When you visit the official website of almost any elected officeholder, you’ll be greeted by a picture of said grandee. Or a whole bunch of pictures, because the ever-hungry ego must be placated.

But not Auditor Doug Hoffer. When you visit his homepage, you see a rotating gallery of Vermont writers who have won major awards, including Robert Frost, David Moats, Galway Kinnell, and yes, Louise Glück. I find that refreshing. Touching, really.

Hoffer’s not your typical politician. Sure, he’s got an ego and a sense of his own importance, but he has never ever expressed the slightest interest in climbing the political ladder. He’s kept his nose to the grindstone and produced a lot of great work, holding state government accountable for how it spends our tax dollars. Because as a Progressive (slash Democrat), he believes that government performs many valuable functions and has a responsibility to do them as efficiently as possible.

He isn’t as focused on self-promotion as most politicians. And I think he has suffered for it; his work has been routinely undercovered in our media and often ignored by those in the Legislative or Executive branches who ought to be taking his findings to heart. A couple of factors have worked against him: (1) Democrats and Republicans don’t like Progressives, and that’s his primary political orientation, and (2) he often challenges conventional wisdom, and nobody likes to hear that.

Now he’s on his way out, retiring at the end of his current term. He’s spending some of his last months in office encapsulating his past efforts in easily digestible form, hoping that people will pay attention. Kind of like an old rock-and-roller putting out a Greatest Hits album. Spoiler alert: It ain’t working very well. He’s getting the full lame-duck treatment. It’s a damn shame.

We take you first to April 7, when Hoffer delivered a memorandum to the House Appropriations Committee that summarized his past work about the Vermont Economic Growth Initiative (VEGI), the giveaway program frequently touted by Gov. Phil Scott, who has yet to see a tax expenditure he doesn’t love. Because it’s “free.” But as Hoffer points out, the state is foregoing tax revenue, so “free” is a mischaracterization. (The memo can be downloaded here; look for “Memorandum to House Appropriations Committee re: Department of Economic Development Performance Measurement Issues.” A title only an auditor could love.)

But the bigger problem is the extreme difficulty in proving the underlying theory of VEGI: That the beneficiaries of our largesse would not experience growth “but for” the tax incentive. Or, as Hoffer puts it, “the general assertion about causality is not supported by facts that can be verified independently” and depends on “hugely overstated ROI” and claims “based on confidential data so the Legislature cannot verify them.”

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

This wasn’t Hoffer’s last swing at VEGI and its overseers at the Vermont Economic Progress Council (VEPC). On May 11 he issued his “Final Report” on the program. (Downloadable here; look for “Vermont Economic Progress Council: Vermont Employment Growth Incentive – Estimated $8.4 Million Aggregate Reduction Across 21 Incentive Awards Using Company Specific Growth Rates.”)

This gets a little wonky, but Hoffer asserts that a reviewed selection of 21 VEGI awards would have been $8.4 million lower if VEPC had used more appropriate measures of projected business growth. That’s $8.4 million in savings, to put it another way. The law governing VEGI requires that “background growth” be excluded from incentive calculations. VEPC used industry-average growth rates; Hoffer argues it would be more appropriate to use growth rates for the individual companies applying for incentives. (If I got any of this wrong, I’m sure I’ll get a note from the Auditor’s office.)

Then on May 15, Hoffer issued a summary of “common audit findings” meant to give an overview of how well our state government operates. (Downloadable here; look for “Common Audit Findings Report.”)

In his introduction, Hoffer noted that there are “many common elements in the management of state programs” and that “similar problems” often pop up across departments and agencies. So he decided to issue “a summary report of common audit findings that keep popping up.” Which seems like a valuable contribution to deliberations over the performance of state government. Indeed, it seems like a critical roadmap to reforming government operations. Like, a real-life actionable version of the governor’s long-abandoned Lean Management initiative.

Seems like a good time to point out that NONE of the above reports received ANY attention in the news media, as far as I can tell. Hoffer’s website includes a list of news stories about his work, and there are no citations for any of those reports.

It includes one entry for the last Hoffer summary on the list, a performance overview of Vermont’s sheriff’s departments. As regular readers of This Here Blog will know, there’s been a hell of a lot of bad news about many of our sheriffs in recent years, and it’s good to have all this information in one official document. This report was issued on July 8, and got a brief spot on WCAX News — and nothing more.

The Vermont Sheriffs report can be downloaded here; look for “Vermont Sheriffs – Summary Report of Recent Issues and Audit Findings.” It cites six separate cases of serious malfeasance in the last four years, from the then-sheriff of Bennington County being found in 2022 to have moved out of state while maintaining his post to the 2026 arrest of the Windsor County sheriff on sexual misconduct charges. As Hoffer wrote, “there is no real accountability for Sheriffs other than elections* or impeachment** for mismanagement, malfeasance, or criminal activity.”

*Sheriffs are routinely re-elected even if embroiled in scandal due to sheer name recognition, because the vast majority of voters pay little attention to county offices.

*He noted, accurately, that impeachment is “rarely used.” Which is kind of an understatement.

That seems to be a problem, given the fact that six out of fourteen sheriff’s departments have been hit by scandal since 2022. That’s what you call a “trend.”

Hoffer’s report also notes other issues with state regulation of sheriffs, including the fact that sheriffs can still hold office even if they lose their certification to be law enforcement officers (although they are barred from certain functions of the office).

Also, while sheriffs are supposed to adopt uniform accounting standards and submit to financial audits every two years, Hoffer has found that sheriff’s departments often commit “financial reporting errors” that betray a “lack of financial knowledge,” that internal controls are often ignored (or weren’t sufficient in the first place), and that sheriffs often fail to ensure that accounting functions were operating as they should. Furthermore, many sheriff’s departments are repeat violators on one or more of these points.

Hoffer also surveyed other states to find out how they regulate and oversee their sheriffs, and offers some helpful suggestions for reforms Vermont could adopt. This will likely be met by silence from official quarters, given the fact that the Legislature couldn’t even adopt a simple requirement that sheriffs must hold a top-level certification as a law enforcement officer — a reform measure proposed by the Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs itself!

Nope, I don’t think the Legislature or Executive has any desire to improve the rotten structure of sheriffs’ departments, and I seriously doubt that Hoffer’s report will make the slightest difference. Hell, if it can’t even get widespread coverage, nobody’s going to raise a stink and perhaps force official Vermont to take some action.

For the avid golfer in the Auditor’s office, this is just par for the course. He has served the state with distinction. His reward is to be widely ignored by Our Political Betters and our sleepy media watchdogs. The weird thing about the latter is, these reports and audits are ready-made for deadline-driven reporters. They don’t take much work at all, and they’re definitely newsworthy. It continues to puzzle me, and depress me, that our news media pay so little attention to important information about how well our state government works. Or doesn’t.