Tag Archives: Phil Scott

The VTGOP Is “Helping” Phil Scott Again

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Gov. Phil Scott is kinda busy these days with, among other things, talking to the Biden administration and our Democratic Congressional delegation about federal flood relief.

So naturally, Vermont Republican Party chair Paul Dame thought this was an ideal moment to flog the “Biden Crime Family” nonsense. Dame’s weekly commentary, delivered today to the select few on the VTGOP mailing list, is loaded with conditional assertions and misleading phraseology, all in service of the long-discredited narrative that Joe and Hunter Biden are international racketeers of the basest sort.

Good thing for the governor that nobody takes Paul Dame seriously outside his tiny band of true believers (who, unfortunately, occupy most of the leadership positions in the state party). Otherwise, Scott would have some ‘splainin’ to do the next time he picks up the phone to talk to administration officials.

Dame does his level best to whomp up some outrage from the steaming “Biden Crime Family” pile of Santorum. And fails. But his effort is yet another stain on the reputation of a once-respectable political organization — one that ruled Vermont for more than a century and produced remarkable figures like George Aiken, Bob Stafford, Dick Snelling, and Jim Jeffords.

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This Is the Easy Part

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Gov. Phil Scott is getting positive reviews for standing tall in the public eye, projecting an aura of confidence and strength, displaying leadership in a time of crisis.

All good things, to be sure. But I remember in 2011 when his predecessor Peter Shumlin got the same kind of plaudits for his handling of Tropical Storm Irene. But it turned out that Shumlin was a much less skillful administrator in the absence of a crisis. From this I learned that crises are not the true test of a leader. You need definite skills in such moments, but they are not the same skills that make someone an effective manager in “normal” times or a visionary who can steer the ship of state in a positive direction.

Phil Scott’s true test will come after the immediate crisis, when he will have to learn the right lessons from the Flood of 2023 and craft policies to minimize the chances of similar disasters in the future. And to do so even if it means re-examining his own beliefs and preconceptions, something that hasn’t been his strong suit in the past.

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The Loneliest Overwhelmingly Popular Governor in Town

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At last week’s press conference, Governor Nice Guy spent much of the time wearing his Frowny Phil mask. Lots of unpleasant subjects: The still unsettled emergency housing program, all the veto overrides, plus Auditor Doug Hoffer’s scathing report on his pet administrative project, the Agency of Digital Services, which gave him the opportunity to unfurl an obviously scripted and vigorous defense of ADS. (Outgoing ADS Secretary Shawn Nailor was in on the presser for no reason at all, just in case some reporter asked about the agency. When the question did arise, Scott and Nailor just couldn’t stop trumpeting the former’s vision and the latter’s execution.)

On top of all that, he had the opportunity to wallow in his profound political isolation. Not a lot of fun for a politician with an approval rating of, what was it, 163 percent or something?

Gov. Scott was clueless about how we’ve arrived at the point where an historically popular leader is on the short end of historically lopsided legislative supermajorities, and had no idea what he might be able to do about it. Plus he made it clear that his divorce from the Vermont Republican Party is complete and irrevocable.

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Sure, Hundreds Have Been Unsheltered, But Let’s Not Forget the Real Tragedy: Important People Have Had Their Feelings Hurt

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There’s a great deal of desperate history-rewriting going on after the disheartening political debate over emergency housing. Everybody is shifting blame. No wonder; the outcome was not a solution to the crisis, but a patchwork of compromises intended to carefully balance the suffering of the unhoused against the comfort level of Our Political Betters. It’s nothing that anybody can take pride in.

The Scott administration is blaming the Legislature for, I don’t know, failing to defy the governor’s insistence on ending the program as scheduled. Legislative leaders who were happy to kill the program until it got too embarrassing are now blaming the administration for failing to plan a transition, which is true enough but doesn’t absolve Statehouse leadership from their failure to heed the warnings coming from housing advocates and, well, people like me.

There’s one thing both sides can agree on: The real villain is Brenda Siegel.

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Why Don’t We Govern As If People Mattered?

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Two stories on a common theme appeared Monday morning on VTDigger. The first was about a “spate” (their term) of deaths in Vermont’s prison system, mainly at the Springfield facility. The second was about another rise in opioid-related deaths that puts us on track to break the all-time record set in 2022.

In both, I heard echoes of the lamentable deal struck by the Legislature and Scott administration for a partial extension of the motel voucher program — an extension loaded with poison pills. Not only does the program leave 800 or so households without shelter, it also makes the voucher experience as unpleasant as possible for its clients from now on. Who are, just a reminder, some of Vermont’s most vulnerable. You know, the ones Gov. Phil Scott likes to say he’s committed to protecting. Echoes also of a fundamental approach toward human services programs for the poor: Make the experience difficult and unpleasant so recipients are incentivized to GTFO, one way or another.

It’s like a soup kitchen that dumps vinegar into its food because if it tastes good, people won’t be incentivized to get their own damn dinner. Mind you, not enough vinegar to make anyone sick; just enough to discourage them from partaking unless they’re truly desperate.

This approach is all too common in our social programs. It’s a lousy way to meet the needs of our most vulnerable. It’s morally questionable, and if you’re not into the “morality” stuff, it’s also counterproductive in terms of financials and outcomes. People suffer needlessly and face tougher barriers to achieving self-sufficiency, which I think is what we’re supposedly aiming for.

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If a Political Committee Does Something Stupid in the Forest, Does It Make a Sound?

