The records. Every file the Department produced is published at middlesexgazette.org/records/tax-prr-november-2026/, with one personal phone number, three staff phone numbers and the mail-routing headers removed, and tracking tokens cut from links in the text renderings, as the collection's index lists. The notes below cite them by email and part, or by screenshot, as they appear there.
On October 30 I asked the Vermont Department of Taxes for its records on Commissioner Bill Shouldice's commentary. The piece ran in at least five newspapers and on the Department's own website in the week before the election.1 The Gazette's concern is twofold: the commentary was a political message, and the data in it was cherry-picked to serve that message. The Department sent 49 files on the evening of November 3. One record was withheld. The Department expects to finish reviewing the rest by November 13.2
The records tell a story in four parts. The commentary was planned and written in a week. The Governor's office was in it from the first working day. The Commissioner's principal assistant described Vermont's taxes as "truly progressive." Every figure the officials offer in these records about who pays Vermont's taxes is about one tax, the income tax. Count the income tax, the property taxes and the taxes on spending, as the Gazette did last week, and the picture reverses. The average top-1-percent filer, on $1.56 million a year, pays a smaller share of income than the median Vermont household does on $83,000. A household at the top-1-percent line pays less than one earning a quarter as much. When the average one-percenter pays a lower rate than the median household, the tax system is regressive.3 And after the piece went up on the state website, the Deputy Commissioner wrote that in hindsight she might have discouraged it, so close to an election. The State's own personnel policy tells its employees not to use their official authority or influence to affect an election, and the only people who can enforce it work for the Governor.
1. The participants and their plan
The first draft was written over the weekend of October 17 and 18 by Jake Feldman, a Department analyst.4 On Monday, Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Sameroff sent it up: "Jake did a GREAT first pass at op-ed content over the weekend."5 Shouldice read it that night: "This is awesome!!… you have captured my voice and my self deprecating humor."6
Three other Department staff matter here. Sameroff, Deputy Commissioner since December 2020, runs the policy side; she led the rewrite and later sent the text about hindsight.7 Sarah Mearhoff, the Commissioner's principal assistant, handled the press and the Governor's office; by November 2 she had moved to the Agency of Commerce and was still handling the press.8 Katelyn Connizzo, the communications director, edited the draft and asked the question about the $25,000.9 Shouldice himself was appointed by Governor Scott in February 2025.10
The editing happened on Tuesday, October 20, in a Teams group chat. Its earliest captured message is Sameroff's, at 9:31 AM: "Op ed chat!"11 The group logged more than 300 tracked changes that day.12 The day before, Sameroff had called one sentence in the draft "a Claude sentence." Claude is an AI assistant. She "liked Jake's OG a bit better."13 The staff knew what the piece was for. Fifteen days before Election Day, state employees on the public payroll were planning a rebuttal of the "wealth tax" argument. In the records, that argument belongs to the Fair Share for Vermont coalition, a group of advocacy organizations that includes the Public Assets Institute. The coalition said in January that the top 1 percent of Vermont earners "are set to receive an average annual tax cut of $57,000" under the federal law. Amanda Janoo, the Democratic nominee running against the Governor who appointed their Commissioner, had been part of the coalition and ran on an income surcharge built on its plan. Mearhoff, in a comment on the draft: "part of the power of this op-ed is utilizing -- and debunking -- the verbiage being used by advocates and candidates."14 Mearhoff again: "an op-ed could be Step 1, and Bill could piggyback it into follow-up interviews if this makes a big enough splash (which I think it could, given what a key tenet this whole 'wealth tax' argument is to certain people in the news cycle these days)."14 The next day she sent the final draft to the Governor's office as "an op-ed debunking the 'wealth tax' rhetoric that's been circulating in the state."15
2. The Governor's office, from October 19
Three people from the fifth floor of 109 State Street, where the Governor's office and the Agency of Administration sit, appear in the records. Amanda Wheeler is the Governor's press secretary. Sarah Clark is the Secretary of Administration. The Department of Taxes is a department of her agency. By statute its Commissioner is appointed by her, with the Governor's approval and the Senate's consent, and serves at her pleasure; the Governor announced Shouldice's appointment. Jason Maulucci is the Governor's director of policy and ran his 2024 reelection campaign.16
