Susan Bartlett said she did not throw a reporter out of a meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which she chairs, because “there was no meeting.”

She did, she acknowledged, ask Louis Porter of the Vermont Press Bureau  (The Times-Argus and the Rutland Herald) to leave the room one day the week before last while she and the other Democrats “consulted with legislative council.”

Two House members, Democrat Jason Lorber of Burlington and Republican Oliver Olsen of Jamaica, were also asked to leave.

The consultation, Bartlett said, was originally going to be held in the Legislative Council’s offices, but the space there was cramped, and she suggested they’d be more comfortable in the committee room.

“We can do that,” she said.

Obviously they can, because she did. Whether senators may, under their own rules, hold closed sessions inside their committee rooms is less certain. Because an official meeting had not been convened, holding a private session might not have violated those rules.

Or maybe it did. It seems to be a matter of interpretation.

The place to start looking, suggested State Archivist Gregory Sanford, is the Vermont Constitution,  specifically Chapter 2, Section 8, which states that, “(t)he doors of the House in which the General Assembly of this Commonwealth shall sit, shall be open for the admission of all persons who behave decently, except only when the welfare of the State may require them to be shut.”

According to Sanford and others, this section applies to committee rooms as well as the legislative chambers, the exception for “the welfare of the state” refers only to emergencies, and being a reporter is not proof of indecent behavior in and of itself.

That would seem to indicate that the session in the committee room –whether or not it was a “meeting” — should have been open. Bartlett acknowledged that five committee members – a quorum – were present.

Bartlett said the committee was also gong to discuss “personnel” matters, therefore it could meet “executive session.”

It can, but only after voting to do so in open session, by a two-thirds majority, and even then only for certain designated reasons, one of which is to discuss personnel. None of that happened the day Bartlett closed the meeting.

But Allen Gilbert of the Vermont American Civil Liberties Union, himself a strong advocate of open meetings, acknowledged that Senate rules might be unclear as to whether a gathering “is a meeting unless it’s convened.”

At any rate, Gilbert said, there is no remedy for this violation, if it was a violation. The only redress is to “complain to the (Senate) Committee on Rules” because the Senate is “not covered by the Open Meeting Law,” so there is no “statutory violation.”

There also appears to have been no harm done. Privately, some senators from both parties were unhappy about Bartlett clearing the room. But no one suggested she was trying to pull a fast one. She just wanted to meet in more comfortable surroundings.

But in the first place, it’s not certain that under Senate rules a reporter (or anyone not misbehaving) didn’t have the right to be at the meeting no matter where in the Statehouse it was held. Or maybe even if it was held out of the statehouse, though Sanford pointed out that lawmakers have sometimes held closed meetings elsewhere, apparently (though perhaps mistakenly) believing that as long as they were in a different buildings they could bar press and public.

Gilbert said the Open Meeting Law draws no distinction between meetings in official or unofficial venues. Should two members of a three-person school board or select board bump into each other at the grocery store, he said, they are forbidden from discussing board business.

It’s unclear whether the Senate rules are quite that strict, but it would seem that Bartlett at least violated the spirit of Vermont’s open government tradition.

To be sure, a case can be made that the tradition is too strict. Maybe people have to get together in private sometimes to hash matters out. Banning such sessions in public (or even in the grocery store) could just push officials into more clandestine locales, such as the back table of the local saloon. (No, come to think of it, that’s too public). But if the system should be changed, officials should argue for changing it, rather than simply breaking the rules.

If there is any price Bartlett will pay here, it’s political. She’s one of the five Democrats running for governor. Getting a reputation for acting surreptitiously (which in general she does not seem to deserve) is not likely to be a political plus.

But when it comes to tension between public officials and members of the Fourth Estate, Bartlett cannot compete with State Auditor Tom Salmon.

Salmon apparently dislikes Seven Days political reporter Shay Totten. Disliking Totten, an unusually pleasant and easy-going fellow, is not easy, but presumably if a reporter keeps catching a politician doing stuff he shouldn’t do, the pol might start taking it personally.

