This week the Judicial branch jumped on the H.1 bandwagon, saying that if the Legislature is going to exempt anyone from ethics oversight, it should be them!

The long-awaited education reform package moved out of the House Education Committee on Friday; the governance reform component is reminiscent of the Act 46. The study group the House is putting in charge is made up of the same administrators that both designed and run the current system. Do you think they're going to give us a different product this time around?

This week tensions boiled over between Governor Scott and the Legislature over the mid-year budget adjustment for FY2025. The Legislature's version of the bill faced significant opposition from Governor Scott, who criticized it as "irresponsible" spending. At the heart of the dispute is the motel voucher program, which is set to expire in April for the summer (the FY2025 budget only funded the program for families most in need through the winter months). Legislative leaders, lacking the votes to override Governor Scott’s veto, shifted focus earlier this week; they pressed the Governor to extend the motel shelter program for a subset of unhoused persons, reflecting a narrower approach to address the "immediate needs" amid budget disputes.

This week Governor Scott gave his budget address for FY2026 and we learned more details about his plan to overall Vermont's education system.

Governor Scott gave is budget address on January 28th, proposing a $9B budget for FY2026 with heavy investments in housing and other areas while simultaneously cutting taxes for the most financially vulnerable Vermonters.

July 1 has come and gone, and with it the end of Vermont’s 2024 fiscal year on June 30 and the start of fiscal 2025 on July 1. Given it’s an election year in Vermont, now is a good time to consider important fiscal trends within the budget that might bite taxpayers going forward.

Governor Scott presented his FY2025 budget to state legislators on Tuesday in the annual budget address. They will, of course, toss it out and write their own, but it’s still a purportedly important ritual.

Scott led with a more admonishing tone than normal, telling legislators that Vermonters “want to do their part, but they are being crushed by the burden of property taxes or the higher rents that come with it as well as by increased fees just to renew a license or register a vehicle, or the looming payroll tax, or the unknown in higher fuel and electricity costs, not to mention inflation.” He is of course referring to the 13% budget increase from last year that the legislature overrode his veto to pass. He continued on to tell them that “when we spend beyond our means, it catches up to us… When we fail to address the fundamentals of decades-old problems, they get worse.”

The State Treasurer, Mike Pieciak, submitted his budget and comments on the treasurers office to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.