For the sake of the children, let’s not balance the budget on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.  If we are looking at this as strictly a money issue, the purported $200,000 savings that will deny children and families vital social services will end up costing society and taxpayers much more in the long run.  

In an article in yesterday’s Brattleboro Reformer, Howard Weiss-Tisman detailed the impact to child and youth care services if the state’s projected budget cuts go through.

Windham Childcare Association Executive Director Sadie Fischesser traveled to Montpelier last week to try to save 12 financial assistance counseling positions across the state.

At the same time social services agencies across the state are crying out for support, Governor Douglas touted a new plan involving technologies that take the human factor out of human services.

I have been a Vermont foster parent, and I continue to work on legal cases involving children.  The families with whom I work need the one-on-one connection with a counselor.  They need support and direction.  

The change is expected to save about $200,000 and Fischesser said the change would set back early child care.

“To make the system work families have to know how to access funding,” Fischesser said.

The state has already eliminated some positions and opened up a phone bank for other services, but Fischesser said there have been problems.

I know there are problems.  One of my cases this year involves a grandmother and her 3-year-old granddaughter.  Getting any social services aid has been challenging.  Getting legal help was impossible since Have Justice Will Travel lost its grant in the southern part of the state.  If some of my clients have a cell phone, they certainly do not have the money to stay on hold indefinitely and with their hourly-wage jobs actually have no time to call let alone understand the maze of systems one must negotiate to get counseling, assistance, and necessary court representation.  People need real one-on-one assistance and direction, not an automated system that takes that help one step further away.

While families are crying in need, the Governor Promotes Dept for Children and Families’ New Benefits Center.

According to the Douglas administration press release

Waterbury, VT- Governor Jim Douglas is encouraging Vermonters to use the Department for Children and Families’ (DCF) new Benefits Service Center and interactive website to access benefits such as 3SquaresVT (formerly food stamps), fuel assistance, health insurance, and phone assistance.

“You can call 1-800-479-6151 or go to myBenefits.vt.gov to find out about available benefits, track your application, and access information about your case,” said Governor Douglas. “And you can do all this when it’s most convenient for you – during the day, at night, or on weekends. Starting in June of this year, you will also be able to apply for benefits online.”

The counselors meet with parents who are trying to access different state programs, and the Douglas administration has suggested replacing the counselors with a phone bank.

The clients I see and talk to need more not less.  More service now means that a child is well cared for, has adequate food and housing and is therefore able to focus and learn in school.  I spent almost 10 years teaching teenagers who seemed unable to succeed academically.  In every case, something happened to them in elementary school so that these children did not learn to read.  As they got older they acted out and many had significant disciplinary issues.  Teaching them to read changed their lives, even those who had some trouble with the law.  

If we don’t look at the morality of taking away vital services from innocent children, then let’s look at the tax burden of fighting crime.  Incarceration costs $75,000 for every woman and $45,000 for every man.  My five years as a newspaper journalist and police reporter showed the revolving door.  Investing our tax dollars now in vital family services to our most vulnerable will save significant money later.  The Governor likes to be seen as tough on crime.  How tough is it to cut vital services and set up a pattern that will most likely drive people further into a hand to mouth existence.  Cutting one-on-one support, changing it to internet and phone banking makes these services out of reach to those who need them most.

 Vermont’s acting Commissioner of Public Service David O’Brien still suffers the anguish resulting from a Christmas party several years ago. In attendance at the party was Vermont Yankee VP Jay Thayer whose power plant Commissioner O’Brien regulates.The suggestion of appearance of conflict has been in the news off and on since the holiday party.

This week O’Brien responded in a letter to vt.digger.com and makes a statement that reads as if he wished for a lot less openness in his life and more secrecy during Sunshine Week.  

In hindsight I regret being forthcoming about my personal holiday party, I should have answered that it was no one’s business who visits my home. Ever since this matter was first raised I feel as though my personal space has been invaded.

