Town officials in Vermont are pressing state lawmakers to change the way the state processes public-records requests, arguing that record-keeping duties are being overwhelmed by a surge of requests they say are coming from companies outside the state. Colchester deputy town manager Renae Marshall said officials are increasingly fielding requests from people and firms “around the country,” and she said the combined effect of request volume and state deadlines has made it difficult to keep up. She acknowledged there is “little or nothing illegal” in what the businesses are doing, but she said the state’s Public Records Act was not designed to serve “easy access to public records for the financial or time-saving benefit of businesses outside of Vermont.”
Marshall tied her argument to what she described as Vermont’s strict response window and fee structure, which require towns to respond quickly under state law even when officials must redact sensitive material. Under the act, she said the definition of a public record is broad, including “any written or recorded information, regardless of physical form or characteristics,” created while the government conducts business. She also pointed to the law’s general rule that officials can charge for making copies but not for in-person inspection, while additional charges can apply if processing a request takes longer than 30 minutes—an issue, she said, that often includes the time-consuming task of removing protected information.
The push for possible changes is now under consideration by Vermont lawmakers, including the Vermont House committee chaired by Rep. Matt Birong, D-Vergennes. Birong said he does not yet know how to proceed, telling the committee, “Right now, I don’t know how to balance it,” adding: “All I know is, we need to balance it if we move forward with something.” The committee has been taking testimony from public records officers in local and state government since the start of the legislative session, according to Birong.
Colchester has proposed several limits on who can access records and when certain records can be produced digitally or photographed, Marshall said. She described the town sometimes receiving requests that come from out of state more than once per week. As an example, she cited last August’s request by an employee of a Virginia-based company, called Records Retrieval Solutions, for electronic copies of “all purchase orders” the town had issued between January 2020 and June 2025.
Marshall said the town does not want to reduce public access, but she said officials question whether corporate requests are creating more harm than good for municipal operations. Samantha Sheehan, a lobbyist for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, said the group regularly hears about similar patterns statewide. Sheehan said some companies request large volumes of information about local bids for services and later sell the data to contractors that use it to compete more effectively.
The League of Cities and Towns has proposed changes aimed at easing the workload on towns, including extending the maximum time officials have to respond to many requests from three days to 14 days. Sheehan said the proposals also include requiring officials to have explicitly denied a request before a requester can make a formal appeal, rather than allowing a denial to be inferred if officials do not respond after three days. The group also wants to broaden fee rules so towns can charge more easily for time and costs associated with making records available for in-person viewing—not only for copies—along with a requirement for “that a reasonable deposit be paid” before officials begin compiling records.
Sheehan said the league is also seeking a new legal definition of “vexatious” requests that would allow officials to seek a court order relieving them of the need to comply with those asks. She said Maine has a similar law. She described the impact as uneven across Vermont municipalities, saying her group has heard that not every town faces constant burdens, estimating that some towns might see only “four or five” such requests at a time, but that officials nevertheless feel overwhelmed. “They feel like they just can’t do their job,” Sheehan said, describing a scenario in which staff might miss grant deadlines or bid deadlines if requests pile up faster than normal operations can handle.
The debate is also playing out locally. In Montpelier, the acting manager, Evelyn Prim, said one resident accounted for 70% of 220 total public-records requests filed there in 2025, the Montpelier Bridge reported last week. Prim told the city council that requests took about 634 staff hours last year overall and cost the city about $6,100 in attorney’s fees, and council members discussed whether the city might need to hire a dedicated staffer to manage the volume, according to testimony described in the coverage.
Opponents of the proposed limits say slowing access and raising costs could reduce transparency and impede reporting. Groups representing Vermont’s newspapers and its TV and radio broadcasters told the government operations panel they oppose many, if not all, of the changes being considered. Bridget Higdon, the publisher of four newspapers in northwestern Vermont and vice president of the Vermont Journalism Coalition, told the committee that giving officials more time to respond would delay reporting. Sheehan and others argued more fees could burden low-income people and smaller news organizations.
David Cuillier, director of the Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, told the committee that the changes being considered in Vermont this year were “absolutely horrid,” and he said they would “make Vermont one of the most secretive states in the nation.” Cuillier said companies requesting public information is not new, but he said there has been “a huge surge” in recent years as technology makes it easier to submit large numbers of requests at once. He also said towns’ record-storage and search tools are falling behind, contributing to the burden.
Cuillier said a better approach would be creating mechanisms for oversight and challenges short of asking towns to take vexatious requesters to court, and he referenced Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Commission as an example. He also questioned whether it was necessarily harmful for companies to solicit public information, arguing that if the result is more competitive service bids, it could save taxpayer money over time. Another advocate, Alex Torpey, interim town manager in Rockingham, said he did not agree with restricting access only to Vermont residents and businesses, but he supported a different approach that would charge corporate requesters higher fees while potentially reducing or eliminating costs for local residents. Torpey said corporate requests are a relatively small share of Rockingham’s overall volume, but he said many of them have come from companies rather than residents.
It was not clear which proposals, if any, would reach the end of the legislative process, Birong said, as the committee weighs how to address administrative strain without restricting access to records the law requires governments to disclose.