Congratulations are in order for Allen Gilbert, the executive director of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. At a banquet last week Allen was honored with the Matthew Lyon Award for his lifetime commitment to the First Amendment and the public's right to know the truth in Vermont.

Gilbert, himself a former reporter and editor for the Times Argus and Rutland Herald (pre-strike, for those with a long enough memory for that), has been in the forefront of the fight for government transparency in Vermont. As the Bennington Banner reports:

 Vermont Press Association President Maria Archangelo, publisher of the Stowe Reporter and Waterbury Record, said Gilbert has been on the front lines in fighting for greater public access to government records, for public disclosure about police misconduct, and for blocking efforts to hide the cause of death on public death certificates in Vermont.

“Allen has been a key figure in tracking what the Legislature has been doing, especially dealing with transparency in Vermont government,” Archangelo said. “He is a big reason that Vermonters now have a new public records law, replacing a statute that was one of the weakest in the nation. ” While the Vermont Press Association and the ACLU don't always agree, it's important to acknowledge Gilbert's extraordinary work through the years as a journalist, as a government official, and with the ACLU, Archangelo said.

In other work, Gilbert was probably most visible this year as the field general who led the campaign to defeat the legislative proposal to allow the State Police access to prescription drug records, remaining at his post on the House gallery even as the closing speeches were being given at the end of this year's legislative session. 

And who was Matthew Lyon, you ask?

 Lyon also has the distinction of being the only person to be elected to Congress while in jail. On October 10, 1798, Lyon was found guilty of sedition, in violation of the Alien and Sedition Acts; which prohibited malicious writing of the American government as a whole, or of the houses of Congress, or of the President of the United States. Lyon was the first person to be put to trial for violating the acts on charges of criticizing Federalist president John Adams for his pretense of going to war against France.

Here at Green Mountain Daily, government transparency and robust dissent are very important, so we congratulate Allen for this well-deserved honor.