Editorial Roundup: New England

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Hearst Connecticut Media. July 14, 2023.

Editorial: CT has already failed in investigating state trooper scandal

Letting police investigate themselves is like letting pitchers call balls and strikes.

Or President Richard Nixon determining the outcome of the Watergate hearings.

Or Donald Trump or Joe Biden deciding who wins an election.

It doesn’t matter if it’s 8-year-olds playing sandlot ball or 80-year-olds running for the highest office in the land. When a tough call needs to be made, the arbiter can’t have a vested interest in the outcome.

So there’s not really anything to debate when it comes to how to manage the investigation into whether Connecticut State Police Troopers falsified traffic tickets. Experts in criminal justice are clear that state police should not be involved in the probe. The 8-year-olds making the calls in the sandlot would likely summon the same wisdom.

Yet Gov. Ned Lamont and Co. don’t seem to be recognizing the scope of this scandal. This is the stuff that can turn the state into easy fodder for late night comics. An audit of traffic tickets suggests tens of thousand of tickets were faked. Doing so could boost a trooper’s record, resulting in pay raises and padded pensions. It also appeared to protect state police from the appearance of racial profiling. Somehow, the faux tickets were apparently for faux drivers who happened to be white.

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This is too important to bungle. Lamont summoned the right word when he called for an “independent” investigation. But there apparently needs to be clarity about how to define “independent.”

As it stands, the State Police Central District Major Crime Squad has a role in the probe. In other words, state police are investigating themselves.

“I don’t know any other industry that would be able to do that,” Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, a sociology professor at Brown University, told Hearst Connecticut Media. “It’s like having the tobacco industry say, ‘I promise we’ll have other people in the tobacco industry, overseeing the health standards of our cigarettes.’ ”

The investigation needs to carefully answer the five Ws of journalism, along with that crucial H.

— Who participated in falsifying tickets? Not just the troopers who signed the tickets, but anyone involved in a cover-up.

— What was the process?

— When did this happen? Not just during the period of the audit. Has this been a culture among state police?

— Where? Was it limited to certain barracks, or did every troop have violations?

— Why? Was personal gain the motivation? Or to mask racial profiling? Or was it something else?

— How could this happen?

But there are so many other questions, primarily around the issue of whether there were related misdeeds.

Experts pointed out that even without the involvement of the crime squad, there is a potential conflict of interest in letting the probe be led by the chief state’s attorney, given their close working relationship with police departments.

We suggest bringing in investigators from outside of the state. Yes, it may come with a price tag. But sometimes you have to hire an umpire. There’s a reason they don’t wear the caps of one of the teams on the field.

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Portland Press-Herald. July 9, 2023.

Editorial: Gov. Mills’ argument on tribes must now to be put to the test

Mills maintains that the best outcome for both the Wabanaki and the state can be obtained at the negotiating table. It shouldn’t be said another time; it should happen now.

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

The old T.S. Eliot line came to mind last week as the Maine Legislature finally brought its protracted session to an end.

“The biggest drama was limited to the House,” one of our news reports noted, “which tried to override the governor’s veto of a tribal rights bill but fell 10 votes shy.”

In response to this latest revolution of the merry-go-round of attempts at reform for Maine tribes, Gov. Mills said, again, that the better way forward is to negotiate.

If that’s the case, Maine needs to see it start happening immediately.

The House ultimately voted 84-57 for the override, but that fell short of the two-thirds support needed to overturn Mills’ veto of L.D. 2004, An Act to Restore Access to Federal Laws Beneficial to the Wabanaki Nations, sponsored by House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross.

The fate of the bill, the subject of both mounting tribal hopes and considerable political and public pressure, was ultimately in the hands of the single Democrat and 12 Republican representatives who voted in favor of it in June (when it passed by a comfortable 100-47 in the House and 26-8 in the Senate) and subsequently, for reasons that have not been particularly well explained, chose not to push past the veto.

In the short term, Gov. Mills has succeeded in averting this proposed legislative change and must be feeling relieved. In the long term, however, relief seems to be a very distant prospect; tribes in Maine are arguably more organized and more vocal about gaining sovereignty than ever.

