Speaking at his weekly press conference Thursday, Gov. Peter Shumlin named former Vermont Press Bureau chief Louis Porter as his next secretary of civil and military affairs. Porter, who most recently served as “Lake Champlain lakekeeper” for the Conservation Law Foundation, will be charged with implementing Shumlin’s agenda in the legislature.
Or, as Shumlin put it, “ensuring that the legislators do everything we want and should do.”
With Porter’s former colleagues gathered around a conference table in the governor’s office, Shumlin said, “He’s someone whose integrity and extraordinary intelligence and commitment to what’s best about Vermont has always impressed me.”
The Calais native worked in journalism for 10 years — his last five in the Press Bureau, which provides Statehouse news coverage for the Rutland Herald and the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus. At the CLF, Porter has been an outspoken advocate for Vermont’s rivers and lakes — particularly in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene.
He was highly critical of the Shumlin administration’s failure to enforce environmental laws after Irene, telling Seven Days in June, “To tell you the truth, I think both ANR’s actions after Irene and the statements from the governor both contributed to bad work in the river. Both had a hand in that.”
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