This.

Governor Scott vetoed a bill that would have overhauled Vermont's homelessness response system, saying it does not adequately reduce the size or cost of the motel voucher program.

Because of this, you know, we're going to continue to see the fight at the state level over who has access to emergency housing.

You know, for how long, who gets left out in the cold?

Plus, a new financing tool for housing infrastructure becomes law.

And House and Senate negotiators appear to have struck a deal on a major education reform package.

But will it satisfy the governor?

All that and more ahead on Vermont this week.

From the Vermont public studio in Winooski.

This is Vermont this week, made possible in part by the Lintilhac Foundation and Milne Travel.

Here's moderator Mitch Wertlieb.

Thanks for joining us on Vermont this week I'm Mitch Wertlieb.

It's Friday, June 13th, and joining us on the panel today, Peter Hirschfeld from Vermont Public, Carly Berlin for Vermont Public and Vtdigger and Austyn Gaffney from Vtdigger.

Thank you all so much for being here today.

While a lot going on, I think I say this every week, Pete, it's amazing how things are moving so quickly as we're going to tape here.

It appears it appears that House and Senate negotiators have struck a deal on an education reform bill.

This has been a big deal at the state House.

This is while the lawmakers have had to spin over time because nothing's gotten done.

But what do we know to this point about what may be happening?

Yeah.

You know, if you'd asked me last night, Mitch, after the conference committee's last meeting at about 7:30 p.m., whether or not they were going to get a deal done, I would have said, bet on it not happening and looked like they were at loggerheads.

It looked like there were some really thorny issues over independent schools.

How much money is going to be going to independent schools?

How many students will be eligible to attend independent schools?

Also, issues about what's going to happen to spending and taxes, and a lot of districts that are going to see their funding levels change by this law.

And what we saw today was appears to be a resolution of those differences.

And it arrived in relatively short order.

And I as it stands right now, it looks like we're going to have a handshake deal really soon.

Now, the stuff we don't know, of course, is whether or not Governor Phil Scott is going to be happy with whatever deal was reached.

We as we're going to tape now, the governor has a press conference coming up in about an hour.

We'll see what he has to say then.

But one of the things that we do know is that he was really trying to get these negotiators to get a deal done quickly.

They went over time.

It didn't happen.

So you would sort of think intuitively that maybe he's glad that something has come up here and that maybe something's got done, but he also may have objections.

Yeah.

Well, Phil Scott has said what we need is a generational overhaul of our education system.

And he said, because it's so big, because it's so consequential.

When we do this, we have to make sure we get it right.

And Phil Scott has said we need a deal, but he also hasn't put any time deadlines on reaching that deal.

So you can be sure that if this deal ends up being something that Phil Scott can sign off on, he's not going to say so adjourn the session and we'll come back and try to figure out next year.

He's going to say to lawmakers, I need you to keep coming back to the table until you deliver me something that I can sign.

Also, just if this does make it to a floor vote in the House and Senate, there's no guarantee right now that rank and file lawmakers are going to approve this thing.

There's a chance the bill doesn't even make it to the governor's desk, because there's some real misgivings among a lot of lawmakers about what this bill would do and how it would do it.

Again, school consolidation, a lot of concern about some of the smaller schools.

Yeah, no question about it.

Make sure you go to Vermont public.org to get the latest on all of this.

And we'll try to keep you up to date as quickly as we possibly can.

Once we know more about what could be a major education reform bill here.

What we do know about a bill that has been signed, curly, or actually a veto of a bill, is the motel voucher program.

There was supposed to be an overhaul of this program.

Governor Phil Scott was not a fan of the motel voucher program, but then he went ahead and vetoed the overhaul version.

So why?

What did he objected to there?

Exactly?

I mean, the the main concern from the governor here was that this bill, each 91, would have continued spending really high levels of state money on homelessness response.

He, you know, kind of construed, you know, in his veto message to lawmakers that this bill would be a continuation of the motel voucher program as it currently exists.

This bill would actually have dissolved the statewide program next summer and given responsibility and funding over to private, nonprofit organizations to provide emergency shelter going forward.

But that was that was the main concern.

But that means we're back to square one.

