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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

It was cold last week, wasn’t it? And it’s gonna be a cold winter.

How do we know?

Well, we don’t know, in the sense of being certain beyond a scintilla of doubt. But we do have some pretty good info telling us it might be a good idea to make sure we have enough long-johns and sweaters for the coming months.

And no, this info does not come from the Farmers Almanac, which claims to be “known for its traditionally 80 percent accurate forecasts,” but does not reveal by whom it is so known.

Kind of fun, the Farmer’s Almanac, but even if it no longer uses the “pig spleen method” or the “ol’ goose bone method” of weather forecasting, its reliance on “a secret formula that was devised by (founder) Robert B. Thomas” in 1872 does not inspire confidence in its results, especially when its proprietors sum up their approach by proclaiming that they “believe that nothing in the universe happens haphazardly.”

Oh, sure it does.

Instead of secret formulas, this projection that a cold winter lies ahead comes from scientists both public and private, who project colder than usual weather for the entire Northeast, and who, being scientists, acknowledge a certain margin of error in their projections.

As AccuWeather.com’s Chief Meteorologist and Expert Long Range Forecaster (yes, all those capital letters are AccuWeather’s idea) Joe Bastardi, put it, this winter’s likely “fading El Niño results in the stormiest and coldest pattern in recent years.”

But don’t panic. First of all, the National Weather Service agrees about the cold, but not the storms. And even Bastardi thinks that most of those storms will be south of Boston, and therefore safely south of Vermont. Boston and northward, he said, should see “normal snowfall with temperatures slightly below normal this winter.”

That possible “fading El Nino” will make it colder because the stronger and longer-lasting the El Nino (“A change in the surface water temperature in the Pacific Ocean that produces a warm current”), the warmer it is all over the United States, even this far from the Pacific.

This far, though, the meteorological impact will be small, hence the projection of temperatures “slightly below normal.” No one is predicting a deep freeze.

The economic and political impacts are harder to predict. If winter precipitation is normal, the snow-plowing budgets should follow suit. On the other hand, colder weather is likely to prompt Vermonters to spend more money and/or split more logs to heat their homes. (Of course, the more logs one splits, the less fuel one needs, the act of splitting itself providing ample warmth).

The political prediction should be more qualified than the long-range weather forecast, but a cold winter is likely to energize the global warming denier crowd, even though a cold winter provides exactly zero evidence to refute the scientific consensus that human activity is warming the earth.

Alas, evidence or lack thereof seems no hindrance to the climate change deniers, who are inspired by impulses from within, not data from without. Consider the blogger calling himself “NORTHERNVT” who complained in Sunday’s Burlington Free Press that “global warming is a load of crappp,” his “evidence’ being that it was chilly out. This is not an argument based on evidence; it is a blurt based on resentment, specifically, in this case, of Al Gore and his movie An Inconvenient Truth.

Not that Gore et al don’t sometimes overstate their case. In the movie (reportedly; the News Guy did not see it) Gore makes much of the melting of the “Snows of Kilimanjaro,” famous because Ernest Hemingway made those words the title of one of his brilliant short stories.

The snow and ice on the mountain are melting, but not, according to some scientists, because of global warming. Significantly, though, these very scientists think the ice atop many other African mountains is melting because of global warming.

Aside from the occasional bleat, global warming denial has been an insignificant force in Vermont, where no major elected official seems to deny the overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic (the fancy term for “human-caused”) warming. The only deniers hereabouts are a commentator or two whom few take seriously to begin with.

But a bit of a counter-attack — on the face of it a most ineffectual counter-attack — is coming nationally, so if this winter is colder than usual, one might expect a little more noise from the local deniers.

The counter-attack comes in an about-to-be-published book by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, a sequel to their much praised best-seller, Freakonomics. The sequel is Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Purchase Life Insurance (Harperluxe), which is a funny title, but the book seems to say (according to several discussions on line) that the earth has actually been getting cooler “over the past several years.”

Uhhh, no. The last two months were the second hottest August and Septembers on record. This year is likely to be the fifth hottest year on record, meaning that all ten hottest years will have occurred in the past 15 years.

There are more than enough other outrageous errors in the climate change chapter to prevent any reasonable person from taking it seriously.

Which is not to say that reasonable people shouldn’t keep an open mind. Like all other scientific conclusions, the anthropogenic global warming consensus is tentative. The first time a dissenter puts his or her doubts into scientific form, submits the product to the climatologists (peer review), and the climatologists can’t immediately dismiss it, then the rest of us will have to go back to square one.

