The Scoreboard: This Week's Winners and Losers
Who won the week in Vermont news and politics? Not nearly as many as those who lost it, according to this week's diligently researched and poll-tested Scoreboard.
Check 'em out below and leave your additions and subtractions in the comments section:
Winners:
Jerry Dodge — Gov. Peter Shumlin on Wednesday promised to sell East Montpelier's most famous 16 acres back to his neighbor. Now all Dodge needs is a damn lawyer. Runner-up winners: Reps. Kurt Wright and Patti Komline, who struck just about the right tone in their Wednesday press conference calling on Shumlin to help all the Dodges of Vermont. The Republican reps were wise to mask their political attack as a policy proposal — and to keep the crazies of their party well away from the podium.
Vermont ski slopes — They killed it this year. With 4.5 million skier visits, this was the dankest season since 2001, according to the Vermont Ski Areas Association.
Magic Hat — An armistice has been declared in the war of beers divisible by the number three. In a joint statement issued Thursday, South Burlington-based Magic Hat and Kentucky-based West Sixth indicated they've settled their differences, with the latter company retracting a number of hopped-up statements. So who won? As the Burlington Free Press' Sally Pollak noted, West Sixth appears to have removed a star-like symbol from its logo that was totally wigging out Magic Hat. VICTORY!
Losers and ties after the jump...
Danilo Lopez — The 23-year-old migrant farm worker saw a dream come true this week as Gov. Peter Shumlin signed a new law letting undocumented workers obtain a driver's privilege card. But as VTDigger's Alicia Freese reported, Lopez likely won't have a chance to legally drive the 2001 Jetta he recently purchased. That's because he's been ordered to leave the country by July 5.
Burlington transpo' — Burlington International Airport got a new flight to hot 'lanta today and, in the way cooler department, the Navy named a "joint high speed vessel" after the city of Burlington (We're on a boat!). But as my colleague Kevin Kelley reported this week, not everything's so fly at BTV.
Losers:
Vermont law enforcement — Two days after my colleague, Ken Picard, um, exposed what appears to be a prostitution racket operating in the open at a trio of Burlington-area massage parlors, the cops haven't shut the places down. Runner-up losers: the Vermont media. Where are the follow-up stories?
Black Vermonters — According to a new report by ACLU-VT, blacks are 4.4 times as likely as whites to be arrested for smoking pot in Vermont. Now that Vermont has decriminalized possession of small amount of marijuana, will they be ticketed four times as often instead?
Gov. Peter Shumlin — Another week of stories about Jeremy Dodge. 'Nuff said. (On a related note, be sure to read VTDigger columnist Jon Margolis' thoughtful take on Shummy's mess.)
F-35 supporters — We punted on this one in last week's Scoreboard, but we're now ready to place the pro-plane folks in the loser column. No matter how they spin it, it doesn't help their case that 20 percent more people than the Air Force previously acknowledged would land in a high-noise zone if the F-35s come to Vermont.
Senatorial unity — As the Burlington Free Press' Nancy Remsen and Gannett's Nicole Gaudiano noted earlier this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders is pretty darn lukewarm to the comprehensive immigration reform bill Sen. Patrick Leahy ushered through his Senate Judiciary Committee last month. But with Democrats seeking 70 yays and Leahy looking to burnish his legacy, would Bernie really dare to vote no?
Labor unity — As the AP's Dave Gram reported, AFSCME and SEIU took their homecare unionization battle to the Vermont Labor Relations Board Thursday, with the former seeking a quick election and the latter hoping to slow the process down. And in an unusually tough press statement issued late Thursday, AFSCME characterized SEIU as an "out of state union" attempting to "derail the process." Oh snap!
