On Wednesday, a new crop of citizen lawmakers will stand together and swear to “be true and faithful to the State of Vermont.” Although it’s not stated in their oath of office, they’re also meant to represent the people who elected them. For the next five months they’ll work on behalf of their neighbors to determine how the state should manage its limited resources, including tax revenues, for the greater local good.
Witnessing this biennial ritual in a historic chamber of the Vermont Statehouse is enough to move even the most cynical observer. I teared up watching my partner, former state senator Tim Ashe, take the oath in 2009. He was just one of thousands of well-meaning part-time public servants who have participated in Vermont’s annual exercise of representative democracy, which dates back to 1777.
Almost a quarter of a millennium later, now seems like a good time to ask: How is that working?
Today, an institution created when Vermont was a state of small farms — and just 10,000 residents — must grapple with complex social, economic and environmental problems, from education funding to homelessness and climate change.
Legislators get no training for their elected positions beyond a couple of presession orientations. With minimal staff, they largely rely on paid lobbyists and advocates for research and policy recommendations.
A small percentage of lawmakers call the shots, and, in modern Vermont, when they get it wrong, the consequences are dire. For example, Vermont passed an education funding bill in May 2022 that had to be rewritten by the legislature in 2024 because it had thrown school districts into chaos.
Meanwhile, the number of local news outlets covering the legislative session has shrunk dramatically, and the relatively few reporters following the action are often rookies. VTDigger.org started as a Statehouse watchdog and reliably chronicles the daily machinations. Seven Days is lucky to have seasoned journalists Kevin McCallum, Anne Wallace Allen and Alison Novak covering highlights, but, even in our paper, big-picture analysis of the sausage making is a rarity. No media outlet in the state has staffers consistently asking the hard questions about whether the 248-year-old system still effectively serves Vermonters.
Seven Days is embracing the challenge. In a yearlong series we’re calling “Ways and Means,” we’ll scrutinize the legislature to help readers understand how it functions — and sometimes falls short — in representing them.
Such an ambitious project requires a designated reporter, but we didn’t want to move any of our veteran news writers off their beats. Through friends at ProPublica, we found Hannah Bassett, a Tufts grad with a master’s in journalism from Stanford University. A Granite State native with family in Vermont, she had worked as a press secretary and outreach coordinator for U.S. representative Annie Kuster of New Hampshire before turning her focus to government accountability and, ultimately, journalism. Hannah was at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting in Phoenix, writing about statewide health disparities, but expressed an eagerness to return to New England.
Two Vermont philanthropists stepped up to help us hire Hannah and split the tab for this yearlong legislative investigation. Both are former politicians — from opposite sides of the aisle — who care deeply about Vermont.
Burlington native and University of Vermont grad Bruce Lisman built a successful career in finance at Bear Stearns before founding and funding Campaign for Vermont, which calls itself a nonpartisan coalition advocating for a more prosperous state, in 2011; he stepped back from active involvement with the group in 2015 before running for governor in the Republican primary and losing to Phil Scott. He’s served on the executive boards of many prominent Vermont companies.
Entrepreneur Paul Ralston — who studied agricultural engineering at UVM — started a number of successful local businesses, including Vermont Coffee Company, which he sold in 2021. He served as a Democrat in the Vermont House representing Middlebury from 2010 to 2015. Three years ago, he started an L3C social venture called Little Village Acres, which focuses on entrepreneurial efforts to help Vermonters experiencing food insecurity.
Neither donor will have any influence over the stories Hannah pursues, her sources or what we publish. Both have already made their contributions to the project through our fiscal sponsors: Journalism Funding Partners and the GroundTruth Project. I appreciate their trust in Seven Days and investment in our work.
News editor Matthew Roy is the “Ways and Means” project manager; his team includes consulting editor Candace Page, a former Burlington Free Press writer and editor who covered the Vermont Legislature off and on for nearly four decades.
Look for stories by all our Statehouse reporters — in the paper and online — throughout the legislative session. We expect Hannah’s first take later this month.
Correction, February 14, 2025: An earlier version of this column got the dates wrong for the education funding bill known as Act 127. Vermont lawmakers passed the law in May 2022, and a new crop of legislators had to rewrite it in 2024.
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