So the take away lesson learned isn’t that he should or could have worked to avoid a potential appearance of conflict of interest but that he should have kept the visit secret from the public. I guess we will never know if he threw a St. Patrick’s Day party?  

Governor’s Executive Code of Ethics  

Appearance of a conflict of interest" as used below in §§ III (A) (2) and (7) means the impression that a reasonable person might have, after full disclosure of the facts, that an Appointee's judgment might be significantly influenced by outside interests, even though there is no actual conflict of interest.

http://www.workerscenter.org/b…

Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

While Congressional healthcare reform dominates national headlines, things are heating up in Montpelier for Vermont to lead the way for more fundamental change to truly fix the broken system.    

Yesterday, the Vermont Senate Appropriations Committee took testimony  from Sen. Doug Racine and the Senate Committee on Health & Welfare about S.88. In case you missed it, this is the bill their committee passed out unanimously (6-0) last Friday which would set up a commission to hire experts to design implementation plans for an overhaul of the healthcare system to be enacted in 2011 (see more here:.

The Appropriations committee room was packed, including six members of the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign. Everyone on both committees seemed to be in agreement that the current healthcare system is broken, that the work that Vermont is currently doing won’t fix the problem and that soaring healthcare costs are unsustainable, especially for the State Budget.

There was lots of discussion about whether the new version of S.88 bill, that Sen. Racine and his committee was asking for $400K would help us get to where we need to go.  Since the moment this bill passed out of committee, the  discussion that has been the discussion outside the statehouse as well. Leaders  throughout the healthcare reform movement , including  leaders of the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign are not unified on  what might happen if the bill passes. There are concerns about the language of the goals of the commission in its current form and our Policy Committee has made a list of ways the bill needs to  be strengthened.    

Some groups and individual single-payer healthcare advocates have called for the new bill to be completely replaced with the old language.  But it is highly unlikely given that the bill passed 6-0 out of the Senate healthcare committee, and four of those six were original sponsors of S.88.  So what should we do?  I think its clear we must strengthen and pass this bill in the Senate and the House.  There’s a bunch of ways to do that.  I know I could sleep a whole lot better at night if the Governor only had one appointee on the Commission as in the original bill…

… or maybe as Rep. Paul Poirier (I-Barre City), told our members on Monday night, that its possible to find a way to get rid of the commission all together and just order the work done by architects. (A lot of folks think we might have a perfect candidate you can join us to hear from tomorrow.  Dr. William Hsiao, who has experience designing healthcare systems around the world, will be speaking before Joint Healthcare Committees tomorrow at 2pm at the Statehouse in Room 11).  

The Senate Health & Welfare Committee did not pass exactly what we wanted. With the help of Con Hogan (see See VWC Blog on Feb 23 ) they tried to put a bill together that would be a “consensus bill” to get bipartisan support on. That is why the bill calls for the design of  three options, one of which is a single-payer and all of which need to meet the principles and goals (including our human right principles).  We think its unnecessary and only more costly to have three options but I think we can live with them, if it helps get legislators behind a bill that has at least one option design a implementation plan that will make healthcare be able to be treated as a public good.

A crew of our Chittenden County members  were at the Statehouse  and met with  Sen. Hinda Miller (D-Chittenden) yesterday.  When we talked about how we wanted to strengthen the bill, she said beware that “the perfect does not become the enemy of the good.”  That is a real danger. Now, our mission is to make sure healthcare is treated as a human right by holding public policy up to human rights standards and calling for a overhaul of the healthcare system to meet those standards. So the question has been how can we get this to be improved to make sure it accomplishes what we need it to, that is, it designs the plan to implement next year. We need to find amendments to strengthen it so we are sure it will do that and let’s work to get the members of the Senate Health & Welfare Committee to support those amendments.

In today’s Times Argus/Rutland Herald story they quoted me as saying “This will move us forward.”  When asked about the bill as we left the Appropriations Committee room what I actually said was  “we need to make it stronger, but we must move forward”.  

