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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.
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Categories: National News, State House Spotlight, Taxes
Thank you, Mr. Page.
You described why Vermonters are not being governed with their interest at heart. They need a bi-partisan legislature; the pinnacle of Democracy.
The only escape from the Dem/Prog fiasco is to elect three or more Senate Republicans. That will create a check and balance within the G.A. Those House anti- Vermonter bill would be defeated on the Senate floor.
Am I reading the last paragraph correctly that they will “establish a new Joint Legislative Environmental Oversight Committee to oversee permitting by the Land Use Review Board and Agency of Natural Resources”? PLEASE tell me I’m misinterpreting that. All of those folks are already costing us 5 M a year.
Yes you read that right- so vote them out in November! http://www.ruralvermontrising.org – join us!
If the Federal Government was sending the State of Vermont a lot more money then they might ease up on property taxes, and other taxes. What I would like to see is a Tax revolt against the federal government to demand “R.O.I.” return on investment of our tax dollars to the States to use for programs for people, housing, education, etc.
Now, what I want is a Tax Revolution to make the public aware and informed that because of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, we pay taxes to the I.R.S. and then the U.S. Congress votes to give billions to the Pentagon and N.I.H., National Institute of Health, and then the Pentagon and N.I.H. hand out our hard earned tax dollars to Laboratories to invent new Rx prescription drugs, medical devices, new Jets, Drones, Bullets and Guns, etc. But here’s the catch, under the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, the lead researcher in each Laboratory gets to OWN the U.S. Patents and Copyrights (the OWNERSHIP TITLEs) of each invention, and then they make contracts with Defense Contractors and Pharmaceutical Corporations to produce and distribute and sell the newly invented products world wide. Here’s the problem: the lead researcher and the Defense Contractors and Pharmaceutical Coporations get all the profits. We get none. We, the people, paid for the R&D, the research, design and development, and we get no share of the profits! So, we need a Tax Revolution, a Tax Revolt, to demand that when our tax dollars are used for R&D, we own the title to the inventions, the U.S. Patents and Copyrights. That’s the way it was before 1980, it was called “work made for hire” and whoever paid for the R&D, the research, design and development, owned the U.S. Patents and Copyrights (ownership titles to new inventions). We have been abused, as taxpayers, since 1980 when the wool was pulled over too many peoples’ eyes and they believed the story that we needed to sacrifice our hard earned tax dollars to give researchers the incentive to make new inventions. Well, that’s a bunch of bull. All it has done is make the rich even wealthier and the rest of us are left struggling. Stop believing that giving our hard earned tax dollars away to “incentivize” other people is doing us any good.
“So far the Legislature doesn’t seem to think that wholesale budget cutting – or at least freezing – is the solution.” This is their blind spot…the roadblock. We are condemned to this continuing tax purgatory. What government services are valued enough to stand as enterprises in the private market place? What will citizens actually pay for? Leave citizens’ money in their own hands…let them buy the services they want rather than endenturing them to service we think they “should want”. Example; schooling services; parents know what they want…teachers have valuable service to market. Let them have at it.