Tag Archives: Seven Days

Team Scott Tries to Count to 15 and Comes Up Short

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Ruh-roh, Raggy. Something has gone off the rails in Montpelier.

After several days of lobbying the Senate and slamming its critics, the Scott administration has asked the Senate to, um, postpone its confirmation vote on Zoie Saunders, the governor’s choice for education secretary. (The development was first reported by VTDigger’s Ethan Weinstein and later confirmed by Seven Days’ Alison Novak.)

You know what that means: They don’t have the votes. Which would be perhaps the most embarrassing failure in Scott’s seven-plus years in the corner office. He’s had vetoes overridden before, but that happens to every governor. These confirmation votes are usually perfunctory. Lower-level appointees have, on rare occasion, been rejected, but I haven’t seen any reference to the last time a cabinet nominee was sent packing. Certainly the administration didn’t foresee any trouble, considering that Saunders quit her job in Florida, moved her family to Vermont, and began working as education secretary, all before her confirmation was in the books.

Still, they should have seen it coming. What did they expect, when they nominated someone who’s patently unqualified for the job?

So of course the governor owned up to his mistake and BWAHAHAHAHAHA no he did not. He blamed the whole thing on “misinformation, false assumptions, and politicization” of her nomination by critics and opponents.

Which is a bunch of Grade-A Joe Biden malarkey. The criticism is focused on Saunders’ lack of experience in public schools, her long tenure at a for-profit charter school operator, and — at least from me — her nearly complete lack of any actual administrative experience.

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Not With a Bang, But a Whimper

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Vermont’s longest-running Cold War ended this week, with Seven Days waving the white flag and surrendering to Sen. Bernie Sanders.

It had been nine long years since Bernie had deigned to speak with Vermont’s leading weekly newspaper. The streak ended this week, with Seven Days accepting what was presumably a limited sit-down dedicated to one of the senator’s favorite issues, the plight of America’s senior citizens.

Ultimately it means little to nothing, but it made me a little sad. Way back in December 2017 when I helmed the gone-but-not-forgotten Fair Game column, I covered one of the great events of the Burlington social/political calendar: the late Tony Pomerleau’s annual Christmas shindig. It was a blatant exercise in noblesse oblige, with Pomerleau footing the bill for a big dinner and holiday gifts for selected members of the Queen City’s neediest. And every top-rank political type felt obliged to kiss Pomerleau’s ring, including America’s most notorious Democratic Socialist.

Bernie and Tony had a longstanding relationship, going back to the former’s first days as mayor of Burlington. Sanders had just won a shock victory in 1981, but he didn’t let it go to his head (at least not immediately). He realized he needed to find common ground with The Great and Good of Burlington, including its leading real estate mogul. The unlikely pair did indeed figure out how to work together, which helped get Sanders’ mayoralty off the ground and set the stage for his very successful political career.

Okay, I’m making a short story long. Point being, I wanted to get a quote or two from Sanders about this Odd Couple partnership. That was all. I approached him before the event, when he was glad-handing his way around the room. He seemed amenable at first, but that changed when I mentioned the magic words “Seven Days.” He said “Not right now” and turned away. He could have added “And not ever, either,” but it went without saying. At the time, Bernie held a grudge against Seven Days because it dared to cover some of his rare missteps. I was just caught in the crossfire.

As I walked up to him I started recording on my phone, and captured the entire 10-second exchange. I’ve saved it ever since for sentimental reasons, which is why I can quote it back to you now.

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The New Education Secretary Is Literally Unqualified for the Job, and That’s Not the Bad Part

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Well, well. After taking almost an entire year to find a new education secretary, Gov. Phil Scott sprang his choice on us with very little notice on a Friday, when news organizations are ramping down for the weekend and have no time for a deep dive on the new hire’s background.

That wasn’t a coincidence, not at all, because Zoie Saunders not only hails from Florida, the state on the forefront of smothering public education, not only comes from a position where her primary responsibility was to close public schools, but also fails to meet the legal standard for her new job. The relevant passage:

At the time of appointment, the Secretary shall have expertise in education management and policy and demonstrated leadership and management abilities.

