Now that the legislative session has ended, I finally have had some time to catch my breath and do a little writing, I want to share with you some of the most important bills 1) passed out of the legislature and 2) passed out of Senate Natural Resources and Energy, which I chaired, and then 3) I want to highlight what I'm at least currently perceiving as priorities going into next session. 
​

H.955 - Education and Property Tax Reform 
This bill aims to reduce property taxes, while preserving a quality education for all Vermont students.

• It requires that all school districts be a part of a CESA (a Cooperative Education Service Agency), which is a group of school districts that would collaboratively contract for services like professional development, special education, IT, etc. This should help save money simply from economies of scale. Maine, Mississippi, Montana, and West Virginia all have similar structures.
• This bill requires that all districts are a part of a set of districts that would get together to discuss the feasibility of merging, keeping an emphasis on preserving small elementary schools and have more regional high schools.
• It sets in motion a 2nd home tax. Currently, in a third to a half of our towns, second homes pay a lower rate than primary residences because they are considered commercial property.
• It sets us on a path to have a foundation formula, which would provide a certain amount of money to the district for each student, adjusted based on the needs of those students. I had a lot of concerns about this, as I don't want education funding to be a political football, and everywhere else that has a foundation formula under-funds its schools, but there is a board who determines what the formula should be, so it should be somewhat insulated from political winds. 
• It ramps down the excess spending threshold from 118% to 112.5% by 2032. I don't love this provision, as some school districts have done all of the belt-tightening that they can reasonably achieve without cutting staff or programs (some have already cut staff or programs). 
• There's more in there, but those are some highlights. You can read more about it here.

S.190 - Healthcare Reform: Reference-Based Pricing
Reference-based pricing is a system that limits the amount a hospital can charge for a particular service to a percentage of the Medicare reimbursement rate. This has been a proven way to reduce healthcare costs in other states. We had already started down the path of reference based pricing, but this bill speeds up the timeline and applies it particularly to the healthcare coverage for public school employees, as a means for lowering property taxes.  You can read more about it here. 

S.298 – Vermont Voting Rights Act 
Strengthens protections against voter intimidation and reduces barriers to participation while improving access for historically underrepresented communities. You can read the bill that passed the House and the Senate here. 

S.209 - Prohibits Civil Arrests at Sensitive Locations
Given the atrocious behavior of ICE, people are afraid to go about their daily lives - going to the doctor, to drop their kids off at school, etc. Here I think the bill says it best: "A person shall not be subject to civil arrest while:

• (A) traveling to, entering, remaining at, or returning from a:
  • (i) court proceeding; or
  • (ii) educational institution; or
• (B) on the premises of a:
  • (i) building owned and wholly controlled by the State or a political subdivision of the State where members of the public may enter in order to conduct governmental business; 
  • (ii) office operated by the Department of Motor Vehicles that is open to the public;
  • (iii) public library;
  • (iv) polling place;
  • (v) social services establishment, which includes a crisis center, domestic violence shelter, victim services center, child advocacy center, supervised visitation center, family justice center, facility that serves disabled persons, homeless shelter, substance use disorder counseling and treatment facility, and food pantry or similar establishment that distributes food or other essentials of life to persons in need;
  • (vi) place of worship;
  • (vii) facility licensed as a children’s camp or that serves as a day camp; or
  • (viii) health care facility.

Two Constitutional proposals: 
It's important because you're going to be asked to vote on these in November. 

Prop. 3 – Right to Organize Amendment
Places a constitutional amendment before Vermont voters to enshrine the right to form a union and collectively bargain. Here is the language from this document (you can read it on page 88).

