Bob Hartwell

United Way of Bennington County’s Second Annual Golf Tournament honors State Senator Dick Sears, Bennington County District, for his work with youth.  Proceeds from the tournament will benefit programs that focus on mentoring and other support systems for the youth of Bennington County.  Senator Bob Hartwell is one of the tournament’s committee members.

2010 Golf Tournament (PDF)

As the legislative session approaches Town Meeting week, S.252, the legislation I introduced in January to effect the most comprehensive change in education governance in 120 years has received more attention than other legislation introduced in the current session.  The Senate Committee on Education has held extensive hearings on this legislation.  It is clear that reform is badly needed given the structure of 62 supervisory unions and 280 school districts, the most inefficient and convoluted system of education governance in the country.

With the Vermont birth rate, already the lowest in the country and continuing to collapse and migration of some people out of Vermont, the situation is dire.  At about 92,000 students today, and rapidly declining to well below 80,000 in the next decade, major reform is critical to Vermont’s economic vitality and, therefore, the state’s participation in economic recovery.  If we do not act, and if separate Administration proposals to increase the property tax are enacted, taxes will rise 50% in most areas in three years without sufficient state resources available to allow taxpayers to pay for such increases based on their incomes.

The Administration supports S. 252, as well it should, but attempts to take away much of the benefit by shifting teachers retirement to the education fund in the amount of $10.4 million in 2011 and $21.5 million in 2012 with escalating amounts in 2013 and 2014.  In addition, certain federal funds of nearly $7 million received by the state in connection with Medicaid payments related to special education would go to the general fund instead of the Education Fund essentially creating a statewide property tax increase of nearly $5,000,000.  As if this is not enough, the governor proposes to shift $5,000,000 per year in school capital construction costs to the education fund; these properly belong in the State Bonding and Capital Construction bill, not in the Education fund, where they would create an additional permanent statewide property tax increase of about $3.5 million per year.

It is beginning to look a lot like 2009 and the veto session in which the legislature wisely overrode the governor’s veto of the legislative budget under which the state is now operating.  The alternative pushed hard by the governor and the minority party in the House of Representatives would have resulted in the largest property tax increase in the State’s history, a recipe for economic disaster in Vermont.

In an interesting development, the Vermont House is considering a change in the rules of the House that will require any bill that “materially affects the revenues of more than one municipality” to be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means thus treating such bills in the same fashion as bills affecting the revenues of the State.  This change will cause a better review of state mandates adversely affecting the property tax.  Ultimately, the legislature should prove its commitment to reduced property taxes by forbidding unfunded mandates altogether.  A successful commitment in the Vermont House to curtail unjustifiably high property taxes is overdue.

I am hopeful that all business owners and property tax payers will bring as much pressure as possible on the legislature to enact meaningful education governance reform and to decline to transfer millions of dollars of new obligations to the property tax.

It is imperative that all Vermonters understand that Vermont’s economic capacity will be frozen in time if we do not take comprehensive action.  Vermont relies on the property tax for 42% of revenues compared to a national average of 30% placing Vermont among the five highest so dependent states in then nation. This is completely untenable given the collapse of the state’s demographics, the nation’s lowest birth rate and second oldest population.

There is no more time for taxpayer funded study commissions; it is clear what action must be taken and that little time is left in which to act. There are a variety of questions relating to school choice, which will be significantly expanded, and the role of independent schools, among others, which must be satisfactorily addressed in connection with badly needed reform.

Later editions of The Gathering Storm will address our progress in the enactment of meaningful reform.

Since the publication of Part I of the gathering storm in December, many constituents have contacted me expressing concern about severe property taxes and interest in what needs to be done to change the unaffordable direction in which Vermont is headed.

On January 5^th, the first day of the second half of the biennium, I introduced S.252, a bill to reform the system of education finance in Vermont.  The bill can be found on the Vermont legislative bill tracking system, and I am happy to provide hard copies to those who wish them.

