Digger Tidbits: State to probe more abuse complaints; Foodstamps backlog disappears; Shumlin tweaks AT&T with Tweet

Workers at the Eligibility Benefits Center in Waterbury sort through applications.

Racine to hire more investigators for elder abuse complaints

Doug Racine, secretary of the Agency of Human Services, said he will fill 10 full-time investigator positions in Adult Protective Services to eliminate the waiting list of more than 250 complaints of abuse, neglect or financial exploitation that have not yet been investigated. About 44 cases have been sitting in a growing queue of complaints for more than six months. Even though the state hired temporary investigators last winter to address the backlog, the program has not been able to keep up with the number of complaints, which, according to data from the program, could total close to 4,000 this year. Racine said the temp workers would continue to work on the backlog until the program is caught up on cases, most of which are financial exploitation.

Racine made the announcement in an interview on Vermont Public Radio last Thursday. The secretary also notified VTDigger.org. VPR picked up the original story from VTDigger.org, which ran Aug. 6.

Foodstamps backlog disappears

A year ago, hundreds of Vermonters were stuck in a backlog for foodstamps, Reach Up and Medicaid. Only 65 percent of benefit applications were processed within 30 days, as required under statute. That’s because the state had adopted a new digitized application system that hadn’t taken hold yet – and positions in the eligibility benefit center had been cut.

Vermont Legal Aid threatened to sue the state, and in December, Steve Dale, then-commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, worked with the Shumlin administration to hire 20 full-time workers to take care of Vermonters whose applications had been mistakenly rejected or stuck on the waiting list. That investment – of about $1 million – eliminated the queue and enabled Vermonters timely access to programs. Today, 90 percent of applications are processed within 30 days.

Shumlin's AT&T tweet.

Shumlin tweaks AT&T with Tweet

Last Thursday, Shumlin was temporarily incommunicado with his staff. Turns out that AT&T was down for about an hour that morning. The governor, who keeps tabs on his Cabinet via two cell phones, was perturbed by the blackout and somehow managed to squeak out a Tweet that warned his followers the cell phone outage could last 24 hours to 72 hours. The blackout may have felt that long for the governor, but it was actually about one hour in length.

Canteen reinstated

The Vermont State Hospital will reopen the “canteen” after the snack bar was closed nearly two years ago. Christine Oliver, commissioner of the Department of Mental Health, says the Canteen will offer a café menu again in September.

Oliver said the new snack bar will be run by the Division of the Blind and Visually Impaired. The cafe will serve healthier options, and, as in the past, it will be open to the public, and some of the workers will be Vermont State Hospital patients.

The Canteen was a contentious budget item in 2009. The Douglas administration shuttered the café, but an outcry from mental health advocates eventually led to an appropriation to keep it open and to renovate the space.

Vermont has second highest insurance rates

According to a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Vermont had the second highest insurance premium rates in the country in 2010. Massachusetts took first prize; both states had rates above $400 per person last year. The national average is $215 per month per person.

Timely tax data?

Dick Heaps and Art Woolf, authors of the Vermont Economy Newsletter, complained last month that they weren’t receiving tax information as quickly as they used to. In an item titled “Suppressing Timely Information,” they alleged that the Tax Department is delaying release of the monthly tax receipts data in order to allow the Agency of Administration to review the information and offer an “accurate interpretation.” The latter struck Heaps and Woolf as an Orwellian breach of openness and transparency in state government.

Mary Peterson,  commissioner of the Tax Department, says for some reason, the raw numbers had been going out to a select group of 30 people, including Heaps, before the data were “scrubbed.” The public dispersal of the revenue numbers is issued around the 10th of the month; the raw data were sent about four or five days beforehand.

“It’s not a big deal,” Peterson said. “We’re waiting for solid numbers. It makes sense to send them out when they’re ready for everybody.”

The list of raw revenue recipients included state agencies and two outside entities – Vermont Economy Newsletter and the Rockefeller Center for State and Local Government.

Questions about the accuracy of numbers published in a recent article led to an examination of the reporting system, Peterson said.

The data from the Tax Department is reconciled with information from the Department of Finance and Management before it is reported by the Agency of Administration.

