The House Government Operations Committee heard from Representative Brennan on Tuesday who, on behalf of the Town of Colchester, proposed an amendment to H.875 (the municipal ethics bill) which would require towns who have established policies and procedures on Ethics to be exempt from the entirety of the Bill upon submitting a letter from the legislative body to the State Ethics Commission by December 31^st of each year certifying that the municipality has adopted an ethics policy and  framework that does not conflict with the state standards.

H.630 reached the House floor on Tuesday. Representative Beck of St. Johnsbury offered an amendment on behalf of the Committee on Ways and Means. They recommended passing the bill along with an amendment that appropriated $70k for the Agency of Education to administer a grant program to support the formation of Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES).

H.873 reached the House floor on Tuesday, with Representative Conlon of Cornwall speaking on behalf of the Committee on Education. The bill addresses funding challenges for the state’s program for the remediation of the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in schools. This has been a major cost-driver for many districts.

Chair Cummings explained on Tuesday afternoon that they are expecting several tax bills from the House but, as of yet, none of them address the big question of “the biggest problem we’ve got which is the massive increase in property taxes, which really is coming close to making Vermont unaffordable to most people.”

The Senate Education Committee held a presentation on Tuesday afternoon on the Flexible Pathways Initiative, created by Act 77 of 2013, which encourages and supports the creativity of school districts as they develop and expand high-quality educational experiences that are an integral part of secondary education in the evolving 21^st century classroom. 

Chairman McCarthy opened the House Government Operations Committee meeting on Tuesday morning by saying he was particularly busy visiting with the House Appropriations Committee regarding the grants bill, H.140. He shared with the Committee that he would like to offer an amendment to H.702 to insert the working Group concept from the previous bill into this one.

Chair Conlon and members of the House Education Committee,

The education finance crisis before you today is the gravest in decades and eerily similar to the crisis we faced a decade ago. You have difficult choices ahead of you around overhauling the entire education finance system or making targeted reforms to inject more transparency and accountability into the incentive structure.

Representative Boyden presented H.702 on the House floor on Friday. She told members of the House that, as policy makers, they need to routinely evaluate how well our system is working and ensure that Vermonters are receiving the results they expect and deserve. H.702 is the first step in strengthening this type of government accountability.

The annual housekeeping bill for the Ways and Means Committee, H.546, reached the House floor on Friday. Chairwoman Kornheiser presented the bill to the House. She described the bill as “revenue neutral.”

Ben Edgerly Walsh (Climate & Energy Program Director, VPIRG) testified on S.259 in the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday afternoon.

He shared in his presentation that VPIRG supports this bill because the cost of the climate crisis is “staggering”, and Vermonters should not be responsible for “shouldering the burden.” They see this legislation as a medium to long-term strategy. The legal process will take years, as will the rule-making process.