Soon after gaveling in for the 2024 legislative session, the Vermont Senate voted to beef up its financial disclosure requirements, providing more information to the public about its members’ potential conflicts of interest.
Prior to the vote, sitting senators had been required to reveal only a sliver of information about their personal finances — and nothing about their spouses’ or domestic partners’ finances. The rules change required them to disclose more, including income sources greater than $5,000; leases or contracts with the state; lobbying activities; and equivalent information about spouses and domestic partners.
Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, said at the time that the rules change had been inspired by VTDigger’s award-winning Full Disclosure series, which in April 2023 documented how little information lawmakers revealed about potential conflicts — and how hard it was to find that information.
After the January 2024 vote, Baruth asked his fellow senators to file new disclosures with the newly required information. The secretary of the Senate then published the latest disclosures on the Legislature’s website — in a single, 91-page PDF.
VTDigger, which had created a searchable, sortable database of legislative filings for the Full Disclosure series, got to work. Reporters and editors deciphered senatorial handwriting and entered the information into the database. Data reporter Erin Petenko, who had built the original database, then updated it to ensure that readers had the most up-to-date information.
The House has not updated its disclosure requirements, so data from that chamber dates to January 2023. The updated database, which you can find below, also includes information from disclosure forms filed by all candidates for state office during the 2022 election.
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