Vermont

In Vermont, ‘Town Meeting’ is democracy embodied. What can the rest of the country learn from it? – The Boston Globe

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2 years ago

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March 18, 2024

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In Vermont, ‘Town Meeting’ is democracy embodied. What can the rest of the country learn from it? – The Boston Globe

But in pockets of New England, democracy is done a bit differently. People can still participate directly and in person. One day each year, townsfolk gather to hash out local issues. They talk, listen, debate, vote. And in places like Elmore, once itâs all over, they sit down together for a potluck lunch.

Town Meeting is a tradition that, in Vermont, dates back more than 250 years, to before the founding of the republic. But it is under threat. Many people feel they no longer have the time or ability to attend such meetings. Last year, residents of neighboring Morristown voted to switch to a secret ballot system, ending their town meeting tradition.

Not so in Elmore, population 886. Its residents are used to holding tight to traditions. Theyâve fought to keep open their post office, their store and their school, the last one-room schoolhouse in the state. Last fall, Elmore residents voted 2-1 in favor of keeping their town meetings.

And so it is at 9 a.m. on the first Tuesday in March, when, atop an elevated stage, moderator Jon Gailmor stands up.

âGood morning, everyone, and welcome to democracy,â he says. âThis is the real thing, and we should all be proud that weâre doing this.â

Community and government, hand in hand

Elmore calls itself the beauty spot of Vermont. The town borders a lake, which in early March is dotted with people ice fishing. Beyond, a mountain rises. At night, steam floats up from sugarhouses, where maple sap is being boiled down into syrup.

The heartbeat of the town is the store. âIâve always said itâs a live, living, breathing creature. I donât own it; she owns me,â says Kathy Miller, 63, who bought the store with her husband, Warren, in 1983. People would come in not only to buy milk and pick up the mail but to use the fax machine, find a plumber or just to swap gossip.

In 2020, Warren died. He loved collecting things â advertising signs, beer-tap handles, snowboards. At home, Miller looks through some of his collections and talks about selling stuff. Her sense of loss is profound. Her best friend, the man she worked alongside every day, is gone.

The year he died, COVID-19 restrictions also took a toll on the business, and Miller found she was struggling. Then townsfolk began giving her money in advance. âI had one gentleman give me $5,000 just to keep the store going,â Miller says, choking up.

Miller kept running the store for another 18 months before she was bought out by a community trust, set up to ensure the store remains open. These days, the store is run by Jason Clark. Miller helps out when sheâs not serving meals at a food kitchen. And she still collects her bills from P.O. Box 1.

Miller recalls that after joining the state grocersâ association in the 1980s, she testified before Congress about the impact of credit card fees. Back then, she believed that little people could have a voice in national politics. But these days, she says, Washington has gotten away from the basics. Too big, she says. Too messed up. Tilted off its axis.

Her husband served as a Republican representative in the Vermont state legislature, and Miller describes herself as a Republican who hasnât drunk the Kool-Aid. She notes both Vermont and Elmore have shifted more Democratic over the years. But at Town Meeting, she says, political differences donât mean a thing.

âThereâs no animosity,â she says. âPeople can talk about things. You shake hands with your neighbor when you leave.â

At Town Meeting, Miller makes a pitch to increase the townâs library funding from $1,000 per year to $3,000, to reflect the increasing patronage and expenses. The townsfolk agree.

A moderator who keeps things moderate

Gailmor, 75, is a singer-songwriter who brings an element of performance to his role as moderator.

âReappraisals of your homes are going to start in the spring,â he says as he reads through a dry list of announcements. But then, to laughter, he adds: âSo spruce âem up.â

He describes himself as an independent voter who has supported both Republicans and Democrats over the years.

The day before the meeting, Gailmor plays his guitar at the library in Morristown. Heâs helping a group of senior citizens practice the songs they have written for an upcoming performance. They are supposed to ax two of the eight songs but canât bring themselves to choose. Instead, they decide, they will perform them all.

The seniors love Gailmor, who says he has somehow aged to become one of therm. They joke about âflatlandersâ â people not born in Vermont â and have come up with a song that celebrates the spring thaw: âSo break out the booze, weâve got nothinâ to lose, embracing the ooze, itâs the mud season blues.â

Gailmor first moved to Elmore in 1980 and says he found the town meeting tradition nothing short of miraculous. It wasnât some politician spouting off but real people taking part. He was so inspired that he even wrote a song about it. He plays it for the seniors.

