This morning on central Vermont’s meeting place of the minds, the Mark Johnson Show, David Mears announced his departure as head of the Department of Environmental Conservation. The move, he said, has nothing to do with DEC or the Shumlin administration or his performance:
“I was given an opportunity to go back to my old gig teaching law at Vermont Law School, and decided I just couldn’t turn that [down]. …It just happened to be that the position came open now, and law professor jobs don’t come along very often, so I took it…
“In all honesty, I would have liked to have stayed throughout the remainder of the Shumlin administration, but like I said the chance came along so I decided to jump at it.”
I have no reason to doubt him, but as VTDigger’s Morgan True pointed out:
Mears is the 11th agency or department head to leave or retire from the Shumlin administration since Racine was fired last August #vtpoli
— Morgan True (@true_morgan) July 16, 2015
This is where Shumlin’s lame-duck status could be most impactful.