Tag Archives: Seven Days

Much Ado About Meatballs

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Very curious event took place yesterday. A business announced it was locating in Vermont, and nobody from the Shumlin administration was on hand.

Phil Scott was.

His buddy and nominal Democrat Dick Mazza was.

House Republican leader Don Turner was.

Hmmm.

Good Ol' Phil, pleased with himself. Screenshot from Seven Days.

Good Ol’ Phil, pleased with himself. Screengrab from Seven Days.

The event was Bove’s announcement that it will locate a sauce plant in Milton. According to the Burlington Free Press, Bove’s currently makes its sauce in Youngstown, Ohio, God knows why, and its meatballs and lasagna in Shelburne.

Yum, long-distance interstate food, just like Grandma used to make. Well, it’s all coming home to Milton.

As for why two Republicans and a go-ahead-admit-it-you’re-a-Republican were the invited guests, company owner Mark Bove offered some cagey remarks.

Bove was flanked by several legislators, including Phil Scott, the Republican lieutenant governor; Sen. Dick Mazza, D-Grand Isle, and Rep. Don Turner, R-Milton. The restaurateur said each helped Bove’s find its way back to Vermont.

“I just couldn’t get back to Vermont, as much as I tried,” Bove said of previous efforts.

Well, okay then.

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Cautionary notes on the Phil Scott inevitability, part 3: Deadweight party

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See also: Part 1, addressing the massive turnout difference between presidential and non-presidential years; and part 2, on the unhelpfully archconservative nature of the Republican presidential field.

Strangely, there was no media presence at last Saturday’s meeting of the Vermont Republican Party.

I say “strangely” because the VTGOP’s four officers were up for re-election. And they haven’t been all that successful; the party continues to trail the Democrats in finances, staffing, and organization, both statewide and grassroots.

I couldn’t be there because I was out of town all weekend, but I have heard some news.

To begin with, in a sign that Executive Director Jeff Bartley doesn’t have his finger on the pulse, he scheduled the meeting for the opening weekend of hunting season. That’d seem to be a no-no for The Party Of Traditional Vermont (And Guns), if not for a young urbanite like Jeff. From what I hear, they barely mustered a quorum.

On the topline, there was no drama. All four officers were re-elected. Maybe the conservatives were out baggin’ deer, or maybe they just don’t have much to offer. (Two years ago, their choice for party chair was John MacGovern, who’s best known in these parts for being an ultraconservative joke candidate against Bernie Sanders in 2012. If he was the conservative wing’s best option, then ugh.)

Here’s something you’ll be surprised to hear. Both gubernatorial candidates addressed the “crowd,” and from the whispers reaching these ears, Phil Scott was underwhelming. How underwhelming? Well, Bruce Lisman looked good by comparison. Apparently, Scott rolled out his usual bumpf, while Lisman actually offered some red meat to the faithful.

In the long run, that’s probably meaningless. Scott remains the overwhelming favorite for the nomination, but there might just be a few chinks in the favorite’s armor.

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How to kill a political career in one easy step

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Ruh-roh, Raggy. Looks like a budding politico is in danger of failing to get out of the starting gate.

Following the news that D.C. journalist (and Vermont native) Garrett Graff was coming home to run for lieutenant governor, Seven Days’ Paul Heintz pointed out the elephant in the room: State law requires candidates for the state’s top two offices to “have resided in this State four years next preceding the day of the election.”

Secretary of State Jim Condos felt the need to consult with the Attorney General’s office over that tortuous bit of legalese. Well, he has, and in a follow-up post by Terri Hallenbeck, the news isn’t good for Young Graff.

…Condos said that after studying residency requirements for candidates in the Constitution of Vermont and consulting with the Attorney General’s Office, “We are not sure how Mr. Graff could meet this.”

Hoo boy. This could be the biggest political boner in Vermont since “Six Teats.”

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Please, VSEA, get your act together

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Various media reports, of which I believe Paul Heintz was first, reveal some bad and sad goings-on in the Vermont State Employees Association.

On Friday, a group of VSEA staffers called on the union’s board of trustees to oust executive director Steve Howard. Analyst Adam Norton, who represents those staffers in a union within the union, presented the trustees with a letter saying they had decided “overwhelmingly to cast a vote of no confidence in the leadership of VSEA’s executive director.”

The letter is harshly critical of Howard’s leadership. Heintz reports that the board “considered a resolution to dump Howard when his contract expires in June. Instead, the trustees tabled the discussion until their January meeting.”

Friendly fire seems to be endemic at VSEA. Howard’s predecessor, Mark Mitchell, was himself fired and then un-fired before leaving of his own accord after only a couple of years on the job.

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Bruce Lisman has some stuff to sort out

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Well, our very own Wall Street panjandrum has formally launched his gubernatorial bid with a bold, perhaps unprecedented, first move:

He okayed a campaign logo without a speck of green in it.

Instead, he bravely opted for a sky-blue field, backing what appears to be the label from a long-lost brewery: Lisman Lager, the beer that claims to be different from all the others but tastes oddly familiar.

That’s the bold move. The rest of his launch was a pastiche of mixed messages and same-old same-old.

Let’s start with his Jeb! problem. As a presidential candidate, Jeb Bush had to decide how to address the legacy of George W. Bush. And he hasn’t. He’s tried to present himself as his own man, but that effort is undercut every time he rushes to W’s defense. He winds up talking much more than he should about 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lisman’s “George W. Bush” is his Wall Street career.

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Just a simple country farmer

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The latest on alleged sex criminal and Republican Senator Norm McAllister comes by way of this week’s Seven Days, and it ought to be an occasion for liberal schadenfreude over the fact that Republicans are still stuck with this tar baby. In the story, McAllister insists he will not resign and won’t agree to a plea deal. Republicans had been hoping he would change his tune once it became clear that his criminal case wouldn’t be resolved until sometime next year. But his tune, like Yanni’s, remains the same.

Thus, the 2016 legislative session is set to begin with a whole lot of embarrassing questions and an intense focus on the McAllister case. He might even show up for work, which would be the circus of the century. The Senate may try to expel him, which would lead to, presumably, public testimony from the likes of his former Montpelier roomies, Sen. Kevin Mullin and Rep. Tim Corcoran. It would be instructive to hear them explain, under oath, how they remained clueless about what was happening when McAllister had a teenaged “assistant” sharing his bedroom.

The schadenfreude is tempered, however, because the Seven Days article itself is kind of disturbing. It’s basically a one-sided account from McAllister’s point of view, quoting him extensively, painting him as a sympathetic figure, and providing little context or pushback.

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Sorrell vs. the record, part 2: Campaign reimbursements

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Sorry for the delay in this continuing series; it’s tough work, slogging through a solid hour of Bill Sorrell. He is remarkably inarticulate for such a prominent figure.

SorrellDoggAnyway, I’m taking a closer look at Our Eternal General’s comments in an interview
with VTDigger’s Mark Johnson. I think it’s worthwhile because this was the first time Sorrell has been quizzed at length about allegations of campaign finance funny business and excessive coziness with high-powered lawyers soliciting state contracts.

Part 1 compared Sorrell’s remarks with the public record about the MTBE lawsuit. Today, we turn to Sorrell’s fuzzy reporting of expense reimbursements by his campaign fund to himself.

The matter was raised last spring by Seven Days’ Paul Heintz:

Several times a year, candidates must publicly disclose each campaign expenditure they make, “listed by amount, date, to whom paid, for what purpose,” according to state law.

A review of Sorrell’s recent filings shows that he has routinely ignored the rules. Sixteen times over the past four years, Sorrell’s campaign has reimbursed him for hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars’ worth of expenses paid out of his own pocket. In each instance, the campaign provided only a vague explanation of what Sorrell bought with the campaign cash — and never once did it disclose who it paid.

Sorrell’s response: Hey, a lot of people do it that way.

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Sorrell versus the record, part 1: the MTBE deal

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Earlier this week, former Mark Johnson Show host Mark Johnson produced his first podcast for his new employer, VTDigger. It was a 50-plus-minute interview with Attorney General Bill Sorrell, headlined by Our Eternal General’s stout denials of any wrongdoing. (It was also an excellent example of Johnson’s interviewing skills. His departure from WDEV was a big loss for our public discourse, and I look forward to his Digger podcasts.) Sorrell is, of course, the subject of an independent investigation for campaign finance-related activities.

SorrellCriminalThe interview reveals Sorrell in all his self-centered, fumblemouthed glory. He is, as always, the innocent target of politically motivated attack and quasi-journalistic hit pieces. But it’s worth taking a close look at how he explains himself, and comparing that to what’s on the record so far. (The independent investigator, Tom Little, is famously tight-lipped about his work, so we have no clue what he may have discovered.)

I’m breaking this up into parts because otherwise, it’d be horrifically long. This installment, Sorrell’s explanation of the MTBE lawsuit, is itself pretty damn long. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, the bottom line is: Sorrell’s interpretations and recollections are self-serving, and often at odds with the facts. In my judgment, it’s unclear whether Sorrell violated the law; but his behavior and his insidery relationships with key players are disturbing at the very least. There is an appearance of wrongdoing, whether there was actual wrongdoing or not.

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Some good news arrives by a very circuitous route

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Here’s something you wouldn’t expect, based on all the continued carping about Vermont Health Connect. The Times Argus, Saturday edition:

Vt. Health Exchange Called the Best

And Seven Days:

GAO: Vermont’s Health Exchange More ‘Operational’ Than Others

The news comes from an audit of state health exchange IT systems conducted by the Government Accountability Office, and released on Wednesday. The Vermont rating was not highlighted by the GAO, but it was definitely there. A chart on page 38 of the 109-page report shows that Vermont had the best operational status of any state-run health exchange. In a measure of four categories, Vermont was judged “fully operational” in three, and “partially operational” in the other one.

The chart was first reported in the Connecticut Mirror, which highlighted Connecticut’s rating of “partially operational” in all four.

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Paid sick leave: everybody’s binky for 2016

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It’s been a years-long battle to enact a paid sick leave law in Vermont. The issue came close in 2015, passing the House but failing to survive the Senate. Next year? Bet on it sailing through.

As Seven Days’ Terri Hallenbeck reports, top Democrats (with the consicuous exception of Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell, a PSL skeptic) held a news conference Wednesday at Hen of the Wood Restaurant* to announce that PSL legislation would be on top of their agenda for 2016.

*Nice work if you can get it.

The move was not at all political, no sirree. Just ask declared gubernatorial candidate, House Speaker Shap Smith:

Smith dismissed his political ambitions as a factor Wednesday. “The election has nothing to with it,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Regardless, Smith will be up against other Democratic candidates who support the concept. If he’s able guide the bill into law in 2016, that success will give him a boost in a Democratic primary race where the issue is likely to resonate.

Yup.

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