Legislative Report

In general

The legislature finished its regular 2024 session in the wee hours of May 11. We reconvened in mid-June to consider whether to override or to sustain the Governor’s vetoes of several bills.

Until almost midnight of our last day in session (which went until 2 AM), we didn’t know the fate of key bills where the House and the Senate had different views.  The Senate has been generally more conservative than the House, especially on revenue and budget issues, so the work to see if the two houses can reach agreement frequently goes until the last hours of the session.  The override session lasted most of a day, with the successful override of six vetoes, and one failure to override (Digital Privacy—see below).

To complicate the picture more, opinions even among Democrats, vary along a considerable spectrum.  Some of us represent generally progressive districts, others more mixed districts. This means for many bills, we need to work out many differences to pass a measure. And if the Governor vetoes the bill, an override is rarely certain.

Below I summarize some of the major accomplishments of the session.  I don’t try to cover all of them. I include the fate of three bills I introduced as they relate to the specific needs of our towns. I’ll also tell you where I think we failed. This report is fairly long, but I wanted to lay out the essence of each of the major bills; feel free to skip to what interests you!  Please write me with any thoughts at marc@mihaly.org.  Thanks!

Key Legislation

Act 250 Reform. Regulation of Land Use to Provide More Housing and Protect Environmentally Sensitive Areas and Agriculture

I strongly support this bill. 

H. 687 is a major revision to Act 250 which governs the state permitting of significant development.  It takes a place-based approach:  it exempts from many of the Act’s provisions areas where housing development makes sense and could be built with state subsidies to be affordable to the average Vermonter. These exempted areas lie inside and nearby cities, towns and villages (but not so much in flood plains) especially where sewer lines are or could be available.  At the same time, the bill increases protections for natural areas with regulations that heighten review of proposed roads or development. And the new law creates a board of full-time professionals to complete mapping of both the development and protected areas.

This law is the result of a successful negotiation among people with different agendas: housing and commercial developers who wanted relief from regulation and environmentalists who wanted more protection for the state’s key natural areas and ways to reduce forest fragmentation and loss of agricultural land to high-priced, low density homes. \

The Governor vetoed this bill.  The Governor said he wants Act 250 reform but also seems opposed anything that strengthens its environmental provisions even when, like this bill, it also provides for needed housing. The House and Senate voted to override the veto so thankfully it’s become law.

The Climate Superfund:  Ensures that big oil helps pay for climate-related damages in Vermont

Since climate change has been caused largely by emissions from burning oil, S.259 provides that the major oil companies must pay a share of the costs of climate change including repairing and upgrading roads and other infrastructure damaged by floods. The share is based on their sales of fossil fuel products in Vermont.

This important bill takes the same approach the federal Superfund law already  takes with toxic materials: we ensure that the companies that produced the contamination pay to clean it up.  Opponents of the bill argue that it’s unfair because we benefited from our purchases of oil and gas.  While it is certainly true that consumers have received benefits,  this is also true of many substances determined to be toxic to the environment. Despite this, the federal Superfund law requires  thecompanies responsible for the contamination to pay for the cleanup. 

This is no different, and it’s important to remember that the oil companies have been paid handsomely for their sales.  So, it’s completely fair to ask them to share the burden of the impact of their product.

Interestingly, the Governor chose to let this bill go into effect without his signature.

Supporting young Vermonters achieve reading literacy

H.204 supports young Vermonters through enhanced literacy training in the early years of primary school. This is key: our literacy performance has been declining for several years, in part because of lack of screening, testing, and in part because of the use of a teaching method that has been demonstrated to be unsuccessful with many young students.

The bill provides for guidance on kindergarten through third grade reading assessment and intervention to improve literacy.  It specifically requires that any public school or approved independent school that receives public tuition provide systematic and explicit evidence-based reading instruction to all students and supplemental instruction to those students whose reading proficiency prevents progress in school.

Improved Renewable Energy Standard

H. 289 revises and updates existing requirements that utilities generate 100% of electricity with renewable sources.

Again, this is a bill that was a hard-won successful compromise among environmentalists, the solar industry, and every one of the state’s electric utilities.  The bill moves up deadlines for reaching 100% renewable electric generation.

Various parties, including unfortunately our Governor, opposed this bill. While acknowledging that climate change is real, they oppose doing anything about it, claiming that any efforts will cost too much. 

The Governor has vetoed this bill.  Thankfully, the Legislature overrode the veto. I know this area well and have studied the data.  Not only has the Scott administration exaggerated the costs, but they’ve completely ignored that this bill and similar efforts will save Vermonters enormous sums.  Efficiency Vermont, for example, opposed by Republicans at the time as too expensive, has saved Vermonters over $6 billion in electricity costs through conservation. The Renewable Energy Standard will save us billions of dollars over the next 10 years.

