Hey, remember Tom Salmon? The guy who could hardly be bothered to feign interest in his job as State Auditor? Who always seemed to be looking for something else to do?

Well, he’s still at it.

Salmon, who claimed to have numerous high-ticket job offers when he left office in January, wound up taking a less-than-high-ticket job with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

You’ll never guess what comes next.

Oh wait, you will. Take it away, Paul Heintz:

…after just one month on the job, the State House News Service reported Wednesday, Salmon left to pursue another gig with the federal government.

… “Despite making a commitment to stay on, he has taken that position and moved on,” Massachusetts Inspector General Glenn Cunha said Wednesday at a meeting of the Inspector General’s Council.

… [The Inspector General’s spokesman Jack] Meyers said the IG’s office was surprised Salmon so quickly departed what was supposed to be a six-year appointment.

“You know, there had been a pretty involved search process to select the candidate,” Meyers said. “There was an expectation that he’d be here for a while.”

Bwahahahahaha.

Heintz goes on to recount Salmon’s Vermont history of serial enthusiasms: his party switch, his dalliance with a U.S. Senate candidacy, and his on-again, off-again run for re-election as Auditor.

Oh, and about that “high-ticket” job? Salmon claimed to have “a half dozen potential jobs,” and described himself as having “a skill set that probably can earn between $160,000 and $220,000 reasonably.”

Jack Meyers didn’t know Salmon’s MDOT salary, but his successor will earn $108,000.

For those who have trouble with numbers, that’s way, way below Salmon’s predicted pay grade.  

Jake Perkinson is resigning as chair of the Vermont Democratic Party, effective three days from now. The press release:

Montpelier, Vt. – On Tuesday evening, Vermont Democratic Party Chair Jake Perkinson informed the State Committee of his intentions to resign as Chair. Perkinson’s resignation will become effective on Saturday, March 16 at which point Vice Chair Dottie Deans will service (sic) as Interim Chair until party reorganization elections in November.

“Over the past decade I have worked along with hundreds of other volunteers who have dedicated countless hours to building a better Democratic Party,” said Perkinson. “Because of that hard work, we are in a prime position to move Vermont forward. At every point in this journey I have been humbled by the selfless service of our committee members and volunteers at every level. Now is an opportune time for me to depart because the Party has never been stronger or more secure in its operations.”

“The VDP is now poised to fulfill the obligations of supporting the policies and politicians that are overwhelmingly favored by the Vermont electorate. I’d like to thank our Governor, elected officials, the party staff, and the people of Vermont for the wonderful opportunity,” Perkinson concluded.

I’m not a connected guy, but this certainly seems like a bolt out of the blue. There’s certainly no results-based reason for him to go, since the party is at a historic high point. And, as it happens, I interviewed Jake a couple weeks ago when I was guest-hosting The Mark Johnson Show on WDEV, and there was no hint of anything like this.

Whatever’s going on, Jake has done his job extremely well, and I wish him the best.

Update: I just got off the phone with party spokesflack Ryan Emerson. His comments after the jump.

Ryan Emerson’s comments on Perkinson’s departure:

“This has been in the works for a couple of weeks. Historically, after an election cycle, chairs tend to step down. They usually stay on for two years, max. Jake is very hands-on and active, but it takes a lot of time.

“This is a good time. The party is in a good position, we’re fully staffed, and we have confidence in Dottie Deans.”

There’s also a solid candidate-in-waiting to take Deans’ spot as vice-chair: David Scherr, currently chair of the Burlington Dems.

Emerson expanded on the seemingly sudden nature of the announcement:

“We’d wanted to keep it under wraps until as close to the [party] committee meeting as possible. Sometimes, if there’s more advance notice, you get a lot of public speculation and innuendo, and we didn’t want that.”

There you go. According to Emerson, a natural transition at a good time. No scandals, no emergencies.  

If Tuesday was any indication, things are getting tetchy at the State House. Lawmakers came back from their Town Meeting break, with committees under pressure to move legislation. Which had a couple of unexpected results:

1. The child-care unionization bill was voted down in a Senate committee, with a co-sponsor casting the deciding “No” vote.

