A Weekly State House Recap By Maggie Lenz and Gwynn Zakov (on behalf of Atlas Government Affairs
and Garnet Government Relations
Progress, With an Asterisk
If last week was a barometer of whether the Legislature is truly interested in reopening the book on Act 250 reforms, the outlook is not very promising. Since the first week of the session, both House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over housing issues have been working on various housing bills and proposed initiatives.
The House General and Housing Committee is working diligently on a bill addressing property tax relief by modifying homestead property tax credits to provide increased relief, particularly for low- and middle-income homeowners, through adjustments to the income-based formulas used to calculate those credits. Another bill would create a suite of housing financing tools, including a rural tax stabilization pilot program, municipal special assessment bonds, expanded State Treasurer credit facilities for mobile home parks and bulk purchases of modular housing, and an off-site construction study program.
Meanwhile, the Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs Committee has finished work on a comprehensive housing bill that addresses how municipalities track and meet housing targets, caps mobile home park rent increases, and extends first-time homebuyer tax credits. The bill would prohibit condominiums and homeowners associations from banning long-term rentals or the operation of home daycares. It would also mandate that local zoning bylaws allow duplexes anywhere single-family homes are permitted without requiring larger lot sizes, and require municipalities to allow buildings of four units or fewer in areas served by sewer and water.
That is the good news. Housing discussions are moving forward. However, conversations around Act 250 reform, particularly revisiting Act 181 of 2024 and adjusting course, have gone virtually nowhere. The Senate Economic Development Committee initially included several Act 250 reform provisions in its draft bill, but those provisions were removed late last week after the committee was deemed not to have jurisdiction over those issues.
That leaves the Senate Natural Resources Committee as the only Senate committee with the authority to advance Act 250 reforms. So far, however, its work has been limited to broad, general reviews of housing issues, with nothing specific and nothing directed at Act 250.
Looking to the other chamber, the House Environment Committee, which does have some Act 250 jurisdiction, has not substantively discussed Act 250 reform bills. The only engagement to date has been brief bill walkthroughs conducted while the committee chair was absent.
What is increasingly clear is that if there is any chance for Act 181 or Act 250 reforms to move forward this session, it rests with a very small group of people: leadership in both chambers and the chairs and vice chairs of the Environment and Natural Resources committees. There are many stakeholders, and even legislators, who are eager to revisit Act 181 to correct course and make targeted changes to the underlying law. Several bills and proposals would amend, repeal, or delay implementation of the road rule, as well as push out the timeline for Tier 3 jurisdiction.
The Rural Caucus, along with the Land Use Review Board, agrees that some of the implementation dates in Act 181 are unrealistic and need to be extended. The Rural Caucus has also been clear that the state must provide actual written notice to every property owner potentially impacted by Tier 2 and Tier 3 jurisdiction.
The dust is far from settled on Act 181. Yet so far, there appears to be significant resistance within the State House to taking these concerns seriously. That may prove to be a miscalculation. While many Vermonters are aware that major changes are underway, far fewer understand the real impacts those changes could have on their communities, their neighborhoods, and their land. It is a sizable gamble, and it remains to be seen whether it pays off, and perhaps even what that “payoff” is supposed to be.
Curiosities: a weekly peek at the odd and intriguing happenings under the Golden Dome
The Fine Print
In a narrow hallway near the cloakroom and several Senate committee rooms, the copy room sits tucked away, easy to miss, small and unassuming. It exists outside the building’s visual grammar. Elsewhere, the State House relies heavily on architecture to communicate seriousness and weight. Chandeliers, carved wood, high ceilings, and carefully proportioned rooms are not just decorative. They are part of a long civic tradition that uses grandeur as a form of theater, giving physical form to the authority exercised here and signaling that the decisions made within these walls carry consequence.
The copy room offers none of that. It does not participate in the language of ceremony or permanence. It is a small, functional space, built for repetition rather than display, efficiency rather than symbolism. And yet the building depends on it as surely as it depends on its grand chambers. One side of the State House performs the gravity of democracy. The other makes it all possible.
Tony Morse, the Copy Room Technician, gets to the State House complex around 7:15 most mornings, often struggling to find parking before the routine begins. “I turn on all the equipment,” he says. “Distribute the daily calendars, journals, and bills. Then I check the print queue for any jobs that arrived overnight.”
From there, the day unfolds in paper: printing, folding, cutting, stapling, binding, laminating. Bills in various states of passage. Printouts of presentations from those who testify before committees. Charts and spreadsheets, especially for Joint Fiscal Office and the money committees, which rely heavily on the copy room to move information through the building.
