Because I usually finish what I start, the “Drafts” section of this site’s back office is mercifully brief. It contains exactly one unfinished blogpost. That one is more than four years old, and I long ago despaired of ever pulling it off.
Its title is “We Have No Idea How Well State Government Performs.” I honestly believe that statement is true, but I’ve never finished it because it would be an absolute bear to research — to try to catalogue examples of state government failing to work as it should, when I suspect that most examples remain safely concealed in a bureaucratic mountain that gets little meaningful independent oversight.
But three recent news items provide solid evidence in support of the working theory that our state government is not nearly as efficient or effective as it could be.
Hey, let’s start with a tangent. Last week’s episode of “There’s No ‘A’ in Creemee” featured deputy state auditor Tim Ashe, now running to succeed the retiring Doug Hoffer in the big chair. And honestly, I thought Hoffer caught a couple of strays. Podcast co-host Andy Julow opined that during Hoffer’s tenure, the office has been “kind of a sleepy position” because Hoffer is not an “in front of a camera kind of guy,” There was no dissent from co-host Joanna Grossman or from Ashe himself.
To which I say, whose fault is that? Hoffer doesn’t chase cameras, but he does try to draw attention to the work of his office. Too often, that work is ignored by the news media and the Legislature. And that’s not his fault.
Take last week, for example. Hoffer’s office examined compliance with a law requiring Vermont schools to test their buildings for radon gas. As Hoffer wrote, “Breathing air with radon increases the risk of developing lung cancer and is the second leading cause of lung cancer deaths in the United States after cigarette smoke.” Seems like something we’d want to prevent — especially when it comes to the kids, no?
The law was adopted in 2021 and testing deadlines were extended the following year. As amended, the law required all schools to test for radon by June 30, 2025. However, as Hoffer reported, the law “did not include a reporting requirement.” Kind of a legislative oopsie there. Or a deliberate omission meant to defang the law while creating the appearance of Doing Something.
The result: No one in state government had any data, or any idea whether testing had actually been done. So Hoffer’s team did the work instead. (His report is downloadable here.)
Want to know the results? Our major media outlets apparently didn’t think so, because they didn’t bother covering it. There were stories on WPTZ-TV and in the Rutland Herald and Times Argus, but that was about it.
The inevitable has occurred, to the surprise of no one paying the slightest attention. Former Senate pro tem Tim Ashe, pictured here alongside some guy, has declared his candidacy for State Auditor*. This has been inevitable since current Auditor Doug Hoffer hired Ashe as his chief deputy back in 2021. It became extra-double inevitable when Hoffer made it clear he would not run for re-election in 2026.
*Credit where credit’s due: Political blogger Matthew Vigneau spotted Ashe’s candidacy filing on December 22, a full ten days before Ashe officially announced. He deserves credit for getting the story first, not that any mainstream media outlet ever gives proper credit to bloggers.
Both men wear the same political label as Democrat/Progressives. Both hail from Burlington. Both have ties to Bernie Sanders. Both are the kind of policy/financial nerds who would make good small-a auditors. All indications are they have worked well together in the capital-A Auditor’s office.
So yeah, of course Ashe is running for Auditor. And assuming the Vermont Republican Party can’t do any better than nominating the likes of H. Brooke Paige, he’s almost certainly going to win.
But the most politically impactful thing about this announcement has nothing to do with the man. It’s all about that D/P thang.
I’m talking about Auditor Doug Hoffer’s latest audit (downloadable here), which reviews how the Department of Health’s Food and Lodging Program has been addressing complaints about unsafe or unclean conditions at our state’s hospitality businesses. “Examples include,” his cover letter helpfully enumerates, “complaints alleging bedbug infestations… serving expired food, and handling ready-to-eat food with bare hands.” Hoffer found that the Program often failed to respond promptly to complaints or make sure that offending businesses obeyed improvement orders.
