Local Government In Vermont
Who Are We?
As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the lawgivers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.
--Adlai Stevenson, Speech in Chicago, 1952
™Vermont is a “Dillon’s
Rule” state. That is,
municipalities may do only what the legislature allows them to do. In contrast, “Home Rule” states enable
municipalities to do whatever they want to do unless they are specifically
prohibited from doing so by the legislature.
There are 46 states with some version of Home Rule legislation or
constitutional protections.
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 much
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. In Vermont today, 69% of the cities and towns have voted to use
the Australian ballot in some way.
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.
™ There are 246 cities and towns in Vermont and 40 villages in
Vermont as well as 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 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 walks 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 – a rare belief that we hope is being rekindled in the beginning of the 21st century.
™ Local officials administer
elections; 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 assess and collect taxes and 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
872 The Selectboard is the governing
body of a municipality – they act 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 employees answer ultimately to the Selectboard; independently elected
officials such as the clerk or treasurer do not.
Democracy
cannot be saved by supermen but only by
the unswerving devotion and goodness
of millions of little men. – Adlai Stevenson, speech, 1955
December6, 2001