Tag Archives: Seven Days

News You Should View: There’s Some Good Stuff Out There

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Not much of a subtitle, sorry. More of a restatement of this weekly feature’s origin: Our media landscape may be vastly reduced from its former glory days, but there’s still some good stuff being produced that’s worth your time. This week’s haul…

Quite Literally Ripped from the Headlines. You won’t often find a summer theater company cited in this space, but one of the Weston Playhouse’s 2025 offerings is “A Distinct Society,” a new play set in the Haskell Free Library that centers around its unique straddle-the-border location. From the description: “When an Iranian father and his daughter, separated by the international border, start using the library as a meeting place, the denizens of this quiet sanctuary find their lives suddenly full of excitement and consequence.” Presumably the play was written before the recent crackdown at Haskell, but it seems all the more relevant right now. Excitement and consequence indeed. Performances from August 20-31.

Burlington Dems Get Fast and Loose with the Chats. For the second week in a row, Seven Days enters the honor roll for the kind of story that made its reputation: A public records request that uncovered extensive texts among Democratic members of City Council during 2024 meetings, including a lot of chatty, gossipy stuff and more than a few close brushes with open meetings law. The Dems, who have a working majority on Council, would often discuss tactics amongst themselves while taking part in a public meeting. Council President Ben Traverse says texting is “simply part of modern government,” but he also told his fellow Dems to cool their jets after Seven Days filed its public records request. Technically they’re not violating the law because there were only six Democrats on the 12-member Council but Independent Mark Barlow is a Dem in all but name, so if the letter of the law hasn’t been violated, the spirit of the law has gotten a damn good rogering.

Embezzlement in Hardwick? Really now. The Hardwick Gazette reports that a local woman embezzled thousands of dollars from three local nonprofit organizations. The victims included the East Hardwick Fire District (which has been reimbursed by the alleged thief), NEK Arts, and the Hardwick Downtown Partnership. The total involved was less than $20,000 all told, but you might expect that organizations in and around Hardwick would be a bit more careful after the infamous $1.6 million embezzlement case involving the Hardwick Electric Department. It’s been a while, but still. (Discloure: I serve on the board of Northeast Kingdom Public Journalism, which operates the Gazette. But I would have listed this story in any case.)

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Burlington Democrats are Spending Big to Defend Their Council Majority With a Lot of Help from the Leunig’s Frequent Diners Club

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On Town Meeting Day in Burlington, the Progressive Party has an opportunity to do what (according to Seven Days) it has never done before: Hold the mayor’s office and a majority on City Council at the same time. City Democrats are doing their best to ensure that doesn’t happen. And a lot of “their best” came straight from the city’s biggest name in real estate, the Pomerleau family.

We just found this out because the Burlington Democratic Committee has just filed its first campaign finance report for this year’s Town Meeting campaign season. The filing was 17 days late by my count. City party chair Andy Vota, in an email exchange, blamed the delay on difficulties with the Secretary of State’s new filing system which took multiple consultations to work out. Understandable. But as it worked out, the filing came immediately after Seven Days published its big pre-election article on the campaign, so the story makes no mention of the BDC’s fundraising or its highfalutin’ sources.

By state law, candidates and committees involved in Town Meeting Day elections must file financial reports 30 days and 10 days before election day. The BDC will have to turn around quickly to meet the second deadline. Missing the February 2 deadline is not nearly as egregious as the BDC’s 2020 violation, which resulted in a $2,500 fine for failing to file any disclosures until months after Town Meeting Day. (It’s quite unusual for campaign finance law violations to draw any penalty at all; normally, they can get off scot-free if they belatedly correct errors and omissions.)

So… how much does the party have and where did it come from?

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It Wasn’t the Best Week to Roll Out Your Ebenezer Scrooge Impression

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Last week, the Budget Adjustment Act sailed through the House on more or less a party-line vote, with Republicans raising whiny objections over a penny-ante increase in funding for the General Assistance Emergency Housing program. Gov. Phil Scott did his share of whining as well, and there’s been some talk of a possible BAA veto. Which, if it happens, would be utterly ridiculous.

But amidst all the Republican whining, the most ignorant, shameful, bigoted remarks actually came from a Democrat. Stay tuned for more on that.

This all happened against the backdrop of a tremendous piece of journalism that dropped the day of Scott’s comments and the day before the House’s BAA debate: a story by Vermont Public‘s Liam Elder-Connors and Seven Days‘ Derek Brouwer exploring how many unhoused people have died in Vermont, a statistic the state has so far declined to keep. With that story on the front page, it was a bad time to bitch about an extra $1.8 million in motel vouchers.

