We are of to the races! The first week of the legislative session was as active as you would expect as a flood of new legislators sought to get up to speed on big issues like education spending, health care costs, and carbon-pricing.

Good evening, I wanted to be sure that the Commission took the recent Education Outcomes & Spending report from Campaign for Vermont into consideration. As well as the original report from 2014 that Tom Pelham and I co-authored.

Senator Baruth,

I’m sure it is not lost on you how important the pick for committee chair of Education is at this moment in time. Vermont is in the midst of an education spending crisis that will take care, attention, and perspective to address. Who is steering the education policy ship in the Senate will matter a great deal as the legislature rises to meet this challenge.

Today, Campaign for Vermont Prosperity (CFV) released a report looking at education data in Vermont to help identify opportunities for cost savings and better performance. A decade after Act 46, it’s clear that district consolidation was not the answer. Education spending has skyrocketed while outcomes have declined.

A decade after Act 46, it’s clear that district consolidation was not the answer. Education spending has skyrocketed while outcomes have declined. This report builds on a similar report the organization published in 2014 that showed larger school districts did not necessarily perform better. Today’s report shows that the trend has continued, however statistical analysis reveals some potential cost and performance improvements could be had through supervisory union consolidation and increasing class sizes.

The largest cost-driver we are seeing in Vermont’s education system is our smallest-in-the-country class sizes. We are so out of step with the rest of the country that not only is it heavily impacting cost, it’s also negatively impacting performance. The data shows that, in Vermont, outcomes actually improve as class sizes get bigger, particularly at higher grade levels. 

CFV is known for issuing data-driven reports, but this one may be the most impactful yet. We hope that the report helps legislators focus on data-informed policymaking in order to tackle the property tax crisis our state is facing.

On behalf of Vermonters,

Ben Kinsley
Interim Executive Director, Campaign for Vermont

Download Report

As a property taxpayer, I was relieved to see that the December 1^st letter from the Tax Commissioner did not warn of another double-digit tax increase. However, as a public policy advocate, that relief dissipated as I dug into the details.

You attended one of our candidate trainings? Great! We would love your feedback.

This letter is in response to Don Tinney’s 6/26 commentary in VTDigger.

Tinney’s “hit piece” on Governor Scott is nothing new for the VT-NEA, although I’m surprised by the shrillness of the tone. Perhaps he realizes how much Vermonters have lost patience with rising property taxes and declining outcomes and is hoping to deflect attention away from his organization.

The annual property tax yield bill was a little different this year. In response to a projected 20% increase in property tax rates, the legislature injected a number of policy reforms into the bill in hopes of reducing rates in future years.

H.875 strengthens Vermont's ethics laws by creating enforcement over disclosure requirements and independent oversight over state officials by giving the State Ethics Commission investigatory powers for the first time. A new Municipal Code of Ethics will also be created to provide a baseline code of conduct for local officials across the state.

S.58 is one of several criminal justice bills passed by the legislature this session. Key provisions of the bill add zylazine (an animal tranquilizer) to the list of regulated drugs and tightened up language that allows dealers to dodge responsibility by claiming they didn't know what was in the products they were selling. More controversially, the bill delays "raise the age" efforts in an attempt to allow the Department for Children and Families to deal with a current spat of violent juvenile offenders.

The General Assembly passed S.55, which updates Vermont's Open Meeting Law. It requires public bodies to be transparent about their deliberations and decisions, and to use standard rules and best practices for both meeting format and method of delivery.

Chairman McCarthy brought the ethics bill, H.875 up for discussion on Thursday morning in the House Government Operations Committee.  He commented that the Senate’s proposal of amendment did most of what the Committee wanted and for the most part is an improvement of the bill as passed out of the House. McCarthy reviewed the changes in general and asked if the Committee was ready to vote on whether they concurred with the Senate’s amendment or not.  The vote to concur was 9-1-2.

Representative Kornheiser introduced the Senate changes on H.887 to the House Floor Friday night. Her proposal of amendment embedded the education finance study into the Commission on the Future of Education. They also proposed an excess spending threshold of 118% above average district spend, which splits the difference between the original positions of the two bodies.

Chairwoman Kornheiser kicked off the House Ways & Means Discussion on Thursday around H.887 by telling the Committee to “take a breath on all our opinions on everything related to the Yield. And actually, just first hear what the Senate did.” She instructed them to keep their questions restricted to “qualifying” and understanding, keep notes on other concerns for later.

The yield bill, H.887, reached the Senate floor late on Friday night. Senator Cummings shared the compromise they had reached with the House to “meld” the two study committees together. The finance study would now be a sub-committee for the Commission on the Future of Education. The major point of contention was the one-time bump in the property tax credit in an attempt to hold income sensitized taxpayers harmless.

Chairwoman Cummings launched the Senate Finance Committee right in on Tuesday morning, explaining that they had drafted an amendment to H.887 the previous day. She reiterated that the Commission on the Future of Education will remain in the bill, but the amendment creates an Education Finance Study Committee who’s work will result in proposed legislation after taking into account “everything that goes into school financing.” The task of this study committee will be to design an “affordable educational funding system designed to ensure substantially equal access to educational opportunities for all Vermont students.”

The Senate Economic Development Committee and the Senate Natural Resources Committee met jointly on Thursday to review the House changes to the Act 250 bill, H.687. Representative Bongartz was there to help walk them through some of the changes. There were some minor changes to the implementation dates. The first major change is that the Land Use Review Board (formerly the Natural Resources Board) would not hear appeals to Act 250.

Chairwoman Kornheiser opened the Tuesday House Ways & Means Committee meeting by sharing the Representative Demrow had a suggested amendment to the housing and Act 250 bill, H.687, which the Committee had some jurisdiction over.