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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

The bill, H.630, allowing for a new layer in the education delivery system called ‘boards of cooperative education services’ (BOCES) reached the Senate Floor on Wednesday. Senator Gulick presented the bill on behalf of the Education Committee. Senator Baruth spoke on behalf of the Appropriations Committee, focusing on the $1M expenditure from Education Fund for the Community Schools program. Senator Campion added that Molly Stark School in Bennington is a Community School. He described the wrap around service model they employ and approves of this as an expenditure from the Education Fund.

Senator Alison Clarkson presented H.702, on behalf of the Senate Government Operations Committee, on the Senate floor Tuesday. She reported that the Committee supported the bill.

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.

Campaign for Vermont has long supported government ethics reform in Vermont. We were the lead advocate in the passage of Act 79 in 2017, which created the Ethics Commission, and we supported the creation of a uniform state code of ethics in 2022. We recognize that applying a uniform code of ethics to municipalities that vary in size and complexity should not be taken lightly. There exist today a wide range of municipal ethics policies that guide the conduct of our local public officials and any complaints are ultimately referred back to the municipality for resolution. Some municipalities have a very strong process, with their own ethics policies and ethics commission, and others are non-existent. Vermonters deserve to have a baseline set of expectations around the conduct they can expect from their public officials – a statewide uniform code of ethics that applies to municipal officials affords this opportunity. 

A strike all of H.875 was presented to the Senate Government Operations Committee on Wednesday, which reflected some of the agreed upon discussions and clarifications. Legislative Counsel reviewed the bill.  There were two significant changes: