John Walters is a VTDigger political columnist.
On June 27, 2011, then-World Wrestling Entertainment champion CM Punk sat down on the entrance ramp during a live broadcast and delivered a five-minute promo — usually a theatrical performance designed to advance a storyline. Punk gleefully broke the fourth wall, tearing into the WWE’s backstage politics and announcing his intention to leave the company with the championship. Punk’s promo endures in wrestling lore as “the pipe bomb,” widely considered the best in pro wrestling history.
On Friday, April 17, Vermont State Colleges Chancellor Jeb Spaulding dropped a pipe bomb of his own. He revealed that in three days’ time, the VSC board of trustees would vote on a plan to close the two campuses of Northern Vermont University and the Randolph campus of Vermont Technical College.
The reaction was fast and furious. Gov. Phil Scott and legislative leaders quickly sought postponement of the vote. Thousands of Vermonters contacted lawmakers by email, phone and social media. A petition to save the campuses achieved its goal of 35,000 signatures by Tuesday morning, and is now pushing toward 50,000. On Sunday afternoon, the VSC board shelved a vote on Spaulding’s proposal. And Wednesday morning, Spaulding officially dropped the idea.
I don’t believe Spaulding ever intended to hold a vote. His announcement was a pipe bomb, designed to force the state to confront VSC’s financial crisis.
And boy, did he succeed.
Now, Jeb Spaulding is no CM Punk. He’s been in state government almost continuously since 1985. (Sixteen years in the Senate, two years out of office, eight years as state Treasurer, four years as then-Gov. Peter Shumlin’s administration secretary, and chancellor of the VSC system since 2015.) He has a well-honed instinct for survival and an aversion to taking risks. Throwing a pipe bomb isn’t his style. But he did, and it may well end his career in public service.
So why did Spaulding do it?
He had no other option. Things were simply that bad. On Monday he told the VSC board that the system needed at least $25 million to avoid insolvency — on top of the state’s annual appropriation of roughly $30 million. And he warned that the cost of survival will rise as the pandemic continues.
The VSC system is heavily dependent on tuition and room and board. Those income streams are gone indefinitely, and the system is on the hook for refunds for this semester.
But even before Covid-19, VSC was in terrible shape due to decades of underfunding by the state. The grisly details were laid out in a white paper published last summer by Spaulding’s office. State support in 1980 amounted to 49% of VSC’s budget. Now, it’s only 17%. In 1989 Vermont ranked third in the nation in state funding for public colleges and universities; now, it’s 49th. The system has roughly $50 million in deferred maintenance, and more than 80% is at the three campuses targeted for closure.
The Vermont State Colleges were a house made of sticks, vulnerable to the first big blow. Enter the coronavirus.
It took a real crisis and a pipe bomb to engage state leaders. Well, sort of.
Scott reacted by touting his never-fleshed-out “cradle to career” idea, which would involve a politically poisonous raid on the education fund to boost higher education. House Speaker Mitzi Johnson and Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe floated the idea of “a one-year bridge budget” that would postpone the day of reckoning.
Worse, in a Sunday afternoon press conference organized by Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, the Senate’s top budget writer washed her hands of responsibility for the mess.
“The Legislature has provided additional funding,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia. “I would say that there have been multiple increases that were done to recognize the financial situation. Several times we were told that that appropriation would stabilize and take care of the situation.”
That’s misleading at best. Last year, according to the system’s chief financial officer, Steve Wisloski, the colleges asked lawmakers to increase VSC’s appropriation by $25 million over five years, enough to get Vermont to the New England average for state support. Instead, the Legislature approved a one-time hike of $2.5 million.
In January, Spaulding again called for that $25 million boost over five years. And again, he ran into the same wall of resistance from legislative budget writers.
Kitchel and her colleagues will tell you that money is tight and there are many competing calls for more funding. It’s true. But at some point you have to decide whether you want a robust public system of higher education, and put up the necessary funds if you do.
(On Tuesday afternoon, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., issued a joint statement thanking the board for postponing action and offering bland, nonspecific support for finding “a creative path forward for the Vermont’s [sic] state colleges.” They said nothing about increasing public funding.)
With his now-withdrawn proposal, Spaulding forced the issue. My colleague Jon Margolis called it “a major blunder.” True, but only if Spaulding cared more about keeping his job than the future of the VSC system.
CM Punk’s renowned promo ended abruptly when his microphone was cut off by management. And he left the company as he had threatened to do.
Spaulding may encounter the same fate. He’s facing it without fear.
