Transformational change is something to be approached carefully, diligently, thoughtfully. Every facet should be fully explored, every interest considered. Unforeseen effects should be searched for and dealt with before the transformation is put into effect.
Or, you can do it the way Our Political Betters are handling fundamental reform of Vermont’s public education system: Quickly, behind closed doors, and rushed through the Legislature before you can blink twice.
Because, I guess, it worked so well with last year’s Act 73. You know, the last-minute measure that triggered widespread anger and consternation among the voting public because they rightly felt blindsided? Yeah, we’re trying that again. Because definition of insanity.
Well, I didn’t expect to be recycling this cheeseball graphic so soon, but here we are with House leadership violating one of the fundamental rules of running a legislative body. Last time it was letting the minority Republicans win something for the first time in (per Rep. Mark Higley) 18 years. This time it’s depending on Republican votes to pass a major bill because a solid majority of Democrats wanted to change it.
Whatever the merits of the bill in question, this is another case of leadership malpractice. If you can’t convince your members to go your way, then run to the front of the pack and at least pretend you’re leading.
The bill, S.208, passed the Senate as a ban on police personnel — local, state, federal — wearing masks or otherwise concealing their identities, and requiring the wearing of visible identification. The House Judiciary Committee removed federal police from the bill because a court decision struck down a similar California law, and Judiciary felt that S.208 would suffer the same fate.
But when the bill went to the full House, it became clear that most Democrats preferred the Senate version. House leadership repeatedly postponed a floor vote as it sought a way forward for the House Judiciary version. Apparently they gave up, because the vote finally happened on Wednesday. A proposed amendment to restore the Senate version came before the House, and more than two-thirds of voting Democrats bucked leadership and voted for the amendment.
Addison County Sen. Steven Heffernan, seen here being endorsed by our allegedly “moderate” governor, has done it again. He’s outed himself as a bigot, and is now trying to avoid the political damage that should result. Last time it was bravely ducking out of the Senate chamber when the roll was called for PR.4, which would add an equal protection clause to the state constitution. This time, he’s trying to explain why he’s not an ignorant bigot after making remarks on the Senate floor that were clearly both ignorant and bigoted.
And I do hope somebody asks Phil Scott if he has any second thoughts about the quality of his endorsements. Because Heffernan has revealed himself as an archconservative far away from our political mainstream in general and the politics of normally blue Addison County in particular.
The remarks in question were delivered on the Senate floor last Friday, May 15, and went unreported in the media until top Democrats started raising holy hell about them. Even now there’s been absolutely minimal coverage — an outrageous state of affairs when compared with the brouhaha over much milder remarks made by former senator Sam Douglass. Heffernan’s statements in the official record were far more toxic than anything posted by Douglass on Young Republican message boards.
The only story I’ve seen was tucked at the bottom of VTDigger’s “Daily Briefing” column for today, Wednesday May 20. The piece included Heffernan’s lame effort to explain himself, which beggars credulity. There’s been zero reporting from Seven Days or Vermont Public or even The Addison Independent as of this writing.
This November, we’ll all get a chance to vote on adding an equal protection clause to the Vermont constitution, something our state sorely needs — especially in a time when the federal administration is actively fighting equal protections. The equal protection amendment known as PR.4 has now cleared every hurdle in the marathon course required of constitutional amendments — passage through the Legislature in two successive biennia, which takes a minimum of three years to accomplish.
The final vote came last week in the House, and the tally was 128 in favor and 14 against. The corresponding vote in the Senate was 29-0 — with Republican Sen. Steven Heffernan taking the coward’s way out and ducking into the restroom when it was time to cast his vote.
I’m not making that up. It comes straight from VTDigger’s Shaun Robinson, who reported that Heffernan “got up from his seat right before the roll call vote was taken… because his stomach was feeling ‘agitated’.”
It’s a convenient and time-dishonored way to avoid going on the record. Heffernan barely bothered to devise a convincing cover story, telling Robinson “My pizza hit at the right time, I guess,” and acknowledging that the timing was “convenient.”
Especially when you’re a conservative lawmaker about to seek re-election in the blue precincts of Addison County, right?
