Friday, January 29, 2016
After meeting with Federal Bureau of Investigation agents Friday to discuss allegations against Attorney General Bill Sorrell, the Vermont State Police announced that “no state-based investigation will be commenced.”
Left unsaid was whether federal officials would launch their own review. Paul Holstein, chief counsel for the Albany division of the FBI, which has jurisdiction over Vermont, declined to comment.
Last week, a panel of 11 state’s attorneys released the results of a nearly nine-month investigation into a series of allegations made by Vermont Republican Party vice chair Brady Toensing and based on reporting by Seven Days and the New York Times. The panel dismissed several of Toensing’s six allegations but referred the most serious to the state police.
That allegation centers around a Washington, D.C., dinner Sorrell attended in December 2013, during which representatives of a Texas law firm gave him an envelope stuffed with $10,000 worth of campaign donations. At the same dinner, according to a sworn affidavit signed by Sorrell, the firm asked him to file suit against the oil and gas industry. Sorrell later did so and hired the Texas firm, Baron & Budd, to represent the state.
VSP spokesman Scott Waterman said Wednesday that Friday’s meeting with the feds was being held “to determine if an investigation is warranted and who has jurisdiction to perform the investigation if one occurs.” As Seven Days reported in December, state and federal officials have previously met to discuss the matter.
Tags: Bill Sorrell , Brady Toensing , Vermont State Police , Federal Bureau of Investigation , Image , Web Only
Thursday, January 28, 2016
These days, Sanders is getting pretty close to the line.
On Thursday, four days before the Iowa caucuses, the senator released a new ad ostensibly criticizing the investment bank Goldman Sachs for its role in the 2008 financial crisis. But the real target of the ad is clear: Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who has accepted $2.2 million in speaking fees from Goldman over the past decade.
"How does Wall Street get away with it? Millions in campaign contributions and speaking fees," a narrator intones. "Our economy works for Wall Street because it’s rigged by Wall Street. And that’s the problem. As long as Washington is bought and paid for, we can’t build an economy that works for people."
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , Hillary Clinton , presidential campaign , Wall Street , government reform , Image , Recommended Reading , Video , Web Only
First disclosed in this week’s Fair Game political column, the email pertains to a September 2014 press conference organized by then-lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Dean Corren and attended by Sorrell. Standing in front of McCaffrey's Sunoco in Burlington, the two called for legislation requiring gasoline distributors to disclose pricing information to the attorney general’s office.
After the event, the head of a local business group raised concerns about Sorrell’s participation, prompting the AG to reply, “I care about the issue, not to mention the $4k a whole seller gave a prior opponent …”
The “whole seller” in question appears to be Skip Vallee, a political lightning rod whose Colchester-based business, R.L. Vallee, Inc., has been accused of driving up gas prices in Chittenden County. Now the Vermont chairman of Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) presidential campaign, Vallee has contributed generously to Republican candidates over the years, including President George W. Bush, who in 2005 appointed him ambassador to Slovakia.
In August 2012, Vallee and his wife, Denise, donated $4,000 to Chittenden County State’s Attorney T.J. Donovan’s Democratic primary campaign against Sorrell. Though Donovan came close to unseating Sorrell, he ended up losing the election by 714 votes, just 11 days after the Vallees made their contributions.
Tags: Bill Sorrell , Skip Vallee , Brady Toensing , Image , Web Only
Problem is, the Senate chose an entirely different path last week — to repeal the thresholds altogether — and its leaders aren't budging.
"We're standing strong," Senate Education Committee Chair Ann Cummings (D-Washington) said Wednesday.
Though he characterized himself as "eternally optimistic" that the two bodies could reach accord, House Speaker Shap Smith (D-Morristown) conceded late Wednesday that he had no idea how they would.
"If I knew the path forward right now, we would be on it," he said. "But I think it's going to take a fair amount of work — the next couple days and maybe a week."
Time is not on their side. The uncertainty has left local school boards wondering how much money they can spend, even as they race to complete their budgets ahead of Town Meeting Day.
Tags: Act 46 , education , property taxes , spending threshold , Image , Web Only
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
The Montpelier native spent more than 11 years in Washington, D.C., before moving to Burlington last fall. He argued Wednesday that he meets the constitutional residency requirement for a lieutenant gubernatorial candidate: One must have lived in the state for four years prior to the election.
“Residency is always a mix of physical presence and intent to return,” Graff told the Senate Government Operations Committee. “Physical presence alone is a poor measurement of where someone might consider home.”
A better measure, Graff argued, is one based on where a person is registered to vote or drive a car, something a person can legally do in only one state at a time.
The 34-year-old former editor of Politico Magazine announced in November that he was moving from Washington to Burlington and considering running for lieutenant governor as a Democrat. Secretary of State Jim Condos and Assistant Attorney General Michael Duane have indicated they don’t think Graff meets the constitution's four-year residency requirement.