We are I mean, we you know, this veto in some way sort of endorses the status quo of this program with its constant churn of people coming in and out and constant fights in the state House over who is eligible for it going forward.

You know, it passed on largely party line votes.

You know, in the final days of or before lawmakers went home before this education wrangling has has continued on.

But that means that lawmakers are unlikely to be able to override the veto in coming days, and we'll have to see what might come next for this vision of of regional izing, decentralizing the motel program.

What we do know is that the problem itself of homelessness is not going away.

Hundreds of people used this program last year.

Is that right?

That's true.

I mean, thousands really?

This is our our main backstop for, a shelter system that has been overloaded for years.

And as we know this, you know, the motel program expanded greatly during the pandemic when federal money came in.

This fight has, you know, continued for the last few years as that federal money has gone away.

And so we have to see if state leaders can come to an agreement on on what the future of the state's homelessness response looks like as the problem gets worse.

And it was interesting to see this issue after, you know, all these months of trying to reach consensus right.

Go back to the purely partizan divide that we've seen for most of the last four years since it became an issue.

And House Democrats put out a statement after the governor issued his, veto, a withering criticism, and he basically boiled it down to Phil Scott hates homeless people.

And, it'll be interesting to see where they go from here.

And also, if the veto of this bill is going to have the sort of devastating impacts on on the homeless population that Democrats say it's going to.

Well, you know, from the motel voucher program to housing writ large, there has been a bill passed Carly Berlin about, a housing package has been signed into law.

There's a lot going on in this bill.

What are some of the big main takeaways that you can tell us about?

Yeah, the main policy achievement of this bill is a new program that's aimed at financing the infrastructure that's needed to build new housing.

So think sidewalks, roads, water lines, sewer systems, those things are really expensive.

And those costs often fall to the developer to build out.

And then those costs get, you know, baked into the cost of housing, which is rising.

So the idea here is to use increased tax revenue from new development to pay off loans for that infrastructure build out.

And yeah, it the policy is that the new law will create kind of like a pilot program basically.

So this will exist for a decade.

But over the course of that decade, there's basically a $2 billion, infrastructure investment authorized here.

So that's pretty pretty sizable.

It is sizable.

Is it fair to say that, House lawmakers here were a bit more concerned about the kind of housing that might get built, given the passing of this new bill?

In other words, you know, we don't want a bunch of, you know, very expensive houses being built at the ski chalets.

We want affordable housing.

This is a bill deal with that.

It's true.

That was definitely a concern that came up through the legislative process.

And there are benefits baked into how this program is, is designed for affordable housing to try to incentivize homes that, you know, have income restrictions for, for who would ultimately live in them.

Apologies for getting into the nitty gritty of this, because as I said, some of the stuff is really complex, but I have to ask.

There's something called the butt for test, in this bill.

And I think what this means is would a project have gone forward?

But for the public financing?

Yes.

Is that is that about right?

What what else can you tell us about that?

Yeah.

So this was a major place of contention as the bill worked through the House.

The House added this, but for test after the Senate had passed an earlier version of the bill.

It was really important, to House Democrats to have this, this a guardrail.

And that test made it into the final version.

It was tweaked a little bit in the final committee of conference.

The but for tests won't be used for affordable housing projects going forward just for market rate ones.

But the kind of negotiating tactic here was, you know, the House allow or, you know, the, the House and Senate agreed that they could keep the buffer test but raise the amount of money, that they would authorize, this, this, oh, that.

All right.

So that, that, that controversial cap.

Right.

And so they, they came to an agreement on those two pieces, and that was enough to get Scott buy in and Pete Hirschfeld, you've been covering a lot of this two, $2 billion bill here.

I mean, is this going to move the needle on the housing that Vermont desperately needs?

I think that's the thing that I bet Carly is most excited about following in the wake of this bill being enacted into law.

This has all been a theory up until this point.

Is this going to be, you know, in the absence of a historic allocations from the federal government in the form of Covid stimulus money?

Can Vermont find other mechanisms to increase housing stock?

And this is one of the ones that they've landed on.

And, you know, in six months from now, a year from now, are we going to see municipalities taking on debt to build the kind of infrastructure that that lawmakers are hoping they will?

It's an unanswered question right now, but but one will get the answer to eventually.