So far, no such paper has been submitted.

Politicians, policy-makers, and pundits be warned! There’s a new player in town, a hot-off-the-presses pressure group with plans to make its views known, forge alliances with like-minded factions, and endorse candidates.

It’s Vermont’s archeologists.

Both of them.

Okay, maybe all 40 of them, splitting down the middle the “about 30-to-50” estimate of Jeremy Ripin, one of two co-chairs of the newly-formed Vermont Professional Archaeologists’ Association.

But don’t dismiss them too easily. They have potential allies among historic preservationists, environmentalists, and the Abenaki. They are likely to have a goodly chunk of the general public on their side, possibly even a majority. There is, after all, something close to a consensus that historical preservation, including archeological protection, is good for business.

Then, too, these archeologists are really motivated.

There’s nothing all that new in the events motivating them. In fact, they have been dealt with here, most recently on July 31, and not much has changed since then, at least not in public.

Let’s try to explain what’s going on here, at the risk of some inevitable over-simplification, inevitable because we have to deal with intertwining laws and regulations, not to mention the powers and responsibilities of several obscure state agencies (the Natural Resources Board, not to be confused with the Agency thereof; the Department of Historic Preservation [part of another agency altogether]; the State Archeologist; the Historic Preservation Officer; the District Environmental Commissions, and more).

Gov. Jim Douglas’s administration wants to change the administrative rules under Act 250 that determine whether a chunk of Vermont which somebody wants to develop first has to get checked out to see if some ancient artifacts might lie beneath it.

According to the archeologists and their supporters, the changes would make it less likely that historic and pre-historic sites would be discovered and protected. As a result, they say, Vermont would be the poorer. So would they.

In fact, the leaders of the new association are refreshingly candid about having some self-interest in this controversy, not that there’s anything unusual about a pressure group looking after its own, or any necessary contradiction between looking after one’s own and promoting policies in the public interest.

“We’re the professional archeologists,” Ripin said, “We do the excavating and looking for sites. This ‘no new sites’ policy could mean the loss of 30 to 40 jobs.”

By ‘no new sites’ policy, Ripin was referring to the changes being proposed in the Act 250 administrative rules that, in his view, would limit the search for archeological material to areas where such objects have already been found.

“If they change this rule, other sites will never be found,” he said. “They’ll be bulldozed.”

As even some other archeologists see it, the “never” there might be something of an overstatement. The proposed changes would allow investigation in new areas under certain circumstances.

But the archeologists do seem to be over-stating their case less than is the Agency of Commerce and Economic Development (under which is the Division of Historic Preservation, whose director – an acting director these days – is the state Historic Preservation officer). In an email message, David Mace, the spokesman for the Agency, said the changes are “designed to make the rule comport with the statutory language and clarify the roles of the parties.”

For several reasons, this seems debatable at best. First, the plain meaning of the text indicates that the proposed changes are substantive. At least twice, the proposals would change the criteria for considering whether archeological investigation may be needed from land having “historically significant resources” or “potentially significant…resources,” which would include archeological materials, to “a historic site,” which might not. At another point, it changes the wording of a sentence that reads “A number of steps are necessary to identify archeological sites.,” to “a number of steps may be necessary…” Twice it removes the words “potentially significant property resources” as a reason state officials should examine “the effect of the (proposed) project” on possible archeological material.

All of which seems to support the contentions of archeologists that under the proposed rules, the state would require developers to look for archeological objects only where such objects had already been found nearby. Anywhere else, “only in exceptional circumstances” would even the most superficial check of the terrain be required.

The Agency’s proposed changes might also threaten the funding stream that finances archeological exploration. Now, the developer who wants to bulldoze the land files an application that sets in motion the process of determining whether the land has possible archeological value. (The answer is usually ‘no,’ and in more than 90 percent of the cases, there is no cost to the developer, though when there is, it can be several thousand dollars.)

The new proposals would finance the process through a small fee charged to all developers. Some archeologists, including Professor John Crock, head of the University of Vermont’s consulting anthropology program, think this might be a good idea.

Right now, said Crock (who is not in the new archeologists political organization), the burden falls “unevenly on developers that just happen to be working in areas where there are significant archeological sites.”

But he said the proposals as written are so vague that effectively there is “no plan,” and the proposals “don’t explain how archeology is going to get funded.”

