A few side dishes for your holiday barbecue… Entergy tries to corral the PSB, police “free for all” near Burlington Airport, TJ Donovan stakes out activist turf, and a positive step by state government. Details following…
Entergy seeks limits on PSB review. The owners of Vermont Yankee have unleashed their expensive lawyers yet again, continuing their openly adversarial relationship with the state. This time, Entergy is seeking to severely limit the grounds of a Public Service Board review of VY’s operations*. Per Brattleboro Reformer:
*Corrected; the motion was not filed in federal court, as I first wrote.
Because of Judge J. Garvan Murtha’s ruling that Vermont legislation was passed to regulate nuclear safety and the continued operation of the Vernon reactor, Entergy officials stated the PSB is no longer allowed to include energy diversity, the impacts of safety on Vermont tourism and whether Vermont Yankee’s continued operation is in the public good or whether Entergy has been or is a “fair partner” to the state.
…To avoid preemption from the Atomic Energy Act, the motion states “a board ruling must be exclusively based upon an independent, non-safety rationale that provides a factually justifiable basis for shutting the plant down.”
The motion also asserts that concerns about electric system reliability should not be considered. Which is a bit much, coming from the outfit that’s staked its claim on being a reliable source of baseload power. I guess they’ve dropped “reliable” from their mantra “safe, clean, reliable.”
If you’re not a fan of Bill Sorrell, you could call this filing another instance of collateral damage from his one-sided loss before Judge Murtha.
Cops gone wild in South Burlington. Remember that story about police training exercises in those vacant houses near the Burlington Airport? Well, the other shoe dropped in Tuesday’s Freeploid. (Paywalled, natch.)
What happened is that a nice little use of resources (soon-to-be-demolished houses) went completely out of control. And now South Burlington and the Airport has halted all training exercises. This is why the police can’t have nice things.
The arrangement went off the rails when the Vermont State Police allowed out-of-state agencies to use the houses. Eventually, troopers from all six New England states did so, among others, and coordination with South Burlington police was sketchy at best, nonexistent at worst.
The failure of police to coordinate their training with South Burlington, with neighbors and with the airport led the airport official with immediate responsibility for the houses, [Burlington Airport] Facilities Foreman Matt Harding, to complain internally June 5 that the police presence was turning into a “free-for-all.” Houses were being left unlocked after training, said Harding, who indicated he was often left in the dark about when training would take place.
Also left in the dark: the remaining residents of the neighborhood, a very rare enclave of affordable housing in the immediate Burlington area.
The training for the outside SWAT teams was coordinated by Adam Crogan of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration at the airport.
…Crogan told Harding the State Police were “very excited” about the training, because “some of these guys will go 20 years as a trooper and never have a realistic training venue like this.”
Yeah, they were so excited they couldn’t keep it in their pants. so to speak. The Freeploid also reports that the exercises went beyond designated vacant areas, and came uncomfortably close to “houses that were still occupied,” according to Matt Harding. Yikes!
As I said before, the cops ought to take a bucket or two of that bottomless well of Homeland Security money and build themselves a little Potemkin village somewhere that they can shoot up to their hearts’ content.
Donovan says he’ll go national on marriage equality. TJ Donovan says he is fully in support of marriage equality — not only in Vermont, but nationwide. Indeed, he says Vermonters won’t have true marriage equality until it’s the law of the land.
Federal law withholds from some married people the rights it grants others. For example, federal law prevents same-sex married couples from filing joint federal tax returns, which can lessen tax burdens. Federal law prevents the surviving or divorced spouse of a same-sex marriage from collecting Social Security benefits on an equal basis enjoyed by other married persons.
If he becomes AG, he would use his position to advocate for gay rights in other states and at the federal level. VTDigger:
Donovan cites the May 31 decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeals that “federal law unconstitutionally discriminates against full citizenship for all adults.” He expects gay marriage rights to be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court in the next session, and he says he would do anything in his power (amicus brief, anyone?) to support a decision that would uphold Vermont’s law.
It’s another solid step in Donovan’s bid to differentiate himself from Sorrell as someone who wants to be a more involved, activist AG. It happens to be true, of course, that Donovan has a more activist view of the office. But it’s also a politically astute way of painting Bill Sorrell as lacking in energy and engagement. Or, ready for the rocking chair, if you prefer.
DMH and VSP developing better coordination. I’ve been a critic of Patrick Flood and the Shumlin Administration’s post-Ireme plans for mental health care (and I still am), but I have to give them a lot of credit for being proactive on another important issue: the interactions between police and the mentally ill.
State Police and the Department of Mental Health are trying to develop ways to collaboratively respond to people in mental health crisis. This efforts, Flood said, have been stepped up since the death of Macadam Mason after being tasered* by a state trooper. Valley News:
*My damn spellcheck just tried to turn “tasered” into “tasseled.” Bad computer!
Flood said the first stop will be to ensure that police call the local mental health agency as soon as they get a report of someone who appears to be in a mental health crisis.
Beginning this week, all state police barracks and all of the state’s designated mental health agencies — regional nonprofit mental health service centers that work under state contract — will have contact persons on hand to speed communication.
…”Whenever possible, a mental health professional will join the police at the scene,” it added. “Within three weeks, joint protocols will be in place to guide interactions in these situations.”
The devil is in the implementation, of course; Flood admits that fully funding a 24/7 crisis response capability is problematic. And the issue of taser use must still be addressed in full. But I give a lot of credit to Flood, the VSP, and the Shumlin Administration for taking this seriously. It’s the way government ought to work.
The author is relying here on an article in the Brattleboro Reformer, so I’ll assume that the motion mentioned here is the motion mentioned there. Assuming that’s the case, it’s not true that: “This time, Entergy is asking the federal courts to severely limit the grounds of a Public Service Board review of VY’s operations.”
Entergy’s motion is directed to the PSB itself, NOT to the courts. It expresses Entergy‘s views about federal preemption, which, to be blunt, are completely outlandish. But hey, we’re guaranteed the right of free speech, and “corporations are people, my friend,” so Entergy is free to express whatever ridiculous theories it wishes.
But fan or not of Bill Sorrell, this filing can hardly be termed “collateral damage from his one-sided loss before Judge Murtha.” First, many of the views expressed in this motion have been promulgated by Entergy for over a decade now, and have been just as regularly dismissed by the PSB. Second, the PSB has yet to rule on this motion (and may not do so at all), but to this observer at least, the odds of the Board adopting Entergy’s radical take on preemption are between slim and none.