Can they do that?

Or, to be strictly grammatical,  the doer in this case being a single entity, if composed of several individuals, can it do that?

The “it” is the Executive Branch of the government of the state of Vermont, commonly known as the Douglas Administration. And the thing that it did was fire a state worker after the Legislature specifically told it not to fire that state worker, an instruction that Gov. Jim Douglas seemed to accept.

As with the grammar, the above description is imprecise. The Administration did not officially “fire” Jens Hawkins-Hilke, the scientist who provided expert advice to local planners involved in the Community Wildlife Program.

It just eliminated his position.

It did so even though the budget bill passed in late May stipulates with no apparent ambiguity that “(i)t is the intent of the general assembly that the fiscal year 2011 budget… funds two (2) limited service Fish and Wildlife Scientist II positions… The Scientist II positions shall continue to implement the landowner Incentive Program and Community Wildlife Program. “

A separate “Statement of Legislative Intent” filed by Appropriations Committee chairs Martha Heath (House) and Susan Bartlett (Senate) asserts that “the policy goal” of the provision is “to have continuity…for the wildlife related local municipal and regional planning…assistance these positions provide including wildlife crossing of roads in developed areas to improve planning for sustaining critical habitat for wildlife preservation.”

Douglas signed the bill on June 3. The next day, Jonathan Wood, the Secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources eliminated one (1) of those “two (2) Fish and Wildlife Science II positions, Hawkins-Hilke’s, the one that “implement(s) the…Community Wildlife Program.”

Could he do that?

Obviously he could because he did, though Hawkins-Hilke and the state employees union have filed a grievance. Until the grievance procedure runs its course, then, it’s premature to conclude that the termination (reduction in force, or RIF, in government jargon) was completely on the up and up.

But it isn’t too early to conclude whether the Executive Branch has the power to terminate a position even after it agrees (as at least implied by the Governor’s signature on the bill) not to terminate that position.

Apparently it does.

“The Legislature can put in language that says ‘you shall’ or ‘you shall not,’” said David Coriell, Douglas’s spokesman. “But when they say what the intent of the Legislature is, that’s a little fuzzier. Intent is not a mandate.”

Coriell, of course, works for the Executive Branch, and could be expected to interpret law and constitution in its favor. But Steve Klein, the head of the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office, a lawyer as well as a numbers whiz, agreed that in general “I don’t think legislative intent has the force of law,” and Paul Gilles, the Montpelier lawyer who is recognized as one of the state’s leading constitutional lawyers, said statutes are often “not implemented the way (legislators say) they’re supposed to be,” but courts are reluctant to intervene in jurisdictional disputes between the other two branches.

At any rate, the Legislature does not plan to take this case to court.

“We’re just urging the governor to follow the full intent of the law,” said Tom Cheney of Speaker Shap Smith’s office.

When one side in a legal dispute decides not to go to court, it’s usually because it doubts it can win.

So Hawkins-Hilke’s termination, while perhaps less than noble, arguably even dishonorable, appears to be within the Administration’s constitutional discretion.

Whether it violates the state’s contract with the Vermont State Employees Association is yet to be determined, and Hawkins-Hilke, not surprisingly, asserts that it does, and is therefore illegal.

“According to the union contract, (the RIF) has to be on economic grounds and has to be in compliance with the law,” he said. “The budget bill is law. It was signed June 3, and on June 4 administration continued with the RIF. So it is not in compliance with statute. Nor is it an economically driven cut.”

Yes, it is, insists ANR Secretary Wood, even though it saved only $16,000, the state’s half of Hawkins-Hilke’s pay. The other half came from the federal government.

“I would love the people who are saying that to live a little bit in my shoes,” Wood said. “The agency has had to reduce almost 100 positions…in the last couple of years. Unless you’re in state government it’s a little annoying to cavalierly talk about amounts of money as though they’re insignificant. This has been the largest reduction of state government in history. Every dollar is important.”

But Hawkins-Hilke and others suspect that the Administration wants to weaken environmental planning as much as it wants to save money. After all, it increased spending on some of its preferred functions, such as economic development.

And one email released by Administration Secretary Neale F. Lunderville’s office indicated that at least one Administration official, Human Resources Commissioner Caroline Earle, was “very concerned about this move in the light of the legislative language.”

Other officials, though, were confident that Wood had the authority to terminate the position.

Hawkins-Hilke pointed out that he is not the only environmental planner whose job has been eliminated.

“The only planner in Forest, Parks, and Recreation was RIFFED last year,” he said. The head planner for the Agency of Natural Resources was RIFFED  last year. The Basin Planning Program (part of the Water Quality Division) has taken a substantial hit.”

Dana Farley, president of the Vermont Planners Association, had a similar assessment.

“The planning community’s a little bit perplexed by it all,” she said. “Resources for planning have been cut for many years. We aren’t getting the kind of technical and funding support we used to. The loss of this position really tipped over the cart.”

Wood insisted that ANR would continue to help localities plan for wildlife conservation, though he acknowledged that the service “may not be quite as robust without having an individual dedicated to it.”

Evidence as to whether the position was terminated solely to save money might be found in the emails the VSEA is seeking from the Department under a Freedom of Information Act filing. According to Hawkins-Hilke, Lunderville’s office has complied with the request, and the Agency of Commerce and Community Development replied that it has “no communications whatsoever” on the matter, an assertion Hawkins-Hilke does not doubt.

But ANR is balking, arguing that though the VSEA does not want copies of the emails, only the opportunity to look at them, it must pay for the staff time required for the search.

