WILLISTON — Kellen Cloud’s line of work has always been dangerous.

For the better part of the past two decades, Cloud has worked at Green Mountain Flagging, a company that stations traffic controllers at construction sites around the state. He recalled when a coworker had their body pushed by an impatient driver, and when another had to jump out of the way of a truck that would not slow down.

“You have to be a little crazy to do this job,” he said with a laugh, during an interview last month at the company’s headquarters in Williston.

In recent years, though, Cloud said his job has gotten noticeably more dangerous. People seem to be driving more recklessly than in the past, he said — something data suggests could be a lingering impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, data also shows more people are injured or killed in work zones today than a decade ago. 

It’s a concern that led Cloud, along with many others in the state’s construction industry, he said, to support a state plan aimed at bolstering speed enforcement in work zones using relatively new technology: automated cameras. 

The program, which Gov. Phil Scott signed into law in May 2024, would deploy cameras at a small number of highway work zones around the state over a period of 15 months. The cameras would capture photos of the license plates of cars going at least 10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit. After a review by a police officer, speeding drivers would be mailed a warning notice, and if they offended again, could face civil fines.

Under the law, the state was required to start a public outreach campaign about the use of the cameras on April 1, 2025, with a pilot taking effect July 1. But the program — which already exists in some form in more than 15 other states — has yet to materialize.

Vermont Agency of Transportation leaders have said they could not meet the pilot’s deadlines because no law enforcement agency has yet raised its hand to help out. Even though the cameras are automated, under the legislation creating Vermont’s program, a police officer must review the images the cameras collect and send out citations. 

That delay has frustrated some legislative leaders in recent months. They’ve criticized Scott’s administration for failing to implement a program the administration supported — especially when there’s often little consequence for speeding through work zones now.

That’s because while police officers typically park near construction sites with their cruisers’ lights flashing, they’re encouraged to remain at their posts rather than leave to chase down a speeder, several state officials said.

Joe Flynn, Vermont’s transportation secretary, said his agency is committed to getting the pilot program underway, even though it will be on a slower timeline than the Legislature dictated. He said officials are confident the cameras could change drivers’ behavior; data from Pennsylvania, for instance, shows speeding in work zones has dropped by 37% since that state first deployed a similar automated system five years ago.

“We just can’t see this being what we thought it would be,” Flynn said of the program as written in the 2024 law. “We need to just rework it. So that’s what we’re doing.”

But Cloud said that, for him and his colleagues, the safety improvements the cameras could bring are long overdue. Cloud is now Green Mountain Flagging’s operations director, training new employees regularly. He called the delay “frustrating” and “discouraging.” 

“It’s our job to protect,” he said. “Why aren’t we being protected?”

‘Pass a hot potato’

That a program using automated technology would be hobbled by concerns about human staffing seems counterintuitive. But leaders in the Scott administration have been adamant that unless lawmakers remove police officers from the process, the administration may not be able — or willing — to move the program forward.

The legislation states that a “law enforcement officer” has to be the one to issue citations for speeding through work zones, but it does not task a specific agency with that work. However, as the law was being finalized last year, according to Flynn, it was “starting to seem as though this was going to fall squarely” on the Vermont State Police, even though it wasn’t necessarily designed that way. 

During a House Transportation Committee hearing in May, state police leaders insisted they did not have the resources to help facilitate the program. Col. Matthew Birmingham, the director of the state police, said the agency had 54 open positions among its ranks of certified troopers at the time, or about a 17% vacancy rate.

“It just would not make any sense to me,” he told committee members. “There will be something that will have to be given up — and at this point I don’t know what that is because everything we’re handling is violent crime and crimes against people and potentially dangerous crimes like DUI and aggravated aggressive driving.”

Vermont Public Safety Commissioner Jennifer Morrison — whose department includes the state police — also pushed back on the idea the state police could take on the work. She told legislators the issue is “not one of our willingness to enforce traffic laws,” but rather “one of resource allocation.” To illustrate her point, she and the department’s policy director, Mandy Wooster, offered estimates of the amount of time it could take officers to review the violations generated by the pilot program each day. 

Wooster said part of the challenge would be officers needing to cross-reference the identity of the owner of a speeding car with a database of people who are members of the U.S. military, because soldiers and sailors on active duty can get extended time to pay or contest certain citations, such as speeding tickets, under federal law.

She told the committee that, when accounting for that database check, it could take seven or eight minutes to process each violation. She said the administration had been operating under an assumption there would be a maximum of 1,000 citations issued during a regular, eight-hour workday — which, when multiplied by the time to process each case, could result in well over 100 hours of officers’ time each day.

That’s in addition to extra time required if people who received a violation contested the ticket in court, which is allowed under Vermont’s law as written, Morrison noted.

“I’m not looking to pass a hot potato over to someone else,” the commissioner said. “But I’m very clearly signaling that we do not have the capacity to take this on as the sole owner of this project.”

Per the legislation, drivers would face no fine for a first offense caught on camera, an $80 fine for a second offense and a $160 fine for a third offense, provided those subsequent violations occurred within a year. A violation would not levy any points on a driver’s license, state officials have said. 

Not everyone agrees with the administration’s estimates, though. Rep. Phil Pouech, D-Hinesburg, the transportation committee’s ranking member, said Morrison and Wooster were relying on the “worst case scenario” and, in his view, exaggerating the amount of officer time the program would require. If 1,000 people were speeding through work zones every day, he contended, the state had a problem on its hands that warranted addressing immediately.

Pouech pointed to earlier testimony the committee received from a company that makes and operates automated speed enforcement cameras describing how it could take less than one and a half minutes to review each violation.

“The state police clearly just put up a giant smoke screen with their calculations of how much time this was going to take,” Pouech, who’s among the program’s most vocal supporters, said in an interview. “It seems like that was more of an excuse.”

In Pennsylvania — which Flynn said operates the closest example to what is being proposed in Vermont — a dedicated state police unit reviews all automated violations that carry fines, according to a report on the program. Last year, automated cameras were used roughly 2,500 times across 55 different roadway projects in that state. 

Pennsylvania State Police spokesperson Sgt. Logan T. Brouse wrote in an email that it takes three minutes for officers to process speed camera violations in that state on average.

Flynn said that, even considering data from other states, he stood by the administration’s time estimates for the program in Vermont. Compared to Pennsylvania, Vermont is a far smaller state with more limited law enforcement resources, he said. 

When Vermont’s state police say they can’t help run the pilot, Flynn said, “I take it on face value — and I don’t question what they say about (their) ability to manage this, or not.”

‘They’re sitting on their hands’

At the same time, officials considered — and decided against — having another statewide law enforcement agency support the program. The Department of Motor Vehicles Enforcement and Safety Division, which is under the purview of the transportation agency, has a number of certified police officers on its staff. 

The “DMV Police” inspect commercial vehicles for safety and conduct their own highway speed enforcement, among other duties, Flynn said. Notably, the force is fully staffed, with Flynn estimating the division has 30 employees statewide.

But Flynn said he was hesitant to commit one or more of his officers’ time to reviewing and issuing citations. The small force’s time, he said, is better spent out in the field where it often backs up other law enforcement agencies, including the state police.

“It just seemed to really be overly burdensome to field forces who otherwise are already fully busy on a daily basis,” he said. “Where can you best use the really highly talented and trained resources that you have, when really, this is an administrative process?”

Flynn said he now plans to meet with leaders from another realm of law enforcement — the state’s 14 county sheriffs — to find out if any of their departments could support the pilot program, rather than a statewide law enforcement agency. 

Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux, vice president of the statewide association representing sheriffs, said last week he needed to learn more about the program before he could say whether he or his counterparts could take on the additional work. He said conversations about the program seemed like a priority for the state transportation agency. 

Sheriff’s departments already partner with state agencies for some jobs, such as transporting youth who are in the custody of the Department for Children and Families, he said.

However, he continued, “the state police don’t have a monopoly on the staffing issues. You know, I’m short people. And every sheriff’s department is short people.”

Morrison, in testimony to the Legislature earlier this year, suggested lawmakers could also find a way to reconstitute the program so police don’t need to be involved at all. One option could be having the company the state chooses to operate the camera system issue fines to violators, itself, she said. 

Flynn said his agency was working on bill language it could bring to the Legislature for the 2026 legislative session, which starts in January, to amend the program. In the meantime, he said the state would “plus-up” the number of officers stationed around work zones who would be tasked, specifically, with pulling over speeders.

Rep. Matt Walker, R-Swanton, chair of the House transportation committee, said he would consider any new language the agency presents next year. He said he’s concerned, however, that the timing is such that it could end up being a year from the program’s original effective date that cameras finally make it onto the roads. 

Walker said his committee did not have enough time before the end of this year’s session, which was in mid-June, to make any adjustments to the existing law. During a hearing in late April, he said that from a “sixth-grade social studies perspective,” he was frustrated the executive branch of state government wasn’t following a law the Legislature had passed a year before, regardless of what it was requiring. 

“And at the nine-plus month mark, we are finding out that it’s not going to happen,” he said at the time. “So that is a little bit frustrating.”

Walker’s counterpart in the Senate, Lamoille County Republican Richard Westman, said he also had concerns about the timing of the program, but noted the program has been a larger priority for the House. The Senate Transportation Committee chair said the state transportation agency was short-staffed and has challenges of its own. 

Pouech, the House transportation ranking member, had stronger words. 

“It passed. The governor signed it, and now they’re sitting on their hands,” he said. “I feel bad for the people who work out there. … We have a speeding problem all over the state, and here is a chance to do something about the construction zones.”

A need for more enforcement is what concerns Cloud, the longtime Green Mountain Flagging employee, the most. He said the state has already tried other solutions, like public service campaigns using digital billboards. None of those efforts seemed to have meaningfully changed drivers’ behavior, he said.

He does not think the cameras are the only solution to make drivers more aware of workers on the road, “but it’s got to start somewhere,” he said. 

“If it’s time for some enforcement, then it’s time for enforcement,” Cloud said. “Something has to make them pay attention.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont promised new tech to keep highway workers safe. It still hasn’t arrived..

Leaders of Vermont’s House Appropriations Committee have warned colleagues that next year’s state budget-building process could be among the most difficult in recent memory — potentially forcing some existing programs onto the chopping block — as lawmakers grapple with sweeping federal funding cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending law.

“We expect the upcoming state budget cycle to present a number of challenges that most of us have not experienced as legislators before due to uncertainty in the economic forecast and changes in the federal budget,” wrote Rep. Robin Scheu, D-Middlebury, and Rep. Jim Harrison, R-Chittenden, in a memo to the full House last month. Scheu is the committee’s chair; Harrison is its vice chair.

Moreover, the leaders of the powerful budget-writing panel wrote, “We may need to ask policy committees to review existing programs to see if there are any that can be scaled back or may no longer be the priority they once were.”

The House’s “policy committees” focus on specific areas of law, such as education, health care or transportation. The Appropriations Committee, which oversees state spending, and the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax policy, are known as the chamber’s two “money committees.”

The memo, which was shared with VTDigger, was part of an email House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, sent to all 150 House members on Aug. 11. Krowinski’s email included a handful of other summertime updates for her colleagues, who adjourned their 2025 session in mid-June and are slated to come back to the Statehouse for the 2026 session in January. 

Harrison described the intent of his and Scheu’s message during a panel of top Vermont Republican leaders Thursday night in Ludlow. 

“One, the message was, don’t think of new ways to spend the money, even though there are a lot of them,” he said. “And two, we need you to start thinking about, what are the programs that we have that may have been a good idea and served a good purpose 20 years ago, but maybe aren’t as important today as something else — like health care.”

Citing projections economists shared with legislative leaders and Gov. Phil Scott in late July, Scheu and Harrison wrote that state revenues are expected to increase by about $61 million during the state’s 2027 fiscal year. That’s the time period, running from July 2026 to June 2027, for which lawmakers will be creating a new state budget starting in January. 

While that revenue upgrade is good news, Scheu and Harrison wrote, it won’t be enough to cover projected increases in salaries and benefits for state employees and “a myriad of other fixed costs,” they wrote, meaning “we can probably expect some adjustments to programs and services” to make up the difference. 

The economists also cautioned that their projections could need to be revisited because of uncertainty over the impacts of both the GOP-led federal spending package and Trump’s tariffs. 

“Don’t get comfortable,” Tom Kavet, one of the state’s economists, said in July. 

It’s unlikely, however, that the full Legislature will need to meet again this year to respond to losses in federal funding, Scheu and Harrison wrote. That’s because many of the changes included in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” do not take effect until 2026, or later, the legislators said. That includes certain cuts to Medicaid and access to federal nutritional assistance, among others. 

Lawmakers added several measures into the state budget bill for the current fiscal year, which they approved in May, that would trigger a special legislative session if federal funding cuts reached certain thresholds. But those thresholds are unlikely to be hit just yet, according to Scheu and Harrison.

Before legislators start work on the state budget next year, they will first get a proposed spending plan from the Scott administration. In an email Friday, Scott’s press secretary, Amanda Wheeler, said the administration was still too early in its budget development process to say whether any existing state programs might see significant cuts.

“We’ll review all funding impacts and deliver a balanced budget to the Legislature in January,” she said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Eyeing federal cuts, Vermont House budget-writers brace for tough spending decisions.

Courtney Cutting has listened to the local radio stations around her hometown of St. Johnsbury for as long as she can remember. Her listening hit a stride two summers ago, she said, when flood damage shuttered the diner she worked at, putting her out of a job.

But last month, Cutting noticed a change on the airwaves. The newscasts that her favorite station — WMTK “The Notch” — played at the top of the hour, and which she relied on for national and international news, sounded different.

“When it would come on, I would turn up the radio to be like, ‘What am I hearing?’ Cutting said in an interview. “And then that’s when I got the end tagline, which is, ‘America’s listening to Fox News.’”

“The Notch” is one of seven stations based in the area where Cutting grew up that are now owned and operated by Essex County Republican Sen. Russ Ingalls. The Newport real estate broker purchased the media group earlier this year in a $1 million deal with longtime local broadcaster Bruce James. The stations, which air different types of music and some sports and talk programs, broadcast throughout the district Ingalls serves in the Senate.

Cutting emailed Ingalls to ask about the change, and when the senator replied, it confirmed what she had suspected for weeks: While the seven stations previously aired news from a mix of sources, he had switched all of the broadcasts, solely, to Fox News. Ingalls told VTDigger that, before the change in early August, the stations played news from either the Associated Press or the major broadcasters ABC, CBS and NBC.

Cutting wrote back, in an exchange she shared with VTDigger, that the switch had left her frustrated. To her ears, she wrote to Ingalls, the Fox newscasts offered scant context about the many controversial actions taken by President Donald Trump’s administration in recent months, and often lacked the perspectives of people who opposed them.

Ingalls contended in response that the reaction he’d received from listeners after changing the newscasts had been overwhelmingly positive. He told VTDigger he had received more than 1,400 supportive messages from local residents since he made the change, while he’d so far had only “two confirmed emails of dissatisfaction.” 

“I’m sorry that you don’t like the president,” Ingalls wrote to Cutting. “I didn’t like the last one much but he was still the president. I don’t know what I can tell you that will help you other than it was a good business decision based on what we are hearing.”

The stations Ingalls operates include WMOO “Moo 92,” JJ Country and WIKE “The Notch” in Newport; Magic 97.7, Kix 105.5 and WSTJ out of the St. Johnsbury area; as well as WMTK “The Notch” in Littleton, New Hampshire.

Earlier this year, as he was starting to operate the local radio group, the senator told VTDigger he did not want to make the stations’ content more political — even as he, himself, is one of the area’s most recognizable politicians. In an interview this week, he contended he was motivated to change the newscasts not by his conservative politics, but by the repeated requests he heard from listeners to “do something about the news.”

