MONTPELIER – We are entering the home stretch of this year’s legislative session, still with some very big items on the agenda before we adjourn (we hope!), in the first week of June.
As for those big items, since my last update, the appropriations bill and school funding bills came out of committees, passed the house and were sent to the Senate. It is my understanding that Senate has nearly completed their work on these bills. They will be sending them back to the House, where they will go to a committee on conference to negotiate a compromise between both chambers.
Regarding the budget, I am greatly concerned that over just the past five years our state spending has exploded from around $5 billion to $9 billion annually. This level of spending, and the taxing necessary to support it, is not sustainable, especially if the federal funding that covers over a third of this number is cut or cut back. This burden is adding tremendous stress to our affordability crisis.
Currently, the approximate federal assistance to Vermont’s budget is $3.2 billion. A lot of that amount was emergency, one-time money granted during Covid-19, under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), and the Inflation Reduction Act. Unfortunately, when the supermajority was able to override Governor Scott’s vetoes at will, they did not heed the governor’s advice to use one-time money for one-time expenditures only. So, now we have to make some hard decisions about whether to cut that spending or continue it with new and higher taxes on Vermonters.
There are a great many differences between the House and Senate versions of the education reform bill, and what ultimately comes out of conference committee will likely look different from both versions, so it is still too early to share any useful conclusions at this point.
My committee took testimony from a variety of witnesses on H.394, an act relating to renewable energy generation, and S.50, an act relating to increasing the size of solar net metering projects that qualify for expedited registration. Most of the testimony was from solar developers, VPIRG and Renewable Energy Vermont.
What this bill would do is basically allow larger solar arrays (from 15 kWh to 25 kWh) to go through a less restrictive approval process by the Public Utilities Commission. One bone of contention was over whether or not to require a set-back from a property line and highway right of way. We settled on a 10-foot setback. S.50 was voted out of committee on a vote of 9-0-0.
The Republicans on the committee were successful in keeping the single plant proposed change out of the bill. Single plant would have allowed additional construction of solar arrays in areas that have existing arrays. Although this may seem logical on the surface. Republicans on the committee were not convinced that ratepayers would not be subsidizing the cost for the power. A compromise was reached to have the Public Utilities Commission hold hearings on the single plant language and update the committee in January 2026.
Republicans also proposed all future solar projects approved for construction sell electricity at the market rate instead of at a premium, and tried to insert some language to help small municipal utilities cover some of their costs with these solar arrays installations. Both those efforts were not successful.
When S.50 came before the full House for action, Republicans tried to amend the bill with H.16, repeal the Affordable Heat Act (aka the Clean Heat Standard), but the speaker of the house ruled the amendment not germane, and did not allow it be attached to the bill.
On the third reading of S.50, Republicans tried again to attach some language from H.289, the governor’s proposed energy bill, such as repealing the lawsuit provision of the Global Warming Solutions Act that allows anyone to sue the state at taxpayers’ expense, but we could not overcome the majority to get that through either.
Richard Bailey represents Lamoille 2 District in the Vermont Legislature. The district includes the towns of Belvidere, Hyde Park, Johnson and Wolcott.