Eventually, yes.

And Carly Berlin, also Vermont housing agencies.

There's a limit on assistance vouchers.

What's that all about?

That's true.

So these are section eight vouchers paid for by the federal government that help low income people cover their rent.

You know, as as rents in Vermont are rising.

Very expensive.

Yeah.

The bottom line here is that the federal government hasn't allocated enough money to keep up with those rising costs.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has also clawed back some reserve funding from local housing agencies.

What that leaves us with is that the largest housing authorities in the state have stopped issuing any new vouchers.

They've taken away, about 150 vouchers from people who currently had them and were looking for an apartment to use them, which we know is really challenging already.

And they've said that they need to shelve about 1000 vouchers by the end of this year.

So that's through attrition.

You know, when someone gives them up, the authority is there.

Nine of them across the state won't be giving out new ones.

That's pretty significant.

1000.

I mean, we had a graphic up for those of you watching at home showing, you know, who's going to be affected by these section eight pullbacks.

Austin Gaffney, I want to talk about some environmental stuff now because a new bill is focusing on, farm runoff, which has been a huge problem in Vermont.

What is the bill do?

What does it tackle here?

So it's Senate bill 124, and it's an act for miscellaneous agricultural subjects.

But basically what it does is it is a reaction to, a claim by the Environmental Protection Agency that came to Vermont last fall where they said that Vermont was violating the Clean Water Act.

So Vermont is as a state, can, determine how the Clean Water Act is enacted through, the Agency of natural resources.

And basically, the legislation is trying to help the agency of natural resources get a better handle on runoff from farms.

But there's a bit of controversy here, because the answer right can be seen sometimes as perhaps being a little too friendly to, to to farms that, in other words, they shouldn't be over overseeing this.

There's been some criticism there.

There's the answer back.

I'm sorry.

Yes.

Oh yeah.

There's been some criticism between what is called split jurisdiction.

So basically between A and R and the agency of agriculture.

So the agency of agriculture is thought of obviously to be friendly to farms because they are, very invested in farms and they have a lot of like strong relationships that they built with farmers over time.

So while they have basically split, regulating runoff from farms with an R, and that is what the EPA pointed out had led to issues, with overseeing pollution from those farms.

I appreciate the update on that.

Thank you.

Pete Herzfeld, there are some new bills, even though everyone's concentrating on housing, education, obviously, but some new bills, have been weighed in on by the governor.

What are some of the big ones here?

Yeah.

One that I think a lot of people were following was called an act relating to age appropriate design code.

This is also known as Kids Code.

And broadly what lawmakers are trying to do is, create a state law that forces social media companies to re-engineer their platforms like TikTok and Instagram, in ways that prevent children from becoming addicted to the Doom Scroll, for example, or the notifications that pop up and, you know, give you that endorphin rush.

The algorithm.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, the idea is, hey, we have, safety codes in place for cars and buildings.

We need to have a similar code in place for these social media platforms that kids are spending hours a day on.

In some cases, a lot of people thought the governor might veto this because he he vetoed a similar bill, last year.

But they pushed out the implement implementation date until 2027.

And so the governor says he thinks that will allow time for these court cases to play out in ways that that doesn't get Vermont stuck in a legal quagmire.

I'm curious, though.

I mean, we're talking about the the big media companies here in Meta and Instagram, you know, all that stuff.

So, you know, what can Vermont really do in that?

Is there really teeth in this, in other words?

Yeah.

So the duty of regulating big, big tech has in many ways fallen to state, the federal government has not made a lot of headway in recent years in terms of passing big data, privacy, AI, social media legislation.

I've talked to Senator Peter Welch about this before.

He says, lobbyists for Google and Amazon and Meta have done a really good job gumming up the works in DC.

And so we're seeing states take this on, more than about 20 states now have comprehensive data privacy laws.

So Vermont is not alone in this.

It's it's part of a long list of states that have said, hey, if Congress isn't going to do something about it, then we are.

We were talking, you and I, about a data privacy bill that actually did not, get done.

And I think part of the problem is because this is kind of interesting, there are smaller Vermont entities that sort of need to deal with this data harvesting.

Right?

Yeah.

