An Interview with Gubernatorial Candidate Anthony Pollina
Vermont Commons, May 2, 2008, by Ron Miller (link to article).
Vermont Commons: Let’s start with a very broad question. As you’re considering becoming governor of Vermont, what is your vision for our future? What direction would you like to see our state take?
Anthony Pollina: First of all, I would like Vermonters to reconnect with the fact that we share a vision. I really believe that we share priorities. I remember when Vermont was a real leader on important issues, from the environment to health care to issues of war and peace. When we talk about my vision for Vermont, the first thing I want to do is remind Vermonters of our ability to be leaders and our ability to work together, and help us reconnect with a vision of a Vermont that takes better care of itself. Part of it is looking for ways to invest in Vermont, build upon the good things that we have here.
If you listen to Jim Douglas long enough, you begin to think that Vermont is a bad place. Nobody wants to do business here; it’s too expensive; our kids don’t want to stay here; we can’t fix the roads, we can’t invest in energy efficiency. Essentially, Douglas puts forth a negative vision and talks about the things that we cannot do. Jim Douglas lives in a different Vermont than I do. I have a very different vision of Vermont. I think Vermont is a great place, filled with a lot of great people who have a lot of great energy. Quality of life, environment, great place to raise kids, one of the smartest states, we have a great workforce. So I think we need to recognize that Vermont has things that not every place has. We need to find a way to build upon those great things.
From an economic point of view, I think we need to do a lot more to invest in Vermont and build upon the business possibilities that we have. In the Vermont that I live in, we would be buying local. The governor goes on the radio and says we should all buy local; it’s just that simple. When I hear that I say to myself “Jim, if it’s so simple, why are we not doing it? Why is it when I walk into a college or a prison in Vermont they’re still serving cheese from Wisconsin and hamburger from Iowa?” I think we can do a lot more to invest in Vermont by buying local. I think we could bring Vermonters together to insure ourselves locally, using a self-insurance pool that we’re all a part of, that we all pay into, based on our ability to pay. It wouldn’t be tied to whether we’re working.
VC: Do you mean health insurance, particularly?
AP: Yes. I think Vermonters are willing to come together and do that. I think that we could build upon some of the business base that we have here in terms of building renewable energy businesses and IT and internet technology businesses. Six years or so ago, when Vermont Yankee was being sold, a couple of us suggested that some of the windfall profit from the sale be set aside into a fund to build renewable energy businesses in this state, to build a renewable energy institute affiliated with our state colleges. At the time, no one in state government wanted to make it happen. I think we could build an equity fund to support local Vermont businesses by asking institutions like UVM or Fletcher Allen to invest their portfolios locally. We ask them not to invest in tobacco or South Africa; if we have the right governor we can ask them to invest in Vermont. We could ask them to put two percent of their portfolio into a fund which would then be used to provide equity to entrepreneurs and small businesses. Once they did that, we could go to bigger businesses and ask them to do the same. When it comes to economic development I want renewable energy and high-tech businesses but also meat processing plants as well. I want us to understand that those are both the kinds of things that can really grow and thrive in Vermont. And I want us all to carry a Vermont credit card that we operate and control. We could control the interest rates, and the fees that businesses pay when they used the card, we could keep that money in Vermont and use a share of it for the equity fund. There are a number of things we could do to better weather the rash of globalization that we’re going through right now. Jim Douglas talks about affordability. But it’s not just about Vermont, it’s a national problem. We should realize that there are things that we can do in Vermont that are different if we are willing to look inward and invest more in what we really have.
VC: When you say “weather” the uncertainties of globalization, it sounds as if, in some ways, you’d like to see us disengage a little bit from the system.