Article 23. [Right to collectively bargain] That employees have a right to organize or join a labor organization for the purpose of collectively bargaining with their employer through an exclusive representative of their choosing for the purpose of negotiating wages, hours, and working conditions and to protect their economic welfare and safety in the workplace. Therefore, no law shall be adopted that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to collectively bargain with respect to wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment and workplace safety, or that prohibits the application or execution of an agreement between an employer and a labor organization representing the employer’s employees that requires membership in the labor organization as a condition of employment.
​
Prop. 4 – Equal Rights Amendment
Places a constitutional amendment before Vermont voters to strengthen equal rights protections in the Vermont Constitution. If approved, it will reaffirm Vermont's longstanding commitment to equality, dignity, and freedom from discrimination. Here is a copy/paste of the language from this document: 

Article 23. [Equality of rights] That the people are guaranteed equal protection under the law. The State shall not deny equal treatment under the law on account of a person’s race, ethnicity, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or national origin. Nothing in this Article shall be interpreted or applied to prevent the adoption or implementation of measures intended to provide equality of treatment and opportunity for members of groups that have historically been subject to discrimination.

 ReH.915 - The Bottle Bill
This bill transitions the structure of the bottle redemption system (it creates a Producer Responsibility Organization - let me know if you'd like me to explain), which will help modernize our redemption center sites, make them more financially and environmentally sustainable, and improve the redemption experience for Vermonters. It temporarily increases the handling fee while the Producer Responsibility Organization is stood up so that we don't lose any more redemption centers in the meanwhile. Early on in this process I recognized that this bill had bipartisan support, particularly if we included the temporary handling fee increase, so I was proud to have the Senate minority leader report this bill to the Senate. 

H.727 - Data Centers
Senate Natural Resources and Energy (SNRE) added valuable protections to

• ensure grid stability
• reduce air pollution
• blocking 24/7 fossil fuel-powered jet engines
• required battery storage and impact fees.

We strengthened the water regulations by prohibiting open-loop cooling systems.  We also corrected language that came from the House that would have allowed additional costs and negative effects to be borne by Vermonters. The Senate ensured that that would not happen. It was unanimous coming out of committee, passed the Senate 26-3, and I'm proud that every member of SNRE took part in reporting this bill. Unfortunately the Governor thought it was too strict and vetoed it. 

S.202 - Plug-In Solar
I worked hard to vet this bill ahead of the session with stakeholders to smooth the path and it fit well with my expertise, limited as it is. The main thing this bill does is cut red tape for these devices so that homeowners have an easier time going from purchase to plug-in. Right now, a homeowner would have to go through the paperwork process governed by the Public Utility Commission before plugging one of these in. This bill ensures that these devices are safe (compliant with UL3700 and National Electric Code). The main safety concerns are available in this document from Clean Energy State Alliance, which I found very helpful. The bill prevents condo associations or mobile home parks from prohibiting them, but it allows building owners to have reasonable restrictions for their tenants. It also makes it clear that the building owner is not obligated to do any wiring work for their tenant to have one of these. If you already have a net metered system, you can't have one of these, because the electric meter can't distinguish between electricity generated through the net metered system versus the portable solar device. 

S.325 - Updates to Act 181
This is one of the most important bills that came out of my committee and ultimately passed the legislature. Most notably, this bill repealed Tier 3 of Act 181, which would have created extra regulations for critical natural resources, and it repealed the road rule, which would have created more regulations regarding forest blocks. Because there needed to be a lot more vetting and conversation with landowners affected by this process, this bill asks the Vermont Council on Rural Development and the Conservation Districts to come up with a plan for how to engage with the public on what may come next. How could we modernize the current use system to help protect critical natural resources? How could we incentivize and honor the stewardship work that landowners are doing? What are the main drivers of the loss of working lands? Zooming out, I do think it's important for legislators to be reflective on how things are going and if things are not going well, that we are humble enough to change course. This bill embodies that willingness. Democracy is an iterative process. I started the version of S.325 that passed specifically because I heard that the roll-out of Act 181 was not going well. The Senate started with a delay of implementation so that we could hear more feedback. And then we heard a lot of feedback in a hurry! And that was actually quite helpful. I'm glad that this bill asks for a public engagement plan for the future so that we can engage especially rural Vermonters in crafting whatever comes next. 

