Well, when I went looking for a cheeky illustration for this post about the fortunes of VTDigger, I didn’t plan on discovering Diggerland, “the one and only construction theme and water park in the U.S.!” (Exclamation mark theirs.) But that’s the internet for ya. The real Diggerland, complete with opportunities to “Drive, Ride & Operate specially engineered, real construction machinery,” is located in a New jersey exurb of Philadelphia, which sounds about right.
So no, our favorite nonprofit “print” news organization hasn’t opened a theme park. Not yet. But the idea doesn’t seem completely farfetched given the sweaty, sweaty nature of Digger’s current fundraising campaign.
If you haven’t visited VTDigger in the last several weeks, you’ve missed a huge number of fundraising messages competing for space with a shrinking number of actual news stories. You’ve missed messages directly from staff reporters, which rings ethical alarm bells among ink-stained wretches. You’ve missed pitches that tie support for Digger to the provision of heat and sustenance, which strikes me as a tad aggressive. The implicit message is if you don’t support VTDigger, you don’t care about the poor among us. Which is nonsense.
Anyone noticed the lack of activity lately from the Ethan Allen Institute? What used to be the closest thing to an idea factory for Vermont conservatism has all but fallen off the map.
Turns out, it’s not your imagination. Here’s how inactive the Institute has been — and for how long.
Its website lists former Senate candidate Jack McMullen as chair of its board. I reached out to McMullen, who told me he resigned as chair in… wait for it… September of 2023.
Yep, more than two years ago, and nobody has bothered to update the website on something as important as the Institute’s top officeholder.
Other evidence of inactivity: The Institute’s website doesn’t list any paid staff. The most recent post on the Institute’s Facebook page is dated March 2023. There’s been only one entry on the Institute’s “Blog” page since January 2024, when longtime EAI stalwart John McClaughry (still listed as the Institute’s vice president, for all that’s worth) announced the end of his long-running series of biweekly commentaries on the page. The Institute has yet to file an IRS 990 form for 2024, which was due in October. And, of course, they’re still listing McMullen as chair more than two years after he resigned.
“[The Institute is] in a dormant stage,” McMullen told me. The cause, he asserted, is the ongoing litigation involving Myers Mermel, who served as president of the Institute for 10 months before being ousted by the board in, ahem, September of 2023. (Also in September 2023, as reported at the time by VTDigger: The State Policy Network, a national organization of state-level conservative think tanks, suspended Ethan Allen Institute’s affiliate status. Currently, SPN’s website lists no affiliation with any Vermont organization.)
Mermel, now owner of WDEV Radio, filed suit for wrongful termination after his dismissal. According to McMullen, the action is still making its way through the courts. “Litigation is very expensive,” McMullen noted, “Representation is costly.”
That’s as may be, but you’d think an organization with deep roots and a well-connected board would be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The lawsuit can’t possibly be the only issue.
This situation came to my attention a few weeks ago when Common Sense Radio ended its long run as the conservative-branded hour on WDEV Radio. The Institute had paid for the airtime for years, but chose not to renew its contract according to Mermel. (He otherwise declined to comment on the record.) The time slot is now in the hands of the Vermont Daily Chronicle’s Guy Page.
My view: The increasingly radical nature of conservative politics may have sidelined the Institute, whose stock in trade was old-fashioned fiscal conservatism and free-market capitalism. I rarely (if ever) agreed with McClaughry or any of the Institute’s other commentators, but they never engaged in conspiratorialism or Trumpian authoritarianism and I respect them for that.
McMullen still has hopes for the Institute’s future. “I think they could revive if they get through the litigation,” he said. I hope they do. There was little to no common ground between the Institute and me, but it was a credible voice in Vermont politics. There’s a hole in our discourse where the Institute used to be.
I don’t usually bother writing about op-ed pieces or letters to the editor because (a) who reads them, anyway? and (b) that way lies madness. The temptation is ever present (take, for example, “Farmer” John Klar’s recent lament about grade inflation at Harvard, a topic of conservative whingeing since at least the 1970s), but I do try to avoid it.
C’mon, Burr & Burton is one of the most coddled, protected, politically insulated institutions in the state of Vermont. I mean, we just went through an Act 73 process in which Democratic and Republican leaders stacked the deck in favor of B&B and the other private schools that receive taxpayer tuition dollars. The two most influential lawmakers in the entire process were Senate Education Committee chair Seth Bongartz, who spent nearly two decades on the B&B board, and Senate Minority Leader Scott Beck, a longtime faculty member at St. Johnsbury Academy. One of the highest priorities of the process was protecting the interests of the four big private schools that take public tuition dollars.
It’s not just the flagrant wrongness of Orton’s premise. It’s the quantity of inflammatory prose he packs into a few short paragraphs.
“The drumbeat against” Burr & Burton “is becoming more strident and punitive.” Actually, I’d say “the drumbeat” has been pretty consistent. If it’s getting louder, that’s because our entire public education reform process seems to prioritize B&B and its fellows over all else.
Orton complains that critics browbeat the storied academy “with fallacious charges” and demand “that the school become a public institution.” Nope, I’ve never heard that one. I have heard people say B&B shouldn’t be allowed to take public education dollars without being subject to the same rules as public schools.
Orton again: “There are yowls from the establishment that Burr & Burton costs more.” Again, nope. The “yowls” of reasoned criticism center on the taxpayer subsidy of the private academies. I don’t think anybody cares about the total tuition bill.
Orton then brags that “no taxes are levied for capital improvements” at B&B because its admirers “consistently contribute enough to cover them.” Well, yeah, private schools exist because they serve affluent families and wealthy benefactors able to pony up for expensive infrastructure schemes.
Orton closes by declaring B&B a “success… beloved by parents, students and residents.” And then he gives away the game in his conclusion: “It’s telling that those who can’t compete have set out to diminish Vermont’s premier secondary schools.”
And there it is: Competition.
See, the thing is, public education shouldn’t be a contest with winners and losers. A strong public school system is a public good of tremendous value to its communities, socially and economically. Every taxpayer has an interest in good public schools. Every taxpayer does not benefit from private schools.
Orton is sounding the alarm against an imaginary enemy. The bulk of “the establishment” is firmly in the private academies’ back pockets, sad to say. Our political “establishment,” both Democratic and Republican, supports the academies and enables their special status. The four major academies spend big on Statehouse lobbying, and it pays off in spades. Their critics have been marginalized throughout the decades-long school reform debate.
Sure, public educators advocate for the institutions they’ve devoted their lives to. Sure, there are liberal politicians who’d like to see a fairer playing field in public education. Sure, there’s an active campaign called “Same Dollars, Same Rules,” which asserts that if the private academies accept public dollars, they should abide by the same standards as public schools. But so far, none of those people have made significant headway against the influence of the extremely well-connected private academies.
And while those people disagree with Orton, he vastly overstates the nature of their criticisms and their truly modest goals. I have never heard, for example, a single person of any stature call for the academies to be forcibly turned into public schools.
Like many a wealthy American, Lyman Orton sees Communism — or at minimum, socialism — when reasonable people call for reasonable reforms. There are a few dust balls under his bed, and he thinks they are monsters out to kill him.
The housing advocate and fixture of Montpelier life has died after, as they say, a long battle with cancer. Word of his death was posted yesterday on Facebook by fellow advocate Brenda Siegel.
Before proceeding, a necessary acknowledgement: I’m far from the best person to memorialize Morgan. I knew him indirectly from his advocacy work and his Green Mountain Meandering Missives blog, plus that one time I had a cup of coffee with him. That was in the early stages of his illness, and I never sought another meeting because it seemed an imposition on an acquaintance with limited time remaining. But I have thoughts on his passing. Think of this is one pebble in the pond, not the final word on anything Morgan.
The above Muppetization of him and his beloved companion Miss Cleo adorns his YouTube channel, but it seems appropriate here because Morgan was a gentle soul who seemed to have been born on the wrong planet. He needed and deserved a more welcoming environment. Our world is a little colder without him.
This announcement, dated December 1, is still posted on Emerge Vermont’s website. But those “training opportunities” will not happen, at least not in their present format or timetable. Because, per Seven Days, Emerge America just decided to shut down Emerge Vermont in a nationwide move to eliminate state chapters in favor of a regionalized structure.
Emerge Vermont has been a highly effective pipeline for Democratic women who want to enter politics. It has trained hundreds of Vermonters, many of whom are now top elected officials — like U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, Attorney General Charity Clark, Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, and I don’t know how many state reps, senators, and local officeholders.
Emerge Vermont can be credited for nearly erasing the gender gap in the Legislature. (It would have completely erased it by now except that Republican caucuses are almost entirely male.) Emerge Vermont has also been an invaluable asset for the Vermont Democratic Party, which has benefited from a steady supply of Emerge-trained women ready to run for office. (Vermont Republicans don’t have a counterpart and, as I’ve said before, they would be well advised to get their donors together and create one.)
In short, this is a sad day for gender equality in Vermont, and for Vermont Democrats.
This, friends and neighbors, proud Vermonters, is the former gymnasium at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, a.k.a. the state’s only prison for women.
It was the gym until the prison got so overcrowded (130% capacity) that they had to convert it to a temporary shelter where (at last count) 24 inmates are sleeping on the floor in this appalling setting. Although I will admit the jigsaw puzzle is a nice touch, providing the thinnest veneer of hominess to this shitshow.
All of this is according to testimony delivered Monday to the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee by Isaac Dayno, executive director of policy at the state Department of Corrections. (Dayno’s slide deck can be downloaded here.) And this is only the newest outrage at CRCF, which has kept inmates in unsafe, unsanitary conditions for the better part of a decade. (For a dose of unfresh outrage, see Paul Heintz’ CRCF exposé, published by Seven Days in 2019. Or check out Heintz’ 2020 report on the facility’s showers providng a home to maggots and leeches and reeking of human waste.)
Dayno began his appearance by reporting his imminent departure from DOC, about which more below. In this light, his testimony can be interpreted as a not-so-subtle single-finger salute to the Phil Scott administration, which has failed to produce a solid proposal for upgrading or replacing the prison for, yes, the better part of a decade.
“We can do better,” Dayno told lawmakers. “The costs of inaction and apathy are quite high.” Hmm, remind me who’s been in charge of the situation since 2017? Phil Scott, that’s who.
Here’s a shocker, and a subject I will likely never mention again: A handful of ultraconservative Vermonters has created an alternative to Front Porch Forum. Well, they want to position it as an alternative to FPF. In reality, it’s something much simpler, stupider, and more useless.
The organizers, with all the cleverness they can muster, are calling their new thing “Vermont Back Porch.” Yeah, baby, I wanna be your back porch man.
It appears to be nothing more than a statewide message board, open to anyone who signs up. Reddit for Dummies, if such a thing is possible. What it doesn’t offer is the community-by-community connectivity that has made FPF so useful and popular.
Conservatives have long been upset over FPF’s fairly modest content moderation standards, which are designed to prevent outbreaks of toxic partisanship. Political comment is fine, especially on local issues, but there are limits — which the nutbags try to label “censorship” because, as usual, they don’t understand that actual censorship involves the imposition of political authority on speech. The First Amendment has nothing to do with social media content moderation; like any other non-public entity, FPF is free to adopt whatever rules it wishes and you can’t call it censorship.
But hey, what are facts anyway? Especially when the organizers of this new endeavor hail from the ranks of — you guessed it — Covid denialists! Yay whoopee!
Back at the beginning of this year, when Donald Trump was spouting his “51st State” nonsense and threatening a tariff war with Canada, there were concerns about the effect on Vermont’s tourism economy. Well, we’re almost a year into the second reign of King Manbaby, and the numbers show that Vermont has, in fact, suffered greatly from Trump’s cold war with our neighbors.
Canadian tourism is down. Way down.
Canadian credit card spending in Vermont is down even more.
This is only one of the many negative effects of Trump on Vermont. Tariffs have bedeviled many Vermont industries and businesses, and have hit housing construction especially There are real and potential losses in federal funding, including the rampant politicization of disaster recovery aid. There’s the chilling effect on migrant workers, which is putting a real hurt on our construction and agricultural sectors.
I can’t quantify those effects. But I’ve got a bunch of numbers regarding Canadian tourism. And man, do they ever make for some grim reading.
State Rep. Jim Harrison, one of the most respected members of the House Republican caucus, will leave the Legislature shortly after the new year. Harrison has represented his district in rural Rutland County since 2017; before that, he’d been a Statehouse fixture for decades as head of the Vermont Retail and Grocers Association. He told The Rutland Herald that a move to Wilmot, New Hampshire is in the works simply because he and his wife have decided “it’s time to move on.”
Well, this is sudden, definitive, and puzzling. A Statehouse lifer and loyal Republican is bugging out for no particularly compelling reason. And I have a feeling that Harrison is an early canary in the coal mine. The conditions are right for a wave of resignations and retirements among Democrats and Republicans alike.
For starters, the Statehouse is a grind. The hours are long and often tedious, the demands are great and the financial rewards laughable. Honestly, it’s a wonder that anyone sticks around for very long. And then you get to the fact that this year’s session was tougher than usual, and next year’s is likely to be worse.
Fascinating story in this week’s edition of The Hardwick Gazette, which merits follow-up coverage of the implications by our larger media outlets. (And I’m not saying so because of my role with the paper. This is all about the merits of the story.) As The Gazette’s Paul Fixx reports, the Hardwick Electric Department just replaced its general manager in a completely opaque fashion: no public notice, no agenda item at a board meeting, no explanation whatsoever. Nothing.
So what’s going on here?
We don’t know, but I have my suspicions. I see the current drive to de-localize management in our public education system, and I wonder if the same forces are at work in Vermont’s electric power system. In short, is there an effort underway to consolidate Vermont’s community utilities — up to and including the Burlington Electric Department?
For the good folks of Hardwick and environs, the most immediately important thing is the total mystery around the replacement of Sarah Braese as general manager less than a year after she was hired. What does it say about the organizational health of HED?
For the rest of us, the big piece is the identity of HED’s new interim (apparently) general manager. Scott Johnstone was the utility’s interim chief last year, plus he’s been chief of Morrisville Water & Light since 2022, plus he was recently installed as head of the financially troubled Hyde Park Electric. (The best source for coverage of Hyde Park’s perilous situation comes from, shocker I know, The News & Citizen. Local journalism FTW.)
That’s a hell of a portfolio: Johnstone now runs three small utilities in northern Vermont. Things that make you go hmm…..
The Vermont Political Observer. 