Announcing the potential refinancing of Burlington Telcom’s debt last week, Burlington Mayor Robert Kiss proclaimed that the latest development “confirms that the use of pooled cash has not been, and is not, an increased risk to the taxpayers of Burlington.”

This is false. The taxpayers of Burlington could have lost the $17 million the city (via its “pooled cash” funds) loaned to BT. In fact, they can still lose it, because the refinancing by Piper Jaffray, a Minneapolis-based underwriting company, has been announced, but not completed.

Kiss’s claim was in the news. The truth of its inaccuracy was not, not in John Briggs’s story in the Burlington Free-Press nor in Ken Picard’s account in Seven Days’s on-line Blurt blog. As far as could be determined on line (and not searching until Sunday) no other news report mentioned Kiss’s quote, absolving them of the obligation to correct it.

Do not misunderstand. The point here is not to condemn Briggs, Picard, or any other reporter, Here some clarification is in order. Recent criticisms of Vermont news coverage on this site have not, for the most part, been directed at the working reporters, and if they have been interpreted that way, they must have been imprecisely worded. In Vermont and elsewhere, a shrinking corps of reporters is doing its best under difficult and increasingly frustrating conditions. Whatever is wrong with news coverage is not – at least not primarily – the fault of the working reporter.

Or maybe even the working editor, who has fewer reporters to assign, (though one incident this past weekend shook one’s sympathy for at least some editors; details below).

No, the trouble here transcends individuals, or individual news organizations, or Burlington Telcom or Burlington. Or Vermont, for that matter, though it is certainly prevalent here. It is the confusion of journalism with stenography, the erroneous impression that if a reporter has accurately quoted a news source, the reporter has done his/her job.

Not if what the news source said is demonstrably false, he/she has not. Reporters are not supposed to take sides between Smith and Jones, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. They are supposed to take sides between truth and falsehoods. Otherwise we end up – as we often do – with “Opinions As to Shape of the Earth Differ” stories.

Opinions may, but that only proves that some opinions are wrong. Here are three truths: (1) The earth is round, or, if you wanna be picky, an oblate spheroid; (2) Life on earth developed some 3.7 billion years ago and evolved, (a tad of oversimplification here) via a combination of genetic mutation and natural selection until culminating (so far) in the emergence of human beings; (3) When some of said human beings lend money to others, there is always the possibility that the receivers of said money won’t pay it back. That’s one reason there is a direct relationship between the price of the money (the interest rate) and the perceived risk that it might not be paid back.

In this case, if the loan is not repaid, Burlington taxpayers will be out 17 million clams. Meaning the use of pooled cash has been, and is, an increased risk to the taxpayers of Burlington, precisely the opposite of Kiss’s claim.

In fairness to the reporters, the standard operating procedure in these matters is to get someone else – in this case a banker or an economist — to make the correction. Kiss held his press conference at 4PM on Friday (as Picard aptly pointed out the usual time for issuing bad news, not good) giving them little if any time to call anyone.

Still, in this case (and in many others, (which is why this post is being written) reporters need not rely on an expert to make the correction. Every reporter ought to be enough of an expert to make this elementary correction, and ought to have the authority to do so. Allowing the mayor of the state’s largest city to make an obviously false – and politically self-serving — statement is not good journalism. At the very least, the reporters could have noted that every loan entails some risk, alerting the reader that Kiss’s statement was, at a minimum, questionable.

Again, the “villain” here is not the individual reporter. It is the prevailing journalistic outlook that distorts the admirable values of objectivity until it degenerates into blandness and, in the final analysis, misinformation.

Now, to those editors, compassion for whom was growing in the News Guy’s heart.

Until Saturday morning, when the Free Press led the paper – not the sports page, but the front page – with a football game.

Now, some background. This condemnation does not come from what the News Guy’s late friendly acquaintance (really), George Corley Wallace, used to call one of those pointy-headed intellectuals who doesn’t know how to park his bicycle straight, and would rather catch butterflies than watch football (didja see that Michigan state-Purdue game Saturday? A corker)..

Au contraire, the News Guy has liked football since his father took him to the first intercollegiate game between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869. (Well, OK, the 1945 version at Princeton’s then-beautiful Palmer Stadium. It got less beautiful when seating capacity was increased in the 1970s, and was demolished in 1996).

But a lot of news was made last Friday far more important than Essex trouncing Rutland. Furthermore, in addition to being poor journalism, the choice was probably not even good business. Yes, a lot of folks like football. But not that many, if you look at the polling. Nine percent call college football their favorite sport; no doubt fewer really follow the high school game. The notion that putting the game in the most prominent spot on Page One would either increase circulation that day or build long-lasting loyalty in Essex appears to have been based on vague hunch more than hard evidence.

They’re out to get us.

Such, it seems, is the reaction by advocates of public telecommunications service to the furor over the City of Burlington’s semi- sub-rosa loan to Burlington Telcom, the city owned Internet, phone, and cable company.

