Gov. Peter Shumlin mentioned the middle class in his State of the State speech last week—once. That’s exactly the same number of times he mentioned the middle class in his inaugural speech last year; and exactly one time more than he mentioned them in his 2011 Budget Address. Read more

No.   Declining enrollment doesn’t drive up costs. It’s true that Vermont’s student enrollment has been declining at a rate of about 1 percent per year.  But, school costs have also been declining for the past two years.

If you listen to some who are weighing in on Vermont’s school spending lately, you’d think that a lower student count is causing increased spending.  Read more

Governor Shumlin is rightly proud of the leadership this administration provided in the clean up after Tropical Storm Irene last summer.  He inspired Vermonters to rise to their best during one of the worst disasters in the state’s history.

And he is correct in making job creation the state’s top priority and in recognizing that investment now in education and public infrastructure are key to Vermont’s economic future. Read more

Even if President Obama and some members of Congress don’t get it, Gov. Peter Shumlin understands that people can freeze to death in the winter if they don’t have heat. That’s why he announced Tuesday that the state was going to supplement the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) after Congress failed to adequately fund the program. Read more

What’s the lesson learned from the clean up after Tropical Storm Irene?

Deputy Transportation Secretary Sue Minter summed it up best in a New York Times story last week. The Shumlin administration received well-deserved front-page kudos for getting the state’s highways and bridges fixed and functioning in record time. Read more

Except as further evidence of Congress’s dysfunction, we shouldn’t mourn last week’s failure of the so-called Super Committee. Newt Gingrich’s critique was right on the money: Such a committee never should have been created in the first place. Addressing the country’s fiscal problems is the responsibility of the existing committees of Congress, and the job needs to be done openly, not in secret meetings that only lobbyists can attend. Read more

Unlike his predecessor, who used to rail at local school officials, Gov. Peter Shumlin sent out a letter to all school board members last week thanking them for their service and for working to hold down education costs. “The fact that overall school spending increases have been basically zero over the past two years proves that school boards, administrators, and voters have been diligent in keeping costs in line,” the governor wrote. Read more

The Shumlin Administration announced this week that they will hold a series of “listening sessions” on how the state should finance Green Mountain Care, Vermont’s soon-be-be reformed health care system.  Since individuals, employers, and the state and federal government are already paying the $5 billion annual cost of Vermont’s health care system, this financing exercise is really about re-arranging how we pay for health care, not trying to find new money.   Read more

In an insightful and intelligent VTDigger.org commentary yesterday, John Margolis put his finger on an important public policy struggle going on in Vermont: people vs. money.

While he doesn’t frame it that way, Margolis points out that Gov. Peter Shumlin, in a speech at the University of Vermont last week, urged the school to focus on preparing students for business, without mention of the arts, culture, or philosophy. Read more

Critics of anti-poverty programs have complained for years that poverty measures are flawed because they don’t take into account the effects of these programs in mitigating poverty. They have a point. There is no before and after measurement.

The state looks at income to determine whether people are poor enough to qualify for food stamps, which we call 3SquaresVT in Vermont, or Reach Up (formerly welfare) or Medicaid. Read more