As everybody knows, Vermont has a bad business climate.

Everybody knows it because everybody’s been told it early and often. Politicians, led by none other than Gov. Jim Douglas, regularly bemoan the hostility visited upon businesspersons and entrepreneurs. The business leaders themselves rarely miss a chance to proclaim that were only Vermont’s regulations weaker and its taxes lower, especially on the wealthy (meaning, often, them) they would employ far more workers. Even more rarely do most newspapers and TV stations fail to report those contentions, or to cite “studies” asserting that Vermont’s economy is stifled – if not strangled – by state policies.

It’s almost unanimous.

Oh, except for the actual data.

They (the data) say Vermont is one of the more affluent states, with an economy that grows (and, these days, shrinks) roughly in concert with the rest of the country and/or the region. They say that the state’s economy has its problems, but so do all the others states, and raise the question of why, if Vermont’s business climate is so bad, business in Vermont (until the Recession) isn’t.

Now comes a new report indicating that the business climate couldn’t be that bad because (again until the Recession) Vermont’s economy was quite healthy, another way of saying that business was good.

Better, according to several measurements, than in most other states, including those where taxes are lower and regulations looser.

For instance, according to the report, The Vermont Job Gap Study, Phase 10, Part 1, from 1998 to 2007 Vermont’s rate of job growth was the highest in New England, the 17^th highest in the country, and higher than five of the nine states which have no personal income tax, including neighboring New Hampshire.

During those same years, the study shows, the per capita Gross State Product, grew (in inflation adjusted terms) faster in Vermont than in 45 other states.

“If Vermont was ‘anti-business,’” the report said, “we would not see this result.”

Not that everything is economic peaches-and-cream here, the study acknowledges. Vermont lost manufacturing jobs during those years. But so did 43 other states, 35 of them at a faster rate.

For at least two reasons, this study should be viewed with some skepticism. The first reason is that all studies should be so viewed, in accordance with The General Law of Studies: Every study reaches the conclusion its studier wished to conclude before he/she obtained his/her first datum.

The second reason has to do with its pedigree. The study was written by Doug Hoffer, the Burlington-based policy analyst whose politics are decidedly left of center, on behalf of the Peace and Justice Center, whose politics might be to the left of Hoffer.

In addition, Hoffer used economic statistics from something known as the National Establishment Time Series, not from the standard U.S. Government sources, the Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But it isn’t as though the NETS is some kind of Marxist cabal. It’s associated with the Dun & Bradstreet financial services empire, putting it smack dab in the Wall Street mainstream. Firms that subscribe to it base some of their business decisions on its information.

Hoffer said the NETS statistics are better for assessing a state’s economy. Their samples are much larger, he said. In addition, BLS employment figurers are based on payroll surveys, which omit many single practitioners, who are quite common in Vermont.

(For instance, the News Guy probably would not be considered an employed person by the BLS, but might be by NETS. Which appraisal is more accurate will be left to others).

There is no indication that Hoffer cherry-picked either his numbers or the dates he used to make Vermont look better. Not much happened in Vermont between 1998 and 2007 that did not happen in the rest of the country. And his findings are consistent with those of other studies, including (see below) some undertaken by those on the other side of the political spectrum.

So the data – the actual, empirically testable evidence – leads to the conclusion that a business can thrive and prosper in Vermont about as well as in most other states. This is not to say that there are no problems facing businesses in the state, some of them worse here than elsewhere. For many firms, Vermont is far from raw materials and big markets. Some companies have trouble finding enough qualified workers. The state is small, rural, and atypical, all in an economic climate that confers advantages on metropolitan areas, dense population centers, and standardization.

But what about the argument from politicians and some business leaders that Vermont does have a poor business climate? It has to be based on something.

It is. But it is not based on data. Take a look at the presentations made last year to the Blue Ribbon Tax Structure Commission by the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation.

They are not insubstantial. They are full of facts, suggestions, anecdotes, proposals, and assessments, some of which are undeniably correct and some of which are debatable. But they make no statistical case that Vermont’s economy is weaker than any other state’s.

Then there are several business-sponsored studies reporting that many business executives in the state (and a few outside it) find Vermont “unfriendly” to business. But with one exception, these are not based on data either, but on the impressions of the business executives surveyed.

Some of their specific complaints are no doubt legitimate. But any survey of business people, or lawyers, or teachers, or (let’s not omit) journalists is going to elicit complaints, because (a) ours is a culture of victimization whose real motto is “woe is me and mine;” (b) under the “squeaky wheel gets the grease” rule, they’d be fools not to complain.

Besides, some of these surveys are weird. Take the one by the very conservative American Legislative Exchange Council which put Vermont next-to-last for pro-business policies between 1997 and 2007 (similar to Hoffer’s time period). But in those years, the study had to concede, personal income per capita grew by 61.2 percent in Vermont, the seventh highest in the country.

Most residents of most states would love to have such a poor business climate.

In fairness, many Vermont business leaders do not complain about state policy. Among the business organizations here is the liberal Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility. Not every business leader always agrees with the lobbyists from the Chamber, the Business Roundtable, and the GBIC. Nor do those organizations contend that the state’s business climate is all that terrible.

