Chapter II, Section 20 of the Vermont Constitution says the Governor does — “correspond with other states, [and] transact business with officers of government, civil and military.”

by Compass Vermont

Governor Phil Scott vetoed H.674 on Monday. It was a low-profile bill — one that would have formalized Vermont’s “sister state” partnerships with places like Tottori, Japan, and Honfleur, France. These are friendship arrangements. They support cultural exchanges, student trips, the occasional trade visit. Vermont has had them for years.

The Governor’s objection ran to four short paragraphs. He said the bill was fine except for one clause — a clause that would let a nine-member committee terminate any of Vermont’s sister-state partnerships by majority vote. That, Scott wrote, “usurps the Governor’s express Constitutional authority to transact business with officers of government.”

Twenty Years Of Doing It The Same Way

Vermont’s sister-state relationships didn’t start last year. Governor Jim Douglas signed a friendship agreement with Tottori Prefecture, Japan in 2008. Governor Scott upgraded it to a full sister-state agreement in 2018, signing it with Tottori’s governor at the State House. Vermont has similar partnerships with Honfleur in France, Thies in Senegal, Austria, and North Macedonia.

Every one of them was entered into the same way: the Governor signed them. That isn’t tradition or habit. It’s what Chapter II, Section 20 of the Vermont Constitution says the Governor does — “correspond with other states, [and] transact business with officers of government, civil and military.” When Vermont enters into a friendship with another place, the executive branch does it. That’s how it’s worked for nearly twenty years, under three governors, with no recorded problem.

H.674 would have kept that part. The Governor would still sign new partnerships. What the bill would have changed was who could end them.

The Meeting Where It Changed

The bill came out of the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee with no termination clause. It was a framework: a committee to recommend new partnerships to the Governor, the Governor to make the call.

Then the bill moved to House Appropriations. On the morning of March 11, the committee took up eight amendments at once. Legislative Counsel Rik Sehgal — the lawyer who drafted the bill — walked the committee through the changes.

The first amendment Sehgal explained removed two words from the bill’s stated purpose: “diplomatic collaboration.” Sehgal told the committee he had checked with colleagues at his office and they agreed that diplomacy “is more the purview of the president, federal government.” The words came out. Foreign diplomacy belongs to Washington, not Vermont. The committee accepted the change without discussion.

A few minutes later, Sehgal reached amendment five. He described it in one sentence: “a request to have the committee’s authority to terminate a partnership for some reason if things go sour.”

That was the clause Scott would veto two months later.

Sehgal did not say whose request it was. No one on the committee asked. The amendment passed without discussion, along with the others, on an 11-0 vote.

The Question That Wasn’t Asked

The committee had just walked through a federalism question — Washington’s job versus Vermont’s job — and got it right. Diplomacy is federal, so the word came out.

A few minutes later, the same committee voted to move a function from one branch of Vermont government to another — without raising the parallel state-level constitutional question. Nothing in the meeting record suggests anyone in the room compared the new termination clause to the Vermont Constitution. Nothing suggests anyone asked who had requested it, or what problem it was meant to solve. The vote was unanimous.

The Senate didn’t catch it either. Senate Economic Development reported the bill out 5-0. Senate Appropriations reported it 6-0-1. The floor passed it. The bill went to the Governor.

The Governor caught it.

Why Now?

That’s the question the bill never answered. Vermont’s sister-state partnerships have run the same way for almost twenty years. The Governor signs them. If one stops working, the Governor ends it. There’s no public record of a partnership going badly, no scandal, no diplomatic incident, no complaint from any quarter that something needed fixing.

The clause that triggered Monday’s veto would have changed that. Someone asked Legislative Counsel to draft it. Somewhere in the Office of Legislative Counsel’s records is a name — the legislator who made the request — and a date. That name didn’t come up at the markup. It isn’t in the bill’s text. It isn’t in the committee minutes.

The Legislature is still in session as of this writing. Scott has said he would sign a revised bill that removes the termination clause and keeps the rest. The chambers could send him a corrected version before they adjourn, or take it up when they return.

Whether anyone explains, this time, what problem the clause was trying to solve is up to them.