Contact:
Meghan O’Rourke, 862-3966 x16 morourke@cctv.org

Channel 17 coverage

Under the Dome
Legislative Reports from the Vermont State House on the channel every Monday at 6 p.m. and every Sunday at 1 p.m.
VT Governor’s State of the State Address Thursday, January 5 airs at 6 p.m. This will also be available at 2 p.m. as a Live webstream at www.channel17.org thanks to a partnership with VPT.
VT Governor’s Budget Address Thursday, January 12 airs at 6 p.m.

Town Meeting Election Coverage
Burlington Business Association Burlington Mayoral Forum airs Sunday, January 7 at 1 p.m. (pre-recorded)
Local Motion Burlington Mayoral Forum airs Sunday, January 14 at 1 p.m. (pre-recorded)
All candidates for Town Meeting must declare by January 30 – Live forums with All candidates will be scheduled in February

Town Meeting Forums February 6 -15 beginning at 5:25 p.m. each night Live Call-ins on ballot items and with candidates from Burlington, Essex, Winooski, South Burlington and Williston check here for more information.

Watch programs on TV Channel 17 as well as online at: http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/live-at-525.
Programs repeat up to 3 times on TV.

Channel 17/Town Meeting TV provides government access and public affairs programming to the Comcast cable subscribers of Colchester, South Burlington, Burlington, Essex Town, Essex Junction, Winooski, Williston and St. George as well as to the subscribers of Burlington Telecom cable. Channel 17’s mission is to make government more accessible and accountable to Chittenden County residents and to provide citizens with a direct link to public policy makers.

VTDigger

Norman Rockwell's painting Freedom of Speech was based on a town meeting held in Arlington, Vermont.

Editor’s note: This essay by Greg Guma is from The Vermont Way: Restless Spirits and Popular Movement, a new study of the state’s evolution and influence slated for release in 2012. To find out more, visit The Vermont Way.

Like a perennial flower that defies climatic change, local control has re-blossomed in Vermont almost every decade since the state’s birth. The forces nurturing this perpetually endangered species have changed – from temperance activists and radical populists in the state’s early days to peace activists and greens in the 1980s, conservative Republicans in the late 90s and the independence movement of recent years. But it never fails to stimulate the public’s political senses – or highlight the distance between image and reality.

The enduring image – some consider it a myth – is that Vermont has a unique democratic heritage tied to traditions like town meeting, a citizen legislature and resistance to centralized power. This is at the root of Vermont’s sense of difference, that hard-to-describe attitude sometimes called the Vermont Way. The term has been used to describe everything from the traditional way to make maple syrup and smart farming practice to a political campaign agenda and the ability to make something out of almost nothing. Sometimes it is extended into the phrase “Vermont way of life.”

When he left the Republican Party, Jim Jeffords said, “Independence is the Vermont Way.” In her autobiography Consuelo Northrup Bailey, a native Vermonter who was the first female attorney admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and in 1955 became the first female lieutenant governor in the nation, said the character of Vermont was defined by “everyday, common, honest people who unknowingly salted down the Vermont way of life with a flavor peculiar only to the Green Mountains.”

Authors Frank Bryan and John McClaughry tried to define it in The Vermont Papers, their decentralist manifesto: “God-given liberties, their hostility to the central power, whatever it may be, their attachment to their towns and schools and local communities, their dedication to common enterprise for the common good – all these have been among the most cherished Vermont traits, the subject of countless eulogies of Vermont tradition over the years.”

That said, the two libertarian thinkers also admitted that reality is something else. While the 1777 Vermont Constitution included some open government provisions, celebrated the consent of the governed – in theory, abolished slavery and created a comprehensive education system, it also placed considerable power in the hands of the governor and his Council. It has even been argued, notably by historian Nicholas Muller III, that “early government in Vermont functioned more like an oligarchy than a democracy.” Before the State Senate was created, the Council with the Governor combined the power of an upper legislative chamber with the executive branch.

Today Vermonters still elect six statewide officials every two years. Under the original plan, there were annual elections for 15 jobs, including the governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, and 13-member Council. Councilors could simultaneously serve as Supreme Court Justices. The result of this system was centralized power and few losses for incumbents, leading to longer tenure in office.

