Bram Kranichfeld says his work as a deputy state’s attorney has given him a unique understanding of Burlington. “As a criminal prosecutor I have a view into the community that most people don’t get to see,” explained the 31-year-old Democratic candidate for mayor in a recent interview with VTDigger. “I deal every day with issues around poverty, mental illness, drug addiction. I’m on the front lines in dealing with these underlying social issues.”
Living in the Old North End also helps, he adds, allowing him to “see people’s struggles firsthand. Anyone who wants to be mayor should understand the whole community.”
A relative newcomer to local politics, Kranichfeld was elected to his first term on the Burlington City Council less than two years ago. Prior to that, he was appointed to the Burlington Electric Commission in 2008 and subsequently became its chairman. He originally decided to run for office in part because “the city wasn’t paying enough attention” to his Old North End neighborhood.
“We’re often not part of the conversation,” he says, “and city departments can be unresponsive.”
Kranichfeld says he was also “very disappointed with the management of the city,” especially the administration’s handling of Burlington Telecom. As council races heated up in late 2009, the controversy over BT’s finances was at a fever pitch. Council members, including presumed Republican mayoral candidate Kurt Wright, pushed for recall and impeachment resolutions that, while not mentioning Mayor Bob Kiss by name, were aimed at him.
At the time, City Council members charged that Kiss and Chief Administrative Officer Jonathan Leopold had kept secret a $16.9 million Burlington Telecom debt to the city treasury. The mayor still disputes those charges, his assistant Joe Reinert said last week. In written responses, Kiss has argued that the council and Board of Finance were briefed on several occasions.
In 2008, for example, Kiss notes that the BT budget passed by the City Council showed an $11.1 million shortfall and forecast the need for $8 million in debt financing. On May 18, 2009, two months after his re-election, he says he and Leopold told the council about the growing debt in the city’s cash pool in an executive session. The council also knew that the certificate of public good issued by the Public Service Board was being violated, he claims.
Kranichfeld, who joined the council after most of these revelations, says the central problems, particularly in matters financial, are the administration’s lack of transparency and openness. There is also too much partisan vitriol, he adds. “I’ve seen it firsthand; too much time is wasted on posturing and bickering.”
He says he can bring people together across party lines. “I’ve ignored partisanship,” Kranichfeld says. “If Progressives have a good idea, I’ll support it.”
He disputes the contention that “I’m just talking about Democrats” when discussing the need to unite and get past differences. “No, I’m talking about everyone.” He also disagrees with a recent Seven Days column by Shay Totten that alleges his backing “comes deep from within the old guard Democrats.”
“I do have support from the core of the party,” he acknowledges. Figures like State Rep. Johannah Leddy Donovan, a local Democratic Party leader for decades, and activist lawyer Sandra Baird, have supported his candidacy. But he also points to endorsements from more than 150 other local Democrats, including Suzi Wizowaty and Jessica Oski, “People who have demonstrated that they can work across party lines.”
“It’s not so much about fusion,” he explains, a reference to the approach being advocated by mayoral candidate Tim Ashe, who hopes to win both the Democratic and Progressive nominations. “It’s who you can attract and the decisions you’ve made. I’ve made decisions across party lines. That will be important as mayor. I have a track record.”
From business law to holistic policing
Kranichfeld’s path to the Queen City began in Dummerston, a tiny community in Vermont’s southeast corner, but he spent most of his youth in Rye, N.Y. Today he has family ties in Rutland and is married to “a Montpelier girl.”
As a student at the University of Chicago, he was initially attracted by the humanities, “the history of intellectual thought and particularly analytic philosophy – language, arguments, meanings, communication.” This led him eventually to Cornell Law School. While studying there he interned for the New York Attorney General’s Office, as well as for Carter, Ledyard and Milburn, a New York business firm with 130 lawyers on staff. After law school, the firm hired him.
“I have no regrets about working there,” he says. “It was incredibly valuable to learn about the business world and finance. I was a corporate attorney, and part of my job was mergers and acquisitions. Another was finance, working with banks and brokerages, guiding them through regulations. “
But after two years on the job he had an epiphany. “I took a step back and asked what I was doing with my life,” he recalls. The answer: “I was making rich people richer. As challenging as the work was, it wasn’t what I could dedicate my life to doing.”
His first step away from business law was a shift to family law for a legal services non-profit. Next came the search for a job in Vermont. He eventually nabbed a county judicial clerkship in St. Albans. “I came with the intention of giving it six months,” he laughs. “But literally within two weeks of living here I decided that I would never leave.”
In 2007, Kranichfeld became deputy state’s attorney for Chittenden County. His boss, T.J. Donovan, was briefly considered a potential mayoral candidate himself. Donovan is the son of Johanna Donovan, one of Kranichfeld’s best-known backers.
In the last four years, he has worked in the local drug court, served on the electric commission and run for the City Council in Ward 2. In that election, he faced Max Tracy, a 23-year-old UVM graduate and local labor activist on the Progressive ticket. Kranichfeld’s main issues were BT and public safety.
The circumstances were a bit unusual. For more than two decades, Ward 2 was a Progressive stronghold. But Democrat David Berezniak took one of the two seats in 2009. Then the other incumbent, Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, moved to Ward 3. In March 2010, Kranichfeld defeated Tracy by a razor-thin margin of 14 votes.
He was optimistic at the beginning. “I think we’re all going to be able to work together,” he said in early 2010. Following up on his campaign, he attempted to deal with noise, vandalism and drug dealing in the ward, problems he’d seen as resident and prosecutor. That meant getting “more support from the Burlington Police Department or starting neighborhood watches to keep the problems at bay.” He attributes many of the difficulties to “the large proportion of college students” in the ward.