A couple of weeks ago Totten caught a member of  Salmon’s official staff  sending a political email from a state computer during business hours. The email “welcomed” as an opponent (perhaps prematurely) State Sen. Ed Flanagan into the Auditor’s race. Flanagan, who once served as auditor, is thinking about running for his old job against Salmon, who was elected as a Democrat but switched parties last year.

Responsibly, before writing a story, Totten emailed Salmon for response and comment.

Which arrived promptly and…well, let’s just say bluntly. No, on second thought, let’s say obscenely. This web site, determined to persist in its policy of (outward) respectability, will not quote Salmon’s reply (but here’s the link). Suffice to say that it was as far from respectability as one can get.

There is a term for a politician who not only talks this way to a journalists, but actually puts it in writing, meaning he can’t later claim to have been misquoted.

No, make that two alternative terms: (1) A person of dubious judgment; (2) a dope.

At least one Republican, sort of defending Salmon, suggested in a Statehouse corridor last week that Totten was “nitpicking” because sending the email on state time and state equipment was a minor infraction.

Maybe, but you know what? Reporters are supposed to be nitpickers. The Auditor’s office is about a five minute walk from Republican headquarters, and Salmon’s aide could have gone over there at lunch time or after the business day to send the email all legal and proper on a GOP computer. Campaign finance laws, like open meeting laws, exist for a reason.

For the Vermont voter, the political prospects for the Auditor’s race seem especially dismal. For reasons that will be dealt with another day, Flanagan’s judgment isn’t all that reliable, either. In fact, perhaps the most puzzling political question of the day is why Democratic leaders haven’t by now found an attractive accountant – or at least finance-savvy businessperson – to oppose Salmon, who would seem vulnerable if opposed by a minimally competent candidate.

OK, who won?

Now that the palavering, posturing, and pontificating of the 2010 session of the Legislature is over, it’s time for at least a preliminary evaluation as to who did and did not come out ahead.

Not just by the measurement of raw politics, either. This assessment will also taka a look at whether the day-to-day lives of regular folks were affected by what the lawmakers and Gov. Jim Douglas wrought these last four-and-a-half months.

The short – and possibly welcome – answer is: not too much. A large majority of Vermont citizens who are neither rich nor poor will note little if any change in their bank accounts, their job security, their children’s education, their retirement benefits, their recreations, or their passions because of any legislation passed and signed into law this year.

Welcome news indeed to those who remember the old phrase about how “no man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.”

But there were exceptions. No one should be shocked by this news, but in general, the very wealthy came out ahead, while the poor and near-poor did not, especially the poor and near-poor who are ill or otherwise in need of social services.

And some 7,700 middle and upper middle-income households will face higher property taxes, quite a bit higher in some cases.

The results do not mean that impoverished Vermonters are going to be begging in the streets, their open sores exposed to the elements. Legislative sessions, especially as they wind down are: (1) dramatic; and (2) insular. The drama takes place in an enclosed space in which the same relatively small number of people – legislators, lobbyists, reporters, administration officials — constantly interact with one another.

What happens then is that all disputes become magnified and the disagreements are assumed to be more polarizing than they really are. Had Douglas gotten all the spending cuts he wanted – and he did not – the state’s social services would not have evaporated, no more than business investment would have dried up had the Democrats blocked all those tax reductions.

The last dispute resolved, for instance, was over whether the capital gains tax would be cut by $1.5 million or $3.2 million. Not an inconsequential sum, but a tiny fraction of a $3.77 billion budget.

But let’s get to the raw politics, because it’s easy and it’s fun.

Douglas won.

Not everything, but a lot. For a lame duck governor, he showed that he still has a fair amount of clout. He did it by being stalwart (or stubborn, depending on one’s political preferences), betting that the Democratic leaders wouldn’t risk a repeat of last year’s budget veto and subsequent veto override vote.

Last year, they won that vote. This year, they might not have won it in the House of Representatives. And even if they had won it, they feared it might play into Republican political hands, allowing Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie to paint them as big spenders who raise taxes.

Which he’s going to do anyway, but a budget confrontation might have strengthened his case.

Under some circumstances, Douglas’s strategy might have been risky for Dubie and the Republicans, giving Democrats the chance to portray them as friends of the ultra-rich but indifferent toward the needy.

