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The Issues

Restore Vermonters' Trust In Government

If we expect Vermonters to be innovative and cost-efficient, our state government must lead by example.

Many of Vermont’s challenges stem from state government’s inability, under the Douglas-Dubie administration, to fundamentally modernize its approach to technology, project management, and the transparency of its regulations and service delivery.

Meeting the needs of Vermonters, and ensuring that government produces the public value most important to Vermont citizens, will be a priority of my administration as we work together to transform the way state government operates.

My administration will focus on the following priorities:

1. Transparency: Provide regular opportunities for Vermonters to ask direct questions of the Governor and agency heads, and make suggestions for how to improve state government. Budget proposals for various departments will be available on-line for voters to review. All state contractors will be listed publicly in a searchable format, as will grantees of public funds. In addition, we will also ensure that expenditures made by corporations to influence public officials and other decision makers, such as doctors, will be in formats that can be easily searched.
2. Fast and predictable processes: Use technology to track the regulatory process, creating a system that shows the steps in the permit process in real time and explains how long each step in the process is expected to take.
3. Responsive state services: Make tools available for state employees to collaborate on-line with applicants to fill in a document, increasing efficiency and reducing the time, money, and energy wasted sending back and forth written material.
4. Responsible contracting: Ensure that state construction contracts go to employers who model good benefit packages, pay fair wages, and do not abuse independent contractor laws.
5. Accountable investment: Develop a capital improvement plan that phases in the conversion of all state facilities to renewable energy using low-interest 20-year bonds to finance the conversion, and provide information on the long-term cost savings of these conversions as each facility is upgraded.
6. Access to information: Provide the public with easy access to information about the distribution of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Vermont is currently ranked 49th out of the fifty states in making this information available to its residents) and all other future federal funding sources.
7. Clear measures of success: Set benchmarks and success metrics for each agency and department, and then make progress towards those objectives public.