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In: budget adjustment, Budget Adjustment Act, Department for Children and Families, Government & Politics, H.145, Legislature 2023, motel housing, motel program, Phil Scott, Vermont Department for Children and Families, Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, Vermont legislature
Gov. Phil Scott delivers his budget address to a joint session of the Legislature at the Statehouse in Montpelier in January. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Gov. Phil Scott will allow a wide-ranging spending package that extends emergency housing in hotels for unhoused Vermonters to pass into law without his signature, his office announced Monday.

The bill, H.145, sets almost $19 million aside to keep those currently in hotels there until May 31. After that, eligibility will narrow to people fleeing domestic violence, families with children, those aged 60 and over, pregnant people, people with disabilities, and certain households that recently lost their housing.

Each year, early in the legislative session, lawmakers pass a budget adjustment act to true-up the current fiscal year’s budget. Once a sleepy affair, the legislation has ballooned in size and importance in the pandemic era as Montpelier has contended with unprecedented surpluses and federal aid packages.

This year, the most contentious item concerned Vermont’s housing programs in hotels, which the state dramatically scaled up in the early days of the public health emergency, and for which federal funding dries up March 31. 

A House-passed version of the budget adjustment bill had set aside $21 million to keep everyone eligible for housing in motels through June 30, the end of the current fiscal year. The Senate-passed version also anticipated continuing the program until that date — but with new eligibility requirements kicking in a month prior. House budget negotiators ultimately decided to accept the Senate’s position, which also includes $2.5 million to expand shelter capacity.

There are roughly 1,800 households living in motels right now. The Department for Children and Families estimates that 1,045 households currently in the program will remain eligible after May 31.

Though a veto was not widely expected, Scott’s decision to allow the spending deal to pass into law was not a given. House and Senate budget writers basically funded all of his proposals, but Scott had criticized lawmakers for wanting to spend more than initially contemplated by the administration.

“While some of the Legislature’s additional spending may be worthy of consideration, there was no opportunity to weigh their merit against all other investments in the FY24 budget,” the Republican governor wrote in a statement. “Spending this much money so early in the session, without looking at everything in the aggregate means we can’t be sure we’re getting the most out of the historic one-time opportunity for Vermonters.”

Scott had objected in particular to the continued funding for emergency housing, which state officials have argued forcefully is unsustainable absent federal funding. But he had also argued against $50 million for the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to create perpetually affordable homes and $9.2 million for organic dairy farmers, making the case that both appropriations should be debated as part of the regular budget process.

The governor partially got his way on dairy farmers — lawmakers axed the line item in the budget adjustment and promised to take it up in the “Big Bill,” as the annual state budget bill is called. The VHCB line item was whittled down to $25 million, though more is likely to come in next year’s budget.

Historically strong revenues mean that despite the additional spending greenlit in the budget adjustment by the Democratic-controlled Legislature, a $335 million surplus remains available to carry forward into next year’s budget. But Scott wrote that it is “imperative the Legislature invest revenue surplus with more discipline and clarity.” 

“Failing to do so will squander the historic and transformative opportunity we find ourselves in,” he continued.

Other major appropriations also included in H.145 include:

  • $9 million for the Vermont Housing Finance Agency to meet demand in the “Missing Middle” homeownership program.
  • $5 million to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development for the Vermont Housing Improvement Program, which gives landlords grants to rehab vacant empty units.
  • $8.6 million to fund a Reach Up caseload increase. 
  • $10 million for a traveling nurse contract increase at the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital, partially offset by $3.5 million in vacancy savings.
  • $22.4 million for a Brattleboro Retreat rate and utilization increase, $10 million of which is state funded. 
  • $30 million to the Vermont Community Broadband Board to match $84 million in federal grants.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Spending package extending emergency housing becomes law without Scott’s signature.

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In: Government & Politics, Hartford, Hartford Selectboard, Lannie Collins, Michael Hoyt, Valley News
Hartford Town Hall. Supplied photo

This story by Patrick Adrian first appeared in the Valley News on March 17.

Hartford Selectboard members called for more collaboration, communication and civility after a recent organizational meeting gave way to criticism of colleagues, disputes over committee positions and frustrations over a controversial vote.

A Selectboard meeting on March 9 to appoint new board officials and a committee liaison led to friction between board members.

Resident Michelle Boleski, speaking in a public comment, urged the board members “to grow up.”

In one example, a lack of familiarity with rules and procedures resulted in board member Lannie Collins losing a bid for board vice chair because Collins was denied an opportunity to vote.

Board members were also taken aback when Collins publicly critiqued other board members without solicitation, which members found disrespectful and inappropriate.

Speaking to the vote, Collins said that the board’s procedures “felt like a deliberate attempt” to deny him the officer role.

“My vote was completely ignored,” Collins said. “My (belief) is it was because (my appointment) was basically not wanted” by other board members.

Collins, who won reelection last week to a two-year term, has frequently clashed with board members over local government’s role in promoting social diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. Since joining the board in 2020, Collins has opposed board-supported initiatives, including cultural diversity training for employees and elected officials and the Hartford “welcoming” ordinance, which provides protection to undocumented people by limiting the information that town employees may share with federal immigration and customs agencies.

“It’s not that I feel social issues aren’t important,” Collins told the Valley News in a phone interview. “But my emphasis has always been on the core issues that concern many members of the town,” such as finances and department operations.

“It’s like the old adage: You don’t get a paint job for your car when the brakes are failing,” Collins said.

Selectboard Chair Michael Hoyt said the mishandling of the vice chair vote was not intentional.

When conducting the roll call vote, Hoyt skipped over Collins without asking his intent; Hoyt later said he’d assumed that Collins would abstain from voting on his own appointment. The vote ended in a 3-3 tie, short of a majority to pass.

Collins attempted to express his vote, but the board moved to a new nomination.

“I don’t recall seeing a member (vote for oneself) before and wasn’t sure it was allowed,” Hoyt told the Valley News, who had abstained from his own vote for chair.

“I assumed he would also abstain from voting,” Hoyt said. “That assumption was incorrect, and I should have asked him whether he was going to abstain before calling for the votes of the other members.”

The board later held a re-vote. But on the second vote, board member Ally Tufenkjian — who previously voted for Collins — changed her vote to a nay, which resulted in a failure to pass, 4 votes to 3.

Tufenkjian told the Valley News that she initially felt appointing Collins to vice chair would help provide more balance of viewpoints on the board. But she still worried about Collins’ “ability to work collaboratively and collegially” with other members.

She said she switched her opinion between the two votes when Collins criticized board member Dan Fraser, saying that he does not participate enough in board discussions and has “disrespected the public on numerous occasions.”

Earlier in the meeting Collins similarly criticized Hoyt’s performance as chairman, saying he “struggles sometimes with empathy (and with) being able to interact with a broader base of people.”

“Collaborating effectively means being able to offer feedback constructively and respectfully to support each other in doing our best work,” Tufenkjian said.

“We need to model that for our community, and I don’t believe Lannie has demonstrated that. I hope he continues to grow those skills so that he might be ready to step into a leadership role on the board in the future.”

Collins said he felt his feedback was appropriate and warranted.

“I think it has to be recognized,” he explained. “I think we grow as individuals from recognizing our weaknesses.”

But Collins said he regrets a provoking comment made toward Fraser and that he intends to apologize.

At the meeting’s closure, Collins asked about the new seating arrangements. “I want to sit next to Dan (Fraser). I want to rub elbows with him,” he said jokingly.

Board member Mary Erdei remarked that it was “unprofessional” to make light of his earlier comments about Fraser.

“Let’s just get on with the business of the town, rather than finding ways to attack,” Erdei said.

Hoyt said it is appropriate for board members to share constructive criticism with colleagues provided it does not “turn personal.”

“I would like the board to work through interpersonal conflicts directly with other members or through the chair,” he said.

Several board members, including Collins, said the board would benefit from mediation or group training to help the group to work more collaboratively and communicatively.

Board Clerk Kim Souza, who is seeking reappointment as the board training coordinator, said she hopes to organize new trainings, which would not be based on DEI subjects like racial inequality but issues identified in community surveys regarding the town culture or government.

“When the Selectboard is not able to be cohesive or collaborative, it is a poor model (for the community as a whole),” Souza said.

Souza also advocates for the board having a stronger knowledge of town rules and procedures and by developing guidelines for appointing Selectboard members to committees, which also led to arguments last week.

“Written guidelines would have given us a framework to lean on instead of us dissolving into an emotional debate,” Souza said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Hartford Selectboard seeks more collaborative approach after tiff at meeting.

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In: Bob Beeman, Brian Kellogg, democracy, Don McDowell, election, Government & Politics, Judy Bickford, Laura Streets, Morristown, selectboard, Town Meeting Day, Travis Sabataso
From left to right, Don McDowell, Laura Streets, Judy Bickford and Travis Sabataso. Courtesy photos/News & Citizen

This story by Tommy Gardner first appeared in the News & Citizen on March 16.

Thirty-five years of combined institutional memory is gone from the Morristown Selectboard, either pushed out the door by voters or leaving of its own volition.

The board, during its annual reorganizational meeting Thursday, bid farewell to its longest serving members as the remaining elected officials pondered how to deal with the fallout from an unpopular operating budget.

Brian Kellogg, who had served over 20 years on the board — in addition to more than 40 years as the town dogcatcher and 20 years a volunteer firefighter — was defeated in Town Meeting Day elections by Travis Sabataso, who ran on a promise to defeat the budget and have a hand in crafting a new one.

Sabataso may have also played a part in the departure of Bob Beeman, who had been on the board for 15 years, most of it as the chair. Beeman, who cited a family member’s health issues as a significant factor in his decision to step down, also said the political atmosphere had gotten too heated in the past year, and he singled out Sabataso for levying personal attacks against town officials.

Both men struck conciliatory tones Thursday when reading from prepared statements.

Beeman said he had originally planned a lengthy resignation speech but decided against it, saying he wanted to “take the high road” and not “deflect any negativity” on the board he was leaving. He reserved most of his remarks for praising the town employees, apologizing for any heat they’ve taken over the past month and a half of budget strife.

“This last Tuesday was 15 years for me on the board. I have to say that I enjoyed the first 14 of them very much, even the long meetings until 10 o’clock at night and even some heated discussions at times,” Beeman said. “Maybe even I was elected because I’m the guy that just tells it like it is. I’m not afraid to say something whereas some people bite their lip sometimes. I still feel that way.”

Sabataso said he was “disheartened” to read Beeman’s comments in the News & Citizen last week in which he told the newspaper that Sabataso “has done nothing but berate, criticize and insult” town staff and board members in the weeks leading up to Town Meeting Day. But he also said he would work on his communication skills.

