The House Environment & Committee returned on Friday morning to hear from TJ Poor (Director of Planning, Department of Public Service). He was following up on a question from his last time in the Committee regarding the Comprehensive Energy Plan (CEP). The CEP actually calls for a full evaluation of the Clean Heat Standard (CHS) in terms of cost, societal impact, and equity. This didn’t happen in the Climate Action Plan (CAP) process due to the tight timelines.

Anne Sosin (Interim Director, Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition) spoke to the House General & Housing Committee on Thursday about Housing and Homelessness. She cast homelessness as a housing problem and a "policy choice," reiterating that they are "aligned" with other advocates supporting the S.100 housing bill.

On Tuesday, the House General and Housing Committee did a walk through of H.276 with Legislative Counsel. The bill essentially requires landlords provide identifying information on the owner, landlord, property manager and other identifying information about the unit, location of the unit, and construction of the unit by March of next year.

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.

Thursday morning the House Environment & Energy Committee returned to testimony on S.5. Neale Lunderville (President & CEO, Vermont Gas Systems) was first to speak. Chairwoman Sheldon gave an introduction Lunderville’s terms as Transportation Secretary, Secretary of Administration (under Douglas), and General Manager of the Burlington Electric Department.

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.

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.

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).

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 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.