The last Douglas administration idea to improve the Vermont State Lottery was to lease it to Lehman Bros.

Now Scientific Games, the company that has run the Vermont State Lottery for ten years, is suing the State. The suit involves the handling of the contract process that will allow Intralot (an international gambling concern based in Greece) to run the lottery.

Scientific Games International Inc. alleges in a lawsuit that the state Lottery Commission, its executive director, Alan Yandow, and Attorney General William Sorrell have violated Vermont's public records law for about a year by refusing to provide the documents. Business Week

Also, some concerns are raised about the ability of Intralot to properly manage the lottery game.

The complaint quoted from the letter, which said a satellite-based lottery system "will very likely experience performance difficulties in Vermont due to the unique weather and foliage challenges."

Intralot International runs lotteries world wide. Intralot Australia made an embarrassing entry into the Australian instant lottery ticket market when it was found that all the new machines’ instructions were in Greek,literally.  

  FairPoint Communication’s Mike Smith is proposing less regulation for the bankrupt company he now represents. He is just in time to make his regulatory wish list known in the last days of the Douglas administration while his old friends are still in office.  

Seven months ago FairPoint hired the newly retired Smith, Douglas’s former Chief of Administration for their newly created job called Vermont State President.

One state Senator noted then that "He has a good working relationship with the Department of Public Service and the Public Service Board so it will probably will be helpful in that regard,"  

I guess it is helpful, because his old colleague Commissioner of Public Service David O’Brien (who represents Vermont customers before the PSB) and Republican State Senator Vince Illuzzi chime in sympathetically that Smith may have a point regarding easing regulations on the bankrupt company.  

The major problems cited for FairPoint’s troubles didn’t include over regulation but very poor management, service and a crushing burden of debt.  

Smith acknowledged that there are parts of Vermont where FairPoint is the only company offering certain services. He said he would like to see the state regulate the company specifically in those areas; but be less regulated in the parts of the state where there is competition.  

The state regulates the rates FairPoint charges customers and its expansion of Internet broadband in rural areas.  

"We're looking to the future," Smith said. "We wanted to get this conversation started."

Times Argus  

Take over British Petroleum says Robert Reich former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton. “…under temporary receivership, BP would continue to have the equipment and expertise. The only difference: the firm would unambiguously be working in the public's interest. As it is now, BP continues to be responsible primarily to its shareholders, not to the American public.”

Reich argues that President Obama should take over British Petroleum giving the US authority until the gusher is controlled. He maintains that it is the only way the US public will be confident that enough resources are being put to use to stop the disaster.

No President, he says would allow a nuclear reactor owned by a private for profit company to melt down in the US while remaining under control of that company.

Here are his five reasons and a link to the full article :

1. We are not getting the truth from BP.  

2. We have no way to be sure BP is devoting enough resources to stopping the gusher.  

3. BP's new strategy for stopping the gusher is highly risky.  

4. Right now, the U.S. government has no authority to force BP to adopt a different strategy

5. The President is not legally in charge.    

The President should temporarily take over BP's Gulf operations. We have a national emergency on our hands. No president would allow a nuclear reactor owned by a private for-profit company to melt down in the United States while remaining under the direct control of that company. The meltdown in the Gulf is the environmental equivalent.

   Today's Yankee news

"The observed short duration and small volume of leakage from the drain line appears to indicate that the event did not result in any impact to public health and safety," according to an NRC statement.

Vermont Yankee by coincidence or design never fails to make a small headline sometime on Friday afternoon or some sleepy Saturday or Sunday morning. What are the odds? The latest caps a busy couple weeks getting the beast back online after refueling.  

The newest hi-jinks at the troubled plant comes on the heels of VY offcials misleading Vermont sate officials about under ground pipes leaking tritium and the state senate vote against re-licensing, strontium 90 was discovered in a fish near the plant and almost as a side show the entire unit was “Scrammed”, automatically shut down due to a switching problem during  power up.

Picture this power plant running for twenty more years, 2032?  Safe, clean and reliable headlines every slow news day.  

A new leak of radioactive material has been found and fixed at the troubled Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, officials said Saturday. Vapor and water containing 13 different radioactive substances was found late Friday coming from a pipe in a hole workers dug to find the source of an earlier leak.

