Tag Archives: Phil Scott

Scott Plays Lobbyist Footsie Over Medical Monitoring Bill — UPDATED With Another Grisly Detail

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The Legislature is once again trying to move forward with a bill to mandate lifetime medical monitoring coverage to Vermonters who may have been exposed to toxic chemicals such as the PFAS family of hazardous greeblies. Lawmakers passed such a bill in 2018 and 2019, only to see it vetoed by Gov. Phil Scott both times for his usual weak-ass reasons.

Well, now we know exactly how closely the administration was coordinating its stance with big corporate interests. Short version: Hand in glove. Or footsie under the table, if you prefer.

This revelation doesn’t come from Vermont’s sadly diminished political press, but from The Hill in faraway Washington, D.C. On January 26, The Hill posted the second in a four-part series on efforts to defeat such legislation in multiple states. The opening paragraph lays out the thesis:

State-level efforts to help victims of “forever chemical” exposure get compensation have met resistance from both governments and industry — and this pushback has been particularly effective in Republican-led states.

Like for instance, Vermont, which is the focus of the 1/26 story. It draws on public records requests that uncovered how “an official in the governor’s office coordinated with a lobbyist in ‘watering down'” the bill.

The official was Ethan Latour, then assistant spokesflack for Scott and now Deputy Finance Commissioner (because flackery is such good preparation for a high-level fiscal management post). The most telling moment: Latour sent an email to Warren Coleman of MMR, the top black-hat lobby shop in Montpelier, in which he shared a draft of a policy memo to the governor. Yep, Latour was making sure his memo danced to Coleman’s tune.

But that’s not the most telling part! In the email, Latour made reference to “his/our proposal,” meaning a weakened version of the bill which was a joint effort between the administration and Coleman’s corporate paymasters.

One more snuggly little detail: Before Latour joined the Scott administration, he worked for…. wait for it… MMR.

Update. Latour doesn’t work for the state anymore. He’s on the Secretary of State’s Lobbyist registry as a lobbyist employed by… wait for it… MMR. Isn’t that special!

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This Will Be a Good Test of the State of the VTGOP

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In this corner: six-term state Sen. Joe Benning, former Senate Minority Leader and the only Republican to chair a Senate committee.

In that corner: Gregory Thayer, 2020 election truther, organizer of the CovidCruiser, anti-critical race theory agitator and head of Vermonters for Vermont, an all-purpose far-right Society for the Airing of Grievances.

These are the two Republicans running for lieutenant governor. It ought to be an easy choice. Prominent lawmaker, articulate, thoughtful conservative versus fringey zealot. And maybe it will be; I make Benning the clear favorite.

But it might not be, and therein lies the problem with today’s VTGOP. There are a lot of Gregory Thayers in the party ranks. Party chair Paul Dame is likely to take a cautiously neutral position because he can’t afford to inflame the far right, even though Benning is clearly the better choice. He’s the only one who’d bring credibility to the ticket, and he’s earned his party’s support through his years of service.

But we’re talking about a VTGOP that’s turned its back on Gov. Phil Scott, the only Republican who’s won a statewide election since 2008. And a VTGOP whose base probably sees Benning as a turncoat.

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In Praise of Shithousery

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This, friends and acquaintances, is Jamie Vardy, ace striker for Leicester City FC and world-class shithouse. His specialty is the extravagant goal celebration in front of opposition fans. I do believe he’d rather score on the road than at home, just so he can put on displays like this. A former teammate says that Vardy would ask fellow players how to deliver insults in their language so he’d know how to say “Your sister is a whore” to a Portuguese defender.

Shithousery, broadly defined, is behavior designed to get under your opponent’s skin and hopefully disrupt their play. Kicking, grabbing, taunting, egregious overacting in an attempt to draw a foul, that sort of thing. It’s a quality you hate in opposing players but love when they’re on your side.

Which brings us to Vermont politics, especially Democratic politics, which is woefully short on shithousery. You might think we’re better off that way. To be sure, shithousery can be overdone; there are figures on the national scene who are capable of nothing but. (Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, etc.) Vardy, on the other hand, is a topnotch player who once carried his squad to an improbable Premier League championship.

