How a non-vote exposed the Democrats’ true attitudes regarding the housing crisis.

When new Vermont House members receive their orientation to how things work in the legislature, one point of etiquette driven home is that it’s not good form to spring amendments to bills onto the floor without a healthy heads up. “No surprises,” goes the line. Is that good advice? Or is it more like me (a diehard Yankee fan) giving the Red Sox advice on how to pitch to Aaron Judge: just throw him fastballs straight down the middle. It’ll work out great!

Well, in an attempt to address Vermont’s housing crisis, Rep. Michael Boutin (R-Barre City) threw one of those fast balls right down the pipe alerting leadership good and early about his intentions to put forward an amendment to H.632 – An act relating to miscellaneous environmental amendments.

Backing up a bit, what miscellaneous environmental bill is supposed to do is make corrections to existing environmental laws in order to fix flaws found after implementation or introduce improvements. Rep. Amy Sheldon’s (D-Middlebury) Environment Committee worked on H.632 for over a month, ultimately passing out thirty-five pages tweaks on a variety of issues including how to deal with electric vehicle batteries when they’re life is done to helping low-income Vermonters ensure they have clean drinking water to how we deal with dam removal, and more.

The bill passed out of the Environment Committee, and then through Transportation, Government Operations, Agriculture, Ways and Means, and then landed in Appropriations, chaired by Sheldon’s fellow Middlebury seatmate, Rep. Robin Scheu (D-Middlebury), on February 24th, one small step yet one giant leap (go Artemis!) away from consideration on the floor of the full House. Keep in mind this was a good three weeks prior to “crossover,” the date bills need to be passed out of the House and sent over to the Senate.

But what H.632 didn’t do is anything to help spur housing construction to address the crisis that all (or as we shall see almost all) Vermonters agree is a top issue that needs to be addressed.

Enter Boutin’s amendment, which, in a nutshell, would have codified a 2025 executive order by Governor Scott, “Promoting Housing Construction and Rehabilitation,” and critically would have reduced the 50 foot buffer zone in class 2 wetlands to 25 feet. In Boutin’s district, this would have allowed an additional 20-30 much needed housing units to be built within an already existing project. And, following the “no surprises” courtesy, he informed leadership of his intentions to present the amendment on the floor. Fastball down the middle.

What happened next is what didn’t happen next. H.632 was quietly killed through non-action in the Appropriations Committee – after an hour of discussion — with the (transparently lame) excuse that they didn’t have time to deal with it. Surprise!

Rather than allow a vote on an amendment to take place putting Democrats on the record voting against a pro-housing initiative – which they assuredly would have voted down had they been forced to vote on it to appease their “green” special interest masters — Democrat leadership scrapped over a month’s committee work and several important corrections to Vermont environmental law.

Boutin was livid. And hurt. So was Agency of Natural Resources Secretary, Julie Moore, who worked with the Environment Committee to get several important provisions into the bill. In a scathing by Montpelier standards letter to Speaker of the House, Jill Krowinski (D-Burlington), Moore wrote,

For the second straight year, my staff have put significant time into preparing and refining this package of technical corrections with our jurisdictional committees in the House and Senate, and for the second year running it has been tabled…. With respect, the explanation that this was a scheduling decision is hard to square with the facts – it feels decidedly more like a political decision. H.632 contains many beneficial provisions, reflects a considerable investment of my staff and your committee’s time, and passed through the House Environment, House Ways and Means and House Appropriations committees with strong

support. Given this, we had no reason to believe it wouldn’t cross over to the Senate. That was until fears that the minority would use H.632’s germaneness to field a wetlands amendment surfaced. As it seems unlikely any such amendment would have the votes to pass, from my vantage, it certainly appears that the bill was tabled to avoid giving members a recorded vote that either their constituents or environmental groups might hold against them in the next election.

Ah-yup.

This episode exposes a couple of truths. The big one for Vermonters is that the Democrats may say they’re all for solving our housing crisis, but when it comes time to walk the walk they are most assuredly not. (A lesson here for those who actually think that a mere delay in anti-rural aspects of Act 181 will be addressed by a Democrat majority after the next election.) The other is for Republicans: when your opposition tells you it’s a good idea to surrender the element of surprise, don’t.

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 25 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.