As the end of the legislative session nears, work on a major reform bill continues.

My conversations with legislative leadership leads me to believe there is a path forward.

And then we can work this out, and we can get to where we want to go.

But it could be a bumpy ride, in doing so.

Plus, the housing debate comes to a head, and Vermont may soon join a growing list of states banning cell phones in schools.

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 is Friday, May 30th.

And joining us on the panel today, Kevin McCallum from Seven Days, Tim Mcquiston from Vermont Business Magazine.

And joining us remotely today, Lola De four from Vermont Public.

Thank you all so much for being here.

And as usual, there is a lot going on.

Lola, we're going to start with you.

Things going on at the state House, the one thing we do know is that folks that are going to be burning the midnight oil, we're not sure when a German is going to happen, but they're still working on this big education reform bill.

Where do things stand with that bill now?

Well, like the governor says, said, there does seem to be a path.

Right.

And I think, deal on this kind of major and historic education bill, is within sight, which is, very surprising to me, given how comprehensive this proposal is.

But, that being said, there is still a long ways to go.

There are still a lot of outstanding issues between the House, the Senate, and, of course, the governor.

On candidly, some of the hardest issues, on precisely how much money we would give schools under a foundation formula, on the subject of, school choice and, you know, which schools would remain, which private schools would remain eligible for public funding through a tuition program?

And so, you know, we we've got a long ways to go, but it does seem like, the two the three sides are inching closer and closer together.

And when you say the three sides, we're talking about the House, the Senate and the governor and the governor, right?

Yeah.

Well, last week, you know, last week we were talking about, how the Senate had to sort of backtrack on about four weeks or, you know, about a month of work, kind of scrap their whole plan and start over again.

What has happened in that interim that has got them, as you were saying, inching a little bit closer to an in court here.

I don't I don't know what it is.

That sort of, got them from.

Maybe this all falls apart to.

We absolutely have to have a deal.

I mean, the governor has been very clear this entire time that he will not accept, the session ending without some sort of education reform, you know, on his desk that he can sign.

But, of course, he can't really compel the legislature to pass legislation that they don't like.

He can bring them back to Montpelier.

And he said that he would, but, you know, he can't he can't force them to do anything in particular.

Once they're back there, they could just adjourn and go home.

But, you know, there seems to be a genuine desire to get to.

Yes.

And so that that is where they're going.

You know, I think the Senate to, to kind of get over the hurdle that they were at last week sort of got closer to the house.

His position, which of course takes them a little bit further away from the governor's position.

But, you know, somehow, all three parties are somehow getting to a middle spot.

But, you know, the there's some really big details that still people have to get, have to be convinced of, you know, there is a hope on the House side that, you know, they can keep their formula for, their foundation formula, which is what would determine how much schools, get, and, you know, they're really wedded to this because they think it's scientific and empirically derived and, you know, a formula that they can sort of defend.

The Senate and the governor have been more concerned about, you know, having a formula that does not inadvertently end up spending more than we are now.

And there are kind of certain scenarios in which that might have happened with the House formula.

So a lot of math is going on behind the scenes right now to see if the house formula can actually land on a number that the Senate and the governor feel comfortable with.

And that has a lot to do with whether or not, how you determine which schools and which school districts are eligible for extra money because they are in sparse or geographically isolated areas.

Right, right.

And so that's why this could go late into the night.

And we're just not sure when this is all going to happen.

And we got to remind folks, you know, that as we're as you're seeing this year, there is still a lot of that wrangling going on and things could change a lot.

Kevin McCallum, the other thing that's happening, the the big bills, the housing infrastructure bill, and there's a lot of that same wrangling that Lola's talking about here, differences between the House and the Senate.

What can you tell us about that?

But that's exactly right.

No.

Some of the same dynamics, that Lola just described, are going on about the housing infrastructure bill, and this is one that, you know, I've actually been very surprised that it has become as acrimonious and difficult to resolve as it has, because it's kind of a highly technical bill on a very technical housing financing tool.

And you would think that if it's minor like that, that they would be able to bridge their gaps and, and actually it's turning out to be extremely difficult to do that.

