Dunne to run for Vermont Senate

By JULIA LLOYD WRIGHT
Contributing Writer

HARTLAND- Hartland resident Matt Dunne hopes to put his experience to good use in the Vermont Senate.

Dunne, a Democrat, who served eight years as a state representative for Hartland/West Windsor, is a candidate for one of the three Windsor County state Senate seats. He said he received a telephone call in June from Senator Dick McCormack, who was stepping down and encouraged him to run.

Dunne said he was overwhelmed- it was four days before his wedding- but he had a desire to come back and the opportunity was right.

For the past three years, Dunne has served as the Director of Americorps/VISTA in Washington, DC. The aim of the 35-year-old agency, with an $85 million dollar budget and 6,000 volunteers, is to help low-income communities with housing, education and safety.

At 30, Dunne was appointed to the post by President Bill Clinton but stayed on through the Bush Administration.

Dunne, who developed a reputation for working with Republican legislators in Vermont during his tenure in the House, is outspoken in his praise of President Bush's support and goal to increase the number of VISTA volunteers to 25,000. Dunne said it was “an honor to be there when the president in his inauguration address called for people to serve” and “a huge turning point in this country . . . regardless of political ownership.”

A 1992 graduate of Brown University with a degree in Public Policy when Dunne served in the Vermont House he was the youngest majority whip in the country and at the same time held a full-time marketing job at Logic Associates.

During his House tenure, Dunne started the Vermont Film Commission. “Film projects are a lucrative financial opportunity to celebrate and promote Vermont,” Dunne said. “Growing jobs in ways that don't compromise our environment and historical preservation and targeting renewable industries,” is on Dunne's agenda for the Vermont Senate. He also helped push Vermont's version of the federal brownfields program, which allows potentially contaminated sites to be cleaned up and made ready for redevelopment.

“We want to develop jobs for the future, particularly for manufacturing in Springfield,” where a labor force already exists, he said. “Vermont has innovators. We should invest in those entrepreneurs who start in garages and barns with access to capital and not susceptible to the whims of large multinationals. The Dean Center is an example of how we can go this way.”

Dunne said he will be visiting communities and most major events around the county in the upcoming weeks.