But those circumstances would exist only if a leading Democrat started making that argument a few weeks ago. There are five Democrat running for governor, but none of them stepped forward to make that case. That left Douglas and his allies free to set the parameters of the discussion.

That Douglas “won” does not really mean that the Democrats “lost.” In the final bargaining, they gave up more points to him than he to them. But first of all, this isn’t really a game. Besides, they held firm on education financing. There will be no mandatory school district consolidation, nor a required change in the student-teacher ratio.

In addition, both sides could claim “victory” in that they passed a budget despite starting the year facing more than a $150 million projected deficit. They did so in a collegial manner, and they could claim that the budget was “balanced.”

It might be.

Celebrating the agreement and his success, Douglas said that “while other states are cutting programs and raising taxes in response to the fiscal crisis, Vermont, I am proud to say, is moving in a different direction.”

Sounds good. Except that what he and the Legislature did this year was cut programs and raise taxes. They didn’t eliminate programs or raise the key income, sales, or property tax rates. But they raised some people’s taxes (while reducing others) and effectively reduced the quantity – and almost surely the quality – of many public services.

By how much? Impossible to say, because the “challenges for change” concept grants the Administration broad powers to cut spending. One of Douglas’s victories occurred when the Democrats gave up on their proposal to allow the state to dip into its “Rainy Day Fund” if the “Challenges” process did not save enough money.

It won’t (for reasons to be explored in a post coming soon). The result will be more cuts in services for the poor, the sick, the mentally ill. It was not a liberal Democrat, but Republican Rep. Anne Donahue of Northfield who said (in Thursday’s Times-Argus), the lawmakers are “pretending that we are restructuring services when in fact we will be cutting services.”

The higher taxes will be the result of some tinkering the Legislature did with the formulas for deciding who is eligible for how much “income sensitivity” in determining their statewide school property tax bills. The tinkering means that more people will benefit less from income sensitivity.

According to figures from the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office, some 7,700 households will pay an average of $662 more a year in property taxes, a total of more than $5 million.

The hardest-hit will be 423 households earning between $85,000 and $95,000 a year. Their property taxes will rise an average of $1,639 each. But some households with incomes of $40,000 or even less will pay a few hundred dollars more a year.

The money will go into the Education Fund, holding down the statewide school property tax rate. The beneficiaries here are households with incomes too high to qualify for any income sensitivity, and who pay solely on the basis of the value of their property.

Upper-income taxpayers will also reap most of the benefits from the partial restoration of a capital gains tax break. Under the new law, someone with, say, a $10,000 capital gain from the sale of business assets with a Vermont connection would pay taxes on only $6,000. Douglas wanted the exclusion to apply to all capital gains including stocks, bonds, and homes.

In the end, he accepted a partial victory, and the Democrats agreed, in the hope that lower taxes on Vermont-related capital gains would provide an incentive for more business investment which in turn would lead to more jobs.

The evidence for this assumption – or hope –is…is…well, it may not exist, a mystery worthy of detailed examination next week.

“Everything is resolvable at the end. Unless it isn’t.”

This time, it seems, it isn’t.

The words came from Shap Smith, heretofore known not as a Buddhist philosopher but merely as the Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives

But it was that kind of day at the Statehouse Tuesday, a day of policy and politics; a day of hope and worry; a day, one might say, of now and Zen.

Occasional spurts of activity were followed by long periods of waiting around. The talk in the corridors was sometimes theoretical, sometimes practical. Optimism clashed with pessimism.

Oh, and Democrats clashed with Republicans.

Politely, to be sure. Everyone from Republican Gov. Jim Douglas to Democratic Senate President Peter Shumlin made sure to tell reporters that their discussions were courteous and friendly.

But by the time Smith uttered his mystical mantra, at about 4 PM, they had not resulted in agreement between Douglas and the Legislative leaders on the Fiscal Year 2011 state budget, nor on the taxes Douglas wants lowered. Without those tax cuts and more budget reductions, the Governor has implied, he might veto the budget bill as he did last year.

