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By Don Keelan
It was bound to happen, and now it has; many of Vermont’s nonprofits have become the Fourth Branch of State Government.
Based on gross revenue, staff size, and the actual number of entities, it is indisputable that in Vermont, one of the largest, if not the largest, sectors of the State’s economy is the nonprofit sector.
It was inevitable that state agencies would not be able to execute the myriad programs of the State’s eight-billion-dollar spending budget. Thus, funding, execution, and control were transferred to scores of state-registered nonprofit organizations, thereby creating exponential growth in nonprofit organizations from where many were three decades ago.
This observation is not unexpected. The evolution was necessary. State agencies could not carry out the work of hospitals, colleges, mental health, housing agencies, and others.
But it comes with a price. The price is that the nonprofit entity is not subject to the same rules of transparency that must be adhered to by government agencies. Meanwhile, they are carrying out programs entirely funded by the State or federal funds administered by the state.
A recent example of transparency was an inquiry to Efficiency Vermont. My request was simple: would the nonprofit provide me with information on how they have spent the proceeds of the $34 million grant they received last August (legally, the grant was executed by EVT’s parent company, Vermont Energy Investment Corporation)?
For background, on August 22, 2023, Emma Cotton’s reporting in VTDigger was headlined, “Efficiency Vermont announces $36 million to help homeowners, renters, and businesses recover from floods.” However, a year later, significant changes were made in how the grant funds will be spent. EVT made it clear to me that there are “no funds from the State’s coffers, but that the funds are federal ARPA funds.”
To be accurate, the signed grant was $34 million, with $1 million going to the State for administrative costs. EVT has been cooperative in sharing some information on how the $34 million has been repurposed. I was told the details need to be accessed by requesting such information from the Vermont Public Service Department.
According to the material provided to me by a senior executive at EVT, 29% of the grant will aid flood damage victims. Specifically, EVT noted the following:
“None of the $34 million comes from state coffers or funding sources. Approximately $10 million is for residential flood recovery (homeowners and renters). Approximately $5 million is spent on a heat pump and water heater program for low- and moderate-income residential customers. Approximately $20 million in ARPA funds electric panel upgrades for low- and moderate-income residential customers.”
Based on EVT’s July 15, 2024 filing with VPSD, 409 installations have been made for homeowners and businesses to date.
The need to assist victims of last July’s and this year’s floods was not as great as initially thought. EVT has engaged in an active media campaign to get the word out but has still had little success. The grant’s fund was reallocated, but did the public know about it?
A $34 million grant overseen by a State agency is significant.
For reference, the Vermont Veterans’ Home in Bennington exemplifies how far $34 million can go. According to information provided by an official at the Veterans’ Home, the Home has a current census of 92 residents, 195 full-time staff, and an operating budget of $31.8 million.
I received this information within one hour of requesting it. I was told that if additional details were required, I should just ask.
Shires Housing, which recently provided numerous housing developments in Bennington, Arlington, and Manchester, announced that it was merging with the Housing Trust of Rutland County. The reported reason was to gain more leverage by being part of a larger organization. Meanwhile, needed rehab at existing projects is not being addressed according to public comments. My calls to Shires Housing requesting financial and tax information have been ignored.
The State’s PSD and Veterans’ Home staff have been most cooperative in responding to my requests. EVT has been cooperative, and Shires Housing has not at all.
With Vermont having a fourth branch of government, the same rules of transparency that apply to the other three branches should apply. This is especially so if the nonprofit agency is the beneficiary of grant funding, regardless of whether the funds come from the State “coffers” or the federal government with the State as the conduit.
The author is a U.S. Marine (retired), CPA, and columnist living in Arlington, VT.
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Categories: Commentary
Wow! my math may be rusty but $31,800,000.00 divided by 92 is $345652.17 per vet. Then $34,000,000.00 for 409 installations equals an average of $83,129.58 per.
I wonder how many beneficiaries would have spent that money for what the non profits selected.
Maybe what we need is to review what is a non profit so that the rest of us can share the tax load with these in state actors.
Vermont’s many non-profits as well as our public sector unions (VTNEA, VSEA) largely function as protectors of many useless jobs and as a conduit for huge sums of public money to be laundered into contributions to the democrat party. It’s a self-perpetuated scheme to bankrupt Vermont the way of Venezuela. Geographically and demographically similar New Hampshire has HALF the number of state employees per capita as Vermont and they somehow get by.
Thank you, Mr. Keelan, for your continued scrutiny into this issue.