“Often, democracy requires people with different opinions to sit together and find compromise and I believe our community is better served when we have a variety of opinions at the table,” Sabataso said. “It saddens me to see the leader of our board step down during a time when we need strong leadership more than ever, but I will try to do my best to be a valuable leader and member of this board going forward and I hope that we can all work together to help lead this town into the future.”

There remains a Bob-sized hole on the board, as Beeman leaves with a full year left in his term and the board presses forward for now at 80-percent strength. There has been no move yet to warn a special election or solicit candidates so the board can appoint someone to replace Beeman.

A portion of Thursday’s meeting was dedicated to distributing responsibility among the elected officials and appointing new people to committees or town positions.

Judy Bickford, now the longest tenured board representative as she begins her sixth year, was elected board chair. Don McDowell, a relative veteran now as he enters his second year, was named vice chair.

Sabataso is joined by another new member, Laura Streets, who urged cooperation.

“There are some harsh realities coming up that we’re going to have to face, and I ask everyone to not take it personally, or get defensive,” Streets said. “Let’s work together and we will get through this, and we will be better off.”

The board adopted a new meeting schedule — it will still meet on the first and third Mondays of the month, but meetings will start at 5:30, a half hour earlier than usual.

As far as Kellogg’s responsibilities, the town has gone to the dogs, with Kellogg deciding not to continue as animal control officer or pound keeper.

David Ring suggested that, similarly to how the town recently rechristened the Bridge Street span the Francis Favreau Bridge after a former town historian, the town ought to rename a bridge slated for construction in the Morristown Corners area the Brian Kellogg Bridge.

Ring also noted Beeman’s departure, saying, “Unfortunately, Bob, you’re leaving, so we’re gonna have to find another bridge for you.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: New generation takes over Morristown board.

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In: candidates, charter change, charter committee, city council, Government, Government & Politics, Jessie Baker, Mayor, Paul Engels, Peter Taylor, resolution, South Burlington, wards
South Burlington Public Library and City Hall on Wednesday, November 10, 2021. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

This story by Corey McDonald first appeared in The Other Paper on March 16.

South Burlington’s charter committee, by charge of the city council, has over the past year been exploring new governing models for the city, including possibly expanding the number of council seats, creating a local ward system for council elections, and adding a mayoral seat to city hall.

The conversations, which began in earnest last spring, were spurred by a city council resolution in late 2021 asking the committee to investigate whether a ward system or more councilors would provide better geographical representation to a city of more than 20,000 residents.

Now, the charter committee is set to begin a public outreach campaign to generate more conversation around how citizens want to be represented.

“Five city councilors are representing 20,000 people. Is that enough city councilors to represent all the residents of a big city?” city manager Jessie Baker said. “In all the conversations I heard with the council, it wasn’t that they said, ‘We want to have X,’ it was that we should have a conversation in our community about governance and what we might want in the future.”

South Burlington is currently governed by a city manager and council chair form of government, with five councilors elected at-large to represent the city’s population and the city manager appointed by the council.

Andrew Chalnick and Tyler Barnes were this month elected to three- and two-year terms on the board, respectively, replacing Vermont Sen. Thomas Chittenden and Matt Cota. They join current councilors Tim Barritt, Meaghan Emery and Helen Riehle.

Five individuals, meanwhile, are elected to the city’s school board.

But over the years, concerns have arisen about whether this provides equitable representation. Chittenden, who recently stepped down as city councilor, wrote in The Other Paper in 2018 asking whether the town should expand the size of the city council.

“It seems to me that our current (South Burlington) constituency ratio dilutes the quality of relationships with our citizens,” he wrote. “If South Burlington increased the number of councilors to seven, that would be two more people to make connections throughout South Burlington and two more people to bring those connections into city hall.”

“Alternative models with a mix of ward and at-large seats could mitigate this by keeping our local elections ‘local,’” he continued.

Of South Burlington’s five city councilors, four live in the city’s southeast quadrant, a more rural and affluent area of town. Both Cota and Chittenden also lived in the southeast district.

“One of the other things that spurred this conversation was just a general conversation about equity in society, and equity in governance,” Baker said. “There was potentially a perception that when you have four counselors that are all from the same area of the city, are we equitably providing representation for all?”

Residents in the southeast quadrant may have their own set of issues separate from issues present in the Chamberlain neighborhood, for example, said Paul Engels, a member of the charter committee and former city councilor who this month lost in his bid for reelection.

“It’s a question of equal representation,” he said.

The question of campaign and election financing is also present. This year’s city council election saw more than $20,000 in campaign contributions for the five candidates. Four of the five candidates, Engels included, raised at least $3,000.

“As more money is becoming part of the city council election, people who live in the southeast quadrant, who have money or have access to money … are the people who are candidates,” Engels said. “That’s the way it’s evolved.”

Creating a ward system, he said, would be a “solution to the cost of running citywide elections” and would ensure a more equitable representation on the council. He said in meeting minutes that it was the most important thing the committee could do. 

Emery, the only sitting councilor not from the southeast quadrant, said she first ran in 2008 to ensure that her part of town did have representation.

“Elections are expensive, and increasingly so because there are wealth disparities between the different candidates,” she said. “There are some real moneyed interests here that can throw their weight behind candidates. By having a ward system, I could see perhaps more obstacles to that kind of uneven playing field. That would be a benefit.”

But she cautioned against thinking “that a councilor from a specific ward is only responsible to that ward.”

“I think that opens up the kind of faction building, ‘I’ll do this for you if you do this for my district’ thinking,” she said. “We really have to think of the city as a whole and let people’s strength of their arguments and the strength of the public’s arguments really be the persuading factor.”

There’s also long been calls from the public to elect a mayor, Emery said. “I can’t say that this is a broad call, and I think that’s what the charter review committee is going to actually be able to measure.”

It’s these pros and cons that the charter committee has been weighing, having spent the last nine months researching the various governing models in Vermont.

Since May 2021, the charter committee has interviewed Montpelier city manager Bill Fraser, Winooski mayor Kristine Lott, and Rutland City mayor David Allaire, exploring the “pros and cons” of each form of government.

The city council, in its 2021 resolution, asked that the committee finish its work by July 2023.

The committee has, as a result, created a public document exploring several governing models: a “strong mayor” system, like Burlington’s; a “weak mayor” system where the mayor would serve as city council chair but has no executive function, similar to Winooski; and the city’s current city manager and council chair model — as well as an expansion of seats on the board and a ward-based electoral system.

Any change to the city’s charter is still months, or years, out. The committee will shape its recommendation based on public feedback. Members plan on sending out a survey to residents and will have several forums to take feedback and solicit ideas from residents based on their pros and cons list.

“If 90 percent of people say they like wards, it could drive us in that direction, regardless of what any of us might feel about it,” Peter Taylor, chair of the charter committee, said. “That’s what the council wanted, for us to get this out to the public and get feedback.”

The committee hopes to formulate a recommendation by the fall and would present it to the city council, who would then have to have its own set of public hearings and then approve a measure to be voted on by residents. Officials have tentatively suggested a possible vote in either March or November 2024.

“We could very well say, from the committee’s perspective, we’re going to advise that you keep it the way it is, and then the council could say, well, we disagree,” Taylor said. “So, it really goes back to the council, and then they determine the direction of how it goes forward.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: South Burlington city council looks at expansion, wards.

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In: activism, Affordable Heat Act, BIPOC, climate action, Climate Change, climate crisis, climate justice, Climate Solutions Caucus, Duxbury, Essex, Global Warming Solutions Act, Government & Politics, income inequality, Manchester, Montpelier, S.55, Sierra Club, South Burlington, Vermont Youth Lobby, Westford, youth
Jenna Hirschman, an Essex High School junior and Youth Lobby activist, speaks in support of statewide climate legislation at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Friday, March 17, 2023. Photo by Natalie Williams/VTDigger

As legislators scrambled to meet crossover deadlines for policy bills at the Statehouse on Friday, youth climate activists spent the day calling on lawmakers to prioritize climate justice.

“I should be at school today,” said Miriam Serota-Winston, a 14-year-old member of the activist group Youth Lobby and first-year student at Montpelier High School. “But instead I’m here alongside my fellow students continuing to demand real, impactful climate action.” 

Activists from Youth Lobby, Sunrise Chittenden and the Sierra Club attended the Statehouse as part of Youth Lobby Day, speaking at a press conference and meeting with representatives, Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman and the Climate Solutions Caucus to express climate concerns and advocate for climate legislation. 

“We are on a path to our own demise,” said Kallen Fenster, a Youth Lobby member from Manchester who spoke at the press conference. “Humankind has a responsibility to preserve our planet for our future generations … but right now we are rapidly failing.” 

“We have the data and the science,” Serota-Winston said. “We know that the earth is warmer, that the sea is rising. We know that climate change disproportionately affects people of color, people in poverty, marginalized communities. We’ve said it so many times before and we will keep saying it until politicians stop putting profit and political maneuvering before our lives.”

Among youth activists’ priorities was the passage of S.5, a bill also known as the “Affordable Heat Act,” which would establish a clean heat standard in Vermont, using a credit system to incentivize and subsidize Vermonters’ transitions to heating and cooling systems with reduced carbon emissions. 

Although a similar bill was vetoed last session by Gov. Phil Scott, S.5 advanced in the Senate this week and is projected to do well on the Senate floor, given the unprecedented supermajority of Democrats and Progressives in the Legislature this session.

A top recommendation of Vermont’s Climate Action Plan, which was adopted in 2021, the Affordable Heat Act would serve as an important legislative step for Vermont in meeting the legally binding emissions reductions requirements outlined in the Global Warming Solutions Act.

“The Affordable Heat Act is a big step toward (a safe) future. We needed this bill passed last year when our governor vetoed it, and we need it now, even more,” said Jenna Hirschman, a Youth Lobby activist and Essex High School junior. 

The student activists focused much of their messaging on the importance of justice in climate action, citing how the climate crisis disproportionately affects people of color, people in poverty and other marginalized communities. 

“While we all experience, collectively, the same effects of climate change, we will not be experiencing them equally,” said Earl Aguila, a student organizer of Sunrise Chittenden and a South Burlington High School student. “Black, Indigenous and communities of color and low-income communities already have limited access to education, jobs, housing, healthy food and transportation. A changing climate will exacerbate these crises.”

“We must actually have BIPOC and low-income people as integral and valued members and leaders” of movements for climate action, Aguila said.

As the activists stood before a small, dimly lit crowd, they spoke passionately while lawmakers passed casually in and out of the room.

