Last August, I wrote a diary entitled “How green is Vermont, really?” In it, I argued that Vermont’s reputation as a stalwart protector of its environment was vastly overblown — that our actual track record is a decidedly mixed bag.

My central point was that our two biggest environmental advantages have nothing to do with our earthly stewardship; it’s a simple matter of low population and lack of exploitable resources. As examples of poor stewardship, I pointed to our clean-water record (recurring toxic algae blooms on Lake Champlain, inadequate treatment of storm and sewer water, and a complete lack of effective oversight of our smaller bodies of water), the amount of particulate matter we pump into the air via residential woodstoves, decades of complete non-regulation of junkyards (only corrected four years ago), and our addiction to driving, particularly in low-mileage trucks, SUVs and all-wheel drive vehicles.

Well, a couple of recent items in the news have confirmed — indeed, amplified — my views. Our traditional Vermont ways are often harmful to the environment, and only our small population saves us from being a blight upon the earth. And even with our current population, we are inexorably degrading our environment.

The first item is from the January 22 issue of Seven Days. In an article on potential regulation of woodstoves, Ken Picard reported that Vermont has “the highest rate of adult asthma in the country – 11.1 percent of the population suffers from it.” And, as I noted last August, the vast majority of small particulate emissions come from woodburning. In short, our air quality would improve overnight if we got rid of every woodstove and outdoor wood boiler in the state and replaced them with an equivalent number of biomass plants with up-to-date emission controls.

It’s doubtful that Vermont would tackle this festering problem on its own. Instead, the EPA is proposing tough new standards for woodstoves and other wood-fired heaters. Even if those rules go through, it’ll take decades for our current stock to be replaced by products that don’t pollute the air.

The second item was, of course, Wednesday’s come-to-Jesus meeting between lawmakers and the US EPA, in which we were lectured on our abuse of Lake Champlain and warned that we will have to make serious (and costly) changes to avoid federal sanctions and mandates.

This is a development you’d expect in Texas or West Virginia. But solidly green, crunchy-granola Vermont as an environmental outlaw? We ought to be ashamed.  

And, frankly, the state and our advocacy groups ought to make this our number-one environmental priority. But we probably won’t, because it’ll be difficult and expensive. And it will impinge on a core Vermont tradition: small-scale agriculture. The big sources are pretty much under control.

As Environmental Commissioner David Mears noted, “Most of the pollution that’s going into the lake comes from the landscape.” More specifics from the Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck (Gannett paywall warning):

Cropland accounts for the single largest share at 35 percent with pastures adding another 4 percent. Development accounts for 14 percent, as do forests. Erosion of unpaved roads brings in 5.6 percent.

… As a result, efforts to reduce phosphorus will likely include requirements for road and bridge construction and regulations on farms, requiring small farms to be certified as medium and large farms are and ensure that they follow standard manure management and other practices.

The shoreland protection bill currently making its way through the Legislature will also play a part. But this isn’t going to be easy, especially when the largest problem, by far, is agriculture. The festival of circular finger-pointing has already begun, and it’ll get a whole lot worse.

And I haven’t even mentioned how we’ll raise the money to pay for all of this.

Champlain pollution, like our belching chimneys and high asthma rates, is mostly a product of our current Vermont lifestyle, not large industries or overdevelopment. Yes, parking lots and rooftops play a part. But we have relatively few of both. It’s what we’ve been doing and are doing now that’s turned Lake Champlain into a petri dish for toxic algae blooms.

In order to become the Good Stewards we like to think we are, we cannot be satisfied with trying to preserve our current status. We have to make significant changes in how we live and how we use our landscape. Some of our Vermont traditions will have to go — or will have to change substantially. Like, for instance, our addiction to low-mileage trucks and FWDs and the quantity of miles we drive: the solution to that problem is a switch to electric-powered vehicles and the widespread construction of renewable energy sources. Yes, even wind turbines.

Last August, I wrote this about our environmental movement:

The unspoken guiding principle seems to be this: If it’s old, traditional, familiar, or small, it’s good (or at least acceptable). If it’s new, shiny, different, or (gasp!) corporate, it’s bad and we need to resist it.

And there’s where our self-satisfaction becomes counterproductive. Not everything old, traditional, familiar or small is good; not everything new, shiny, different, or even corporate is bad.