I mean, you know, even if you're a mom and pop retailer, the 21st century business imperatives require you to be doing things like targeted advertising.

And if you're in the business of targeted advertising, then you're in the business of buying and selling data.

And the concerns are that if you tailor legislation that's going to, try to target the bad actors, there's a danger that smaller Vermont businesses get ensnared in that in a way that complicates their business model.

So so, that data privacy issue specifically is going to be one that is going to take a little more time for lawmakers to work through.

There were speaking of, you know, smaller entities, cannabis growers in Vermont, small growers especially not very happy with the bill that the governor signed dealing with cannabis law.

What can you tell us about that?

Yeah, it's sort of a you know, there's miscellaneous bills.

There's some stuff in there about, labeling.

You have to say when the cannabis was, packaged, things like that.

But what growers were looking for, a lot of growers, was the ability to sell their product directly to consumers.

They say they're getting squeezed out by this retail marketplace that, really puts smaller, independent growers at a real disadvantage.

And they ultimately were not successful in pushing, lawmakers to adopt the direct to consumer, concept.

And, they let it be known that they were not pleased with this bill and had hoped Bill Scott would veto it.

Okay.

Now there's also a flood bill, that that has been, dealt with around the governor.

And what's going on there.

Yeah.

So there isn't a ton of money that lawmakers have to work with to help flood hit communities.

And so in the absence of money, they've tried to give them some new municipal financing tools.

And this would allow towns to use unspent money from the previous year for flood purposes without going to a town vote.

It would change the terms under which they can take on loans, allow them to take on more emergency loans, over a longer term.

So arcane stuff.

But there are a lot of lawmakers that think it could be potentially meaningful to communities, when future disasters hit.

All right.

I'm glad you're covering all these different bills while still trying to concentrate on the deficit and housing.

It's just amazing how much stuff has been flooded in here towards the end.

Austin Gaffney, I was reading this fascinating article that you wrote in Vtdigger about some new processes for taxing utilities in Vermont, which I guess caught a lot of smaller towns, especially by surprise.

Yeah.

So it's something that, the state Department of Taxes has been undergoing for about five years now where they're taking on, these different properties and other systems evaluation and trying to make them more consistent across towns in Vermont.

So utilities is what they took on this year.

And basically in late May, these utilities got an email that said their valuation had changed.

So if you're a smaller town, what that means for you is that potentially, your valuation has gone down because it's now divided instead of like, electric poles or substations.

It's now divided based on a customer base.

So if you have your customers, you might see you might might not see your utility valuation drop.

And so that surprised some of these small smaller towns.

So what's an example.

What's a small town that's dealing with this now for the first time.

So there's a couple in Essex County who I spoke to.

One is Guild Hall and they saw their valuations drop by up to 60%.

Wow.

Another is, Maidstone sorry, Maidstone.

And they dropped by 55%.

So it's while, it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to pay a lot more for taxes, it's still a small bump in the taxes that they might end up paying, as a town or not receiving as a town.

So it's a it's a bit of a change for them.

And why did this change come about again?

Because they wanted to make the total system more fair.

Is that a basically what it is?

Yeah, essentially it's a pretty wonky subject, but the idea is that they're trying to make, the valuation system for utilities consistent across the board, like it is under national standards.

And and Carly, you know, you've seen this happen with grand lists.

I mean, these are these are important things.

Towns need this money, right?

I mean, it it happens.

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, I think you're seeing a wider scale reckoning at the state level with what a lot of people view as the antiquated nature of the way we calculate the value of property across the state, which turns out to be a key factor in determining how much people are paying into the public fisc for things.

There is a bill related to, you know, grandiose values in towns for property right now.

Right?

We have local town listers that are going to a house, and they're volunteers in some instances, and they're making a decision about how much this piece of property is worth.

And there are a lot of people in Montpelier who feel like we got to get with the times on this.

We need to professionalize this.

We need the state to be taking a stronger role in it.

So yeah, I think it's part of a broader effort to rethink the way Vermont does things.

Well, there are some other things going on too, which have sort of a a broader, I guess, connection to national things that are happening in Vermont.

Plans to join a lawsuit that seeking to block President Donald Trump's deployment of National Guard troops against protesters in Los Angeles.

