The Commons

2 The Commons • February 2009 The Commons • February 2009 NEWS 3
n New state rep from page 1
service from Rutland to Burlington
with bus service in response
to a projected $253 million budget
deficit.
As time passes, most members
of the two legislative committees
start showing signs of weariness.
Some slouch in their seats, and
one stares blankly into space,
propping his sagging face with
his thumb and index finger.
Burke, on the other hand, has
not been on the job long enough
to become jaded. She sits directly
in front of the witness, maintaining
complete focus and piercing
eye contact with Ide as she takes
page after page of notes throughout
the hour-long testimony, with
the intensity of someone obligated
to becoming an expert in
all aspects of transportation policy
in the state.
The road to the
State House
Burke, 61, a painter and visual
artist who has worked as an art
teacher at the Hilltop Montessori
School for more than 20
years, had only recently earned
a master’s of fine art from Goddard
College in Plainfield when
her state representative, Daryl
Pillsbury, announced that he
was stepping down from the
Windham-3-2 seat he had held
since 2001.
“I didn’t think anything of it,”
she recalls. But soon Sara Edwards,
who represents the adjacent
district, tapped her as a
Progressive Party candidate.
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Burke, a Brattleboro town
meeting representative for 19
years, says she considered running
for state representative an
“interesting proposition,” especially
given her undergraduate
degree in political science. Burke
also pursued graduate studies at
the London School of Economics
before shifting gears to the
visual arts.
A lifelong Democrat, Burke
says she “really went back and
forth” on whether to run on the
Progressive ticket. In the end, a
combination of the shared political
ideals and her “respect for
Sara” helped influence her decision,
she says.
But as it happened, Burke also
received a majority of the 61
write-in votes in the Democratic
primary election to become the
de-facto nominee of that party.
Although she ended up as
the only contestant for the seat,
Burke still campaigned for the
job, engaging in debates and
knocking on “about 90 percent”
of the doors in the district. (She
would have completed the task
were it not for her sister’s wedding,
she notes.) Her 4,041 constituents
include some of the
most economically disadvantaged
and citizens of Brattleboro,
including those from the
Clark-Canal Street area where
she once led a neighborhood art
program.
Burke says she told herself to
“remember to keep this visceral
image of these neighborhoods,
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JEFF POTTER/THE COMMONS
Representative Mollie Burke, left, on the floor of Representative Hall. On the right is Megan
Smith, a Democrat from Rutland, another first-term legislator. Burke, Smith, and 30 other
new representatives began their legislative careers in January.
that it’s not just you in this privileged
place.” She vowed to retain
“a certain kind of humility,”
she says.
The committee room
The State House stands majestically
and incongruously in
Montpelier, an otherwise-typical
Vermont small town of 8,000, its
gold dome glinting in the intense
winter sun. When this Vermont
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State House was built in 1859, the
country’s taste in art and architecture
was neoclassical, turning
to influences in the ancient societies
of Greece and Rome. A
young United States looked back
in time, cherry-picking formal elements
that together created an
environment and context for the
nation’s laws and civil society.
That historic lushness of the
place — painstakingly renovated
and restored in the early
1980s — comes across in the
public corridors and spaces of
the building. Yet little comes between
the public and their access
to the building, often referred
to as “the people’s house.” The
result: a hands-on, practical access
to the formal environment,
a place where legislators dress
their best out of respect for the
heritage of the building yet still
feel comfortable wearing their
snow boots.
“Talk about the accessibility
of state government,” Burke
says with a smile describing her
chance encounter with Governor
Jim Douglas in the cloakroom.
“You have the ability to have a
cordial greeting whether you
agree or not.”
After the joint hearing and a
brief interlude into a modern
annex to a cafeteria ser ving
food products made in the state,
Burke (already on a first-name
basis with the cashier) takes her
tea to the Room 43, where she
spends most of her time working
with 10 other representatives
on the House Committee
on Transportation.
If the lower floors of the State
House architecturally represent
the formal, lofty, and ceremonial
ideals of government, these
committee rooms represent the
cramped place where the handson,
darkly practical lawmaking
take place.
