Q&A: Deborah Markowitz, Secretary of State

Vermont Business Magazine, Feb 01, 2007

VBM: Oh yes. Merger can be a dirty word in some towns.

Markowitz: Well, because of the finances involved, and understandably people are worried about that.

VBM: But that's not as common a problem as it's been in the past?

Markowitz: That's right.

VBM: How about your personal background - are you a Vermonter?

Markowitz: I grew up in New York. I came to Vermont to attend the University of Vermont in 1979, and then went to Georgetown Law School after I graduated with a philosophy and political science degree from UVM. I came back to Vermont and began to practice law. First I clerked in the Supreme Court with Justice Peck and then practiced law briefly with a firm in Burlington. Then I lucked out and got a job with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. I was the director of their municipal law center. I actually started that. I was their first director. I helped to develop that program.

That's where I developed some expertise in municipal government and also fell in love with our cities and towns and town officials. I served part time as the director while my kids were young. After about seven years I started looking around for something full-time and I thought about working for the Secretary of State's office because, when Jim Douglas was Secretary of State, he had taken a very active role in helping our cities and towns. They had the newsletter that we have now, and educational programs like we have now.

But after he left the office to run for other things and ultimately be State Treasurer, the Secretary of State didn't really keep that up, leaving our local officials and the citizens who deal with the local officials a little bit high and dry. So I ultimately decided I would run for this office, and to my surprise, and probably to a lot of other people's, I won, having never been involved in politics before. That was in 1998. I'd never worked on a campaign or even been involved with any political party. So it was a real education for me to see how the political system worked. Running a campaign is exciting and a lot of hard work. It was really gratifying to have won in a very close race. No recounts though!

I had some very specific promises I'd developed in the campaign. At the time I ran there was a backlog of professional licensing cases, over 90 cases that had been languishing for over two years. Imagine being a professional and having someone make a complaint against you and having it just sit for years and years. Or being the person who felt they were wronged and have that unresolved.

So, my first order of business was to restore services to cities and towns, but also to fix the backlog of licensing cases. We did that. It was hard work. What it required was for us to make the people in this office accountable so that we knew where every case was, whose desk it was on and what its status was. At the time the Attorney General's office was doing the prosecutions, so over a period of years we worked closely with them, but ultimately the legislature changed that responsibility so now we do the prosecutorial function inhouse. It's much more efficient and effective.