Did Symington gain special treatment for Intervale?
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By Rob Roper - Published: October 12, 2007
Speaker of the House Gaye Symington has made it clear that environmental legislation and campaign finance legislation will be top priorities when the Legislature reconvenes in January. The recent controversy surrounding Symington and her employer, Intervale Center, relates directly to the speaker's credibility on both of these issues.
The Times Argus editorial page tried to dismiss the environmental violations at Intervale as "silly" and a "recent dust-up," and did its best to distance Speaker Symington from the environmental harm the center is allegedly responsible for. "Few are going to view Symington's role as a fund-raiser for the project as somehow laying on her shoulders the responsibility of monitoring its compost" (editorial, Oct. 2). This casual dismissal is not justified by the facts.
First, Speaker Symington's job at Intervale Center is not just fund raising. Her job also entails completing annual reports and "being a public voice for the nonprofit Intervale Center" (AP, Sept. 27). Given this official communications and PR role, Symington should be fully aware of and up to date on all the major issues and aspects of the organization's activities. For the "public voice" of Intervale to pose as ignorant about a matter that threatens to terminate the center's very existence is disingenuous at best. What's more, Intervale's problems are not recent, as the editorial implies, but have been going on for years.
The charges by the Agency of Natural Resources that hit the papers last week were not the first warnings, but rather the last straw for Intervale. A letter to Intervale from the Department of Environmental Conservation dated Sept. 24 notes a failure to comply with the conditions of its solid waste management certification going back to 2002. A second letter notes that Intervale was warned in writing by ANR of specific violations in February 2007, and Intervale was given until July 15, 2007, to comply. Intervale didn't comply, and this is what's so disturbing.
If Intervale had just learned of the environmental hazards it created and promised with good faith to fix them, pointing to the speaker's involvement would, indeed, have been cheap political mud-slinging. But that's not what happened. The speaker of the House is the "public voice" for an organization that has failed to "meet the necessary standards to ensure the protection of human health and the environment," that knew about the problems for years and then months, and did not take action to fix the problems in a timely fashion. This is hardly silly. That Vermonters now risk losing what is a wonderful resource in the Intervale as a result of mismanagement and long-standing inaction is tragic.
Perhaps more troubling than the speaker's role as a spokesperson for Intervale is her role as a fund-raiser. In 2006 the Burlington Electric Department decided to sell 179 acres of land to Intervale in what many Burlington residents decried at the time as a sweetheart, no-bid deal at significantly reduced price. The Burlington City Council (then headed by Vermont Democratic Party Chairman Ian Carleton, who received a $2,500 donation to the Vermont Democrats from Intervale's honorary founding member, Will Raap, just days before the council first took up the land deal issue) voted to approve the low sale price of the property on Oct. 23, 2006.
But even at 50 to 80 percent off (depending on whom you ask), Intervale would need $200,000 to cover the cost. Where would they get it? The answer was a $220,500 grant from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board.
The VCHB is dependent upon the Legislature for its budget. Back in November 2006, Vermont Business Magazine noted that "allocations for the board were increased through the actions of the Democratic-controlled Legislature" (Vermont Business Magazine, Sept. 1, 2006). Who controls the Democratic-controlled Legislature? Speaker of the House Gaye Symington.
It is a legitimate question for Vermonters to ask (and have answered) if it is ethical or a conflict of interest for the speaker of the House to be intimately involved in both sides of a deal that transfers taxpayer dollars to a company that pays Symington a salary to fund-raise.
If the Herald thinks I've earned a "jab" for raising these issues, I'll accept that as coming with the territory. However, Speaker has earned some hard questions about whether the company she works for has received special treatment in any way. As a public official, that should come with her territory.
Rob Roper is chairman of the Vermont Republican State Committee.
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