Author Archives: Peter Hirschfeld

Latest Shumlin land deal leaves seller feeling jilted

Posted on May 22, 2013 | Leave a comment

As his July 15 moving date nears, Jeremy Dodge’s seller’s remorse has begun to intensify.

Back on Nov. 7, when Dodge finalized the sale of his 16-acre homestead in bucolic East Montpelier, he believed the deal he cut with its buyer, Peter Shumlin, was the only way to avoid imminent ouster from the residence his now-deceased parents built 31 years ago.

He’d accumulated more than $17,000 in back taxes since inheriting the property in 2009, and the looming tax sale, Dodge says he believed at the time, would result in his eviction from the property.

So without a lawyer to represent him, Dodge signed a purchase-and-sale agreement in which Shumlin, the second-term Democratic governor of Vermont, acquired the property for $58,000 — less than a quarter of the $233,700 for which the homestead was then appraised.

“I could not afford a lawyer,” Dodge said. “And (Shumlin) said we’d just use his lawyers.”

The sale price included $9,000 representing the value of the rent Shumlin said he was saving Dodge by allowing him to remain in the home from November through July, and a $9,000 “seller repair credit” — money Dodge won’t get if he hasn’t upgraded the condition of the property by the middle of next month.

“I don’t have nothing bad to say about him, but yeah, I got ripped off, plain and simple,” Dodge said Tuesday. “I wish it had turned out differently. I wish that I had let it go to tax auction.”

An East Montpelier town lister has since lowered the appraised value to $140,000, owing to the decrepit condition of the house in which Dodge has lived since before his parents died.

In an emailed statement late Tuesday, Shumlin said the sale price was fair.

“I believe $58,000 was a fair price, and we both agreed to it,” Shumlin said. “The house is in terrible shape; it will have to be knocked down or totally gutted.”

As for Dodge’s lack of counsel, Shumlin said he urged him last year to remedy that.

“He didn’t have a lawyer on this sale,” Shumlin said. “But I did recommend it.”

But the 53-year-old Dodge, a parolee with a criminal rap sheet that includes convictions for drugs and domestic assault, says that if he knew last year what he knows now, he would have been able to avoid losing the house, or at least sold it more profitably.

Check out the full story, plus pictures of Dodge and his property and links to relevant documents,  at: http://www.timesargus.com/article/20130522/NEWS03/705229893

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House, Senate poised to withdraw controversial tax plan, pave way for copacetic adjournment

Posted on May 13, 2013 | Leave a comment
Speaker of the House Shap Smith

Shap Smith

House and Senate Democrats look poised to end their veto showdown with Gov. Peter Shumlin by withdrawing an income-tax overhaul that would have delivered tax cuts to more than 200,000  middle-class Vermonters.

Neither House Speaker Shap Smith nor Senate President John Campbell have made any definitive announcements today about the status of their battle with Shumlin over the tax reform proposal. But in an interview on WDEV’s the Mark Johnson show this morning, Smith seemed to indicate that he didn’t want to escalate the standoff.

“It’s going to be a good proposal if it’s passed this year, or if it’s passed (next year),” Smith said.

Since the impacts of the reform proposal wouldn’t begin taking effect until fiscal year 2015 anyway, Smith said, “our feeling is we can still do it (next) January if we decide not to go forward with it today.”

The tone telegraphed the withdrawal of the proposal – an official announcement will be coming later this afternoon – a concession that would signal the end of a late-session battle that has pitted the Democratic governor against a House and Senate controlled by members of his own party.

Smith and Campbell had sought to cap itemized deductions, and used the resulting revenue to bring down marginal income-tax rates across the board. The changes would have had the effect of increasing taxes on about 15,000 wealthier tax filers, and decreased obligations modestly for about 240,000 people, mostly in low- and middle-class tax brackets.

Janet Ancel

Janet Ancel

Rep. Janet Ancel, chairwoman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, championed the plan as a revenue-neutral way of delivering tax relief to working Vermonters. Shumlin, however, said the proposal violated the no-new-taxes pledge he entered into with lawmakers last week, and made it clear he would veto the bill if it made it to his desk.