We need us a Jamie Vardy. By “we,” I mean Vermont’s Democrats and Progressives. The closest thing we’ve got is Bernie Sanders, but he’s not active on the home front. We need someone in state politics happy to throw a sharp elbow in the opposition’s ribs, even if they have to suffer the tut-tuts of the chattering class.

Phil Scott, for all his “nice guy” reputation, is an exceptional shithouse. He knows how to fire a sucker-punch when the ref isn’t looking. Say, when he accuses his critics of playing politics or slams the media for creating controversy. Or when he tiptoes around veto threats while refusing to engage with lawmakers.

It’s how he keeps the Dems off balance. They’re always trying to guess how far they can go without triggering a veto, which makes them water down their own legislation. Which results in Democrats looking like fools when they try to convince their voters that really, if you vote for us this time, we’ll deliver on the stuff we’ve been promising for years. Scott also keeps a stable of shithouses in his executive office, just as fellow “nice guy” Jim Douglas did when he was governor. (Names? Jason Gibbs, Dustin Degree, Tayt Brooks. All three have Two have been at Scott’s right hand since day one; Degree joined them eleven months into Scott’s first term.)

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Somewhere, Arthur Laffer Nods His Approval

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Ah, supply-side economics. That oft-discredited relic of the Reagan administration. The failed policy that has done more to create income inequality than anything Sam Walton could dream up. You’d think that if anybody still believed in it, the Sam Brownback crash-and-burn would have convinced them otherwise.

But here we are in the Year of Our Lord 2022, and somebody from the “moderate” Phil Scott administration has the gall to trumpet a policy as “supply-side.” Yikes.

“This is a supply-side proposal to build more homes, literally to subsidize contractors, home developers and builders to build more homes at the price point that working Vermonters can afford,” [Housing Commissioner Josh] Hanford said.

That quote, which didn’t age well from the moment it left Hanford’s mouth, is about Gov. Scott’s proposal to spend $5 million on a pilot program to pay contractors to rehabilitate decrepit housing stock.

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Never Miss a Chance to Hit Your Talking Points, No Matter How Awkward the Context

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Gov. Phil Scott used the occasion of his weekly Covid briefing — well, customarily weekly; he’s missed two of the last three weeks — to do a little bragging. The Omicron numbers are starting to trend downward and Scott was quick to take credit, although he also warned it was too soon for a victory lap.

That’s all fine. Normal for a politician. But on a couple of occasions, the governor took it uncomfortably close to the realm of tastelessness.

First, a reporter asked him to reflect on Vermont’s death toll passing the 500 milestone. He said the right words, most of them, although in an oddly dispassionate tone; but he couldn’t resist referring — not once, but twice — to the state’s relatively low death toll. In other words, he took a solemn moment as a pretext for delivering a political talking point. And later on, he talked of keeping the death rate on the low side in spite of Vermont’s aging population. Yeah, I know, us Olds are so inconvenient.

Details and a few other notes… after the jump.

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Phil Scott Shows His Educational True Colors

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The above was burped out this morning by “National School Choice Week,” an organization that claims to support education but doesn’t know how to spell Phil Scott’s first name. For the record, it’s one-L, as in Ogden Nash’s lama.

“National School Choice Week” is one of those innocuous-sounding labels adopted by a right-wing organization to obscure its true nature. Here’s how they themselves describe what they stand for:

School choice means giving parents access to the best K-12 education options for their children. These options include traditional public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online academies, and homeschooling.

Of course, parents already have access to all these options. What NCSW wants is for public dollars to follow every student no matter where they are educated, including institutions that practice various forms of discrimination and religious indoctrination. Such a program inevitably drains resources away from the public school system, which is one of the jewels of American government.

And yes indeed, Scott did issue a proclamation in support of NCSW. It’s couched in the usual language about improving the quality of education and accountability and parental authority. But look: Scott is endorsing a cause put forward by the enemies of public education on the right. That should worry anyone in Vermont who supports a strong system of public schools.

