Is Gov. Douglas Green or Greenwashed?

A national green directory has named Gov. Jim Douglas one of the top 10 "greenest" governors, an honor some in Vermont claim verges on "greenwashing."

Greenopia recently ranked all 50 governors. Topping the list is Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado, followed closely by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California.

The entire ranking results are available at 50 Greenest Governors.

Douglas is ranked eighth, just ahead of Govs. Jon Corzine of New Jersey and Jodi Rell of Connecticut.

“We looked at all 50 governors in the U.S. and compared their policies, transparency, and interest group ratings and ranked them. It was a monumental task," says Doug Mazeffa, Greenopia's director of research. "People want to know which governors are the eco-leaders or laggards, and especially identify those making repeated eco-gaffes.”

However, Greenopia notes in its profile of Douglas that "we were unable to find any scores from environmental interest groups."

I guess a phone call to any one of the state's handful of environmental groups was not in the budget.

Comments posted to both Douglas' individual profile and the main article are less than flattering. Several readers question the group's methodology — and sanity — citing Douglas' opposition to renewable energy development, permission of ATVs on state land, and lack of progress on cleaning up Lake Champlain as examples of his environmentally unfriendly policies.

Greenopia recognized Douglas for undertaking “several programs to make Vermont greener. These include the Clean and Clear Water Action Plan, Biofuel initiatives, and programs aimed at making the state government greener. Vermont also has tax incentives in place to help consumers and businesses go green."

The site also says, "Vermont has always been on the forefront of environmental legislation and its governor, Jim Douglas, is no exception."

While it may make his detractors green with envy, Douglas is happy to accept the honor.

“As the greenest state in the country, Vermont is leading the nation when it comes to setting environmental standards. I believe it is important that we do all we can to keep the Green Mountains green," says Douglas in a statement. “As governor, I will continue to do all I can to advance our efforts to clean up impaired waterways, reduce our carbon footprint with tough automobile emissions standards and encourage green jobs in our state."

Wonks of the World: Unite!

Just in time for Independence Day and the spate of Tea Parties around Vermont, two public policy groups joined forces to create a website that gives citizens an inside look at how and where their tax dollars are spent.

It was more than a year in the works, but the left-leaning Public Assets Institute and the Libertarian-leaning Ethan Allen Institute launched Vermont Transparency on Thursday. 

"There wasn't an inch of difference between us," notes Jack Hoffman, senior analyst at PAI. "We both understand the importance of having good information and good data for the public. The collaboration has been terrific."

John McClaughry, president and founder of EAI, concurs.

“Neither of us ruled anything out the other wanted to include,” said McClaughry. "This is really straightforward and factual information."

Policy wonks as well as professional and citizen journalists will find it easy to dive more deeply into the nitty-gritty of state revenues and spending, both current and historical. The site also lets you find out what state employees earn: You can search by job title or an individual's name.

Visitors will also find links to federal stimulus spending, state economic development credits, rainy day funds, school district spending and outcomes, and municipal web pages.

Within the next week or two, people will also be able to search state payments to vendors and delve into budget details from 20 years ago.

Adventures in Queuing — the Lift Opening

Disclaimer: For my entire life, I have refused to wait in line to get into a club or bar, no matter how hot the venue. I don’t care if Jesus himself was cutting a rug inside; I ain’t waiting outside. I would rather swallow a jar full of bees than wait in a line outside a club. That’s how much I don’t want to wait.

So last night I waited in line outside of Lift, a club by cRAIG mITCHELL.  Without a doubt, this had to be the most anticipated club opening in Burlington since... um, I don’t know what. Let’s just say that Lift is the Bluebird Tavern of clubs — there’s a huge amount of hype surrounding it. Warranted or not, people wanted to get in here.

Let’s back up a bit. Lift, for those of you who aren’t dedicated club kids, is a new venture started by turntablist of some renown Craig Mitchell, who used to spin the decks in Burlington a few years ago before he became rich and famous and left the Green Mountains. The club is occupying the space left vacant by the former Second Floor, the college ghetto of clubs. People who pay attention to the downtown Burlington scene have been waiting for something to happen to that space. And now something has.

Another Celebrity Death!

After a short illness, Uma Thurman has passed away.

