EXCERPTS FROM THE BLOG
FILE: MARK DAVIS
In EB-5 Case, Investors’ Lawyer Fails to Verify China Sex Crime Claim On March 19, Stowe attorney Russell Barr, who represents foreign investors defrauded in the Jay Peak Resort EB-5 scandal, made a sensational allegation. After a court hearing on the investors’ lawsuit against state officials, Barr told reporters he had evidence that one of the 10 defendants had been arrested on an EB-5 trip to China in “2013 or 2014” for “having sex with a minor” and was bailed out by another state official. Barr said he would provide evidence of the incident in a memo he was scheduled to file with the court in two weeks. On Monday — the due date — Barr filed the memo. It made no mention of his allegation. Instead, Barr and cocounsel Chandler Matson filed a 52-page motion in which they
Attorney Chandler Matson
In response, Franco sent a letter to Sinex asking him to adhere to his original building plan and requesting that the city reopen the appeal period, which had closed. In last Friday’s filing, Franco objected to the fact that neither Sinex nor the city had warned him of the request for amendments; he learned about those changes from a Seven Days report, he has said.
KATIE JICKLING
Vermont Senators Propose Opiate Tax to Fund Drug Abuse Treatment
Rendering of the mall project as seen from Cherry and St. Paul streets
COURTESY OF PKSB ARCHITECTS
20 LOCAL MATTERS
MARK DAVIS
Two Democratic Vermont senators are putting together a proposal for a tax on prescription opioids. The proceeds would be used to bolster substance abuse intervention, treatment and recovery efforts, many of which are short-funded or facing declines in current revenues. Sen. Claire Ayer (D-Addison), chair of the Health and Welfare Committee, outlined the idea in a committee hearing last Friday, which also featured testimony on how the proceeds of a tax might best be used. Ayer said that she and Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) happened upon the idea in Governing magazine, which examined how states are trying to fund substance abuse programs. According to legislative attorney Nolan Langweil, several other states have considered an opiate tax, but none has enacted one. The idea is still in development. Ayer and Ashe haven’t settled on a tax rate, or even on how it would be levied. Prescription opiates could be taxed per pill, per dosage or per “morphine milligram equivalents,” a standard measure of a drug’s potency. The tax would likely not apply to prescriptions for chronic
FILE: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR
The Burlington Town Center redevelopment case is back in court. Attorney John Franco filed a legal challenge in U.S. District Court last Friday morning arguing that developer Don Sinex and the City of Burlington didn’t do enough to notify Franco and his clients of changes to the project. Franco, who is representing project opponents, contends that the city violated the settlement agreement the two parties reached last July. By not allowing his clients to weigh in on the changes, Franco argues, Sinex denied them their constitutional rights to due process.
He and his clients are asking that Sinex pay for “emotional distress damages” and attorney fees. Franco declined to comment on the decision to reopen the case. Last month, Sinex received permission from the city Department of Planning and Zoning to add 16 additional apartment units and eliminate 40,000 square feet of planned retail space in his CityPlace Burlington development. The changes would also amend the parking setup — which Franco argues would ultimately result in fewer parking spaces. The changes are “in express violation of the DRB’s Conditions of Approval,” which mandate that any changes go before the Development Review Board, Franco wrote in his legal complaint. Sinex has previously said the changes, which were approved administratively by the city, were necessary to cut costs of excavating for parking space.
SEVEN DAYS
04.04.18-04.11.18
SEVENDAYSVT.COM
Development Opponents Go Back to Court Over Burlington Mall
repeated legal arguments they’d previously made. The attorneys stressed, for example, that the Vermont EB-5 Regional Center, an arm of state government tasked with overseeing the projects, bore responsibility to bilked investors because it touted its involvement as an indication that the investment was safe. “Those individuals then proceeded to use the brand of the state of Vermont and assist the marketers of the largest fraud in Vermont history to recruit immigrants by the repeated and various notions of state auditing and oversight,” Barr wrote. The Vermont Attorney General’s Office has asked Judge Thomas Carlson to dismiss the investors’ lawsuit, arguing that the claims are without merit. “We’re going to move forward and do our job, which is to protect the state,” Attorney General T.J. Donovan said Tuesday. Barr did not respond to several requests for comment.
pain. Also unresolved is where the tax would be collected: from manufacturers or distributors, or at the point of sale. Ayer fully realizes that the proposal flies in the face of Gov. Phil Scott’s opposition to new taxes and fees. “We have very difficult situations to be addressed,” she said. “[Scott] will have to make a decision whether [to approve] something that’s a reasonable way to fund the consequences of using opiates with a tax on opiates.” Witnesses called before Ayer’s committee described a system that’s overburdened, underfunded and inadequate to provide a robust response to Vermont’s opioid epidemic. “In our treatment system, there are a lot of places in need, and I’m not seeing solutions,” said Bob Bick, CEO of the Howard Center in Burlington. He Sen. Claire Ayer said that Vermont has built “an important national model for intervention, but the financing of that model is at risk.” As an example, he cited the state’s drug court programs, which are designed to decriminalize those with substance abuse problems — getting them into treatment instead of behind bars. “The programs are federally funded, and the money will run out in nine months,” he noted.
JOHN WALTERS Disclosure: Tim Ashe is the domestic partner of Seven Days publisher and coeditor Paula Routly. Find our conflict-of-interest policy here: sevendaysvt.com/disclosure.