The headline over Vermont House Minority Leader Rep. Don Turner’s “Legislature is Anti-Jobs” could just as easily have read “Legislature is Pro-Worker” in Monday’s Saint Albans Messenger. In it, the leader of the House GOP railed against last year’s increase in the minimum wage, using payroll taxes to shore up medicaid reimbursements and paid sick days.

“State government should not decide what benefits are most important for employers to offer and by doing so we remove the flexibility that Vermonters and their employers have.” – Rep. Don Turner

What about the flexibility for a working mother to choose to stay home with a sick child? What about the flexibility for a food-service worker to stay home instead of toughing it out and serving it up when they should be home sick? What about the flexibility of being able to afford to buy a few more groceries, and maybe eat out once in a while because you make $9.50/hr instead of $8.75?

I owned a coffee shop and bakery for six years, and I always paid my employees more than minimum wage. I had better, happier, more productive employees. I’ve never bought the argument that racing to the bottom and creating low-wage, low-benefit policies is going to be good for Vermont’s economy. I know it wouldn’t be good for the lowest-paid workers in our state.

Rep. Turner wasn’t the only House Republican to churn out anti-labor, anti-worker rhetoric yesterday.  

My own Saint Albans Rep. Corey Parent’s latest legislative update bemoaned the relegation of one of his favorite bills to “legislative purgatory” on the committee wall.

One of the most pressing issues I’ve heard from many of you is the need for our Department of Labor to define better what it means to be an “employee”.  Currently, the State of Vermont considers an independent subcontractor that does similar work to the contractor that hires them for a job an employee of the contractor.  That means the contractor has to pay unemployment and workers compensation insurance for the services performed by the subcontractor.

Really? He’s heard from “many” constituents that they want to make sure the people who hire them don’t have to pay for Worker’s Compensation insurance and unemployment? I find it hard to believe that working people are advocating for a decrease in benefits. I find it easier to believe that this kind of policy-which erodes the supports for a strong labor force and middle class- is right out of the ALEC playbook, and not coming from Vermonters.

The Democrats took a bit of a licking in 2014, primarily over dissatisfaction (on both sides) about the progress of healthcare reform and the rising cost of education. Being the party in power, it makes sense that we bore the frustration. Vermont’s Republicans, at least in the House, say that they have listened to those frustrated Vermonters. Why does it seem like they heard a Scott Walker speech instead?

Vermont has a lot to be proud of, and one of those things is a tradition of strong support for working people. I think if Reps. Turner and Parent listen harder they’ll hear Vermont workers asking for better wages and better jobs. At least, that’s what I hear.

The VT Young Democrats are back, and if today’s well-attended convention in Montpelier is any indication there is a lot of enthusiasm as we look toward 2016. Vergennes native William Northrop chairs the reincarnated VT Young Dems. The executive board put on a program that was light on business and heavy on speakers who talked about the past and future of the Democratic Party in VT.

Senator Patrick Leahy kicked off the event with the story of his first election, commentary on the long road to normalizing relations with Cuba and a quick word about his cameos in the Batman movies. He pointed out the importance of the Dems’ ground game saying

“They have a lot of money, but we have people- and you can’t buy people.”

Rep. Kesha Ram spoke about spending her entire 20s in the VT House and that it’s never too early to get involved in public service. VT Dems’ Chair Dottie Deans talked about her early interest in politics during the Kennedy/Nixon election.

Secretary of State Jim Condos talked about how many of his “colleagues” in other states are entertaining or pushing for photo ID laws that suppress the vote. Even here at home these ideas are being discussed seriously in committees, and even on the Senate floor, in spite of the total lack of evidence that voter fraud is an issue.

Chittenden County State’s Attorney TJ Donovan talked about his teen years working in a mom-and-pop store in Burlington that was a hub of the community. There he learned about service and respect, and the core constituencies of the Democratic Party: poor, working-class and middle class people that need government to work for them.

Has the Democratic Party lost its way and forgotten these core constituencies? This legislative session leads me to believe that we may be in the middle of an “identity crisis” in Vermont. That said, there’s nothing like spending a few Saturday hours with dedicated teens, twenty and thirty-somethings to remind me who we have to serve if we are going to win elections and refocus our vision for the future of our state.