“I remember having panic attacks over the state of the climate before I even left elementary school,” said Rowan Clough, a Duxbury resident and student activist with Harwood Union High School’s Youth Lobby Chapter. “I found (activism to be) very helpful for my own climate anxiety.”

While the youth activists were quick to admit the emotional toll the climate crisis has taken on them, referencing feelings of climate anxiety and doom that have at times felt insurmountable, they stood at the Statehouse calling for change.

“I’ve heard that some of my friends are like, ‘I don’t have any reason to do anything with climate action. There’s already a lot of other people doing it,’ but I guess what I would say to that is that the climate crisis is not just happening here,” Aguila said, who has family living in the Philippines. “It’s not just happening locally.”

“We all have a collective obligation to one another,” Aguila said.

Virginia Cobb, an Essex High School student and Westford resident, spoke about how young people are flooded with negative, but accurate, climate change news.

“I, along with my peers, want to be able to look back and say we did everything we could to help Vermonters and fight climate change,” Cobb said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont teens call on lawmakers to act on climate change and pass the Affordable Heat Act.

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In: BROC Community Action, candidates, Crime, David Allaire, Government & Politics, Homelessness, John Atwood, Lyle Jepson, Michael Doenges, PAC, population, Rutland, Sharon Davis, Town Meeting Day, voters, William Notte
Mike Doenges. Photo courtesy of Mike Doenges

Whether critical or complimentary of Rutland Forward, many observers of Rutland city politics agree that the organization played a key role in the election of a new mayor — and the ouster of an incumbent.

Registered as a political action committee in Vermont, Rutland Forward fielded nine candidates in the March 7 elections for city and school board posts. All of its candidates won, including Michael Doenges, who was sworn in as mayor on Wednesday. He replaced David Allaire, who had held the seat for six years.

“It’s a whole different approach to getting elected in Rutland, and it worked,” said Tom Donahue, CEO of the nonprofit social services agency BROC Community Action and former president of the city’s board of aldermen. “It was highly successful.”

The tactics of Rutland Forward — which started fielding local candidates in 2021 — included mailers, social media marketing and a digital palm card, a candidate list designed to be stored on a mobile device. These supplemented the traditional campaign yard signs, sign waves and public appearances.

Donahue said the PAC’s digital strategies were particularly important in courting young people, whose votes he believes tilted the race toward Doenges. The new mayor beat Allaire 1,710-1,317. About a quarter of Rutland’s 11,800 voters turned out last week, according to the city clerk’s office, but there’s no way to know voters’ ages. 

The bottom line, Donahue said, is that Rutland Forward supporters were committed enough to the group that they voted for its entire slate of candidates. “That’s what made it work at the end of the day,” said Donahue, who does not endorse candidates but who moderated candidate forums leading up to Town Meeting Day.

Rutland Forward, whose slogan is “making a Rutland for everyone,” is regarded by observers as a progressive political organization. Its treasurer, John Atwood, said the group doesn’t espouse a political ideology and is not affiliated with any political party.  

“We’ve worked with candidates of varying political persuasions,” he said. “Yes, many of our candidates would call themselves progressive, but not all of them.”

He said the organization selects candidates to support based on whether they’re invested in Rutland, don’t hold extreme views and are willing to work hard with the group. 

Doenges, who entered politics through the board of aldermen in 2021, was part of Rutland Forward’s first slate of candidates. 

‘Big city politics’

Some municipal officials see Rutland Forward’s emergence as an intrusion into local elections of the machinery and money associated more with big-city politics.

Recently reelected Alderman Bill Gillam Jr., who was not endorsed by Rutland Forward, said city residents should be able to win a seat on the board armed with just a few hundred dollars and their community involvement, experience and leadership skills. Belonging to a political organization shouldn’t be a prerequisite, he said.

“We’re going to lose that individual person that can actually contribute a lot to the city,” said Gillam, who supported Allaire for mayor. “That’s what we should be pushing — it’s getting people to participate and not have to belong to a group.”

Alderwoman Sharon Davis, who endorsed Allaire, said the PAC’s ability to raise bigger amounts of money sidelines other candidates.

“Can anybody raise money? Absolutely. Can anybody put out flyers? Absolutely. But it’s the amount of money that is difficult to raise to be in competition with Rutland Forward,” she said.

In response to the criticism, Atwood said the organization has, in fact, leveled the playing field in local elections. He said the group has created the opportunity for people who don’t have long histories in Rutland, or who don’t have name recognition, to run for public office.

“I think we’ve actually opened up space for a new type of candidate to be able to compete,” said Atwood, who unsuccessfully ran for the board of aldermen multiple times.

He said raising money is an important part of political campaigns. “I guess we’re competing hard,” he said, “and money is certainly very useful.”

The deadline for disclosing campaign finances for Town Meeting Day isn’t until next week. But Atwood provided VTDigger with internal reports, stating Rutland Forward spent $4,000 on their postcard mailers, as well as $400 on printing and envelopes. 

He said the group’s social media marketing didn’t involve any paid placements, only the free features of social media platforms.

The media and the message

Doenges believes Rutland Forward contributed to his mayoral win as much as he helped in the group’s election success. He said the organization’s strong slate of candidates likely gave him a boost, while his efforts to be widely seen and heard could have broadened the slate’s reach.

Doenges considers his campaign’s multimedia strategy as key to his victory. Because people get news and information from a variety of sources, he said he tried to get in front of voters through every medium possible: the local newspaper, local TV stations, online news, mailers, radio, YouTube and Facebook.

“If you consumed all those pieces of media,” he said, “you get the same thing over and over.”

Allaire declined to comment on the factors that could have influenced the election, but said leaving the mayor’s office didn’t mean he was disappearing from public life.

“You haven’t seen the last of me,” Allaire said on his last full day in office. 

Other community members also attributed Doenges’ win to his personality, ideas and vision for Rutland.

Doenges campaigned on revitalizing the city — Vermont’s second largest municipality for most of the last century — based on long-range planning. With a master plan spanning 20-25 years, Doenges said, Rutland can innovate and redevelop into a place where future generations will choose to build their lives. 

His priorities include reversing the city’s decades-long population decline, creating more housing and attracting new businesses while combating rising crime and homelessness.

Steve Costello, a retired Green Mountain Power executive, endorsed Doenges for mayor, the first time he publicly supported a political candidate. He praised Allaire’s accomplishments as a mayor and his integrity as an official but said he believed Rutland needed a leader like Doenges at this moment.

“We have a lot of work that really needs to get done,” Costello said, “and Mike, I think, is the guy who presents the best opportunity to get that kind of stuff done.” He cited Doenges’ accomplishments in the local organizations where they’ve served together. 

Rep. William Notte, D-Rutland City, who also endorsed Doenges, described the candidate’s optimism and strategic planning as a winning combination.

“That really gave a lot of people hope,” he said. 

Lyle Jepson, director of the Chamber and Economic Development of the Rutland Region, which remains neutral on political races, said the mayoral candidates are both well-liked and didn’t vary greatly in the solutions they proposed to Rutland’s major problems. 

But Jepson said he believed Doenges was more effective in getting his message out to voters, on top of running a strategic campaign that included being part of Rutland Forward.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Rutland’s mayoral race demonstrates the growing influence of a local PAC.

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Mike Doenges. Photo courtesy of Mike Doenges

Whether critical or complimentary of Rutland Forward, many observers of Rutland city politics agree that the organization played a key role in the election of a new mayor — and the ouster of an incumbent.

Registered as a political action committee in Vermont, Rutland Forward fielded nine candidates in the March 7 elections for city and school board posts. All of its candidates won, including Michael Doenges, who was sworn in as mayor on Wednesday. He replaced David Allaire, who had held the seat for six years.

“It’s a whole different approach to getting elected in Rutland, and it worked,” said Tom Donahue, CEO of the nonprofit social services agency BROC Community Action and former president of the city’s board of aldermen. “It was highly successful.”

The tactics of Rutland Forward — which started fielding local candidates in 2021 — included mailers, social media marketing and a digital palm card, a candidate list designed to be stored on a mobile device. These supplemented the traditional campaign yard signs, sign waves and public appearances.

Donahue said the PAC’s digital strategies were particularly important in courting young people, whose votes he believes tilted the race toward Doenges. The new mayor beat Allaire 1,710-1,317. About a quarter of Rutland’s 11,800 voters turned out last week, according to the city clerk’s office, but there’s no way to know voters’ ages. 

The bottom line, Donahue said, is that Rutland Forward supporters were committed enough to the group that they voted for its entire slate of candidates. “That’s what made it work at the end of the day,” said Donahue, who does not endorse candidates but who moderated candidate forums leading up to Town Meeting Day.

Rutland Forward, whose slogan is “making a Rutland for everyone,” is regarded by observers as a progressive political organization. Its treasurer, John Atwood, said the group doesn’t espouse a political ideology and is not affiliated with any political party.  

“We’ve worked with candidates of varying political persuasions,” he said. “Yes, many of our candidates would call themselves progressive, but not all of them.”

He said the organization selects candidates to support based on whether they’re invested in Rutland, don’t hold extreme views and are willing to work hard with the group. 

Doenges, who entered politics through the board of aldermen in 2021, was part of Rutland Forward’s first slate of candidates. 

‘Big city politics’

Some municipal officials see Rutland Forward’s emergence as an intrusion into local elections of the machinery and money associated more with big-city politics.

Recently reelected Alderman Bill Gillam Jr., who was not endorsed by Rutland Forward, said city residents should be able to win a seat on the board armed with just a few hundred dollars and their community involvement, experience and leadership skills. Belonging to a political organization shouldn’t be a prerequisite, he said.

“We’re going to lose that individual person that can actually contribute a lot to the city,” said Gillam, who supported Allaire for mayor. “That’s what we should be pushing — it’s getting people to participate and not have to belong to a group.”

Alderwoman Sharon Davis, who endorsed Allaire, said the PAC’s ability to raise bigger amounts of money sidelines other candidates.

“Can anybody raise money? Absolutely. Can anybody put out flyers? Absolutely. But it’s the amount of money that is difficult to raise to be in competition with Rutland Forward,” she said.

In response to the criticism, Atwood said the organization has, in fact, leveled the playing field in local elections. He said the group has created the opportunity for people who don’t have long histories in Rutland, or who don’t have name recognition, to run for public office.

“I think we’ve actually opened up space for a new type of candidate to be able to compete,” said Atwood, who unsuccessfully ran for the board of aldermen multiple times.

He said raising money is an important part of political campaigns. “I guess we’re competing hard,” he said, “and money is certainly very useful.”