This, too, could simply be because the hard-pressed agency needs to find all the money it can. On the other hand, just as a decision not to go to court usually indicates a weak case, a reluctance to turn over documents often means that the reluctant party does not want the documents in question to see the light of day.

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.

USA Today came to Vermont last week to write about the Vermont Yankee squabble, and in Friday’s paper the reporter quoted Yankee spokesman Larry Smith describing the nuclear power plant’s opponents as “hippies from the ’60s who want to be against something, and it’s nuclear power.”

Not a very smart thing to say, at least not in the judgment of one Larry Smith, who said Tuesday, “not the smartest thing I ever said.”

Not what he meant, either, said Smith, who didn’t deny saying it. But he was referring, he said, only to some of those who oppose relicensing the plant for another 20 year run, “many of the same people who attended those (anti-nuclear) hearings” 40 years ago.

“The people who moved up here in the 60s, sort of counter-culture folks,” he said. “But it was not a general characterization. I would never characterize all our opponents that way.”

Good enough. But here’s the interesting thing. If he had meant it as a serious description of those against the relicensing (and we take him at his word that he did not), he would have had a point.

Not literally, of course. If the latest polls are accurate, most Vermonters don’t want the plant licensed to run past March of 2012, and surely most Vermonters do not fit the definition of “hippie”: “a person who opposes and rejects many of the conventional standards and customs of society” (American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition).

But broadening the definition a little (well, OK; a lot), the description fits. At least the leaders of the anti-Yankee forces tend to be political liberals, environmentalists who are suspicious of all large corporations, who might go out of their way to eat locally grown, organic food, who listen to public radio.

To a corporate executive at a nuclear power plant, these people would be not only wrong on the issue, but also…not my kind of people. Conversely, on the other side of the debate, those executives would be not only wrong on the issue, but…not our kind of people.

At some point this political tribalism becomes as significant, if not more so, than the differences over the issues, real though they are. On both sides, beating those other guys (not our kind of people) becomes the real goal.

This is not a phenomenon unique to Vermont. Take the dispute over drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The oil industry does not support drilling as fervently as do conservative commentators and operatives (the industry isn’t sure there’s that much oil there). The conservative commentariate has no economic vested interest. They just want to “stick it to the hippies,” or, more accurately, defeat environmentalists, who are not their kind of people (and who in turn delight in the conservative discomfort about continuing to lose this battle).

Something similar is going on in Vermont with regard to “permit reform,” which apparently isn’t going to happen again this year. But it’s a perennial. It will be back, promoted by the business community (especially the building contractors) and supported by most Republicans.

Their argument is that the hoops through which developers must jump before they are allowed to begin construction projects suppress economic growth in the state. Were it easier, quicker, and cheaper to get permits, they say, there would be more construction projects, hence more jobs and faster economic growth.

The argument is not provably false. But it is almost surely not true, raising the possibility that another motive is at work here, that what the “permit reform” advocates really want to do is “stick it to the hippies.”

Or to put it more responsibly, some Vermonters are still so bitter about losing the fight over the passage of Act 250, 40 years ago, and some other environmental laws since, that they want revenge. If not to repeal the law (a political impossibility) at least to weaken it.

This is not a sentiment confined to the right side of the ideological spectrum. Some feminists still (metaphorically speaking) froth at the mouth when reminded of the failure of the Equal Right Amendment 30 years ago.

But what is the foundation for concluding that Act 250 and the other environmental rules have not suppressed Vermont’s economy?

A good question with a simple answer: Vermont’s economy has not been suppressed.

By almost every measurement, the state’s economy has grown as fast as or faster than the economies of its neighboring states.  In the last 40 years, Vermont’s per capita income, once far behind the national median, has almost caught up with it.  The state now ranks 23^rd in personal income per capita.

The most recent statistics from the Bureau of Economic Analysis show that Vermont’s economy grew by 1.7 percent in 2008, faster than the country as a whole, faster than the New England region, faster than the rest of the Northeast, faster than the South or the Great Lakes, and just as fast as the Southwest.

And they got oil.

Furthermore, there are no data – none – indicating that Vermont’s permitting process prevents or even much delays development projects not likely to harm the environment.

According to a recent report by the Natural Resources Board, last year 82 percent of 380 Act 250 applications were approved without a hearing. Decisions on almost two thirds of all applications were issued within 60 days, and 81 percent were issued within 120 days.

Five, or 1.2 percent of the applications, were denied a permit.

But what about the applications that never get filed because the developer finds the process daunting or distasteful or expensive?

Well, one cannot prove a negative. But look at it this way: a smart developer seeing an opportunity to make a profit will file the application even if filing it is a pain in the neck.

Unless, of course, the developer is not sure the project will meet the guidelines. In that case, the law is working exactly as intended, stopping the environmentally damaging projects while allowing the vast majority of proposals to proceed.

This doesn’t mean that a developer has never given up on a project because of the permitting process. No doubt a few have. But it makes no difference. The site the developer was considering is still there.  Another developer will come along with another project.

None of this means that the permitting system can’t be improved. Anything can be improved, especially government bureaucracies, which often move at all deliberate dawdling. Nor is it intended to absolve  the other side of this discussion–the environmentalists–of their own tribal hostilities.

But next time someone says Vermont will go broke unless it does something about its environmental permitting system, remember that some folks have been saying this for the last 40 years, during which Vermont has gotten richer. Whoever spreads that message probably is less interested in prosperity than in sticking it to the hippies.

Hatchery work

Fishing season begins tomorrow. Thanks to the warm weather, fish-stocking season began a couple of weeks ago.

