Jason Lorber October 30, 2011

Interview with Jason Lorber

The following is a faithfully transcribed conversation between me and Democratic mayoral candidate Jason Lorber recorded at The Bagel Cafe and Deli in the Ethan Allen Shopping Center on North Avenue on October 30, 2011 between 11am and 12pm. Lorber is currently a state representative from Burlington and is running for the Democratic nomination for mayor of Burlington.

HB: I'm at the Bagel Deli and Cafe with Democratic mayoral candidate Jason Lorber...

JL: ...And the leaves are changing. And it's the last of the beautiful leaves. We see red leaves all about us.

HB: I know. My plan today after this is to take the kids sown to the...we do the loop. We go down to Battery Park, walk down to the waterfront and then back up Depot Street. Big Circle.

JL: Oh nice. And when you're at the Battery Park you can also point out ' this is democracy. We see the tents from the...

HB: Oh. Are there tents at Battery Park as well as City Hall Park?

JL: Oh I'm sorry. They're at City Hall Park.

HB: Oh. We'll probably hit that later. And we do the slide. I saw you talking about the slide in the debate. We do that too. I thought that was our term but I guess it's universal. The kids love that slide.

JL: Everyone does that. Yeah.

HB: But you've got to be careful, especially on the south side. It's a little bit of a steeper drop...

JL: [Laughter.]

HB: ...if they were to fall off the edge.

JL: That's right. We have a lot of fun there.

M,or

HB: So you were the first announced mayoral candidate.

JL: Yes.

HB: Why would you want to be mayor at a time like this?

JL: Well this is the time when we need a strong mayor, of all times, and that appeals to me even more... Well I want to be mayor because I love this city and I want to make sure that we're true to our principles, but in order to do that we need to get back on financial footing- strong financial footing. I don''t want to succumb to the fear and the Republican rhetoric that we're seeing throughout Burlington, as well as on the national level. People talk about Social Security being a problem on the federal level. And while there's challenges, it's going to remain solvent for ten, twenty years before there's a real problem to address. We're not in emergency mode yet. And the same way in Burlington- We have serious financial problems but we're not in emergency mode. We don't need to be selling off Burlington Electric. We don't need to abandon our principles. And I want to be mayor to preserve what's unique about Burlington, but to restore trust and fiscal stability.

HB: What would be bad about selling Burlington Electric?

JL: I'm not sure where to start, because there's so much, but I'll just say it's financial malpractice to look at selling Burlington Electric. Here's an institution that just from a financial perspective, saves us money. When energy uses are skyrocketing across the country, Burlington Electric has a history, a proven history of keeping our energy usage flat. I think it's risen by two percent over the last number of years...

HB: Well it definitely seems like a good deal for all that you get from electricity. You know you look at your average cost per day and it's like, two or three bucks...

JL: Exactly.

HB: ...and you're thinking that's a cup of coffee.

JL: Right. And for Burlington residents... electric use and energy use is not a luxury. We have to have it. So you can view it as a tax. And if you were to sell Burlington Electric to a private utility, we're going to be essentially paying taxes to that company and it's going to be going out of state, possibly out of country depending on who buys it and that's going to increase costs for all of us.

HB: Now to get something on the ballot the way Kurt is proposing this, it would either take an act of the city council or a petition drive, right, to get something voted on. He's saying he would propose this as a ballot item for next November if he were to become mayor... Why do you think he doesn't just propose that it go on the March ballot right now since he could do that as a city councilor?

JL: Well I think that this is wrong-headed, not just for financial purposes, but also for who we are as a community and what our values are. Burlington values sustainability. Burlington values us creating community centered approaches to our challenges, and selling out to a private entity goes against the grain of who we are. The fact that this is coming from the Republican right makes me think. They're after something else. They're trying to attack how we do business and how we work well together as a community.

HB: Kurt might just say he's trying to balance out books... To wit, let's talk about Burlington Telecom...

JL: Well wait. Let me just address that because again to just balance our books- our obligations and the concerns of our financials are long term and while I have an MBA, you don't need to have an MBA to understand the difference between short term obligations and long term obligations. You don't fix long term obligations by having a hurried fire sale.

HB: I think most people would agree that the underfunded pension is a long term liability...

JL: Absolutely.

HB: But the potential liability with Burlington Telecom could come all at once if Citi Financial is successful in its lawsuit. They're suing the city for the money that we borrowed from them with the lease purchase agreement... This is something I asked Bram, and have asked the mayor... Do you think that regardless of what the lease-purchase agreement might say, that the city has a moral obligation to pay back the money it borrowed?

JL: Whenever you borrow money, you should be paying it back. Absolutely.

HB: Ok... so what is your plan for that? We're currently being sued. The city has terminated the lease. Under the terms of the lease Citi Financial now owns Burlington Telecom's equipment. Burlington Telecom continues to use the equipment, continues to draw revenue from that's another part of the lawsuit...