October 19, 12:38 PM. Mearhoff: "I've reached out to Amanda on the 5th floor and asked to chat with her sometime this afternoon about op-ed optics, timing, pros/cons…"17 4:48 PM. Sameroff asks Shouldice to "reach out to the 5th floor for a green light on the concept," adding that she cannot recall "who you discussed this with besides Sec Clark."18 8:00 PM. Shouldice sends the draft to Clark and Wheeler: "I'd love to get it out…ASAP…but let me know your thoughts!"19
October 20, 7:36 AM. Clark: "We will be in touch!"20 8:29 AM. Wheeler, copying Maulucci: "This is good to go from my perspective – I'd just recommend either hyperlinking your sources or having a source sheet handy because reporters will likely ask."21 8:46 AM. Sameroff to staff: "Call to action!… Bill wants it out ASAP."22 10:09 AM. Sameroff reports Clark's edits: "Sarah clark sent some edits, inclduing randomly bolded words."23 1:02 PM. Mearhoff: "Just talked to Amanda Wheeler and the gov's office is happy and eager. She asked for one final look at the draft before we send it to newspapers. The gov is scheduled to go on the Morning Drive tomorrow morning and will tease some of these talking points."24 5:08 PM. Mearhoff sends the "final draft" to Wheeler, Maulucci, Clark and Shouldice for that last look.15
October 21 was debate day. 9:21 AM. Mearhoff: Shouldice "has nudged the 5th floor for their approval ASAP." 11:11 AM. Mearhoff: Shouldice "is reaching out to them one more time and if they don't answer, he said to just let it rip." 11:38 AM. Mearhoff: "Just got the clear from 5th floor and Bill. Sending."25 The pitches went to the newspapers from 11:45 AM.26 That evening, at the Vermont Public debate, the Governor was handed a listener's question: what would he tell a young family thinking of moving to Vermont. The moderator had just asked his challenger whether her surcharge could dissuade such a family. His answer included: "But we have the most progressive tax system in the country, we already do tax people more the more they earn."27 The next morning, in a thread about where the commentary might run, Sameroff: "The trump tax cut was front and center early in the debate so I'm thinking he'll get pinged (if op-ed staff and reporter staff talk, at least)."28
October 27. The piece ran in the Times Argus and Rutland Herald and went up on tax.vermont.gov with no disclaimer. Mearhoff told Shouldice she had also sent it "to reporters at Digger, VPR, WCAX, etc. for their own background/reporting purposes."29 She had talked to WCAX's Calvin Cutler off the record on the day of the pitches and sent him the commentary. Sameroff's word for Mearhoff's part in the WCAX story of October 21 was "seeding."30
3. The "most progressive" claim and what it leaves out
The shares of income tax paid by the top 1 percent and the top 10 percent were in Feldman's first draft. Sameroff rewrote the piece on the afternoon of October 20 and kept them. Twenty minutes after the rewrite went up, Mearhoff wrote in the group chat, addressing Sameroff: "Huge fan of adding the portions of PIT receipts paid by top 1%, 10%, etc.… Really illustrates how truly progressive our tax system already is."31 The commentary says Vermont has "one of the most progressive state tax systems in the country." The Governor said "the most progressive tax system in the country" at the debate.
Every one of those claims rests on one tax. PIT is the personal income tax. There is nothing in the top 1 percent's share of income-tax receipts about what share of their own income they pay. There is nothing in it about the property tax, the sales tax, or the taxes on meals, rooms and gasoline. The Gazette ran those numbers last week, using the Department's own effective-rate tables for the income tax. Counting the income tax, both property taxes and the sales and excise taxes, in Middlesex, a median Vermont household pays about 9 percent of its income. A household at the 75th percentile pays about 10 percent. A household at the top-1-percent line pays 9.4 percent. The average top-1-percent filer pays under 8 percent. The 75th-percentile household earns about $139,000 a year. The top-1-percent line is about $587,000. The household with less than a quarter of the income pays the larger share. The comparison with the middle is starker. The average top-1-percent filer reports about $1.56 million of income, nineteen times the median household's $83,000, and pays a smaller share of it than the median household does. On average, the people the commentary defends pay less, as a share of what they make, than the typical Vermonter.32 The one published ranking that would support the Commissioner's phrase, from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, puts Vermont near the top of a list of mostly regressive states and calls its system "regressive through the top part."33
Figure 1. Share of income paid by four households. Left: the income tax alone, from the Department's 2024 averages after credits. Right: the income tax plus the 2026–27 education and municipal property bills after the credit, and the sales, meals, alcohol, vehicle and gasoline taxes on Consumer Expenditure Survey spending, for Middlesex homes of $304,000 to $800,000. The average top-1-percent filer, on nineteen times the median household's income, pays the highest income-tax rate and the lowest overall rate. Source: Middlesex Gazette model, October 27, 2026.
