MONTPELIER – The past couple of weeks have been quite active in the House. Many bills have passed out of the House and have gone to the Senate for consideration. Some of the bills do not do much other than correct language in current laws which was identified as needing the updates by Legislative attorneys. I will highlight some bills which are either passed by the House or currently in consideration in the House.
H.932 was passed by the House. This bill clarifies Act 250 jurisdiction over property primarily used for forestry. It ensures Act 250 jurisdiction only attaches to the part of the property that is used for development.
H.577 was passed by the House. This bill establishes a Vermont Prescription Drug Discount Card Program. It will pool purchasing power with the state, other states and territories to lower the cost of prescription drugs.
H.949 was passed by the House. This bill sets the education property tax rate for the year. The proposal from the governor was to use $105 million to buy down property tax rates for this year. The estimated tax increase was to be around 12%. Using this money to buy down taxes would have brought the proposed tax increase down to 3 to 4%, which is still too much in my opinion.
The committee and some members of the House had a different idea. To only use half of the money for buy down this year and the other half next year. This would mean a 7% tax increase for this year. The rationale was if this wasn’t done, it would create a large tax increase for next year. If we were to freeze tuition and start the foundation formula now, this would not happen. There are bills which have been introduced that would do this. However, it seems no one is willing to address the issues with increasing taxes. I did not support this bill.
H.951 was passed by the House. This is what is referred to as the “Big Bill” or, State FY27 budget. It is a lot of money. What passed the house is a $1.46 million increase over the governors’ proposed budget. I felt the proposed budget was too much money based on what we are seeing day-to-day in the economic world. I certainly did not agree with the increase and did not support this.
H.941 was passed by the House. This bill would prohibit municipal regulation of agriculture activities in areas other than what are known as Tier 1A areas (densely populated, urban areas). Farming is to include the growing of plants for personal use, donation or sale, orchard crops, maple sugaring and the raising livestock.
H.955 is still in the House. This bill is the newest version of the education bill. I have read the bill a couple of times. It creates study committees, the hiring of contractors for making recommendations, hiring of many facilitators but fails to make any substantive changes which will address statewide, equal, student success or the looming cost of the way education is financed. As with last year’s Act 73, which nothing came from, this continues to kick the can down the road. The balance within all of this has yet to be determined.
Michael Southworth represents the Caledonia-2 House District (Hardwick, Stannard and Walden) in the Vermont Legislature. He can be reached via email at msouthworth@leg.state.vt.us
