The Scoreboard: This Week's Winners and Losers
It's crossover week in the legislature, when deadlines become real, so winners and losers are changing quickly. We'll have more when the dust settles, but for now here's the Scoreboard for the week of Friday, March 15:
Winners:
Manners: Here in Vermont, even our crooks are nice.
Senate Government Operations Committee — After considering a "campaign finance reform" bill that would've drastically increased candidate contribution limits, the committee came to its senses Thursday, Green Mountain Daily's John Walters reports.
PETA — For getting more press than they deserved from their anti-fishing publicity stunt.
Moretown residents — The Agency of Natural Resources is dumping the dump.
Losers after the jump...
Losers:
American Federation of Teachers — Their long-sought childcare worker unionization efforts were once again derailed this week when Sen. Bill Doyle — an AFT member, no less — pulled a switcheroo and voted no in committee.
Gov. Peter Shumlin — House Speaker Shap Smith continues to fight the gov's budget, while the nonpartisan Vermont Commission on Women pans his proposed Reach Up cuts.
The Vermont Democratic Party — With chairman Jake Perkinson's departure, it lost one of its best leaders in years.
Vince Brennan and Rachel Siegel — The two Burlington city councilors quietly pressured School Board Chairman Keith Pillsbury to concede his closely fought reelection before a scheduled recount, as the Burlington Free Press' Joel Banner Baird reported. Wait, isn't that up to the voters? Runner-up winner: Pillsbury's opponent, Kyle Dodson, who ended up losing the election by four votes, but who did mighty well for a last-minute write-in.
Wings Over Vermont — The sequester hits us right where it counts: air shows.