As this is Town Meeting week, it seemed appropriate to reprint this article about local government, written by the Vermont League of Cities and Towns.
Local Government in Vermont: Who Are We?
By Vermont League of Cities and Towns, December 2008
In Vermont, the legislature gets involved in many aspects of local government, including setting fees that may be charged at the local level for local documents subject to the open meeting law and blessing changes to municipal charters that have been voted by the people in those municipalities. This uneven relationship between local and state government is the source of continuing friction between the two levels of government.
Vermont cities and towns are governed by Town Meeting, a direct form of democracy in which every citizen of voting age who is registered to vote in a municipality may participate. (Brattleboro has a representative Town Meeting.) At Town Meeting, budgets are adopted and other questions of interest to the town are decided. There are 78 municipalities that still conduct all their business from the floor at Town Meeting. There are also a few municipalities who have voted to return to a participatory Town Meeting because they feel that debate is lost when questions are voted on the Australian ballot (questions on a printed ballot where voters indicate yes or no).
There are 237 town and 9 cities in Vermont, as well as 40 villages and a number of fire districts, school districts, solid waste districts and other special purpose municipal governments.
There are more than 5,000 local officials in Vermont, selectboard members, planning, energy and conservation commissioners, listers, auditors, health officers, collectors of delinquent taxes, managers, city councilors, mayors, clerks and treasurers, public works staff, zoning administrators and more. For the most part, local officials volunteer their time (lots of it) or are paid very little for their efforts. They come from all works of life to volunteer in their communities – doctors, lawyers, teachers, professors, bankers, homemakers, conservative and liberal, the independently wealthy and the barely scraping by. They are bound together by their belief in public service.
Local officials administer elections; maintain highways; keep land records; may adopt and administer zoning and planning regulations; assess taxes; regulate the keeping of domestic pets (dogs and wolf hybrids); lay out and maintain highways; may offer fire and police protection as well as emergency services; may develop and maintain sewage and water supply systems; may borrow money; and undertake lots of other responsibilities necessary to govern a city, town or village.
The selectboard has “the general supervision of the affairs of the town and shall cause to be performed all duties required of towns and town school districts not committed by law to the care of any particular officer.” 24 VSA 872The selectboard is the governing body of a municipality – it acts in the same capacity as the legislature at the state level. In towns without municipal managers they also act in an executive capacity, administering the day-to-day affairs of the municipality. And on occasion, the selectboard acts in a quasi-judicial capacity, holding hearings on issues such as appeals of disputes concerning the municipal highway system. All appointed officials and employeesanswer ultimately to the selectboard; independently elected officials such as the clerk or treasurer do not.