Before it ends, said Tom Wiggin, the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department’s Fish Culture Operations Manager, the department’s trucks will have dumped 350,000 hatchery-raised brown, rainbow, and brook trout into inland lakes and rivers and 284,000 trout and adult landlocked Atlantic salmon into Lake Champlain. Another 160,000 landlocked salmon fry and 150,000 walleye fingerlings will also be put into the lake, according to the Department’s web site.

Those fish won’t last long. Well before trout fishing season ends in October, the fish will have been caught by human, bird, beast, or another fish. Theirs is intended to be a short life.

Whether it is also a happy one can not be determined.

But there is little doubt that their existence makes some people happy.  The life and the death of these planted fish pleases fishermen (and, increasingly these days, also fisherwomen) because the more fish in the water, the greater the chance of catching a fish.

Especially hatchery-raised fish, which are easier to catch.

That’s the purpose of putting them in the water: so that anglers can take them out. Hence their sobriquet: put-and-take fish.

Fish stocking began in the 19^th Century and takes place all over America, where billions of dollars have been spent raising, transporting, and dumping millions of fish into lakes and streams. It’s as American as apple strudel (it was developed in Germany) and widely popular. The stocking schedule, Wiggin said, is the most popular option on the Department’s web site.

But it might be bad science, bad wildlife management and harmful to the environment.

Such, at least, is the judgment of an increasing number of fisheries biologists.

“The data that are available seem to support the concept that stocking hatchery trout in streams with native brook trout populations is not a scientifically sound idea.  I could find no published or stated evidence to the contrary,” concluded Larry Harris of Trout Unlimited in West Virginia after reviewing the scholarly evidence in 2005.

(Full disclosure: The News Guy, who loves to fish, and even wrote a book about it, is a TU member).

Among the fisheries biologists Harris cited was Ray White, who wrote, “Hatchery fish perform poorly in nature, and hatchery programs and their fish harm wild fish.”

That assessment now represents almost a consensus among fisheries biologists. Fish are still stocked from coast to coast less for scientific than for political reasons. Anglers, especially those in rod and gun clubs, like having all those hatchery-raised (and therefore usually less skittish) fish to hook. Those anglers have political clout, and they think they deserve to get what they want.

In a sense they do, They pay for the hatcheries and the stocking. In almost every state, including Vermont, Fish and Wildlife Departments (by varying names) get almost no general revenue money. Only those who pay for hunting or fishing licenses and the excise taxes on hunting and fishing equipment finance the departments, even though these days those departments perform services for the general public.

Hatcheries and stocking long ago altered the natural world, for the better in some ways. Without them, there would be no rainbow trout – native only to the Pacific Coast – in the Rocky Mountains, where anglers flock to catch them, or for that matter in Vermont. Only brook trout are native to the Northeast.

But the brookies – and the Northeast – have paid a price for bringing in the bigger rainbow and brown trout. Along with the habitat degradation that development wrought, these invasive species have decimated the native brook trout population, now found in only about half of Vermont’s streams and rivers.

Years ago, biologists figured out that planting browns in a stream would abolish the brook trout population, and introducing rainbows would diminish it. The bigger trout don’t eat the brookies as much as chase them from the best spots in the stream for finding food and avoiding predators.

What has changed in the last several years is that biologists now believe that even putting the same species in a river – stocking hatchery-raised brook trout over a wild brook trout population – is a mistake.

“Basically we’re finding out  that there’s a lot of local adaptation, with the fish in each watershed having its own unique genetic structure,” said Jack Williams Trout Unlimited’s senior scientist. “A brook trout in one river system in West Virginia may be different from a brook trout in Vermont. A lot of the fish that are stocked are not really from that local drainage system., so they’re different from local fish that have the best adaptation to the local system.”

As a result, stocking can weaken the wild fish population. Hatchery-raised fish are often bigger, stronger, and more aggressive. But they are less hardy and more likely to be diseased.

So why does Vermont continue to plant “manufactured” fish where wild fish breed?

With a few exceptions, it does not. Choosing their words carefully, Vermont’s Fish and Wildlife scientists and technicians will not come out and say that stocking is undesirable. That would anger some of their most loyal (and outspoken) constituents. But they do make clear that the state’s stocking policy is, as Tom Wiggin said, “very selective.”

“Where you have a good natural population, we don’t stock,” he said. “We stock waters that do not have good populations. These aren’t the quality waters.”

But that’s not all. Increasingly, the state is stocking these streams with “triploids,” trout hatched from eggs treated by heat or pressure so that the fish cannot reproduce. This guarantees, Wiggin said, that the planted fish won’t introduce a new genetic marker into the river.

“it won’t interfere,” he said. “These fish are put and take.”

Put bluntly, then, anglers who fish the stocked rivers are fishing rivers where the habitat has already been so degraded that it will not support a wild fish population. And the fish they catch are…well, they’re fish, technically, but they’re also manufactured products, sterile and somewhat docile. With a few exceptions, a hooked hatchery fish flops rather than fights. An angler can get a better tussle from an eight-inch native brookie than from a foot-long plant. (They taste just fine, though).

The one big exception to the Department’s policy is the Willoughby River in the Northeast Kingdom, where the wild rainbow trout population is supplemented every spring by hundreds of  hatchery-raised fish. Pressured by members of the Orleans Rod and Gun Club, the Department worked out an arrangement whereby the club raises fish from a brood stock that came “from the same exact run” as the wild Willoughby rainbows, in the words of fisheries biologist Rich Kirn.

