Gov. Peter Shumlin spent his Friday afternoon meeting with reporters one by one as part of an effort to deflect criticism of a recent land deal in which critics have said he took advantage of a low-income neighbor.
Instead of a press conference in which the governor would be subjected to questions from journalists as a group, Shumlin chose to make a personal pitch to members of the press. The damage control effort included interviews with Vermont Press Bureau’s Peter Hirschfeld, WCAX’s Jennifer Reading, Seven Days’ Paul Heintz and the Burlington Free Press’ Terri Hallenbeck, who trickled in and out of the governor’s personal office on the Fifth Floor of the Pavilion building to talk about his land deal with Jeremy Dodge.
Dodge, a high school drop-out and ex-convict, sold the property to Shumlin for roughly a quarter of its appraised value in November. Dodge claims six months later that he did not know what he was doing, when he sold the family homestead that he inherited. Read the full story on the issue here.
Andrew Stein sat down with the governor and his press secretary Sue Allen on Friday afternoon. An edited version of the conversation between the reporter and the governor follows.
Q: What’s the latest development?
A: This morning, I had a nice meeting with Jerry, and I left him a letter to show to his family. The message was simple: ‘We went into this understanding we’d come to an arrangement that was fair to both of us. I was disappointed to learn in the press that you changed your mind. When I agreed to help, I made a commitment to myself that I’d see this through. Let’s press restart, sit down and figure out what your concerns are and a way to solve them.’
Q: Are you going to void the sale?
A: No, that wouldn’t do anybody any good. It was important that he felt like this was fair to both of us. If he has a change of heart, I’d like to figure out how we can remedy that. The only caveat is I urged (him) to get a lawyer numerous times. My lawyer urged him to get a lawyer. This time you’ve got to get a lawyer. I’ll pay for it; I would have paid for it last time, I’ll pay for it this time, but you can’t refuse. Last time he refused to get a lawyer.
Q: When was the first time you met Jeremy Dodge?
A: I can’t remember, but he’s my nearest neighbor.
Q: Do you remember when you first discussed purchasing his property with him?
A: Very clearly. Jerry was doing some work for me this summer. He needed a job, and I had him cutting wood and working with some of the guys clearing land — not a lot of hours. I got to know him through that, and I was sometimes working with him. I like to cut wood myself. Good therapy.
I see Jerry two or three times a week, and we talk to each other frequently. I know him pretty well. In terms of this discussion, I became aware because people told me his place was coming up for tax sale, and people said you really ought to buy it because he’s your neighbor.
I’ve never bought anything on a tax sale, but I felt like I owed him the courtesy of telling him I knew there was a tax sale. I didn’t want it to be a surprise if I showed up there.
Q: Was this several days before the tax sale?
A: Weeks before. In that conversation, he told me more about his finances than I had ever known because his finances are none of my business. And I realized how deeply in financial trouble he was. I said to him, ‘Jerry, the best outcome for you would be to find a family member or really good friend who could borrow the money. $17,000 against a property isn’t that much, and even if you have to put it in a relative’s name; hold onto the property so you can dig your way out of this mess.’
He said he had conversations with his son and others. I never thought much more about it and I wasn’t going to bring it up. I had given him what advice I could.
A couple of weeks later — and this was during the campaign when I didn’t get much time off — I was stacking wood. It was a cold fall day. He came up and was very upset, and said, ‘Listen, I have tried everything. My son can’t get it. He just informed me recently. Is there any way you’re willing to help me out of this mess?’”
My first response was, ‘Not yet.’ I had never been to his house, so I went over before I had to go back to work. It was so filled with debris and garbage, and it had been destroyed. He had inherited a house from his family that he had totally destroyed. So, I said to him, ‘Jerry, I’ve really got think about this.’ And he asked if I could think quickly because the tax sale wasn’t far away.
I felt like I owed it to him to get back, and I thought long and hard about it. I knew that he was in a really tough spot. What I observed in the house was shocking to me. I didn’t realize he didn’t have power, he didn’t have water, he didn’t have heat, it was cold, the entire sanitary conditions of the house were as bad as you could imagine, and I didn’t have the heart to say no to the guy.
Now, listen, this is a person who has a long criminal record. He is a violent offender. He has done horrendous things to innocent people. On the other hand, he is a guy I had grown to realize was really working to better himself, as he puts it, and he’s making some progress.
So, I went back and worked out an arrangement that I felt and he felt was fair to him and fair to me.
Q: Was it just you two who negotiated the deal?
A: Yeah, it was. This wasn’t complicated math. I said, ‘Jerry, this house is destroyed. Maybe someone would want to gut it, but there is nothing left,’ which the listers concurred with. ‘So, I’m willing to put about $58,000 into paying bills, working off your back rent, to making it possible for you to live here, and I insist that at the end there be a pot of money that you can go and find a better place to live because this is not habitable. In the interim we’ll do the plumbing and do the work we need to do to get it back up and functioning. But by July 15 you’ve got to find something that’s more suitable for human life.’
Q: Did you do the plumbing right away?
A: I had to. He had no power, so the first thing I did was go to Washington Electric and paid off his power bill. This is before we had any arrangement.
Q: So his sewage system is working now?
A: It is now, but it wasn’t that simple. There was so much damage.
Q: Why make this deal before it goes to tax sale? Why not let it go to tax sale?