I believe that more than ever. The much-protested new and shiny things, like ridgeline turbines, solar farms, biomass plants, and even that natural gas pipeline, are less of a threat to Vermont’s environment than simply continuing to do what we’ve been doing. And on our own, we have clearly lacked the political will to make meaningful changes. That’s why our water and air problems are being tackled, not by good-heated Vermonters, but by bureaucratic regulators from the federal government.

Environmentally speaking, Vermont needs to get its shit together. It needs to stop being so smug and self-satisfied. And it needs to stop reflexively defending the familiar and rejecting the new.  

( – promoted by Sue Prent)

     We, in each of our towns, and throughout Vermont are, together, a community.  As Town Meeting approaches, I trust that all of us, regardless of our particular political persuasion, agree.  And as a community we do right to concur that one does well, when one’s neighbor does well.  This commitment to our friends, family, and fellow residents is old one. When the Green Mountain Boys evicted New York land surveyors, tax collectors, and sheriffs, I do not doubt that they too were motivated by this notion of self-preservation as inalienably linked to community; Freedom and Unity. More recently, we saw this belief manifest during the crisis following Irene. Two and one half years ago I was honored to see many of you from Waitsfield, Warren, Duxbury, Fayston, and beyond coming to lend a hand in Moretown during our hour of need.  Such acts of human camaraderie will never be forgotten.  In essence Vermont has a long and proud history of people reaching out in solidarity when their neighbors could use a hand.  We are, in a word, a people who embrace and honor the core value associated with the very notion of community as the foundation upon which rests the prosperity of the individual.

     Today, we can and do express our sense of community, not only in time of crisis, but also through a maturing social compact which gives form to the worth and well-being of our fellow citizens.  Maintaining and improving an equitable education system that gives support to children and families is one such expression.  Creating a Vermont controlled healthcare system that provides insurance and quality medical care regardless of job or lot in life is also such an expression. Guaranteeing that all working Vermonters are afforded the right to accrue paid sick days is yet another expression.



    It is for these reasons that I support H208, a bill currently in the Vermont House of Representatives that would guarantee all Vermonters the right to earn up to 7 sick days in a given year. As a Vermonter, I encourage you to support this noble effort too.

    The fact is, all people get sick some time or other; most of us a few times a year.  When this happens, when one has a fever, one should be able to stay home for a day and get better.  And if your kid is home sick, and if both parents have to work, one parent should be afforded the economic ability to care for the child during that time of need. How could one begin to construct a moral argument against this statement?  Either we are a community, and therefore embody the core truth inherent in the principle which is Vermont, or we are not. I assert that we are Vermonters.

    However, the reality is that thousands of low income people in these Green Hills do not have any paid sick days. When they get sick, they often must make a hard decision: work while their body and mind are turned against them, or stay home and miss one fifth of their weekly pay. For the many, this one few-and-far-between unpaid sick day means the phone will be shut off; the rent will be late; the kids will miss a meal. For those that do work when they are ill, not only does their productivity go down, but they typically infect their co-workers which, in turn, makes productivity sink measurably lower.  Therefore, as a community and as Vermonters, it is absurd to maintain a status quo which serves no human, neighborly, or long-term interest. For these and other reasons, H208 (paid sick days) is supported by both Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility and Organized Labor.  

    As a resident of Moretown, as part of the broader Mad River Valley community, as a Vermonter, I encourage all of you to take a moment to reflect on this human issue.  I encourage you to express your support for H208.  I also encourage our State Representatives to actively support this bill with no exemptions. Of course I would also welcome our Governor, Peter Shumlin, and our State Senators to likewise support this legislation. By doing so, they will all be casting a vote in favor of the Green Mountains’ working families and in line with Vermont’s long tradition of valuing our community over short term and private interests. After all, one does well, when one’s neighbor does well.

   Take Action To Support Paid Sick Day! Please click on the below link in order to send an email to your State Representatives to let them know that the People of Vermont support paid Sick Days for all workers!  

 http://afl.salsalabs.com/o/402…

As report in an article by Alan Levin on Feb 14, 2014 in http://www.bloomberg.com/news/…

“…the Federal Aviation Administration, which since 2007 hasn’t permitted commercial drones in the U.S. while it labors to write rules to allow them.”

Rules? It is simple. ‘Open Season’ should be the rule! Perhaps a bounty on the damn things is in order. Let the American people vote with shotguns whether or not they want the government, corporations or their neighbors looking into their windows of their homes, workplaces, their yards or their automobiles to see what should be private.

Oh! The police, the Defense Department, the NSA, the CIA, the entire government will object. Same vote!

The harm this technology will do to our society is far greater than the benefit to those who would use them.

Perry

Tough as our economic and environmental challenges may be, one need only look to Fukushima Prefecture to know we have been relatively lucky, so far.

In a new video release by Fairewinds Energy Education,  Arnie Gundersen tells us that recent reports from TEPCO indicate that the scope of damage to the spent fuel pool in the #3 reactor at Fukushima far exceeds anything that has been previously suggested in news releases.  

Much has been said about the commencement of efforts to remove spent fuel bundles from the damaged fuel pool of reactor #4.  Shifting the focus to reactor #4 was a shrewd way to avoid discussion of the much graver situation at reactor #3, where fifty-plus tons of debris have collapsed into the fuel pool following a detonation shockwave that represented the worst explosion that occurred at the facility.

TEPCO doesn’t want to talk about Unit 4 because it has no good answer to provide for what can be done about the radioactive mess at the bottom of the debris pile.

The implications are chilling, but the bad news is deeply buried in a recent corporate report entitled TEPCO’s Nuclear Power Plant Roadmap.  The company has provided no translation, so volunteer translators are assisting Fairewinds in making the information accessible to industry watchdogs around the world.

Bottom line?  Because bad stuff does happen, if events like the Unit 3 detonation shockwave can’t be planned for and a successful robotic response engineered into the original design, it’s madness to even consider the continued use of nuclear energy.

New TEPCO Report Shows Damage to Unit 3 Fuel Pool MUCH Worse Than That at Unit 4 from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.

(Dedicated to Jen & Maggie and all the crew at Charlie Os World Famous who are boycotting the Olympics on the TV there.  And also boycotting Stoli vodka.  Also to Abby, PolitenessWoman.  I think you’ll like this, folks.  I turned it into a musical at the end.–PS)

Putin:  “Get that !@?/#!*@in’ queer bastard!  Slam the puck up his faggot ass!  Use your…”   ‘THUNK!’  Putin is struck in the head by a STEEL HANKIE.

Putin:  “Sonofafairybitchin’ priestfuckin’…”  ‘THUNK!’  Yet another STEEL HANKIE.

Putin:  “Who threw that?!  Where’s my Mafia Security Guards?!  How dare…”

PolitenessMan:  “I, sir, am the culprit.  Although, in this matter, you yourself, sir, brought about my action.”

Putin:  “And who the fuck are you anyway?!  I’d like to know before I have you shot!”

PolitenessMan:  “I, sir, am PolitenessMan.  And I am here to help you renew and redefine the proper old vestiges of dignity that befit a leader of a Great People.  And to guide you in your future conduct regarding Gays, Ukrainians, Chechnyans, and others, so that one day you will become so gracious a World Figure that historians throughout the ages will place you side by side with Lincoln, Churchill, FDR, and Jimmy Carter.  I am humbly at your service.  But please refrain from further vulgar and unnecessary use of the F-Word and all associated profanities, as our goals here must be addressed at a level commensurate with their import.”

Putin to his Russian Mafia Security Guards:  “Wait!  Wait.  Put your guns away!”  And to PolitenessMan:  “You say that you, PolitenessMan, can make me as great and famous and beloved as Lincoln?  And Jimmy Carter?”

PolitenessMan:  “It will be work, but yes, I can teach you the ways in which you will come to be revered as a modern leader of unmatched civility in handling all the crises that befall, not only your own people, but, ALL THE PEOPLE of the ENTIRE WORLD.”

Putin:  “Wow, PolitenessMan.  That’s all I’ve ever wanted.  To help save the World and be loved by everyone in it.  What can you teach me first?”  And to his Mafia Security Guards:  “Chill, boys.  Take a break.  Go drink some Stoli.”

PolitenessMan:  “First, Vlad, if I may call you Vlad…”

Putin:  “But of course, PolitenessMan.”

PolitenessMan:  “Thank you.  First, Vlad, it is necessary for you to apologize to the ladies of Pussy Riot, and to all the Gay women and men in your nation and the World.  And to then enact laws in Russia for the total equality of all Gay women and men, and, going one well-mannered step further, appointing a wide range of Gay women and men to important and distinguished positions in the Russian government, in Russian enterprise, and Russian science and culture.”

Putin:  “Hell, I can…excuse me, PolitenessMan…I can do that.  Consider it done.”

PolitenessMan:  “Good.  Next step is, lose the Russian Mafia thugs.  They are really not a good fit for a World Leader deserving of the very best in good manners and decorum from the entourage surrounding him.”

Putin:  “Done, PolitenessMan.  Shall I have them shot?”

PolitenessMan:  “No, no, no, no, Vlad.  Have them all dispatched to the Ukraine as your personal ambassadors of good will to assist the Ukrainians in deciding where they wish to fit in the New Polite World Order.”

Putin:  “Yeah.  I’ll tell them to let the Ukies do whatever they want.  If they want to become the 51st state of the United States, that’s fine with me.  To tell you the truth, PolitenessMan, the Ukies became buddy-buddy with Hitler’s Nazis when the Nazis invaded our country in the Great Patriotic War.  I’d just as soon cut them loose.”

PolitenessMan:  “There.  That is already at the higher and more refined stature of the StatesManShip you wish to embrace.  And have the Whole World acknowledge.”

Putin:  “Really, PolitenessMan?  I’m a StatesMan now?  Whoa!  Tell me what else to do.”

Politenessman:  “The Chechnyans, Vlad.”

Putin:  “Oh boy, PolitenessMan, that’s a toughie.  But, as you say, I am now a StatesMan of Stature.  Chechnya, you are FREE!  Long Live Chechnya!  How’s that, PolitenessMan?”

PolitenessMan:  “By God, Vlad, as Pickering and Henry Higgins would have put it to Eliza, I think you’ve got it!”

Putin:  “I’ve got it?”

PolitenessMan:  “You’ve got it!  You’ve got it!  I didn’t think you’d get it, but indeed you did!”

Putin:  “And now that I have got it, have got it, have got it, I’ll pass it on to Kim Jong-un and all his kids.  I feel like I’m a new man!  A new man!  A good man!  A man of taste and pleasantries thanks to all you did.”

PolitenessMan:  “And don’t forget the Japanese, the Japanese, of Nippon.  Tell them to apologize for all the World War II crimes they’ve kept neatly hid.”

Putin:  “Yes, PolitenessMan, I’ll do it.  I’ll do it.  I’ll do it.  Two years from now We and China and Japan will be The New World Kids.”

PolitenessMan:  “And now, Vlad, I must be going, be going, be going.  I have to see PolitenessWoman at her latest gig.  But don’t forget the Planet, the Planet, the Planet.”

Putin:  “Yes, I’ll help stop Global Warming and send my Mafia to Wall Street to equalize the economic grid.”

PolitenessMan & Putin:  “So on with the Olympics.  The Olympics.  The Olympics.  We love that Gay figure skating lady and all the jumps and twists she did.”

Putin:  “One more time, PolitenessMan!”

PolitenessMan & Putin:  “Yes, we are men of great good manners, good manners, good manners.  And all the World will thank us for the tastelessness we’ve undone, yes indeed we did.”

PolitenessMan:  “Now I have to say Good Day now.  Good Day now.  Good Day now.”

Putin:  “But come back next year to see me and all the nastiness I will have undid.”  Das vi danya, PolitenessMan!”

PolitenessMan:  “And a good and better and more well-mannered day to us all.  Adieu, Vlad.”

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.  

Oh, looky here: according to Talking Points Memo, the most successful state in implementing health care reform is…

… Vermont.

Yes, Vermont, the state where spectacularly unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock insisted that the system didn’t work and wouldn’t work, and was “a story of incompetence and hubris.” But somehow, in spite of all that, Vermont has managed to enroll a higher percentage of Obamacare-eligible people than any other state.

According to TPM, Vermont has enrolled 52.4% of its eligible population. It’s the only state over 50%. TPM arrived at estimates of eligible populations using figures from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute. Details at the above link.

And there’s good news on the other end of the system as well:

Vermont’s largest health care provider has had few problems with patients using health insurance provided by the state’s new health care exchange since coverage began Jan. 1, an official said Wednesday.

… Shannon Lonergan, director of registration at Burlington’s Fletcher Allen Health Care, said only a small percentage of the thousands of patients the hospital and its affiliated offices see every day have been covered by insurance provided through Vermont Health Connect. Still, they expected more problems than they have seen.

”Surprisingly, it’s gone well,” she said.

Here’s the thing that’s often been lost in the shuffle: the website, the software — those things are not health care reform; they are tools to achieve reform. What’s becoming very clear is that while the tools didn’t initially work as they should, the actual process of reform is doing quite well, thank you.

Maybe that’s why the dead-ender opponents of reform, like Sore Loser Brock and Darcie “Hack” Johnston, have pretty much stopped talking about the health care exchange; instead, they’ve turned their fire on single-payer. Because they know opposing the exchange is a lost cause.

After the jump: That Newsweek report, and the Huntsman’s obsession.  

Well, they still harp on the flaws in the initial rollout and make wide-ranging accusations of misconduct or corruption or stupidity or whatever. But they’ve stopped saying “the system doesn’t work,” because it does, and even they realize it.

And speaking of the initial rollout, let’s take a moment to dispose of the investigative report from the formerly-substantial journalistic entity known as Newsweek, now a mere shadow of its former self. Last week, Newsweek reporter Lynnley Browning wrote a lengthy “takedown” of last year’s exchange rollout, which asserted that state officials had “glossed over ominous warning signs and Keystone Cops-like planning.”

Er, that oughta be “Keystone Kops,” but whatever.

I’ll confess I didn’t read Browning’s opus. When I saw that the most notorious charge — that a July demonstration of the exchange website was faked by contractor CGI — was based on a single anonymous source, I’d had enough. Using a single anonymous source is a big fat journalistic no-no. Browning leans awfully heavily on this single unnamed person, as we see in this key passage:

In the demonstration, “a lot was left to the imagination,” says a person familiar with the event who declined to be named…  Some state staffers that July 26 thought it showed “live” registrations and enrollments by hypothetical consumers, when in fact static, premade screens were displayed. “People weren’t technologically sophisticated enough to understand what was actually going on,” this person explains.

CGI, the source adds, had one goal in that demonstration: It “wanted the state of Vermont to keep its faith.”

Everything in those two paragraphs is credited to a single anonymous source. Maybe this little reportorial transgression explains why Browning has taken the unusual career path of going from the New York Times, the nation’s leading newspaper, to Newsweek, a business that’s barely hanging on, and was famously sold in 2010 for the princely sum of $1.

In this week’s “Fair Game” column, Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz gives Browning and her story a thorough fluffing. Perhaps that’s because he, himself, has spent quite a bit of time waving the red flag over the exchange rollout, and, well, confirmation bias.

The other day I was chatting with a State House reporter who told me that this “faked demo” tale had been widely flogged to in-state political reporters by opponents of reform. The local scribes didn’t bite because they were well aware of who was selling this bill of goods, and they knew there was no corroboration or documentation of any of the charges.

So instead, somebody from outside the state, presumably clueless of the levers and gears of Vermont politics, swallowed the tale hook, line, and sinker.

Heintz reports that he was contacted by another anonymous source who also had doubts about the July demo — although how he knows that his source and Browning’s are actually different people is a mystery to me.

If the two unnamed sources are actually two people, which we have no way of verifying, I still question the ethics of Browning and Heintz in writing stories that were each based on a single anonymous source. Heintz had no way of verifying the bona fides of Browning’s source, so his story depends entirely on a single mystery guest. And again, those two anonymi could well be the same person.

Heintz (and Browning and Brock and Johnston et al.) still believes there’s a scandal waiting to be uncovered, and he chides the Vermont press corps for failing to uncover it. Not sure if he includes himself in that score; he’s one of them. And while he has repeatedly drawn attention to unanswered questions, he hasn’t done much to provide answers.