And it's a little complicated to explain why, but basically it involves taxes.

It involves how this program is going to work.

And what it does is it allows developers to, to avail themselves and to use, what's called tax increment financing.

It's a tool that municipalities have used for, for decades to help clean up blight in their, in their communities.

Right.

If you had an area that's got a whole bunch of properties that are all dilapidated or problematic, then you you pass a district and you, borrow a bunch of money and you fix them all up and you build some new roads and, clean up the, the soil, and you put a bike path in there, and then and then when the property values rise over time, you pay back the, the bonds, right?

That you that you borrowed to do all the work from the increase in the taxes that occur, the property tax.

So that's why we've seen that work in in places like Saint Albans, for example, Saint Albans Hill Town is one or the Burlington waterfront.

And so so here we are at a moment with a huge housing crisis.

Right?

We don't have that many blighted downtowns in Vermont, but we do have a massive housing crisis.

And, there's been just an increasing number of people in the state advocating for trying to find a way to use that financing tool to build housing, not just to clean up vacant properties, but to go build housing.

And so, the idea is let's expand dramatically the use of that tool to the private market.

And that's just giving some lawmakers in the House, significant amount of pause.

So they want to restrict the program.

They want to keep it modest pilot level.

And the Senate is much more aligned with the governor's big, bold, let's build housing in this state somehow.

And if we have to spend a bunch of money, and even if it's some of it has to come from the Ed Fund, right, to build the infrastructure needed to have the housing go in, let's do it.

And so reconciling those two views, has been exceedingly difficult in the last few weeks.

They've both got versions of the bill.

They both love their versions of the bill, and they both are fighting tooth and nail over the, the, the elements of their bill that they think, are best for the voters or for the folks in Vermont.

I mean, getting to compromise is the hard part.

Go ahead Jim.

Well, the education, you know, the funding has been for years has been a big part of this, where what are you going to rob the and we're having the problem with property taxes and paying for schools like Loyola was just describing in great detail.

Right.

And now you're going to maybe pull some of that money back and try and explain how that works is very tricky.

And the town's very, very often have have technically got this wrong.

It's a really complicated thing to keep up with.

Yeah, but one of the reasons that they are actually making a lot of progress today is because I think the Senate has been, senators on the conference committee for this bill have been pretty articulate about how that that's a bit of a fallacy, the notion that you're really going to be siphoning money from the Ed Fund, that in reality, what you look at, what you see over time, is that the redevelopment that occurs in a tiff district, as they call them, actually ends up generating money that does more money than there would have been to go into the Ed Fund if you'd done nothing.

So that argument has really created a significant amount of give on the part of the house, and we are starting to see the two sides come together in the in the issue.

But the housing just generally the governor says we need 41,000 more units by 2030, which is just around the corner.

Yeah.

And everyone agrees is the housing crisis is creating a workforce problem.

It's creating all these other problems that you just we just got to do it right.

He's just saying we just got to do it.

You know, that's what's interesting.

I think what you were saying, Kevin, is that everybody sort of agrees on the need here, which is housing.

We know we're in this housing crisis.

It's a matter of how, maybe how fast we want to get there, how much money we want to spend there, spend there.

And it sounds like the house is sort of saying, let's not go too quick.

And it's also the type of housing that we're going to build that's becoming one of the real sticking points, right, is do we want to open up the doors to any developer to build a ski chalets in Stowe or, condos, for second homeowners, or do we want to make sure that the money that we're going to be using on a program like this only really goes to build infrastructure that's going to then result in homes that regular Vermonters can afford.

So low income people, moderate income and middle income people.

And so that's where the real tension has become.

The house is much more of the opinion that if we're going to be spending taxpayer dollars, essentially, to build housing, let's make sure that we build low and moderate income housing.

And the Senate is saying, look, we've been spending money to build low and moderate income housing for decades now, and we've only got a few thousand units to show for it.

Let's let the free market sort of decide what type of housing would be best.

And so that's where the real, the real tension has been.

And it has been very tense.

There's been some real uncomfortable, exchanges in this conference committee like I have not seen before in the state House.

And you can tell us about that.

I've just I want to front up in person.

