Talk about a slam-dunk no-brainer.

Here’s a gift, worth millions in plain money, and more in measures money can’t match.

It’s for everyone. First for residents of the Northeast Kingdom, but also for all Vermonters, every American, even anyone in the world.

Not to mention the world itself.

Who could turn it down?

Maybe we could.

“We,” here, is technically the United States of America, or to be precise the Fish and Wildlife Service of its Interior Department, which now has 62 days to accept the gift of  more than 400 acres of land, including 1.4 miles of shoreline along Lake Memphremagog and 228 acres of wetlands.

Or it will turn into a pumpkin.

No, worse. Or it will be sold to whoever will pay the most for it, likely to be someone who will build immense and nearly identical McMansions.

Such are the terms of the will of Michael Dunn, who died on September 1, 2007, and who bequeathed his more than 800 acres on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border to governments, hoping to preserve the land’s “open state” and recreational potential.

But only if those governments agreed to accept the donations within three years of Dunn’s death. Otherwise, the land is to be sold to provide the maximum benefit to another passion of Dunn’s life – the Modern Museum of Art in New York. That doesn’t give Fish and Wildlife much time.

(The federal government of Canada actually rejected the offer, but Quebec Province accepted, so the Canadian portion is saved. For whatever reason, Dunn did not offer a similar option to the state on this side of the border).

It isn’t that Fish and Wildlife is against accepting the gift. At an afternoon tour of the site yesterday afternoon, and later at a public hearing in Newport, Agency officials left little doubt that they wanted to preserve the land and that “we are aware of the deadline,” in the words of Janet Kennedy, the Massachusetts-based regional supervisor of the Service’s Wildlife Refuge System.

So what’s the problem?

Actually, there are two problems, and though right now it looks as though the deadline will be met, both problems illustrate how difficult it often is to get anything done these days in America, and perhaps especially in Vermont.

The first problem is that there is actually some opposition to accepting Dunn’s bequest. Not from the town of Derby, which considers saving the land “a real asset,” Selectboard member Karen Jenne told the hearing. Not from the State Legislature, which overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging the feds to take the deal. And not from the owners of neighboring lakeside cottages, several of whom came to the hearing to urge acceptance.

But Sherb Lang is against it, and so is Hunters, Anglers, Trappers of Vermont (HAT), of which Lang is the president. Lang raised no specific objections to federal ownership of the Dunn land. In fact, he called it “a wonderful piece of property.” But he and his associates are angry at the State Fish and Wildlife Department over other issues, and they remain furious about the 12-year-old sale of what were once called the Champion Lands to the state and federal governments.

This is, in short, a policy position founded on resentment, not an unusual phenomenon in rural Vermont.

The other, more influential, dissenter at the hearing was Duncan Kilmartin, the Republican State Representative from Newport. Kilmartin contended that the plan under consideration by state and federal officials didn’t really honor Dunn’s will, which specified that the land should remain available for “hikes and campers.”

Instead, Kilmartin said, the draft Environmental Assessment (the official subject of the public hearing) gives priority to conserving resources and wildlife habitat rather than human uses such as hiking and camping.

It’s unlikely that Kimartin has a better grasp of what Dunn wanted than does Michael Hickcox, the long-time family friend of Dunn’s who flew to Europe to bring Dunn’s remains home and who flew to Vermont from his San Francisco home for last evening’s hearing.

The proposed plan for the land is “in terms of spirit, exactly what (Dunn) would want,” Hickox said.

Besides, the draft EA does specify that under federal ownership the land will be open to hunting, fishing, and camping. But the proposed new owner is the Fish and Wildlife Service, whose basic mission concerns…fish and wildlife and their habitats. The Service can’t very well take ownership of land primarily for another purpose. Still, people fish, hunt, and camp on its lands all over the country.

The other problem has to do with bureaucratic sclerosis, some of it created by environmental law, which, in this case at least, might end up making it harder to protect the environment.

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 creates a complex and elaborate system of processes that have to be followed before a federal agency can acquire property, even for free.

As Janet Kennedy explained it last night, the first step was a “preliminary project proposal,” which started the NEPA process, leading to the draft EA examining whether the proposal “would significantly affect the environment” and proposing alternatives (in this case just two: take it or leave it).