Hillary Clinton is running for President and what are we talking about? Twitter lights up about how old she looks. Democrats and Republicans alike delight at criticizing her logo.

God forbid we talk about where Hillary Clinton stands on issues that matter- income inequality, marriage equality, or foreign policy. Why not talk about how she has more diplomatic, political and personal experience than the entire Republican field put together. We could even talk about how she’s probably going to be much more capable of advancing a legislative agenda in a grid-locked Washington than the Obama administration could.

Instead we’re talking about a logo. We’re talking about her email. Are we talking about her differently than the boys on the other side?

You bet we are:

WPTZ @WPTZ  ·  4h 4 hours ago

He’s in: Marco Rubio announces WH bid http://on.wptz.com/1CQLCtV

WPTZ @WPTZ  ·  6h 6 hours ago

Why everybody’s talking about Hillary Clinton’s new logo http://bit.ly/1H0UIKv  

He’s in, but she’s got a logo problem. It’s not just the usual mediocrity and stereotyping we’ve come to expect from networks- local Democrats are reinforcing, retweeting and buying into the tropes and lines that could come to define the next year of our political discourse.

Please, my fellow Democrats and all of those who care about things that matter: Let’s resolve to resist the temptation to get involved in the Hillary-bashing. I don’t like the logo either, but this election has to be more about substance than style. Otherwise I don’t think I’ll be able to take it.  

Last Friday night’s usual Budget Bill debate took a dramatic turn when twenty-something Republican freshman Rep. Joey Conforth of Shriftsbury took the House Floor. His dramatic, impassioned speech rocked the body of older legislators and sent the Appropriations committee back upstairs to draft an entirely new budget.

“I just had no idea what we were doing to the young people of Vermont.” said House Appropriations Chair Rep. Mitzi Johnson.

The speech was a stirring vision of a tax-free utopia in which “not a single penny of state money would be spent on freebie, giveaway programs to help greedy seniors, farmers, poor people, or children” and businesses would be free to “harness the natural resources of our great state for the attainment of maximized profit”. It moved some on the House floor to tears.

“I’m really rethinking my priorities after that speech.” said Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown. “Maybe if we cut programs and taxes, the wealthiest Vermonters will have more money and will share it with the rest of us. It’s a powerful idea. This kid (Conforth) is gonna be the next Ronald Reagan.”

Appropriations committee members stopped by Conforth’s seat on their way back to committee to kneel down and beg forgiveness for their budget sins. The Speaker accepted a motion to recess so they could go back to the drawing board on the Budget.

          The following is a response to a letter by Franklin County Industrial Development Corporation Exec. Director Tim Smith that appeared in the Saint Albans Messenger last weekend skewering me for my critique of the Water Caucus proposal to gut the VHCB to fund Lake Champlain Cleanup. The bizarre thing is that Mr. Smith’s wife Denise Smith is the Exec. Director of the Friends of Northern Lake Champlain.

          Tim Smith and I have had a few political conversations in the years that I’ve known him. We have different points of view, but we share a commitment to improved water quality. I was somewhat shocked last week by his letter responding to my earlier comments on the question of how to support the Clean Water Fund in H.35 that is making its way through the Statehouse.

           Mr. Smith said that he didn’t understand why I would ridicule Representatives Parent and Dickinson for looking for ways to fund water quality efforts other than new revenue. My critique was that they narrowly focus on large cuts to one program, the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. They continue the pretense that this idea might actually succeed after it has failed to gain any traction after 3 months. This is political cover, not a sincere attempt to fund water quality efforts from an existing source.

  I agree that we need to look to existing funds before we ask Vermonters to fork over new revenue. However, in the current budget climate those of us who support water quality efforts have to realize that if we want Vermont, not the EPA to decide how to best clean up our waterways then we may have to dedicate new revenue to the effort. I summarized some of the ideas that have been suggested, but I don’t endorse all of them as Mr. Smith suggests.

           I disagree with Mr. Smith that the GOP members of the Water Caucus should be commended for their one, paltry effort to find an existing program to cut in favor of cleaning up Lake Champlain. If they are really making an effort, and not just playing politics with the Lake, there should have been some other suggestions after 3 months- a virtual eternity in legislative time.