Let’s make amendments to it that can strengthen it in ways that we can get broad support for it so it CAN pass. After it passes, our work will certainly still need to be done. There is no way we can pass anything that the new Governor and Legislature could not totally undo.  So we need to continue momentum through the end of the legislative session. We need to fight to pass this bill and let’s organize a huge rally on May 1st at the Statehouse. Then we will continue organizing all Summer and Fall to keep the pressure up and make sure people running for office know what our mandate is.  And then as one of our leaders from Rutland said yesterday, “Our job will be to make sure “our” option is selected by the next Legislature in 2011.”

Let’s make it happen.

James Haslam is the Director of the Vermont Workers’ Center who launched the Healthcare Is A Human Right Campaign in 2008.  see www.workerscenter.org

An article from today’s Rutland Herald caught my eye.  There’s a $7,500 appropriation to the Boy Scouts for a veteran’s day parade in the budget, and there’s controversy over it because the scouts have an anti-gay policy with respect to their volunteer pool.

I get the arguments in support of this money– it does fund a veteran’s day parade, but still it creates problems to have state money going to support an organization which is overtly homophobic.

So I have a proposal: appropriate the money, not to the Scouts themselves but to fund a veteran’s day parade, and allow the scouts to volunteer to do the work in putting it together, but don’t allow the money to be used to promote the Boy Scouts in any way, shape or form.

It still allows the good work to be done, without using state funds to promote an organization which is openly hostile towards lesbians and gay men.

Cross posted from Border Jumpers, Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack.

When we arrived by bus at the HIV/AIDS Resource Center in Katuna, Uganda (the border between Rwanda and Uganda), twenty men were intently watching a match between Manchester United and Chelsea on a small television. Along with the pool table, board games, and additional television downstairs, soccer games provide a much needed distraction for the long-distance truckers who have to wait for their vehicles to be cleared by customs before entering Rwanda.

But just eight months ago, instead of television and camaraderie among workers, the easiest diversion for truckers was sex. Katuna is one of many towns along what is known as the Northern Transport Corridor-a span of highway that stretches from Mombasa, Kenya through Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and all the way to Djibouti.

In the past, the truckers were often delayed for days on the border, giving them little to do. Boredom-and drinking-often led to unsafe sex with prostitutes at the truck stops along the highway. As a result, truck drivers have one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in Eastern Africa. Unfortunately, the virus doesn’t stop with them, and is often spread to their spouses.

Now, thanks to the work of the Solidarity Center, a non-profit launched by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organziations (AFL-CIO) to empower workers around the world by helping them form unions, and Uganda’s Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union (ATGWU), which has about 3,500 members in

Uganda, the amount of time truckers spend on the border has been reduced from days to just hours. The union has worked through bargaining with the government to reduce the amount of time it takes their paper to go through which reduced the amount of free time they have on the border.  When they don’t have as much free time, they’re not as likely to engage in unsafe sex. 

The Katuna resource center, like many others dotted along the transport corridor, offers training and education to truckers and sex workers, and provides reading materials like pocket guides explaining sexually transmitted infections and the dangers of letting them go untreated. More than 150,000 truck drivers and community members have received prevention services, care and support information through one-on-one or community group outreach. The Center also provides free testing for truck drivers, already more than 5,000 of them to date.

As we continued along into Kampala, you can’t help but immediately feel the pulse and energy of the bustling city. In fact, we love this country so much we have no doubt we’ll be back sometime in the future.

People here are also very laid back — We’ve even gone three days without a cup of coffee here and didn’t seem to mind.

You hear the words “Hakuna Matata” everywhere. Literally.