âGreet the old town folks, hear the gossip and the jokes, dip a donut in a good strong cup of Joe,â Gailmor sings. âFind your favorite chair, plant your buttocks there â weâre getting down to business, donât you know.â

At town meetings, people sometimes go beyond voting on local issues and decide to take a stand on national issues of the day. At home, Gailmor holds a photograph of his wife, Cathy Murphy, who died two years ago. Captured by an Associated Press photographer, the image shows Murphy at an Elmore Town Meeting in the 1980s, when she was speaking out against nuclear weapons as part of the Nuclear Freeze movement.

âYou feel important,â Gailmor says. âYou feel like you are being listened to.â

This year, Elmore decides to take a stance on another broader issue by adopting a declaration of inclusion. It states the town will welcome all people regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity.

A âforced civilityâ that works

âForced civility.” Frank Bryan, a retired University of Vermont professor who wrote a book about town meetings, coined that term to describe the way people dealing with disagreements in person are compelled to recognize each otherâs common humanity in a way that larger-scale political interactions do not allow.

That doesn’t mean it always goes smoothly. In Gailmor’s decade of moderating, he says one incident stands out. He invoked the rules to stop one man from repeatedly talking on a particular issue. The man seethed, then came up to Gailmor after the meeting to say he felt like chopping his head off. He stormed off and later moved away. The animosity with Gailmor was never resolved.

Miller says she learned her own lesson about small-town politics after once putting up a political sign about school choice in her store. She had one customer who wouldnât come back and stopped speaking to her, she says. Even with that, though, she is confident about the gentility of the system in which she participates.

Just having voters show up for hours on a weekday morning is challenging. Morristown is one of many Vermont towns to end the tradition of town meetings. Richard Watts, the director of the Center for Research on Vermont at UVM, says people in larger towns tend to feel less sense of connection.

There’s a key downside when a town moves to secret ballot, also known as an Australian ballot because states there were the first to adopt such a system in the mid-19th century: It’s usually a straight up-or-down vote. That means people can’t make tweaks or debate issues. And for some, the open, collegial debate is the genius of the entire system.

âYouâll always have disagreements, and sometimes, sides,â Miller says. âBut itâs not hate. Thereâs not the rage that Iâm seeing on TV.â

Why people get involved (and stay involved)

At the meeting, people leaf through the town report, which features a photo of Brent Hosking and a note thanking him for his 25 years of service as Elmoreâs volunteer fire chief.

A retired industrial arts teacher, Hosking, 74, first bought an old farmhouse in Elmore in 1979. What’s sprouted on his property since then is testament to his never-ending tinkering. He has built a huge barn, an addition to his home and a sugarhouse to make maple syrup. Antique vehicles are scattered around his farm like animal carcasses, projects for another day.

He’s tapped 400 maple trees â a small operation compared to some of his neighbors â and still uses buckets to carry the sap from some of them to the boiler. He and his wife, Sharon Fortune, sell some of the syrup they make from home and use the rest. Not only on their French toast and pancakes, but also in spaghetti sauce, stews, baking, on top of popcorn and in their morning coffee.

âThe people in town, if they come over to eat, they say âWell, is there maple syrup in this?â” Hosking says, chuckling.

He helped start the fire department in 1983 after locals tired of paying neighboring towns to extinguish fires. They get callouts for car accidents, structure fires, and unprepared hikers who get stranded on Mount Elmore.

Being involved has helped foster a sense of community, Hosking says. He knows others will have his back, like when he was once on vacation and other department volunteers corralled his escaped cattle back onto his farm. Town Meeting helps foster that sense of community, he says. It’s a time to get to know your neighbor, he says, which is important in a small town.

Hosking says he’s a Democrat but supports Vermont’s moderate Republican Governor Phil Scott. Like many of his fellow citizens in town, he doesn’t like the turn that national politics has taken.

“You feel helpless, because all you do is one vote,” Hosking says. âIt seems like it gets lost. And I think a lot of people in the nation feel the same way.”

Democracy accomplished. Letâs eat.

Elmoreâs Town Meeting has been going for nearly four hours. What has unfolded represents a cross-section of democracy, of people choosing for themselves how to live and work and govern.

â First, a big surprise: Nancy Davis throws her hat in the ring for a position on the cemetery commission, going up against incumbent John Fish. Nobody can remember a contested cemetery election. Davis, a relative newcomer to Elmore, wants to get more involved.

From there, democracy plays out. People write their choices on Post-it size pieces of green paper and slot them in an old mailbox. Three vote-counters tally the results: Fish 37, Davis 36 â and one spoiled ballot by somebody who has voted for both candidates.

â An impassioned speech by Julie Bomengen secures an extra $500 for the Lamoille Community Food Share, raising Elmoreâs annual contribution to $750.

â Several people have been criticizing the town’s spending habits. Others argue that replacing equipment like the road maintenance truck will only end up costing more if the can is kicked down the road. âWe have just spent two-and-a-half million on this new garage, and then we go out and put $300,000 into a new truck. I think that’s a little overkill,â Shorty Towne tells the crowd.

â After exhaustive discussions, Elmore’s annual town budget of $1.1 million is passed in a voice vote. There is no dissent.

â A move to change next year’s Town Meeting to a Saturday to encourage better attendance is rejected after a survey on people’s preferences proved inconclusive. Elmore, after all, likes its traditions.

Gailmor, who has been voted in for another year as moderator, commends townsfolk for holding a particularly lively and well-attended meeting. Kipp Bovey, who has been active in the meeting, has made good progress on knitting her sweater. Towne has had his say about the truck. Democracy has unfolded on a small canvas. And the much-discussed American political polarization? It’s nowhere in sight.

It’s time to adjourn.

âLunch is cold,â Gailmor says. âBut it will be in the church.â

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Vermont

UVM wants to use state scholarship money to pay for a new sports complex. Vermont legislators are skeptical. – VTDigger

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8 hours ago

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April 3, 2026

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Press Room

UVM wants to use state scholarship money to pay for a new sports complex. Vermont legislators are skeptical. – VTDigger

The Old Mill building on the University of Vermont campus in Burlington in March 2025. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

The University of Vermont is asking legislators for $15 million from a statewide student financial aid fund so the school can put it toward a long-planned campus sports complex instead.

While Gov. Phil Scott supports the proposal, it has gotten a cold reception so far from lawmakers. Scott included the funding move in his state budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts in July. And he highlighted the project in his budget address to lawmakers at the start of the legislative session in January.

The House took the plan out of the version of a spending package it passed last week. The chamber’s bill, H.951, is now being considered in the Senate.

Both supporters and detractors of the plan agree it would mark a shift in the use of the state’s Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund, which helps pay for aid to students at UVM, in the Vermont State Colleges System or attending other schools in-state.

Last year, the trust fund paid for 675 scholarships averaging $1,400 each, according to data from the Vermont State Treasurer’s Office, which manages the pot of money. About three-quarters of the beneficiaries were first-generation college students.

But for UVM, the state fund — which recently saw a large infusion of cash — is an attractive option to get construction back underway on its “multipurpose center” project, which broke ground in 2019 but has stalled since the Covid-19 pandemic. The indoor venue would be among the largest in the state, school leaders have said.

Rep. Robin Scheu, D-Middlebury, chairs the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee. She said she opposes UVM’s plan because taking money out of the trust fund would make less available for student aid. Doing that, for a building project, is a policy decision that needs more scrutiny, she said.

“It’s completely unrelated to the uses of the fund — and that’s a huge policy shift,” she said of UVM’s project Wednesday.

One member of the appropriations panel was blunt in his criticism during a hearing on the plan earlier this year: “I don’t like this,” said Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury. The House Education Committee has also voiced its opposition to the proposal, calling it “well outside” the fund’s current purpose in a February memo.

State lawmakers put $6 million into the fund when they set it up in 1999. It gets new money from the estate tax on high-wealth individuals’ assets when they die, as well as an annual infusion of cash from the state’s collection of unclaimed financial property.

Every year, the state withdraws up to 5% of the fund’s assets for aid to students at UVM, Vermont State University and Community College of Vermont. Money is also sent to the Vermont Student Assistance Corp. for its financial aid programs.