S.218 - Salt Contamination Reduction
​This bill would have set up a voluntary program for private commercial salt applicators to learn best practices about salt-spreading. If these salt applicators keep sufficient records of their best management practices and a slip-and-fall type accident occurs, they would be provided some liability protection. This is modeled after a very successful program in New Hampshire, the Green Sno Pro certification. And like NH, we would have offered this to municipalities as well. This is all in an effort to the reduce the amount of salt on our roads, parking lots, and side walks, while still salting to a safe level. Unfortunately, the Governor vetoed this bill, for reasons that I find questionable. I'll probably have more to say on this later. 

Of course there are bills that I wish had not been vetoed or had gotten across the finish line: 
S.208, requiring that federal law enforcement not hide their identity. 
H.740, would have created a GHG inventory from fuel sales, broken out by municipality or zip code. 

Looking forward, though, we must find ways to 
1. Protect our democracy, our elections, and our neighbors
2. Take action on climate change
3. Build more housing (in general), but especially housing for working, disabled, homeless, and senior Vermonters.
4. Reduce the cost of healthcare, and make Vermont a more affordable place to live.

There are many more issues of course, but those are some that rise to the top for me.  What makes your list to work on for next year? I'd love to hear from you. 

While I was the Mayor of Montpelier, during the height of Covid, I oversaw the lowest percentage tax increase in the prior decade. Why? Because that is what Montpelier needed at that point. They needed a break. And that is true now for working and middle class Vermonters across the state. 

One thing became clear during the last session: our education funding and property taxes have not landed in a sustainable place. Property taxes, which are mostly made up of education funding taxes, are a major expense for household budgets, and while I support the idea of everyone contributing to make our school districts strong and equitable, many Vermonters are at or beyond the limits of what they can afford for property taxes. So what do we do? Below are ideas that I would like to explore to potentially lower education taxes or property taxes in general for middle class and working Vermonters. 

1. Break up the non-homestead tax into its component parts, so that we can tax 2nd homes and/or mansions at a higher rate than others. I believe that if people can afford a 2nd home (hunting camps wouldn't count) or a mansion, then they can probably can pay more, thus lowering the needed taxes from everyone else. 
2. Shift to an income-based education tax. There's already been a lot of work on this idea, as outlined in this report. The conclusions in the executive summary are one potential road map to a simpler, fairer, more progressive funding stream. Right now most Vermonters are "income sensitized" meaning that their property taxes are reduced because of their income, but the amount that they are reduced is capped and that creates "bumps" and "cliffs" in the benefits depending on your income. So an income based education tax would be a more sensitive tool for creating equitable contribution.  
3. I'm also interested in exploring the possibility of a spending cap for districts, which as I understand it has been successfully used in other other states. I'm hesitant about this one particularly because I believe that school districts may have good reasons for exceeding a cap, but I at least want this idea on the table and see how well it has worked for schools in New York. 
4. Much of the education property taxes are heath care related, so if we can make health care more affordable, then we can make education more affordable. To that end, I'm interested in reference based pricing for health care, which should reduce the cost of healthcare, not just for educators, but for working Vermonters in general. The Auditor had a great report on this a few years ago, and then updated this info in this memo, which says that Oregon has implemented reference based pricing and as a result saved $112 million dollars in 2021. 
5. I'd like to close the funding formula loophole that rewards districts for closing schools, or put another way, forces districts that operate schools to subsidize districts that don't operate schools. I actually proposed this change to the senate finance committee this past year, and was told that they would study it and potentially include it in a future year.

Additionally, I am supportive of adding a fifth tax bracket to ask Vermont's wealthiest residents (those who make over $500,000 per year) to contribute more of their income to state programs. 

I deeply believe that we have enough resources in the state to meet our needs, but we have significant imbalance in the distribution of wealth. So when households making over $500,000 are contributing a smaller percentage of their income than those making under $100,000, that's a problem. 

These are just some ideas that I'm working on, and I'm open to whatever practical suggestions you may have to make property taxes more affordable to working and middle class families. These ideas I've listed here may be the right ones and they might be the wrong ones, but either way, we need to find some solutions to get financial relief to Vermonters. 