The two reporters found that “at least 82 people in Vermont… died between 2021 and 2024 while appearing to reside in an emergency shelter or outdoors.” That’s almost certainly an undercount; no one in Vermont officialdom tracks that number, nor does anyone seem interested in doing so. Outgoing Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine said it would be “very challenging” to collect such data.

Not as challenging as, say, sleeping outside in the dead of winter, but sure, let’s only keep the easy statistics.

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It’s a Poor Carpenter Who Blames His Tools

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Oh looky here. Turns out the campaign of Lt. Gov. John Rodgers made “major errors” in its campaign finance filings.

Well, I’m sure Rodgers accepted full responsibility like the Real ManTM he is — wait, what? He blamed the campaign finance reporting system?

Yep.

“The system sucks,” Rodgers told Seven Days in a moment of sober reflection.

Shall we assume that when he shoots at a deer and misses, he slams his gun on the ground and stomps it into little pieces?

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Seven Days Accepts Conservative Cash to Investigate the Democratic Legislature

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This is a terrible idea.

Seven Days publisher Paula Routly used her latest column to trumpet a new journalistic venture. Or should I say “misadventure”?

The basic concept isn’t a bad one. The paper is hiring a reporter to conduct a series called “Ways and Means” examining how effectively the Vermont Legislature is doing its job. That’s a subject worthy of exploration, although it’s also true that legislative bodies are, by their very nature, clunky and inefficient. You want maximum effectiveness? Get yourself a king or a dictator. And the Vermont Legislature is part-time and has virtually no paid staff, so it lacks the resources to be as effective as it could be.

But that’s not the bad part. The bad part is how the project is being funded. Routly describes the money as coming from “two Vermont philanthropists” who are former politicians “from opposite sides of the aisle.”

Their names? Bruce Lisman and Paul Ralston. Close observers of Vermont politics may already be rolling their eyes.

Lisman is a former Wall Street tycoon and dyed-in-the-wool Republican who once ran against Phil Scott in the Republican primary. He is one of the top Republican donors in the state, a prominent member of the unofficial club I call The Barons of Burlington. He and his buddies did their level best to eliminate the Democratic supermajorities last year.

Ralston, founder and owner of the Vermont Coffee Company, did serve two terms in the House as a Democrat but (1) even during his tenure he was known as a renegade centrist who thought he was the smartest guy in the room and (2) he hasn’t identified with the party since he left the Statehouse in 2015. More recently he has been politically independent and deeply critical of the Democratic Legislature. Details will follow. But let’s get this on the record right now: What we have here is two wealthy men who oppose Democratic politicians and policies, buying a series of reports designed to highlight the Democratic Legislature’s flaws and failures. There will be no corresponding examination of the Republican Scott administration.

Lisman and Ralston won’t have editorial input. But they’ve established the playing field and the terms of engagement. They are buying coverage that will almost certainly favor their political beliefs. Routly’s whitewash doesn’t hide the fact that this deal is a gross violation of journalistic standards and a real shocker coming from what used to be Vermont’s alternative newspaper.

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Are You Ready For the Climate Culture Wars?

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Welp, Gov. Phil Scott has revealed himself to be all hat and no cattle when it comes to climate action. As Seven Days’ Kevin McCallum reports, our alleged climate fightin’ leader is calling for a full retreat on, you know, doing anything about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. With the exception of furrowed brows and earnest expressions of concern. Per McCallum, here is Phil Scott’s climate agenda:

  • Kill the clean heat standard
  • Kill the Global Warming Solutions Act
  • Ignore our 2025 emissions reduction targets
  • Ignore our 2030 emissions reduction targets
  • Effectively put all our eggs in the 2050 basket

That’s one hell of a platform for a guy who claims to believe that climate change is a clear and present threat to humanity’s future.

His argument here, as on every other issue, is affordability. Vermont simply can’t afford to cut emissions or transition to a clean energy future.

A couple things about that. “Affordable” compared to what, exactly? His projections about the unaffordability of energy transition appear to rely on the assumption that fossil fuel prices won’t rise. Anyone who’s played Russian Roulette with the cost of propane or heating oil could testify otherwise.

Putting all his chips on affordability also ignores the impacts of climate change. As we have seen, Vermont is far from safe in this regard. In fact, we have one of the highest totals in the nation of federally-declared disasters since 2011. We don’t have beachfronts or flatlands, but we do have a rugged topography of mountains, hills, and deep valleys. The latter is where (a) most of our people live, and (b) the runoff easily overwhelms our rivers and streams when greenhouse gas-fueled downpours occur. We have yet to experience catastrophic wildfires around here, although the risk has been worryingly high for a good chunk of this year. Just a matter of time.

