Vermont's next governor?

At Statehouse, the doors are wide open

By Jesse Roman

Published:

Thursday, February 11, 2010 12:11 PM EST

Many Americans have soured on politics, viewing bickering and dogmatic politicians as more eager to win a political battle than to offer a useful idea.

But things are different in Vermont, whose Statehouse has no metal detectors, has an open door policy, and provides more access to lawmakers than any general assembly in the nation.

Vermont politics is less a knock-down, drag-out brawl than a careful dance. With great energy, constituents, lobbyists, policy experts and elected officials dart through the capitol’s halls, in and out of little conference rooms, exchanging ideas and handshakes.

As chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee for the last 10 years, and the lone senator from Lamoille County for 18, Susan Bartlett is completely in tune with the hum inside the Vermont Statehouse. She’s at ease here: This is home.

Bartlett is an insider’s insider and she wears that hat with pride. Strolling through the halls, she rarely makes it more than a few feet before a colleague pulls her aside for a quick exchange about the budget or health care, or to say a friendly hello.

Her jovial nature makes her approachable, but she also commands respect, from the governor on down. After 18 years, she knows her place in the Senate well, and seems to relish it.

This is Bartlett’s last year in the Senate. She’s embarking on an all-or-nothing run at governor this year. When the next session begins in 2011, she’ll either be Gov. Jim Douglas’ successor, or a spectator.

“It was not easy to give this up. I am very powerful” in the Senate, she says candidly, sitting in the capitol’s cafeteria sipping a diet Coke. “Power comes from 18 years of information. What I have in here,” she says, pointing to her head, “is where the power is.”

As chair of appropriations, she has unique power over the state’s pursestrings, and has a well of knowledge about state budgeting that may be unequaled.

Going back almost two decades, she knows when this or that bill was passed, why it was passed, how it works, the context for it. All of this comes with being in the trenches and watching it happen; it comes from experience.

But she’s ready for the next chapter.

“Eighteen years in the Senate is plenty of time. There are plenty of smart people who can do this job when I get out of the way,” she said. “I’m convinced everyone here is replaceable, from the top of the heap to the bottom of the heap.”

Early argument

Bartlett’s days in the Senate are not slow. Governing is faced-paced, full-time job.

Last Thursday started at 8 a.m. sharp in her appropriations committee room, at the southeast corner of the building. With her was a who’s who of health care in Vermont: Marie Beatrice Grause, CEO of the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems; Craig Jones, director of Vermont’s Blueprint for Health; Jim Hester, director of the Legislature’s health care reform commission; legislators on health committees; leaders of Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Cigna, Fletcher Allen Health Care, and the Banking Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration; plus several consultants and other major players.

A vigorous discussion about utilization, practice facilitators, hospital costs, doctor pay structure, unsustainable growth and much more was raging well before the 9-to-5ers had had their first cup of coffee.

Bartlett and others were pushing the hospitals on ways they can control costs and cut budgets. Grause and other hospital officials told lawmakers it is near-impossible to cut as much as they’re hoping. The hospitals “are working to build consensus on what we can deal with,” said one hospital administrator. Hospitals “have been working hard to restrain growth and will continue to do that.”

Bartlett sees this kind of thing every day. Finally, fed up with the resistance, she asked, “Do we want to get run over by a glacier or do we change?”

As the hourlong meeting concluded, people rose, splintered into groups and continued the conversation for another 15 minutes in the hallway, near the door, or in the corners of the room.

“Can you pull together a group of people who can come here and talk to me?” Bartlett asks one high-ranking administrator, talking about Federally Qualified Health Centers. “I need to know what we can do, how we can do it and what do we see as the plan. If some of the things we’re talking about can work, we’ll write them into the budget.”

Making something happen

It’s remarkable how much of the work of running the state is hammered out in small informal gatherings, in the hallways or the cafeteria, standing or sitting in splintered small clusters.

During lunch, later in the day, Jones, Hester, Bartlett and several others met informally to continue the health care discussion. What seemed a frustrating morning turned productive quickly.

A consultant pointed out a fundamental difference between the state’s outlook and hospitals: Hospitals look at costs and adjust revenues (rates) accordingly, while the state’s costs are driven by how much revenue it can collect. Get the hospitals thinking more like the state, and perhaps the logjam can be broken.

All the state needs is a carrot to dangle in front of the hospitals to make them more willing to play ball. Lessen administrative duties for everyone if they cooperate? That might work.