The findings of a Harvard Kennedy School report released late last year – identifying Maine tribes as being “at the bottom of the barrel” economically and wielded many times since by supporters of tribal sovereignty – followed in March by an emotional, rallying State of the Tribes address before a joint session of the Legislature, unattended by the governor because of a scheduling conflict, both sharpened public interest in the concept of tribal sovereignty denied.

“I do not wish to have a confrontation,” Mills said last year after opposing a previous tribal sovereignty bill. “It would serve no constructive purpose and only inflame emotions on all sides of the discussion, while likely harming the positive and constructive relationship we have worked so hard to build.”

The furious reactions of tribal leaders and advocates last week does not suggest there is an easy road ahead. If anything, the successful veto of L.D. 2004 risks having further corroded relations and trust – both of which will have to be carefully restored before any of the visualized “line by line” negotiation between the parties is achievable. At least once last week the governor was called a “tyrant” and “out of touch.”

“Waiting a few more years for a new governor is what we will do if we must,” said Ambassador Maulian Bryant of the Penobscot Nation in one of the most forceful statements. “We were here long before Gov. Mills, and we will be here long after she leaves office.”

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Bangor Daily News. July 11, 2023.

Editorial: ‘Historic and catastrophic’ flooding in Vermont is somber reminder of climate change

Sadly, we’ve become somewhat accustomed to weather disasters in other parts of the world. In recent years, floods have displaced people and destroyed homes and other buildings in Asia. Droughts have plagued Africa, leading to food shortages and conflicts.

This week, damaging floods happened closer to home, offering a somber reminder of the reality and dangers of our changing climate. On Tuesday, Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, remained cut off from the rest of the state by flood waters, which inundated the country’s smallest capital city.

Although the rain had stopped, there was still concern Tuesday morning that a dam near Montpelier was near capacity and that water may have to be released, which would add to the already record high levels on the Winooski River.

“This has never happened since the dam was built so there is no precedent for potential damage,” City Manager William Fraser wrote in a statement posted to Montpelier’s Facebook page early Tuesday morning. “There would be a large amount of water coming into Montpelier which would drastically add to the existing flood damage.”

Residents who had not evacuated the city were warned to stay on higher ground or in the upper floors of their homes. Some emergency communication towers, which are needed for police and ambulance dispatch, were damaged in the storm and are not functional.

The amount of rain that fell in parts of Vermont on Monday and Tuesday was eye-popping.

According to the National Weather Service, 5.28 inches of rain fell in Montpelier on Monday, which broke the daily record of 5.27 inches that fell in 2011, during Hurricane Irene.

Dozens of state roads were closed because of the flooding and parts of Interstate 89 were shut down overnight. Several communities remain inaccessible. Flooding also destroyed roads in upstate New York.

President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Vermont, which unlocks federal resources and funding for response and relief efforts.

“The devastation and flooding we’re experiencing across Vermont is historic and catastrophic,” Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said at a news conference on Tuesday morning. He said that thousands of Vermont residents had lost their homes or businesses.

“Historic” storms, however, are becoming commonplace in the U.S. and around the world. Although the number of storms is not increasing, they are becoming more intense, especially in coastal areas, scientists say. Like record heat across the world, this increased intensity of storms is yet another hard-hitting example of the impact of a changing climate.

“I think it’s important for the public to take (this) seriously,” Adam Sobel, a climate scientist at Columbia University, told NPR earlier this year. “The storms are getting stronger. So even for the same number of storms, the number that are a real problem goes up because they are strengthening.”

This is why both efforts to mitigate climate change and to adapt to its consequences are essential. Mitigation involves reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and other steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Adaptation involves changes in building patterns in coastal areas among other measures to help communities prepare for changes in sea level, rainfall and temperatures that are predicted to intensify as our climate changes.

So far, thankfully, there have been few reports of deaths or injuries in Vermont and New York. Lives, however, will have been forever altered by the storm, which destroyed homes, businesses and their contents.

A federal disaster declaration will help. It is also a reminder to critics of this type of federal support that the next disaster could be in your neighborhood. As storms intensify and our climate changes at an unexpectedly fast rate, the next devastating wildfire, winter storm, hurricane or flood could be in your community.

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Boston Globe. July 12, 2023.

