By Guy Page
House legislative committees will consider hundreds of bills this week. Selected below, in no particular order, are a few:
Data center restrictions – House Energy & Digital Technology at 3:30 PM Tuesday will consider H.727, to restrict siting of data centers in Vermont. Introduced by Rep. Laura Sibilia (I-Dover), the bill “proposes to regulate the deployment of data centers in Vermont for the purpose of ensuring electric service reliability and affordability for all Vermonters and preventing any adverse effects on the State’s environment, natural resources, local communities, economy, and public health and welfare.”
Arrest warrant for court no-shows – Rep. Tom Oliver (R-Sheldon) will get a hearing for H.741 in House Judiciary this week. It would ‘require the court to issue an arrest warrant rather than a citation to appear when a criminal defendant is released on conditions and subsequently fails to attend a scheduled court hearing for the offense, or when a person fails to appear in court after being issued a citation to appear by a law enforcement officer.”
Gender equality in Olympic Nordic events – House Economic Development and Commerce Committee this (Tuesday) morning will consider a resolution to ask the Olympics to combine men and women’s Nordic skiing into one, gender-equal category.
J.R.S. 37 is seeking “in solidarity with national and international ski organizations and numerous skiers across the globe, the introduction of long-overdue gender equality in Nordic combined Olympic competition and urging that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) only introduce new Olympic sports that practice gender equality.”
Nordic events include cross-country skiing and ski jumping. In both events male top finishers record better times and distances than top female finishers.
Chronic student absenteeism – House Education will discuss legislation about chronic absenteeism (30% in Vermont schools) this (Tuesday) afternoon.
Veterans’ bills – Wednesday afternoon, the Government Operations and Military Affairs Committee will do introductory run-throughs on H. 93 – creation and maintenance of a database of veterans in Vermont (Rep. Robert Hooper, D-Burlington, a veteran) and H. 884 – definition of Gold Star family members (Rep. Mary-Katherine Stone D-Burlington, Sponsor). June Heston, Surviving Spouse of Brigadier General Michael Heston, Vermont Army National Guard, will testify.
Click here for a listing of all scheduled committee meetings and agendas this week.
Judges – keep them, or not?
The Legislature’s Judicial Retention Board will hold a public hearing Wednesday, Feb. 11, to take public comment on the judicial retention of several Vermont Superior Court judges.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 7:05 p.m. in Room 11 at the Statehouse. The meeting will also be livestreamed for remote participation and viewing.
Judges up for retention include:
- Judge David Barra;
- Judge Ben Battles, appointed in December 2023 after nearly a decade with the Vermont Attorney General’s Office, including service as solicitor general.
- Judge Michael Harris, appointed to the bench in 2016 by then-Gov. Peter Shumlin.
- Judge Rachel Marie Malone, a former Vermont public defender who previously served as a judicial master overseeing the state’s family treatment court in Chittenden County;
- Judge John W. Valente, appointed in 2015 and experienced in both the Family and Probate divisions;
- Judge Thomas Walsh, an environmental lawyer before his judicial appointment by Shumlin.
Budget hearings this Thursday, next Thursday
The Vermont House and Senate Committees on Appropriations will hold two joint public hearings on Thursday, February 12, 2026, at 1:45 p.m. and Thursday, February 19, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. via in person or video conference.
The Committee will take testimony on the Governor’s recommended budget at the above date and time. Anyone interested in testifying should sign up in advance of the hearing through the following online form not later than 10:00 a.m. on February 12, 2026, for the first hearing, and 10:00 a.m. on February 19, 2026, for the second hearing. Instructions on how to access and participate in the hearing will be sent once you have signed up for the hearing.
The hearing will be available to watch live on YouTube.
For more information about the format of these events, contact Autumn Crabtree or Elle Oille-Stanforth. Written testimony is encouraged and can be submitted electronically or mailed to the House Committee on Appropriations, c/o Autumn Crabtree, 115 State Street, Montpelier, VT 05633.
