State auditor Tom Salmon says he won’t seek re-election in November. The three-term politician announced his decision in a letter to the media on Friday afternoon.
On May 11, Salmon told VTDigger.org via a text that he was still in the running for state auditor, but a week later he changed his mind.
“It was not an easy decision,” Salmon said. “I have a talented group of 13 people in the building, nine people with master’s degrees. We have a really smart group.”
Salmon, who had considered challenging Gov. Peter Shumlin and toyed with a run against Sen. Bernie Sanders last fall, says he is looking at higher-paying out-of-state jobs as a matter of necessity. He has three children in college and faces $100,000 a year tuition bills, and even with an annual salary of well under that figure, his family didn’t qualify for financial aid.
Salmon said this week he heard from officials at the Office of Management and Budget who were interested in possibly hiring him as an inspector general or chief financial officer for a federal agency. Other options beckon, too, he says, including an offer from a California accounting firm. He said he feels certain he’ll find a job that pays in the $160,000 to $200,000 a year range in the next seven months. Salmon is a certified public accountant.
“I have a number of options presented to me, and some still out there, in God’s hands,” Salmon wrote in a statement.
Money, he said, hasn’t been his primary focus — but he said he’s “at a place now where I have an enhanced skill set” that he has fine-tuned over the last six years as state auditor. “I’ve never pursued a job for the salary,” Salmon said.
Salmon said he hopes to work for the Corporation on National and Community Service, which oversees Americorps, or the U.S. Department of Education.
Salmon said he attracted national attention when he served on President Barack Obama’s Office of Management and Budget Administrative Flexibility Workgroup and suggested that the federal government create an office of planning, performance and priorities in each state.
Over the last several years, Salmon has made municipal and school embezzlement cases his cause celebre and after two years of effort got the Legislature to weigh in on the issue.
In a statement, Salmon wrote: “I have achieved the goal set when I took office in January 2007 to transform the Vermont State Auditor’s Office into a first-rate performance auditing shop. It is time for me to move on to new challenges.”
Vermont GOP chair Jack Lindley said Salmon’s decision not to run is a blow for the party.
“Words can’t express my disappointment at losing such a rising star,” Lindley said. “It was always my dream that Tom would follow his dad and become governor one day. The people of America are gaining a true public servant, and Vermont Republicans have lost a future leader.”
Salmon is the son of Gov. Tom Salmon, a Democrat. The younger Salmon established a career in politics in his right, and ran on the Democratic ticket for state auditor in 2007, beating out Republican incumbent Randy Brock by just two votes in a controversial recount.
Salmon was re-elected in 2010 — beating Democrat Doug Hoffer by about 15,000 votes — in spite of a highly publicized drunk driving incident that was captured on a Vermont State Police video, in which he was detained by police after he consumed five alcoholic beverages at a party. Salmon pled guilty and lost his license for 90 days. Subsequently, the state auditor embarked on an anti-drunk driving education campaign.
The fact that the auditor’s seat is uncontested makes it all the more attractive to Sen. Vince Illuzzi, R/D-Essex-Orleans, who is also considering a bid for attorney general on the Republican ticket.
“The question is, does my background and expertise fit well into that job?” Illuzzi said.
Illuzzi said as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee he has overseen the budget of the Auditor’s Office is “intimately familiar” with the way it works. Most auditors around the country, he said, are lawyers and former legislators. Most of the CPA work for the auditor’s office in Vermont is done by contractors.
“The part that’s always been interesting to me is the program performance reviews that auditors office does,” Illuzzi said. He said he had talked with Salmon about creating a separate arm of the office that would investigate embezzlements at the local level because state and local law enforcement don’t have accounting expertise.
Illuzzi said it is too early to say which office he will be running for — or if he’ll campaign for his Senate seat.
The campaign filing deadline is June 15.
Hoffer who plans to run again in this election cycle said he wished Salmon well.
“I’m running for state auditor regardless of the opponent,” Hoffer siad in a statement. “I’m going to tell voters about my qualifications, my experience, and my plans for the job. I have begun meeting with Democrats and Progressives around the state and I look forward to the campaign.”
