The House took up a bill, H.492, on the floor Thursday that sets the statewide yields which determines local property tax rates. The average rate would decrease in FY2024, but much of that decrease will be “masked” by the Common Level of Appraisal (the leveling mechanism to account for disparities between when towns last did an appraisal) and school district spending.

The Senate Health and Welfare Committee held confirmation hearing on Wednesday for Dr. David Murman to be appointed to the Green Mountain Care Board (GMCB).

The House Education Committee met briefly on Tuesday to review two changes to the committee amendment being offered on H.483. The first change was to remove the Vermont School Boards Association (VSBA) model policy for admissions for publicly tuitioned students to public schools (the language was maintained for independent schools). Concerns had been raised about the model policy, and VSBA is currently re-evaluating it. However, the rationale for removal of this requirement was the that title of the bill only referenced independent schools.

Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont Ethics Commission) presented to the Senate Government Operations Committee on Wednesday a proposal to add language to H.429 surrounding candidate financial disclosures and the compliance with such requirements.

Representative Conlon spoke for the bill on on the House Floor Wednesday on behalf of the House Education Committee. He called it a “long and thoughtful bill drafting process” that focused on “core values that should be attached to every dollar spent on public education.” He voiced concern that the town tuitioning program had “strayed” from its original purpose and that it was hard to imagine that the founders of the system intended their dollars to go across oceans. This was the justification for the 25-mile radius in his mind.

The House Environment & Energy Committee picked up S.5 again on Wednesday with testimony from Matt Cota (Lobbyist, Vermont Fuel Dealers), who shared that the “first misconception” being repeated is that this bill only affects large companies. Big companies are not the ones the bill obligates to buy credits, according to Cota. It is not size, but rather who owns title to the fuel when it crosses state lines that determines who is required to buy the credit; that could be a large company or a tiny company, a wholesaler or a dealer. Small dealers who are geographically located near borders are going to be disproportionately tagged as obligated parties.

The Senate took up S.32 on Wednesday with Senator Vyhovsky reviewing the bill. She noted that Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is used across the country and even internationally. In fact, the bulk of other democracies around the world used ranked choice voting. Here in the US, both conservative and liberal states use RCV. One reason for this is that millions of votes are not counted in the last round of presidential primaries as candidates drop out.

Senator Clarkson presented S.42 to the Senate on Tuesday, positioning the bill as a "win-win." She listed a number of individuals that were involved for the bills development, including the Treasurer, the Vermont Pension Investment Committee (VPIC), and several other experts. She cast the bill as the result of "productive negotiations" lead by the Senate Government Operations Committee with with the intent of divesting fossil fuel investments while simultaneously protecting the state's pension funds and Actuarial-Defined Employer Contribution.

The Clean Heat Standard bill (S.5) made a re-appearance this week as the House began to take testimony. Not much of an indication yet of how the Committee will handle the bill, but already there has been more vocal opposition to it than was heard in the Senate.

The independent schools bill was pulled back into the House Education Committee twice this week after they rushed the bill out at the end of last week with a lack of testimony. Some of the language was improved around enrollment for students on public tuition, but is still problematic. Additionally, students will no longer be allowed to use their tuition dollars at schools across the border in Quebec. No testimony on either of these issues was taken by the Committee. Not a good look for those responsible for our public policy supporting Vermont students.

Brad James (Finance Manager, Agency of Education) joined the Committee on Tuesday. He informed them that all but three districts have reported their budgets so far and the remaining ones were very small. He noted that if they assumed the remaining districts came in at the statewide average, the overall average spending increase would come out just under 8%.