In addition, according to a source familiar with the process but preferring to remain anonymous, some state officials are already trying to weaken the protection for potential archeological sites. This source said that the Historical Preservation Division is understaffed and is still being led by an acting director, months after her predecessor retired (or was forced out, as some say).

Besides, nobody makes changes in rules, especially over the objections of legitimate constituencies (in this case, the Abenaki and environmentalists in addition to the archeologists) just to “clarify” a process. Rules are changed to make a difference in the outcome. Somewhere in the Agency of Commerce and Economic Development, somebody wants weaker protection for potential archeological sites.

Who and why is not clear. Crock said he hoped it was not some “hot button right-wing issue,” but that could be as good a guess as any. The obvious beneficiaries of weaker regulations would be the building contractors, land developers, and realtors. But considering that only a smattering of projects incur any costs at all, ideology could be a bigger factor than economics.

The archeologists say that Vermonters care about their history. No doubt many do. But in some circles these days there is an active – even an aggressive – hostility not just to history, but to scholarship and intellect in general. It’s essentially a tribal impulse, a desire to strike back at “them” on behalf of “us.” In this case “them” are scientists, environmentalists, intellectuals in general, who seem to be condescending to “us” (developers and other businessmen).

Seem to be because sometimes they are.

The same phenomenon explains, at least to some extent, global warming denial as well as the intensity of some conservative ideologues for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The ideologues are more devoted than the oil companies, who know that there might not be all that much oil in ANWAR. The ideologues care less about oil than about annoying environmentalists.

Whatever the motivation behind these proposed changes, one knowledgeable source calling their ultimate adoption “a done deal.” The Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, probably more sympathetic to the archeologists, can delay but not veto the final decision of the Administration. (But if LCAR votes against the changes they would be more vulnerable in a court case).

Of course, it may not be a “done deal.” The process is not over. In fact, the new rules have not even been formally proposed, though David Mace’s memo said that would probably take place within the month. On October 27, Mace said, the “Vermont Advisory Council on Historic Preservation ( citizens group appointed by the governor) and the Natural Resources Board will meet to discuss the archeology rule.”

All assuming that the process can survive the political juggernaut of the newly energized archeologists.

The Newport Wastewater Treatment Plant

It’s OK to drink the water.

At least in Vermont, one may reasonably assume that the local wastewater treatment plant has been inspected within the last decade, that any violations (and there have been violations) have been corrected, and that in some cases the offending facility was fined.

As to all those folks whose water comes from their own wells, it’s probably clean, too. You never can tell about e-coli, of course, but they’re quite rare in deep wells. If you get your water from a spring, you’re running a bigger risk, but you probably knew that.

None of which means that there is no water pollution problem in Vermont, nor that there is no legitimate criticism about the way clean water laws are enforced here. Every now and then, state officials issue a “boil water” notice for a small water system where problems are discovered, and the lakes and rivers could provide far better habitat than they do for fish and other creatures.

But drinking water from the tap is not likely to make you sick.

A reassurance necessary (or at least advisable) after the water-protection world and a whole lot of other people were knocked off their feed last Sunday by a long, detailed, and disturbing account of the nation’s clean water situation by the New York Times.

Under the headline “Clean Water Laws Neglected, at a Cost,” the Times revealed some horrible examples of, for instance, West Virginia homeowners who can’t drink their own well-water because toxic coal-mine detritus has seeped into their wells. The story also recounted several cases of lax enforcement of clean water laws as officials “repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping,” often intimidated by powerful corporate polluters.

In addition to the information in the newspaper, the Times conducted an “extensive review of water pollution records,” compiling a ”national database of water pollution violations that is more comprehensive than those maintained by the states or the E.P.A.”

Comprehensive, but not necessarily accurate.

Click on that link, for instance, and under “select a state,” you will see that…..WHOA, Waitaminit!.

THEY FIXED IT.

Well, sort of.

They fixed some of it. But sneakily, without any kind of public disclosure in their corrections pages that they had fixed it.

And they only fixed some of it.

Let’s go back to the beginning here.

The story in the paper reported that Vermont has 171 waste-water treatment facilities, of which 76, or 45 percent, are “out of compliance.” The on-line information painted a bleaker picture. The first page listed 15 plants, not one of which had been inspected since 1982, and eight of which had not been inspected since the 1970s. Those 15 plants had a total of 97 violations, but not one of them had been penalized a single penny.

But the information was internally inconsistent. Clicking (then, not now) on the Burlington North End waste water treatment facility led to a page saying the plant was last inspected on November 9, 1978, but that there was an enforcement action on August 5, 2005.