2. A House committee dumped Gov. Shumlin’s much-derided tax on break-open tickets and grabbed money from other sources to pay for energy efficiency programs.

And now the details…

1. The Senate Economic Development Committee voted 3-2 against the child care unionization bill, with co-sponsor Bill Doyle doing a last-second 180. His explanation:

“It caught my attention that the only people that could vote for the union would be those who are subsidized by the state,” Doyle told VTDigger on Tuesday afternoon. “There’s not a lot of give and take when some of the people opposed to this union are not at the table.”

Ahem. This is Senator Doyle’s 44th year in the senior chamber. This legislation has been around for quite a while, and he’s a frickin’ co-sponsor. And I’m supposed to believe that a key provision only just “caught [his] attention”? Smells fishy to me. Especially since, as VTDigger reports, Doyle “toured around central Vermont just last week with a pro-union organizer, visiting child care providers.”

I also, at the risk of venturing into tinfoil-hat territory, detect another fishy undertone.  

Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell opposes the bill, but promised it would get a full hearing in committee. And then he played his usual pre-session role in choosing the committee. He chose Republican Kevin Mullin, who strongly opposes the bill, as committee chair. Was that coincidence? Campbell apparently felt no compunctions about packing the Natural Resources Committee with opponents of utility-scale wind; maybe he had his thumb on this scale as well.

Franklin County Democrat Don Collins cast the other “No” vote, while Dems Ann Cummings and Phil Baruth voted “Yes.”  

The vote was a setback, but the bill isn’t dead. Chief sponsor Dick McCormack says that “many options remain.”

2. The House Committee on Natural Resources and Energy made a dramatic (and unexpected) move on Gov. Shumlin’s plan to boost energy efficiency and low-income heating assistance (LIHEAP) through a new tax on break-open tickets. The committee dumped the break-open tax, dropped LIHEAP from its bill, and appropriated up to $11 million from other sources to fund weatherization and renewable-energy initiatives.

The action has only been reported (as far as I know) in the paywalled Mitchell Family Organ, by Peter “Vermont Press Bureau” Hirschfeld. The revamped legislation, which awaits a full committee vote, relies on existing revenue from a tax on sales of heating fuels to commercial users. That money is currently split between the general fund and education fund. If the committee passes the bill, the House Appropriations Committee would have to reverse the action or fill an $11 million hole in the budget by some other means.

Committee chair Tony Klein (D-East Montpelier) is ready for the fight over what he calls “the climate change bill of 2013.” He argues that heating fuel is a primary source of carbon emission, and fuel-tax revenue is an appropriate source of funds to battle climate change.

During the hearing, Klein expressed frustration over a lack of solid funding for what’s been billed as a high priority for the Shumlin Administration:

“We’re struggling with it. We’re getting lambasted for it, frankly,” Klein said during a committee hearing. “No one seems to want to pay for (these policies) in any way, shape or form.”

The Administration claimed that the break-open tax would net $17 million, enough to fully fund weatherization, clean energy, and LIHEAP. But the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office reported that the tax would only bring in about $6.5 million.

As for stripping LIHEAP from the energy bill, the committee decided that the issue was better left to committees that deal with human services issues. In doing so, of course, it also off-loaded another multi-million dollar problem. Klein has proposed a partial solution: he’d like to see LIHEAP recipients moved to the top of the weatherization list. That makes a lot of sense; if you tighten up low-income housing, you cut fuel consumption and the burgeoning cost of LIHEAP.

All that, and it’s only Day One of the second half of the session. Could be a barnburner the rest of the way to adjournment.  

This is from the same person that wrote the last piece.  Since then he has been a busy woodchuck.  I’ll let him explain:

Sentiments of Residents Living  in the Current F-16 and Proposed F-35 Noise Zone.

