Tag Archives: Vermont Health Connect

Is this the end of Rico?

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Well, if this isn’t the mother of all Friday newsdumps.

After 18 months of headaches caused by Vermont Health Connect, Gov. Peter Shumlin announced Friday that he’s prepared to replace the online health insurance marketplace if it fails to meet two new deadlines.

(Note: According to VTDigger, Shumlin first made his announcement on WDEV’s Mark Johnson Show. Credit where it’s due.)

Yeezus. I make a little day trip to New Hampshire, and this is what happens? I may never leave Vermont again.

“This is not an attractive option,” Shumlin’s chief of health care reform, Lawrence Miller, said at the press conference.

Miller added that “bubonic plague can ruin your day, and zombies are bad news.”

In the past I have occasionally been guilty of hyperbole, so it’s understandable if you take this with a grain of salt, but…

This doesn't end well.

This doesn’t end well.

If Vermont Health Connect fails, it is the end of Peter Shumlin’s political career.

It wouldn’t be the last act; he’d still remain governor for another year and a half. But the abandonment of VHC would be a death blow to whatever’s left of his reputation for managerial competence. And trustworthiness. He will have a simple, stark choice: Serve out his term as best he can, step aside with grace and dignity (and hopefully a big show of unity with a consensus candidate for the Democratic nomination)… or go down in a metaphorical burst of tommygun fire.

Mind, all this is contingent on the failure of VHC, which is far from a sure thing. But given its track record (and the Governor’s), today’s announcement has to send shivers down the spines of everyone who’s invested political capital in the Shumlin Growth Fund.

The song goes like this: assurances of success; bumps in the road; conditional assurances of success; postponements; failures; promises to learn lessons and do better; new plans with later deadlines; fresh assurances; lather, rinse, repeat.

We have just gone from “assurances of success” to “conditional assurances.”

The fallback plan, should VHC again fail to meet functionality targets, is a hybrid marketplace: federally supported but state-regulated. It’s not a terrible Plan B, but it would put the lie to every assurance Governor Shumlin has made about Vermont Health Connect since its launch. It would hand the Republicans a huge quantity of ammunition, and it would permanently sink Shumlin’s managerial reputation.

The Governor’s new timeline:

Shumlin said he would only deploy the contingency plan if Vermont Health Connect is unable to automatically process changes in account information by May or if it’s unable to smoothly reenroll users by October. Even then, the state would not adopt the new system until October 2016, in time for the 2017 open-enrollment period.

Oh great. So if VHC isn’t working by October, then we’ll be activating Plan B right in the middle of the next gubernatorial campaign.

And what if anything — at all — goes wrong? It drags on until after the election. If that happens, it may not matter who the Democrats nominate.

If all that happens, Peter Shumlin will not only go down in history as a failure. He’ll also be the guy who squandered a king’s ransom in political capital for his Democratic Party.

So what kind of game are legislative Republicans up to?

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Interesting bit of byplay from last night’s hearing on possible E-911 dispatch closures, as captured by Freeploid newbie Paris Achen, who is one “a” away from being the only Vermont reporter named after two European cities:

Rep. Job Tate, R-Mendon, stood at the entrance of the House chamber and handed out Lifesavers “for life savers.”

Now, I would expect Republicans, being Republicans after all, to oppose revenue increases. But here is Mr. Tate, grandstanding his opposition to a modest budget cut.

This is the party that believes we should take a meataxe to the budget — that Democrats are guilty of out-of-control spending.

Of course, this is also the party that has failed to identify any cuts of its own, aside from its persistent call for dismantling Vermont Health Connect. You know, the proposal with the Incredible Shrinking Savings: originally $20 million, now $8 million.

I’ve heard other rumblings of this behavior by some Republican lawmakers, but this is the first concrete example I’ve seen in the media. It strikes me as highly cynical and deliberately obstructive.

The Republicans like to claim they’re different from their national colleagues — that they adhere to the Vermont Way of civility and cooperation in politics, trying to serve the best interests of the state. Well, actively opposing real budget cuts while issuing vague calls for undefined budget cuts is a piss-poor way of doing so.

