vt.Buzz ~ a political blog

Political notes from Free Press staff writers Terri Hallenbeck, Sam Hemingway and Nancy Remsen

2.21.2007

Pinching pennies

I was talking to Sen. Dick Sears about public safety funding yesterday. He was fuming in Sears-like manner about how we all have our heads in the sand about the drug problem, that somewhere we have to find the money to fund police, this most basic function of state government.

Money being scarce, that led him into a rift on the emergency farm aid, which will amount to $12 million once the Legislature squares away the final $3 million in the coming days. He wondered if the money was really going to solve the problems facing dairy farmers. "It’s a debate we haven’t had," Sears said.

Sen. Sara Kittell, chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, just happened to be sitting nearby, so the debate ensued. Kittell took umbrage, and said she wouldn’t have supported $12 million if she didn’t think it was imperative and useful.

Police coverage vs. farm aid – that’s just one example of the quandaries of budget balancing. Every turn you take in the Statehouse, you run smack into some part of state government that is gasping for money.

Roads and bridges, colleges, cops, the state psychiatric hospital, prisons, environmental enforcement. I surely have left off a score of other areas that are desperately underfunded, and have been for decades.

How do we turn those barges around? The thought of it is enough to make you hammer your head on the pillars of the Statehouse.

Surely, there must be treasure troves of hidden cash somewhere in state government that can be snared before some bridge decays right at the moment somebody’s driving over it. We’re not talking about flooding the colleges with so much cash that they hire someone to carry the students’ books, but just enough to eke Vermont out of the bottom of state support for colleges.

Without raising taxes, that is.

At the risk of sounding naïve, where is the money hidden? Where are the holes down which state money is being flushed, whether in small bills or large? What programs just don’t stack up anymore when you look at those that are starving? Are there pennies out there to be pinched?

Any ideas?

- Terri Hallenbeck

posted by vt.Buzz | 10:45 AM |

Comments:

You gotta wonder a little about farm aid.

Times have changed. It doesn't make much sense to prop up farms that just don't have balance sheets that work.

It seems we more and more support "traditional use and the way it was", but the fact is that the world has changed and is changing. And Vermont needs to change with it.

# Posted by:

Anonymous | 10:57 AM, February 21, 2007

Where is the money? Prisons.

10% of our state budget goes to locking people up. Crime rates have not grown in proportion to the prison population.

Stop over-using the prison system.

Burlington Rep. Jason Lorber has done some great work on this.

www.friendsofjason.org

# Posted by:

Anonymous | 11:17 AM, February 21, 2007

On farm aid, Vermont dairy farmers should be added to the list of victims of globalization and the "race to the bottom." Milk prices today are at the same level they were 20 years ago. Even Wal-Mart workers get paid more today than they did in 1987. I'd certainly pay another 25 cents for a glass of milk if it meant that a farmer who is thinking of selling out stays in business for another year. The problem with state farm aid is that it will never be enough - there's no way the milk price will recover enough to help the farmers unless Congress substantially changes federal farm policy - granted, that will be easier this year, with a Democratic majority and Pat Leahy as #2 on the Senate Ag Committee. To me, the dairy aid program is a far higher priority than a lot of other things in the state budget.

I'll second the comment above that we need to take a hard look at corrections spending. A few days ago the Free Press reported that it costs the state an average of $46,000 a year to keep an inmate in prison. That's the cost of a top-tier Ivy League university. The Legislature, the judges, the Corrections Department all need to get together and re-examine policy about who gets sent to jail and why. As the poster above notes, Rep. Jason Lorber has done some good work on this issue. Take a look at his article "53 Voices on Corrections in Vermont" which can be downloaded from www.friendsofjason.org

# Posted by:

Anonymous | 11:28 AM, February 21, 2007

Here's an idea. The Douglas Adminstration should ditch its $100 million plan to relocate the State Hospital to the Fletcher Allen campus in Burlington and instead build a new facility in central Vermont for far less money. The savings could be plowed back into corrections, farm aid, whatever. Seems like a no brainer to this Vermont taxpayer.

# Posted by:

Anonymous | 12:35 PM, February 21, 2007

What we need to finance is training for farmers so they can get out of dairy and move to something else like organics, wine, meat, etc. We keep giving aid when legislation, supply/demand and corporate farms control milk price. The fact is that many dairy farms need to take a risk and jump to a different product.

Those that cannot make the adjustments, need to fold. Make no mistake, its a bad place to be as many farms are in the land use program that stipulates % of income and places a lien on property. That means in order to be in Land use, a certain percentage of your income and a certain amount per acre needs to be derived from farming. Developing the land requires that the lien be payed. So basically, the farmer is in deadlock. He can't make money in dairy, he can't sell without having to pay a large lien, and he can't take up carpentry (or whatever) without also risking his Land Use status.

The bottom line is that farmers must transition.

# Posted by:

Anonymous | 6:15 PM, February 21, 2007

If you got rid of income sensitivity, you would have a ton of spare dollars.

# Posted by:

Anonymous | 6:17 PM, February 21, 2007

Good idea for dairy farmers to transition to other types of agriculture, but the state needs to help them do that. For example, Vermont desperately needs more slaughterhouse capacity. The small number of slaughterhouses in the state require farmers to reserve time three or four months in advance. Beef farmers don't know three or four months in advance whether their animals will be ready for slaughter. Individual Vermonters, as well as consumers and restaurants down-country, will pay a premium price for grass-fed Vermont beef, but the state Ag Department needs to help beef farmers get their cattle slaughtered at the right time.

# Posted by:

Anonymous | 7:27 PM, February 21, 2007

What we need to finance is training for farmers so they can get out of dairy and move to something else like organics, wine, meat, etc

Like Hemp.

# Posted by:

Anonymous | 7:28 PM, February 21, 2007

"Like Hemp."

I actually chose not to mention that, so I wouldn't come off as too radical.

But now that its out, I completely agree.

Its amazing that we have such a hangup over and such a significant lobby against what is probably the most useful plant on earth. Production of hemp would solve many problems.

I agree on the slaughterhouse commentary and I actually know the owner of one of the few in Vermont and he's pretty much at capacity. I understand the problem. Its really a matter of cooler space. I can only imagine what type of permit hurdles it would take to build a bigger facility. One thing that might be worth investigating is the transport of newly slaughtered carcasses to other processing facilities for packaging. Perhaps grocery store meat facilities could be contracted to cut/wrap. The fed inspectors only need to be present for the slaughter, so perhaps the output of the slaughterhouses could be increased by using a pipeline that frees up slaughterhouse refridgeration space and uses parallel processing facilities. The actual slaughter is not the time consuming task, its the aging, cutting, and packaging.

BTW, its not all that uncommon for the farmer/beef raisers to actually come in and cut up their own meat after hours.

# Posted by:

Anonymous | 10:36 AM, February 22, 2007

Cut the Douglas administration's budget, so he has to stop spending all that $$ on PR to make himself look good. That's our $$ he's propping himself up with.

Won't pay for police but every little bit helps. And it would sure make me feel better.

# Posted by:

Anonymous | 10:36 AM, February 22, 2007

Juan Douglas say: "Mis ojos no vieron nada. La prensa es el mal. Soy un tipo agradable y esto es lo que es importante."

# Posted by:

Anonymous | 3:16 PM, February 22, 2007