Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger went back to high school today; he's making good on a campaign promise to move his office to Burlington High School for a week. This Monday through Friday, the mayor and his three-person staff will be conducting city business out of a fishbowl office belonging to BHS assistant principal Nick Molander.

Last night, the mayor tweeted a photo of his backpack as he prepared for his first day at school. 

Weinberger's schedule for the week includes riding the school bus, hosting his weekly coffee klatch in the school cafeteria and hosting a business roundtable on Wednesday in the school auditorium. A "press corps" of student reporters will reportedly be blogging about his time there, and posting updates on social media.

Is Weinberger playing hooky? Getting stuffed into a locker? Batting .400 for the school's baseball team? Get up-to-the-minute reports on his activities on Twitter, using the hashtag #miroBHS. 

Weinberger kicked off his week in residence at BHS at a schoolwide assembly Monday morning. Hundreds of students and community members turned out to see him get his keys, ID badge and a BHS ballcap. 

But orientation wasn't the only thing on the agenda — the mayor hoped to use the gathering to highlight the Burlington-Winooski Partnership for Change, a three-year, $3-million-plus effort to remodel Burlington's and Winooski's high schools, made possible by a grant from the Nellie Mae Foundation.

On hand to celebrate the partnership were a whole host of lawmakers and local officials, including Gov. Peter Shumlin and House Speaker Shap Smith (D-Morristown), as well as representatives from Senators Leahy and Sanders' offices.

Happy Monday, news and politics geeks. We're getting to crunch time in the Statehouse, Burlington's mayor is going back to school, and Seven Days is running this year's Vermont Brew Bracket — a subject near and dear to many of your hearts, we know. Here's what you should add to the calendar.

If you have an event you want to see on next week's calendar, email Andy Bromage with details.

Monday, March 18

9:45 a.m.: As I write this, Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger is moving his office to Burlington High School. He'll be there all week to connect with students and teachers and promote something called the Partnership for Change, and we'll highlight more of the interesting events in this here post.

6 p.m.: The Burlington Board of Finance and City Council hold their Monday meetings at Burlington High School.

What a Cluster indeed: A Vermont organization that advocates for the rights of the Palestinian people has called on Ben & Jerry's ice cream to live up to its socially progressive values and stop doing business in Israel until the Israeli government "ends its occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands."

On Thursday, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (VTJP) issued a report titled "Peace, Love and Occupation: Ben & Jerry’s Economic Complicity in Israel’s Military Occupation and Illegal Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory." 

The 20-page white paper — the name is a play on Ben & Jerry's marketing slogan, "Peace, Love and Ice Cream"— accuses the company of not remaining true to its social mission because it manufactures ice cream in Israel, then sells it in Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The organization is calling on the South Burlington-based ice cream giant — owned by British-Dutch conglomerate Unilever — to stop manufacturing, marketing, catering and selling "Vermont's Finest" in Israel and Jewish-only settlements. VTJP is also asking Ben & Jerry's to issue a statement "calling for an end to Israel’s occupation and settlement enterprise" and to appeal to other socially responsible companies to do the same.

Friday morning, a Ben & Jerry's spokesman issued a statement indicating that that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Ever wonder what happened to former state auditor Tom Salmon?

After quietly leaving office in January, the formerly up-and-coming Democrat-turned-Republican evidently took a position with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. But after just one month on the job, the State House News Service reported Wednesday, Salmon left to pursue another gig with the federal government.

That's leaving some Bay Staters none too pleased.

"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, according to SHNS. (Sorry, the story's not available online.)

Jack Meyers, a spokesman for the inspector general's office, confirmed to Seven Days Salmon's brief tenure as director of the special audit unit in the Department of Transportation.

"He started work here earlier this calendar year and then after about a month he said he was going to leave the post," Meyers said. "My understanding is that he was pursuing another job and also that he had some personal reasons to go back to Vermont."

Meyers said the IG's office was surprised Salmon so quickly departed what was supposed to be a six-year appointment.

After less than two years in the volunteer position, party chairman Jake Perkinson unexpectedly announced Wednesday that he plans to resign from the post on Saturday. He said vice chairwoman Dottie Deans of North Pomfret would lead the party on an interim basis, until the party elects a new chair.

The 42-year-old Burlington lawyer cited competing professional and family obligations and said the party would be just fine without him. While he hinted that he'd "had discussions with people" about possible job opportunities, he has no other immediate plans at present.

"I've always got things both from a business and a personal perspective I'm interested in pursuing, and the reality is the party takes a lot of time," Perkinson says. "The party's in a great position right now to go forward, and I don't have the arrogance to think I'm the only one to move it forward."

Vermont's cities and towns will see a few newcomers taking office this week after Town Meeting Day. Here's to small-town democracy. It's also gun-control advocates' turn to rally at the Statehouse on Wednesday, and the week ends with St. Patrick's Day on Sunday. (Here's a reminder that you shouldn't drink green beer and you REALLY shouldn't drink Irish car bombs on Sunday.)

