(Just moving this up as a reminder; the show’s Saturday night. – promoted by JulieWaters)

This benefit concert is for the Greater Falls Warming Shelter.  Featured performers include Jesse Peters, Derrik Jordan, Vermont Timbre (Mike Mrowicki & Amelia Struthers) and Julie Waters.

It will take place at Emmanuel Episcopal Church (Stone Church) at 20 Church Street in Bellows Falls, VT.  It starts at 8.  Admission is by donation.

To me, music is transformative, and concerts like this illustrate that better than anything else I can think of; as musicians, we play, hopefully for money, but often just to be out there and share our craft.  There’s something about shows like this which push us to think about our music not just in terms of what we can get from it, but what we can give with it as well.

Music is a creative process, but not everyone follows their muse without getting scathed in some form.  Some of our most talented musicians have, at some point in their lives, ended up destitute, homeless or otherwise separated from the rest of society.  This concert is one small way some of us can honor those among us whose who have fallen from their expected path and who too often fall through the cracks, discarded by the world around them.  

Performer details after the fold.

Derrik Jordan has released many CDs of his original music as a singer-songwriter and also under the name SuperString Theory. He was recently commissioned to write a piece for the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, “Odzihozo And The Lake,” which tells the ancient Abenaki creation story of Lake Champlain in music. It was performed in ten venues around the state in the fall of 2009.

Julie Waters is a folk artist in the truest tradition, weaving stories, motion and rhythm, creating lyrical poetry through the strings of her guitar. This is more than simply a creative approach to music. This is performance which turns on a dime, first evoking ancient modal melodies, and then suddenly sliding into a rock and roll beat which takes you straight into the 21st century.

Vermont Timbre — the singer-songwriting duo of Amelia Struthers and Mike Mrowicki , will be offering local musical produce as part of the concert to support  the Bellows  Falls  Winter Homeless  shelter. The two local performers began singing together in 2004 while working on the album, Love in Kindness. When Amelia was invited to combine her bright and clear voice to harmonize with Mike’s tender vocals, they instantly recognized a spark of musical alchemy.

Jesse Peters blends all his formative experiences into a musical approach that includes many different styles. He is flexible enough to play instrumental dinner music one day and jazz-rock with his trio the next. His writing style is similarly broad, with modern groove numbers interspersed with more traditional fingerpicked tunes, and a few rockers thrown in for good measure. Mixing it up like this keeps it interesting for both him and his audience.

Cosponsors of the shelter include United Church of Bellows Falls, Our Place Drop-in Center, Parks Place, Unitarian Church of Walpole, SEVCA (Southeastern Vt. Community Action), Rockingham Area Community Land Trust (RACLT), Chroma Technology, Youth Services.

If you would like to help advertise this event, please put up posters.  The poster can be downloaded here.  There is also an open facebook page that people can use to give themselves a reminder of the show or to invite others to attend.

(Continuing the policy of promoting diaries from officeholders and officeseekers. – promoted by kestrel9000)

Wow did the first week begin at full speed!  The long list of issues that are asking for attention and the complexity of these issues are certainly going to make for a very interesting and intense session.

I want to talk about the Challenges for Change, the program that the Speaker, Pro tem and Governor all stood together and said this is good and we need to do it.  At the end of last session, we all knew that Vermont and the country were in a serious recession and that it would be a long time before we all recover.  We also knew that it was time to take a serious look at how we deliver state services and find ways to do it better with less.  

More after the jump

In the face of significant state layoffs and the continued dropping of revenues, we put aside $100,000 to ask for proposals from professional groups that have worked with governments of all sizes to help us reach the goal of permanent savings through restructuring.  Our target was $34 million in 2011, with more in the next year.

A company called Public Strategies was awarded the contract.  They have over 20 years of experience and they have previously done work in Vermont.  The result of their work with the oversight committee is Challenges for Change.  This document is available on the legislative web page and I highly recommend you check it out.

The way to change how government services are delivered is not by having some high paid folks from “away” come in and give you ideas.  It is best achieved by having the executive and legislative branches working together to achieve common goals.  What Public Strategies has done is facilitate these communications.  The outcome is a series of “challenges”.   Let me give you an example.  

A challenge is to get better outcomes from contractors and grantees at a 3.5% lower cost in FY11 and 10% less cost to the state in FY12.   The state of Vermont has a total of $200 million in contracts every year.  Most of these contracts and grants pay for hours or other units of effort, not for results.  It’s time to make a change to performance-based contracts.  In other states, these changes have led not only to significant dollar savings, but better services.

This effort is all about looking at government services in a different way.  It’s about setting the outcomes that we want, allocating the money and evaluating the results.  Now I know that sounds simple, but mostly government doesn’t work that way.  This type of reform can lead to a much more transparent form of budgeting.  It will allow the folks who are working in an area to know exactly what the outcomes are that are expected of their programs.  They know they will be measured on the outcomes.  We all will know what is working and what isn’t working.

