The Senate Natural Resources Committee reviewed S.252 on Wednesday, which was sponsored by four of the five Senators on the Committee. The bill would give the Public Utility Commission (PUC) authority to oversee the permitting, construction, and operation of “thermal energy” networks.

The Senate Natural Resources Committee convened their first meeting of the session on Thursday. Chairman Bray went around the room asking each member of the Committee what their top priorities were.

No new arguments were presented on the House floor Tuesday; the bill primarily deals with municipal zoning reform and feigned to address Act 250 issues, shy of a few time-limited exemptions. It focused on large lot sizes, excess parking requirements, excess setbacks, and other local zoning requirements legislators felt inhibited housing growth.

Critics of the bill argued that municipal reform should be paired with rollbacks to Act 250, the state’s major land-use and environmental law. However, since the bill passed third reading in House with a voice vote, incremental progress will have to be settled for. Amendments were introduced to limit energy requirement that could drive up construction costs by tens of thousands of dollars, but it was disagreed to. Other amendments would have moved up some of the implementation dates, add reviews of current processes for inclusivity, and widen the priority housing project exemption in Act 250. They were met with varying levels of success.

After passage, the Senate Committees began reviewing the bill.

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.

This week the Senate Natural Resources Committee focused mainly on amendments and wording changes to S.100 and the amendments being offered.  These language changes dealing with definitions of downtown development districts, areas affected by municipal sewers infrastructure and wastewater systems.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, Gus Seelig (Executive Director, Vermont Housing and Conservation Board) spoke to the Senate Natural Resources Committee about their version of S.100.

He commented on the state’s failure to pass statewide land use planning back in the “Act 250 days.” Specifically, he pointed to the abundance of opportunities during the permitting process for folks to increase costs and raise objections that lead to a lack of affordable or lower market rate housing generally.

He pointed out that the Vermont Housing Conservation Board (VHCB) is the financing arm of the state’s housing development efforts and recanted some stories about a designated smartgrowth site in Putney adjacent to the food coop. The same person came forward and appealed at two different stages of the process. Both times they won the initial appeal against the objections, but now it is headed to the Vermont Supreme Court. The town of Putney was all on board, however the resulting delays will be 18 months by the time the appeals play out, and it will raise the per unit cost by an estimated 20% (originally expected to be $400,000).

The Senate Committee on Natural Resources took up S.100 on Wednesday, with written testimony from Dr. David J. Weissgold.

On Thursday the Senate Natural Resources Committee brought up the topic of possible amendments to S.5. It was a short discussion and no major changes where proposed, however they did discuss some minor concerns from Xusana Davis’ testimony the previous week.

The Senate Natural Resources Committee took up S.5 again on Tuesday.

The Senate Natural Resources Committee came back to S.5 on Thursday for mark-up of the bill. Chairman Bray thought they were dealing with mostly just minor corrections at this point, fixing typos and minor date changes, etc. Larger discussion points were deferred until later.