Sunday, January 29, 2017
They took to the streets two days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that suspended the refugee resettlement program and the entry into the U.S. of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Syria, Libya and Somalia.
The crowd assembled at the First Unitarian Universalist Society, then marched along Church Street to City Hall Park. Marchers stepped off singing "This Land is Your Land," and then chanted: "No hate! No fear! Refugees are welcome here!"
Several speakers addressed the crowd at the park, including Mayor Miro Weinberger; Susan Sussman, a caseworker from Senator Patrick Leahy's (D-Vt.) office; Jay Diaz, a staff attorney with the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union; and Community College of Vermont student Zeinab Bulle.
Tags: Donald Trump , refugees , immigration , Image , Web Only
Friday, January 27, 2017
His calls for boosting early education, child care and higher education drew positive reviews. But his funding plan, which would raid the education fund to pay for those improvements, force local school boards to level-fund their budgets, and make public school employees pay more for health insurance, was seen as politically untenable. It didn’t help that Administration Secretary Susanne Young framed the plan as a non-negotiable “package” requiring urgent action by the legislature.
By Thursday, the objections were multiplying. And they went beyond policy choices, to areas like accuracy, feasibility, legality and even constitutionality. At day’s end, the plan’s supporters were furiously retrenching. Instead of advocating for passage, they pleaded for a modicum of consideration by the majority Democrat legislature.
“It’s incumbent on the majority to take the time to look at it. That’s all I’m hoping for at this point,” said Senate Minority Leader Dustin Degree (R-Franklin). “That’s the conversation we need to have, and I think the governor started that conversation pretty effectively.”
Tags: Phil Scott , Dustin Degree , Ann Cummings , Ginny Lyons , Barre-Montpelier Times Argus , Susanne Young , Mark Perrault , Image , Web Only
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Scott, in his first public appearance since unveiling the plan two days earlier, deflected all of the criticism and defended the plan as an audacious rethinking of Vermont’s education system.
“What I put on the table admittedly was bold, but I think that that’s what Vermonters want,” Scott said at a press conference where he touted a non-degree higher education program that would benefit from his proposal. “We find ourselves in fairly dire straits.”
Tags: Phil Scott , Vermont legislature , education funding , Kurt Wright , Vermont League of Cities and Towns , Image , Web Only
But they may be disproportionately targeting minorities, it says.
In 2016, 21 percent of arrestees were not white, and 24 percent of the people that police used force against were not white.
Those figures have held relatively steady since 2012, according to the report. Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo said the gap is "relatively small," and "may not be statistically significant."
But department officials acknowledge one worrisome statistic: Nonwhites in Burlington were 37 percent more likely to have a firearm pointed at them than whites, according to the department's analysis of six years worth of data documenting when officers use or threaten to use force.
Tags: Burlington police , use of force , law enforcement , bias , Image , Web Only
When a committee considers a bill, it hears testimony, discusses the bill, amends it, gets more testimony, discusses and amends yet again — lather, rinse, repeat.
After all that, when the committee is almost ready to vote on the bill, it has a markup session. This is a process of going through the bill line-by-line, raising potential issues, discussing, debating, dithering, and finalizing the language in the bill. Which they've gotta do because, after all, this thing might become law, and they can't afford to overlook mistakes or unintended consequences. Still, it tries the patience of one and all.
On Wednesday, the Senate Government Operations Committee was scheduled to do markup on S.8, the ethics reform bill. Thirty-two pages of legalese.
Committee chair Sen. Jeanette White (D-Windham) is no dummy. She knew it was going to be a long, tedious afternoon. So she brought cake.
Tags: Jeanette White , Alison Clarkson , Brian Collamore , Claire Ayer , Chris Pearson , Mark Johnson , Image , Web Only
Hazar Mansour, a French teacher, said on the program "Anderson Cooper 360°" that she, her husband and their two small children are happy to be in Vermont. They fled Damascus during a civil war in Syria that, according to the United Nations, has killed more than 400,000 people. They made it to Turkey and then went through two years of background checks before arriving in Rutland two days before Trump's inauguration, Mansour said.
"We were worried about ourselves, worried about our children," Mansour said. "We want to live in peace. It's better than living in the war situation we were in."
"I like Vermont and the people of Vermont," said her husband, Hassam Alhallak, an accountant.
Tags: Rutland , refugee , Chris Louras , refugee resettlement , Image , Web Only , Video
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
The vote fell along party lines: Six Democrats and one Progressive for the recount, four Republicans against it. The full House is expected to vote next week.
“We want to make absolutely sure that the ballots in Orange House District 1 were indeed correctly counted and that the will of the voters is indeed carried forward,” Rep. Maida Townsend (D-South Burlington), chair of the House Government Operations Committee, said after the panel voted.
Rep. Ron Hubert (R-Milton), the committee vice chair, called it a partisan and unnecessary decision. “We’re going through this process because we have a sore loser,” he said.
Tags: Vermont legislature , elections , Susan Hatch Davis , Bob Frenier , Maida Townsend , Ron Hubert , Image , Web Only
Last week, two Syrian families arrived in Rutland from a Jordanian refugee camp, after months of heated debate in the city. They were to be the first of an expected 25 families.
But Louras, who has staked his mayoral legacy on his plan to make Rutland a refugee resettlement hub, said the plan appears to be dead after multiple media outlets reported that Trump plans to sign an executive order to stop accepting refugees from Syria. The Associated Press reported that he further intends to temporarily suspend immigration from several other predominantly-Muslim countries.
“I think that these first two families are the only two families,” Louras said. Barring some unexpected development, he continued, “I’d say it’s the end of refugee resettlement for Rutland. While not a shock, it certainly is just as much a kick in the gut as if it had been a surprise.”
Tags: Rutland , refugees , Chris Louras , Syrian , refugee resettlement , Trump , Image , Web Only
"It's very alarming," said Stacie Blake, the director of government and community relations at the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.
"We don't have any concrete information about his intention," she said of Trump.
The federal decree would impose a temporary ban on most refugees and would suspend U.S. visas issued to citizens of seven Middle Eastern and African countries, including Syria, according to Reuters.
Tags: Immigration , Syria , refugees , Rutland , Stacie Blake , USCRI , Image , Web Only
In practical terms, the effect of the task force is unclear. “Since the election and the transition of power in Washington, many Vermonters have approached me with questions about what’s going to happen, specifically in the area of immigration,” he said. “The short answer is, we don’t know.”
The task force’s mission is to address those unknowns as they become knowns, and advise Donovan on how to respond.
In purely political terms, the task force is a masterpiece of networking. Donovan cast a wide net through Democratic and advocacy circles, essentially enlisting some very influential people onto Team T.J. And two of the three cochairs represent that rarest of commodities in Vermont — visible minorities.
Tags: T.J. Donovan , Faisal Gill , Kesha Ram , Jake Perkinson , sanctuary cities , Dustin Degree , Don Turner , Image , Web Only