The aid is drawn from the interest the fund accrues, because state law does not allow withdrawals that would reduce the amount of its principal. A smaller percentage of the fund can also be used to bolster UVM and the state colleges’ endowments — provided there are matching private donations available.

Both UVM and the governor’s office are pitching to take $15 million out of the trust fund’s principal. They argue the timing is ripe because the fund got a historic windfall of estate tax revenue last year: more than $26 million, which brought its total assets to nearly $66 million. Even after taking out $15 million for UVM’s new facility, they’ve argued, the fund would still be larger than in years past.

“I know it’s a departure from how those funds have been used for the past,” Marlene Tromp, the UVM president, told House Appropriations last month. “We believe this one-time investment is an appropriate use of those funds, because it will allow us to make such an impact on the state.”

The new facility would be able to seat 5,000 people, Wendy Koenig, UVM’s director of government relations, said at the same committee hearing. It would house the men’s and women’s basketball teams and host concerts, lectures, conferences and other events, according to previously-detailed plans. The project would also renovate existing athletic facilities on the site.

Vermont

As manufacturing jobs decline, Vermont business leaders take their concerns to the Statehouse – VTDigger

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20 hours ago

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April 2, 2026

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Press Room

As manufacturing jobs decline, Vermont business leaders take their concerns to the Statehouse – VTDigger

Sang But, left, and Matt Lawrence program a cutting tool at Flex-A-Seal, a manufacturer of mechanical seals, in Essex Junction on Thursday, October 24, 2019. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Theo Wells-Spackman is a Report for America corps member who reports for VTDigger.

The manufacturing industry generates billions for Vermont’s economy each year — but jobs in the sector are on the decline.

That’s according to state Chamber of Commerce President Amy Spear, who spoke to a packed room of lawmakers and business leaders at the Statehouse during manufacturing industry day programming Thursday morning. Manufacturing employment has fallen more than 11% since pre-pandemic levels in 2020, she said, and a recent long-term study on the industry returned a pessimistic outlook for the rest of the decade.

In general, Spear and her colleague Megan Sullivan said in an interview, manufacturers create relatively high-paying jobs with significant upward mobility in Vermont. They also form the backbone of a crucial facet of the state’s economy, Spear said: exports.

Manufacturing brings “new money” into Vermont, Spear told lawmakers Thursday. “It grows the economic pie rather than redistributing it,” she said.

Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, chair of the Senate Economic Development Committee, echoed Spear’s comments.

“You are our partners in economic development, and we depend on you,” she told business leaders. “We are your cheerleaders in the Statehouse.”

But while manufacturers in the room applauded several recent legislative efforts to ease financial pressure on companies — including Covid-era relief and research and development tax credits in a bill currently under consideration — several expressed anxiety over the rising cost of doing business in Vermont.

Dave Laforce, who owns Built By Newport, a furniture manufacturer in the Northeast Kingdom, said the combination of electricity costs, property taxes and health care premiums had been crushing in recent years. But passing costs on to consumers isn’t an option when you’re facing international competition, he said.

“In my 35 years of being in this business, I have not seen the escalation of fixed costs that we’ve experienced in the last three years,” he told lawmakers.

In particular, Laforce joined Janette Bombardier, an executive at Chroma Technology in Bellows Falls, in raising concerns over the burden of the payroll tax lawmakers recently imposed to support child care growth. Many of Chroma’s employees live in New Hampshire and therefore cannot access the subsidy this tax pays for, Bombardier said, and even those on the Vermont side live in an area where the need for child care still far outstrips available slots.

“I’m not sure it’s doing what we’re all hoping it would do in terms of creating spaces,” Bombardier said of the payroll tax.

Recruiting an adequate workforce was perhaps the largest headwind that business leaders cited.

Ben Bristow of Nolato Vermont, a plastic and silicone molding company in Royalton, said his Swedish ownership had considered opening a new facility in the area several years ago. But when it became clear that hiring a 200-person staff in a short time would be difficult, the project abruptly moved to Hungary, he said.

Lt. Gov. John Rodgers concluded Thursday with a plea to strengthen and expand the state’s technical education centers and the apprenticeship programs that connect them with local manufacturers.

“If we’re going to encourage the next generation of builders, we need to get them involved in hands-on learning early,” he said.