Obviously, this, too, was a political rather than a scientific decision, with the Department using good science to make sure that the stocking did not degrade the wild fish population. In one sense, it has succeeded. Anglers flock to the river every April as the rainbows leap their way up the river toward Lake Memphramagog, spending money in local hotels and restaurants and catching (mostly) the stocked fish. The stocked fish that are not caught, rarely survive the summer.

But as some biologists see it, even this kind of stocking is a way of avoiding the underlying problem –that the fishery had declined because of habitat degradation. In their view, stocking is a poor second choice compared to habitat improvement.

“We’re better off trying to restore the habitat and trying to promote the health of those streams rather than rely on stocking,” said Jack Williams of Trout Unlimited. “It’s much better in the long run to address habitat problems or look at changing the fishing regulations, even if it’s easier to meet the demands from the fishing public by stocking.”

The Department does not really disagree. It does a lot of work protecting habitat, but it can’t roll back the farming, logging, and building that has warmed and polluted Vermont’s rivers for the past 200 years.

And as Rich Kirn said, stocking the degraded rivers “helps keep people connected with those waters, and maintains an interest in making them better.”

Another political decision, and arguably a good one.

Things are getting a little strange over in Burlington.

To which many a Vermonter would say: “So what else is new?” These are the folks who like to point out that Chittenden County is a nice place because it’s right next to Vermont.

But let’s not be divisive; it’s one state, and we’re all in it together. And considering that the latest Burlington strangeness was inspired by politics, known to bring out the strange in men and women all over the world, we non-Burlingtonites (Burlingtonians?) should refrain from acting in a mean-spirited manner.

But that doesn’t mean we have to ignore the obvious.

Start with Mayor Bob Kiss’s assertion on election night that the outcome “doesn’t play out as a referendum on this administration.”

Uh, actually, Mr. Mayor, it did. Your party lost  (pending a recount) a Council seat in its Ward 2 stronghold. Your party’s pet political ploy – instant run-off voting – got rejected. Your administration’s handling of the Burlington Telecom mess was certainly one reason Republican Kurt Wright breezed to an easy victory over incumbent Democrat Russ Ellis in Ward 4.

Sounds like the functional equivalent of a referendum on the administration.

In the interests of charity, it should be acknowledged that Kiss was acting like a very conventional politician (which, come to think of it, is what he is). Even extraordinary politicians  seem incapable of calling a setback by its rightful name. Recall that both Ronald Reagan (in 1982) and Bill Clinton (in 1994) were asked the day after the Mid-term elections whether their party’s defeats indicated public displeasure with their policies. No, both said. Yes, was the correct answer.

True, you can’t expect any politician (or non-politician) to be that candid. But wouldn’t it have been refreshing if one of them had said something like, “well, it wasn’t a ringing endorsement, was it?”

But the Mayor was not the only self-deluded politician in town last week. No sooner had the votes been counted than Councilor Ed Adrian, a Ward 1 Democrat, said Kiss should resign.

Resign? He’s the duly elected mayor. In a democracy, elected officials who are not seriously ill or been convicted of a crime should not resign. We should not let them off so easily. Furthermore, we should not let the voters off so easily. They should pay more attention to whom they elect, on the assumption that the winner will serve out his/her term. Voters should understand that they are going to be stuck with their choice until that term ends.

(OK, right across the lake there is a possible exception because Gov., David Paterson (a) has been charged with offenses that are not frivolous; and (b) was never elected governor. But those are peculiar circumstances. Even Burlington is not as strange as New York State).

In addition to political delusion, some Burlngtonians seem to suffer from hypersensitivity. When Kiss blamed the loss of instant runoff voting on the “naysayers” of the New North End, Ward 7 Councilor Paul Decelles, the Republican who represents part of that neighborhood, pronounced himself “appalled.” The Mayor’s statement, he said, was “beyond contempt”  The New North End, he reminded Kiss, was part of Burlington, and “not in Colchester.”

Touchy, touchy. If in fact the denizens of Ward 7 got their noses out of joint over Kiss’s comment, they need to grow up. Maybe they didn’t but Decelles decided to get in on the whining craze anyway.

Again, he was not alone. The people (or, probably, just the mayor and some self-appointed spokespersons) of Las Vegas executed a hissy fit last month after President Barack Obama told a New Hampshire audience, “you don’t blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.” Outraged, a Las Vegas newspaper wondered “why the president of the United States continues to use Las Vegas as an applause line in speeches about wasted money.”

But where do the folks out there think you go to blow a bunch of cash? Akron? Topeka? Perth Amboy?

Or maybe Colchester.

If you live in the nation’s sybaritic capital (or in the North End, for that matter) at least a minimal thickness of skin is recommended.

_______________________________________________

Last week, the News Guy was on the radio, on the WDEV-FM morning call-in show hosted by Mark Johnson, who mentioned that a new poll about public opinion on the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant was about to be released.

“Who took it?” Was the first reaction from this corner. “You have to be careful about polls commissioned by interest groups.”

The poll came out later that day, justifying the caution. It was taken by a market research company called Infogroup ORC (which just this week was bought by CCMP Capital Advisor, a New York based private equity firm for some $635 million) on behalf of the Civil Society Institute.

The Institute seems to be a lively group of folks who do some valuable work. But they are unquestionably anti-nuclear, and it shows. Among the poll’s questions were whether respondents would support closure of Vermont Yankee in 2012 “assuming that a combination of increased energy efficiency, clean energy, such as hydroelectric, wind and solar, and natural gas could be used to offset the electricity from the reactor.”  Another was whether they would support closing the plant in 2012 “assuming that many new jobs could be created through investments in new clean technologies, such as hydroelectric, wind and solar.”

