The Importance of Chris Cole
Chris Cole is retiring from his job in state government here in Vermont. It’s not a huge deal to the general public. But it matters.
Deep in the guts of government, where the work gets done, guys like Chris Cole matter. We don’t hear much about their work. The media doesn’t get down that deep. What we read and watch every day covers the surface - the debates, the arguments, the latest statement by the governor.
Vermont’s governor Phil Scott, a moderate Republican, holds a twice-a-week press conference to discuss the state’s response to the pandemic. He takes questions from the state’s press corps along with his human services secretary and health commissioner. In doing so, the governor gets a message out to the public via the media. Wear a mask and socially distance, guidelines for returning to school, etc.
Deep beneath the governor’s pronouncements, people like Chris Cole work feverishly every day to make those pronouncements a reality. And it is because of people like Cole that government works at all. They administer huge amounts of money, supervise dozens or hundreds of staff, and try to get them to pull in the same direction in service of the public.
Cole was the commissioner of Buildings and General Services in Vermont. He leaves office this week. Before that he served in several other posts in state government, including as secretary of VTRANS, the state’s highway department.
Before state government, Cole ran a transportation agency in Burlington, VT, which provided bus service around the state’s largest county. He is rarely in the press and most Vermonters don’t know him. But without him and others like him, life in Vermont would come to a grinding halt.
In each of his jobs, Cole did the kind of work that citizens depend on in their daily lives - getting the bus to the grocery store, commuting to work, getting a driver’s license.
If you hear about Cole’s work, it is usually because something went wrong. You don’t read about the successes in the media. The good stuff is boring, but essential. People like Cole order all the supplies for state government. They make sure the snow plow trucks have gas and get on the road in a snowstorm. They spend hours at the Statehouse advising legislators on issues like how best to pave the roads or how to fix a decades-old mold problem in that historic building.
If Cole didn’t do his job, snow doesn’t get plowed on state highways, bridges don’t get repaired, and the discussion of how to do it better doesn’t move forward. Recently, he worked full-time procuring supplies for state government during COVID.
Multiply Chris Cole 100 times or so and you have the essential work of state governments across the country. These are the places where health insurance rates are set, contract tracing during COVID is performed, dump sites are cleaned up, state parks are cleaned, foster kids are protected, drinking water is tested, and grants are given to entrepreneurs and many millions of dollars are taken in and given out in the form of service to citizens.
That list is long. And those essential services are performed every day all year. Try to get through a day without touching something provided or supervised by state government. It’s very tough.
It is fashionable and fun to argue about whether these services are worthwhile, whether they matter, or whether they could be done better. They probably can be done better, but the point is, in the end, the job gets done everyday.
When Chris Cole packs up his office this week and heads home to the next chapter of life, he will be replaced by someone else who will do this essential work, probably trained by Cole.
And that job will get done, because Cole and others like him do work that’s valuable. And what is that? It is this - Citizens getting served by their government in a functioning democracy.
And that, after all, is the point.
