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.

In his last State of the State address, Gov,. Jim Douglas demonstrated once again that he is tenacious, determined, single-minded, and bold.

And maybe a little clueless?

It was a fairly long (5,917-word, 50-minute) speech to the Legislature, clear if not eloquent in composition, crisply delivered, politely received.

And familiar.

In fact, if some in the audience thought they had heard similar sentiments similarly expressed not all that long ago, they were right. Similar statements had been similarly expressed a year and a day ago in the same place by the same speaker, in his fourth inaugural address.

Leading some to wonder why, early in the speech, Douglas warned his listeners not to “choose to recycle old ideas and hope for a different outcome.”

In this case, the governor recycled some of his old ideas, including several that he’d proposed last year. He didn’t get them then. If he’s hoping for a different outcome this time, he would seem to be ignoring his own advice.

After all, little has changed. It’s the same Legislature that ignored most of his proposals last year and over-rode his veto twice. If anything, the lawmakers are more confident than they were a year ago, especially because one thing that has changed is that Douglas decided not to run for re-election.

In other words, he’s a lame duck. He keeps insisting that he isn’t, though he is, or at least that it has not weakened him politically, which would be a first in the history of the country, if not the world.

So why did he make the same controversial (and probably doomed) proposals again?

Because he really believes in them. Because he’s tenacious and bold. Because he thinks this time he might prevail.

Or because he’s clueless.

As he did last year, Douglas urged the Legislature to set a cap on local school spending. It didn’t. As he did last year (though in slightly less blunt language) he called the school finance system “broken,” implying that the lawmakers should replace it. As was true last year, he didn’t specify what the replacement would look like, leaving that to the lawmakers. Perhaps because most legislators don’t agree that the system (Acts 60 and 68) is “broken,” they came up with no replacement last year. They won’t this year, either.

But Douglas did not stop at recycling his old ideas that were not adopted. No, bulling right ahead with little hope of success, he came up with some new ideas that are almost certainly not to be adopted, as follows:

–Repeal – or at least pledge to repeal in the near future — the capital gains and estate tax increases adopted last year;

–Require teachers to pay 20 percent of their health insurance premiums;

–Trim the “income sensitivity” provision of the statewide education property tax so that middle-income homeowners pay more and the wealthy pay less. (of course, he didn’t word it quite that bluntly, but that’s the gist of his proposal);

–And while this was more a suggestion than a specific proposition, Douglas made clear he thought it would be a good idea if all the teachers emulated state workers and took an immediate three percent pay cut.

(Not an outlandish idea, but unrealistic. The state employees agreed to the cut in their new, statewide, contract. Teachers contracts are district-by-district, and they do not all expire at once).

It was hardly necessary to wait until the speech was over to figure out that Douglas was not convincing the legislators. Six times the audience in the House Chamber interrupted the speech with applause. But except for the early support for his tribute to Vermonters fighting (or soon to be) overseas, almost all the clapping came from the balcony, full of old friends and administration officials.

Down on the floor, where the lawmakers sat, few applauded except for the stalwart but decidedly outnumbered Republican contingent—50 of 150 House members, seven of 30 senators, and not all of them firm Douglas allies.

Perhaps because they know they have the votes and Douglas doesn’t, the Democratic Legislative leaders were relatively restrained in their post-speech comments. Snate President (and Democratic governor hopeful) Peter Shumlin and House Speaker Shap Smith both said they were willing to discuss the governor’s ideas. Sen. Susan Bartlett of Morrisville, another candidate for governor, called the speech a “pragmatic first step” in this year’s legislative process. Sen. Doug Racine of Richmond, yet another gubernatorial hopeful, said he agreed with Douglas that the state is in a “tough” fiscal bind.

Then, bit by bit, they began to say what they really thought. Douglas’s proposed tax cuts would “reduce Vermont revenue by roughly $28 million,” Shumlin said. Bartlett said that Douglas “wants to have his cake and eat it, too,” because he didn’t call for repealing the income tax cuts adopted last year, only the capital gains and estate tax increases.

Racine said the speech sounded like “a list of the things he promised to do seven years ago and failed to do,” such as extending broadband Internet service statewide and cleaning up Lake Champlain. And Sen. Mark MacDonald, a Williamstown Democrat, said Douglas’s proposed changes in the income sensitivity mechanism would “raise the property taxes of working Vermonters and cut them for out-of-staters,” some of whom own large tracts of land. Income sensitivity used to hold down the tax bills of 80 percent of Vermonters, MacDonald said. It is now down to 70 percent, and Douglas wants to reduce it further.

Despite these dismissals, a few of Douglas’s proposals might actually get adopted, though probably with some alterations. Regardless of party, almost everybody in state government agrees that public education in Vermont is expensive, in large part because there are, as Shap Smith put it, “legitimate questions about the pupil-teacher ratios.”

They are very low, 11-to-1 statewide, Douglas said, and he proposed “a mechanism to fill only one vacancy for every two retirements.”