In Room 43, no oil paintings
hang on the walls — only an
odd assortment of photographs,
news clippings, maps, and random
graphs from transportationrelated
presentations. Scraps of
paper with titles of active legislation
are taped to the wall.
The representatives seat themselves
at their cheap office tables,
all clustered into an island in the
center of the room; the makeshift
island holds the legislators’ belongings
and other papers, reports,
baskets of binder clips,
a dour piggy bank, toy wooden
trucks, and a miniature Bozo the
Clown figurine.
Two representatives from
the Lake Champlain Regional
Chamber of Commerce sit in
mismatched chairs at the edge of
the tiny and cluttered room waiting
to testify about an economic
study. Someone inquires about
Cambridge representative Rich
Westman, the Republican committee
chair who when last seen
was fighting the flu. Westman, lying
on the floor, dryly confirms
his presence, stands, and takes
a large swig of orange daytime
cough syrup straight from the
bottle. Ranking member Albert
“Sonny” Audette, a Democrat
from Burlington, enters, larger
than life both physically and in
personality, and takes his seat at
the end of the makeshift conference
table.
It can take up to a full year before
new House members fully
get the proceedings and the politics
behind the life and work of
a legislative committee, says Audette,
who came to the House
in 2000 with some background
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in transportation issues, having
managed public works for
the city of South Burlington for
30 years.
By 10:30 a.m., the rest of the
representatives have assembled,
and the testimony begins,
with Westman holding court and
Burke taking meticulous notes
about the Chamber’s strategies
for transportation issues in anticipation
of declining revenue.
With the guests excused, Westman
tells the committee members
that they’re free to go for
the afternoon “unless I decide
to call you back.”
H o w w i l l t h e y f i n d o u t
officially?
“I don’t really know that yet,”
Burke says with a smile and a
shrug. So far, word of mouth for
changes of schedule has worked
just fine.
On the floor, but
not speaking
On Jan. 14, after attending a
lunch at the nearby Capitol Plaza
Hotel with the Vermont Commission
on Women — “very often,
there are luncheons, and you
want to go,” she says — Burke
returned to the State House and
took her assigned seat in Representatives
Hall as the House of
Representatives reconvened.
After Rep. William Aswad of
Burlington (one of Burke’s colleagues
on the Transportation
Committee) delivered an invocation
that harkened back to the
Great Depression and quoted the
song of the era “Brother, Can You
Spare a Dime?” House Speaker
Shap Smith moved a blur of nine
new bills and several joint resolutions
to standing committees.
Twenty minutes later, Smith
rapped his gavel, adjourning the
proceedings until the next day.
Legislative proceedings take
place in their own language and
with their own protocol, and it’s
impossible for a newcomer to
jump in without at least some degree
of a learning curve.
Late last year after the election,
the newly elected legislators
— 32 representatives and three
senators — received a 2½-day
orientation from the Vermont
Legislative Joint Fiscal Office,
The Legislative Council, and the
Snelling Center for Government
that introduced them to ongoing
legislative issues and the sometimes-unwritten
rules of decorum
that govern the lawmaking
process in Montpelier.
For instance, “you don’t really
speak on the floor of the House
your first year,” Burke says. “It’s
assumed you are there to watch
and listen.”
Burke has also been warned
“never to promise your vote and
then change it,” an act of betrayal
that would demolish standing
and reputation. “Your word is
your bond,” she says.
The orientation also gave
Burke and her other incoming
colleagues some reassurance —
that “you’re not expected to know
everything about everything,”
she says. The newcomers help
one another, and veteran legislators
offer advice unstintingly.
Burke and representative Diane
Lanpher, a Democrat from
Vergennes, both find themselves
new to the State House and serve
on the Transportation Committee.
“We definitely enjoy each
other’s company,” Burke says.
“We’re learning together every
day here, every moment.”
While Burke was well prepared
on any number of levels for
the job, “the pace and intensity
— that’s been a surprise,” she
says.
Burke moves around the floor
networking, taking as much time
to leave the rotunda as the duration
of the session itself. So do
the other representatives. It’s
part of the process.
