Over the past year, Democrats on the Burlington City Council routinely used a group chat to discuss city business, coordinate votes and gossip about their Progressive colleagues — including during public meetings, a Seven Days analysis has found.
Most of these conversations, among a voting majority of a public body, would typically run afoul of Vermont’s Open Meeting Law. In their texts, the councilors themselves questioned whether their conversations were legal.
While the confabs were indeed legal, transparency advocates say the practice violated the spirit of the law.
“They shouldn’t be texting to each other on substantive issues without involving the public,” said Matthew Byrne, an attorney with Gravel & Shea who specializes in First Amendment law. “The point of being a public representative is to serve the public. Representatives should include, rather than exclude, the people in the decision-making process.”
City Council President Ben Traverse (D-Ward 5), one of six Dems on the chat, said electronic communications are simply part of modern government. As long as they operate within the boundaries of the law, he said, councilors will continue to text.
“They shouldn’t be texting to each other on substantive issues without involving the public.” Matthew Byrne
Seven Days learned about the Democrats’ group chat in January and filed a public records request for those messages dating back to April 1, 2024, the day Progressive Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak was sworn into office. The paper filed an identical request for text messages from the five-member Progressive caucus.
The city attorney’s office typically handles large records requests and did so for the Progressives. But the Dems hired Ed Adrian — an attorney and former Democratic councilor — for the job. The caucus will pay Adrian about $5,500 from their taxpayer-funded spending accounts, money that can be used for anything from hiring interns to paying for childcare on meeting nights. Traverse said previous councilors have also used the money to cover legal fees.
Both sets of chats were heavily redacted, in most cases because they contained political discussions that the city said aren’t subject to public records law. Seven Days appealed some of the redactions to Mulvaney-Stanak, who, as the head of city government, has the power to release records she decides should be public. She revealed a handful of the texts, including one in which a Democratic councilor criticized her. The mayor declined to comment on the exchanges.
The records show that the Progs texted far less often than their Dem counterparts, particularly while council meetings were in session. Apart from the occasional partisan jab, the Progs used their chat to schedule meetings and determine who would post agendas on Front Porch Forum. They also shared their positions on issues, but, because they are in the minority, there was no danger of violating the open meeting law.
During council meetings, “it’s kind of hard to conduct real business on text,” Councilor Gene Bergman (P-Ward 2) said. “That’s what leaning over and talking to someone that you’re sitting next to is for.”
Democrats, however, have chosen to exchange views by typing on their phones. During all four city council meetings in December and January, they texted about matters being discussed on the floor, sometimes at length. When meetings weren’t in session, the councilors shared opinions on issues such as emergency homeless shelters, police staffing and a proposal to leash outdoor cats. Traverse told them to stop texting on January 31, the day that Seven Days filed its records request.
Broadly speaking, state law says that when a quorum of a public body gathers — in person, on the phone or by other electronic means — it’s a public meeting. Legal precedent has established that a quorum is the majority of the body’s total number of seats, including vacancies. In Burlington, the council has been down to 11 people since November due to a vacancy in the East District. But the quorum is calculated from 12 total seats, making seven the magic number. That means a group chat of six — the number of councilors in the Democratic caucus — isn’t a quorum and therefore doesn’t violate the open meeting law.
But those same six councilors do have a voting majority, giving them the power to pass ordinances, adopt zoning rules and block measures introduced by their Progressive colleagues.
And the Democrats have done just that. Most notably, they leveraged their numbers in January to remove the controversial cap on the police department roster, ending a highly politicized debate that had dragged on for years.
Harrison Stark, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, says the law didn’t intend to allow a voting majority to deliberate outside of public view.
“When you have enough people to render a decision, that is where the transparency requirements are intended to kick in,” he said. “Those deliberations should be done in the light of day.”
The Dems seemed cognizant of that, alluding several times in their messages to the fact that the chat could constitute a meeting. At one point, Councilor Evan Litwin (D-Ward 7) directly asked the group whether the text chain was a quorum. Traverse responded succinctly: “Yes.”
In a follow-up interview, Traverse said he was mistaken.
“I never thought that that thread rose to the level of being a quorum for the purposes of an open meeting law violation,” he said. But he added, “Generally speaking, I don’t think we should be using these text threads to engage in depth in city business.”