None of those listeners specifically asked for a change to Fox News, Ingalls said. He settled on that network because people were asking for more “positive” stories about the country, he continued, something he believes Fox News provides. He said he’s frustrated by “negative” news coverage of Trump in mainstream news sources.

“Just because CBS, ABC, NBC and AP hate Trump doesn’t mean that the rest of America does. I mean, he’s our president,” Ingalls said. “I was tired of the negativity that was coming from all those other news sources. That’s not what my stations are about. That’s not what Russ Ingalls is about. It’s not … how I run my businesses. I like cohesiveness. I like people getting along and being together.”

He contended, too, that the decision had nothing to do with supporting Trump.

“I don’t give two shits about Trump. I really don’t. But it’s the country in itself — this country is doing very, very well. It really, really is. It’s a great nation,” he said. “I want a news source that’s going to report and reflect (that) accurately.”

Fox News’ radio programming is syndicated to about 1,500 stations across the country, according to a company press release. The network frequently features pro-Trump opinion hosts; the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, has her own program on the network.

In 2021, Fox News was sued by the voting equipment manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems over claims the network’s hosts had knowingly peddled falsehoods that Dominion rigged the 2020 presidential election so Trump would lose. The news giant later agreed to pay about $790 million in damages to resolve the case. 

Ingalls is well-known as one of the Vermont Senate’s most conservative voices. He faced criticism from the state’s Democratic Party in April when he was one of a handful of members of the chamber to vote against a resolution condemning the arrest of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student activist, by masked federal immigration agents in Colchester. The Columbia University student, who was a prominent leader of pro-Palestinian protests on campus, was later ordered released by a federal judge.

To be sure, Ingalls also represents some of the state’s most politically conservative areas. In Essex County, which makes up most of his district, 55% of voters supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election, compared to 33% on average statewide. 

Cutting, the longtime radio listener, said there are other changes Ingalls has made to the stations’ content that she likes. She said she’s noticed more spotlights on local businesses — “that is a wicked cool idea” — and regular on-air listings of community events. There’s even a show Ingalls hosts himself that “I just love to listen to,” she said.

“I really stand behind the way he wants to use it in building community, and making it a forum to foster these kinds of conversations,” Cutting said of the radio network.

“We need to be informed and have hard conversations as a community,” she said — but added that if “all of these radio stations go to one news source that isn’t reporting the full breadth of the news, then, what’s there going to be to talk about?”

Read the story on VTDigger here: A Republican state senator bought a group of radio stations. Now, they play Fox News..

Updated at 7:13 p.m.

Vermont’s joint NPR and PBS station, Vermont Public, announced Wednesday that it cut 15 positions from its staff and reduced two full-time positions to part-time. The cuts meant 13 staffers lost their jobs, according to the network’s CEO, Vijay Singh.

The reductions come just over a month after Congress, acting on a request from President Donald Trump, voted to claw back more than $1 billion in federal funding for public media stations around the country. For Vermont Public, which is based in Colchester, that means a loss of $2 million — or 10% of its total budget — for the current year. Wednesday’s cuts are expected to save the station $1.5 million. 

“It’s heartbreaking to have to make these choices,” Singh said Wednesday. “And yet, they’re necessary to ensure the longevity of this institution — and to make sure that we can continue to have as big of an impact for our community as we possibly can.”

Wednesday’s cuts impacted a reporter and hosts of some Vermont Public programs, Singh said, though he declined to specify which beat or shows would see changes. He said the station would not eliminate any existing programs as a result, though he did not rule out such changes in the future. He said a future round of layoffs was less likely. 

“There are hosts who people love and have built relationships with — and I’m sure some folks will feel the loss there,” Singh said.

One of the two positions reduced from full- to part-time Wednesday is currently vacant, Singh said. Overall, the cuts amounted to 14% of Vermont Public’s workforce, according to a statement the organization released Wednesday afternoon.

Singh described Wednesday’s layoffs as a “direct response” to the funding cuts that Congress approved in mid-July. He said the station had already taken steps to trim other operating costs before looking to lay off staff, including a decision by the station’s executives to take a pay cut. The radio and TV network “turned over every stone,” he explained, “but the staff line in our budget is the biggest expense we have.”

In the weeks since Congress decided to cut public media funding, Vermont Public has raised more than $1 million from supporters, Singh said — half the amount that the station is losing this year. But the CEO contended that while that fundraising blitz gave the station a short-term cushion, it was still staring down long-term instability. 

“Perhaps if someone came out of the woodwork and, you know, donated millions and millions of dollars, we might be in a different position,” he said. “We’re appreciative of what we were able to fill in the gap from what people have donated — but still, still a lot of work ahead of us to address our financial situation.”

The station has reported millions more in expenses than revenue in recent years, according to filings with the federal government, and Singh said last month that it regularly relies on its substantial investment fund to make up the gap. The station’s leaders have been hesitant to dip into the fund further, even to make up for federal funding losses, Singh has said, questioning whether that would only accelerate the station’s financial issues.

Much of Vermont Public’s investment fund comes from the 2017 sale of a Vermont PBS broadcast license to the federal government, which totaled $56 million. The public TV station merged with Vermont Public Radio in 2021 under the joint name Vermont Public. The organization listed $60.5 million in investment assets at the end of June 2024.

Vermont Public said in its Wednesday statement that the network also faces “many of the same business pressures being felt in Vermont and in public media writ large,” including “skyrocketing healthcare costs, changes to the fundraising landscape, economic uncertainty and evolving media habits of our audience.”

Wednesday’s layoffs come as Vermont has lost more than 1,000 journalism jobs over the past decade, according to research from the University of Vermont. There are 75% fewer people working in the news business in the state today than there were in the year 2000.

Clarification: Vermont Public updated its own announcement about the layoffs to clarify the number of positions the outlet cut versus how many employees were impacted. This story was updated to reflect that change.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Public slashes 15 jobs in wake of federal cuts to public media .

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday threatened to cut funding to Vermont and 39 other states for a program aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases if states do not remove “all references to gender ideology” from curriculum materials supported with federal dollars. 

President Donald Trump’s health department cut funding to California last week for that state’s participation in the nationwide program, called the Personal Responsibility Education Program, or PREP. In a press release Tuesday, the department said it could do the same for other states — as well as U.S. territories and Washington, D.C. — if health authorities there did not ax what the feds called “delusional” curriculum language within 60 days.

In Vermont, that puts about $670,000 of federal funding at risk, according to data attached to the health and human services department’s release. The program distributes about $80 million nationwide. 

“Accountability is coming,” Andrew Gradison, acting assistant U.S. health secretary, said in the release. “Federal funds will not be used to poison the minds of the next generation or advance dangerous ideological agendas.”

Gradison wrote a letter to the Vermont Department of Health on Tuesday outlining what he said were examples, taken from curriculum used in the state, that “fall outside of the scope” of federal laws governing the sex education program. The feds asked Vermont to provide curriculum used for the program in April, according to the letter, and Gradison on Tuesday thanked the state for a “timely response.”

The letter cited language from Vermont’s sex education materials stating that asking young people “to tell you their pronouns is a way of creating a safe space for transgender or gender nonconforming youth,” as well as material that included an explanation of differences between the terms “gender,” “gender identity” and “gender expression.” 

The letter also cites material from Vermont stating: “Transgender women and cisgender women are both women. Transgender men and cisgender men are both men. The use of cisgender helps clarify that gender identity exists in both cisgender and transgender people.”

Gradison called the language “irrelevant” to the purpose of the PREP grant program, which he said is to educate young people about abstinence and contraception. He said the program’s federal statute “neither requires, supports nor authorizes teaching students that gender identity is distinct from biological sex or that boys can identify as girls and vice versa.”

The letter directed Vermont to remove “these and all similar language” from curriculum used for PREP in the state or risk losing funding.

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Kyle Casteel, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Health, said of the letter that his colleagues were “working to understand it in real time.”

“While we don’t know the full scope of the potential impacts yet, the Health Department affirms our commitment to evidence-based public health programs that reflect the needs of all Vermonters, including the LGBTQ+ community,” Casteel said. 

Olivia Gieger contributed reporting.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Trump’s health department threatens to cut funding to Vermont and other states over ‘gender ideology’ in sex ed materials.

Vermont is taking steps to resume a long-planned buildout of electric vehicle chargers along its major highways after federal funding for the project was stripped away — and then, recently, made available again — by President Donald Trump’s administration.

In February, the U.S. Department of Transportation suspended funding for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program, which was created under President Joe Biden’s 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. In Vermont, that meant almost $16 million in funding was thrown into limbo, $9 million of which had already been committed to help build high-speed chargers in 11 communities around the state. 

But earlier this month, the Trump administration changed course — albeit, it seems, reluctantly. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote in an Aug. 11 press release that states could access program funding, again, if they submitted new plans on how they would use the money. The department also revised some of the program’s guidance in an effort to get more chargers built, more quickly, the secretary said in the release.

“While I don’t agree with subsidizing green energy, we will respect Congress’ will and make sure this program uses federal resources efficiently,” Duffy said. 

The new guidance strips requirements created by the Biden administration that states engage with “rural, underserved, and disadvantaged communities” when deciding where to locate new charging stations, Duffy said, as well as stipulations that the charging network plans provide “opportunities for the participation of small businesses, including minority-owned and women-owned small businesses,” among other changes.

Vermont has submitted a new application for federal funding for the 11 charging stations as it had them planned out earlier this year, Rachel Noyes, a spokesperson for the state’s Agency of Transportation, said in a statement Monday.

Andrea Wright, the agency’s environmental policy manager, said in April that two of those projects — in Randolph and Wilmington — could move forward regardless, using state dollars. But work was put on hold for the other nine, even though contractors had already been awarded bids, she had said.

The other projects include charging sites in Bennington, Berlin, Brattleboro, Manchester, Middlebury, Rutland, South Burlington, St. Albans and White River Junction. Chargers would be located along Interstates 89 and 91, as well as U.S. 7 and VT-9. 

Meanwhile, one charging project in Bradford funded by the program was already completed, more than a year ago, before the funding was put on pause. 

Robb Kidd, director of the Vermont chapter of the national environmental advocacy group Sierra Club, said the state desperately needs more chargers along its major travel corridors to encourage more people to purchase electric vehicles over gas cars. 

Fast public chargers are important not just for people driving through and around the state, he said, but also for Vermonters who don’t have access to that infrastructure at home, often because they live in an apartment or other types of multifamily housing.

“We see it as a critical component to making sure that everybody can access reliable and high-speed charging, no matter where they are,” Kidd said Monday.

He added that the Trump administration’s reversal is significant, too, because it comes as other federal support for EV adoption continues to be slashed. That includes, as of Sept. 30, a planned end to up to $7,500 in federal tax credits that is available on new EV purchases. The tax credit elimination was part of the sweeping Republican-led tax and spending bill Trump signed into law in July.

Meanwhile, VTrans’ Wright noted in an email that the tax and spending bill also nixes, starting in July 2026, a federal tax credit for EV charging equipment — something that could drive up costs for the vendors the state had been planning to work with on the charger buildout.

Vermont was one of 16 states, along with Washington, D.C., that challenged the Trump administration’s decision to hit the brakes on funding for new EV chargers in federal court in May. A judge later ordered the administration to release the grant funding to most, though not all, of those states. Vermont, Minnesota and Washington, D.C., were not included because they did not show that they would face “irreparable harm” if the funding remained frozen, the federal judge decided. 

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is leading the joint lawsuit against the funding pause, told NPR this month that news of the money being available again was “encouraging” but said it did not mean the immediate end of the states’ legal challenge.

In a statement Monday, Amelia Vath, a spokesperson for Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark’s office, said Clark would “continue to monitor the progress of the case to ensure Vermont’s interests are protected.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont seeks federal funds for EV charger buildout, again, after Trump administration’s reversal.

Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak called on Gov. Phil Scott this week to do more to help the state’s largest city respond to homelessness and curb public drug use. But Scott and his administration argued the city needs to be the one to step up first.

The back-and-forth across different forums underscored how some state and local leaders have been at odds over each other’s role in addressing persistent social and economic challenges that, while not unique to Burlington, have nevertheless subjected the city to statewide scrutiny.

“The city has made their bed, and they are going to have to ask for specifics to help turn the corner,” Jennifer Morrison, Scott’s commissioner of public safety, whose job includes overseeing the Vermont State Police, said at a press conference Wednesday.

At one point, the commissioner — who was Burlington’s interim police chief in 2020, when protests prompted city councilors to cut the size of the police force by attrition — characterized visiting the city right now as a “terrifying” experience, though did not explicitly say why she thought that. She had interjected during an exchange between Scott and a reporter from WCAX News.

“The problems in Burlington did not occur overnight. They will not be fixed overnight,” Morrison said. “And it requires that everybody commit to principles of accountability — shifting the pendulum back to the middle so that the use of public spaces is just as important for law-abiding people and businesses to thrive as it is for service-resistant people who make others afraid or commit crimes.”

The WCAX reporter had asked Scott, a Republican, what his administration was doing that could help Burlington address concerns raised at a Tuesday meeting the mayor’s office held with local business owners. According to WCAX, a number of attendees told Mulvaney-Stanak, a Progressive, that drug use and dealing in downtown was hurting their businesses.

Joe Magee, a spokesperson for Mulvaney-Stanak’s office, said the mayor’s response in that virtual meeting echoed what she wrote in an op-ed published in VTDigger last week. 

In that opinion piece, the mayor said Vermont municipalities “do not have the staff or resources to adequately respond” to what she called a combination of homelessness, substance use disorders and mental health crises. She said the governor’s decision to allow a sweeping round of evictions from state-sponsored motel rooms to proceed on July 1 — a move that specifically impacted families with children and people with acute medical needs — put more pressure on social services in and around Burlington.

In a statement to VTDigger Thursday, Mulvaney-Stanak also said she took issue with the governor’s and his administration’s comments at the press conference a day prior. 

“I continue to hope for stronger collaboration with the Governor and his team, and I was disappointed that they decided to take an adversarial tone in communicating to Burlington through the media,” the mayor said.

Scott said at the Wednesday briefing that he was not sure what additional help his administration would be willing to provide the city unless local leaders took steps to boost enforcement of existing laws, including cracking down on public drug use, he said. 

The governor acknowledged Burlington businesses were facing numerous challenges including a well-documented decline in Canadian tourism spurred by blowback from President Donald Trump’s sweeping trade war. But regardless of that and other factors, Scott said, it was wrong for the mayor to suggest his administration is not doing enough to help.

“I think it’s easy to blame others when some of your strategies are failing,” he said. 

Some Burlington leaders have called for the city to bolster local law enforcement, too. On Thursday, City Council President Ben Traverse, a Democrat representing Ward 5, wrote an open letter calling for a police presence “during all open hours” in downtown’s City Hall Park, which has become a hot spot for drug use and dealing. 

Traverse also called for the park to be cleared overnight — when it is closed — of people sleeping. That’s not allowed under city ordinances, though in reality, many people regularly use the park for overnight shelter.

Traverse wrote that his letter — which was sent by the city’s Democratic Party — was in part a response to recent news that a man died after being assaulted and injured near the park.

“I call on my friends in the Progressive Party, and all political persuasions, to join me in collectively building a more resilient Burlington by focusing on the issues voters elected us to tackle,” Traverse said in the letter, which was first reported by Seven Days. 

Traverse, who represents the city’s South End on the council, said in the letter he planned to discuss his requests at the upcoming council meeting on Monday.

In a separate email to Burlington residents Thursday, Mulvaney-Stanak emphasized that the city could not address what she called “complex and overlapping public health crises” on its own. The Progressive mayor urged her constituents to use a contact form on Gov. Scott’s website to make a plea for greater state support. 

“I am urging Vermonters to contact Governor Scott to tell him that municipalities and many of our local businesses are at a breaking point,” the mayor wrote, “and that it should be a State priority to develop a coordinated response to our collective public health, housing, and mental health crises.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Phil Scott, Emma Mulvaney-Stanak trade blows as state leaders take aim at homelessness, public drug use in Burlington.

