Q&A: Jim Douglas gets down to business

Vermont Business Magazine, Jan 01, 2004

Jim Douglas has been in public life for three decades. He came to the state Legislature as the representative from Middlebury, elected first in 1972, the year he graduated from Middlebury College. He served therefor three and a half terms, including one and a half terms as Republican majority leader When Richard Snelling was elected governor in 1976, Douglas served as his campaign co-chairman.

In 1979 Snelling invited Douglas to become his executive assistant. In 1980, Douglas ran for secretary of state and served a dozen years in that capacity. He ran unsuccessfully or the US Senate in 1992 agamst Patrocl Leahy. He was elected state treasurer in 1994, and served in that role until he was elected governor in 2002.

He served as executive director of the United Way of Addison County for many years and has been the long-serving moderator for Middlebury Town Meeting, Douglas has been president of the National Association of State Treasurers, as well as president of the National Association of Secretaries of State.

Robert Smith and Timothy McQuiston interviewed Governor Douglas in his office in Montpelier on December 17.

VBM: Looking back on your first year as governor, how would you assess it? What do you consider your accomplishments, and what were the disappointments?

Douglas: I feel very good about the first year. I think it was remarkable year of bipartisan cooperation and progress during the legislative session last winter. I know a lot of observers wondered if a Senate dominated by one party and the House dominated by the other could work well together to accomplish some important goals for the state. But I'm pleased to report that with one major exception, all my legislative initiatives were passed.

VBM: The exception?

Douglas: The permit bill. We got a $105 million jobs package to help jumpstart our economy. The most significant jobs bill ever. There was an emergency farm finance bill that helped 90 to 100 of our struggling dairy farmers get through a period of low milk prices this year. We also got a new funding mechanism for our public schools, which ended the divisiveness of Act 60 that we've faced for the past six years.

We've got a balanced budget with a very modest increase in the general fund. We continue the ratcheting down of our longterm indebtedness. We created a substance abuse package with a $9.1 million commitment to the heroin epidemic in our state. There were reorganization measures for several different agencies of state government.

I feel very good about this last year.

VBM: When we talked when you were running for office, 18 months ago, the state was facing some fiscal problems in balancing the budget. How has that worked out?

Douglas: The first year was a tough budget year, and frankly we're going to have another tough one coming up. The 20th of January I'll present a budget for fiscal year '05, and it'll be another difficult one. Last year we gave a scenario to all the agencies of a 5 to 10 percent reduction in their expenditures. We didn't reduce all agencies or programs by that amount. In the end, we made some reductions in some areas, but I was able to fund the priorities that I'd established in higher education, economic development and public safety, and keep the overall increase in the general budget to .7 percent.

I feel very good about that. We've kept the same fiscal restraint for the coming year and still met the legitimate needs of the state while balancing our budget.

VBM: It seemed to me that the revenues are a little better than projected. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Douglas: This year, they're running ahead for the year to date, but the economists aren't confident that this is a sustainable trend. With the IBM severance package and the Poultney package, for examples, tax revenues were more than expected. All impacted state revenues, but in November revenues were down in the general fund. So we had four months up and one down, so we want to be very cautious and not get over confident.

VBM: What's on your agenda when the Legislature reconvenes? And permit reform is one area we're especially interested in.

Douglas: Continued fiscal restraint, certainly. I'm not going to look to support any increase in the tax burden for Vermonters. In fact, we're recommending a 5 percent reduction in our statewide property tax rate. We continue to bring down our bonded indebtedness so that future generations aren't paying a large amount of principal and interest on debt. I have a jobs package, to follow-up on the progress we made this past year.

It has four components, We talk about a 'campaign to retain,' to address some of the competitive disadvantages that companies are having with creating jobs here, and one of those is the permitting process. It would be more of a boon to recruitment to reach out to encourage other companies to come here. We have more trade missions, Eke the one we just had to Quebec. More participation in trade shows, more staff for our economic development department. We have 11 people. Other states kind of chuckle when they hear what a small department we have.