The deadline for disclosing campaign finances for Town Meeting Day isn’t until next week. But Atwood provided VTDigger with internal reports, stating Rutland Forward spent $4,000 on their postcard mailers, as well as $400 on printing and envelopes. 

He said the group’s social media marketing didn’t involve any paid placements, only the free features of social media platforms.

The media and the message

Doenges believes Rutland Forward contributed to his mayoral win as much as he helped in the group’s election success. He said the organization’s strong slate of candidates likely gave him a boost, while his efforts to be widely seen and heard could have broadened the slate’s reach.

Doenges considers his campaign’s multimedia strategy as key to his victory. Because people get news and information from a variety of sources, he said he tried to get in front of voters through every medium possible: the local newspaper, local TV stations, online news, mailers, radio, YouTube and Facebook.

“If you consumed all those pieces of media,” he said, “you get the same thing over and over.”

Allaire declined to comment on the factors that could have influenced the election, but said leaving the mayor’s office didn’t mean he was disappearing from public life.

“You haven’t seen the last of me,” Allaire said on his last full day in office. 

Other community members also attributed Doenges’ win to his personality, ideas and vision for Rutland.

Doenges campaigned on revitalizing the city — Vermont’s second largest municipality for most of the last century — based on long-range planning. With a master plan spanning 20-25 years, Doenges said, Rutland can innovate and redevelop into a place where future generations will choose to build their lives. 

His priorities include reversing the city’s decades-long population decline, creating more housing and attracting new businesses while combating rising crime and homelessness.

Steve Costello, a retired Green Mountain Power executive, endorsed Doenges for mayor, the first time he publicly supported a political candidate. He praised Allaire’s accomplishments as a mayor and his integrity as an official but said he believed Rutland needed a leader like Doenges at this moment.

“We have a lot of work that really needs to get done,” Costello said, “and Mike, I think, is the guy who presents the best opportunity to get that kind of stuff done.” He cited Doenges’ accomplishments in the local organizations where they’ve served together. 

Rep. William Notte, D-Rutland City, who also endorsed Doenges, described the candidate’s optimism and strategic planning as a winning combination.

“That really gave a lot of people hope,” he said. 

Lyle Jepson, director of the Chamber and Economic Development of the Rutland Region, which remains neutral on political races, said the mayoral candidates are both well-liked and didn’t vary greatly in the solutions they proposed to Rutland’s major problems. 

But Jepson said he believed Doenges was more effective in getting his message out to voters, on top of running a strategic campaign that included being part of Rutland Forward.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Rutland’s mayoral race demonstrates the growing influence of a local PAC.

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In: Agency of Transportation, crossover, Dan French, Dick Sears, Doug Hoffer, Final Reading, Final Reading 2023, Government & Politics, H.222, H.230, H.31, kate donnally, Legislature 2023, Melanie Carpenter, Phil Scott, S.16, S.56, Sara Coffey, Transportation, Transportation Bill, Vermont Agency of Transportation, Vermont legislature
Friday marked Crossover Day — the deadline for bills to clear their committee of origin — at the Vermont Statehouse. Illustration by Jeralyn Darling; File photo by Mike Dougherty

Happy Crossover Day to those who observe! 

For those of you with real hobbies and interests outside of the golden dome, that means today is the (first) deadline for bills to clear at least one committee in one chamber of the Vermont Legislature. Those that don’t — with a few notable exceptions, as described below — are unlikely to become law this session.

Before we run through which bills survived and which met their Crossover Day fate, let’s review the standard disclaimers and caveats: For one thing, money bills get an extra week, because they’re special. For another, no bill is ever really, truly dead. 

There are myriad ways lawmakers can resuscitate legislation that appears long gone. For example, they can tack measures on as amendments to separate bills, stretching the definition of germaneness to the outer limits of the human imagination. There’s the tried-and-true method of just throwing it into a big ol’ omnibus bill. Who will notice, right? Or, in the first year of the biennium, lawmakers can always trot out the classic refrain, “That’s a two-year conversation.” Translation: “We’re putting this off ‘til next year.”

So, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at which bills are in, and which are out:

IN

OUT

  • S.16, which would scrap the clergy exemption from mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect.
  • H.27, which would expand the state’s definition of domestic abuse to include coercive and controlling behavior. 
  • S.77, which would fine GPS providers $2,000 for failing to give drivers explicit notice about the maximum vehicle dimensions allowed through Smugglers Notch.
  • H.81, which would grant owners of agricultural equipment the “right to repair” their own machinery, or hire an independent mechanic.
  • H.156, which would incrementally implement Green Mountain Care through universal primary care.
  • H.173, which would prohibit the manipulation of children for the purpose of sexual contact.

— Sarah Mearhoff, with much help from her treasured colleagues

IN THE KNOW

There’s soon to be a fresh face in the Statehouse halls. Knowing that Friday was sure to be a slow news day, Gov. Phil Scott’s office announced the appointment of Hyde Park Democrat Melanie Carpenter to the House. Carpenter will assume the seat vacated by former Rep. Kate Donnally, a Democrat who resigned from her post in January.

According to a Friday press release, Carpenter owns and operates Zack Woods Herb Farm in Hyde Park, and previously worked as principal of Stowe Middle School from 2008 to 2013. Before that, she taught 7th and 8th grade and worked as a literacy specialist at Peoples Academy Middle School in Morrisville. Scott on Friday touted the “diverse perspective” he said she will bring to the Statehouse given her work as a farmer, small business owner and educator.

House Speaker Jill Krowinski’s chief of staff, Conor Kennedy, told VTDigger on Friday that Carpenter will likely be sworn in Tuesday.

— Sarah Mearhoff

Vermont Secretary of Education Dan French will leave his job next month for a leadership role at an education nonprofit, state officials announced Friday. 

French, who has led Vermont’s Agency of Education since 2018, will take an unspecified “senior leadership role” at the Council of Chief State School Officers, an organization of state education officials. 

“It has been an honor to serve as a member of Governor Scott’s cabinet and his team,” French said in a press release sent at noon on Friday. “It has been a privilege to serve as Secretary of Education for a Governor who is deeply committed to the future success of all of our students.”

Deputy Secretary of Education Heather Bouchey will take over as interim secretary after French’s departure, officials said. 

Read more here.

— Peter D’Auria

The House Transportation Committee advanced the state’s annual transportation bill on Friday afternoon — and it includes, among dozens of other provisions, funding that would keep Green Mountain Transit buses fare-free through the end of the year.

The bill directs the state Agency of Transportation to make a one-time, $1,000,000 appropriation to the Burlington-based transit agency for the 2024 fiscal year. 

Rep. Sara Coffey, D-Guilford, who chairs the House transportation committee, said the allocation would be pulled from the agency’s FY 2024 highway maintenance budget. Funding to continue fare-free service, which Green Mountain Transit has offered since the outset of the pandemic, was not part of the administration’s initial 2024 transportation budget proposal. 

Earlier this year, Green Mountain Transit’s board of commissioners voted to reinstate fares on July 1, 2023. But officials from the public transit agency have since told lawmakers that they need more time to bring a modern, efficient fare collection system back online.

The bill also calls for Green Mountain Transit to develop a new “tiered-fare” system that would, at a minimum, offer free or reduced fares for low-income riders. 

Coffey said the T-bill’s next stop will be in the House Ways and Means Committee.

— Shaun Robinson

A bill that would end clergy exemptions for reporting child abuse and neglect appears dead as it failed to meet a key legislative deadline for passing out of a committee Friday.

The bill, S.16, had been assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held hearings on the matter, including one that featured Vermont Catholic Bishop Christopher Coyne, who testified in opposition to the legislation.

Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, the committee’s chair, said Thursday that due to “constitutional concerns” the bill was being shelved, at least for now, and therefore will not move out of committee.

“I’m going to be working with Legislative Counsel and others trying to work something out so when we take it back to make sure it is constitutional under the United States Constitution and the separation of church and state,” Sears said.

He added that he would be looking at what laws other states have on the books or are looking to adopt.

“It’d be dead for this year but it wouldn’t be dead for next year,” he said of the legislation. “I want to make sure whatever we do is constitutionally protected.” 

Read more here. 

— Alan Keays

The state Agency of Transportation blew past estimates it gave the Legislature for the costs and timelines of several recent major paving projects — and it hasn’t been clear on the reasons why, according to a new report by state Auditor Doug Hoffer.  

Paving is the largest program in the state’s proposed transportation budget for the 2024 fiscal year, totalling about $142 million. The Legislature has approved nearly $600 million for paving projects between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, according to Hoffer.

But “despite these significant appropriations,” the March 15 report found, the agency lacks “transparency and accountability” when it comes to tracking the cost and timeliness of its paving projects — especially in the early engineering phase.

Read more here.

— Shaun Robinson

ON THE MOVE

Without much ceremony and with just minutes to spare, the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare on Friday advanced a child care bill that would make a historic investment in Vermont’s ailing child care sector and create a new parental leave benefit. 

A deep-pocketed advocacy push and the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on an already beleaguered sector combined to make child care a banner priority for Democrats in Montpelier this year. 

The health and welfare committee’s members advanced S.56 on a 3-2 vote, with Republicans opposed, on the final day of the Legislature’s mid-session “crossover” week, when all policy bills must leave their committee of jurisdiction or die on the vine.

A full fiscal analysis for the bill, which has undergone several major revisions this week alone, is not yet available. But Nolan Langweil, an analyst with the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office, told lawmakers Friday that preliminary estimates pegged the combined annual cost of paid leave and child care subsidies at about $190 million in 2025, which would be the first full year of operation. (Roughly 90% of that price tag would be attributable to child care.)

Read more here. 

— Lola Duffort

H.31, a bill that addresses chemicals used to treat aquatic nuisances, has passed out of the House Environment and Energy Committee by the crossover deadline with some significant changes. 

The original bill would have established a moratorium on any new permits that would allow application of pesticides or other chemicals, and it would have banned the use of any chemicals already allowed by the state under existing permits, with a few exceptions. 

Lawmakers nixed the moratorium on Friday, but kept a study that would assess the environmental and public health impacts of chemical treatments compared to their usefulness. 

— Emma Cotton

The House Human Services Committee pushed a bill forward on Friday with a variety of fairly uncontroversial provisions aimed at reducing opioid overdoses. 

The bill, H.222, is a grab bag of different changes intended to improve access to harm reduction supplies, medication-assisted treatment and peer support. Among them: 

  • It would order the Department of Health to create statewide programs for needle and syringe disposal and for the distribution of overdose reversal drugs, including at kiosks accessible to those at risk. 
  • It would require the Department of Vermont Health Access to ensure that the state’s Medicaid program covers at least one type of opioid use disorder treatment in each therapeutic class: methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone. It also would make several technical changes intended to remove or ease existing prior authorization requirements for Medicaid patients who need those treatments. 
  • Finally, it would require that municipal zoning laws treat certified group homes for people in recovery from substance use serving fewer than eight people as a permitted “single-family residential use.” This parallels a current law requiring the same for residential care homes of other types. 

— Kristen Fountain

The Vermont House will have a chance to weigh in on its own set of gun control measures next week, after a bill crafted in response to Vermont’s high and rising suicide rate passed largely unchanged through a second committee’s review on Friday. A separate bill with gun-related provisions is also on the move in the Senate. 

The House bill, H.230, has three primary components: a new requirement for gun storage and accompanying criminal penalties in limited cases; a new route for family or household members to petition state courts for gun removal; and a new 72-hour gun purchase waiting period.

The House Judiciary Committee signed off on the legislation, which originated in the House Health Care Committee, on Friday morning with a 7-4 vote. 

Read more here. 

— Kristen Fountain

WHAT WE’RE READING

Charlotte Selectboard back to the drawing board after voters reject budget (VTDigger)

Vt. lawmakers consider allowing agricultural, domestic workers to collectively bargain (Vermont Public)

Vt. bill would ban ‘forever chemicals’ in menstrual products, textiles, turf (Vermont Public)

Read the story on VTDigger here: Final Reading: Many bills made it across the crossover threshold. Some did not..

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In: Barbara Rachelson, Charity Clark, Ela Chapin, Government & Politics, Gun control, gun laws, gun legislation, guns, H.230, Joseph Andriano, Legislature 2023, Martin LaLonde, S.4, Vermont legislature, Will Notte, William Notte
Rep. Barbara Rachelson, D-Burlington, of the House Judiciary Committee, said the bill strikes a balance between gun rights and public health. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

The Vermont House will have a chance to weigh in on its own set of gun control measures next week, after a bill crafted in response to Vermont’s high and rising suicide rate passed largely unchanged through a second committee’s review on Friday. A separate bill with gun-related provisions is also on the move in the Senate. 

The House bill, H.230, has three primary components: a new requirement for gun storage and accompanying criminal penalties in limited cases; a new route for family or household members to petition state courts for gun removal; and a new 72-hour gun purchase waiting period.

The House Judiciary Committee signed off on the legislation, which originated in the House Health Care Committee, on Friday morning with a 7-4 vote. 

Rep. Barbara Rachelson, D-Burlington, summarized the balance that she said the bill struck between gun rights and public health. 

“We’re not willy-nilly trying to take rights away from anyone,” said Rachelson, who voted for the measure. “But we are trying to do something that is going to make a difference and still allow people to enjoy being gun owners and hunters.”

For the past decade in Vermont, almost 90% of gun deaths have been suicides. The state’s suicide rate of 20.3 per 100,000 people is much higher than the national average of 14 per 100,000. In 2021, almost 60% of deaths by suicide in Vermont were by firearms, which the legislation describes as “unique in their ability to create instantaneous and irreversible outcomes.”

Legislators who voted in favor of the bill said there is evidence from other states that all three of the measures would reduce those numbers and save lives. “We are losing people to preventable deaths and quite frankly we need to do something,” said Rep. Will Notte, D-Rutland City. 

Several opponents of the measure spoke before the vote, and said their belief that the bill runs afoul of the Constitution’s Second Amendment weighed heavily.

“It’s not that it’s not a problem that we are facing, but we have a Constitution that has set forth a right here,” said Joseph Andriano, D-Orwell, a lawyer and the sole non-Republican to oppose the bill, paraphrasing the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

A changing legal landscape

A case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in October has made the constitutional questions even murkier. The Bruen decision, as it’s known, overturned standards previously used by the courts to determine the constitutionality of limits on gun ownership and use. 

State officials testifying before the judiciary committee gave widely diverging opinions on what should be done in the face of the legal uncertainty. 

“This is a classic area or moment to consider a study group to weigh in,” said Rebecca Turner, who supervises public defender appeals for the state Office of the Defender General, in testimony on Thursday. She urged legislators “to explore other alternatives that are not so fraught with possible constitutional challenges in terms of addressing the policy goals.”

One part of the Senate bill, S.4, which would have prohibited Vermonters under age 21 from owning semiautomatic weapons, was removed before approval in that chamber’s judiciary committee due to concerns it would be found unconstitutional under the new interpretation. But other gun-related pieces remain.

One Senate bill provision would forbid defacing a firearm’s serial number and another would make “straw purchasing” a felony. In straw purchases, a person buys a firearm on behalf of someone who is prohibited from owning one or who intends to commit a crime with it. 

Attorney General Charity Clark told the House Judiciary Committee that she was “enthusiastic” about the House bill and was prepared to defend its constitutionality in court, despite the recent change in the legal landscape. 

“I am of the mind that if the Legislature waited for all the case law to resolve itself across the nation in every court, that you would be paralyzed and never pass a bill,” Clark testified on Thursday. 

Youth hunters complicate storage provisions 

The law likely to come before the House next week would require Vermonters with guns — 47% of households by one estimate — to store them locked and separate from ammunition in situations in which a child or an adult prohibited from having a gun would otherwise be able to access them. 

Prohibited persons include those convicted of a violent crime or subject to court-ordered gun removal under an “extreme risk protection order.”

The requirement would not apply to residences or other places in which access by a child or prohibited person is not likely to occur. It also would not apply when the gun is with or near the owner or another authorized user. 

However, a “child” in the bill is defined as anyone under the age of 18 and “authorized user” is defined as a person 18 and older. As a result, judiciary committee members spent several days debating how to ensure the new requirement would not affect Vermont’s long tradition of youth hunting and target shooting. 

Hunting and shooting are frequently family affairs in Vermont. A person under 18 can legally purchase a firearm after completing a certified hunter safety course. Also, a parent or guardian can legally provide a firearm to a minor for his or her use. 

Judiciary chair Martin LaLonde, D-South Burlington, said he did not believe the requirement would apply once a gun was taken out to go hunting because the bill deals only with gun storage, not gun usage.

But concerns were raised in both the House judiciary and health committees about specific circumstances in which the requirement might come into play, particularly when youths under 18 are allowed to have access to stored guns.

“We’re going to want to keep it broad enough to protect people who have the right to go hunting and should have access,” said Rep. Ela Chapin, D-East Montpelier, on Wednesday. 

The solution lawmakers found was this: No civil or criminal penalties would be applied except in cases in which a child or prohibited person’s access to the unlocked firearm results in its misuse. 

If the firearm were improperly stored and the child or prohibited person used it in the commission of a crime or threatened someone with it, the charge for the gun owner would be a misdemeanor. The charge would be a felony if the firearm was used to cause death or serious bodily injury.

Chapin said she felt that the change acknowledged teenagers can and do access firearms stored in Vermont homes for hunting and target practice. “This makes it a little more palatable,” she said.

A few other changes were made to the bill by the judiciary committee. The proposed 72-hour waiting period was waived for gun shows for one year. 

Also, a family or household member would still be able to petition the court directly to consider issuing an extreme risk prevention order, which allows law enforcement to remove firearms from someone considered a risk to themselves or others. Currently, only a state’s attorney can do that. In the bill’s new version, after the initial petition, the state attorney’s office becomes responsible for pursuing the order.

But no amount of tweaking would address the most comprehensive argument from gun rights advocates: the law’s potential infringement on a basic constitutional right. 

“At best, at best, you’ve got a huge gray area,” said Chris Bradley, president of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs. He warned that his organization and others would be bringing potentially costly legal challenges should the bill become law. 

“Vermonters will pay for this, so I think we need to go into this with our eyes open,” he said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Suicide prevention gun bill heads to House floor.

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In: Catholic Diocese of Burlington, Catholic Diocese of Vermont, child abuse, child neglect, Christopher Coyne, clergy, Dick Sears, Diocese of Burlington, Government & Politics, Legislature 2023, Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington, S.16, Vermont legislature
Christopher Coyne, bishop of the Diocese of Burlington, center, answers a question from Sen. Phil Baruth, D-Chittenden Central, left, as the Senate Judiciary Committee considers a bill repealing an exception for clergy to report child abuse at the Statehouse in Montpelier on March 3. The bill failed to make it out of committee this session. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

A bill that would end clergy exemptions for reporting child abuse and neglect appears dead as it failed to meet a key legislative deadline for passing out of a committee Friday.

The bill, S.16, had been assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held hearings on the matter, including one that featured Vermont Catholic Bishop Christopher Coyne, who testified in opposition to the legislation.

Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, the committee’s chair, said Thursday that due to “constitutional concerns” the bill was being shelved, at least for now, and therefore will not move out of committee.

“I’m going to be working with legislative counsel and others trying to work something out so when we take it back to make sure it is constitutional under the United States Constitution and the separation of church and state,” Sears said.

He added that he will be looking at what laws other states have on the books or are looking to adopt.

“It’d be dead for this year but it wouldn’t be dead for next year,” he said of the legislation. “I want to make sure whatever we do is constitutionally protected.” 

Friday was the deadline for policy bills to move out of their committee of origin. If a bill is not passed out of that committee it is likely shelved for a year. If a bill is shelved during the first year of the biennium, as is the case with S.16, it can resume the legislative process the following January. 

Vermont law says clergy members are obligated to report abuse and neglect, but the law includes exemptions for what they learn while hearing a confession or acting as a spiritual adviser.

According to current law, the exemptions include information obtained in a communication that is:

  • Made to a member of the clergy acting in the capacity of a spiritual adviser.
  • Intended by the parties to be confidential at the time of the communication.
  • Intended to be an act of contrition or matter of conscience.
  • Required to be confidential by religious law, doctrine or tenet.

The bill would have done away with those exemptions.

Benjamin Novogroski, legislative counsel, told committee members earlier this year that Vermont is one of 33 states with exemptions for clergy in laws requiring mandatory reporting of child abuse.

Earlier this month, Coyne testified against the legislation, stating that a priest faces excommunication for disclosing the communication made to them during confession.

“And the sacramental seal of confession is the worldwide law of the Catholic Church, not just the diocese of Burlington, Vermont,” Coyne said, according to the Associated Press. He added that the bill “crosses a Constitutional protective element of our religious faith: the right to worship as we see fit.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Clergy reporting bill fails to make key legislative deadline over constitutional concerns.