After about nine years, before Vermont became part of the United States, the original Constitution was amended, creating something closer to what exists today – three separate branches of government with distinct powers. But the Governor’s Council survived for another half century, and the Council of Censors was retained. This Federalist-inspired holdover from pre-revolutionary days was supposed to somehow oversee both the governor and legislature, making sure that laws were handled properly and the Constitution was being followed. If not, the Censors could call a convention and propose amendments.

Although doubts arose early about how Censors were elected, its vulnerability to partisan control and some proceedings marked by prejudice, Vermont hung onto this unusual institution until 1870. In its first 40 years, only one of its proposed amendments was ratified, however, and that one denied voting rights to foreign-born citizens until they were naturalized.

According to Ira Allen, there was little support for the Constitution anyway. Had it been submitted to the people, he wrote in his history of the state, “It is very doubtful whether a majority would have confirmed it.”

He should have known. Allen was on the Council from the start, along with his brother Heman, trusted associate Thomas Chittenden, Jefferson ally Matthew Lyon, and other Allen associates. This tiny group controlled negotiations with the British during the revolution, the composition of the early Supreme Court, and, for several decades, almost everything that made it through the General Assembly.

The rise of Town Meeting Day

On the other hand, Vermont had the tradition of Town Meeting Day. The roots of the idea went back to England and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and eventually spread through most of New England. In the days of the Bay Colony, the sense that participation was a social obligation was so great that fines were sometimes imposed for non-attendance. But the crucial business conducted in the 19th century was largely appointive. For example, residents would gather to select “tything men” to act as the general police, and sometimes also pound-keepers or supervisors – known as “reaves” – who cared for hogs and other animals.

A full house at a Bethel Town Meeting. Photo by Jessamyn West.

In the early 20th century Town Meeting Day gained some traction, becoming the main way for local communities to exercise some measure of control over an increasingly broad range of public affairs. At its best, it epitomized the value of equalitarian democracy. On the other hand, attendance was 20 percent or less in many places, and business was often decided by rural bosses before the formal meeting began. Over time growth brought increased complexity, while state and federal government assumed more local responsibilities, leaving a ceremonial shell in which the purchase of a truck became “major” business.

Frank Bryan began observing these meetings in the late 1960s. In early analysis, he found that participation was relatively greater in smaller towns, that educational level didn’t influence the level of involvement and increased use of the Australian ballot threatened to kill the tradition. He also talked about the “atomizing” of local authority; basically, the shifting of local functions to various regional groups and the state left towns with little to draw residents each year.

In the 1970s, however, a new type of business began to appear on Town Meeting Day agendas – resolutions that dealt with issues beyond the usual boundaries of local government. In 1976 anti-nuclear activists brought up items that called for the banning of nuclear power plants or the transportation and storage of nuclear waste. People knew the towns had no way to enforce such a decision, and yet by 1977 more than 40 communities took such a stand. In subsequent years a majority of Vermont towns voted for a nuclear weapons freeze – a campaign that gained national recognition by 1982 – issuing instructions to the state’s congressional delegation to help lead the charge. Federal officials eventually took their advice.

At the time Bryan and other Town Meeting boosters were concerned that “larger” issues might begin to dominate the annual gatherings and reduce attendance in the long run. In 1974 he had predicted “the functional death of the Vermont town” as rural political systems became “more closed than open, more individualistic than communal, and politically more passive than active.” But in a 2004 book, All Those in Favor, he was more optimistic, praising the global impact of local votes on the nuclear freeze “because the world knows that town meetings are authentic, democratic governments and Vermont has the healthiest system of this kind of government anywhere.”

Pointing to a series of social innovations – from challenging slavery and McCarthyism in the past to leading the national debate on environmental protection and gay marriage in more recent times – he and co-author Susan Clark argued that Town Meeting is the reason Vermont “consistently places better on indices of achievement in the areas of good government, civil society, social capital, collective generosity, and political tolerance.”
Among their observations:

• An average 20 percent of eligible voters attend Vermont town meetings, a more significant figure when you consider the amount of time involved and the fact that voter turnout for local elections across the United States is only 25 percent.
• 44 percent of those who attend actually speak — a high number for any legislative process.
• Women fare better than in any other part of the U.S. political system. Less than 20 percent of the Congress is female; in the Vermont state legislature it is around 30 percent. But according to 2003 study of 44 town meetings, 48 percent of those involved in passing local budgets and setting the tax rate were women.
• The level of participation varies widely. Small towns average more than 30 percent attendance, while only about 5 percent show up in larger communities. Bryan and Clark suggest that town meetings aren’t that effective in participatory terms when the community grows beyond 5,000 people, and recommend that larger places consider either a representative town meeting or division into “neighborhood meetings.”

