Gov. Peter Shumlin and the mayors of Burlington and Winooski aren’t the only ones jetting to Florida next Wednesday to hear the roar of the F-35 and F-16.

The Shumlin administration has hand-picked two Vermont reporters to tag along: Vermont Public Radio’s Kirk Carapezza and the Burlington Free Press’ Terri Hallenbeck.

Both news outlets say their participation in the trip is tentative, pending confirmation of financial arrangements with the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation — a business group that favors basing the F-35 in South Burlington and which is sponsoring the trip to Eglin Air Force Base.

“I will be curious to see and hear them,” Hallenbeck says. “But I go into it knowing that I won’t necessarily be able to discern which one was louder and whether that means they’ll be louder every day in the same place. I go conscious that [Shumlin] is being taken by people who are for this and really, really want it — and really want to convince people that this is a good thing.”

VPR news director Ross Sneyd says he believes there’s news value in sending Carapezza to record the takeoff and landing of the planes — but also to provide context about what the politicians experience during the trip.

“It’s like any other story we’d report. We have to have a reporter there who can give context,” he says.

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Paul Heintz was part of the Seven Days news team from 2012 to 2020. He served as political editor and wrote the "Fair Game" political column before becoming a staff writer.

3 replies on “Media Note: VPR and the Freeps Heading to Florida on F-35 Trip”

  3. U.S. Air Force in Corrupt Practice

    AIR FORCE F-35 BOONDOGGLE: A BOON FOR OFFICIALS IN THE
    BOONIES?

    By
    William Boardman panthers007@comcast.net
    The Governor of Vermont and the Mayor of Burlington have
    decided to flaunt their
    corrupt behavior as they engage in a private,
    lobbyist-paid trip supported by a directly interested party in a charade of
    investigation designed to bring a nuclear weapons system to Vermont at the
    expense of the health, welfare, and homes of thousands of Vermonters.

    That’s not exactly the way Governor Peter Shumlin put it at
    his news conference December 6 when he announced that he would be taking a trip
    to Florida, in a private jet paid for by the Greater Burlington Industrial
    Corporation, to visit the Eglin Air Force Base, in order to listen personally
    to an F-35 nuclear-capable stealth fighter bomber that has created significant
    controversy in Vermont because of the Air Force’s potential plan to base the
    world’s most expensive weapons system in the midst of Vermont’s most populated
    area.

    Accompanying the governor on the December 12 Florida trip,
    he said, would be Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger and Winooski Mayor Michael
    O’Brien. All three elected
    officials are Democrats and the mayors endorsed the governor’s 2012 re-election. Shumlin and Weinberger endorsed the
    F-35 as Burlington’s own WMD last May.

    Although the F-35 would be based at the Burlington Airport
    in South Burlington if it comes to Vermont, the governor has excluded South
    Burlington officials from his Florida trip. The South Burlington City Council recently voted unanimously
    to reaffirm its opposition to an F-35 base that would devastate the city. City Council chair Rosanne Greco is a
    retired U.S. Air Force colonel and former Pentagon planner, whose concise and
    wide-ranging critique of the Air Force plans have gone unrefuted.

    Air Force Stonewalls on Releasing
    Information

    Rather than rebut Col. Greco’s analysis, the Air Force has
    so far chosen to stonewall requests for data on which its plans are supposedly based. To date there has been almost no transparency to what
    is supposed to be a public review process.

    Misrepresenting the nature of his trip at his news
    conference, Governor Shumlim said:

    “I’m
    honored that it’s possible for me and the mayors of the cities – the closest
    cities – that would be impacted and others to listen to them…. I do think when you’re
    making a decision of this magnitude it’s important that you know what you’re
    talking about.”

    Besides ignoring the absence of anyone from the closest
    city, South Burlington, when the governor talked about “making a decision of
    this magnitude,” he was talking about a decision that was out of his hands and
    would be made by the Air Force and others at the Pentagon. The Governor chose to rubber stamp the
    plan in an unofficial manner when the Air Force presented its environmental
    impact statement that, among other things, finds that the F-35 is twice as loud
    as the planes now based in South Burlington and that the impact of the base
    will render thousands of homes around the airport “unsuitable for residential
    use,” in the Air Force’s sanitized phrase.

    “I think I owe it to Vermonters to listen to an F-35 as
    compared to an F-16 and see what it sounds like,” the governor said,
    without addressing his lack of training in sound engineering or any other
    relevant expertise.

    Have
    Any Officials Read the Air Force Report?

    At the “F-35 in South Burlington” blogspot,
    longtime F-35 opponent Juliet Beth Buck suggested that if the governor wanted
    to be “informed,” he might read the Air Force’s environmental impact
    statement. It is not clear whether
    the governor has read the report or not, but back in May he expressed
    “unconditional support” for the F-35 at the first hearing on the report, as
    reported in VTDigger
    blog, which has mostly stopped reporting on F-35 opposition.

    On Vermont Public Radio,
    where the early online comments mocked the governor’s jaunt, the main story
    quoted Juliet Beth Buck:

    “My
    first thought was, ‘Oh good. We have three people who know nothing about noise
    going somewhere to not measure noise and spend the taxpayers’ money doing it….’ [Shumlin] is going to be standing up
    there with a large group of people who approve of this project. Nobody who’s
    opposed to this project is invited. Nobody who can actually evaluate the
    quality of that noise has been invited.”

    While the Industrial Corporation has said it would pay the
    travel costs of about $23,000, none of the officials have yet said they would
    return a pro-rated part of their salaries, and any involvement of the Vermont
    National Guard or the Air Force would mean further expenditures of tax dollars
    on a one-sided travelling show.

    Exploring the one-dimensional nature of the Florida
    contingent in Seven Days, Paul Heinz
    talked to the head of the Industrial Corporation, Frank Ciofffi, himself an
    ardent supporter of the F-35 who organized a misleading petition drive aimed at
    coercing the South Burlington City Council into backing down on facts he
    couldn’t disprove. Asked about the
    make-up of his air show audience, Cioffi explained the deliberate omissions
    this way:

    “Basically
    everyone on the South Burlington City Council has their mind made up one way or
    the other….I didn’t invite them because their minds are made up already.
    They’ve already staked out their position and their position is their
    position.”

    Contingent’s
    Pre-Trip Bias Goes Unexplained

    Cioffi had no explanation why the trip includes so many
    people on record in favor of the F-35 – not only Shumlin and Weinberger, but
    National Guard Brig. Gen. Ernie Cray and Burlington real estate
    multi-millionaire Ernie Pomerleau.
    The only member of the delegation who appears possibly outside the
    military-industrial complex is Winooski mayor O’Brien, whose city council
    passed a temporizing resolution several month ago, seeking “more information,”
    so it makes sense to head south with people who can offer both “information”
    and future campaign support.

    When Heinz asked Col. Greco about her exclusion from the
    info-gathering expedition, she responded:

    “I’d
    like to go only because I’d like to have the opportunity to sit down and talk
    with the governor and both mayors about the F-35…. Going to hear aircraft in another location that is still in
    testing to see if I personally find the noise too loud, too soft, just right,
    is, I think, a waste of time.”

    Bad faith permeates this dog-and-pony exercise, leaving the
    governor and other elected officials apparently thinking the public is stupid
    enough to accept a pointless “investigation” that is structurally
    anti-democratic and without intellectual integrity. On the other hand, that’s not really new news.

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