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In: child care, Government & Politics, H.66, Legislature 2023, paid parental leave, S.56, Vermont legislature
Monique Braman helps Elliot Hall, 2, put on snowboots in January at the Orange County Parent Child Center in Tunbridge. The Senate Committee on Health and Welfare on Friday advanced a child care bill that would make a historic investment in Vermont’s ailing child care sector and create a new parental leave benefit. File photo by Riley Robinson/VTDigger

Without much ceremony and with just minutes to spare, the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare on Friday advanced a child care bill that would make a historic investment in Vermont’s ailing child care sector and create a new parental leave benefit. 

A deep-pocketed advocacy push and the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on an already beleaguered sector combined to make child care a banner priority for Democrats in Montpelier this year. 

The health and welfare committee’s members advanced S.56 on a 3-2 vote, with Republicans opposed, on the final day of the Legislature’s mid-session “crossover” week, when all policy bills must leave their committee of jurisdiction or die on the vine.

A full fiscal analysis for the bill, which has undergone several major revisions this week alone, is not yet available. But Nolan Langweil, an analyst with the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office, told lawmakers Friday that preliminary estimates pegged the combined annual cost of paid leave and child care subsidies at about $190 million in 2025, which would be the first full year of operation. (Roughly 90% of that price tag would be attributable to child care.)

The bill has undergone a major rewrite since it was first introduced. Gone, for example, is a centerpiece of the original legislation: free, full-day pre-K in public schools for all 4-year-olds. The bill now simply calls for a study on the subject.

A last-minute addition, meanwhile, would create a 12-week paid leave benefit for the parent of a new child. The upper chamber has long been lukewarm on paid parental leave, and key Senate Democrats have argued this year that child care should be the priority. The leave amendment is generally viewed as the Senate’s rebuttal to H.66, a push in the Vermont House to enact one of the most generous paid family and medical leave programs in the country, to the tune of over $100 million a year.

One parent per two-parent household would be allowed to access the parental leave benefit outlined in the Senate legislation, and weekly reimbursements would max out at $600 a week. Families at or below 600% of the federal poverty level — $180,000 for a family of four — would be eligible. 

The upper chamber’s leave proposal does not include benefits for any other types of time off — such as medical or caregiving leave — though those are included in the House bill.

The economics of child care are broken in two ways: Families can ill-afford the cost, and workers can’t make ends meet. The median income for early childhood teachers in Vermont is less than $40,000; for assistant teachers, it’s around $22,000, according to a 2021 state report. Child care workers typically also go without basic benefits such as health insurance, paid sick time or retirement plans. The average cost of care, meanwhile, is over $26,000 a year.

A report commissioned by lawmakers estimated that Vermont would need to spend between $179 and $279 million to shore up salaries and make tuition affordable for most families.

The Senate bill extends help to more families than contemplated in the report. But it also increases reimbursements at a lower rate than recommended and does not guarantee that all families receiving subsidies would pay less than 10% of their annual incomes toward child care.

“We don’t want to sacrifice the good for trying to get to perfection,” Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, the panel’s chair, told her colleagues Friday. “We’re trying to do some good in terms of moving ahead as much as we can.”

Currently, Vermont’s child care subsidy program pays the full cost of tuition for families living at or below 150% of the federal poverty level. (That’s $45,000 for a family of four.) S.56 would eliminate co-payments for those making up to 185% of that threshold ($55,500 for a family of four) and extend partial subsidies to families making up to 600%, mirroring the cut-off for the paid leave program. In the current system, child care subsidies end for families with incomes above 350% of the federal poverty level.

In a statement, Aly Richards, the CEO of child care advocacy group Let’s Grow Kids, wrote that the panel had “made history” on Friday by advancing the legislation.

“This bill brings Vermont closer to solving the child care crisis by making child care more accessible and affordable for thousands of Vermonters and by improving compensation for early childhood educators,” she wrote. “We applaud members of the committee for their hard work strengthening this bill.”

S.56 must next go to the Senate’s appropriations and finance committees before hitting the floor.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Senate panel advances $190 million child care and parental leave bill.

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In: Agency of Transportation, audit, auditor, Doug Hoffer, Government & Politics, Jesse Devlin, Joe Flynn, roadwork, Vermont Agency of Transportation
Catlin and Keshia Passonno, who are married, remove line striping targets along South Street in Woodstock in the summer of 2021. On several recent paving projects, a new report states, VTrans exceeded its initial cost estimates by more than 50% and finished its work up to six years later than it said it would. Photo by Jennifer Hauck/Valley News

The Vermont Agency of Transportation blew past estimates it gave the Legislature for the costs and timelines of several recent major paving projects — and it hasn’t been clear on the reasons why, according to a new report by state Auditor Doug Hoffer.  

Paving is the largest program in the state’s proposed transportation budget for the 2024 fiscal year, totalling about $142 million. The Legislature has approved nearly $600 million for paving projects between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, according to Hoffer.

But “despite these significant appropriations,” the March 15 report found, the agency lacks “transparency and accountability” when it comes to tracking the cost and timeliness of its paving projects — especially in the early engineering phase. 

The agency should establish measures to determine whether paving projects have “deviated excessively” from their proposed price tag and schedule, Hoffer’s office recommended, and develop a process to “consistently record” what causes projects to run too long or over budget. 

Jesse Devlin, the agency’s highway safety and design program manager, said in an interview Thursday that the agency worked closely with the auditor to support the report and agrees that it could share more information. The transportation secretary, Joe Flynn, wrote in a response to the report that he did not dispute any of the facts presented by the auditor’s office. Hoffer noted, though, that he did not think the agency’s leadership had committed to taking up all of the suggestions his office made. 

“We are utilizing this as a way in which we can improve,” Devlin said Thursday. He added that the agency plans to “take steps to meet” Hoffer’s recommendations. 

The report analyzed 14 paving projects that the agency completed across the state in the 2020 fiscal year. Of those, the agency completed the projects the auditor considered “simpler” on schedule and by spending within 30% of the original estimated cost. But for the more complex projects, the report states, the agency exceeded initial cost estimates by more than 50% — and finished the projects up to six years later than initially planned. 

For instance, the cost of one paving project in Essex and Richmond ended up more than 200% higher than, and three years behind schedule from, its initial estimate, the report found. 

Five of the 14 projects missed their original planned completion date for preliminary engineering work by three or more years, according to the report. 

Additionally, the report found that the agency has not kept records identifying the reasons for the cost and schedule overruns, and “while VTrans officials identified some of the reasons, they could not always explain project delays.”

Most of the schedule delays for complex projects occurred during the “preliminary engineering phase,” which is when officials develop construction plans and determine a project’s required materials and costs, the report states. Once the construction phase of a project began, according to the auditor, the agency fared better at meeting its estimates.

The report states that the agency lacks a systematic way to assess and report whether its paving projects, specifically, are deviating from their initial estimated cost. And while the agency has a measure to assess the number of projects it advertises on time each year, the report says, it has none assessing on-time performance for the duration of a project.

Devlin acknowledged that the agency does not formally report all of the expected changes in a project’s cost and timeline starting with the initial engineering phase, saying that projects are managed “dynamically” within the agency as they progress.

“It hasn’t been a primary gap that we’ve identified previously,” he said, though “we certainly see value in that, you know, coming out of this audit report.”

The auditor’s office also suggests the Legislature amend state law to require the agency to report every time its estimated project costs exceed original projections by more than 50%. Lawmakers should also make it so the agency must report significant paving delays, and the cause of those delays, “in a manner that is transparent, timely, and accessible to Legislators,” the report says.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Auditor: Vermont’s road paving program lacks transparency, accountability.

As Reported by VTDigger

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In: Charlotte, Charlotte Selectboard, Government & Politics, Jim Faulkner, Lane Morrison, Mary Mead, town meeting, Town Meeting Day, Town Meeting Day 2023
After a failed Town Meeting vote, the Charlotte Selectboard reconvened in a special meeting on Tuesday, March 14, to take a third stab at reducing the proposed fiscal 2024 budget. Screenshot

A week after Charlotte voters narrowly rejected a proposed $2.9 million town budget, the selectboard met Tuesday to make a third round of cuts — the latest development in a contentious budget season.

Voters rejected the budget by 35 votes on Town Meeting Day, with 458 voting in favor of it and 493 against it. 

The failed budget represented an 11.5% increase over this year’s budget. The biggest spikes were a nearly $94,000 hike in what board members said were inflation-driven employee salaries and about $80,000 in employee benefits — items some residents cited as the reason they didn’t vote for it.

Data shared at Town Meeting outlined a 2% pay raise and a 7.5% cost-of-living adjustment for the town’s 18 employees. For the top two earners — the town clerk/treasurer and the town administrator — salaries would jump from $87,600 each in the current fiscal year to $96,000.

Last year’s cost-of-living adjustment was 4.5% and was considered high, according to Dean Bloch, the town administrator.

Rosemary Zezulinski said at Tuesday’s selectboard meeting that she was “appalled” and “very upset” to see the sharp increases at a time in which many Charlotte residents are working second jobs and struggling to stay in their homes.

“There are people deciding whether to pay for their food, pay for their medicines, or pay for their taxes,” Zezulinski said. “We need to be compassionate because I don’t believe our greatest asset is our town employees, even though they’re all wonderful. Our greatest asset is our residents in this town — of every background, whether they’re older or younger, families.”

The salary bump is big and a concern for everybody, selectboard chair Jim Faulkner said at Town Meeting last week. The salary increase is based on a market analysis conducted by consultants from Gallagher, Flynn & Co. that the town hired last year.

“The goal was to get to the market rate, which we did,” Faulkner said. “And the benefits come with that; there’s no way you can avoid that.”

Selectboard member Louise McCarren defended the salary increases last week and at Tuesday’s special meeting. “I believe that we need to pay what we need to pay to keep good employees,” she said.

Others saw it differently.

“I voted no … because salaries and benefits are rising exponentially,” Peter Demick said at Tuesday’s meeting. The average salary of a librarian in Vermont is about $50,000 and can go up to $75,000, he said. He wondered why Charlotte wants to pay the library director $88,552 — the amount proposed for fiscal 2024 and the third-highest salary on the town’s list. Two other librarians would draw about $56,000 each, according to the salary chart.

Jerry Hawkins, a resident who also voted against the package, said he supports a decent wage. But he argued those are “fairly large pay increases,” the kind most residents do not get.

“So we need to take another look at how much we’re increasing the salaries and benefits because, for a town of 3,000 people, it was just ridiculous to me,” he said. (Charlotte has roughly 3,900 people, according to the 2020 census.)

The cost-of-living adjustment has increased significantly. In past years, it has been close to zero, but this year’s figure came in at the end of January at around 7.4%, according to Matthew Krasnow, a former selectboard member whose term recently ended. He was voted trustee of public funds last week for an uncontested three-year term.