But Scott’s latest statements should come as no surprise. All he’s done is pull the sheep’s clothing off his inner wolf. In truth, he has been a resulote obstructor of serious climate action since he became governor. (Back in 2021, I called him the biggest obstacle to climate action in Vermont.) Kind of fitting for a guy who’s spent his entire adult life working with fossil fuel-powered machinery.

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However Much We’re Taxing the Gambling Industry, It Isn’t Enough

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There’s a fire raging somewhere out there, and it’s only a matter of time before it arrives on our doorstep with devastating consequences. And we are not ready for it, not at all.

As you might have gathered from the headline, this isn’t about an actual forest fire, but about America’s biggest growth industry: Online gambling. There was a fair bit of coverage in our media earlier this year after legalization took effect, as initial returns suggested that the business was a big hit in Vermont. But what finally got me to write was a recent episode of The Distraction, a studiedly goofy sports-themed podcast with occasional forays into more serious stuff.

Like the November 14 edition, featuring football writer Arif Hasan. He’s a lifelong gambler himself, but he has a clear-eyed view of gambling’s impact on individuals, the sports world, and society in general. There’s a whole bunch of scary stuff in the interview, and more in an article he recently published (which is partly behind a paywall). But here’s the thing that prompted me to write.

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Are We Sure the Green Mountain Care Board Knows What the Hell It’s Doing?

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Shots fired!

In response to revenue cuts ordered by the Green Mountain Care Board, the University of Vermont Health Network is slashing services at multiple locations. Most egregious, to me, is the closure of Central Vermont Medical Center’s inpatient psychiatric unit.

Reminder that we’ve had a chronic shortage of inpatient psychiatric space more or less continuously since 2011, when Tropical Storm Irene put the final nail in the old Waterbury state hospital’s coffin. And now we’re cutting eight beds?

A cynical observer might infer that UVMHN disagrees with the Board’s mandate, and is forcing the issue with unpopular and/or unworkable reductions. Seven Days’ Derek Brouwer wrote that the Network’s announcement “ratchets up a long-simmering tension” between the Health Network and the Board.

The Board was in a ratcheting mood itself. It issued a huffy statement Thursday afternoon expressing deep concern with the cuts and asserting that it “was not consulted on, and did not approve, these reductions.”

Well, boo frickin’ hoo.

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Hey, We’ve Got an Unrepentant White Nationalist Running for… Get This… Justice of the Peace (UPDATED)

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This is a screenshot from the ballot in Berkshire, Vermont, a small, rural community in Franklin County near the Canadian border. There are a total of six candidates listed for six openings for Justice of the Peace so, absenting a vigorous write-in campaign, all six are going to win.

And that’s a damn shame for the good folks of Berkshire, because the last name on the list should be familiar for some unpleasant reasons. Republican nominee Ryan Roy has a past that would make him appear uniquely unqualified for any position that involves “justice” or “peace.”

*UPDATE. Roy appears on the Secretary of State’s 2023-24 list of Justices of the Peace for Berkshire, so apparently he’s running for… re-election? I’m seeking confirmation of 2022 election results. If he’s a sitting J.P., this is even worse.

Roy has received extensive coverage in the press for, among other things, being identified as a member of the neo-Nazi Patriot Front and having been an active participant in the infamous 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Here he is holding a torch and lookin’ big mad in a Vice News documentary about the rally.

Yeah, well, okay then. Justice of the Peace, got it.

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Mother Nature’s Punching Bag

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I can remember a time, not that long ago, when we believed the worst effect of climate change on Vermont would be a potential influx of climate refugees — people from coastal areas looking for safe havens in the hills and mountains of our state.

Yeah, about that.

We’re getting hit, very hard and very often, by the consequences of climate change in ways that outstrip all those places we used to look at with more than a touch of Green Mountain smugness. I’ve certainly wondered why people even live in the lowlands of Florida or Louisiana or Texas or why they hold onto beachfront property that’s being eroded away. Don’t they know better? Can’t they see the signs? And why should they expect the rest of us to underwrite their bad decisions?

Yeah, about that.

Rarely, if ever, have I seen a bunch of bad news on any subject to compare with what we’ve seen lately about how Vermont is in the crosshairs of climate change. It all adds up to one conclusion: Far from being immune, Vermont is in many ways uniquely vulnerable. We are at risk. And we’re repeatedly seeking help from others, who could understandably ask why they should bail us out when we insist on living in disaster-prone places like flood plains, riverside communities, or out in the countryside along dirt roads and unpaved driveways that can easily wash away. (Above image: Horn of the Moon Road in East Montpelier, washed out earlier this month.)

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