Bonus: Tate’s rationale for opposing the E-911 consolidation was tissue-thin.

“For us, the local knowledge of the area is important to directing troopers to the right location,” Tate said.

Consolidation would remove some of the local knowledge about remote areas of the state, he said.

Yuh-huh. You’re telling me that efficient dispatch service depends on local knowledge? It’s not like we’ve got dispatchers in every town and on every hilltop. The current system has four dispatch centers. FOUR. In a state like Vermont, the unique value of “local knowledge” dissipates awfully quickly. It’s hard to see how we’d lose critical “local knowledge” when we’re cutting from four to two.

Don Turner phones it in

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House Republicans have apparently decided it’s time to pay some lip service to the idea of health care reform.

Emphasis on “little.”

Under the very generous headline “House Republicans Develop Alternative to Shumlin’s Payroll Tax Proposal,” VPR’s Bob Kinzel outlines a half-assed Republican idea that would, at best, produce a fraction of the benefits of Shumlin’s plan. At worst, it’d be a huge step backward for health care access in Vermont.

The Governor has proposed a payroll tax of 0.7%, with the proceeds going to shore up Vermont’s embarrassingly low Medicaid reimbursement rate. Since Medicaid services are now indirectly subsidized through higher charges to non-Medicaid payers, increasing the state’s reimbursement rate should lead to lower insurance premiums for everybody else. Shumlin says the net drop in premiums would more than make up for the new tax, and he would task the Green Mountain Care Board with making sure the premiums go down.

Also, the reimbursement system would be, y’know, fairer.

House Minority Leader (and king of the kneejerk conservative response) Don Turner isn’t buying it. Funny thing: he doesn’t argue against the tax itself. Instead, he invokes the long-discredited Domino Theory.

“It seems like a little number, but you’ve opened the door,” Turner says.

So he’s not arguing against the tax, just the imaginary consequences of the tax.

His big idea? The state should ditch Vermont Health Connect and opt for the federal exchange. Turner figgers we could save $20 million, which could go toward raising Medicaid reimbursements. Even by his perfunctory standards, this is awfully lame. Transparent, even.

Three problems (at least).

— His $20 million estimate is contested by administration officials. And, as I understand it, a lot of the money spent on VHC is actually federal money. How much of Turner’s reputed $20 million is actually Vermont’s money?

— Shumlin’s tax plan would raise $90 million annually, enough to close the Medicaid reimbursement gap by half. Turner’s $20 million would accomplish slightly more than Jack Diddly Squat.

— Worst of all, the US Supreme Court is considering a case that could end federal health care subsidies for states that use the federal exchange. Turner doesn’t give a rat’s.

“We understand there may be a potential for Vermonters to lose federal subsidies,” Turner says. “However, 35 other states are in the same boat.”

We’ve cut the number of uninsured Vermonters in half, and Turner’s response? “Ehh, easy come, easy go.”

Also, about one-third of the payroll tax revenue would allow the state to expand Medicaid to 20,000 more Vermonters. There’s nothing like that in Turner’s “plan,” and he couldn’t care less. As Kinzel reports, Turner “says he’s not convinced that this expansion is a good idea.”

I guess he’s fine with tens of thousands of Vermonters having no health insurance. Or at least he’d rather have that, than a small payroll tax hike that would be more than compensated for by lower insurance premiums.

Shumlin Administration Dumps Ballast

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Frontrunner for Least Surprising Personnel Move of the Year:

Department of Vermont Health Access Commissioner Mark Larson is stepping down from his post in March and will be replaced by Deputy Commissioner Lori Collins on an interim basis, the Shumlin administration announced Tuesday.

First of all, I don’t know how much blame Larson deserves for the disastrous rollout of Vermont Health Connect, or in the fundamentally flawed oversight of its development. What I do know is that last September, when the VHC website was finally taken offline so it could be patched together, Larson was the only administration official to pay a price. He was benched from any involvement in VHC, but allowed to keep his job and perform other, undefined duties.

And as you may recall, when Gov. Shumlin announced his abandonment of single-payer in December, Larson was relegated to a seat across the room from the phalanx of officials backstopping the governor. Didn’t want him appearing in any press photos, I guess.

