One-party rule in Burlington will have to wait.

One year after Mayor Miro Weinberger won a landslide election, ending Democrats' 30-year exile from Burlington City Hall, his party failed to win enough seats to claim a majority on the 14-member city council. Democrats picked up an open seat in the New North End, long a Republican stronghold, but Progressives recaptured a seat in the Old North End and an independent in Ward 1 hung onto her seat.

In the end, voters went for the better known candidates — and the result will be more divided government in the Queen City.

But the big story of the night was the drubbing of incumbent South Burlington city councilors Sandy Dooley and Paul Engels, who lost by two-to-one margins to challengers Chris Shaw and Patricia Nowak. The incumbents found themselves on the defensive about their vote against basing F-35 fighter jets at Burlington International Airport, and about the firing and $140,000 severance paid out to city manager Sandy Miller.

Happy Town Meeting Day, everyone! Once again Seven Days is teaming up with Burlington's Channel 17 for coverage. We'll have a live blog and chat with writers and readers from around the state, plus live streaming video from Channel 17. We'll also aggregate Town Meeting Day reports from media outlets around the state and update results as we get them, including from the competitive city council races in Burlington. The fun starts at 6 p.m.

Click here to tune in.

Local opponents of the F-35 are throttling up their campaign by petitioning for a cutoff of construction funds for Burlington International Airport if it agrees to host the fighter jets.

Activists began gathering signatures during Town Meeting Day voting today in support of a 2014 ballot initiative stating that "no more than one dollar may be spent for construction, equipment and improvement" at the airport in the event F-35s are based there.

Bristol attorney Jim Dumont, speaking on behalf of the plane’s opponents, argues that Burlington voters have the power to slash the airport’s budget. He bases that claim on a section of state law that requires local voters to approve the budget of a municipally owned airport. Burlington has apparently flouted this law for decades by not making airport funding contingent on direct approval by city voters, Dumont said at a news conference Tuesday morning at the Mater Christi School polling place.

City attorney Eileen Blackwood says Dumont has it wrong.

In a statement emailed to reporters on the evening prior to the press event, Blackwood said, “Burlington’s city charter trumps the general state law on this issue.” Burlington’s charter vests budget-making authority solely with the city council, she notes. Airport spending therefore could not be directly blocked by the city’s voters, Blackwood says.

Dumont (pictured) responded on Tuesday that it’s Blackwood who’s got it wrong.

Gun control might be a non-starter under Montpelier's golden dome this year, but that's not stopping voters in a half-dozen Upper Valley towns from weighing in on the issue themselves.

At least six towns in the region are considering a largely symbolic resolution that instructs federal and state lawmakers to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, require criminal background checks for every gun sold in the United States, and make gun trafficking a federal crime with real penalties for "straw purchasers," or those who purchase arms for those barred from doing so.

It's a proposition that voters in Hartland approved this morning after a tense but mostly civil Town Meeting Day floor debate about the possible merits or perils of gun control. While plenty of residents weighed in with their skepticism about the resolution — criticizing it as vague, unnecessary and a waste of time — the supporters ultimately carried the day.

"I'm tired of doing nothing, and I'm tired of our legislators being intimidated by a small, small lobby group with a lot of money," said Michael Heaney.

The Vermont inn that made headlines for refusing to host a same-sex wedding reception is campaigning for a new title: The Wildflower Inn in Lyndonville is vying for the "readers' choice" award for favorite New England family resort on About.com. And so far it's winning: As of today, it's 14 points ahead of the other four nominees in the polls. 

Asked whether the inn's family-friendly reputation extends to same-sex families, owner Jim O'Reilly says, "Oh, absolutely. The thing that came out about the wedding thing has nothing to do with our families that visit with us, whether they’re same-sex or heterosexual. We treat them all, everybody, the same."

"The wedding thing" refers to the lawsuit that lesbian couple Ming and Kate Linsley brought against the Wildflower Inn after the owners refused, in 2010, to host the couple's same-sex wedding reception. The lawsuit resulted in a settlement last August in which the Wildflower Inn agreed to pay the Vermont Human Rights Commission a $10,000 civil penalty and donate $20,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the couple a charitable trust established by the couple.

The inn's owners also said they would no longer host weddings or receptions at the Lyndonville getaway. 

The owners, Jim and Mary O'Reilly, cropped up again in the news a few weeks later: They appeared in a television ad in Maine opposing same-sex marriage. The Portland Press Herald called the ad "misleading" and "mostly false", because the innkeepers were sued for breaking a 1992 antidiscrimination law, not Vermont's 2009 same-sex marriage law.  

Happy Monday, politics geeks! Here's what's happening in Vermont news and politics this week — a slow one with the legislature on Town Meeting break.

Got a newsworthy event for next week's calendar? Email by Friday to submit.

Monday, March 4

• Gov. Peter Shumlin is in Rutland all morning, starting with a legislative breakfast with business leaders at 7:45, and ending with a tour of the Strafford Technical Center at 11:30.
• What could be more political than maple syrup? Not much — at least in Vermont. Today, Vermont Public Radio's "Vermont Edition" tackles the coming changes to the maple grading system Vermont uses in a segment called "Goodbye Fancy, Hello Golden Color." Listen live. 