I suppose the governor would argue that Saunders has “expertise in education management and policy” dating primarily from her five years as an executive for Charter Schools USA, a for-profit underminer of public education. But c’mon, she has never taught, she has never managed a school building let alone a district, and she has racked up a mere three months actually working in a public school system. That shouldn’t strike anyone who cares as “expertise in education management.”

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“We Didn’t Have to Do Anything”

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At his weekly press conference today, Gov. Phil Scott again pushed his affordability agenda and characterized the Legislature as tax-and-spendthrifts. And answered some pointed questions about his emergency shelter program, which saw a substantial uptick in business last night (although still well below projected capacity). A total of 34 people slept in the governor’s slapped-together, nighttime-only shelters.

The governor defended his program as “a success,” although he didn’t seem awfully confident. His voice got noticeably quieter when talking homelessness than when he was hammering Democrats about “affordability.” And when push came to shove and he’d reached the limit of his ability to emit thick clouds of verbiage, he twice resorted to that most desperate of defenses: “We didn’t have to do anything.”

Sounds like headstone material to me. Sure, you didn’t have to do anything. No one had a gun to your head. But sweet Jesus, what a statement. The fact that he wasn’t absolutely required to do anything is supposed to make his crappy shelters more acceptable? I don’t think so.

Are we supposed to judge his administration by that standard? There’s actually precious little he has to do. As Donald Trump’s presidency showed, the machinery of government largely keeps moving even if the captain is an ill-tempered, narcissistic boob with a short attention span. But if that’s all you aspire to, well, please don’t run for re-election. We deserve better.

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The Press Coverage of the Temporary Shelters Is Somehow Even Worse than I Thought

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The Gods of Time were very kind to Gov. Phil Scott when they arranged for March 15 to fall on a Friday this year. The 15th was the expiration date for the Adverse Weather Conditions emergency housing program, and that’s when the governor, in all his infinite wisdom and alleged niceness, deliberately unsheltered nearly 500 vulnerable Vermonters.

And partly because it happened on a Friday, the press coverage was scant and woefully incomplete. Almost to the point of moral bankruptcy.

It was bad enough that the coverage of Scott’s decision was slanted pretty strongly in his direction. But the lack of attention to the details of his slapped-together temporary shelter “system” may well let him off the hook entirely for an administrative failure of the worst kind

Friday afternoon is the beginning of the long, dark, largely journalism-free weekend. Staffing is minimal at best. Our biggest outlets (VTDigger, Seven Days, Vermont Public) may have a designated reporter who’s on call to cover big breaking news, and the bar is pretty high for that. The TV stations have smaller staffs but still maintain a weekend presence because they’ve got airtime to fill. But don’t expect their A-Team, such as it is. Any coverage from Friday afternoon to Monday will mainly focus on fires, crashes and crime.

With the background set, what did we get for shelter coverage from Friday evening, when the shelters opened, until now? Damn near next to nothing.

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The Press Coverage of the Shelter Situation Has Been Terrible. We All Need to Take Some Responsibility for That.

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The media coverage of this week’s Scott administration temporary shelter ClusterfuckTM has been dispiritingly spotty and incomplete. This has helped the admin play a little game of “Hey, look! A Squirrel!” with the press. Gov. Phil Scott came out swinging in his Wednesday press conference, bashing the Legislature for allegedly failing to address Act 250 reform when, in fact, the legislative process is a lengthy one and it’s way too early to declare victory or defeat. Since the environmental and development lobbies seem to be unified behind the effort, there is every reason to believe that significant reform will be enacted and Scott’s panic will prove unwarranted.

But all the whining and finger-pointing diverted press attention from the simultaneous rollout of the shelter plan, which involves kicking 500 vulnerable Vermonters out of state-paid motel rooms and into hastily-constructed temporary shelters that will (a) only be open at night and (b) will only be in operation for one week. Or less.

