Updated 11:09 p.m.
After 10 months on the job, longtime businessman and former Republican U.S. Senate candidate Myers Mermel was ousted from his role as president and director of the Ethan Allen Institute, a Vermont-based conservative think tank.
The nonprofit institute’s five-member board voted unanimously to remove Mermel from the post on Sept. 13, according to Wendy Wilton, the board’s treasurer and acting chair. Wilton is also a former statewide candidate, a former Rutland City treasurer and a longtime player in Vermont’s conservative political circles.
“It’s an internal matter and we don’t want to comment on it at this time,” Wilton said of the board’s decision to remove Mermel in an interview with VTDigger on Tuesday.
But in a series of email records obtained by VTDigger, Mermel alleged to the Vermont Attorney General’s Office on Sept. 20 that the board’s vote to remove him was, in fact, retaliation for his repeated pleas, dating back to June, to Wilton and fellow board member Anne McClaughry for financial transparency.
“I am writing to request that the Office of the Attorney General open an investigation into the Ethan Allen Institute in order to protect the funds of donors,” Mermel wrote to Assistant Attorney General Jamie Renner on Sept. 20. “I am no longer able to do so since my role as Board member and President has been removed as of last week in retaliation for my actions to protect the donors and comply with law.”
Mermel declined to comment on the matter. McClaughry, who is married to Ethan Allen Institute founder and former president John McClaughry, also declined to comment.
Founded in 1993, the Ethan Allen Institute is a Vermont-based, libertarian-leaning think tank that has at times been an influential conservative voice in Vermont state politics. Catherine Clark, Milt Eaton and Bill Sayre also sit on the board, and Jack McMullen — another former statewide candidate — resigned on Sept. 11 after serving two decades on the board.
Mermel, who lives in Manchester and sought the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in 2022, took over the Ethan Allen Institute at the end of that year, after ousting his predecessor, Meg Hansen, who herself led the organization for about a year.
According to the records obtained by VTDigger, Mermel first emailed the Attorney General’s Office on Aug. 15 to raise the issue. As a new president of the nonprofit, he wrote, he had wanted to audit the institute’s finances. To that end, he had requested myriad financial records from Wilton dating back to Jan. 1, 2020, including bank statements for all of the institute’s accounts; financial information provided to the institute’s accountant; the institute’s QuickBooks files; its latest donor spreadsheet; and its monthly payroll summaries. Later, in August, Mermel requested that Wilton provide credit card and PayPal account statements for the institute.
By the time Mermel sent his Aug. 15 email to Renner, he wrote, he had requested these records from Wilton in writing on eight separate occasions, beginning on June 25. And, according to Mermel’s email, the Ethan Allen Institute’s outside legal counsel, diGenova & Toensing, wrote an additional five requests to Wilton in July “that spelled out board members’ rights to these records and the Treasurer’s obligation to produce them.”
Brady Toensing, a partner with the law firm and a former vice chair of the Vermont Republican Party, declined to comment.
Mermel also, according to email records, tried to compel Wilton to hand over the financial records by an official board vote. He wrote that on Aug. 7 he had called a special meeting of the board to vote on a resolution that “spelled out the Board’s fiduciary responsibilities regarding the organization and the proper stewardship of donor funds, and that those responsibilities necessitated the right to demand and receive financial records. It also spelled out the obligation of the Treasurer to produce financial records to fellow board members.”
But his resolution, Mermel wrote, was defeated. Instead, the board “passed a motion ‘commending’ the Treasurer for her ‘transparency.’”
In the Sept. 20 email to Renner, Mermel called this vote by the board “perverse.”
“One Board member said in that Board meeting (on this vote to comply with law) that he was only going to cast his votes for ‘decades long friends,’ and not for any other reason,” Mermel wrote on Sept. 20. “That’s why he voted against compliance with law. That’s a problem.”
