Though I took a long break over the holidays, not all of it was lounging on a beach in the Caribbean. Well, none of it was lounging on a beach in the Caribbean, but the thought is a nice one to conjure. In any case, while I wasn’t lounging on a Caribbean beach, I was busy with bureaucratic change work, one piece of which is a very bare-bones, early proposal for a State Ombudsman Office in Vermont, requested by and provided to ACLU-Vermont. You can see it here.

Still awaiting the decision from the Secretary of State’s Office regarding charges against the woman who used taxpayers’ dollars to carry out a years-long personal agenda. Whichever way the decision goes, it will serve to support the creation of a State Ombudsman Office. If they do file unprofessional conduct charges against her, we’ll have some specific information about the steps taken, and lack of steps, bureaucrats used to abuse the system for their own purposes, which argue for a State Ombudsman to prevent those abuses in the future.

If they don’t file charges against her, then the record of what the investigation turned up will be sealed, and we won’t get to see that material–ever. We won’t have access to whatever the state has to say about how someone who is already on record as having provided tainted testimony, in the estimation of the state’s appellate judge as well as her own colleagues on the Board; and lied under oath and otherwise violated professional ethics codes that have been adopted into state law–just how it is that same someone can wind up with no charges against her. That too is an outcome that would argue for the creation of a State Ombudsman–especially when set side-by-side with the particulars of my case.

Stay tuned, and Peace.

Deborah Alicen