Nor was there any agreement by mid-evening, and Smith had made clear that with or without a deal with Douglas, the lawmakers would vote on a budget this week. Hence the possibility that Democrats would pass the budget they prefer, taking the chance that Douglas will veto it.

That’s what he did last year, only to have his veto over-ridden. This year, both sides said they wanted to work together, and at least they have behaved more civilly toward one another. In fact, negotiations continued into the night, both sides clinging to the hope that an agreement would be announced Wednesday morning.

Later in the night, though, negotiations broke down without agreement. It’s not quite the end. In theory, talks could resume Wednesday morning. In theory, everything remains “resolvable.” But the “isn’t” outcome seems more likely, as does a veto and a possible veto override session next month.

All day, in fact, there was conjecture, not all of it by Democrats, that Douglas actually wants to veto the budget bill to provide a political boost to Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie’s campaign for governor. According to this theory, a veto would dramatize the GOP argument that without a Republican in the governor’s office, Democrats would just keep spending more money and raising more taxes.

The fact that in its two-year life this Democratic-controlled legislature actually lowered income taxes – albeit minimally – on a large majority of Vermont taxpayers seems not to diminish the potential force of this argument. In modern America, myth and image outweigh mere fact.

The conjecture about Douglas’s political strategy was, of course,  surmise. But it gained some currency by the fact that all day long (actually, for the past several days), the Democrats kept giving ground to the Governor.

Who kept taking it. And asking for more.

By early afternoon, the Democrats had made so many concessions that one Republican lawmaker crowed, “the Democrats are caving on all the taxes,” and some liberal Democrats were grousing about their own leaders.

One of those Democrats said…well, his precise words are too indelicate for this web site. Suffice to say that he suggested that his party’s leaders were acting as though they were the Governor’s concubines.

But some of those Democratic concessions might have been more symbolic than substantive Take the capital gains tax dispute. Last year, over Douglas’s objections, the Democrats reversed a capital gains preference enacted in 2002. That change is expected to raise some $10 million in revenue in the coming fiscal year.

Smith said he thought a compromise could be reached by restoring the preference, but only on capital gains from investments in companies based in Vermont. Anyone who knew much revenue would be lost by such an amendment (Smith indicated he did) wasn’t revealing it. But probably not much. Wealthy Vermonters (and most capital gains taxes are paid by the wealthy) no doubt invest in diverse portfolios on the advice of financial consultants whose job is to make their clients richer, not to play in-state favorites. One of the great things about capitalism is that it is heartless, with devotion to neither person nor place, but only to money.

Nor would the Democrats be giving up much if they repealed the higher estate taxes they enacted last year. In a few years, the federal estate tax, the terms of which Douglas wants the state’s version to follow, might actually take in more money from wealthy estates (the only kind that are taxed) than Vermont’s. So if the Democrats can find a way to delay the revenue loss for a year or so, they might be willing to compromise.

And there seemed little doubt that the Democrats eagerly – if not desperately – want to compromise, while Douglas and his advisors appeared  willing to accept another veto confrontation. This could be because Smith isn’t sure he has the 100 votes needed to over-ride a veto. (Shumlin has a bigger majority in the Senate, and should have no problem). Perhaps significantly, the Speaker never claimed to have commitments from 100 representatives.

On the other hand, as long as today’s topic is political conjecture (not to mention meditation), here’s another possibility. Remember, Shap Smith knows how to play this game, too, as he proved last year when his House overrode two Douglas vetoes. If he has a problem this year, it would seem to come from a handful of his less liberal members. Continuing to give way on these liberal positions (the two taxes), only to have the Governor continue to rebuff him, might be just what he needs to shore up those votes for the veto override.

Again, conjecture, but, again, perhaps given some currency by another development. Most of those less liberal Democrats are from rural areas, where many influential voters are big landowners who oppose the changes to the Current Use system called for in a bill which has passed both houses, but in different versions.

Smith has been in no hurry to bring an amended bill back to the House floor. He could be holding it as a possible bargaining chip, dropping one or more of its most controversial provisions to placate those rural Democrats.

Log-rolling to please the forest industry. Something Zen there.