Because last Friday’s post was about something real (mis-classification of workers on construction jobs), and because the account originally scheduled for today needs some more reporting, let’s do the usual Friday house-keeping and web site info bit today.

First, let’s correct a small error made last Friday. As a reader who reads more carefully than this writer writes pointed out, a Form 1099 is not “the Internal Revenue Service form that freelance workers fill out.” It is the form the IRS sends to free-lancers letting them know that they have received a certain amount of income (and had darned well better report it).

Considering that the writer himself receives a few of these forms every winter, youda thunk he woulda got that straight, wountcha? But no.

A reader writes, anonymously, that the Department of Public Service is getting $23 million in federal stimulus money for energy efficiency grants and is going to decide all by itself how to spend it, with little or no public input.

And on top of that the Department does not even have a director of its Energy Efficiency Division. The post, writes the reader,  is vacant.

Democratic State Chair Judy Bevans

It is, though some of its duties are being looked after by Steve Wark, until recently Gov. Jim Douglas’s press secretary, now moved over the DPS.

The federal money is – or, more accurately, will be, because it hasn’t yet arrived — $21.9 million, Wark said, and it will be apportioned in consultation with the Legislature through  a “very transparent” process.

In the final analysis, state agencies have the power to decide how much of the federal stimulus money is spent, with great or lesser amounts of transparency. How great and how little often depends not only on the agency but on how intently lawmakers and the public insist on it.

This seems to be a good opportunity to let readers know what has happened to some bills in the Legislature that have been mentioned in earlier posts, then left hanging.

One of them – H-166, providing $50 million in “moral obligation debt” to the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation, discussed here February 24 – was approved by the House last month, by the Senate last week, and sent to the governor yesterday.

Two other bills mentioned in recent posts apparently ain’t goin’ nowhere. H-117, allowing anglers to use lead sinkers in lakes and ponds, is in the House Natural Resources Committee. H-29, banning strikes by public school teachers, is in the House Education Committee. With only a few weeks to go in the Legislative session, neither is likely to get any further.

More successful, if perhaps only symbolically, was the resolution calling on the Health Department to conduct another study to replace the one suggesting that those who lived within a ten-mile radius of an abandoned asbestos mine in Eden were more likely to get asbestosis.

As recorded in two posts here, December 14 and 15, the study enraged many residents of the Northeast Kingdom, who insisted it was flawed. That explains why the Legislature passed the resolution. There is no indication, though, that the Health Department is planning to conduct another study.

And for those who did not see it elsewhere, Paul Millman,  the Windham County businessman who was mentioned on March 13 as planning to run against Judy Bevans to be Democratic State Committee chair, later decided not to bother. Bevans was elected at the State Committee meeting last Saturday.

Quite likely many of you did not see this elsewhere because once again almost nobody covered the Democratic State Committee meeting.

There was some coverage of the recent selection of Tim Donovan to be the new Chancellor of the Vermont State College System, though none of it speculating on whether he was the choice of Gov. Douglas. Such was the speculation of the post here on February 20 which noted that Douglas had attended the State College Trustees meeting in February and that some trustees thought he preferred Donovan to Karrin Wilks.

At any rate Donovan, the head of Vermont Technical College [Correction: No, of the Community College of Vermont] got the job. It will be interesting to see if he aligns himself with Douglas’s plan to merge the State College system with the University of Vermont.

Finally, though this is a New York State story, it was a Vermont television station that covered it with such outrageously irresponsible journalism that someone must call it to account.

On Tuesday, WCAX-TV (Channel 3), which was praised on this web site just the other day, broadcast a story about a drug bust in Clinton County, proclaiming at the outset that “there is evidence state lawmakers are undermining (law enforcement) efforts with weakened drug laws.”

The station did have a quote from Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wiley that “The (state) Senate, the Assembly has actually passed legislation to try to do away with minimum mandatory sentences.”