Would you believe that very large majorities replied that under those circumstances they would shut down Yankee? And would you agree to give away your car “assuming” it would be replaced by a chauffeur-driven limousine with a fully-stocked bar and a drop-down table constantly refilled with caviar canapés, with an all-expenses-paid, two-week trip to the Riviera thrown in as an added inducement?

The irony is, of course, that it isn’t necessary to hype anti-VY sentiment in the state these days. As demonstrated by the neutrally worded poll taken by Research 2000 last month, and by reaction to the recent State Senate vote not to relicense the plant, most Vermonters would be happier without it

But the hyperbole in this poll was so bizarre that it would felt right at home in…well, in Burlington.

At about 5PM, the phone rang.

Nobody on the other end.

“Hello, hello,” and finally came that delightful metallic tone of a recorded voice explaining that this was a political poll, and asking the respondent whether he had a favorable (press 1) or unfavorable (press 2) opinion about Sen. Patrick Leahy.

At which point, the respondent, being a politically sophisticated type, assumed the poll had been commissioned by a Leahy opponent.

A conclusion confirmed by the next question: Would you vote for Pat Leahy no matter who ran against him? (Or words to that effect. Notes were not being taken. It could have been something like, “regardless of who runs against him”).

Now, aside from Pat Leahy, his wife, his children, and a few devoted, down-the-line Democrats, who on earth is going to answer that question in the affirmative? Suppose Jonathan Papelbon were to quit the Red Sox, or Tom Brady were to retire from the Patriots, move to Vermont, and run for the Senate? What if Oprah moved here and wanted the job? They’d get lots of votes. Rare is the voter who would commit to a candidate without taking even a quick look at the opposition.

“That’s a pretty typical hard re-elect question used in polling,” said Dan Riley, the spokesman for Len Britton, the Republican running against Leahy, who was indeed the power behind the poll.

Well, not really. More typical would be something like, “do you think Pat Leahy has done a good enough job as senator to deserve re-election, or is it time to give somebody else a chance?”

But just because the question was unusual did not make it pointless. Britton can try to trumpet the likely result (look for a press release headlined, “80 percent might vote against Leahy”) to convince contributors that his is not a lost cause.

Which of course it is not. Eight months before the election, nobody’s cause is lost. Improbable, perhaps, but not lost.

_____________________________________________________________

Outside some polling places Tuesday health care activists were handing out little slips of paper with their motto, a phrase commonly heard but rarely examined in Vermont these days: “Health care is a human right.”

It is? Who says? And more broadly, who decides what is and is not a human right?

The questions bring up the recently quoted remarks of John Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods Market, that “it’s not intrinsic in the nature of human beings to have a right to health care.”

Mackey is right, of course. But then it’s not intrinsic in the nature of human beings to have the right of free speech, freedom of religion, security against unreasonable search and seizure, or the power to choose the folks who will govern them.

These are all artificial inventions, or what the folks in parts of academia would call social constructs. They come neither from nature nor heaven, but from people in particular cultures, notably ours.

Intrinsic or not, it’s up to human beings to decide what rights they and their society should have. In America we have in effect (because we’ve never spelled it out) decided that health care is a human right for those old enough, poor enough, or, needless to say, rich enough.

For everybody else it isn’t. Yet.

___________________________________________________________

Some clarifications of recent items are in order here, including a clarification of a clarification. Monday, the News Guy corrected the previous Monday’s post that said the recent statewide poll taken by Research 2000 for WCAX-TV had a four percent margin of error.

Actually five percent, said the correction.

Actually five percentage points, which the numerate among you will understand is not the same thing. This is one of those stupid errors which is stupider than most stupid errors, being an error the News Guy has often corrected when committed by others, making it especially foolish of him to commit it himself.

Almost as embarrassing was the typo in Monday’s other correction. Why the spell check did not catch “secondary sourc” remains a mystery (but not an excuse; we can’t rely on spell check). Perhaps there is such a word is “sourc”? Whichever, this was supposed to be a” secondary source.”

More substantively, Monday’s post reported that the spent nuclear fuel stored at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant site in Vernon could remain dangerous for 24,000 years.

Worse than that, emailed Margaret Gundersen of Fairewinds consulting, which deals with nuclear power issues. That 24,000 years “is the half-life of the nastiest radioactive isotopes,” she said, “but it takes roughly 10-half lives for the radioactivity to decay completely and for the radioactivity to be equal to what is natural background.  So, mathematically, 10-half lives of 24,000 years means 240,000…years.

This becomes a question of personal responsibility. The News Guy wants to make sure that his error has lulled no one into thinking he or she can wander around the grounds of the abandoned Vermont Yankee plant as early as the year 26,010. That could still be dangerous. Unless the waste has first been removed to Yucca Mountain, Nevada (but don’t hold your breath for that one) or elsewhere, do NOT, under any circumstances, walk around that area until the year 242,010.

Assuming, of course, that human beings then are still counting years under the same system. Assuming that is, that human beings have not either (a) evolved into a possibly more rational species; or (b) completely destroyed themselves and their surroundings.

Without mentioning the great man’s name, Vermont’s dwindling collection of Vermont Yankee supporters have been invoking the wisdom of one of this more admirable Yankee’s most famous utterances (and one he apparently uttered, which is not true of all of them): “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

Indeed it ain’t. It might not be over for 24,000 years, roughly how long the spent nuclear fuel stored on site will remain dangerous, unless by then it is moved elsewhere.