“Once somebody has that kind of ‘aha’ moment, that’s when you start to make real progress,” Bartlett said in an interview. “What happened during lunch is the health-care bill started to come together. Sometimes that’s what happens when you get a small group of people together.”

Votes in hand

Twenty-minutes after the health care meeting, Neale Lunderville, the secretary of administration and Gov. Jim Douglas’s right-hand man, comes sauntering into Bartlett’s now-empty committee room.

He’s just arriving, with his coat still on and a bag flung over his shoulder.

Bartlett and Lunderville casually and comfortably exchange pleasantries and chitchat about primaries and personal items, then something catches Lunderville’s eye.

“Oh, I haven’t seen this,” he says, picking up the Blueprint for Health report and flipping through the pages.

“It’s a doozie,” Bartlett replies, flipping through e-mail on her phone.

“In a good way, or a bad way?”

“Oh, it’s good,” Bartlett says.

“I’m going to have to get a copy of that,” Lunderville says.

Then, realizing appropriations is slated to vote on the Challenge for Change that afternoon — the sweeping bill aimed at saving $38 million by restructuring several state departments — Lunderville asks if there’s going to be a problem; that is, does she have the votes?

Shaking her head, Bartlett says it’s a done deal.

“I can’t be there for the vote, but I want to catch up with you after,” Lunderville says.

Four hours later, after amending some language, appropriations unanimously passes the bill.

Finance Secretary Jim Reardon, the only administration official who sat in on the vote, stuck around to update Bartlett and her committee on the state budget. Then, his phone went off.

“The secretary of administration wants a copy of the Challenge for Change Bill,” Reardon said after hanging up. “As if I wasn’t going to bring one.”

Business challenges

“When I sit down in appropriations, I never get to do e-mail, because it’s one person popping in after another,” Bartlett said.

Around midmorning a white-haired man in a suit came bouncing into the room. It’s Tim Meehan, a principal at the lobbying firm MacLean, Meehan & Rice LLC, and a former Washington lobbyist. He represents several large corporations, including the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

“It would be near impossible for us to have a face-to-face discussion like this with the Senate chair of appropriations in Washington,” Meehan said of the openness of Montpelier. In Washington, “there are layers and layers of people and staff between you and them.”

Bartlett is staff-less.

Meehan brought a client, an executive of a large international corporation with a plant in Vermont, to meet the senator.

“We love to live here, but for businesses it’s challenging,” the executive told Bartlett in her committee room. “Our competition have plants in Alabama and Mexico with direct gas lines. It is a challenge to compete against that.”

And Vermont politics don’t make it easier, he said.

“We see a bill that might have a lot of good intentions, that’s really good for kids, or something, then there’ll be one line in it that will make us say, ‘My God. That’s going to kill ours and every other business!’”

Bartlett concedes that Vermont’s energy future is vague at this point. She fears “there are some serious reliability issues” if the Vermont Yankee plant shuts down when its federal operating license expires in 2012. The plant is looking for a 20-year extension, but accidents, misstatements and radioactive tritium in the plant’s groundwater have put the request on thin ice.

But Bartlett stops short of making any assertions, predictions, or promises to the businessman.

Shortly after 10 a.m., Meehan and his client leave to see House Speaker Shap Smith of Morrisville.

Legitimate frustration

“People want to talk. There is legitimate frustration in the business community,” Bartlett said after they had left.

In the appropriations committee room, frustration is the norm — especially this year, when the committee is trying to solve a $150 million state budget deficit.

“In this room, we understand the weight of these cuts and their effect on people. We try to mitigate that, but I don’t know how we’ll do that this year. It’s really overwhelming,” Bartlett said.

Over the next couple of months, a cast of people will come to her and her committee and make passionate appeals about why their funding should be spared. Most will leave frustrated, disappointed and angry. Bartlett and her committee won’t feel good about it, either.

“Most (programs) at the beginning don’t fill in the measurables. So they come in with nice stories about how well things work, but they can’t show me the stats,” Bartlett said. “That’s our situation in appropriations. If there’s no way to substantiate with numbers and no proof whether something is effective or not, you are making arbitrary decisions. It’s really frustrating.”

That lack of information is critical and something she aims to correct if elected governor.

What will be more difficult to change are unrealistic expectations. She and her colleagues are working hard and effectively to balance those expectations with reality, she said.

“The system of the Legislature is really solid,” she said sincerely, gazing around the increasingly crowded cafeteria. “Vermonters don’t realize how lucky there are, how well this system works, or how hard people here work because they care.”