by Dave Soulia, for FYIVT.com
Ever wondered who’s actually behind the Global Warming Solutions Act, the Clean Heat Standard, Act 181, the road rule, or the steady drumbeat of progressive legislation rolling out of Montpelier year after year? This Saturday, they’ll all be in one building in Moretown — and the public is invited.
The 2026 Vermont Changemakers Summit, organized by the Vermont Natural Resources Council and co-sponsored by more than two dozen of the state’s most active advocacy organizations, comes to Harwood Union Middle and High School on April 11 — a free, full-day convening billed as a gathering for “community activists, organizers and advocates passionate about people and the planet.” For Vermonters who have watched property tax bills climb, heating costs rise, and land use regulations tighten, it is a rare opportunity to meet the coalition responsible in person.
The Basics
The summit runs 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 458 Vermont Route 100, Moretown. Admission is free. Complimentary parking is available at the school. The agenda includes:
- 9:00–10:00 a.m.: Registration and sponsor exhibits
- 10:00–11:00 a.m.: Plenary session with remarks from Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas and U.S. Representative Becca Balint
- 11:15 a.m.–12:30 p.m.: Session A workshops
- 12:45–1:30 p.m.: Lunch and networking
- 1:45–3:00 p.m.: Session B workshops
- 3:15–4:00 p.m.: Closing keynote from State Treasurer Mike Pieciak
The event’s own code of conduct requires officeholders appearing at the 501(c)(3)-compliant event to represent themselves “in their official capacity, or as a Vermont resident eager to learn.”
Who’s Behind It
The summit is organized by the Vermont Natural Resources Council and co-sponsored by the following partner organizations:
- 350Vermont
- ACLU of Vermont
- Fair Share for Vermont
- Hunger Free Vermont
- Let’s Grow Kids Action Network
- Migrant Justice
- Planned Parenthood of Northern New England
- Rights and Democracy Institute
- Run on Climate
- Rutland Area Branch of the NAACP
- Sierra Club Vermont
- Third Act Vermont
- Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility
- Vermont Conservation Voters
- Vermont Creative Network
- Vermont Harm Reduction Advocates
- Vermont Interfaith Action
- Vermont Interfaith Power and Light
- Vermont Natural Resources Council
- Vermont NEA
- Vermont Paid Leave Coalition
- Vermont Public Interest Research Group
- Voices for Vermont’s Children
For Vermonters who have wondered who has been driving the legislation affecting your lives and wallets, that list offers a fairly direct answer.
Their Legislative Record
The Vermont Natural Resources Council helped draft and champion Act 181 — the sweeping 2024 land use overhaul that restructured Vermont’s Act 250 permitting framework, created the Land Use Review Board, and added what is now known as the “road rule.” That provision, inserted late in the drafting process, triggers a full state environmental review under all ten Act 250 criteria when a new road or combined road-and-driveway network exceeds 800 feet — a threshold critics say could ensnare rural families trying to build a home on land they have farmed for generations. The 171-page bill passed on the final day of the 2024 legislative session; multiple senators publicly acknowledged they had not had time to read it before voting. VNRC later acknowledged the provision did not say what the organization intended.
Four other summit partners — VPIRG, Sierra Club Vermont, Vermont Conservation Voters, and ACLU Vermont — co-signed a November 2025 legal demand letter with VNRC challenging Governor Scott’s executive order that sought to roll back portions of Act 181, arguing the order was unconstitutional and demanding compliance clarification from three state agencies by a fixed deadline. When Governor Scott issued an executive order aimed at rolling back portions of the law, those same organizations sent formal legal letters to state agencies arguing the order was unconstitutional.
The Act 181 coalition is only part of the story. A broader look at the sponsor list and recent Statehouse history:
- VPIRG was the lead organizational voice for S.5, the 2023 Affordable Heat Act, which established a Clean Heat Standard requiring fossil fuel importers to purchase clean heat credits — a framework the oil heat industry has characterized as a de facto carbon tax passed on directly to consumers.
- 350Vermont has been a primary driver behind the Vermont Climate Superfund Act, signed in 2024, making Vermont the first state in the nation to require fossil fuel companies to pay into a climate damage fund — legislation now facing federal legal challenge.
- VNRC, Sierra Club Vermont, Rights and Democracy, Vermont Conservation Voters, and VPIRG all backed the Global Warming Solutions Act, which created mandatory emissions reduction targets and opened the state to citizen lawsuits if those targets are missed.
- Fair Share for Vermont — whose coalition includes VNRC, ACLU Vermont, Vermont NEA, Vermont Conservation Voters, and Voices for Vermont’s Children — pushed H.827 and H.828 in the 2024 session: a proposed wealth tax on unrealized capital gains for Vermonters with assets exceeding $10 million, and a 3 percent income surtax on households earning over $500,000.
- Vermont NEA backed Act 127, the 2022 education funding formula overhaul whose implementation contributed to the property tax crisis that drove increases of 15 to 18 percent in fiscal year 2025 and triggered school budget failures across the state.
- Planned Parenthood of Northern New England led the multi-year campaign for Proposal 5, Vermont’s 2022 Reproductive Liberty Amendment, now enshrined as Article 22 of the state constitution.
- ACLU Vermont has been the primary driver this session behind S.208 and S.209, the bills restricting law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration agents, both of which passed the Senate 27-2.
- Migrant Justice successfully lobbied for driver’s license access for undocumented residents in 2013 and operates trained rapid-response teams that mobilized protesters to the federal courthouse in South Burlington within hours of the March 2025 ICE raid on Dorset Street, sustaining near-daily demonstrations until the detainees were released.
About That Code of Conduct
The summit requires all attendees to abide by a posted code of conduct, with violators subject to removal. Among the prohibited actions:
- Actions likely to cause a “material and substantial disruption to event operations”
- Actions that “could reasonably be expected to or actually do give rise to a riot or public disturbance”
Those two provisions are worth sitting with. The organizations co-sponsoring Saturday’s event have collectively packed Statehouse hearing rooms with coordinated crowds to outnumber opposition testimony, run simultaneous multi-store picket lines across the state, organized sustained courthouse demonstrations, dispatched delegations to corporate headquarters in Massachusetts and the Netherlands to directly confront executives, and built the rapid-response infrastructure that produced the sustained public demonstrations against an ICE operation in South Burlington in March — and celebrated each instance as a model of effective organizing.
Disruption and public pressure are not incidental to how these organizations operate. They are the method. The code of conduct, it appears, applies to everyone except the people who wrote it.
Worth Your Saturday
None of that makes Saturday’s event closed to the public. Quite the opposite. The summit is free, the parking is complimentary, and the organizations responsible for the Global Warming Solutions Act, the Clean Heat Standard, Act 181, the Reproductive Liberty Amendment, the Fair Share wealth tax push, and the current legislative drive to limit immigration enforcement will all be in one building in Moretown from 9 to 4.
For Vermonters who want to understand how Vermont’s policy landscape gets shaped — and by whom — it is a rare chance to see the full coalition in one room.
Full agenda and workshop details at vnrc.org/vtchangemakerssummit/agenda