Dear Chair Mihaly and Members of the House Committee on General and Housing,

I am writing on behalf of Campaign for Vermont Prosperity to respectfully urge this Committee to insist on the reinstatement of the Off-Site Construction Accelerator pilot program as the House considers the Senate's proposed amendments to H.775.

Dear Chairman Collamore and Members of the Senate Government Operations Committee,

I am writing today regarding S.298 and the ongoing discussion about candidate financial disclosure forms and the role of the Vermont State Ethics Commission. Our message is straightforward: Vermont's ethics framework can only succeed if it is given the resources to match its responsibilities.

Good Evening Chair Kornheiser and Members of the House Ways & Means Committee,

Thank you for your work in the yield bill (H.949) to try to get Vermont out of the cycle of using one-time funds to buy down property taxes.

As you know, the use of these funds creates funding cliffs in the following years that require further expenditure of one-time funds to fill and undermines the trust of taxpayers who see predictions of massive tax increases unless something is done… eventually there will be no one-time monies available and these predictions will come true. This is a cruel game of musical chairs.

Good Evening Chair Kornheiser and Members of the House Ways & Means Committee,

There has been some discussion in committee this week about the impact on the foundation formula if districts are left at their current size. This has sparked concerns about viability for small districts, but I would content that the viability of the entire system in jeopardy.

Dear Chair Cummings and Members of the Senate Finance Committee,

Thank you for your ongoing work to address the trajectory of education spending through S.220. We urge the Committee to adopt enforceable mechanisms that align spending growth with the sustainable capacity of the Education Fund and provide immediate relief to Vermont property taxpayers.

Since the passage of Act 60 nearly thirty years ago, Vermont’s per-pupil education spending has grown at a rate nearly triple the national average. This expansion has also doubled the rate of inflation and, crucially, exceeded the growth of the consumption tax revenues that support the Education Fund. Because the Fund is self-leveling, any spending growth that surpasses organic revenue growth creates a deficit that is shifted onto property taxpayers.

Dear Members of the Vermont General Assembly,

We urge you to prioritize and refine the work of the Act 73 Task Force. Their start towards evidence-based education reform is the right direction for Vermont. The shift toward shared services and away from top down, state mandated mega districts is clearly the most effective plan to date, but it does not yet go far enough to meet the scale and urgency of our affordability crisis.

We share the strong public opposition to forced mergers and small school closures that the Task Force heard. The data does not support this type of consolidation and there is considerable risk of losing time, energy, and political capital implementing the wrong fix for our education challenges.

We also agree that learning happens in classrooms, not in the 52 central offices that exist today. To maximize cost-savings and minimize student disruptions, we need to look there.

Thank you for taking on such an entrenched issue this legislative session. The bill you are working on essentially equates to Act 60, Act 68, and Act 46 all wrapped into one and the fact that you have gotten this far in one year is already impressive.

There is no doubt more work to do to get this bill to the finish line, and tweaks will need to be made next year and in following years. I do not think it is an understatement to say that Vermonters are relying on you. They are relying on you to arrest skyrocketing education costs. They are relying on you to bring stability to a chaotic tax structure. They are relying on you to reverse the declining student outcomes that are jeopardizing the futures of so many young Vermonters.

Senate Appropriations Committee, I fully appreciate that you are in the midst of crafting a state budget that meets the needs of Vermonters in an uncertain environment. That is no easy task and I thank you for stepping up to it.

Chair Conlon and members of the House Education Committee,

The education finance crisis before you today is the gravest in decades and eerily similar to the crisis we faced a decade ago. You have difficult choices ahead of you around overhauling the entire education finance system or making targeted reforms to inject more transparency and accountability into the incentive structure.

February 20, 2024

House Ways & Means Committee,

We agree that the ‘Who Pays’ report showing that our state’s tax burden is flat, and even slightly regressive, for taxpayers with incomes in the top 40% is concerning. Middle class Vermonters are struggling to make ends meet and inflation, taxes, and other impacts on cost of living have not been kind to them. Learning that they also shoulder an outsized share of the tax burden adds insult to injury. It is also important to highlight, as the report authors did, that this distribution of tax burden is not because our income tax system is inadequately progressive, but rather that we have a number of other taxes that are quite regressive.