By Michael Bielawski

Former Hazen Union School Board chair David Kelley from Greensboro is running as a Democrat for the Orleans-4 district House seat and his proposals may be a break from the larger party’s ambitious climate proposals.

In this one-seat district, Kelley will face in the August 13 primary with Leanne Harple of Glover.

Energy Policy

On issues concerning energy production, pundits have argued that ambitious industrial-scale wind turbines and solar fields can be both costly and have negative environmental impacts that don’t offset the value of the reduction in carbon emissions.

Kelley supports more local control over energy production.

“We need to protect, not destroy, our intact forests, especially on our ridgelines. Vermont’s forests absorb an amount of carbon roughly equal to Vermont’s emissions of greenhouse gasses,” he wrote on his campaign page.

Ridgelines and forests are two of the most compromised resources when massive wind installations are built. The group Vermonters for a Clean Environment has documented such concerns with wind and solar. VCE – like Kelley’s campaign – advocates for more local control.

Kelley wrote, “…there is an appropriate size and location for innovations like the rise of wind turbines. It’s for this reason, that I have fought to keep 500-foot wind turbines off of our mountaintops while supporting projects that more appropriately balance the needs of our environment and our community.”

Kelley notes that in addition to sequestering carbon, forests remain necessary for wildlife.

“They also provide increasingly precious wildlife habitat. We need to empower local planning commissions, grassroots decision-making, and community-based policies and problem-solving to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve greater energy efficiency at the grassroots level.”

Harple is similarly marketing her campaign as in the best interest of rural communities. She wrote on her campaign page, “I’m running for the House of Representatives in the Orleans-4 district because I love our small-town rural life here and I want to see our communities thrive.”

Her energy policy section does not specify whether wind or solar will be part of her strategies. What it does say is she wants to “Strategically allocate resources to reduce climate change and fossil fuel dependency, and work towards an environmentally sustainable future.”

She emphasizes the importance of conserving land in general, writing that she would, “Increase land conservation to protect biodiversity and working land in our state. The U.S. Forest Service recently reported that Vermont loses the equivalent of 14,000 football fields of forest each year to development.”

Land conservation became a hot topic this past legislative session when lawmakers approved for half of all state lands to ultimately be barred from development.

Collective bargaining

Harple supports Proposal 3 to the Vermont Constitution. According to her writing, this is for “enshrining Vermonters’ rights to collectively bargain. … This would enable Vermonters to organize labor unions to negotiate for better working conditions and higher wages that could keep up with the rising cost of living.”

Not all pundits at VDC share her enthusiasm. Political commentator Rob Roper wrote, “This so-called ‘right to collectively bargain’ effectively strips, in key cases, one’s right to individually bargain on one’s own behalf. That’s not a good thing.”

Kelley’s page doesn’t specifically address collective bargaining matters.

Education funding

As a former school board chair at Hazen Union School (grades 7-12), Kelley has been a vocal critic of the state’s efforts to consolidate schools. He wrote, “The law should be amended so no town’s elementary school gets closed without the approval of a majority of voters in that town. So far there is no evidence forced mergers and school consolidations have actually saved any money. On the contrary, there is evidence it has eroded public confidence in our schools.”

Harple’s proposals include, “opportunities to lower the cost of education while maintaining high-quality standards in our schools, and explore new funding models that are more equitable to low-income Vermonters and people in rural areas.”

Albeit with different rhetoric, Kelley also offers a funding system overhaul. He writes, “…the Education Funding formula has gotten so complicated voters and even school boards don’t understand it. It needs to be simplified. We can’t have meaningful votes without understanding exactly what we are voting on.”

And for the winner…

The winner will face the uncontested Anthony Daniels of Albany, running as a Republican. Daniels submitted a piece on why he is running to the Hardwick Gazette. He says that he has been, “into the building trades and have owned my own business for over 40 years.”

The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle