Editor’s note: This story is the first in a series of profiles of the six major party, gubernatorial candidates.
In Profile: Matt Dunne, a precocious candidate with no shortage of confidence
In Profile: Markowitz banks on hard work, local network, “women’s vote”
In Profile: Shumlin, a gubernatorial candidate marked by determination and smarts
Susan Bartlett gesticulates excitedly as she talks about her life in Vermont and her career in politics from her seat at the helm of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
It’s a position she’s comfortable with. The state senator has held what is arguably the most powerful position in the Statehouse – chair of Appropriations — for 10 years. All of the money that passes through the Legislature effectively does so under her purview. She understands the state budget like no one else under the Golden Dome.
Bartlett, however, has her eyes set on a higher perch on the political ladder. Behind her, visible in the distance through the room’s large paned window, is the fifth floor of Montpelier’s Pavilion building — and the offices of the governor of Vermont.
From sheep fields to the Senate
Bartlett came to Vermont her junior year of high school when her family moved to the Northeast Kingdom village of Orleans in 1962. Except for a three-year stint in Boston right after graduation from the University of Vermont in 1968 (she worked as an airline ticketer and a Girl Friday for an advertising firm), Bartlett has lived in Vermont all of her adult life.
She married her college sweetheart, Bill Bartlett, and they settled in Hyde Park for the duration – 35 years now and counting.
Like a lot of young Vermonters who set down roots in the state’s rural areas, Bartlett’s career didn’t follow a linear trajectory. She found work in a group home for wards of the state, and she and Bill, who didn’t raise children of their own, took in foster children. On the side, they pursued the back-to-the-land routine, putting in large gardens and raising chickens and sheep.
Bartlett, intrigued by her work with children who had learning disabilities, obtained a master’s in special education at Johnson State College in 1977, and shortly afterward, she was charged with creating and coordinating Lamoille North Supervisory Union’s special education programs under the relatively new federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
The lure of homestead style farming won out, however. In the early 1980s, she and Bill raised sheep in earnest on their 25-acre parcel and sold wool at a small store in Morrisville.
Ten years later, this special educator-cum-farmer pulled off a political upset and moved from the sheep fields of Hyde Park to the halls of power in Montpelier.
The politics of Lamoille County were “very, very Republican” when she mounted a campaign for then-Sen. John Farmer’s vacant seat in 1992, Bartlett said. She was the first woman to win a Lamoille County Senate seat.
“That race is not dissimilar to this race for governor,” Bartlett says. “People didn’t know me. I was the underdog.”
She sits here now, against the odds, an eight-term state senator who presides over the most important committee in the Statehouse — any piece of legislation that has money associated with it must pass through Senate Appropriations before it makes its way to the Senate floor.
As Bartlett talks, student pages come in and out of the room, handing off letters and memos to her in pink envelopes, and other lawmakers poke their heads into the room looking to speak with her.
Bartlett regularly makes the point that she holds the only position outside the governor’s office that sees every aspect of state government: She believes that’s the reason she’s best qualified to become the 81st Governor of Vermont.
Jobs, jobs, jobs
Bartlett’s No. 1 focus as a gubernatorial candidate is jobs. The government’s role in economic development, she said, is to foster growth in the private sector.
“I don’t think that government creates jobs,” Bartlett says. “It’s the business community that creates jobs.”
She supports programs like the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive that are designed to encourage job creation. Under VEGI, businesses apply for cash incentives based on targets for new hires. The companies receive cash payments once they meet employment targets over a period of time. In theory, the system pays for itself as employees generate income tax revenues for the state.
“They [businesses] don’t get the credit until they create what they say they are going to create,” says Bartlett.
This approach is important for ensuring a good return for a state where money is a “scarce resource,” says Bartlett, especially for small businesses which she views as the “bedrock” of growth.