But the Dems did, on several occasions. In January, they used the chat to wordsmith their resolution about the police roster cap. They also contemplated introducing a measure to overturn Mulvaney-Stanak’s controversial executive order that gave her office the power to review police press releases before they went out.
“If we want to influence this we should strike while the iron is hot,” Councilor Joan Shannon (D-South District) wrote. The caucus decided not to act.
Other conversations happened while council was in session. At a December meeting, councilors were debating an ordinance that would have allowed people to sue one another for violating city laws, in what’s known as a private right of action. The proposal was designed to target people behind an anti-transgender stickering campaign.
Shannon wrote in the group chat that she intended to make a motion to strip the private right of action from the proposal, effectively neutering it.
“I would appreciate your support on the amendment,” she wrote to her colleagues.
They provided that support. The motion passed, with all five Progs opposed.
In the group text the next morning, Councilor Becca Brown McKnight (D-Ward 6) wrote that she was pleased with the vote’s outcome. Traverse agreed, then offered a warning.
“This is probably one of those issues we should self police our text thread on though,” he wrote.
“Oh right,” McKnight responded. “Yes thanks.”
At a marathon city council meeting in mid-January, the caucus exchanged messages mocking Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak and members of the public.
During the meeting’s public forum, resident Caryn Long defended the mayor against assertions that she hasn’t done enough to address public safety challenges — a common complaint among council Democrats. To emphasize her point, Long held up the city’s “safety and security guide,” a one-page flowchart that advises people on whom to call for various emergencies.
“Ok fine they have taken action on safety. They made a pdf!!! Cue applause,” McKnight wrote to her colleagues. Shannon responded by “laughing” at the message.
The Progs weren’t above trash-talking, either, though they did so less often. During a council discussion in February, for instance, Democratic Councilor Litwin complained that the Public Safety Committee hadn’t yet vetted his proposal to create a “public safety kiosk” downtown, which would be staffed by a police officer. Councilor Melo Grant (P-Central District), who chairs the committee, countered that the city’s priority is creating a reception area at the police station, not downtown.
“Melo that was fire,” Councilor Joe Kane (P-Ward 3) wrote on the Prog chat.
“No one wants the shitty kiosk,” Grant wrote back.
Both caucuses also used the chats to keep score against the other party. In December, Councilor Carter Neubieser (P-Ward 1) took heart in how the Progs voted to place an “apartheid-free community” pledge on the ballot after activists gathered the required number of signatures. Democrats ultimately blocked the measure.
“I think we’ve won this. Politically — not literally obviously,” he wrote. “This is so clearly fucked.”
A month later, McKnight expressed displeasure in the chat when the council tabled a Dem-sponsored resolution as a meeting ran late. “Either we are a team or we are not,” she wrote. “We got hosed by the progs tonight.” Her colleagues responded that they thought Progressive councilors had purposely stalled to avoid a vote.
McKnight, in a follow-up interview, said she regrets that some of her messages could be hurtful. But, she said, underlying them is her frustration that the Progressives lack the urgency needed to address the city’s public safety crisis.
“Sometimes a result of that is that you have to vent to your teammates,” McKnight said. “We’re all human beings with real feelings, and I think that you can see that in these text messages.”
Grant provided a similar explanation for her snarky text, writing in a follow-up email that she gets frustrated when Dems introduce resolutions without consulting experts or her committee.
“At the meeting, I pushed back,” she wrote.
Traverse said the unflattering messages underscore the need for more comprehensive training. As it stands, councilors aren’t formally trained on open meetings or public records laws. McKnight, for instance, said she received only a cheat sheet to explain Robert’s Rules of Order, the parliamentary procedure used at meetings.
With help from the city attorney’s office, Traverse has been working on a new training program that will launch shortly after the council’s new session begins on April 7. But he also said councilors will keep texting, as long as they’re not violating any laws.
That will be much harder for the Democrats to do when the new session starts and all 12 seats are filled. Their caucus will once again have seven members — an undeniable quorum.
Disclosure: Courtney Lamdin serves on the Vermont committee for the New England First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for transparency in government. Harrison Stark, a NEFAC board member, and Matthew Byrne serve on the committee with Lamdin. Byrne has also represented Seven Days on legal matters.
The original print version of this article was headlined “On Message? | Democrats on the Burlington City Council talked business — and gossiped — in a group text chain”
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This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2025.
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