By Guy Page

Don’t look now but repeal of Act 181, the 2024 Act 250 expansion bill enacted over Gov. Phil Scott’s veto in 2024, isn’t the only ongoing citizen rebellion.

Repeal of Act 181’s Tier Two and Tier Three is scheduled to go to the House floor tomorrow. The House changes to bill S.325 would eliminate the road rule and the law’s enhanced Act 250 restrictions on rural development and would give a path forward for public engagement on what regulations, if any, will take their place. For more details, see below.

As the Vermont Legislature grapples with the surprise rural property owner rebellion of 2026, the Epoch Times reports a growing property tax payer rebellion nationwide. Vermont was indeed ‘first in the nation’ when, two years ago, irate property taxpayers tossed out Democrat incumbents and challengers in favor of Republicans who promised tax relief.

The beef driving the 2026 rebellion sounds sound similar: declining enrollment, ever-increasing taxes, declining performance, more seniors with big tax-soaking homes they can no longer afford. 

Red, blue or purple: the political composition of states gripped in property tax rebellion doesn’t seem to matter. It’s virtually everywhere. 

Omnipresent, too, are grassroots citizen groups that have lost faith in their state capital’s Establishment will or ability to fix the problem. For example, in one northwestern state, citizens are furious that lawmakers didn’t make much needed repairs to school heating systems and instead spent one-time Covid relief funds on expanding programs and staffing. 

What’s different are the proposed solutions. Some states want spending caps. Others want to shift from property taxes to income taxes. Some would shift the property tax burden from primary to second homes.

Here in Vermont, the current Legislature claimed to get the message sent by voters in 2024, when the Democrat supermajorities withered under voters’ harsh judgement of year-over-year property tax increases despite declining enrollment and student performance. This week, House and Senate are dueling over how much to raise the property tax and how much to spend in reserve funds in order to fund education. (The House would raise the property tax higher and spend less in reserve funds than the Senate.)

The problem isn’t lack of revenue, Sen. Scott Beck reported in an op-ed published in VDC yesterday:

“According to Vermont’s Joint Fiscal Office, our major tax revenue sources have surged over the last six years. Personal income taxes are up 59% ($536 million). Corporate income taxes are up 161% ($153.5 million). Sales, meals, and rooms taxes have each increased 43% ($277.6 million). The difference between this revenue growth and inflation—28%—amounts to $507 million.”

So far the Legislature doesn’t seem to think that wholesale budget cutting – or at least freezing – is the solution. 

Stay tuned…..

Act 181 repeal amendment details

The amendment going to the House floor tomorrow would scale back and delay key parts of Act 181 (Vermont’s land-use modernization law) while expanding temporary housing exemptions under Act 250.

It deletes major provisions of Act 181, including road jurisdiction rules (Sec. 19) and Tier 2/3 planning sections (Sec. 21), and repeals Tier 3 rulemaking and reporting requirements. It also pushes back implementation dates for certain Act 250 changes from 2026 to January 1, 2028.

The bill expands and extends Act 250 exemptions for housing, allowing projects of up to 50–75 units in designated growth areas to proceed without state permits through 2028, provided they meet size, location, and infrastructure criteria.

It shifts more authority to municipal panels, requiring them to incorporate and enforce existing Act 250 permit conditions in Tier 1A areas, while limiting state enforcement in those zones.

The amendment also delays rulemaking deadlines, creates a statewide public engagement process on land-use policy, and establishes a new Joint Legislative Environmental Oversight Committee to oversee permitting by the Land Use Review Board and Agency of Natural Resources.