But last week’s overwhelming vote by the State Senate against allowing the Public Service Board to relicense the nuclear power plant for another 20 years, was a powerful – if not quite fatal – blow to the plant.

To employ a metaphor the aforementioned Mr. Berra would appreciate, a baseball team that has fallen behind 26-4 (the Senate vote) at the end of eight innings can still win. It rarely does.

Today’s post is particularly designed to fulfill one of the purposes of this web site, as expounded at its outset – to compensate for the flaws in mainstream news coverage stemming not from lack of ability but from the rise of “opinions on the shape of the earth differ” journalism, in which quoting each side accurately is considered doing the job even if the words quoted are absurd.

The premise seems to be that if a reporter points out the absurdity he or she will be considered biased. It’s a foolish premise. There is no bias here on the issue; the News Guy is neither an opponent nor a booster of nuclear power. The only “bias” is for evidence and against nonsense.

Start with the oft-quoted dismissal of the Senate vote by Yankee’s most important backer, Gov. Jim Douglas.

“There was a lot of theater here yesterday, but from a legal standpoint, nothing’s changed,” Douglas told WPTZ-TV (Channel 5) News. “The law says absent an affirmative vote from the Legislature, the Public Service Board can’t move forward with relicensure. So I expect there’ll be more chapters in this drama to play out.”

Could be. As the Governor and other Yankee advocates pointed out, by next year, Yankee’s image, battered by news of tritium leaks and official misstatements,  might have recovered. Besides, there are elections this November, and the lawmakers who take office next year could be less hostile to Yankee and its owner, Entergy Company.

But that would require a far greater turnover of Senate seats than seems likely. And on the basis of recent development, it’s just as likely that another misstep or another revelation would drive Yankee’s reputation even lower. Right now, the Senate’s decision appears likely to stand.

As to the consequences of shutting down the power plant in two years, actual evidence (as opposed to rhetoric) supports not taking either side one hundred percent seriously.

The gloom and doom projections are certainly overblown. There is a power surplus throughout the Northeastern United States. Your lights will go on with or without Vermont Yankee.

Might your electric bill be higher? Yes, but it was going to be higher either way. Yankee may now provide some 35 percent of Vermont’s electricity at a low price. But under its most recent contract offer, it would provide less power at a higher price. Interestingly, the utilities that buy Yankee’s power have been relatively quiet during the recent tumult. That’s because they’ve figured out how to replace the power they get from Yankee at an acceptable price.

Besides, if people are serious about controlling global warming (as to be sure many are not, though all evidence indicates that most Vermonters are) everybody is going to have to pay more for all kinds of energy so that everybody uses less. Markets work; the easiest way to reduce consumption of any commodity is to raise its price.

None of this proves that electricity might not be slightly more expensive without Yankee than with it. But “might” and “slightly” are the key words here. Either way, the increase is hardly likely to eliminate Vermont’s status as the cheapest-power state in the region. So those warning about how shutting down Yankee will chase away businesses because of high utility rates need not be taken seriously.

So what should be taken seriously? In ascending order, the following:

1—Without a nuclear power plant, more greenhouse-gas-creating fossil fuel will be burned so Vermonters can turn on their lights, run their computers, and the like. Most of that fuel will probably be natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal and oil, but not as clean as nuclear, (at least once the nuclear fuel is refined from its ore, a process that burns a great deal of fossil fuel). Eventually, wind, solar, and other “sustainable” sources will provide more power, probably at a higher cost. But (see above) higher costs are both inevitable and desirable.

2—Closing the plant will have some economic impact in and around its home base of Vernon. Even Arnold Gundersen, the consultant who has been critical of Vermont Yankee, acknowledged that if the plant stops producing power when its license expires in 2012, it will lay off some 200 nuclear engineers.

Yankee critics point out that most of those engineers live in Massachusetts or New Hampshire. True, but they come to Vernon five days a week (or more) and spend money there. Losing them will be noticeable.

But not catastrophic. Businesses and policy makers have at least two years to prepare. Furthermore, shutting down a nuclear power plant is a major undertaking, requiring hundreds of highly skilled workers for a decade or more. Vernon can prosper for the foreseeable future if it keeps its head.

3—And here’s the only real reason the Vermont Yankee matter is not really closed (all that other stuff is just why people will still jabber about it). Entergy could challenge the state’s power to block its relicensing in federal court.
The company might win. Federal law trumps state law if they conflict (See Article VI, US Constitution). But it’s complicated. Elsewhere, state regulatory agencies play a role in licensing nuclear plants, which seems not to have been challenged.

Besides, companies are often wary about using raw power to impose themselves where they are not wanted. Nobody is going to boycott electricity. Still, fighting the state in federal court could turn out to be what Yogi Berra (maybe) once called “a wrong mistake.”

Correction: Last Monday’s post said the recent Vermont poll taken by Research 2000 had a margin of error of plus-or-minus four percent. That was a typographical error of the mind. It’s five percent (as the computations in the next paragraph correctly indicated).

Correction 2: A reader noted that the picture used to illustrate Friday’s post did not seem to come directly from the US. Agriculture Department’s Food Environmental Atlas, but via a “secondary sourc.” Said reader is right. The map should be credited to the always-helpful Rural Blog from the University of Kentucky.

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.

A nuclear power plant (NOT Vermont Yankee)

In 13 months of existence, the News Guy has so far declined to deal with one of Vermont’s most important and most contentious issues: what to do about Vermont Yankee.

The subject has not been inadvertently overlooked; it has been deliberately avoided for two reasons.

