Tag Archives: Vermont ACLU

Canaan Backs Down From Loitering Ban

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Unsurprisingly, the selectboard in the Northeast Kingdom town of Canaan has backed away from its broadly-written, almost certainly unconstitutional ban on loitering — or doing just about anything else without permission.

At its September 18 meeting, the selectboard adopted a new ordinance aimed specifically at unauthorized camping on public property. (The text can be downloaded from the town’s website.) The change in heart likely follows some pointed communications from those darn busybodies at the Vermont ACLU and Vermont Legal Aid.

The original ordinance, adopted in August, would have barred anyone from sitting, standing, or loitering “in or about any municipally owned or municipally maintained land, park, building, or parking lot between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.” unless authorized by a town official. It would also have banned sitting, standing, or loitering on any “street, sidewalk, municipal land, building, or any other public space in town” if an “owner, tenant, or custodian thereof” asked them to leave.

Yeah, that’s pretty damn unconstitutional.

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Canaan Launches Purification Drive

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Oh Canaan, my Canaan. What are you up to now?

The Northeast Kingdom town, best known in these parts as (1) the home of the only public school district that never adopted a mask mandate during the Covid epidemic, (2) the home turf of former education secretary Dan French, and (3) the place where a parent threatened to “kill somebody” if his child encountered a transgender person at school, has just enacted a broad, sweeping ban on loitering — or doing just about anything else not specifically authorized by the town — on public property.

It’s obviously aimed at unhoused people, and it’s almost certainly unconstitutional. The Selectboard itself gave that game away when it inserted a “separability” clause, which anticipates a losing battle in court.

The Vermont ACLU, which has previously reminded other Vermont communities that anti-panhandling ordinances are unconstitutional, seems likely to fulfill the Selectboard’s anticipation. “[The ordinance] does appear to raise a number of constitutional concerns,” wrote ACLU Communications Director Stephanie Gomory in an email.

But wait, there’s more! The Canaan Selectboard has also embarked on a drive to clean up “junky yards,” a concept that’s clearly in the eye of the beholder.

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Pointless Brattleboro Petition Sparks Rage, Fear, Prejudice

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Things are dire enough down Brattleboro way that someone named “Buck Russell” has launched a petition drive to prohibit panhandling. Gee, what do you know, you take a historic housing shortage, add a mass unhousing by state policymakers, toss in an opioid crisis we have yet to address, and hey presto, you get desperate people begging for money. Our unspoken pleas for the unhoused to simply, conveniently disappear seem to be falling on deaf ears.

The petition seeks to drive Brattleboro down a dead-end road. In 2018, the Vermont ACLU convinced six communities to deep-six their anti-panhandling ordinances. The nonprofit pointed to clear and consistent court rulings against such laws.

The 2015 Supreme Court case Reed v. Town of Gilbert made clear that it is unconstitutional for municipal ordinances to regulate only certain types of speech, including panhandling. Similarly, of the more than 25 laws attempting to ban panhandling reviewed by courts across the nation, all have been found unconstitutional.

I suppose that memories fade when communities are under stress. I doubt that the town Selectboard will give much credence to the petition, considering that Brattleboro was itself one of those communities that killed its anti-panhandling ordinance in 2018.

The petition itself is sort of a work of art in its own dystopian way. Russell does his level best to hide the wolf of contempt in the sheep’s clothing of compassion. He claims, in fact, that enacting a ban would actually be “encouraging [the unhoused] towards more sustainable solutions,” as if the unhoused could build housing and create a social safety net by themselves.

But if the petition tries to come across as Sincerely Having the Best Interests of Our Unfortunate Neighbors In Mind, the commenters employ no such restraints. Nay, rather, they are absolutely unhinged.

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“They are building a prison, not a shelter”

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Hearty congratulations to the good people of Hyde Park, who have “amicably resolved” a dispute over the siting of a homeless shelter. “Amicably” is the word chosen by VTDigger’s social media poster to describe a deal that will severely restrict the civil rights of shelter residents, so the amicability does not extend to the unhoused.

The story as a whole, originally posted by the News & Citizen of Lamoille County, betrays a complete blind spot where the unhoused are concerned. Nowhere are their thoughts or feelings expressed, nowhere are they seen as anything other than pawns in a game. And I must confess a similar blind spot; the import of the story didn’t hit me until housing activist Josh Lisenby pointed it out on Twitter, which I refuse to call X. In fact, I borrowed the headline of this post from one of Lisenby’s tweets.