The same selectivity shaped the commentary's main claim: that the $57,000 federal tax cut for the top 1 percent is "not what actually happened," only an extension of the 2017 Trump cuts. The Department's own analyst knew that was half the story. On October 20 Connizzo asked whether ITEP's correction meant "the windfall is less than advertised but still five digits?" Feldman said about $25,000 of it was new business tax cuts from the bill's expensing rules, "just a timing change," and "too wonky" for the commentary. Connizzo and Sameroff said to put it in the source document, not the commentary. Feldman wrote it into the commentary anyway that morning: the bill "did allow businesses to take some expenses all at once rather than spread them out," a near-term benefit that is "a wash over time." Sameroff's rewrite that afternoon moved the sentence below the commentary, under the line "Save fodder below for potential media questions," and it never came back. His comment the next morning put the split at "maybe $32K" of extension and "maybe $25K" of "new stuff."34 Call it timing if you like. Deducting the whole cost of new equipment or research this year, instead of over five years or more, means paying less tax now and keeping money you would not otherwise have had for years. That is a tax cut. ITEP's correction calls it one. With the 2017 cuts extended, it says, "the tax cut at the top is about $25,000," and "a lot of the tax cut at the top is attributable to business-side tax cuts." The commentary did not mention it. Sameroff, on whether to send reporters the fuller source guide: "That 57k stuff is pretty bonkers complicated so we may just have to rest on our authority as tax experts!"35 The outlets got the basic source page. The commentary went out saying the $57,000 cut is "not what actually happened." ITEP's correction, which the Department's own analyst worked through, said about $25,000 of it did. The sentence that acknowledged the expensing change was gone.
Figure 2. The $57,000 average federal tax cut for Vermont's top 1 percent under the 2025 federal law, as the Department's analyst split it on October 20 and 21: about $32,000 from extending the 2017 cuts and about $25,000 of new business expensing, which he called “just a timing change.” The commentary told readers the whole $57,000 was an extension. Deducting a cost this year instead of over five years or more is money kept now: a tax cut. ITEP's top 1 percent is a different group from the Department's in Figure 1: ITEP's starts at about $759,000 of 2026 income and averages about $1.96 million; the Department's starts at $586,634 of 2024 income and averages $1.56 million.
4. What the Deputy Commissioner said in hindsight
On Thursday, October 29, two days after the website posting, Sameroff and Mearhoff were texting. Mearhoff was annoyed at the Public Assets Institute: "We have the RECEIPTS!" Sameroff:
"Haha yeah there's quite a Buzz on Reddit too. Unfortunately some of it is about whether it was appropriate for the department to post the oped on its website or not... Which in hindsight maybe I would've discouraged so close to an election... / But we're within our legal bounds!"36
Mearhoff's reply: anyone who would "care deeply enough about that to post about it" is "too online/plugged in/not representative of most Vermonters," and "the fact that Tax — from its position of great credibility and generally apolitical nature — did write/post it speaks to the need for objective fact-checking in this conversation!"37
This is the Deputy Commissioner talking. She asked the Commissioner to get the Governor's office's green light. She led the rewrite. She approved a social-media post about the piece on October 28; the produced file's name says it was not posted.38 On October 30 she weighed whether a reporter's question should be answered "from a technocrat like Jake or another exempt appointee (me)," adding that the reporter "hasn't been part of the 'should tax have been involved' question so maybe not an issue either way."39 She had asked that question of herself the day before. Her answer was "within our legal bounds."
The rule that speaks to it is the State's own personnel policy. Policy 5.7 of the Department of Human Resources, "Political Activity," applies to every classified and exempt employee of the Executive Branch, commissioners and deputies included. It says an employee may not "use his or her official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the nomination or election of any candidate for public office." It lists as prohibited "using his or her official title; government funds, equipment, supplies or personnel while participating in political activity." It defines political activity as "activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group." It bars political activity during working hours and in State buildings. Its stated purpose is "to avoid conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflicts of interest; to ensure that employees can perform their duties without political pressure or considerations; and to promote public confidence in the integrity of Vermont State Government."40 Read that against the record: a commentary written on State time by State employees, cleared by the Governor's press secretary, aimed at the challenger's tax plan, and posted on a State website a week before the Governor stood for election. Whether that is activity directed toward the success or failure of a candidate is a judgment someone has to make.
