Bill Would Set Up Killington Secession Commission

WMUR (NH) ^ | January 30, 2006

[Irontank]

A Vermont legislator who represents Killington has submitted a bill to set up a commission to study giving the town to New Hampshire.

The bill submitted by Rep. Harry Chen, of Mendon, is up for review this week in a House committee. It's not given much chance of passage.

Killington officials have been talking about leaving Vermont and joining New Hampshire because they don't like Vermont's statewide property tax.

New Hampshire already established a commission to look at accepting Killington. It has said it is waiting to meet with a Vermont commission, should one be created.

[MNJohnnie]

Anything we can do to ENCOURAGE this?

[RexBeach]

Lots of dough involved here. Killington, I believe, is the biggest ski resort in New England. If it isn't, it's close to it.

Tah-tah to the socialists in Vermont...and...Kah-ching to saner New Hampshire.

[Irontank]

I just can't understand why any town would want to leave the very high-tax, liberal, "progressive" state of Vermont

[Doc Savage]

I suggest we sell Vermont to Cuba and then see how these Communists like the verdant green hills!

[dead]

These little spats are cute, but they never go anywhere.

If you really want to secede, raise an army.

[Irontank]

These little spats are cute, but they never go anywhere.

True...towns and states usually talk about secession because they feel they're being taken advantage of by the larger entity from which they're seceding...and those doing the taking are never willing to just give up their advantage

[bill1952]

Waste of breath. Change the freakin State.

[Verginius Rufus]

The only case I can recall where land was successfully shifted from one state to another involved a little bit of land on the Arkansas/Oklahoma border which was hard to get to from the state it belonged to, because of a river, so it had become a haven for criminals, and that's why the state that owned it gave it up.

Killington is in the middle of Vermont, halfway between NH and NY (a few miles east of Rutland and a few miles NW of Plymouth Notch, Calvin Coolidge's birthplace). There's no way it's going to be handed over to New Hampshire.

I recall when Block Island got fed up with the government of Rhode Island and the state of Colorado offered to annex it...would have given Colorado a seacoast.

[Brilliant]

"Killington is in the middle of Vermont, halfway between NH and NY"


Yeah, that's why this is just a joke. I don't think NH would want to take a city in the middle of Vermont even if the Vermonters wanted to give it to them. On the other hand, this is the kind of publicity stunt that folks rally behind to make a point.

It's sort of like the Minnesota thing a few years ago where the MN Senator proposed to give a small piece of MN to Canada. Everyone knew it was going no where, which is why he did it. But it gave him some attention and made the locals feel important.

Vermont used to be part of NY. Maybe they could just give Killington and everything south thereof back to NY.

[Verginius Rufus]

Two cases that supposedly almost made it, both a long time ago, were to give El Paso to New Mexico, and Kansas City, Missouri, to Kansas. (Maybe in the latter case it was to give the whole of Jackson County to Kansas, which would have meant Independence, Mo., as well.)

In 1970 there was a proposal by some people in western Nebraska to separate from Nebraska and join Wyoming...again, caused by dissatisfaction with the state government, and with no realistic chance of it actually happening. Anyway it would have failed if put to a vote in the area in question--the Cornhusters were on the verge of winning three Orange Bowls in a row.