Remarks
Town Officer Educational Conferences 1999

We’re here today for all the best reasons—to learn, to talk to others about how we do our jobs, to tell some of the speakers they’re wrong, but overall because we care about the quality of the work that is done in local office.

That you’re here today tells me something about you: that you appreciate the complexity of the law and understand that it doesn’t stay the same year to year; that you are committed to improving the services you provide to your community; that not everything can be learned on-the-job, and that others can teach you (and you can teach others) skills needed to survive in local office and excel in the business of local governance.

Governance is tough. Americans, Vermonters, members of your towns, hate to be governed, that’s one of the basic tenets of our system—they hate taxes, they hate rules, and they love to make fun of government. Because it’s so easy to do. Every coffee shop in this county this morning laughed at government’s expense—what the legislature did yesterday, what some Washington politician said on the news last night, what went on at the zoning board. What’s orange and sleeps six? A state highway truck. It’s so easy and it’s so much fun. It’s not fair, but it’s fun.

Of course, other than local government, where is the government? You almost never see a federal official. You don’t get to count post office employees any more; that is hardly a federal agency. You see them when there’s been a flood or other natural disaster; you hear about them during elections, or when there’s something happening in Washington that captures our interest (or not) like an impeachment, but even though this is a federal system and we’re all part of the United States of America, you’d never know it by looking.

State officials are a little more obvious, in those orange trucks, or green cars with the lights on the top, but still with a part time legislature and a small work force in Montpelier, you could almost miss the presence of the state, at least in person. We all love Ray Burke, of course, who gives us the report on the highway conditions, and we saw our state representatives at town meeting, but in Vermont, with virtually no county government, no very obvious regional government, government means the select board, the clerk, the listers, and other officers.

You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. Residents blame you for bad roads in mud season, as if nature had nothing to do with it. They blame you for the increase in the county or union school budgets, for what the legislature did or didn’t do last year. From you they expect miracles. Make the next door neighbor’s dog stop barking. Make my children smarter than tacks. Make crime disappear, at least from my door. Guarantee that nothing will ever change, except to make my life better.

Get real, we need to say to them: some things are beyond anyone’s control. Government is a system. It does its thing. It delivers—a permit, a ballot, a tax bill, a grader to a washout, a grand list—because that’s its duty. It does what the law expects it to do, the way the law says it should be done. It can’t do everything, and it would fail if it tried.

The law: we say the law, like it a living person, but the law is not a person or even a book. It’s even more than a set of books: it’s a rule, and another rule, and another after that, enacted by Congress, or the state legislature, or the select board, and somehow it all fits together. No one person, of course, knows all the law there is: it’s more a process of looking it up when you need to know it. That’s why these seminars are held. To alert us to the basics of the law—how to do what is expected of us.

The law has its own pecking order, in reverse order to the presence of the governments in our lives. The federal constitution and federal law are at the top of the pyramid, with overarching authority over state and local law. State law trumps local law, and towns, at the bottom of the legal pyramid, have to bow to all higher law.

This is the tough position towns find themselves in, with all the problems, the heavy end of the cost, and with authority dependent on the state legislature and federal government. This creates an extraordinary tension, and I think ultimately more frustration than needed, when we can see solutions to problems but can’t convince the legislature or congress to enact them.

The congress legislates for all the states. The legislature enacts laws for all towns and cities. But in Townshend or Corinth or Franklin, there are unique problems that don’t fit into the statutory framework and no local authority to address them. That’s the great weakness of our system. The legislature looks out over the multi-colored quilt of Vermont and makes law that fits some communities. It can’t fit everything. No law works well for Colchester and Morgan, Pownal and Hartford, Canaan and Rutland. In a sense, there is no "Vermont," but rather a diverse range of communities, with different needs and different resources.

The extraordinary power of the Vermont community to resolve problems in spite of that lack of authority is a daily reminder of the preemptive power of local control. We make do. We end run. We invent sometime to get us through the crisis. We wait and see. We don’t wait until the legislature gets around to finding a solution, and we don’t rely too much on Montpelier or Washington to solve our problems.

All of the best ideas for changing Vermont law come from local experience. Town charters are among the richest sources of new general municipal law. When you travel to Montpelier to testify, they listen.

Why then are we not living in paradise? In many ways the law doesn’t solve the problems of local government: problems of personality conflict, problems of traditions that have outlined their usefulness (or still prove workable, but are resisted), problems of a lack of resources, of deciding what constitutes right and wrong.

The state legislature has given the zoning board the standards to use in rendering a decision, but the board is very much alone in deciding the case. The law doesn’t help when the question is whether this applicant should have a permit, when we denied one like it last year to somebody else. Or when the applicant is a perfect jerk, and offends everybody he meets. Or when the room is full of unhappy opponents, who don’t understand that the board is obliged to grant a permit if the standards are met, even if a lot of people dislike the outcome.

Unfortunately, the law doesn’t help when there’s a problem of a conflict of interest either. Precisely when you should step down is not clear, and it ought to be. Clearer laws, better laws can help, but while this is a nation and state of laws, experience is the life of the law, and how officers do their jobs is often as important as what they do.

How do you like living on the stage, with the bright lights on, and people watching your every move? More meetings are being broadcast on public access channels. Minutes are published on the net in some communities. As people see what goes on in local government, perhaps they begin to see how tough it really is, but that doesn’t make it easier for you. Everybody in Vermont is a closet highway engineer, believing they have the answer on how to direct traffic through town or recalibrate a set of lights. So too everybody thinks they know what their town should do with its biggest challenges. As town officers, having 43 people looking over your shoulder and telling you what you should do, you understand democracy better than anybody else.

It’s not easy to be a local officer. You know that better than I. If you do your job right you will make people unhappy. If you try make people happy, you won’t be always able to do it and follow the law. Here, pay this tax. Here, apply for this permit. Here, you didn’t qualify for a permit. Should you have to apologize for doing your job? Of course not.

It isn’t personal! We need to convey that message to the public. This is a system. It’s done this way everywhere else. The law requires it. There is no local option to avoid tax foreclosure or enforcing the zoning laws or the speed limits. We can’t exempt ourselves from Act 250 or Act 60. We are here to do what the legislature has told us to do.

We aren’t machines. We aren’t computers. We make mistakes. We have to back up and do it over, to make it right. That’s no problem. It gets worked out.

That’s what makes local government so effective. First of all, it’s not the federal government or the state government, it’s local. The taxpayers know where you live. They recognize you on the street. There’s no hiding, no secrets, no need for a special prosecutor. More importantly, the taxpayers know where their money is going. The road out front just got graded. There’s a new culvert going in on the center road. That’s the fire truck.

That’s our fire truck, it’s own town. We personalize it, because we are a part of it. Town pride is a terrific glue that holds everything together. You see it at its best at town meeting, at the finals of the high school basketball team or in the feeling that comes after a good old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration.

Town pride brings you here today, because you believe in doing the best you can for the town, and that’s great. Expect to be tired by the end of these four lectures. Learning is hard work. If you can take even one good idea home with you today, this day will have been worth it.

Have a great day.