Wild boars have come to Vermont.

No, this has nothing to do with the campaign for governor. These are the O-A-R boars – the four-footed, perhaps 500-pound rooters — not the O-R-E bores – the two-footed, 100-250-pound preeners.

In the interests of scientific precision, let’s acknowledge that these latest Vermont boars are possibly not even full-fledged boars (Sus scrofa in the official nomenclature) but some combination of boar and the regular old pig (sus domestica).

Boars are not native to Vermont. Neither, probably, are cattle (bos), of which there are many more, but there are at least two major differences between the two species: (1) Cows do less damage (although they do their share); (2) cows were brought to Vermont on purpose.

Wild pigs do a lot of damage to gardens, lawns, streams, fish, other wildlife and some tame life, primarily livestock and pets, though possibly also their human owners. As to the wild pigs now (apparently) resident in the state, they were not brought here on purpose.

They emigrated from New Hampshire, where they are not native, either, but where they (sort of, and no insult intended toward the fine citizens on the far side of the Connecticut) belong.

Details shortly, but first let’s make sure this post does not cause panic. Vermont is not being over-run by wild swine. According to the generally recognized authority on the subject, John J. (Jack) Mayer, Jr., there are not even enough wild hogs in Vermont to constitute a breeding population.

Yet.

And there may never be, said Mayer, who is a research scientist and manager at the Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, S.C., and co-author (with I. Lehr Brisban, Jr.) of Wild Pigs in the United States: Their History, Comparative Morphology, and Current Status (University of Georgia Press, 1991).

“The advantage Vermont will have is the weather,” Mayer said. “Piglets may not be able to survive a cold winter.”

The adult wild hogs, he said, rarely live for long, either, because they are so eagerly hunted.

“Word gets out (that there’s a wild pig in the area) and typically it doesn’t last very long. So far, Vermont really hasn’t had a sustaining population,” he said.

But Michigan, where it’s comparably cold,  does, Mayer said. So do four western Canadian provinces which are colder than Vermont and where the wild pigs, Mayer has been told, burrow into hay bales or make snow tunnels to survive a winter night.

But the animals are rapidly expanding their range, so much that the whole country faces what Mayer calls “a pig bomb.” As recently as mid-2008, wild pigs lived in 37 states. Now Mayer estimates 44, all but Connecticut, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Utah, and Wyoming.

Vermont’s boar population is low, fewer than 100, Mayer estimates, all of them in Windsor County, having swum across the river from their New Hampshire home.

No, wild hogs are not native to the Granite State, either. They were brought there, the first of them more than 100 years ago, to live and be hunted in the immense fenced “park” created in 1886 by Austin Corbin, the founder of the Long Island Rail Road.

After enclosing some 9,500 hectares (about 23,000 acres) with 58 kilometers (almost 35 miles) of fence, buried to make it “wild boar-proof,” Corbin bought 1,000 Black Forest wild boars from Germany.

The problem was that the fence was not people-proof, and then and now, according to Mayer, some of the locals, angry that all this land and all that game was available only to Corbin’s fellow-millionaires, kept tearing holes in the fence. Lately, he said, “vandals have been cutting holes you could drive a truck through.”

It is from those gaps in the fence, Mayer said, that according to his sources (whom he will not name; some of them may be among the fence-cutters) several wild hogs have swum across the Connecticut, probably making landfall somewhere between Windsor and Hartland.

Those travels illustrate how relentless and resilient these animals can be. The eastern edge of Corbin Park is about eight miles from the river, and while the area is not densely populated, it isn’t wilderness, either. Those hogs made their way to and across the Connecticut through human habitat.

Should they establish a breeding population here, the consequences would be consequential, and possibly catastrophic. It isn’t that boars are human-eating killers. There would be no need, Mayer said, “to keep the kids home from school.”

But they are voracious eaters who root into the ground everywhere—gardens and farm fields. They will eat, Mayer said, anything “ if they can get their mouth around it — fawns, goats, lambs.”

And pets. Mayer said wild hogs don’t like dogs, and some of the rare confrontations between the animals and humans have arisen when a hog attacked a dog being walked by its owner.

Boars are as ravenous about water as about food, Mayer said, and will root up a lawn’s underground sprinkling system.

They also damage trout fisheries. By rooting, eating, and excreting along riverbanks, they pollute the water and, by removing vegetation, cause erosion that covers trout redds (spawning areas) with silt.

Bears, bobcats, and coyotes eat wild hogs, but not enough “to have any impact on the population,” Mayer said. That’s why, once they establish a breeding population, they are almost impossible to eradicate.

