[T]he House and Senate are headed in different directions on the selection process for the head of the Vermont National Guard. House members want the Legislature to retain the power to pick the adjutant general while a key Senate committee signaled strong support Friday to let the governor make the final choice.
Both chambers want to improve a selection process they say is fraught with politics and not informative enough, with candidates for adjutant general selling themselves to lawmakers in short conversations at the Statehouse prior to the election every two years.
Bills in both the House and Senate would set up a board to vet candidates and forward qualified applicants to whoever makes the selection — lawmakers or the governor. Vermont is the only state where the Legislature — and not the governor — pick the head of the state National Guard.
The bills all contemplate minimum requirements for the candidates, including a rank of lieutenant colonel or above. They also would move the election of adjutant general from the first year to the second year of the biennium to give the vetting committee time to review the candidates and, if the Legislature picks, avoid having newly elected members make a decision in the first weeks of their term.
In February, using the current system, lawmakers elected Col. Greg Knight as adjutant general over three other candidates in a process that lawmakers and the candidates said was akin to a popularity contest, in which lawmakers felt they didn’t have enough time to fully review the candidates’ stands on issues and their backgrounds.
Even before that election, lawmakers were introducing bill to change the selection process.
In March, the House voted overwhelmingly in favor of H.530, which kept the selection with the Legislature.
According to Rep. Joseph “Chip” Troiano, the Legislature should retain the selection in part to avoid having the governor pick a crony. The election process, while flawed, would be improved, he said, if a nominating board reviewed the candidates first, instead of lawmakers relying on informal talks at the Statehouse.
“You can’t get a sense of how a candidate feels about sexual harassment in 10 minutes in the lunchroom. It just doesn’t happen. It’s not possible,” said Troiano, D-Stannard, vice chair of House General, Housing and Military Affairs told Senate Government Operations members in testimony last week.
“Having an election is not so bad. If we’re well informed, you can make a good decision,” Troiano said.
A key Senate committee, however, has come to a different conclusion. Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, the chair of Senate Government Operations, favors having the governor select the adjutant general.
Her committee appears poised to vote out a bill, S. 121, next week that would transfer that power. White says the governor should make the appointment because lawmakers are unfamiliar with military issues and because the governor has the staff to properly check the candidates’ backgrounds.
Taking the selection out of lawmakers’ hands, she said, would remove the politicking that can be demeaning and not meaningful. Fellow committee members agreed.
“It seems unseemly to me, that these people have jobs to do and they’re spending months in here courting us,” said fellow committee member Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison. “It’s a waste of their time. It’s hit or miss. Some of us really dig in and some of us don’t” to study the qualifications.
“It doesn’t seem a highly functional way to do it,” Bray said.
White said she had spoken to more than 10 House members after their vote who would support giving the power to appoint to the governor — if they’d had the chance. She said they supported the H.530 bill because it set up a review committee, which they felt was better than the current situation.
White and Sen. Anthony Pollina, P/D-Washington, noted the candidates would still have to woo lawmakers under the House-passed bill.
Troiano told the senators he was also swayed by the more than 100-year tradition of the Legislature picking the head of the state militia.
“The process needed improving on but we felt the need to change the election wasn’t necessary,” Troiano said, adding the House felt “180 people making a decision is better than one person making a decision.”
The only Senate committee member sympathetic to the House argument was Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, who said she was “loathe” to give the governor a power that had been held by the Legislature and also respected the tradition. However, after committee discussion, she appeared prepared to compromise in order for her committee to reach a consensus.
If the House and Senate disagree, they would have to iron out the differences in a conference committee, or drop the issue and take it up again next year.
Gov. Phil Scott has favored having the governor make the appointment for adjutant general.
He said the current system “overly politicizes the process” and puts the candidates in the position of “campaigning.”