Nation-Building >> Vermont economy "better than most" states | return to front page

While Dean's commuter train may have lost money, he still left Vermont in better financial shape than most states. At the Eastern Regional Conference of the Council for State Governments, legislators from Vermont spoke about their state's fiscal situation.

“As bad as this is, it could be a lot worse had we not been fiscally conservative in the past few years,” House Speaker Walter Freed, R-Dorset, said Tuesday. “I want to attribute it to our own fiscal conservatism over the last two years. … It’s important that people in the state who hear this message realize we’re here because we’ve been fiscally conservative in the past few years. Everyone’s had a piece in this.”
One of those policies was to use surpluses in flush years for onetime expenditures rather than for additional programs, said Rep. Martha Heath, D-Westford, vice chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee. “I think you can give (former Gov.) Howard Dean and the Legislature the credit,” she said. “We learned valuable lessons from the early 1990s. We established rainy-day funds and we’ve been vigilant about filling them and keeping them filled.”

Certainly doesn't sound like fodder for "Fleecing of America", does it?
*thanks to reader Christopher Curtis for the link*