           The VHCB is an effective and popular program that supports land conservation and affordable housing throughout the state. It’s unrealistic that those of us who live along lakes could ask the legislators and citizens of the rest of Vermont to gut a program overnight and give us the money because our priorities have finally turned to the lake we live on. I wonder if Mr. Smith would be so supportive if the proposed cuts had been to other important and effective programs, like the Regional Development Corporation he leads on behalf of Franklin County.

           Mr. Smith may not agree with me, but let’s be clear about what I was originally trying to say: Our legislators better find a way to fund lake cleanup efforts that make sense for Vermont in H.35. How embarrassing would it be if legislators from other parts of the state support funding for Lake Champlain while those of us who live in the most polluted part of the watershed fail to support it? I look forward to the Friends of Northern Lake Champlain board meeting on Monday and I hope to hear commitments of support for H.35 from our Franklin County delegation.  

Recent comments by Franklin County legislators Rep. Lynn Dickinson and Rep. Corey Parent make it clear that they are doubling down on their plan to take funds from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to fund lake water quality efforts. They claim that these funds, revenues from the Property Transfer Tax, should be reallocated because “lake Champlain is our new conservation priority.”

This plan was never going to get any traction, and the cynic in me says that they knew it from the start. Those of us in the Champlain Valley have heard the call loud and clear for lake cleanup efforts to be prioritized, but that doesn’t mean the legislators from other regions are going to gut a popular and effective program to do it. The only viable way to get new spending on Lake Champlain-and sustain it beyond the next fiscal year- is to raise revenue through a new, dedicated source.

If you’re going to say that water quality is a priority, you have to be willing to ask someone to pay for it. Some of these Water Caucus members are reminding me of that friend who says we just “have to order the Hong Kong Calamari”, drinks five beers, orders the most expensive entree on the menu plus dessert-then wants to go halvesies on the check.

H.35 finally takes some long-overdo steps to address small farm contributions to water nutrient pollution. It puts some water quality conditions on those enrolling in Current Use. The bill would overhaul municipal stormwater management. To do all of this work it would establish a new Clean Water Fund.

Everyone seems to agree that this is important, but no one wants to pay for it. Tom Torti and the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce don’t want Rooms surcharges or an increase in the Meals and Rooms Tax. Ag advocates can’t support a fee on fertilizer. Everyone loses when we do nothing, especially those of us who like to swim in a clear, clean Lake Champlain. I’m willing to pay an extra 5 cents for every $10 I spend at a restaurant, but that’s just me.

My prediction is that the GOP members of the Water Caucus won’t support H.35 unless it’s funded their way, by cutting VHCBs ability to fund and administer affordable housing and land conservation efforts. They might surprise me and support the bill, even with some new revenue source, but unlike a Saint Albans Bay homeowner on a hot August day- I’m not holding my breath.

So the legislature is off for Town Meeting Week. I saw Mayor Liz Gamache and Rep. Corey Parent at the polls at Saint Albans City Hall this morning. One committee that probably isn’t taking a break is the new GOP not-so-secret special committee combing through the budget.

House Minority Leader Rep. Don Turner (R-Milton) mentioned it matter-of-factly last week on Vermont Edition.

We have a committee working with our appropriations people, that started before the session began, and have started to scrub and comb through all areas of state government. We’ve initially focused on the high cost areas.

The VPO already covered how spectacularly ineffective this committee has been to date here. So, I’ll move on to talk about what’s on my mind: What does this new committee mean about the GOP’s faith in its own Appropriations committee members? Also, how does it relate to the rumored absence of members from their afternoon committee meetings (reported to me in hushed tones by several of my old statehouse friends)?

If you’re new in the Vermont House, especially a member of the minority party, then your only hope of being respected and effective is by showing your skills in committee. I’m not sure how less politically-inclined tax payers feel about having our legislators doing partisan work while their committees are meeting, but it ticks me off.

People who don’t respect the process in Montpelier do so at their own peril. If seasoned members of the Appropriations committee can’t find some juicy cuts to make to the budget then I seriously doubt that freshmen ditching their committees to comb through the budget will. If this new GOP committee really wants to serve their constituents they should work on some legislation and leverage the power of their committee assignments and respect their colleagues of all party affiliations on the Appropriations committee to do their jobs.  