Auditor named sailor of the year

Sailor Tom Salmon, courtesy photo

The message came via email, complete with a scan of the original certificate of award: The White River Junction Navy Operational Support Center has named State Auditor Tom Salmon, also known as Builder First Class for the U.S. Navy, Sailor of the Year. Two photos are featured with the announcement – one of Salmon in his “dress blues” and a second in which he’s wearing fatigues, leaning up against a truck.

Salmon, a Democrat turned Republican, is either running for governor or Senate, depending on whether Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie makes a bid for the Fifth Floor against Shumlin. Lately, the state auditor, who appears to be functioning in campaign mode, has taken to sending out several emails a week to the press.

Legislative Apportionment Board by the numbers (and the map)

Since the meeting of the Legislative Apportionment Board last week, the Vermont secretary of state’s office has issued a map of the new single-member and double-seat district lines. The overall maximum deviation is 20.3 percent; a deviation figure has been calculated for each district as well.

Download the proposal and the map.

The plan now goes to the Legislature in January.

Wallack touts payment reforms in New England Journal of Medicine

Anya Rader Wallack, special assistant to Gov. Peter Shumlin, outlined the governor’s single-payer health care plan in the New England Journal of Medicine last month. Wallack gives cost control mechanisms and the single-payer concept equal weight in her article. Payment reform is the key concept in her brief, which emphasizes the state’s Blueprint for Health, cost sharing, global hospital budgets, bonus payments tied to quality of care and bundled payments by all payers.

“It is worth watching Vermont’s development of its single-payer system as a model for guaranteeing coverage for all citizens, reducing administrative waste, and simplifying insurance for both patients and providers,” Wallack writes.

Report urges “prompt” solution to long-term nuclear waste problem

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future issued recommendations last month for long-term storage of highly radioactive fuel generated by the nation’s 104 operating nuclear power plants. The commission outlines a new strategy for the storage of spent fuel that includes “prompt” siting of nuclear waste management facilities.

The authors of the report acknowledge that the nuclear disaster in Japan “gave new urgency to our charge.”

“In the weeks of intense media coverage that followed, many Americans became newly aware of the presence of tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel at more than 70 nuclear power plants around the country,” they wrote.

The Obama administration put an end to the long “troubled” policy, the report states, “which tied the entire U.S. high-level waste management program to the fate of the Yucca Mountain site.”

No other permanent site for high-level radioactive waste is currently being contemplated by national officials. Meanwhile, spent fuel is accumulating at nuclear power plant sites. At nuclear power plants around the country, including Vermont Yankee, more fuel is being kept in “storage pools” than they were designed to contain, according to a report by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting. The Vermont Yankee spent fuel pool is loaded with five times more fuel than it was designed to hold, according to Shay Totten at Seven Days, who contributed to the series.

The commission acknowledges this fact. “The United States currently has no physical capacity to do anything with this spent fuel other than to continue to leave it at the sites where it was first generated,” the authors wrote.

The report urges the federal government to develop long-term geologic storage capacity and consolidated “interim” storage facilities. It also recommends a new “consent-based” approach to siting fuel repositories.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., praised the commission’s report.
“If appropriately implemented, their conclusions can become an action plan to renew confidence in the nation’s nuclear waste management program,” Leahy said. “Forging the structure of a sensible and workable program is not an option, it is an imperative. We have gone too long without a plan, leaving waste piling up across the country and leaving many communities vulnerable to nuclear disasters.”

No more trees to leave the Statehouse lawn

Officials confirmed in a meeting last week that no more trees would be removed from the Statehouse grounds this year. Buildings and General Services Commissioner Michael Obuchowski, Statehouse Curator David Schutz and other officials decided that the state would “engage in a comprehensive planning exercise that will include the Capitol Complex Commission and legislators.”

The state recently removed three sugar maples that had graced the lawn in front of the Golden Dome for 30 to 40 years, because of complications from soil compaction.

Schutz said that “the current design of the lawn is, however, in serious question.”

The sugar maple, which is the official state tree, is not well-suited to urban settings, he said. The species could also become a casualty of climate change. Sugar maples, scientists say, won’t thrive as Vermont’s climate warms.

“Should we mindlessly keep planting sugar maples, and only sugar maples, in a situation that is not conducive to their long-term survival?” Schutz wrote in an email. “That has long been the plan that BGS has followed. To vary the trees and their locations would be a highly-debatable proposition, and I’m happy to report that for the next year we intend to pursue this discussion with a mind toward expanding involvement in planning for the Statehouse lawn.”

~Taylor Dobbs