The evidence is now more compelling than ever that the demographics of Vermont are collapsing with a rapidly downward birth rate and the beginning of out migration of Vermont residents to other places.  We cannot direct people to have families.  Many Vermonters will have fewer children, some none at all.  The recession has caused many to postpone having families and/or to have smaller families.  (Following the 2001 recession which lasted eight months, forty-six months elapsed before employment returned to its level at the time the recession began.  If the same ratio pertains to the current recession, 11 and one half years will elapse before we reach the number of jobs existing at the beginning of this recession.); the birth rate of 10.5 per thousand Vermonters in 2007 has dropped to 9.8 for 2009 and is falling further.

Despite all of this, however, we can take steps to stop the out migration of Vermonters by providing an economic environment as inviting as our natural environment. Clearly, thus far and for several reasons, we have not done so.  These include taxation policy, misplaced state policy priorities and the need for far more efficient and coordinated state government.

S.252 recognizes a very significant part of the emerging crisis and addresses the single most serious detriment to economic expansion and security in Vermont, the property tax.  The bill calls for consolidation of supervisory unions along technical center boundaries and consolidation of Vermont’s more than 220 school districts into far fewer in a process to be carried out by the Commissioner of Education.  The savings to be achieved are in the tens of millions of dollars statewide and are in the millions of dollars in my home county of Bennington alone.

In addition, there must be a better solution to the cost of teachers retirement and health care.  The administration most unfortunately sought to transfer these obligations to the Education Fund which would have resulted in the largest property tax increase in the State’s history with no underlying suggestion for education finance reform.  Those who voted to support such ill-advised policy should be called to task.  Vermont has no capacity left to support such taxation.  Thus, the override of the governor’s veto of the legislative budget spared Vermonters of an unaffordable future, and we must be diligent to assure that such a mistake does not occur in the second half of the biennium. I respectfully disagreed with the Governor’s budget proposal.

In addition to the first priority of reform of the system of education governance, the legislature should examine whether or not business taxation is too high in Vermont and, is so, what can be done to change it.  Next, we should act on the recommendations of the Challenges for Change report prepared by the Government Accountability Committee created by the legislature to examine the performance of state government.  Just as with education finance there is more than ample room for state government to consolidate like functions between state agencies and coordinate a major marketing effort to attract new economic activity to an improved climate for business development and employment opportunity in the Green Mountain State.

Then we should focus on the one area in which Vermont is clearly not overdeveloped, affordable housing.  The administration has made a pastime of attacks on the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, created in the late eighties to encourage land conservation and the development of affordable housing.  This ongoing assault has been completely misguided in that one dollar of state money appropriated to VHCB is leverage for between five and six dollars of investment from other sources.  We must change this and mount a full campaign to end Vermont’s shortage of affordable housing, a problem often cited by employers.

Broadband coverage to every Vermont customer who wants it must a priority; our rural economy can not be viable without it, and time is of the essence in order to avoid the negative long term effects which can occur if people from other places believe Vermont does not have a seamless system of telecommunications and broadband.

Finally, we need to step up our commitment to the professional training and development effort of the Next Generation process.  Some very good people are helping Vermont to progress in this area, and it must be an absolute priority from now on.

There are other initiatives such as passenger rail service throughout Vermont.  The administration’s fortunately ill fated attempt to terminate most Amtrak service to Vermont last year was as misguided as its continuing attempts to destroy the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board.

All of our priorities for a stronger Vermont economy are in jeopardy if we fail to address unjustifiably high property taxes.  S.252 moves in the direction of such control, and taxpayers should insist that the legislature take definitive action before it is too late.  Given current trends, immediate action is required.

The problem is very real and very severe but, like most problems, it presents us with opportunity to change the situation much for the better for all Vermonters and to attract new Vermonters.

For several years now, Vermont has been experiencing a dramatic decline in the number of children in its population. Going back to 2003 and then forward, this trend has  accelerated to the point that Vermont has the nation’s lowest birth rate, now at less than 10 births per thousand residents in a state with less than 625,000 residents, the second lowest teen pregnancy rate, and the largest proportion of its population of any state between the ages of 45 and 65 and, therefore, producing virtually no children.