I find this entire idea really exciting and am looking forward to working with folks over the session to further develop the idea of developing more challenges for each agency.

The best way to reach me is to give me a call at home and leave a message 888-5591, or through my website, www.bartlettforgovernor.com

Cross posted from Nourishing the Planet.

Sylvia Banda started Sylva Professional Catering Services Limited in 1986, even though just 30 years ago women weren’t allowed to own businesses-or even eligible for loans-in Zambia. She began her business by serving people food she cooked and brought from home on what she calls, a “standing buffet,” because she didn’t have enough money for tables and chairs.

Not having furniture didn’t stop Sylvia’s business from taking off; she made almost a hundred dollars after a few days. And with her husband listed as the proprietor of her business because land rights are limited if not inaccessible to women in Zambia, Sylvia was able to grow her small “standing buffet” into three subsidiary businesses.

Sylva Professional Catering Services Limited is dedicated to creating, selling and serving nutritious foods, made from indigenous and traditional products that are purchased from local farmers and merchants. Sylvia provides work for 73 people and has developed partnerships with local development organizations, using her financial and popular success to become a proponent of farmer and employee training. She calls it “economic emancipation.”  

Sylvia’s success has benefited not just her own family, but the wider community as well. And Winrock International, an organization that collects examples of projects focused on sustainable food, improving livelihoods and preserving local food traditions, hopes to extend her positive impact even further still by making her case study available as a resource and model for potential entrepreneurs-and for policy makers and NGOs who support potential entrepreneurs-around the world.

For more information about Sylvia’s work and other projects that are focusing on sustainable food, improving livelihoods and preserving local food traditions, see Winrock International’s site on Community Food Enterprises.

First it was Div, now we learn that Brian Joyce has resigned from the local beat at WCAX. It wasn't always the courts, but that's where I generally saw him, either on the tube or in person.

Brian has always had an inquisitive mind, and he put the time in to understand the stories. When you work in the courts, and the cases you're working on can be complicated, you appreciate that.

 Good luck, Brian.

Update:  A story in the The Rutland Herald identifies the engineer who gave the misleading responses to the Panel as David McElwee, Entergy’s public liaison officer, and has VY officials admitting that they “should have been more thorough” in responding to the Public Oversight Panel’s questions. The Herald quotes from an August 13 e-mail sent by McElwee to panel member Arnie Gundersen, state nuclear engineer, Uldis Vanags, and Sarah Hofmann, public advocacy director for the Department of Public Service:

As for your outstanding question on underground piping goes, Act 189 requested that an underground piping system carrying radionuclides be part of the inspection…we have none. Since this is not an item active in the review of … recommendations, we consider this issue closed.

In a press release, Gundersen states that

The Panel was informed that there were no systems with underground piping that carry radioactivity at VY

It seems that Entergy just can’t quit stepping all over its own feet in the effort to court approval for a VY license extension. In light of the recent revelation that there has been a tritium contamination of groundwater at Vermont Yankee, it appears that ENVY was less than forthcoming in its representation to the Vermont Yankee Public Oversight Panel in 2008 that there was no radioactivity in VY’s underground pipe system.

The Panel’s findings include this admonishment:

The Panel recommended the following adjustments for the scope identified in Section 3 of Act 189:

1. The Panel was informed that there were no systems with underground  piping that carry radioactivity at VY.  Therefore the Panel recommended that the review of the service water system, Act 189 §3(6) (“a cooling system dependent upon Connecticut River water”), which has buried nonradioactive piping, specifically include a review of ENVY’s Buried Pipe and Tank Inspection Program.

Despite these recommendations, (which represented a legislative mandate) no such review of ENVY’s Buried Pipe and Tank Inspection Program was apparently ever undertaken, and  ENVY’s clean pipe assertions were simply taken at face value!  It is my understanding that Envy insisted to the Panel that both the piping leading to the Condensate Storage Tank and the CST itself could not possibly leak as they were completely embedded in concrete.   ‘Sounds to me like someone might have deliberately mislead the Legislative Panel.  Now that ain’t right.

One can’t help but wonder what other discrepancies in ENVY’s representation to the Panel remain to be discovered.

It's an election year, and this year is particularly ripe for the red noses, fright wigs, and floppy shoes.

That's right, the Second Vermont Republic is running a slate of candidates.

If you've been following the issue for years, as we have, you are familiar with how chummy the SVR people are with the League of the South and other neo-confederate racist groups.

What? You say this is nothing more than another desperate try for the SVR to grasp at relevance? Of course, if you said that you'd be right, but don't tell them–it would be like telling a little kid there's no tooth fairy.

Cross posted from Nourishing the Planet.