Tags: Garrett Graff , lieutenant governor , Vermont Constitution , Vermont legislature , Jeanette K. White , Image , Web Only
The spokesman, Scott Waterman, confirmed that his agency had "received a complaint of alleged criminal misconduct" from a panel of state's attorneys charged with investigating six allegations against Sorrell. He said Friday's meeting had been scheduled "to determine if an investigation is warranted and who has jurisdiction to perform the investigation if one occurs."
As Seven Days reported in this week's Fair Game political column, Waterman told the newspaper Tuesday that his agency had already launched such an investigation. On Wednesday, he told Seven Days that he had been mistaken and that the state police had not yet done so. He attributed the error to internal miscommunication at the VSP.
"We are not investigating at this time," Waterman said Wednesday. "We are going to be consulting with the FBI over the next couple of days because there's a question of jurisdiction."
Tags: Bill Sorrell , Scott Waterman , Brady Toensing , Vermont State Police , Federal Bureau of Investigation , Image , Web Only
Rep. Chris Pearson (P-Burlington) said the bill would increase the fairness of the school tax by asking higher-income Vermonters to pay the same share of their pay as middle-income property owners. Vermonters with $100,000 in household income now pay about 3 percent of their wages in property taxes, compared to 0.5 percent for households with income of $1 million, he said.
“We believe we have a way to make our school funding more equitable and, at the same time, give most Vermonters a break on their property taxes,” said Sen. Anthony Pollina (D/P-Washington), sponsor of the Senate version of the bill.
Currently, the income-based system covers only taxpayers with household incomes of $90,000 or less and only for a house and two acres. Residential property owners with more than two acres pay an additional amount based on the property’s value.
Tags: School property tax , Rep. Christopher Pearson , Sen. Anthony Pollina , Sen. Tim Ashe , Rep. Janet Ancel , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
"The President and Sen. Sanders first discussed this meeting last December when Sen. Sanders attended the Congressional Holiday Ball," White House press secretary John Earnest said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. "The two will meet privately in the Oval Office, and there will be no formal agenda."
The confab comes just days after Obama threw shade at the Vermonter in an interview with Politico, dismissing him as nothing more than a "bright, shiny object" in the campaign to succeed him. The president spoke more favorably about his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who is battling Sanders for the Democratic nomination.
Though Obama campaigned for Sanders in Vermont in 2006 and Sanders returned the favor in 2008 and 2012, the two have never been close. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that in Sanders' 40 visits to the White House since Obama was elected president, visitor logs showed them meeting privately in the Oval Office just once, in December 2014.
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , presidential campaign , Barack Obama , White House , Hillary Clinton , presidential debate , Recommended Reading , Image , Web Only
Monday, January 25, 2016
"No, I don't think — I don't think that's true," Obama said. "I think Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long-shot and just letting loose. I think Hillary [Clinton] came in with the — both privilege and burden of being perceived as the frontrunner. And, as a consequence, you know, where they stood at the beginning probably helps to explain why the language sometimes is different."
During the 40-minute interview with Politico's Glenn Thrush, released Monday morning, Obama occasionally complimented Sanders.
"There's no doubt that Bernie has tapped into a running thread in Democratic politics that says: Why are we still constrained by the terms of the debate that were set by Ronald Reagan 30 years ago?" Obama said. "You know, why is it that we should be scared to challenge conventional wisdom and talk bluntly about inequality and, you know, be full-throated in our progressivism? And, you know, that has an appeal and I understand that."
But, at times, the president sounded a more dismissive tone.
"You know, you're always looking at the bright, shiny object that people don't, haven't seen before," he said, apparently referring to the senator from Vermont. "That's a disadvantage to [Clinton]. Bernie is somebody who —although I don't know as well because he wasn't, obviously, in my administration, has the virtue of saying exactly what he believes, and [with] great authenticity, great passion, and is fearless. His attitude is, 'I got nothing to lose.'"
Tags: Senator , Bernie Sanders , presidential campaign , Barack Obama , Recommended Reading , Image , Web Only
The state needs federal permission because two of the health insurance systems it wants to involve are federal programs — Medicare and Medicaid, which respectively cover the elderly and the poor. The state wants change to include commercial insurance, too.
The state is proposing to move from the current health care model that pays a fee for a service such as a blood test or a physical exam. In the new system, hospitals and doctors would receive set payments for their patient populations and have flexibility to provide appropriate medical care to prevent or manage patient health. The precise payment methodology has yet to be determined.
Monday’s briefing, featuring Gov. Peter Shumlin and Al Gobeille, chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, coincided with the state’s submission of preliminary terms and conditions for the waiver from federal regulations that Vermont seeks.
Tags: Gov. Peter Shumlin , Al Gobeille , Green Mountain Care Board , Medicare , Medicaid , Darcie Johnston , Guy Page , Image , Web Only