A prominent Vermont businessman released a television ad Wednesday attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders and his wife, Jane. The ad, paid for by Republican benefactor Rodolphe “Skip” Vallee, demands that Jane Sanders return the severance pay she received in 2011 when she resigned as president of Burlington College.
Vallee is owner of R.L. Vallee Inc., a gasoline distributor and operator of the Maplefields chain of convenience stores. This is at least the third time Vallee has produced a television ad attacking Sanders.
The latest ad calls Sanders a hypocrite for criticizing “golden parachutes” in the corporate world while his wife accepted nearly $200,000 when she left the college. In a phone interview Wednesday, Jane Sanders defended her payout, saying it was a paid year of sabbatical contractually due her, and standard practice in academia.
Vallee said Wednesday the ad was not motivated by Sanders’ potential bid for president, nor by Vallee’s past disputes with Sanders over gasoline prices in Chittenden County, but out of concern for the school.
“Burlington College’s financial difficulties exist whether Bernie Sanders is running for president or not,” he said.
Vallee is a prominent donor to Republican causes and a one-time candidate for Vermont State Senate. He was appointed ambassador to Slovakia in 2005 by President George W. Bush. Vallee owns the Maplefields chain of convenience stores and gas stations.
Burlington College faces nearly $10 million in debt. Its financial struggles surfaced in the media last month when Brady Toensing, the vice chairman of the Vermont GOP, passed financial audits of the college to local media.
During her presidency, Jane Sanders led a push to buy a North Avenue property from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington where she planned to use as a new campus. Sanders resigned shortly after the purchase, and since then the college’s financial situation has plummeted.
Asked whether she would return the money, Sanders on Wednesday would not answer.
“I’ll answer with a question,” Sanders said. “Why are you keeping gas prices so artificially high and when will you lower your gas prices 30 cents a gallon, more in line with the rest of the state?”
In 2012, Sen. Sanders launched an attack on high gas prices in northeastern Vermont and put the blame on the handful of companies, including Vallee’s, that owned most of the area’s gas stations. The resultant publicity brought prices down, although recently the Burlington Free Press has reported that once again, prices are significantly higher in the Burlington area than elsewhere in Vermont.
Jane Sanders said that Vallee’s ad illustrates how the national Republican Party operates but not how she believes things worked in Vermont. She was lukewarm about her husband’s apparent exploration of a bid for president, but she said that Vallee’s ad confirms why he needs to run.
“It’s bullies like this that make me think ‘oh, yeah, he is needed.’ Because he more than anyone else I know won’t give in to bullies,” Sanders said.
Vallee has spent $10,000 for airtime on WCAX starting Thursday, he said. He is considering buying more time on other stations but won’t if Sanders returns the $200,000 to the college, he said. For now, the ad is only running in Vermont, he said.
Jane Sanders was president of Burlington College from March 2004 to September 2011. The severance pay of $200,000 was a year’s worth of earned but unused sabbatical, she said Wednesday. That pay and her title of president emeritus were announced when she resigned, and were covered in media accounts at the time.
Sanders received one year’s pay of $149,380, including benefits, paid over two years. She also received $21,415 in retirement payments, a deferred bonus of $15,000 and a lump sum final payment of $15,000, according to the fiscal 2013 audit.
Sanders said she agreed to take the money over two years instead of one to ease the burden on the school.
When she left she also had a year and 9 months left in her contract and had a signed commitment letter for an additional four years, she said. She could have asked for pay for those years but requested only what she had earned, she said.
“The college was doing well when I left it and was poised for a promising future,” she said. For the past three years she has offered to help Burlington College any way she can, she said.
Vallee said he doesn’t accept Sanders’ argument that her payout was standard.
“If we’re going to excuse this golden parachute because there was a basket of contract rights then Sen. Sanders needs to excuse every other golden parachute,” Vallee said.
He pointed to a 2009 letter sent by Sanders and other senators to AIG chairman and CEO Edward Liddy, condemning the insurance company’s practice of giving executives multimillion-dollar bonuses.
The letter called it “morally unacceptable” for the company to spend $165 million on bonuses when the company received a $170 billion taxpayer-funded rescue.
Burlington College has made financial commitments to two other former presidents. One receives a monthly payment for life, according to the 2013 audit. Those payments began in 1995 at $600 and have increased each year according to the Consumer Price Index; the current payment is $958 per month. The college also pays $1,225 per month in health insurance premiums for that president and his partner for the rest of his life, a cost estimated to reach $253,835 by the time he dies. It also pays up to $2,000 per year in dental care reimbursements, the audit said.
The college also pays the medical and dental insurance costs for the spouse of another former president. That agreement, struck in 2002, costs $268 per month. The college also agreed to pay up to $1,000 per year in dental expenses.
