Editor’s note: This opinion is from Doug Hoffer, Tom Salmon’s former Democratic rival in the state auditor’ race. Hoffer is a policy analyst who lives in Burlington.
(State auditor) Tom Salmon’s letter to Judge Crawford was completely inappropriate as he is not a party to (a recent public records request lawsuit) and was not called to testify. Unfortunately, this type of interference in the work of other branches of government is not new for Mr. Salmon.
In my case, I requested information about a number of items dealing with his official activities including 1) his office calendar to determine, among other things, if he had met with officials from Vermont Yankee before writing to legislators criticizing their efforts to make Entergy fill the decommissioning fund (he did, but he didn’t inform legislators); 2) travel expenditures for Mr. Salmon’s staff (very questionable); and 3) Mr. Salmon’s half-baked effort to “solve” the dairy crisis (a waste of taxpayer resources).
For Mr. Salmon to complain about requests for information is ironic and hypocritical because he often talks about transparency and accountability. And he could have avoided all these pesky records requests by simply posting the information on his web site.
Mr. Salmon said that public records requests “need to have boundaries.” It is shocking that the State Auditor thinks Vermont should reduce access to public records. What we really need are boundaries on Mr. Salmon’s imagined self-importance. He should apologize to Judge Crawford.
In case you didn’t read Shay Totten’s blog in Seven Days, here it is.