Youth leaving foster care often struggle on their own. A Windsor County senator wants the State to provide them with a monthly stipend.

Two epihanies, actually. A senator admits the Senate doesn’t do things to help poor people, but must save the world instead. And, there just aren’t enough workers to weatherize, etc. enough to meet self-imposed carbon reduction mandates.

Recent laws have improved telehealth, but improvements could be made, a recent study says.

A Senate bill would deliver what the holy grail to Vermont abortion providers: free abortions to all, required to be paid for by Medicaid and private health insurance.

Xusana Davis: “It’s now my third or fourth session in the state and one of the things I often hear from legislators is, oh yeah, sorry, the equity piece isn’t quite there but we’ll fix it in January. We’ll fix it later. And what that says to me is there is something that motivates us to do this that is more important to us than justice. So the justice will have to wait.”

A bill that could add up to $4 to the cost of heating fuel passed the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee this morning.

Vermont lawmakers are seeking to outlaw efforts to counter the pro-abortion agenda.

Legal protections now enjoyed by police and crisis pregnancy centers are in the crosshairs of two House bills introduced Tuesday.

H251 would add the issuance of a Brady or Giglio letter as a basis of law enforcement misconduct under the jurisdiction of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, the state’s police disciplinary board. 

In a speech on the floor of the House, a Northfield lawmaker decries the abortion shield bill’s lack of conscience protections for health professionals.

Now the House also has a bill to study whether the Legislature should meet year-round.

Secular private schools now receiving public tuition could suffer financial harm under a bill meant to stop tuition to religious schools.

More than 400 emails opposing H113 have already been sent to lawmakers.

Bills establishing vaccination freedom and fetal personhood were introduced Tuesday in the Vermont House of Representatives.

A controversial pro-LGBTQ bill has been approved by a House committee.

The paid family and medical leave bill also would give time off for sexual and domestic abuse victims.

New bills continue to flood into the Vermont House of Representatives.

When Democrats won super-supermajorities in both chambers of the Vermont legislature in November’s election, they brought with them a host of legislative priorities that come with massive price tags for Vermont taxpayers.

Congress seems unwilling to impose term limits on itself. So a growing number of Vermonters are joining with citizens across America to call a Convention of States.

State law already provides health insurance for illegal immigrant children. A bill in the Senate would extend Medicaid coverage to all regardless of age and immigration status.

Vermont taxpayers are on the hook to pay both the defense and (likely) the prosecution legal bills for the inevitable lawsuit for not meeting carbon reduction goals. Yet at least one state senator has given that potential lawsuit a big thumb’s up.

Vermont senators want to group discrimination against obesity and ethnic hair styles in the same category as race, gender, religion, etc..

A Vermont Climate Council spokesperson saying it’s impossible to put a pricetag on the new Clean Heat Standard was met with bobble-headed agreement from lawmakers.

A Republican lawmaker has introduced legislation which, if acted on, would change how Vermont regulates carbon emissions reduction.

A Washington county senator wants to ban shooting guns within 500 ft. of an occupied building, and has proposed a Purple Paint hunter/trapper posting.

Priests who violate the confidence of the confessional are breaking church law. Now a Vermont state law could compel them to do so.

Number, sponsor and a plain-language description of every bill introduced into the Vermont House of Representatives in 2023 to date.

Should the law require solar panel installers to have a recycling plan? And do the Capitol grounds need a 24/7 restroom? These questions and others raised in proposed House legislation.

Big bills come out of small committee rooms.

One of the silver linings of the pandemic: the Vermont State House is now more accessible to people who can’t or won’t visit in person.

Comprehensive listing of information about 2023-24 Vermont Representatives and Senators.

The Vermont Senate, under the President Pro Tem leadership of gun-control advocate Phil Baruth (D-Chittenden), is off to a fast start with gun control.

With about a third of the Vermont House of Representatives comprised of new members, a list of all members and their contact information might be helpful.

