This commentary is by Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast, the Vermont Senate majority leader.
As a mom of a two-and-a-half-year-old and a one-year-old, I’ve learned the universe laughs at your best-laid plans.
When I was pregnant with my first child, Mira, my due date coincided with the last day of session. I imagined triumphantly passing a child care bill on that final day and then being rushed to the hospital.
Instead, my water broke seven weeks early. I spent a month in the hospital, voting remotely and helping pass major housing and labor bills between contractions and rounds of medication.
No one questioned my commitment to Vermont then. And yet now, as state employees prepare to comply with the governor’s return to office order for Dec. 1, caregivers like me — and the many parents and workers who keep Vermont running — are being treated as though flexibility and commitment can’t coexist.
The order was announced weeks ago, but its true impact is only now coming into focus. At the same time that federal cuts and uncertainty are rippling through state budgets and programs, the governor is adding another layer of chaos to the lives of public servants. Families who depend on those workers — to process benefits, issue permits, and answer calls — will feel it first.
This is no small shift. Dec.1 falls squarely between Thanksgiving and Christmas, one of the hardest times of year to find child care or rearrange family schedules. Workers are being told to drive back to leased office spaces the state has not budgeted or prepared for, even as they juggle school closures and rising costs.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that women’s turnover rates are three times higher than men’s following return-to-office mandates. The gender pay gap, which had finally begun to narrow, is widening again as mothers are pushed to the margins.
Meanwhile, a New York Times podcast (later retitled) actually asked, “Are women ruining the workplace?” It’s a revealing question in this moment of backlash — a time when women’s gains at the ballot box and in the workforce are being met with old, tired attempts to set us back.
This isn’t just a national trend. Here in Vermont, I’ve heard Republican male colleagues joke that “if women weren’t allowed to work, we wouldn’t have a child care problem.” That kind of thinking — casual, nostalgic and wrong — is exactly what this order echoes. It imagines a workplace frozen in time, where workers’ value is measured by their presence, not their performance, and women’s labor is invalidated.
Meanwhile, Vermont’s government is struggling to meet its basic obligations. The Tax Department routinely has no one available to answer calls on Wednesdays because of staffing gaps.
Developers complain it can take months to get a permit turned around from the Agency of Natural Resources, sometimes because one overworked staffer is on vacation. Agencies can’t fill vacancies fast enough to process benefits, issue licenses, or review applications.
How does forcing more commutes and rigid office schedules solve that? Why not focus instead on pay, retention and modern management practices that actually attract talent?
During the pandemic, we proved that a flexible, digital government could serve people more efficiently. To reverse course now — just to prove a political point — is wasteful and self-defeating.
In the Legislature, we see the dedication of state employees firsthand. Our own staff — policy analysts, attorneys, committee assistants — work year-round to keep government running while we float in and out of the Statehouse with the seasons. They show up early, stay late, and adapt around our unpredictable schedules, just as other state employees do for Vermonters in every corner of the state.
To treat them as expendable now, or to frame flexibility as a luxury rather than a proven management tool, is short-sighted and cruel. It sends a message that loyalty and performance don’t matter — only control does.
This would be a bad idea in the best of times. But in this moment — with Washington in disarray, federal funds in limbo and families already bracing for economic uncertainty — it is indefensible. The people of Vermont need their government focused on stability, service and common sense.
I urge the governor to pause the return to office order and give state employees the breathing room they deserve. There is nothing to gain from forcing an arbitrary December 1 deadline that will only deepen vacancies, disrupt services and demoralize workers.
Vermont’s state workforce has been there for us through crisis after crisis — through floods, fires and pandemics. They showed up when it mattered most, often from their kitchen tables and home offices, balancing family life and public duty. We should meet their loyalty with trust, not suspicion.
It may feel like we’re far from the chaos in Washington or the cruelty of national politics, but make no mistake: the backlash against working women and families has reached us, too. Cruelty doesn’t always shout. Sometimes it hides behind the language of “equity,” the timing of the holidays and the assumption that we’ll quietly manage.
Vermont’s strength has always been compassion and common sense. The governor still has time to show both — by pressing pause.
