What a 1987 Tax Battle Says About Bernie Sanders [View all]

[Uncle Joe]

Burlington Mayor Bernie Sanders didn't attend the June 1987 press conference that opened with a bombshell. Assessor Rosaire Longe did his bidding, announcing that the city had sent a tax bill to the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont, the venerable institution on the hill now known as the University of Vermont Medical Center. The amount the Sanders administration sought from the hospital, which, as a charitable institution, had been considered tax-exempt: $2.9 million.

Spencer Knapp, the hospital's legal counsel then and now, was in the president's office when the hefty bill arrived. "Our jaws dropped to our chests," he recalled.

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"We took the view they didn't provide enough charitable care to qualify" for a tax exemption, Joseph McNeil, then city attorney, said in a recent interview. The hospital had provided $1.5 million in free care, but "much of what they were calling charitable care was really uncollectable debt," McNeil said. Translation: hospital bills that people couldn't pay.

(snip)

"He is all about building movements," said Keller, who worked for Sanders from 1981 to 1986. Bold initiatives, such as presenting a $2.9 million tax bill to the state's largest medical center, "draw attention to the possibilities," she said. Today, as Sanders crisscrosses the country in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Keller said, "His message to these crowds is, we have to build a movement ... a movement that will keep the pressure on, no matter who is president."


http://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/what-a-1987-tax-battle-says-about-bernie-sanders/Content?oid=2819309

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