Burlington City Council meetings can get crowded, but reporters always have a seat at the “media table.”
Located behind the U-shaped row of councilor desks, the table gives us media types a place to commune and kvetch. It also provides a perfect view of councilors’ laptop screens. And for someone who’s professionally nosy, it’s hard to not sneak a peek.
Doing so at a meeting in January landed me a story that not only exposed a questionable practice by councilors but also highlighted a loophole in state law.
On the night in question, council Democrats introduced a resolution to remove the 87-officer cap on the police department roster, an issue that has divided the council since the 2020 vote to slash the size of the force. Dems argued that the limit was hurting recruitment. Progs said the move would be performative because the city hadn’t succeeded in hiring up to the existing cap.
As the debate wore on, I looked up from my laptop and saw an animation playing on a computer belonging to Councilor Sarah Carpenter (D-Ward 4). The clip was of a smiling pig hanging out a car window, with a caption that read “Weee!” It appeared to be part of a text thread that was getting longer in real time.
I wondered: Were the Dems texting each other, holding some sort of meeting within a meeting? If so, I thought, that could be a violation of Vermont’s Open Meeting Law, which gives the public a right to know what elected officials say and how they make decisions. There was only one way to find out.
Cursing myself for leaving my camera and zoom lens at the office, I took a few covert snapshots with my phone. The pictures showed that the Dems weren’t just sending GIFs of farm animals. They were coordinating their talking points as the debate played out on the council floor. Later, I would request a year’s worth of these text messages, which confirmed that the Dems frequently discussed substantive issues in the group chat.
Back at the meeting, I did some quick math. With one vacant seat, the 12-person council was down to 11 members. A conversation among six councilors — a voting majority — had to be illegal.
Or so I thought.
Turns out that a true majority, known as a quorum, is calculated using the total number of seats, including vacancies. With a council of 12, that meant a seven-person text thread would be illegal, but not a six-person one.
I still had a story. It featured transparency advocates who said the law didn’t intend to allow voting majorities to deliberate in private. And we printed a handful of the texts, some of which were pretty unflattering. Readers got to learn what their elected officials say when they think no one’s looking. By now, they should know I always am.
This article appears in Dec 24 2025 – Jan 6 2026.
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