I should clarify that this Uma was a resident of our office aquarium — a white Angel Fish. She was very outgoing and friendly, and quite beautiful. I wish I had a photo of her to share, but alas, that is not the case. Instead, here is a photo of her final resting place —  in a flower bed outside the office window.

Rest in peace, Uma.

Mazza Fields...Forever?

Last Thursday was close to unbearable as far as the office life goes, with unbelievable clear blue skies making an appearance and air of 80-plus degrees Fahrenheit. A true Vermont summer day. Needless to say, the Seven Days intern squad reacted with glee when tasked with undertaking a strawberry-picking adventure at Mazza Farms. We jumped into a couple cars and made the 15-minute drive through Winooski and out to Colchester, where Mazza can be found on Lavigne Road.

Mazza’s Farmers Market is only the gateway to the road to the strawberry fields, where families and veterans were picking clean rows upon rows of strawberry plants. We were told the best berries were in the northern region of the field. On the way, we met up with a couple of happy faces who were able to tell us a little more about the spirit of the fields (check out the video). We all learned something during our trek, especially regarding mutant fruit.

The intern crew was able to grab three quarts of their own strawberries to take home for under eight bucks. The dankness. We also stopped in to the farmers market before leaving and found some beverages and eats made locally that none of us had ever heard of. Some taste testing confirmed the trip as well worth a Thursday afternoon. When the next perfect summer day shows up, head north to Sam Mazza’s Farm and start picking.

 

Bulldog vs. The Flyboy?

State Sen. Ed Flanagan (D-Chittenden) dispensed with the rumors and made it official Wednesday: He's running for lieutenant governor.

Flanagan, now in his fourth term as senator, served four terms as state auditor where he earned the nickname "bulldog" for his ability to hold accountable the administration of fellow Democrat Gov. Howard Dean. 

Rumors of Flanagan's potential bid to unseat Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie first surfaced on the Democratic activist blog Green Mountain Daily.

When I followed up directly on the GMD rumors with Flanagan for my "Fair Game" column, he chuckled and sidestepped the question. "Right now I’m just trying to absorb all these rumors, and find out who started them."

He then added, “I have no plan now to run for lieutenant governor.”

Didn't take him long to change his plans. Guess he was just being coy.

I wonder if the rough portrait Seven Days painted of Flanagan's competence as a lawmaker had anything to do with his circumspection? He was a bit more direct with Nancy Remsen at the Burlington Free Press in a post on the paper's political blog vtbuzz.

Rep. Floyd Nease (D-Johnson), the House majority leader, has been openly exploring a bid for the lite-guv post. The 2008 challenger, former Rep. Tom Costello and Chittenden County State’s Attorney T.J. Donovan are also mulling runs.

What I wonder is this: Is Flanagan's bid serious or is it just a way for him to bow out gracefully from the political stage?

Dubie's mum on his plans for 2010, but it's still early. Besides, rumors of Dubie not running for re-election always surface around this time in the election cycle. May be wishful thinking on the part of Democrats.

"The campaign season starts next year, not now. Its too early. People are not interested in non-stop campaigning. When the time is right to announce my intentions, I will," Dubie said. "Right now I am focused on doing the job Vermonters elected me to do."

On Wednesday that job took him to French Guiana where he watched a TerreStar satellite launched into orbit. The satellite is designed to improve AT&T mobile phone service in Vermont, as well as bring high-speed Internet services to the Northeast Kingdom.

Now, that's quite a photo-op, eh?

PS: To those hard-working volunteer bloggers at Green Mountain Daily, let me be clear: I didn't call you liars. If I thought you were liars, I wouldn't have even cited you as a source of the original rumors. My comment had more to do with the pols than with you. I thought I was being diplomatic by giving you cred for having this info first. Since my days at the Vermont Guardian, I've given credit where credit is due in the blogosphere and have given plenty of props to GMD and other sites. Life's too short, folks, and there are bigger battles to wage.

Photo by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur.

A Pay Phone, You Say? Why, Whatever is That?

Today, I saw the most extraordinary sight. I wish I had my camera with me so I could have taken a picture. Surely, no one will believe what I'm about to write.

In the middle of the afternoon, as I drove along Main Street in Burlington, I saw someone feeding quarters into a pay phone. Yes, a pay phone. One of those telephones with a cord that require the user insert quarters in order to make a call. They are often covered in bad graffiti, fossilized chewing gum and dried spit.