Hey Team! 

I am so excited to announce that I am running for re-election to represent the Washington District in the Vermont State Senate! I'm running again because there is so much more work to be done. We need to continue to work towards financial security for all Vermonters. This means taxing 2nd homes at a higher rate. It means transitioning to cheaper, more renewable energy sources. It means creating more housing. It means making paid family and medical leave available to all Vermonters and it means bringing down the unreasonably high costs of healthcare. ​

I hope you'll support me in this effort in whatever way you can. Maybe that just means voting for me, maybe that means walking with me in a parade or knocking on doors with me (it's more fun than it sounds!), maybe that means making a financial contribution. Regardless, I will need your help! 

It has been such an honor and pleasure to represent you. I heard from many constituents over the last two years with your ideas and concerns, and I am so deeply impressed with the collective wisdom that came from folks in Central Vermont. There were multiple occasions when your emails or phone calls changed my mind about an issue, and I am so grateful for everyone who took the time to be in touch. 

Running a county-wide+ election campaign means mailers, palm cards, lawn-signs, etc. So please donate if you're able! You can also sign up for our newsletter on the main page or sign up to volunteer on the volunteering page. I'm looking forward to seeing you out on the campaign trail!

Thanks,
Anne ​

One of the biggest bills we will work on this session is a significant and (I think) very exciting overhaul of Act 250. The Senate Natural Resources and Energy version of this is S.308. But before I get into it, here's a little background. For a primer on Act 250 (Vermont's signature land-use planning law), for the history of its origins, and for an overview of its current problems, I highly recommend VPR's Brave Little State podcast on Act 250.

What do I think about Act 250? I'm grateful for the environmental backstop that it provided to Vermont, especially for the towns that didn't and don't have zoning regulations, but I also believe Act 250 no longer serves Vermonters as well as it once did. In the last 50 years, many towns have adopted zoning regulations that duplicate the criteria for Act 250 and it's clear that Act 250 has
1. Prevented good development in our downtowns and village centers,
2. Not prevented sprawl, and 
3. Not protected significant ecological sites. 

Here's the good news: Within the last few months of 2023 there were three studies all having to do with Act 250 (1. Regional Future Land Use, 2. State Designation 2050, and 3. Natural Resource Board's Necessary Changes to Act 250 aka "Act 250 Modernization"), which astonishingly, across a broad spectrum of stakeholders, had a high degree of alignment of their suggestions for how to modernize Act 250. Recommended by both environmental advocates and housing advocates, this set of consensus suggestions represents the package of changes that are currently represented in S.308. In testimony on this, it was delightfully refreshing to hear economic development champions to call for better regulation to prevent forest fragmentation and defending Vermont's pristine ecological sites, and then to hear from environmental advocates on the need for more housing in our already-developed downtowns. I hope this description conveys how magical and significant this consensus is. 

​The current paradigm of Act 250 is "threshold based". If you build too much or too fast, it triggers regulation. The new paradigm embodied in all three of these reports is a shift to "location based" regulation. There are some places where we want to encourage development, like in our downtowns and village centers, which are already well-regulated. And there are some places that are so ecologically sensitive or significant that ANY development should be regulated there, even if it's just one unit of housing. 

The language that we have been using in committee to distinguish between different types of places comes from the "Necessary Changes to Act 250" report (aka the NRB report), which uses a tier system.

Tier 1a: These are downtowns or previously-developed areas, with access to water and sewer, in cities and towns which have such robust zoning that Act 250 is duplicative. These are places that will likely either be exempt from Act 250, or they may locally administer the Act 250 process, or something similar. 

Tier 1b: Village centers or towns which may not have access to both water and sewer, and who's zoning may not be quite as robust as checking all of the boxes of Act 250, but maybe they check some of the boxes. And so these areas would get some level of either exemption or self-administration of Act 250 that corresponds to the zoning the do have or some other loosening of the regulations. 