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You know, if the Burlington Republican Committee wasn’t a bunch of hateful fuckers, I might feel a little bit sorry for them. They went to all the trouble of writing a painfully detailed resolution denying the very existence of transgender folk and complaining of bathroom incursions by people posing as trans, “authoritarian censorship” of their views on gender, “an alarming increase in violent attacks” on people such as themselves… and oh, so many other things. There’s a grand total of 17 “Whereases” and seven “Be It Resolveds.” It has the distractingly busy look of a Dr. Bronner’s Soap label.

The resolution was first reported on June 23 by Guy “Scoop” Page at the Vermont Daily Chronicle.

The Committee burped out this thing on… April 25. And then sent it to Mayor Miro Weinberger and the Burlington City Council.

Yikes. All that hard work, all that hatred spewed onto a single crowded page, and nobody noticed for almost two months.

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Vermont’s Renewable Energy Sector Has Taken a Dive Since 2016. Gee, What Happened at the End of That Year?

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The good folks at Renewable Energy Vermont have issued a new report called “No Good Reason” which chronicles the extreme slowdown in solar energy projects since 2016. As seen in the above graph, Vermont’s rollout has slowed at the same time that solar is on the rise across America.

Two words missing from the report: “Phil Scott.”

Yep. the report shows that since 2016, state regulators have done their level best to delay and defeat solar energy development in Vermont. But while it assigns blame to the Public Utility Commission, the Department of Public Service and the Agency of Natural Resources, it skirts around naming the man responsible for appointing those officials and setting the policy course they all follow. Also unmentioned: political appointees like DPS Commissioner June Tierney, ANR Secretary Julie Moore, PUC Chair Anthony Roisman, and PUC Commissioner Margaret Cheney, a.k.a. the wife of U.S. Sen. Peter Welch.

Maybe REV is trying to be diplomatic. Myself, I think they’re cowards.

Still, it’s a great report that quantifies what’s been obvious for years: the Scott administration is happy to obstruct solar in Vermont and meet our renewable energy needs with power from Hydro Quebec.

The result: Vermont ranks 48th in the nation in meeting its electricity needs within its borders. Only Massachusetts and Delaware, small states that consume a lot more energy than Vermont, rank lower.

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This Is Not Going Away

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One of the lesser aftereffects of The Great Unhousing (Abridged) is the fact that the fine old Vermont pastime of “camping” is now a euphemism for “no shelter for YOU!” So there’s that.

Otherwise, I’m sure Our Political Betters are hoping that the issue will Just Go Away, Already now that they’ve managed to squeeze out a partial, inadequate offramp for the motel voucher program.

News flash: It’s not going away. We may have avoided unhousing 2,000-odd households, at least for now, but we’ve done nothing for the 800 or so households who were kicked out of their motel rooms this month. And the deal between the Legislature and the Scott administration sets the stage for a drip, drip, drip of unhousing over the next several months due to the mean-spirited restrictions put on the extended program. You know, avoid the big one-day eviction events, the media doesn’t notice, the unhoused disappear into their cars or unsanctioned campsites or wherever the hell they go as long as they go somewhere, and the political headaches are manageable.

That’s right, our goal is not to help the vulnerable and alleviate suffering, it’s to keep the issue off the radar. But some of us are planning to keep making noise.

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Vermont Democrats Spend a Pleasant Tuesday Slappin’ Around the Most Popular Governor in the Country

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Well, that didn’t take long. The Legislature had scheduled a three-day session to try to override the eight vetoes delivered this year by Gov. Phil Scott. Turns out they only needed one single day.

In that day, the Legislature overrode five of Scott’s vetoes and deferred action on the others. They failed exactly zero times. They didn’t come close to failing. Five overrides in one day sets an all-time record and, as Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman pointed out in a post-session press release, “In Vermont’s history, there had only been 14 veto overrides. With these five overrides, the legislature has increased that number by more than 33%.”

All in a day’s work. Facing down the most popular governor in America.

Oh, and there was also the indignity of attaching metaphorical training wheels to Scott’s administrative bicycle. In the bill to extend the motel voucher program for some recipients, the Legislature imposed strict reporting requirements on Team Scott, as if lawmakers didn’t trust the admin’s ability or inclination to do its frickin’ job.

I mean, all they had to judge by was two years of administration failure on that front. No wonder they’re demanding receipts this time.

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The Voucher Deal: Better Than Nothing, Worse Than It Ought to Be

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On the eve of the Legislature’s veto override session, we now have the text of the bill extending the motel voucher program. It’s more or less what we thought it would be; its biggest shortcoming is the exclusion of the hundreds of Vermonters unsheltered this month. Ain’t a damn thing in it for them. And as we saw earlier, these may not be the neediest of our neediest, but they’ve got some pretty extreme needs and they’re going to suffer greatly as long as they’re unhoused.

The real sin of it all is that it wouldn’t cost much to include them, and we’ve got the money. Our fiscal experts continue to forecast revenue declines in the future, but for now we’re still collecting more than predicted every month. And the FY2024 budget puts $14 million in cold storage against future federal match opportunities. That seems like prudence except that we always find money for federal matches! Wait, let me put a little stank on that:

We. Always. Find. Money. For. Federal. Matches!

Missing out on federal largesse because we couldn’t come up with the scratch? It’s just not a thing that happens.

Banking funds against that highly unlikely occurrence while we’re sentencing hundreds to indefinite unsheltering? That’s a goddamn crime.

But this deal is almost certain to go through. It gives the House dissidents most of what they asked for, and they’re likely to give in and support the override of Gov. Phil Scott’s budget veto. Well, most of them will. The rest, in the world of legislative dealmaking, don’t matter. Nor do the unhoused who aren’t being helped.

So let’s take a closer look at the bill, including a few unexpected and unwelcome twists.

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