The first is that the debate over re-licensing the nuclear power plant in Vernon for another 20 years has hardly been ignored by Vermont’s established news organizations. Sometimes it seems as though no one at the plant can sneeze without the Brattleboro Reformer, the Burlington Free Press and VPR recording how many co-workers said, “God Bless You,” and seeking comment from VY’s owner, the Louisiana-based Entergy Company.

Considering that one reason for the News Guy’s existence is to cover what others do not, not covering what others do made sense.

The second reason is that this dispute is both financially and scientifically complicated, and that one ought to know what one is talking about before talking about it.

That this precept is not universally followed renders it no less worthy.

Just how dangerous are those dry casks of nuclear waste stored at the plant site? How hard would it be to replace the power Yankee produces annually? Will that one-degree increase in the Connecticut River’s temperature degrade the river’s ecological integrity? Does the spinoff of Yankee to a new, highly leveraged, company mean Vermont taxpayers are likely to be stuck with the cost of shutting the plant down?

Because the policy here holds that knowing what you’re talking about involves more than just quoting the (often shrilly expressed) opinions on both sides of the debate, answering those questions and more would take more time than has been available. Hence the absence of Vermont Yankee coverage.

By now, though, enough of that information has been gathered to probe into some of the politics and economics (if not the nuclear physics) of the Vermont Yankee dispute. Besides, in recent days, the political aspect has moved center-stage, allowing the political observer to comment with more authority.

Actually, the tumult of the last few days has inspired some exceptions to one of the most obvious political facts of the Yankee debate – its tribalism. An outspoken Vermont Yankee supporter is likely to be…well, let’s just say a proper person (and, yes, we’re engaging in a little simplistic stereotyping here, just to make the point quickly). Possibly a Republican, but at any rate a pro-establishment sort, someone who admires – or at least is not bothered by – large corporations, the consumer culture, suburbia.

But find a populist Vermonter (left or right) who rails against corporate dominance, gas-guzzling vehicles, and consumerism, and who has some counter-cultural sympathies, it’s a probable twelve-to-seven that he or she wants Vermont Yankee shut down yesterday.

On neither side of the divide is anyone likely to change his or her mind because of anything as trivial as evidence.

Which, when you think about it, is a pretty foolish foundation on which to conduct an important discussion.

Herewith, then, the first of three conclusions about the Vermont Yankee debate: It is entirely possible to be a reasonable, thoughtful, intelligent, well-meaning, public-spirited person and be in favor of relicensing VY for anther 20 years.

Or to be against it.

And that’s because of the second of three conclusions about the Vermont Yankee debate: Everyone living in Vermont now or who gets born or moves into it over the next 20 years can live healthy, prosperous (and electrically-powered) lives if the plant shuts down in 2012 or earlier.

Or if it continues to operate for another 20 years.

Which is not to say that the choice is not consequential, merely that it is not cataclysmic. Without Vermont Yankee, electricity might cost more, and Vermonters in effect might have to burn more coal, producing more greenhouse gas. (“In effect,” because Vermonters wouldn’t themselves burn the coal; it would be burned for them to provide some of the power now produced by Yankee).

If the plant continues to operate, it will continue to produce some radiation pollution. Then there is the danger, minimal but potentially catastrophic, of leakage from those storage casks. (But that danger already exists, from the gunk already there. Whether another 20 years worth substantively enhances the danger is one of those scientific questions this site is not yet competent to answer).

These are the kinds of choices societies have to make these days, and, as stated above, are matters on which decent and reasonable people can disagree. In an ideal world – or even a reasonable one – they would disagree civilly and rationally.

A challenge rendered more difficult by passions on both sides, but especially these days by the conduct of the plant’s owners, whereupon we come to the Third conclusion about the Vermont Yank debate: Entergy officials may be competent managers of an efficient and safe power plant. But when it comes to dealing with the public, they…well, to clean up the line Lyndon Johnson (unfairly) used about Gerald Ford, they can’t find their collective behind with both hands.

A reality evident even before this latest debacle about the underground pipes and lying to the authorities. There was the collapsing water tower in 2007, the inadequate studies about the safety of the waste storage, the failure to follow the Public Service Board’s order requiring it to monitor radiation levels in the spent fuel containers, its procrastination in making a price offer to the utility distributing companies.

Then consider the company’s new advertising campaign, the one highlighting the fact that 650 people work at the plant.

As they do. But half of them live in Massachusetts. And if they were all Vermonters? They would comprise some three tenths of one percent of all the jobs in the state. The people of Vermont don’t rely on Yankee to provide jobs. They rely on it to provide clean, reliable, inexpensive electricity. Sometimes, marketing “experts” can be too cute for their own good.

Then of course we come to the latest fiasco. ‘Oh, we do have radioactive material in underground pipes after all, even though we said we didn’t; even though we said it under oath.’ (But using words perhaps designed to avoid to perjury. “I don’t believe there is active piping service today carrying radionuclides under ground,” said Entergy Vice President Jay Thayer. It’s all but impossible to prove that a person did not “believe” what he said he did at any moment).

It’s as though nobody ever told these guys that the best – actually, the only – way to appear to be transparent is to…(hold your breath here for the shock)…be transparent. It’s a public process. You can never be sure of not getting caught if you say something false. Ergo, say nothing false.

In all likelihood, then, most Vermonters now view Vermont Yankee as a company from which they would not buy a used car, were it in the car business, because: (a) they wouldn’t trust it not to have rolled back the odometer; and (b) they wouldn’t be sure it knew how to roll back the odometer without rolling it forward by mistake.

