Decisions... - 4/25/26

Greetings,

Education and the Budget

We are in a weird limbo right now. My committee work is mellow while the big bills are being worked on in key committees, mostly in the Senate. This year the budget is tied to the education reform bill because the Gov has been threatening to veto the budget if we don’t give him what he wants for an Ed bill. (Here is a 4 minute audio breakdown of the situation from VPR). Not having a budget by the start of the fiscal year – July 1 – would be an unprecedented disaster for Vermont and I don’t see that happening. But, the world is crazy right now…

The House and Senate versions of education reform bills are very far apart, so there will be an interesting committee of conference to hash out a compromise in the coming weeks. The problem is, neither version is what the Governor wants! The fundamental issue is whether to mandate district consolidation (the Gov’s preference) or to make consolidation voluntary but with significant financial incentives and penalties to right-size the system. There is disagreement about whether consolidation will even save money or whether a better route is to create a shared services model to gain economies of scale (the House bill chose the latter path).

Property Taxes

The Senate decided to use all of our surplus fund for a property tax buydown this year, instead of the House decision to spread it out over two years. As I have stated many times in the past, using one-time buydowns is shabby fiscal policy that Montpelier has become addicted to. The trade off with spending it all this year is that it creates a huge fiscal cliff for next year. What if we don’t have a spare $100 million next year to buy down property taxes again? We will see double digit increases in one year! I much prefer doing half this year and half next year, partly because the economic headwinds are serious and growing. The repercussions of our most recent folly in the Middle East are significant and could get much worse. Once again, this will be worked out in conference committee, but the Governor likes the Senate one-year buydown version so that is how it will likely go.

There Ain’t no easy Answer…

To give you an idea of the difficult choices we face on many bills, here are two examples. Legislating is almost always about tradeoffs. There are winners and losers. I tend to take a utilitarian approach – I try to find the path to the greatest good for the most people. But what if you are on the losing end? It is hard to stomach.

1 - In my committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure, we spent weeks hashing out the best process for siting cell towers earlier in the session. The key issue is how much public involvement there should be and what is the process of incorporating that input into decision making? That is a perennial question across multiple topics. We passed our bill onto the Senate – here is an article on how they are wrestling with this issue.

2 - The House passed a good compromise bill dealing with tenant-landlord law a while back. It was a classic compromise bill that neither side really loved, but reasonable people could live with. Vermont has one of the most onerous eviction processes in the country and it clearly constricts housing availability. Potential landlords have heard the horror stories of trying to get a bad apple tenants evicted. But most tenants are fine and they also bear the brunt of bad tenants. Here is a commentary on this bill, which is now in the Senate.