Not that anybody has paid attention, but it’s legislative report season. A rather stunning 55 separate reports have been submitted to the Legislature in the month of December alone. (You can peruse the list and download reports here.) Some are consequential and worthy of attention (fir instance, the Commission on the Future of Public Education has issued its final report, and we’ve got the annual review of traffic stops sorted by race), while some are routine and destined for a dusty filing cabinet in the State Archives (the riveting Annual Report on Railroad Rights-of-Way for Communication Leases and a whole bunch of Fee Reports from various agencies).

I hope to circle back to some that seem worth reading. But for now, I’m focused on the annual report from the House Ethics Panel, submitted on December 23. As ever, it’s a masterpiece of obfuscation and bureaucratic doublespeak. Because as ever, the Legislature’s ethics regime is designed to protect its members, not the public interest.

Refresher for anyone who needs it: the House and Senate instituted ethics regimes, begrudgingly, back in the mid-2010s. The rules have been tweaked a bit since then, but the fundamental fact remains: Both regimes are black boxes, designed to keep as much information from the public as possible. The stated rationale: To protect lawmakers from the potential harm of baseless ethics complaints. That was a higher priority than, you know, informing the public or protecting our legitimate interests in a trustworthy legislative process.

The House Ethics Panel’s 2024 “report,” air quotes because it’s an insult to the plain meaning of the word, weighed in at one half of one page. That’s it.

I guess you could say this year’s version is an improvement in that it’s three times as long. Yep, one and a half pages. Here’s what you learn if you wade through the whole thing.

• The panel disposed of two complaints filed in 2024 but unresolved until this year because, I don’t know, it’s hard to do any work when your Panel rarely, if ever, meets?
• One of them involved “a failure to maintain professional boundaries,” and that’s all the information you get. The complaint resulted in “a stipulation and consent order,” about which please don’t ask any questions, you ungrateful constituent. The order, whatever the hell it contained, was “successfully completed,” brush hands, walk away.
• The other 2024 case involved one lawmaker “targeting another legislator with harassing and demeaning conduct on multiple occasions.” I assume this was the infamous case of Rep. Mary Morrissey repeatedly dumping cups of water in a tote bag belonging to fellow Bennington representative Jim Carroll. The Ethics Panel pulls a discreet curtain over the whole affair even though it was all over the news at the time. (Extra bonus: the voters of Bennington, in their infinite wisdom, turfed Carroll out while re-electing his tormentor.) This complaint, the report says, “was dismissal (sic) following successful completion of a stipulation and consent order.” You’d think somebody could have done a little proofreading on such a brief document.

The Panel received five fresh complaints in 2025, about which YOU GET NOTHING!, as Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka would say.

• Complaint number 2025-01 involved a lawmaker who allegedly “directed unethical conduct and engaged in the appearance of unethical conduct by encouraging the disruption of a meeting.”
• Complaint 2025-02 accused a lawmaker of violating “expected standards of conduct due to social media activity.”
• Complaint 2025-03 came from the same source as 2025-02 and accused the same lawmaker of “violat[ing] expected standards of conduct due to the Representative’s interactions with the Complainant at a public meeting.”
• Complaint 2025-04 alleged that a lawmaker “violated statute and House Rules by not allowing members of the public to testify at a committee hearing.”
• And complaint 2025-05 doesn’t take a Miss Cleo to figure out. It’s obviously the case of Henry Bonges, who was not reappointed to positions with the town of Milton after expressing opposition to Republican policies on climate. That didn’t sit well with the selectboard, three of whose five members (Leland Morgan, Michael Morgan, Brenda Steady) happen to be Republican lawmakers. The complaint alleges that two unidentified representatives “violated constitutional duties and rights and the Municipal Code of Ethics” in what I assume was the Bonges case.

All five of the complaints were closed for the same reason: “…there were no
reasonable grounds to believe that an ethical violation occurred.” That sounds fair, but the House’s definition of “reasonable grounds” likely differs from yours or mine or any other uninterested party. The House has defined extremely narrow “grounds” for ethical violations, as I discovered back when I became the first person to file a complaint with the Panel.

Finally, the House Ethics Panel received two requests for ethical advice from sitting representatives. And that’s all you get, GOOD DAY, SIR!

I suppose we should be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the House Panel’s table, since the Senate’s rules are even worse. Its Ethics Panel only has to file a report once every two years instead of every year, so we’ll have to wait until December 2026 to find out NOTHING! about ethics complaints against sitting senators filed in 2025. I mean, we wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone during an election year, would we now? (Although the Bennington vote would suggest that one’s chances of winning re-election might actually be improved by a scandal.)

It’s all a big fat joke against the public interest, and our lawmakers ought to be ashamed of themselves for presenting this hot mess as their response to legitimate concerns about legislative ethics.