I and but just build it has actually worked in other in other places too where the more you have the sort of supply and demand thing really works out.

Right?

Because remember, once you have the units, now you have people moving here, getting a job, buying a car, going out to dinner, putting their kids in school, buying those kids clothes to go skiing.

I mean, it's just, you know, the ripple effect of new.

And the governor's made this point over and over and over again.

So that's starting.

So that's if you can afford those places again, that's, that's that's part of the problem as well.

Also Kevin McCallum, lawmakers have advancing a flood recovery bill.

This is something we talked about last week pretty important with, you know, flood season upon us pretty soon.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

No.

So, the two bills that Lola and I have and Tim have just been talking about are the big ones that are taking up all the oxygen in the state House at this juncture, for sure.

But, along the way, there's all these other bills that are actually making progress.

And, the, the flood recovery bill is, is definitely one of the key bills that's making progress.

And that's an important one for a number of reasons, because obviously, we have all these flood impacted communities around the state that haven't been getting these big FEMA buyouts, they haven't been rebuilding.

They've been kind of stuck in this place.

And so, this bill has a number of tools that are meant to help municipalities recover.

And each one in and of itself is not super transformative.

Right.

But if you cobble together six or 8 or 10 different sort of tools that they can use, there's real optimism that towns are really going to benefit from them.

And I'll just mention, you know, one of them is, allowing a municipality, a small one, for example, that doesn't have huge reserves in the bank to borrow some money after a flood, so that they don't have to wait for two weeks for FEMA to give them a grant so they can then hire someone with excavators to come clean the muck off the middle of Main Street.

So normally you'd have to go to the voters and say, we'd like to borrow some money to do this work.

And borrowing money is a thing, and you have to be careful about how you do it.

So the voters have to have a say in that.

And typically this would do away with that.

This would allow towns to borrow money without going to the voters.

And then there's also a provision that, would allow communities, to keep more of what's called the local option tax.

So these are taxes that little towns to towns passed to in order to keep the revenue, for themselves instead of having it all go to the state.

So like a sales tax instead of 9% would be a 1% for the town.

Only town gets to keep 70% of that money.

They not all of it.

They don't get to keep 100.

They only get to keep 70.

That's a 7030 split.

And, there's been some discussion about allowing the towns to keep more of that.

So now at the moment or the bill now includes, 75%, they get to keep in, 25% will go to the state.

So that's one of those compromises that I think a lot communities are happy about.

And this legislation does feel important right now, especially with so much uncertainty about federal funding for FEMA in the future.

And floods, resiliency, excuse me, flood mitigation coming from the federal government.

I just don't know if that's going to be there.

Lola, another big bill that a lot of people would be paying attention to when you're not, first and foremost.

But this has to do with, cell phones in schools.

And there is a proposal for, having phone free schools and do you think this is going to happen?

I think it is.

Yes.

I, you know, hasn't quite happened yet.

And so, you know, second asterisks on that, but, it seems like that is going to happen today, that we'll see a final passage out of the house.

And that as of the 2026, 27 school year.

So now not the upcoming one, but the one after, there will be a ban on personal devices in schools from arrival to dismissal.

So it's not just that, you know, kids would not be allowed to use phones, in classrooms, but, you know, at lunch, in the hallway, you would not be allowed to have your phone out for the entire school day.

And that's a huge win for advocates.

And, you know, we've been talking about a lot of really contentious, difficult conversations.

This is not one of them.

This is, bipartisan tri partizan support.

There's been almost no opposition this year.

There was some opposition last year.

There were some concerns, from, folks in the school community that this would be really difficult and impractical to enforce.

But, you know, nationwide, we have seen a stunning number of, states now passed these bans.

There really is this kind of nationwide momentum and movement behind this phone free schools, and some districts in Vermont, too.

Right.

Loyola have actually tried this out.

I think Harwood is one of them.

And I was going to get to that.

And we have had a few schools voluntarily do this this year.

An educator there have had, you know, have come to lawmakers with kind of glowing testimonials.

I talked to one superintendent who, you know, submitted like an unsigned, unedited ed list of, responses from his teachers when he sent out a survey about how well this had gone.

