Tomorrow, August 11, is Vermont’s Primary Election.

The primary election is how political parties choose which candidates will represent them on the November General Election ballot. Vermont does not require voters to register with a political party. When you vote in the primary, you can choose which party’s ballot you want to vote. You vote only one of those ballots.

I’m an independent, and this year I will be choosing the Democratic ballot. There are competitive races for both Governor and Lieutenant Governor, with multiple qualified candidates running.

I don’t always make endorsements, and I don’t make them based solely on party affiliation or ideology. Like the decisions I make in Montpelier, I try to evaluate candidates individually, considering their judgment, integrity, willingness to listen and ability to govern.

This year I have endorsed:

Aly Richards for Governor. After years of supporting Governor Scott, this year I am supporting Aly because I believe Vermont is at an inflection point. We cannot continue to just manage our way through challenges that require real change. Aly brings experience, a strong work ethic and practical ideas for Vermont’s future. Aly first needs to win the Democratic Primary if she is to run in the General Election in November

Ryan McClaren for Lieutenant Governor. I am supporting Ryan because he leads with humility, listens before he speaks and puts relationships ahead of ambition. I value public servants who are motivated by service rather than the next political opportunity.

I hope you’ll learn about these candidates and their opponents, make your own decisions, and vote tomorrow.

One last thing that sometimes causes confusion: you will not see my name printed on a primary ballot because I am an independent. My name will appear on the November General Election ballot. You can write my name in during the primary if you would like, but you do not need to do that in order to vote for me in November.

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​Last week I had the opportunity to attend meetings in Chicago with the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators (NCEL), the NCSL Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Task Force, the NCSL Energy Committee, and the Women’s Legislative Network.

Here is what I find valuable about these back-to-back events: legislators of all parties from across the country are here. Just like political parties, no single state has all the answers. Legislators everywhere are wrestling with artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, energy affordability, how to pay for adapting to climate change, education, workforce shortages, housing, modernizing government and many of the same challenges we face in Vermont. Learning from one another helps us avoid repeating mistakes, identify ideas worth exploring and better understand what may or may not work in Vermont. The states themselves are also organized very differently. Wyoming may be in session for as few as 20 days, while Michigan has a year-round legislature. Vermont is generally in session for about 17 to 18 weeks. We still pay citizen-legislature wages, but our legislative session is considerably longer than many other states. There is a lot we can learn from those differences, too.

So, what did I bring back? My biggest takeaways were how aggressively and quickly artificial intelligence is advancing while digital privacy is being reduced; that in many parts of the country, the electric grid is being governed in ways that are driving up costs without increasing resiliency, and in some cases raising serious questions about corruption; and that environmentalists are becoming more open to at least discussing non-fossil fuel energy sources beyond wind and solar.

And increasingly, all of these things are intertwined.

The clearest example is artificial intelligence. That industry is moving incredibly fast. We have gone from talking about what AI might someday be able to do to watching it reshape businesses, infrastructure, government and entire industries in real time.

That raises some pretty basic and urgent questions for me. AI systems depend on enormous amounts of data. What happens to our privacy as more information about us is collected, combined and analyzed? And who is responsible when these systems get something wrong or cause harm? We have done some important work here, especially with leadership from my colleague and national privacy expert Rep. Monique Priestley (see my end of session write up), but AI raises the stakes considerably. We give businesses and government a tremendous amount of information about ourselves. Some of it is information we have no real choice but to provide. Protecting that data, being clear about how it can be used and making sure someone remains accountable for it are important responsibilities for public officials at every level of government. I believe we public officials are behind and quickly falling very far behind.

This connect fairly directly to work I’ve been doing for years on broadband, energy, cybersecurity, data centers and government technology. A lot of that work comes down to perspectives on oversight and accountability, particularly when we are talking about systems that people depend on every day.

In Vermont, we regulate some critical infrastructure for a reason. Electricity can’t simply stop working without real consequences for people, communities and the economy. At the same time, regulation can be expensive, cumbersome and sometimes unnecessary. So the question isn’t simply whether government should regulate something. It is when regulation is necessary, what problem we are trying to prevent or solve, and whether we are actually protecting the public without getting in the way of innovation.

Answering that question is challenging as these systems become increasingly connected.

AI requires huge amounts of electricity. Data centers require electric and telecommunications infrastructure. Our electric grid is increasingly dependent on digital systems, creating new cybersecurity risks. And massive amounts of personal and sensitive data now move through systems most of us never see and most likely don’t fully understand.