— Theo Wells-Spackman

In the know

Testimony to lawmakers last year revealed that gaps in state alerts to crime victims sometimes caused them life-altering harm. After learning about those gaps, lawmakers on the House Corrections and Institutions Committee assembled a task force to improve the state alert system.

On Thursday members of that task force reported back with their most recent recommendations.

Victims have long asked lawmakers to make the automated alert system customizable. For example, someone might want to be alerted if the person who harmed them was released from prison. But they might not want to know if their abuser was merely transferred from one prison to another. Victims might also want to change the types of information they receive over time.

Kelsey Rice, a survivor of domestic violence who sits on the task force, told the committee that as more time passes after the moment when someone’s abuser is arrested, victims might want to change the types of information they receive. “The choices and decisions I made in that moment were not the same choices and needs that I identified needing later on,” Rice said.

Current state law leaves no room for that choice, task force members told the committee. They asked lawmakers to draft changes to Vermont law allowing victims to opt out of certain notifications.

— Charlotte Oliver

Gov. Phil Scott had harsh words at a press conference Wednesday for the House majority that voted last week in favor of the chamber’s budget proposal.

The Republican governor read aloud a letter he said he’d received from a Vermont-born man who wrote that he’s now leaving the state because his taxes have gotten too expensive.

“Apparently, the majority of House members have been hearing something different from their constituents,” Scott said before criticizing how the chamber is “proposing to increase property taxes by an average of 7%.”

The governor has proposed a plan that would increase property taxes too — by 4%. Ultimately, the size of the projected tax hike will depend on how much money legislators and the governor agree to use to buy down tax rates in the upcoming fiscal year.

Scott also said he disagrees with the House’s decision to draw on $9.5 million in interest from the state’s Technology Modernization Fund to pay for a number of one-time initiatives that weren’t part of his budget proposal. And he wants the Senate, which is now reviewing the budget bill, to back an idea he initially proposed to eventually send all of the state revenue from taxes on vehicle purchases to the Transportation Fund.

The Scott administration also opposes a portion of the House’s budget that would require detailed information about the state Agency of Education’s operations in some of the agency’s future spending proposals.

In testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee later Wednesday, Adam Greshin, Scott’s commissioner of finance and management, called that language “basically a middle finger to the agency.”

— Shaun Robinson

On the trail

Attorney General Charity Clark is weighing in on the race for Chittenden County’s next top prosecutor.

On Thursday, Clark endorsed Bram Kranichfeld, who currently serves as Franklin County state’s attorney.

Kranichfeld, a Democrat, is running to the right of current Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George, who is seeking reelection.

“Bram is incredibly caring, moral, and thoughtful. He is an excellent lawyer, someone whose judgment I trust. I believe he’s the change Chittenden County needs,” Clark said in a statement.

Some have said the race is off to a “spicy” start.

— Ethan Weinstein

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Vermont

Trucker’s brief detour into Canada leads to 3 weeks in federal custody – VTDigger

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1 day ago

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April 2, 2026

By

Press Room

Trucker’s brief detour into Canada leads to 3 weeks in federal custody – VTDigger

The Highgate Springs border crossing with Canada in 2021. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Arnaldo Gregorio Alay Aguilar was following his navigation system while delivering a truckload of logs to New York and ended up at Vermont’s Highgate Springs border crossing into Canada.

Canadian officers would not let him back up the truck for safety reasons, his lawyers say. So he was forced to cross through, make a U-turn and report to a border official on the U.S. side.

That detour led to the 40-year-old trucker being held in federal custody for three weeks. But the government did not make a case for why, according to court documents.

The situation has similarities to a pattern that emerged in recent immigration operations in Burlington and South Burlington, where government lawyers failed to provide evidence when seeking to hold people picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford ordered Alay Aguilar’s immediate release last week “given the nature of the constitutional violations in this case,” according to the court order.

Federal officials “failed to provide Petitioner with a charging document or to articulate a clear or legally sufficient basis for his detention,” his lawyers stated in court filings.

In his order, Crawford noted that the government had offered no justification except a reinterpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act as it applies to people who originally entered the U.S. without authorization and have been living in the country. Alay Aguilar has a pending asylum application from October 2025.