Aside from the Australian ballot, which lets voters avoid discussion and instead use pre-printed forms, the largest threat they see is the long-term loss of decision making power to other levels of government. Until 1947, Vermont towns conducted their own business on Town Meeting Day without much state interference. Since then, however, the Legislature has been tinkering with the process, gradually usurping local power in more areas. In response to town meeting initiatives like the nuclear freeze votes, for example, there was an attempt in 1983 to raise the petition requirement for placing items on local ballots. It didn’t happen, but the intention was clear – to make it harder for people to raise issues not in favor with elected leaders.

The Golden Bubble. VTD/Josh Larkin

Political power rests with the state

This dynamic illustrates an inconvenient fact. Although the state has a tradition of local democracy and an accessible citizen legislature, it also has one of the nation’s most centralized governments, due in part to the weakness of county structures. Beyond that – and also contrary to myth – both its citizens and leaders, progressives and conservatives alike, have repeatedly opted to expand the state’s authority in areas ranging from roads and the environment to health and education. Much of what makes Vermont attractive to those bewitched by its image can be traced to the use of state power.

Based on the state’s contemporary image as a liberal stronghold, it is easy to forget that Republicans largely made Vermont what it is today. GOP governors were among the most ardent early proponents of a statewide tax to fund education. Governor Ernest Gibson Jr. said – as early as the late 1940s – that the greatest problem facing Vermont was “equalizing educational opportunity and distributing the costs as equally as possible among the towns and school districts.” Thirty years later, another Republican, Richard Snelling, called for a state-administered property tax to spread the burden between rich and poor towns. The proposal failed when rich towns squealed, while communities that would have come out ahead worried instead about a loss of local control.

Despite such occasional setbacks, Republican leaders had little difficulty embracing centralization for most of the century they dominated Vermont politics. After the Civil War, the issue was state aid to highway programs, designed to help farmers transport their milk.

In the early 20th century, under Fletcher Proctor, it was centralization of rural schools and industrial education. Far from being a libertarian, Proctor also supported prohibition, only relenting when a “local option” movement for liquor licensing threatened to overturn GOP rule. Subsequently, he struck a deal with liquor distributors and managed to maintain state control of local license committees.

Republicans were firmly in command when the state stepped into education management, passed and increased the income tax, and established the state highway system after the flood of 1927. In each case, they were accepting reality; namely, that local communities needed outside help. By the 1940s, it was common knowledge that individual towns couldn’t handle all the necessary services properly on their own. In addition to looking at education, Gibson established the State Police and argued that state government should take the leading role in providing for public health and welfare.

Although Phil Hoff was both praised and blamed for expanding state services and power in the 1960s, the stage was actually set by yet another Republican. In the late 50s, insurance executive Deane Davis chaired the Little Hoover Commission, a reorganization study that called for agency consolidation and more control by the governor. The buzzwords then were simplification and efficiency. A decade later, Davis succeeded Hoff and presided over the formation of what became known as “super agencies.” It was precisely the type of bureaucratic centralization that Republicans today view as a threat to personal rights and local autonomy.

Davis, who succeeded Hoff as governor in 1968, was also “godfather” to the first major land development control law in the country, Act 250. Like Hoff, he wanted a statewide land use plan, but was blocked by large landowners and conservatives in his own party. Though he euphemistically labeled the approach “creative localism,” the main objectives were to regulate development and protect the environment through consistent statewide policies. In more optimistic and trusting times, these sounded like common sense notions that might actually help local areas cope with development pressures. Thus, when Snelling proposed a statewide property tax he was building on an established Republican stance, the moderate centralism of the Vermont party’s Aiken-Gibson wing, a combination of populist rhetoric and policy pragmatism.

In recent years, state government has increasingly regulated, and sometimes even negated, changes in local policies and practices. The legislature’s 1989 attempt to strip local communities of the power to choose alternatives to the property tax is only one episode in that struggle. On the other hand, people have continued to use Town Meeting – in many cases the only forum open to them – to influence the policies and decisions of “higher” levels of government.