Well, He Just Made the List — of Republicans whose records deserve closer scrutiny in this election season. The List also includes the nine Republicans who voted against a bill to establish a state vaccine registry. And since no one in the media thought it worthwhile to name the opponents of PR.4, well, I’m happy to oblige.
Has Danziger been our cartoonist laureate yet? If not, why not?
Anyway, to business. Recently, Gov. Phil Scott took a flying elbow off the top rope in the opinion section of The Hill, that bastion of conventional wisdom inside the Beltway. It was a complete and utter smackdown from beginning to end. And I’ll stop with the wrestling metaphors now, I think.
The subject was Scott’s return-to-office order for state employees. That’s the one in serious jeopardy thanks to a unanimous ruling by the state Labor Relations Board. That’s the Board whose five members were all nominated and/or vetted by the Scott administration.
Which begs the question, was the return-to-office order a good idea or not?
Enter Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, a widely-published expert on workplace issues in the digital age, dubbed “The Office Whisperer” by The New York Times. He penned (Only in Journalism) an essay published by The Hill on April 14 that ripped the RTO order to shreds. He called the order a “fiasco,” a “blunder,” and “an expensive gamble,” not to mention “a case study in how political theater can collide with labor law, management reality and basic fiscal discipline.”
Democratic lawmakers are in the process of dismantling Act 181, the landmark Act 250 reform measure designed to encourage housing where it makes the most sense while protecting undeveloped land. It’s clear that the Act will be significantly pared back due to (a) political pressure from rural areas and/or (b) garden variety Democratic cowardice in the face of the slightest headwinds.
As they do so, Democrats will be throwing another of their core constituencies under the bus. If they’re willing to ignore the teachers’ union (not to mention principals and school administrators and, well, parents) by pursuing the Act 73 education reform bill, their rewriting of Act 181 is an abandonment of environmental groups. Yep, the Dems to seem to have a tendency to take their strongest supporters for granted. (See also: Women, people of color, LGBTQ+ folk.)
Act 181 was one of the most carefully crafted, inclusive pieces of legislation to come down the pike. It was the product of extensive negotiation and collaboration across the full gamut of interested parties, from environmental groups to developers and business interests. It was meant to strike a delicate balance between development and conservation — a balance that’s now being undone in the Democrats’ retreat.
Act 181 had the added benefit of encouraging development where we need it the most: in settled areas with public services. I don’t know about you, but my definition of “workforce housing” doesn’t involve isolated homes deep in the woods. It means affordable housing where the workers and the jobs are located.
As expected, Aly Richards has declared her candidacy for governor, becoming the second person willing to take on S.S. Phil Scott, the Nimitz class aircraft carrier of #vtpoli. And I am all for it.
Richards is the former head of Let’s Grow Kids, the organization that led the charge for improved child care. She’s currently chair of the University of Vermont Medical Center board, which puts her in kind of an interesting (uncomfortable?) position when it comes to the hot-button health care affordability issue. I mean, considering that UVMMC is widely seen as The Big Bad of Vermont’s cost crisis.
The first to enter the race was Amanda Janoo, an economic policy expert with the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. Each brings a unique and intriguing skill set to the race. I’m not here to compare their resumés or agendas; I just want to cheer the simple fact that two very talented people actually want the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in the same year, a blessing we haven’t enjoyed since 2016.
Conventional wisdom would say a competitive Democratic primary is a resource drain, putting the winner at an even greater disadvantage against a popular incumbent who hasn’t been beaten in literally forever. He’s been in politics since 2000 — amazing for a self-professed non-politician, right? — and his next election defeat will be his first.
But I say, to hell with conventional wisdom. Bring on the primary!
Last week’s edition of Gov. Phil Scott’s weekly bitchfest press conference centered on his opposition to the House’s FY2027 budget, which basically involved the governor defining “compromise” as “forsake your own position and do what I want,” and also featured him continuing to complain angrily about “bias” in a Vermont Labor Relations Board whose members are (1) appointed by himself and (2) bound by law to be “neutral” and “impartial.”
But there were a pair of passages that should not be allowed to fade into the impenetrable murk of Phil Pressers Past. So before we move on to new business (a competitive race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, hooray), let’s enter them into the public record.