“This can become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Tom Torti, head of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber. “You play with fire when you say things are always bad.”

And Seth Bowden, the Director of Business Development for the GBIC, said his organization is “not trying to make a case that we have a bad business environment. Every state has got its pluses and minuses.” Bowden even said Vermont may have been wise in “trying to control growth in particular ways,” though he added that “sometimes that doesn’t work out for some of the businesses.”

It isn’t that neither man had complaints about the state’s economic policy. Not surprisingly, those complaints had to do with taxes, and here the business community is not entirely without statistical evidence. Though even the Tax Foundation has given up arguing that Vermonters shoulder the highest state and local tax burden in the country, there is no doubt that taxes here are higher and more progressive than in most other states.

There is substantial doubt, though, that the current tax structure is bad for business, especially when there is so much evidence that business isn’t bad, or wasn’t before the Recession, and is still not as bad as in many other states.

The tax angle, however, deserves a separate discussion. Tune in Friday.

Short postings today and tomorrow to make time for serious research prior to the opening of the Legislative session Wednesday and Gov. Jim Douglas’s Inauguration Thursday. But…..

Did you get the announcement that the Burlington Free-Press had become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce?

Hmmm, It seems we all missed it. But how else explain the 1,400-word platform the Freep provided for Chamber President Tom Torti in Monday’s business section?

Followed by a half page outlining the Chamber’s wish list for the 2009 Legislature and another half-page for two other businessmen to make their own suggestions.

All without a word of assessment or the slightest hint that some of these proposals might be controversial, not to mention inconsistent.

Well, it is the Business section. But in a newspaper, as opposed to a propaganda sheet, that means a section devoted to covering the news of business, not an opportunity to provide a megaphone for businesspeople to pronounce their preferences as though they were princes of one church or another.

Especially when their preferences are as sweeping as President Torti’s. He wants nothing less than the reorganization of  state government in which the Departments of Labor and Economic Development would be eliminated, but then somehow merged, along the way picking up the adult education responsibilities now in the Education Department.

He also wants the state government to do less because “government has grown larger than we can really afford.” Except, of course, where he wants it to do more, such as investing in electric transmission infrastructure. And he wants taxes lowered, especially on the richest one percent of the people.

And just what is wrong with any of that? Perhaps nothing. Torti’s opinions are as legit as anyone else’s. But like anyone else’s, they should be put into some perspective, and would be were they being reported in an actual newspaper, not what appears to be the Chamber’s newsletter.

It isn’t that business’s point of view shouldn’t be in the paper. But it should be there with context, in this case an indication that much of what Torti proposed is not likely to happen, and a reminder that his is, after all, a special interest, to be treated with the same skepticism as any other special interest.

Were this journalism rather than  promotion, the story would have quoted someone-perhaps one of the leaders of the Legislature,  saying, ‘Gee, maybe we’re not going to do all of that. Or any of it.”

Were it good journalism, it would have sought out someone on the other side of the political spectrum. A trade union official. A somewhat liberal economist. (Come to think of it, a centrist economist would do). A representative of consumers. A health care advocate. Anyone who might present a contrary case.

Failing to do this might be acceptable if the Free Press also had, say, a weekly labor Section, or a pull-out devoted to education, or the arts (which its Thursday entertainment guide is not), or police officers and firefighters. Then each interest group could be handed a similar megaphone to present its prejudices. But business is the only identifiable constituency that gets its own section every day.

Because he has committed actual journalism in the past, reporter Dan McLean may well know all this. He did find one semi-independent sources, David Mace, the spokesman for the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, who said…well, not much of anything, really. Aside from that, he simply let Torti run on, not even pointing out the glaring inconsistency (less state spending except where it’s good for the corporate world), raising the question of whether he was ordered not to challenge the interview subject.

Acceptable perhaps in a feature-style personal profile. But that’s not what this was. This was politics.

Likely to backfire anyway, thanks to Torti’s public relations gaffe about the onerous tax burden of the top one percent. The tax structure, Torti said, gives these folks “A reason to leave” the state.

It isn’t that people who earn $348,000 a year (the national figure in 2007) should be under-appreciated and over-taxed. It’s just that the assertion that they are abandoning Vermont because of its marginal income tax rate is too silly for words, a fact that should have been noted in the story (though of course not expressed quite that baldly).

Vermont has been right next to New Hampshire for roughly 250 years, and for the last 30 of them Vermont has had a relatively progressive income tax while New Hampshire has none at all. If rich Vermonters wanted to leave the state because of its taxes, they wouldn’t have very far to go.

No doubt a few have gone. But the number of rich people in Vermont keeps going up. Maybe that’s because they keep getting richer. A study a little more than a year ago found, in fact, that “Vermont’s wealthiest households have seen their incomes grow faster than anywhere else in New England,” as reported in the Free Press by…Dan McLean.

Very well reported, too. But that was back in October of 2007, when the Free Press was still trying to be a newspaper, arguably worth the 50 cents it then charged. Now it barely tries and charges 75 cents. Why pay it?