Or take Newport, last inspected December 7, 1981. But an enforcement action March 27 2006.

Enforcement actions without inspections? Not likely

Here is the information saved as a document on Monday:

1–15 OF 206

24 facilities could not be mapped but are included in this list.

Now here it is on line Thursday:

1–15 OF 206

All of a sudden those same 15 plants have been inspected within the last few years — Newport on August 22, 2007, Burlington North End March 5, 2008. (And St. J is spelled correctly).

Somebody at the Times must have agreed with Gary Kessler, the Director of the Compliance and Enforcement Division of Director of Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation, that “they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Kessler called the Times presentation, “a real disservice. It makes it look as if our inspectors haven’t left the building in decades.”

In response to complaints from officials in Vermont (and probably elsewhere) the Times has now corrected that misimpression. But its on-line data still report that no Vermont wastewater treatment plant has been fined for any violation in decades, which certainly does indicate lax enforcement.

Except it isn’t true. Kessler provided records showing thousands of dollars in assessments for “Supplemental Environmental Projects” levied against Vermont wastewater treatment plants. Burlington, for instance, has been assessed more than $58,000 in the last 13 years. Instead of going into the state’s coffers, though, the money was used for environmental improvements in the Lake Champlain Basin.

It’s possible that according to the Environmental Protection Agency, where the Times got much of its data, any assessment that does not go into the state’s General Fund is not classified as a “fine.” But that’s what most people would call it. The Internet is an extraordinarily useful tool. But a reporter can’t ask it, “just what do you mean by that?”

An extraordinarily useful question for a reporter to ask.

The New York Times (whose spokesperson did not reply to an email request for comment) is the best newspaper in the country (if not as good as it used to be, but neither are the others). It regularly serves the country well by telling people what they ought to know but what powerful forces would rather they not know. Last Sunday’s report on clean water, by reporter Charles Duhigg, was one of those stories – thorough, clear, well-documented, and mostly accurate.

Like most high-quality newspapers, the Times is trying to augment the information it provides in print with creative and innovative use of the Internet. In this case, it, uhhh, muddied the waters, as it has effectively acknowledged by changing the data available on line.

But it only corrected some of its mistakes, and it did so a bit surreptitiously. Let’s not get carried away here. The general public did not panic, and even the officials (at least in Vermont) were more annoyed than worried about public over-reaction.

But surreptitiously is not a good journalistic habit.

Archeological dig in St. Johnsbury (from UVM)

If you can no longer bear the suspense, no, the News Guy was not admitted to the “Developmental and Environmental Regulation Seminar” sponsored by Associated Industries of Vermont Thursday.

Neither were any other reporters. At least two, one from the Burlington Free Press and one from Vermont Public Radio, had been told by telephone that wouldn’t be allowed in, so they didn’t show up.

Nobody else seems to have tried. Or cared.

Tough (or stubborn) bunch, that AIV. The combined censure of the News Guy, Shay Totten of Seven Days, St. Michael’s College journalism professor David Mindich (as reported in the Free Press), and even an uncharacteristically hard-hitting Free Press editorial did not shake AIV’s determination to hear speeches by the Secretary of Natural Resources and other senior state officials in secret.

Or maybe not so secret. This conference turned out to be even less a private, invitation-only, session than understood when its closed-to-the-press rule was condemned in Wednesday’s post (just scroll down). Anyone willing to pay the $45 fee could attend.

Come to think of it, a sneaky reporter who was a stranger to the event’s organizers (and one can always hire a ringer) could have paid the forty-five smackers and sat through the entire seminar. What with today’s technology, he could have surreptitiously filmed it and put the whole shebang on YouTube.

For all practical purposes, then, it was a public event, as well as a meeting between regulators and the owners of businesses they regulate. That made the ban on news coverage (and, especially, the acceptance of that ban by the public officials) even more objectionable. It also made the indifference of the rest of the state’s news outfits (excepting the Free Press, Seven Days, and VPR), more mysterious, if not more cowardly.

On the other hand, the all-but-public nature of the event meant there were people inside the meeting who were willing to talk to a reporter in the corridor outside. From their reports, the events within were useful, informative, and not at all shocking.

That YouTube, it seems, wouldn’t have been very interesting, much less the least bit scandalous.

Asked what he had said during his lunch speech, Natural Resources Agency Secretary Jonathan Wood said, “nothing different than if you’d been in the room,” an assessment confirmed by others.