Health Care: Some progress on expanded medicare coverage and drug prices

Although I feel we could have done more, the legislature did pass important health care bills.

 With respect to Doctor Dinosaur and other state programs, we passed and the Governor signed H.766, a bill that substantially limits the prior authorization process, that is the ability of insurance companies to deny drugs or medical procedures recommended by a general practitioner.

 In H. 233, we regulated pharmacy benefit managers, drug company monopoly intermediaries who exercise control over drug pricing in key ways. In S.98, we initiated a study to look at further regulating and limiting drug price increases.

Protecting our State’s pollinators by banning neonicotinoids

H.706, voted out overwhelmingly in both chambers, bans certain pesticides that attack bees and other pollinators. These “neonicotinoids” are already banned in Quebec and will be banned in New York. Substitute pesticides are available.   

Sadly, the Governor vetoed the bill, calling it anti-farmer and citing statistics that don’t accurately reflect the pesticides’ true damage to pollinators. He said that domestic honeybee populations are on the rise, which does not address the concern for native pollinators, which are under threat. I’m delighted to report that the Legislature overrode the veto.

Public Safety: Protection against Crime by reducing the long backlog between arrest and trial

Vermont has suffered from an increase in property crime—drugs thefts, shoplifting, car theft, and break-ins.  Experts agree that what deters people from committing crimes is not harsher sentences, but the reasonable certainty that they will be punished quickly.  But right now, in Vermont, due to court backlogs the time from arrest to trial is two to three years. 

 So, we need to reduce the backlog, which requires more judges and support staff. We need to provide better funding for the judiciary, for state’s attorneys, for public defenders, victim’s advocates and staff.

The budget we passed, H.883, signed by the Governor, includes some $6 million to expand the justice system so we can begin to eliminate the backlog. House and Senate agreed on funding to hire more judges, prosecutors, , defense attorneys and victim’s advocates. This will begin to reduce the backlog, but the amount raised will only do half the job.  Taxes proposed by the House on high-income earners would have raised twice that amount and insured we truly addressed the issue. Hopefully, we’ll return to this issue next session.

Timber Theft: Helping landowner victims

In response to and with the help of tireless constituents, I introduced, and the legislature passed, H. 614, a bill to increase penalties for timber theft and make it harder for a rogue logger to continue in business after conviction, if fines or judgments remain unpaid to the wronged landowner.   A few bad actors who give loggers a bad name victimize Vermonters by cutting more timber than authorized and never paying for it, sometimes even threatening the landowner.  During the session, the Attorney General also finally brought a case against one group of timber thieves.

Housing the Homeless—the motel program

The budget signed into law (H. 883) extends the program to house unhoused Vermonters in motels rather than kicking them onto the street. Here again, compromise prevailed, and the program was embedded in the budget which the Governor just signed. It’s far from perfect, but it does devote about $44 million to the effort to provide motel housing to a vulnerable population, as well as another $45 million for services to support inhabitants, shelter expansion, supportive housing and programs for homeless youth. 

The motel program focuses on unhoused Vermonters who are ill or elderly, and families with children. It sets limits on the number of days one can occupy motel rooms outside of the winter season. These limits are not ideal, but about as good as we could achieve in the budget given the enormous cost of using motel rooms, an approach which almost everyone regards as something that should be replace by more permanent housing of various types.

Changing the way we fund education.  Reducing the property tax burden

Education taxes are too high. Our budget (H.883), signed by the Governor, reduces the property tax rate from early estimates, but the increase is still burdensome.  The Governor decried the high taxes but has proposed no solution, now or at any time during the legislative session.  He has vetoed the basic tax statute that set the tax rate, but thankfully we overrode the veto.

 The state is facing a crisis regarding the funding of our schools, and the legislature needs to address it. We made modest progress here, but the heavy lifting will come in the next session.  We transferred funds from various state sources to “buy down” the property tax increase from a potential 18% to about 12% on average (the increase in many districts was lower). 

 There are no easy solutions to this issue.  The legislature didn’t “impose” the tax; as required by law, the Legislature simply set the tax rate necessary to raise the revenue necessary to pay to local school districts the amount they passed in their budgets.  School districts must address rising medical costs and other inflation.  They shouldn’t cut teachers or take steps that damage our children’s education.  Using other state funds to reduce the school taxes is more of band aid than a solution since “other state funds” are raised by income taxes.

 Unfortunately, the Governor has acted in a most immature and political manner here.  He continually decries the high property taxes (who wouldn’t agree?) but offers no solutions.  He just blames the legislature but has consistently been a literal no-show in working to address the issue in some real way.

 What we heard from most of the actors—the superintendents, principles, teachers, and many parents—is that we should act carefully and not make the mistake of reaching for some quick “solution” that would backfire and have dire unintended consequences.  In response, we created a representative commission that will serve as a public forum, listening, holding hearings around the state, and finally making preliminary recommendations late this year and final recommendations next year, all so the legislature can evaluate and design major revisions to how we educate our children and how we pay for it.

