Friday marked a key deadline for Vermont lawmakers, and House and Senate committees have been in a mad dash this week to keep their legislative priorities alive.
“Crossover” is the date by which policy bills must be voted out of their committees of jurisdiction in order to move on to the next stages of the legislative process.
Vermont Public’s Capital Bureau took stock of some of the bills lawmakers have been scrambling to get out the door.
Accountability for ICE
Federal law allows citizens to sue state and local officials for violating individuals’ constitutional rights. But there’s no legal recourse for transgressions by federal officials.
As Vermont lawmakers watch immigration agents crack down on protesters in places like Minnesota — and now here in Vermont — they’ve decided to pursue state legislation that would give Vermonters the right to sue federal officials for excessive use of force, for example, or denying people the right to assemble.
The full House of Representatives approved the legislation less than 24 hours after the ICE raid in South Burlington on Wednesday. The bill still needs approval in the Senate.
“We are seeing where there are potential violations across the country,” said South Burlington Rep. Martin LaLonde, the Democratic chair of the House Judiciary Committee. “And I think that it has shown that we should be holding all officials, whether they’re federal, state or local, to upholding the U.S. Constitution.”
LaLonde said the proposed law would likely face a legal challenge — the U.S. Supremacy Clause holds that federal law takes precedent over conflicting state laws.
“But we think it’s well worth the litigation risk,” he continued, “because we think we have strong arguments that it would be upheld.”
Health care
Last year, health care legislation was all about bringing the hammer down on hospital prices. But this year, the pendulum swung in the other direction, and lawmakers entertained a slew of deregulatory ideas.
Some do not look like they will advance. In H.585, for example, Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s administration sought to open the door to association health plans and let insurance companies adjust premiums based on age. Those proposals have either been killed outright in the House Health Care Committee or turned into a study.
But the Senate is moving legislation, S.189, that would partly undo a law that was only just passed last year. The 2025 law allowed the Green Mountain Care Board to block hospitals from eliminating service lines, and it's probably why Rutland Regional ultimately didn’t close its inpatient pediatric beds.
The bill that’s advancing would soften that considerably — and have the Vermont Agency of Human Services simply make a public, but non-binding, recommendation about whether or not such closures should happen.
There’s also been a lot of conversation, meanwhile, about what Vermont should do concerning private equity’s growing footprint in the state’s health care system. But providers pushed back hard against H.583, an ambitious regulatory package sought by the Health Care Advocate’s Office, arguing it might require undoing whole swaths of the state’s health care infrastructure. On Friday, the House Health Care Committee advanced a compromise bill. It isn’t everything advocates wanted, but they say the public reporting required in the bill will at least shed a lot more light on what’s going on.
Education reform
The top priority for lawmakers and Gov. Scott this year is a sweeping education reform package that would transform the way Vermont pays for and governs public schools.
But House and Senate lawmakers continue to row in opposite directions.
The House Education Committee is pursuing a plan that would force Vermont’s 119 school districts to merge into larger governance entities. And it would eliminate school choice in the approximately 90 communities where parents have a range of options to send their children, including private schools.
The Senate Education Committee, meanwhile, favors an approach that would let districts merge voluntarily. And its proposal would preserve school choice as it exists now.
Neither committee will pass a bill before crossover. But leaders in both chambers have given the committees a reprieve from the deadline.
Housing regulations
Some lawmakers want to delay implementation of a contentious land-use law.
The Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee voted unanimously Friday to advance legislation that postpones Act 181. That law, which called for a major restructuring of Vermont’s development review process, passed the Legislature two years ago.
As the law’s impacts have started coming into focus, housing advocates have argued that it skews more toward preserving land than encouraging homebuilding, and have called for a slowdown.
Senate Minority Leader Scott Beck is particularly concerned about a controversial new “road rule” taking effect. That rule would increase permitting scrutiny for construction of private roads over a certain length in much of the state.
The Democratic authors of the law argued that it would encourage development close to roads and prevent the fragmentation of forests. Rural landowners have argued that it infringes on their property rights and sounds a death knell for future growth in small towns.
The committee voted to postpone the rule’s kickoff an additional two years, until 2030. That delay tactic could be a bid to ultimately kill the provision, though, as Beck and other Republicans have called for its full repeal.
Property tax relief
Property tax bills have risen by 40% over the past five years. And even if lawmakers can get their historic education reform package over the finish line in 2026, it’ll be several years before the legislation has any effect on spending.
Many lawmakers say that relief won’t come soon enough. And the Senate Finance Committee on Friday voted out legislation that seeks to slow the growth in school budgets as soon as next year by ramping up financial penalties on higher spending districts.
The legislation relies on a mechanism known as the excess spending threshold. A fiscal analysis indicates that lowering that threshold from 118% to 112% could save more than $20 million a year, if districts adjust spending to avoid penalties for exceeding the target.
Lawmakers are still debating Gov. Scott’s proposal to use $115 million in one-time money to buy down tax bills next year. The House Appropriations Committee will decide how it wants to use that money next week.
Emergency housing
The House Human Services Committee has advanced a bill that would restructure Vermont’s response to homelessness.
The committee bill moving forward is a pivot from bipartisan legislation introduced earlier this session, which would have effectively ended the use of motel rooms as shelter in two years and set up a voluntary program to pay for unhoused people to relocate out-of-state. That bill was scrapped.
Instead, the legislation advanced on Friday sets up a new framework for shelter and services run by the Department for Children and Families. It limits the number of motel rooms the state can use moving forward but doesn’t nix their use altogether. It also requires that unhoused people participate in case management. There’s no out-of-state travel program included.
The bill sticks with the budget amount Gov. Scott recommended for shelter programs in the coming year: $82.6 million. Officials with the governor’s administration have signaled that they like the current direction of the bill.
