GLOVER — To an outsider, Rodgers Road seems like one of hundreds of unremarkable dirt roads in Vermont. The road, which stretches for over a mile, is surrounded by towering green trees and sprawling farmland. It passes by a cemetery holding the gravestones of families that have called this small Northeast Kingdom town home for generations.
But the road is also at the center of an increasingly personal, yearslong ownership dispute between Vermont’s Lt. Gov. John Rodgers and the town of Glover’s leadership and employees. The town considers all of Rodgers Road to be a town highway — Town Highway 48, specifically. Meanwhile, Rodgers says a three-quarter mile portion along which he lives and farms is actually private and belongs to him.
Rodgers Road — named after the lieutenant governor’s family, who have owned the property for close to two centuries — makes an almost 90 degree turn, creating a wonky square with the equally rural Andersonville Road and Daniels Pond Road. Both of those roads are Class 3, meaning that under Vermont law they must be maintained year-round. That classification continues past the intersection onto Rodgers Road for roughly one-third of a mile. The remainder of Rodgers Road is considered Class 4, which doesn’t require year-round maintenance. This is the contentious section, currently the subject of a lawsuit that Rodgers filed against the town last month.
Rodgers says his family has always owned the road section. Glover, on the other hand, says the town has always owned the section. The legal dispute started in 2023.
That was about a year before Rodgers announced his decision to run for the state’s second highest office and 18 months since he had last represented the region in the state Legislature. Elected in 2002 as a state representative for Glover and surrounding towns, Rodgers later also served as a state senator, in both offices as a Democrat. He changed parties before accepting the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in 2024.
On June 12, 2023, according to public records obtained by VTDigger, Rodgers emailed then-Glover Selectboard member Leanne Harple — now herself serving as the town’s state representative — requesting that no work be done on the Class 4 section of Rodgers Road, until the question of ownership is answered.
Earlier that day, Rodgers had stopped Mike Pray, a member of the Glover road crew, from putting in a new culvert on that section of the road.
“I would ask that until this legal issue has been resolved that No town action is taken on the class for [sic] section of the road,” Rodgers wrote in the email, obtained via the public records request.
Rodgers went on to say he was considering closing the road to through traffic once his right to do so was affirmed. “I could close the road and make the town higher [sic] a legal team to find evidence of their right of way if I decided to go that direction,” he wrote. “I would rather not.”
“My intention is that if my legal team is correct that I will eventually close the road to car and truck traffic but would leave it open to all pedestrian bicycle ATV in UTV used as a Trail,” Rodgers added.
When Harple forwarded Rodgers’ email to Pray and other Glover officials — asking if work could pause until the legal issue had been resolved — Pray shared his version of events.
“I was greeted with John [Rodgers] walking up to me in the excavator calling me a moron, and was told if I do any work on the Class 4 … that cops would be called,” Pray wrote.
Later in the email thread, then-selectboard member David Simmons said he didn’t see a reason to give up the road.
“Calling Mike a Fucking moron is nothing more than him being a bully,” he wrote.
The disagreement was just starting to heat up.
Town records and road crew
A few weeks later, on July 17, 2023, Rodgers found himself in front of the Glover Selectboard, arguing his case.
“I asked the town about giving [Rodger’s Road] up, they didn’t seem like they were going to negotiate,” Rodgers said at the meeting, according to audio obtained by VTDigger. “So I got a hold of a lawyer and a researcher. And from our preliminary research, there is no record of layout, no record of dedication and acceptance, two major hurdles for the town.”
In response, Nick Ecker-Racz, a former selectboard member who gained extensive knowledge about Glover roads and their history helping put together various maps for town use, disagreed, stating Rodgers’ researcher was “mistaken.”
After some polite chatter, Rodgers brought up the conflict that had occurred between himself and Pray on June 12. Rodgers also accused Scott Pray, another member of the Glover road crew, of “coming at” him with a grader, and stated the town had made a “huge mistake” hiring the Prays to the road crew.
