They’re out to get us.

Such, it seems, is the reaction by advocates of public telecommunications service to the furor over the City of Burlington’s semi- sub-rosa loan to Burlington Telcom, the city owned Internet, phone, and cable company.

“The same forces that want to preserve the private insurance monopoly in health care…are now out to preserve the private corporate monopoly in Vermont telecommunications,” claimed John Franco, once chairman of the Burlington Electric Commission, and now co-chair of the Burlington Progressive Party.

That’s the party of Mayor Bob Kiss and his chief Administrative Officer, Jonathan Leopold. Those are the officials who decided to lend Burlington Telcom $17 million. Even without approval of the City Council or the Board of Finance. the loan might have been entirely proper had it been paid back within 60 days.

It was not, a fact which, at the very least, Kiss and Leopold did not go out of their way to inform the rest of the world, or even the rest of city government.

That’s why they’re in a political pickle.

Which does not disprove their contention that state officials, doing the bidding of Comcast, BT’s private, for-profit, competitor, are trying to use this pickle to discredit publicly-owned telecommunications systems in general. Last week, citing BT’s troubles, Public Service Commissioner David O’Brien tried to discourage officials of the Rutland Redevelopment Authority from proceeding with plans to set up a public fiber optic broadband system in their area.

Then there’s the timing. O’Brien’s blast at Telcom for being ”a business that is losing money, has no immediate promise of making money and is in debt beyond their ability to recover,” was certainly ungrammatical and may have been incorrect (see below), but it did divert attention from the embarrassment (to him) of the news that Fair Point, which he once said could be “a wonderful change for Vermont” was declaring bankruptcy.

Not to mention making it even less likely that BT, whose license (Certificate of Public Good) authorizes it to provide telephone service statewide, might take over the state’s land line phone service if Fair Point loses its own right to operate in Vermont. O’Brien may have been firing a shot across that bow, too.

But even if the Progressives are right, they’re violating a basic rule of governing: If you know certain forces are out to get you, don’t give them ammunition.

And, in this case, continue to give it. The Mayor proclaimed his devotion to “an independent audit” of Burlington Telcom in the same sentence in which he endorsed a less-than-independent audit, in that its parameters would be set by the Board of Finance, a five-member body on which sit Kiss, Leopold, and a Progressive Party member of the Council.

Haven’t any of these folks read about Watergate, and learned the old line about the cover-up being worse than the crime?

In fairness to Kiss and Leopold, they seem to have committed no actual crime (unlike Richard Nixon, whose crimes were in fact far worse than the cover-up). Perhaps all they are covering up is a cover-up, an understandable it ultimately foolish effort to keep anyone from finding out about the loan until Kiss got re-elected last March.

Either way, they seem unaware of a salient element of this incident. Whether it ever rises (sinks?) to the level of scandal, it threatens two Vermont institutions: publicly owned telecommunications and the Progressive Party.

Back to that in a moment. But first, a reality check.

As any sentient Vermonter knows, there are three words which prove that incompetence and chicanery are not unknown in the private, for-profit, telecommunications world. Two of those words are “Fair Point.” The other is “Adelphia,” once Burlington’s dominant cable company, now defunct because its top officials were guilty of stock fraud. Two of them, at last report, remained ensconced in the federal correctional system.

Nor do BT’s troubles prove that publicly owned telecommunications is a bad idea. According to Joanne Hovis, president-elect of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, there are 54 municipally owned Fiber-To-The-home (FTTH) systems in the country, many of them effective, solvent, and instrumental in attracting businesses to their cities. A report by the Municipal FTTH Systems organizations lists 15 cities or counties where publicly-owned high-speed Internet connections have helped attract companies such as Louisville Slugger, Colgate Palmolive, and Yahoo to open facilities.

Furthermore, all this outrage from O’Brien, some City Council members and assorted commentators that Burlington taxpayers may end up on the hook for the loan should be put in context. All telecommunications are tax-subsidized one way or another, from the telephone universal service charge to the Reverse Morris Trust used when Fair Point bought Verizon’s northern New England land lines, costing the taxpayers at least $600 million.

But the cost of those subsidies was diffused all around the country, which would not be the case were BT to fold or be sold still owing the $17 million. That’s almost $450 a Burlingtonian.

On the other hand, predicting such a calamity for BT might be quite premature. The company surely has its problems. It doesn’t cover the whole city, and serves only about 30 percent of the 85 percent it does cover. But most private companies don’t cover their whole cities, either; they cover the profitable parts. And according to Christopher Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis, most municipal telecommunications companies lose money in their first three years, which is all BT has been operating.

“The need to refinance doesn’t necessarily suggest (BT is) in a position of weakness,” Mitchell said. “What’s happening is more or less par for the course. The first five years are marked by losses and opponents seize on (them) and say it’s never going to work.”

Mitchell said BT might very well thrive. But he, too, wondered where that $17 million went.

That should illustrate the Progressives political predicament. Even supporters of public providers have questions about the loan. The argument that Kiss and Leopold did tell the Council, but that the members just didn’t take it all in, is believable only if one assumes that all the city council members are denser even than most city council members tend to be.

The reason this is a perilous position for Progressives is that whatever success they have had rests on their reputation for purity. Unlike the Democrats, they claim, they do not compromise. Unlike Democrats or Republicans, they seem less likely to cut political corners, to parse language to try to weasel out of trouble.

