Vermont governor begins final term

MONTPELIER — When the Legislature reconvenes for the 2010 session, Gov. Jim Douglas will ask lawmakers to put constraints on how much local school districts can spend. If that sounds like a familiar idea, it is.

Douglas has 12 months left in office, a time when he said he will focus on balancing the most difficult state budget he’s faced and push some familiar proposals left hanging.
Legislators must go back to the future

“It’s business as usual,” said Douglas, who announced in August that he would not seek re-election this year. “I’ll try as hard as I ever have to position Vermont for success.”

Those who know Douglas say Vermonters should not expect any changes in Douglas just because he’s on his way out. There will be no playing the part of lame duck, no letting up on a Legislature that more often than not irritates him, no sudden new side of Douglas that Vermonters had not seen in these past seven years as governor.

“I’ve never seen him change his style at all,” said Sen. Richard Mazza, D-Grand Isle/Chittenden, who was first elected to the Legislature in 1972, the same year as Douglas. “I suspect this year he will be just as determined and just as focused as in past years.”

“The hallmark of Jim Douglas’ public service has been consistency,” echoed Tom Torti, executive director of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce, who was buildings commissioner and secretary of natural resources for Douglas.

What will be different for Douglas this year is that he faces the largest budget gap of his career. If that makes his last year in office his toughest, he’ll be right in step with his predecessors.

“Every governor I have known or studied in the past 40 years except for one had a tough last year in office,” said Chris Graff, longtime former Vermont bureau chief for The Associated Press. (That one exception, he said, was Deane Davis).

In his first inaugural address in 2003, Douglas promised a stringent budget that would slow the growth of government and help pull the state out of recession. He called for changes to Vermont’s education-funding system. He said technology must help make government more efficient.

His State of the State address for 2010 likely will sound quite similar, except this recession towers over that of 2003. Douglas said he will again propose some of the same ideas lawmakers rejected in past years: controls on education spending, opportunity zones for economic development, urban homesteading incentives for downtown redevelopment.

“Just because they reject something doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea,” Douglas said. “If I feel it’s the right thing to do to move this economy forward, I’m going to do it.”

This see-saw relationship with the Legislature — in which he proposes, they reject — has characterized much of Douglas’ tenure as governor. For six of his eight years the Republican will have faced a Legislature controlled by Democrats, and which has leaned more liberal with each of his terms in office. That was never more apparent than last year, when the Legislature overrode his vetoes of the budget and of same-sex marriage.

Douglas can chalk up a list of accomplishments from his time in office. He points to Vermont’s relatively healthy finances compared with other states; its relatively low unemployment rate; a series of health-care initiatives that have provided coverage for more Vermonters, given the state more flexibility on use of federal money and helped treat chronic illnesses; a ramped-up effort to clean up Lake Champlain; a drug deterrence program.

Still, as Douglas heads into the stretch run, a fair number of proposals he has made have not reached fruition.

The Circumferential Highway has not been built. Vermont continues to come in near the top on tax burden, and near the bottom on growth even though Douglas campaigned on a promise of jobs. He promised an e-state by the end of 2010, but broadband likely will not stretch border to border when he leaves at the start of 2011. His Lake Champlain cleanup effort did not meet the 2009 goal he set.

The education-funding system he has railed against has been modified but not fixed to his liking. He and the Legislature streamlined the environmental permitting process in 2004, but it remains a source of frustration for Douglas. The future of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant remains unsettled.

Douglas contended that most of those efforts are farther along than they would be because of his work on them. On the e-state proposal, he said, “If I didn’t establish some aggressive goals we wouldn’t be moving along as well as we are.”

On education financing, he called modifications made in recent years progress. “We’ll keep at it,” he said.

Although lawmakers rejected his proposed spending cap for local schools last year and said it would end up simply increasing local property taxes, Douglas contended this year should be different.

“I think it’s going to be easier this year because of the fiscal pressure that the state is facing,” he said.

What would matter most to Douglas to accomplish before he leaves office is the state’s economic stability, said Betsy Bishop, president of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce and former deputy chief of staff and economic development commissioner for Douglas.

“I think the governor is going to play the role of making sure the budget is in good shape when he leaves office,” she said.

Douglas’ critics would argue he has plenty left to do before he leaves office.

“When the governor came in eight years ago, his slogan was ‘Jim equals jobs.’ That hasn’t happened,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Shumlin, D-Windham, one of six candidates vying to replace Douglas. “I think he’s going to want to focus on working with us to make sure that slogan matches reality.”

Will Patten, executive director of the liberal Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, said he wants Douglas to stop criticizing Vermont’s business climate and work with business to solve problems such as health care and lack of infrastructure. “Stop broadcasting to Vermont and beyond that we are a bad place to do business. Our 1,100 members certainly don’t feel that way,” Patten said.

Douglas argued he has to sound the warning bell.

“I have to be on the one hand the cheerleader-in-chief for our state to encourage young people to stay here and be part of our future and to encourage employers to come and grow,” he said. “But in the forum of public policy debate, I think it’s my responsibility to point out areas where we need to improve.”

There’s one thing Patten said he knows not to ask Douglas for in 2010, given the recession and a projected $150 million budget deficit: “It’s stupid to ask him to do anything that would cost money.”

That economic reality means Douglas’ last year in office will not be a breeze, but Graff noted that’s often the way it’s gone for governors.

“Tom Salmon had a horrendous last year: He was running for the U.S. Senate at the time and faced a recession, high unemployment and an energy crisis,” Graff said “Dick Snelling had a tough final year in 1984: The raid on Island Pond happened in June, plus he was facing a budget deficit.”

Gov. Howard Dean, Douglas’ immediate predecessor, was scouting out a presidential run as he wrapped up his governorship. “In the first four months of 2002, Dean was gone half the time,” Graff said. “And he didn’t make things any better when he would show up. While his staff thought they were negotiating through the budget troubles, Dean would then drop by and blow things up.”

Douglas, he said, actually might fare better. “Gov. Douglas is in a stronger position than most of the last four or so governors: He is still held in high regard by many Vermonters, and he is not seeking higher office, so his focus is on the state,” Graff said.

Graff argued that when it comes down to it, governors aren’t remembered for that tough last year in office, or for whether they checked off the laundry list of items they promised. “I don’t think he has anything to prove,” Graff said of Douglas.