Digger Dirt: Farewell to the Golden Bubble, for now

The People

Editor’s note: Digger Dirt is a political column.

In my short time as a Statehouse reporter (nearly four months) I’ve learned a lot about the Democratic process, even though I had kind of a head start — I’d worked as a newspaper reporter and editor for 15 years in Vermont, before I ventured into the inner sanctum of the Golden Bubble as a journalist.

I know sometimes my coverage of Statehouse doings can be analytical and sometimes critical, but I want to say for the record: I’m impressed with what I have seen.

Though the Golden Bubble can seem like high school on steroids — especially in the cafeteria where lawmakers can be seen passing notes, grandstanding and gossiping nonstop — in committee legislators plod through painstaking legal minutiae and wade through technical testimony like pros.

To a person, Vermont lawmakers clearly take their work seriously. They focus on details, ask good questions and take stands as conscience demands. They study the issues; they debate based on principles of good government; and, for the most part, they put their constituents first and leave their personal agendas at home. Their ideologies differ, and their personal interests vary, but by and large, they think through tough problems with the public good foremost in mind.

The citizens of Vermont have reason to be proud of their representatives and senators: They are hard-working, earnest, committed individuals who are doing what they think is right for constituents – often at their own political peril.

The same can be said of the many Douglas administration officials who have come up with creative solutions – particularly in this Great Recession – to the state’s fiscal problems, while maintaining vital services to Vermonters.

I’m giving lawmakers and the state’s bureaucrats this shout out, not because I think it’s going to help me develop better sources or improve my standing at the Statehouse (I’ve probably ticked off plenty of people in the Golden Bubble already), but because I honestly believe they deserve it.

Anne Galloway, editor of Vtdigger.org

As a reporter, I respect the work of our leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers, separate and apart from my role, which is to question what they do and how they do it. I’m obliged, in my role as a journalist, to badger people for information, ask lots of impertinent questions (my favorite part – because it comes so naturally) and generally to be attentively present — watching and waiting for word on how decisions made by our government will affect the people of Vermont.

Though I can’t speak from experience, my journalistic colleagues say it’s been an unusual session. Like everyone else who struggles to keep on top of the issues, I’ve often been overwhelmed. I’ve tried to focus on as many of the big topics this session as I could in my role as a Vtdigger.org reporter at-large in the People’s House – Vermont Yankee, the budget deficit, Challenges for Change, school consolidation and the bankrupt unemployment fund – but there were so many issues I didn’t get to.

I often compare covering the Statehouse to the journalistic equivalent of being water-boarded: Every day, yours truly and the other members of the press corps nearly drown in information. There is always too much to cover and not enough time to report.

One way I tried to expand my reporting was through videotaping. For example, I believe I’m the first reporter to capture Otto Trautz, the administration’s accounting whiz, presenting his Budget Adjustment Act baby analogy on film (thank you, Rep. Martha Heath, for putting up with the tripod in your cramped House Appropriations Committee room).

There was one camcorder mishap this session that I still feel badly about — I knocked a camera and tripod squarely on Rep. Betty Nuovo’s hand while I was filming testimony on Vermont Yankee. Miraculously, her hand didn’t turn black-and-blue (I’m still sorry about that, Betty). Yes, yours truly is an accident-prone klutz.

My colleagues have been troopers to put up with my endless questions about legislative protocol, and I’m grateful for their candor and kindness. We had a lot of good laughs in the Statehouse press “office,” that is the House gallery. Thanks to Dan Barlow, Kristin Carlson, John Dillon, David Gram, Terri Hallenbeck, Peter Hirschfeld, Bob Kinzel, Stewart Ledbetter, Peter Mallary, Louis Porter and Nancy Remsen, Shay Totten for sharing the secrets of the Golden Bubble.

Thanks also to Bob Stannard who taught me everything I need to know about political savvy (which I’m sorely lacking and therefore have trouble understanding). Let me paraphrase: “It’s not about the issues, stupid.” He also helpfully told me that when I first appeared on “Vermont This Week” that I looked as though my children were being held hostage and one of the terrorists was aiming an Uzi at my head. Once I had that image in my head, VTW was a breeze.

I am also grateful for the constancy of Nick Monsarrat, my editor, who has made my job as a reporter possible. Even though he is miles away, it doesn’t matter when I send a story over the transom – day or night, he is there to read it, catching the flaws. As a former Statehouse reporter himself, who worked with the likes of Mavis Doyle, he knows the corridors, the rhythms and the process inside out. Nick’s advice and editing expertise have been invaluable. He smooths the rough patches in my writing, translates arcane legislative argot, keeps the facts straight and prevents me from embarrassing myself in virtual print. I owe him a debt of gratitude.

On the day of adjournment, the climax of the last four months of legislative machinations, a hacker attacked Vtdigger.org with a virus (hundreds of other sites were also infected), and whom did I call? Josh Larkin and Dan Allen, who both came to my rescue and worked late into the night to bring the site back up. What kind of friends would do that? Best friends. Thanks, guys, for everything.

But most of all, I want to say thank you to my husband, who over the last four months has put up with a lot of dirty dishes, frozen pizza, unfolded laundry and general wife-missing-in-action stuff. Without his patience and support, none of this foolishness would be possible.

Statehouse reporting is a real Challenge, and I’m still working on the desired outcomes — though even Public Strategies Group would probably approve of my personal, fiscal reductions. I’m not sure I’ve mastered the art of taking too many notes, a surfeit of bad photographs and lots of poor-quality video — sometimes all in one go — and boiling it down into a tolerable, Digger-style report. Suffice it to say, I’m still figuring out best practices. I let you, dear readers, take measure of the results.

–Anne Galloway