Gaye Symington of Jericho, Speaker of the House in the Vermont Legislature from January 2005 to June 2008, is the Democratic candidate for governor of Vermont. This is the second in a series of interviews with Vermont’s 2008 gubernatorial candidates. Progressive Anthony Pollina was interviewed in the Spring 2008 issue of Vermont Commons. Incumbent Republican governor Jim Douglas will be interviewed in the fall 2008 issue.

Vermont Commons:  Let’s start with a very open-ended question. I’d like to ask about your vision for the State of Vermont. Where would you like to see the economic and political life of the state go from this point? If you’re elected, where would you like to help take it?

Gaye Symington:  As governor I would like to move Vermont in a way that builds on what we do best and what we’re known for as our strengths. I have spent a great deal of time asking business owners, in particular, over the last fall and winter, “Why are you here? Why did you grow your business here? Why did you choose to expand here? You have other options. What is it that attracts you and keeps you here?” I also ask about the challenges they face. There’s a very consistent response about our strengths as well as the challenges.     

My sense is that our current governor is not proud of, and does not convey, what we do well. He’s stuck in neutral, not moving us forward and really addressing in a substantive way our challenges. That’s what I would want to do as governor – say, “What do we do best? Let’s build from there. What are our biggest challenges? Let’s tackle those, one step at a time in a practical way.” We’re a small, narrow state. We have our limitations, but we can, in a practical way, take on these challenges, and in so doing build opportunities that are unique to Vermont.

VC: Could you name a couple things that we do best? Just what is distinctive about Vermont?

GS: It’s a beautiful place. It’s the mountains, the rivers, the natural resources. People always reference that. But it’s more: it’s how we interact with each other; it’s this sense of public engagement. Vermonters engage with each other in a very real and direct way. We talk through, in our communities, what choices we’re going to make in our curriculum, how much road salt are we going to use, where are we going to put the troopers to slow ourselves down? We argue about recess policies. Boring stuff, but we do it in a real way and we know what our limitations are.   

That is a huge part of what I hear when I ask why people are here. Some people call it a sense of community. Some people say “My voice matters; I can make a difference.” It’s a sense of being engaged with each other. That is the tremendous strength. I think there are very few states, where if you say “I’m from here,” people get a sense of what that means. When you say you’re from Vermont, it is about natural resources and the quality of life, but it is also about this sense of belonging to a community and having diverse communities where people of different worlds interact everyday with each other.

VC: Let’s talk about some of the specific issues we’re facing. One of the main challenges is energy – the soaring cost, and the looming phenomenon of peak oil. How do you see Vermont meeting its energy needs in the future?

GS:  I think this is one of the areas where there’s the greatest distinction between the current governor and what I am offering as governor. Jim Douglas has not put innovative ideas about our energy future on the table. We’re being backed up against a wall of impossible choices. There are different worlds of energy. There’s electric energy, there’s the energy we use to move our cars, and there’s heating, and they’re three different worlds. The Legislature has really taken the lead in trying to plan for an energy future beyond our heavy reliance on two contracts now, knowing that those long-term contracts with Vermont Yankee and Hydro Quebec are coming up for renewal. How would we get beyond them? I would rely on a more-diversified portfolio including renewable energy, more in-state generation. I believe wind belongs in our energy portfolio. There’s great potential in methane. I’m less sure about things like energy crops.  

Clearly we haven’t taken enough advantage of opportunities in renewable energy, and energy conservation and efficiency. Electric energy conservation and efficiency is one area where Vermont has had a leadership role, starting with the energy efficiency utility about 10 years ago. It’s been the Legislature that’s insisted, over the real reluctance of Governor Douglas, to invest more in energy efficiency. The payback, we know, is greater than any other alternative. We’ve managed to grow our economy and yet not have our electric energy demands going up at the same pace as the economy. In fact it’s been reduced about 1 percent since we began the efficiency program.    

There’s heating oil and transportation as well, which have their own dynamics. Again, over the veto of Governor Douglas, we have moved our energy efficiency efforts beyond electric energy, expanding them to include all fuels. We’re only beginning that, because the bill was vetoed the first year it was put forward. I really worry about this coming heating season for Vermonters. People are really concerned about how they’re going to pay their bills. I’ve been wanting to set up some kind of financing mechanism so that the Vermonters who don’t have seven or eight thousand dollars in a savings account would have access to upfront capital to invest in their homes to make them energy efficient, and then pay back over time – a pay-as-you-save mechanism. That’s only in the development stages. Similarly, in the world of transportation, I think we’re stumbling because we don’t have great options in a rural state. I go by the Richmond park-and-ride every day and there are as many cars parked on the grass as there are on the paved areas. That’s true all over the state.