“The same forces that want to preserve the private insurance monopoly in health care…are now out to preserve the private corporate monopoly in Vermont telecommunications,” claimed John Franco, once chairman of the Burlington Electric Commission, and now co-chair of the Burlington Progressive Party.

That’s the party of Mayor Bob Kiss and his chief Administrative Officer, Jonathan Leopold. Those are the officials who decided to lend Burlington Telcom $17 million. Even without approval of the City Council or the Board of Finance. the loan might have been entirely proper had it been paid back within 60 days.

It was not, a fact which, at the very least, Kiss and Leopold did not go out of their way to inform the rest of the world, or even the rest of city government.

That’s why they’re in a political pickle.

Which does not disprove their contention that state officials, doing the bidding of Comcast, BT’s private, for-profit, competitor, are trying to use this pickle to discredit publicly-owned telecommunications systems in general. Last week, citing BT’s troubles, Public Service Commissioner David O’Brien tried to discourage officials of the Rutland Redevelopment Authority from proceeding with plans to set up a public fiber optic broadband system in their area.

Then there’s the timing. O’Brien’s blast at Telcom for being ”a business that is losing money, has no immediate promise of making money and is in debt beyond their ability to recover,” was certainly ungrammatical and may have been incorrect (see below), but it did divert attention from the embarrassment (to him) of the news that Fair Point, which he once said could be “a wonderful change for Vermont” was declaring bankruptcy.

Not to mention making it even less likely that BT, whose license (Certificate of Public Good) authorizes it to provide telephone service statewide, might take over the state’s land line phone service if Fair Point loses its own right to operate in Vermont. O’Brien may have been firing a shot across that bow, too.

But even if the Progressives are right, they’re violating a basic rule of governing: If you know certain forces are out to get you, don’t give them ammunition.

And, in this case, continue to give it. The Mayor proclaimed his devotion to “an independent audit” of Burlington Telcom in the same sentence in which he endorsed a less-than-independent audit, in that its parameters would be set by the Board of Finance, a five-member body on which sit Kiss, Leopold, and a Progressive Party member of the Council.

Haven’t any of these folks read about Watergate, and learned the old line about the cover-up being worse than the crime?

In fairness to Kiss and Leopold, they seem to have committed no actual crime (unlike Richard Nixon, whose crimes were in fact far worse than the cover-up). Perhaps all they are covering up is a cover-up, an understandable it ultimately foolish effort to keep anyone from finding out about the loan until Kiss got re-elected last March.

Either way, they seem unaware of a salient element of this incident. Whether it ever rises (sinks?) to the level of scandal, it threatens two Vermont institutions: publicly owned telecommunications and the Progressive Party.

Back to that in a moment. But first, a reality check.

As any sentient Vermonter knows, there are three words which prove that incompetence and chicanery are not unknown in the private, for-profit, telecommunications world. Two of those words are “Fair Point.” The other is “Adelphia,” once Burlington’s dominant cable company, now defunct because its top officials were guilty of stock fraud. Two of them, at last report, remained ensconced in the federal correctional system.

Nor do BT’s troubles prove that publicly owned telecommunications is a bad idea. According to Joanne Hovis, president-elect of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, there are 54 municipally owned Fiber-To-The-home (FTTH) systems in the country, many of them effective, solvent, and instrumental in attracting businesses to their cities. A report by the Municipal FTTH Systems organizations lists 15 cities or counties where publicly-owned high-speed Internet connections have helped attract companies such as Louisville Slugger, Colgate Palmolive, and Yahoo to open facilities.

Furthermore, all this outrage from O’Brien, some City Council members and assorted commentators that Burlington taxpayers may end up on the hook for the loan should be put in context. All telecommunications are tax-subsidized one way or another, from the telephone universal service charge to the Reverse Morris Trust used when Fair Point bought Verizon’s northern New England land lines, costing the taxpayers at least $600 million.

But the cost of those subsidies was diffused all around the country, which would not be the case were BT to fold or be sold still owing the $17 million. That’s almost $450 a Burlingtonian.

On the other hand, predicting such a calamity for BT might be quite premature. The company surely has its problems. It doesn’t cover the whole city, and serves only about 30 percent of the 85 percent it does cover. But most private companies don’t cover their whole cities, either; they cover the profitable parts. And according to Christopher Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis, most municipal telecommunications companies lose money in their first three years, which is all BT has been operating.

“The need to refinance doesn’t necessarily suggest (BT is) in a position of weakness,” Mitchell said. “What’s happening is more or less par for the course. The first five years are marked by losses and opponents seize on (them) and say it’s never going to work.”

Mitchell said BT might very well thrive. But he, too, wondered where that $17 million went.

