Grace Elletson is a Statehouse reporter for VTDigger.
During a typical day covering the Statehouse, I bounce from committee room to committee room. I climb at least 20 flights of stairs and track lawmakers like a bloodhound looking for comments on the news of the day. All in heels, I might add.
Now, I bounce from my couch, to my dining room table, to my bed — mostly to keep my legs from falling asleep while listening in to back-to-back committee hearings, all on conference calls. There are no stairs in my bite-sized apartment and I’ve swapped out heels for slippers.
Reporting looks a lot different now that Vermont’s Statehouse has shut down due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. As one of VTDigger’s Statehouse correspondents, I produce the Final Reading newsletter, our daily guide to the legislative news of the day.
As loyal readers have likely noticed, our Statehouse coverage hasn’t stopped with the shuttering of the Golden Dome. Final Reading still comes out every day as committees have continued their work remotely. We’re listening in via legislative hotlines to ensure that Vermonters know what their lawmakers are doing during this consequential moment in history.
Reporters pride themselves on objectivity but I find it incredible that technology has allowed Vermont’s General Assembly to continue its work. I think I can speak for the wider Statehouse press corps that the effort to keep these discussions open and accessible to the public and journalists is important and appreciated.
Still, I’m also mourning the loss of the complete unrestricted access I took for granted just days ago.
I particularly miss the nuances of lawmakers’ interactions. I miss the grimaces, smirks and exasperated sighs reporters can’t miss in the tight committee rooms. Those reactions, often a signal that a followup question should be asked after a hearing, don’t come across over a phone line.
And those followup questions can lead me to what I’m really after: honesty.
In a building where cautionary, politically packaged comments are far too common, those key moments can provide readers a purely human response.
Final Reading, first and foremost, is about providing readers with the most consequential legislative news. But lawmakers are people too and capturing their character, what makes them tick, is also essential.
That’s hard to capture through a phone line.
However, these moments of candor have in fact revealed themselves this week. In the background of committee calls, blips of lawmakers’ homelife comes through when they’ve forgotten to put themselves on mute. On a Senate Government Operations call, a child’s gibberish continually interrupted chair Sen. Jeannette White, D-Windham. It was apparent the phone had been left unattended near a curious kiddo, because White’s requests to mute the phone went ignored for at least a few comical minutes.
On another committee call, a lawmaker’s smooth jazz interrupted the conversation. After some requests for the caller to mute, the music disappeared without acknowledgement. As jazz fans here at Final Reading, we’re curious to know which lawmaker loves jazz too! All tips can be sent to grace@vtdigger.org.
There have been some bizarre moments, too. During one Senate Government Operations committee call, when Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, said she was having trouble finding a document, an anonymous male caller yelled, “You dumb cow! You’re so stupid!”
White, sounding shocked, repeatedly asked who had made the comment. No one spoke up. Sounding like a schoolteacher, she reminded all lawmakers and witnesses, sternly, to keep decorum.
To be fair, the caller may have been looking out the window at a farm animal, and not, in a moment of frustration and forgetfulness (the mute button) taking aim at Clarkson. Despite the staggering loss of dairy farms, cows are still abundant and not always bright. See bill H.557 that passed the House earlier this session titled “An act relating to municipal regulation of livestock running at large.”
Again, if any clarity can be offered, all tips can be sent to grace@vtdigger.org.
Cow jokes aside, at Final Reading, we feel a strange mix of gratitude, fear and shock as our reporting continues from off site.
We’re grateful that we can continue bringing information to Vermonters about this ever-changing crisis. I’m fearful about how many Vermonters will be harmed. I’m shocked that the first legislative session I’ve covered could be cut short … by a pandemic — a scenario that would have taken the longest of odds to predict when the session began in January, so long ago.
A colleague the other day told me he also felt a feeling of numbness as we’ve tried to shut down our emotional response and report the news, no matter how unprecedented, shocking or scary it may be.
We know we are not alone in those mixed feelings. But we hope our coverage will help you stay connected with the most important and up-to-date information.
Even if we do it all from home. In our slippers.