Internet services down nationwide all day? Hakuna Matata…

Flights cancelled? Hakuna Matata…

Two hours in wall-to-wall rush hours in Kampala? Hakuna Matata…

We spent a lot of time letting go and reversing any stereotypical American traveler latte-induced behavior…

Right after arriving, we visited the Mukono District, about an hour outside of Kampala, Uganda, where we met up with Edward Mukiibi and Roger Serunjogi, coordinators of the Developing Innovations in School Cultivation (DISC) project. Edward, 23, and Roger, 22 started the project in 2006 as a way to improve nutrition, environmental awareness, and food traditions and culture in Mukono by establishing school gardens at 15 preschool, day and boarding schools. And over the last year, DISC has received global attention for its work-DISC is now partly funded by Slow Food International.

They started with Sunrise School, a preschool taking care of children between the ages of 3 and 6. By teaching these kids early about growing, preparing, and eating food they hope to cultivate the next generation of farmers and eaters who can preserve Uganda’s culinary traditions. In addition to teaching the children about planting indigenous and traditional vegetables and fruit trees, DISC puts a big emphasis on food preparation and processing. “If a person doesn’t know how to cook or prepare food, they don’t know how to eat,” says Edward. The kids at Sunrise-and the other schools working with DISC-know how to grow, how to prepare, and how to eat food, as well as its nutritional content.

As a result, these students grow up with more respect-and excitement-about farming. At Sirapollo Kaggwass Secondary School, we met 19 year-old Mary Naku, who is learning farming skills from DISC. This was her school’s first year with the project and Mary has gained leadership and farming skills. “As youth we have learned to grow fruits and vegetables,” she says, “to support our lives.”

Thanks to DISC, students no longer see agriculture as an option of last resort, but rather as a way to make money, help their communities, and preserve biodiversity.

We were so impressed with project DISC and urge you to check out this opinion-editorial we wrote about them for the Des Moines Register.

With 1,000 words nearly coming to an end…

We would be remiss if we didn’t mention that Uganda, like most of the countries in Africa, is full of contradictions.

While everyone we met in Uganda was friendly and helpful, going out of their way to assist us when we needed directions, a Wifi hotspot, or a place to find vegetarian food, the country also has some of the most restrictive laws against human rights on the continent. While we were there, the “Bahati Bill” was introduced in parliament.  The Bahati called for life in prison — and in some case the death penalty — for people found “guilty” of homosexual activity.

As gay marriage laws are passed around the world, including most recently in Mexico City, it’s hard to believe that lawmakers would punish people for being gay or having HIV/AIDS. The Bahati bill also punishes anyone who fails to report a homosexual act committed by others with up to three years in jail, and a prison sentence of up to seven years for anyone who defends the rights of gays and lesbians.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, due to mounting pressure from governments such as the United States, across Europe, and in Canada, said that he opposes the measure, and would attempt to try and soften the bill. Yet, even the possibility that a watered-down version of the proposed law could be passed, is an alarming sign of a dangerous trend of prejudice all over Africa. In Blantyre, Malawi, for example, a gay couple was arrested a few months ago after having a traditional engagement ceremony. Homosexuality is punishable by 14 years in jail in Malawi.

Other things we want to quickly note

Where we stayed: overall, the Aponye Hotel in Kampala, Uganda is a very good budget option in the heart of the bustling city center. It is in walking distance from restaurants, markets, ATMs, the bus station and more. Approximately $35/night, the room was very simple, clean, with air-conditioning and hot showers, and Wifi in the lobby.

The veg options were great: We ate fresh avocado, a local staple called posho (or maize flower), matooke (or banana), rice, and cassava. Served with the meal was a dipping sauce made of ground nuts and tomatoes cooked in a covered box sauce pan. Most of the vegetarian food is served in Uganda is steamed — usually using banana leaves on the bottom.

A must do: Go whitewater rafting at the base of the Nile (just a short ride from Kampala). Don’t worry it’s safe and you will have a lot of fun.

Another must do: Go swimming in Lake Victoria — no need for a fancy hotel, most will let you on the property to swim and use their facilities for a nominal fee.

