Municipal clerks tell committee one resident’s repeated disruptions are tying up meetings and legal budgets

Municipal clerks from a Caledonia County town told the House Government Operations & Military Affairs Committee that a single resident’s repeated disruptions at public meetings and in the town office have forced adjournments, required police intervention and produced legal bills they say are straining the town budget.

Linda Corey, town clerk, said the resident repeatedly exceeds public-comment time limits, speaks over the chair and in one meeting forced officials to adjourn because they could not restore order. “We had to adjourn the meeting, stop the business of the town, and adjourn the meeting because we could not get this person to stop,” Corey told the committee.

The clerks said the resident also has refused to fill out public-records request forms and will not accept documents if they come from the town’s attorney; he has filed multiple open-meeting and records complaints that have been dismissed in court, they said. The clerks and the select board have adopted a public-comment policy and a required appointment system for office visits to limit disruptions.

Why this matters: committee members said the testimony raised questions about the limits of current open-meeting and public-records law, staff safety and the financial burden on small towns when repeated complaints lead to legal defense costs.

The clerks described a recent office visit in which the resident arrived late for a scheduled appointment, refused to complete the town’s records-request form and refused to leave when requested. “We called the sheriff. They were on a detail somewhere else and couldn't come right away. They advised us to call the state police,” Corey said, describing a roughly 40-minute wait before state police escorted the man outside.

The clerks gave specific figures for legal costs tied to the resident’s actions: they said the town received a bill for about $22,000 in April, expected bills to bring that to roughly $30,000 by May, and projected that continued litigation could push costs toward $50,000. Corey added that a penny on the town tax rate is about $41,000, and said these fees are therefore significant to municipal finances.

Committee members and counsel discussed legal avenues. Tucker Anderson, legislative counsel, cautioned that obtaining protective orders generally requires an “actual articulated threat” and that Vermont law distinguishes fear of harm from an imminent, articulated threat. “Based on what you've heard… you would need an actual articulated threat against an individual,” Anderson said. Representatives and counsel noted that 1 V.S.A. § 312(h) already allows a chair to adopt reasonable rules for public comment, and that the Public Records Act permits agencies to adopt rules to prevent disruption of daily business, but that enforcement and remedies can be limited.

Committee members also raised possible criminal statutes as tools in extreme cases, recounting how other towns had cited criminal