The City of Montpelier will seek voluntary reimbursement from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) presidential campaign for costs associated with his Statehouse rally on Saturday afternoon. It’s Sanders’ first major Vermont event since he launched his second bid for the White House and is expected to draw a yooooge crowd.
According to assistant city manager Sue Allen, the move is a first for the capital city, which has previously absorbed the costs of police, firefighters, traffic control and site cleanup for any event in town.
On Wednesday, the Montpelier City Council directed municipal staff to pull together cost figures after the rally and send a letter to the Sanders campaign requesting a donation to cover the cost.
“We love hosting events,” Allen said. “They make Montpelier vibrant. But we do want to keep track of what all this vibrancy is costing us.”
The council also asked staff to develop a formal policy for seeking reimbursement from event organizers in the future.
Councilor Ashley Hill, a two-time Democratic candidate for state Senate, said that she was the one who raised the issue. “I love that Bernie is our senator and I’m super stoked he’s coming here,” she said, “but when I heard how many police officers, firefighters and EMTs we’d need, I realized it was a significant expense. It’s fundamentally unfair for the taxpayers of Montpelier to shoulder that burden alone.”
When asked if the Sanders campaign would reimburse Montpelier, spokesperson Arianna Jones replied with an effusively noncommittal email.
“The senator is looking forward to the Montpelier rally,” she wrote. “It’s an opportunity for him to thank the citizens of Vermont for allowing him to represent their great state and ask for their support in 2020 — and a moment Vermont will look back on with pride when he’s in the White House. We’ll work with the capital city to ensure a great event.”
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Good idea. Presumably they’ll do so with the other events they must monitor and participate in.
Voluntary? Good luck getting a dime out of the Sanders campaign. Bernie and his crowd are happy to take, not sure theyre all that keen on paying their own way.
Good luck on that one… The now ( 1 percenter ) most definitely won’t pay up with his own money… After all the poor fella has to maintain his/her (3) homes… Lest we not forget, his 1st real paying job was as mayor of Burlington. He lived off his 1st (2) wives. His current one, after bankrupting Burlington College, collects a $430.000.00 pension… Like his twisted sister Hillary, Bernie Sanders is a career politician that has crafted the art of spending other people’s money to a science…
Getting a nickel out of him is very unlikely as it goes against his very grain… 🙁
How has this worked in the dozens of other places where Bernie (or any politician, for that matter) has held rallies? What’s the standard?
Bernie’s campaign should pay for any costs incurred by Montpelier for his rally . It is the correct thing to do.
By the way . . . did that deadbeat Trump ever pay Burlington for his rally at the Flynn back in 2016?
“Bernie’s campaign should pay for any costs incurred by Montpelier for his rally”
Are you kidding? The cheap-ass dude still owes electric bills from the 1970s.