Efficiency Vermont (operated by the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation (VEIC) delivers services in most of the state.
Vermont Energy Investment Corporation (VEIC) showed $108.7 million in 2022 revenues. It paid $37.3 million in employee salaries and benefits that year. Its CEO, Rebecca Foster, received $277,420 in annual compensation, and its Director, Thedore Trabue earned $323,414. And VEIC’s ‘interim’ Director received more than $213,000. In fact, Vermont Energy Investment Corporation’s top ten employees all earned six figure salaries and benefits approaching $200,000 each. Lisa Harris, for example, the ‘Chief People Officer’ (I kid you not), earned over $200,000 in 2022 from VEIC.
And then there are the sub-contractors. Capstone Community Action Inc., of Barre, VT, for example, received $1.593 million from VEIC in 2022. Capstone had $26.5 million in 2022 revenues, almost half of which was employee compensation.
Mr. Keelan reported these money laundering features back in January of this year. Nothing has changed. The growth of the ‘4th Estate’ continues. Meanwhile VEIC claims to be saving Vermonters $216 Million per year.
Is Efficiency Vermont transparent? Is it really saving all that money? Sure. Just ask them. Read its Efficiency Vermont Savings Claim Summary 2023 For the period 1/1/2023-12/31/2023. The report is only 78 pages long and is very easy to understand…. Not!
Postscript: I’ve been unable to determine whether or not Vermont Auditor Hoffer has taken a look at these VEIC programs… rats nests that they are.
Yup….
We have the following within and around it…..they operate with bigger budgets than both our political parties combined, every year.
Planned Parenthood
VNRC
Teachers Association
Medical Association
Our government is nothing but a tree of lobbyists, non-profits and corporatists, all in harmony with the New World Order….
Keep going we are the most and easiest manipulated state in the nation, we are owned and it’s not by the people.
And they rotate their lobbyists in and out of the administrative state.
Knocking on the door of Vermonts biggest grift, “affordable” housing and they didn’t answer you call. Huh…not surprising.
You are just getting warmed up, there is so much insider dealing, so much corruption, that’s been going on for so many decades, it’s considered SOP…standard operating procedure, they think it’s normal.
Keep knocking on that door……I’d like to take a battering ram and exposed the entire charade.
Some of us not fans of “You will own nothing and be happy”.
You need to knock on the Vermont Govie door. He has to be well aware of the massive fraud. Remember, blackmail and bribery are a dirty business.
Fourth branch out of the playbook of the Fourth Reich well underway to the Fifth.
September 8, 2024: Robert Kennedy Jr. “There’s been an inversion now where the Republican Party has become the party of the common man, of working people, of the middle class, and the Democratic Party has become the party of Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Ag, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Tech, the Big Banking Systems, and all of what (DJT) calls the Deep State”
Sounds about right to me – just need to include the RINOS (aka wolves in sheep’s clothing.) It does boil down to good vs. evil. Are we a Republic or some hybrid, convoluted, chaotic soup of communism/facism/crony nepotism, mafia style criminal syndicate? We are being sold out to an unelected foreign enterprise – by all indications to date. The UN conference meetings shortly….staging the events to take over through war, famine, and by force I’m sure.
And how forgetful of me, I totally forgot about the circle of corruption and deception!
Yes, yes the circle feeds, supports and builds itself bigger and stronger, think…
All the non-profits support other non-profits, things that couldn’t be possible without their money, things like….
VTDIGGER millions of non profit dollars supporting non profit propaganda
VPR!!!!!!! HELLO!!!!!
And of course my favorite banned state wide news, internet and incumbent forum….
Front Porch Forum, afraid of the facts and dissenting opinion, more seasoned the argument, the quicker the removal.
Ah yes, the circle of corruption is strong in this “brave little state”….feeding the pride and ignorance of our population with sophisticated words, production and propaganda….
You can only self govern if you maintain the structure of governance that allows it.
Gordon Dritschilo’s front page article, “Fair Faces Stormwater Regulations,” caught my attention because it exemplifies what I have observed over the last seven years with respect to the workings of government in Vermont.
Would a self-governing body attempt to inflict this kind of damage on itself, with legislation like the 3 Acre Rule now poised to strike the Vermont State Fair in Rutland? That does not seem likely, unless the structure of said government has been compromised and is no longer functioning properly as a self-governing body.
A century ago in 1924, the National League of Cities was founded. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it began to lobby Congress as an American advocacy group, with a focus on municipal issues. Established as a nongovernmental organization (NGO), they commenced laying the groundwork for a system of targeted advocacy, focusing on state and local governments throughout the United States.
