Valley News political columnist and news editor John Gregg in West Lebanon, N.H., on September 20, 2016. (Valley News - Geoff Hansen) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.

Members of the Vermont House Wednesday evening gave final approval on a 75-71 vote to a bill to legalize possession of one ounce of marijuana, the so-called “home grown” bill co-sponsored by state Rep. Chip Conquest, D-Wells River.

While most Upper Valley lawmakers supported the measure, six voted no: state Reps. David Ainsworth, R-Royalton, Tim Briglin, D-Thetford, Bob Frenier, R-Chelsea, Rodney Graham, R-Williamstown, Ben Jickling, I-Brookfield, and Jim Harrison, R-Chittenden, a newly appointed lawmaker whose district includes Bridgewater.

State Rep. Kevin Christie, D-Hartford, was marked absent for the vote. But Christie, who is chairman of the Hartford School Board, voted against the measure on an earlier vote on Tuesday.

The bill would end civil penalties for possession by adults of up to an ounce of marijuana and also allows for possession of up to two mature marijuana plants, according to the pro-pot Marijuana Policy Project.

“Most Vermonters support this bill, in part because they know that marijuana is objectively less harmful than alcohol, and it’s time to start treating it that way,” Matt Simon, the group’s New England political director, said in a news release.

The fate of the home-grown measure remains up in the air. It differs markedly from a Senate bill that would also legalize marijuana but would tax and regulate it in a manner similar to such states as Colorado. An amendment offering that measure was defeated in the Vermont House on Tuesday in a 99-42 vote.

Leaving Lobbying

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center’s top lobbyist — and one of its most personable employees — is stepping down this summer. Quechee resident Frank McDougall is retiring from his job as D-H’s vice president for government relations at the end of June.

“I’m going to always be an advocate and a phone call away to help my colleagues at Dartmouth-Hitchcock,” the 67-year-old McDougall said in a phone interview from Washington, where he was working against measures in the Trump-backed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “It was a privilege to be an advocate for an organization that just does so much good for people.”

A former secretary of commerce for Vermont Republican Gov. Richard Snelling, and Democratic Gov. Howard Dean, McDougall grew up in Lowell, Mass. The son of a postmaster, from whom he inherited a self-effacing sense of humor, McDougall said lobbying is “the ultimate relationship business.”

“You need to be credible, but certainly you need to like people and connect with people whether you agree with them or not,” said McDougall. He and his wife, Deb, have been active in Special Olympics in Vermont and plan to return to that task. In addition, four of their five children live in the Twin States, and three are lawyers.

“Someone said having three sons as attorneys, they can work eight-hour shifts covering me,” McDougall said in typical fashion.

McDougall will be succeeded by Matthew Houde, a D-H lobbyist who left the New Hampshire Senate, where he was a Democrat representing the Lebanon area, in 2012, to work for D-H.

‘Shattering’ Portrait

A new book — Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes — is getting good reviews. The New York Times, for instance, says it “creates a picture of a shockingly inept campaign hobbled by hubris and unforced errors.”

It’s also 385 pages long, and if you had Clinton fatigue before, this book is not for you. Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook, a 1998 Hanover High graduate, is a central figure, overreliant on analyzing data while Bill Clinton thought he should be doing more conventional polling and sending Hillary to campaign in suburbs and exurbs. You know, places with a lot of disaffected white voters. There’s no denying that the leaks of Russian-hacked emails, Hillary Clinton’s failure to articulate a clear message about why she should be elected, and FBI Director James Comey and that darn private server, were all key factors in her loss.

But the book also makes clear that strife was constant in Brooklyn, Clinton’s campaign headquarters. Campaign chairman John Podesta thought Mook kept too much information to himself and was “passive-aggressive,” the book reports, while Mook “thought Podesta was a (jerk).”

Sanders Paperwork

Good gumshoe reporting by VtDigger.org and Seven Days in recent days has revealed that the FBI appears to be investigating the 2016 collapse of Burlington College and whether its former president, Jane O’Meara Sanders, overstated pledged donations in an application for a bank loan the college needed to buy land along Lake Champlain in 2010.

Sanders got a big payout when she left, and if there’s any meat to the inquiry, look for pressure to mount on her husband, Sen. Bernie Sanders, to release his 2015 tax returns as part of the 2018 election cycle. The Vermont independent released 2014 returns, but managed not to release the 2015 returns during his presidential campaign.

John P. Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com.