The overland bus company we recommend: Starways (and trust us — because we traveled on all of them)

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Per today’s Rutland Herald, in a piece about Snowboard manufacturer Burton moving its production facilities out of state:

David Mace, a spokesman for the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, said… the state had worked with Burton in the past to create jobs, most recently in 2008 when the company was authorized to receive $1.6 million in Vermont Employment Growth Incentive payments. The cash payments are made to companies that create jobs and make capital investments.

Mace said Burton was authorized to receive VEGI payments based on the creation of research and development jobs. He said to date the company has not claimed any incentive payments.

He said the loss of the Burton jobs is an example that the state needs to do more to reduce costs for businesses, including high taxes, workers’ compensation and burdensome regulations and mandates.

Okay.  So.

We need to reduce costs for businesses, but Burton turned down $1.6 million in money we were ready to hand them?   And this couldn’t, possibly, have anything to do with the controversy over Burton’s risque snowboards from a couple years ago?  Burton’s relationship with Vermont changed quite a bit after that and that could easily influence whether a company stays or leaves a state.  Losing partnerships with local resorts makes a big difference to this sort of thing.  

But hey, why dig deeper when you can just blame high taxes and regulations (you know– the sort of things that keep products from killing, wounding or maiming us) for everything?

Turn over almost any rock these days, and you’ll find some local-office holder freely exercising a conflict of interest. Right now in Highgate, the rock seems to be the source of the conflict. Here’s what we know so far:

Highgate Selectboard member Brian Rowell has been accused of impropriety with regard to the sale of a quantity of stone to the Town for reconstruction of a road (Mill Hill) washed out by heavy rains. The Town was the recipient of a Town Highway Emergency Grant from the state to address the problem, and apparently Mr. Rowell saw nothing wrong with writing the check to himself.

Details of the controversy were provided in two news stories that appeared in the St. Albans Messenger on Saturday, March 13 and Monday, March 15.  Mr. Rowell and his brother Bill are the owners and operators of Green Mountain Dairy in Highgate. Through their other business, Green Mountain Forest Products, the brothers sold the Town of Highgate a quantity of “riprap” stabilizing stone for $14,600.  The stone had been removed from their property in the permitted installation of a methane digester; but it appears that the stone was sold months before the permit was issued.  The brothers claim that they assumed the permit allowing installation of the digester also allowed sale of the stone but seem to have offered no explanation for the timing discrepancy.

At issue is not just the permit status of the stone sale, but also the price and apparent absence of a competitive bidding process.  According to the March 13 article:

The Messenger examined the Mill Hill project records at Highgate Town Hall and could find no record of any competitive bids or quotes for any aspect of the project.

While  acknowledging that obtaining quotes from multiple suppliers “would have been good practice,”  Alec Portalupi of the Agency of Transportation told the paper that this does not necessarily place the transaction in violation of the law.  Apparently it is up to the individual towns to establish rules for procurement, and Highgate has neither a purchasing policy nor one governing conflicts of interest!

However, that was not the end of Selectman Rowell’s problems; nor indeed, of the Town’s:

The Messenger reviewed all of the Highgate Selectboard  minutes for 2006 and could not find a record of a single vote in which the selectboard moved to hire any of the companies involved in the project…Depending on when and how those decisions were made, the town may have violated the state open meeting law which requires that all votes be taken in open session and recorded in the minutes.

Mr. Rowell might yet find himself in the running for the “Stinking Salmon Award” for 2010.

(This was a nice piece of investigative reporting on the part of Messenger staffer Michelle Monroe.  It’s a shame that the Messenger does not see fit to offer either article on the internet, but we will follow developments with interest; so look for updates.)

The city of Barre used Federal stimulus money to buy six new handguns, 21 Taser guns, and five new shotguns, including one nonlethal version that shoots bean bags.  

The Tasers have been used twice since their purchase was approved in August. Each case involved disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Both of the people tasered were women and it was the same policeman in both incidents.  

From the Times Argus here is the play by play in the latest incident starting from after the first Taser shot was fired.