What is happening now is the legally required comment period, after which a final EA will be issued and the regional supervisor will or will not issue a Fonsi, which is not a character in an old sitcom but a Finding of No Significant Impact, after which the Acting Fish and Wildlife Director in Washington may grant “permission to expand the boundary” of the existing Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge, which will include the Dunn land, non-contiguous though it may be.

Got all that?

There is also the possibility that the whole process didn’t start soon enough. The trustees of the Dunn estate seemed to have had trouble navigating the political shoals in Washington until they turned to the Vermont Land Trust for help.

“You would think that giving away this land would take a ten-minute meeting and a handshake,” said Mark Frederick of the Community Financial Services Group, which is handling the Dunn trust. “But some said it wasn’t their jurisdiction, others said the property was too small for them, or they didn’t have the funding.”

When the VLT came into the picture, Frederick said, so did Vermont’s Congressional delegation, and then the process began to move.

In time? Jonathan Wood, the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources Secretary who conducted last night’s hearing with a booming voice and a soft touch, said he thought so. The state’s Fish and Game Department (part of Wood’s agency) will probably end up managing the new addition to the federal system, but it won’t cost much. The basic management plan is to leave it alone, and anyway the feds will pay for most of what has to be done.

See? A no-brainer slam-dunk.

Unless it isn’t.

Parliament: Way back when

The News Guy did not go to the Vermont Democratic Party fundraiser in Burlington last night despite suggestions – if not taunts – from some folks that he was obligated to do so, having shamed the Dems into opening the event to reporters.

The shamer/taunter set had a point, but 140 miles of round-trip driving just to show the flag seemed excessive from an energy-efficiency standpoint.

Two of them actually: excessive petroleum use by the automobile, excessive use of already-depleted energy reserves in the body. Word is that at least one other reporter did attend the event to hear what Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts had to say, and that said reporter’s account will appear on the VT Digger web site.

Last Wednesday’s post (What Are They Hiding? Just scroll down) calling attention to the (subsequently reversed) Democratic decision to keep reporters out of the fundraiser noted that even from the party’s selfish perspective, that original decision was “really, really dumb.”

Let it not be thought, however, that in Vermont these days one has to be a Democrat to take actions falling into the “really, really dumb” category. Just take a look at what the movers and shakers of the Northeast Kingdom city of Newport did last week.

(And, no, don’t think that just because you might live far from Newport, this particular really, really dumb move doesn’t affect you; it could cost you a few bucks even if you live in Castleton).

What the Newport City Council did was to decide not to welcome visitors from Quebec, or at least not welcome them in French.

Put Bienvenue on a sign? Sacre bleu, non, replied the City Council, as reported by the Newport Daily Express.

“Why can’t we put Spanish on the sign coming from the South?” asked one Alderman, a question which may or may not have had some rational foundation.

Another complained that French-speaking Quebecois are so anti-English that “the English die up there.”

Assuming loose standards for “rational foundation,” this qualifies. Francophone Quebecois do de temps en temps take this French-only business trop loins.

Still, it is unlikely that the folks in the tourism/marketing/economic development department would recommend a deliberate decision not to welcome people in their own language. Having heard about Newport’s anti-bienvenue policy, some Quebecers might decide to spend their money this summer in New Hampshire or New York, or maybe not to cross the border at all.

And who could blame them?

Now that we’re in the international mode, and before proceeding to matters of far greater substance for the rest of the week, let’s finish the recent contemplations about the possibility of altering some of the basics of Vermont governance.

Again, these are not proposals, just stuff that might be interesting to talk about. Last week and the week before, the interesting stuff was a one-house legislature, such as Nebraska has. Today, inspired by the sentiments of one reader’s comment, a more radical suggestion: Why not think about making Vermont the first state to establish a parliamentary system?

Maybe because it could be unconstitutional. The Constitution (Article IV, Section 4) guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” and by some definitions, a parliamentary system does not qualify.

But by others, it does, and every once in a while, a writer or scholar will suggest that the whole country convert. On its face, it seems a sensible suggestion. Almost all of the world’s democracies operate under a parliamentary system, and most of them seem to be governed at least as well as this one.