As for his unanswered questions and Browning’s unsupported allegations, to me it’s less likely a scandal and more likely a reasonable consequence of trying to launch an extremely complicated new system. Every major new government program has gone through growing pains. For that matter, a whole lot of private-sector launches have initial difficulties — or bomb completely. (New Coke, Edsel, the World League of American Football.) Yes, the exchange had a troubled beginning. But it’s working better every day.

And, the most important thing: it’s providing health insurance for thousands of Vermonters who couldn’t get it before.  

If one is in need of a good laugh, check out the caption under the overlaid image of Governor Peter Shumlin reportedly aired recently on WPTZ – Channel 5 – News (Burlington, VT/Plattsburgh, NY: i.e., “Shumlin on Heroin”), via Haik Bedrosian, here.

Either the folks at WPTZ must know something the rest of us don’t or they’re just plain dopey.

(smile)

There have been some major changes in Vermont’s media landscape in recent months. I thought it was time for a scorecard of sorts: who’s doing what, and how well they’re utilizing their resources.

A couple of caveats: My focus here is on media that cover (or claim to cover) state politics and government. And I’m leaving out the TV stations because, frankly, I don’t watch them very much. (I will note that, for all their shortcomings, both WCAX and WPTZ are much better at covering substantive news than most big-city TV operations, which are obsessed with violent crime and produced as if their audiences have ADD/ADHD.)

The new year has seen the emergence of a clear Big Three, and they aren’t the ones you’d expect. After that, there’s a big newspaper on the decline, a smaller paper hanging in there, and a rare throwback to the golden age of radio.

Still the champ: VTDigger, which continues to maximize its limited resources and provide an essential stream of news and information. In the Desert Island scenario, if I had to choose one media outlet, it’d be VTDigger. Anne Galloway has built (is building) something really remarkable. And it’s not easy being the Tampa Bay Rays of Vermont media: constantly losing reporters to bigger outlets and developing the next crop of talent.

Number 2 is Seven Days. Its newly beefed-up reporting staff is knocking out three or four can’t-miss stories every week. At a time when many free weeklies are falling apart — mainly thanks to corporate ownership — we’re lucky to have local ownership at Seven Days, who are investing their healthy ad revenues into a vibrant news operation.

Close behind, and poised to overtake, is Vermont Public Radio. VPR was a sleeping giant for a long time; most of its longer-form stories were rehashes of whatever was in the morning papers (or on VTDigger), and I never felt the need to catch VPR’s local news segments or listen online. That’s changed since the first of the year. Now I try to visit VPR’s website at least once a day, and there’s usually at least one story (often by Peter Hirschfeld) that hasn’t been reported elsewhere.

I downgrade VPR somewhat because it has so many resources, it could do even better. VPR has a huge staff and top-heavy management, and it’s such a fundraising powerhouse that it sucks a lot of the oxygen out of the nonprofit environment. Which means VPR should meet very high expectations; lately, it’s begun to approach them.  More, please.

Those are the new Big Three. Together, they provide a healthy amount of news coverage, especially given our current age of media decline and unpredictability. They’re not perfect, and a lot of news goes uncovered; but we’re hella lucky compared to many other, larger markets.

After the jump: kudos to Steve Pappas and Mark Johnson; another raspberry for the Freeploid.

Haven’t got to the Freeploid yet, have I? Nnnnnope. After the Big Three, in this order:

— The Mitchell Family Organ. The Times Argus and Herald are sadly underfunded, and the MFO’s capital bureau is again reduced to a single reporter. But hell, I give the Mitchells a lot of credit for just continuing to publish a daily paper in two small markets. And, more often than not, the MFOs deliver at least a couple of good stories every day. I’m a Times Argus reader, and its editor, Steve Pappas, is one of my Heroes of Journalism: he has a tiny budget to work with, he deals with constant turnover on his news team, and he produces a lot of copy himself while also riding herd on the entire operation. I hope the Mitchells realize how fortunate they are to have him. And if he ever leaves, any other news organization would be wise to snap him up ASAP.

— Ah, the Burlington Free Press. Doubly enfeebled by declining ad revenue and its money-hungry corporate owner Gannett. It’s also become less relevant to anyone outside Chittenden County due to its obvious diminishment of State House and statewide political news in favor of purely local content. The Freeploid has two State House reporters, but they don’t produce as much as the MFO’s one (now Neal Goswami; formerly Peter Hirschfeld). I can’t say that’s their fault; I suspect it’s a matter of editorial priorities. The Freeploid is now the most underperforming player in our media landscape (performance compared to resources), now that VPR has upped its game.