A politically sophisticated plan, because it doesn’t require firing anyone, and because raising the ratio to 13 to 1, as he suggested, hardly degrades the quality of education. Perhaps not a realistic plan, though. It’s based on statewide numbers, but teachers neither teach their classes nor retire statewide. They do it school by school, where the numbers may not always add up (or subtract down) precisely the right way to allow reducing faculty without letting some classes get too big.

Still, here’s one area – quite possibly one of the few– where the legislators might build on (or off) one of Douglas’s proposals.

But first, everyone, especially those who read Friday’s post before it was corrected at about 10AM, is urged to scroll down to read the special Sunday post explaining what went awry, and why,

Now let’s deal with the forest-trees problem in re: the Democratic primary for governor and perceptions thereof.

Whether some people are so carefully examining the trees that they can’t see the forest, or vice versa, makes no difference. In general, observers have been so carefully scrutinizing the numbers (with five candidates, one could win with less than 30 percent of the vote, etc.) that no one has noted that the contest has taken form.

Racine

Not over strategy or tactics, either. Over policy. One of these guys wants to raise taxes.

Somehow, because the “narrative” has been created and set in stone that the five Democrats don’t disagree on much, the emergence of a real disagreement has been all but ignored.

Not that State Sen. Doug Racine of Richmond has come out and proclaimed in so many words, “I want to raise your taxes.” Nowhere on the home page of his campaign web site does the word “taxes” appear.

But he isn’t being cute about it, either. What is prominent on his web site is a link to his November 20 appearance on Vermont Public Radio’s Vermont Edition, where Racine clearly said he thinks the answer to the state’s budget shortfall has to include some new revenue.

That means higher taxes.

On that program, and again in an interview last week, Racine said his policy was modeled on what Gov. Richard Snelling, a Republican, did when the state faced a similar revenue shortage in 1991. Working with a Democratic Legislature, Snelling did cut spending. But to ease the impact of spending cuts, especially on the poor and the ill, Snelling and lawmakers agreed on temporary tax increases.

“(Snelling) went to Vermonters and said, look we’re all in this together, we’re all going to feel a little bit of the pain,” Racine said on the radio, calling for the same “balanced approach” to be used next year, when the state faces a revenue-spending gap of at least $90 million.

Racine said he, too, would cut spending, would “try to find efficiencies in state government, and think about using the rainy day funds.” But some new revenue would probably be necessary, he said.

How much and how it would be raised he has not yet figured out, he said, adding that he and some campaign aides were trying to work out the details of a specific proposal.

The other four Democrats running for governor haven’t absolutely ruled out calling for any new or higher taxes. But neither have they come close to suggesting any such thing. In a recent article on “the state budget problem” on her web site, State Sen. Susan Bartlett of Hyde Park spoke only of the need for cutting the General Fund budget and holding down school costs. Senate President Peter Shumlin of Putney announced his candidacy last month saying, “Vermonters cannot  bear more of a tax burden.”

(Although he said much the same thing earlier this year, but then put together a budget package that included higher taxes for upper-income earners; Racine and Bartlett voted for it).

The other two candidates, Secretary of State Deb Markowitz and former State Sen. Matt Dunne of White River Junction have said little about how they would deal with the impending budget problem.

So Racine is taking a gamble. Most people don’t want to pay higher taxes. As Racine himself said, the Democratic field is strong. Most Democratic voters would be reasonably happy with any of the five. So why wouldn’t most primary voters choose one of the four who doesn’t call for higher taxes, even if they’re advertised as temporary?

(The 1991 tax increases were rescinded in 1993 as scheduled, though the sales tax was later raised back to five cents; it is now six cents).

“Running for office is a gamble,” Racine said. “I’ve run for office before. Maybe it’s a function of my age. I’m telling people what I think.”

But just looking at the politics of the situation, maybe it’s not such a foolish gamble. One way to carve out a plurality victory in a five-person Democratic primary is to appeal to the social welfare liberals – call them the “One Vermont” constituency, after the group that formed last year to fight cuts in programs that help the poor.

These voters are likely to make up a heavy share of the Democratic primary electorate, and if they unite behind one contender, that candidate would probably win the primary.

Traditional political strategy calls for the candidate then quickly to trim back to the center for the general election. But as Racine acknowledged, in this case, that would be close to impossible.

“If you’re out there. It’s really hard to trim back because you’re not trimming, you’re contradicting,” he said. “It would hard for me the day after the primary to say I didn’t mean everything I just said.”

So should he win the primary, the Republicans, presumably led by Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, would undoubtedly – and credibly – assail him as a “tax and spend liberal.”

Not as deadly a label in Vermont as in many other states. But still a potential problem.

On the other hand, before the election – even before the primary — the Legislature, including three of the candidates, is going to have to pass a balanced budget for the state. Voting to cut programs for, say, poor, sick, children, might not be any more politically palatable than voting for a temporary tax hike.

But that’s for later. For now, the Democratic race has a structure. It even has an issue. And an obvious question for the other four candidates: Without any new revenue at all, exactly (and that means exactly, with numbers) how would you balance the budget?