JL: There's going to be a lot of twists and turns between now and the resolution of that legal case and you could talk to many lawyers on many sides and they're going to posit different opinions. Here's what we need to know. We need to know that Burlington Telecom- we need to do everything that we can to preserve it as a publicly owned utility. One of the reasons is... I don't care if you're... a Comcast or a Burlington Telecom family. Comcast rates are low because of this competition. Burlington Telecom is providing much needed infrastructure. So we need to do everything we can within financial realities. Now within financial realities we also know that it's not operating profitably and no matter what spin is put on it, that just doesn't pass mustard to say that it is working right now. What we need to do is we need to look at attracting private customers and that means creating an environment to make Burlington Telecom as profitable as possible.

HB: most of the other candidates seem to be talking about bringing in partners or investors, ad what you seem to be saying is 'continue to own it all, and just make it work...'

JL: Uh uh.

HB: No?

JL: No. I was just talking about bringing in private investors.

HB: Oh. I thought you meant private businesses as customers to Burlington Telecom...

JL: No. No no no. No, we need private investors...

HB: Well why would anybody want to invest in a company with such a liability... What's in it for them to do that? Didn't Citi Financial invest in Burlington Telecom and aren't they paying for that?

JL: Private investors are going to invest into Burlington Telecom because it makes financial sense. It's not out of the goodness of their hearts. So we need a mayor who can go in and look at the books and understand them. I can do that. I have that background. I have the MBA. I have the financial background. What we are going to do, the first thing is ... we are going to do a full audit of the books, from top to bottom, and we're going to make that public.

HB: Haven't there been a number of audits? Like most recently the Larkin report that came out in January. That was pretty extensive.

JL: There's a number of... The numbers need to be current. We need to address the financial recommendations of how to change out audit. We need to do away with this 'trust me' style of bureaucracy.

HB: Would you be in favor of running Burlington Telecom by commission the way some of the other departments are, like BED? And make it more of a publicly engaging enterprise? It seems to be quasi-private right now... It's not a full department. It's kind of been run out of the CAO's office and most of the decisions get made in executive session- or at least are discussed in executive session. Would you be in favor of...

JL: And that is a problem. That is a big problem...

HB: ...having a commission?

JL: … and we need to change the structure as I've talked about... possibly making changes to the CAO position. Right now there's a big concentration of power and the fox guarding the chicken house. We need to...

HB: We didn't used to have a CAO, by the way...That was a relatively new...

JL: No. Right. It was three different positions that were combined.

HB: We used to have a mayor, a treasurer and a city clerk. And essentially all those functions still need to be attended to. Would you be in favor of looking at maybe going back to the clerk and the treasurer model?

JL: That's what I've talked about and I think we need to consider all options. We don't need to accept the current system and we need someone with a fresh set of eyes.

HB: The way I look at the CAO system that we've got now- We've essentially got two mayors, each with plausible deniability because of the other. Do you agree with that analysis?

JL: Well the buck always stops with the mayor.

HB: Right. But does it? It still seems to be a question whether or not Bob Kiss actually knew money was coming out of the cash pool... according to the Larkin report, since the beginning of BT. It was never in compliance with condition 60.

JL: With Burlington Telecom we need to start with understanding the books. We know about the 17 million dollar gotcha. We don't know what other numbers are out there. And for people to have specific recommendations at this point is not responsible. You need to understand what the numbers are. So that's the first step. The other part is recognizing you're going to need a partner not come in and take an equity stake in Burlington Telecom.

HB: A majority stake?

JL: Quite possibly. And so in order to do that, we also have to make sure that his is financially feasible for them. How they're going to make money off of Burlington Telecom in what we originally had planned was for Burlington Telecom to go beyond the Burlington borders. To go into Winooski, to go elsewhere and capture more businesses and more government entities. In order to do that we need a charter change. We need to go to the legislature and seek their approval. To my knowledge this mayor has not done that and we need to be bolder about what's happening. And this goes back to transparency.

HB: So are you in favor of seeking a waiver of the condition that asks us to build out the entire city?

JL: I'd like to see us go beyond that. I'd like to see us...

HB: Should we finish the build out of the entire city for all residents?

JL: We should. The timing...

HB: But there's a proposal out there now to try to be released from that condition... Do you have a position there, on that?

JL: Well I think we need to go further... We need to... relax the conditions particularly to allow us to make more money. I don't think we should give up on that covenant and on that vision to have all Burlington residents covered.

HB: But you would prefer to see the condition relaxed ?

JL: I would prefer to see that we're allowed to expand Burlington Telecom's scope beyond just Burlington.

HB: In advance of building out the entire city of Burlington?