A: A tax sale would have been the worst thing for Jerry for two reasons: One, you have no idea how you’re going to come out of it. But that’s not the main reason. The tax sale was one of just a menu of financial problems he had including no power and no heat and nowhere to live for the winter. It was cold. If you go to a tax sale, you don’t take the deed for a year, so nobody who bought it at tax sale was going to help him get his power back on and get the lights back on and get the plumbing fixed and do all of the things that needed to be done to make it habitable so he wasn’t homeless.
Jerry knew and I knew that if he couldn’t find someone to help him come to a fair arrangement for a tax sale, he was in a really bleak situation.
Q: You’ve closed many land deals. You own a lot of real estate, correct?
A: Yeah, I do.
Q: Have you ever closed a deal with someone who didn’t have an attorney or a realtor?
A: I’ve done it myself, as the seller, for the simple reason that the risk is on the buyer. There are liens on property and things in the deed you don’t know about. But, as Jerry said, I begged him on numerous occasions to get a lawyer. My lawyer urged him and begged him to get a lawyer. Jerry refused. He never said he couldn’t afford it.
I assumed his unwillingness to engage a lawyer was connected to his long history of interaction with the law. That was my hunch, but I can tell you Jerry is a headstrong person. When he makes a decision, he makes a decision, and he was not getting a lawyer. That’s why I put in this arrangement that I would not talk to him about finding a remedy without a current lawyer.
Q: Are you making this new arrangement public?
A: I’m telling you about it. If he had just come to me and said I’m having concerns or I want to extend the time, I would have said fine.
Q: Would you consider any settlement that allows him to keep the home?
A: This home is unlivable. If there were a silver bullet that would solve this complicated problem, I would have shot that one first. No human being should be living in that home. As the listers confirmed, it needs to be torn down. What good does it do to give Jerry a home that requires removal or a $250,000 renovation? Where is he going to get the change for that?
This is a really difficult situation. I mentioned this before I did it to a couple of friends and they said, ‘Are you crazy? Do not get involved with an ex-con who is broke and has nowhere to turn. Don’t do it. No one else is. Why are you?’
All I can tell you is, I could not be the person who at the very last resort, when a neighbor was desperate, in a Vermont way I could not just turn around and walk away.
Q: Did the FBI contact you?
A: Absolutely not. The only thing I’ve ever read about that are the rumors in the press. I have never been contacted by law enforcement in any way, shape or form. There is nothing to hide.
Q: When I went to Jerry’s house, there was a state trooper parked in your driveway. Is that usual or have you been receiving threats?
A: I never comment on security, but obviously it should be no secret to Vermonters that I do have security.
Q: Do you think you did anything wrong in this matter whatsoever?
(Long Pause)
A: I understand why people can have divergent views of whether I should have gotten involved at all. In the end, I am an individual who lives in the state of Vermont, and I didn’t have the capacity to turn to a neighbor in a really desperate situation — someone for whom many in the community have no sympathy because of the horrendous things he’s done — and see a guy who is working to better himself and basically sentence him back to jail. I couldn’t do that.
Q: Did you ever say to him, aside from an attorney, there are other options or services?
A: Like what? Do you think we have the human services that would have bailed out Jerry Dodge? We don’t have them. What would they have done? Find him a place to live? Maybe, but who? And he didn’t want to go anywhere but where he is.
This was a private transaction, and I wasn’t going to use my influence as governor. I didn’t want anything to happen where any other Vermonter wouldn’t have been treated in the same way. I was doing this as his neighbor, not as the governor.
What social service agency could I have referred to him that would have helped out better than the option that he and I both agreed that was extraordinarily fair and reasonable?
Let’s do the math for a minute; it wasn’t just the $58,000. I knew I’d have to pay $20,000 to $40,000 just cleaning up the mess when he left, clearing out the building. I thought, I’m spending $90,000 to $100,000 for between 14 acres to 16 acres of land that can never be more than a single lot.
I’ve never paid that much for an acre of land, but I knew I wasn’t being hosed.
From Jerry’s perspective, he was getting all of his bills paid off, getting back into a livable situation and having resources to go rent something when he went out the door. I tried to be as fair and he tried to be as fair as we possibly could be.
Q: What have you paid to him so far?
A: I can’t tell you in exact numbers, but I wanted to make sure he had all of his bills paid, some cash in in his pocket and that the bulk of the payment went to him at the end so that he had the maximum amount of resources to go build a better life.
Q: What now? How do you proceed?
A: We’re going to sit down and try to figure out what his concerns are. I knew when I agreed to help it had to be good for him, it had to be good for me, and we had to both leave feeling it was fair. We achieved that. Now it’s changed.
I’m not the kind of person that says, ‘Too bad.’ I’m going to sit down with him and make sure that we come to an arrangement he’s happier with now that he’s decided he’s not happy. That’s just who I am.
Q: What will you do with this property?
A: Jerry needs a place to live, so nothing much will change. Once he goes, I’m going to either tear it down or gut it.
Q: A lister called a health officer in the spring because of the home’s condition. Did you fix it up before the health officer was called?
A: After we got it back in shape in the fall, it got back into a state of decay. I wasn’t aware of that until I went in with the listers.
Q: Do you know how long you’ll allow Jeremy Dodge to stay there? And whether he’ll receive the funds he otherwise would receive under contract for vacating the property by July 15?
A: I’m not charging Jerry to stay there. I want to make sure the nest egg for Jerry to find something better to live in is there when he moves.
Q: A nest egg of $12,000?
A: It could be more than that depending on how much of the $9,000 on maintenance we’ll spend.