This week, Vermont's legislative focus was largely on housing, education, and health care. The Senate Economic Development Committee advanced a task force proposal to inventory business resources and tackle gaps in access to capital, evolving from last week's broader housing finance pilot programs toward a comprehensive and inclusive economic ecosystem. The task force would include stakeholders like the Vermont Futures Project, the Vermont Small Business Development Center, and Professionals of Color, signaling an emerging pattern of nonpartisan collaboration to address rural-urban economic divides.

H.775 is an innovative housing bill designed to stimulate affordable development in rural Vermont through financial incentives, pilot programs, and administrative reforms. The legislation introduces tax stabilization for some communities, authorizes municipalities to issue revenue bonds backed by special assessments, and leverages the State Treasurer’s credit facility to fund mobile home infrastructure and off-site modular home construction.

This week in Montpelier, education governance reform took center stage, with Act 73 discussions evolving from high-level overviews last week to concrete proposals on district consolidation, shared services, and regional structures. This signals a shift toward mandatory regionalized service (or consolidation) to address equity and costs, though voluntary options and rural safeguards remain hotly debated. We weighed in early in the week with the letter to the House Education Committee, urging them to challenge assumptions similar to those that derailed Act 46 (the previous consolidation effort). We followed later in the week with testimony in the Senate Finance Committee about our report identifying $300 million in potential savings by consolidating Supervisory Unions (instead of districts) and taking advantage of shared services.

The legislative session is off to a fast-paced start. Maps seem to be a key theme: from the Governor's threat to veto the state budget unless legislators move forward with his mega-district school consolidation plan to the statewide zoning plan set to replace the Act 250 framework all come down to drawing lines on a map. We have been keeping up with all of it in our legislative updates. If you haven't subscribed already, you should!

Dear Members of the House Education Committee, 

I have watched your deliberations regarding Act 73 with interest over the first weeks of the legislative session. The conversations you are having today are startlingly similar to the Act 46 conversations from over a decade ago. Local control versus the need for scale and efficiency. Small schools versus equity and achievement. Etc. These conversations are framed as binary choices: one or the other, this or that. The problem is, the data do not support binary framing.  

H.577 would create a statewide Vermont Prescription Drug Discount Card Program, administered by the State Treasurer, to pool Vermont’s prescription drug purchasing power with other states. The goal is to negotiate lower prices on medications for all Vermonters. The bill sets up the legal authority for joining multi-state purchasing/discount arrangements, allows modest fees to sustain the program, establishes a dedicated fund, and provides start-up money and reporting requirements so lawmakers can monitor implementation, costs, and savings over time.

This week lawmakers delved deeply into education funding and reform, reflecting ongoing efforts to build a more equitable and sustainable system amid demographic challenges and a persistent spending crisis.

H.67 creates the Joint Government Oversight and Accountability Committee, a new bipartisan legislative body tasked with systematizing government accountability efforts and examining issues of significant public concern affecting Vermont state government performance.

Long-Held Beliefs About Healthcare Costs Don’t Hold Up 

As Stat readers know, Vermont has the highest commercial insurance rates in the nation. We can credit a prolonged period of poor oversight, lax accountability, price gouging, and asset hoarding by some hospitals for much of this crisis. 

Adding to that, the state’s largest insurer, BCBSVT failed to negotiate aggressively with the UVMHN over prices. According to BCBS-VT, UVMHN had taken the position that if their rate demands were not met, they would stop seeing BCBSVT patients. 

All in all, leaders and regulators failed to focus on costs and Vermonters are left paying the bill. 

Here it is... the first legislative update of the year!

Lawmakers dusted off major 2025 reforms, such as last year’s landmark economic and workforce bill, S.122, which continues to steer targeted grants and training dollars to small businesses and high-demand fields, positioning Vermont to compete for workers and employers in a tight regional market. Legislators also began early discussions around how the new, long‑term CHIP infrastructure and housing finance program can be deployed on the ground. The program has the potential to channel up to $200 million per year into local infrastructure that supports new housing and grows the tax base.