Those writers and scholars have not inspired a movement. The only organization that comes close to being a pro-parliamentary advocacy group is known as “US Parliament,” which is based (one will not be surprised to learn) in California, and which barely qualifies as an organization. Even Paul C, Manuel is not familiar with it. http://www.usparliament.org/parpar.htm

That’s significant because Manuel, a political scientist, co-wrote (with his wife, political scientist Anne Marie Cammisa)  Checks And Balances?: How A Parliamentary System Could Change American Politics (Westview Press, 1999 ) .

Professor Manuel, now at Georgetown University in Washington, said he and his wife were not advocating that the US switch to a parliamentary system, merely examining the pros and cons. In fact, he seems to conclude that the cons outweigh the pros. After all, he said, in more than 200 years, “the US has never had a government collapse.”

Still, there are advantages to the parliamentary system. Government in Britain, he said, has been “more responsive,” if “less stable” than its U.S. counterpart.

Because of the uncertainty, it might be interesting if one small, relatively civilized, state (that would include this one) decided to perform the experiment. If the states are, as Justice Louis Brandeis said, “the laboratories of democracy,” maybe one state would perform a service by switching to a parliamentary system. If it succeeded, other states would emulate it. If not, the first state could switch back.

Under a parliamentary system, Vermonters would not choose a governor. They would simply vote for legislators. The party that controlled the legislature would choose its leader to head the executive branch. In most parliamentary system, this leader is called the prime minister, but Vermont could continue to use the term ‘governor.’

One advantage of a parliamentary system is that the government, as long as it retained the support of a legislative majority, and presumably therefore of the people, could really get things done.

This is, of course, also the system’s biggest disadvantage. The government might do too much. But if any government did too much in the opinion of the electorate,  that government might fall, requiring a new election.

Would that be more power to the people? Or too much politics?

The power of the majority might also be constrained because legislative majorities could be harder to come by. Parliamentary systems tend to inspire the growth of minor parties, which often win seats in the legislature. Then the bigger parties have to form coalitions with them in order to get enough support to form a government.

This is precisely why some people think a parliamentary system might be a good idea. They’re the folks dissatisfied with the two parties and the powerful if unofficial two-party system which effectively invalidates minor parties.

Granted, all of this might be idle speculation, cotton candy for the mind, as someone once described theoretical musings about unlikely prospects.

But look at it this way: Thinking about making Vermont the first parliamentary system in America is no sillier, and less objectionable, than thinking about having Vermont secede, an absurdity which seems to have a  devoted (if very small) following in these parts.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Vermont Democratic Party decided that, on second thought, it would allow reporters to cover its Sunday evening fundraiser starring Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts.

A wise move. When a powerful House committee chairman speaks in a quasi-public setting, he might commit what some reporters call a “new” (or perhaps a gnu?). That is, he might make news. News ought to be covered by folks whose business it is to cover the news, not because they have such a wonderful time doing so (it’s often a drag) but because it’s better to have an informed public that an uninformed public.

Such, at least, is the theory behind democracy, or, as it’s sometimes known, a republic, meaning both Democrats and Republicans should facilitate rather than encumber the process. For the nonce, the Democrats seem to have figured this out. Some of us will be watching all political parties for future compliance.

Speaking of politics, let’s deal with that poll about the governor’s race that came out the other day, and with the reaction to said poll.

According to a Rasmussen Reports survey of 500 randomly selected Vermonters, Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, unopposed for the Republican nomination, is leading all five Democrats running in the Aug. 24 primary to oppose him.

Dubie’s lead over Secretary of State Deb Markowitz is a modest one, 47 percent to 40 percent, within the poll’s plus-or-minus 4.5 percentage point margin of error.

Against the other four, Dubie gets more than 50 percent, though just barely (51) against Sen. Doug Racine. But the lieutenant governor has a 15-point margin over Racine, and bigger leads against Sens. Peter Shumlin and Susan Bartlett and former Sen. Matt Dunne.