U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., has made a point in recent appeals to supporters that she serves in Congress free from corporate influence. “Hi, it’s Becca,” she wrote in an email to potential campaign donors last month. “I don’t take corporate PAC money.”

But a recent financial disclosure filed by a political action committee Balint uses to support and win favor with other members of Congress — known as a leadership PAC — paints a less clear-cut picture of the second-term representative’s fundraising. 

Over the first half of 2025, Balint’s “Courage PAC” accepted thousands of dollars in contributions from political action committees tied to major corporations, according to its latest Federal Election Commission report.

The leadership PAC is separate from Balint’s main campaign account, or what the FEC calls a “principal campaign committee.”

According to its July 31 filing, Balint’s leadership PAC reported $13,500 in contributions over the first half of the year. More than half of that total came from political action committees linked to big-name companies: $5,000 from Nike’s federal PAC; $2,500 from a PAC tied to Universal Music Group; and $1,000 from Google’s federal PAC.

Some of those contributions came at or around the same time Balint was disavowing corporate support to potential donors. Her leadership PAC reported receiving the Google donation, for instance, on June 12; less than a week later, she wrote in an email seeking donations directly to her campaign that “unlike other politicians, Becca doesn’t take money from big corporate donors with a hidden agenda — she relies on support from people like you who pitch in $10 or $5 at a time.”

The remaining $5,000 in last month’s report came from Equality PAC, which is the political arm of the Congressional Equality Caucus and raises money to elect more openly LGBTQ+ people — such as Balint — to the U.S. House and Senate.

Balint’s leadership PAC also accepted more than $12,000 from corporate PACs during the 2024 election cycle, according to previous FEC filings. That included donations from PACs tied to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Amazon, Paramount, Sony Entertainment and Toyota, as well as the Nike, Universal Music Group and Google-affiliated PACs.

Many members of Congress, including the two other members of Vermont’s delegation, have their own leadership PACs. Politicians often use these PACs to fundraise for other candidates within their party, which can in turn bolster their own image and influence.

Leadership PACs are legally separate from politicians’ own campaigns, though, and the former cannot directly fundraise for the latter. That’s a point Sophie Pollock, a Balint spokesperson, made in a statement to VTDigger about Balint’s PAC’s fundraising. 

“These funds are used to donate to other campaigns that the Congresswoman believes in, progressive candidates rooted in their communities, fighting for working people,” Pollock said. “To be clear, these funds do not go toward Rep. Balint’s campaign for her own reelection.”

She added that Balint sees her leadership PAC as a tool to help elect more members of Congress who will counter President Donald Trump’s administration in the coming years. Right now, Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress.

“She’s laser focused on taking back the Republican controlled House that’s doing so much damage. We must defend our democracy from Donald Trump,” Pollock said. “The stakes are too high.”

Filings show Balint’s leadership fund has contributed in recent months to Rep. Chris Pappas, D-New Hampshire, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in 2026; Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, who narrowly overcame a Republican challenge to her seat in 2024; and JoAnna Mendoza, a Democrat running for a GOP-held House seat in Arizona.

Still, the recent big-brand donations to Balint’s leadership PAC stand out compared to the list of contributors, over the same time period, for the leadership PACs used by Vermont’s Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Sen. Peter Welch.

Sanders’ leadership PAC, called “Progressive Voters of America,” reported a total of $200,650 from at least 179 contributions over the first half of the year, according to FEC filings. Nearly all of those came from individual donors, filings show, while just one — $5,000 from the National Education Association, or NEA — came from a PAC.

Welch’s leadership PAC — “Maple PAC” — raised $70,500 in that time from at least 34 contributions. Most of that money came from PACs, though none are affiliated with corporations. The largest contributors, at $5,000 apiece, include PACs representing the hospitality industry, mortgage bankers, realtors, dermatologists, broadcasters, sheet metal workers and electric co-ops, according to the committee’s latest filing.

Neither of the senators’ leadership PACs reported contributions from corporations during the 2024 election cycle, either, previous FEC records show.

Matthew Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College, said it’s common for leadership PACs to take in money from many different sources, including corporations. Balint is not running afoul of any laws by spending corporate money on other candidates she likes, he said. But Dickinson added the leadership PAC’s activities could appear “in tension” with Balint’s campaign messaging, which in part entices people to donate using a pledge that she takes no corporate contributions. 

“It’s all legal. But perhaps, ethically, some might view that it tarnishes the claim not to accept corporate money,” Dickinson said in an interview. “She’s not lying in her email. But she’s not telling you the whole story.”

The latest FEC report filed for Balint’s campaign account, which is called “Becca Balint for Vermont,” also lists a handful of donations from PACs that are tied to corporations — something that would directly conflict with Balint’s campaign messaging. But Pollock said the campaign had, as of last week, rejected those donations and was returning them. (The donations made up a relatively small percentage of the total receipts.)

“Rep. Balint does not and will never take corporate PAC money into her own campaign account. Period,” Pollock said in a statement.

July’s FEC filings show that about two-thirds of the money Balint’s campaign brought in over the first half of the year came from individuals. Much of the rest came from PACs representing different industries, labor interests or cooperatives — including one, notably, that featured in the contentious final stages of Balint’s 2022 primary race against Molly Gray. Balint beat Gray and was later elected to her first term.

At the time, Balint’s campaign skewered Gray over a donation Gray received from a PAC tied to American Crystal Sugar Company, which is the country’s largest producer of beet sugar. Balint’s campaign charged that the Minnesota-based cooperative was the “number one donor to GOP congresspeople who willfully encouraged and supported the insurrection on Jan. 6th.” Later that year, a report from the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found that American Crystal Sugar’s PAC ranked among the top campaign contributors to members of Congress who voted against the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

Balint was also caught up in controversy following the 2022 primary after campaign filings revealed that Nishad Singh, then a top advisor to the now-disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, had donated $1.1 million to a PAC that then used Singh’s money to buy pro-Balint advertisements. Balint’s campaign later said it had no coordination with Singh during that process.

This April, Balint’s campaign took a $5,000 donation from American Crystal Sugar’s PAC, FEC filings show. (In both the 2022 and 2024 election cycles, the PAC donated more to Democrats than to Republicans, according to an OpenSecrets analysis.)

Asked for comment about that contribution, Pollock said only that Balint “accepts donations from agriculture associations who support her progressive agenda.”

“She’s looking ahead toward taking back the House,” Pollock said.

Erin Petenko, VTDigger’s data reporter, contributed to this story.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Becca Balint tells supporters she doesn’t take corporate PAC money. Records show it’s not that simple..

Gov. Phil Scott has turned down a second request from President Donald Trump’s administration in as many months to use members of the Vermont National Guard to carry out elements of the White House’s controversial domestic policy agenda. 

The Department of Defense last week asked Scott for “a few dozen” troops it could deploy to Washington, D.C., as part of the president’s sweeping push to crack down on crime in the city, Vermont Public reported Friday. But the governor said no, telling the Pentagon he didn’t think the request was an appropriate use of the guard’s resources, according to the news outlet.

Dustin Degree, a spokesperson for Scott’s office, referred VTDigger to the Vermont Public story in response to a request for comment Friday afternoon. He declined to be interviewed or answer questions about the governor’s decision.

Trump has ordered hundreds of troops onto the streets of the nation’s capital in recent days and moved to assert federal control over the city’s police department. At a press conference Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said states could be called on to reinforce the city’s national guard, if needed. On Friday, Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued the Trump administration over its efforts to take control of the local police force.

In late July, Scott rejected a separate request from the Trump administration to allow a dozen Vermont guard troops to do clerical work for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the federal agency’s field office in St. Albans.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Phil Scott rejects Trump administration request to use Vermont national guard in president’s DC crackdown.

Two of Vermont’s statewide elected officials — Republican Lt. Gov. John Rodgers and Democratic Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas — said Thursday they plan to seek reelection in 2026.

Rodgers discussed his plans to seek a second term, which have not been previously reported, in an off-the-cuff interview with VTDigger Thursday afternoon. Copeland Hanzas signalled she was running for a third term in a fundraising email to supporters earlier this week, and confirmed those plans in an interview Thursday.

Candidates for the 2026 election have until next May to formally declare they are running. But Copeland Hanzas said she wanted to announce her plans well in advance because she’s concerned President Donald Trump is sowing distrust in states’ elections well before next November, and she sees herself as “a steady hand” to push back against that rhetoric. 

“I figured, with all that’s going on in the world, that people would probably like to know that their secretary of state — who’s got an eye on taking us through the 2026 election — plans to be there, and working hard, to make sure that our democracy is safe and and that our elections go off as we expect them to,” she said in an interview. 

Rodgers said he does not plan to formally announce his reelection bid until next year, though said in response to a reporter’s question about his plans that he is not ready to hang up his hat.

“I think I’ve been very effective working with legislators in the building and working with the governor’s office,” Rodgers said. (The lieutenant governor presides over the Vermont Senate.) “I think we’ve made some progress, but there’s a lot left to do — and so, I’m excited about staying in the position and continuing my work.”

Copeland Hanzas announced Wednesday that her office will not comply with a request it’s expecting to receive from Trump’s Department of Justice to share detailed personal data on Vermont’s registered voters. After putting out that statement, she said, she’s received encouragement from a number of supporters to run for governor, instead.

But her plans to run for another term as secretary of state likely leave just two other statewide Democratic officials as potential gubernatorial candidates — Attorney General Charity Clark and Treasurer Mike Pieciak. 

Incumbent Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, has not yet said whether he will run again in 2026. He is in his fifth term. Scott has made a habit in years past of not announcing his reelection plans until the state Legislature adjourns for the summer — typically in May — during an election year. 

Clark said in an interview Thursday that she plans to run in next year’s election, though has “not officially decided what office I’m running for.” She declined to say which offices she was considering.

Meanwhile, Natalie Silver, political advisor to Pieciak, said the treasurer had not made a decision about the upcoming election yet. Silver previously served as campaign manager for Democratic U.S. Rep. Becca Balint’s winning bid for Congress in 2022. 

“Mike is very focused on his current job,” Silver said Thursday. “He certainly is thinking about his options for the next cycle, but has not made any decisions.” 

Both Pieciak and Clark are sitting on substantial campaign cash, according to their latest filings with the state, which detail fundraising and spending through the end of June. Pieciak had about $184,000 on hand, the filings show, while Clark had about $98,000. Copeland Hanzas, by comparison, had about $12,000 on hand as of late June.

Vermont State Auditor Doug Hoffer, a Democrat/Progressive, has said previously he did not plan to seek reelection in 2026. He said in an interview Thursday that he wasn’t aware at this point of anyone who was angling for the job after him. 

“I’ve put in my time. I’ve enjoyed the work,” Hoffer said. “But it’s time for somebody else to take it on.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Lt. Gov. John Rodgers, Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas say they’re running for reelection.

Updated at 6:12 p.m.

Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas said Wednesday her office will not share personally identifiable information about voters in Vermont with President Donald Trump’s administration, if the federal government asks for those details.  

The announcement, in a press release, comes as Trump’s Department of Justice has sought voter registration data from at least nine other states in recent months, according to Stateline. That data could include voters’ dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and social security numbers, among other identifying details, the news outlet reported. 

As of Wednesday afternoon, Vermont has not received a formal request to share voter information with the federal government, Copeland Hanzas said in an interview. 

The secretary’s office did receive an email from the Department of Justice asking for a meeting to discuss potential information-sharing, according to Bryan Mills, chief of staff to Copeland Hanzas. It then had “a brief phone call” with a justice department official in late July, Mills said, but the call did not result in any agreements or consensus.

The office expects to get a formal request for information from the justice department soon, Mills said in an interview Wednesday.

Asked Wednesday if her announcement was, also, partly a response to the recent decision by Gov. Phil Scott’s administration to share the personal data and shopping habits of thousands of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, recipients in Vermont with the Trump administration, Copeland Hanzas said: “yes.” 

She said that “Vermonters were outraged” by news of that decision by the Republican governor, and she contrasted the decision with her office’s approach. 

“I learned in second grade how to identify a bully on the playground. And by fifth grade, it had become very clear to me that when there’s a bully on the playground, you are not going to win by trying to duck. You might save your own skin, but you’re going to watch your friends get their lunch money taken or their nose bloodied,” she said. 

“And so I will not be willing to duck in hopes that this kind of madness doesn’t come to us,” the secretary continued. “Because if somebody doesn’t stand up and say, ‘no, this is wrong,’ then it’s only a matter of time before they have whacked everyone else — and then, they come and whack you.”

Copeland Hanzas said she believes her office has firm legal backing for its decision. Existing Vermont law “specifically prohibits” the state and municipal governments from sharing voters’ personal details with the feds for certain uses, she said. That includes, per the law, handing over voters’ information so federal agencies can compare it to “personally identifying information contained in other federal or state databases.”

Any member of the public can access a basic list of all registered voters’ names and addresses in Vermont, she explained. But the secretary of state has more personal data than that on file, such as details on which elections someone has voted in. It’s the latter bucket of data her office is particularly concerned about protecting, she said.

Other secretaries of state have not received clear explanations as to why the Trump administration wants access to detailed voter information, Copeland Hanzas said. But part of the reason, she said, appears to be to follow through on Trump’s March executive order aimed — among other goals — at preventing non-U.S. citizens from voting in state and federal elections, a practice that’s nevertheless already illegal. 

(A handful of municipalities around the country, including three in Vermont, allow non-citizens to vote only in their own municipal elections.) 

There is no evidence, she said, that non-citizens illegally vote in state or federal elections in significant numbers — so plans to scour government data for cases where the practice happens are akin to looking for “a needle in a haystack.” The secretary said the administration’s efforts were exaggerating a problem for political purposes. 

“You know, it’s boogey-monster scare tactics that the administration is using to continue what it’s been doing for eight years, which is to try to undermine people’s confidence in voting and in the democratic process,” Copeland Hanzas said Wednesday. 

Some states have already declined requests to share voter information with the Trump administration, including Maine, where Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows told Trump to “go jump in the Gulf of Maine” in response late last month. 

Others, meanwhile, have willingly shared such data, Stateline reported — including Indiana, where Republican Secretary of State Diego Morales inked an agreement with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services giving his state access to a federal database that would allow it to verify whether its registered voters were also U.S. citizens. 

Within Vermont, state leaders have also adopted different tactics in response to the slew of controversial actions the Trump administration has taken since the start of the year.

Gov. Scott’s office said earlier this month that, in the case of SNAP recipients’ data, the federal government was well within its legal rights to ask for the information — and his administration was merely following the law by providing it. His office also said it was concerned that fighting against the request could put Vermonters’ benefits at risk. 

But his decision faced sharp criticism from the state’s Democratic treasurer, Mike Pieciak, as well as the head of the Vermont Democratic Party. Meanwhile, Democratic Attorney General Charity Clark said the Scott administration’s actions stymied her office’s plans to join a federal lawsuit in which 20 other states are arguing that the request for SNAP data is, in fact, unlawful.

Scott’s office did not return a request for comment Wednesday on the secretary of state’s announcement. 

Copeland Hanzas said her office was coordinating with Clark’s office on a potential need to defend in court the secretary’s position on voter data sharing. Clark, who’s a Democrat, has joined a separate multistate lawsuit challenging the legality of Trump’s March order aimed at non-citizen voting. A federal judge has temporarily blocked parts of the order from taking effect, though the case is ongoing.

“The Attorney General and I will also continue to coordinate with other states that are committed to protecting citizens’ private data and preserving the constitutional balance of power,” Copeland Hanzas said in Wednesday’s release. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont secretary of state says she won’t share voter data with Trump administration.

President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs on countries across the globe took effect this week — a move experts have said will further disrupt trading patterns and increase prices for U.S. consumers on goods from clothes to food to appliances.

