The bill creating a carbon-pricing scheme, known as the Clean Heat Standard (CHS), reached the House floor on Thursday. Representative Sibilia presented the bill on behalf of the Environment & Energy Committee.

She described the bill as having the Public Utility Commission (PUC) develop the marketplace and rules for implementing the CHS. They will provide the 2025 legislature and Governor with the rules to implement the CHS. That is “all we are voting on today,” she claimed. She continued that “a yes vote today will not increase the cost of Vermonter’s fuel or protect the cost. We are not voting on those things today. We are voting on those things in 2025.”

On Wednesday, the House Education Committee took up the H.258, which would eliminate Independent school choice in Vermont. Andrew Jones (Assistant Superintendent, MMU) shared that he was also an education policy researcher at UVM and considers himself an expert on “school privatization.” As someone who strongly believes in the institution of public education, he voiced his support for the bill because he is “gravely concerned” about the 2022 Carson V. Makin ruling. He believes that allowing school vouchers to go religious schools undermines the public education system. He also argued that vouchers “effectively subsidize the wealthy” because research from other states with vouchering programs indicated that they were most often utilized by families who would have sent their kids to private schools regardless.

Representative Graning introduced the House Education Committee to her bill, H.258, which she claims is to support high quality public education. The bill effectively restricts public tuition to the four traditional academies, which essentially removes school choice for students that reside in districts that do not operate a school. She admitted that this bill was about stopping the “siphoning of money” away from public schools.