Editorial: DCF should stop taking Social Security benefits from foster children

When children age out of care, they need the money

The Department of Children and Families took Marissa Pike from her mother’s house in North Attleborough when she was 12, and she spent six years in foster care and group homes.

As a child with ADHD in a low-income household, Pike received Social Security benefits, and when she entered state custody, DCF began collecting those benefits, keeping most of the money and setting aside a portion for her needs. The benefits continued as long as the amount set aside for her didn’t grow larger than $2,000, which would have made her ineligible. Pike, now 25 and living in Lynn, only knew that occasionally — in retrospect, when she neared that asset limit — her social worker would ask her what she wanted and buy it: movie tickets, an iPad, a Fitbit.

When Pike aged out of DCF custody, she had almost nothing. She turned 18 in the middle of her senior year, moved in with her sister, then became homeless for six months. She has since earned associate’s and bachelor’s degrees and become certified as an EMT. She works for the North Shore 911 system and Lynn Public Schools.

“I had no family, I had no guidance, the only support system I knew was foster care. … I (was) on the streets with no money, no resources, and no clue how to be an adult,” Pike recalled.

According to the Disability Law Center, which is working on a report on this issue, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families is taking $450,000 to $500,000 a month in federal Social Security payments due to approximately 1,250 children in foster care — around $5.5 million a year, or an average of $4,400 per child per year. There are more than 9,000 children and young adults in DCF placements.

This includes Supplemental Security Income, which helps children with disabilities in low-income households, and survivors benefits for children of a deceased parent who paid into Social Security. DCF puts 10% of the benefits into the child’s personal needs account to pay for things like summer camp, sports equipment, toys, and laptops, then the agency directs 90% to the state’s general fund.

Under federal law, the Social Security Administration can approve DCF as the “designated payee,” someone appointed to act in a fiduciary capacity for a child, and let the agency reimburse the state’s general fund for the expense of the child’s care.

While it may be permitted by the federal government, the Disability Law Center says this arrangement is illegal because state law obligates DCF to care for children using agency funds. But regardless of legality — and advocates may file suit if a change is not forthcoming — DCF and the Legislature should eliminate the practice of using benefits to reimburse state government and instead set aside those benefits to help foster children enter adulthood.

When DCF takes the benefits, the children lose money that could be spent for their long-term benefit. “This is legally and morally questionable, and it’s simply terrible public policy,” said Rick Glassman, director of advocacy at the Disability Law Center.

There are administrative challenges to giving children the money. If SSI accrues, the child will hit a $2,000 federal asset limit and become ineligible. But there are financial savings accounts — like an ABLE account for people with disabilities — for the child’s benefit that do not count toward the asset limit.

Andrea Grossman, a DCF spokesperson, said DCF is “actively working with partners in the financial community” to give DCF the ability to establish ABLE investment accounts, but it is not set up yet.

DCF in January changed its regulations so the agency, rather than being required to take 90%, has discretion to take up to 90% . Grossman said this will “allow for more flexibility in distributing amounts based on each child’s unique, personal needs.”

The Marshall Project and NPR called attention to similar practices nationally in a 2021 story, which has spurred some change. Other states have found legal workarounds to the federal asset limit by using different types of trust accounts, like ABLE accounts. Today, at least six states, Washington, D.C., and several large cities require their child welfare agency to set up accounts for children where benefits can accrue, with the specifics of how much can be saved in what kind of account varying by state. Connecticut forbids its Department of Children and Families from using Social Security benefits to reimburse itself and requires the money be put in children’s trust accounts. Illinois and Maryland require state agencies to save an increasing percentage of benefit money for the child as the child ages.

These children desperately need their money. When children age out of foster care at 18 — or 21 if they voluntarily accept services — they are among society’s most vulnerable young adults. They usually lose their home and rarely have money to pay for housing or college. Many lived through trauma and lack a stable adult guide. According to Massachusetts data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 40% of 21-year-olds leaving foster care lack stable housing; 74% aren’t enrolled in post-secondary school; 23 percent have been incarcerated; and 18% are parents.

“Most young people have a financial safety net they can fall back on in dire circumstances. Young people who age out of foster care don’t have that. They end up in our shelters, in our prisons, at our food banks, and a lifetime of reliance on public assistance,” said Julie Segovia, vice president of research, policy, and learning for HopeWell, which provides services to foster children.

