…After a session of spending, regulation, and last-minute policy movement
by Dave Soulia, for FYIVT.com
If the rumors are right, the Vermont Legislature may be headed for adjournment Friday night. But the final hours under the Golden Dome are not quiet wrap-up work. They are crowded with late-session negotiations, vetoes, education rewrites, tax studies, hospital pricing fights, data-broker regulation, property-tax mechanics, school construction money, and the usual Montpelier habit of moving consequential policy while most Vermonters are busy working, paying bills, and trying to keep up.
The question for taxpayers is simple: what did they buy?
The answer is not simple, but the pattern is clear. Lawmakers spent the 2025–2026 session expanding government’s role in schools, land use, health care, housing, agriculture, data privacy, public benefits, utilities, professional regulation, and local governance. Some bills may produce useful reforms. Some may correct real problems. But the overall direction was more state structure, more compliance, more study, more rulemaking, and more public money tied to systems that were already expensive.
The Final-Day Pileup
On May 28 alone, committees were still working through major pieces of policy.
Ways & Means reviewed language tied to H.942 and H.931, including a study of whether equine farming should be included in Vermont’s use value appraisal program. That sounds narrow, but it goes straight to property taxation. If certain land and buildings become eligible for use-value treatment, the tax burden shifts somewhere else. Lawmakers acknowledged there was no current fiscal estimate because the proposal had been turned into a study.
The same committee reviewed H.931, a miscellaneous education bill carrying an appropriation and provisions for an advisory council on harassment, hazing, and bullying prevention. The fiscal numbers discussed were not huge — roughly $22,600 — but the pattern matters: even “miscellaneous” bills now routinely create councils, reports, new duties, or appropriations.
Senate Finance was still working through property-tax relief mechanics, including circuit-breaker thresholds, homestead exemption modeling, and school bond treatment under excess spending calculations. JFO staff reportedly identified about $11.8 million in annual principal and interest payments for certain school bonds passed since July 1, 2024. That is the real Vermont problem in miniature: every adjustment meant to soften one taxpayer’s hit has consequences for another district, another formula, or another budget line.
Education Reform Is Still the Big Unsettled Beast
Education remained one of the largest issues of the session. Lawmakers advanced or debated bills on career and technical education, school construction aid, education transformation, chronic absenteeism, education finance, school governance, and pre-K structures.
The CTE language is a good example of the Legislature’s style. Senate Education reviewed language saying a student may not be placed on a waitlist or prevented from accessing CTE for lack of capacity, while allowing alternative aligned programming where viable. Another proposal would require districts to apply CTE credits or proficiencies toward graduation requirements, replacing local school-board discretion.
That may increase access. It may also reduce local control. Both can be true.
Appropriations also reviewed education-transformation funding tied to H.955 and Act 73, including transition grants, Agency of Education funding, a limited-service position at the State Board of Education, school construction positions, and a $900,000 transfer to the school construction aid special fund.
Vermonters were promised transformation. What they should watch for is whether transformation means lower property taxes, or just a more centralized and expensive version of the same system.
Health Care: Cost Control by More Control
Health care was another major state-management project.
Senate Health & Welfare reviewed language around hospital pricing, provider contract benchmarks, reference-based pricing, hospital price transparency, Green Mountain Care Board authority, and possible premium impacts. Lawmakers discussed using savings from reference-based pricing to reduce premiums in the individual, small-group, and school-district markets, with an explicit connection to property tax relief.
That is the promise. The risk is that Vermont continues trying to solve health care costs through increasingly complex public architecture. Reference-based pricing may restrain some costs, but it also creates new disputes over hospital solvency, payer mix, benchmarks, critical access hospitals, Medicare cost-sharing, and what happens when state-set targets collide with hospital balance sheets.
Again, the question is not whether the bill sounds good. The question is whether a Vermonter’s premium, tax bill, or hospital access actually improves.
Property Rights: A Few Wins, More Permission Slips
Were Vermonters left more free in their property rights?
On balance, probably not.
There were some property-rights-friendly moments. H.537, the right to grow vegetable gardens, is a plain example of protecting ordinary property use. Housing-production bills and reforms to common interest communities may help in limited ways. Some infrastructure bills could reduce barriers.
But the broader session leaned toward more regulation of land and property decisions. Bills moved on Act 250 Tier jurisdiction, regional planning, forestry under Act 250, stormwater, dam safety, water quality, agriculture, housing rules, posting of land, data centers, and environmental standards.
H.727, the sustainable data center bill, became the latest flashpoint when Gov. Phil Scott vetoed it on May 28. Supporters framed it as necessary protection for ratepayers, communities, and the grid. The governor saw enough of a problem to reject it. Either way, the bill shows where Vermont is: even a new economic-development opportunity arrives first as a regulatory framework.
That is not a pro-property-rights posture. That is a managed-growth posture.
Data, Privacy, and the Compliance State
Data-broker legislation also moved late. Finance committees discussed increasing the registration fee from $100 to $900, with current registry counts around 283 brokers. That would raise estimated revenue from about $28,300 to roughly $254,700. Draft language also included higher penalties, possible $200-per-day administrative fines for nonregistration, a $20,000 bond requirement, and expanded reporting to the Secretary of State.
There is a real privacy issue here. Data brokers are not harmless. But Vermont’s answer, again, is a fee-and-compliance regime. Businesses get more filings, more penalties, more state oversight, and more uncertainty while the state studies larger deletion and opt-out mechanisms.
Vetoes Mark the Edge of the Fight
The governor vetoed nine bills this session, including H.727 on data centers, H.674 creating the Vermont Sister State Program, S.218 on chloride contamination, S.183 on home improvement and land improvement fraud, H.91 on homelessness response, S.125 on collective bargaining, H.219 on the Department of Corrections’ Family Support Program, and two budget-adjustment bills.
Two other bills became law without his signature: H.849, creating a civil action for damages for deprivation of federal constitutional rights by government officials, and H.1, dealing with State Ethics Commission complaints.
The Bottom Line
So, are Vermonters more free?
In a few targeted areas, yes. On the whole, no.
Are their lives less expensive?
Not yet, and probably not soon.
The Legislature worked on cost control, property-tax formulas, school construction, hospital pricing, housing, education transformation, and ratepayer protection. But much of the work came through more state control, more public spending, more studies, more mandates, and more boards or agencies managing the details.
That does not mean every bill was bad. It means the session’s default setting was government expansion.
As lawmakers prepare to leave Montpelier, Vermonters are left with the bill. Some of it will show up in taxes. Some in rates. Some in rents. Some in compliance costs. Some in property decisions they can no longer make without permission.
Adjournment ends the session. It does not end the cost.