On Wednesday, a new crop of citizen lawmakers will stand together and swear to "be true and faithful to the State of Vermont." Although it's not stated in their oath of office, they're also meant to represent the people who elected them. For the next five months they'll work on behalf of their neighbors to determine how the state should manage its limited resources, including tax revenues, for the greater local good. Witnessing this biennial ritual in a historic chamber of the Vermont Statehouse is enough to move even the most cynical observer. I teared up watching my partner, former state senator Tim Ashe, take the oath in 2009. He was just one of thousands of well-meaning part-time public servants who have participated in Vermont's annual exercise of representative democracy, which dates back to 1777. Almost a quarter of a millennium later, now seems like a good time to ask: How is that working? Today, an institution created when Vermont was a state of small farms — and just 10,000 residents — must grapple with complex social, economic and environmental problems, from education funding to homelessness and climate change. Legislators get no training for their elected positions beyond a couple of presession orientations. With minimal staff, they largely rely on paid lobbyists and advocates for research and policy recommendations. A small percentage of lawmakers call the shots, and, in modern Vermont, when they get it wrong, the consequences are dire. For example, Vermont passed an education funding bill in May 2023 that had to be rewritten when the legislature reconvened in January 2024 because it had thrown school districts into chaos. Meanwhile, the number of local news outlets covering the legislative session has shrunk dramatically, and the relatively few reporters following the action are often rookies. VTDigger.org started as a Statehouse watchdog and reliably chronicles the daily machinations. Seven Days is lucky to have seasoned journalists Kevin McCallum, Anne Wallace Allen and Alison Novak covering highlights, but, even in our paper, big-picture analysis of the sausage making is a rarity. No media outlet in the state has staffers consistently asking the hard questions about whether the 248-year-old system still effectively serves Vermonters. Seven Days is embracing the challenge. In a yearlong series we're calling "Ways and Means," we'll scrutinize the legislature to help readers understand how it functions — and sometimes falls short — in representing them. Such an…