JL: Correct. Yeah so that should happen now.

HB: We should be able to expand outside the city before everybody in the city has that service...because life isn't fair?

JL: Well it's not about fairness. It's about financial stability. We need to maintain that financial stability if this is going to survive. But this really goes back to transparency. A lot of candidates are talking about 'I'm going to do this, I'm going to have this quick fix' but when you have a problem- when you have a breakdown in a system, it's important that you understand 'now where did that come from?'

HB: Kurt Wright and Tim Ashe were on the board of finance in 2008. Johnathan Leopold has said on public access television that he told the board of finance that they were borrowing from the cash pool, and that they were having trouble finding financing in 2008. The minutes can't confirm that because a lot of it is done in executive session. Should Tim Ashe and Kurt Wright bear some responsibility for the lack of transparency that surrounded Burlington Telecom leading up to the discovery of the pooled cash deficit in 2009?

JL:: Well there's a couple questions there. One is a question of transparency, and the other is a question of...

HB: And do Ashe and Wright bear responsibility for the lack of transparency?

JL: ...the other question is the issue of doing the job. You can say 'well I didn't do the job because I didn't understand the job- or because I didn't understand the numbers- or maybe I did understand the numbers but I wasn't willing to move forward on it'

HB: Which of those things do you think it the case for Ashe and Wright?

JL: Frankly I don't care. The fact of the matter is the job wasn't done.

HB: Right.

JL: And we need a mayor who isn't going to pass the buck, who isn't going to make excuses. Who is going to say 'listen- if we have an oversight regulation and I approve certain things, that's on my watch.' And for someone to say 'oh that went though, oh let's not talk about blame' ...There are two other words which you could at least say- which I'm teaching my son- 'I'm sorry,' or 'I messed up.' What would have happened if Bob Kiss had come to our community and said 'you know what? We overspent on building this. We under-marketed. We are out of money and the world has crumbled around us in terms of telecom. This wasn't unique to Burlington but we're now in a situation where we need to address this as a community. That didn't happen and the city took 17 million dollars out of the general fund and hid that from voters. We need transparency in government. We would have different solutions if the mayor and... if others would step up and say “this is the situation that we're in.” So when you hear candidates talking about transparency, you need to say “well what are you doing about transparency?” Here's what I've done: I live my life in a transparent way. I've very clear. I'm the only candidate that released my campaign finances. I said where I'm raising my money from and where it's going to. No other candidate has done that and they've been silent on that. When I was in the legislature I supported tougher penalties for government entities like Burlington...

HB: Are you not in the legislature any more?

JL: No, I...

HB: You still are, right?

JL: Yeah. I'm saying there was a specific action I did when I was in the legislature when I supported the transparency laws that our current administration opposed those restrictions, those penalties rather. That was the meat of the bill. We need to be able to walk the walk when we talk about transparency. As a young man, I had to face a very difficult situation in coming out to my parents and letting them know that I was gay. That was a very scary thing. But I know that when we address our realities- when we come clean- we become stronger for it. As a business owner I know that the number one thing that you do when you're creating a business, which is a risky venture, as I did after I got my MBA I started my business and I headed up the obstacles head on. The riskiest parts, that's what you go towards. You don't shirk away from them. And in doing so you minimize the risk. If there's risky elements in government, we need a mayor who stands up. We need candidates who stand up and say “I'm going to address those concerns.

HB: Ok. A city council task force on the pension fund... I just want to change topics and go to the pension because that's probably next to Burlington Telecom, the other large financial issue facing the city. In 2006... the unfunded liability of the pension fund was around 32 million dollars. And that was before the economic downturn of 2008. I think more recently It's been estimated to be around 46 million, maybe. Maybe you know the numbers better than I...

JL: Those numbers seem ri... well they're changing all the time...

HB: They always change because of the market fluctuations but...

JL: ...but that's the ballpark.

HB: Would you prefer moving toward a defined contribution versus and defined benefit structure for city employees?

JL: I think the way that you address this is you bring the unions to the table and you have a decision. And if you're not able to...

HB: And which position are you going to advocate for as the mayor?

JL: Well I'm going to bring all the parties to the table and have a meaningful discussion about it. I'm not going to outline right now specifics on that, that I think should be part of the negotiation. And what I'm going to say is, we're going to come to an agreement and if we don't we're going to binding arbitration.

HB: Right. But what are you going to be binding them to, though- is the question. I mean what would you prefer to see? I mean there's only a couple of options for...

JL: No I mean bind them to... that's an independent...

HB: … either you could increase the contributions that they're making to make up that 30 year shortfall... ask people to contribute more to their retirement. You could move to a defined contribution system as opposed to a defined benefit to reduce the liability on the city... or you could cut the benefits. Really there's not too many other options to make up that shortfall... Do you have a preference for what you'd like to do?

