The public can follow much of Vermont lawmakers' work easily these days: Bills are updated and tracked from the day they are introduced; agendas are published online in advance of meetings. Since the pandemic, floor discussions and even committee meetings are generally live streamed, and the recordings remain online for viewing after the sessions conclude. For a small state with relatively limited Statehouse resources, this is a testament to how even Vermont's oldest institutions can use modern tools to foster trust in government — when they choose to. State lawmakers have chosen not to do so when it comes to their own potential conflicts of interest. Vermont's legislative ethics disclosures fail to provide meaningful insights into legislators' potential conflicts, according to government transparency experts in Vermont and across the country who spoke with Seven Days. In this digital era, lawmakers nevertheless fill out their disclosure forms by hand, and they are often difficult to read. Adding to the confusion, House and Senate members use separate forms that ask for different information. Experts said standardizing the disclosures and switching to an electronic system would offer a clearer and more comprehensive view of potential conflicts of interest among elected officials. Easy access to this information can illuminate for voters the private interests behind their elected officials' votes, experts said. Previous reporting by Seven Days, for example, created a database of legislators' disclosures and found that nearly half of all state senators were landlords as the chamber mulled legislation on tenant protections in 2019. Transparency advocates pointed to the current tumult in federal government, as the Trump administration upends government norms, as evidence of the need for robust mechanisms for transparency and accountability. Vermont ranked 37th in the country in a 2015 assessment of state government accountability and transparency conducted jointly by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity. The findings helped spur the legislature to establish the state's ethics commission two years later amid vows that Vermont's elected officials were committed to restoring faith and trust in government. The commission can receive and review all complaints filed against legislators before referring them to ethics committees in the House and Senate. Those committees alone can investigate concerns at the center of legislative business, such as voting and committee assignments. This year, despite that, the House voted to exempt the groups that investigate alleged misconduct by legislators from a requirement to… ...read more read less