Bartlett said the focus of her administration would be fostering economic growth within discreet regions of the state based on existing economic drivers – such as tourism, skiing, dairy farming and manufacturing resources.
Environment
Farming and the agricultural landscape are the catalysts for rural economic development statewide, in Bartlett’s view.
“Because of the size of dairy in Vermont, it will probably forever be the big agricultural driver in the state,” Bartlett said.
Economic development should be balanced by environmental protections, Bartlett said. She advocates for downtown development over rural suburban sprawl and continued support for the protected agricultural land.
“Coming to Vermont is like stepping back 60 or 70 years and there aren’t many places that look like this anymore,” Bartlett said. She said the state needs to protect the land – for its aesthetic and agricultural value – to keep farming and tourism intact. She believes preserving the rural landscape is the key to stabilizing local economies in Vermont. “What is important is that we create a work environment that allows young people to be able to afford to live in this state,” says Bartlett.
Education
Preparing young people to lead Vermont is going to require a transformation of the educational system, she says.
Bartlett believes new technologies will radically change the nature of learning and teaching in the classroom and may even lead to more individualized learning experiences.
All Vermonters need some form of higher education, Bartlett said, in order to qualify for good jobs, but she doesn’t expect the state to invest more money in post-secondary institutions anytime soon.
“We don’t have the money as a state to put significant amounts of dollars into higher education,” says Bartlett.
The budget
The state’s lagging revenues remain a big issue for Bartlett and for whoever becomes the next governor. This year the state faces a $151 million deficit; and for the next three years, economists are predicting a shortfall of about $200 million a year between state revenues and current expenditures.
Finding the right level of fiscal restraint while supporting health care, education and social services will be a challenge for lawmakers. Bartlett said those three areas having been growing at an unsustainable rate for many years, she said.
“If we make some relatively minor investments of several million dollars in mental health and substance abuse treatment in the community, we can, over a couple of years … significantly reduce the number of people we have incarcerated,” says Bartlett.
“The key to all of this in my opinion is substance abuse and mental health problems,” Bartlett said.
Three-quarters of all of the state’s inmates, for example, have substance abuse and/or mental health issues. Vermont incarcerates a higher percentage of non-violent offenders than any other state, she said.
“If we make some relatively minor investments of several million dollars in mental health and substance abuse treatment in the community, we can, over a couple of years … significantly reduce the number of people we have incarcerated,” says Bartlett.
As governor, Bartlett said she would ensure that people with mental health and substance abuse problems are assigned to a caseworker who would help with not only personal issues but professional and family problems. She estimates such a program would cost Vermonters $5,000 per person per year in general fund dollars as opposed to the $24,000 to $50,000 a year the state spends on prisoners in the correctional system. The Department of Corrections budget of $133 million a year comes straight out of the General Fund.
“You can, in a short time period, save millions and millions of dollars from the general fund,” says Bartlett. “More importantly you begin to create a lot more successful families.”
As more Vermonters become productive members of society, she said, they will become less reliant on state programs and begin to contribute to the tax rolls.
Health care
Creating more expansive treatment programs for Vermonters with substance abuse and mental health problems would also have a significant impact on heath care costs, she said.
Vermont’s nonprofit hospitals provide care to all-comers and the costs for those who can’t pay are shifted onto the insurance policies of those who can.
“We need to flip the system to where hospitals are paid on the outcomes of patient health,” she said.
Bartlett wants every Vermonter to have access to affordable health care. She believes the focus should be on disease prevention and health education.
She supports a “quasi single-payer” system, in which insurance companies would play a significant role. Hospitals would be given a block of money to provide care based on the number of patients they serve, as opposed to the current “fee for service” model, in which hospitals are paid for each procedure or office visit.
She doesn’t think the government should manage a universal health care system; she favors administration through a nonprofit insurance company such as BlueCross BlueShield of Vermont.
“I don’t necessarily, here in Vermont, see insurance companies as the evil empire,” Bartlett said.