Andy Bromage is off this week, so send your submissions for next week's political calendar to me instead.

Monday, March 11

7 p.m.: The Burlington City Council meets for the first time since Town Meeting Day. See the agenda here.

click to enlarge

Paul Heintz

Sen. Bernie Sanders

In so doing, Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) made strange bedfellows with a group of conservative Republicans and libertarians who sought to block Brennan's nomination due to concerns with the Obama administration's drone program.

The vote came a day after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) captivated the Capitol with a 13-hour, talking filibuster seeking to stall Brennan's nomination.

Leahy and Sanders joined Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley and 31 Republicans in opposing Obama's CIA pick, while 13 Republicans joined the Democratic majority to vote 63 to 34 in favor of Brennan's confirmation.

The votes were reversals for both Leahy and Sanders. The former said in January that he'd back Brennan, before indicating to Seven Days on Wednesday that he was considering opposing him. Sanders, in contrast, told the paper that day he planned to support Brennan — before evidently changing his mind.

Asked during an interview in his Capitol Hill office Wednesday whether he expected to vote for Brennan, Sanders said, "I do, yah, with reluctance, but I will."

Explaining that reluctance, Sanders said, "I have concerns about this drone business. We've gotten a little bit more information. It's an issue that I will stay on."

Those concerns apparently grew overnight.

After casting his nay vote on Thursday, Sanders said in a written statement, "With regard to the use of drones and other methods employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, I am not convinced that Mr. Brennan is adequately sensitive to the important balancing act required to make protecting our civil liberties an integral part of ensuring our national security." 

Sanders' staff declined to answer questions about his reversal Thursday.

Every Town Meeting Day, the Vermont media run a few heart-warming stories that reinforce the Rockwellian ideal of what it means to participate in local, direct democracy — such as this chestnut from WCAX about "Newark's Tasty Town Meeting Day Tradition."

(Spoiler alert: it involves "casseroles and salads galore.")

And then there's Steven Pappas' town meeting takedown. In a piece headlined "Has Town Meeting Run Its Course?" (behind the paywall), the editor of the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus calls for ending the cherished tradition and replacing it with voting booths.

The piece begins:

I’m going to make a motion. I know it will eventually get a second, and plenty of discussion. 

In the end, I expect it will fail.

My motion is this: “I move that all town and school budgets, as well as election of local officers, across Vermont be decided by Australian ballot, hereby ending the ‘traditional town meeting’ as we know it.”

For real. Once and for all. It’s a relic, and its worn parts are really starting to show.

Damn. At first, I thought Pappas was joking — that this was some ironic set-up or journalistic bait-and-switch that, in the end, would call for fixing town meeting's broken parts but not scrapping the whole enterprise.

I mean, really. The editor of state capital's daily newspaper crapping on, of all things, town meeting? That's got to be satire, right?

Nope. As the piece goes along, it becomes crystal clear the dude's dead serious.

click to enlarge

Sen. Patrick Leahy said Wednesday he's considering reversing course and voting against confirming John Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman said he'd do so to protest the Obama administration's continued unwillingness to provide his committee access to top secret legal memos justifying the use of drone strikes against American citizens abroad.

"I may cast a vote that would be a shot across the bow," Leahy told Seven Days Wednesday afternoon. 

The move would be a dramatic reversal for Leahy, who said in January that he'd back Brennan's confirmation. It comes as a small group of Republican senators, led by Kentucky's Rand Paul, spent the afternoon filibustering consideration of Brennan's confirmation.

Asked whether he'd informed the White House of his change of heart, Leahy said he hadn't.

"I'll probably let them figure it out," he said.

Town Meeting Day in South Burlington presented voters with a clear choice on their city’s direction, and they delivered a decisive verdict: Out with the new, in with the old.

Incumbent city councilors Sandy Dooley and Paul Engels were buried in a landslide that swept challengers Pat Nowak and Chris Shaw onto the five-member panel. Dooley and especially Engels presented themselves as a new guard with progressive views, while painting Shaw and Nowak as exponents of an old, pro-development way of conducting the city’s affairs.

But the more than 2-1 rejection of the incumbents by voters does not necessarily signify a triumph of the right over the left. Council candidates in South Burlington don’t run with party labels. And Dooley and Engels were members of a body that made some broadly unpopular moves that had nothing to do with liberal or conservative attitudes. Those actions left them on the defensive throughout an intensely fought campaign.

“It was a combination of things — interim zoning, the F-35, Cairns Arena, the National Gardening Association” that accounted for the outcome, Engels said on the morning after.

Interim zoning refers to a two-year freeze the council imposed on most development in the city, with the aim of enabling four study groups to develop recommendations for South Burlington’s future. “The developers were against that from day one,” comments council chair Rosanne Greco, who remains in office but who will almost certainly have to surrender her gavel when the new council convenes.

“The development community bought this election,” Greco added, referring in part to the heavy advertising on behalf of Nowak and Shaw that ran in South Burlington’s weekly paper.