Editor’s note: This commentary is by Charlotte Dennett, who is an investigative journalist, author and lawyer based in Burlington.
[L]ike many who stayed till the bitter end of the City Council meeting of Nov. 27, I continue to reflect on the chaos surrounding the last-minute offer by Schurz Communications to buy Burlington Telecom. As we watched city councilors milling about during a two-hour recess before the vote, some huddling, others going out into the hallways, still others sitting glumly in their seats, we sensed that something wasn’t right.
Perhaps no single event of that evening better epitomized the mood of uncertainty than when Councilor David Hartnett (an independent and a proponent of Indiana-based Schurz) shouted down Councilor Joan Shannon (a Democrat and proponent for Toronto-based Tucows/Ting) for raising questions about the process which resulted in the last-minute deal with “no input from the public” and “no community support.” Unrattled by Hartnett’s loud interruptions, she continued, “I have never seen a less transparent process than bringing in a completely new offer while everybody’s asleep … I hope we won’t cast a vote for an unknown.”
After the vote, Councilor Max Tracy (Progressive, who with Progressive Councilor Ali Dieng favored Keep Burlington Telecom Local, or KBTL, and opposed the deal) called it “A slap in the face to the public process,” and predicted Burlington residents would be furious when they learned of what happened.
Hartnett, by contrast, was elated by the vote and took credit for helping forge the last-minute backroom deal which he and Republican Councilor Kurt Wright worked to bring about. “I’m OK with giving up transparency for a better offer,” he reportedly told Seven Days.
No doubt we will learn more in the coming days, thanks in part to a lawsuit by Seven Days to force the city to turn over withheld records in response to its public records request of Nov. 1. Meanwhile, it is important to consider the bigger picture: the cost of the councilors’ vote — not in taxpayer terms, but in long-range terms regarding the morale and democratic vitality of this community.
Not only did the public not have a chance to weigh in, but it seems the councilors — and possibly even Mayor Miro Weinberger – had not fully vetted Schurz. Most seemed to have accepted without question the personal assurances of CEO Todd Schurz that his company was just a “family-owned business” (and hence, purportedly less of a threat to local control). And most believed that Schurz’s offer to allow the city to invest taxpayers’ money to buy a 20 percent holding in Burlington Telecom would help ameliorate the public’s concerns about corporate management and the possibility of a future sale to outsiders to satisfy shareholders.
Since Schurz is privately owned and not publically traded, it is difficult to find information on its business dealings except through news stories and press releases. But internet searches do reveal that Schurz is much bigger than a “family-owned business,” and has been flipping properties during the media acquisition craze of the last four years along with right-wing media companies that have come to be called “Trump TV.”
In the fall of 2015, the Department of Justice announced that it had cleared the sale of Schurz’s broadcast stations to Gray Televison, at the same time that Gray was flipping properties with Sinclair Broadcasting Group. The relevance?
Sinclair Broadcasting, according to a November-December 2017 article in Mother Jones entitled “Ready for Trump T.V.” has been plotting to take over local TV news outlets using a “mix of terrorism alerts, right-wing commentary, and classic propaganda” which “could soon reach three-quarters of US households.” Although Sinclair started out as a “small family company with three TV stations” it has grown “into a media goliath with entrée to the Oval Office.” Its chief executive officer, David Smith, “has shown no qualms about using his stations for political purposes,” the article warned, “ and has salivated at the prospect of acquiring more under Trump’s friendly regulatory regime.”
Gray TV, for its part, was instrumental in gaining access to Trump’s Oval Office when its “reporters” accepted the president’s invitation to join him for dinner in February 2017 on the eve of his first address to Congress. According to a press release by Gray TV, the dinner lasted over three hours. Mike Pence, America’s “pro-family” evangelical vice president who often meets privately with neoconservative businessmen and organizations, apparently dropped in to say hello, but did not stay for dinner. The purpose of the meeting, according to the Gray press release, was “to honor the power of local television.”
Shay Totten, a former reporter for Seven Days and a proponent of KBTL, has done his own sleuthing into Schurz’s campaign donations and has concluded that Schurz is “a conservative media company from the Midwest whose owner Todd Schurz donates tens of thousands of dollars to some of the most conservative members of Congress who oppose gay marriage, raising the minimum wage (even opposed raising the federal wage to $7.25 an hour), In 2016 alone, the Schurz family gave to such illustrious Koch-brother backed candidates as: Sen. Todd Young, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Sen. Roy Blunt and many more.” Totten claims that he sounded this warning to city councilors, but to no avail.
Councilor Shannon, to her credit, questioned Schurz’s commitment to net neutrality on Nov. 27, and Seven Days reported the following day that the company “submitted a letter to the Federal Communications Commission to advocate against net neutrality — the current practice that prevents internet service providers from favoring some online content.” The article quotes CEO Schurz as saying “The commitment we gave to the city to keep BT net neutral we will absolutely keep.” Yet his company’s previous lobbying before Obama’s FCC — against transparency and political advertising in media – makes one wonder if Schurz will remain true to his promise.
If the City Council wants to rectify the fiasco of Nov. 27 and regain the trust of Burlington voters, it should at the very least allow another public hearing before it votes on the final agreement with Schurz. What, for instance, has Schurz been doing with the $430 million it gained from finalizing its 2016 sale to Gray TV other than offering $30 million to buy Burlington Telecom? What are its ties, if any, to Gray TV (which took over Vermont’s largest TV station, WCAX, earlier this year) and Sinclair Communications, and does it share in their Trumpian conservative vision of buying up local and radio TV stations throughout the U.S.? More questions should be asked of Councilor Hartnett, who, methinks (as Shakespeare would say) “protested too much” when Councilor Shannon began to ask questions about the last-minute deal. Did he, and Republican Kurt Wright (whose 2012 campaign for mayor Hartnett ran) know more about Schurz than either of them let on? Why were they, of all the councilors, the only holdouts for Schurz and seemed unconcerned about transparency in order to get the winning bid?
CEO Todd Schurz has said recently he wants to spend the next several months winning over the hearts and minds of Burlingtonians, but until the agreement between him and the city is set to be signed on Dec. 18, he — along with his two most ardent proponents on the City Council — have a lot of answering to do.