Starting tonight.

The press took a while to get in gear on the shelter issue. It’s a complicated situation, and most of the stories failed to get a full grasp of it. Some weren’t much better than water carriers for administration policy.

I was prepared to write a scathing critique of our press corps, and I will, but then I listened to a really good podcast this morning about the fallen state of journalism today. It made me realize that every one of us plays a part in the health of our media ecosystem, and that I should do something about it as well as complain about it.

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Blows Against the Umpire

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It’s been a bad month for “print” media between the abrupt shutdown of Sports Illustrated, the purchase of the Baltimore Sun by a right-wing rich guy, mass layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, and the assimilation of music review site Pitchfork by GQ. There are signs that the already parlous state of journalism in America is about to get a whole lot worse.

Here in Vermont, we are relatively blessed on that front. We have robust nonprofits like VTDigger and Vermont Public and a reduced but still energetic Seven Days, plus a number of daily and weekly newspapers that are battling to produce meaningful reportage on a shoestring. A lot of energetic, smart people are doing their best to keep us informed.

But over the past couple of weeks, our media have repeatedly failed us. I feel compelled to point this out because the worse they do, the less informed we are. In the words of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

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Phil Scott Sacrifices a Pinch of His Credibility at the Tomb of Republicanism

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So, our putatively moderate governor went and endorsed the very conservative Nikki Haley for president.

Well, kinda, but not really.

VTDigger reported it as an endorsement; Seven Days cast it as a rebuke of Donald Trump. I have to say Seven Days got it right here. He didn’t say he’d vote for Haley. All he said was that New Hampshire primary voters should choose Haley as the only viable alternative to Trump, in hopes that the November election would offer two candidates “with character and integrity, who respect the rule of law, the rights of all people, and the Constitution.”

That’s a depressingly low bar, but Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party has left Scott in the position of endorsing an ardent anti-choicer, an advocate of building the border wall, cutting taxes for the rich, increasing the age for receiving Social Security, and imposing something stronger than Ron DeSantis’ “don’t say gay” bill, among other things. Not to mention that whole playing footsie with the cause of the Civil War thing.

In short, Haley may be more presentable and less aggressively anti-democratic than Trump, but policy-wise there’s not much distance between her and her former boss. She’s no Phil Scott, that’s for sure.

But Scott, who clings to his partisan identity like a toddler with its favorite plushie, desperately wants the Republican Party to offer something, anything, of value to the American electorate.

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The Death of Nuts-and-Bolts Political Reporting

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My previous post concerning the party reorganization process could have been written a couple weeks earlier. That’s when the information became available. I just plain didn’t get around to it immediately because (1) other stuff got in the way and (2) I was pretty confident that no other media outlet would bother with it.

And I was right. Nobody in Vermont covered it. In fact, nobody in Vermont is covering the nuts-and-bolts of politics anymore. Party reorgs, hirings, departures, leadership changes, party finances: they’re off the agenda. No one routinely (well, really, ever) attends state party committee meetings, conventions, or big fundraising events.

You also see a lot less reporting on individual politicians’ campaign finances. Filing deadlines used to be big occasions. Back when reports were filed in person, political reporters would gather at the Secretary of State’s office to grab the reports and file stories. Everything’s digital now, so all you have to do is open up the SoS campaign finance website and hit “refresh.”

It’s a lot easier. And yet, little to no attention is paid.

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You’re Not Going to Cop Your Way Out of This

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I don’t know what we expected when we ended the motel voucher program and failed to address the opioid crisis with appropriate urgency, but this is what we should have expected.

The above photo of City Hall Park, posted on SeeClickFix, is disturbing to say the least. Some have responded on Twitter with laments about the decline of Paula Routly’s “beautiful burg” and strident calls to Do Something.

By now, I’m sure that Something Has Been Done. But when you have the sheer quantity of human misery now present in Burlington, you’re only playing a grim game of Whac-A-Mole. Unless you hire enough police to have a cop on every corner 24/7, this is going to happen. Or get worse.

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