Despite more than a dozen written requests and the failed resolution, Wilton “refused” to hand over most of the records Mermel sought, he wrote to Renner, “except for a small portion of the requested bank records.”
“This is concerning as the organization, as I joined it, has no real financial controls: no ‘segregation of duties’ and no ‘checks and balances,’” Mermel wrote to Renner on Aug. 15. “The Treasurer has sole knowledge and control of the books, records, and donations.”
Wilton pushed back against Mermel’s claims, telling VTDigger, “I have always been transparent with the board,” providing members an income statement, balance sheet and bank statement every quarter.
But Mermel, she said, “had this huge laundry list” of records he was requesting from Wilton — some of which, she said, she didn’t have anymore. Wilton said that she and other members of the board decided amongst themselves what records to hand over.
“He started asking for a lot of information, and I felt it was something the board needed to understand and agree upon,” Wilton said. “So the board did meet and … I laid out to the board what I had that I could give him, and I said, ‘Is this sufficient?’ And the board basically decided yes, and so I proceeded to provide that information to him.”
Asked to show VTDigger email records from when she sent Mermel those financial documents, Wilton said, “I want to run it by the board first.”
Email records indicate, and Wilton confirmed, that the Attorney General’s Office indeed got in touch with her following Mermel’s initial Aug. 15 inquiry — by email and by phone, multiple times. The last time she spoke with the Attorney General’s Office, Wilton told VTDigger, she reported back that she had sent Mermel “what the board asked me, agreed for me to send.” She hasn’t heard from the office since, she said, and assumed the matter was settled.
Asked on Tuesday whether the Attorney General’s Office was investigating the Ethan Allen Institute, chief of staff Lauren Jandl wrote to VTDigger, “It is our office’s policy that we do not comment on whether investigations exist, or on ongoing investigations.”
Subsequent emails from Mermel to the Attorney General’s Office show that he wasn’t satisfied with what financial information Wilton handed over to him. Neither, it seems, was the State Policy Network, a national nonprofit network of conservative and libertarian think tanks, which served as a sort of umbrella organization to the Ethan Allen Institute.
On Sept. 6, the State Policy Network suspended its affiliation with the Ethan Allen Institute, spokesperson Carrie Conko confirmed to VTDigger on Tuesday.
“SPN does not take the decision to suspend affiliate membership lightly, and this step was enforced to align with our standards of professionalism and to safeguard both our organizations’ shared goals and values,” Conko wrote in an email.
Conko did not directly address State Policy Network’s reasons for suspending its relationship. But Mermel wrote to Renner two days later, on Sept. 8, that the network had suspended the Ethan Allen Institute “pending an audit to bring clarity to SPN’s concerns about the lack of financial transparency.”
Asked on Tuesday why the network would have taken such a step, Wilton told VTDigger, “I don’t know. I mean, that relationship with the national organization — I’m the treasurer. It’s not my purview.”
By Sept. 20, Mermel wrote his final missive to Renner. The board having ousted him as president just one week prior, Mermel’s tone was its most urgent yet. He implored the Attorney General’s Office to conduct an investigation of the nonprofit.
“I am not so much concerned with the end of my affiliation with Ethan Allen as I am with the uncertain status of donor funds,” Mermel wrote.
Mermel proceeded to accuse the board of a slew of ethical violations: “conflict of interest, negligence or incompetence, failure to disclose material information, breach of duty of loyalty, breach of duty of care, breach of duty of good faith, breach of duty of prudence, mismanagement, failure to act, inadequate record keeping, and potentially other violations of statutory duties.”
Kicked out of the organization, Mermel in his final email to Renner ultimately threw up his hands, saying it’s up to the Attorney General’s Office to conduct an investigation.
“The Office of the Attorney General is the last backstop for financial oversight in Vermont,” Mermel concluded on Sept. 20. “I hope your Office will open an investigation to finally provide transparency and safety to donor funds at the Ethan Allen Institute.”
Myers Mermel’s first name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.
