Weekly Dispatch with Mayor Sullivan

We have been extremely excited this past year about the plans that are finally taking hold to improve the look and feel of our unique and special “downtown on the lake.” These downtown development efforts will, we firmly believe, allow us finally to realize the tremendous potential we have to increase the prosperity of the entire region – principally by encouraging private investment that will bring us more and better paying jobs, support our local property values, allow us to increase our housing stock and to dramatically expand our municipal tax base so that we are able to better build out our infrastructure for the next generations of Newport residents. Basic economic development. Long overdue here. Good stuff. No. Great stuff.

Enter the Green Mountain Care Board – the State’s healthcare regulator — who recently unveiled a 144 page report from a high priced consulting firm, Oliver Wyman, who, from its fancy offices around the world, are telling us in Vermont once again that the health care system built by Vermont administrations past and present is in deep financial despair.

In this latest iteration of healthcare reform (remember the failed “single payer” reforms championed by our friends in Montpelier? Remember the failing OneCare “all payer” model?) these consultants are telling us that we in Newport ought to effectively lose our local hospital. Let’s favor instead the hospital complexes and healthcare systems hours and hours away from us, those centered in Burlington, Rutland and Hanover.

Of course, that’s not what these consultants are saying literally. But instead, as is being proposed, North Country Hospital is converted by the State to a specialty care mental institution. NEK residents not needing mental health treatment will be asked to better find services from medical providers “off campus” or to toddle down to White River Junction or Burlington for basic surgical and inpatient services.

I can’t think of anything that would more discourage the investors and development we are trying to attract to the region than to have the State communicate that we so little value the communities in this remote and isolated part of the State that we are as a State going to just gut our health care infrastructure here.

As we all know, our remoteness is in so many ways a blessing. But because of it, limiting the services to be provided by North Country will without doubt disproportionately impact our retired population, who just can’t easily travel hours for the type of care they need in their advanced years. And to create a specialty mental health hospital here to steer from around Vermont persons having mental health challenges — miles and miles separated from their loved ones — seems particularly cruel. And here I’m not masking a “not-in-my-backyard” sentiment. Vermont sorely needs to expand the number of its available mental health beds. We can contribute to that. But where’s the infrastructure for what would be an entirely new mental health institution here in Newport going to come from – the psychiatric specialists who will have to be recruited to relocate here, the post hospitalization mental health treatment

centers and the new specialty housing that will be necessary to support this new population? Where are those “off campus” care providers the consultants tell us we should be using to replace lost North Country Hospital services and beds.

We, meaning all of us, need to message Governor Scott and his administrators: save our North Country Hospital. Fancy consultants can run their numbers all they want and tell us that our system is not economically sustainable. But I say it is. Work instead on the expensive specialty social service programs being funded through the wasteful and inefficient “designated agency” system that the State adopted some 60 years ago now (I say, in fact, we should dismantle and centralize that system, now consisting of 13 little economic fiefdoms that pump public dollars into executive salaries across the State).

Stop spending millions of dollars to pump suboxone into our prison population or to build heroin injection sites in Burlington. Stop with the ambitious social service Medicaid “demonstration projects” that support grants to the needy not-for-profit industry that rely on them.

Put those dollars back into basics, such as hospital and provider Medicaid reimbursement rates, for starters. The solution is not to tear down the hospital system and start all over again as if we were dealing with some model train set. Fix it. Put people and communities above the persistently failed economic policies and perverse cost-shifting practices of our friends in Montpelier. Fix it in a way consistent with true Vermont values.

As your Mayor I have already begun to organize efforts to make sure that the Governor, the legislature and the often-faceless administrators who make these sorts of decisions hear our voices — the People’s voice. I’ll be looking for help. Reach out to me individually if you are interested in being part of that effort or drop into one of my Mayor’s Hours on Mondays from 9-11:00 AM or by appointment on Wednesday.

Thank you for your confidence – your Mayor, Linda Joy Sullivan