Flood protection for our River Corridors and Dam Safety

S.213 is a huge bill, a response to this year’s flooding. It charges the state Administration with mapping river corridors, identifying flood risk, improving dam safety, and charting a way forward for better management of flood emergencies. The Governor let the bill go into effect without his signature.

The bill contains two sections I introduced:  One transfers the safety regulation of some 21 power generating dams, including the Marshfield dam, away from the Public Utilities Commission to the Agency of Natural Resources. This is an improvement, because the PUC has little expertise in the dam safety arena, while the staff of ANR’s division of dam safety is better qualified to assure the safety of our dams. 

The second section provides for a summer study session to address our currently inadequate response to flood emergencies such as could be posed by a dam failure in the face of more climate-change induced storms. We’ll then take more specific actions to improve emergency preparedness next session. 

What we sadly didn’t do:  Truly address affordable housing production and pass into law digital privacy legislation

Housing:

My biggest disappointments for the session involve housing. The problem is money. 

The Act 250 reforms I mention above will provide places to build more housing, but that’s not enough; we need more funding to buy down the cost of the housing to a level Vermonters can actually afford.

The House enacted measures to raise the funds to address the state’s affordable housing needs, reduce crime, and expand the health care provided by Medicaid to more Vermonters.  These bills would have raised taxes on the wealthiest Vermonters (those earning over $500,000 per year), and the largest corporations. And the measures would have restructured the tax on real estate transfers to reduce the tax for properties under $750,000 and increase it for the high-end houses priced over that. 

Contrary to the Governor’s assertions, these bills would NOT increase the tax burden on middle class Vermonters. These taxes on the very wealthy would recoup only a fraction of what our wealthiest residents have gained from repeated federal tax cuts for the rich over the last three decades. Many of our wealthiest constituents wrote us that they favor tax increases for themselves. 

Unfortunately, the Governor opposed these taxes on the wealthy and large corporations. Because it appeared there wasn’t sufficient support in the Senate to override a veto, the bill did not move forward. As a result, we were only partially able to address the looming housing and health care needs and we short-changed the effort to reduce crime.

On supporting construction of new housing that’s affordable to Vermonters, the Governor’s proposed budget would have cut funding by 80 to 90 percent from last year.  Under that budget, we’d never solve our housing problem.

What the governor says, as he chastises the Legislature, is that the housing “solution” is to reform Act 250. But removing all the requirements of Act 250 would not produce a single affordable home. Why? Because high construction costs and high interest rates mean that government assistance is necessary to produce affordable housing. The free market can’t produce housing most Vermonters can afford.  It now costs well over $500,000 to produce a single housing unit in Vermont.

We could abolish Act 25o and every other state and local permit requirement, and all we’d end up with are a bunch of $800,000 mansions in places we don’t want them.  If the Governor wants to provide housing affordable to Vermonters, the government has to help pay for it. 

After much discussion and negotiation, the legislature did enact, and the Governor has signed, some measures that will provide some funding for middle income housing, $13 million to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board for some low-income housing, and $1 million for manufactured housing.  If our state income is higher than anticipated in the budget, a contingent appropriation will provide more.

Though these measures will help, they aren’t enough. I hope that the legislature makes more progress taking on the housing problem in the next session. The taxes the House proposed would have created a perpetual housing fund to help construct new affordable housing units.  Although we did address the motel situation to provide housing to some of the neediest Vermonters, that is insufficient. We will not succeed in creating a meaningful increase in our supply of affordable housing until we find new revenue to pay for it. 

Digital Privacy:

This is also a major disappointment. H. 121, the Vermont Data Privacy Act, is another cutting-edge bill addressing a serious problem. The bill requires consumer consent before companies can sell their data and protects children from bullying software. 

This important bill passed both houses despite heavy lobbying by large national corporations such as Google, Apple, etc. masquerading behind companies such as Vermont Country Store and Orvis. Most unfortunately, the Governor listened to these Vermont “fronts” and vetoed the bill.  The House voted to override his veto by the lopsided supermajority of 128 to 17 with many Republicans jumping ship and voting to override, but the Senate sustained the veto, so it isn’t law.  We’ll have to try again next session.

The final bill focuses on the largest corporate data collectors and incorporates exemptions for smaller companies that include most Vermont companies.

The data we’re talking about reveals what you buy, cross indexed with other sources about what you read, what you watch on media, even how you register to vote. The law’s basic premise is simple:  companies should be able to collect and use data generated by them to reach out to you to make you a repeat customer or evaluate what you think of their products that you’ve purchased.  But they should not without your affirmative agreement be able to sell that data to third parties, to large data collection corporations which in turn sell them to multiple corporations for various uses.

The bill also protects kids from software that enables anonymous bullying.

Legislative Report – March 6, 2023