Over a three week period I canvassed about a third or so, some 300 houses, in the 65dB Jet noise zone of South Burlington talking to residents and trying to get a feel for how other people view or felt about the proposed basing. I live in the zone so I had reason to start this inquiry. What I found contradicts the view of so many people who do not live in this zone and of the wishful thinking pro-F35 crowd. Of those 300 some houses about 60% responded, the rest not responding from either not being at home, some other reason or declining to offer an opinion.  (To get to the 60% level I had to canvass streets twice.  I counted those who opened the door but had no comment in the 40% figure assuming “no response” was equivalent to not opening the door.)

If I subtracted out the guard members, their families or friends (as stated to me) then a strong majority of residents oppose the basing of the planes here. Even with the pro-guard persons included I still found that a majority opposed the basing. These residents presently have difficulties with the F16s. So imagine their feelings about going back to a plane that is at least as loud as the F4 which had a reputation of breaking windows in houses near the airport from its noise.

In a handful of houses with children the kids were terrified when the planes took off. In one case the parents said it took several years for their kids to adjust and that adjustment is still not complete.  At a day care center the owner was particularly irate about the jets take-offs since the kids in the yard would scream and cry from being terrified.  Across the street a woman felt the same but didn’t want to create internal family problems by voicing her opinions publicly. Fortunately most houses here do not have small children.

I talked to numerous residents who knew people who moved out because of the noise.  Others I talked to would follow suit when financial conditions allowed.  On my block alone a house that was purchased about two years ago is for sale. The owners want to get away from the noise.  Another is for sale just up the street.

But the overriding issue expressed to me was property values. There is a lot of mis-information and wishful thinking coming out of the pro-F35ers, but research in other areas with airports have clearly show the property values decrease the closer one gets to airports with noise issues. There is even a formula to calculate the decrease in value. Some homes I visited had damage to interior walls that they were convinced came from the planes.

Supporters of the F35 have been particularly abusive in their put-down to those with legitimate objections to the basing of the jets here by calling them whiners among other abusive language and suggest if they do not like it they should move out of the area. Well, that would mean at least a simple majority of homeowners would have to move. Consider what that would do to property values!

Roseanne Greco and the council were right to question it through the city council since it affects so many people living in this zone. To have not done it would have been irresponsible and would have shown the lack of caring about its impacts to nearby residents – a lack of caring I have seen in manifold amounts from the business community here and supporters of the basing. I laud the council’s decision to question the proposed  F35 basing here and Ms. Greco’s courage to speak out.

Ray Gonda

South Burlington

It's not the biggest thing we do here, but you may have noticed that we will occasionally highlight some of the Dem/Prog fisticuffs in Burlington politics. After all, as Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley observed, politics ain't beanbag.

Still, what we have heard from the Progs today seems way, way over the line.

The issue is last week's Burlington School Board election, which was so close that it was reasonable for the candidate who apparently lost, write-in candidate Kyle Dodson, to request a recount; in fact, he picked up a few votes and narrowed the margin to four.

The Free Press reported this morning that the recount confirmed that Keith Pillsbury, a twenty-two year incumbent, was the winner. Although seats on the school board are nonpartisan, the subtext is that Pillsbury used to be a Prog and ran in the Democratic primary for state representative in 2010. 

What the Progs did that, as I say, goes way over the line, was to call on Pillsbury–the winner, remember?–to resign, not just before the recount, but before they humiliated him by making their request public.

 According to the Free Press:

 In an email Wednesday to Pillsbury, [Progressive Councilor Vince] Brennan wrote: “I’m giving you the opportunity to seriously think about this offer of conceding before I make my request public. It would be far more graceful for you to step down rather than have public pressure make it hard for you to govern.”

Progressive Councilor Rachel Siegel made the same request. 

Remember, this is the Progressives, the party that so zealously guards the sacred right of political participation that they seem to consider it a mortal sin to accuse someone of being a spoiler, but here they are demanding that one of the candidates–the one who got more votes, remember?–withdraw from the race to avoid the embarrassment of being publicly pressured to resign.