Either he was a scapegoat, or he failed. In any case, he got to keep his job and his salary, even though one of DVHA’s chief operations was no longer in his control. Nice work if you can get it.

Shumlin issued a statement on Larson’s departure, praising the soon-to-be-former Coffee Boy.

“Mark has worked as hard as anyone on my team over the last four years,” Shumlin said. “Mark led the Department through some challenging times, but no one cared more or tried harder to overcome those challenges so Vermonters could access affordable health care than Mark.”

I don’t doubt that he cared deeply or tried hard. The question isn’t how dedicated he was — it’s how effective he was. From all outside appearances, the answer is “not very.”

And yet, by the time he leaves, he will have occupied his position and drawn paychecks for a full six months after one of his primary responsibilities was removed.

One of Governor Shumlin’s best qualities is his loyalty. He builds a team, relies on them, and rewards them for their service. It’s also one of his worst qualities: he sticks by his people whether they objectively deserve it or not. Failure rarely results in punishment or removal; at most, there’s a mutually agreed upon parting of the ways. Shumlin’s been in office for four years now, and I believe the only high-profile person he’s ever fired is Doug Racine — his longtime #1 political rival, and definitely not a Shumlin insider.

In announcing Larson’s departure, both he and the governor noted that, during his tenure, the number of uninsured Vermonters has dropped by half. Which is true; but is that a matter of causation or correlation?

Available evidence suggests the latter.

The Assassination of Mary Morrissey by the Coward Shap Smith

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The Burlington Free Press doesn’t have much time for state government these days, what with the dismissal of its entire Statehouse bureau and its obvious skeleton-crewing in recent weeks.

But boy, they’ve got plenty of time to spare for the potential reassignment of a single Republican back-bencher.

[State Rep. Mary] Morrissey, [R-Bennington]… confirmed Friday she has been told that House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown has plans to reassign her to a yet to be determined committee.

… Morrissey said she sees the move as an effort to silence a legislator who has been forced to ask tough questions that Democrats are not asking themselves.

Or, to put it another way, it’s a routine committee reshuffle, the kind that happens every couple of years. A whole lot of others will be shifted around in the next few days. It is within the purview of the Speaker to make committee assignments.

Morrissey and her allies are depicting this move as an effort to stymie oversight of health care reform. Which, frankly, gives a hell of a lot of credit to Morrissey. In my brief exposure to her work, she seems to be a garden-variety naysayer on health care reform, ideologically opposed to Obamacare and Shummycare under any circumstances, and not offering any special expertise on the subject.

The Speaker himself put it this way:

“I’ve spent a lot of time looking at a group of people that will work well together to come up with policy,” Smith said.

“I want to put together people who will work effectively together and don’t have baggage from past fights,” Smith said.

Since Morrissey is toting a steamer trunk full of conservative dogma, Smith seems to have reason for her removal. It has less to do with the alleged danger she poses to Democrats, and more to do with her kneejerk opposition. She’s not a watchdog, she’s a fallen tree in the roadway.

Her possible removal from the Health Care Committee is standard operating practice. And, frankly, not that big a deal. It’s not like she’s the only one who can ask inconvenient questions, and it’s not like she has special knowledge of the health care system.

Well, if she does, she hasn’t shown it.

Phil Scott #2016 rumbles out of Pit Road

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In my previous post, I noted a report of some uncharacteristically aggressive remarks by Lt. Gov. Phil Scott. As it happens, Mr. Nice Guy did a brief radio interview this morning on WCVR, “Real Country 1320 AM” in Randolph,”playing all your favorites from yesterday and today!”

Well, maybe not my favorites. I doubt their playlist includes King Crimson or Talking Heads (yesterday) or Arcade Fire or Cold Specks or Godspeed! You Black Emperor (today), but I know what they mean.

Morning deejay Ray Kimball took a few minutes from spinnin’ the tunes to talk with Our Lieutenant Governor. And thanks to Real Country’s livestream, I could listen from my snowed-in central Vermont hilltop redoubt.

Hey Vermont, need a lift?

Hey Vermont, need a lift?

I must say, Phil Scott was on his game, combining his customary aw-shucks charm with some well-crafted jabs at the (unnamed) Democrats.