JL: Well there's also... you need to look at the compensation as part of their overall package. And we need to respect the principle of collective bargaining by these unions, and there's a lot of...

HB: But there's no question about that. My question is about...

JL: There are questions about that...

HB: ...what position you're going to take in that collective bargaining, not whether or not you respect the process of collective bargaining. I don't think many people would argue with that.

JL: Actually a lot of people would argue with that. I don't believe that all the candidates are respecting collective bargaining. And you can talk to them about that...

HB: Which ones specifically are not?

JL: Well... Kurt Wright has certainly had a number of issues. That's been out there. There's been a proposal out there to say- 'you know what? Let's not go though the current channels, lets make this a ballot item- let's have voters choose which system we go to.' I think it's important to respect the collective bargaining process and go to binding arbitration. And that is not something that anyone has utilized so far- that no mayor has gone to that length. But we need to bring the workers to the table, the unions and all the different stakeholders... and do it.

HB: Yeah but what? What is “it?”

JL: Well that's going to be part of the conversation.

HB: Right, right...ok. Would you feel comfortable supporting any of the other three democrats running for the nomination if, say, you didn't win?

JL: I think we need to beat Kurt Wright, and that's pretty darn clear... that his values are not our values.

HB: Did you support IRV [Instant Run-off Voting]?

JL: I did.

HB: So, could you rank the other three Democratic candidates in terms of your preference?

JL: [Laughter.] Well IRV is dead... the voters...

HB: Still, at the caucus it is sort of a system like that because they're going to go though several rounds, most likely, unless somebody gets 50% on the first ballot, in which case... Let's say you don't get 50% on the first ballot... how does it work?

JL: I'll cut you off right there and just say I'm focused on my campaign.

HB: [Laughter.]

JL: [Laughter.] … And you're my second choice.

HB: Thank you. Thank you. That's very nice. But I'm not a Democrat.

JL: [Laughter.]

HB: [Laughter.]

JL: What are you?

HB: I'm an Independent.

JL: Sure?

HB: Yeah. My preferences, in terms of the issues don't fit neatly into a box. I'm very libertarian in some ways and I'm very socially liberal in other ways...

JL: Well let me tell you why I'm a Democrat. I'm a Democrat because I believe in community. I believe that no one's a rock, no one's an island- with apologies to S and G [Simon and Garfunkel]- That we are stronger when we work together as a community. And we see that at the farmers market when we go down there and we see neighbors from all over the city. We see that when we work together for sustainability, whether that's through the Sustainability Academy and the public schools or through Burlington Electric and we say we're going to create a utility that's not just about bottom line profits, but also about achieving some of out social mission. Those are some of the values that I hold dear to me and I want to make sure the next mayor continues with those values... You know I've been in the legislature for the last seven years and I'm proud of the work we did on justice reinvestment where we found alternatives to prison that cost less but save us tens of millions of dollars. And we do that by attacking the root cause of the problem. For a lot of the crime- for a lot of the non-violent crime- it's drug and alcohol addiction. Well why would you send people to prison for drug and alcohol addiction when it's often easier to find drugs and alcohol than cigarettes in prison. Why not … get them the community support that then need so that when they come out they save money by staying straight. And that's the history I've done. And that's also involved- In order to do that we've looked at affordable housing options and we've found supporting, great organizations like Mercy Connections and the Howard Center and creating Northern Lights- Funding for Dismas House, for Larkin Street Youth, for Spectrum Youth Services, for the Phoenix house- programs like that- make us stronger. And that's because we’re taking a community based approach. The work I've done on Farm to Plate is also indicative of the work that I'll do as mayor. I don't have all the solutions, nor do I claim to, but we're not hiring a city manager, we're hiring a leader and so I went to some of the experts and said “what I ideas do you have? Give me a great idea and I'll help implement it. And I went to the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility. There's a guy there named Will Rapp from Gardeners Supply who had this idea and this vision to create a statewide network of agriculture that will help us buy locally and in meeting with them, it was called the Vermont Agriculture and Sustainability Investment Program. I said the first thing we need to do is we need to find a name for this. And they said well Jason we have a name. I said with all due respect, I'm a marketing guy. You don't have a name. And so we decided to call it the Farm to Plate program. And we passed that into law. And the Farm to Plate program helps us buy locally by giving small, $5000 matching grants from the government to create long term sustainability. Now that sort of thinking- from Farm to Plate, to justice reinvestment- and again with justice reinvestment, I didn't come up with the ideas, but I identified the right people to work with, and we got that passed. That's what I'm gonna do as mayor.

HB: OK. I guess we'll leave it there. Jason Lorber, candidate for the Democratic nomination for mayor of Burlington- it's been very nice speaking with you. Thank you very much.

JL: Thank you Haik.