Q&A: Deborah Markowitz, Secretary of State

Vermont Business Magazine, Feb 01, 2007

VBM: Is it getting more difficult to get people to take positions on local school boards, select boards or as trustees?

Markowitz: They are thankless jobs. One of the more popular programs that I started is an awards program called the Vermont Public Service Award. We've given out thousands of these awards to local officials who have served in office for 20 years or more. You would be surprised at how many people there are who have served over 20 years, and it's not always in one office. There arc some who have served in five different offices. Once they've served on the select board they end up becoming an auditor or a Ester or the town moderator. We have a core group of people who are really committed and participate. But they are thankless jobs and you have vacancies and it's hard to recruit new people to get involved.

As you get closer to urban areas people are career based and they are not working in the towns where they live, It becomes even harder then to find volunteers. It's a little bit counter intuitive because you've got higher populations but it's a hundred times harder to fill the slot. You've got a higher population but fewer people coming up to volunteer.

VBM: Do you think younger people struggle more with this than earlier generations that saw that as their civic responsibility?

Markowitz: There are many people who say, when we give them this 20 year public service award that they don't think it's so extraordinary, they just figure that everyone has to take a turn. We self govern and we can only self govern if everyone takes a turn. It's true that with television and the Internet and the fact that so many people are working in places that aren't where they live, that people feel less obligated to take a turn. So one of the things that we've done here is to become the cheering section for participation and getting involved in public policy discussions and getting involved in democracy in all of its different forms. That's one of my passions and one of the things that I love about being Secretary of State.

VBM: Do you think that more education in that area would encourage more people to get involved?

Markowitz: More education and more support. What happens is, over the years, these roles have become very legal, very complex. Over the years, the laws that apply to local government have become very complex and they are changing all the time. If you have a volunteer board, they're not lawyers, they are by and large school teachers or they work in construction or have a business. It's a lot to expect that they would understand the complex rules that apply, so we try to provide that kind of support, as does the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. The benefit of what we do is that we also can get the same message to members of the public who are interacting with those boards. So we help citizens to feel empowered to know what their rights are and what their responsibilities are and basically what the rules are. So as they also try to get involved, they know what's appropriate.