It wasn’t much of an interview, maybe five minutes. And as an interviewer, Ray Kimball is a darn fine deejay. But it gave me a sense that Mr. Nice Guy will be a very dangerous candidate in 2016 if he wants to be. And, for the first time in his career, he’s showing signs that he does indeed want to be. I guess we shouldn’t have doubted the competitive fire of a man whose third profession is auto racing.

Ol’ Ray started by mentioning the expected presence of Fox News, which is apparently nosing around the Statehouse looking for fuel for its festive Jonathan Gruber stake-burning. Initially, Scott didn’t take the bait, instead pivoting to Governor Shumlin’s overdue rollout of a single-payer health care plan. And, in his customarily genial tones, he delivered a fist-in-a-velvet glove shot at Gov. Shumlin.

I’m looking forward to the Governor presenting his plan as he was supposed to do quite some time ago, as was named in the law itself. He’s missed a couple of deadlines. I don’t want there to be any excuses, I want to hear what this financing plan is, what this single-payer looks like, so we can make a decision as to whether it works for Vermont or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, I want to move on. The uncertainty it’s created in Vermont just having this discussion, I think has had a negative effect on our economy. So I want to get this over and done, and then move on from there.

Nicely done, sir. Slam the Governor for missing deadlines, assert that the “uncertainty” has hurt Vermont’s economy*, but leave the door open, barely, for consideration of single-payer.

*Please stop with the uncertainty bullshit. Truth is, life itself is uncertain. Businesspeople face far bigger and more pressing uncertainties every damn day. Single-payer, if it happens, is three years away. How much other uncertainty will be packed into those years? 

Ray-Ray then asked a garbled follow-up, and that’s when Scott pivoted back to Jonathan Gruber’s videotaped comments, delivering a skillful punch in his unthreatening way.

His comments were made about Obamacare, but it does bring to light some, ah, you know, you might question some of the tactics and some of the things he’s said, in terms of trying to manipulate the public and perception, so I think some of his, ah, some of his data might be questionable.

Aha. Laying the groundwork for disbelieving the Governor’s plan while maintaining the facade of open-mindedness. He didn’t even call for Gruber’s head on a plate; he just undermined Gruber’s work.

Then Kimball asked about the budget. Scott took that ball and ran with it.

I know we can’t continue to look back, but I look back a few years as, uh, as to when Governor Douglas vetoed the budget…

Let’s stop for a moment and note the contradiction there: we can’t look back, but I’m looking back. Okay, Phil, continue.

… when Governor Douglas vetoed the budget, said it was unsustainable in the future, and it turns out he was right. We, uh, the Legislature overrode his veto and put that into place, and I think that’s where it started. And I think we’re living, ah, beyond our means. We’re spending, we, ah, we’re spending more money than we’re receiving. Revenues are down. So we’ve had to make corrections, and we’re going to have to tighten our belts, and it’s going to take all of us to determine how we’re going to do that, because we can’t spend more than we’re taking in.

Well played! Referring to the halcyon days of Jim Douglas, blaming the Democrats and Gov. Shumlin without naming them, couching harsh criticism in kitchen-table terms, and even calling for bipartisanship while, at the same time, trumpeting Republican orthodoxy. Ingenious.

There have been persistent doubts that Phil Scott has the fire in the belly, that he’d most likely stay within his comfort zone as Mr. Nice Guy, Lieutenant Governor For Life. It’s very early, but I suspect we can lay those doubts to rest.

Phil Scott exits 2014 with over $100,000 in campaign cash, and he’s proven he can be a big-time fundraiser within the humble boundaries of Vermont. If he can mount a credible campaign, and I think it’s clear he can, he’ll start drawing some outside money as well. He is developing a solid message, combining Jim Douglas-style plausible moderation with skillfully coded shout-outs to the True Believers.

If he wants the 2016 gubernatorial nomination, he’ll have it. And he will be the most formidable Republican candidate since Jim Douglas left the scene.

Hell, at this rate, he might turn out to be better than Jim Douglas.

Postscript. This was a brief interview, but a couple of items were notable by their absence. The name “Scott Milne” was not mentioned. And there was no talk of repealing Vermont Health Connect which, if I recall correctly, was the Republicans’ clarion call less than two weeks ago. 

“The 2016 campaign is already underway!”

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I didn’t write those words in a paroxysm of political-blogger wishful thinking. No, that sentence was crafted — exclamation mark and all — by one “Super Dave” Sunderland, chair of the Vermont Republican Party. It’s the closing line in a fundraising pitch that’s posted on the VTGOP website and, I’m sure, spammed to every Vermonter on its contact list.

So much for the Vermont tradition, more honored in the breach than the observance, that campaign season won’t start until the Legislature adjourns in the spring of 2016.

What Super Dave means, of course, is that he needs your money right now to begin the long build toward 2016. But in another, equally real, way, the Republicans have begun the 2016 campaign in earnest — with their words and their newly aggressive attitude.

Donkey walks into a bar, says "I'll have a Heady Topper." Bartender says, "Sorry, you elitist snob. We only serve Bud."

Donkey walks in, says “I’ll have a Heady Topper.” Bartender says, “Hit the road, you elitist snob. We only serve Bud.”

It started with their big post-election news conference on Nov. 7, in which the Party’s top elective officials got together to call for the immediate dismantling of Vermont Health Connect. (Leaving aside, for this narrative, the unfeasibility of the idea and the curious incident of the Milne in the night-time.) It was a deliberately confrontational opening move for a party still on the short end of lopsided legislative majorities. I took it as a signal that the VTGOP was feelin’ its oats.

At the same presser, some GOPers expressed interest in further exploring The Milne Theorem, an unproven assertion postulating that 87,075 is greater than 89,509. Scott Milne had first floated the trial balloon a couple days earlier; that news conference was the first outward sign of broader support for his unlikely proposition. And a sign that the Republicans were (like a pro wrestler looking under the ring for the folding chairs and kendo sticks that are always, curiously, stashed there) eagerly grabbing for whatever weapons they could find to whack the Democrats.

A few days later came the annual meeting of the Vermont Rail Action Network, a chance for politicians to promote and/or give lip service to rail travel. As reported by outgoing State Rep. Mike McCarthy on Green Mountain Daily, Gov. Shumlin was there and did his duty, giving “a rousing speech about rail and cross-border trains.”

And then Mr. Nice Guy, Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, took the mic:

The room of about 150 railroad officials, government agencies, and legislators was a little surprised that instead of talking about rail, Lt. Governor Scott focused solely on last week’s election and slammed “Montpelier” for not listening to Vermonters.  I guess this is what the beginning of a 2016 gubernatorial run looks like: No More Mr. Nice Phil.

McCarthy pronounced himself “shocked” that Scott “for the first time in his political life seemed to have gone tone deaf.”

Granted, Mike McCarthy is fresh off an electoral defeat and might be feeling a little bitter, but he’s generally a reliable correspondent.

I’m guessing that Phil Scott’s been giving himself a few dope-slaps since Election Night. It’s very easy to imagine him imagining himself winning the governorship. Has that experience suddenly got him yearning for the corner office, and sharpening his message and his political profile for the first time in his soft-jazz political career? It would seem so.

More coming shortly in this space.

Grubermania: Catch it!

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Well, Vermont conservatives finally have a live one: a get-your-blood-boiling, wave-the-bloody-shirt phony “issue” of the kind that rarely presents itself in our green and pleasant land. And boy howdy, are they ever jumping on the outrage train.

Critics of the Shumlin administration are demanding the dismissal of a state consultant whose remarks about the Affordable Care Act last week went viral on Twitter and was picked up by major news outlets…

The target, of course, is Jonathan Gruber, health care expert and creator of the best economic model for health care systems. And utterer of some completely charmless comments on a handful of occasions over the past few years.

Just think, in this age of digital media, how many Young Conservatives are being gainfully employed searching through endless hours of Gruber’s public appearances, trying to locate bits of marketable outrage. Gruber’s been a high-profile figure in health care reform for many years; because of the unique usefulness of his model, he’s been hired by the feds and a whole bunch of states. He’s given testimony, he’s given speeches, he’s been on countless panels.

But never mind the inherent unfairness of tearing a man’s reputation to shreds over a few words. We’ve got some rabble-rousing to do! And our junior-league rabble-rousers are in full force: Rob Roper, Darcie Johnston*, and oh wait — here’s a new entrant to the Pitchfork Brigade: the previously cool-headed, plausibly nonpartisan Campaign for Vermont!

*And again I say, why in hell is anybody listening to Darcie Johnston after the faceplant of the Dan Feliciano campaign added another chapter to her Little Book of Failure?

Between this and CFV moneybags Bruce Lisman’s recent mouth-foamer of an opinion piece (about which more in an upcoming post), it looks like CFV is finally shedding its chrysalis of nonpartisanship and emerging as the Butterfly of Fiscal Conservatism we all suspected was in there all along.

All this Grubermania has a purpose: to toss a can of nails in the Road to Single-Payer, as VTDigger’s Anne Galloway reports:

Gov. Peter Shumlin… is moving ahead with his signature single payer health care initiative. Gruber’s work is crucial to that effort.

“Crucial” because Shumlin has to show that single-payer won’t hurt the state’s economy. Gruber’s model is by far the best tool for the job.

No Gruber, no model. And Shumlin’s task gets a little bit harder.

Now let’s see what kind of cojones the Administration has. WIll they stand by their guy in the face of grossly exaggerated attacks? Or will they toss him off the dogsled in hopes of distracting the wolves?

Based on past experience, I hope Gruber is packin’ a Bowie knife. After all, one of the great saints of Vermont liberalism, Peter Welch, fell for a similar outrage over alleged malfeasance at ACORN. Welch, you may recall, played a small and ignominious role in ACORN’s termination. Sadly, I expect nothing better of Governor Shumlin.

Time to change the subject

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Huh. Day One of Vermont Health Connect 2.0 passed uneventfully, the website performing as expected with only “minor issues” that were resolved immediately.

“It was a nice, boring morning,” [chief of health care reform Lawrence] Miller said. “And that’s what we look for.”

Cool beans.

Of course, unlike last year, the site wasn’t overwhelmed by hordes of eager applicants. According to the Mitchell Family Organ, the site processed 80 new applications and 401 renewals. A nice number, but not a flood. And, we should note, some of the website’s functions are off line until after the open enrollment period ends.

So, baby steps. But so far, so good.

And as long as things are going well, we can safely ignore Republicans’ call to tear the whole thing down and join the federal exchange, complete with its lower subsidies and possible dismantling by the Supreme Court.

And now that things are looking up for VHC, must be time for Republicans to change the subject.

Oh, here we go.

A video from Vermont shows Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber mocking a Vermonter who expressed concern about single-payer health care.

That’s better. It’s getting harder to challenge Obamacare and Shummycare on policy grounds, so let’s demonize somebody!

And filling the role, in the fine tradition of Hillary Clinton and Valerie Plame and Lois Lerner and Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton again and the hordes of illegal gangbanging youth swarming our borders (remember them?), not to mention Demon Number One, President Obama himself, is Jonathan Gruber, “architect” of Obamacare.

Let’s posit first of all that Gruber seems to be an arrogant ivory-tower type with no conception of how his ill-considered words sound in the wider world. To judge by the carefully-selected words spoken on a handful of videos trumpeted by the right, Jonathan Gruber is a proper asshole.

However…

To call Gruber the “architect” of health care reform is quite a stretch. His primary contribution was the development of an economic model that allowed the testing and comparison of possible reform measures. And from what I’ve read, the Gruber model is uniquely accurate. It’s a valuable tool, and Gruber’s been well compensated for its development and use. He’s been employed by the federal government and the Shumlin Administration (and by a whole bunch of other states) to use his model and consult on details of reform programs.

But he is not the architect of anything. Not in Washington, and not in Montpelier. He did not create the system; he was one among many. And he had nothing to do with the political strategy that led to its enactment, which makes his views on political strategy irrelevant.

You could call him the Ted Williams of health care reform. He’s a terrific power hitter. But he is not the manager or general manager, much less the owner. His thoughtless and arrogant remarks are no more relevant to health care reform than Ted Williams’ famous battles with the press were to his performance at the plate.

Convenient, isn’t it? Just when VHC is getting off the ground and Obamacare is starting its second round of successful enrollments, opponents of health care reform have “discovered” comments made by Gruber two and three years ago.

The video cited above was recorded in 2011 by the conservative website True North Reports.

And now — more than three years later — it’s the outrage du jour? How convenient.

The video’s existence was reported by Vermont’s own version of James O’Keefe, the Koch-funded Bruce Parker at Vermont Watchdog. His story was reposted by True North Reports — without comment on why a three-year-old video that True North Reports itself produced should be considered hot news today. What has TNR been doing with this video for the past three years?

By the way, the Vermonter who was mocked by Gruber in 2011?

El Jefe General John McClaughry.

As Gruber sits listening, the committee chair reads a comment from a Vermonter who expresses concern that the economist’s plan might lead to “ballooning costs, increased taxes and bureaucratic outrages,” among other things.

After hearing the Vermonter’s worries, Gruber responds, “Was this written by my adolescent children by any chance?”

El Jefe is shocked, shocked that Gruber would say such a thing. Although he’s certainly been called worse. And I myself have occasionally wondered if El Jefe’s opinion pieces might have been written in crayon.

In this particular case, McClaughry’s thunderings were so exaggerated, so over the top, that they invited mockery. And Gruber, unwisely, took the bait.

So now the Shumlin Administration is under pressure to take their irritable, impolitic slugger out of the lineup because he acted like a jerk.

Three years ago.

If you ask me, the Republicans are desperately changing the subject. They’re running out of time to undercut health care reform on its merits, so they’re demonizing one of its leading academics.

And, if you ask me, Jonathan Gruber’s remarks have no relevance to the merits of health care reform. None at all.

 

Is this the time for business as usual?

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It’s an annual rite at this time of year: a changeover in the upper levels of the administration. It usually involves some key departures, a shuffling of the deck, and the elevation of those who have served in a lesser capacity.

The latter began on Wednesday for the Shumlin Administration, with promotions for press liaison Sue Allen, campaign manager Scott Coriell, and education adviser Aly Richards. Loyal servants, rewarded for their work.

But should they be?

I have nothing against these folks. As far as I know, they deserve their promotions. But a broader question is on my mind:

Praise and promotions were freely distributed when Shumlin was riding high. Should the same be true after a poor administrative year and a disastrous campaign?

Further: Are these promotions a sign that Shumlin, at some fundamental level, doesn’t get it? That it’s business as usual on the fifth floor?

The Governor has made the right noises. But the current situation calls for a lot more than that. You can say “The buck stops here” all you want, but if the buck stops and gets tossed in a drawer, it’s a meaningless statement.

After the election, I saw a gleam of hope: Shumlin does his best work in crisis, as we saw after Tropical Storm Irene. This election was the closest thing to a personal Irene for Shumlin. My hope was that he would seize the opportunity, thoroughly evaluate everything he and his people do, and boldly set a new course.

So far, given his frequent deferrals to legislative leadership and his dispensation of Jobs For The Boys (And Girls), I’m having my doubts.

In addition to a personal reckoning by Shumiln, there ought to be a personnel reckoning. During the campaign, I wrote that the continued problems of Vermont Health Connect called for some clear direction and, probably, the rolling of some heads.

In addition to Doug Racine’s, that is. Racine may have had his failings at Human Services, but it wasn’t like he got a lot of help from Shumlin. Plus, he had little to do with Vermont Health Connect. He was expendable, not because he was the biggest problem, but because he wasn’t really part of the team. Mark Larson, who was far more responsible for VHC but was clearly one of the boys, was shunted to the side but kept his title and is still drawing a salary for duties and responsibilities unknown.

Is Governor Shumlin capable of evaluating his staffers and functionaries with the cold eye of reason, and demoting or defenestrating those who’ve contributed to his administration’s malaise?

We’ll see. He promises more personnel changes to come. But I have to say I’m not optimistic. If the changes have more to do with the desires and ambitions of his staff than with a sorely-needed overhaul of the Shumlin Machine, then his third term is off to an inauspicious start.