And teachers were like, this has been transformational.

This has been amazing.

This has been the best thing that we have ever done in this district.

And so educators at least seem to really, really love it.

You know, research is kind of still out on whether or not, phone bans, you know, about the, the, the efficacy of these interventions.

But the research is also early and testimony testimonials like this really about, and so, you know, with several schools kind of doing this voluntarily and saying it's been a huge success.

Plus you've got this momentum nationwide, you know, this this happened really quickly and with a lot of unanimity, a lot more than I have seen in this building about any issue in a long time.

And so, yeah, it's nice to have some, some agreement on something.

Yeah, there's some agreement on something.

So it's, it's, it's been really interesting to watch and briefly, Loyola, do you have any sort of a prediction on when adjournment might actually happen?

No.

It it'll be either really late tonight or next week or tomorrow morning or a month from now.

I you know, I don't know, one day we'll get out of here.

I hope that's, you know, I hope you can get some sleep, get some food, all that stuff where we're concerned.

Kevin McCollum, I read this really interesting story, recently about these underground passages for amphibians.

The University of Vermont came out with this study saying that this has been really successful in helping, frogs and salamanders and all these little creatures survive because during their spring migration, they got to get across the roads.

There is something you've been writing about, though, for Wildlife Crossing that maybe is not going to be as successful.

What can you tell us about this plan and what's happening with it?

Right.

So for years there's been this study to see whether the state Agency of Transportation could, could, find places in the network of highways and state and national highways to they can punch holes through those highways to allow wildlife to travel back and forth.

You know, wildlife corridors extend all around the state.

And when there's a, you know, an interstate running through it, animals run across the road, get in collisions or and it just is a real problem for the animals and for drivers.

So they've been, they've been trying to figure out ways that they can create gaps.

And usually in Vermont, it's in the form of an under crossing where you basically take a culvert and you make it five times the size that it needs to be.

And now an animal can walk through out west.

They have these and they they tend to go over crossings.

These really big structures were animals can walk over even herds of elk or whatever.

And Canada can go over the highways.

We don't have that much of that here.

But here we have these under crossings.

There's a few of them.

We've experimented with them over the years.

They've had mixed success.

But there's a new plan to try one in Bolton.

And it was, they had some money from the Biden administration to do a feasibility study and even some engineering drawings, and they were ready to go.

And I just spoke to Joe Flynn, agency secretary of the Agency of Transportation, yesterday, and he admitted that they were not going to go forward with a major grant application for that project because they realized that even if they could get $25 million from the federal government pot of money that they were eyeing to help fund this project, they didn't have 25 other million dollars for the $50 million project.

So they didn't have the other half.

And so they felt it was a little irresponsible to move forward with a grant application when they couldn't really, in good conscience say, oh, yeah, we're going to build it.

If you give us this money.

They were basically, you know, they would have had to say, well, give us the money and we'll see if we can fundraise to.

And that wasn't good enough.

So they pulled the plug on that, grant application.

A lot of people are disappointed in the environmental community because it was a it was a key, crossing.

It was meant to connect.

Right?

The the beautiful, massive tracts of forest land, between Camel's Hump and Mount Mansfield.

And, there's a lot of people that are worried that as climate change happens and species can't migrate to new areas to higher elevations, then, you know, they're in big trouble.

And so there's a lot of disappointment out there on that.

Tim Mcquiston, there's another project that looks like it's, in trouble.

And this deals with the green River reservoir in the, Hyde Park Mooresville area.

What's the situation there?

What if folks want to do?

And why isn't it looking like it's going to happen?

All right, now, the water, the Morrisville Water and Light Department, one of these small utilities, which are sort of dotted throughout the state, very small, is responsible for the dam there.

It's a hydro it's very small hydro project, and they're out of compliance.

Everyone agrees they're out of compliance.

They need a relicensing of this thing.

They don't want any part of it, in part because the the the Ferc has limited how much water flow can go through the dam.

And if you're not getting enough water flow, you're not going to be able to produce electricity, you're not making any money.

It's just a millstone around the small company.

And, so they would they want the state to take this over.