The $5.5 million annually that DCF takes from foster children on Social Security is a drop in DCF’s bucket, but for those foster children, it could be life-changing. A savings account of accumulated federal benefits could help young adults pay for college, rent, or transportation.

Bills sponsored by state Senator Joanne Comerford and state Representative Tricia Farley-Bouvier would require that every child receive financial literacy training, be screened for benefit eligibility when they enter care, be told how much they are due, and, when DCF applies for the money, be updated about money they receive. DCF would have to put 10 percent of the benefits in a child’s personal needs account and manage the rest in a savings account to be available when the child turns 18.

These policies would have helped Lazara Wilson, 26, who lived in group and foster homes from age 9 to 19. When she was 17, her mother died, and Wilson said she applied for survivors benefits and only then learned that her mental health conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder, qualified her for disability benefits from childhood. She says DCF never screened her for eligibility.

Wilson spent her teenage years working multiple jobs to afford a car and pay for personal items like shampoo, snacks, and laundry. When she aged out of the system, she lived in her car and started using drugs. “If had financial support, I wouldn’t be under so much stress needing to provide for myself,” Wilson said.

As a young adult, Wilson got Social Security benefits, became sober, and, with help from her grandparents, bought a condo in Osterville. She earned a bachelor’s degree and is starting a master’s in social work at Bridgewater State University.

But her path shouldn’t have been so hard. As Comerford said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if young adults who age out of foster care and enter into adulthood … had a small amount of money to pursue their dreams?”

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Boston Herald. July 11, 2023.

Editorial: Ball’s in Ben & Jerry’s court to give back Vermont land

Great news for Ben & Jerry’s: the virtue-signaling ice cream company has a chance to put its money where its mouth is.

After flexing social justice warrior cred with the tone-deaf Independence Day post: “This 4th of July, it’s high time we recognize that the U.S. exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it,” the company faced backlash and threats of a boycott.

Now, however, Ben & Jerry’s has a chance to make amends with the some of the indigenous people whose land was stolen, personally.

As Newsweek reported, an indigenous tribe descended from the Native American nation that originally controlled the Vermont land the Ben & Jerry’s headquarters is located on would be interested in taking it back, its chief has said.

Don Stevens, chief of the Nulhegan Band of The Coosuk Abenaki Nation — one of four descended from the Abenaki that are recognized in Vermont — told Newsweek it was “always interested in reclaiming the stewardship of our lands,” but that the company had yet to approach them.

It comes after the ice cream company was questioned as to when it would give up its Burlington, Vermont, headquarters — which sits on a vast swathe of U.S. territory that was under the auspices of the Abenaki people before colonization.

In that July 4 statement, it added that the “land back” movement was about “ensuring that Indigenous people can again govern the land their communities called home for thousands of years.” It focused much of its statement on the taking of land from the Lakota in South Dakota.

Odd, given that social justice can begin at home – Ben & Jerry’s home.

“If you look at the (Abenaki) traditional way of being, we are place-based people. Before recognized tribes in the state, we were the ones who were in this place,” Stevens told the New York Post.

Ben & Jerry’s has expressed strong views on people it deems “were in this place,” not only in America.

Last year, it slammed parent company Unilever for selling its operations in Israel to a local licensee — effectively circumventing a boycott of Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank.

“We continue to believe it is inconsistent with Ben & Jerry’s values for our ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” Ben & Jerry’s tweeted.

But it was OK to sell ice cream on American soil it says was stolen from indigenous people? Is that a take on its Core line of ice creams – posturing on the outside, profiting on the inside?

Unilever bought Ben & Jerry’s more than 20 years ago in a deal valued at $326 million. The ice cream company insisted that its board have autonomy on social and political issues.

Ah, the perks of being a champagne socialist.

This is a teachable moment for Ben & Jerry’s, and its political fan base. Will it stand up to its statement and start negotiating with members of the Abenaki Nation to return the Vermont land? Or does it have a crisis management team working OT to staunch the flow of “put up or shut up?”

We await the scoop on justice served. “If you look at the (Abenaki) traditional way of being, we are place-based people. Before recognized tribes in the state, we were the ones who were in this place,” Stevens told the New York Post.