A Weekly State House Recap By Maggie Lenz and Gwynn Zakov (on behalf of Atlas Government Affairs and Garnet Government Relations
What Gets Rebuilt
Two weeks ago, we wrote about how grassroots pressure had moved Act 181 from a deadline-extension conversation into a repeal conversation. Last week, we wrote about how quickly leadership aligned behind that repeal, and what previous testimony revealed about the trust costs of regulating ahead of landowners.
This week, the committee began the harder work of writing what comes next. By Friday, the House Committee on Environment was already on its second draft amendment to S.325. The committee made good on the promise from Chair Sheldon and Speaker Krowinski. Sections 19 and 21 of Act 181, the Road Rule and Tier 3, are deleted outright. The Tier 3 rulemaking is repealed. So is the Tier 2 Area report. Discussions since that pivot have been candid, productive, and genuinely hard, as members try to keep what is working in Act 181 intact while pivoting away from what is not. What the draft adds is where the questions really begin.
The Senate version of S.325 had moved the interim housing exemption sunsets for designated new town and growth centers, village centers, and downtown districts out to January 1, 2030. The House draft pulls them back to January 1, 2028, a one-year extension from current law rather than the Senate’s three-year extension. It also strips the Senate’s expansion of those exemptions to subdivisions and mixed-use development, and removes the proposed new exemption for housing projects of 50 units or fewer in designated village centers where at least 20 percent of units are mixed-income or mixed-use.
The House draft likewise leaves the accessory dwelling unit and commercial-to-housing conversion exemptions at their current sunsets, rather than extending them to 2030 as the Senate did. Housing advocates on the committee are uneasy. The shortened runway puts pressure on the Tier 1A and 1B designation process to come online quickly, and the village-center exemption was, for some, the most concrete near-term housing tool the bill carried. Whether the final version restores any of that is one of the open questions heading into next week.
The draft also creates a new Joint Legislative Environmental Oversight Committee, five legislators with a 2029 sunset, charged with overseeing the Land Use Review Board (LURB), the Agency of Natural Resources, and the implementation of what remains of Act 181. The instinct is understandable. A standing oversight body is one structural answer to an implementation process that ran ahead of the people it affected. But the timing is awkward.
Asking Vermonters to trust a five-member off-session committee to watch the agencies on their behalf, in the same session those Vermonters told the Legislature that small groups making decisions in rooms they are not in is the problem, is a tension the committee will have to think through.
The most promising structural answer in the draft is Section 8. The LURB would contract with a non-governmental organization, one with documented neutrality, statewide democratic engagement experience, and a proven record in rural communities, to design a public engagement plan for the next round of conservation policy work. The plan would gather statewide input on the risks of losing critical natural resources not already protected, including agricultural soils, forest blocks, habitat connectors of statewide significance, and headwaters, and on what tools, regulatory and non-regulatory, could protect them. This reflects the lesson from earlier testimony written into statute: conservation policy succeeds when it is built with landowners rather than around them. Whether it gets resourced, whether the contracted organization is genuinely trusted in rural Vermont, and whether the engagement actually shapes the policy rather than running parallel to it, will determine whether this section is a foundation for something better or another report on a shelf.
The regional planning provisions are quieter but consequential. Regional Planning Commissions (RPCs) would be required to provide member municipalities with written descriptions of map changes, municipality-wide before-and-after maps, and information about the new tier structure at least 30 days before the first hearing. Plans expiring in 2026 or 2027 are extended to December 31, 2027, one year longer than the Senate proposed. On the formal review of RPC decisions, where the Senate repealed outright, the House draft instead directs the LURB to report by January 15, 2027 on whether repeal is warranted and what should replace it.
The committee received the second draft walk-through on Friday, and members are still absorbing it. Concerns voiced in the room included the shortened housing exemption runway, the removal of the 50-unit village-center exemption, and the structure of the off-session oversight body. None of those are settled. The committee takes the bill back up next week, and how it lands on each will tell us a lot about whether the lesson from this session, that the people most affected need to be at the table from the beginning, is being applied to the bill being written, not just the one being repealed.
The repeal of the “Road Rule” and Tier 3 was the easier decision, once the political math moved. What the Legislature builds in their place, and how it builds it, is the harder one. That work has just begun.
Curiosities: a weekly peek at the odd and intriguing happenings under the Golden Dome
Horse Cents
The Senate Agriculture Committee is considering an update to Vermont’s Current Use program that would explicitly recognize professional equine farms. Current Use, formally the Use Value Appraisal program, has been in place since 1978 and is one of the state’s central land policy tools. It allows qualifying agricultural and forest land to be assessed based on its value for production rather than its full market value, and eligible farm buildings are exempt from property taxation under the program. The challenge for lawmakers has been in defining equine operations in a way that reflects how many of them actually function, while still drawing a clear line between a working agricultural business and a hobby.
Earlier this session the Senate Committee heard from Alyssa Price, a young woman who runs a training and boarding facility in Halifax, Vermont. She told the committee she grew up in Vermont, left to study equine instruction and training in New Jersey, and then chose to come home to build her business here. She described purchasing a former horse property that required extensive rehabilitation to become operational, including rebuilding fencing, replacing arena infrastructure, installing new footing, and repairing water and electrical systems. These were not cosmetic upgrades, she told the committee. They were the core infrastructure required to run the operation safely and consistently.
She was clear about how the work is her livelihood. “Today, 100 percent of my income comes from lessons, boarding, training, and shows,” she said. “This is not a hobby. This is not recreational land use. This is my agricultural business.”
She described purchasing hay from local farmers, sourcing grain and bedding from nearby suppliers, and working with Vermont veterinarians and farriers as part of regular operations. The farm maintains pastureland, manages manure, and keeps open fields in active use. The structure of the business, she explained, mirrors other forms of livestock agriculture, even if the revenue model looks different. The argument she made to lawmakers was that this effort is about aligning policy with how these operations already function on the ground.
The committee is now working on language that would reflect that reality more clearly. The approach under discussion would define equine farming to include the raising or management of at least four horses along with activities like boarding, training, showing, and instruction. It would allow income from those activities to count toward eligibility for the program and require that a significant share of a person’s income come from farming or equine farming to qualify.
The goal is not to expand the program beyond recognition, but to make sure it reflects how agriculture actually looks today, including operations that may not fit traditional molds but are clearly functioning as working farms. As Alyssa told the committee, “When equine operations are treated differently from other livestock farms for tax purposes, it sends a message — whether intentional or not — that horses are recreation rather than agriculture.”
Alyssa Price at her horse farm in Halifax, Vermont.
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