Now, needless to say, I was fairly shocked by the sight of this youngish man at the phone booth. I thought pay phones had assumed their place in the pantheon of technological relics occupied by things like the phonograph, the telex machine and the dot matrix printer. Everyone from gum-snapping tweens to denture-wearing grannies has cell phones these days, effectively rendering the utilitarian pay phone obsolete.

But clearly, I was wrong. This fellow, dutifully pushing his coins into the slot, proved that I am not as smart as I make myself out to be. So everyone doesn't have a cell phone, apparently. Some people communicate the old-fashioned way — standing in one place, in a spit-stained booth, pressing a receiver to their ear that about 10,000 other people have also had pressed to their ears.

Surprisingly, this fellow's act of using quarters to make a call stirred some feelings of nostalgia in me that I hadn't felt since the last time I saw someone jamming out with a Walkman, which was many years ago. I was reminded of a time when I used to have to call my parents for a ride after basketball practice in middle school. I would root around my gym bag for some spare change and then sidle up to the pay phone and punch in my home phone number, hoping to god my parents were home and would agree to come fetch me. It was more often the case that I had just spent my last bits of change on a Mountain Dew and a Ding Dong from the school vending machine and I had to call my folks collect. They would pretend to the operator that they didn't know who I was and then grudgingly accept the call. I would beg them to pick me up and they would yell at me for calling them collect. Ahhh, memories.

Anyway, the other day, while doing very important journalism, I found myself in need of a pay phone. I was in Enosburg, where cell reception was equivalent to what one might find on the moon, and I was lost. I needed to call the fellow I was meant to meet and tell him that I had lost my way and that I needed directions to his house. After cursing out my BlackBerry's crap reception and causing something of a scene in a gas station parking lot, I looked around for a pay phone. After finding none, I popped into the mini-mart attached to the gas station and asked the teenager behind the counter if there was a pay phone nearby.

She was like, "A what?,"  hardly containing her disdain for me having so rudely asked her a question while she was prattling to her friend behind the counter about her previous night's dalliances.

And I was all like, "Uh, a pay phone. The kind that has a cord and you put coins in it to make a call and the booths are covered in spit."

She said they didn't have one at the gas station and she didn't know where I might find one. But kindly, she did allow me to use the mini-mart's landline, as long as I was making a local call. I was, I said, and thanked her for being a gem. I got directions, the old-fashioned way — by asking for them — and off I trotted.

The point of this whole post, and yes there is a small nugget of a point, is that pay phones are the technological dinosaur of our age. This is not news to anyone. But that there is still a need for them, well, that's heartening. It makes me a little misty to think it.        

Fletcher Allen Nurses, Hospital to Sign Union Contract

The Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (VFNHP) and Fletcher Allen Heath Care administrators are expected to sign a new, three-year contract this week.

The deal comes after months of bargaining between the two sides, and after a successful union drive by tech workers. That group of employees voted 160-87 last Thursday night to join the union, which now represents RNs, LPNs and technical professionals at Fletcher Allen.

“We are pleased to settle this agreement which preserves the gains we have made for nurses and patient care," said Jen Henry, VFNHP president. "We welcome our new technical professional members and look forward to continuing our work with the hospital administration to provide the highest-quality patient care.”

One of the key aspects of the negotiations is an agreement that respects Fletcher Allen employees' right to make an informed decision whether or not to join a union, according to the union. The agreement provides for a quick and fair secret ballot, conducted by the National Labor Relations Board, and contains specific rules of conduct for both parties.

Negotiations with the tech professionals will begin soon, said union officials.

"We joined the VFNHP so that we can work with the nurses and the hospital to ensure respect for the employees and quality care for our patients," said Chris Gonyeau, a respiratory therapist.

Other aspects of the agreement include a preservation of the wage scale and wage step increases for RNs and LPNs and reduced cost to insured employees when they use Fletcher Allen services, among other agreements related to continuing improvement of patient care.

Fletcher Allen recently implemented a new electronic health-care records management system.

The Gray Lady Notices South Burlington's Field of Dreams

The New York Times' business section ran a nice piece on South Village, a 22-acre housing development in South Burlington that's preserving prime Vermont farmland by keeping it in food production. One interesting aspect about the Times article: Its lead borrows a theme from Aimee Picchi's feature on South Village, which ran in the May 13 issue of Seven Days. 

Aimee's subhead: "If you build a development with its own farm, will they come?"

