To The Editor:
We would like to applaud Heidi Spear and Seth Henry for their clear-sighted and trenchant article in last week’s [The] Valley Reporter.
There is one thing that we would like to emphasize and add to their comments and that concerns “Regulatory Capture.”
“Regulatory capture is a form of government failure that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating” (thank you, Wikipedia, for this succinct definition).
Vermont is currently experiencing Regulatory Capture: The governor appoints the heads of various state agencies who “serve at the governor’s pleasure.”
The agencies that are supposed to serve our collective public interests have been suborned into doing the administration’s bidding and operating for the benefit of industries that the administration favors. This influence has also extended beyond the state agencies to utilities and entities such as the Vermont Public Interest Research Group. Such groups are dedicated to furthering their benefactors’ special interests through lobbying and strategic campaign contributions to our legislators in Montpelier.
Ordinary Vermonters have been excluded from anything but meaningless and superficial token participation in policymaking so that many of the administration’s flawed policies are implemented without genuine citizen debate or recourse.
The state agencies should revert to their independent roles in order to protect and promote the best interests of the citizens of Vermont, especially when dealing with powerful and well-funded industries and their lobbyists.
Such is the irony that in progressive Vermont the Democrats are now the cohorts of business and the manipulators of state agencies and the Republicans are seen as the champions of the little guy and good governance and the protectors of the environment.
David and Avril Howe
Waitsfield