The number of residents between the ages of 0 and 18 has plummeted 9% in five years from 139,000 in 2003 to 128,000 in 2008 and will drop even faster in 2009 and beyond.   The number of births in Vermont was 6514 in 2007, 6338 in 2008 and may well drop below 6,000 in 2009 and drop further, again, in 2010 with no end of the decline in sight.

In 2006, the Vermont Department of Education issued a perfectly valid chart at the time predicting that the slide in the school age population would reach bottom in 2013.  We now know that the bottom of the slide is much further into the future than 2013, probably far beyond 2017 or 2018 by which time currently fairly heavily utilized high schools in Vermont will have become severely underutilized just as most elementary schools are today. By that time, many elementary schools, if left as they are today, will have few, if any, children entering kindergarten, and, therefore, in all grades, thereafter.

Vermont’s school age population is dropping dramatically as people refrain from starting or adding to families in the worst and longest recession since the Depression.  The state’s demographic composition combined with the long and deep affects of the recession mean that Vermont is entering into a radically different set of circumstances to which little response has occurred   The ever accelerating reductions in the number of births and, therefore, the number of children in Vermont’s schools is extremely severe and extremely fast.  Also, as few seem yet to realize, Vermont’s total population is in reverse having lost at least 1700 residents in 2007 and 2008, in all likelihood, people of child bearing age, offset by a smaller number of older arrivals, a disturbing development also likely to increase.

At no time in our history has something so momentous occurred except possibly the westward migration of farmers prior to the Civil War and even that cannot compare to the crisis at hand. Many still believe that the bottom for the number of children in Vermont is about 85,000.  In fact the number is much lower, perhaps closer to 70,000 in less than decade, a literal cascade downward from approximately 93,000 children now and more than 105,000 children in 1997.

The Perfect Storm is gathering as property taxes, already at unacceptable levels, continue to rise, there are 23% more people working in public education with 12% fewer children since 1997 (soon to be well in excess of 20%), as the business community struggles valiantly with the recession, and state government continues to have obligations for which it will be unable to pay particularly after federal recovery funds terminate on June 30, 2011.

While some do not want to face the storm, there are those of us who must if we are to avoid major long-term economic decline. The Committee on Education Finance and Efficiency created by the legislature of which I am the representative from the Senate Finance Committee has met several times in order to make concrete recommendations to the legislature to reform education governance in Vermont.  I am concerned that the Committee will not go nearly far enough in making recommendations of meaningful change to education governance.  We have a huge bureaucracy with 63 supervisory unions, a virtually endless number of school districts often unable or unwilling to share resources, a declining student teacher ratio soon to be less that 10 to one, easily the lowest in the country, a generally inefficient system of doing everything from procurement to financial reporting to the provision of special education services along with a building infrastructure already far bigger than we will ever need again, very soon to become more drastically underutilized if trends are allowed to continue as they are now.

If we do not address education finance to mirror the true population we are serving, the system will invade the state’s economic capacity, severely frustrate the ability of business entities to form and remain in Vermont, affect adversely the cost of borrowing for state government and, ultimately, lead to a serious deterioration of the Vermont’s reputation as a place to live and do business.  If we do not act to reform the system of education finance, we will be unable to arrest the slide in our population leading to a continuing downward spiral far harder to repair even a few years into the future.

I will propose legislation to address the crisis which I will discuss in the second installment of this series in January.  I will also address other reforms I believe necessary to protect Vermont’s future. Later editions will address the progress I hope we will be making on this clear priority.  The Gathering Storm is far closer than many of us realize; the change is the most profound in history, and we must act soon to control its affects and to prepare for the Storm, the early winds of which have already arrived.  We must see the clear threat to our future by accepting it as a challenge and opportunity to do the right things in the near future for all Vermonters including the protection of excellent public education to assure the future of one of America’s most beautiful and compelling places.  If we are honest with ourselves, we will move quickly to prepare to ride out the Storm.