Alec Appelbaum's lead: "The bewildered Iowan who converted his farm into a ballpark in 'Field of Dreams' in 1989 might reverse the move today. From Vermont to central California, developers are creating subdivisions around organic farms to attract buyers. If you plant it, these developers believe, they will buy."

Guess there are only so many "field" analogies to go around.

Photo by Andy Duback.

Court Says No to Barre's Sex-Offender Residency Restrictions

A Washington Superior Court judge has ordered the city of Barre not to enforce an ordinance that limits where sex offenders may live, WPTZ is reporting.

A preliminary injunction was issued this morning by Judge Helen Toor, which stopped the city from forcing a 29-year-old convicted sex offender from vacating his current residence. The offender, Chris Hagan (pictured, with wife Amy), was convicted of lewd and lascivious behavior with a 15 year old when he was 18.

Sally West Johnson profiled Hagan in the June 17 issue of Seven Days. As she points out in her story:

"No Easy Answers," a report published by Human Rights Watch in 2007, takes issue with the notion that imposing residency restrictions can prevent sex crimes. In fact, the authors argue, "among laws targeting sex offenders living in the community, residency restrictions may be the harshest as well as the most arbitrary. The laws can banish registrants from their already established homes, keep them from living with their families, and make entire towns off-limits to them, forcing them to live in isolated rural areas."

Photo by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur.

Best Bites: Duke's Creemees

160 River Street, Route 7, Milton, 309-3179160 River Street, Route 7, Milton, 309-3179

I eat out a lot, and I also happen to live with a man who wants to go out for ice cream every night. That combination leads to a certain amount of malaise. Chocolate and vanilla creemees just don't cut it anymore. We need our soft-serve to be bigger, brighter, crazier. That’s why we make the trip to Milton, where we can get our frozen ya-yas out at Duke’s Creemees.

You might not spot it with a perfunctory drive-by — there's no sign. Look for Scales & Tails pet shop, then look at that tiny window with the picture of a creemee in front of it. Bingo.

On my last visit, I went with the delightfully pink Strawberry-almond creemee. It’s one of six strawberry varieties on the menu, from strawberry banana to strawberry colada. Of course, the selections aren’t all straight from the patch. There are 79 flavors, which come in only one very large size, and at one ridiculously low price — $1.90.

My all-time favorite is the Mint Chocolate Chip, a bracing mixture filled with tiny chips. That’s right – a creemee with chunks. You can get a cone of Chocolate Butterfinger or Oreo Mint with a smooth creemee texture. None of that Blizzard business for us.

I’m not crazy for candy, so my short list includes unique flavors such as Black Forest, Banana Rocky Road and Cocoa Kahlua. Care to join me for a cone of Blueberry Cheesecake?

Monday Evening Missile Launch Protest

Gotta hand it to the dedicated souls in Vermont's peace movement. On Monday evening, from 5 to 6 p.m., members of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom are going ahead with a scheduled demonstration to protest the U.S. government's test launch of a Minuteman III missile, Vermont rain be damned.

Beginning at the downtown Burlington offices of Rep. Peter Welch, the group will make their way to Senator Leahy's office, then up to Bernie's pad on the top of Church Street to voice their outrage over the fact idea the U.S military needs to see if these nuclear bottle rockets still work.

As someone who's had the privilege — if you can call it that — of climbing down into the silo and launch facility of an actual Minuteman III missile at Malmstrom Air Force Base in northern Montana, I can assure you, these are some scary WMDs. Back in 2000, after a four-month background check, I was granted permission to interview U.S. Air Force missileers who sit in a hole in the ground 24 hours each day waiting to turn the key that blows up the world. Talk about hours of utter boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. They have to figure out if the codes coming into them all day are just practice war games or the actual judgment day.

One of my favorite parts of the story, which I wrote for the alt-weekly, Missoula Independent, was asking a female missileer how she explained the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction to her 5- and 6-year-old daughters. And you thought summarizing your job description on a resumé was tough.

Rainbow Redesign

I stumbled across the radio program, Studio 360 while driving yesterday. The show's topic for the week — 40 years after Stonewall, where is gay culture today? Though I managed to miss most of the other segments dedicated to this particular topic, one really caught my eye. Er, ears. It asked what the rainbow flag, originally designed in 1978 as a symbol of gay pride, would be like if designed today. To help them with the challenge, Studio 360 solicited the help of the design firm, Worldstudio.

Whether or not you feel the gay flag should be redesigned is, of course, another important topic of discussion. But even if you think the flag is just fine the way it is, take a gander at what Worldstudio came up with HERE. At the very least, it's fascinating (or at least it is to us designer nerds) to watch the process of identity and branding evolve. This is no doubt a challenging but exciting project for any design firm!

One of my favorites: the "pink" American flag. Yeah baby! Click here to see the results and vote for your favorites.

Chew-Chew Drain

I love arcades. Whenever my weekend is clogged with butchering animals and visiting snack bars in the Northeast Kingdom, it's a given that I will be in Montreal, playing Street Fighter IV against far more adept Asian teenagers. Once a year, I look forward to the day that I can go to the food arcade — the Green Mountain Chew-Chew Food and Music Fest.

It's not that the food is uniformly great. It's not. It's all about atmosphere. The air is thick with smoky tastes and crowded with bodies — of a stunning variety of shapes and sizes — in pursuit of it. We have tokens (nine for $5), and we will use them. 

This year, the atmosphere is also pervaded with a certain desperation. Many folks arrived aware that this is their last time to nosh. Others realize only as they see T-shirts for sale — with a picture of a mustachioed conductor and the legend "Last Supper" — that after 24 years, this is the final Chew-Chew.

The word choice rings uncomfortably true at my first stop, The Dismas House's table. Its namesake, the criminal crucified next to Jesus who repented before death, suggests a darkness completely absent from the reformed criminals' delightful lime and butter-drenched grilled corn (three tokens) and squeezed-to-order lemonade (four). The nectar has long been one of my Chew-Chew favorites, very much like an awesome Vietnamese lemonade — bobbing sugar crystals and all.

My boyfriend James picks up a Sweet Italian sausage from Kevin's Wicked Mountain Dogs (four) and a plate of Pork Backribs with Smoky BBQ sauce from the Missisquoi Valley Lions Club. At just three tokens for what appears to be about a quarter rack, this is one of the best deals of the day.

I grab a cardboard tray of the bemusingly named "New York City Chicken & Rice" (four) at Amir's Kebab. I've had his eponymous dish and am in search of something new. A few lanes over, I grab a Cuban panino (three) at the Price Chopper Supermarkets stand. It's a large half sandwich stuffed with thinly sliced pork, a mild pickle sliced lengthwise and an herbed mayo.

Ready for dessert, we press on. For just two tokens, Sam Mazza's Farm is doling out moist and cinnamony cider donuts. I try their strawberry shortcake, too (four). At New Moon Cafe they've got soft raspberry scones (two), which immediately convert me, Dismas-like, from a scone-hater. I will be back to their shop for more. Their chocolate chip cookies (two for three tokens) ooze with gooey dark chocolate.
James hits the T-shirt stand for a $5 bask in 2005 nostalgia. This year's fashion is $15, but duds going as far back as 1996 are a third the price.

Rumors are circulating around the Chew-Chew track that this is not really the end of the festival — more a finale of the format. A reliable source hints that next year, the event may be reborn as a barbecue fest. I can hardly wait to buy my tokens.

Comcast Completes Audit of RETN Finances

A long-awaited review of Regional Educational Technology Network's finances by telecom giant Comcast is complete, with no major findings of irregularity or a need to probe further.

That's good news for RETN officials, who have feared that Comcast would try to exert undue and unprecedented oversight on its day-to-day operations. Comcast disagrees with what RETN and other public-access channels spend on certain equipment and programming. The company currently has a petition before state regulators.

The two sides, which have been locked in tough negotiations for more than a year, have also agreed in the past 24 hours to attempt to resolve their disputes by meeting face to face, said Scott Campitelli, RETN’s executive director. The first negotiation will take place on July 2.

"We're hopeful a negotiated settlement can be reached," Campitelli told Seven Days.

Ready for a Roundup on the Winooski River?

On June 24, Brian Tokar wrote this interesting post for the Green Mountain Daily about the expanding practice of planting "Roundup Ready" (i.e., genetically engineered) corn along the Winooski River between Plainfield and East Montpelier. Brian noted a recent study showing that the chemicals in the Monsanto herbicide Roundup are lethal to amphibians at low doses. Monsanto, it seems, is not a fan of the GEICO gecko.