The state really doesn't want to take it over.

If you've been to the green River reservoir, it is a spectacularly beautiful place.

Great swimming spot.

People like to pristine.

No, no, motorized watercraft.

Unless you have one of these electric trolling motors.

It's.

There are loons there.

The easiest thing to do would be to take out the dam, but then you lose the reservoir.

There's this beautiful, benefit to the state.

The state park.

And, so there's no solution in the state.

And in fact, the governor's press conference yesterday was talking about, well, we're looking into whether we want to take it over.

And, it seems like that's going to be the only logical solution because the the little utility can't keep up with the especially if it's not producing electricity.

It's 800, kilowatts.

You know, like the, the, the Townsend Dam on the West River's like five megawatts.

So it's it's even on that scale on these run of the river, type, dams.

It's actually pretty small.

So it's, it's but it's a spectacularly beautiful place.

At some point, they're gonna have to make a decision because it has to be re licensed or not, or the dam has to be taken out, which I don't think is ever going to happen, frankly, because that would not be a good look to drain this very popular knowledge.

It'd be a PR disaster.

First of all, environmental groups have been calling for the removal of dams, but mostly on the smaller scale.

There's there's hundreds of them around Vermont.

You can just walk through the woods and find one of these tiny little dams.

But, so that's that's going to be a bigger, bigger issue going forward.

There's no, logical resolution.

But I think that the state which owns the Waterbury Dam at Little River State Park, this would be the second largest dam they would own if they were to take this over, even though it doesn't look that big and its citizens want to take it over because of the cost of maintaining it, or is cost of maintaining it having that responsibility?

But I don't think there's any other way to go to the question I want to ask you about another story.

We've been talking a lot about federal effects, that are starting to seep their way down to states like Vermont without congressional funding.

Vermont of Vermont veterans program faces a potential shutdown.

What can you tell us about that?

Well, this is, you know, part of the whole deal about the federal government cutting back on expenses.

This is not a big money that we talked about, FEMA and that huge impact that could have.

This is a couple of million dollars in the state of Vermont to help veterans sort of negotiate.

I mean, if you've ever had to deal with Social Security or Medicare, Medicaid, then you're a veteran and adding all that complicated bureaucracy to it.

This was an organization that would help veterans negotiate, you know, how do I get the benefits the from the through the VA?

How do we get educational opportunities?

There are a lot of benefits that that are available to veterans, but just negotiating that.

So that would be sort of another sort of pulling another federal pull back on helping a certain group.

But the actual program could, could shut down if there's a yeah, there's no, there's money doesn't come in.

And this has happened with other programs too, with other social service programs that have been funded by the federal government.

It's just like, well, it doesn't exist anymore.

We have to shut it down.

Okay.

I appreciate the update on that one.

We can end on a sort of a positive note here, because income eligible Vermonters are being offered free entrance to state parks.

This is, of course, our.

We've been talking a little bit about the state parks.

You mentioned the green River reservoir, and this is, you know, sort of an opportunity to get more people, to come to the state parks, use them.

You know, and if you have the income eligibility, I think there are ways that you can, show your eligibility for that.

And then you can get free entrance to these state parks, which is a really nice thing.

It's a pilot program.

It's going to start, pretty soon.

And then folks can, you know, make their way to our beautiful state parks and enjoy them because it's a great thing to do, especially in summertime.

Before we, head out of what you want to, you know, quickly ask the panel here.

Do we think that these issues education reform, the housing bill, are these going to get done pretty soon, or are we looking like this is going to happen?

Well, the real quick.

I think the housing bill is definitely going to, be buttoned up before the education bill.

Housing first.

Okay.

That's I think first.

And then I think education after, like I said, I think a deal is going to happen, but, I've predicted things on TV before and, and so so we're not going to hold it to you, I promise.

And we're going to have to leave it there for today.

Thanks to our panel, Kevin McCallum from Seven Days, Tim Mcquiston from Vermont Business Magazine, and joining us remotely today, Lola Duffort from Vermont Public, putting in the midnight oil there.

Thank you so much, all for watching and listening.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb.

Tune in next week for Vermont this week.

We hope to see you then.