Tag Archives: Kerrick Johnson

Is the School Centralization Model Coming for Vermont’s Small Utilities?

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Fascinating story in this week’s edition of The Hardwick Gazette, which merits follow-up coverage of the implications by our larger media outlets. (And I’m not saying so because of my role with the paper. This is all about the merits of the story.) As The Gazette’s Paul Fixx reports, the Hardwick Electric Department just replaced its general manager in a completely opaque fashion: no public notice, no agenda item at a board meeting, no explanation whatsoever. Nothing.

So what’s going on here?

We don’t know, but I have my suspicions. I see the current drive to de-localize management in our public education system, and I wonder if the same forces are at work in Vermont’s electric power system. In short, is there an effort underway to consolidate Vermont’s community utilities — up to and including the Burlington Electric Department?

For the good folks of Hardwick and environs, the most immediately important thing is the total mystery around the replacement of Sarah Braese as general manager less than a year after she was hired. What does it say about the organizational health of HED?

For the rest of us, the big piece is the identity of HED’s new interim (apparently) general manager. Scott Johnstone was the utility’s interim chief last year, plus he’s been chief of Morrisville Water & Light since 2022, plus he was recently installed as head of the financially troubled Hyde Park Electric. (The best source for coverage of Hyde Park’s perilous situation comes from, shocker I know, The News & Citizen. Local journalism FTW.)

That’s a hell of a portfolio: Johnstone now runs three small utilities in northern Vermont. Things that make you go hmm…..

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Julie Moore, Off the Top Rope

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I don’t know whose idea it was to make Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore the lead signatory on an opinion essay aimed squarely at Vermont’s environmental community, but… it’s… a choice, that’s for sure.

The Moore op-ed, co-signed by Public Service Commissioner Kerrick Johnson, is entitled “Vermont’s Housing Needs Require Decisive Action – Step Up or Step Away.” The unfortunate echo of Donald Trump’s infamous “Stand Back and Stand By” remark aside, the essay is a direct attack on the environmental groups that Moore frequently interacts with — and hopefully cooperates with. I guess not, eh?

The essay posits environmental advocates as The Enemy in Gov. Phil Scott’s effort to ease Vermont’s housing crisis. I mean, “Step Up or Step Away” comes across as a very thinly veiled threat.

Before I go on, I must point out an inadvertent admission in Moore and Johnson’s essay. It’s right there in the second sentence: “The cost of housing has skyrocketed with median home prices in Vermont more than doubling in the last 10 years, putting both homeownership (sic) and rentals out of reach for many.”

To which I immediately thought, well, who’s been governor of Vermont for almost the entire last decade? Oh yeah, Phil Scott, that’s who.

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“Rhetoric” vs. Reality

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Gov. Phil Scott continues to urge Vermonters to take a chill pill and ignore the bull rampaging through the china shop. He tells us to stop focusing on “the rhetoric in D.C.” — without identifying the source of the rhetoric. He did so once again last week in an interview with Vermont Public’s Michaela Lefrak which was faithfully, painfully, completely transcribed on VP’s website. Feast your eyes on this cornucopia of good talkin’.

Well, what— again, we have to wait for whatever the action is he takes against us here in the state, and react to that. And I, I think we have been doing that, but, but for all of us to fall into that trap, I think, is, would be unfortunate and it takes away from all the problems that exist here in Vermont today, that we’re not doing because we’re focusing on the rhetoric that he, he wants to stir up, and I don’t believe we can live in chaos for the next three and a half years. They just have too much to do, too much to accomplish right here in Vermont.

Winston Churchill would be proud.

Anyway, the governor couldn’t be wronger about this. First of all, we’re going to be living “in chaos for the next three and a half years” no matter what. Donald Trump is going to keep waving all the red flags and eroding our democracy and our federal government even if we take Scott’s advice and whistle resolutely past the graveyard.

Trump is a bully. He backtracks when confronted, and then seeks the soft spots in our defenses. It’s exhausting and yes, it takes a lot of time, but we don’t have the luxury of sitting back and waiting for rhetoric to turn into reality. Just ask immigrants, refugees, and transgender folk if they’re feeling secure these days.

Even when it’s nothing more than “rhetoric,” it creates tremendous uncertainty across the board. As Public Service Commissioner Kerrick Johnson told a legislative committee in February, “It changes daily in terms of the program. It changes daily in terms of the program and the people we’re required to work with. It changes daily in terms of the interpretation of the language and what’s being sent.” How the hell can the state do its job in that environment?

But c’mon, it’s gone far beyond mere rhetoric in more ways than I can count. Still, I’ll give it a try. What follows is a list of specific actions taken by the Trump administration that have already had a measurable impact on Vermont and Vermonters. I dare the governor look over this list and gabble placidly about “rhetoric.”

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