The universal mailed ballot shifts responsibility away from the voter, and also sends ballots to the wrong address, a sponsor of H23 says.

Krowinski “adamantly denied it was because of my Article 22 advocacy, but her assorted rationales, as I told her, ‘didn’t meet the straight face test,” Donahue said.

Saying hello via video to four new lawmakers, including three who have served previously.

Toss out misdemeanor cases, legalize switchblades, and designate golf courses as protected areas – these ideas and others are among newly introduced legislation in the Vermont House.

A Republican lawmaker had her say before the Vermont House of Representatives – over her objection – re-elected Jill Krowinski as Speaker.

With the opening of the 2023-24 Legislature still a day away, new bills already are rolling in.

Just a couple of months into legal cannabis sales, Vermont growers now want to cut out the retail ‘middle man’ and sell directly to customers. Farm stands, maybe?

Commenting on a bill blocking parental rights to stop a child from being prescribed puberty blockers, Sen. Phil Baruth says “I tend to be the sort of person to side with medical experts.”

Legal sports betting will get a serious look in the Vermont Legislature next year.

Presenters said Vermont has a shrinking window to take legislative action. They expressed concern about a vocal minority in the state that is doubtful or dismissive of climate change as a problem.

In 1994, when he began serving in the Vermont State House, “I could not have dreamt this day would come,” Rep. Bill Lippert said after Joe Biden signed into law a 50-state gay marriage law.

“If a majority wishes to demonize or inflict prejudicial retaliation against people of faith, or ban public readings of scripture from the Koran, Torah, or Bible, that would be a violation of basic First Amendment principles,” John Klar says.

All three Vermont members of Congress voted for a bill making gay marriage the law of the land and leaving religious groups and individuals open to legal and government action.

A new federal gay marriage law could wipe out the protections for Vermont churches and others opposed by conscience to gay marriage.

A leading advocate for the anti-slavery Constitutional amendment compares modern-day imprisonment with slavery.

Lawmakers on a key committee seem curiously unaware of their Dec. 1 deadline for ruling whether Vermont follows California and bans the sale of internal-combustion cars by 2035.

Through lawsuits and legislation, supporters of legal abortion, doctor-prescribed death, and prostitution are headed towards making Vermont a destination state.

Legalization of sports betting could raise $10 million in state revenue – but consumers could be harmed, a state study says.

A bill to make it easier to charge repeat retail thieves with a felony didn’t get out of the 2022 Vermont Legislature.

Students at all public and independent schools will eat free breakfast and lunch this coming school year, thanks to a bill passed this year by the Legislature. The $29 million to pay for it will come out of the Education Fund.

If reading this book won’t cure insomnia, nothing will.

States (like Vermont) where buying marijuana is legal are seeing higher concentrations of THC and more teens suffering from THC-induced mental illness, a new study shows.

A resolution co-sponsored by Rep. Peter Welch calls for “eliminating unnecessary governmental restrictions on the provision of, and access to, gender-affirming medical care and counseling for transgender and nonbinary adults, adolescents, and children.”  

The U.S. Supreme Court today struck down New York’s “may issue” firearms carry permit law as too restrictive. What will this decision mean for Vermont?

Opponents of safe injection sites say their effectiveness is unclear and are a ‘foot in the door’ for legalizing possession and sale of hard drugs.

Gov. Phil Scott vetoed 13 bills during the 2021-22 session. Nine stuck.

Ben & Jerry’s took out a full page ad in the May 25 Seven Days to criticize “social media attacks on legislators over a transgender rights bill.”

H96 creates a task force to develop “legislation to create one or more truth and reconciliation commissions to examine and begin the process of dismantling institutional, structural, and systemic discrimination in Vermont, both past and present.” 

The bill claims that leaving forests unmanaged would benefit wildlife habitat and slow climate change – but forest science shows the opposite is true.