When we talk about Vermont’s nearly $6 billion unfunded liability, most of us think about the teachers’ and state employees’ pensions. But these two giant liabilities only account for half of the state’s total unfunded liabilities. Where’s the other half?

           On January 5 Gov. Phil Scott delivered an upbeat State of the State message. He declared that though Vermont has many unmet needs  -  his leading example was a “desperate need for more people and workers.” - “anything is possible”.

A dozen years ago, a Vermont pension reform committee recommended that the state look into switching the way it structures its pension plans for new hires in the future.

The Department of Public Service has just released its 2022 Comprehensive Energy Plan (CEP). Aside from the “stakeholders”, it’s probably fair to say that very few Vermonters - and very few of their legislators – will be able to penetrate the CEP’s acronym-ridden complexities.

A key component of the Climate Action Plan just put forward by the Vermont Climate Council is a thing they’re calling “The Clean Heat Standard.” This is a convoluted scheme that is in practice a stealth tax on home heating oil, propane, natural gas, and kerosene that will drive up the costs of those products for consumers.

Imagine you have a mortgage. When you close on your house, the bank gives you a schedule of payments that you’ll have to make each month to pay down the principal and interest. After 15, or 20, or 30 years of fixed payments, the mortgage will be paid off.

When the Vermont House of Representatives returns in January, one of the first orders of business they will take up is a constitutional amendment called Proposal 5 (aka Article 22). Proposal 5 is being sold as a statewide protection for women’s rights guaranteed under Roe v. Wade. This isn’t an accurate portrayal of what Proposal 5 would do. In fact, Proposal 5 is a legal mess that no one on either side of the abortion debate should be okay with.

Since 2014 the climate change activists have created four public policy plans to achieve their objectives. Plan A – the carbon tax - bit the dust in 2018. Plan B –TCI – has just followed it into oblivion. Plan C is the Vermont Climate Council’s Climate Action Plan, avoiding a visible carbon tax (except for resuscitating TCI). When that fails, there’s Plan D: send the Conservation Law Foundation into court to sue the State for not shackling Vermonters with Plan C fast enough.

The airwaves are awash with frenzied reports about the terrors of the imminent climate crisis. Could we calm down a minute and get a grip on the subject?

In his recent commentary, Secretary of State Jim Condos decried election disinformation’s potential to create distrust in our electoral process. Despite touting the “gold standard voter-marked paper ballot we use in Vermont,” Condos has done much to encourage such distrust in our electoral process while dismissing the importance of a free press in supporting free elections.