I guess Burlington could have saved a lot of time and money if they had just dispensed with an election and asked Vince Brennan and Rachel Siegel who they wanted on the School Board.

Oh well. Maybe next year. 

Hey! Great news!

[Vermont] Housing affordability continues to improve: At record level in 2012

Oh no! Terrible news!

High Rents Make Housing Unaffordable for Many in Vermont

Huh. We seem to have a little puzzle on our hands.

The first headline comes to us courtesy of Vermont’s Most Overpaid Economist*, Art Woolf. His annual “analysis” shows that Vermont housing got more affordable in 2012 for the sixth year in a row.

*He’s got the balls to price his “Vermont Economy Newsletter” at $150 per year. I’ll stick with “Tiger Beat,” thanks.

The second headline comes from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which found that “Renters in Vermont need to earn $18.53 an hour in order to afford a basic apartment.”

And there’s the disconnect: Woolf is only interested in housing purchases, while the NLIHC focuses on rental housing, the only available outlet for many of the working poor.  

Note: Here’s where the Correction starts. Actually, a complete overhaul of the rest of this diary. In my original post, I confused “median” with “mean,” so my original point about Woolf’s bias is not accurate. (Thanks to commenter TomC for the correction.) However, his report remains extremely problematic.

What’s more, Woolf only considers families including a married couple filing jointly* — which leaves out many of the poor and working poor. The median income for a married couple is almost certainly a fair bit higher than the median income for all Vermonters. And in Vermont Business Magazine’s story on the Woolf study, he does not give a dollar figure for “median household income.” I wrongly assumed he meant $53,000, which is the statewide median income.

*Thanks to commenter Doug Hoffer for pointing this out.

Between those two problems, I’m not really sure if there’s a point to Woolf’s study. It’s extremely selective in a way that makes Vermont’s housing market look a lot more accessible than it really is. Either he doesn’t know how to appropriately design a real study, or he deliberately designed this one to provide a rosy picture.

Either possibility is quite disturbing, and makes me mistrust his punditry and his very expensive newsletter.  

There are many stories today that merit discussion on GMD, from Bruce Lisman’s attempt to redefine and co-opt “sustainability;” to the ouster of F-35 opponent, Rosanne Greco, as chair of South Burlington’s City Council; but,  before it slips seamlessly into legal precedent, I thought we should consider the case of the so-called “Cannibal Cop” who has been convicted and now faces possible life-imprisonment for his “crimes.”

It is tempting to focus only on the unpleasantly sensational details of Gilberto Valle’s fantasy appetites; and were that the end of things, I would say “Great! One more loathsome potential predator removed from the streets, forever.”

But of course that’s not where it ends, as legal judgments carry the weight of precedent which can have surprising consequences for the rest of society.

Does this judgement open the door, even a crack, to a future in which people will be locked-up just for thinking about committing a crime?

Nevermind that social media has become both the staging area and the mirror held up to every imaginable thought and deviancy, it is still nothing more than words and pictures.

Is it the natural progression of this new form of culpability that it will eventually be used to justify preemptive police action, or something even more sinister…like political imprisonment or assassination?

I  would like to know what some of the legal minds around GMD are thinking today.  Is this conviction as concerning to you as it is to me, or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

The 3 regular readers of my blog know I post a lot about the Constitution and legal statutes, American and world history, the evolution of scientific understanding and other geeky stuff that bores a lot of people.  I eat that shit up, and have ever since I can remember.  

My late mother called me “the family historian” because I was the one who always paid attention to the Old Timers' stories, so I knew where we'd come from and became sort of the repository for family lore.  I collected coins (past tense because I still have my collection, much of which came from my paternal grandfather, but I no longer actively engage in numismatic-related program activities).  I made NToddsPa take me to historic sites in Philly and Boston, even though he hates urban driving.  

I obviously haven't grown out of it.  In between anti-war actions in DC, I visited the Holocaust Museum, the National Archives, the Smithsonian, etc.  I dragged my pregnant partner up Little Round Top and love researching local boys who served in the Civil War.  I pore over the Annals of Congress for my “daddy time”.

