By Irene Wrenner

(Editor’s note: the author is a Democrat candidate for the Chittenden North state senate seat which she lost in 2024 in the Red Wave general election, powered by voters’ concerns about property taxes. As she notes, Republicans voted No against the proposed 13.8% property tax increase passed by the Democrat super-majority earlier that year. Many Republicans voted no in hopes that the Legislature and the governor could find a compromise that would further reduce the property tax rate.)

Who do YOU blame for school tax rates going up double digits in 2024?

One party lost 25 seats in the legislature that year because voters heard just one side of the story.

As with many complex issues, blame was reduced to a soundbite.  

Actually, no one voted for a 0% tax hike in 2024 to fund schools.

The choice we legislators had in 2024 was:

Vote Yes on the Yield Bill (leading to a 13.8% tax increase), or

Vote No on the Yield Bill (leading to a 30% tax increase). **

Accordingly, members of BOTH parties voted for a large increase to pay for education expenses that year.

Democrats voted to fund school budgets that had passed in each town with current dollars through an average statewide homestead and non-homestead tax rate increase of 13.8%.

Republicans voted to fund those school budgets with a 30% tax increase on non-homestead taxpayers only, which includes ALL businesses. Millions of dollars would have also been borrowed to keep schools open at unfavorable interest rates, the financing of which would have cost all taxpayers.

The Democrats held enough seats to pass H.887 and override the Governor’s veto that year.

Businesses should have breathed a sigh of relief. Some of them already had one foot out the door. They didn’t need a 30% property tax hike to send them packing for good.

Voters often tell me they’re concerned about keeping businesses in Vermont.

And they don’t want their residential taxes to go up.

Legislators get it: We are taxpayers, too.

It was a choice between two awful outcomes that year.

Which increase would you have chosen:

13.8% or 30%?

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** VT Legislative Joint Fiscal Office (nonpartisan analysis):

Fiscal Implications of No Yield Bill in Fiscal Year 2025