The conference keynote speaker was Los Angeles attorney Ellen Brown, chairman and president of the Public Banking Institute, formed in January 2011 "to further the understanding, explore the possibilities, and facilitate the implementation of public banking at all levels -- local, regional, state, and national."
Mayor Hollar opened the conference with a three-minute welcome speech, using talking points Hallsmith had prepared for him. The mayor touted the city's Master Plan as a guide to developing a creative local economy, and he noted recent initiatives including a wood-burning power plant, a time bank exchange, and the effort to make Montpelier bicycle and pedestrian friendly. He concluded saying, "Thank you to Gwen [Hallsmith] for all your work on behalf of the city."
Introducing the mayor, the planning director had just said, "I've been working hard over the last six years to make Montpelier a model of a resilient local economy " trying to set an example for other communities."
By the end of 2012, public banking legislation had been introduced in at least 16state legislatures, but Vermont was not among them. As of November 2013, banking lobbyists continued to be successful in keeping the Vermont Legislature from even forming a study committee on public banking.
How many personal attacks does it take to add up to "ad nauseum"
It's not clear precisely when Mayor Hollar started ragging on his planning director for her "views that are fundamentally anti-capitalist in nature," but by March 19, 2013, by his own email account, the mayor had been repeating himself ad nauseum at least to the city manager. That particular email outburst was apparently prompted by an email he had received about an hour earlier from Lucie Garand, a fellow attorney at Downs Rachlin Martin.
Garand was reporting to him and other lawyers in the firm about legislative testimony earlier that day dealing with pending public banking legislation and the threat public banking could pose to the firm's private banking clients. A Demos report in February had argued that "large out-of-state banks are failing Vermont small businesses." Even though the Senate committees on finance and appropriations reported the bill favorably, it died quietly April 30, on a parliamentary move by Democratic senator John Campbell, and never came to a vote.
Whatever the mayor may have expected on March 19 that the city manager would do about the planning director, the city manager appears not to have done it. On April 10, while chairing a City Council public meeting with startling ineptitude (so startling it might appear to have been deliberate), Mayor Hollar allowed a disgruntled member of the Planning Commission (John Bloch) to vent at length, including thinly veiled personal attacks on the planning director (although apparently not for her anti-capitalist views). Bloch's uncontrolled vitriol prompted at least one member of the public to complain at length (four pages, single-spaced) to the mayor directly, with copies to the council and the city manager. [The video of this meeting is no longer available on the city website.]
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