Our democracy is not safe
Rutland Herald | June 20, 2018
Sue Minter lost the last gubernatorial election to Phil Scott because she couldn’t keep the Democratic National Committee out of my mailbox. Phil Scott won because he ran a dignified campaign, in spite of his ridiculous “No New Taxes” pledge.
However, somewhere along the line, the conservative Republican national apparatus got to Phil Scott. Some of us saw it coming when he appointed Jason Gibbs as his chief of staff.
Vermont has very quietly become a battleground for the Koch Brothers ALEC organization and their national agenda. Don’t for a minute think otherwise.
The warning signs became obvious last year at this time when, without trying very hard, Phil bent the Democratic legislative leadership over backwards and they caved to his demand to burnish that campaign pledge with a 2-cent rollback on the statewide education property tax.
It sounded good if you didn’t look at it too hard but, in the end, all it accomplished was to kick the tax burden back on the towns. This year, we’re looking at the same play but this time, the governor’s office has adopted a page from the Republican National Committee playbook by claiming that he can balance the budget by using a future revenue stream to pay for it. This is an exercise in the economic theory known as “Magical Thinking.”
But there’s more at stake here than immediately meets the eye. Last week, a pop-up ad running on local newspaper websites featured a resolute looking Governor Scott and the message, “Democrats wanted to raise millions in new taxes. Phil Scott said NO.” The ad was sponsored by a Vermont political action committee operating from the Washington, D.C., street address of the Republican Governors Association. What a surprise.
If you think that as long as you’re tuned to VPR while you’re riding around in your Volvo or Subaru, that your democracy is safe, let me tell you, it isn’t.
The consolidation of schools under Act 46 is simply one overt symptom of a consolidation of power that is now underway in Vermont. It is an attack on the bedrock Vermont values embedded in our town meeting-style direct democracy. Start small, spin big. It’s already working on the national level. Let’s make sure it doesn’t gain traction here.
David M. Clark
Westmister
Can you do better?
The Times ArgusMay 15, 2018
In the topsy-turvy world that is Montpelier these days, no topic seems to generate as much heat and as little light as school funding. The fun began last year about this time when Gov. Phil Scott thought it might be politically expedient to actually overreach his “No New Taxes” campaign pledge with what, at first blush, looked like the almost irresistible topper of a two-cent cut in the statewide education property tax rate. Of course, on the QT and with the acquiescence of the legislative leadership, he plugged that yawning gap with what we politely refer to as “One Time Money” and this year, he wants to do it again.
Now, in order to throw John Q. Public off the scent, he needed a fall guy and the perfect fall guy was, of course, those pesky schools which were causing all the budget trouble in the first place. But even if the governor wanted excellent schools that would provide a highly trained workforce, that didn’t mean he actually wanted to pay for it.
Enter now the Vermont School Boards Association, which could see opportunity in all this, and when Phil Scott opined that it might be a good idea to have a statewide teacher health insurance plan, the VSBA and their conjoined Siamese twin, the Vermont Superintendents Association, said “Happy to help.” Or, it might just have been their ambitious leadership. What they got was burned, and in cozying up to Gov. Scott, not only did they throw every school board budget in Vermont under the bus, instead of being players, Phil Scott used them as chips.
Remarkably, it’s still their current thinking, or as VSBA Director Nicole Mace put it Wednesday night, “Have people at the local level (meaning the school boards) focus on what they’re experts in.” Which is apparently nothing. So, let this clodhopper from southern Vermont weigh in and just say, that if the operators in the state capitol think they can do a better job with a statewide plan than we’ve already done down here, where we’ve reigned in our budgets and negotiated Phil’s 80/20 health insurance split, then let ’em.
But, let’s make those premium obligations a state government responsibility at the same time, so we’ll really know what and who’s responsible for runaway school budgets.
Maybe it will turn out that the governor’s political apparatus can defy the laws of gravity, or maybe it can’t, and we’ll wind up finding out what the rest of the country already knows, which is that statewide teacher’s contracts lead to statewide teacher’s strikes.
David M. Clark
Westminster
Archived Articles:
November, 2018
"Act 46's end game:
Strip towns of control"
-Bennington Banner
Nov. 1, 2018
October, 2018
"Tick, tick, tick' goes Act 173"
-Rutland Herald
Oct. 30, 2018
"David Clark: A candid take
on the VSBA conference"
-VT Digger
Oct. 24, 2018
September, 2018
"Dismantling Democracy"
-Caledonian Record
Sept. 23, 2018
"Thieving from the Ed
property tax"
-Rutland Herald
Sept. 6, 2018
June, 2018
"Our democracy is not safe"
-Rutland Herald
June. 20, 2018
May, 2018
"Can you do better?"
-The Times Argus
May. 15, 2018
October, 2017
"Letter: VSBA says no to accountability"
-Brattleboro Reformer
Oct. 24, 2017
"Gutting Local Control"
-Rutland Herald
Oct. 19, 2017
June, 2017
"Double-crossed by governor"
-Rutland Herald
June 28, 2017
"Gutting local democracy"
-Rutland Herald
June 22, 2017
"Opinion: Governor's granstanding"
-Burlington Free Press
June 1, 2017
May, 2017
"Making a mess of teachers' health insurance"
-Eagle Times
May 21, 2017
April, 2017
"Act 46 is fundamentally flawed"
-Brattleboro Reformer, April 12, 2017
March, 2017
"A bunch of baloney"
–Brattleboro Reformer, March 1, 2017
"Not suitable for publication"
"The problem with Act 46"
-Eagle Times
March, 2017
February, 2017
"Act 46: the death knell of local control"
-Commons Online, February 22, 2017
Materials formerly available at
The Alliance of Vermont School Board Members (AVSBM) Website