So I keep coming back to the same questions: What needs oversight? What needs regulation? Who is responsible for protecting the public? Who pays for the infrastructure? Who bears the risk when something goes wrong? And can the public actually see who is making these decisions and hold them accountable?

Decisions being made now about AI, data, energy and infrastructure will affect what Vermonters pay for energy, how reliable our essential systems are, how our personal information is protected and who is accountable when something goes wrong.

NCSL Women’s Legislative Network

This year I was elected Vice Chair and incoming Chair-Elect of the Women’s Legislative Network, which means next year I will become the first independent legislator to serve as Chair of the network.

Over the past year, I’ve worked with the Network to ensure their bylaws allowed women legislators from across the country to have opportunities to participate in leadership, regardless of political affiliation. Did you know that all of Nebraska’s legislators are non partisan? I’m proud of the progress we’ve made and glad to have the opportunity to continue that work.

I’m now back at my year-round job and have quickly had opportunities to think about how what I was hearing from legislators around the country connects to what we are seeing here in Vermont.

One of those places is the Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee, or JITOC, which provides legislative oversight of major state technology projects and spending. JITOC is currently working to understand where a conflict ridden project to replace Vermont’s aging statewide financial and human resources systems is at.

This is commonly called an ERP, or enterprise resource planning system. Basically, it is the technology government uses behind the scenes to manage things like finances, payroll, purchasing and employees. It is a huge and complicated undertaking, and when these projects go wrong they can be very expensive for taxpayers and disruptive for the people who rely on them.

The length of time this project has been contemplated, planned for and being implemented and the many questions around this project are a good example of why consistent legislative oversight and technology expertise is an important function to develop within the legislature.

I also attended Vermont’s Digital Government Summit last week, in part because I wanted to hear what the chair of the Governor’s AI Task Force had to say about how Vermont is approaching artificial intelligence. The Summit itself gave me quite a bit to think about, particularly around the pace of adoption, cybersecurity, data protection and how we make sure oversight and accountability keep up as government uses new technology.

Work also continues around the future of the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital birthing center. The Windham County legislative delegation recently wrote to the Green Mountain Care Board in support of the hospital. You can read that letter here.

Education

The River Valleys Unified School District Board met on Monday, August 3 and voted to request to be moved out of it’s original study group with much of the current Windham Central Supervisory Union and into study group that is centered around Burr and Burton in Manchester. There was considerable discussion and a fair amount of confusion about if this was the only way to protect school choice.

The West River Modified Union District will meet Monday night, 8/10 at 7 PM at Leland & Gray to discuss their study group.

Office Hours

• Wednesday, August 12, 6:00 p.m. –  Visiting at the Community Gathering on Route 30 or in the event of rain, at the Jamaica Town Office (second Wednesday)
• Thursday, August 20, 6:00 p.m. – Wardsboro Public Library(Third Thursday of each month.)
• Saturday, September 5, 11:00 a.m. – Dover Free Library (First Saturday of each month.)
• Wednesday, September 9, 6:00 p.m. –  Visiting at the Community Gathering on Route 30 or in the event of rain, at the Jamaica Town Office (second Wednesday)
• Thursday, September 17, 6:00 p.m. – Wardsboro Public Library(Third Thursday of each month.)

Community Events

• Windham County History Fair – Saturday August 15th 10-4 including a celebration of the 10 year anniversary of the Gilfeather Turnip becoming the Vermont State Vegetable
• Jamaica Day 2026 – Saturday, August 15 The Jamaica Day Parade begins at 2:30 p.m. Following the parade, the community will gather in front of the Jamaica Community Church to celebrate the United States’ 250th birthday with cake and “Happy Birthday,” led by the American Legion Band. Then they’ll do it again to celebrate Jamaica’s 246th birthday!

If you need help with state services, please reach out. I do not have staff and I work year-round, so if you do not hear back in a day or two, please follow up or send a text. If you find my work useful and are able to support it, you can do that  here.

Thank you for staying engaged and staying in touch!

Rep. Laura Sibilia
Windham-2 District (Dover, Jamaica, Somerset, Stratton, Wardsboro)
Email:  lsibilia@leg.state.vt.us
Phone: (802) 384-0233

Sibilia Announces Campaign for Reelection to Represent Windham-2

Great to have a chance to connect with retiring Brattleboro Rep Molly Burke at NCSL. Molly and I spend a lot of time in the statehouse afterhours during the session.