by Joseph Gresser
BARTON — Friday was probably one of the last pleasant days of the year, so when Scott Milne, the Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor stopped by for a chat it was possible to sit at the Chronicle’s picnic table.
Mr. Milne is a relaxed campaigner. During his first visit to the Chronicle in 2014 he arrived without the customary handler, and stayed for hours chatting happily.
On Friday he had a set schedule, but still took time for casual conversation.
He was accompanied by Elise Keys, who only revealed herself as more than a standard campaign aide when she called him “Dad.”
Mr. Milne is making his third run for statewide public office. In 2014 he lost the gubernatorial contest to Governor Peter Shumlin, who won with only 2,500 votes to spare.
In 2016 Mr. Milne went up against U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy with less than stellar results. The incumbent senator received 61 percent of the votes cast; Mr. Milne got 33 percent.
This time around, he is aiming at an office that has little in the way of official duties. The Lieutenant Governor presides over the state Senate and takes the place of the Governor should he be unable to perform his duties.
Otherwise Lieutenant Governors are free to make of their office what they can.
Governor Shumlin made then Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott a member of his cabinet. Governor Scott has not done the same for the person who followed him in the office, current Lieutenant Governor David Zuckerman.
Asked about his plans should he win the office, Mr. Milne said, “I think Phil Scott needs a partner and Vermont deserves for Phil Scott to have a partner in the Lieutenant Governor’s office, not somebody who’s shooting at him and trying to step ahead of him for the next job.”
About the traditional duty of holding down the fort on occasions when the Governor is out of state, Mr. Milne was blunt. In these days of constant communication, it doesn’t matter much where Governor Scott might be; he still is able to perform his duties.
On the other hand, should something unforeseen happen to the Governor, and here Mr. Milne referred to the transition to Governor Howard Dean when Governor Richard Snelling died unexpectedly, “You’ve got to be ready to step in if, God forbid, something happens.
“As you recall,” Mr. Milne continued, “I lost the closest Governor’s election in 200 years in Vermont. So I have some credibility with a minority of Vermonters who feel I’m a capable fill-in for Phil Scott should that happen.”
As a businessman, Mr. Milne said he is very concerned about the state’s economy.
“We’re coming out of a once-in-a-century health crisis,” he said. “We came into that pandemic, I would argue, with underlying fundamentals that are not healthy for our economy. We’re going to come out of it into the worst economic situation we’ve seen in 75 years, with that underlying foundation of weakness.”
As someone who built a business from a one-person operation to one that employed around 100 people at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, Mr. Milne said he has the right experience to help deal with the state’s economic situation.
“I know what people are going through, and I think I know better than my opponent, or better than most people in Montpelier, what it takes to be successful. I think it’s important to point out that, though my business appears from the outside to be a small retail Main Street kind of Vermont business, it’s very interconnected globally. And without understanding what’s going on around the globe, and being able to be competitive with people in other states and other countries, you’re out of business a long time ago,” he said.
As an example, Mr. Milne said his company did no business in Dubai four years ago. Today, he said, it produces more revenue for the company than Vermont does.
Mr. Milne said he has put together a plan with 60 ideas for reinvigorating the state’s economy. Many, he said, are borrowed from Democrats. Those interested in seeing his proposals can find them on his website, scottmilne.org.
The first he mentioned was the elimination of income taxes on Social Security benefits and military pensions. He said he met a friend of his son’s, who is a cybersecurity expert in the military.
While having dinner together, Mr. Milne said his son’s friend told him he is considering places to live when he leaves the service. The first item on his checklist was whether a state taxes military pensions. Those that do are off the list.
Mr. Milne also said he doesn’t want to wait for money from Washington to build out a statewide broadband service. Instead, he proposed eliminating sales taxes on communications equipment to encourage companies to build out their networks.
Sometimes it makes sense to come up with your own solutions to problems, he said, but other times a good businessman will borrow someone else’s solution.
Mr. Milne suggested that Vermont look to New Hampshire for an answer to making childcare more affordable.
That state has “just a little bit less red tape on some of their restrictions around childcare,” he said. “On average, your New Hampshire family spent 13 percent less a week on childcare and spent a lower percentage of their annual income on childcare than Vermonters.”
Another of his proposals, he said, calls for “putting all police functions under one roof in the Agency of Public Safety, which I think is going to make police more accountable. It’s going to have benefits for integrating thoughtful mental health services.”
Only state law enforcement would be included. Local sheriffs’ departments and municipal police forces would continue as they presently do, but officers from the State Police, Department of Liquor Control, and Game Wardens would be overseen by the same agency.
“The idea would be that everyone under state jurisdiction would be playing by the same rules,” Mr. Milne said.
He said he learned in business that having different groups of people doing the same work divided into silos is the enemy of efficiency.
Asked about the tendency displayed in the implementation of Act 46, the school merger law, to take power from localities and centralize it in Montpelier, Mr. Milne said he favors a middle ground.
“One of the things that we should cherish and celebrate in Vermont is the power of cities and towns,” he said. “But we should also acknowledge that 250 years ago, and 200 years ago, and even 75 years ago, that was fine, but the world has become much more complicated. Unlike in most states, there’s really no democratic unit between a city or a town and the state. In most states, you have counties that can manage complicated things, distribute federal funds that need to be distributed at a level lower than the state, but that doesn’t make sense for every town to distribute on their own.”
Mr. Milne said there is a proliferation of organizations such as regional planning commissions and supervisory unions. People, he said, don’t have the opportunity to vote out members of those organizations when they don’t like what they’re doing.
He suggested instituting a form of elective county government and having planning commissions, supervisory unions, and district environmental commissions work within county borders. It was to be the centerpiece of his 2014 run for Governor, he said, but he was persuaded the idea was a sure loser.
Mr. Milne said he thinks strengthening county governments as a democratic structure between municipalities and the state would give people more of a voice in decisions that affect them.
Unlike his 2014 visit to Barton, Mr. Milne had somewhere else to be after his interview, so after a round of farewells, he and his daughter headed off to the next round of interviews in Newport.
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