Rest of the week after the break...

Unseating City Councilor Sharon Bushor would qualify as one of the biggest upsets in Burlington's recent political history. But some civic activists in Ward 1 insist that Democratic challenger Tom Derenthal just might be able to prevent Bushor, an independent, from winning an unprecedented 13th term on the council.

In her 26 years of service, Bushor has built a reputation for diligence, responsiveness to her constituents and long-windedness. Having acquired the status of an institution, she has faced only token or write-in opposition in recent re-election bids. But Bushor did have to battle an aggressive Democratic opponent in 2005 when the hard-charging Ed Adrian came within 41 votes of ending her tenure.

Eight years later, there's talk of "Sharon fatigue" on the part of some voters. Bushor, 65, hears that herself as she makes the campaign rounds. "People say you've been around a while, but that doesn't mean you're devoid of new ideas," she said in an interview five days prior to the March 5 council election.

Peg Boyle Single, a Democrat and member of the Ward 1 Neighborhood Planning Assembly steering committee, expresses the time-for-a-change sentiment. "Sharon has been on the council quite a while and some of the issues facing the ward have persisted during that time," Single says. Derenthal, she adds, "is bringing a new perspective on those issues."

The House Agriculture Committee this morning approved the GMO labeling bill by a vote of 8-3. H.112 would make Vermont the first state to require food manufacturers to label products that contain genetically modified ingredients.

As reported in this week's print edition, GMO labeling has broad support among grassroots activists and legislators (a third of lawmakers have signed on as cosponsors for the House bill and its Senate counterpart). But the GMO bill still faces an uphill climb. Lobbying from the biotech industry, not to mention the looming threat of a potentially expensive court challenge, could hinder the bill's chances of success beyond the house ag committee.   

The marked-up bill heads next to the House Judiciary Committee. House Agriculture Committee chair Rep. Carolyn Partridge (D-Windham) says she'll be asking for an exemption to the mid-session crossover deadline when bills normally have to pass from the House to the Senate, and vice versa.

"We’ve really put together an excellent bill," says Partridge, a cosponsor of the bill. "I think it’s ultimately defensible when and if it goes to court."

Voting yes on the bill in the House Agriculture Committee were Reps. Carolyn Partridge (D-Windham), Will Stevens (I-Shoreham), John Bartholomew (D-Hartland), Cynthia Martin (D-Springfield), Kristina Michelsen (D-Hardwick), Tess Taylor (D-Barre), Tristan Toleno (D-Brattleboro) and Teo Zagar (D-Barnard). Voting no were Reps. Harvey Smith (R-New Haven), Dan Connor (D-Fairfield) and Richard Lawrence (R-Lyndonville).

"The committee did an excellent job identifying the key issues that indicate why the people of Vermont have a right to know how their food is produced," the bill's lead sponsor, Rep. Kate Webb (D-Shelburne), wrote in am email Friday. "We have a formidable opponent in the biotech industry. We believe we can ultimately prevail. Remember with David and Goliath, David won."

File illustration by Tim Newcomb

After a year of cross-cameral squabbling over the expired Violence Against Women Act, the U.S. House on Thursday put its seal of approval on the law's reauthorization.

For House Republicans, who have long opposed expanded protections for Native American and LGBT victims of domestic violence, the vote was an embarrassing, caucus-splitting retreat. And for Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), whose version of the bill now goes straight to the president, it was a big win.

Speaking on the Senate floor just after the House approved the legislation 286 to 138, Leahy said, "Having worked on this for a couple years, I am very happy that the Senate has done what it should do, the House has done what it should do, and perhaps we've taken — and I believe we've taken — a major step to protect women against violence."

Politically speaking, Thursday's vote was a little screwy. 

click to enlarge

OK, I mean, not that I think Gov. Peter Shumlin would run for president. Nor do I think he'd stand a chance. 

But during Shummy's jaunt to Washington last weekend, Politico's otherwise generally astute Jonathan Martin seemed to put Putney Pete on a short list of 2016 presidential contenders.

To be more precise, Martin pegged Shumlin as one of several Democratic governors who are "ambitious politicians boasting records that would probably play well with primary voters in 2016." Folks whose presidential ambitions would be stymied by another run by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Martin writes:

"[Martin] O’Malley is the second-term Maryland governor who has been perhaps the most open about his 2016 ambitions, but whose prospects are largely out of his hands as long as Clinton looms on the horizon. Count New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin and [Colorado Gov. John] Hickenlooper himself on that same roster of accomplished Democratic governors who are younger than the 65-year-old Clinton but could find themselves stuck in their state capitals for another decade-plus should she be elected president.

Later in the piece, Martin writes this:

Shumlin, without fully denying his own ambitions, was blunt about what Clinton meant for the Democratic race.

“Let’s be candid about this: So much depends on Hillary,” he said. “If Hillary runs, you’re going to see fewer candidates. If Hillary does not run, you’re going to see more candidates.”

Without fully denying his own ambitions?! OMG! Sounds like he's running for prez!

Um, not quite.

But at Shumlin's first press conference since his D.C. trip wound down, we couldn't resist giving Shummy a chance Wednesday to definitively put to rest such fanciful rumors.

And he did.