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Categories: State House Spotlight
Gender equality in Olympic Nordic events? This simply defies all logic. There is no serious sports‑science study that concludes adult men and women are physically equal and should generally compete head to head on a “level playing field” in most mainstream sports. Available evidence instead shows consistent average differences in strength, speed, and aerobic power, rooted in biology such as muscle mass, body composition, and hormone profiles. What a stupid waste of taxpayer dollars in spending time even approaching this subject. Don’t these elected officials have anything better to do in the legislature?
Well, looks like this madness took Women back to pre-title nine days — That’s how dangerous these woke ideologies are. This is a huge loss for men and women. Preposterous and demented.
I wonder how many female Olympic Nordic skiers who trained their whole lives are all in on this proposal.
Folks, you can’t make this stuff up. The most absurd and satirical comedy could barely compete with the utter inanity of such God-hating, human hating stupidity.
Thank God for the integrity, honesty, and courage of the physicians in the American Board of Plastic Surgeons who are refusing to participate any longer with this agenda from hell to eliminate the truth of “God made them male and female.”
“Thank God for the integrity, honesty, and courage of the physicians in the American Board of Plastic Surgeons…”
No.
They are CYA’ing because there was at last a successful MALPRACTICE lawsuit in White Plains, NY, against the plastic surgeon and the shrink who mutilated a vulnerable teenager. $2 million.
You can bet lawyers took notice.
Thank you, Tyler, for your comment and insight on this. I had only heard about this new stance by the Board of Plastic Surgeons and was astounded to think that they had actually walked back their previous position of the willy nilly butchering of children. It seemed like a bold stand on their behalf against the woke lunacy and quackery we’ve seen in the medical field.
But as I looked into it more because of your comment, I now see that the words integrity, honesty, courage are too strong and most likely inaccurate for what they are doing. They are only postponing the same evil until the kids are nineteen now. So, philosophically, they haven’t really changed their stance, and are still violating their oath by doing tremendous harm; they are only CYAing, as you described it.
Thank you for the adjustment.
Thank you, Tyler, for alerting me to the reasons behind the plastic surgeons society’s decision. As I looked into it, I realized as you correctly pointed out, it was a CYA on their part. I had superficially responded because of how astounded I was that they would have walked back on their previous stance. I thought that they were actually renouncing their demonic position.
However, if they are simply pushing their timeline out to merely wait until these children are nineteen years-old to butcher these children, it’s still wicked and still violates the oath they swore to do no harm. It might be comparable to reading an imaginary headline proclaiming that ACOG would no longer be endorsing chemical pill abortions. However, if one were to read further, it would be discovered that they were still endorsing and committing g surgical abortions through all nine months. Same evil, different optics. Same violation of Hippocratic Oath, different CYA.
Thank you for the adjustment, Tyler. I need to be careful about responding prematurely and before getting “the rest of the story.”
I thought this retraction posted yesterday, but evidently not.
And thank you also, Rep. Sheldon, for being one of only a handful of common sense voices calling for common sense legislation to stop in their tracks and get off the streets serial arrestees and those who flaunt and disrespect the law. We need to see much more of this kind of the most basic common sense policy to end this kind of foolishness. Higher bail would also be a huge step to keep off the streets until trial or guilty plea those who do get arrested for failure to appear. If they can’t be trusted to appear when and where they ought, then that choice needs to be taken away from them with bail and jail.
Why stop with gender “equity” (moonbats love to toss that word around) in Olympic events? Our legislators have so much time on their hands before their typical June adjournment they should also virtue signal their concern about gender equity in the job market. We must all demand equal number of men and women being engaged in the roofing, auto mechanics and logging professions…whether they want to be or not…just to make idealistic progressives feel good about themselves. Ladies just wants to be pounding nails, carrying bundles of shingles up a 2-story ladder and running a 20″ chain saw. Let’s stop pretending that there are physical differences between men and women. Progressives and many democrats have already declared that men can have babies.
The Nordic skiers issue has drawn a lot of feedback. There are other items that merit comments, too. Chronic absenteeism was an issue in Colorado after cannabis was commercialized, 5 years before we did. That may be part of the issue, but covid keeping kids home and schools not really teaching in ways that challenge are factors, too.
We need to keep honest, community minded judges and remove those who are inclined to keep revolving doors on crime circling.
Anyone with a budget gripe should plan to be involved with the budget hearing.