Soweto in Johannesburg, South Africa is most well known as the scene of massive protests and violence under Apartheid. Today, it is place of contradictions. While many of South Africa’s wealthiest citizens live there, it’s also a community plagued by poverty. Many of the residents live in shacks with tin roofs and don’t have running water or electricity. But like the residents of other cities in Africa, including Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi (See Vertical Farms: Finding Creative Ways to Grow Food in Kibera and Farming on the Urban Fringe), the residents of Soweto are growing foods, including cabbage, kale, spinach, and other vegetables in their yards.

While Johannesburg doesn’t have an official policy supporting urban agriculture, the government in Cape Town, South Africa has invested $5 million rand ($671,670 USD) to help the city’s poorest residents grow vegetables and fruits and raise livestock.

Stay tuned for more on urban agriculture as I travel to other cities in sub-Saharan Africa.

Today is the day the E Board is scheduled to meet and discuss the Douglas administration’s “emergency” demand that business tax incentives through the VT Economic Progress Council (VEPC) and the VT Economic Growth Incentive program (VEGI) be raised 150% – that’s 15 million dollars – to 25 million total. This is the same Governor of course who wants to slash critical programs because he says we can’t afford them. Kudos once again to Doug Hoffer who brought this to our attention: “The E Board consists of five people: the governor and the four chairpersons of the money committees (Heath, Obuchowski, Bartlett, and Cummings).  The proposal is bad on substance AND process.”

It’s all rather mysterious. It’s being rushed through, with the Governor and his people jumping up and down saying the taxpayer dollars must be shoveled out toot sweet with no real accountability in play. There is no real transparency at all. Word is that it involves companies that just applied for the funds last Friday, and that there is a start up company involved that is supposedly promising 500 jobs. That’s all anyone seems to know, and even that seems to be unconfirmable.

So the legislature legislative branch is being bullied into a multimillion dollar big business blind trust fund in a time of economic downturn with virtually no accountability or transparency, and no real idea where the money is going. Sounds rather TARP-ish, doesn’t it? Add to that the scuttlebutt that the Governor may ultimately want the VEPC/VEGI fund limit to be uncapped entirely. Sounds a little like Fannie/Freddie, eh?

The whole system has already been, let’s say “questionably skewed,” beyond simply the transparency and accountability issue. For example, when VEGI gives out grants, it bases them on the broad metric of “industry background growth” rather than  basing it on the actual applicant business. Most other states base their grant on what the company itself is doing, rather than the industry as a whole. Using broad industry driven metrics instead of company-specific ones can end up with a business grant being much larger than it otherwise would’ve been.

Part of the probblem with the lack of transparency is that it can allow people to get funny ideas. You know, a lame duck governor, on his way out. A Governor whos faced questions about showing favoritism to campaign contributors, and who isn’t too concerned about the appearence of inmappropriate ties to favored busunisses (see diary immediately below). Why, some might assume there is a last minute attempt to bully millions of taxpayer dollars from the legislative branch out to some buddies in the business world. After all, he’s going to be looking for work this time next year.

But only a cynical person would think that.

(Continuing the policy of promoting diaries from officeholders and officeseekers. – promoted by odum)

First, I’d like to thank everyone who came to the public hearing on health care last night. The House Chamber was packed full, and the testimony was compelling. Now, we must do the work of figuring out how to get universal, affordable, quality health care in Vermont.

But the real reason I’m writing today is to invite all of you to my Campaign Kickoff Party. Although I announced that I am running for governor a year ago, I haven’t yet had an official kickoff for my campaign, and I think it’s time to do that.

The party is on Saturday, January 23rd, from 3 to 5 pm, and there are locations all across the state. You can find all the details on my website: http://dougracine.com/kickoff

When you RSVP for the party, you can send me a question, and I will answer a question from each location during the party – there will be a live video stream at each party location. I hope you will join me on the 23rd, and I look forward to working with you to build a brighter future for all Vermonters.

Vermont legislator Tim Ashe has taken notice of the potential portal to conflict of interest that may open in the last year of the Douglas administration. From the Times Argus:

A Senate committee will begin today to consider a bill that would prevent the state's commissioner of public service from working for any state-regulated utilities for five years after he leaves office.

Speaking about the bill O’Brien said “It’s sad” but offered no noticeable pledge not to take future employment with those he now regulates.

"Given its extreme importance there can be no question that our lead enforcement agent be unencumbered by any future conflict," Ashe said.

Public Service Commissioner O’Brien raised eyebrows in the past over the appearance of a close relationship with those he regulates when Entergy’s VP Thayer attended one of his Christmas parties. Entergy contributions in the past to Douglas have also drawn attention. VP Jay Thayer donated $ 2,000.00 to Gov.Douglas in 2008. Entergy also gave $5,000 to Governor Douglas for his inaugural Balls’ favorite charity. All of this raised questions about the distance this administration was keeping form Entergy Vermont Yankee. Most recently former Douglas administration Chief Mike Smith was in the spotlight for taking a high profile job with FairPoint Communications lobbying the legislature and his former colleagues