State Attorney General Charity Clark said on Tuesday that in recent days, Trump has sent several thousand National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to LA in response to the protests that are opposing US immigration and deportation policies.

You know, the protests are happening, all across the country, and they are happening tomorrow in Burlington.

And I think throughout the state of Vermont.

I mean, what are we expecting to see here, with the protests that are happening?

Well, digger had a story, earlier this week saying that I believe they're going to we're up to 40 protests in communities across the state now.

And I don't know if any of you went out to the protests.

The last I mean, the last big round of these was, was, I believe, in late winter, early spring.

Yeah.

And I was surprised at the turnout in places like Barton, in places like Newport, places that you don't necessarily think of as liberal bastions in Vermont.

And I think it's going to be interesting to go around the state tomorrow and see what this looks like and see what people have to say and see how many people turn out.

Yeah, these are called the No Kings protests.

And, you know, I think when Pete, when you talk about these, these smaller places and, you know, we have seen the immigration policies that Trump has put in effect here have an effect on dairy farms, for example.

I know you've all been following this, too.

There are workers here in Vermont that are keeping some of these farms operational, keeping them afloat.

So perhaps that is why we're seeing some of these protest come out in places that you would not expect in Vermont.

I think one of the things that's given this issue so much salience is Vermont is because of stories like the migrant farm workers that were arrested in Berkshire, like the Columbia University student that was arrested, when he reported for a citizenship interview in white River junction, or construction workers, an affordable housing project in Newport.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So so this is happening around the state tomorrow.

It's going to be very interesting to see what the response is.

Now we haven't you know, again, there's been talk about National Guard troops and we don't know there's no word whatsoever that there will be any kind of a National Guard troop presence here in Vermont.

We don't think that's going to happen, but it is something that we're going to have to watch out for.

And do you all think that I'm just opening this up here?

Is this going to put some pressure on Governor Phil Scott, depending on what happens with these protests?

At some point, if Phil Scott wants to retain the enormous popularity that he has had with Democratic voters in this state, I think he is going to have to show them more in the way of resistance and opposition to President Donald Trump.

We've seen signs that voters want that.

There was a letter that 64 voters from Guilford, Vernon and Brattleboro sent to the governor just a couple weeks ago saying, we need you with us on this.

We need to hear your voice.

And I think that that sentiment represents a pretty broad view among the Vermont electorate that cares about property taxes, that cares about housing and that thinks the governor is the one to lead on those issues, but that also need him to be part of, what they view as a broader resistance against the second Trump presidency.

I mean, it's very interesting because what Governor Phil Scott has said more recently, I know he has been critical of Donald Trump in the past.

He said he's not voted for him.

He's voted for other candidates over him.

But what he has said is that we can't react to every little thing Donald Trump does.

In other words, his point is that's sort of what Trump wants.

You know, when he when he does something that's provocative and we overreact, that's hurting everyone's cause.

But again, you know, given given the large numbers of people that have come out here, you know, Austin, for example, you know, Vtdigger covering these protests, you know, is this a point where Governor Phil Scott is going to have to maybe take more of an active role in saying, you know, I am not for this.

We have a right to protest peaceably in this country.

I wonder, if he'll take after Governor Gavin Newsom at all, who has really been outspoken about, the what he feels like is the unlawfulness of sending National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles without, request from the state or from the city.

So I think Governor Gavin Newsom is sort of setting a model.

And obviously he's a Democrat and he has strong political ambitions.

But, I think other governors might start stepping up into that same place.

And I, I don't know what Governor Scott will do.

Yeah.

It's going to be very interesting to see.

But again, these protests are happening tomorrow, Saturday, in 40 towns around Vermont.

And of course, we'll be talking about it and covering also the education bill, when we know more about that next week.

And we will have that information for you.

In the meantime, go to Vermont public.org to find out the latest.

That's we have to have to leave it for today.

I want to thank our panel so much, Peter Hirschfeld from Vermont Public, Carly Berlin from Vermont Public and Vtdigger and Austyn Gaffney from Vtdigger.

Thank you all so much for being here.

Really appreciate it.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb, thank you so much for watching and for listening to Vermont this week, and I hope you tune in again.

Tune in again next week for Vermont this week.