Maybe Vermont really is different from the rest of the world.
Consider the legislative process, a small part of the world, but not without its significance.
Down in Washington, where the great big legislature meets (that’s the Congress, bigger even than the New Hampshire State Legislature), part of the day-to-day routine consists of lawmakers browbeating the hapless folks who come before them.
The House and Senate Committee meetings are held in huge, high-ceilinged rooms, with ample room for television cameras. The Senators or Representatives sit in plush chairs behind rows of desks towering above the ground floor realm of mere mortals.
The mere mortals, even if they are cabinet secretaries, bank presidents, oil billionaires or movie stars, sit on plain wooden chairs behind plain wooden tables, from which they have to look up at their interrogators, who often enough become their tormenters.
Woe betide the witness who attempts a complex reply to a Congressperson’s question. “Please answer the question,” is likely to be the most polite interruption. “Stop filibustering,” or “no obfuscation,” or “don’t give me that song and dance,” are more common, often followed by an old-fashioned scolding.
To which the witness, be he a corporate CEO, be she the Secretary of State, can only listen politely, the scolder being one of those elected to make law and control the public purse.
With that picture in mind, enter (vicariously of course) Room 47 of the Vermont Statehouse, the domain of the House Committee on Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources. The room is just big enough — or, perhaps more accurately, not quite big enough — for the table and chairs for the nine committee members and one witness, and for 10 people to sit in chairs along the two side walls and perhaps three more to stand near the door.
The wealthy dairy farmer said that if the Legislature repealed last year’s “Pete the Moose” bill, he would deforest his 700-acres and grow corn on the land.”
It was full Tuesday afternoon, if not a little over-full with one TV camera and some radio sound equipment. As in Congress, the committee members faced the witness. As in Congress they asked him questions.
Not once, though, did any Representative interrupt Doug Nelson, the Northeast Kingdom dairy farmer and captive hunt landowner inside whose 700-acre impoundment reside several hundred imported elk, perhaps 140 native white-tailed deer, and several moose, including the most famous moose in America, the rescued cervid known as Pete.
No House member suggested that Nelson was not answering their questions, or obfuscating, or filibustering, or giving the committee a song and dance.
Even though Nelson was:
- Not answering their questions;
- obfuscating;
- filibustering;
- giving the committee a song and dance.
Even after Rep. Jim McCullough, a Williston Democrat, twice asked Nelson if he would “move forward and not dwell on the past,” to try to solve the impasse between him and the state over the wild animals confined in his compound, Nelson remained obdurate.
“Of course I want to cooperate,” he said, “but I’m not going to say I’m going to take any card that comes my way.”
A few minutes later, he said that if the Legislature repealed last year’s bill granting him ownership of all the animals in his compound and transferring responsibility for them from the Department of Fish and Wildlife to the Agriculture Agency, he would deforest his 700-acres and grow corn on the land.
At one point, Committee Chairman David Deen, a Putney Democrat, did note that he was “not sure (Nelson was) answering the question.” But the only remark remotely resembling a challenge came from Rep. Bob Lewis, a Derby Republican, who told Nelson, “we’ve heard testimony you’ve never been in compliance,” with the conditions laid down in last year’s legislation.
Nelson, who owns the state’s largest dairy herd and is one of Vermont’s richest men, replied by saying it would be impossible to tag the white-tailed deer in the compound without shooting them and pointing out that fallow deer are very wild.
The committee is considering legislation to overturn last year’s law, which legislative leaders snuck into a budget bill without notifying the Agency of Natural Resources (the Fish and Wildlife Department’s parent) and without letting any committee examine it.
Its purpose was to save “Pete,” the abandoned young moose who had been illegally rescued, illegally transported to Nelson’s compound, and illegally held there. “Pete” had become a nationwide cause célèbre, with “Save Pete” Facebook pages devoted to prevent state officials from removing the animal, and possibly destroying it.
The legislation, though, did much more than save “Pete.” It gave Nelson private ownership of all the wild animals in his compound, and in the process violated the Public Trust Doctrine, a roughly 1,000-year-old principal of Anglo-American law “which holds that live wild animals can be owned by no individuals, but are owned collectively by and held in trust by the government for all citizens,” as Eric Nuse, of Orion — The Hunters Institute, told the committee.
In response to anger from hunting groups and environmentalists, even many of the lawmakers who engineered the law’s passage last year, including then-Senate president and now Gov. Peter Shumlin, seem to acknowledge that they went too far. There is widespread support for H.91, which would restore the Public Trust Doctrine and restore jurisdiction to the Fish and Wildlife Department.
But if there is a consensus behind the bill, Nelson is not part of it.
“I didn’t mind having the only private moose held in North America,” he said. If Fish and Wildlife tried to shoot the white-tail deer in his compound, he said, “By God, they might have to shoot me.”
Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Patrick Berry noted that while Nelson says he wants to save the deer, “he has raised these animals specifically to have someone kill them” in his private hunting compound, where hunters pay as much as $12,500 to shoot a big elk. “He’s keeping native wildlife in a penned facility so people can pay to kill them.”
Berry said that confining wild animals creates an unnatural population density in which chronic wasting disease can develop. While no CWD has been found on Nelson’s land, Berry said, “there have been devastating consequences around the country, and every single one can be traced back to a captive facility like his.”
Were a CWD-infected deer to escape the compound and infect other wild deer, he said, the state would “have to eradicate every single deer,” within a radius of several miles. Taking such a risk would be “the most acute kind of negligence” on the part of his department.
Berry said the deer in the compound could be eradicated by allowing special hunts, perhaps out of season, rather than by hiring professionals simply to go in and exterminate them.
At any rate, he said, “Pete” is not in danger. If Nelson does not agree to put the animal in a separate enclosure, the Department has found an alternative site for the moose.
Despite getting hardly a single straight answer from Nelson, the committee members had nothing but kind words for him, praising his “humanity” and his contributions to the local economy.
But maybe they knew they didn’t have to argue with him. The bill seems to have widespread support, and opposition only from Nelson. They didn’t need straight answers.
Neither, often enough, do the members of Congress who routinely bark at their committee witnesses. But Vermont is different, and, at least in this context, perhaps superior.