Tony has worked in the State House copy room for about five and a half years. Before that, he worked in graphic design and prepress in newspapers, which gradually became general printing and production, and later display coding for websites and mobile apps for medical and scientific journals. It is the kind of work that rarely draws attention unless something breaks, but it underpins nearly every visible moment of legislative life.
“I like that work stays at work,” Tony says. “Once I leave, the job doesn’t follow me around; I don’t have to think or stress about it at all during my off hours.”
In a building where many people carry unfinished work and unresolved decisions home with them, a pattern that deepened after COVID blurred the boundary between professional and personal life, that separation feels increasingly rare and healthy.
The work itself is steady but constantly shifting.
“Everything is impermanent,” Tony says. “Things are constantly changing and often with little to no notice.”
There are predictable rushes: right after the Governor gives the budget address, when the report of a major study is released, or when Committees of Conference meet and each round of changes requires a new version to be printed. Annual publications like Fiscal Facts and the members’ biography book quietly increase the workload as well. These are the moments when printed copies are in highest demand, when information needs physical form and weight to keep pace with the building.
Tony’s biggest frustration is not the volume but the waste.
“My biggest pet peeve is when people request prints and don’t pick them up, or when they cancel or make changes in the middle of a print run,” he says. “I’m big into reducing waste and thereby saving taxpayers’ money.”
From the copy room, he notices dynamics that people moving quickly between committee rooms often miss.
“I think the State House is a lot less formal or ‘stuffy’ than people think it is,” Tony says. “The members and staff like to let loose a little more than I was expecting, especially after-hours.” He also picks up on the building’s emotional shifts. “As the chambers go, so goes the building’s mood,” he says, describing elation when a popular or important bill is passed, tension when a VIP is visiting, and anxiety before a vote. Even on quieter days, “the building always has a faint ‘buzz’ to it, like being in a crowd at a concert.”
That buzz is sustained not only by speeches and votes, but by the background work that allows everything else to function. The copy room is one of those places where democracy is not debated but maintained, where the infrastructure of decision-making is reinforced through repetition and precision. The work is largely invisible unless it is missing. Because without it the pace of the building would quickly stall.
Tony grew up in North Adams, Massachusetts, just south of the Vermont border. “As a kid I would ride my bike to Pownal all the time,” he says.
Years later, he and his wife honeymooned in Manchester and decided that if the opportunity ever arose, they would love to live in Vermont. When his previous employer began downsizing and offshoring more and more positions, his wife, who was a state employee at the time, alerted him to the copy room opening. “It sounded ideal,” Tony says.
Outside the State House, Tony is involved with Green Mountain Wrestling Club, an independent wrestling promotion that runs shows throughout central and northern Vermont. He serves as the ring announcer and also helps with setting up and tearing down the ring.
“I’m a lifelong fan of pro wrestling and I just asked how I could get involved,” he says. He started as security, and when the usual ring announcer was double booked one night, he asked if he could fill in. At the end of the show, he was asked if he wanted the role permanently.
“I’ve gained much more respect for what the athletes put themselves through for the love of the sport,” Tony says, pointing not only to the physical demands but to self-promotion, merchandise design, and the hours spent traveling. He is just as quick to credit the ring crew, the camera and sound teams, and the complexity of scheduling and booking events. “It’s a real labor of love.”
Those worlds do not feel separate to him.
“Vermont is such a tightly knit community that nothing ever feels truly separated from anything else,” Tony says, noting that he enjoys seeing other State House staffers at wrestling events. In his time off, his interests range widely: an extensive video game collection of approximately 10,000 pieces, a fifth-degree black belt in Shaolin-Kempo karate, reading, watching sports, and playing board games.
When asked what feels most meaningful about his work, Tony returns to the people around him.
“State legislators have a lot of responsibility and hundreds if not thousands of people to answer to with every decision they make,” he says, adding that they can also be very demanding on staff. While he enjoys the work itself, “It gives me extra satisfaction whenever I can make someone’s day a little easier or a little brighter.”
The copy room is not where democracy displays its power. It is where democracy becomes real, handout after handout, stack by stack, turning abstract ideas into tangible form. Long before a bill is debated beneath chandeliers or framed by carved wood and ceremony, it passes through spaces like this one, where arguments become paper, where decisions take shape not as symbols but as objects that can be held, read, marked up, and carried from room to room. The work is quiet and unadorned, but without it, the weight and authority the State House is built to project would have nothing to rest on.
From left to right: “The Dreaded Icon” Corey Jackson, “The Frozen One” Don Freeze, “The Cold Hard Truth” Johnny Pierce and Tony Morse in hat.
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