Governor Phil Scott announced Smith’s plans Monday afternoon in a statement praising his hard work, sage counsel and sense of humor.

“Mike helped lead our world-renowned vaccination rollout, worked tirelessly with our health care providers to keep the system working, helped build our testing capacity and so much more,” Scott said. “This is all on top of his day job, leading the largest agency of state government.”

Smith will be the third prominent official to leave the administration in short order, after departures by Fish & Wildlife commissioner Louis Porter in October and administration secretary Susanne Young last month.

Smith, 68, is a former Navy Seal who represented the Woodstock area as a Republican in the House of Representatives from 1977-78. This was his second stint leading the largest state agency, whose 3,500 employees manage corrections, mental health, child protection, public health and publicly funded health insurance programs. He previously served in the role under Republican governor Jim Douglas after serving years as Douglas' secretary of administration.

In late 2019 Scott asked Smith to take his old job back after Al Gobeille resigned and later took a position at the University of Vermont Health Network.

In the statement, Smith said the pandemic had caused him to stay in the $154,000 position longer than he had planned, and that he’d hoped the state’s vaccinations and other measures would by now have resulted in far lower transmission rates.

“The Delta variant has made our jobs a bit more difficult, but nonetheless, we have testing and vaccination programs that are the envy of the rest of the country and we have protected many Vermonters from the more serious outcomes of this virus,” he wrote.

Smith has been an unflappable, often blunt presence at Scott’s weekly press conferences, occasionally allowing himself a wry quip to lighten the mood.

Smith joined the Navy's elite special ops team at 19 following a rough upbringing in Woodstock, he told Seven Days in 2015.  Smith credited the four years he spent parachuting, scuba diving and detonating explosives underwater for turning his life around.

In his varied career in state government and business, Smith earned a reputation as the state’s "interim fixer-in-chief" for willingness to try to right troubled organizations.

In 2010, he came to the rescue of FairPoint Communications and spent four years helping one of the state's largest providers of phone and internet service claw its way back from bankruptcy.

He was hired by the board that oversees the state’s 911 call centers to help it improve a system plagued by outages. And in 2015 he agreed to serve as interim president of the cash-strapped Burlington College after students of the small liberal arts school convinced the president to resign. The school closed in 2016.

Deputy Human Services Secretary Jenney Samuelson will serve as interim secretary after Smith’s departure.

Correction, December 6, 2021: An earlier version of this story misspelled Jenney Samuelson's name.

“Our workforce is shrinking, housing is unaffordable, families are forced to choose between caring for loved ones and paying the bills, and our next generation is struggling to make it work," Gray said in a statement announcing her run. "From affordable, quality child care to workforce development, I’m committed to working hard to bring real solutions to Vermont families."

Her campaign page went live Monday morning, and in an interview later in the day, Gray said she’s “running for Congress to be a champion for Vermont.”

Few students attended class at Mount Abraham Union Middle/High School in Bristol on Friday, and police stationed themselves outside the building after its principal announced that unidentified students had said they planned to bring weapons to school.

“This is a terrifying thought,” Principal Shannon Warden wrote in a letter emailed to families and posted on the high school’s Facebook page Thursday night. Many students and parents had notified administrators that they were “scared to come to school tomorrow,” Warden wrote, “and I can’t blame them!”

On Tuesday, a 15-year-old high school student in Michigan killed four classmates and injured seven others. His parents were charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter because of their actions in the lead-up to the shooting.

Warden said the threats at Mt. Abe were made after the school decided Thursday to ban students from wearing flags or banners in school. This week, the principal explained, students had draped flags over themselves like capes “in support of a person, cause or movement.”

A person familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified told Seven Days that some of the flags expressed support for former president Donald Trump. Pro-law enforcement Thin Blue Line and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags were also worn. As a counterprotest, other students brought LGBTQ, Transgender Pride and Black Lives Matter flags to school.