…Osborn [a 58-year-old homeless woman] responded to this by laughing and saying “you got me,” bending forward and continuing to laugh, police said in a news release.  Duhaime then used the “drive stun capabilities” of the Taser, which required him to place the Taser directly on Osborn’s body as opposed to shooting the probes, Bombardier said.  

This method worked after several attempts, Bombardier said, but the officer and Osborn ended up on the ground, and Osborn took a swing at Duhaime and missed, leading to the citation for attempted assault.

The Barre leaders responded to reporter’s questions about the tasering  

–City Manager John Craig said Osborn's stubborn refusal to place her hands behind her back as Duhaime allegedly requested and her decision to cross her arms to make it more difficult for him to place her in handcuffs amounted to the sort of active resistance contemplated in the policy.  

–Mayor Lauzon said he isn't interested in quibbling over the difference between "active" and "passive" resistance, suggesting that as soon as someone is informed they are under arrest – as police say Osborn was – any resistance is active.  

-Protestors who lock arms to make it difficult for officers to arrest them could be fairly viewed as actively resistant, chief of Police Bombardier said.

This is the second in a two-part series about my visit with Jan Nijhoff, who works with the Common Market for Eastern and South Africa (COMESA) and Michigan State University in Lusaka, Zambia. Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

According to Jan Nijhoff, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) “was born” as a result of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)-the list of broad targets that the United Nations hopes developing nations will achieve by 2015. Nijhoff, who coordinates a project between Michigan State University and countries in eastern and southern Africa to promote regional trade, says CAADP was a response by COMESA (the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) to develop a program to “solve” the problems outlined in the MDGs.

The initiative is focused especially on MDG #1, the goal of halving both the number of people who earn less than a dollar a day and the number of hungry people worldwide by 2015.

CAADP works on four main pillars or programs: extending the area under sustainable land management and reliable water control systems; improving rural infrastructure and trade-related capacities for market access; increasing food supply, reducing hunger, and improving responses to food emergency crises; and improving agriculture research and technology dissemination and adoption.

But achieving these goals (and MDG #1) will require increasing agricultural growth across Africa by 6 percent per year, according to CAADP. To do that, African governments will need to spend 10 percent of their annual budgets on agricultural development-up from only around 5 percent currently.

The “beauty of the CAADP approach,” Nijhoff says, “is that it holds governments accountable” through agreements, or compacts, that they develop with COMESA. These compacts, which outline extensive government actions, can help countries achieve greater agricultural growth while also protecting the environment. Essentially, Nijhoff says, they are “game plans” that specify where a country needs to spend its resources, where donors and the private sector can play a role, and what policies need to be in place before an investment can happen. They can include actions like building more roads to reduce transport costs for farmers and other businesses.

COMESA has also launched a regional compact initiative with FANRPAN (which I’ll be writing about in future blogs) and other partners to identify interventions that are already common among member states, as well as activities that can have a regional impact.

By focusing on national and regional economic development, and by showing donors where to spend their money, both COMESA and CAADP hope to increase food security, improve livelihoods, and achieve the MDGs for millions of people in eastern and southern Africa. And although skeptics of the program claim that it’s “donor pushed,” Nijhoff says it should be viewed as “African led” because agriculture and trade ministers are working in collaboration with CAADP to develop policies.

What do you think?

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(Sounds about right. – promoted by GMD)

Legislative counsel, in conjunction with the Douglas adminstration’s media outreach advisory committee and with the input of the legislative committee on strategic oversight, after considering the recommendation of a Blue.Ribbon.Tiger.Evlsin.Review.Board.Subcommittee.Panel.Of.Public.Disclosure.Optics, has just released the video tapes of “THE Challenges for Change” (Act 68) legislative history.

This Challenges for Change highlight video sums up the serious consideration the Douglas administration and our conscientious legislators gave this important curve bending, paradigm shifting optimization of Tiger-Teamed jargon helmetted flash whizz Change-You-Can-Govern-With bureaucratic deliverablility efficiency program on a Popsicle stick.