But as a simple phone call could have let them know (they do have phones over at Channel 3, don’t they?), the law has not in fact been changed.

As Wilie’s muddled quote indicated, the Legislature is working on changing the “Rockefeller drug laws” enacted in 1973, and slightly altered in 2004 when George Pataki was governor. The law was exactly the same Tuesday as it was last week, last month, last year. It has not been “weakened,” and therefore could not possibly have “undermined” anything.

UPDATE: Late Wednesday, legislative leaders and Gov. David Paterson reached agreement on changes to the law. Meaning, of course, that the law had not yet been changed.

And finally finally, those so inclined are invited to click on “About Me” to the right and view the new picture of this site’s proprietor, in which he looks, if not handsomer (and certainly not younger), jollier than he did in the earlier picture. The new one was taken by a real photographer, who refuses payment, and who, considering the raw material with which he had to work, did a superb job.

Whatever else one may say about the gay marriage issue in Vermont this year, it certainly has not been under-discussed. On the front pages and in the opening minutes of the broadcast news programs, the debate over the love that once could not speak its name has refused to shut up.

So you’d think – and no doubt many would hope – that everything that can be said about the situation has been said.

But maybe not. As the process nears its end, the latest developments have revealed a few interesting tidbits, and not just about the same-sex marriage issue.

The first and most obvious (though rarely remarked upon, which is why it is being remarked upon here) is how thoroughly the “pro” side of this debate has become the position of The Establishment.

Everybody knows what The Establishment is, though officially it does not exist. It’s the folks who really run the joint – the leading businesspeople; the bankers, lawyers, and realtors who serve on the United Way boards and all those other do-good (but make no waves) committees; the president, provost, top deans and senior faculty (not including the ones who make waves) at the nearest college or university; the editor and publisher of the newspaper.

Overwhelmingly, if not quite unanimously, The Establishment’s Vermont chapter now favors gay marriage.

An extraordinary development, when you think about it. Here is a cause that only a decade or so ago was embraced by only a fringe of the fringe. Remember, the Legislature passed civil unions in 2000, probably against the wishes of most Vermonters, only because it was effectively under court order to do so. Back then, even most politicians who supported civil unions were careful to point out that they opposed same-sex marriage.

Now the pro-gay marriage stance seems to be the default position in corporate boardrooms and country club locker rooms.

Otherwise it’s unlikely that Tom Torti , president of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce, would have endorsed the bill so enthusiastically before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Chamber presidents tend to talk to their members, who are actually their bosses,  and to be careful not to outrage them

And note how Torti said that by adopting  gay marriage  ”Vermont is poised to reinforce its legacy.” Being in favor of the bill, he was saying, was being a traditional Vermonter, a member of the state’s establishment rather than a rebel.

Clearly, not everyone will agree with that. But it was noteworthy that no business leader challenged Torti. Mike Belya, the legislative director of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, told the Burlington free Press that his organization would take no position on the gay marriage bill because it wasn’t “a business issue.”

In this case, though, “no position” is the functional equivalent of “it doesn’t bother us.”

At least not enough of “us” to make big deal over it.

Then, of course, there was the Free Press itself, reversing its 1999 position that marriage was not a right and that some discrimination was acceptable. “The years since then have proven our position to be unfounded,” last Wednesday’s editorial said, adding that some of its reasoning was “pure nonsense.”

Rarely do newspapers talk that way about themselves, especially newspapers known for…well, shall we charitably say for not being on the cutting edge. The Free Press’s motto could be “Taking Chances ‘R’ Not Us.” There is reason to presume that the top honchos there knew that what they were doing was good public relations and good business. The Free Press editor and publisher are not fools.

(More debatable is whether they are journalists. By reliable report , both of them attended one of Gov, Jim Douglas’s January speeches to the Legislature, sat in the press section, and…..Arggghhh! applauded. Journalists do not do that. “No Cheering In The Press Box.”  If you want to applaud, go sit with the hacks. They’ll make room for you).

