Bill Schubart is a regular columnist for VTDigger. He is a retired businessman and active fiction writer, and was a former chair of the Vermont Journalism Trust, the parent organization for VTDigger.
It appears that Mike Smith, the new leader of Vermont’s largest agency, the Agency of Human Services, may have been chosen more for his political affiliation than his human services leadership experience or skills.
Sadly, this is all too common in Vermont and elsewhere and a major reason why we make so little headway rightsizing our institutions and improving delivery on their missions.
Smith’s resume is diverse but, other than replacing Charlie Smith as AHS secretary briefly during the Douglas administration, he has little in his resume related to AHS’s significant challenges. He’s a former Navy Seal, and he served as deputy state treasurer under Douglas, as president of troubled Fairpoint Communications, as interim president of Burlington College, and was a WDEV radio talk show host, among other posts.
AHS, which has a $2.5 billion budget, comprises six complex departments: The Department for Children and Families is struggling with high parental rights terminations; the Department of Corrections is under popular and legislative pressure to decarcerate; The Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living addresses an aging Vermont population; the Department of Vermont Health Access is amid major change wrought by accountable care organizations; the Department of Health is trying to address a bloom of drug, alcohol, and vaping addictions; and the Department of Mental Health is trying just to catch up to current clinical and residential needs.
The architecture of effective governance is similar across three sectors — the for-profit or business sector, the for-mission or nonprofit sector, and the government sector. In the first two, a governing board hires the most appropriate leader to achieve its goals. In the government sector, citizens are the governing board, choosing their leader in the electoral process. The leaders in all three – president, executive director, and president or governor — then hire and lead their own management team to deliver on the promises for which they were chosen. It’s when politics becomes the primary criteria for hiring, instead of demonstrated experience, knowledge and wisdom, that goals inevitably become compromised.
I have been, and am currently, part of a nonprofit leadership search and the process is intentional, inclusive, exhaustive and transparent. Why not the same for our most vital institutional leadership positions? That would be better than having them filled with political partisans and cronies whose skills are measured politically rather than in relevant leadership experience and wisdom.
Political skill is part of any strong leadership profile, the ability to bring people along in support of a consensus strategy. Political ideology, however, is personal, often predetermining end goals and ignoring consensus. And when ideology becomes the sole driver of decision-making, it severely compromises leadership.
Political appointees, cronyism and corruption have reached an artform in the current federal administration. Ambassadors have long been chosen not for their diplomatic skills, experience and knowledge, but for the size of their political donations. Today, federal agency heads are chosen for their political allegiance to the president and his goal of neutering their agency’s effectiveness. History teaches us that the endgame of political cronyism is an authoritarian regime, unaccountable to the well-being of its citizens and their pocketbooks.
Vermonters are rarely well served by political appointments. This is not to say that there aren’t appointees who are inherently ethical and accomplished people, but that their resumes are often exemplars of political survival rather than mission-driven experience.
Personal political relationships and political contributions are just that, personal not professional, and thus irrelevant as criteria for leadership. A demonstrated culture of leadership, experience, professional accomplishments in the relevant field and references are the criteria for choosing leaders. The rest is extraneous and counterproductive.
Vermont can benefit from adopting leadership search criteria and process consistent with best industry and nonprofit practices. An ethics commission, (when we get one) might easily draft such a search process for helping governors and agency heads find and engage our best leaders.
In our seven agencies, six boards, and 21 commissions, Vermonters have too much at stake not to be confident that their leaders are chosen to deliver on mission, instead of ideology.