That explains why even a whole lot of pro-corporate establishment types are turning against Yankee relicensing. See Sunday’s Free Press editorial. See also the angry statements from top officials of Gov. Jim Douglas’s Administration, clearly expressing the governor’s views. If anyone has the right to be angry at Yankee, it is Douglas. He’s supported it all the way. Now it has sandbagged him.

To render this judgment, one needs no scientific expertise, and the company has only itself to blame.

OK, for the last time for a year if not forever, let’s get this fund-raising stuff out of the way.

The response to last month’s plea for donations has been encouraging. The News Guy will live for another year.

The clever ploy, of course, would be to state the opposite, that only you, by your contribution, can stave off the death of this site. But while effective marketing may call for…well, shall we say a touch of artfulness, good journalism – the goal here — requires transparency.

Which you have. Whether or not you contribute, the News Guy will live.

But he still needs a little more revenue. Hence this admittedly annoying reminder. The experience of the last few weeks is that reminders work; each new appeal for funds inspires more donations. Perhaps this explains why public radio station fund drives are so obnoxious. It works. Alas, the News Guy finds it impossible to be nearly as obnoxious as a public radio station. But he’s trying.

So once more: If you think this site brings Vermonters news and analysis they otherwise would not get, and contributes to the state’s public discussion, click on “donate” (Under “pages” in the upper right quarter of the page) and send as little (or, even better, as much) as you choose.

All right. Enough of that.

Now let’s peek into two items of the week’s news, starting with State Sen. Hinda Miller’s proposal to reverse this year’s repeal of the state’s capital gains tax preference.

In this case, a peek is all that’s required because, with the eternal caveat that one can never conclusively predict where proposed legislation will go, one can with some confidence predict that this one ain’t goin’ nowhere.

Still, there was something interesting about the evidence Sen. Miller, a Burlington Democrat, provided as she announced her proposal: there wasn’t much, if any.

Do not misunderstand. This is an observation, not a condemnation. There is nothing unusual in proposing legislation without providing much evidence for it. Better (or worse?) yet, one need not have evidence to be correct.

Miller said that doing away with the preference may have been “fair” because it mostly effected the wealthy, but it was not “smart” because it would discourage investments, which the state needs.

“If we don’t repeal these capital-gains tax increases then we are going to dissipate any consideration people might have to risk their own money in the future of Vermont businesses,” Miller told the Burlington Free Press.

Could be. Then again, the news has been full of late of people who have decided to risk somebody’s money, probably including their own, in Vermont businesses (a new Yogurt plant in Brattleboro; a new company planning to produce hydro power from old flood control dams; three stores moving to Shelburne Road Plaza). Obviously, the tax structure isn’t discouraging everybody.

Not to mention that Gov. Jim Douglas, that advocate of low taxes and investment incentives, once proposed ending that capital gains preference himself. True, Douglas would have, sort of, given the money back to the same people who “lost” it by reducing income tax rates on the wealthiest taxpayers. But the impact on investment would presumably have been identical to the impact from this year’s repeal.

In fairness to Sen. Miller, she might have some facts to back up her contention, but she was out of town yesterday and did not respond to phone and email messages.

But now comes word of an actual economic study arguing that under the present circumstances (high unemployment; effective zero short-term interest rates), cutting capital gains taxes would be exactly the wrong thing to do.

In a paper written for the New York Federal Reserve Bank, economist Gauti Eggertsson concluded that reducing capital gains taxes “deepens a recession” because it “gives people the incentive to save instead of spend, when precisely the opposite is needed.”

The other item worth a peek is yesterday’s unanimous decision by the Legislative Committee on Administrative Review (LCAR) to reject a proposed rule allowing all-terrain vehicles on state land.

Again, only a peek is needed because there’s no reason to think many Vermonters care much. This is a niche issue. Oh, there’s measurable public opinion on it; a rather substantial majority of the public seems to oppose allowing the ATVs on state land. But only the hardcore environmentalists are passionate opponents, just as only the ATV riders are passionate advocates.

This political perspective is appropriate because the Agency of Natural Resource’s case for changing the rule was entirely political. The scientific evidence – every iota of it – supports keeping the ATVs off public land (and perhaps imposing more restrictions elsewhere). That’s why the actual scientists in the agency opposed changing the rule.

Again, this is observation, not condemnation. In a democracy, political decisions are entirely proper. Top ANR officials might have reasonably concluded that the degradation of the natural resource caused by ATVs, while certain, would be minor, outweighed by the enhanced convenience bestowed on the ATV riders.

(And perhaps enhanced economic activity, though whether allowing ATVs on state land would attract more out-of-state riders to Vermont is conjecture, and would have to be considered against the possibility that the policy would deter some out-of-state visitors who prefer quiet hikes on state land).

Then there’s the management consideration. ANR Secretary Jonathan Wood, neither an ATV rider nor, by reliable report, a great fan of the ATV lobby, has pointed out that some ATVers are riding on state land anyway, legal or no, and that providing some legal access might reduce the trespassing.

Besides, the ATV riders are one of the constituencies to which Gov. Jim Douglas…well, after some reflection, let’s say, one which he likes to please.

Before the reflection, the impulse was to say a constituency to which Douglas panders. But that has an unnecessarily derogatory connotation. Pandering is unavoidable in a democracy, and all office-holders engage in it (See under: Vermont Yankee, Democratic candidates for governor, and). The favored constituency does not think of itself as being pandered to, only as having its needs recognized and its sensibilities honored.

That’s why the Douglas Administration might try to push ahead with the rule change anyway. Honoring the sensibilities of a loyal constituency, even a small one, can be politically appealing.