Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Don Keelan, a certified public accountant from Arlington.
Gov. Peter Shumlin and his commissioner of the Department of Public Services, Elizabeth Miller, have embarked upon a disservice to Vermonters and Vermont businesses.
The disservice stems from their releasing, in September, of a 600-page report, Vermont Comprehensive Energy Plan, with comments to be made within 30 days (recently extended another month).
Are they for real?
For those who are not aware of what is going on, the plan outlines how Vermont will be positioned, by the year 2050, to have 90 percent of all of its energy sources derived from renewables. In other words, heating our homes and businesses, driving our vehicles and consuming electricity will come from sources that our not derived from fossil fuels.
In better times this might be a laudable goal—albeit unrealistic in today’s economic environment. However, as a state, we are not in good times. The fact is, we are in awful times. The governor recently noted, “we are facing a financial disaster.” With that noted, the report and its implementation needs to be placed on the “back burner.”
Eight weeks after the worst storm in Vermont’s history, state officials are still uncertain as to the dollars it will take and where the money will be found to bring our roads, bridges, streams and rivers back to acceptable standards. This is at the state level—now factor in the scores of towns and villages that are facing huge debt payments to defray the costs of re-building their infrastructure. For Vermont businesses, the dollar losses will be in the tens of millions—who has time to focus on a 600-page report?
Layered on to this is the fact that 1,596 Waterbury state employees lost their work place and are now disbursed throughout northwest and central Vermont—not having a clue as to whether they will ever go back to the state office complex in Waterbury.
How are we expected to comment on a 600-page report when what we read in our daily newspapers is that the state is facing a disaster in its managing of the state’s mental health sector. The Aug. 26 storm wiped out Vermont’s only mental health hospital, and, not unlike the state employees, the 51 patients are being held at temporary facilities. And to compound a bad situation—there is no place to send new patients who require a mental health facility.
Recent newspaper reports have noted that the state’s Department of Aging and Independent Living has a 300-case backlog of elderly abuse cases and related issues that has not been addressed—this coupled with the state’s corrections facilities’ managers demanding even more money than had been anticipated. The conclusion is simple: the state’s focus should be on the present and not the year 2050.
You also have to wonder if this is the proper time to be attempting to digest the commission’s report with the present focus on the Vermont Yankee court case and the pros and cons of the merger of the state’s two largest electric companies—CVPS and GMP?
It is a well-known fact that Montpelier does not have warm feelings toward the state’s business sector—this will never change. Nevertheless, how disingenuous it is for the state to have established an initial 30-day comment period for this energy report when most small businesses are in their busiest season—fall foliage—and have barely recovered (and for some not at all) from the devastation of Tropical Storm Irene.
This time last year, then-candidate Shumlin, was crisscrossing the state advocating that his administration would be one of transparency. Less than nine months into his governorship, we have the opposite. Meanwhile, the governor’s long-cherished goal of having us use wind, solar, hydro and geothermal/energy, regardless of cost, is being rushed to approval.
All of this is occurring while the state’s essential services, budget and infrastructure are in shambles—and its citizens, non-profit organizations and businesses are still recovering from the August disaster. House Speaker Shap Smith had it right when he recently said to a Rutland Herald reporter, “The rebuilding of Vermont is going to take not months, it is going to take years.”
Do the governor and Elizabeth Miller have a hidden agenda here—one that they do not want us to focus on?