That should illustrate the Progressives political predicament. Even supporters of public providers have questions about the loan. The argument that Kiss and Leopold did tell the Council, but that the members just didn’t take it all in, is believable only if one assumes that all the city council members are denser even than most city council members tend to be.

The reason this is a perilous position for Progressives is that whatever success they have had rests on their reputation for purity. Unlike the Democrats, they claim, they do not compromise. Unlike Democrats or Republicans, they seem less likely to cut political corners, to parse language to try to weasel out of trouble.

Now their leading public official in the city of their greatest strength seems to be doing just that. The Progs could be in at least as much trouble as Burlington Telcom.

(Note One: The tax story alluded to Wednesday will run next week)

(Note Two: For what it is worth, the News Guy will be on” Vermont This Week,” on Vermont Public TV Friday at 7:30 PM, re-shown Sunday at 11:30 AM)

Hidden amidst the stilted language of government budget-cutters in Montpelier Tuesday, along with the moaning and groaning—some of it legitimate—from people who will suffer from those cuts was some real news. But you won’t see it in the morning papers or on the evening TV shows.

Here it is: This liberal state—sometimes called the most leftward in all the land—is governed by two center-right parties.

This isn’t necessarily undesirable; center-right policies have their claim to wisdom.

But it’s a surprise, considering Vermont’s reputation as a hotbed of liberalism, sometimes even “the Peoples Republic of Vermont,” in semi-jest from both left and right.

In a real “peoples republic” (which does not mean China) the government does not raise the price of college for middle-income students or reduce the quality of mental health services for the poor without at least looking into the possibility of selectively raising taxes or fees.

Again, there is no suggestion here that the budget cuts are bad policy. Many of them are quite reasonable, even for liberals. Taken as a whole, however, they are not liberal policy. Not even center-left policy.

Raising this interesting question: What happened to the institution that supposedly supports and pursues center-left policies? You may have heard of it, especially because its adherents hold four of the six statewide offices and dominate the Legislature. Not only that, but its presidential candidate whumped his opponent but good in Vermont just a few weeks ago.

Yup, it’s the Democratic Party. The party of FDR, HST, JFK, LBJ, and HHH. Not one of whom would have stood by and allowed cuts in legal assistance for the poor, or weaker enforcement of human rights violations, or spending less on services for sick children without saying—no, without proclaiming—‘Wait a minute! There must be some way we can find some money here’

That Democratic Party lives, just not here. We know that because just next door, in New York, Gov. David Patterson is an actual Democrat with budget problems as severe as Vermont’s, with a $15 billion deficit looming for next year. Like Vermont’s Republican Gov. Jim Douglas, Patterson has proposed severe budget cuts. But he would deal with more than 25 percent of his projected shortfall with $4 billion worth of tax and fee increases.

Whether Vermont should follow that course is a subject over which reasonable people may differ. But if any of those reasonable people were Democrats, you’d think that a few of them would be taking that side of the debate.

Debate, however, seems to be something Vermont Democrats avoid, even when most of the evidence is on their side, or would be if they had a side.

For instance, in explaining why no tax hikes should be considered, Neale F. Lunderville, Douglas’s Secretary of Administration, asserted that “economists widely agree that tax increase during challenging economic times serve only to slow recovery.”

Well, sort of. What economists more “widely agree” on is that while tax increases are the second worse thing to do in a downturn, they are not as bad as cutting the budget and laying people off .

Just as Vermont is doing, without a peep from a leading Democrat.

There are economists who disagree with the general consensus, and who think raising taxes is worse than cutting spending. They could be right. But they are not Democrats. They are the most conservative Republicans. Even the center-right economists tend to agree with Democrats on this matter.

Among Democrats, only former State Rep. Paul Cillo, now head of Public Assets Institute, the liberal think tank he started after he left the Legislature, has dared to suggest that the state consider selective tax increases on upper-income earners. So have two writers on the Progressive Party’s “Prog Blog,” Burlington Mayor Bib Kiss and public policy analyst Doug Hoffer. But they aren’t Democrats.

(Well, OK, Treasurer Jeb Spaulding has proposed higher fuel taxes to finance road and bridge repairs. But that’s more of a user fee than a tax).

It’s true that on social issues Vermont effectively has two center-left parties, with few leading Republicans spending much time worrying about abortions or embryonic stem cell research or trying to roll back the state’s Civil Unions law. But when it comes to the fundamentals of governing—the role of the state in guiding the economy and providing basic social services, Vermont’s leading Democrats have converted; they are now Republicans.

Perhaps they are just being prudent. Any suggestion of tax hikes is politically risky. But nobody has taken a poll to see whether most Vermonters would consider some selective revenue hikes or borrowing to soften the impact of budget cuts. They accepted that path when Republican Gov. Richard Snelling chose it in 1991.

Even with the political risk, the behavior of the state’s Democrats leaves us with this question: If the Democratic Party will not stand up for poor, sick children, what’s the point of having a Democratic Party?—Jon Margolis