Shumlin also criticized the plan for coming so late in the session, and said it hadn’t been sufficiently vetted.

Smith this morning said that if there’s going to be a fight over the proposal, he wants it to be over the merits of the policy, not over whether it came too late in the session, or whether it reneges on any deals.

“We don’t think something that’s pretty good policy should be clouded by technical arguments, and we don’t want to fight about anything other than, is this a good idea?” Smith said.

In the months between now and the second half of the biennium, Smith said, he believes he can help Shumlin learn to appreciate the rightness of the House and Senate’s thinking.

“We think this is a fair tax policy that’s going to lower taxes for over 200,000 Vermonters, and we think we can take the time and convince the governor that this makes sense to do,” Smith said. “We think this is something the governor and the Legislature should be out championing, not fighting about.”

The dispute over tax policy may the most contentious issue standing between lawmakers and a Tuesday adjournment, but it isn’t the only area of disagreement in the building.

An effort to insert into the budget language previously stricken from a bill dealing with mountaintop wind development has tripped up negotiations around the $5.3 billion bill. House lawmakers are trying to desperately to salvage pieces of an education-funding reform bill that has stalled in the Senate. And the House floor this evening – and perhaps well into the night – will have one last debate over an end-of-life-choices bill that appears all but certain to win final passage.

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Senate says ‘no’ to ‘death with dignity,’ but hope for deal still in the works

Posted on May 7, 2013 | 1 Comment

When the Senate finally took up “death with dignity” Tuesday evening, it was to be the final chapter of a wrenching debate that has filled House and Senate galleries this year with Vermonters both for and against the end-of-life-choices bill.

But just as a 15-16 vote seemed to signal the death of “physician-assisted suicide,” yet another surprise twist materialized that will make this story last at least another day.

Sen. Peter Galbraith, one of the two swing votes who sided with opponents of the legislation Tuesday night, pulled Sen. Claire Ayer aside immediately after his vote. The two huddled in private, and Ayer returned to the floor voicing new hope for compromise.

The body agreed to postpone action on the legislation until Wednesday morning – a vote that needed Galbraith’s support to carry – and lawmakers will give it another go tomorrow.

Neither Galbraith nor Ayer would offer much insight into the contents of the compromise.

“It’s something that we’d talked about in the past, that we’ll be willing to look at now that it might keep this alive,” Ayer said.

Asked what the package might look like, Ayer wouldn’t say.

“I know what’s in it and I have seen the pieces,” Ayer said. “It’s something that we weren’t going to do, but it’s something we can get behind as a last resort.”

Galbraith was equally cryptic in his brief remarks after the floor session tonight.

“All will be revealed in due course,” Galbraith said. “Or nothing will be revealed. I’m not saying there’s anything in the bag.”

Galbraith had said he’d bee willing to vote in favor of Oregon-style legislation, which mandates a series of steps patients and doctors by which doctors must abide before prescribing a lethal dose of medication. But Galbraith said patients and physicians shouldn’t be forced to go through that process if they don’t want to. And he said any legislation he approves will have to allow for off-the-record transactions between patients and doctors that offers criminal immunity without enforcing state-mandated procedural requirements.

The Senate is scheduled to reconvene Wednesday morning at 9 a.m., however the end-of-life bill won’t be taken up until at least 11 a.m.

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Shumlin, Smith Campbell seal deal over tax bill

Posted on May 7, 2013 | 1 Comment

Read their lips: “no new taxes.”

Gov. Peter Shumlin, House Speaker Shap Smith and Senate President John Campbell this afternoon said they’re choosing budget cuts over tax increases, and will scrap entirely House and Senate revenue bills that would have upped taxes on everything from the incomes of the rich to the sales of bottled water.

“We’ve been having conversations over last several days about the best way to bring closure to this session, while accomplishing the greater goals we set out at the beginning, which is to do everything in our power to find ways to create jobs and raise incomes for Vermonters that have jobs,” Shumlin said. “And we have come to an agreement on revenue and the budget that will allow us to leave this session without raising additional taxes.”

Shumlin’s comments came during a press conference in his ceremonial office in the Statehouse, where he, Smith and Campbell delivered news of the compromise to the media.