The impacts are somewhat complicated for goods imported to the U.S. from Canada, which data shows is by far Vermont’s largest trading partner. Here’s the latest:

Canadian imports to the U.S. now face, broadly, a 35% duty. That’s an increase from the 25% tariffs that had been in effect since March. (The new rate for Canadian goods took effect Aug. 1, while revised duties on other countries took effect Thursday.)

Trump increased levies on Canadian imports after failing to reach an updated trade agreement with the country’s leaders by the start of August. The president has tied the tariffs, in part, to what he maintains is Canada’s failure to reduce the cross-border flow of illicit drugs into the U.S. — though Canadian leaders have disputed that claim. 

It’s not clear when a deal between the two countries might be reached.

The latest tariffs have a critical exception, though: the 35% duties don’t apply to goods covered by an existing deal called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which Trump signed in 2018, during his first term. That agreement allows many products to be traded duty-free if they largely originate from within North America.

Vermont State Treasurer Mike Pieciak said between 85% and 90% of Canadian exports likely fall under that agreement. Meanwhile, he said, all of the energy that Vermont imports from Canada appears to also be covered by the agreement.

The latter is particularly important since Vermont gets about a quarter of its electricity from Hydro-Quebec, based in the province of the same name, while about a third of the fuel used to heat homes and businesses in the state comes from Canadian dealers.

The tariff situation is further complicated by the fact some products have been facing separate levies for months, Pieciak said. Imports of Canadian steel and aluminum have faced 50% tariffs since June, he said, and aren’t exempted under the 2018 deal.

Meanwhile, 25% tariffs on foreign imports of automobiles and auto parts have been in effect since earlier this year, though there are certain exemptions to those levies. 

Pieciak said the tariffs on metals have already affected some businesses in Vermont this summer. He recalled conversations with housing and business developers who are concerned that future projects could be plagued by higher material costs. 

“A lot of the projects that are up and running had to source their steel well before they started construction. And they largely have missed the recent imposition of the tariffs,” he said. “But I do worry about what it means for projects that are on the drawing board — projects that will come to fruition in the months and years ahead.”

Trump’s tariffs on foreign-made cars have not yet been reflected in the prices consumers see at dealerships around Vermont, said Matt Cota, who represents auto dealers in the state. That’s because there is often a long gap between when a new car leaves a factory and when someone buys it at a dealership, he said.

But “unless things change,” Cota said, higher vehicle prices are on the horizon.

Pieciak also noted Vermonters can still expect new expenses in the coming months, across the board, due to Trump’s tariffs. The Yale Budget Lab estimated this week that some of the sharpest immediate impacts will be to apparel costs — with near-term price increases expected at 39% for shoes and 37% for clothing. 

Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, said at a press conference Thursday that the new slate of tariffs would only further strain the U.S.-Canada relationship. He predicted further detrimental effects on tourism in Vermont as a result.

“I think it’s going to be a while before they start trusting us again,” Scott said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: What do Trump’s latest tariffs mean for trade with Canada?.

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott’s administration complied with a federal request last month to share sensitive data on thousands of Vermonters who receive nutrition assistance from the government — a move that has drawn sharp criticism from top Democratic officials and the state’s leading advocacy organization for fighting systemic food insecurity. 

The Republican governor said the federal government was well within its legal rights to ask for the data, and that his administration was merely following the law by providing it. But Democrats, including Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, pointed to how 20 other states have challenged the legality of the same request in a federal lawsuit. The suit, which was filed last week, is currently pending before a judge in San Francisco.

Disagreement over whether Vermont should have pushed back, too, underscores how leaders at the highest levels of state government have adopted different tacts in response to the slew of controversial actions the Trump administration has taken since the start of the year.

Vermont Public first reported that Scott’s administration handed over data about recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits.

“Capitulating to the Trump Administration will not keep Vermonters safe from their harmful agenda,” Mike Pieciak, Vermont’s Democratic treasurer, said in a statement. “The President’s threats are often hollow and they do not withstand legal scrutiny. But the choice not to fight will have real and immediate consequences for Vermonters.”

At issue is a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture request that state governments, before July 30, disclose certain details on people who have received, or applied to receive, SNAP benefits since the start of 2020. That information should include, per a department memo, names, birthdays, social security numbers and addresses.

Vermont Public reported that Scott’s administration is not providing the federal government with information related to people’s immigration status.

The request, according to the agriculture department, was making good on a Trump executive order aimed at curbing “waste, fraud and abuse” in SNAP programs and improving federal officials’ access to information about who is receiving benefits.  

About 65,000 people in Vermont currently rely on the state’s SNAP program, which is known as 3SquaresVT. However, as many as 14,000 of them, including 1,600 refugees and asylum seekers, could lose access to some or all of those benefits in the coming years under cuts laid out in the GOP-led spending bill Trump signed into law last month. 

Scott’s office said in a statement late Tuesday that “although the federal government’s approach has been unnecessarily political,” Vermont had no choice but to comply because the feds are “legally entitled” to the information they asked for. His office also contended that not complying with the order “could put thousands of Vermont’s most vulnerable at risk.” 

“When there is clear evidence of harm to Vermonters, the Scott Administration will continue to push back against such decisions and requests,” the governor’s office said. “Despite all the political drama on this issue, this is not one of those moments. Again, the facts matter. And the facts here are clear: everything we have provided to the federal government is within the limits of long-established law.”

The states that sued the Trump administration, though, have a different interpretation of that same request. In the lawsuit, led by Democratic attorneys general from California and New York, state leaders argue that the agriculture department’s request is illegal because individuals’ data is likely to be used for purposes beyond the scope of administering SNAP benefits — namely, conducting immigration enforcement, they said.

The suit also contends that the Trump administration has threatened to hold up funding for SNAP benefits in retaliation against states that have not turned over recipients’ data. The attorneys general have asked a judge to block the department from collecting the personal information in question and to bar the department from withholding funds. 

“USDA’s attempt to collect this information from Plaintiff States flies in the face of privacy and security protections in federal and state law,” the lawsuit states.

Vermont’s Democratic attorney general, Charity Clark, has sued the Trump administration more than two dozen times since Trump took office in January. Last month, she joined a multistate suit challenging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ move to share Medicaid recipients’ personal data with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees federal immigration enforcement.

Clark said Wednesday that her office wanted to sue to block the SNAP data sharing, however, “the governor’s approach has everything to do with why Vermont is not a party to that lawsuit.” 

She declined to elaborate on Scott’s decision, citing her role as the state’s chief litigator.

“The governor and I have taken different approaches at times. But he’s the governor, and this is his prerogative,” Clark said.

Scott’s decision also drew opposition from advocates for nutritional assistance programs in the state.

Anore Horton, executive director of the nonprofit Hunger Free Vermont, called the governor’s decision “troubling” in a statement Wednesday. The organization is also urging people to write to the governor with their opposition to the move. 

“This is a clear overreach,” Horton said, referring to the data sharing. “It violates both the law and the basic expectations of privacy that millions of families rely on when they apply for SNAP. States are being forced into an impossible position: comply and risk violating the privacy of their resident, or refuse and face political retaliation.”

Scott has not granted all of the Trump administration’s wishes in recent months. In late July, for instance, he denied a White House request for a dozen members of the Vermont National Guard to do clerical work supporting federal immigration enforcement. The guard members would have been stationed in St. Albans, which is home to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office. Scott said he did not think the request was an effective use of the state government’s limited resources. 

Earlier this year, though, Scott was at odds with a group of Democratic state senators over the senators’ calls for him to terminate a contract that allows federal immigration authorities to hold detainees at state-run prisons. Senators said ending the agreement would send a clear message that Vermont wasn’t willing to cooperate with the Trump administration’s toughened immigration enforcement. However, Scott — along with some advocates — argued ending the contract might mean detainees would be transferred to other states where they might face worse detention conditions. 

Scott has publicly criticized Trump for years and voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. He made national headlines in 2020 when he was the only Republican governor in the country to publicly announce his vote for Joe Biden.

Since the latest election, though, he’s repeatedly argued that steps Vermont takes to oppose the Trump administration could make the state — which is heavily reliant on federal dollars to support key government services — a target for a president who has long used retribution as a governing tactic.

“As the Governor has said, we cannot live in chaos for the next three and a half years,” Scott’s office said this week. “Vermont will continue to evaluate all requests and actions by the federal administration based on reality — not rhetoric.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Phil Scott faces criticism over decision to share SNAP recipients’ personal data with feds.

Thousands of Vermonters could lose access to nutritional benefits funded by the federal government in the coming years as a result of cuts laid out in the sweeping Republican-led spending package that President Donald Trump signed into law last month. 

The reductions, along with many other measures in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, are designed to fund parts of Trump’s domestic policy agenda, including an extension of tax breaks that estimates show will benefit wealthy people the most, as well as major increases in funding for border security and immigration enforcement, among other changes. 

State officials and advocates emphasized in recent weeks that they haven’t yet tallied the full impacts the tax and spending package could have on Vermont. But a number of provisions, they said, will undoubtedly make it harder for people to access food using the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

About 65,000 people currently receive SNAP benefits — commonly known as food stamps — in Vermont, according to Ivy Enoch, policy director for Hunger Free Vermont, a nonprofit that advocates for ending systemic hunger in the state. Her organization estimates as many as 14,000 of them could see nutritional benefits they rely on reduced or eliminated entirely as a result of the legislation. 

“This will make it harder for people to meet their most basic needs,” Enoch told VTDigger. “Fundamentally, it will cause harm to every one of our communities — and it is also forcing our state to contend with really difficult decisions.”

Vermont’s SNAP program is called 3SquaresVT. People are generally eligible for the program if their household income is equal to or below certain thresholds established by the federal government, or if they receive the state’s earned income tax credit. The vast majority of SNAP benefit recipients in Vermont are children, older adults and people with disabilities, Enoch said.

Currently, many SNAP recipients between the ages of 18 and 59 are required to report to the federal government that they are working, or participating in a work training program, in order to receive their benefits. But the new law expands that work reporting requirement to certain people up to 65 years of age.

There are certain exceptions to those reporting requirements, including for parents with teenage kids. Currently, parents of children under age 18 can be exempt from requirements to work, but under the new law, many parents will only be able to claim an exemption if they have kids under 14. People experiencing homelessness, veterans and young people who have aged out of foster care could also be subject to new work reporting requirements, Enoch said.

Proponents of the changes have argued they would ensure more people are working and that SNAP benefits are reserved for people with the greatest needs. But research has shown that existing requirements do not increase employment and have only pushed more people off of the safety net program. 

Enoch said many SNAP recipients who can work, do work.

“This rule will be expanded to more people, who will need to take more time — that they don’t have — to fill out complex paperwork and submit it to the state,” she said. “And the state will then need to review more paperwork, creating more burden on both.” 

Hunger Free Vermont estimates many people in the state will start to face the prospect of losing their SNAP benefits in February 2026, though the timeline is not entirely clear, Enoch said.

A more immediate impact, she said, will be felt by immigrant communities in the state. Starting Oct. 1, under the new law, refugees and asylum seekers — who have lawful status to live in the U.S. — will no longer be able to access SNAP benefits. Hunger Free Vermont believes about 1,600 people in Vermont will no longer be eligible for federal nutritional benefits because of that change. 

The legislation also restricts future increases to the value of the nutrition plan the federal government uses to determine how much money many SNAP recipients should receive. Under the new law, the value of this “Thrifty Food Plan” will continue to reflect established cost-of-living increases. But barring future updates to the underlying value of the plan could mean SNAP payments lag over time, Enoch said.  

Beyond the cost of food for individuals, the legislation is also expected to put new pressure on states, including Vermont, to pay for administering SNAP programs.

While the federal government pays the cost of SNAP benefits, it shares the cost of administering SNAP programs with individual state governments. Right now, that burden is shared 50-50. But it’s slated to change starting in October 2026, Enoch said, to a cost share that’s 75% on states and 25% on the feds.

The Vermont Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office reported last week that this change will cost Vermont $8 million a year starting in 2026. It’s one of many fiscal changes, prompted by Trump’s return to the White House, which state legislators will need to contend with when they return to Montpelier for the 2026 legislative session next January.

Other advocates have said a reduction in the number of people receiving SNAP benefits in Vermont could have broader impacts on the state’s food system.

The Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont runs a program called Crop Cash, which leverages federal funding to multiply the dollar value of SNAP benefits when recipients use them at local farmer’s markets. SNAP recipients spent more than $385,000 at markets across the state in 2024, according to the organization’s data. 

The organization is not immediately concerned about funding for the program itself. But if fewer people are shopping at farmer’s markets because they cannot afford to without SNAP benefits, local farmers could lose out on income, which could be a potentially painful hit on already tight margins, said Jessica Hays Lucas, a policy organizer for the association. 

“We’re just going to have so many fewer dollars in circulation,” she said, referring to SNAP benefits.

Read the story on VTDigger here: 14,000 Vermonters could lose nutritional benefits under Trump’s spending package.

Updated at 11:31 p.m.

BURLINGTON — Vermont Green Football Club are national champions. 

The Green toppled Seattle-based Ballard FC, 2-1, in Saturday night’s United Soccer League Two championship game at the University of Vermont in Burlington. Thousands of fans turned out to the Green’s home stadium at the school, Virtue Field, to watch the team cap off its undefeated 2025 season with its first-ever national-level prize. 

United Soccer League Two is a semi-professional, summertime competition made up largely of collegiate players. It has about 150 total teams across the country.

“Unbelievable. Unreal,” Maxi Kissel, the forward who scored the Green’s go-ahead second goal, said after the match ended. He was surrounded by at least a dozen kids, all clad in Vermont Green merchandise, who had run onto the field to get his and other players’ autographs. “I knew what I had to do — and I’m so thankful that I did it.”

Saturday’s game was deadlocked at 0-0 until just after halftime, when Vermont Green midfielder Julien Le Bourdoulous slotted home a penalty kick. Ballard then tied the game at one apiece around the one-hour mark. Both teams continued to trade chances for the next half-hour, but with the game approaching the final whistle, it looked likely to be heading to overtime. 

That was until the Green won a corner kick in the match’s final moments. After the initial delivery from the corner, Kissel latched onto the end of a second bouncing cross toward the goal and pounded the ball past Ballard’s goalkeeper, sending the stadium into an eruption of cheers. The game ended shortly after.

“It was tough. That’s the best team we saw all year,” Vermont Green coach Chris Taylor said after the match. “But we knew the longer the game went on, we’d be the stronger team.”

Saturday’s win was the culmination of a dream run for Vermont Green, which is in its fourth season and has garnered international attention for its outspoken support of climate justice and other progressive social causes. The team regularly draws sellout crowds for its home games, boasting some of the highest average attendance of any similar team in the country. 

After tying just three regular-season games and winning every other, the Green won its local United Soccer League Two division, the Northeast Division, in early July. Later that month, the team topped the league’s regional Eastern Conference bracket to advance to the final stages of the national playoffs.

Saturday’s win marks the second national championship for a Vermont-based soccer team in the past year. Last December, the University of Vermont men’s soccer team won the NCAA Division I championship, the first national collegiate title in a major sport in school history. Four UVM players were part of the Vermont Green team that won Saturday’s game.

Kissel, the late goalscorer, was one of those players. He said last fall’s win for UVM was echoing in his head as the final whistle blew on Saturday night.

“We did it again,” he said, catching his breath before repeating: “We did it again.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘Unbelievable. Unreal’: Vermont Green FC wins national soccer championship.

BURLINGTON — Some seven months ago, Maxi Kissel, clad in the green and gold of the University of Vermont men’s soccer team, slotted home the goal that won Vermont its first national collegiate championship — in any major sport — in school history.

Winning one national title would be impressive enough. But on Saturday, Kissel, along with three other players who lifted the NCAA Division I trophy for UVM last fall, will be on the university’s home field in Burlington to compete for a second one.