Tier 2: Rural areas that are not Tier 3. Act 250 would continue to apply here potentially with an additional provision called the "road rule" that would help prevent forest fragmentation, like the kind seen in Charlie Hancock's testimony from Montgomery, VT (his part starts at 29:40). 

We had lots of great testimony again this week, and while we're starting to get into some policy conversations, Natural Resources and Energy is still feeling like a science class (and I'm loving it - feeling right at home!) So again, I want to share some images with you that I found compelling. All of these images are screen shots from the presentations this week either by Mike Kline, Rebecca Pfeiffer, or Rob Evans. These folks helped me understand how to look at FEMA flood maps, helped me have a better understanding of the difference between a flood plain and a river corridor, and helped me understand how what we saw during the summer, was a part of the natural cycle for rivers that have been altered. 

It all starts with the stages of river channel evolution, as seen in the image below. The "incision" stage is  when humans have messed with the river, either by armoring, straightening, dredging, berming, or removing wood, etc. It's just a matter of time before those human interventions ultimately cause the river to widen and re-stabilize. Currently 73.5% of Vermont's rivers are "moderately to severely incised".

It turns out that the last time FEMA came through Vermont to update their flood maps was in the 1970s, at the height of Vermont's river incision. So when FEMA ran their algorithm that added some additional volume of water to river channels, because of the incisions, the "flood plain" perfectly overlapped the river channel itself in many places. This is what we're seeing in the image below, where the red 100 year flood plain shares much of the same boundaries as the river channel, implying that those surrounding fields are somehow safe for construction. 

And of course those static maps from the 1970s are not super helpful when the river itself is moving around the landscape. Check out the image below from Underhill where the river channel has already moved so much that the channel is outside of the flood hazard area (circled in yellow). 

How much do rivers change their shape on the landscape? Quite a bit. We saw some great examples of this, but my favorite is from the Third Branch of the White River (bottom left in the image below), where you can see that we straightened the river in 1924, but the river was just not having that and continued to wiggle its way across the landscape.

It's important to note that those FEMA maps are all about the inundation hazard area. (Another way of saying a 100 year flood area is an area with 1% annual chance of flooding. The 500 year flood area has a 0.2% annual chance of flooding.) Inundation is just when the water rises, like we saw in downtown Montpelier. So these maps do not include the area at risk from erosion risk, when the river decides its time to carve a new path or re-stabilize its banks. This was the kind of damage we saw in Cabot (and many other places) in July and in the image below. 

The erosion hazard area is what is supposed to be captured in the "River Corridor" maps. So when you hear "FEMA flood plain" think inundation risk (waters rise), and when you hear "River Corridor" think about those wiggly lines all over the landscape and erosion risk. That's what the white-ish area is around the red flood plain in the first map. 

A couple points of good news: 

1. FEMA is in process now of updating Vermont's flood plain maps, and they should be done in 2026 and 2027.
2. Part of S.213, which prompted all this testimony, would make it easier for municipalities to help keep housing out both types of risky areas (inundation and erosion hazard areas). 

I think we can all agree that while we must build more housing, it should NOT be in these high risk areas. 

In other news, I received the Vermont Conservation Voters Rising Star award for the Senate! (yay!) A physical award is still in the works, but they gave me a bar of chocolate as a placeholder until the real award arrives. The picture below is from the award ceremony held at Hugo's Bar and Grill. Since I won this award, I was interviewed on the Vermont Conservation Voter's Climate Dispatch podcast, which you can listen to here. 

Coming back into the State House this week, the biggest priority on everyone's mind was flood recovery. We heard testimony in both Natural Resources & Energy and in Government Operations on it, and I wanted to pass along some of the most interesting images from testimony this week. 

Beyond the immediate needs of making those devastated by the floods whole, I'm very tuned into how are we going to prevent this kind of flooding from happening again in the future. We know climate change is here, but there are ways that we can improve our water management systems so that the effects of increased precipitation are reduced. 