"This was a new leak," Vermont Yankee spokesman Larry Smith said in an e-mail. "The leak has been stopped. … There is no threat to public health or safety." The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission also said the public faced no danger.

emphasis added,BP

 Vermont State legislators are restricted from soliciting funds from lobbyists when the legislature is in session. The legislature is, technically, but no less legally still in session until June 9th.  

Gubernatorial candidate Brian Dubie is taking no chances and recently canceled his planned big bucks fund raising breakfast to remain in compliance with the spirit of this regulation.

But this deserves a stand alone mention.    

If you are candidate for Lt. Governor Republican Phil Scott it is ok to just go ahead as planned, give yourself a pass and bend the rules. He says he understands the reason for the rule, yet still chooses to pursue campaign donations in possible conflict with regulations.  

State Senator Phil Scott’s campaign manager says the Elks Hall is already rented and he did not want to cancel it.

Sen. Scott says "I can understand that it's the law, and I understand why," he said. "Certainly especially during the legislative session you wouldn't want to put yourself nor lobbyists in a compromising position."

 

‘But you see the hall is rented and we don’t want to cancel it. Trust us we would never do anything inappropriate.’   IOKIYAR  

"I'll have to make it very clear tomorrow night," that donations from lobbyists must wait, Lamberton[Scott’s campaign manager] said Tuesday about the event for Scott, who now represents Washington County and is one of two Republicans vying for his party's nomination for lieutenant governor. "I'll have to have someone go through the checks and send back any that are inappropriate."

The Vermont State legislature is still technically  in session until June 9, when it will adjourn sine die, Latin for ‘without day’. This keeps lawmakers technically at the ready and able to respond in the event the governor vetoes a bill.  

It also extends limits on legislators’ and state officials’ campaign fund raising activities.  

Quickly shedding his folksy flannel shirt worn in last week’s campaign video (Pure Vermont) Brian Dubie appears to have jumped into a business suit, left his log cabin and run full steam ahead in the chase for some political money, too soon.

This comes on the hub-bub heels of his on again, off again, New York Times banner ad bad-mouthing Vermont’s business climate. Pure Vermont?  

Dubie invited lobbyists to the $2,000-per-table event in the executive board room of the Capitol Plaza Hotel in Montpelier, according to a source. His campaign manager, Corry Bliss, realized after the letter went out that the breakfast event was a problem.

In an apologetic missive to potential donors, Bliss wrote, “We have decided that in order to uphold both the spirit and letter of the law, we will not solicit campaign contributions from lobbyist (sic) or lobbyist employer (sic) until after the legislature officially adjourns sine die.” Vtdigger.com  

Like oil, issues surrounding the Deepwater Horizon leak are flowing out into the media.  

Some details have been lying near the surface.

Taxpayers are receiving significantly less of a bang for their buck from offshore oil development—even though energy companies have access to six times as many leases as they did in the early 1980s.

Two research professors from the University of California and University of Louisiana published the results of their Federal oil leasing study last June. It can be found online in Miller-McCune magazine. A blog post here by Elizabeth McGowan revisits the issue in light of the British Petroleum oil leak.  

Statistics compiled by two researchers studying the last 30 years of leasing policy show that per-acre lease rates have plummeted almost nine-fold from shortly after the time Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency to the tail end of President George W. Bush’s second term.  

An average of $2,224 per acre for all federal leases sold between 1954 and 1982 careened to $263 per acre for federal leases sold between 1983 and 2008.

In March President Obama announced his plans to extend oil leasing, he spoke of his overall energy policy strengthening the economy, but no plans were apparent to revamp the current leasing program that was originally altered in the Reagan era and again under Clinton to favor the oil industry.    

The leasing study points out how the country could benefit from a change.  

Big picture arithmetic shows that such leasing by MMS (Minerals Management Service) is second only to the Internal Revenue Service in dollars destined for Uncle Sam.

“The 300 million-plus Americans are the ones who own this offshore oil source,” he [Professor Bill Freudenberg] continues. “It’s precious and there isn’t that much left. We could use the money to pay for schools, parklands and other necessities, instead of just saying nobody should make money off of this except for top executives of oil companies.”

  The Obama administration, with some evocative rhetoric, has vowed to keep "the boot on the neck" of British Petroleum as a result of the massive oil leak in the Gulf.  

Despite this rhetoric, Obama’s other shoe hasn’t yet dropped on the oil industry as McClatchy reports 27 environmental study waivers have been granted since the oil leak began.  

With investigations pending, the Chair of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment zeros in on the lack of regulatory implementation even as exemptions continue to be given. The committee chair calls the disaster “a blistering, scalding indictment of the practices the industry engaged in to avoid implementation of safeguards that could have removed the likelihood or possibility of this kind of accident …”  

Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama’s vow that his administration would launch a “relentless response effort” to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday — the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling



McClatchy

The exemptions, called “categorical exclusions,” are granted by the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) includes exploration at 4,000 and 9,000 deeper than the Deepwater Horizon rig. Final approval would still be needed for drilling but official would not say if the waivers would stand after the moratorium is lifted  

MMS’ approvals are expected to spark new criticism of the troubled agency and the administration’s response to the spill.

Salazar announced Thursday that there’d be no new offshore drilling until the Interior Department completes the safety review process requested by Obama. The department is required to deliver the report to the president by May 28.

Given the MMS approvals, however, said Peter Galvin (conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, the environmental group that discovered the administration’s continued approval of the exemptions.) the administration’s pledge appears disingenuous.   McClatchy

(This expands on what Rama has already taken note of in the sidebar diaries, BP)

No two situations are identical of course but some similarities here are striking. The similarities are enough to feel once again that the Vermont legislature did the right thing voting overwhelmingly against VY’s continued operation.  

In New Jersey the Oyster Creek generating plant is a 40 year old boiling water reactor (VY is also a BWR) that was up for, and was granted a license extension by the NRC. The aging plant can now operate for twenty years past its original stop date.  A matter of days after the operating extension a tritium leak was discovered.

Oyster Creek is now one of the 33 plants nationwide leaking tritium according to the NRC. The plant owner, Exelon, is drilling monitoring wells and has been ordered by the State to “come up with a plan”.      

The tritium leaked from underground pipes at the plant on April 9, 2009, and has been slowly spreading underground at 1 to 3 feet a day. At the current rate, it would be 14 or 15 years before the tainted water reaches the nearest private or commercial drinking water wells about two miles away.  

The radioactive water leaks were found just days after the plant got a new 20-year license in 2009 that environmentalists had bitterly fought for four years. Those problems followed corrosion that left the reactor's crucial safety liner rusted and thinned.  

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Exelon insist Oyster Creek can operate safely until it is 60 years old. But environmental groups disagree.

Brian Dubie’s imported campaign gurus from Virginia tout the virtues of a web savvy campaign. The man running Dubie’s web effort has written an article about the vital importance Facebook played in electing the arch conservative Bob McDonnell in Virginia and centerfold Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Last winter he praised Lt. Gov. Dubie for the long hours and personal attention he puts into his Facebook page.  

Perhaps this web presence alerted the Free Press that the internet has finally arrived in Vermont politics.

VtBuzz is curating (their word) a six part exploration of the gubernatorial candidate websites. The ‘curate’ starts himself off as if awakening from an eight year dream with the observation that times have changed since 2002, noting:

How the world has changed since the 2002 election, which brought the current governor, Jim Douglas, to the top of state government. That was a different era for politics. Websites hardly were in use this way by state candidates.  Now they are in the forefront of all political campaigns.

Yeah and ‘What’s with these kids in their bellbottoms?’

The series to date has covered Dubie, Racine and Markowitz. (I understand earlier today Susan Bartlett was also curated.)Dubie’s webpage came first, gets some technical criticism and is faulted for self promotion [?] but the curate just can’t resist a co-pilot and points out the official born-in-a-log-cabin-regular-guy qualities Dubie is said to possess.

The Racine and Markowitz web pages fair better in technical criticism yet the curator levels a different eye at these two. With Racine he notes the slew of statewide endorsements, including a glowing one from Gov. Dean. Then he digs deep and wonders with concern if it’s enough:

…considering his [Dean’s] cult-like reputation among liberals.  ‘

‘Why can’t you be more like Brian?’ he suggests for Markowitz in his What’s missing category. He proposes for Deb, something that at first glance I thought might be a joke

Her own Dubie tour of the business landscape would surely be an eye-opener.

My guess is that she doesn’t have the same amount of time on her hands as our Lite Gov. Dubie.