This time, they’ll be playing for Vermont Green Football Club, a semi-professional team also based in the Queen City. The Green compete in United Soccer League 2, which has about 150 teams across the country. The clubs field mostly college players who often hope the summertime showcase will attract the eyes of professional scouts.

“It’s a bit surreal,” Kissel said Wednesday afternoon, taking a break during a team training session at UVM’s Virtue Field. In just a few days, the stadium’s bleachers and surrounding fences are set to be lined with thousands of fans for the 7 p.m. game against Ballard FC, a team that’s based just north of downtown Seattle. 

“It’s like, wow — we haven’t lost a game in ages,” said Kissel, who’s a forward from Germany, speaking about himself and his peers on both UVM and Vermont Green. (Vermont Green has gone undefeated so far this season.) “We just do our best every day — and, thankfully, good things happen.”

Kissel has played a key role on Vermont Green’s offense in recent weeks. He scored one of the three goals the team needed to overcome FC Motown of New Jersey in an early round of the United Soccer League 2 playoffs this month. Then, in last Sunday’s semifinals, he notched a goal in Vermont’s dramatic, penalty-kick shootout win over Alabama’s Dothan United.

Vermont would not have won that semifinal without another UVM stalwart — goalkeeper Niklas Herceg, also from Germany, who blocked two of Dothan United’s penalty kicks during the shootout. UVM defender Nathan Siméon, of Quebec, and midfielder Ryan Zellefrow, of Pennsylvania, have also been go-to starters for the Green’s playoff run.

“With the UVM team, we kind of went into the games — especially in the college (tournament) — knowing like, no matter what happens, we were going to win,” said Zellefrow, also during Wednesday’s training. “And this team feels so similar.”

That two Vermont-based soccer teams have found so much success, one so soon after the other, feels unlikely in a state with no professional sports franchises of its own. But players and coaches said the pair of national tournament runs is hardly a coincidence.

UVM’s championship win — a product, in part, of a roster bolstered by top players recruited from around the country and the world (the case for many college teams) — “captured the imagination of so many people around the state,” said Chris Taylor, Vermont Green’s head coach, in an interview after Wednesday’s training wrapped up.

Having more Vermonters interested in soccer, in turn, helped Vermont Green build on what was already some of the highest average home game attendance of any team in United Soccer League 2 in the country, Taylor said. Vermont Green’s semifinal drew about 4,000 spectators out to the UVM stadium, and Saturday’s match could see more.

“They paved the way, I think, for this season. We’ve obviously got some of their best players as well,” Talyor added, speaking about the UVM men’s soccer team. “I don’t think we have the season we’re having without UVM’s season.”

Zellefrow noted that Vermont Green’s robust fanbase has also spurred talented collegiate players who hail from other countries, which have had strong soccer fan cultures for far longer than the U.S., to want to spend the summer playing in Burlington.

More than half of the players on Vermont Green’s current roster were born outside the U.S, according to the club’s website. 

“I think those guys, when they come to Vermont and see the fans, and the community and so forth, they feel like they’re at home,” said Rob Dow, the UVM men’s soccer coach. “They’re talking about, ‘Oh, I grew up in this power club in Germany, or in Belgium or France — but I never felt this type of energy before.’”

Like UVM last year, Vermont Green has made several late-game comebacks this year to keep its season going. Some fans have loaned the team versions of the “Cardiac Cats” nickname UVM’s team earned in 2024 after a similar series of late-stage heroics. 

Taylor, the Vermont Green coach, said his team has been successful at the tail end of games in part because of its deep bench of talented players who can be brought in as substitutes with fresher legs, essentially helping Vermont “just outlast” other teams.

It’s a strength that will likely be put to the test in Saturday’s final against Ballard FC, Taylor said, which has consistently been among the best United Soccer League 2 teams in the country in recent years. Ballad won the national championship game in 2023. 

“They make games really fast,” Taylor said. “Their pressure is really good. They’re a pretty relentless team.”

Kissel, the UVM and Vermont Green forward, said he, too, was confident in the team’s ability to come back late if needed. He credited the fans’ unabated support — but agreed the parallels with his college team’s run are hard to ignore. 

“Maybe it’s a Vermont thing,” he said, smiling.

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘This team feels so similar’: Heading into a championship, Vermont Green FC builds off UVM men’s soccer’s success.

Burlington officials are moving ahead with plans to replace a monument to an Abenaki chief with a new sculpture commissioned by the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi, which is one of four groups recognized as Native American by Vermont’s state government.

But the Missisquoi group’s involvement in the project has spurred protest from one of Burlington’s state representatives, who has also been a vocal critic of the state’s past tribal recognition decisions. Independent Rep. Troy Headrick told Burlington officials last month they should seek input on the project from two Abenaki nations based in Quebec, where tribal leaders maintain that many members of Vermont’s state-recognized tribes can’t claim continuous ties to historic Abenaki people, or to any Indigenous people.

“It is deeply concerning that the Abenaki communities at Odanak and Wôlinak, whose documented ancestral ties to this region are well established, have not been consulted in this decision-making process,” Headrick wrote in an email about the monument plans to Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak and her chief of staff. He shared the message with VTDigger.

Headrick’s comments have brought contentious questions about Abenaki identity in Vermont before Burlington city leaders. These questions have also colored state legislative debates in Montpelier and other nearby state capitals this year.

At issue in Burlington is a sculpture known as “Chief Greylock” that was installed in the city’s Battery Park in the late 1980s. Greylock was an Abenaki chief who is famed today for leading Abenaki people during wars against English colonists in the 18th century.

The sculpture was “named and embraced by the Abenaki community,” although it was not a direct representation of Indigenous people historically in Vermont, according to a memo about the project from Doreen Kraft, executive director of Burlington City Arts, a city department that supports local artists.

Moreover, Kraft told the Burlington City Council earlier this month, city officials have been worried about the structural integrity of the wooden statue for years. An analysis last fall found that it was significantly rotted inside and in danger of collapsing.

Following that report, officials decided the artwork should be taken down for public safety, Kraft said. The sculpture was taken down last Thursday, with only its base left, according to Joe Magee, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office.

In its place, Burlington plans to put up a new wooden sculpture donated to the city by the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi, which is based in Swanton. Under a March 2022 resolution approved by the city council, the Missisquoi group is, “the tribal authority to represent Abenaki matters” between local Abenaki people and the city government.

The new sculpture, according to photos in city council documents, has a similar shape to its predecessor though adds on clear references to the Missisquoi group, including the group’s flag and the words “Missisquoi Abenaki.” It also bears carvings of wildlife and an “Indian head,” Brenda Gagne, the Missisquoi chief, said in an interview.

The piece is meant to focus on Missisquoi’s history more broadly, rather than on Greylock, himself, Gagne said.

But Headrick told city officials in an email that decisions about the design of the new sculpture should have included input from other sources. Among those sources, he wrote, should have been Odanak and Wôlinak First Nations, both of which are headquartered northeast of Montreal but claim Vermont as part of their ancestral territory.

The First Nations’ leaders have argued for years that many members of the four groups the state of Vermont recognized as Abenaki in 2011 and 2012 are, in fact, not Indigenous. Odanak and Wôlinak leaders have accused the state-recognized groups of appropriating Abenaki culture. In letters and public statements, the First Nations’ leaders have also urged organizations in Vermont to work with them, rather than the Vermont-based groups, when seeking Indigenous people’s perspectives.

The groups that the state of Vermont has recognized have asserted that they can, in fact, claim Abenaki identities and have repeatedly urged the First Nations to stay out of their affairs. In addition to the Missisquoi, those groups include the Elnu Abenaki, Nulhegan Abenaki and the Koasek Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation.

Several weeks after Headrick’s email to the mayor’s office, city officials pulled an item off the agenda for a July 14 city council meeting that would have allowed the city to formally accept the new sculpture already commissioned by the Missisquoi group.

In an interview Monday, Magee characterized that decision as a temporary pause so the city can do further structural analysis of the old sculpture’s base, which is set to also be used for the new one. He said the delay in formally accepting the new sculpture was not due to questions about tribal identity or legitimacy, and emphasized that the city still plans to accept the new artwork.

Magee said the city has not reached out to Odanak or Wôlinak leaders. He would not say whether or not the city planned to reach out to them. He emphasized that the city would continue to abide by the 2022 agreement to work with the Missisquoi group.

“The city has had a good working relationship with the Missisquoi Abenaki tribal council since the adoption of the resolution in 2022, and you know, we want to continue and maintain that relationship,” he said. 

“The administration is aware of the conversations happening on a larger level,” he added, referring to assertions about the Vermont groups’ legitimacy. “And the city does have an interest in figuring out how we can engage with other bands, other tribal councils, to fully honor Burlington’s history — and the history of Burlington land as Indigenous land,” he said.

Daniel Nolett, the executive director of Odanak First Nation’s tribal government, said in an interview Tuesday that he hoped Headrick’s outreach would prompt Burlington officials to contact him or someone else in his office. 

Nolett said his family is directly related to Greylock. While he understands that the now removed sculpture was a public safety threat, he added, he wished he had gotten a heads-up from the city.

“The statue was in the state that it was — it posed a safety issue, so it had to be taken down,” he said. “That’s not an issue. The only issue is that we should have been part of this project for the new statue.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the organizational structure of Burlington City Arts.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Plans to replace Burlington monument bring controversy over state-recognized tribes to Queen City leaders.

The sweeping Republican tax and spending bill that cleared the U.S. House Thursday could cause about 45,000 people in Vermont to lose health insurance in the coming years, state officials say. The bill is now heading to President Donald Trump for a sign-off.

In order to pay for key parts of Trump’s domestic agenda included in the legislation, called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” GOP budget-writers are counting on proposed cuts to Medicaid, the shared federal and state program that funds insurance for people with low incomes.

Meanwhile, the bill has sparked concern among hospital leaders in Vermont over a provision that would limit how much state governments can tax health care providers such as hospitals to, ultimately, access more federal Medicaid funding. Vermont, like most other states, relies on these taxes to fund expanded benefits for Medicaid recipients, which is a practice that helps support providers, too.

“The ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is deeply concerning. I don’t think it’s beautiful, and I think it’s super harmful to Vermont,” said Mike Del Trecco, the president and CEO of the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, in an interview earlier this week. 

President Donald Trump and his GOP allies in Congress have said the legislation would target waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid funding and have pointed to how the cuts would pay for policies such as breaks on taxes for tips and overtime pay. However, critics point to a Congressional Budget Office analysis showing the bill would boost the incomes of the country’s wealthiest households while costing the country’s poorest households more. 

The legislation would result in about 12 million people across the country losing their health care coverage over the next decade across Medicaid and the commercial insurance marketplace, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which is a nonpartisan agency that scores the fiscal impacts of federal legislation.  

One key provision in the bill would impose new requirements that certain people on Medicaid demonstrate that they are working in order to receive coverage. States will also be required to determine a participant’s eligibility for Medicaid every six months rather than every year, as they do now.

The fact that more people will have to fill out additional paperwork will lead some to fall off of coverage, according to Ashley Berliner, director of Medicaid policy for the state Agency of Human Services.

Berliner, in an interview, estimated that about 30,000 Vermonters will lose coverage because of that greater administrative burden. That makes up roughly half of the adults in Vermont who currently receive health insurance coverage under the expansion of Medicaid provided by the Affordable Care Act. That act, commonly called Obamacare, has significantly increased the number of people able to access health insurance.  

Federal spending for those 30,000 people would equate to $205 million annually that would, as a result of the bill, no longer be coming into the state, Berliner said. 

Meanwhile, she said, Vermont health officials believe an additional 15,000 people who purchase coverage on the commercial marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act will also lose coverage, at least in part because signing up for it will become more difficult. The budget bill doesn’t allow people to automatically reenroll in their current health care plan and shrinks the sign-up period for coverage by a month. 

Historically, only about half of people respond to the agency when it requests additional information to verify people’s eligibility to be enrolled in Medicaid, Berliner said. 

“When you ask people for additional information, they don’t fill it out and they fall off — the burden becomes too high and coverage is lost,” she said, adding that the picture is similar across the country, and GOP leaders are relying on the dropoff to help facilitate their proposed cuts.

Officials are also concerned about the impacts of a measure in the bill that would whittle down a long-standing mechanism states use to raise additional funds for Medicaid services by taxing health care providers. The rate of Vermont’s so-called provider tax, which is the name for that mechanism, would be reduced by 2.5% between 2028 and 2032. Vermont’s rate is currently set at the highest level allowed under existing law.

Cumulatively, over the period ending in 2032, Vermont is set to lose around $211 million from this change, counting both a loss of state dollars and additional federal Medicaid funding those dollars would allow the state to bring in, according to Berliner.

Hospitals will also feel pain from lost funding under these reductions, Del Trecco said.

Berliner added that she’s concerned by a measure in the bill that would ban state Medicaid payments for at least one year to health care nonprofits that offer abortions. This would include, notably, Planned Parenthood, which has clinics throughout Vermont.

One additional fallout, she said, could be shifting the costs of the reproductive healthcare those nonprofits provide in Vermont onto other providers. 

All three members of Vermont’s congressional delegation have criticized the impacts of the budget bill and voted against it. 

Last week, before the Senate approved a version of the bill, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., released a report that his office said showed the bill would increase the number of uninsured people in every state in the country. In some states, the rate of uninsured people would nearly double.

The legislation would “devastate rural hospitals, community health centers and nursing homes throughout our country and cause a massive spike in uninsured rates in red states and blue states alike,” Sanders said in a press release last week. 

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., speaking on the Senate floor earlier this week, derided the potential impacts the bill would have on states with all political leanings.

“I want to repeat here: this is the bipartisan infliction of pain. This is real. This is real. And is the tax cut — largely directed to the very wealthy people — is it worth inflicting that kind of pain on so many, when the tax cut benefits so few?” he said. 

Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., voted against the bill Thursday when it was up for final approval. 

“This Republican budget is far and away the cruelest piece of legislation I’ve seen in my career,” she said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “It’s an utter moral failure.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont officials estimate 45,000 people to lose health insurance under Trump’s tax bill.

A loose group of advocates is urging the panel that oversees operations at Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport to issue a statement describing — and, some said, condemning — how federal immigration agents have repeatedly used Vermont’s largest air hub to transport people detained in the state and possibly facing deportation to other parts of the country.

Speaking at the Burlington Airport Commission’s monthly meeting Wednesday evening, two advocates also presented data they said showed federal immigration agents are flying far more people out of the airport, which is run by the City of Burlington, than is widely known.

Leif Taranta of Burlington and Brian Clifford of Essex said their findings, which they’ve compiled into a public chart online, suggest at least 450 people detained by federal law enforcement in immigration cases have been transferred through the Burlington airport since the start of January. That includes transfers by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

VTDigger has not independently verified Taranta and Clifford’s work, though a representative from the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, which is one of the state’s few networks offering pro bono legal aid to non-U.S. citizens, endorsed the advocates’ effort at Wednesday’s meeting.

“The airport, at a minimum, has a responsibility to let the public know what’s happening inside these walls, and on the tarmac,” Julie Macuga of Burlington, another advocate who spoke at the meeting, told the airport commissioners.

The panel did not develop a statement at its meeting, though the body’s chair, Tim George, said in an interview afterward that he and the other commissioners would continue to discuss the request, including what, specifically, his counterparts would be willing to say.

“I think we’ll have some conversations about that and see how we want to proceed,” he said.

Wednesday’s meeting comes as Vermont officials’ interactions with immigration authorities have drawn increased scrutiny following the high-profile arrests of Columbia University student and Palestinian rights activist Mohsen Mahdawi and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk. Both students were in the country legally but have been targeted by President Donald Trump’s administration for deportation. Mahdawi is a Vermont resident, while Öztürk’s detention was challenged in federal court in Vermont.

