Alyson Richards, Shumlin’s deputy chief of staff and director of intergovernmental affairs, has been named the chief executive officer for The Permanent Fund for Vermont’s Children.
The nonprofit Permanent Fund’s two main projects support early childhood education: a public awareness campaign called Let’s Grow Kids, to “focus on the early years,” and Birth to Five, which uses a multifaceted approach to get kids pre-kindergarten education and affordable child care.
Richards’ last day with the Shumlin administration is Friday.
The nonprofit organization offered Richards the job in the spring, after pivoting on its nationwide search for an executive director, she said. Richards said she has not been involved in any decisions that help the Permanent Fund since internal discussions began about her hiring in the spring.
Richards is known in Montpelier for her role in facilitating the Shumlin administration’s major education policies: the school governance bill, which became Act 46 this year; the universal pre-kindergarten bill, which became Act 166 in 2014; and a program facilitating free school lunches for children of low-income families.
Richards is a native Vermonter and graduate of Brown University. In high school, Richards was the third person ever appointed as a student member of the Vermont State School Board, she said. Her career shifted toward education while she was already working for Shumlin as a policy aide.
“I was hoping to stay with the governor until he chose to wrap up his time, but this was one of those opportunities that we both agreed I just couldn’t turn down,” Richards said.
She believes improving early childhood education is the most important issue facing Vermont.
“First of all, the brain science is more and more clear every year, where we know that a child’s brain is 90 percent formed by age 5,” she said. “This is a really crucial age. We have to have to focus on it.”
Richards joins the Permanent Fund at a time when the organization is staffing up for its Let’s Grow Kids public education campaign. Richards said the campaign’s mission is important “for Vermont families who need affordable child care, and then for businesses who need a workforce that has access to high-quality affordable child care.”
Cyrus Patten, executive director of Campaign for Vermont, has been pushing for ethics reform in a recent petition and speaking publicly about the revolving door between the public and private sectors in Montpelier.
Patten said Richards’ new job doesn’t raise any ethical red flags.
“In fact, I think it speaks more to the talent drain in the Shumlin administration as people are leaving and looking for other opportunities,” he said.
Indeed, since last winter, 11 agency secretaries or department commissioners have left the Shumlin administration. Richards is the second senior staffer to leave the administration since Elizabeth Miller stepped down as chief of staff at the end of May. Shumlin announced last month that he would not seek a fourth term.
Richards gave her notice in April and had been considering working for the Permanent Fund organization as early as April 10, according to a personnel memorandum that Shumlin’s spokesperson, Scott Coriell, provided VTDigger.
Richards wrote the memorandum to her supervisors, Miller and incoming chief of staff Darren Springer, to address how the new job could appear as a conflict of interest under the executive code of ethics that Shumlin signed in 2011.
Richards wrote that she has had “no role” in forging relationships between the Shumlin administration and the Permanent Fund, and said she had no knowledge in granting contracts to the Permanent Fund while she worked for Shumlin.