I especially want to highlight the testimony we heard from Karina Dailey, a restoration ecologist with VNRC. You can see her slide deck here.  I've pulled a couple of the images from her presentation from elsewhere on the web and included them below because they were (at least for me) some new learning that I found fascinating. And they say that the best way to learn something is to teach it, so I'm going to attempt to reiterate what I learned here. 

Karina's mantra was "INTACT FRESH WATER SYSTEMS BUILD CLIMATE RESILIENCE". How do we keep fresh water systems (like rivers) intact? To answer this, we have to consider the ways in which a river can change: laterally (shifting side-to-side), longitudinally (flowing down hill), vertically (connecting to ground water or aquifers), and temporally (shifting over time). 

If a river gets disconnected in any of these dimensions, that means bad news for ecosystems and for humans. 

For example, when large rain events occur, rivers need to be able to spread out their excess water into their flood plains (lateral movement), but if rivers are armored (walled or lined with granite blocks) then those flood plains are not accessible.

Solution #1: Connect rivers back to their flood plains

The second idea is re-connecting rivers vertically. How are rivers not intact now? Dams. Dams can raise the temperature of the water behind them (bad for ecosystems). They build up sediment behind them, which literally raises the water level behind them. Apparently they can also increase the water level in high rain events below them as well, though, I'm less clear as to why that occurs. 

​Solution #2: Remove derelict dams

Both of these solutions are baked into the language of S.213, which was the foundation of our testimony this week. S.213 "proposes to amend provisions related to wetlands, river corridor development, and dam safety."

We heard during testimony that Vermont has lost 35% of its wetlands since European settlement, and as my colleague Sen. White observed, during this new era of climate change, we probably need more wetlands than we had then just to deal with the new, high-precipitation weather we're likely to experience with climate change. So one of the provisions in this bill aims to recover than we had. 

I hope you found this as interesting and informative as I found it! 

One other highlight from this week: 
I had the honor of speaking at the Rally for Flood Recovery on Wednesday, where I told the story about how a project in Northfield, which connected a river to its floodplain, lowered the water in the July flooding by 6 inches. To quote Michelle Braun of Friends of the Winooski, "6 inches may not seem like a lot, but when that's in your living room, it makes a big difference." 

​Psyched for Week 2! Here we go!

The Affordable Heat Act aims to bring down the upfront costs of any technology that brings down people's carbon emissions. It identifies multiple technologies that may be useful in that transition, but any technology that accomplishes carbon emissions savings qualifies. In that way, it's "technology agnostic", not trying to steer Vermonters toward any one technology. 

Having said that, I've gotten a lot of questions about specific technologies. Hopefully this post will be useful in explaining a couple of the commonly asked-about technologies. 

Heat pumps
Older, "standard" heat pump technology was not very useful in Vermont because they were not sufficiently efficient between 0˚F and 32˚F. Thankfully, cold climate heat pumps, which became available around 2010, are useful down to 0˚F. I've even used mine in colder temperatures, it's just that heat pumps have to work harder the colder it gets. For that reason most installers don't recommend removing your existing heating system and use that as a backup for those extremely cold days. For more information check out this site about how heat pumps work. (As a physics teacher, I think they are very cool.)  The advantage of heat pumps is that the heat they provide is significantly cheaper than fuel oil, propane, and kerosene per unit of delivered heat. It's worth noting that heat pump technology is significantly different than electric resistance heating (baseboard electric or electric space heaters). Since heat pumps aren't "burning" the electricity, just moving the heat from the outside to the inside, they are significantly more efficient than electric baseboard or electric space heaters. 

From the graph above, check out the volatility of propane, kerosene, and fuel oil. You can also see how stable and cheap the heat delivered from wood pellets and heat pumps has been. 

Pellets
For those interested in automating a pellet heating system, it would be good to know about Pellergy, a Vermont-based business which allows homeowners to switch out their oil burner with a pellet burner - no need to change anything else about your heating infrastructure (thermostat, delivery system, etc.) This  combines with a hopper to hold pellets, which allows the system to be automated. 

If you have a technology-related question that's not addressed here, please let me know through the feedback form!