Advocates of local control and direct democracy are a diverse bunch, and not always the most comfortable of allies. But they nevertheless share a sense that Town Meeting and other forms of local power can still be effective in countering the seemingly inexorable movement toward centralized systems of authority. The main advantage of centralization is said to be efficiency, by no means a small matter. But without widespread participation at the grassroots efficiency can degenerate easily into stagnation or repression.

Participation in Town Meeting is a process of self-regulation that can benefit both the community and its neighbors. It isn’t just a quaint tradition, to be praised but set aside when it is convenient. It is the heart of political democracy.

VTDigger

Sen. Bernie Sanders. VTD file/Josh Larkin

BURLINGTON – Last month Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to fund the government for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year by making the largest cuts in history to discretionary spending.

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., declared that the cuts “will mark the beginning of a new trend of reductions that will take place throughout the next year. We strived to spread the sacrifice fairly,” he added, “weeding out waste and excess. …”

At a Monday morning press conference, Vermont’s Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders spelled out what the “waste and excess” included and introduced his own proposal to reduce the deficit — by spreading the sacrifice to the rich.

The cuts proposed in the House Bill, HR 1, Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011, represent “a devastating attack on the middle class, working families, low-income people, the sick, the elderly and the most vulnerable people in our country,” Sanders declared, and added, “I think a lot of people are not aware of it.”

Sanders gave an overview of the national impact of the cuts, and a panel of Vermont program directors provided estimates of the effect on the people they serve.

Sanders said Head Start would be cut by $1.1 billion, or 20 percent, eliminating early education for 218,000 children and putting 55,000 Head Start teachers out of work nationwide.

Paul Behrman, Head Start director for Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, added that 336 low-income children and their families would lose services in Vermont, about 121 staff would lose their jobs and 25 Head Start classrooms would close.

“We estimate that in Vermont, Head Start is probably serving approximately 50 percent of the eligible children and their families,” Behrman said, “which means you probably have in the neighborhood of 1,200-1,500 low-income children and families who are currently not receiving the program. In the meantime, we have extensive wait-lists for our programs. So at a time when the program should be expanding … we’re threatened with the cuts to undermine the services which support some of the most vulnerable kids and families in the state.”

Sanders said that HR 1 would slash Pell grants – direct awards to the neediest undergraduate students – by $5.7 billion, reducing or eliminating grants for 9.4 million low-income students across the country.

Karen Madden, the director of academic support services at Johnson State College, said not only Pell Grants but federal TRIO programs are an “absolute necessity for Vermont students.”

The U.S. Department of Education funds seven TRIO programs that provide access and support services for 12,000 Vermonters who have low incomes, are first-generation college students or have disabilities. The programs serve students from middle school to graduate school. If the $25 million in proposed cuts take effect, she said, it’s likely that 2,000 students in Vermont will lose TRiO support.
The proposed cuts to the Pell Grant program would reduce grants to these students by almost $1,000 each, making it difficult or impossible for them to attend college. “Education is an investment in the future,” Madden declared. “These programs give Vermonters the ability to become successful, taxpaying citizens.”

Sanders said that HR 1 would reduce funds for community health centers, eliminating primary health care for about 11 million Americans at a time when 50 million lack health insurance. He noted that about 120,000 Vermonters rely on community health centers for their care.

Dr. Stephen Reville, Chief Medical Officer of Springfield Medical Care Systems, said his organization became a Federally Qualified Health Center in 2009 through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – the stimulus bill – and now serves about 22,000 people in several area clinics and Springfield Hospital. It has added some 2,000 new patients who never had a primary care provider before.

The FQHC has started a program to make prescription drugs available on a sliding fee scale, renovated an abandoned mill to create a primary care center in downtown Springfield, integrated care coordinators and mental health services into primary care practices and will soon be opening a dental clinic, “which is a desperate need in our part of the state,” Reville said.

“If these proposed cuts do go through, Springfield is one of the community health centers that is probably on the chopping block, because it was funded through the stimulus bill specifically,” Reville said. “Also, around the rest of the state, there’s another $1.5 million of health center funding that would be cut.” That would mean eliminating construction of three new community health centers and expansion of four existing community health centers.

“I think this could have a devastating impact,” Reville said. In other regions, community health centers provide health care access for the uninsured, he noted, but in Springfield, “the entire primary care network is part of our community health center and is at risk.”