Erasing any doubts that the pro-gay marriage side has become dominant was a thoughtful article explaining the conservative case for gay marriage by Emerson Lynn, the editor and publisher of the St.Albans Messenger, who wrote:

“Marriage connotes commitment. The more couples that seek that commitment, the more stable we are as a society. The greater the barriers to that commitment, the less stable we are. That has been conservative dogma for eons.”

The other interesting new wrinkle has been noticed, but insufficiently documented. This year’s marriage bill seems to be arousing far less passion than did the civil unions legislation in 2000. Perhaps that’s because the actual impact of the civil unions law on the lives of most Vermonters was effectively nil

“On July 1 of that year the sun rose,” Torti noted in his testimony,  ”people went off to work, businesses continued to locate here, tourism continued to flourish and Vermont reinforced its legacy as a state founded on individual rights and tolerance. The doomsday scenarios that were pronounced failed to materialize.”

Those doomsday scenarios mostly had to do with the possible effect of Civil unions on “traditional marriage.” Just what those effects were supposed to be was never spelled out, but we now know what they were: also nil.

Since civil unions became law, Vermont’s divorce rate has gone down, from 4.1 (per thousands of people) in 2000 to 3.6 in 2007.

Because of civil unions? No, of course not. Divorce rates have gone down nationwide, too, but Vermont’s rate of decrease has kept pace, and the state’s divorce rate remains below the national average.

(Though not because of civil unions perhaps because of the state’s disproportionate secularism. This is the state, according to several studies, whose citizens are least likely to be regular religious worshipers. Divorce rates, according to other studies, are highest among Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christians, whose teenage children are also more likely to be sexually active and get pregnant. Perhaps a reason Vermont has a low teen-age pregnancy rate).

What about the marriage rate? That’s gone down, too, from 10.3 in 2000  to 8.6 in 2007. But not because of civil unions. The marriage rate, too, has declined nationwide, and in many states the decline has been greater than in Vermont. In short, civil unions have made no discernible difference to marriage in Vermont, suggesting (though by no means proving) that gay marriage won’t, either.

Of course all this might be wrong. A huge uprising against same-sex marriage might be festering beneath the surface, to emerge after the bill becomes law (if it does) and sweeping supporters out of the Legislature as the “Take Back Vermont” movement did in 2000.

But back then, the bill passed just a few months before the election. This time there would be 19 months after passage before the lawmakers have to face the electorate again. Ample time for other issues to enrage other constituencies.

H-97 will not become law this year, and even its chief cheer-leader understands why.

The House Natural Resources Committee “had its hands full with Vermont Yankee decommissioning and renewable energy matters,” said Wayne Michaud, the director of Idle-Free VT.

Beyond that, Michaud, acknowledged, the bill wasn’t really ready to become law. It would need some changes, he said, and as written, “enforcement would be very difficult.”

The bill would ban big trucks from idling on the public roads for more than five minutes. Violators could pay a $500 fine.

Wayne Michaud

It’s not exactly a radical proposal. Lots of states, including the other five in New England, have similar laws. A Burlington ordinance imposes a $40 fine on anyone leaving any vehicle idling for more than five minutes, but only between April 1 and November 1, so it doesn’t keep anyone from warming up the car on a cold winter day. Other cities around the country and even more in Canada have imposed various kinds of anti-idling laws.

Vermont will not. At least not yet.

So why bother to discuss it?

Because both the proposal and its troubles illustrate some interesting realities about public life these days: the complications involved in getting  an issue onto the public radar screen; the benefit-but also the disadvantage – of requiring strict scientific evidence in public debate; the inevitability of a certain amount of subjectivity in some disputes.

It’s easy to see why some people want to reduce vehicle idling. It dirties the air, endangering health and exacerbating global warming. It wastes gasoline and therefore money. Idling is one of those offenses in which the villain is the victim. Leaving your car motor idling while you run into the convenience store for coffee is like burning money.

