NORTHAMPTON, MASS.-I'm a flatlander now, and when I drive into town without my old green license plates, I am sometimes treated as such. But I still love my hometown and so many of the people in it. Seeing the hardships the area has faced during the past few years has been painful.
That's why I am alarmed that one of your most progressive legislative champions, State Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, who has been endorsed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, is being challenged by a person of significant wealth who has branded herself as a quintessential Vermont farmer, yet has hinted at a regressive tax policy that would shield the wealthiest Vermonters from paying their fair share.
Amanda Ellis-Thurber does admirable work on her organic farm, but a glance at the substance of her financial disclosure shows she is anything but an average Vermonter.
Ellis-Thurber's real estate holdings alone are impressive. According to Nebraska Taxes Online, Amanda Ellis Farms, Inc. held several hundred acres of Nebraska farmland in 2023, with an assessed value over $2 million. That is in addition to the 572 acres she farms in West Brattleboro, which includes a short-term rental property.
Ellis-Thurber also owns two homes - one in West Brattleboro, with 136 tax-exempt acres, and a vacation home in the Northeast Kingdom. Her financial disclosure lists other investments as well.
Not mentioned is that until 2021, she was secretary and trustee of her family's $2.5 million Nebraska-based charitable trust.
When she rides through town on a hay wagon waving signs that look like Vermont license plates, Ellis-Thurber is tapping into a well-earned pride of place. I get it. I love my home state, too.
But I question whether she really understands the plight of Vermont's working and middle classes.
Ellis-Thurber has not stated her proposed policies or platform in specific terms, but has instead dropped catchphrases that echo the rhetoric of conservative, trickle-down economics.
The words of her supporters give us further clues to what she may intend. Ellis-Thurber's campaign manager is Lisa Ford, and Ford's husband, Michael Alexander, spoke out in opposition to Kornheiser's proposed "wealth tax" bill.
That bill would have added a 3% surtax on adjusted gross incomes over $500,000, affecting only the 1.1% of Vermont residents who hold that disproportionate share of the state's wealth. It would have also raised the property transfer tax for homes that sell for more than $750,000. If Kornheiser is reelected, this bill will be reconsidered during the next legislative session.
Here in Massachusetts, we successfully passed a wealth tax in 2022. The additional 4% surtax on incomes over $1 million has exceeded revenue expectations, and people's fears that the wealthy would flee the state with their capital and devastate the economy have not been realized.
The $1.8 billion the tax raised in 2023 was applied toward our school-lunch-for-all program, with funds left over for other educational and transportation programming.
I noticed that Brattleboro raised property taxes to fund its school lunch program, and I wondered whether that additional strain for homeowners might have been avoided if Vermont's wealth tax legislation had also been successful.
One area in which Northampton and Brattleboro have been similarly challenged is school funding. In response to COVID-19, we received unprecedented federal funds, which meant our public schools were fully staffed and resourced for the first time in my memory.
The loss of those federal monies has left school districts across the country scrambling. In Northampton, we are still battling it out, and the community has been pressuring our mayor to level-fund our schools for at least one more year.
In Brattleboro, I have witnessed the stress people experienced over their shifting education property tax rate. Over the next few years, each of our communities will have to decide to either cut services to kids who have suffered setbacks due to the pandemic, or to accept the cost of keeping them.
I recommend supporting Emilie Kornheiser, who is working hard to find funding solutions and has championed a fairer tax structure in Vermont. Amanda Ellis-Thurber, despite her "real Vermonter" branding, has hinted at the opposite.
Certainly, her followers have expressed their expectation that she will favor top-down economics, which history shows has always exacerbated inequality.
On the other hand, those maple creemees sound delicious, and I hope to try one myself soon. Just don't let your sweet tooth cloud your judgment in August.
Mindy Haskins Rogers
Northampton, Mass.
This letter to the editor was submitted to The Commons.
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