ST. JOHNSBURY – Sen. Scott Beck shared his thoughts on the legislature’s priorities and his approach to serving there as the Vermont legislature reached this session’s halfway point and took the week off for Vermont’s Town Meeting Day.
The top priorities continue to be housing education and energy, with Beck’s goal to increase affordability and create ways to increase housing stock. Work in education is about to focus on the governor’s proposal, for which committee hearings begin this week. Becks said current energy work is mostly focusing on looking for ways to only move as fast as resources allow and people can afford.
In Beck’s role as the Senate minority leader he agrees he’s putting forward ideas that are generally Republican, but not necessarily partisan. His Democratic colleagues seem to agree with the basic idea of meeting the needs of Vermonters without unduly adding to the financial burden on them. He called himself a New England Republican, or what might have been called a Rockefeller Republican in another era. Today we’d call it a moderate Republican, meaning government should stay out of people’s lives and practice fiscal conservatism, he said.
Beck commented on the national party that doesn’t adhere to those principals, he said, requiring Vermont to navigate and balance what’s coming from the federal administration to keep Vermont’s needs in the forefront.
Asked about what many on the right call the Nanny-state and how one might get from that to keeping the government out of people’s lives, he said. “It’s never going to be the 19th century again. I’m not advocating to completely reframe the government’s role in society. Rather, ‘Is what it’s doing helping or hurting.”
One component of housing issues in Vermont involves government assistance programs for the homeless, he said. “There have been 124 deaths among Vermont’s homeless population in the last four years. It costs a lot for unimpressive results.” The work to be done there needs to look at better options and the governor’s congregate model deserves attention, said Beck.
The congregate housing model has been discussed in Vermont for at least the past several years. It would create settings that look like college dorms, or assisted living, or perhaps even several adjacent apartments or small homes. “It will be easier and less expensive to build housing than to continue dumping 100’s of millions into vouchers [for the homeless to stay in motel and hotel rooms],” he said.
In addition to lowering costs where possible, finding more revenue is another option, but raising marginal tax rates on the wealthy in Vermont is not likely to achieve that as the wealthy can easily shift investments into non-taxable U.S. Treasury securities, avoiding taxes entirely, he said. Any solution to raise taxes on the wealthy will likely need to be a national effort.
With $3 billion of Vermont’s annual budget coming from Washington, D.C., the Vermont administration is closely watching what’s happening at the federal level and the state is being careful to hang onto cash that may be necessary to fill gaps, said Beck.
The very real threat of tariffs may affect the cost of already costly energy and lumber, he said. Travel by Canadians angry at the talk of tariffs may affect resorts like Jay Peak and Burke mountain that depend on the Canadian visitors.
Addressing school costs is high on the agenda this session too, though Beck said the cost of universal school meals isn’t likely to be cut since the legislature recently learned that cost has been $10M less than expected.
School consolidation is on the agenda, with the governor’s proposal to be considered, said Beck, who thinks the biggest push-back seems to be around school choice. Even with the consolidation of districts to five, or even perhaps 12, each district will have a board and schools will have an advisory council, he suggested.
Act 181 revisions to Act 250. became law in June 2024, overhauling Vermont’s planning framework for coordinating state, regional and municipal land use. It creates several tiers, making development somewhat easier in tier 1A urban and village centers with adequate infrastructure, but potentially adding more regulation in tier 1B planned expansion areas near urban and village centers and tier 3 rural conservation zones as state regulations are being created around the new law. Asked about the very complicated discussion around Act 181, Beck suggested there’s still work to be done to allow housing to be built without undue regulatory costs.
Beck returned to Montpelier Tuesday where he serves as clerk of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy and on the Senate Committee on Finance.
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