But just because people think idling is a bad idea doesn’t mean they’re going to do much about it. So far, at least, the anti-idling campaign has not had much impact. The Legislature did outlaw school bus idling on school property two years ago. But there the anti-idlers had key allies – parents and teachers, already organized and  always a political force.

On their own, the anti-idlers have been less successful. One reason is that they have no full time operative. Michaud,  61, who lives near Bristol, earns his living as an illustrator and graphic artist. Idle-Free VT is strictly a part-time operation for him.

And he’s not a pro. He’s energetic and dedicated, but inexperienced at playing the political game – forging alliances, getting into the newspapers and on the air, making some trouble. According to its web site, Idle-Free Vermont wanted to get an anti-idling resolution on town meeting ballots earlier this month. It didn’t work.

The organization’s major ally is the Vermont branch of the American Lung Association, whose director of Health Promotion and Public Policy,  Rebecca Ryan, testified on behalf of the bill before the House Natural Resources Committee.

Her testimony supplied the scientific evidence about the dangers of idling. Motor vehicle exhaust is unhealthy, especially for the elderly, people with respiratory diseases, and children , more than 12,000 of whom in Vermont have asthma. Truck idling, the Environmental Protection Agency has estimated, consumes more than 1 billion gallons of diesel fuel, and spews 11 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

What was not in her testimony, because it is not available, was any estimate as to how much idling goes on in Vermont, how many gallons of gas it wastes, how much it pollutes the air here. It is not available because it is all but impossible to gauge. No one is going to assign monitors to stand in every parking lot in the state counting and timing the idling cars.

That’s why the bill itself could assert only that if  ”every driver of a motor vehicle in Vermont avoided idling a motor vehicle for just five minutes a day‚ the state would save millions of gallons of fuel and would prevent thousands of tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere and contributing to climate change.”

How many millions of gallons or thousands of tons? Nobody knows. The EPA has determined that truck exhaust is “a likely human carcinogen.”
But the “likely” there indicates some degree of uncertainty.

Still,  this could be one case where the demand for conclusive scientific evidence goes too far. Clearly spewing all that stuff into the air does some harm. All those other states didn’t pass anti-idling laws because they like to pass laws. And what’s the purpose of idling? It’s not a Constitutional right. It is, often, a socially and environmentally damaging self-indulgence, Except on the coldest of winter days, most vehicles don’t need more than 30 seconds or so of idling before moving. Even on those sub-zero days, a minute or two of warm-up should suffice, according to the EPA and Natural Resources Canada.

Unless, of course, the window is fogged up. Or unless the driver doesn’t want to sit in a cold car.

This, as Michaud acknowledged, is where the subjectivity comes in. Some people just don’t like being cold, even for the few minutes it takes for a car to warm up. With or without remote starters, some folks start up their cars on cold winter days and then run back into the house for another cup of coffee until the car gets warmer.

It’s tempting for those of us (yes, I’m among them) who’d rather dress warmly and just start driving to consider these cold-averse people sort of wimpy. But different folks have different cold-tolerance strokes.

Less forgivable are the drivers who leave the car running while they pop into the convenience store. The car isn’t going to get that cold in the minute or so the drivers are inside.

Michaud said that like the “click it or ticket” seat belt campaign, the anti-idling effort should combine education with law enforcement, perhaps with more emphasis on the former. Some places are already cooperating, he said, such as the Vermont State  Employees Credit Union, which put up an anti-idling sign at one its drive-up ATMs (pictured above).

Law enforcement, even for big trucks, will have to wait. Until the anti-idling movement gets a professional who knows how to mobilize public opinion. Or until the price of gasoline goes back up to four dollars and higher. Or maybe just until the trucking industry realizes (as some trucking firms apparently do) that the more states that pass laws prohibiting their drivers from excessive idling, the more money the companies will save on fuel.