“Hunters will take a certain numbers,” he said. “But hunting will only take 10-to-50 percent of a wild pig population. To control it, you need to take 70 percent out of the population ever year. Lethal removal just isn’t going to do it.”

Besides, not everyone wants to get rid of wild hogs. Hunters don’t, and hunters are a potent lobby in every state capital, including Vermont’s. The boars are “fun to hunt, good to eat and make a really impressive trophy on the wall,” Mayer said.

A wild pig population, then, creates a political problem as environmentalists, farmers, gardeners, and hikers favor extirpating them while hunters fight to keep enough of them around to hunt.

Well, that’s when happens when folks mess around with nature.

As everyone does and must. Agriculture is messing around with nature, and imposes some negative impacts on the natural world. But it’s necessary. Shipping wild animals far from their native habitat so that a few folks can pay big bucks to hunt them is not. There being no such thing as an indestructible fence, such shipments should perhaps be discouraged, or at least controlled.

Raising, of course, the matter of Pete the Moose (see the August 28 post, “The Moose is Not Loose”), about which a progress report. There has been no progress. Maj. Dennis Reinhardt of Fish and Wildlife’s enforcement division, said Fish and Wildlife officials are “continuing to meet Mr. (Doug) Nelson (on whose farm Pete is being illegally confined) and the Department of Agriculture “trying to resolve it amicably.” But Reinhardt made clear that the department is convinced that keeping the moose “absolutely is not legal.”

Correction: Terry Macaig represents Williston as a Democratic member of the House, not Burlington.

As regular readers may recall, every once in a while this site pauses to revisit some earlier items, make necessary clarifications and corrections, offer some random thoughts, and deal with items that may not warrant the full News Guy treatment.

This is one of those once in a whiles.

Monday’s post about public employee retirement funds identified Terry Macaig only as “the most liberal” member of the commission State Treasurer Jeb Spaulding created to study the matter. Macaig is also: (a) a Democratic House member from Burlington; (b) on the staff of the Vermont State Employees Association (VSEA); (c) a long-time employee of the State Health Department.

In other words, he has a personal financial interest in the public employees retirement system, a fact that does not render his views invalid, but that should have been included in Monday’s post. (And thanks to VT Digger for the heads-up on this).

Not that the background of everyone else on the commission proved them to be entirely objective. For instance, Gov. Jim Douglas’s appointee was Douglas J. Wacek, the retired President and Chief Executive Officer of Union Mutual of Vermont Companies, and general poobah of the Vermont corporate/financial establishment.

A vested interest of class and ideology rather than a personal financial concern, perhaps. But no less likely to guide one’s conclusion in a direction that might not be entirely in the public’s benefit.

_________________________________________________________________

Friday’s post noted that the American Automobile Association “does not favor” legislation that would ban hand-held cell phone use while driving.

That was correct, but Tom Williams, AAA’s Northern New England Regional Manager, wants it understood that his organization does not oppose the bill, either. It’s neutral.

AAA does favor “a total ban on portable electronic communication devises including cell phones for junior operators,” Williams emailed, along with “strong support” for “primary enforcement” of the seat belt law and the proposed ban on texting while driving.

_______________________________________________________________

In that same post (A Man’s Car is (Not) His Castle), the news guy declined “out of kindness” to name a businessman who had spoken at a public hearing held by the Senate Transportation Committee. Clearly implied, if not overtly stated, was that the anonymity was a kindness because the fellow had said something (“I don’t believe the statistics”) quite ignorant.

In the” no good deed goes unpunished category,” a commenter (scroll down to that post to read the whole comment) raises a valid point and asks a legitimate question: “It may be kind not to name the businessman, but is kindness part of your remit?”

Good as the question is, first we have to deal with this “remit” business.  In context it seems to mean “mission,” “mandate,” “task,” or something like that. Sounds impressive, a word that might be used by a professor of English literature back when C.S. Lewis or E.R. Dodds was at Oxford. Or were they at Cambridge?

Alas, it also seems to be wrong, though the News Guy remains open to further testimony before rendering a final verdict. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (the “compact” version, for which even younger readers need a magnifying glass), the noun “remit,” found on page 429 of Volume 2 (P-Z) is defined as a pardon (as in, remitting a punishment) or as a reference of (anything) from one part of a book to another, or from one authority to another (remitting a case from a lower to a higher court).

Nothing about it being a synonym for “duty” or “obligation” or anything like that.

Enough semantics. The basic question remains: Should kindness be part of the job here?

On one level, kindness should be part of everybody’s job every day.

Except maybe a reporter’s.

As the commenter said, this guy, private citizen though he may be, voluntarily stepped into the public domain. When you, whoever you are, step into that domain, we, the news chroniclers, are supposed to show you no mercy.