Keeping life in balance
Legislators meet in Montpelier
Tuesdays through Fridays from
January through late spring or
early summer, depending on how
the budget process goes. This
year, of course, with cuts to the
current year’s spending interrupting
the normal process of
creating the 2009–2010 budget,
all bets are off.
The structure of Vermont’s
“citizen legislature” cuts two
ways. In theory, the schedule
keeps working in the legislature
from becoming a full-time
job. “There are obviously professional
politicians, but there
are more citizens doing public
service,” Burke says.
But in reality, “you’re retired,
you’re independently wealthy, or
you’re lucky enough to have a job
that’s flexible enough” to accommodate
the legislative schedule,
says Burke. “You can’t live on a
legislative salary.” That salary
now stands at $600 per week
while the legislature is in session,
plus a stipend for food and
lodging for members of the legislature
who live farther than 70
miles from Montpelier.
“I’m lucky in that I’m a parttime
teacher, and I’m lucky
enough to have a flexible job
and employer,” Burke says of
the Hilltop school. “I told them,
‘I don’t know what this means
for the job,’ and my employer
— wonderfully — said, ‘We’ll
just give you your contract, and
we’ll work it out.’ That took a big
weight off me.”
With three children grown and
living their own lives, and her
husband, Peter Gould, involved
in a flexible schedule of his own
that involves teaching a college
class in the Boston area, Burke
now finds herself free to make
sense of a schedule that threatens
to fill every waking minute of
her day and overwhelm her day
planner, clearly not designed to
accommodate the depth of legislative
commitments. (“Already I
think I didn’t get the right size,”
Burke says ruefully.)
“The other surprise is the transition
back home,” she says of
the multitasking required of family
life. In Montpelier, “this is all
I have to focus on.”
Burke carpools to and from the
capitol with fellow representative
Edwards. During the week, she
rents a room with a separate entrance
and bath that’s a 12-minute
walk from the State House,
a living arrangement similar to
that of many representatives
from the farther reaches of the
state. When she is not socializing
with other legislators, she
spends evenings going through
and organizing her notes, trying
to make sense of what has happened
during the day.
Making sense of the job
The next day, the Transportation
Committee has just received
state treasurer Jeb Spaulding into
Room 43 to testify. With that out
of the way, Burke quickly drops
by the Capital Plaza Hotel to appear
at a luncheon of Vermont
JEFF POTTER/THE COMMONS
Mollie Burke pores through a report in anticipation of a meeting of the House Transportation
Committee on which she serves. To her right: Bill Aswad of Burlington and Timothy R.
Corcoran II of Bennington.
State Firefighters’ Association.
She’s not sure she’s going to stay,
but she wants to see if anyone
from Brattleboro, any of her constituents,
had made the drive.
“I don’t think so,” a firefighter
at the door said, double checking
the list of those seated at the
tables. She looks in and sees Peter
Shumlin, who represents her
district in the State Senate, at the
dais addressing the group. She
decides that Windham County is
well represented.
Burke moves to the hotel lobby
for a few minutes to reflect on her
first few days in her new job. As
she talks, she smiles and gives
a cordial wave to the governor,
who is leaving the event.
Burke says she finds herself
straddling the line between
starry-eyed excitement about
working in this new environment
and sober concern about
the grim realities of the problems
facing the state.
“Every day is different,” Burke
says. “Every day unfolds and reveals
the process of what we’re
facing.”
Clearly, that involves upcoming
legislative decisions that involve
difficult, painful choices.
“In some ways, it does present
a good opportunity, in the sense
that everyone is in the same
boat,” Burke says. She points
out that some traditional political
posturing will undoubtedly
be replaced by a bipartisan effort
to figure out “how to do the
least amount of damage” given
devastating budget cuts.
“We have to take things one
step at a time. There are so many
moving parts,” Burke says.
“My goal is when we’re at
the end of this session, I’ll have
stayed true to my values, yet I’ve
worked within the realities of the
situation,” Burke says. “Basically,
that’s what you hope to do
in life, too.”
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