First, we have Scott reiterating his commitment to nuclear energy, which he’s never actually proposed with any specifics because it’d be politically radioactive (see what I did there). And second, we have Scott claiming that any homeless people who are unsheltered in Vermont are doing so voluntarily. Because sleeping in a car is such an appealing lifestyle?
Let’s start with nukes. “I’ve long been a supporter of nuclear energy,” Scott said. “Even back in my days in the Senate, I voted in opposition to shutting down Vermont Yankee.”
Ah yes, Vermont Yankee, the trouble-prone, mismanaged power plant that left nuclear energy with a permanent black eye to most Vermonters. Yeah, that’s what we need: another Vermont Yankee!
It’s been quite a while since I forced myself to endure one of Gov. Phil Scott’s weekly press conferences. I know, it ought to be appointment viewing for Your Political Observer, but I’m my own boss here and I feel free to follow my muse and limit the self-sacrifices. Every gubernatorial presser takes a couple nibbles out of my soul.
But after his angry, neo-Trumpian press release about this week’s Vermont Labor Relations Board decision, I felt like I had to see how he’d follow up in his weekly presser.
And boy, did he ever. It was a festival of self-pity and blamecasting. Nothing is his fault; every problem we face is because of the incompetent spendthrifts in the Democratic Legislature.
(After seeing this performance, I’ve upped the odds on whether he will seek another term; if the chances of him running were 95%, they’re now at 99. And it’s gonna be a nasty campaign, although swaddled in his famously avuncular style. He’s got such a collection of receipts to cash in, he’s gonna need at least one more election cycle to clear his cache. Hell, he might stick around out of sheer spite until we’re asked to re-elect Phil Scott’s Head in a Jar in the year 2050.)
It’s the governor as innocent bystander. Which is a real stretch, considering that he is by far the most powerful person in state government. He is the chief of an executive branch with thousands of employees. His appointees run every department and agency. The Legislature, by contrast, consists of everyday people who get paid a pittance and have little to no staff support.
Let’s count ’em, shall we? The leaders of the House and Senate have one full-time staffer apiece. Each chamber has a small central staff to handle operations and paperwork. Each committee has a single staffer. The entire Legislature has two small support operations: the Joint Fiscal Office and the Legislative Counsel. Compare that to the small army of administrators, bureaucrats and line workers at Scott’s beck and call.
He runs the joint. If he can’t find ways to work across the aisle, that’s on him. I realize it’s no fun to face Democratic majorities for nearly a decade. But it’s his job to find common ground with opposition lawmakers who, after all, have as much of a mandate as he does. He has failed to do so, and that’s why so many of our problems have gotten worse during his tenure.
I haven’t written about last week’s appalling, wasteful, inhumane, dangerous, and just plain stoooooooooooooooooopid ICE action on Dorset Street in South Burlington. You know, the one that endangered countless area residents and students and staff at SoBu High, caused the closure of one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares for hours on end, needlessly endangered children and anti-ICE protesters, and ended up with the detention of people ICE wasn’t looking for in the first place. (Oh, and according to Seven Days, ICE agents showed up at the suspect house WITHOUT A WARRANT, which caused hours of delay while the situation grew tenser and tenser.)
Because, you know, they needed some trophies.
I haven’t written because our news media actually rose to the occasion, offering consistent, detailed coverage of the raid and its aftermath. First prize goes to Seven Days for sticking to the story and providing meaty follow-ups, but multiple outlets put their shoulders to the wheel and kept on pushing in a way we rarely see in our age of diminished newsrooms. But there is one aspect of this sorry misadventure that falls squarely in the purview of this Vermont Political Observer.
Which is, Gov. Phil Scott’s ongoing efforts to walk a tightrope between humanity and the Republican administration in Washington. His contributions are unsatisfying, unedifying, and unlikely to work if the goal is to keep Vermont out of Trump’s crosshairs.
They sure aren’t doing anything to help Vermont’s immigrant communities. Worse, outside of the occasional carefully-worded condemnation, Scott’s government is actively complicit with Trump’s racist, authoritarian crackdown. The stain on our collective conscience is still growing, and Scott bears his share of responsibility for that.
The Vermont Political Observer. 