Campaign for Vermont Prosperity on Monday disagreed with what it calls partisan calls for the Executive Director of the Vermont State Ethics Commission to step down over confusion around candidate financial disclosure forms, according to a statement released by CFVP Executive Director Ben Kinsley.

Campaign for Vermont has been an ethics legislation watchdog for more than a decade.

“Vermonters want an ethics system that works, not a blame game,” said Pat McDonald, President of Campaign for Vermont. “The facts show this is a capacity and coordination problem, not grounds for the removal of a public servant. The Executive Director works far more hours than her part-time position requires.”

The recent dispute involving the Secretary of State, the Ethics Commission, and the Chair of the VT-GOP erupted over how candidate financial disclosure forms are handled and when and where they would be available to candidates.

What the law actually says:

• The Ethics Commission is required to create and maintain the candidate financial disclosure form. The Commission asked for this language in Act 171 (2024) to make it clear their responsibilities ended at making changes to the form when statute required them and did not include answering questions from candidates.
• The Secretary of State is required to receive that form and include it in the candidate filing process and post completed disclosures and tax returns on the Secretary’s website.
• Act 171 (2024) updated the information required to be collected from candidates in their financial disclosure forms but did not explicitly assign responsibilities for administering those forms or answering questions regarding them.

Candidate financial disclosures are not new, they were created by Act 79 in 2017, and the lines of responsibility have been clear until now. The Ethics Commission created the forms and handed them to the Secretary of State to administer the forms to candidates with their filing paperwork.

The Commission updated the form to reflect Act 171 and transmitted it to the Secretary of State in January of this year (months before filing period opened today). The Secretary of State’s office recently raised technical questions regarding the formatting of the form and has argued that the Ethics Commission should host it, creating uncertainty just as candidates prepared to file.

The lack of a clearly posted, final form before candidates could start filing their paperwork today is not due to inaction by the Commission. Rather, it is due to a change in long-standing practice on the part of the Secretary of State’s office to administer the form.

The response from the House Government Operations Committee has been to propose making the Commission the new front‑line help desk for candidate questions about financial disclosures (via S.298). Essentially, they are backing the Secretary of State’s request to reassign responsibilities.

In parallel with this, the Senate budget proposal removes a new Ethics Commission staff position that was previously funded in the House version of the bill. The Legislature is doing this at the same time that it is adding multiple positions to the Secretary of State’s office.

“You can’t demand more complex forms, real‑time candidate support, and tougher enforcement from an office with two part-time staff, then attack them for saying they don’t have the capacity to do it,” said Ben Kinsley, Executive Director of Campaign for Vermont. “If we want ethics and oversight to mean something in Vermont, we have to fund the folks responsible for carrying that forward.”

Campaign for Vermont urges lawmakers to:

1. Restore the Ethics Commission staff position included in the House budget and add additional staffing to support phone coverage so the Commission can:
   • Support candidates and officeholders with the expanded disclosure rules; and
   • Investigate and enforce ethical violations under Act 171.
2. Reaffirm the division of labor in practice:
   • Ethics Commission: draft, maintain, and publish the blank form; provide education and guidance; handle enforcement.
   • Secretary of State: run the filing process and post the completed disclosures from candidates.
3. Reject calls for the Executive Director to resign over this episode. Personnel decisions should be made by the Commission based on performance, not driven by partisan frustration in a single election cycle. At issue here isn’t who staffs the Ethics Commission, but rather the lack of staffing

“Strong ethics laws and transparent financial and campaign finance disclosures are essential,” Kinsley said. “The way to get there is to clarify roles & responsibilities and fund the Ethics Commission to do the job the Legislature has given it. Attempting to undermine its leadership or passing off work on already underfunded agency does not get us there.”