The meeting then devolved into an argument between Rodgers and the road crew.
Following the meeting, Glover Selectboard members sent Rodgers a letter stating: “Last night’s Select Board meeting was uncomfortable and upsetting … Somehow, we need to find a way to de-escalate the tension that exists now between you and our town employees.”
A key theme in the Rodgers Road dispute has been the strained relationship between Rodgers and Glover’s road crew, particularly Scott and Mike Pray — who are father and son, respectively. Their clashes often got personal.
Rodgers and his wife, Brenda Rodgers, both accused Glover road crew members of trying to run them off of the road multiple times according to letters written by the couple to the Glover selectboard. The letters were written following a request by Harple, who asked the couple via email on July 18 to write down their experiences with the road crew.
Brenda’s letter recounted a time she was driving home from work on July 13, 2023, and “had to almost come to a complete stop as the grader came slightly over the middle of the road onto my side,” she wrote. “I was sure he was going to hit me. I was scared for my life and hope nothing like that ever happens again. I feel unsafe driving these town roads.”
John’s letter accused the Prays of trying to run him off the road on the same day. Rodgers also accused Scott Pray of attempting to run him off the road in spring 2023 while the latter was doing maintenance on Parker Road.
“I came around the sharp corner and met Scott on the grader,” John Rodgers wrote. “At first he made a quick steer to the right to give the approaching vehicle more room but when he saw that it was me he made a quick steer back toward me and continue[d] to crowd me off the road.”
Mike and Scott Pray responded with their own letters, denying the Rodgers’ accusations.
“I have no recollection of ever swerving at anyone ever while operating the grader,” Scott Pray wrote. “As far as Brenda’s accusation I truly do not know what she drives or what she looks like.”
Mike Pray wrote that he had “no recollection of myself, or any town employees swerving, veering or trying to run John Rodgers, Brenda Rodgers or anyone else [off the road] while maintaining and performing our duties, or for any other reason in the Town of Glover.”
On Dec. 5, 2023, after the road crew had plowed his road later than he expected following a snow storm, Rodgers wrote about the escalating frustration he felt with the road crew in an email to selectboard members Harple and Phil Young.
“My family has nearly 200 years of service to this town and a reputation for being honest, hard-working people that help everybody out,” he wrote. “I have over 20 years of public service serving this town and this area. To have these lowlifes discriminating against me, is a serious slap in the face.”
A complex controversy
Between January 2024 and April 2025, the road dispute cooled off from its prior fever pitch. During that time, Rodgers ran for lieutenant governor and won the race against a seated incumbent, a rarity in Vermont politics. He was formally sworn into that office in January 2025 after a vote by the full Legislature, required because neither candidate had won a majority in the fall race.
But a number of actions in the spring — including a select board meeting and stories run by WCAX, one of Vermont’s local television news stations — brought the issue to the attention of Vermonters, some of them just getting to know their new lieutenant governor.
At a May 8 select board meeting, Rodgers, who joined via Zoom, again threatened legal action against the town and said he would shut the road to through traffic, according to reporting by WCAX.
“The reason I would like to be able to negotiate something that the town could support is because if we don’t, then we’re both gonna spend a ton more money on lawyers,” Rodgers said at that meeting according to audio obtained by VTDigger. “If I win, I’m going to shut the road down completely. There’ll be no access. If you win, you’re going to spend a whole bunch of money on lawyers and then have to spend money fixing up the road and maintaining it forever.”
At least one select board member sympathized with the lieutenant governor’s position.
In a Facebook comment on the WCAX story, select board member Anne Eldridge defended Rodgers against others commenters who accused him of taking advantage of his statewide office to make a land grab against the town.
“Regardless of my position, I’m still just one voter and citizen in this town. I consider John a friend, and am absolutely sympathetic to his, and his family’s, concerns,” Eldridge wrote.
The television segment “indeed showed a very limited view of a complex and long-standing controversy,” she said in the social media post. “I don’t personally agree with the comments saying this is any kind of abuse of power – he has every right to make his case as a resident, and we have an obligation to hear out and address the concerns of our constituents.”
