Vermont’s form of local, participatory government demands open access to our local officials.
It’s in our town offices and open meetings where we debate each other, question our government officials and hopefully move peacefully forward.
But the poisonous political discourse in this country is too often showing up in even our smallest towns, and it threatens open access to our elected leaders.
The town of Strafford this summer had to lock the front door of its town offices and only allow people in by appointment after a resident allegedly threatened the town clerk and some select board members.
Like a lot of small towns in Vermont, the town office is the nerve center of activity in Strafford.
It’s where locals come to pay their taxes, and where visitors pop in to seek out their family records.
So Strafford Select Board Chair Toni Pippy said it’s not great to have a deadbolt latching the door shut during the day.
“Believe me, it was hard to say that this office has to close, and you can only come in by appointment,” Pippy said. “Because this place was an open door — anybody could walk in, even just to say ‘Hi.’”
The front door’s been locked since a Strafford resident sent more than 200 emails and was eventually arrested for violating a protection order that was taken out by the town clerk.
Pippy said the clerk, and her assistant, two women who are alone in a small office, did not feel safe before the door was locked.
And so along with all of the day-to-day business the town clerk is supposed to handle, Pippy said she fears Strafford is also now contending with the same polarizing discourse that’s tearing apart our country.
“We see it all the time, you know, you see the churches with people being murdered in. You see where protests, people are being run over,” she said. “Is this what we need to get people to really stop, and so far, there’s been so much of that, and it still hasn’t stopped.”
Every year, Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas hosts a statewide meeting to support town clerks.
There are usually discussions about things like digitizing town documents or how to comply with the open records law.
Last year, Copeland Hanzas said, for the first time as far as she knows, her office brought in a mental health expert to teach the clerks how to best deal with someone who’s threatening violence.
“I think it’s pretty clear that it’s getting worse,” Copeland Hanzas said.
“Many municipalities are facing the situation where it’s difficult to do the day-to-day work that they were elected to do or appointed to do because of the tone and toxic nature of how people are communicating with one another these days,” said Vermont League of Cities and Towns Executive Director Ted Brady.
Brady said the league has a legal resource office that fields questions from municipal officials, and traditionally it’s a place where towns ask about things like open meeting laws and public records best practices.
Too often these days, Brady said, towns are asking how they can run a meeting when people are being disruptive.
“Dissent and opinionated comment is the foundation of America’s democracy, and we don’t think municipal officials across want to stop that,” Brady said. “We need to find, as a state, and as a country, the sweet spot between ensuring meetings can happen, while letting people share their opinions without letting one person disrupt an entire community’s ability to operate.”
In Alburgh, a few select board meetings recently were disrupted by someone who was dissatisfied with how he thought the town was handling a situation with the local sheriff.
“It would be nice if people could keep their passions to words. I don’t think there’s any need for it to ever escalate beyond that, but there is certainly a constant looming suggestion that you know, things may escalate.”Elliot Knight, Alburgh Select Board chair
Alburgh Select Board Chair Elliot Knight said there has been shift in how we talk to each other.
“We’re dealing with taxation. We’re dealing with public safety. These are things that have very dramatic effects on people’s lives,” Knight said. “It would be nice if people could keep their passions to words. I don’t think there’s any need for it to ever escalate beyond that, but there is certainly a constant looming suggestion that you know, things may escalate.”
Last month, city leaders in Burlington sent out a plea for people to tone down the “harmful, and sometimes threatening messages” that have been directed toward elected officials.
And Gov. Phil Scott recently asked municipal officials to recognize the roles they play in tamping down the anger showing up in town offices across the state.
Lawmakers have been trying to address the situation.
Last year, the Legislature passed a bill that includes provisions on when select boards can remove someone from a meeting and what constitutes “disorderly conduct.”
“I think we need to as a society be able to have public buildings that are open to the public, and we also have to keep our public officials safe.”Addison County Sen. Ruth Hardy
Addison County Sen. Ruth Hardy introduced the bill. She said it’s very difficult to try to get down in statute who can remove someone from a public space, and when, for just speaking their mind.
“I think we need to as a society be able to have public buildings that are open to the public, and we also have to keep our public officials safe,” Hardy said. “So trying to figure out a balance of access to the public, and safety of public officials is really hard.”
ACLU-Vermont has represented a number of cases in the past few years for people who were removed from meetings or public spaces.
Lia Ernst, legal director at ACLU-Vermont, said towns should set clear policies before an incident erupts at a meeting or in town hall.
“People, in entering these town offices, they’re exercising their right to petition the government. They might be exercising their statutory, or constitutional, rights to hold government accountable by seeking records. Also, it’s just a matter of being inconvenient and uninviting,” Ernst said. “And so I would encourage towns to think carefully and hard whether this type of response is an overbroad response to a specific problem.”
Lincoln Town Clerk Sally Ober said she has been receiving email threats since the 2016 election, and they usually come in just before Election Day.
“They are very distracting,” Ober said. “I feel upset about them, and I stop what I am doing to prepare for the election, to report them to the FBI or other election cybersecurity officials. I received in-person verbal threats just before the 2024 General Election.”
The Rutland County town of Mendon has been struggling with a resident who town officials say threatened them with violence.
Their town office was also locked for a while, and only open by appointment.
Town Clerk Jesse Bridge said last year they used some of the federal COVID-relief money to install a teller’s window in the town office vestibule.
“It was weird at first, but I like it. It’s safe,” she said. “I mean, you know, people can still come in, they just see us through a window.”
Bridge said it’s the new normal, and she’s getting used to it.