AP: I’d certainly like us to survive. I think globalization is battering us economically. Even under Jim Douglas, in the last six years we’ve lost about 25 percent of our manufacturing jobs. The whole issue around globalization and the race to the bottom, and this idea that American farmers and American workers are going to compete with farmers and workers in China and India, basically just means that we’re going to drive ourselves down and we’re going to continue to lower the standard of living. So I would like us, as much as possible, to disengage from the global system. Trade is something you’re always going to do; you’re not going to avoid it. But I think that free trade agreements were a big mistake, and Vermont, like a lot of other states, is suffering from them. But we are smart enough to find ways to disengage from that and look for creative ways to build our economy.
VC: Talk a little about the Vermont Milk Company, because that seems to be an excellent example of the kind of local enterprise that you’d like to support.
AP: The way it came about is interesting because it’s a business enterprise that came out of a grassroots organizing effort. Farmers came to me and others to ask for help. They originally wanted to form a union so that they could negotiate and regain more control over their milk, and over the profit that it generates. They traveled around the state and talked with a lot of farmers and did actually negotiate with the milk handlers, but that didn’t get anywhere. That led to the creation of the business. It adds value to their milk; the Vermont name adds value to everything from teddy bears to coffee and maple syrup, so why not milk, which is the basic Vermont commodity? The way the dairy industry works now, Vermont milk is mixed with milk from other states, trucked long distances and sold as a cheap commodity. They’re hoping to take as much milk as possible out of that commodity market, keep it here in Vermont, add value to it, and put that value back into the pockets of farmers. It’s Vermont-owned; the board is controlled by farmers.
It’s a fair trade dairy business. Fair trade is really growing on the international level; why not bring that concept closer to home? We pay the farmers a steady price for their milk; the company, not the farmer, pays to truck the milk to the plant, then we make ice cream, cheese, and yogurt, and sell them under the Vermont Milk Company label. We also make products for some other Vermont companies that have not been using raw material from Vermont, such as a cheese company in Bennington that used to bring in curd from Wisconsin.
We would like to bottle milk. We’ve been talking to schools, and there are a lot of schools in Vermont that would like to buy packaged milk for school lunches, so we hope to do that some time in the next few months. It would be a powerful message that Vermont can do these kinds of things. It’s a good model and we’re really enthusiastic about where it could go. In the scheme of things, when you look at economic development, the idea of having milk- processing plants and meat-processing plants, places where we can process more vegetables, even fruits, the investment is relatively small, but the return can be really great, economically as well as environmentally. The milk company is a good example of local economic development that can fit really nicely into a sustainable economy.
VC: Let’s follow up on the comment you made earlier about Vermont being a leader in the United States, being an exceptional place—everything from our local economy to our distinctive political culture. What does that mean for our relationship to the rest of the country? Do we fit into the United States, or are we so different that we don’t fit very well?
AP: I think we fit. The way we fit is by being able to set an example, by doing things on a scale that people around the country can’t always fully grasp, but I think we can do things that a lot of Americans wish in their hearts they could do in terms of supporting the local economy and having communities that are small and safe. The other side of it is that we’re losing that. If we don’t act to hold on to the uniqueness we have . . . We haven’t done that in recent years; the governor has basically taken on a mantra that government is bad, that we should all just be on our own, that we should not work together under the umbrella of good government. And that’s not what Vermont is all about, because Vermont is small enough that people can understand that government is us, that we can find ways to work together.
When it comes to health care, for example, we can provide a model, because we’re big enough to do it but we’re small enough to actually make it happen. The localvore movement, and the work that’s being done on the community level around agriculture around the state, almost in spite of government – the more we can do to empower people on the local level, the more those people will provide the leadership.
For example, Douglas told us we couldn’t afford to buy the dams on the Connecticut River. Well, now those dams are worth twice as much as they were, they’re owned by a Canadian company, and the power’s going to Massachusetts. It’s low-cost renewable power that’s just sort of flowing through Vermont without benefiting us at all. Douglas told us we couldn’t invest in energy efficiency last year, and ignored his own climate change commission. The problem we have in Vermont is a governor who spends too much time talking about the things that we cannot do, and what we need is someone who can talk with us about what we can do. I think Vermonters want to get together and solve problems; they want to be creative. We want to work together on all kinds of interesting and impassioned issues, from social justice to the economy.
VC: On the issue of education, what are your thoughts about education policy in general, and more specifically, how the federal mandates of No Child Left Behind affect Vermont schools?
AP: I think No Child Left Behind is a disaster. I think it fits right in with the direction of our federal government, which is to create people who do not think but basically go along with and fit into a corporate culture. It’s all about high-stakes testing, teaching to the test. I think what it does is take away the ability of teachers and schools, and kids then, to be creative, to actually be who they are. The federal government continues to do us a big disservice on education on NCLB, also by not funding special education, which they’re supposed to do, and by not really appreciating the need to keep schools in good condition, and to support public education. I used to run a small private high school; I’m not against people going to private schools if that’s what works for them, but I think public schools are our most important public institutions in the sense that for many of us they’re the center of our community, they’re where kids learn to be citizens no matter who they are. I think public schools need more respect and more support, and I think they need the flexibility to be able to meet the needs of all kinds of kids. Some learn well in the classroom, some would rather be out doing auto repair. There should be more community-based programs that are attached to public schools. We need to be growing good people who will engage in democracy. The federal government is in the exact opposite place.
VC: If we look at these issues from the perspective of Vermont Commons, we’re considering the possibility of not only of economic independence and self-sufficiency, but also thinking that maybe some sort of political separation might be necessary. If we imagine you being the kind of governor who would inspire people to act in this way, do you think that the national government, or the culture of the large nation we’re a part of, would be a hindrance to those kinds of efforts? Jim Douglas would be gone, but now you’ve got the federal government to deal with.
AP: (laughs). There’s the practical, and then there’s the kind of emotional or spiritual level. On a practical level the federal government gets in the way of many good things that we want to do. First of all, they’re throwing hundreds of millions of dollars of our money (meaning here in Vermont) at a war that none of us want. To me it’s a major sign of what’s wrong with our democracy that 70 percent of the American people are against something, and yet it’s what we’re spending all our money on. I think the federal government, to a large degree, is controlled by special interests—the pharmaceutical companies, the health care companies, the Wall St. banks, the big polluters, the car industry. It’s not just a problem for Vermont, it’s a problem for a lot of people all around the country. One thing a governor can do is engage people in Vermont in that conversation, so that we can look for creative ways to begin to become more self-reliant, self-sufficient. We can also talk to people in other states about that as well. We can start by standing up to the federal government, trying to stop the bleeding that the federal government causes us by taking our money and to some degree taking our spirit from us. Whether we could actually disengage from the other states… I don’t know. It’s an interesting concept to explore. I don’t think it would be number one on my agenda, but I think it would be a really interesting part of the conversation.
Going back to the things we were talking about earlier, like economic self-sufficiency, that would begin to teach us some of the lessons.
If we could achieve some of those things—buying local, strengthening the local economy—that might make it that much easier for Vermont and other states to start standing up to the federal government and saying “leave us alone” or “empower us at the state level to do the things we need to do.” Maybe by being a voice, we could encourage other states to think in a similar way. Maybe what actually happens is a group of states that decide to work together stand up to the federal government and start demanding policies that are a bit more compassionate and make a bit more economic sense.
I find myself having very little faith in the federal government. I think there’s a role for it to play, but when I say that government is good and we should make it do whatever we want it to do, I’m also a strong believer in acting locally as much as possible. When I think about changing the federal government. . . Is a new Congress going to get us out of NAFTA and GATT? I doubt it. Is a new Congress going to give us real universal health care that we can afford? I doubt it. When it comes to the real issues, I believe in government, but I believe in local government; I believe in Vermont a lot more than I believe in the United States Congress. I don’t have a lot of confidence in their ability to stand up to the special interests that have bought the Congress. There are some good people there, but the system is out of the citizens’ control.