The tale of this amicable resolution is a tawdry one all round. It begins with Lamoille Community House proposing to open a shelter at what is now the Forest Hill Residential Care Home. That much is fine; cue the tawdriness, in the unshocking form of a California tech entrepreneur who looks, well, exactly how you’d expect he looks.

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Mr. Kenney Declines (UPDATED With Fresh Perfidy)

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The busy beavers at the Vermont ACLU are giving some attention to the seldom-considered races for state’s attorney, especially the contested primaries in Addison, Chittenden, and Washington Counties. They’ve distributed an issues questionnaire, and they’re sponsoring a candidate forum on July 28 featuring the candidates from those three counties.

Well, most of them, anyway.

Declining to participate in the forum, you’ll be shocked to learn, is Ted Kenney, challenger to Chittenden incumbent Sarah Fair George and advocate of a vaguely defined admixture of reform and lock-’em-up.

Kenney also failed to return the ACLU’s candidate survey.

I guess it’s no surprise, since the ACLU supports the kind of reforms that George has championed. But it’s disappointing. I mean, if Kenney is tough enough to clean up Chittenden County, surely he’s got the cojones (or ovaries, if you prefer) to handle a skeptical encounter with a legitimate advocacy group.

Late add. I’ve been told that Kenney repeatedly stiffed the Chittenden County Democrats, who invited him to a forum. He told them he couldn’t make any of the suggested dates but never proposed any alternatives. So there’s that.

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The Rootin’est, Tootin’est, Six-Shootin’est Mayor Burlington’s Ever Had

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I don’t know exactly what touched it off, but after nine-plus years as Burlington’s mayor, Miro Weinberger has suddenly turned into a gun-totin’ lawman.

His most recent eruption was the Friday afternoon newsdump that tossed Progressive city councilors under the nearest bus. Last Friday, just before the close of business, Weinberger’s office dropped a doozy — announcing that the search for a new police chief would be suspended until the Council agreed to significantly boost the salary on offer.

I’m not passing judgment on the substance of the announcement, but the timing. It couldn’t have been planned any better if the Mayor’s aim was to deliberately insult council progressives. Send the email blast, close the office for the weekend, go home and have a good chuckle over a glass of your favorite merlot.

This is only the latest in a series of pro-police, anti-“defund” moves by the mayor.

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The Veepies, Again: Too Fast, Too Furious

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For those just joining us, The Veepies are my occasional awards for stupidity in the public sphere. We’re still setting a brisk pace in that regard. So, here we go…

The We Gave You a Crappy Half-Apology Because We Had To, But We Really Didn’t Mean It Award goes to the Bennington Selectboard. Last month, the town reached a settlement with former state representative Kiah Morris over the police department’s actions, or inactions, regarding threats against Morris. This came after the state Human Rights Commission issued a preliminary finding that the Bennington PD had discriminated against Morris and her husband James Lawton. As part of the deal, Bennington had to issue a formal apology. And it was kind of half-assed, blame-the-victim stuff: “It is clear that Kiah, James and their family felt unsafe and unprotected by the town of Bennington.”

See, it’s not that the town did anything wrong; it’s just that Morris and her family felt unsafe. Put the onus on the victim. But wait, there’s more!

Whatever little value there was in that “apology” was completely undercut by the town’s attorney Michael Leddy, who insisted that there are “no reasonable grounds to believe” that the town was guilty of discrimination, and by Selectboard chair Jeanne Jenkins, who told VTDigger last week doesn’t believe the police department discriminated against Morris.

All they will acknowledge is that Morris “felt unsafe.” Well, Morris and her family have since relocated to Chittenden County, so problem solved, I guess?

After the jump: Empty climate rhetoric, Medicaid money for school cops, and propping up a dying industry.

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Tightening Up the Hate Crime Law

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I’ve written previously about Vermont’s inability to protect targets of hate crimes, especially those in public office. People of color, including former state rep Kiah Morris, have been hounded out of elective office — and have gotten no support or protection from law enforcement or prosecutors. Women in public life, who are frequently targets of harassment, also have to carry on with no recourse in the law. Which means, hey, the harassers win!

