Op-Ed: It’s not ‘outsourcing.’ It’s democracy and the rule of law.

August 10, 2026  |  By Frederick Weston

Complaints about unelected officials and allegations of unconstitutional delegations of legislative authority never, it seems to me, accompany praise for the decisions these folks make. It’s only when the complainant is unhappy with the actions of appointed commissions that we get breathless pleadings about home rule, the inexorable erosion of democracy, and the diminution of individual sovereignty. Fair enough. I have my own laments about the corruption of democracy and our freefall toward planetary catastrophe. But they don’t emerge from the swamp that Elizabeth Brown and Alison Despathy conjure up in their recent column, “It’s time to stop outsourcing responsibility.”

They catalogue a thick list of grievances and imply that they’re the issue of a particular and pernicious shortcoming: all are products of the not-to-be-trusted work of people who are neither installed by the electorate nor exercising power lawfully. This belies a sad ignorance of constitutional law (both U.S. and Vermont) and of Vermont’s own rich history of commission-based governance.

Virtually all legislative action, whether federal, state, or municipal, involves—indeed, requires—a delegation of authority. It’s what legislatures are constitutionally empowered to do and must do, practically. It’s why we have state agencies. (I note that Brown and Despathy do not decry, say, VTrans or the Department of Corrections, both of which have greater powers over life and death than any of the bodies they mention.) 

Legislatures grant authority to agents or agencies to carry out specific, statutorily defined tasks. Such activities are subject to legislative (and, often, executive) oversight and, critically, judicial review. In the same way that Congress created the Federal Communications Commission to regulate telephony and broadcast media, Vermont created the Public Utility Commission to regulate utilities and Waterbury created the Development Review Board to oversee certain kinds of land use. 

There are countless other examples of such instruments of legislative intent. There’s a long and, in some cases, sordid history that led to their creation and, though their particular circumstances varied, they all shared at least one objective: to insulate evidence-based decision-making processes as much as possible from the corrupting influence of politics. They were correctives. Indeed, they were amongst the most foresighted and, yes, democratic actions that the federal and state governments took in the latter years of the 19th Century and first half of the 20th. Vermont’s own record in this regard is one we can be proud of, in no small measure because of our reliance on citizen participation (for the most part unpaid).

The Climate Council, created with the passage of the Global Warming Solutions Act, is another instance of this sort of subject-matter-focused body. The commission and its subcommittees are populated by a broad and diverse group of administration officials, interested parties from across our economic and political spectrums, and citizens. The Council’s authority is strictly limited; its primary charge is to develop policy recommendations that, if implemented (under the existing authority of state agencies or new legislation), will enable the state to meet its greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. The Council proposes; the legislature disposes.

So too with the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission and Waterbury’s own planning commission. These are bodies charged with developing, through open, public processes, conceptual plans for managing land use, development, and transportation in our area now and in the years to come. They have no power to implement the plans. Instead, they make recommendations to relevant legislative bodies. Also, the plans inform the decisions of district environmental commissions, but they are not, by themselves, dispositive. And, of course, the Environmental Board’s decisions, like those of other commissions, are appealable to the Vermont courts and, ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court.

We can debate the need for such bodies or the reasonableness of their decisions—and then, through legislative action, alter their grants of authority—but to couch the discussion in wolf cries of unconstitutionality and innuendo about appointed officials’ lack of integrity is to create a false narrative on the one hand and to defame, without evidence, the good works of our fellow citizens on the other. 

Consider that Brown and Despathy recommend no practical solutions for the ailments they allege. They say only that “It’s time to stop outsourcing responsibility.” What do they want? That commissions of this sort should never be created or that they should only be empaneled by elections? Alfred Smith was right when he said “All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy,” but we’d be wrong to think that it manifests only, or should manifest only, in electoral processes. Not all problems have the same cure.

Good governance and public policy don’t follow blithely from slogans. This one might have momentary rhetorical appeal, but on closer examination one sees that it’s as meatless as a desiccated bone.

Frederick Weston lives in Waterbury.