Reminder that the tourism industry is a cornerstone of our economy and public image. It ain’t great if a tourist family comes down with food poisoning or checks into a charming B&B only to find that the beds are full of crawly, bitey things. The Food and Lodging Program is there to safeguard public health and to undergird the state’s tourism industry. Complaints and inspections might be a buzzkill, but they are necessary to ensure that visitors have a positive experience while they’re here.
Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas gave it the old college try. This year, after every campaign finance reporting deadline, she published lists of all candidates who failed to file as required by law. This was aimed at encouraging compliance, if only by the embarrassment of being publicly identified as a scofflaw.
It was a good idea, but it didn’t work. The proof? The most recent list of non-compliers, released after the December 15 deadline for Final Reports, was by far the longest of all the lists. Proof that avoidance of embarrassment meant nothing whatsoever to candidates for public office.
The list is actually three lists: Those who filed, those who filed an “Under Threshold” report (didn’t raise or spend $500 or more), and those who just let the deadline fly by. And yes, if your campaign had no reportable activity, you’re still required to officially attest to that fact.
Among statewide candidates, only two are in the failed-to-file category: Republican candidate for treasurer (and Republican National Commitee member) Joshua Bechhoefer and, um, incumbent Auditor Doug Hoffer. Oopsie.
It gets really embarrassing when you get to legislative candidates. The list of Senate scofflaws is almost as long as the list of those who complied. A total of 30 Senate candidates, including seven winners, did not file a Final Report. In the House, 105 candidates failed to file, including (by my count) 32 winners.
If he didn’t have a decade-plus track record of ignoring the political implications of his work, I’d think Auditor Doug Hoffer pulled a nice little election-year fast one on Gov. Phil Scott. Yesterday, just in time for the beginning of campaign season, Hoffer issued a devastating report (downloadable here) on the state’s failure to implement its 2018 State Hazard Mitigation Plan.
Which can now be added to my extensive list of Stuff Phil Scott Hasn’t Done. Too bad the Democrats aren’t putting up an effective challenge to the governor’s bid for a fifth term. The Hoffer audit would make an effective cudgel.
The Mitigation Plan included 96 discrete actions to reduce the impacts of natural disasters. Hoffer found that only about one-third had been implemented. Even high-priority items were “frequently” unfinished. And this was a five-year plan that expired in 2023, so it’s not like the administration didn’t have all the time it should have needed. Meanwhile, we’ve been beset by disaster after disaster including major flooding in each of the last two summers. Hoffer told VTDigger that full implementation of the Plan “would have made a difference in the last two years.”
The audit was released a few hours after Scott’s weekly press conference, so reporters didn’t get the chance to quiz him about it. But it did lend a touch of retrospective irony to the presser, which began with Scott bragging about once again relaunching his tired old “Capital for a Day’ concept. Nice way to stage high-profile, media-friendly events in all 14 counties while On Official Business, eh?
The September 1 campaign finance reports crystallized something we already knew: This is shaping up to be an unsurprising political season because there’s such a deep divide between those on top and those trying to get a leg up. The former include Gov. Phil Scott and a whole bunch of Democrats; the latter include every other Republican minus a few who’ve been blessed by the patronage of Burlington’s business elite.
The exception to the Democratic rule: Esther Charlestin, who entered September financially underwater in her long-odds (and getting longer every day) gubernatorial campaign. Somehow, the financial gap between Scott and Charlestin managed to grow in August.
This isn’t a typo: Charlestin has raised only $21,137 and spent $22,309. On primary night, Charlestin told VTDigger she would “go hard” in the general campaign, which meant knocking on doors, seeking endorsements, and “raising a lot more money.”
But she didn’t do that. For the entire month of August, Charlestin raised $4,505, which isn’t anywhere close to “a lot more money.” I can’t say how much of this is her doing and how much is Democratic donors turning their backs; Charlestin didn’t score any donations above $250, and that came from longtime Progressive stalwart Martha Abbott. Hey, Dems: Do you like your candidate or don’t you?