But, as Environmental Health News also reported last week, a so-called "inert" chemical in Monsanto's chemical weed whacker has been shown to kill human cells, too, especially embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells. You know, like the ones that are so promising in stem cell research? Like the ones keeping my 7-and-a-half-month-old unborn child alive? Yeah, those cells. As EHN's Crystal Gammon reports, nearly 4000 such inert chemicals are approved for use by the EPA. One researcher called the toxicity findings "astonishing." "Pretty fucked up" is more like it.

I know the P in "EPA" stands for Protection, but who exactly are they protecting?

The King of Pop, Charlie's Angel and the Big Bad Media Complex

By now, no doubt everyone has heard of today's dual celebrity deaths. Michael Jackson died of suspected cardiac arrest at 50 years old and Farrah Fawcett succumbed to cancer at age 62. You'd have to be living in a cave or the Arctic Circle not to have heard the news. The national media had been talking for days of Fawcett's imminent demise, so her death was less of a shock then Jackson's, but no less sad. What does this have to do with Vermont? Nothing, but it's likely to be the main topic of conversation at offices and neighborhood baseball fields and weekend barbecues for a good while. 

I imagine today will be much like the day that JFK was assassinated, Princess Diana died in a car accident or the planes hit the Twin Towers — everyone will remember where they were when they heard the news that the King of Pop was dead. I was sitting in Uncommon Grounds, writing a story for next week's Seven Days, when I took a break to check the headlines and saw that Michael Jackson had suffered a heart attack. Shortly after that, news spread around the café that the Los Angeles Times was reporting that Jackson died at around 2:30 p.m. PST at UCLA Medical Center.

It's an odd thing how a major news event can make casual acquaintances out of complete strangers. Since I had my computer open, I was the de facto disseminator of information. I read the preliminary reports from NPR, MSNBC and the L.A. Times out loud as my fellow patrons sipped their soy lattes. My friend who was with me at the time is a cardiologist and wondered aloud how a seemingly healthy man like Jackson could have died from cardiac arrest, which apparently is not the same thing as a heart attack. What were his risk factors; was he ill; were there drugs involved? Everyone around us was speculating as well.

To get an in-depth account of what had happened, or at least something longer than a sentence or two, I tried to get on the L.A. Times website, but it was jammed full of people trying to do the same thing. It was refreshing to see that when an event of huge national and international interest happens, people still seek out the newspaper, albeit online, for confirmation and analysis. As a former daily newspaper reporter who still loves that medium, I am grateful for that.

Not a half an hour after Jackson died, NPR posted a massive obituary written by national arts correspondent Neda Ulaby. Obviously they had that one in the can for a while. Not everyone might know this, but major media organizations keep files upon files of obits written pre-death for politicians, celebrities and other people of some import.  These obits periodically get updated so they're ready in the event of an untimely death, such as Jackson's.

I've just finished watching Martin Bashir's "Nightline" special report on Jackson's death and I'm in the middle of the Barbara Walters' "20/20" special on Farrah Fawcett's life, filmed just days before she died. It's amazing that these shows can get pulled together as quickly as they are.  The first show aired at 9 p.m. EST, giving the producers less than four hours to string together an hour-long program. It is impressive to say the least.

Traditional media weren't the only ones working overtime on this. As soon as Jackson's death was reported, Twitter was ablaze with people posting about it. Links were flying around and people were asking if the news was indeed true. There wasn't one Twitter post on my Tweet Deck that wasn't about Jackson. The site was so jammed with people posting about the same event that it was tough to get on it. It was then that I realized just how many people are using the micro-blogging site to get news and information, for better or for worse.

Still, when I think about getting accurate, timely information about something as captivating as Jackson's death, my first bet is always traditional media. No blogger, no tweeter, no citizen journalist can give the depth of coverage needed and wanted. I might be biased, since I ply my trade in written words that are more than 140 characters long. But it's a bias I'll happily cop to.

How have you found the coverage of these two Hollywood deaths to be? Or do you even care? I'd be interested to know.  

Judge to Release Records of Fired City Manager

Roughly one year after Burlington officials put the city's waterfront manager on paid leave during a wide-ranging investigation, a Superior Court judge is scheduled to release documents detailing the probe that led to his suspension and eventual termination.