Sanders denounced slashing $405 million from the Community Services Block Grant, which helps fund Community Action Programs for “the poorest of the poor.” Likewise, he condemned cutting the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, by $400 million. LIHEAP could be of life-and-death importance to senior citizens who live in states where temperatures can drop to -20º in the winter, Sanders observed.

Hal Cohen, the executive director of the Central Vermont Community Action Agency, explained that the Community Services Block Grant is the core funding for Community Action Programs. Last year the Vermont Community Action programs served 60,000 people with food, heating assistance and housing assistance.

“Should the core funding to the Community Action programs be cut, the unemployed, working poor, the disabled and the elderly would not be able to access these needed services, and the safety net for these Vermonters would be severely torn,” he said.

Cohen sketched an apocalyptic scene of the future without Community Action programs. Emergency food shelves would close throughout the state. Services at the state’s two largest food shelves, in Burlington and Barre, would be severely cut. Housing assistance would be drastically reduced, leaving no protection for families fighting eviction. Families whose electricity was shut off or who lost heat “would be left in the dark and the cold.” If LIHEAP were cut in half, he asked, “Who would be able to provide the heat for these people to get through the winter?”

Because the block grant leverages other funds, Cohen noted, “These cuts, which would be a little less than $2 million [in Vermont], would mean that the state would lose over $25 million in related services.”

Sanders observed that cutting the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency by 30 percent would affect not just low and moderate income people: “It impacts everybody that breathes.” (The EPA enforces the Clean Air Act.)

The American Lung Association is alarmed that HR 1 would “promote toxic air” by decimating the EPA’s ability “to protect the public health from life-threatening air pollution,” said Rebecca Ryan, the Vermont Lung Association’s director of health promotion and public policy.

Ryan declared the bill to be “bad for public health” because it ignores the well-being of Americans, and especially of those with lung disease. They include nearly 60,000 Vermonters with asthma and tens of thousands with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Finally, Sander criticized the Republicans’ proposed $1.7 billion funding cut for the Social Security Administration, which he said would cause half a million elderly, disabled, widowed and orphaned citizens to suffer delays in receiving benefits they are legally entitled to. And he deplored a $750 million reduction in WIC, the supplemental nutrition program for low-income Women Infants and Children.

(A paper by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argues that the effect of the cuts will be even greater when inflation is taken into account.)

“These are devastating cuts against the weak and the vulnerable, which is not what America in my view is about,” Sanders said.

The senator agrees with his Republican colleagues on the need to address the deficit crisis. But, he said, “At a time when the richest people are becoming richer, we might want to talk about shared sacrifice.”

Consequently, on March 10 he introduced a bill – S552 – that would impose an emergency surtax of 5.4 percent on all household income over $1 million.

“When the wealthiest people are becoming wealthier, when their effective tax rate is lower than at any time on record, when they’ve received hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks, maybe they should participate in helping us move toward deficit reduction, and not simply the weak, the vulnerable, the sick and the elderly,” he proclaimed. Sanders noted that his legislation would also eliminate tax breaks for large oil companies.

Sanders calculates that the surtax would raise as much as $50 billion a year in revenue; ending tax loopholes for oil companies would add another $3.5 billion. The current Republican proposal would save around $61 billion.

Sanders believes his bill can attract support. The problem at this point is that the American people aren’t aware of what HR 1 would do, he says.

However, when they are asked “to consider whether we ask the wealthiest people to pay a little bit more in taxes after getting huge tax breaks, or whether we decimate programs for our children, for the sick, for the elderly, for the poor, … the answer will be pretty obvious,” he maintains.

For proof, he cites a March 3 Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll which found that 81 percent of respondents said they considered placing a surtax on federal income taxes for people earning over a million dollars a year to be “mostly acceptable” or “totally acceptable.”

The challenge is raising awareness. Sanders says that meetings need to be held all over the country by members of Congress and citizens to discuss the cuts proposed in HR 1. He is holding town meetings this month in Barre, Saint Albans, Bennington and South Burlington.

VTDigger

CONTACT: BOB HOOKER bhooker@vermontfolklifecenter.org

If You Lose Your Old Fashioned Town Meeting Are You Losing Democracy?

The Vermont Folklife Center Presents a panel discussion on the changing landscape of the traditional Vermont Town meeting at 7:00 PM on March 10th.

Panelists will include clerks from towns that vote all Australian ballot, vote all from the floor, and some that blend the two forms. Discussion will swirl around the pros and cons of each; how they benefit the town’s sense of community; is all one way or the other better than a combination of both; whether a greater number of voters casting ballots yes or no is more democratic than folks that care enough to make time to attend a floor meeting to discuss problems and find solutions; and how does a town determine what is best for them?

Please join us for this important discussion at our headquarters at 88 Main Street in Middlebury.

This panel has been organized by photographer Sandra Elkin and Tinmouth Town Clerk Gail Fallar, and is brought to you as part of the current VFC exhibit “Women Town Clerks of Vermont: Reflections on Democracy.” The exhibit is now open Tuesday – Saturday 10-5 through the end of March. Please call ahead for school group visits.

Three other public programs are planned in conjunction with this exhibit including:

* March 17th “Are There Threats to Democracy Beyond Terrorism?” Middlebury Union High School , Student Program
* March 24th “”Town Meeting and Local Government: Focus on Women” Ilsley Public Library Community Room, 7:00 PM
* March 31st “Who Controls Vermont Towns?” Ilsley Public Library Community Room, 7:00 PM

The VFC’s mission is to broaden, strengthen, and deepen our understanding of Vermont and the surrounding region; to assure a repository for our collective cultural memory; and to strengthen communities by building connections among the diverse peoples of Vermont .

For more information on this and other VFC projects, events, and exhibits go to www.vermontfolklifecenter.org or call 802-388-4964 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              802-388-4964      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 802-388-4964 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

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VTDigger

For Immediate Release Wednesday, March 2, 2011

MONTPELIER – The ACLU of Vermont has sued the town of Franklin for including prayer in its town meeting.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Marilyn Hackett, a Franklin resident, alleges that the town and its moderator, Timothy Magnant, have violated Vermont’s constitution and public accommodations act.

For the last decade, Franklin’s meeting has been gaveled to order, the polls declared open for any Australian ballot items, and the pledge of allegiance recited. Then, the moderator has invited a local minister to the podium to lead the voters in prayer.

“Article 3 of the Vermont Constitution guarantees that no one may be compelled to attend or support religious worship,” explained Julie Kalish of Norwich, an ACLU of Vermont cooperating attorney representing Hackett. “The problem is that the defendants insist upon including prayer as part of town meeting even though voters like Ms. Hackett must attend town meeting in order to vote on all the warned items.”

Working with Kalish as an ACLU cooperating attorney is Bernie Lambek of Zalinger Cameron & Lambek, P.C. of Montpelier. Lambek said: “Franklin’s inclusion of religious worship in town meeting is every bit as unacceptable as forcing voters to listen to a prayer before placing their ballot in the ballot box in November. The Vermont Constitution reflects the fact that from early in our history, this has been a place where everyone’s beliefs can co-exist, whether religious or irreligious. Both Article 3 of our constitution and our more recent public accommodations act ensure that government officials do not use their authority to promote one religious belief over another, or religious beliefs over secular beliefs. Vermonters are tolerant and diverse.”

Hackett has tried to get the town and the moderator to change the practice, but to no avail. Last year the town told her that prayer would be kept out of the meeting, but once the meeting was underway, the moderator had the minister pray anyway.

“What’s happening in Franklin is unacceptable,” said ACLU Staff Attorney Dan Barrett. “The government has no business deciding which beliefs are better than others, which is why our constitution and public accommodations act forbid the government from forcing Vermonters to attend religious events or treating people differently on the basis of their beliefs.”

The suit was filed in the Vermont Superior Court. The complaint and supporting documents can be found at the ACLU of Vermont’s Web site, www.acluvt.org/legal/docket/#hackett.

VTDigger

CONTACT:
Paul Heintz

Welch to hold statewide Deficit Reduction Telephone Town Hall Tuesday

Former U.S. Comptroller General and GAO chief David Walker to join Welch

WASHINGTON, DC – As Congress considers how to get the nation’s fiscal house in order, Rep. Peter Welch will host a statewide telephone town hall meeting Tuesday night to seek input from Vermonters about how to cut the deficit.

Joining Welch for the call will be former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, who led the Government Accountability Office from 1998 until 2008. A respected, national leader on responsible budgeting, Walker launched the nationwide “Fiscal Wake-up Tour” in 2005 and has since led the Peterson Foundation and recently founded the Comeback America Initiative.