Smith said the decision will necessitate $10 million cuts from the smallest version of the fiscal year 2014 budget – delivered by the Senate.

“It’s not easy work, but we can do it,” Smith said. “And we can do it while making sure the rest of the session is very productive.”

All three men were silent on the issue of which line items would be cut to close the $10 million gap.

The agreement on taxes solves the most significant disagreement between the House, Senate and administration, and paves the way for a Saturday adjournment.

 

 

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House fuels up for long night of debate over end-of-life choices

Posted on April 30, 2013 | 1 Comment

House lawmakers this evening rejected a last-ditch attempt to postpone action on “death with dignity,” paving the way for an hours-long debate that will likely end with the preliminary approval of legislation that would allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication to terminally ill patients.

 

An amendment offered at the outset of this highly anticipated floor debate sought to delay indefinitely action on a bill known here as “S.77.” The measure failed by a vote of 51-90, after which House Speaker Shap Smith declared an hour-long recess for dinner.

 

When debate resumes at 7:30 p.m., lawmakers will consider a slew of amendments, most of them authored by opponents of the legislation. Rep. Mary Morrissey, a Republican from Bennington, for instance, wants medical examiners to have to list the lethal dose of medication as the immediate cause of death for people who choose to avail themselves of what critics call “physician assisted suicide.”

 

Rep. Duncan Kilmartin, a Newport Republican, wants to spend $250,000 to create a “special investigations unit” at the Attorney General’s Office, where a prosecutor and investigator would work full-time probing for abuses of the new statute.

 

“People who are well-educated and or well-heeled may have the resources to make very informed decisions,” Kilmartin said during a Democratic caucus earlier today. But when you look at what constitutes an informed decision, there are many among us without those resources, either monetary or (intellectual).”

 

Rep. George Till, a Jericho Democrat and the lone medical doctor in the Legislature, will offer an amendment that would create a tiered medical license system – one for physicians who would agree to aid in hastening the death of a suffering patient, one for those who would not.

 

Till said a significant number of doctors have ethical issues with the practice, and “don’t want to be painted with a broad brush as part of a physician community that performs this.”

 

Till’s amendment calls for a signifying decal to be placed on the medical licenses of doctors who have said they would consider prescribing the lethal dose.

 

And Rep. Doug Gage, a Rutland Republican, will offer an amendment that would require a doctor to be present at the time the patient takes the medication. Gage’s proposal would also institute a host of record-keeping requirements, including the number of seconds between the moment a patient takes the medication, and moment they lose consciousness.

 

Democrats representing the committees of jurisdiction on this issue – human services and the judiciary - summarily dismissed the need for each of the amendments earlier today, and they all are expected to fail later tonight. Rep. Linda Waite-Simpson, an Essex Junction Democrat, said Gage’s request for physician oversight would make for an “unnecessary intrusion into a very private and sad time for a family.”

 

As for the use of a stop clock between ingestion and death, Waite-Simpson said, “I don’t know why anybody would want to know that information. It does not seem pertinent.”

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In 8-3 vote, House Judiciary Committee approves end-of-life bill

Posted on April 26, 2013 | 2 Comments

An end-of-life bill that had been dismantled on the Senate floor earlier this year has been pieced back together in the House, where the judiciary committee this afternoon approved legislation that would allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication to terminally ill patients.

The Oregon-style “death with dignity” bill heads to the House floor next Tuesday, where it to have the votes needed to pass the full body. The legislation will then head back over to the Senate floor.

Supporters are hoping for better luck there this time around than they had in February, when a 21-page bill was scrapped on the Senate floor in favor of a three-paragraph provision that essentially indemnifies doctors for knowingly supplying suffering patients with doses of pharmaceuticals sufficient to end their lives.

Sen. Peter Galbraith, the Windham County Democrat who authored the amendment, said the language satisfied the desires of people seeking control over end-of-life decisions without creating a state-sanctioned process by which physicians can abet the hastening of death.

Galbraith’s amendment passed, thanks in part to votes from senators opposed to any kind of end-of-life bill passing this year. But the original bill has been restored in the House, where lawmakers said the Galbraith amendment opened the door to abuse by eliminating the safeguards in the original bill.