Federal officials have shuffled detainees from other states into and out of Vermont, and used commercial flights out of the airport, which is in South Burlington, to facilitate deportations, VTDigger has reported. Those jailed in Vermont’s prisons include people with established lives in the state, like farmworkers. Vermont’s prisons have also held people from other New England states, including Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist working at Harvard University.

Öztürk was shuttled from Massachusetts, where she was arrested, to an ICE field office in St. Albans before being flown out of the Burlington airport early the following morning to Louisiana. She spent weeks in detention there before a judge in Vermont ordered her release. Meanwhile, agents attempted to fly Mahdawi out of the airport to Louisiana, as well, after he was arrested while attending a U.S. citizenship interview in Colchester, the student’s lawyers have said.

That a public body as minor as the airport commission — which is only advisory by design and consists of residents from Burlington, South Burlington and Winooski — was facing questions about the actions of federal immigration agents is evidence of just how focused public scrutiny of immigration enforcement in the state has become. 

One commissioner, Helen Riehle, a former longtime state legislator from South Burlington, called the use of the airport for transporting ICE detainees “abhorrent.” 

Still, it’s not clear there is much — if anything — the commission, or the staff who run the day-to-day operations at the airport, could do to impact how the federal government chooses to use the facility to transport detainees, said Nic Longo, the airport’s director. He said the airport administration generally is not privy to information about immigration operations there.

“We don’t know when these are happening,” he said, referring to when people are transferred through the airport by federal immigration agents. “We don’t get advised. We don’t get any communication.”

He added, too, that the airport could risk losing access to federal grants and other funding assurances by impeding or refusing to comply with immigration enforcement — a point U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made publicly earlier this year. (That threat has since been temporarily blocked by a federal judge after a coalition of 20 states, including Vermont, sued to challenge its legality.)

There were several instances, Longo noted, in which ICE agents were parking their vehicles in areas where parking wasn’t allowed. The airport pushed back — in some cases, nearly towing the vehicles — and got the agents to park in spaces generally available to the public. The airport’s goal, he said, is to treat the agents as if they are any other law enforcement officials, or members of the public.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday about its operations at the airport. 

Taranta, one of the activists, said the group collected data on those operations using U.S. Department of Justice press releases, the PACER system that tracks federal court cases, and a Vermont Department of Corrections website that provides access to a jail tracking system where people can find friends and family members in the state’s prisons. They also verified the data through news articles and direct observations at prisons and the Burlington airport, they said. 

The activists said the data they collected shows as many as 500 immigration detainees have likely been moved through Vermont between Jan. 1 and July 1. About 460 were highly likely to have been transferred through the Burlington airport, the citizen researchers believe, with many of them booked on early morning flights. 

“That’s a shocking number if true,” said Brett Stokes, an attorney at the Center for Justice Reform at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, in an interview Wednesday. Stokes said he would be inclined to trust it unless proven otherwise, but he doesn’t believe it’s a statistic the federal government is required to track.

Activists shared that they were concerned people are being moved through the state without access to legal representation. 

A major concern expressed by those who spoke at the commission meeting was that people flown out of the airport — who were often unshackled, in plain clothes and accompanied by U.S. Marshals — did not have an opportunity to meet with an attorney before facing deportation proceedings outside of the state. The early hours of transport, which the activists have said their findings repeatedly show, also make it difficult for attorneys to connect with clients, they said.

“It’s become clear to us that the airport plays a large role in the region’s ICE operations and most people don’t know about this, including the airport commissions,” Taranta said in an interview. “I hope they’ll take some actions against it.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Burlington airport leaders face questions from advocates over ICE transports.

Gov. Phil Scott signed a package of changes to Vermont’s election procedures into law this week, among them an expansion of who has to file campaign finance disclosure forms and a restriction on candidates running in a general election who’ve lost a preceding primary election.

The changes are part of a bill, H.474, that nearly did not make it over the finish line this year. The House and Senate approved the bill on the final day of this year’s legislative session, June 16. Before that, though, the legislation appeared all but dead after Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, tied its political fate to an unrelated charter change proposal he was backing that sought to ban guns from bars in Burlington. 

With the charter change languishing in a key House committee, Baruth told the chair of a key Senate committee, which was reviewing the election bill, to pump the brakes — months after the election bill had already cleared the House. Two weeks later, though, following legislators’ partial recess in early June, Senate leaders brought the bill onto the floor for a vote — a decision one House leader credited, at least in part, to VTDigger’s reporting on the political dealing behind the scenes.

Senators cut a number of measures from the bill as it passed in the House, including a study of using ranked-choice voting in Vermont for future presidential primaries. The slimmed-down bill included all the “must-have” provisions identified by the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office, a key backer of the legislation, according to Sen. Brian Collamore, R-Rutland, who chaired the Senate panel that reviewed the bill. 

Here are the key measures that did make it into the 30-page law, which also sets out a new reporting requirement for certain write-in candidates and updates rules on who must report on donations to campaigns, among a number of other changes.

Campaign finance disclosures

The law eliminates a measure currently on the books stating that only candidates who raise or spend $500 or more have to file campaign finance disclosure forms with the Secretary of State’s Office. Those forms allow the public to review how much candidates have raised and from whom, and how much they’ve spent and on what.

Now, anyone running for office will have to file a disclosure form — regardless of how much they raise or spend. If that amount is less than $500, they’ll have to formally attest to the state that they haven’t surpassed that ceiling. If they raise or spend more than that, the state’s existing rules requiring more detailed disclosure filings would kick in. 

Deputy Secretary of State Lauren Hibbert said her office regularly fields complaints from the public about candidates who, the complainants allege, have raised or spent more than $500 but haven’t disclosed any such information to the state. She said the office has little ability to track down potential scofflaws now, and hopes the new changes will create more accountability.

‘One bite’ candidacy

More controversial, though, was a portion of the law that now prevents a candidate who loses a primary election under the banner of one political party from running again in the general election under a different party label — or as an independent candidate.

The Secretary of State’s Office did not stake out a position for or against that change to restrict what’s often called “getting a second bite at the apple,” according to Hibbert. But while backers of the measure said it would make elections more fair, opponents said the changes were wrongly limiting the options voters could choose from on the ballot. 

On the House floor earlier this month, independent and Progressive members spoke against the change, and it drew the most debate, by far, of any section of the bill. The measure does not do away with so-called “fusion” candidates, however, which are those who get an endorsement from multiple parties on the general election ballot. 

Some senators were opposed to the “one bite” change, too. 

“I don’t think it harms anyone to allow this,” said Washington County Sen. Andrew Perchlik, who’s a Democrat/Progressive, during debate about the bill on that chamber’s floor earlier this month, before it was passed. For prospective independent candidates, specifically, “I think it’s an anti-democratic change,” he added. 

Write-in candidates

The new law also creates a requirement that write-in candidates for state and federal office in Vermont formally declare their candidacy with local or state officials. The change is designed to reduce the workload election officials have to take on, Hibbert said, especially when they’re tasked with tallying write-in votes that include what seem to be protest or joke votes for national figures or fictional characters. 

In other cases, ballots will come in with numerous different spellings of a candidate’s name, she said. Hilary Francis, the Brattleboro town clerk, told legislators earlier this year about a case where it wasn’t completely clear what member of a family local write-in votes were referring to. 

Under the new law, state and federal write-in candidates must tell either local clerks or the secretary of state about their intent to run by 5 p.m. on the Thursday before an election. When tallying up results, officials will then only count votes for candidates who met the deadline — with some exceptions, including for races in which a write-in candidate gets more votes than anyone whose name is listed on the ballot.

The goal is that officials will only have to count names of people who actually have a technical chance of getting elected to a given office, according to Hibbert. 

The bill also includes several smaller changes to how local clerks operate elections, including allowing for additional time to address issues with a person’s ballot, a process known as “curing.” 

‘Independent’ fundraisers

Another measure in the new law is meant to clarify that certain campaign finance rules apply to individuals who raise and spend money on behalf of a candidate, but who aren’t directly affiliated with that candidate. It wasn’t entirely clear in state law, according to Hibbert, that certain individual fundraisers had to follow as strict of filing guidelines as, for instance, larger political action committees, which are commonly called PACs.

Specifically, the law revises the definition of the term “independent expenditure-only political committee” to clarify that such a “committee” could include as little as one person.

Hibbert said the Secretary of State’s Office asked legislators to clarify the law after seeing Elon Musk, the billionaire and now-spurned adviser to President Donald Trump, hand out $1 million checks to Wisconsin voters in the leadup to an election for a seat on that state’s Supreme Court earlier this year. Musk was attempting to help elect a conservative judge to the court, though the candidate ultimately lost the race. 

The law also lowered, from $1,000 to $500, the threshold at which these “independent expenditure-only” committees will have to report their activities to the state. The same lowered threshold will also apply to political parties and PACs operating in the state.

Hibbert said she thinks that threshold is still high enough to avoid sweeping in people who advocate, on a very small scale, for and against issues in their communities, such as a school budget. But larger local efforts, she said, warrant greater transparency.

“The goals here were just more consistency across the board,” Hibbert said. 

Auditing voter rolls

Earlier this year, the House voted to affirm the victory of Rep. Jonathan Cooper, D-Pownal, in last fall’s contentious election in the Bennington-1 district, which includes the towns of Readsboro, Searsburg, Stamford, Woodford and a part of Pownal.

Roughly 50 people in the district received the wrong ballot in the election, and the race between Cooper and Republican Bruce Busa was decided by fewer than 30 votes, calling into question if the error influenced the result and how that should be handled.

In response to that election, legislators also added a measure into the election bill that requires local officials in places where House or Senate districts split municipal boundaries, such as in Bennington-1, to audit their voter rolls this year.

Local clerks will have to submit summaries of those audits to the Secretary of State’s Office by Nov. 15 — and the office itself must then develop a report on all those findings.

Open meeting law

Another measure in the legislation revises existing state law to “clarify,” according to Hibbert, that annual town meetings are not subject to the slate of requirements laid out in Vermont’s Open Meeting Law. While town meetings are open to all “legal voters” of a given place, Hibbert said, they aren’t — from a legal standpoint — open to the general public, which is where the distinction comes in. 

She said the clarification stemmed from some concern over towns having to provide remote access to town meeting proceedings, including remote voting options. She said that if people had concerns about public access to a town meeting, they could take them to the Vermont Attorney General’s Office or the state’s Human Rights Commission.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Gov. Phil Scott signs new campaign finance rules, other election changes into law.

Vermont’s joint NPR and PBS station, Vermont Public, stands to lose about 10% of its annual funding if Congress signs off on President Donald Trump’s request to claw back funding the federal government provides for public media stations across the country. The measure passed the House earlier this month, and is now being considered in the Senate, where a hearing on the proposal is scheduled for Wednesday morning. 

For Vermont Public, the potential funding cut — which would set the station back about $2 million a year — is unlikely to pose an existential threat, according to CEO Vijay Singh. The station relies less heavily on federal funding, he said, than many others around the country do. He added that Vermont Public’s leadership has done some initial “contingency planning,” though declined to specify, noting much was still up in the air.

Congress has until July 18 to make a decision on the president’s request.

Trump and his Republican allies in Congress backing the funding cut have framed it as an effort to divorce taxpayer money from news outlets they claim are biased. That criticism has led Singh and other public media leaders to make urgent appeals about the nature of their work in recent months — and landed the news stations in their own headlines. 

Meanwhile, Singh said the proposed cuts have created significant uncertainty over whether public media in the U.S., which today operates as a closely-linked network of local stations sharing content and broadcast infrastructure, can continue in that form. 

“It is very unclear what the world, after federal funding, looks like for public media,” he said in an interview Monday afternoon at Vermont Public’s studios in Colchester. 

Like other public media stations, Vermont Public funds its programming in part with money appropriated by Congress to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit run independently from the federal government, which then distributes the money to individual outlets — as well as to NPR and PBS at the national level.

At the beginning of June, Trump asked lawmakers to claw back about $1 billion in funding they have already appropriated to support public media stations across the country over the next two years. Through that process, formally known as a “recission” request, the White House also asked lawmakers to pull back more than $8 billion for foreign aid programs that address global public health and hunger relief.

Conservative activists have been pushing to eliminate federal funding for public media stations for decades. Previous Republican presidents, including Trump, during his first term, have tried to do so, though so far, none have convinced Congress to go along.

This year’s measure passed narrowly through the House, largely along party lines, with most — though not all — Republicans in support. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in a statement earlier this year that NPR and PBS have “consistently and knowingly betrayed the public trust” and “routinely ignore facts to advance a far left agenda.” 

Singh acknowledged “a lot of people have that preconceived notion” that public media, especially at the national level, has a liberal bias. Vermont Public airs many nationally-syndicated NPR and PBS programs, though it also produces its own programs that focus on news and culture in Vermont and neighboring regions.

He said that notion largely stems from the stations’ charge to represent viewpoints that do not always make it into traditional, commercial media stories — meaning the stations’ content will, by design, avoid promoting any one set of views.

“We are not here to reinforce worldviews, and realistically, that’s how a lot of commercial media operates,” Singh said. Public media, he contended, is “going to challenge your worldview. And that is, I think, sometimes where the feedback that we get comes from.”

Vermont Public leans less on federal funding than many other public media stations around the country, particularly among rural states, Singh said. According to data from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, almost half of all rural stations rely on the feds for at least 25% of their revenue, while about 35 stations — many of them on Native American reservations — rely on the government for at least half of their revenue. 

Just shy of 60% of Vermont Public’s revenue comes from individual donations and business sponsorships, according to the station’s latest annual report. In addition to that revenue and federal support, the report states, the station funds about 25% of its yearly operational costs with income from a substantial investment fund. 

Much of that fund comes from the 2017 sale of a Vermont PBS broadcast license to the federal government, which totaled about $55 million. The public television station merged with Vermont Public Radio in 2021 under the combined name Vermont Public. 

According to Singh, the investment fund provides a “cushion” that keeps Vermont Public from operating at a deficit, so the station’s leaders would be hesitant to dip into the fund further to support its operations in the event the station loses its federal funding. 

Rather than turn to its investments, he said the station would likely launch a public fundraising campaign to make up the $2 million gap, if needed. 

Singh said Vermont Public has been in regular contact with the state’s congressional delegation about the impacts of a potential funding cut. One of Vermont’s U.S. senators, Democrat Peter Welch, spoke against the rescission proposal on the Senate floor earlier this month, pointing to how, among other roles, public radio stations can be the only source of information available during a natural disaster.

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, also a Democrat, has signed onto a memo filed in support of two federal lawsuits challenging the proposed public media cuts. The amicus brief argues funding losses could curtail the spread of emergency information across the country, among other points. The suits were brought by NPR and PBS, as well as local stations in Colorado and Minnesota. 

Public media stations provide “a source of local news at a time when we have news deserts all around the country, and the pressure on our local newspapers, on our local broadcasters, on our local radio stations is enormous,” Welch said on the Senate floor. “We need public broadcasting.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Public braces for cuts as Congress considers Trump’s ask to slash public media funding nationwide.

Vermont’s U.S. senators are backing legislation meant to prohibit President Donald Trump from using military force against Iran without first getting approval from Congress to do so — a possibility he has floated as fighting between Iran and Israel intensifies.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, on Monday introduced the “No War Against Iran Act,” which Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and six other Democratic senators have also signed onto. The bill would prohibit the use of federal funding for military force in or against Iran without specific congressional authorization, with some exceptions for existing federal laws.

“Our Founding Fathers entrusted the power of war and peace exclusively to the people’s elected representatives in Congress, and it is imperative that we make clear that the President has no authority to embark on another costly war without explicit authorization by Congress,” Sanders said in a press release issued this week.

The senators’ push comes as Trump has made repeated warnings, many of them not entirely clear, that the U.S. would join Israel in striking at Iran’s nuclear program. At the same time, Iran’s leader has vowed the U.S. would face retaliation for such a move. 