Meanwhile, Scott continues to raise far more money than he needs, and spend money like he’s got an actual battle on his hands instead of an almost certain walkover.
Update below: Auditor Doug Hoffer is working on a thorough exploration of the EB-5 mess.
Mark Johnson posted a pretty incredible two-part podcast last week. In the latest installment of his “802 News” (discoverable here or Wherever You Download Your Podcasts), Johnson spent more than two hours grilling Bill Stenger, the Northeast Kingdom developer who served prison time in the EB-5 fraud case. There’s a lot to unpack about Stenger himself, but the thing that caught my attention was what he had to say about the role of the Shumlin administration. His comments tore the metaphorical scab off the unhealed wound that is EB-5, specifically the state’s role in enabling a massive fraud.
Let’s pause for a moment and posit that no one, absolutely no one, in Vermont officialdom seems the least bit interested in uncovering the whole truth about this. With each passing day, it seems less and less likely that there will ever be a full accounting for Peter Shumlin and his top officials, many of whom (coughMikePieciakcough) continue to hold positions of influence in and around state government.
To get to the key moment: By early 2015, there was plenty of smoke if not open fire around the EB-5 projects. At that point, the state had to reauthorize two of the projects, including AnC Bio Vermont, the big flashy biotech facility that was supposed to be built in The Hole, pictured above.
In Stenger’s telling, state officials knew at the time that lead investor Ariel Quiros was committing fraud, and yet they gave the green light to continue the projects. If this is true, then (as Stenger implies but doesn’t state outright), some very prominent people should have joined Stenger and Quiros in being fitted for bright orange jumpsuits.
(Those with short memories should go back and read some of VTDigger’s reporting on the scandal, spearheaded by Digger founder Anne Galloway. This story and this one for starters.)
On Friday, December 22, state Auditor Doug Hoffer did something almost routine — but did it in an unusual way.
The routine: Hoffer issued a memo pointing out that there’s no evidence that a state workforce incentive program has any beneficial effect. The unusual: He sent it out at 2:26 p.m. on the Friday afternoon of the Christmas holiday weekend. As you might expect, there was no immediate coverage from any Vermont news outlet, all of whose members had their eyes fixed on the nearest exit when the auditor’s missive hit their inboxes.
It’s almost as though Hoffer realizes that when it comes to state incentive programs, he’s a lonely voice howling into the void. So why not simply launch his note directly into the void?
Perhaps that’s just my inner cynic talking. But really, does it make any difference whether he shoves this thing over the transom on a holiday weekend or calls a press conference in a prime spot? It’s probably going to have the same effect.
Hey, look what came up in the alphabet soup! Former state representative Linda Joy Sullivan is running for mayor.
Of Newport, Vermont.
Three hours away from her last known residence of Dorset.
The mayoralty of Newport suddenly opened up last month following the resignation of newly-elected mayor Beth Barnes, who apparently committed the cardinal sin of Not Being One Of Us. In her resignation statement, Barnes said she’d been “intimidated and bullied [and] commanded not to do certain things” by city councilors and then-city manager Laura Dolgin, now freshly retired and living out of state.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like Barnes, who’d never held elective office before, had an incomplete grasp of the niceties of being mayor in a community with a “weak mayor, strong manager” kind of government. But even granting that she may have stepped on a toe or two, it also seems clear that the Old Guard didn’t like having a newcomer in the mayor’s chair (her predecessor had held the office for 14 years) and did their level best to force her out.
Seems like an ideal job for Sullivan, who completely alienated the House Democratic Caucus with her self-promoting contrarianism. She then decided it’d be a great idea to challenge incumbent Auditor Doug Hoffer in the August 2022 primary, which Hoffer won without breaking a sweat.
Sometime between then and now, to give her the benefit of the doubt, she moved to Newport?
The Vermont Political Observer. 