Following brief remarks by Welch and Walker, Vermonters taking part in the telephone town hall meeting will have an opportunity to ask questions of the two and suggest their ideas for tackling the growing deficit. Welch will continue to seek input from Vermonters as the debate progresses.

To join the call, dial (toll-free) 877-269-7289 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 877-269-7289 end_of_the_skype_highlighting and enter PIN code 13785.

WHAT: Deficit Reduction Telephone Town Hall

WHO: Rep. Peter Welch
Former Comptroller General David Walker

WHEN: Tuesday, December 7, 2010 – 7 p.m.

HOW: To join the call, dial (toll-free) 877-269-7289 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 877-269-7289 end_of_the_skype_highlighting and enter PIN code 13785.

VTDigger

20 year Vermont Yankee extension rejected by 15 more town meetings

With all 17 towns reporting, 15 passed the resolution asking the legislature to deny approval for Vermont Yankee to operate after 2012, one town voted against, and one town decided to table the resolution. The text of the resolution is below.

At least seven of the towns, Thetford, Brookfield, Montgomery, Mooretown, Cabot, Sharon, and Peacham passed the resolution with near unanimous votes

Danville and Woodstock passed it with a 2:1 majority, Jamaica with more than a 3:1 majority

Winooski passed the resolution by Australian ballot with more than a 2 to 1 majority (644-313) http://onioncity.com/

The only town voting down the resolution was Rockingham, and there the vote was 33-36

The towns voting this year were all different from the towns that voted last year. Adding the results from both years, a total of 51 towns voted to close Vermont Yankee in 2012 and only 3 towns voted down the resolution.

“The town meeting vote mirrors the Senate vote not only in voting down operation after 2012 but also in the size of the majority,” said Dan Dewalt. “A vast majority of Vermonters know Entergy cannot be trusted. Vermont Yankee is coming to its end, and we will be grateful if we safely decommission it in 2012.”

15 Towns voting yes in 2010 on resolution to close Vermont Yankee in 2012 (see text of model resolution below)
Woodstock (passed 20-11)
Thetford (passed 150-1)
Bristol (passed unanimously)
Fayston (brought up under other business, passed 54-12)
Brookfield near unanimous
Montgomery (unanimous 65+)
Moretown (near unanimous 50+)

amendment added to Moretown resolution:”Entergy shall fund the training of Yankee’s existing workers to build and maintain green energy production systems in Vermont to replace Yankee’s power.”
Waitsfield (first narrowly beat back motion to pass over, then on a voice vote passed by large margin with only a few votes against)
Danville (110-66)
Cabot (near unanimous)
Huntington (passed with an amendment)
Sharon (near unanimous)
Jamaica (55-16)
Peacham (near unanimous)
Winooski (Australian ballot result: 644-313) http://onioncity.com/

1 Town voting to pass over 2010 (table)
Cambridge (passed over)

0 towns voting to split the resolution and pass one or more of the three parts of the resolution
none yet

1 Town voting no in 2010
Rockingham 33-36
Rockingham voters legally warned the resolution, but the selectboard refused to accept it in the warning, so it was brought up as other business at 11:30PM on Sat. Consternation was expressed at it being brought up without being warned. The resolution failed by three votes.

Model resolution used in most towns:

Shall the voters of _________________request the Vermont legislature to:

1. Deny approval for the operation of Vermont Yankee after March of 2012, which marks the end of its 40 year design life.
2. Require that the Entergy Corporation of Louisiana fulfill its pledge to fully fund the cleanup and decommissioning costs of closing Vermont Yankee.
3. Seek safe, renewable,regional sources of electricity combined with efficiency and conservation measures to replace the power presently provided by Vermont Yankee.

The 2009 results were 36 yes, 2 no, 3 table, 3 split resolution passing one or two of the points (I can send town by town results from 2009 if wanted)

Altogether from town meeting votes in both 2009 and 2010:

36 + 15 = 51 towns voted yes
2 + 1 = 3 towns voted no
3 +1 = 4 towns passed over
0 + 3 = 3 towns split up the resolution and passed part

The towns that had the Vermont Yankee resolution on the warning for a vote this year are: Sharon, Thetford, Cabot, Danville, Peacham, Bristol, Jamaica, Winooski, Moretown, Huntington, Montgomery, Cambridge, Waitsfield, and Brookfield.

The towns that considered the resolution under other business are: Woodstock, Fayston, and Rockingham

VTDigger