Bartlett fared worst, trailing Dubie by a 55-to-29 percent margin, so perhaps it was not surprising that her campaign manager, John Bauer, issued a statement questioning the validity of the poll. Bauer quoted the recent comment of Middlebury emeritus political science professor Eric Davis that 
”Rasmussen polls should be interpreted cautiously(because)  Rasmussen uses automated prompts with touch-tone responses rather than live operators to collect its data.”

That’s true, and Rasmussen’s polls are controversial, partly because Scott Rasmussen makes no effort to hide his own very pro-Republican sympathies.

But that doesn’t mean the polls are inaccurate. Even Nate Silver of  538.com, a critic of Rasmussen’s methods, concedes that the company’s polls have a higher than average record for calling races right.

Some of the poll’s findings at least raise the possibility that the survey over-sampled Republicans. For instance, it found Vermonters almost evenly split on supporting off-shore oil drilling.

Maybe they are, but it would be risky to run for office here on a pro-drilling platform.

Still, there’s not much reason to doubt that the Rasmussen poll is an accurate snapshot of the campaign right now.

But that’s all. The dynamic of the race will change on the night of August 24, when the primary results come in. (Rasmussen, confused, used the old date of September 14, but that doesn’t have any impact on the poll’s accuracy).

The more pertinent question right now, then, is not whether Dubie is ahead of the Democrats, but which Democrat is ahead of the others. That question can’t really be answered until next month, when Research 2000 releases its poll on the Democratic race. But it can sort of be answered now, as long as everyone understands that the answer is tentative and even a touch shaky, because two of the campaigns, Markowitz’s and Shumlin’s have hired respected pollsters to check out the race.

The results have not been made public. They haven’t even been quasi-officially leaked. But some people who have seen the results have…well, let’s just say they’ve chatted. In pubs, on the phone, in meetings. Hints have been dropped. With that shakiness caveat firmly in mind, the race seems to be shaping up this way:

Markowitz is ahead. Racine is second, though just how distant a second is hard to determine. Shumlin is an apparently not-very-close third. Dunne and Bartlett remain in single-digit percentage figures.

These results do not justify a prediction that Markowitz will win, or even justify an assessment concluding that she’s the front-runner.  Nor do they mean that Dunne and Bartlett have no hope. To begin with, this is  very hard race to poll. It all depends on turnout, which is likely to be quite low, and while the pollsters are probably “screening” for likely voters, that’s a most imprecise exercise under the circumstances.

All the pollsters can do is ask respondents whether they plan to vote in the primary. Ok, they can push a bit: “Are you sure you’re going to vote?” Or, “are you enthusiastic about the race?” Or some such. But for a couple of reasons, many folks may say they really, really plan to vote, but end up staying home.

Or, in this case, being away. August 24 is in the middle of vacation season. Some of those respondents who said they were going to vote may have forgotten that they have reservations at a resort or plans to visit their Aunt Louise in California on that date.

Yes, there’s early voting. It starts July 12, and all the campaigns have early-vote operations to urge their supporters to fill out their ballots before taking off for the beach or Aunt Louise’s. But one of the peculiarities of this campaign raises the likelihood that many voters may not bother.

The peculiarity is that all five of these Democrats are just fine with the vast majority of Democratic voters. This is not an ideological battle. There are some policy differences, but all the contenders are mainstream, center-left Democrats. Nor is it one of those contest between “regulars” and “reformers,” whatever that means. So far, at least, nothing resembling a “character problem” has arisen about any of candidates.

The result is that while few rank-and-file Democrats are all that enthusiastic about any of the five, neither do they harbor any hostility toward one or two of them. Harboring hostility is  great turnout builder, absent in this primary.

But there’s one more thing to keep in mind. The dynamic of the primary is likely to shift next month, when that Research 2000 poll comes out and when the candidates report their fund-raising results on July 15. The candidates who bring up the rear in both measurements (and whoever trails in one is likely to be trailing in the other) are going to be in trouble. Both press and public will conclude that they are out of it.

That may not be fair. But it’s what almost always happens. At that point, the race will take on a new shape. Don’t expect anyone to drop out officially. But at least two of those Democrats will effectively spend the last month or so going through the motions, with most attention centered on the two or three at the top.

That’s when it’ll get interesting.

And Don’t Forget: The News Guy is on Vermont This Week tonight (repeated Sunday).