“So the salary administration policy bakes that into the annual increases for all town employees,” he said on Town Meeting Day. “It’s a very conservative and standard cost-of-living increase benchmark institutions use for annual adjustments to their cost-of-living increase for employees.”

During public comment at recent selectboard meetings, residents raised concerns about fiscal management and transparency — issues some brought up again on Tuesday.

Demick told VTDigger he has never seen a budget vote fail in his 20 years of living and voting in Charlotte. He voted against it because he thinks it is unsustainable for a town as small as Charlotte to have a bond debt of more than $1.32 million.

“It’s like giving a kid a credit card. They max it out and then they get another credit card and max it out,” he said. “Repaying it is literally impossible for people who have lived here for generations. And now we’ve only had an influx, since 2010, of like 250 people. So they are putting a tremendous tax burden on everyone who lives here.”

Lane Morrison, a former selectboard member, offered several suggestions — delaying raises, terminating a consultant contract and shaving down non-essential line items such as building maintenance.

Lane Morrison, a former Charlotte Selectboard member, offered several suggestions including delaying raises at Tuesday’s Selectboard meeting. Screenshot

The board also faced backlash for choosing to have residents vote on five articles — including the selectboard’s budget proposal and the library budget — by secret ballot instead of at a traditional Town Meeting this year.

Others said the town and school budget impacts on the property tax rate were not clearly presented, which led to confusion, especially in comments made on Front Porch Forum. The municipal budget accounts for only about 11% of the overall property tax burden, while the education budget accounts for 89%.

The fiscal 2024 budget for the Champlain Valley School District is $96.1 million, a 7.5% increase over current spending. It was a separate ballot item in the regional district’s five member towns — Charlotte, Hinesburg, Shelburne, St. George and Williston — and voters approved it last week.

Town Clerk Mary Mead and Morrison suggested selectboard members come to meetings more prepared and communicate better.

Faulkner said town officials had been preparing and discussing the budget for months, and many residents participate via Zoom at its hybrid meetings.

“When I get complaints about keeping people informed, what I’m hearing is, people are not participating on a regular basis to keep informed,” he said.

The board on Tuesday trimmed several line items and is looking to rework budgets that were passed as separate articles at Town Meeting. That includes nearly $966,000 for the Charlotte Volunteer Fire and Rescue budget — a $75,000 increase that translates to a tax increase of about $33 on a $500,000 home, according to a presentation by fire and rescue member John Snow. 

Board members also plan to meet with the library board to discuss the roughly $324,000 library budget that voters approved — almost a $40,000 increase — which some residents are not happy with.

After three and a half hours of discussing potential reductions, the board closed the meeting at 10:30 p.m. and agreed to return to the table next Tuesday.

“We’re very clear that taxpayers are not happy with the budget. We’re going to see what we can cut further,” said Faulkner, who asked department heads to consider equal across-the-board cuts.

The town government must have an approved budget by July 1, when the 2024 fiscal year begins, and set a date for a revote by Australian ballot, tentatively on May 2.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Charlotte Selectboard back to the drawing board after voters reject budget.

As Reported by VTDigger

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In: Becca White, farm bill, Final Reading, Final Reading 2023, Ginny Lyons, Government & Politics, H.10, H.165, H.31, H.372, Henri Bynx, Laura Sibilia, Legislature 2023, Peter Welch, S.125, S.37, S.56, sex work decriminalization, sex workers, Taylor Small, Vermont legislature
Lawmakers, state’s attorneys and advocates held a press conference Thursday, March 16, 2023, to call on Vermont to become the first state to decriminalize sex work. Photo by Sarah Mearhoff/VTDigger

In what was almost certainly not the first time that sex workers accompanied state legislators in Montpelier, lawmakers, state’s attorneys and advocates on Thursday called on Vermont to become the first state to decriminalize sex work.

Sen. Becca White, D-Hartford, and Rep. Taylor Small, P/D-Winooski, are leading the legislative effort in their respective bodies, though White conceded at a Statehouse press conference that the bill (S.125 in the Senate and H.372 in the House) has a snowball’s chance in hell of meeting a Friday deadline for committee approval in order to advance this year. She and Small are starting the conversation now, hoping the bill has a shot next year, White said.

Though sex work is criminalized, White argued on Thursday that the act itself is not inherently dangerous when it is consensual.

“Our laws should protect people, not push them further toward the margins of our society,” White said. “When we no longer push people to the margins and punish them for being there, we end up having better outcomes.”

Joining White was Henri Bynx, a sex worker and cofounder of the Ishtar Collective, a Vermont-based group that advocates for consensual adult sex workers and survivors of human trafficking. Bynx said that she knows from her own experiences and those of her colleagues that sex workers are “treated as second-class citizens because of how we choose to support ourselves.”

When you actively work in a criminalized industry or have in the past, Bynx said, you’re more likely to be discriminated against when applying for jobs or housing, and you’re afraid to turn to law enforcement when you yourself are a victim of a crime, for fear of arrest.

If Vermont were to decriminalize sex work, Bynx said, “Me and my friends could come out of the shadows and be more honest about who we are, and people who are in a lot more danger than I am can come forward, too.”

No other states have decriminalized sex work, but the bill has garnered significant support in the Statehouse: Including White, the Senate version has 10 sponsors, making up one-third of the upper chamber. Five state’s attorneys — from Chittenden, Essex, Rutland, Washington and Windsor counties — also back the bill, and supporters at Thursday’s press conference affirmed, “Sex work is work.”

White pointed to data from Rhode Island, which inadvertently decriminalized sex work for a number of years (yes, really). In those years, White noted, instances of reported rape and transmission of sexually transmitted diseases went down. “So let’s make laws that are rooted in reality, that are rooted in data, instead of past morality claims or ideology,” she concluded.

And in a world in which sex workers are particularly vulnerable to violence, sexual and otherwise, Bynx said she sees the bill as a chance for her and her colleagues to feel safer.

“I want to get old. I want to see my friends get old. I want us to live and I want us to thrive, not under scrutiny, but in mutual respect and real community care,” Bynx said. “I want to retire from sex work one day with openness and pride for all of the incredible things that I’ve learned and all the incredible people that I know and now call my family.”

— Sarah Mearhoff

IN THE KNOW

It wouldn’t be crossover week if someone wasn’t cutting it close. In this case, this reporter (who has been known to push a deadline or two [Editor’s note: this is true]) is still waiting on the Senate Health and Welfare Committee to take action on S.56, this session’s big child care bill.

It has already been decided that full-day pre-kindergarten will not be part of the committee’s package and that a slimmed-down parental leave benefit will be. But as to the central question at the heart of child care reform — how much should Vermont invest? — the panel’s answer is still subject to revision. 

As recently as Wednesday, for example, the committee was looking at a construct that would make families making up to 575% of the federal poverty level eligible for subsidies (for a family of four, that’s $172,500 a year), but new language expected Friday should bump that up to 600% of the poverty line. 

A fiscal note won’t be ready Friday, when the committee is scheduled to vote, although the Joint Fiscal Committee hopes it’ll have big-picture appropriation figures to append to the bill.

— Lola Duffort

Following a flood of public concern about plans to apply a pesticide to address milfoil — a widespread invasive weed — on Lake Bomoseen, lawmakers have introduced a bill to ban most chemicals that control aquatic nuisances for one year while a new committee conducts a study. 

As introduced, the bill, H.31, contains two parts. The first would establish a moratorium on any new permits from the state’s Agency of Natural Resources that would allow “the use or application of pesticides, chemicals other than pesticides, or biological controls.” It also would ban the use of any pesticides already allowed by the state under existing permits, with a few exceptions for urgent situations. 

Its second part would establish an Aquatic Nuisance Control Study Committee, which would assess the environmental and health impacts from using pesticides, other chemicals and biological controls. The committee would compare those impacts to the usefulness of the treatment.

But certain elements of the proposed legislation are not likely to pass out of committee in its current form, according to Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-Dover, vice chair of the House Environment and Energy Committee, which is currently reviewing the bill. 

“I’d say there’s a fair amount of contention around whether or not a moratorium is needed, and to what scale,” Sibilia said, “and probably more consensus around (the) study, although we’re hearing from a number of folks that the rulemaking process should be allowed to play out.”

Read more here.

— Emma Cotton

For weeks, lawmakers in the Senate Committee on Education have been working on legislation intended to make Vermont schools safer. 

Most of the language in the committee bill, which originated with the state Agency of Education and includes provisions about locking doors during school hours and safety drills, appears to be uncontroversial. 

But on Thursday, a coalition of equity organizations expressed alarm over a provision that would require schools to create “threat assessment teams” — which would require the presence of law enforcement officials. 

“This feels like a step backwards,” Amanda Garcés, the director of policy, education and outreach at the Vermont Human Rights Commission, told lawmakers Thursday. “Not forward.”

In a Thursday morning press release, the Vermont Police Out of Schools Coalition — which includes the commission, the Rutland Area NAACP and the state ACLU, among others — urged lawmakers to remove that provision. It could imperil students’ privacy and due process, they said, and threatens to disproportionately target students of color and low-income students.

Read more here.

— Peter D’Auria

ON THE MOVE

In a preliminary vote on Thursday, the Vermont Senate advanced a sweeping bill that seeks to further strengthen the state’s existing protections to reproductive health care access, including abortion and gender-affirming care.

Senators approved the measure, S.37, on a voice vote and are expected to cast a final vote Friday, after which it would move to the House for consideration. 

Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, who spearheaded the bill, told her colleagues on the floor Thursday it is a direct response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision issued last summer, in which the court’s conservative majority struck down nationwide abortion access protections. Following the high court’s decision, the issue was put to individual states to decide, and dozens of states have outlawed or severely restricted access to abortion.

“For nearly 50 years, our state and other states have lived under Roe v. Wade, and it’s allowed … for health care professionals to provide reproductive care for both men and women,” Lyons said on the Senate floor. “The Dobbs decision last summer upended our national understanding of reproductive autonomy.”

Read more here.

— Sarah Mearhoff

Lawmakers advanced a bill Thursday morning that would give free breakfast and lunch to students across the state. 

The House Committee on Ways and Means voted 9-3 to advance H.165, a bill that would create a state-funded universal school meals program.

As written, the bill would draw the funding for the program — an estimated $29 million — from the state’s education fund. 

Lawmakers have not yet designated another funding stream for the program. Without language specifying another funding source, the bill’s cost would simply be tacked onto the education fund, meaning possible increases in property taxes.

The bill now heads to the House Committee on Appropriations. 