That’s actually the usual theory, practice, ethic, policy, and (who knows, maybe) remit here. It was not followed in this case because, so far as could be determined, it would be a one-shot appearance for the businessman. It wasn’t as though he had joined some organization and was going to be a regular advocate for or against anything, a la, the Tea Party folks.

So he got a pass. It probably won’t happen again, and the commenter was both alert and correct to object.

_____________________________________________________________

In a housekeeping note on February 1, the News Guy took note of “the demons who, it seems, occasionally usurp control at Word Press,” forcing it to disobey orders to publish a new post at a specific time.

“Plans for subjugating these demons are afoot,” that post proclaimed. “Meanwhile, be assured that every Monday Wednesday, and Friday, the News guy will either: (a) have a new post; or (b) make known that there will not be a new post, and also explain why.”

The demons have in fact (we think) been subjugated, which is an unscientific way of saying that the system has been updated.

So what happened?

Ten days later, on a Wednesday, early morning readers clicked in to find neither a new post nor a notice that there would not be one.

It would be tempting here to report that the demons staged a comeback, or that system failed again. In candor, it must be revealed that the guy operating the system failed again, having gotten confused. He is, in the cyber world, easily confused.

The News Guy is happy to report a substantial flow of new subscribers. It is gratifying.

It would be even more gratifying – and make possible more trips to Montpelier and elsewhere – if more of you who have recently joined the ranks of subscribers would also join the ranks of donators.

It’s easy to do. Just look up near the top right quarter of the screen, under “Pages,” and click on “donate.”

It will tell you all you need to know to…remit.

This post can also be seen at the VT Digger site, with which the News Guy is cooperating.

A funny thing happened to the Vermont teachers retirement system on its way to getting diminished and perhaps demolished. It got stronger.

At a price, to be sure. Teachers will have to pay a little more into their pension fund and wait a little longer to retire. But when they do, their benefits will be higher.

Spaulding

Perhaps more important, their plan will survive as a defined benefit plan (the jargon for a traditional pension system) instead of being turned into a defined contribution (the 401k alternative) plan as some officials had apparently hoped.

In the process, the state saves $15 million. Pretty much a win-win-win situation, the winners being: the teachers and their union (Vermont-National Education Association); State Treasurer Jeb Spaulding, who seems to have orchestrated the arrangement; the Democrats, because the deal removes a Republican talking point; the taxpayers, both for the $15 million and because the agreement might inspire some veteran (meaning well-paid) teachers to retire.

What, no losers?

Maybe not. Gov. Jim Douglas wanted a plan that would save the $29 million proposed by a special commission last year from both the teachers and state workers. There are more teachers than state workers, so even if a deal is worked out with the Vermont State Employees Association, the $29 million figure is not likely to be reached. But Douglas does not really come off as a loser here, and is not threatening to veto the agreement.

A few teachers are miffed because, for a while at least, they thought they’d have to make the higher contribution to the pension fund without getting the higher benefit. The agreement has apparently been modified to assuage their concerns at least somewhat, but perhaps not entirely.

And the retirement controversy is not over. The VSEA and state officials are farther apart than the Vermont-NEA ever was. The state workers union and state officials are not even negotiating yet.

“Negotiating,” in this context, comes with an asterisk. In the words of Jes Kraus of the VSEA, “this isn’t a matter of negotiating a contract. This is a matter of statute.”

Meaning that the deal reached by the teachers union, Spaulding, and the leaders of the Legislature isn’t final unless and until it becomes law. Or maybe not even then. The public employee pensions are not simply laws. They are constitutionally protected contracts with each worker, and “any aggrieved individual can always challenge” any contract change in court, as Spaulding acknowledged. Especially because the Vermont-NEA has agreed to these changes, a challenge might fail. But fighting it would cost the state some of that $15 million it expects to save.

This constitutional complication is not merely theoretical; it is, for instance, one reason Kraus and the VSEA are so far standing firm in opposing any change in their pension system. But it does not seem likely to scuttle the deal with the teachers, which came as something of a surprise when it was announced two weeks ago.

Until then, state officials and what might be termed the establishment public opinion machine had prepared press and public for a confrontation. Both unions objected to making concessions. To Douglas and some Republican observers, a “crisis” loomed because of the projected growth in state payments into the retirement funds — $73.5 million this fiscal year, $103.5 million next year, and continuing to rise in the future.

Out of context, those raw figures are meaningless, except perhaps to provide politicians with ammunition for declaring a “crisis.” But putting the figures in context does not demonstrate that there is no problem. The obligation is projected to rise as a percentage of state spending, higher than the 3.5 percent of the General Fund deemed acceptable by the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office.

