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.

Dear Senate Appropriations Committee,

While we may differ on whether or not the Clean Heat Standard is the best path forward at this time, it is clear that this is the intention of the legislature. We would like to offer some constructive feedback on aspects of the bill that we believe are problematic to the stated goals of accountability, affordability, and carbon-reduction.