Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s columnist.
About this business of Gov. Peter Shumlin and his neighbor’s land, the first thing to remember is that what Shumlin did was not a crime.
It was worse. It was a mistake.
Every Governor needs a governor, and Vermont’s Governor either doesn’t have one or it was malfunctioning.
That governor (lower-case ‘g’) should be found somewhere at the edge of the brain, probably behind the left ear. Its sole purpose is constantly to convey this message: you’re the Governor, with a capital ‘G.’ Almost anything you do can be construed (or misconstrued) in a manner that will bring you grief. So when in doubt – don’t.
Shumlin’s mistake here was the opposite of the weakness that brings down so many powerful men (and not a few women) – the delusion that the rules the average citizen must follow don’t apply to them. The average citizen could have done exactly what the Governor did and suffered no ill effects. Your real estate transactions and mine don’t get analyzed, dissected, and interpreted. In some cases, the powerful have to obey stricter rules than do the rest of us.
This was one of those cases. The Governor’s governor should have told him.
The mistake was political. Not moral or ethical, just political. Might there also have been some moral-ethical failings involved? Oh, maybe, or then again maybe not. Unlike political mistakes, moral-ethical failings tend to be judged on the basis of conjecture and surmise rather than verifiable fact, and accompanied by gobs of holier-than-thou pronouncements, which have not been in short supply here.
Perhaps the pronouncers ought to pause to consider whether, in Shumlin’s situation, they might not have done what he did. Almost everyone who owns rural land would like a little more of it.
Perhaps the pronouncers ought to pause to consider whether, in Shumlin’s situation, they might not have done what he did. Almost everyone who owns rural land would like a little more of it. Any rural landowner who hears that his neighbor was running short of cash might well, after expressing his sincere sympathies, ask the neighbor whether maybe he’d like to sell a few adjoining acres.
Wouldn’t you? Why not? Both parties would benefit. Your cash-strapped neighbor would get some thousands of dollars to help pay his debts; you’d get a few more acres.
And if perchance your neighbor had a history of going on a bender now and then and getting violent while in his cups, chances are you’d think about trying to buy his entire place, hoping he’d go someplace else.
Neither Shumlin nor Jeremy Dodge has suggested that Shumlin offered to buy Dodge’s house and 16 acres because the Governor would have preferred not to live next door to Dodge.
But – again – would you?
Then there is the matter of the price. Much has been made of the fact that Shumlin paid only $58,000 though the property was assessed for $233,700, which makes it sound as though the Governor cheated his much poorer neighbor. But the assessment was as high as it was because of the house and outbuildings, none of which Shumlin wanted. He did what anyone would have done; he offered what the property was worth to him. He just wanted the land, and the $3,625-an acre price he offered was not out of line with land prices in East Montpelier.
Sure it was a good deal for Shumlin. But that didn’t mean it was a bad deal for Dodge, who was facing a tax sale that might have left him with neither a home nor any money in the bank at all. In a market economy any good is worth what a willing but un-coerced buyer will pay and a willing but un-coerced seller will accept. Dodge accepted.
Raising, of course, the question of whether he knew what he was doing. In recent weeks, some of Dodge’s “friends” (as in, ‘with friends like this…’) and family have suggested that the high school dropout is not mentally competent, that Shumlin should have figured that out, and that therefore he deliberately took advantage of a man who was unable to protect his own interests.
Talk about conjecture. Granted, the suspicion can not be conclusively refuted. But neither can it be conclusively – or even convincingly – confirmed. Everyone who lives in rural Vermont knows a few unsophisticated shrewdies, men and women who never finished school and speak ungrammatically but who are quite adept at taking care of themselves. It’s reasonable to conclude that Shumliin thought he was dealing with such a person. He no doubt knows many of them.
It is true that Shumlin almost invites some criticism of his character because, as not only a politician but a successful politician, he is widely perceived, even by many Democrats, as being duplicitous.
Besides, there is evidence that Dodge is not incompetent. He has been sentenced to prison by judges who, by law, presumed him to be competent. He also would have been screened by mental health professionals for “functional impairment,” according to a former official of the Corrections Department. These screenings are not intelligence tests, and their main purpose is to catch signs of suicidal intentions. But they also include some assessment of “cognitive ability.”
Shumlin has also been assailed for not telling Dodge that he had been overpaying his taxes for years by not getting the lower “income sensitivity” rates for which he qualified thanks to his low income.
Yes, it would have been nice had the Governor clued his neighbor in on that. But it would almost surely have done no good. Until last year, there was no retroactivity at all to the income sensitivity system. Now there is, but only, said Tax Commissioner Mary Peterson, under “extraordinary circumstances.”
As an example, she said the commission was considering a case in which a couple’s daughter died just before the deadline for filing the necessary paperwork to qualify for the lower rates. That might meet the extraordinary circumstance test, she said. Simply not knowing about the benefit would almost surely not.
It is true that Shumlin almost invites some criticism of his character because, as not only a politician but a successful politician, he is widely perceived, even by many Democrats, as being duplicitous.
He is. Just consider how he insisted he was opposed to any tax increases even as he proposed raising taxes on some low-income working families.
But here are a few other folks who were sometimes duplicitous: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan. Oh, yeah, and Barack Obama, too.
Nor is it just politicians. No one becomes CEO of a corporation, head football coach, bishop of the diocese, president of a university, or editor of a major newspaper without being able and willing to be duplicitous now and then. Come to think of it, is anyone in his or her role as spouse, parent, employer, employee, neighbor, or friend entirely free of occasional duplicity? Maybe Shumlin’s problem is that he’s less adept at hiding his duplicity than some others.
None of this lets the Governor off the hook. It just means that he wasn’t being monstrous as much as he was being foolish. The bit about the lawyer should have warned him off. One thing he and Dodge agree on is that Shumlin kept imploring Dodge to get a lawyer, but Dodge would not. At that point, the Governor should have called the whole thing off.
Or, more precisely, that governor – the one with the lower case ‘g’ that should be but perhaps was not just behind his left ear should have told him to call it off.
Governor, activate your governor.