Affordable housing is a critical need in Vermont and a very important component of economic development. The state must continue to play an important role in providing financial incentives to encourage not for profit developers to continue their efforts to build housing affordable to people in or entering the workforce.

The time for short term thinking on transportation is over.  For some time, state policy has been all about paving roads and a grossly inadequate commitment to the repair of deteriorating bridges.

The cost of infrastructure repair in Vermont is rising at a rate in excess of 10% per year.  At the rate repairs are now being initiated, many substandard bridges and rail trackage will never be repaired.  In order to maintain current conditions for bridge and paving alone, $152,000,000 in spending will be required; this year we will spend $58,000,000, a rate which will put us further and further behind with each passing year resulting in more classifications of state roads as being in poor condition.

Rather than accept such a result, the State should issue GARVEE bonds which are issued in anticipation of the State’s receipt of federal transportation funds.  In essence, the State borrows against future federal dollars in order to make necessary projects at much lower current costs thereby creating hundreds of Vermont taxpaying jobs which cover much of the cost of the interest on the bonds.  This approach can save Vermonters hundreds of millions of dollars in construction costs creating good jobs and assuring the safety and efficiency of our transportation system.  Twenty four states have issued GARVEES both for specific projects and for general transportation infrastructure needs.

It is imperative that Vermont place a priority on passenger rail service in the Interstate 91 and Route 7 corridors. Continued service of the Vermonter in the eastern corridor and the Ethan Allen Express in the western corridor are vital, particularly given respective rider ship increases in 2007 of 5% and 12% respectively.  The Ethan Allen Express should enter Vermont in Bennington County with stops in North Bennington and Manchester before proceeding to Rutland, the current terminal point for the train.

In addition, the State must assure that adequate public transportation exists to allow many people to go to work without using a car.  For example a bus route has been created between Manchester and Stratton with a stop at the Park and Ride at Exit 4 on Route 7 in Manchester.  These services must be expanded to assure that cars can remain off the road and people can go to work at reasonable cost.

Allowing our transportation infrastructure to deteriorate and failing to meet the challenges of high fuel costs to transportation, as has been policy to date, is unjustifiable and unnecessary.  The legislature must place major emphasis on this aspect of public need.

Vermont is facing a very dangerous “first winter”, the first winter with heating oil above $4 per gallon for most people.

Over the next two to three years at the most, Vermont should seek to become an energy self sufficient state by harvesting all the available timber from our forests for the production of fire wood, wood chips pellets and other bio fuels. Currently and, incredibly, Vermont imports its biofuels from elsewhere paying higher than necessary transportation costs even though Vermont can produce these products itself.

It is imperative to enact legislation to create incentives for loggers and others in the wood products industry to extract our fuel from the forest; logging has been in decline because it is expensive given the cost of workers compensation insurance, the cost of equipment and its insurance.

The average age of loggers in Vermont is 45. There are no new sawmills in Vermont. In fact, loggers and saw mills are barely surviving. The legislature needs to assure that these industries survive and that they are allowed to benefit from the creation of a very significant wood fuel industry in Vermont. This industry can harvest substantial resources to reduce drastically Vermont’s reliance on foreign oil while maintaining Vermont’s high standards of forest stewardship and creating more meaningful and rewarding jobs for Vermonters.

Senator Hartwell is working on legislation for introduction at the opening of the legislative biennium ion January, 2009 to accomplish these goals.

In the meantime, it is essential to protect all Vermonters who are in need due to excessive fuel prices. There are several important services working to assure that Vermonters have heat and food this winter.

Other renewable resources must be encouraged as well; current incentives for the installation of solar and wind technology are inadequate. The federal tax credit for solar installations must be doubled to $4,000 as a start to changing the completely ineffective response of the federal government to the nation’s energy challenges over the last eight years.

In addition, the Vermont Clean Energy Development fund which receives $6-7 million per year from Entergy Corporation and issues grants and loans for alternative energy sources in Vermont does not nearly reach the demand for such incentives. The legislature must proceed expeditiously to assure that the demand for alternative systems is met in a timely fashion given the drastic recent increase in fossil fuel prices and the likelihood of higher electric rates in connection with whatever decision is made as to whether or not Vermont Yankee is relicensed.

Several agencies are working to assure that Vermonters have adequate fuel and food this winter. These include:

Bennington Rutland Opportunity Council 447-7515

Vermont Food Bank 1-800 585-2265

State Fuel Office 1-800 470-6151

Senior Help Line 1-800 642-5119

For those with Internet access:

State wide resources www.helpforvt.org www.vermont211.org

Fuel assistance, weatherization www.dcf.state.vt.org

Food shelves for
Bennington County www.vtfoodbank.org

Shareheat information www.cvps.com

Suddenly, America is subsumed in urgent conversation about the cost of energy and the rapid change in climate; some of us have urged for some time that America is about to undergo change which will transfigure our country and change us forever. Drastically higher fuel prices and ominous changes in the behaviour of the weather have left a few right wing politicians and shallow thinkers as the hold outs against the obvious.

Eight years of Washington policy dedicated to little more than a grab for tax benefits for big oil has left America a far more vulnerable country economically just as the foolish invasion of Iraq has left us more vulnerable to attack and ridicule throughout the world.

The change required to address our collective circumstances will be sudden and total rejection of business as usual. The role of government in developing answers to the upward spiral of the cost of food and fuel will be completely different from the mismanagement of the last eight years. Now, the psychology of crisis is enveloping the country as many contemplate a winter without enouph heat and food. It is a startling change of fortune for what we think of as the richest country in the world; in fact, America is weaker and more threatened than in the recent distant.

The parallels to the great depression are striking, and the capacity of Americans to meet the challenge must rise to level of courage and commitment of our depression era forebearers. In 1933, nearly a third of Americans were unemployed; much of agriculture in America had already been destroyed in the infamous Dust Bowl and half the farms in the south were in foreclosure. Many were driven from the only places they had ever known.

During his inaugural on March 4, 1933, the new president urged that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. From that point on, it was clear the Administration had big plans for the recovery of an ailing America. There was no room for despair and no room for reactionary laissez faire politics. The creation of the Works Progress Administration, National Recovery Act, the Civilian Conservation Corps, among other programs put millions to work (although the president had to wait 4 years to replace reactionaries on the Supreme Court who struck down several important pieces of New Deal legislation, the National Recovery Act in particular.) The social security system came into being providing a supplement for older Americans (its first recipient lived in Vermont).

Many of the projects which created work for unemployed Americans are very visible today such as the Merritt and Wilbur Cross Parkways in Connecticut and the Sagamore Bridge across the Cape Cod Canal.
Construction of the Pentagon commenced well before the Second World War, and many government buildings in Washington were built the between 1933 and 1945. Unemployed artists painted endearing murals in public buildings visible today in Chicago, Miami and San Francisco among other places.

Hopefully, we are about to embark on another New deal, the Green New deal which will create millions of jobs, reduce the influence of big oil, reduce the cost of living and make America a much stronger country the only way a country becomes stronger, from within.
Rather than the failed policies of tax cuts for those who should not receive them and the relentless burdening middle income taxpayers and leaving many to fend mostly for themselves, we must adopt a very different approach, one which will transform America for the better as did the New Deal.

The Green New Deal will embody policies to create enough jobs to assure that every residence in America achieves substantial and measurable efficiency; solar collectors in the desert will provide power for most western states. Tax incentives will allow everyone to change the source of fuel for their heat and to convert to cars that will result in a fleet 50% more efficient than at present in less than five years. The government will invest billions in Amtrak and will tie the national railroad to urban mass transit systems throughout the country (rather than foolishly attempting to pawn the railroad off on the states hoping to kill it as Bush proposed in 2007). There will be fewer cars on the road; gasoline consumption will drop in double digit percentages reaching the point at which cars no longer use foreign oil. In fact, many will be plug in hybrids that can recharge at charging stations with a credit card drastically reducing the number of stops at the gas station with resulting savings to the car’s owner. The car will recharge at night when there is excess capacity in the electric grid.