VC: So people want to use sustainable alternatives; we’re just not able to provide quite enough.

GS: We’re not there yet in terms of giving them the facilities they need. A couple years ago we insisted on putting some one-time money into new public transit buses. The operating cost of those new buses are half that of the old buses, and the carbon emissions are one-sixtieth [1/60] of the footprints of the old buses on the road. And rail is a huge piece of our transportation infrastructure. This last year we balanced the transportation budget by taking money from rail, which should be going to improve the western corridor. So our policies on transportation have been somewhat short sighted. There need to be more options.

VC: Following up on Vermont Yankee, the eventual decommissioning of the facility has become very controversial, and a lot of people are puzzled about what’s happening there. Could explain what your strategy is, and how you’d like to see it end up?

GS: This is a perfect example of what I mean by being backed up against the wall, with Governor Douglas not taking the lead and not moving forward with an energy plan. When I look at Vermont Yankee I would insist on – and the Legislature has insisted on – a totally independent and complete analysis of the reliability and safety of that plant. If the results of that are that the plant is not safe, then we shut it down, end of conversation. If the analysis is that it is safe, then I would favor having a very short time frame and a plan for transitioning over five, maybe 10 years – I would prefer five – transitioning away from our addiction to Vermont Yankee power. That is going to take some assertive investments in alternatives and moving away from where we are.

VC: What about the problem of the nuclear wastes being generated?

GS: The other piece of that is decommissioning. I have insisted that Entergy, that has made gajillions of profits from operating Vermont Yankee, needs to be held responsible for fully paying for the decommissioning, for cleaning up the site. They’re now backing away from their original promises in that regard. I think the waste is the big quandary with nuclear power. What concerns me as I read the Douglas Administration’s draft energy policies is that they talk over and over about global warming as the big environmental issue around energy, and there is a huge issue around the toxicity of the waste generated by nuclear power plants and we’re treating that as sort of an asterisk. I think that’s passing an impossible situation onto future generations. The waste is there. We have dry cask storage that’s been approved. I actually became convinced that dry casks are safer for storage of radioactive waste than the wet pool that’s inside the plant, but the notion that we’re going to have long-term radioactive wastes stored on the banks of the Connecticut River, in a flood plain, doesn’t make much sense. I think this is where we need to be turning to the federal government and saying, “Does it make sense to have all these disparate sites all over the country storing waste?” If Yucca Mountain isn’t going to be ready for a hundred or two hundred years or more, how can we create a more secure way to store these wastes?

VC: This leads into a broader question about the natural environment – the quality of air and water. If we destroy living systems, then nothing else matters. And yet this doesn’t always seem to be at the top of the political agenda. How would you address natural environment issues?

GS: I think you see with the lake issues recently. I would say that the concern over our natural landscape has been close to the top of the list in terms of the priorities of the Legislature. We have consistently put money back into the Housing and Conservation Fund, for example. Over the last couple years we’ve had two environmental committees in the House, one focused almost exclusively on energy issues, while the second is the Fish, Wildlife, and Water Resources Committee, which used to be a backwater committee (sorry for the pun) which didn’t get much done. It’s done tremendous work protecting our groundwater resources, around Lake Champlain issues. Before the EPA spoke up and said we’re not making progress cleaning the lake, under my leadership we engaged an audit, asking where the money is going; we’re paying millions, tens of millions of dollars, for lake cleanup, and is it being effective? We identified that it was not being used as effectively as it needed to be, and asked for redirection of those priorities.    

There’s been quite a bit of work around trying to make sure that we are protecting natural resources. As governor I would continue to lead in that effort. There are a number of areas where there’s federal money available to help with lake cleanup. This year, when I learned that there’s money sitting there unclaimed, I went to the Fish, Wildlife, and Water Resources Committee and said, “Find out about this. I’m being told that if we put in one million bucks, we’re going to get, I think, four million, in order to direct resources to the lake.” We made that happen. I believe there are other pieces where we’re not taking advantage of funds that are available to us, and it shouldn’t have to come from the Legislature to do that hunting and pecking, but rather should be from the leadership of the governor. This is the 400th anniversary of Samuel de Champlain’s traveling into this lake. Let’s celebrate that with a cleaner lake.

VC: Somewhat related to natural resource issues is the whole issue of agriculture. How can Vermont be more self-sustaining in its food supply, and how can family farmers be better supported?

GS:  I think to some extent the economy is helping us here. Vermont is fairly close to large markets. We have tremendous natural resources to be able to produce a lot of food, not just to feed ourselves but to feed Connecticut, Massachusetts, parts of New York. I think there are a number of ways of making that work. Some of it comes from marketing structures, processing facilities, slaughterhouses – bundling facilities where we can help small farms come together in order to make available carrots in fifty-pound bags; whether it’s Fletcher Allen Health Care or IBM’s cafeteria or Hannaford’s, they’re not going to stop what they’re doing to take deliveries of 20 small farms in the course of a day. They want their deliveries year-round, and they want them in large quantities. I think there are opportunities where, working together with nonprofits and the philanthropic world, the state can provide guidance as to how to direct resources to reduce some of the barriers that exist now, to get more Vermont produce, meat, dairy and vegetables into larger markets.     

My family is part of a CSA farm, year-round. All our meat and many of our vegetables come from no more than 50 miles away. I orient my life around that. To a greater and greater degree, a lot of Vermonters do that. Having worked at the Intervale Center for the last four years, I see the value that Burlington residents put on that piece of local agriculture. The connections between farms and schools are becoming more and more integrated, largely through the leadership of the Legislature. But in order to get into more institutional purchasing, Vermonters who just see the supermarket as their main source of food… there’s going to need to be some sort of bundling. I think of it as distribution networks that are put in place. I think that’s where the role of state government belongs – not necessarily in fully funding them, but in directing resources, partnering with the nonprofit community and cooperatives, in order to help make that happen. Some of the work of the Sustainable Jobs Fund, the Vermont Employee Ownership Center, as well as the Agency of Agriculture, can be directed to make that happen.

VC:  At Vermont Commons, we ask how independent Vermont can be, or needs to be, from the federal government. It seems to many of us that the federal government is working against our deepest values – the war, educational policies, civil liberties. You’ve mentioned that the federal government has resources that we need. So how can we balance the benefits we might get from them, with the ways they prevent us from reaching our own goals?

GS:  Largely, I think that reflects the current administration. The last eight years, despite the lip service that the administration gives to local control, you see it going in the opposite direction. Whether it’s through federal communications policy or No Child Left Behind and education policy, it’s this consistent message of Washington D.C. knows best. And clearly Washington D.C. does not know best when it comes to those specific instances where we see the federal government trying to insert itself into our policies as a state. I think that’s why you see such a backlash, and I hope we’ll all see a change in November.    

As governor, I would certainly keep close ties with, and work with, our federal delegation. I would be at the door of President Obama, saying my top priority is health care, and this is where we need a partnership. I think a partnership goes both ways. You know that health care policy is a huge economic issue for our country; we can show you the way in Vermont. We’re in the lead in terms of transforming from an illness-care system to a health care system. To some extent the barriers are structural and due to federal policies. So how can we work more in partnership here?    

In much of what we do – for example in environmental quality – our policies as a state affect New York (with the lake), affect Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire (with the Connecticut River), and there’s an appropriate role for working as a region on environmental and energy issues. We’re very tied into the New England energy network, and as much as we want to do on conserving energy and using alternative sources of energy, some of our bricks and mortar and power capacity is going to be determined largely by policies beyond our border. That’s where we need to communicate our values to the other states in the Northeast. I think there will always be a back-and-forth between the federal government and Vermont, and within the region where we are so interdependent for our energy, our environmental quality, relying on larger markets to support our agriculture. I don’t see us being an island, digging a moat around Vermont, but I think we need to recognize where either federal policies or regional policies interfere with our values if we don’t engage directly with them to make it otherwise.

VC:  I would push this further and say that there’s a chance that Obama won’t be elected, and if we have four more years of what we’ve had, I think the movement within Vermont to break away from what people are calling the “empire” is going to grow. How would you deal with that?

GS: What does that mean? Would we say that we don’t want two senators and a congressman anymore to bring home the tens of millions of dollars that have gone into cleaning up Lake Champlain?  Thank you, Washington, we’ll take care of our roads entirely ourselves instead of having 80 percent of it come from you?  I don’t think that it’s constructive to walk away from the United States in the long run. To me, it’s more important to engage in changing the priorities of our federal government, and even when it’s frustrating, to keep at it.    

That may come from the experience I’ve had working in state government, which is frustrating, too. I’ve spent time in the minority, and I’ve spent time in the majority, and I know that we would have accomplished a lot less if I had simply walked away when I was frustrated. Instead I’ve engaged and continued to push even when I was in the minority, to continue to make the case, to do the organizing it takes to get back into the majority. I think we’ve had positive economic and social policy come out of the current Legislature, and it’s because the current governorship is the greatest barrier to moving forward in a creative way that I’m running for governor in the first place.    

I’m a big believer in staying engaged and keeping our values in front of the country. Vermont is known as a leader, and I think it would be a loss to the country as well as a loss to Vermont to walk away from that engagement.