There is nothing unique to Vermont about any of this. All over the country, governors and mayors for decades have been negotiating generous retirement plans (most far more generous than Vermont’s) in exchange for union acceptance of smaller wage hikes. The wage increases have to be paid now, during the mayor or governor’s term. The retirement benefits will be somebody else’s responsibility. By one estimate, states and localities face a $2 trillion retirement obligation shortfall.

Seen from that perspective, Vermont’s problem seems manageable, but chances of reaching any kind of agreement dimmed last year when Spaulding established a seven-person “Commission on the Design and Funding of Retirement and Retiree Health Benefits Plans” without naming a single worker representative to it. Adding insult to that injury, (from the unions’ perspectives) the commission retained as a consultant the Indianapolis law firm Ice Miller, which claims on its web page that it can “solve difficult employee issues and resolve disputes before they ever rise to the level of a lawsuit or a union organizing drive.”

That’s jargon for, “We bust unions.”

But when the Commission issued its report last month, its recommendations, while ambitious, were not draconian. It did call for raising the age of full retirement eligibility and the employees contribution to the system. But it also proposed raising the basic retirement benefit to a maximum of 60 percent – rather than the current 50 percent – of how much an employee had earned while working.

That’s still “the lowest in New England,” Spaulding said, but perhaps enough of an improvement, in the view of NEA spokesman Darren Allen, to attract more top-flight young teachers into the state’s system.

Though Douglas took the Commission report as a done deal, incorporating its $29 million reduction in his budget proposal as though it had been adopted, instead of just recommended, Spaulding, the legislative leaders, and the Vermont-NEA obviously saw it as the next step in the negotiating process.

As it happened, the negotiations didn’t take long. The Vermont-NEA understood it was going to have to give way on the retirement age and employee contribution, but it insisted on getting something in return. What it got was that 60 percent ceiling plus health care coverage of a retired worker’s spouse.

As health care costs continue to rise, that could be a big plus.

Ironically, the Commission had rejected recommending spousal coverage, even as a topic for discussion. But it appears to be significant that Spaulding was in the minority on that vote, joined only by Rep. Terry Macaig of Williston, the Commission’s most liberal member.

The final “score” is that the teachers will pay 5 percent rather than 4 percent of their salaries into the retirement plan (an average of an extra $550 a year), and more (though not all) will have to wait until they are 65, instead of 62, to retire.

That leaves some of the 1,800 or so (out of about 9,500) teachers in their late 50s or early 60s wondering what’s in it for them. If they can’t take advantage of the new spousal benefit, either because they are spouseless or because their spouse has access to his/her own retirement health care plan, some could decide they’re better off retiring now.

“We could be sitting on an unprecedented wave of retirements this year,” Allen said, perhaps welcome news to school boards who can replace a highly paid veteran with a lower-salary rookie, or not replace the veteran at all.

As is usual in these matters, all parties had political interests. The advantages to Spaulding are the most obvious. He appears as an official who has done his job effectively and saved the state some money. He’s also preserved the defined benefit pension plan of a union whose members vote in Democratic primaries. Spaulding decided last year he didn’t want to run for governor this year. But he’s only 47. There’s an election every two years.

As for the Vermont-NEA, this is not a bad time for it to appear to be accommodating. With school budgets rising even as school populations fall, the union has faced increasing criticism for winning wage and benefit increases for its members.

Winning such benefits is precisely what unions are supposed to do, but in this case the employers are taxpayers who are more likely to feel stingy in a troubled economy.

VSEA has the opposite problem, especially among its own members. It has been quite accommodating, if mostly because it had little choice. The union has accepted hundreds of layoffs, a two-year pay freeze, and now a 3 percent pay cut. It would seem to be in Kraus’s interest to be seen by his own members as being as tough as possible.

Besides, he said VSEA’s situation is not the same as the teachers. His union’s pension plan is “pay as you go,” he said, and is closer to being fully funded than the Vermont-NEA plan.  Spaulding said “informal talks” were going on with the VSEA, but in the meanwhile Kraus is adroitly playing the legal challenge card. He got prominent attorney Beth Robinson, she of the Vermont Freedom to Marry organization, to prepare a legal brief which concluded that, “if the Legislature chose to adopt the Commission’s proposals, it would subject the State of Vermont to very substantial risk of litigation leading to injunctive relief, possibly an award of damages, and possibly a substantial attorney’s fee award to aggrieved state employees.”

Right now, then, a deal with the VSEA doesn’t appear likely. But then, a few weeks ago, a deal with the Vermont-NEA didn’t look likely, either.