— Peter D’Auria

The House Commerce and Economic Development Committee voted Thursday to advance a bill that would put new reporting requirements on the state’s corporate incentives program and create a task force to study further reforms to its operation.

H.10, which now moves to House Ways and Means, had been watered down significantly from its original version, which would have limited the program to times of high unemployment. But the bill would require the program to release previously confidential data on job creation, salaries and the amount recipients actually received from the state.

Lawmakers also made late changes to a provision requiring that the Vermont Economic Progress Council, which reviews company applications, record their executive sessions and make them available to a handful of oversight bodies. The Vermont League of Cities and Towns told the committee that mandated recordings could set a concerning precedent. 

Instead, the bill would require the council to allow the legislative economist (currently Tom Kavet) to attend executive sessions — despite the objections of program executive director Abbie Sherman, who told lawmakers on Wednesday she was worried it would make him a de facto non-voting member of the council.

— Erin Petenko

The House on Thursday unanimously approved Vermont’s participation in three interstate professional licensing compacts: one for counseling, which includes mental health and family and marriage counselors, as well psychotherapists; one for physical therapy; and one for audiology and speech-language pathology. 

All three compacts have at least two dozen states as current members already and create a reciprocal licensing agreement among all member states. 

The goal is to increase the number of people in those professions eligible to practice in Vermont via telehealth and ease licensing requirements for those newly arrived. The bills would begin reciprocal licensing on July 1, 2024, in all three areas to give the Office of Professional Regulation time to implement the necessary procedures. 

Also, the House Health Committee took testimony on a bill that would include Vermont in the Psychology Interjurisdictional Compact. That agreement would allow a doctoral-level psychologist licensed through a third-party organization to offer temporary in-person care and ongoing telehealth in any member state. 

Marisa Coleman, a clinical psychologist at the University of Vermont Health Network, said membership in the compact is especially important to give people of color and non-English speakers in Vermont access to professionals who can provide “culturally humble care.”

Although Vermont is becoming increasingly diverse, psychologists of color can be counted on one hand, Coleman said. For people looking for support from someone who shares their identity, the options are few. “Weekly, I am at a loss of where to refer these patients,” she said.

— Kristen Fountain

ON THE HILL

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was in the hot seat Thursday, taking questions from the U.S. Senate’s Agriculture Committee. Among its members is Vermont’s own Sen. Peter Welch, who grilled the longtime (minus a Trump-induced break) secretary about his priorities for this year’s Farm Bill. The mammoth bill only comes once every five years, and on Senate Ag, Welch has a key role in shaping it.

Welch has a number of items on his Farm Bill wishlist, but perhaps at the top is for the feds to hurry up and lend a hand to Vermont’s struggling organic dairy farmers. There’s already money allocated — roughly $100 million — but Welch said it’s taking too long for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to get it out the door.

Welch recounted to Vilsack a recent visit to a southern Vermont dairy farm, where a farmer asked point blank: “Where’s the money?” Welch posed the same question to Vilsack on Thursday.

“The money is in the process,” Vilsack responded, saying that he expects it to reach farmers by this summer. Welch responded, “I don’t know that they have that much time. Seriously.”

Asked by VTDigger after Thursday’s hearing whether he was satisfied with Vilsack’s answer, Welch said no.

“I’m not, and I told him that. I said, ‘We don’t have that time to wait,’” Welch said. “Getting the money out too late, to me, it’s a failure. It’s got to be yesterday.”

— Sarah Mearhoff

WHAT WE’RE READING

Twin Valley School District failed to address harassment and ‘hostile educational environment,’ federal investigation finds (VTDigger)

VTDigger investigates motel housing program, reveals unsafe conditions, little protection for residents (Vermont Public)

Franklin County town elects 3 new selectboard members after residents raise ethics concerns (VTDigger)

An Innovative Drug-Treatment Program Encourages Sobriety With an Incentive: Cash (Seven Days)

Read the story on VTDigger here: Final Reading: Advocates look to decriminalize sex work.

As Reported by VTDigger

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On:
In: Carl Rosenquist, Carolyn Branagan, Charles Cross, Cheryl Letourneau, Dawn Penney, Devon Thomas, Doug Bergstrom, Gary Wright, Georgia, Government & Politics, Jamie Comstock, Shannon Jenkins, town meeting, Town Meeting Day, Town Meeting Day 2023
Clockwise from top left: Shannon Jenkins, Devon Thomas, Carolyn Branagan, Carl Rosenquist and Jamie Comstock. Courtesy photos

The Franklin County town of Georgia has sworn in three new selectboard members who pledge to improve town relations after several residents questioned whether the former board had acted ethically.

Residents’ complaints included the town hiring selectboard members to municipal positions and voting to delete the conflict of interest and ethics policy that would have prohibited such hires. 

“It just seems like there’s a lot of very questionable things happening on the selectboard, things they’re not being transparent about,” Georgia resident Frank Gore told VTDigger the week before Town Meeting Day. “I get the impression like they’re keeping everything hidden so that we don’t question certain things.”

During voting on March 7, challengers defeated three incumbents, with Jamie Comstock ousting Chair Doug Bergstrom for a three-year seat, 473-284; Devon Thomas defeating Vice Chair Gary Wright for another three-year seat, 482-287; and incumbent Carl Rosenquist and challenger Shannon Jenkins winning in a four-way race over incumbent Dawn Penney and challenger Charles Cross, 427-399-377-284.

Carolyn Branagan, who also represents Georgia as a Republican in the Vermont House, is in the midst of a three-year term which will end in 2024.

New selectboard members were sworn in as of Monday, according to Georgia Town Clerk and Town Administrator Cheryl Letourneau. 

Many Georgia residents’ complaints boiled over at an informational meeting on Feb. 28, when Jenkins pointed to Bergstorm’s hire as the town’s zoning administrator. 

Georgia residents attend the town informational hearing on Feb. 28. Screenshot via Lake Champlain Access Television

Bergstrom was hired as interim zoning administrator in November 2022 after former zoning administrator Emily Johnson, who began the position in May 2021 after working on the planning commission, resigned from the role in frustration.

In an interview with VTDigger, Johnson reported she had begun to feel overworked and undervalued.

“I didn’t feel like they understood the importance of what I was doing” as zoning administrator, she said. “There was a disconnect.”

Johnson said she was supposed to have support from a part-time assistant. Johnson said she could manage the workload alone in her first few months of employment, but in the fall of 2022, she reported feeling overwhelmed and repeatedly asked the selectboard to hire the assistant her job description had promised.

The selectboard “specifically told me there was no money in the budget for an assistant,” Johnson said. “That’s when I said, well, I needed an assistant in order to stay. They refused to give that to me, so I took (another job) offer.”

Bergstrom was hired to the role on Feb. 17, 2023 after serving as interim since Johnson’s departure in November, according to meeting minutes. A few weeks later, a part-time assistant was hired at $25 per hour, Bergstrom said at the Feb. 28 meeting.

At the meeting, Jenkins questioned why the salary for the zoning administrator position was increased by nearly 50%, from about $51,000 for Johnson, to $75,000 for Bergstrom, according to figures provided at the meeting by Wright. 

When Johnson asked at the Feb. 28 meeting what previous experience Bergstrom brought to the zoning administrator position that would warrant his pay raise, selectboard members did not respond to her question. 

“(Doug is) a man, to point out the obvious,” Johnson said at the meeting.

In a statement emailed to VTDigger on March 9, Letourneau and Rosenquist wrote, “it was not improper under Vermont law for the Selectboard to appoint one of its members to serve as the Zoning Administrator. The Planning Commission interviewed the candidate and recommended his appointment. Mr. Bergstrom was not present during the Board’s deliberations and did not participate.”

Bergstrom declined to comment.

Later in the informational meeting, residents expressed concern that the selectboard had unanimously voted to delete its Ethics and Conflict of Interest Policy on Dec. 1, 2022, at a special budget meeting where no members of the public were present. 

At a board meeting a few days prior, Georgia resident Suzanna Brown told the board “she would like to see the (ethics) policy withdrawn as it is outdated,” according to the meeting’s minutes.

But in an email to VTDigger, Brown said she was surprised that the board did not implement a replacement ethics policy immediately. 

“(The selectboard) never asked what I thought needed updating, but just eliminated it at the next meeting,” Brown said. “Certainly not what I expected them to do.”

Had it still been in place, the ethics policy — which included that “a Town Selectman, Planning Commissioner, or member of the Zoning Board of Adjustment shall not be an employee of the Town of Georgia” — would have prevented the board from hiring Bergstrom to the position of zoning administrator when he was already chair of the board. 

The policy also would have prevented Penney, the former board member, from occupying a position as assistant town clerk while serving on the select board.

Meeting minutes from Dec. 1 show that “the board voiced the belief that we were in conflict” with the Ethics and Conflict of Interest Policy. 

Penney told VTDigger that the board had been abiding by the state ethics standard since deleting the town ethics policy.

However, the state code applies only to state public servants and was not created to govern municipalities, and therefore is silent on the issue of town officials’ conduct, according to Christina Sivret, executive director of the Vermont State Ethics Commission. 

Jenny R. Prosser, general counsel & director of municipal assistance at the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office, said municipalities must have “either a conflict of interest ordinance adopted by the voters or a conflict of interest policy adopted by the Selectboard.”

Yet there are few repercussions for towns that don’t comply with state statute, she said, as the “statute itself doesn’t explicitly say there’s a consequence.” Instead, residents can vote out elected officials at the polls or can petition their local governments, Prosser said. 

As newly elected selectboard members took their seats this week, many of them hoped to repair rifts in the community that have been growing over the past few months.

Thomas, Jenkins, and Comstock all said they believe the new selectboard should reinstate the previous Ethics and Conflict of Interest Policy immediately upon beginning their terms, prioritizing the subsequent creation of an updated policy created with community input. 

“I think that (the community) definitely deserves that at this point. And I think that having a code of ethics with a clear policy about conflicts of interests would go a long way to helping us do our job and build trust with the community,” Thomas said. “If a sitting Selectboard is able to repeal their own code of ethics, I don’t know if that’s an effective code of ethics.”

Jenkins also emphasized her intent to ensure that the town of Georgia signs on to the Vermont Declaration of Inclusion, a statewide commitment to diversity and inclusion that the former town selectboard declined to adopt. 

Comstock said the selectboard looks forward to rebuilding trust with the Georgia community and directing focus toward issues like infrastructure, budget, recreation and diversity, equity and inclusion.

“Perception is everything,” he said. “If the community perceives that the selectboard is not being honest or transparent about their intentions then this causes frustration and a fire to push change.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Franklin County town elects 3 new selectboard members after residents raise ethics concerns.

As Reported by VTDigger