by Dave Soulia, for FYIVT.com

When democrat and progressive lawmakers passed Act 181 in 2024 by overiding Governor Phil Scott’s veto, they did more than “modernize” Act 250. They created a new Land Use Review Board (LURB), a six-member nominating committee to screen candidates for that board, and a framework that lets those FIVE LURB members sign off — or not — on the regional maps that will shape where Vermonters can build for decades.

Act 181 was enacted with a Democratic/Progressive supermajority. The same legislative leadership that wrote and passed the bill now sits on the committee that chooses who is “well qualified” to serve on LURB. From that short list, the Governor appoints five members, and the Senate confirms them.

Who sits on the Land Use Review Board?

The current LURB is made up of five people:

• Janet Hurley (Chair) – Long-time municipal and regional planner, assistant director at Bennington County Regional Commission, former town planning director. Her work has centered on zoning reforms, “smart growth,” and resource protection.
• Sarah Hadd – Town planner and manager by career, past president of the Vermont Planners Association, certified planner and floodplain manager, former planning director in Colchester and town manager in Fairfax.
• Alex Weinhagen – Director of Planning & Zoning in Hinesburg for more than 20 years, current president of the Vermont Planners Association, with degrees in wildlife biology and zoology.
• Brooke Dingledine – Land use and environmental attorney for nearly three decades, representing municipalities, neighbors, and developers in Act 250 and local permitting.
• Kirsten Sultan – Former Act 250 district coordinator in the Northeast Kingdom for 19 years, civil/sanitary engineer, long experience administering Act 250 permits and enforcement.

In short: three career planners, one long-time Act 250 administrator/engineer, and one land-use/environmental lawyer. All five come out of Vermont’s planning and regulatory world. None list farming, logging, small-scale building, or long-term landownership as their primary line of work.

They were chosen from a pool screened by the Land Use Review Board Nominating Committee, a six-member panel made up of:

• two House members (including the lead House sponsor of Act 181),
• two Senators from the majority party, and
• two executive-branch officials.

That committee was created by Act 181 itself and charged with recommending a list of “well qualified” candidates for the Governor to appoint and the Senate to confirm.

Those are the people now empowered to approve or send back the regional plans and Future Land Use (FLU) maps that cover every town in Vermont — and to decide which regions qualify for the new Tier 1A and Tier 1B Act 250 relief.

What Act 181 actually does

Act 181’s core move is to shift Act 250 from being mostly project-size-based to being location-based.

To do that, it requires every regional planning commission to:

• draw a standardized Future Land Use (FLU) map using state data and fixed categories (growth areas, working lands, Rural Conservation, etc.), and
• submit that regional plan and map to LURB for review and approval.

The FLU map is not just advisory. It is the foundation for “location-based jurisdiction” under Act 250. Once the map is in place, Act 181 overlays a tier system that determines how hard Act 250 bites in different places.

The tier system: carrot and stick

The new tiers are designed to push more development into mapped centers and tighten rules in mapped “resource” areas:

• Tier 1A – full relief inside certain centers
  Selected downtowns and tightly defined “centers” that meet strict criteria for zoning, infrastructure and housing planning can get full exemptions from Act 250 for qualifying projects.
• Tier 1B – partial relief in smaller centers
  Smaller village-scale centers that clear a somewhat lower bar can get partial relief: housing and mixed-use projects up to a certain number of units or square footage will not need Act 250 in those mapped areas.
• Tier 2 – status quo for most of the map
  Everywhere else remains under “normal” Act 250 rules. If a project meets the usual triggers, it still needs a permit and must satisfy the existing criteria.
• Tier 3 – more scrutiny in sensitive areas
  Certain mapped areas — long rural road corridors, large forest blocks, and wildlife connectors — are candidates for Tier 3, where additional triggers or stricter standards apply.

