Monday, January 20, 2020
The Vermont Public Interest Research Group announced Saturday that it would form a separate nonprofit entity called VPIRG Votes to back candidates who share its members' concerns about the climate crisis.
“We’re getting off the sidelines,” VPIRG executive director Paul Burns said Monday in an interview with Seven Days. “The board just felt that we were no longer doing the best service for our members by voluntarily sitting out the [electoral] process.”
That’s a departure for a nonprofit organization founded in 1972 that has limited itself to lobbying lawmakers on consumer and environmental issues important to its 50,000 members, such as reducing water pollution, shifting to renewable energy and encouraging open government.
Tags: climate , elections , VPIRG , Paul Burns , PAC , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
A negotiating team made up of three senators and three representatives hammered out the deal during two days of what Rep. Tom Stevens (D-Waterbury) called “rough and tumble” negotiations.
While he was disappointed that a key disability insurance provision was not included in the bill, Stevens said he was nevertheless proud of the committee’s accomplishment.
“I think we have to start, and this is a great starting place,” Stevens said.
That theme — that the compromise was the beginning and not the end of the quest for agreement — ran through the remarks of the negotiating team.
Sen. Michael Sirotkin (D-Chittenden) said he wished they could have found ways to make the program stronger.
“We just had to deal with the realities of the building, at this point,” Sirotkin said. “We couldn’t get everything we wanted, but I do think this is a meaningful step.”
Tags: paid family leave , deal , veto , Web Only , Image
Rep. Jim McCullough (D-Williston) last week floated a bill to increase the pay of committee chairs and leaders of both the House and Senate by 20 percent. “Leadership has much greater responsibilities than the rank and file,” McCullough said. “That means more work.”
His bill, H.614, calls for bumps for the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate, both of whom already make more than their colleagues.
Regular members of the House and Senate earn $743 for each week of the legislative session. The typical session is 18 weeks, which results in annual pay around $13,372. They get annual pay raises tied to inflation rates.
Tags: legislature , salary , income , legislative pay , Web Only , Image
Friday, January 10, 2020
Referencing a similar program in Iceland, the Republican governor said the model has been shown to prevent drug use and improve academic and social outcomes.
“The evidence is clear,” he said during his State of the State address. "Kids who participate in afterschool activities and programs do better in school and in life than kids who don’t."
What Scott did not mention is how the state would pay for the plan — or that it’s not really a plan at all. Rather, it's a call for legislators to create a task force that could design a system that would be implemented years from now. His only two clear requests: the program be voluntary and not rely on any property taxes.
Tags: Phil Scott , afterschool programs , Phil Baruth , Web Only , Image
Thursday, January 9, 2020
“I’m here because I’m afraid I’m going to die!” two dozen people yelled in unison, disrupting Scott’s State of the State speech Thursday afternoon.
Wearing red shirts and holding “Climate Action Now!” banners, the protesters listened to Scott for less than a minute before they stood and began shouting slogans about the importance of responding to climate change.
“Climate change means famine in Vermont!” the protesters screamed from the back of the House chamber.
Scott, who was aware the protesters were likely to disrupt the speech, stood patiently at the dais. He attempted to break in after five minutes or so, but the protesters continued.
Tags: State of the State , protest , Phil Scott , climate , Web Only , Image
Climate protesters interrupted Gov. Phil Scott's State of the State address on Thursday afternoon, prompting a recess in the House chambers as capitol police detained 16 people.
The protesters sat quietly during the first several minutes of the governor's speech before standing and loudly chanting for action against the threat of climate change.
"We demand a people's assembly needed to achieve a just transition," they yelled — interspersing a refrain of "listen to the people" — "because we are unable to trust the government to do so!"
Scott waited while the demonstrators chanted for several minutes. He then returned to the microphone and tried to speak. The protesters were not finished, however, and resumed their chants.
Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman then called for the protesters to quiet down, and when they refused, he called a recess. Police then began escorting the demonstrators out of the chamber, and Scott delivered his address to the legislature.
The protest followed another climate demonstration outside the Statehouse on Thursday morning.
Vermont State Police spokesman Adam Silverman said that agency assisted Capitol Police Department officers and county sheriff's departments in the House chamber. One person, Henry Harris, 41, of Peacham, was arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct. He was due in court in Barre on a future date.
The others were released and given verbal no-trespass orders, Capitol Police Chief Matthew Romei said, meaning simply that they were ordered from the Statehouse for the day. Police simply took the minimum steps necessary to restore order, he said.
Tags: climate , activists , State of the State , Gov. Phil Scott , Web Only , Image
Issued last September, the 3-2 decision found that government agencies can charge members of the public for copies of records, but they cannot charge people for merely viewing the records.
Some officials — including Gov. Phil Scott and Attorney General T.J. Donovan — have interpreted the decision differently, prompting lawmakers to consider whether they need to "clarify" the legislature's intent of the public records law.
"This is more than just about one office or one agency or one department," Rep. Sarah Copeland Hanzas (D-Bradford) said during a Thursday hearing before the House Committee on Government Operations, which she chairs. "This is intended to be a look at what, if anything, do we think needs to be done to clarify the public's right to access the operations of its government."
Tags: public records , legislators , Jeanette White , Sarah Copeland Hanzas , TJ Donovan , Jim Condos , Web Only , Image
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
“We all agreed that finding a path forward to return the Retreat to fiscal stability was the goal,” Smith told Seven Days on Wednesday, hours after meeting with the center's executive team in Montpelier.
The negotiations followed a morning of testimony before the House Committee on Health Care, where legislators heard about the public showdown over funding between Smith's agency and the leaders of the state's largest inpatient health and addiction treatment center.
The Retreat's president and CEO, Louis Josephson, did not return a call for comment Wednesday night, and a message left on a number listed for the board's chair went unanswered.
Tags: Mike Smith , Agency of Human Services , Brattleboro Retreat , Web Only , Image
The Senate Judiciary Committee informally voted 3-2 Wednesday to recommend that the Senate override Scott’s June veto of the controversial legislation.
Committee chair Sen. Dick Sears (D-Bennington) said the protections in the bill are informed by the experiences of the hundreds of residents of his district who for years unwittingly drank groundwater contaminated by PFOA compounds from a former fabric coating plant.
“I want to make sure Vermonters don’t have to go through what the people are Bennington went through and are still going though,” Sears said after the vote.
Tags: PFOA , veto , override , Phil Scott , medical monitoring , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
But according to the House Ethics Panel, which released its annual report last week, disclosure forms for “multiple” legislators were not publicized by the last election. Multiple as in about 30, or a fifth of the House members, according to chair Rep. John Gannon (D-Wilmington), who called the revelation "concerning."
“When we learned of that fact, the panel decided to send a memo to those individuals and ask them to immediately take care of the problem,” Gannon said in an interview last Friday.
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