The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday that Trump has privately approved plans to attack Iran but held off on giving the final order to see if the country’s government would abandon its nuclear program. Trump told reporters at the White House earlier that day that, regarding a potential strike, “nobody knows what I’m going to do.” 

On Thursday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump would make a decision on potential military action in the next two weeks.

In statements this week, Vermont’s senators raised opposition not just to the possibility Trump would join in the conflict unilaterally, but also to the fact it could draw the U.S. into a prolonged war in the Middle East and hinder diplomatic solutions.

Sanders said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — whom Sanders has fiercely criticized in recent years — scuttled the possibility of a diplomatic solution to ending Iran’s nuclear program when Israel started attacking targets in Iran last week, adding the strikes “directly contravened the express wishes of the United States, which was seeking a diplomatic resolution to the long-standing tensions” over the program.

“The U.S. must make it clear that we will not be dragged into another Netanyahu war,” he said in a separate press release. “Along with the international community we should do everything possible to prevent an escalation of this conflict and bring the warring parties to the negotiating table.” 

Welch said in a video posted to his social media feeds on Wednesday that U.S. military involvement in Iran — with or without congressional approval — was the wrong path, pointing to past U.S. conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as examples.

Recent Israeli strikes targeting Iranian military leaders, as well as strikes that have killed civilians in the country’s capital, Tehran, “are telltale signs that the Netanyahu goal is not just about Iran’s nuclear program. It’s about regime change,” Welch said. 

“But you know what?” he continued. “We’ve learned, over and over again, that forcing regime change from outside in, in the Middle East, does not create lasting peace. Quite the opposite.”

For her part, Vermont’s sole delegate to the U.S. House, Democratic Rep. Becca Balint, said this week she was signing onto a resolution led by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Ca., that’s also aimed at forcing Trump to go through Congress before taking military action against Iran.

Balint wrote in a post on X that she was backing the measure “to prevent the United States from entering another forever war.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s US senators say Trump must consult Congress before striking Iran.

State legislators in Maine rejected a bill last month that would have created a state-level process, similar to one on the books in Vermont, for recognizing local groups as Native American tribes. Opponents of the bill pointed to the sharp criticism Vermont’s process has faced in recent years as one of the reasons to vote the legislation down.

“Take a look at what’s happened in Vermont,” said Rep. Adam Lee, a Democrat from Auburn, Maine, on the House floor in early May. The “contentious issue” in Vermont, he continued, has “harmed” Vermont’s relationship with tribes that are recognized at the federal level, suggesting that by passing the bill, Maine would be doing the same.

Debate over the proposal came as legislators in Vermont and New Hampshire were also considering — and also did not advance — other bills related to tribal identity. 

Vermont’s recognition process has been criticized by two Abenaki nations centered in Quebec, as well as researchers at the University of Vermont and in Canada. They maintain that many members of the four groups Vermont recognized as Abenaki in 2011 and 2012 are not Indigenous and, instead, have been appropriating Abenaki culture. 

The Vermont groups assert that they can, in fact, claim Abenaki identities and have repeatedly urged the First Nations to stay out of their affairs.

Odanak and W8linak First Nations have federal-level recognition from the Canadian government. That’s a different standard — and, the First Nations’ leaders say, a far more rigorous one — than the Vermont groups had to meet. With federal recognition, Odanak and W8linak can access greater government resources than the Vermont groups can in the U.S., and they can claim pieces of land as sovereign territory. (According to the First Nations’ tribal government, the symbol “8” used in “W8linak” represents a specific “o” sound, which is pronounced as it is in the word “on.”)

The state recognition proposal in Maine also faced opposition from the leaders of four Wabanaki nations located within the modern-day borders of that state — and which have federal-level recognition from the U.S. government. Those are the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Mi’kmaq Nation, Penobscot Nation and the Passamaquoddy Tribe.

Federal, state recognition

The Wabanaki Nations have longstanding ties to Abenaki people, including through a shared language. At the heart of disagreements over Vermont’s recognition process are contested narratives of who can claim legitimate descendency from historic Abenaki communities that were largely stripped of their homeland by European colonizers.

In a statement posted to Facebook in March, the Wabanaki Alliance — a nonprofit organization that advocates for the Wabanaki Nations’ sovereignty — pointed to Vermont’s process in urging Maine lawmakers to reject the bill proposed in that state.

“The creation of state recognition processes in other states has caused problems and frustrations, as in the notable example of Abenaki tribes in Vermont who could not meet the criteria for federal recognition, but who were still recognized by the State of Vermont,” the alliance wrote in the post. 

The statement also highlighted “years of objections and testimony from the recognized existing Abenaki Nations in Quebec” about the Vermont-based groups’ “legitimacy.”

Vermont lawmakers set up a state recognition process under a law, Act 107, passed in 2010. While not a carbon copy of the Vermont legislation, the bill considered in Maine this year would have, like in Vermont, given power to review applications for recognition to a commission appointed by the state’s governor. The commission, like in Vermont, could then advance a recommendation to the Legislature for further consideration. 

It did include identical language, in some areas, to Vermont’s existing law, including a requirement that “a substantial number” of the members of a group seeking state recognition are related to one another “by kinship and trace their ancestry to a kinship group through genealogy or other methods.” 

That’s a different — and less stringent — standard than the U.S. federal government’s recognition requirements, which demand, among other stipulations, that an applicant must have been identified as Native American “on a substantially continuous basis since 1900.” One of the groups in Vermont — the Abenaki Nation at Missisquoi — applied for federal recognition in the 1980s, but its application was rejected. 

The Maine proposal was closely linked to a yearslong push by another group called the Kineo St. John Tribe to get formal recognition from the state’s government. The Kineo St. John Tribe does not have federal-level tribal recognition, either.

(While the Wabanaki Nations have federal recognition, they receive fewer benefits and protections than other federally recognized tribes in the U.S. due to their unique status under existing state and federal law, according to the Wabanaki Alliance’s website.)

In May, Maine legislators also rejected a bill that would have granted the Kineo St. John Tribe state-level recognition without establishing a process that other groups could use in the future. Supporters of the bill, including Maine Rep. Jennifer Poirier, a Republican from Skowhegan, said acknowledgment of the group’s legitimacy was long overdue.

Leaders from the Wabanaki Nations were opposed to that legislation too. The Wabanaki Alliance’s executive director, Maulian Bryant, emphasized that the nations took issue more with establishing a state-level process than with the identity of the group seeking recognition. 

“The concerns within the Wabanaki Alliance are, you know, appropriating tribal identity and validity,” Bryant said during a Maine legislative committee hearing in March. “Maybe not the group in question right now. But, it could lead to groups down the road, basically, meeting a much lower threshold set by state government — and not having a whole lot of validity as tribal people.”

Efforts in Vermont, New Hampshire

Maine legislators’ consideration of the bills came as their counterparts in Vermont heard two sharply contrasting presentations at the Statehouse in Montpelier this year. One, hosted by Vermont Rep. Troy Headrick, I-Burlington, featured Odanak leaders and urged lawmakers to reconsider, if not undo, Vermont’s state recognition process. 

Headrick also introduced a Vermont House bill that would establish a task force to “review the validity” of the state’s past tribal recognitions — and determine whether any should be rescinded. The legislation, H.362, had a brief hearing in the House General & Housing Committee in early April but did not advance past the panel this year.

Odanak and W8linak leaders have backed Headrick’s effort, calling it “a significant step toward recognizing the true history and rights of the Abenaki people” in a press release. 

Later in April, the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs, which is the panel tasked with reviewing state recognition applications, held a presentation of its own at the Statehouse featuring leaders from Vermont’s state-recognized tribes. Those groups are the Missisquoi, the Elnu Abenaki, Nulhegan Abenaki, and Koasek Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation. 

The Vermont leaders — along with several researchers — urged legislators to reject Odanak and W8linak’s push to revisit the recognition process and, instead, spend time advocating for the members of the state-recognized tribes’ own needs and interests. 

Following that presentation, several Vermont House members, led by Georgia Republican Rep. Carolyn Branagan, introduced a resolution stating that the Legislature “reaffirms its support” for the state’s existing recognition process as well as for the “legitimacy” of the four groups that have already been recognized. 

The measure, J.R.H.4, had a hearing in the general and housing committee in May but didn’t make it past that point, either, before Vermont lawmakers adjourned for the year.

One of the speakers at the April panel was Don Stevens, chief of the Nulhegan group. Just a month prior, Stevens was in New Hampshire speaking to legislators about a bill under consideration in that state’s House — and that Stevens was keen to see pass.

The proposal, which also did not make it over the finish line this year, would have allowed only enrolled members of state- or federally-recognized tribes with “historic and contemporary” ties to New Hampshire to serve on the state’s existing Commission on Native American Affairs. That would include Stevens’ group, per the bill, as well as the three other Vermont-recognized tribes. 

The legislation would also have given the leaders of recognized tribes power to nominate people to serve on the commission, with the speaker of the New Hampshire House confirming appointments. Currently, the state’s governor appoints applicants to the majority of the seats on the panel, who hail “from the Native American communities throughout the state,” according to the commission’s procedures.

There are no groups, however, with state- or federal-level recognition based in New Hampshire today. The bill would have also called for a report back on whether New Hampshire should develop its own state tribal recognition process, like Vermont’s.

Stevens said he supported the new proposed nomination process because it would allow the Nulhegan group to better advocate for its hundreds of members who live in New Hampshire, even though the group is based in Vermont. He said the border is, in some ways, arbitrary for those people because ancestral Abenaki territory spans both states.

“I’m just saying, you know, recognize the fact that that’s our homeland,” Stevens said in an interview. “We need to be on the commission to represent our own people.”

Currently, some members of New Hampshire’s commission are part of groups that say they are Abenaki but aren’t recognized by a state or federal government, according to New Hampshire Public Radio. Several members of the commission spoke at the March hearing, too, and said they opposed the proposal because it would, in their view, cede authority over a New Hampshire panel to people who live in a different state.

Asked about that argument in an interview, Stevens said his goal was not to “go against” anyone in a neighboring state, because his and the other Vermont groups already have the legitimacy they need from Vermont’s state government. 

“We’re already protected,” he said of Vermont’s groups. “We’re already recognized.”

Headrick, the Burlington representative, sent an email in March to the sponsors of the New Hampshire bill suggesting they reconsider it, pointing to Odanak and W8linak’s assertions that the Vermont-based groups have not sufficiently demonstrated Abenaki ancestry.

“I strongly urge careful consideration to avoid repeating the mistakes made here in Vermont,” Headrick wrote in the message, which he shared with VTDigger.

The New Hampshire bill also drew opposition from the Quebec-based First Nations themselves. In a press release issued after state legislators decided not to advance the measure, the First Nations’ leaders framed that fact as a win.

‘’This decision demonstrates a growing awareness of Indigenous and identity-related issues as well as an understanding of the repercussions that actions such as those proposed in this bill can have on our rights, identity, and heritage,” Rick O’Bomsawin, the Odanak chief, said in the statement. “We hope that this stance will help protect our Nation and discourage acts of usurpation that affect our people.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘Take a look at what’s happened in Vermont’: Challenges to state’s tribal recognition process loomed over Maine legislative debate this year.

*Cue “Closing Time” by Semisonic*

After weeks of contentious negotiations over this year’s landmark education bill, H.454, which the House and Senate both passed on Monday, Vermont’s 2025 legislative session has come to an end. Lt. Gov. John Rodgers brought down the gavel in the Senate, for the final time, just before 7:45 p.m., while House Speaker Jill Krowinski did the same about an hour later.

“It’s actually early though, right? I mean, we’ve had some pretty late-night years before,” Gov. Phil Scott joked to senators in his closing remarks Monday to the chamber. (That’s easy to say, I thought, for a guy who spent the morning hanging out with his buddies down in Boston.)

With lawmakers clearing out their desks and heading home for the summer, Final Reading is signing off, too, until the start of the 2026 legislative session next January. 

But before we go, some thanks are in order. Putting together an originally-reported newsletter, every day of the session — on top of the more traditional news stories our readers expect — is no easy task. While you’re used to seeing my byline, and that of my fearless Statehouse colleague, Ethan Weinstein, there are a host of others who make this work possible. 

A number of VTDigger reporters took the lead on issues of Final Reading this year, including Carly Berlin, Emma Cotton (who’s now, in fact, an editor), Peter D’Auria and Habib Sabet. Interns Klara Bauters and Olivia Gieger also pitched in. Meanwhile, ace photographer Glenn Russell captured many of the moments — like this one — that defined this year’s session.

Kristen Fountain, senior editor on the politics desk, wrangled all the bits and bobs of each day’s newsletter, often writing copy and tracking key bills herself. Neal Goswami, VTDigger’s managing editor, brought his years of experience covering the Statehouse to the editing process.

Yardain Amron, VTDigger’s night editor, is the one who turned the plain text of a Google Doc into the email that landed in your inbox every night. Taylor Haynes, the newsroom’s audience and product director, made sure that email looks as good as it does. Natalie Williams, senior editor for the digital team, helped us deliver the most engaging, accessible product possible.

And of course, we’re grateful to all of you — our more than 7,000 subscribers — who turned to this newsletter, and do so year after year, to stay on top of the news under the Golden Dome.

If you care enough about how Vermont works to read this newsletter, then you know that clear, fact-based reporting on government can be hard to come by these days. Vermont has lost 75% of its journalism jobs over the past quarter-century. Across the country, dedicated Statehouse reporting has long been in decline, too, but recent research shows that nonprofit newsrooms — like VTDigger — are helping to buck that trend. It’s something we can only do, though, with our readers’ support. 

So, if you don’t already, please consider making a contribution to our newsroom to support Final Reading — and all of the VTDigger journalism you rely on to make sense of our state. Thank you!

— Shaun Robinson

So, about that voice vote

Some House lawmakers, particularly those opposed to the year’s landmark education reform package, were pretty pissed that the chamber took arguably the year’s most important vote by voice. 

I’m talking about the vote on H.454, which, when no one asked for a roll call, House Speaker Jill Krowinski conducted by weighing the volume of the spoken (or bellowed out) “Yeas” versus “Nays.”

Rep. Kate Logan, P/D-Burlington, leader of the Progressive caucus, said she didn’t think the speaker intentionally rushed the vote, but she still took umbrage with the process. 

“I do think they took advantage of the fact that we all kind of froze after a complicated procedural vote,” Logan said. 

Logan argued that while H.454 had the votes to pass, a majority of Democrats would have voted against it — a possibility that can’t be known given the lack of roll call.

In order for the vote to be reconsidered, a lawmaker who voted “yes” would’ve needed to make a motion that was then voted on and approved. But no one made that motion. 

“I did not clearly hear or understand the question, did not have an opportunity to ask questions or debate, and did not vote because I was unsure of what she had said and what we were voting on,” Rep. Ela Chapin, D-East Montpelier, wrote in a text. She did not support H.454.

“I have not experienced anything like it in my three years as a state representative,” Chapin wrote.

Burlington independent Rep. Troy Headrick made his frustration with the voice vote known on the House floor and again in an email yesterday to Democratic leadership.

“As you know, this was arguably the most consequential bill of the session, both in scope and in its political sensitivity,” Headrick wrote. “While I understand this may fall within the boundaries of procedural correctness, I believe it represents a misuse of authority.”

Conor Kennedy, Krowinski’s chief of staff, said in an interview that representatives’ frustration was “misguided.”

“For the people who are upset, I’m kind of like, literally anyone there could have done it,” he said, referring to making the request for a roll call. 

Kennedy noted the speaker allowed people to share their opinions on the bill during a later motion, and any representative can make their position known to their constituents. He said the speaker’s staff reviewed a recording of the floor and found Krowinski allowed a normal amount of time to pass before calling the vote by voice. 

“For me there has to be a little bit more self reflection rather than placing this blame on the speaker,” he said. “You can be frustrated about a piece of legislation, but I would caution us about how that frustration is directed.”