In two weeks, Superior Court Judge Dennis Pearson will release most of the documents related to the ongoing fracas involving waterfront manager Adam Cate, the city's Parks & Recreation Commission, Parks & Recreation Director Wayne Gross, Mayor Bob Kiss and Chief Administrative Officer Jonathan Leopold and his assistant Ben Pacy.

William Rasch, a union steward within the Parks Department, took the city to court earlier this year after the city denied him access to some documents related to the Cate investigation. Leaked versions of the commission's investigation, which largely appeared to clear Cate and put the blame on the Kiss administration, found their way into the Burlington Free Press.

“Based upon published accounts based upon a leaked copy of the Park Commission’s findings, conclusions, and decision the Parks Commission whitewashed Mr. Cate’s wrongdoing, even though it was admitted, because it furthered the parochial interests of the department in a dispute with City Hall,” argued Rasch's attorney John Franco in his brief to the court earlier this year.

Pearson agreed with Franco, noting that only a near-complete release of the records in question can clear the air. Pearson said he did redact some information from the records—largely names of subordinate employees caught up in the turmoil. He is also withholding some documents entirely, though he did not indicate what those records could contain.

"The bits and pieces that have already been 'leaked' to the press or public simply confuse the issues, lead to innuendo rather than knowledge, and detract from a fuller public understanding of the matters raised," writes Pearson in his ruling.

Vermont Yankee Forum — Hot

About 150 people crammed into a steamy film house Wednesday night to hear a panel of experts talk largely about the cons of relicensing  the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

The Vermont legislature is likely to take up the issue next session, noted Rep. Adam Greshin (I-Warren), who was one of the panelists. Greshin explained that at least two or three committees in the House and Senate could have some jurisdiction over any legislation dealing with keeping the state's lone nuke plant open for another 20 years.

Staff writer Ken Picard (who previewed the forum) and myself attended the hearing last night, and I covered it live via Twitter. To read the full Tweet stream, click on my Twitter page here. You may have to click a few pages in to read the full account.

Things got pretty stuffy in the un-air-conditioned theater during the two-hour meeting, making me wonder if Vermont Yankee knew about the event and reduced the flow of electrons to the Mad River Valley. Just kidding.

The first hour was taken up by presentations from the individual panelists on everything from the health impacts of being exposed to radiation to what forms of power could replace VY. The second hour was devoted to audience members asking questions of the panel.

The forum was not a pro/con debate about Vermont Yankee or nuclear power in general, but an "educational" event, said organizers.

Here's a sample of Tweets:

If #VT Yankee stays open, renewable energy in VT will languish. "If your fridge is full, you don't go to the grocery store."

Lawrence Mott explaining #VT energy portfolio. Says if VT Yankee shuts down, lights will stay on. "Electrons will still flow"

Gundersen notes #VT Yankee has poor procedures in place & not written down. Mostly in employees' heads and most are close to retire

Panelists are done at #VT Yankee forum. Now onto audience questions - Ken Picard asks first Q: What are health impacts of VY on VTers?

Nancy Chickering says not sure of exact rad impacts from #VT Yankee but effects can show up 20 years after exposure

Audience: Isn't nuke cheaper? Mott says no. New nuke in TX is $8K per kWH vs $3K per kwh for wind

Audience: Is there a statewide #VT plan for fostering renewable energy? (Me: Um, no)

Panel: Moore sez #VT Gov Douglas is not really planning for energy future. Hope to renew VY and HydroQuebec. Not renewables.

Audience: Who will pay for decommissioning of #VT Yankee?

Greshin: Entergy Co. is responsible for #VT Yankee waste. Moore: Separate Entergy LLC is responsible. Gundersen: Taxpayers will pay

Audience: How will you, Rep. Greshin, vote on #VT Yankee? He won't answer. Audience boos. Shouts. (no compost is thrown tho)

Moderator pleads for calm, asks folks to take up individual conservations (shouting matches?) after #VT Yankee forum

Gundersen closer at #VT Yankee forum: "At some point in a foolproof system, the fools are going to exceed the proofs"

Naked Guy Blurt Alert

Did anyone else see the naked man jogging down Shelburne Road at around 4:15 p.m.? I did. I guess he wasn't completely naked — he was wearing a pair of sandals, a watch and some spectacles, as he seemingly was out for an afternoon run.

When I told my colleagues of the sighting they quickly told me that any good media person would have gotten a photo. Oops.