Vermont Legislators Strategizing to Lose
By Martin Harris 

As you get older, I'm told, the memory is the second thing to go and thus we can't remember what the first was, but my memory has failed to the point when I can't remember any earlier precedent for what's happened three times during this year's legislative session. Vermont's Golden Dome folk and their supporters have created three situations where they wanted to be seen supposedly striving for outcomes which, in actuality, they didn't and don't want to see actually happen. Two were actually the subjects of supposedly serious legislation, and the third is only in street-theatre format so far. In that order, they are: the facile promises to control school spending and taxes; the proposal to emancipate all laying hens; and the on-going campaign to shut down Vermont Yankee in five years. I can't recall any earlier situation wherein a presumably serious legislative body and/or advocacy group has campaigned for things they don't actually want.

The school tax two-step has been the most enlightening to watch unfold: a learning experience, you might say, in edu-speak. After fulsome promises to "do something", guess what: nothing has been done. Of course not, a cynic would say: count the votes. There are nearly 20,000 employed in K-12, all of whom vote, and maybe another 50,000 in family members living off the same paycheck. With only 315,000 voters in the State, 70,000 on the public payroll isn't a group for legislators with ongoing political ambitions to antagonize. The staged solution: be seen striving mightily for school tax reform, and then, so regrettably, fail.

The hen emancipation initiative has been the most fun to watch. As H.0311, sponsored by Vermont's Reps. Hosford and Masland, and as S.0202, sponsored by the honorific Miller and Campbell, it proposes to outlaw caged-layer poultry farming and to forbid State government from buying caged-layer eggs. It permits private-sector folks to go outside the State and buy as many as they wish, and bring them back, (legally, as opposed to goods which now are secretly smuggled in from no-sales-tax New Hampshire when the Steuereintreiberen of the Vestapo aren't watching) but that won't help in-state producers, like the DeVoid Farm of Salisbury, whose owners have declared they can't afford to stay in business if it passes. Not to worry: it won't. Not that the gentry-left in government, including the sponsors of this bill, care about local farming --despite pious rhetoric, they don't, as was demonstrated last year when they agreed with a New Jersey in-migrant to Orwell that a nearby apple orchard was disturbing his sleep— but rather because, as far-seeing legislators keenly aware of long-range consequences stemming from their carefully-crafted policies (just ask them) they fully understand that actually outlawing caged-layer egg production would result in an egg gap. It might be several years before producers who chose to stay in business could switch over to the far-pricier new product, and during that time, therefore, a staple of base-line sophisticated dining –the crème brulee, right up there alongside brie and Chablis, unidentifiable-content quiche, and of course imported-from-the-Alps bottled water, all basic essentials of civilized life— might become unavailable without resorting to imports. Vermont might be reduced to the status of a net-eggs-for-cremes-brulee importer. A sensitive left-leaning Vermont legislator would no more consider putting crèmes-brulee accessibility at such risk than he/she/uncertain would consider outlawing nuts-and-twigs coffee blends or pate-de-foie-gras. Traditional egg-farmers in Vermont face all sorts of legislative risks –for example, using the Orwell example, that the noise of their hens might disturb newly-arrived trust-funders from the megalopolis, and therefore require decibel-management— but a legislative action which might create a Statewide egg gap, and therefore a crème-brulee gap, isn't one of them.

Third on my list of stop-us-before-we-win-again efforts is the campaign to deny license renewal to Vermont Yankee, that Vernon-based nuclear tea-kettle which presently provides about a third of all electric power consumed in Vermont. Such a shut-down, should it take place in only five years as now seemingly demanded by highly-vocal anti-nuke groups, could easily result in innumerable latte machines (primarily in Burlington, but also in sophisticated enclaves throughout the State, even the Northeast Kingdom) to go cold. A risk of that magnitude, is of course, too terrifying and discomfiting to contemplate.