Now their leading public official in the city of their greatest strength seems to be doing just that. The Progs could be in at least as much trouble as Burlington Telcom.

(Note One: The tax story alluded to Wednesday will run next week)

(Note Two: For what it is worth, the News Guy will be on” Vermont This Week,” on Vermont Public TV Friday at 7:30 PM, re-shown Sunday at 11:30 AM)

Thanks to the combination of:

1—An old back injury deciding on a return engagement:

2—The need to conserve energy and whatever painless intervals that rest and aspirin could provide for the Tuesday obligation to corrupt the young at the University of Vermont;

3—Time spent preparing for redder meat scheduled for Friday and next week…..

The News Guy will not be posting today (Wednesday).

Come back Friday to see why your taxes may go up.

The University of Vermont’s latest proposed re-invention of itself — what it calls its “Spires of Excellence” vision – is complicated, a bit convoluted, and, somewhat controversial.

One might think it’s hard to voice harsh opposition to a proposal that is not yet fully formed, not to mention one that so far has been described in the blandest of bureaucratese, as for example: “will build to the highest levels feasible for the area the capacity to secure external, often highly-competitive, funding for the long-term sustainability of the program, including grants for national research centers…that address critical societal issues…)

Still, the “Transdisciplinary Research Initiative” recently unveiled by UVM has aroused some opposition from the faculty, especially those who think their piece of the pie may shrink.

Which is not to say that the dissent is inspired merely by turf-protection. It is also inspired by the fact that college professors are genetically predisposed to complain.

The above is description, not condemnation. First of all, turf-protection is the default reaction everywhere – in academia, government, business, religion, and, in all probability, the Kiwanis Club. Furthermore, nobody – at least nobody who has a good gig – likes change.

Besides, scholars should be “aginners.” Like reporters, their first reaction to every new proposal should be to look at what may be wrong with it. It’s the lower-class version of what literary critic Lesley Fiedler called the novelist’s duty to shout “No, in thunder,” to respectable social norms.

Essentially, what UVM’s administration wants to do is concentrate on a few areas that transcend the customary academic subject departments in an effort to make the university a leader in selected fields. The chosen “spires” are biological science, complex systems, culture and society, environment, food systems, neurosciences, policy studies, and public health.

As Domenico Grasso, vice president for research and dean of the graduate school, put it “If we want to truly distinguish ourselves and be considered among the very best, we have to be strategic and focused in our allocation of resources. In the past, we’ve tried to be all things to all people. Identifying spires of excellence is the path we need to pursue to become truly exceptional.”

A reasonable outlook especially in the context of the realities of public higher education these days. State universities get less money from federal and state government. That means they have to get more from private grants and tuition. So they have to “market” themselves, both to students and their parents (especially upper-income parents) and to businesses.

By concentrating on the sciences, with their greater appeal to businesses, and aspiring to “excellence” in certain fields, UVM hopes to appeal to both sets of “customers.”

Makes sense. On the other hand, it also makes sense to wonder whether the realities of public higher education these days is really desirable, a question which requires a quick trip back in history.

Like most major social transformations, the growth of public higher education didn’t just happen. It came about because of government planning, a pursuit Americans sometimes try to pretend does not exist. The post-World War II G.I. Bill allowed hundreds of thousands of men to go to college. The 1947 “Truman Commission” report (“Higher Education for Democracy”) paved the way for state and federal policies dedicated to the then-radical notion that college should be available to all qualified students regardless of income.

So for the next few decades, tuition was low, faculty jobs were plentiful and secure, and millions of students were educated. As a result, the United States had more highly trained technicians, engineers, and managers than any country in the history of the world, one reason it became richer than any country in the history of the world.

About 30 years ago, government policy changed, executing a partial but substantial reversal. Government funding dropped, tuitions went up, and so did dependence on private grants. Outside of the sciences, faculty jobs became both scarcer and less secure. State Universities had to be more enterprising to thrive, making it harder for them to be “all things to all people.”

The reasonable question that some faculty members are raising now (and some public officials might raise soon) is whether, assuming it makes this “spires of excellence” transformation, UVM will still be enough things to enough Vermont students.

For example, the concentration on science, especially health-related science, enhances the likelihood that a UVM-educated physician or PhD will one day become a world class researcher, perhaps helping find a cure for a terrible disease. That researcher will, in the words of acting Provost Jane Knodell, be “making a difference in the world,” which is the goal of “Spires of Excellence.”

Great. But will the university still be a good place for a Vermont student who wants to become a family practitioner in his or her home town? That could be considered “excellence,” too, and, in its own way, “making a difference in the world.”

What some professors fear is that the fields with less glitz (and less revenue-attracting potential) — Greek and Latin, theater, English literature, even pure research science (Dennis Clougherty, chairman of the physics department, is a leading dissenter) — will suffer as more of the University’s scarce resources flow into “the spires.”

UVM insists that this will not be the case. But it is pretty much what the administration of President Daniel Mark Fogel just did with athletics – dropping the baseball and softball teams to concentrate resources on its de facto “spires of excellence: — basketball and hockey.

State universities have always been places where elitist and egalitarian values met, collided, compromised, and co-existed. This proposal to tilt UVM not just toward the elite, but toward selective elites, is in its early stages, and likely to be altered by public opinion, politics, and of course, the complaints of professors. They’re good at it.