by Austin Davis, the Lake Champlain Chamber

Here’s a high-level overview of how the Legislature acted on three top priorities this legislative session.

Housing

• Substantial changes to the State’s land-use law, Act 250, were made, following last year’s HOME Act, which will completely reshape development in the state to build desperately-needed housing stock. [Editor: more on Lake Champlain Chamber take on Act 250 reform bill in tomorrow’s VDC.]

Public Safety & Quality of Life  

• Passage of retail theft legislation that progressively increases penalties as individuals re-offend.  
• Additional legislation addresses repeat offenders with updated bail laws and pre-trial monitoring. 
• Legislation also addresses quality of life concerns with the creation of offenses for vehicle trespass and the creation of a Safe Injection Facility with the intention of curtailing public usage of narcotics and needles littering Burlington’s downtown. 

Affordability & Budgeting 

• Property taxes will increase by 13.8% on average as Vermont’s per-pupil education spending climbs to the highest in the country despite our student population continually shrinking. Interesting read on this – check out this report from 2006.
• The Legislature added a 6% sales tax on Software as a Service and levied a 3% surcharge on short-term rentals to raise more revenue for the bloated education fund. 
• The Legislature found $25 million in General Fund surplus to help buy down the tax rates, as well as some surplus held from the previous biennium; without this surplus and the new revenues, the property tax rate increase might have exceeded 18%. 
• On a more favorable note, a new top-income bracket and a proposed tax on unrealized capital gains were defeated, though their advocates vowed to work with national partners between now and the next session to make them a reality. 

What’s Next?

Now that the Legislature has adjourned, it will not be a “goodbye” but a “see you later” as they will inevitably return for a veto session on June 16. 

• The Governor is expected to veto several bills sent to him: H.72 (Safe Injection Sites), H.887 (the property tax and education funding bill), S.213 (river corridor and floodplain regulation), S.289 (the Renewable Energy Standard bill), and S.259 (Climate Superfund Cost Recovery Program Fund). 

The Lake Champlain Chamber is Vermont’s largest business organization.