At the May 8 meeting, select board members discussed getting input from others living on Rodgers Road. In response, some Glover residents began organizing a petition to keep all of Rodgers Road a town highway.
Twelve Glover residents, most of whom live or own property on or near the road, signed the petition. Two notable names on the list were Jim and Nancy Rodgers — John Rodgers’ uncle and aunt, who lived in Rodgers’ current home for decades until they sold it to him in 2019. The couple still live on the road, in a home nearby. Prior to the sale, Rodgers lived on a road next to Rodgers Road.
In a May 19 letter to the Glover Select Board, resident Elizabeth Nelson argued that if the Class 4 section of the road “ceases to be a public through highway, it will make access for agricultural or residential use impossible to my property. It will also significantly affect my property value.”
Nella and James Coe, two longtime Glover residents who run an architecture firm and whose property touches Rodgers Road, were lead circulators of the petition.
“Currently, a corner of our property adjoins Rodgers Road. If it was all privatized, we’d lose access,” James Coe told VTDigger.
The petition was presented at a May 22 select board meeting, attended by over 40 people.
Jim Rodgers, John Rodgers’ uncle, came to the meeting to voice his opposition at the idea of his nephew owning the road.
“We’re against it. We’re living on a Class 4 road, and we would be land-locked if that was shut off,” Jim Rodgers said. “To put it bluntly, it’s silly. It’s plain stupid. That’s my opinion.”
At the meeting, the select board unanimously voted to officially keep all of Rodgers Road part of Town Highway 48, allowing the road crew to continue to work on and maintain the road.
“Now, the war begins,” one select board member said moments after the vote.
On June 4, select board member Glenn Gage emailed Mike Pray, alleging that when Gage went to visit Rodgers Road to check on the work the road crew did, the lieutenant governor was “confrontational about what was going on, mainly about WCAX being involved. He says it was an inside job that got this story leaked. I assured him that it was not, but he has made his mind up over that part.”
On June 11, John and Brenda Rodgers filed suit against the town, requesting a preliminary injunction to prevent Glover from performing planned work on the disputed section of Rodgers Road. They also asked the court to determine who owns the Class 4 section of the road. A hearing for the case is scheduled for October.
To bolster the lawsuit, the lieutenant governor hired a surveyor, who in an affidavit stated that there has never been a record that establishes the town’s ownership of the disputed section of Rodgers Road.
Ecker-Racz, the former select board member, disputed that conclusion, providing VTDigger with a 19th-century document that he says shows maintenance work was done on the road by a town road worker before it was owned by the Rodgers family.
James Ehlers, Rodgers’ chief of staff, declined to comment on the Rodgers Road dispute because the matter was making its way through the court, and referred all questions to the lieutenant governor’s legal representation.
“We assert that the Town never lawfully established the disputed section of Rodgers Road as a legal town highway,” Michael Tarrant, one of Rodgers’ lawyers told VTDigger this week. “We believe that a segment that runs through their property has always been and remains their private property.”
Tarrant also rebuked the idea of Rodgers shuttering the road to public access.
“If we prevail in this case, the result would not be that the Rodgers will have ‘taken back’ or ‘privatized’ this disputed segment,” Tarrant wrote. “Rather, the Court would confirm that this portion of the road never belonged to the Town to begin with — and public access has and will remain within the discretion of the Rodgers.”
The Coes, who are co-chairs of the Glover Planning Commission, said the lawsuit has put a strain on town resources.
“We are on the planning commission, and we have had to stop pursuing some projects because this is happening,” Nella said. “Anything that is raised, that we’d like to do, we are being told … there is no money and it’s not an option to even ask for it, because that would just cause stress to the town.”
Despite the friction the road dispute has caused between Rodgers and town officials, Nella said it has also had a surprisingly positive effect on Glover residents.
“Its kind of brought people together. It’s been cool in that way,” she said. “… I’m sorry to say this, but they’re kind of laughing about it.”