— And finally, but this is no disgrace, WDEV. Its news service is mainly rip-and-read, but it is dedicated to local programming. In itself, that’s a big plus in this age of mega-media. But its crowning jewel is The Mark Johnson Show, an invaluable platform for public discussion and debate. While VPR has a swarm of producers around everything it puts on the air, Mark single-handedly gets the most important guests and asks the key questions. If VPR wasn’t so timid about breaking the modern public-radio mold (nothing longer than 4 minutes), it could do Vermont a huge service by giving Mark a daily platform to engage a statewide conversation.

Yes, I know, Vermont Edition. That’s nice, but it’s limited. I’d like to see VPR — and other public radio stations elsewhere — step out of its comfort zone and fill a couple of daily hours with local conversation. The midmorning and midafternoon ratings aren’t that strong anyway; why not take a bit of a chance? And in the process, do more to justify your place in the nonprofit world and the media landscape?

VPR produces more local programming than most public radio stations, but even so, the vast majority of its broadcast day is spent airing programs produced elsewhere. Many of those programs are worthwhile, but if you look at where the hours and resources go, VPR is no more a “local” station than any of the commercial talk or music stations that are basically repeaters for national programming.  

So there’s my State of the Media report. Your thoughts are welcome, as always.  

For anyone who has been following the drama in St. Albans City over developer-driven changes to the infrastructure of tiny Maiden Lane, I thought I’d provide this update.  On Monday night, the City Council dissolved the Design Advisory Board, which had unanimously opposed those changes.

Here follows the statement which I read at that meeting:

We, the appellants in the matter of the Smith House/ Owl Club at 13 Maiden Lane in St. Albans, Vermont, will not be bringing a separate appeal to Superior Court concerning the changes to parking on Maiden Lane that have been approved by the City Council.

Although we continue to believe that those changes will have an adverse impact on the historic downtown in general and on our neighborhood in particular, we feel it would be counterproductive to devote any of our limited resources to a separate appeal.  Absent broader knowledge of the situation, the judge will be inclined to accept the opinion of the elected City Council as to what represents the best interests of the people of St. Albans.

For us private citizens to undertake the necessary traffic study would not only be financially impossible, but would also set a wrong precedent under which the City might again abdicate its responsibility to devote the necessary time and resources to thoroughly investigating the impact of a change to the right of way that may seem “minor” to the City Council but not to the neighborhood.

The City has taken the position that the scale of the private project for which the change is to be undertaken is not sufficient to trigger the need for a traffic study.  We disagree.

The diminutive scale of Maiden Lane itself effectively enlarges the project and its potential impacts.

Even if the scale of the Connor redevelopment project for 13 Maiden Lane would not alone trigger the need for a traffic study, surely in combination with the large new ACE Hardware project less than half-a block away, it should.

Together, the two projects mean increased volume of traffic at the already troubled intersection of Main and Congress Street, doubling the impact on tiny Maiden Lane.  Even Messenger St. is likely to suffer negative impacts near its intersection with Congress St.

For the City to take the position that neither of the two projects triggers the need for a traffic study is simply irresponsible.  There were repeated requests for a traffic study from the public, but those requests were ignored.

In so doing the City administration has set itself up as an advocate for the interests of one private developer in opposition to concerns expressed by many members of the public and the entire Design Advisory Board.

If the City was not prepared to undertake the entire cost of such a traffic study, it could have compelled the applicants to contribute as a condition of their approval.

In light of their decision to rubber stamp Connor Contracting’s parking proposal and leave it to a judge to undo any damage from that decision, we do not believe that the City Manager, the Mayor and the City Council can be relied upon to protect the best interests of the people of St. Albans.  However the remedy to unreliable government will not be found in an endless series of related appeals.

The only path to better governance remains at the ballot box.  

Sue and Mark Prent, and Peter Ford

Because of questions raised about the accuracy of my diary from last night, Inside Baseball in Montpelier, I have taken it down for review and editing.

Watch this space for more details.