Rutland Herald
June 17, 1999

Dean Slams Critics

By Diane Derby
Vermont Press Bureau

Montpelier – Gov. Howard B. Dean has experienced a bit of a public relations problem in the southwest quadrant of the state recently.

While his administration has moved forward with plans to add passing lanes to a section of Route 7 and to site a natural gas pipeline project, an “us versus them” mentality has emerged.

Bennington County, a region that one state senator refers to as “the forgotten kingdom,” has become hostile territory.

“A cavalier attitude” is how one Dorset Select Board member described the governor’s approach this week, adding, “I’m just really fed up having this shoved down our throats.”

Dean himself played a role in inciting such sentiments when he recently told editors in Bennington that residents should be prepared to “put up or shut up” if they wanted jobs in the region.

But on Wednesday, as he met with reporters for his weekly news conference, the governor became especially talkative on the subject, keeping his often critical tone in check while trying to explain his position.

“What I am responding to,” Dean said, “is 14 years of traveling to southwestern Vermont and hearing that the Number One issue in southwester Vermont is infrastructure and jobs.”

Dean said he had probably been to Bennington “more times than any governor in the history of the state, except those who came from Bennington.” He estimated he has made 200 trips to the area since his days as lieutenant governor in the mid 1980s.

“So I think I have a fairly good understanding of what people in the southwest part of the state want,” he said. “Job opportunities.”

“I’ve worked very hard, particularly in the last eight years, to get more infrastructure,” he said, adding that his administration began laying plans for the Route 7 improvement project seven years ago.

“My thought at that time was to try to avoid building a big new road like ‘Super 7,’ which environmentally was a disaster and took years to get done,” he said.

But the southwest region of the state didn’t get the type of opportunities that the rest of the state got when the interstate highways were built, he said, “and now I think they deserve those types of opportunities.”

And he argued that residents had “erroneous information” when they claimed the state’s plan to add passing lanes to Route 7 in Dorset and Mt. Tabor would take away from more needed projects elsewhere.

“We have plenty of money for all the projects we need to do,” he said. “The problem is we can’t get them on line fast enough.”

Arguing in favor of the pipeline project, Dean said low energy costs were essential for businesses to grow in the region. In negotiations between the state and Mack Molding over expansion plans, high energy costs have been “a continual source of irritation,” he said.

While he avoided weighing in on whether the NIMBY (“not-in-my-backyard”) factor was at work in the region, Dean later told reporters, “Everybody wants jobs and nobody wants a gas pipeline in their front yard.”

And while Dean did admit that his comments to editors at the Bennington Banner may have been made “somewhat in-artfully,” he repeated his refrain yet once more.”

“If you want jobs,” he said, “you’ve got to have infrastructure.”