Thank you to this week’s sponsor of our Advocacy Update:
May 23, 2025
We’re writing a rather short update to you as we report out from week 19 of what is typically an 18 week session. Overtime play has details changing by the minute, and we’re not going to put something in your inbox that might be outdated within an hour, so here is a high-level breakdown of where we are as of lunchtime.
The theme of this week is impasse, with a side serving of impending impact. The House and Senate are both experiencing an impasse in their own way. As your author put it to a colleague this week, “It feels like a veto session. However, there hasn’t been a veto, and we’re still in the normal session.”
- The week has been start-and-go as factions fight bipartisan battles on the defining issues of the session: education and housing.
- That’s what’s keeping them here, the typical final bills of the session, the must-pass bill being the budget and the yield bill, have been signed.
- They could go home but for the Governor, requiring that education reform is a must-pass bill, and it would be a political mistake not to deliver on housing at this time.
Instances of impasse:
In the House, internal conflict is coming to a head, as factions debate different versions of the housing bill’s Community Housing Infrastructure Program (CHIP), with the Senate this week sending the program to the House again in another bill.
- A divided House is set to square off against a united Senate as the bill limps along with House leadership trying to beat back amendments from the Rural Caucus, who, after a brief hiatus, have seemed to get their muscle back.
In the Senate, two wings of the Democratic party wrestled to write a version of the so-called education transformation bill that would unite their caucus, so they could pass something to get to a Committee of Conference.
- Issues primarily around independent schools and minimum class size have provided particular sticky spots for the Democratic caucus, leading to a series of meltdowns over the course of the week that made the Senate start over and scrap four weeks’ worth of work.
How did we get here?
- The absence of a veto-proof majority that characterized the last six years has been good for the legislature, as we’ve seen a great degree of bipartisan agreement and factions forming that transcend party lines to back what they believe is the right policy, not necessarily party policy; however, this now novel line of legislating takes time…
- It doesn’t help that this legislature got off to a late and extremely slow start. Our readers might remember that we led an update highlighting how we had seen the least done by Town Meeting week by any legislature in recent memory.
Zoom out: We’ve written a lot over the last 19 weeks about the backdrop of national politics and the impending impact of the so-called “big beautiful bill” moving through Congress, which just passed the House.
- Congresswoman Becca Balint slammed the passage of the legislation for its cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and food assistance, and Vermont legislators, left, right, and center, are concerned about the tightening of the spigot on federal dollars to our state, where 1/3rd of the budget is federal funding.
- We stated in week 7, “Legislators might feel as if they have the luxury of time, however, they might regret not making more progress on issues they can control now when they need to react to issues out of their control later.”
- The budget is not the only shadow D.C. casts on Vermont policy. A now-passed Congressional Review Act resolution repeals Environmental Protection Agency waivers that allow California, and 16 other states that follow its lead (including Vermont), to set regulations for emissions from cars and light-duty trucks. This is an issue that advocates lobbied in our state to pause, which was eventually done by Governor Scott via Executive Order.
- As both of these pieces of legislation make their way to a predicted final passage, Vermont legislators will find that their work feels slightly superfluous, especially if they need to use the money they appropriated for a special session by the end of summer.
Bottom line: As one lobbyist put it yesterday evening as a group huddled to recount the day of impasse, “it seems the last five months have been the time to [….] around, and now it might be time to find out.”
- Will the Senate find consensus on an education bill? Will the House pass the housing bill Vermonters deserve? Tune in next week or reach out to us to find out.