What an energizing week with Monday's perfect totality viewing, an action-packed Tourism Day coming up on Thursday, April 11, and wide-ranging legislation to tackle in the State House. Rep. Dolan and I are excited to welcome our Mad River Valley tourism professionals into the State House to celebrate successes and learn about emerging needs.
The House Education and Ways and Means Committees have taken extensive testimony from experts in the field, the public and other legislators (including yours) on a path forward. This input has informed the yield bill, which the Ways and Means Committee must pass out by Friday so the Senate can take it up. As described by Representative Dolan last week, the yield bill is how the statewide education tax rate gets determined, accounting for all the budget needs identified in our various school districts. Although it will evolve in the Senate, the yield bill will be available online on the House Ways and Means Committee webpage by Friday and will give us a more accurate picture of what we'll pay locally in education property taxes this year. Please email me for the link if needed. I hope more voters in our district will vote in the April 30 HUUSD budget revote and support our local schools and the hard work of our school board. Fortunately, voters will have more information before April 30 on both this year's costs and what to expect for the deeper visioning process ahead to ensure a sustainable, quality education system and a more predictable, understandable funding formula going forward.
We have passed a critical housing bill in the House, H.829, which will fund ongoing investment in improving existing housing stock, help more low-income Vermonters to find or stay in their homes, provide more pathways to homeownership, support manufactured home communities and add housing and shelter capacity for our most vulnerable. The bill identifies new revenue sources to ensure our commitment to housing can continue long-term. See the recent vtdigger piece by Representative Mike Rice for a great overview of H.829. Also on housing, the big land use and Act 250 modernization bill passed by the House, H.687, is now in the Senate where more housing-related initiatives will likely be added. To advance good governance and transparency, the House passed a new state ethics bill, H.875, which is headed to the Senate. The bill increases transparency with new financial disclosure requirements for political candidates, provides the State Ethics Commission the authority to investigate ethics complaints, brings local officials under the umbrella of the State Code of Ethics, requires that municipal officials complete ethics training and enables the State Ethics Commission to provide advice to Vermonters who have ethics concerns in their towns and cities.
In the Environment and Energy Committee, we're making progress on flood resilience and ensuring accountability from polluters. On Thursday, we'll be holding a joint hearing with the Judiciary Committee to discuss the legal path forward of S.259, the tri-partisan climate superfund bill that passed the Senate recently and that would hold the largest global fossil fuel companies accountable for a share of costly storm damage in our state. Having high school students from around Vermont in the State House when this bill passed was memorable, and I enjoyed the chance to meet with Harwood Youth Lobby members and students enrolled in the Creating Sustainable Communities course. We’ve also taken up S.213, an act relating to the regulation of wetlands, river corridor development and dam safety. Given the recent $1 billion in flood damage in our state, this bill details strategies that will augment the natural flood infrastructure provided by our wetlands while also improving the safety of dams, adding more engineer staffing and consolidating regulatory oversight with the Agency of Natural Resources. The bill includes a new net gain wetlands policy instead of the current no net loss policy and proposes statewide regulation of river corridors, recognizing that many of our towns are in harm’s way but lack the staffing resources to effectively regulate development in the river corridor.
Please share your questions and ideas with me at an upcoming coffee hour or be in touch via email --
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