Editor’s note: This oped is by Morgan W. Brown who lives in Montpelier and runs the blog Vermont Watch.
Members of Vermont for Single Payer have taken issue with the appointment by House Speaker Shap Smith of Jim Leddy as a non-voting member of the Health Care Reform Committee and have declared his appointment to be both unethical as well as quite possibly illegal, violating S.88 (Act 128; PDF version) passed by the Vermont Legislature during this year’s session.
Read recent news reports about it, here (via Burlington Free Press), here as well as here (via Times Argus) and here (via Vermont Public Radio).
A Matter of Opinion:
As I understand it, Jim Leddy is not employed by the Vermont chapter of AARP (AARP VT) and he serves in a volunteer capacity as its president, with only his traveling expenses reimbursed or covered by the Vermont AARP chapter.
If Vermont Single Payer and those associated with it were to get their facts correct, there would be little issue with this nomination.
It would have served Vermont Single Payer and those associated with it to have first directly contacted both Jim Leddy and Speaker Shap Smith as well as others to talk about their concerns rather than to go into attack mode doing this by press release, etc. This could have been handled very differently and did not rise to the level where the tactics used by members representing the organization needed to be employed as there were other means available to address these concerns before hand.
Even if it was not intended to do so, those representing Vermont Single Payer in these matters have wrongly impugned the reputation and integrity as well as the motives of a fine upstanding retired public servant.
It might not have been meant as an attack on Jim Leddy, however it still is one and not at all justified either.
Jim Leddy has done nothing to deserve these attacks and he should not be forced to resign from his volunteer position as president of AARP and neither should he withdraw or be withdrawn from serving as a non-voting member of the Health Care Reform Committee as appointed by House Speaker Shap Smith.
In my opinion, the way those representing Vermont for Single Payer has chosen to approach this matter could hurt efforts of those who share the same passion for their cause, since they are inadvertently asking people to make a choice between the cause and someone they should not have to be making a choice about.
To the those representing Vermont for Single Payer concerning such, the matter seems to be clear cut, but it appears they are being unreasonably rigid.
It seems that they are so focused on the cause that they might be forgetting the most important things their cause is all about: i.e., people and doing our best by them. This is very saddening and too bad as well.
It is my hope that somehow that everyone involved can find a way to talk this through and work it out.
What I would hope is, if were possible to do so and everyone was so inclined — as well as if everyone could stop fighting over the higher moral ground no matter how right they think they are — that all of the persons involved could sit down in person and calmly talk these matters over in a civil fashion.
I would hate to see this thing continue to blow up and hurt the efforts of so many throughout the state who have been working toward bringing about health care to everyone in one manner or another.
In the end, maybe everyone can learn something from all this without it getting much worse in order to do so.
If, however, this is how those representing Vermont for Single Payer go about their business as a matter of course, then I want nothing to do with them or their organization whether directly or indirectly.
