Fascinating story in this week’s edition of The Hardwick Gazette, which merits follow-up coverage of the implications by our larger media outlets. (And I’m not saying so because of my role with the paper. This is all about the merits of the story.) As The Gazette’s Paul Fixx reports, the Hardwick Electric Department just replaced its general manager in a completely opaque fashion: no public notice, no agenda item at a board meeting, no explanation whatsoever. Nothing.

So what’s going on here?

We don’t know, but I have my suspicions. I see the current drive to de-localize management in our public education system, and I wonder if the same forces are at work in Vermont’s electric power system. In short, is there an effort underway to consolidate Vermont’s community utilities — up to and including the Burlington Electric Department?

For the good folks of Hardwick and environs, the most immediately important thing is the total mystery around the replacement of Sarah Braese as general manager less than a year after she was hired. What does it say about the organizational health of HED?

For the rest of us, the big piece is the identity of HED’s new interim (apparently) general manager. Scott Johnstone was the utility’s interim chief last year, plus he’s been chief of Morrisville Water & Light since 2022, plus he was recently installed as head of the financially troubled Hyde Park Electric. (The best source for coverage of Hyde Park’s perilous situation comes from, shocker I know, The News & Citizen. Local journalism FTW.)

That’s a hell of a portfolio: Johnstone now runs three small utilities in northern Vermont. Things that make you go hmm…..

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