Vermont would recognize this concept of central planning in 1967 with the enactment of Act 334, known as the Vermont Planning and Development Act. This would usher in the Vermont League of Cities & Towns and eventually a system of regional and local planning commissions, all justifying themselves as advocates for municipal planning and development. But who delineates the fine line between advocacy and interference with a legitimate governing authority? And what happens when boundaries are blurred, with financial grants flowing freely as incentives for participating in planning and development programs?
At first glance, most NGOs may appear benevolent, but benevolent or not, make no mistake, influence peddlers can be very disruptive to the organic balance of our system of self-governance, even when their intentions are for good. However, a shift toward imbalance may go unnoticed by Vermonters, having been conditioned since the late 1960s by a system of advocacy for central planning and development, a system administered largely through a concept of municipal zoning regulation. Over time, exposure to this controlling structure of zoning, has slowly relaxed our grip on the ideals protecting individual rights and sovereignty, making us more willing to accept top-down government without ever questioning the motives behind it, or the reversal of authority it perpetuates.
But understand that the greater-good zoning promises do not recognize a loss of personal liberty as a negative; rather, it celebrates the cumulative increase of regulatory power, garnished incrementally with the passage of time and each additional regulation.
There are approximately 1.5 million NGOs operating in the U.S. alone, with no prohibition on funding from foreign governments, corporations or the private sector.
This makes for a very powerful lobby, with laser focus on promoting and influencing legislative agendas. But ultimately, whose agendas are prioritized when NGOs are allowed to operate as coalitions, in a public/private partnership with your government?
It might surprise you to know two forms of government can exist in parallel, pretending to be one in the same. However, eventually, the one you thought you had becomes only a memory, and the one you actually endure, is what you are left with. But endure we must, when our system of governance is captured by too much collective influence and control.
Is it any wonder Vermonters fear benevolent legislation that leaves them less vibrant year after year. How ironic is it that, after over 50 years of planning and development, Vermonters now dread the fruits of remedy, garnered by powerful advocacy.
Vermonters are enduring a system of advocacy wrought with compartmentalized manipulation, that has the ability to almost exclusively monopolize legislative agendas once thought of as our own — all while creating legalese that blends in theory with our founding principles yet frustrates the will of the people, making litigation to protect their sovereignty impossible to afford.
Sure, we still endeavor to go through the motions of self-governing, but where else do you go when your government becomes a closed system, leaving you on the outside looking in and feeling powerless?
It will be difficult to decouple from regional planning and development structures when we have allowed them to infiltrate our state and municipal governments for so long. But realize, too much advocacy and influence can negatively usurp our balance of power, while effortlessly shutting down public opposition in the process.
Now consider the possibility we may actually be self inflicting and facilitating our own hostile takeover, by allowing this arrangement to continue — an arrangement that sets the stage for conflicts of interest with coalition partners and special-interest organizations gaining access to our government control mechanisms through political subdivisions like regional planning commissions or municipal leagues.
This is not to cast aspersions on the good people employed by these manufactured, compartmentalized, political subdivisions of government. For as far as they know, the work they do, is benevolent.
However, the organizations themselves have been subtly inserted into the fabric of our power structure. For what reason, it matters not. The fact they are there at all is disruptive.
Now, as a result of years of conditioning, our once independent state of mind does not challenge synthetic advocacy, because it cannot clearly see the threat it poses, as it hides in plain sight behind the benevolent work of its particular compartment and charge.
The fine line separating influence from interference no longer exists, because the structure of Vermont governance has been altered by an invasion of influence. The only question remaining is are we prepared to make the necessary structural changes to reconstitute the integrity of our system of self-governance?
Lynn James Edmunds lives in Wallingford.
The state government appears to be run like the Mafia, except they do it better!
So far, they haven’t resorted to breaking legs. All they need to do is act beneficial and the virtue signaling, bleeding heart liberals will donate and vote for the same people who swindle the taxpayers every time. They’re called nonprofits because after the administrators and lower-level connected employees all have huge salaries off the top. Then you have the connected contractors dipping into the pot of the grant money. The results seem very low compared to the available money. Add the total of expenditures of those whose hands are in the pot of government and donated gold and it is a much bigger scam than what the mafia was running. All the lobbyists are the bag men with cash to spend because the return on the dollar is huge. Where is the auditor of accounts? Who’s supposed to monitor these nonprofits? No one if they are all connected, right! It may not be criminal, but it sure looks corrupt.