There was a beautiful simplicity to the “Economic Pitch” event with Lt. Gov. Phil Scott that I attended this evening at the Bliss Auditorium in Saint Albans. After the mercifully brief references to his Airborne Speedway days of glory, the bulk of the two-hour event was given over to local people pitching their ideas about how to make the economy of our state better. If you’re Phil Scott, and you want people to think of you as a good listener, then giving the floor over to your constituents and saying very little is a pretty good way to do it.

The GOP talking points were sprinkled lightly throughout the evening’s speeches- much lighter than I had feared. The Lt. Gov. reminded us that he had heard a “common theme about affordability” in the last election. That there were “1221 bills introduced last session and only 20 or so would have helped the economy.” In spite of the gloom he said, “We have a lot to look forward to.”

Book-ending the event in the Vermont GOP tradition of bashing our state’s business environment, the owner of Saint Albans Superior Technical Ceramics closed the night by saying “The Vermont Brand is not competitive.” Then he went on to pitch the idea of Research and Development tax credits as a way to make Vermont “The Innovation State”. This isn’t the worst idea, and he did talk about how great the quality of life is here. Still, we can’t miss a chance to advertise how bad it is to do business in Vermont in front of business people. Face palm.

In between the politics were some really great pitches, a few clunkers and one rant that I won’t even call a pitch (see the next paragraph). Superintendent Winton Goodrich talked about administering Pre-K, Special Education, staff healthcare and some other services for education at the state or regional level. Two speakers, including Saint Albans entrepreneur Tim Camisa of Vermont Organics Reclamation (son of Rep. Kathie Keenan) pitched ideas about turning our phosphorous problem into an economic benefit for farmers by processing manure into other products. Kristen Hughes and Jonathan Billings pitched the need for funding local food initiatives like the Healthy Roots Collaborative, emphatically declaring that “now is not the time to cut funding”. Franklin County Industrial Development Corporation’s Tim Smith wants the state to spend $500k more each year on SBDC staff to help guide small businesses in their planning, and is probably right that the increased economic activity will more than pay for the investment. Smith also would love for legislators to convince the feds to improve the Highgate border crossing, which he admitted was a naïve goal. Amen, brother.

The most political of the non-pitches came from engineer Sam Ruggiano via written statement that was read by Franklin Chamber Executive Director Dave Southwick. Ruggiano’s “rantings and suggestions” started out with a regret that the Lt. Gov hadn’t run for Governor in the last election. “He would have won.” According to Ruggiano, “Budget increases have to stop or legislators are going to bankrupt the state.” The legislature should also repeal Act 250 9(l), get the wetlands folks from ANR to stop holding up development in Saint Albans Town, force the City of Saint Albans to give water and sewer services to the Town so they can develop in said wetlands, and make sure they don’t pass any Paid Sick Leave bills while they’re at it.

No one clapped after the statement was read. Southwick said “I’ll let Sam know no one clapped.” Then there was some tepid applause. Awkward.

That was kind of the beauty of the event. It wasn’t about Phil Scott or any one person’s political agenda. Big rhetoric was frowned upon in the mixed crowd of business leaders, municipal officials, Democrats and Republicans. It’s refreshing to hear your neighbors share their ideas and their priorities for a few minutes.

I walked in to the Economy Pitch thinking that it was going to be a big commercial for Phil Scott- the kind of misreading of the room and pompous victory lap I had seen him take at the Vermont Rail Association dinner a week after election night in the same room. It felt more like one of Bernie Sanders‘ town hall style meetings, which I have also attended in that room. If Phil Scott can continue to tap into the earnest desire that many of my neighbors have to make their state a better place, he will be a formidable candidate for governor in 2016. In the meantime I hope he and the Franklin County legislators who were all in attendance will turn some of their ideas into laws.  

The “Cloud Tax” will once again be up for debate this year. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, and haven’t been paying attention to this tedious debate over the last few years, let’s peel back the layers of misunderstanding and loaded rhetoric. No one is proposing that we start “taxing the internet”, just for the record.