Usually when I write about this stuff, people don't comment and I'm sure skip over the excruciating detail I sometimes get into.  On more than one occasion somebody has told me how their eyes roll back into their head, or they glaze over, or something.  That's cool.  I write because I like it, and am thrilled in the rare instances when somebody wants to discuss something.

There's more to it than that, though.  Philosophically, I think knowing history is important for understanding our present and anticipating our future.  And at the very least, you need to appreciate it as you try to interpret anachronistic law that remains with us as we deal with modern policy issues.

What usually gets a bug up my ass is when people try to appropriate history to claim a monopoly on it.  Fundamentally I don't really give a shit what James Madison thought, but I can't abide his being used as a cudgel by people.  So I fight fire with fire because it usually shows how specious their claims are and how shallow their understanding is.

And I just like it.

So it should come as no surprise to people who know me that I might spend a lot of time reading source documents and arguing to the last about something trivial like Vermont's pre-statehood status as a republic.  It's not just about trying to prove I'm right–obviously that's a part of it since I have an oversized ego and hate to be wrong–but I'm like a moth to the flame if I see a burning controversy or even a lukewarm difference in perspective.  And I always learn something new.

F'rinstance, I didn't realize just how prominent one of Fletcher's original grantees was (though I shoulda done the math because, you know, who gets free land from the Governor?).  Jonas Fay pretty much wrote Vermont's declaration of independence, was a member of the Green Mountain Boys, and was on the State Supreme Court.  Now I want to look more into his life.

And I found a cool map.  I also like maps.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming.  Eyes glazing over in 3, 2, 1…

ntodd

So, our Two-Fisted Attorney General held a public forum yesterday on the use of Tasers. Not sure why, because he remained absolutely unmoved by anything he heard. Went in defending the cops, came out defending the cops.

And I’ll tell you, I don’t entirely disagree with him. Tasers could be a valuable tool if used correctly; the problem is, Vermont’s law enforcement community gives us nothing but lip service on the issue.

But here’s the thing. A 2012 investigative report by VPR’s John Dillon was brought up. He’d looked into the use of Tasers on people with disabilities. He found about 25; and in 10 of those cases, Tasers were fired at people “threatening suicide or… experiencing a mental health crisis.”

Sorrell’s response: those instances only made up a small minority of “the hundreds and hundreds of times tasers have been deployed in the state.”

Not true, Bill. Big fat honkin’ lie, in fact. Dillon’s survey covered police records from an 18-month period — from the spring of 2011 to the fall of 2012. And according to a State Police official, Tasers have been fired roughly 70 times between March 2011 and the present.

In other words, that’s 10 out of no more than 70 — not “hundreds and hundreds.”

And although Sorrell and Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn continue to insist that we have good policies, Dillon uncovered some cases that belie those bland assurances.  

n one case, a state police video shows an officer chasing down a man who’d created a disturbance at a residential group home. After firing his Taser and subduing the man, the officer said this to the man’s caregiver:

“What I got him with was a Taser. It doesn’t cause any damage to him at all, but it will keep him calm and controlled.”

This officer needs some retraining, stat. Or perhaps the VSP’s trainings aren’t as clear and thorough as they’re made out to be.

Dillon also reported an incident in which a man with Down syndrome, who’s 5 feet tall and weights 110 pounds, refused police orders to move. Note: passively refused. The police explained that “his refusal could be seen as a precursor to violence.”

Which seems to be at odds with VSP’s policy of using Tasers only on subjects who are “actively resisting” the police. Either that, or the VSP has an awfully generous definition of “actively resisting.”

I realize that the police have a very difficult job. God knows I wouldn’t want to be a trooper. And when they’re responding to a report of a troubled or disruptive individual, there’s a great deal of uncertainty. The situation can escalate very quickly.

But when an officer believes Tasers are harmless, or when a Taser is fired on a passive resister of small stature, you can understand why people don’t trust the police or their reassurances. And why the words of Bill Sorrell sound callous and uncaring.  