Wood said he had not known the gathering would be closed to reporters until one of them, Candace Page of the Free Press, called him on Wednesday. Describing himself as an advocate of “a free and open society,” who cooperates with journalists, Wood said keeping reporters out of meetings did offer the advantage of allowing people to be more candid than they might be if they thought their remarks would be in the newspaper.

In politely denying the News Guy’s request to enter the meeting-room, AIV spokesman Bill Driscoll made the same point.

“Some people get intimidated,” he said. “They are private and shy about the press.” Having reporters in the room, Driscoll said, could stifle open discussion.

Their point can not be casually dismissed. But neither can this: People do what is in their interest, or at least what they think is in their interest. If IAV and its fellow-sponsors thought that their words and actions in that meeting would win them the approval of the public, they’d invite every reporter in the state and give them lunch for free. It is likely that one reason (though not the only one) they keep reporters out is that they’re not at all sure their words and actions will meet with public approval.

The subject of the meeting, after all, was “environmental regulation,” and many if not most of the business leaders in attendance want to weaken the state’s environmental regulations. Whether or not that is a wise outlook, it is in this state (and most the others) a decidedly minority outlook. Those advocating it probably want to minimize their visibility.

As mentioned Wednesday, the specific regulation (or set thereof) at issue now concerns areas of archeological significance. Or, more precisely, areas that might have archeological significance if we knew what was under them. Considering that some of these sites hold relics of people who lived in Vermont some 12,000 years ago, some people find them fascinating and important. Some do not.

The Agency of Commerce and Community Development has proposed changing the regulations for determining which sites get considered for possible architectural designation under Act 250. According to some archeologists, the proposed change in Section 4.2 would weaken protections because it removes the words “or potentially significant property or resource” from the list of criteria for considering whether a site should be examined for possible archeological significance.

Tayt Brooks, the Commissioner of Economic Development, Housing, and Community Affairs, who spoke at Thursday’s seminar, said there was “some confusion” over this language.

“The proposed rule does not change how we designate archeological sites,” he said, repeating earlier assertions that the administration is only interested in “clarification” of the permitting process.

Even John Groveman, general counsel for the Vermont Natural Resources Council, which opposes changing the regulations, conceded that this was “open to interpretation.” But Groveman said a provision in Section 4.7 requiring that some sites be designated “only in exceptional circumstances,” would prohibit – or at least discourage – looking for possible archeological finds in some areas. He also said the proposed change in the method of funding archeological searches threatened to cut off funding altogether, at least temporarily.

Well, the two sides and their lawyers will fight this out for a while, and Brooks acknowledged that “we will be making some changes and tweaks,” as the process moves along. Meanwhile, for those not immersed in the minutia, a few points:

–What’s the problem? Only a tiny fraction of projects that go through the Act 250 process have any archeological complication. According to the Division of Historical Preservation, in 2006 only 57, or 11 percent, of 501 Act 250 projects even required a site visit, which costs nothing. Only 16 of those projects required any further study, meaning that 97 percent of all projects were cleared for development with no cost to the developer.

–Context is important. Here the context is that Gov. Jim Douglas’s Administration is closely allied with the development community – builders, realtors, and their finances – and intent on “reforming,” which often means weakening, regulations.

Thanks to this alliance, environmentalists and their allies view any proposed rules change with suspicion.

“If you look at what’s happening with ANR (Agency of National Resources) and their attempt to streamline permitting and eliminating staff for enforcement, this is all part of a concerted effort by the Douglas Administration to build whatever, wherever, as much as possible,” said Rep. Tony Klein of Montpelier, the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee.

–Never (or almost never) in the entire history of the human race has anyone proposed changing rules just for “clarification.” Process is not important; substance is. If the Administration wants to change the rules, it surely wants to change the results, perhaps not so that contractors can “build whatever, wherever,” but so they can build more, faster.

Which was precisely one of the goals of Thursday’s meeting. As Bill Driscoll acknowledged, the business community believes the permitting process is “too unpredictable, too open-ended, in terms of the delays and the costs involved.” IAV and its co-sponsors are allies of (and its members are campaign contributors to) the Governor.

None of which proves that some streamlining of the permitting process is not a good idea. Jonathan Wood’s point that permits ought to be granted “not to the applicant who can survive the (permitting) process but to the applicant who can comply with the regulations” seems sensible on its face.

But it is a good reason why, even if nothing much transpired at Thursday’s meeting, the public ought to know what goes on at these meetings just in case something does.

NOTE: The News Guy is taking next week off. New postings resume August 10.