S. 122, passed by the Vermont House and Senate in 2025, focuses on enhancing economic and workforce development through targeted funding, task forces, and new commissions.

The bill aims to address Vermont’s workforce shortages in construction, health care, and manufacturing by leveraging the skills of military retirees and their spouses. The bill also builds on the 2024 establishment of the Office of Workforce Strategy and Development to enhance workforce coordination.

Dear Senate Education Committee,

Thank you for expressing a commitment to solving the issues with our career and technical education (CTE) system that have persisted for decades. We believe that this system will be critical to the success of our workforce in the 21^st century.

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.

Senator Alison Clarkson presented H.702, on behalf of the Senate Government Operations Committee, on the Senate floor Tuesday. She reported that the Committee supported the bill.

Representative Marcotte presented a high-level overview of H.707 for the Senate Economic Development Committee. He introduced himself and noted that he was Chair of both House Commerce and Economic Development as well as the SOCWED, a special committee designed to review how best to approach workforce development in Vermont.

Representative from the House Commerce Committee presented a revised version of H.707 on the House floor on Wednesday. The bill is an overhaul of Vermont’s workforce governance oversight which focused on workforce development, education, and training.  The recommendations made in the bill are a direct result of the creative of a task force in 2022 consisting of key players with the State workforce system and a workforce specialist consultant. 

Early in the week the Department of Labor (VDOL) presented numerous recommended changes to the language in H.707.  Most of the changes indicated that VDOL would like to see more discussion and significant review before moving forward.  The primary discussion is about the creation of a separate office reporting to the Governor rather than located within VDOL.  The Commissioner later in the week stated that the Governor is not interested in creating a new office.  There was discussion that with the right person in the job as Executive Director it might not matter where the position resided as long as the individual was capable of executing the job description as envisioned by the House Commerce Committee.

Legislative Council presented a new draft of H.707 on Wednesday for the House Commerce Committee to review. The new draft creates the office of the Executive Director of the Workforce Expansion, which consists of two employees - an Executive Director (under the Governor) and a support staff member. New language was also added to ensure that the Workforce Governance Task Force will study data management models and names the Executive Director as chair of the working group.