There’s an important discussion that has begun concerning the biases that attach when a potential juror is sympathetic to the Confederacy, the modern neo-Confederate movement and its ideological sympathizers. While much of the work and research is Southern oriented, it has relevance to Vermont.

Proponents of the Vermont secessionist movement have long had significant ties to the Southern neo-Confederate movement, most particularly the racist League of the South (LoS). Starting in 2007, the leadership of the Second Vermont Republic (SVR) (the still quite dead SVR founder Thomas H. Naylor and his then SVR co-chair and present VTCommons propagandist Rob Williams) launched a purge of members who’d voiced concern about associating with indisputably racist groups. Committed Vermont seceshers have repeatedly and publicly expressed support for the acts of the Confederacy and the modern neo-Confederate movement.

In addition to presenting research on the racial bias of potential jurors, the researchers, Edward H. Sebesta and Dr. Euan Hague, PhD, have a piece published at The Black Commentator entitled The Confederacy and Jury Selection,

“The historical record irrefutably shows that the Confederacy was formed for the purpose of preserving white supremacy and slavery. Such sentiments are expressed is the declaration and resolutions of the seceding states, in the speeches of the leaders of the Confederacy, and in innumerable other sources, typically being expressed in a straight forward manner.

It would be reasonable, therefore, to ‘challenge for cause’ potential jurors identifying with the Confederacy because of their identification with a white supremacist regime that sought to keep (its) African Americans enslaved. These potential jurors identifying with the Confederacy might object that they would not be biased as jurors, but elements of the pro-Confederate Lost Cause mythology inherently lead to bias. One element is that African American slaves were well treated and content as slaves, and that slavery was like being a part of a large family, rather than that it was a grave and often horrific condition. At some psychological level, Lost Cause rationalizations are embraced and accepted because for that individual, an African American’s freedom and humanity are valued less than their own.”

Alan Bean at the Friends of Justice blog has a piece, Probing the Subtleties of White Racial Bias, and there’s a New York Times Op-Ed piece by a senior editor at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates, on the topic of ingrained racism here

Vermont has a growing immigrant population, as well as an increasing population of color located in Vermont’s small urban areas. Racial profiling has been a recurring issue that has found its way to the courts and that’s not likely to end. White Vermonters who have embraced the white, racist neo-Confederate movement, while an admittedly small group, are still eligible for jury duty.

Vermont secessionists have sought to legitimize their endeavor by claiming that (1) Southerners had a “right” to secede and that, similarly, (2) Vermonters do as well because there once existed a Vermont republic. Vermont republic mythology is a staple for Vermont secesher water carriers like Rob Williams, Juliet Buck and two one time Vermont secesher legislative candidate in Franklin County, Todd Pritsky. (Pritsky came in stunningly last in a field of five.) Pritsky was a member of what was thought by the surreptitious (exclusive – heh)  group (on a)  super secret listserv where some Vermont seceshers, including a neo-Nazi, could engage in racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, seditious and abusively misogynistic (sounds redundant but it’s not) “chat,” while other invited members, like Pritsky, remained largely silent. The racist leader of SVR later referred to this group as “Internet cowboys,” with the usual CIA/Mossad paranoid delusions here.

Juror bias is an issue that needs looking at in Vermont where secessionists and their sympathizers, who embrace the neo-Confederate meme, can potentially contaminate the jury with an element of racial bias.

If you believe, as I do, that the Vermont judicial system needs to examine this issue, please consider contacting the Vermont Judiciary Court Administrator Robert Greemore by writing to him at 109 State Street, Montpelier, VT 05609 or calling him at 802-828-3278; contacting the President of the Vermont Bar Association, Amber L. Barber, at abarber@drm.com or by writing to her at P.O. Box 100, Montpelier, VT 05601-0100; and Attorney General William Sorrell at 109 State Street, Montpelier VT 05609-1001 or calling him at 802-828-3171. This is one of those occasions where I would strongly urge you to put your concerns about this issue in writing.