Those safeguards, according to Rep. Ann Pugh, chairwoman of the House Committee on Human Services, “ensure people are competent and capable and at the end of their lives, and that they’re not under duress.”

“And it brings a practice that many say is happening already into an open and transparent process,” Pugh said.

While the bill will almost certainly win approval on the House floor next week, its path through the Senate isn’t so clear. For a more in-depth look at the political and procedural hurdles awaiting the legislation, check out Sunday’s editions of The Times Argus and Rutland Herald.

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Conservative super PAC back in action with mailings that hit Dems over new taxes

Posted on April 19, 2013 | Comments Off

The conservative super PAC “Vermonters First” is venturing back into legislative politics, this time with a statewide mailing that hammers Democratic lawmakers for proposed increases on a slew of taxes.

Earlier this year, Vermonters First, which spent about $1 million on behalf of Republican candidates during the last election cycle, aired a series of 15-second television ads calling Dems on the carpet for a proposed increase in the gas tax.

The group, funded almost exclusively (as of the latest campaign-finance disclosure deadlines) by Burlington heiress Lenore Broughton, is out now with glossy tri-folds, which began arriving Tuesday in the mailboxes of voters in districts with Democrats in the House.

“(Your representative here) just voted to go on a massive taxing spree!” the mailing says.

A photograph of a shopping cart filled with a pair of jeans, gas can, miniature house, cup of soda and a burger symbolizes the suite of provisions in three revenue bills passed by the Vermont House so far this yaer.

The House’s $23 million revenue bill would eliminate the sales tax exemption on soft drinks, candy, bottled water and items of clothing that cost more than $110. The legislation also raises the meals tax for a year, and would raise income taxes on rich people. An education-funding bill passed in February, meanwhile, would send property tax rates up by 5 cents.

“The high cost of living in Vermont is going to get worse if Democratic (your rep’s name here) gets her way,” the mailer says.

The coup de grace: a perforated tear-off, onto which Vermonters First has already printed the home address of the Democratic rep, that encourages voters to “write your own personal message” to the officeholder.

Broughton cried foul last year when a group of single-payer advocates picketed outside her Burlington home in protest of her media blitzes.

Vermonters First’s lone staff, Tayt Brooks, didn’t respond to requests for comment, as usual. But the mailings indicate that Broughton is as committed as ever to ending one-party rule, and is willing to spend a lot of money to get it done.

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Vt. GOP struggle: Go moderate? Or stay the course of conservative?

Posted on April 17, 2013 | 3 Comments
Phill Scott

Phil Scott

They’ve descended to super-minority status in both the House and Senate, and lay claim to just one of Vermont’s six statewide offices.

By the numbers at least, the once-dominant Vermont Republicans have reached a new low in their years-long fall from grace. Their fight for the future, however, is being waged not with the Democrats that so embarrassed them in the last two election cycles, but among fellow Republicans vying against each other for control of the party’s organizational apparatus.

The emergence of two factions — one led by Vermont Republican Party Chairman Jack Lindley, the other by Lt. Gov. Phil Scott — has pitted the old-guard GOP against a cadre of upstart reformists looking to put some distance between themselves and the Republican National Committee.

As a group led by Scott pieces together a statewide re-branding strategy aimed at picking up the centrists and Independents he says have been turned off by the party in recent years, Lindley and others are beginning to push back against a plan that would, in Lindley’s words, “turn its back on the national party.”

“I’m not about to go down the road of trying to have a party in Vermont that’s Democrat-lite,” Lindley said in an interview last week.
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Dottie Deans elected to serve as Democratic Party’s new chairwoman

Posted on April 15, 2013 | Comments Off

The Vermont Democratic Party has a new chairman.
The Democrats’ state committee on Saturday voted unanimously in favor of Dottie Deans, who replaces outgoing chairman Jake Perkinson. Deans, of North Pomfret, most recently served as vice-chairwoman of the party, and said she’s eager to begin preparing for the 2014 election cycle.

“I look forward to continuing our work concentrating on our
biennial reorganization in our towns, counties, and state as well as
supporting our elected representatives here and in Washington and
preparing for the 2014 elections,” Deans said in a statement.

According to a party release, Deans is a former elementary school teacher who began her climb through party ranks as town chairwoman in Pomfret. Deans is also known for her local HIV/AIDS Service organization, H2RC, where she served as a volunteer, staff member, and most recently stepped down as the board chairwoman, according to the release.

“As a teacher I know that an integral part of learning is listening and
staying focused on the tasks at hand,” Deans said. “I will concentrate on working with all Democrats to grow and strengthen our outreach and presence
throughout our state.”

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Administration wants to cut jobs of people helping welfare beneficiaries find them

Posted on April 9, 2013 | 8 Comments

Gov. Peter Shumlin made headlines in January when he proposed a five-year lifetime cap on welfare benefits. But lawmakers only recently found out that he also wants to eliminate 12 positions dedicated to helping welfare recipients find the jobs they need to get off the program.

Commissioner of Children and Families David Yacovone said Tuesday that he wants to divert $1.2 million away from job-placement services for Reach Up beneficiaries and toward substance-abuse counseling for the same population. Yacovone said that even after the cuts, his agency will retain a robust in-house employment-services division.

“But what we don’t have is enough mental health and substance abuse services,” Yacovone said. “The folks that we’re asking to go to work need mental health and substance abuse help, and we haven’t been providing that.”

The cuts would phase in over two years- six positions would be gone beginning fiscal year 2014, and the remainder would disappear the year after that.

Advocates for low-income Vermonters say the proposed changes couldn’t come at a worse time. More than 700 Vermont families later this year would face a reduction in benefits, or the elimination of them altogether, if the Democratic governor’s plan to impose a 60-month lifetime cap wins approval.

According to data provided by the Vermont State Employees Association, each position slated for elimination has a caseload of 40 to 60 welfare recipients. Christopher Curtis, a staff attorney at Vermont Legal Aid, said the state ought to be ramping up job-placement services in advance of the time limits, not paring them down.

“To say that the Reach Up plan at this point is half-baked would be to suggest that the oven is even on,” said Curtis, a staunch critic of the proposed 60-month cap. “The goal of the program is to help people successfully graduate from Reach Up and get back to full and stable employment. And that’s exactly what these employees they want to eliminate are doing.”

For more on this story, check out tomorrow’s editions of The Times Argus and Rutland Herald.

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New strain of March Madness hits Statehouse

Posted on March 21, 2013 | 3 Comments

Basketball fans aren’t the only ones suffering from March Madness this week.

Rep. Heidi Scheuermann today began handing out copies of a tournament bracket that pits 32 taxes against each other in a race for revenue dominance.

It’s a fun jab at the very real deliberations going on inside the House Committee on Ways and Means right now, where lawmakers are winnowing a slate of revenue options that range from sales taxes on clothing, candy and bottled water to the elimination of capital gains exemptions and the home-mortgage interest deduction.

Scheuermann, Stowe Republican who sits on the House Committee on Commerce, has even seeded the various possibilities. A tax on items sold on vending machines earned a two-seed, and will look to advance to the second round with a win over the seventh-seeded tax on car washes. In anther first-round match up, a tax on break-open tickets will look to pull the small upset over a $15,000 cap on home-mortgage interest deductions.

No cash pool unfortunately, but the tax bracketology has made for a welcome distraction. For lawmakers on ways and means, any lightheartedness will be short-lived as they turn their focus to the very real task of coming up with a source for the $20 million in new revenues needed for next year’s budget.

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Condos stays in-house for new elections chief

Posted on March 19, 2013 | Comments Off

Vermont will soon have a new elections chief.

Longtime Director of Elections and Campaign Finance Kathy Scheele is stepping down at the end of March. Secretary of State Jim Condos announced today that he’s promoting Will Senning to take over the position.

Born and raised in Duxbury, Senning, who holds a JD from Vermont Law School, has worked in the state elections office since 2011. Condos said in a release that under Scheele’s guidance, Senning has become well acquainted with the laws and responsibilities involved with the elections process.

