Good Day Great Northenders.
Well, depending upon how you count things, legislative week 5 (6) is in the books and the Pages, who are grouped into three annual “classes” have shifted to group #2. This session seems to be rolling along at a fairly fast clip.
In Committee, Gov Ops/Military Affairs, we devoted the first few weeks of our time to sorting out the foul up in the Bennington election-where voters on one side of a street (district border) got the wrong House ballots. When first discovered, the losing candidate filed a challenge, but the vote had already been certified. Further investigation revealed that the mistake had not been discovered for parts of two election cycles. Lesson learned: don’t put a dividing line down the center of a neighborhood street. The Secretary of State had jumped out early with a decision that a revote was necessary, only to find out that the decision on who got the Seat was Constitutionally mandated to the House of Representatives. So, the decision had to wait until we had reconvened and taken testimony-a LOT of testimony. Since ½ of one street voted in the wrong place, it also impacted the neighboring district where they SHOULD have voted-so the deeper we dug the bigger the hole got. Different opinions from varied experts, town clerks, constitutional scholars, candidates, etc., etc… led to no clear decision/direction so our decision was to make sure the problem was fixed for the next election and to seat the member who was determined to have won in the initial count. To redo would have meant we would have had to recreate election day. Some had moved out of the district, others had moved in, some didn’t vote at all (should they have a second chance)…..impossible to recreate. The House agreed with our recommendation and we moved on.
When I started this last night, we were fresh off of a joint House and Senate Gov Ops committee meeting held at the request of the Secretary of State’s office, pointing out that the Governor’s education plan would involve a significant change to the way Town Meeting elections for School Board would have to be administered. The Governor proposed a massive change to district administration-but was a LOT of HAT with very little HORSE under it-and a relatively short time frame to redraw district lines for the new structure with FAR fewer Schoolboards managing what would now be 5 basic districts. On top of that problem, and it is a significant one, I am not sure the Legislature is going to buy into such a radical change to governance-OR that existing districts are going to love what will amount to far less local control over where and how their kids get educated. Many folks are frankly saying that 5 is too few, but XXX is too many. Personally I am not sure that the personnel savings of fewer boards and administrators will actually save a significant amount of money. The Education committee is charged with that problem, my committee has to work on the election details. One wonders if the buggy is in front or behind the horse here.
I am getting a LOT of email lately from people who “say” they are constituents of our district, but have addresses from Brattleboro to Barton. All over the Convention of States/Article 5 Constitutional remake meeting that I have talked about before. It takes ⅔ of states to ask for it and ¾ to pass any changes that are proposed. (I think I have that right). So far a lot of states are considering it, but less than 20 have passed it….MOST from the Old South.
Any state can get an amendment to their own Constitution introduced, and via our Congressional representatives that same process can do it on the federal level to a great extent. Article V is pretty silent on what happens after the Convention is called-and I remain highly skeptical that the motivation is not to cut programs, give corporations more freedom to Drill Baby Drill in our national parks and go back to the Articles of Confederation where each state could decide who got to sit at the lunch counter or drink from the fountain. I personally will not be supporting such a wild card. It has been introduced in our Legislature this year.
As always, drop me a line at StateRepHooper@gmail.com if you have a question or suggestion. I will try to do another of these this week to spotlight the bills I have either introduced or find interesting. Heads UP!! Not everyone will agree with me….. but thanks for the opportunity to represent you in Montpelier…
Hoping your generous neighbor has a snowblower they really like using….
Hooper