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Wet Arse, No Fish

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It’s not exactly a surprise that legislative leaders have given up on passing a mask mandate bill, but the timing is curious indeed. Last Friday, we appeared to be one single grumpy senator away from committee approval. Now, less than a week later, the white flag is waving.

On Friday (per VTDigger’s excellent Final Reading), Ginny Lyons, chair of the Senate Welfare Committee, asked her members if they were ready to vote on the bill. Sen. Ann Cummings replied that she wasn’t. Which is pretty odd, considering that a mask mandate has been a hot issue in #vtpoli for months now. Had she given it no thought until that moment?

Lyons asked if the committee could vote on Monday, usually an off day. The not-terribly-energetic Cummings responded, “What’s the matter with Tuesday?”

The bill was on the committee’s agenda first thing Tuesday morning. But at that point, Lyons announced an indefinite delay. “Leadership continues to discuss the path forward for that bill,” she said. “It was scheduled for this morning, but we’re going to postpone our work and hopefully it’ll only be until tomorrow morning.”

“Hopefully.”

But the state Senate is where hope goes to die.

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Dear Workforce Member: The Definition of “Acceptable Damage” Has Been Escalated

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The news that the University of Vermont Health Network will force workers to use up their vacation and sick days if they get Covid is bad enough. What’s worse is the implicit message about the future of the disease.

“While the UVM Health Network understands that this is a change, as we enter the third year of the pandemic with a realization that COVID-19 will become endemic, UVMHN needed a policy that could be sustainable and offered for the long term,” UVM Health Network spokesperson Annie Mackin wrote in an email.

Worth noting that “this is a change” is a totally vanilla way of saying “we’re sticking it to all of you.” Beyond that, the message is that after pandemic transitions to endemic, the ravages of Covid-19 will be impactful enough to warrant a permanent change in workplace policy. Even when “pandemic” is nothing but a memory, a lot of workers will still get sick enough to use up their paid time off.

For those who believed that we were going to come out of this unscathed — that “endemic” meant our lives could return to normal — this is a chilling concept. Kinda provides a bit of unpleasant context for Gov. Phil Scott’s sweet-talk about the endemic phase. We might be wearing N95s and thinking twice about entering public spaces for a long, long time. Like, indefinitely.

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Phil Scott Enjoys a Swim in the Covid Cashpile

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As expected, Gov. Phil Scott’s budget address (video/text) was a rollicking affair full of new and expanded programs and tax relief that he touts as providing “transformational” change for Vermont. Yep, these budgets are a lot easier when they’re floating on a sea of federal Covid funds, plus vastly inflated state tax revenues thanks to the purchasing power injected by the feds into Vermont.

To his credit, Scott cautioned that we can’t spend willy-nilly. He said this is a once-in-a-lifetime windfall, and thus a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reset and strengthen Vermont’s economy. “The economic future of our state will be defined by what we do today,” he said at the end of his address. And he warned against spending one-time money for ongoing expenses. “These are one-time funds for one-time challenges.”

Do his proposals match his sweeping rhetoric? In part, but not in full.

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Dan French Wants You to Know He’s Smarter Than You

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Gov. Phil Scott is the master of leavening otherwise innocuous statements with little passive-aggressive cracks, such as his couching any opposition to his Wise PoliciesTM as “playing politics.” Well, Education Secretary Dan French, the Inspector Clouseau of the Scott cabinet, has listened and learned at the feet of his master.

You see, French buried a lovely nugget of condescension in his second consecutive Friday newsdump of fresh guidance for the public schools. Not only has he shifted state policy away from in-school testing and contact tracing; now he’s actively dissuading school officials from pursuing more stringent measures.

In his Friday email to the schools, French told them “to avoid the temptation to build additional processes.”

Temptation?

Excuse me?

What he’s saying, I guess, is that school officials have to be cautioned away from the shiny bauble of additional work. Yes, the sirens of contact tracing and Test to Stay may be singing prettily from the rocky shore, but local officials need to tie themselves to the mast and sail on by the opportunity to take on a workload that was killing them throughout the fall semester.

Does he know how condescending this sounds? Probably not, given his customary level of obtuseness.

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