Turns out, somebody’s trying to do something about that. The House Judiciary Committee is working on a revision to Vermont’s hate crime law aimed at allowing more prosecutions while preserving Constitutional rights. More on this after a brief digression.

This is what they call a “committee bill,” meaning it’s drafted by a committee rather than an individual legislator. Coincidentally enough, VTDigger’s Kit Norton covered the phenomenon in last night’s episode of “Final Reading,” Digger’s free-subscription daily summary of legislative activity.

Unlike an ordinary piece of legislation, which is formally introduced by a member of the House or Senate, given a bill number and referred to a legislative panel for discussion, a committee bill is assembled, piece by piece, within a — you guessed it — committee. 

It lacks a bill number and isn’t easily found on the Legislature’s website. It can evolve quickly and quietly, under the radar, until it springs from committee, fully formed, onto the House or Senate floor. 

Norton writes that, for whatever reason, there are lots of these bills in the Legislature this year. He’s right; committee bills don’t show up in the Legislature’s searchable list of introduced bills. You have to go to the committee’s website and search around.

Back to the matter at hand. Apparently House Judiciary has been low-key working on this, in consultation with the Attorney General’s office. I’m glad to hear that, because I’ve specifically attacked T.J. Donovan for failing to prosecute hate crimes. This means Donovan recognizes the need for a change in the law. On Wednesday morning, the committee began hearing testimony on the bill. Testimony that showed how difficult a balancing act this legislation will be.

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The Corrections Culture

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Corrections Commissioner James Baker continues to make the right noises. On Friday, after news that more than two-thirds of Vermont inmates at a Mississippi for-profit prison had tested positive for coronavirus, Baker talked of accountability and responsibility and the need for a culture change inside his department.

Now, if only he can make it happen. The DOC is a hidebound place, full of long-tenured employees whose kneejerk reaction is to defend the status quo.

In one of his first actions, Baker sent two DOC administrators to Mississippi to get a first-person look at things. He said he was “reassured” upon hearing their reports.

Not so fast, my friend. One of the two who made the trip was DOC facilities operations manager Bob Arnell. That’s the Bob Arnell who was once the superintendent of the state’s extremely troubled women’s prison.

I’m sure ol’ Bob knows all about problematic institutional culture. After all, he became superintendent after the inglorious departure of his predecessor, David Turner, who requested reassignment in 2012 “days after a report emerged that condemned the conditions” at the prison. (Turner, “a veteran employee” of the DOC, was shuffled elsewhere in the department.)

And we all know that, ever since, the women’s prison has been the very model of excellence. Oh wait.

In recent years, …guards have sexually assaulted inmates, harassed female employees, and pursued sexual relationships with women who have left the prison but remain on furlough, probation or parole — and, therefore, under DOC supervision.

That’s from a December 2019 story by Paul Heintz of Seven Days, reporting on widespread allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use in the prison — and the almost complete lack of DOC response to all of it. Except to threaten retaliation against inmates who had the guts to complain.

I don’t know how long Arnell was in place at the facility, but let’s conclude he didn’t have any perceptible impact on the “culture.” But I’m sure if he says everything is hunky-dory in Mississippi, we can take his word for it.

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Let Us Now Praise Doomed Policy Proposals

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The fine folks at the Vermont ACLU got together Tuesday to unveil a plan that would cut the state’s inmate population by hundreds — which would, among other things, allow Vermont to bring its out-of-state inmates back home. (It’d also save money in a bloated corrections budget.)

Great idea. And in the words of Rice University Prof. Quincy Maddox, “Ain’t nothin’ gon’ happen.”

Seriously, I have to admire the dedication of these public interest advocates who do all kinds of research and put together plausible policy proposals in professional-quality brochures and pdfs that you just know are destined to get the bone-saw treatment in the legislative abbatoir. (Not on the official public tour.)

The plan calls for an end to cash bail (at any moment, hundreds of Vermonters are behind bars for failure to post bail), expanding alternatives to incarceration, better treatment for mental illness and substance use disorders, sentencing and prosecutorial reform, decriminalization of certain offenses including sex work, and better options for released inmates.

For years now, our political leaders have paid lip service to the notion of bringing all our inmates back home. But even as we’ve seen scandals and problems and questionable policies at out-of-state prisons, our leaders have failed to follow through.

This time, as usual, there’s plenty of lip service to be had.

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