Richard Westman has new job

“It’s very interesting work,” he said.

Westman, of Cambridge, is a long-time legislator who was elected to Lamoille County’s lone senate seat last November.

He said he enjoys his time in the Legislature, but it doesn’t pay the bills — legislators in Vermont make between $12,000 and $15,000 a year, with no health benefits, he said.

“You can’t be in the Legislature and make a living,” he said. “This is my summer job.”

At the co-op, Westman’s job is to talk with the public and do other outreach work, like writing up information on ballot votes for the co-op’s 34,000 members.

For much of his legislative career, Westman has focused on transportation issues, so the power business is a natural, but challenging fit, he said.

“There’s a lot of similarities between all areas where you talk about infrastructure, whether it’s power or roads or sewer or water lines,” he said.

Westman said working for the co-op, like many jobs in Vermont, could raise conflict of interest issues during votes in the Legislature, but said he’d make sure to recuse himself on any vote that would affect his salary.

“It’s the nature of a citizen’s legislature,” he said. “The question is do you yourself directly benefit from a decision that is made? One could argue that a teacher (in the Legislature) voting for a school funding formula has some effect on their salary.”

Westman compared it to his time working at Vermont Student Assistance Corporation, which handled grant money for college students. While in the Legislature, he had to vote on how to allocate federal loan money to the nonprofit, but because it didn’t affect his salary, he said he didn’t recuse himself.

Westman was elected to the House in 1982, as a 23-year-old representative for the Cambridge-Belvidere-Waterville district. He held that seat for 27 years, until then-governor Douglas appointed him in 2009 to run the state tax department.

He is a dairy farmer and worked for 10 years at the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation, directing its higher education investment plan.

In nearly three decades in the House, Westman served on many committees, and chaired both the Appropriations and the Transportation committees.