Vermont Tiger

The Campaign to Nowhere

Election day is less than 100 days off and the prospect of more of what we have experienced so far is truly dismaying.  It is customary for candidates to talk about how this election is the most important since the discovery of fire – or at least in modern memory – and for editorialists to lament the candidates’ detours around the “substantive issues” in favor of superficialities such as, for instance, who has, or has not, proposed a single-payer health care system.

But you could make a case that this time, both arguments would be right.  This election is the first since the reality of what happened to the economy – locally, nationally, and globally – has sunk in … or should have, anyway.  In 2008, the experience was so fresh that the electorate resembled a boxer who had just taken a brutal combination of punches and was out but still on his feet.

At What Price?

by Art Woolf

Sidwell Friends School is the private Quaker-run school in Washington DC's suburbs that educates children of the movers and shakers in the nation's capital.  Kids with names like Chelsea Clinton, Julie and Tricia Nixon, the grandchildren of VP Joe Biden,  Albert Gore III, and Sasha and Malia Obama.

Washington's public schools are among the worst in the nation.    Many of the parents who send their kids to Sidwell probably support public schools -- for other people's kids--but don't support the District's limited voucher program, which was killed by Congressional Democrats this year, a popular program that allowed poor families to send their kids to private schools just like richer folks can.

But that's not the point of this post.

A Vermont company, gro-Solar, just won a contract to make the school greener by installing solar panels so the school can be self-sufficient in electricity.  Parents, or any other investor, can buy $5,000 bonds to finance the project.   Why doesn't the school just finance it itself by taking advantage of federal tax credits, the way just about every other organization that buys solar panels does? 

reVOLTing

... the future of General Motors (and the $50 billion taxpayer investment in it) now depends on a vehicle that costs $41,000 but offers the performance and interior space of a $15,000 economy car.
    NYT

What the hell.  It's good enough for government work.

Not So Fine

by Art Woolf

A major organization in Vermont, with hundreds of well-paid employees, is fined $420,000 by the federal government for allowing its employees to be exposed to deadly hazards.  Another example of an organization that should be shut down for safety reasons?

In the Beginning ...

the stimulus created jobs.

And the jobs were on "shovel ready projects."

Except, er, when they weren't.  Including one

     ...  at the Central Vermont Community Action Council.
    That job, at a portion of the agency called Vermont Green, helps coordinate job training in renewable energy or other “green” industries with businesses, other nonprofit groups and other individuals or organizations.
    Porter, Herald

New Right-Wing Madman Spotted

By Daniel Foty

Well, it looks like there's another right-wing madman on the loose:

The city budget shortfall is $70 million and Booker plans to meet the revenue shortfall with budget cuts instead of property tax increases.

"Taxes cannot be the answer," Booker said.

Booker says property taxes in Newark have gone up 76 percent in [the] last decade and 19 percent in the past five years.

"Booker" is Newark (New Jersey) mayor Cory Booker.

And, oh yeah, he's a Democrat...

Important Event

(click here for full details)

Another Bailout

But not to worry.  It's for the children.

Choo Choo

by Art Woolf

Planners love railroads.  Unfortunately for them, most people don't.  Trains are slower, and generally more expensive, than the alternatives.

Vermont is receiving $50 million in federal stimulus money for passenger rail improvements to be made sometime in the future.   (As a side note, the federal stimulus funds were supposed to stimulate the economy when it was down--in the summer of 2009.  What happened to the so-called  "shovel-ready" projects that were supposed to be the recipients of federal stimulus funds to help get us out of the economic doldrums?  This money won't likely be spent for another year--that is in 2011.) 

While planners gloat over the possibility of high speed passenger rail, The Economist, in a lengthy article on rail, points out that  

the problem with America’s plans for high-speed rail is not their modesty. It is that even this limited ambition risks messing up the successful freight railways. Their owners worry that the plans will demand expensive train-control technology that freight traffic could do without. They fear a reduction in the capacity available to freight. Most of all they fret that the spending of federal money on upgrading their tracks will lead the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the industry watchdog, to impose tough conditions on them and, in effect, to reintroduce regulation of their operations.

What about those high speed trains in Europe?

America’s railways are the mirror image of Europe’s. Europe has an impressive and growing network of high-speed passenger links, many of them international, like the Thalys service between Paris and Brussels or the Eurostar connecting London to the French and Belgian capitals. These are successful—although once the (off-balance-sheet) costs of building the tracks are counted, they need subsidies of billions of dollars a year. But, outside Germany and Switzerland, Europe’s freight rail services are a fragmented, lossmaking mess.

Since the U.S. deregulated its rail industry in the 1970s and 1980s, freight railroads have become profitable and efficient, unlike their European counterparts.  Before Vermont officials spend more time and effort trying to improve passenger rail for the few people who use it they ought to consider that those efforts may be to the detriment of the far more important freight portion of the industry.

Hard Questions for a Soft Campaign

by Art Woolf

To Vermont political candidates:

1.  The state of Vermont is facing a $120 million deficit for FY12, the budget year that you will be dealing with when the legislature meets in January.  How do you plan to deal with that deficit, and $100+ million projected deficits for the following fiscal years? 

2.  From FY04 to FY08, General Fund revenues grew by more than five percent annually, a high growth rate.  Those revenues were spent rather than banked for a rainy day or returned to taxpayers.  If revenues had continued to grow at that rate from FY08 to FY11, the state would have had $320 million more to spend than it actually does.  Given that the legislature and governor were able to balance the FY11 budget, does that imply that $320 million of government services that have been cut were not essential and could have been done without even before FY11?  Was Vermont overtaxed to the tune of $320 million?

3.  Vermont posted healthy revenue growth in the 1990s and most of the 2000s due in part to two economic booms--the telecom and internet boom of the 1990s and the housing boom of the 2000s.  There is not likely to be any similar economic boom anytime in the future.  How will you deal with a slower-growing economy and slower growing state revenues than Vermont has experienced in the past two decades?

4.  Vermont's population is nearly stagnant and its working age population is declining.  How will you deal with the economic and revenue impacts of this population problem and the resulting slowing of state tax revenue growth?

5.  You all have plans to enhance the state's economy at taxpayer expense.  So, are you willing to put your own money at risk?  If you believe, for example, that the state should push farmers to produce organic milk, are you willing to put a significant amount of your own money--say $50,000 – into loans for organic milk producers?  If you believe that Vermont should take the lead in alternative energy production, are you willing to put $50,000 of your own money into below-market rate loans to alternative energy producers?  If you believe that Vermont's future lies in community-scale local agriculture, are you willing to invest $50,000 of your own money into these farms, and accept below-market returns?

If the answer to these is 'no,' then why are you willing to put taxpayer money at risk for these projects, and not your own?

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely yours,

Art Woolf