Cashman, health care to dominate Statehouse
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By Darren M. Allen Vermont Press Bureau - Published: January 16, 2006
MONTPELIER — A controversial sentence that Chittenden County District Judge Edward Cashman handed down to a sex offender will be examined by a House committee this week as the fallout over the judge's decision continues to reverberate throughout the Statehouse.
The House Judiciary Committee's technical reason for consideration of the 60-days-to-10-year sentence for Mark Hulett is a pending resolution seeking Cashman's resignation. But the committee's chairman and ranking member made clear last week that lawmakers are going to use the time to reflect on more than just the appropriateness of the sentence.
"We need to give that careful consideration," said Rep. William Lippert, D-Hinesburg, the committee's chairman. "I don't like the sentence, but it is a complex sentence. And before we go and recommend impeachment or resignation, we need to go about this in a thoughtful way. Vermonters value an independent judiciary."
Last week, Republican lawmakers introduced a resolution calling on Cashman to resign. House Speaker Gaye Symington, D-Jericho, deflected immediate action on the resolution by sending it to the Judiciary Committee.
The governor — who has urged Cashman to resign — reported through his spokesman receiving more than 20,000 e-mails from around the country, including more than 1,000 from Vermont. With few exceptions, the communications were expressing negative opinions of the judge.
The committee does not expect to call Cashman to testify, although he has offered to go before the Senate Judiciary Committee. A transcript of the court hearing shows that Cashman did not make the controversial comment attributed to him that he no longer believed in punishment, rather that "punishment is not enough" in a sex-offender case such as Hulett's.
The ranking Republican on the House committee, Rep. Michael Kainen of Hartford, said that it would be a mistake to add fuel to the firestorm, which has been fed largely by what called inaccurate reporting and sensationalized headlines.
"I think that this has been misreported, not just by one national news organization but by the local press as well," Kainen said, referring in part to Fox News' coverage of the sentence and its aftermath. "It's based on a misunderstanding of the sentence or it is an attempt at sensationalizing the story."
The hearings will focus on the separation of the branches of government and on whether the Legislature should intervene outside of the regular retention hearings judges face to keep their seats.
They also will give lawmakers a chance to step away from the heat of what has become the most pitched political battle of the young legislative year, the speaker said.
"This makes it that much more important that we are disciplined and step back," Symington said. "It can become a distraction from the priorities of our work."
Those priorities, lawmakers say, include health care. And the Senate health care committee will continue working on a bill that seeks to carve out areas of agreement between the governor and legislative Democrats.
The administration last week gave its first detailed description of how much its so-called consensus health care provisions would cost. According to a spreadsheet distributed Friday by Sen. James Leddy, Douglas' plan would implement a toll-free phone line for $170,000 a year; spend $6.2 million a year on his chronic care-related initiatives called for in his "Blueprint for Health"; seek $5 million a year in increased reimbursements on Medicaid payments; and spend $15.4 million in premium reimbursements for insurance policies taken out by the working poor.
In all, his plan would cost an estimated $28.7 million; however, the administration predicts that its recently enacted global commitment Medicaid rescue plan would reduce that amount by $14.2 million.
The administration has not yet identified how it would pay for its health care proposals. Lawmakers, however, heard from Kenneth Thorpe, a consultant they hired, who offered some suggestions of where the extra revenue could be extracted.
Thorpe, a professor of health policy at Emory University, said the state could raise $54 million if it increased the sales tax to 7 percent; another $13 million by raising the meals and rooms tax to 10 percent and the alcohol tax to 11 percent; and another $51 million by expanding the sales tax to clothes, shoes, legal services, automobile repairs and computer services.
The governor is generally against raising new taxes to pay for health care.
Clues to where he expects to finance his health plan — and the remainder of the state's $4 billion annual tab — will come Tuesday when he addresses a joint meeting of the General Assembly to deliver his budget address.
It is expected to be heavy on education assistance, property tax reduction, health care expenditures and economic development, although the administration has been sparing with details.
Contact Darren Allen at darren.allen@timesargus.com
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