H.146 seeks to treat the purchase of software via the internet  as a service, rather than a product so that it is exempt from the sales tax. This would save companies from paying sales tax when they purchase software licenses and download the applications on everything from Microsoft Office to the Adobe Suite. The legislative Joint Fiscal Office had this estimated at $2.3 Million worth of sales tax revenue in FY2014.

Viewed through the lens of economic development, this is always pitched as a way to make Vermont look “open for business” as it was in the most recent legislative update from Rep. Corey Parent. That sounds great. Why tax the internet? Let’s keep it free and cheap, and have Vermont be a place where tech companies can go and thrive without a pesky 6% charge every time they pay for a software bundle.

When I was a small business owner, I often went down to Staples and grabbed pens, paper, and other supplies. I forked over 4 cents to the Transportation Fund and 2 cents for the Education Fund with every dollar I spent. Back at the office I downloaded Quickbooks and other software, not to avoid the 6% tax, but because it was much more convenient. The last time I did this was during the Cloud Tax moratorium, so I didn’t pay any sales tax. Had I bought that same product while I was in a brick and mortar store, I would have paid the sales tax.

Let’s put aside the fact that the sales tax pays for roads and schools for a moment. Is it fair to call the same product that used to come in a box on a CD a service now that it’s available online? That’s the real question that legislators should be asking when H.146 is debated in the Commerce & Economic Development committee.

Viewed through the lens of Main Street fairness the Cloud Tax debate gets more difficult.  I know folks who are upset that their customers walk into a shop to browse and then buy online. These  customers avoid helping our brick and mortar stores pay their  lease and the tax that educated the kid at the counter and paid for the road to get the product there. That’s why Congressman Welch and others support taxing online sales to level the playing field. We should think hard about how this bill that allows companies like MyWebGrocer and Dealer.com to save thousands of dollars each year, plays into the online tax avoidance that many Vermonters, of all political stripes have called “unfair”.

As we increasingly live in a world in which internet sales are the norm, but many of the products we purchase online depend on educated people and transportation infrastructure to deliver them, we need to look at debates like this more closely. Otherwise, we may be contributing to the shuttering of brick and mortar stores, like the Staples that just left Saint Albans, all in the name of “economic development”.

Vermont’s official motto “Freedom and Unity” is easy to like, but a middle school student’s suggestion last month that the state also adopt a latin motto has brought out some ridiculous protests online. The latin motto “Stella quarta decima fulgeat”  is the suggestion of a middle school student and was introduced in a Senate bill.

The thread on the WCAX story page, reposted by Gawker.com in the story “Nativist Idiots Mistake Latin for Spanish, Totally Lose Their Shit” includes some particularly awful stuff.

“No, this is America, and our language has been English from the beginning. We don’t need to change now for a few.”

AND

“How do you say idiotic senator in Spanish? I’d settle for deport the illegals in spanish as a backup motto>”

I shared the Gawker.com link on my Facebook page and most of my friends had a great time laughing at the foolish posts and coming up with their own Latin mottos for our Fourteenth Star state. After the laugh-fest is over I can’t help but be concerned about how the knee-jerk posting and reposting of content reveals and amplifies messages of bigotry and ignorance that propagate too easily online.

Don’t these people stop to ask themselves, “Does this make me sound like a bigoted jerk?” I guess not.

At the same time this cute bill about a new state motto is getting criticized and the racist jerks are getting lampooned by my comrades, there is a much more important bill about online behavior under discussion in the Vermont House.

VTDigger’s story  covered Rep. Kesha Ram‘s bill,  H.105 that seeks to criminalize the act of revenge-posting nude photographs online by ex-lovers. With sexting  as a commonplace practice, it’s not suprising that this issue has had an impact on many young people, especially young women.

With the freedom of the internet, and the power to share ideas and content widely with ease, comes great responsibility. Are we ready to regulate the worst of this behavior by criminalizing revenge porn? I think so. Can we ever get the idiots to hesitate before pressing “post” on the WCAX comments page? Less likely, but a guy can hope.

UPDATE: Credit where credit is due: John Walters originally posted the motto story on the Vermont Political Observer. My bad for perpetuating an injustice.