‘Caucus of the whole’ scheduled for noon hour today to try to sort it all out
By Guy Page
The Vermont Senate is sparring over two committee chairs’ vision of the future of housing and Act 250 reform.
A more ‘housing-friendly’ reform of Act 250 emerging from a committee chaired by Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (D-Chittenden) now faces amendments from Sen. Chris Bray (D-Addison), chair of the more ‘slow-growth’ Natural Resources and Energy Committee.
But before deciding on which vision (or combination of visions) to support, senators must first understand the increasingly complex housing/Act 250 legislative proposals before them.
To that end, the Senate will hold a ‘caucus of the whole’ today at 12:15-30 PM to help senators understand recent amendments proposed by Bray to H.687, the House’s stab at housing and Act 250 reform. The bill became more ‘housing friendly’ after elements of Ram’s S.311, the Be Home Act, were added by the Senate.
Now that bill – already a hybrid – has become more cumbersome with Bray’s amendments, with the scheduled May 10 adjournment of the 2024 session looming.
As passed by the House, the 132-page H.687 – ‘an act relating to community resilience and biodiversity protection through land use’ – would exempt from Act 250 review only housing developments in locations meeting strict guidelines for wastewater, biodiversity impact, and population density, and then only after several years of preparing the necessary regulatory guidelines. It has been criticized as unresponsive to Vermont’s immediate need for more housing by Gov. Phil Scott.
A tri-partisan coalition of lawmakers preferred a House bill that would fast-track housing starts. But the essentials of that House bill were replicated in S.311, the ‘Be Home’ Act passed by the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs, chaired by Ram-Hinsdale.
Confused? So are many senators – which is why the ‘caucus of the whole’ will be held shortly, and can be seen on the Senate YouTube page via Zoom.
H.687 and S.311 are both reactions to Vermont’s unprecedented housing shortage. While both ‘sides’ admit the need to build more housing, the more slow-growth lawmakers blame private sector builders for only wanting to build homes for the wealthy. Ram, and others, say the state must loosen Act 250’s tight grip on new housing construction.