Here is who makes it. The Department of Human Resources issued the policy and the Secretary of Administration approved it. The Commissioner of Human Resources is appointed by that Secretary with the Governor's approval and serves at the Secretary's pleasure; the Secretary is appointed by the Governor and serves at the Governor's. Any action to enforce the policy needs the Governor's approval. And whatever is decided stays private: the files kept to evaluate or discipline a State employee are exempt from the Public Records Act, and the Department publishes no record of enforcement.41 The people who would judge whether the Governor's appointees broke the rule work for the Governor, and nobody outside would be told either way.
Part of that rule is in statute too. The merit-system principles for the State's career service, in 3 V.S.A. § 312, include "assuring that employees are protected against coercion for partisan political purposes and are prohibited from using their official position for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election or a nomination for office." The career service is the classified staff. Department heads, one deputy for each, and the Governor's office staff are outside it. The Deputy Commissioner calls herself an "exempt appointee" in the records. Beyond that there is little. There is no Vermont statute that limits what an executive agency may publish before an election. The State Code of Ethics bars using office for personal or financial gain and using State resources for anything but official State business; neither rule mentions elections. There is no candidate named in the commentary's text; the bio line sent to the papers names the Governor who appointed him.42 I asked the Department for its policies on commentaries, website content and communications during an election period, and for any election-period guidance it received from the Governor's office or the Agency of Administration. There is none in the records produced so far, and Policy 5.7 was not among what the Department sent.43
5. Questions raised by these records
- Who cleared the commentary at 11:38 AM on October 21, in what form, and what did Secretary Clark change? In the records produced so far, the clearance and Clark's edits exist only as Teams messages about them.44
- Did anyone at the Department or in the Governor's office ask whether Policy 5.7 on political activity applied to this commentary, and has anyone referred it to the Department of Human Resources?40
- Did the Governor go on the Morning Drive that morning, as the Department was told he would, and did what he said match the final draft his office had been sent the evening before?45
- Why does the commentary say the $57,000 cut is "not what actually happened" when the Department's own analyst had found roughly $25,000 of business-side cuts in the same ITEP correction, wrote a sentence about them into the draft, and the rewrite moved it out?34
- Why does every figure the Department offers about fairness stop at the income tax? The Department publishes the education property tax rates and runs the credit too, and it publishes effective income-tax rates by income group. Put those rates beside this year's property-tax bills and the sales taxes, as the Gazette did, and the top 1 percent pays a smaller share of income than the upper middle class.32
- Which outlets received the piece, and which reporters got it as background? Four pitch emails were produced. Mearhoff told the others in the group chat she would stop copying them on the pitch emails "because I imagine that's getting really old really fast. Just know I'm disseminating this widely."46
- What was withheld, and under what statute? The Department's letter cites a title of the Vermont Statutes that does not contain the Public Records Act.47
- Which custodians were searched? The texts came from one phone. There are no text or Teams messages to or from the Commissioner in the records produced so far. The emails he wrote appear only as text quoted inside other people's forwards. The produced emails addressed to him are three notes (October 19, October 27 and November 2) and the four pitch emails, on which he is copied.48
- What is still coming on November 13, and will the Department reconcile its count of 54 to what it has sent?2
At 12:54 AM on Wednesday, November 4, I sent this piece, with its notes, to the Commissioner's office, Deputy Commissioner Sameroff, communications director Connizzo and the Governor's press secretary, Amanda Wheeler. The Department's lawyer and Mearhoff, now at the Agency of Commerce, were copied. I asked for comment by noon. The records it is built on were published at the same time at middlesexgazette.org/records/tax-prr-november-2026/.
By noon on Wednesday, November 4, neither the Department nor the Governor's office had responded. Any response that arrives will be added here.
Shouldn't Vermonters be able to rely on their Department of Taxes to do the ethical thing, not just the legal thing? Why is this a problem at all? One fact stands: Scott picked the leadership in place, and Scott has been in charge for nearly a decade.
