From BurlingtonFreePress.com:

The two candidates talked loftily about transparency and technological advances, but it was a listener from Barton who posed the kind of question one of them might have to answer routinely as secretary of state.

The listener said a town clerk had charged him 10 cents a page for a public record, citing town regulations, even though state law specified 5 cents. What should he have been charged, 5 cents or 10 cents?

Neither Jim Condos, the Democratic candidate, nor Jason Gibbs, the Republican, was willing to hazard a guess. Each said he was unsure which law took precedence. But the question, toward the end of their 45-minute debate on Vermont Public Radio’s “Vermont Edition,” provided a springboard for each to discuss his public-records platform.

Condos said he would establish a public-records advisory office, with an ombudsman who would hear public-records disputes. Gibbs said he would create a public-records accountability commission that would help consolidate disparate laws and render them in plain English.

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