The House Appropriations Committee met to review H.480 on Wednesday. The bill proposes to remove municipalities from the property reappraisal process and require instead that the Division of Property Valuation and Review within the Department of Taxes conduct full and statistical reappraisals on behalf of all municipalities in the State.

The workforce development bill, H.484, was presented to House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday. The makes several appropriations for programs that educate, train, and help businesses hire and retain workers. It also includes appropriations for forgivable loan programs, scholarships, degree and certification programs, assistance to businesses and other miscellaneous proposals to enhance workforce and economic development opportunities in the state.

On Tuesday the House Environment & Energy Committee began taking background testimony on S.5, beginning with Representative Sibilia providing a recap of what happened with H.715 (The Clean Heat Standard bill vetoed by the Governor) last year, and passage of the Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA). The GWSA created the Climate Council which in turn created a Climate Action Plan. She emphasized that Vermont needs to reduce emissions from the thermal sector, and one recommendation was for a Clean Heat Standard. It did not quite make it last year, but a lot of work went into it, and here we are again with an “improved” bill.

Representative McCarthy was introduced to the Senate Government Operations Committee on Tuesday by Chairwoman Hardy. Out of the gate she wanted to advise everyone they would be hearing from lots of others on H.429 and passage was not likely to occur soon. She acknowledged lots of media attention and outreach to her and other members about the bill.

Two more problematic bills moved out of committee this week. The first was a bill tightening restrictions on independent schools who receive public tuition dollars under Vermont's historic town tuitioning system. We have been following this bill for quite a while and, although duplicative, the bill was generally acceptable until a new provision was added the day before the Committee was set to vote on it... That provision would disallow any sort of normal application processes to play out before schools make enrollment decisions. Current rules prevent discriminatory behavior, but schools still saw value in bringing students in for site visits before enrollment so they could begin planning how to best meet their needs. The bill would prevent this as well as other criteria such as program alignment. This was particularly concerning for students ability to use their tuition dollars at specialty schools like ski academies, which were not given an opportunity to comment on the bill. We are hopeful that this language will be fixed by a House floor amendment or by the Senate.

Tuesday

The Senate Government Operations Committee took testimony on Tuesday regarding S.42, which proposes to divest fossil fuel investments from the state's pension funds. In their previous meeting, the Committee still had not come to a consensus on several issues. Some stakeholders agreed to meet Friday and Saturday to hopefully come up with a compromise so bill could be voted out of Committee.

Tuesday

The House Commerce Committee pivoted on Tuesday and took up draft bill 23-0991, which deals with enhancing workforce and economic development opportunities, a topic they had not previously covered in earnest. The bill appears to be a replacement for H.452.

Tuesday

Dan French (Secretary of Education) shared with the House Education Committee on Tuesday that the Agency of Education did not fully support the bill. The main reason is because they just embarked on rulemaking with the State Board of Education (SBE), which he described as “yeoman’s work… to bring forward a much-improved regulatory framework for independent schools.”

He is concerned about changing the rules before they even go into full effect. His preference would be to see the new 2200 series rules go into effect and then make adjustments as necessary.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing and Conservation Board) spoke to the Senate Natural Resources Committee about their version of S.100.

He commented on the state’s failure to pass statewide land use planning back in the “Act 250 days.” Specifically, he pointed to the abundance of opportunities during the permitting process for folks to increase costs and raise objections that lead to a lack of affordable or lower market rate housing generally.

He pointed out that the Vermont Housing Conservation Board (VHCB) is the financing arm of the state’s housing development efforts and recanted some stories about a designated smartgrowth site in Putney adjacent to the food coop. The same person came forward and appealed at two different stages of the process. Both times they won the initial appeal against the objections, but now it is headed to the Vermont Supreme Court. The town of Putney was all on board, however the resulting delays will be 18 months by the time the appeals play out, and it will raise the per unit cost by an estimated 20% (originally expected to be $400,000).