The current inadequate tax credit for solar systems will be doubled or tripled; the incentives to use alternative fuels will make fossil fuels perpetually unattractive. Multi tier metering systems will be in place to penalize those who waste power and reward those who do not. Net metering will spread to whole communities, and suburbs will be less attractive as people congregate downtown, or suburban areas will create their own clusters of self sufficient communities.

What all of this means to us is the greatest change in behavior perhaps in our history which will result in better air quality as fewer and far more efficient vehicles are on the road and a national rail system that at least attempts to replicate systems abroad which are vastly superior. This means more income for Americans as we break our addiction to fossil fuels; it means fewer car accidents; it means an America secure in the winter in which people do not choose between food and fuel or between fuel and medicine.

It means a complete rejuvenation of downtown America in which people assist one another and actually come to know their neighbors; it means millions of Americans getting more exercise as they walk more and use bicycles more and becoming healthier in the process.

Some, including some of those in public office who live inside the box of failure will whine about the cost of all of this. In reality, it will be rather cheap; the misguided tax cuts of the Bush crowd has cost the treasury more than the cost of all the incentives required to eliminate foreign oil for the American economy; Iraq has cost Americans almost three trillion dollars, radically more than the cost of all the programs ever dreamed of during the New Deal and more than all of the initiatives advocated here. In fact, the mismanagement of the American economy and the Iraq incursion together have cost radically more than all the incentives and subsidies required to create the Green New Deal, incentives designed to create tax paying jobs ($1 billion in construction spending creates 47,000 construction jobs, an amount spent in less than 5 days in Iraq) and an entirely new energy ethic.

We must change the way we do things, and we must fire those elective officials at every level of government who do not recognize the massive failure of the last eight years and state openly and credibly the need for major change in 2009.

Few large companies have reacted effectively to the challenge of opportunity of the Green New Deal. In fact Exxon Mobil reported earnings of $11.68 billion in the second quarter of 2008, missed Wall Street’s expectations and the stock went down. Exxon wanted to help with the impending heating crisis ibn thbe northeast, it could give a $100 coupon for the maintenance of each residential oil burner in new England to help protect our residents who do not have enoupph to pay $4 for heating oil and help assure their safety. This would cost the Company about $200,000,000. Exxon makes more than that every 56 hours.

The fact remains the role of government will be big if we are to regain our strength and hope as a country, things that can only be achieved by ending unfair and violent public policies and replacing with a commitment to our country of such magnitude that all will be required to participate in our national recovery through the fabulous opportunity clothed in the current crisis.

When asked about the biggest challenges they face, employers in the Bennington region tell us there are more jobs available than qualified workers and that there is a shortage of affordable housing. Both of these challenges require focused intervention by state government.

The passage in 2007 of the Next Generation legislation will provide significant funding for targeted training for to create a workforce prepared for the technology of today’s highly sophisticated and interesting manufacturing environment in the Bennington Region. New jobs are being created, and we are not developing a trained workforce quickly enouph to fill them; this need must be an absolute priority in order to keep young people from leaving Vermont and to promote healthy and successful lives for future Vermonters. Each job created will improve the life of a Vermonter who will become a satisfied person performing a respectable tax paying job for the benefit of all of us.

The legislature must assure continued funding for the Next Generation until we are assured that our workforce is trained on a continuous basis and able to perform jobs as employers create them.

The second major hurdle to a completely productive workforce is an inadequate supply of affordable housing. Several funding sources in state government are dedicated to affordable housing, but our progress is still too slow; the administration’s continuing effort to undercut the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board is grossly misguided in that 60% of VHCB funding is dedicated to affordable housing and every state dollar invested in VHCB can leverage in excess of three dollars form other sources. VHCB must be fully funded in order to undertake the construction of affordable housing at a far greater pace than at present.

We’re working on a new website… with my new .org domain name…..stay tuned.