This commentary is by Susan Culp, a resident of Newbury.
Hey, Vermonters! Taxes are high in this state, right? Yeah. Given how expensive it is to live here and pay local, education and state income taxes, one always imagines that our state leaders are wise stewards when it comes to spending our hard-earned money.
Guess again.
Vermont’s latest taxpayer spending spree is benefiting a private, out-of-state corporation that wants to run a secure detention facility for boys under the age of 17.
This is the result of the precipitous closure of Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center after a series of management failures by the administration’s Agency of Human Services in running the facility. Instead of addressing those failures, however, the administration chose to shut down the facility and privatize the secured confinement of adjudicated youth.
The administration is now fixated on placing violent youth offenders in the care of a private company in the small community of Newbury. In a remote rural area. With no infrastructure or services that can adequately support it.
The town of Newbury has rejected this proposal for a host of reasons — but the litigious company, funded by taxpayer dollars, sued to overrule the local planning and zoning decision. And the Vermont Superior Court is letting them. The plaintiff is Becket Family of Services, doing business as Vermont Permanency Initiative.
For this particular project, it secured the support of administration officials to renovate its private property to the tune of $5 million in taxpayer money — according to recent legislative estimates — all to operate a facility that will house only six boys under the age of 18 who are “adjudicated youth” (that is, charged with a criminal act).
Oh, but it gets better. Becket/VPI will also be contracting with the state to operate this facility for six individuals at a whopping cost of approximately $3.9 million per year. That translates to $1,774 per bed per night every single day! What a deal! You could book the presidential suite at a five-star hotel for cheaper! Not only that, Becket/VPI would be getting that sweet, sweet taxpayer money regardless of whether the beds are filled or not.
To give you some sense of how outrageous this cost is, the Justice Policy Institute recently cited $544 per day as a national average for secure confinement of juvenile offenders in the United States. It notes that figure in discussions of “sticker shock” for such costs. The institute folks should come to Vermont — their eyes would pop!
It gets worse. The town of Newbury rejected this proposal due to lack of services and infrastructure available in the town to safely support it. So, Becket/VPI and the Scott administration dragged the town to court to get their way. Guess who paid those legal bills? That’s right — the state of Vermont, throwing around our hard-earned taxpayer dollars again. Paying for lawyers to clobber our own communities, and to overrule local decision-making. All to enable a private corporation to soak up all those lovely taxpayer dollars for a grossly overpriced facility and program.
Why would the state be so hell-bent on working with this company on such an outrageously expensive endeavor? And condone such obviously sleazy tactics?
A report on the “Vermont Permanency Initiative Inc. Organizational History, Evolution and Financial Capacity” put out by the Vermont State Board of Education on April 2, 2018, offered a clue. In that report, it is noted, “VPI has had significant capitalization needs, especially in Bennington, where neglected maintenance has resulted in most buildings requiring substantial renovation in the short term.”
Whaddaya know — in 2020, Becket/VPI and the Vermont Department for Children and Families cooked up a plan to renovate a building in Newbury, at a cost of $5 million in taxpayer money, to kit it out as a secure juvenile detention center to replace Woodside. Coincidence? Perhaps. By late 2020, they were at the Legislature, asking for the bucks to do it.
Why would the state Legislature sign on to this? The project was approved by legislators in November 2020, allocating taxpayer dollars to push it through.
You might want to call your representatives and ask them about it. See what they have to say about paying exorbitant amounts of our money — money that could be spent actually serving the needs of everyday Vermonters — to house juvenile offenders at a privately run facility at enormous cost.
I can’t close without thanking Gov. Phil Scott and his administration, the architects of this ridiculously expensive scheme to privatize the care of youth offenders. What’s the next scheme to waste taxpayer money?