The “carrot and stick” is simple:

• Towns and regions that align their plans, zoning, and FLU maps with the state template are more likely to get Tier 1A/1B areas where Act 250 eases off.
• Land that ends up in Rural Agriculture & Forestry, Rural Conservation, or mapped forest-block and habitat-connector areas is more likely to remain Tier 2 or Tier 3, where state review can be tighter and more expensive.

8C and 9(B): the new and old environmental levers

Act 181 also leans heavily on two Act 250 criteria that tie back to state mapping.

Criterion 8C – forest fragmentation and wildlife connectivity

• Act 181 activates a new standard aimed at forest blocks and habitat connectors.
• State agencies have been mapping large forest patches and modeled wildlife corridors for years; under 8C those layers now matter directly in Act 250.
• Projects in those mapped areas will have to show they avoid “undue adverse impacts” on forest integrity and connectivity, or else avoid, minimize, and mitigate their effects.

Criterion 9(B) – primary agricultural soils

• Act 250’s long-standing protection for primary agricultural soils remains in full force.
• If a project converts prime ag soils, applicants often must pay mitigation or permanently protect other farmland.
• Act 181 tells regional planners to identify agricultural lands using the state’s agricultural-land identification process when drawing their FLU maps, so fields with good soils and production history are more likely to fall into Rural Ag & Forestry or Rural Conservation categories.

Together, 8C and 9(B) give LURB and Act 250 more leverage over land that maps as:

• good soil,
• intact forest block,
• or key wildlife corridor.

What this means for Vermonters

For most Vermonters, this will show up in a few practical ways:

• If you live or build in a village or downtown
  Your town may try to qualify parts of that center for Tier 1A or 1B, which can reduce or remove Act 250 for some projects. That can make it easier to build multi-unit housing or mixed-use buildings inside those mapped areas.
• If you own rural working land
  If your property sits in mapped Rural Ag & Forestry or Rural Conservation, and especially if it overlaps prime ag soils or mapped forest blocks and wildlife connectors, it is more likely to face tougher conditions or denials if a project triggers state review.
• If you serve on a town board
  Your local plan and map still matter — but they now sit under a regional FLU that must be approved by LURB, and under a tier system written into state law. Towns that stray too far from the state’s framework risk losing access to Tier 1A/1B designations and the housing and economic advantages those can bring.

Who built what’s now being “protected”?

There is another layer that helps explain why Act 181 is drawing strong reactions in rural towns.

Vermont’s “prime agricultural soils” and “intact forest blocks” are not untouched wilderness. Less than 200 years ago, the state was heavily cleared for sheep and agriculture; hillsides that are wooded today were open ground. Forest cover returned only as marginal farms were abandoned and landowners allowed woods to regrow and, in many cases, began to manage them more carefully.

The same is true of much of Vermont’s “prime” farmland. The officially mapped soil series that qualify as “primary agricultural soils” are, in many cases, naturally stony, acidic glacial tills that were made productive by generations of work: stones picked, drainage added, fertility built up over time.

Those are the lands that now show up on the FLU maps as Rural Agriculture & Forestry, Rural Conservation, forest blocks, and habitat connectors — and that fall under criteria 8C and 9(B) when a project reaches Act 250.

Who’s in the room — and who isn’t

Act 181 hands the job of enforcing this framework to:

• a nominating committee made up of legislators who wrote and passed the bill and two executive-branch officials, and
• a five-member Land Use Review Board drawn entirely from the worlds of planning, Act 250 administration, engineering, and environmental law.

Their task is to administer the law they’ve been given: reviewing regional FLU maps, deciding whether they are consistent with statewide housing and conservation goals, and granting or denying Tier 1A/1B designations that can reshape where and how Vermonters build.

What’s missing, at least on paper, is any explicit representation for the people whose work created the “prime” soils and forest blocks in the first place: long-time farmers, working foresters and loggers, small rural landowners and small builders whose livelihoods depend on the land the maps now describe.

Act 181 does not change who owns the land. It does change who draws the lines that matter — and who has the final say when those lines do not match what towns and landowners thought their future would look like.