How did it go? “I learned how frustrating it can be on the council,” he admits. To deal with noise and vandalism, he “put together forums and neighborhood meetings” and took part in student education programs. “But none of those things seemed to work,” he laments. What he now thinks might be effective is direct involvement from UVM. “Right now, they have a more serious internal response to overdue library books than noise complaints.”
The mayor “is in a stronger position to do something, to negotiate,” he says. “We on the council can advise, but at end of day it’s the mayor who negotiates partnership terms. We need to work harder to protect the city’s interest.”
His proposal for reducing what he calls “quality of life crimes,” things like vandalism, drugs and “bad behavior on the marketplace,” is to develop an overriding strategy and “a more coordinated, holistic approach.” To start, he says, this would involve bringing together the police and people who have a stake in solving the problems, as well as more rigorous code enforcement and fines.
Assets, partnerships and privatization
Could Burlington, birthplace of Vermont’s modern progressive movement, be forced to face a more privatized future? Until recently, it was an idle question. State legislation authorizing Burlington to furnish electric power dates back to 1902. A decade later the city was generating more than 1 million kilowatt hours with its own turbine generator.
A century on, BED is the largest municipally owned electric utility in Vermont. Serving more than 19,000 customers and generating about $50 million in annual revenues, it provides power for the city and Burlington International Airport, and it also pays around $1.5 million annually in contributions to the city. GOP candidate Wright has run the numbers and thinks that selling it could be the key to retiring the city’s pension and telecom debts, not to mention rescuing its endangered credit rating.
Whatever their differences, the four Democrats competing at the Democratic Caucus on Nov. 13 agree on at least one thing: This idea is extreme. As soon as it surfaced, they deemed the sale of BED a half-baked scheme.
Kranichfeld describes it mildly as a “bad idea” and calls BED a model success story. “This is no time to be proposing fire sales of our assets to get a one-time cash infusion,” he charges. “To privatize BED would put ratepayers in danger. It’s actually a weird proposal – to protect the taxpayers by jacking up their rates.”
But the idea of privatizing city enterprises isn’t going away. A week after Wright’s proposal made the rounds, Jason Lorber, another Democrat in the mayor’s race, suggested selling the Burlington International Airport. Although the other candidates have so far let that one go unanswered, they acknowledge that Burlington will be lucky to hold onto another large public project – Burlington Telecom.
Kranichfeld says he wants to “keep an open mind,” which includes considering just about any proposals from potential partners. However, he said he isn’t “sure it’s realistic to keep a controlling interest. Maybe some stake, but the goal has to be helping our credit rating.” At the same time, he says that “we have to remember the value of having publicly owned utilities. Their main focus is protecting ratepayers.”
His view of waterfront development is similarly nuanced. “It would be short-sighted to just sell it for development,” he says. “The waterfront is an asset because it attracts millions from tourists. It’s one of main reasons for our quality of life.” However, he says he’s concerned that one of the major unfinished waterfront projects – reuse of the Moran plant – could become a financial burden. “If the current plan doesn’t work. we could end up with useless infrastructure,” he warns.
Part of the long-term solution is to “create more public-private partnerships that provide jobs. As the economy tightens, they are a great way to grow the city, benefiting constituents and not leaning on taxpayers,” he believes. One example he cites is the school system, where he envisions changes like use of local businesses as classrooms. “We could have more internships and job shadowing.”
He does draw the line at Lockheed Martin, however, both the deal made by Mayor Kiss and the way it was handled. “What I didn’t like about the process was that it left the community out,” he says. “The mayor came back with a signed agreement – with no benefits. It allowed them to use Burlington as part of their advertising.”
Kranichfeld supported the resolution on community standards for partnerships passed by the council. Despite a veto by Kiss that wasn’t overturned, he feels that it “put the mayor on notice.”
Managing change in uncertain times
Kranichfeld often talks about the need for a “fundamental change in the way we do business.” One of his main examples is how city government handles finances and the budget process. “Our accounting system is opaque at best,” he complains. “It prevents honest, open discussion. Department budgets aren’t all in the same format, so it can be almost impossible to see where money is coming from and going.”
Assessing his 18 months on the council, he admits that “it is impossible for us to make a reasonable decision when we’re always forced to go to the chief administration officer. It should be much more clear and transparent.”
Although he sees some basic governance problems, he would begin with “changes that aren’t structural, to improve the efficiency of the system.” Contrasting himself with the current CEO, he would engage the legislative branch. “I’d call them up and try to work with them to move on issues,” he suggests. “We don’t get any calls. This fosters an us-versus-them situation.”
Still, he said he believes that “any system is only as good as the people running it.”
At this point, he sees so much financial uncertainty that “anyone who claims to have a plan forward is suspect as best. We don’t even really know what the liabilities are.” He continues: “We need to know how the lawsuits will be resolved, and we also need an internal audit.” Despite these challenges, he nevertheless claims that “there is no learning curve for me,” and points to his experience in business law. “I’m not a stranger to a balance sheet.”
Kranichfeld said he does worry, however, that the city’s financial woes are leading people not only to “lose sight of the fact that we live in a fantastic place,” but also to be taken in by short-sighted proposals like Wright’s BED sale idea. “It sounds good – until you think about it.”
Though he’s reluctant to go negative, the line epitomizes his criticism of his likely opponent if he wins the caucus. “It’s reactive,” he says of Wright’s idea, “like the recall issue. I didn’t like that because it would have politicized things even more. The mayor would be in a perpetual election cycle. It was a knee-jerk response that would have damaged the city in the long run.”
But before he gets to debate that and other issues, his apparent strategy until the caucus on Nov. 13 is to avoid attacking his rivals if possible, concentrate on building personal connections over detailed proposals and continue emphasizing a mixture of business pragmatism and quality-of-life concerns.
