FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT:
August 20, 2010 Kate Duffy
kate@briandubie.com
(802) 735-8321
Survey Says: Senate Votes Prove Candidates’ Anti-Jobs Records
Shumlin, Bartlett Score 0% in New NFIB Survey, Racine Scores 11%
Essex Junction, VT – Senators Peter Shumlin, Susan Bartlett, and Doug Racine failed to support small business owners in Senate votes this session, according to a survey released this week by the Vermont chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business.
The NFIB/Vermont – the “Voice of Small Business” in Vermont – released its Voting Record this week, rating state legislators on their support of nine bills or amendments of particular interest to small business owners during the past legislative biennium. Among the bills:
* General Fund Budget (H. 441), which ultimately raised more than $28 million in new taxes by increasing the income tax, estate tax, capital gains tax, and taxes on satellite TV and digital downloads in 2009;
* Miscellaneous Tax Bill (H. 442), an earlier tax bill that proposed $55 million in additional taxes by raising the income and estate taxes in 2009.
Sens. Shumlin, Bartlett and Racine all voted in favor of these tax increases to the detriment of small business owners. The NFIB/Vermont gave Sens. Shumlin and Bartlett scores of 0% for their anti-jobs votes. Sen. Racine earned a score of 11%. Secretary of State Deb Markowitz did not receive a score, but she was on record strongly supporting the Legislature’s override of the budget veto that led to these tax increases. Matt Dunne, who left the Senate in 2006, most recently scored a 0% in the NFIB/Vermont survey of the 2005-2006 biennium.
“Unlike my opponents, when I talk about creating jobs and helping small business owners succeed, it is not just a campaign slogan,” Dubie said. “I have listened to those who create jobs and worked with them to get our economy moving. This survey shows my opponents have ignored the concerns of small business owners by voting time and again against their interests and against legislation that would help them expand and hire more Vermont workers.”
The NFIB/Vermont says its Voting Record is a guide for evaluating lawmakers’ efforts to protect and promote its members’ rights to own, operate and grow their businesses. The guide is available online at http://www.nfib.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=klIexxCIqgA%3d&tabid=1083.
“Voters see a clear difference between my opponents and me,” Dubie said. “My opponents only want to raise taxes and create dozens of new government programs that will lead to greater burdens on our small business owners and stifle job growth. I am running for governor to make state government a partner, not an adversary, of small business owners. Job creators who want lower taxes, less burdensome regulations, and an environment in which they can think about expanding, not just surviving, know they can count on me.”
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This is not helpful reporting. As an interested voter I’m looking for information to help me make an informed decision about who to support in this year’s elections, not just a print out of someone’s biased press release. OK I get it, the Democrats are not high on the NFIB list but I recall seeing another article recently saying that the group VT businesses for social responsiblity (or something to that effect) gave high marks to several Democratic candidates. A more interesting and helpful article would have explored these two varied opinions and helped the read understand how 2 business groups could be so far apart.
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This is just another extreme right wing group repackaging the same tired negativity we have come to expect from the Douglas/Dubie administration. Thank goodness the Legislature stood its ground and stopped Douglas from raising property taxes, selling the lottery to Lehman Bros.
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Dubie has it right.
The Democrat party veto-proof majority is drunk with power and has passed laws and overrode vetos that increase the role and expenses of government when they should have done the opposite given Vermont’s dire economy and huge deficits. See example.
Just look at the many real estate ads with “REDUCED” labels on them.
Example: the 50,000 kW renewables law with exorbitantly high feed-in-tariffs that benefit a few vendors and a few lottery winning millionaire developers at the expense of taxpayers and rate payers.
RENEWABLES JOB CREATION
According to VT-DPS reports, about 35% of the capital cost of renewables projects is supplied by Vermont sources, the rest, mostly equipment, is by non-Vermont sources. For example: PV panels from China and inverters from Germany are about 70% of a PV system’s materials cost.
According to VT-DPS reports, after investing $228 million in 50,000 kW of renewables there will be a spike in short-term jobs during the renewables construction stage which flattens to a permanent net gain of 13 long-term full-time jobs during the operation and maintenance stage. In essence jobs are created in one politically well-connected sector (renewables) of the Vermont economy at the expense other sectors.
It appears using scarce rate payer/taxpayer funds for renewables that are expensive and produce just a little of expensive power is NOT the jobs creation panacea so much talked about by proponents of renewables.
http://publicservice.vermont.gov/planning/DPS%20White%20Paper%20Feed%20in%20Tariff.pdf
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Understand your frustration, Erik. The two groups are radically different, with ideology as the big difference. Naturally, since this is just a press release, that NFIB/Vermont sent out to promote Dubie, it is promoting their anti-tax, and probably anti-government, stance — i.e Republican. Vermont Business for Social Responsibility (VBSR) is, in general, an organization of Vermont businesses concerned about the effects of business and what businesses do on communities, environment, and so on. They are active, for instance, in the crusade for single-payer health care in Vt. The NFIB is a right-wing national organization (probably funded by corporations or other right-wing groups) while the VBSR is a group of member Vermont businesses. Hope this helps a little bit.
Yeah, it was a bloody good thing that the legislature stood its ground against Douglas/Dubie. Imagine what would have happened if we had sold our lottery to Lehman Brothers or allowed the property tax to increase while their friends got nice tax write-offs — which was their intent.
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The Douglas PSD gave us the don’t buy the Ct River dams advice. Talk about botching a no-brainer. The Douglas PSD accepted as fact the VELCO assertion that major transmission lines placed next to residential dwellings have no impact on property values. The Douglas PSD accepted this VELCO assertion in order to allow the trisection of Vergennes by a string of 90 ft transmission towers. The city, no thanks to the mayor and local Republican Senator and Reprsentatives got their act together and were able to keep the city whole. Hired the GMP electric power planner to single handedily re-do the States power plan in order to allow VELCO to proceed with a major transmission project. Luckily they were caught in the charade and had to back down and re-start the process from scratch. It was also quite happy to assist Velco and GMP to have get to know each other meetings with the impacted VT communities, without the public’s knowledge. The Douglas PSD accepted as fact the VELCO statement that they had no plans on the table to go any further than New Haven with the same major transmission line and power station. I doubt if the population exceeds 1000.
And let’s not forget the Verison/Fairpoint deal. That’s been a real winner from the start.
And Entergy’s corporation makeover attempt. Also remember Arnie Gunderson, the nuclear engineer who was right on so many Vt Yankee issues yet was banned by the PSB because they said he had an anti-nuclear bias.
If you want any creditability I sure wouldn’t post the findings of a Douglas PSD report. I’d ask for an un-biased second opinion.
Also want to guess who O’Brien and Douglas will be working for in a year or so.