Editor’s note: This commentary is by Steve May, who is a Progressive State Committee Person and former member of the Vermont AFL-CIO executive board.
[W]hen the Legislature returns this week, it will be confronted with yet another budget deficit. This will be Peter Shumlin’s sixth budget to balance, and it will be the sixth year in a row that the state of Vermont will report a budget deficit. One can’t help but believe that this has become the “new normal.” When something happens once you call it an occurrence, twice might be a trend, but three times is a pattern, which makes you wonder what you call a sixth consecutive year of austerity budgeting, other than the “new normal.”
The truth is, that this behavior is the product of a crass and calculated plan. Austerity has become not only a tactic, but part of a way of life. In crisis, it is easier to earn concessions which are unavailable otherwise. Perpetual economic crisis has become a centerpiece of Shumlin’s governing philosophy. The governor and his surrogates in the Legislature have decided to balance the budget on the backs of state workers … creating a crisis — make “them” the other, and by creating a straw man, you, through your behaviors and choices, give voice to conditions where you have a villain of your own choosing.
Her life and the lives of the people who do the jobs that are so important to the function of state government were cheapened by your rhetoric.
Governor, through your actions you have waged battle against the working families of this state. You have sat back and watched your surrogates attack the First Amendment rights of workers to strike, a labor protection, hard won and constitutionally protected. Even worse, the money committees in the Legislature are directing cuts and gains to be extracted as part of a negotiations process. Directing additional rounds of cuts to be extracted because it’s time to stoke anger and aggression at the hands of your new found boogeyman; is not leadership.
Sir, you created the conditions which made it possible for state employees to be viewed by the general public as nameless, faceless bureaucrats. Even worse, that hostility led to a general coarsening in our public discourse. This came to bear with the savage murder of a DCF worker in Barre, this past August.
We all now know that Lara Sobel was that worker. She was made of flesh and bone. She was a mother, a daughter and a wife. She worked to make the lives of Vermont families better, every day. I am honored to have personally known Lara. She was a member of our synagogue in Burlington, and she graduated from the UVM social work program a year ahead of me. She was not a random press cycle, in the heat of a long hot summer. She did her job every day, and in the course of doing this much too difficult work, she was slaughtered.
Her life and the lives of the people who do the jobs that are so important to the function of state government were cheapened by your rhetoric. While you did not put a gun in anybody’s hands and there is no accounting for the behavior of a seriously ill and desperate shooter, one cannot underestimate the power your words and your deeds carry. In fermenting a crisis and manufacturing a villain for political gain you are culpable for the death of this woman. In this final year of your term as governor, it is so clear, that this “new normal” must clearly become anything but.