“Will has built a strong relationship with our town clerks and other local election officials,” Condos said in a written statement. “He believes that the Elections Division should work as a team with Vermont’s local officials to serve their citizens as they take part in our critical and important elections process.”

 

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Single moms can’t afford Shumlin cuts, says Vermont Commission on Women

Posted on March 14, 2013 | 6 Comments

In a somewhat unusual public foray into legislative politics, the Vermont Commission on Women this afternoon issued a statement opposing Gov. Peter Shumlin’s plan for welfare reform.

The 16-member commission, which bills itself as a “non-partisan state agency dedicated to legislative, economic, social, and political fairness,” said it weighed the matter carefully before determining the plan would have a disproportionate impact on single mothers.

Shumlin has proposed a five-year cap on welfare benefits, a cost-cutting measure he says will encourage impoverished Vermonters to get jobs. The move would shave about $6 million annually in human services costs, and kick about 1,200 families off the welfare rolls beginning in October.

In a release, the Vermont Commission on Women said the “overwhelming majority of Vermont households receiving this cash assistance are women, and limits to this program will disproportionately affect female-headed families with children.”

“A number of facts lead the VCW to this conclusion,” the release said. “The lives of these families are complex. They often include challenges, such as lack of transportation, education and child care; mental health concerns; care of a child with a disability; or trauma from having survived domestic violence.”

In a written statement, the commission’s executive director, Cary Brown, said Shumlin’s proposal targets those that can least afford it.

“These are Vermont’s most fragile and vulnerable families,” Brown said. “The Commission believes that budgetary concerns should not be balanced on the backs of those least likely to be able to function without government assistance.”

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UPDATED: Perkinson out as Democratic Party chair

Posted on March 13, 2013 | Comments Off

Jake Perkinson, who’s milling about the Statehouse cafeteria this morning in the wake of announcing his resignation as chairman of the Vermont Democratic Party, says a confluence of business and family matters has compelled him to call it quits.

He said he leaves under nothing but good terms, and that it’s really about freeing up time for him to spend more time with his kids and pursue some professional opportunities.

Perkinson said he also wants to allow talent within the party to churn through the ranks, and that by leaving now, he prevents the kind of hierarchical “logjam” that comes with longer-serving chairs.

The party this morning announced the imminent departure of Jake Perkinson. He’ll step down March 16, according to a press release, when he’ll be replaced on an interim basis by vice-chairwoman Dottie Deans.

Perkinson has been with the party for a decade, and helped orchestrate its near sweep of Republicans in the most recent election cycle.

We’ll have more on Perkinson’s tenure in tomorrow’s editions of the Times Argus and Rutland Herald.

Below, the release:

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Critics say campaign finance bill has gone off the rails

Posted on March 12, 2013 | Comments Off

Elections watchdogs say a bill aimed at tempering the influence of money in politics would only exacerbate the problem.

The Senate Committee on Government Operations has spent much of the first two months of the session on a wide-ranging campaign-finance bill, S.82, that originally sought heightened disclosure requirements in the elections process.

The bill comes in the wake of a 2012 election cycle that saw super PACs make their debut in Vermont. Lawmakers from all three parties seemed to agree that while the Legislature can’t curb the flow of  money into these new entities, they can at least help voters follow the money.

But changes to the bill in recent weeks have drawn fire from elections watchdogs, who say the legislation would actually intensify the stream of cash flowing into the elections process.

At issue is a proposed increase in the size of allowable donations to candidates and political parties, who would, under the new rules, be allowed to receive larger contributions from their donors.

Proponents say the higher limits are a necessary evil aimed at helping candidates counteract the impact of super PACs, which aren’t bound by limits on the contributions they can accept. Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, disagrees with the tactic.

“It’s like saying that I object to the amount of pollution that a large factory is discharging into the river, and my solution is to allow every other factory to increase its pollution in order to achieve parity,” Burns said in a release. “This arms race mentality only increases the problem of money in politics, it doesn’t solve it.”

Political candidates currently can accept no more than $2,000 from a single donor in a two-year campaign cycle. The Senate bill, up for a committee vote later this afternoon, would increase that figure to $5,000. The bill would allow candidates to accept up to $7,000 from political action committees, and $85,000 from political parties.

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