— Ethan Weinstein

In the know

Just days after a gunman shot and killed one state legislator and injured another in Minnesota, security was tighter than normal at the Vermont Statehouse on Monday. Access to the building, typically available unchecked through a number of different entrances, was allowed only through a door by the loading dock, where Capitol Police were screening bags with a little-used X-ray machine and wanding down entrants with a metal detector.

State Rep. Melissa Hortman — the Minnesota House’s top Democrat and its former speaker — and her husband, Mark, were fatally shot at their home Saturday. Meanwhile, Minnesota Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were shot and wounded at their home, too. The gunman has since been apprehended.

The shootings, which Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has said were politically motivated, weighed heavily on Vermont legislators in recent days. Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, who said in a statement over the weekend that she and Hortman were friends, called the shootings “unthinkable” in remarks on the floor Monday morning.

“There are really no words to describe how tragic this event was,” she said, appearing to tear up.

— Shaun Robinson

Plans for the state to build a secure youth treatment facility are “on hold” after officials withdrew a proposal in Vergennes, according to the Vermont Department of Buildings and General Services.

The news came a day after state leaders informed advocates for justice-involved youth and other stakeholders that Vermont would consider a variety of options in its effort to build a new facility, five years after the closure of the scandal-plagued Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center.

Read more about the decision to reconsider the facilities’ location here. 

— Ethan Weinstein and Charlotte Oliver

Don’t be a stranger

While the session is over, our coverage of government and politics is year-round. If you’ve got tips, scoops, story ideas or anything in-between, be sure to let our reporters know. We’ll be keeping tabs on the many bills lawmakers approved this year, with a focus on what works — and what, perhaps, does not. You can find the right person to contact, and their emails, on our staff page.

We’ll catch you on the flip side.

— The Final Reading team

Read the story on VTDigger here: Final Reading: That’s all, folks, for Vermont’s 2025 legislative session .

Updated at 11:11 p.m.

MONTPELIER — The Vermont Legislature adjourned its 2025 session Monday night after approving a bill that would make generational changes to the state’s education system. The Senate gaveled out at 7:37 p.m., while the House gaveled out at 8:35 p.m.

Monday’s adjournment brought an end to a session that was well into overtime. For months, lawmakers had said the last week of May was their deadline for finishing their work, including on the education bill, H.454. But when negotiations faltered on Friday, May 30, legislative leaders punted on adjournment until Monday, June 16 — a day they’d already set aside for potential votes on vetoes by Republican Gov. Phil Scott.

In the end, neither chamber’s Democratic leaders attempted to override any vetoes on Monday, even after Scott last week rebuked bills that would have restructured the state’s homelessness response system — a stated priority for leadership — and that would have granted supervisors in Vermont’s judiciary the right to form a union.

The lack of veto overrides was as good a symbol as any of the partisan dynamic that shaped this year’s session — and made it stand out compared to recent years. While Democrats had a majority of seats in both chambers, they lacked the supermajorities that, in the past, allowed them to enact bills regardless of the governor’s support.

In closing remarks Monday night, legislative leaders, and Scott, were quick to describe a policymaking dynamic they said was more cross-partisan than in the past.

“I want to start by telling you how much I appreciate the time and effort you’ve made this session — and the effort the majority has made — to hear my point of view and the view of the minority,” Scott told senators in remarks shortly before the chamber adjourned.

House Speaker Jill Krowinski, meanwhile, said in an interview after the House gaveled out that she had spoken to the governor “more this session than we ever had in any previous session,” which the Burlington Democrat said “really helped to make a difference.” 

Both chambers adjourned until Jan. 6, 2026. But they also approved a measure that would allow House and Senate leadership to call their colleagues back into session before then to respond to potential future federal funding cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration. (Gov. Scott also has the authority, per the state’s Constitution, to call legislators back if he wants.)

Over the first two weeks of June, a joint panel of House and Senate members haggled over their differences on the education package, both with one another and with Scott’s administration. Meanwhile, both chambers held a number of brief floor sessions to head off final adjournment until the negotiators reached a deal. After days of stagnated negotiations last week, that agreement finally came on Friday, June 13. 

Then on Monday, following hours of debate across both chambers — both on the floor and in closed-door meetings — the House and Senate approved that compromise version of the bill, which would fundamentally change how the state governs and funds its K-12 schools. The package now heads to Gov. Scott, who is expected to sign it.

Legislators also approved several other bills Monday, including an expansion of who must file campaign finance disclosure forms and a new disclaimer requirement for certain images of political candidates that are generated using artificial intelligence.

The House also signed off on a measure, already approved by the Senate last month, that would require school districts to ban students from using cellphones from arrival to dismissal. That legislation is included in a bill, H.480, which proposes a number of smaller changes to the state’s education laws as well.

Most years, one of the Legislature’s last acts before adjournment is to approve a budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year. But the House and Senate delivered this year’s proposal, for the 2026 fiscal year, to Scott’s desk weeks ago, and the governor had little criticism when he signed the roughly $9 billion spending package into law.

The budget sets aside about $75 million from the state’s main operating fund to reduce the property taxes people will pay to support public education in the upcoming year. It also earmarks about $15 million for a slate of proposed tax credits that would benefit low-income families, workers and veterans, as well as retirees and people receiving military pensions.

The policy language establishing the tax credits is part of another bill, S.51, to which the Senate gave final approval Monday. The House had signed off on it last month.

The 2026 budget bill, H.493, directs Scott’s administration to use tens of millions of dollars in anticipated state revenue surpluses to plug potential future federal funding reductions. Some of the deepest cuts, to the state’s Medicaid program and nutritional benefits for lower-income Vermonters, could come in federal spending legislation being debated in Congress to fund President Donald Trump’s agenda.

There was no consensus, though, on another piece of state spending legislation this year — the annual mid-year “budget adjustment.” In March and April, legislators sent Scott two different versions of the largely technical, accounting bill, but he vetoed both over their inclusion of funding to extend certain households’ eligibility to stay in state-sponsored motel rooms into the warmer months. The governor then issued an executive order allowing some, though not all, of those people to stay in the program.

That executive order is set to expire on June 30, though — and Scott’s office has said he does not plan to extend it. That means more than 300 highly vulnerable households are slated to lose eligibility for the motel voucher program by the end of the month.

Legislative leaders did not attempt to override those two earlier vetoes, either.

After months of back and forth with Scott’s administration, lawmakers also passed — and the governor last week signed — a sweeping housing package, S.127, into law. Among many other measures, the legislation allows municipalities and developers to borrow money for infrastructure like sidewalks and sewers for a housing project — and then use the increased property tax revenue from the homes to help pay back the debt.

The law also adds citizenship and immigration status to the list of protected classes in Vermont’s fair housing laws, prohibiting discrimination on those grounds when someone is seeking to rent or buy.

In remarks Monday, legislative leaders also touted several bills — which Scott has since approved — that are aimed at reducing the state’s high cost of health care and increasing oversight of its hospital network.

One measure, H.266, caps the amount that health care providers in the state can charge for outpatient prescription drugs, which are medications administered by injection or IV that are often used to treat cancers and autoimmune diseases. 

Lawmakers also enacted S.126, which sets out the development of a “statewide health care delivery plan.” It also directs the Green Mountain Care Board to implement reference-based pricing — a system that tethers the prices that health care providers charge to the equivalent rates that Medicare allows, among many other measures.

They approved, too, a measure that will use funds appropriated to the state Treasurer’s Office to erase $100 million in Vermonters’ medical debt. The legislation, S.27, also prohibits credit reporting agencies from taking into account people’s medical debt when determining their credit scores.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Legislature adjourns 2025 session after weeks of debate on education reform.

The House and Senate both passed a slimmed-down version of a bill that would make myriad changes to the state’s election procedures Monday — even after the legislation, in a different form, seemed unlikely to advance when legislators last convened in full at the end of May.

Election-related bills are often contentious — “because nobody loves to debate elections more than elected officials,” said Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, on the Senate floor just before the chamber approved the bill, H.474, Monday morning. Later in the day, the House passed the legislation, too, sending it to Gov. Phil Scott for his consideration.

That outcome was far from certain, though, after Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, tied the bill’s fate in the Senate to an unrelated Burlington charter change proposal he was sponsoring. (The election bill had cleared the House in March.) Baruth told Rutland Republican Sen. Brian Collamore, who chairs the Senate committee that was reviewing the election bill, not to advance it to the floor unless the charter change advanced out of a House committee.

Fast forward two weeks, and the charter change, which would ban guns from bars and other establishments in the city that serve alcohol, hasn’t moved — but the election bill has. 

Among many other measures, the election bill would require more people to file campaign finance disclosure information and prohibit candidates who lose a primary election from running in the general election under another party, or as an independent. It would also require local officials to perform an audit of voter checklists in House and Senate districts that span multiple towns, a direct response to errors that plagued a Bennington County House race last fall.

Before approving the bill, the Senate stripped a number of measures from the bill, though, including a study of using ranked-choice voting for Vermont’s presidential primaries. Collamore said on the floor that, with the bill facing dim prospects last month, he asked the Secretary of State’s Office — a key backer of the bill — for a list of “absolute, must-have provisions” from the many that cleared the House.

The result of that conversation, Collamore told his colleagues, was the “much-thinned” draft legislators approved Monday.

Rep. Matt Birong, a Vergennes Democrat who chairs the House Government Operations and Military Affairs Committee — which was reviewing the Burlington charter change bill — said in an interview Monday that the city’s proposal, and the election bill, were now “politically bifurcated.” Birong, along with Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas, had previously panned the election bill’s holdup.

Birong added, “the attention it received from the media helped people in the public understand what was going on and helped get this elections bill separated from that political desire,” referring to a VTDigger story late last month on Baruth’s move to link the two measures.

Asked about the legislation Monday afternoon, Baruth said he was “never opposed to the election bill,” but he was frustrated by how the charter change hadn’t moved forward despite getting nearly 90% support at the polls on Town Meeting Day earlier this year. 

“I wanted equal consideration given to the voters of Burlington. It became clear that that wasn’t going to happen,” Baruth said in an interview. “But we wanted to make sure (town) clerks had what they needed … and there was still time to do that.”

— Shaun Robinson

In the know

The Vermont Senate passed the year’s landmark education bill late Monday afternoon on a 17-12 vote, a majority built on strong Republican support.

H.454 would entirely transform Vermont’s education funding and governance landscape over several years, consolidating school districts and shifting the balance of power over district budgets from the local to the state level. 

The House approved the proposal via a voice vote later in the evening.

Read more about the Senate vote here, and details about the House vote later at VTDigger.org. 

— Ethan Weinstein

Toward the end of last week, Gov. Scott signed into law S.69, a bill that aims to make social media platforms safer for minors.

Known as the Kids Code by advocates, the law requires social media companies like Tiktok and Instagram to adjust their design codes for users under 18 by modifying certain algorithms and features to make them less addictive. Under the new law, social media platforms and other web sites will also have to strengthen default privacy settings for young users.

However, it’s likely the law will face headwinds in the courts, where Big Tech lobbying groups have attempted to tank similar regulations passed in other states in a flurry of litigation. Lawmakers have said Vermont’s Kid Code was crafted with those cases in mind and would likely withstand legal scrutiny.  

​​”With ongoing lawsuits in other states, I recognize this new law will likely face a legal challenge,” Scott said in a statement upon signing the bill. “But I’m hopeful with the enactment of this law delayed until January 1, 2027, it will allow enough time to provide clarity and change the law if necessary.”

– Habib Sabet

On the move

The House on Monday passed S.23, a bill that would require certain publishers of images  generated using artificial intelligence that depict political candidates to also publish a disclosure stating that the content is fake. These “deepfakes,” as they’re often called, would have to be published within 90 days of an election in order for the disclosure requirement to apply. The bill still needs a final sign-off from the Senate, though, before it would go to Gov. Phil Scott for his consideration.

— Shaun Robinson

Meanwhile, the Senate approved a conference committee report Monday for S.51, which would set out tax credits benefiting low-income families, workers and veterans, as well as retirees and people receiving military pensions. Last month, Senate conferees sided with the House’s version of the bill, leaving out their colleagues’ previous proposal for an unpaid caregiver tax credit — a fact that drew some resentment on the floor Monday. 

The package, which is expected to cost about $15 million, will now head to the governor.

— Shaun Robinson

Visit our 2025 bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following. 

Canada-bound

On July Fourth, Rep. Mari Cordes is leaving Vermont for Nova Scotia in a move that also marks her resignation as a representative. “It’s the day of my own independence,” Cordes, D-Bristol, said Monday in a somber, shaky voice. 

As a queer person, a senior and a nurse at the University of Vermont Medical Center, Cordes had a whirlwind of personal and political reasons that spurred her decision to resign and relocate, she said. 

Read more about her decision to move to Canada here. 

— Charlotte Oliver

Correction: A previous version of this newsletter misstated the status of S.23, the bill that would require a disclaimer for artificially-generated media.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Final Reading: A sweeping election bill gets new life in the Vermont Senate.

National anti-abortion advocates and two Vermont-based crisis pregnancy centers have dropped a 2023 federal lawsuit against the state over a law passed the same year that made the centers, specifically, subject to existing state laws targeting false and misleading advertising. The two centers, and others like them around the country, provide counseling and some basic obstetrics from an anti-abortion perspective.

The end of the case came just two weeks after lawmakers made substantial changes to the legal language that prompted the suit in the first place. Gov. Phil Scott signed the changes into law on May 13 as part of a broader package that supporters say will bolster protections for reproductive and gender-affirming health care in the state.

The legal group spearheading the suit, Alliance Defending Freedom, claimed in a press release last week that lawmakers amended the 2023 measure — which passed with overwhelming House and Senate support — “as a result” of the group’s litigation. 

But in interviews this week, legislative leaders said that framing wasn’t accurate.

The lawsuit’s plaintiffs included Aspire Now, a pregnancy center in Williston; Branches Pregnancy Resource Center, another in Brattleboro; and National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, a nationwide anti-abortion advocacy nonprofit. 

Lawyers for the plaintiffs described the 2023 law as “viewpoint discrimination” against the centers. They argued it ran afoul of protections granted by the First Amendment and impinged on the centers’ ability to effectively serve people seeking their support.

Pro-abortion rights advocates, including backers of the 2023 law, have accused crisis pregnancy centers of advertising in a misleading way that lures in patients considering an abortion in hopes of persuading them to change course once they’re in the door.

Some of what the plaintiffs took issue with in the 2023 law came in several pages of legislative “findings,” including the assertion that some crisis pregnancy centers “have promoted patently false or biased medical claims about abortion, pregnancy, contraception, and reproductive health care providers.” 

The law went on to state that a crisis pregnancy center whose advertising was “untrue or clearly designed to mislead the public about the nature of services provided” would be liable for committing “an unfair and deceptive act and practice in commerce.”

But the measure enacted last month stripped from state law the specific references to crisis pregnancy centers added two years ago. It also nixed lawmakers’ findings that the centers sometimes provide misleading or outright inaccurate information.

Instead, the new law replaced references to the pregnancy centers with more general language stating “any person” who makes false or misleading claims about health care services they provide is subject to the existing laws designed to protect consumers.

While lawyers for the centers said the changes were prompted by their lawsuit, Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast — who co-sponsored this year’s law and chairs the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, which reviewed it — disputed that.

Lyons said in an interview Tuesday that she thought it was a good idea to broaden the language passed in 2023 to encompass more health care providers than just crisis pregnancy centers — but that idea had nothing to do with the legal challenge. She said she had concerns that preceded the lawsuit with how the language approved in 2023 singled out one type of health care provider. 

“I’m very glad that we did it. But it was not in response to a lawsuit,” said Lyons, who also helmed the same committee in 2023, speaking about the changes in this year’s law, S.28. “We want to ensure that anyone who is working in this arena has high ethical standards — and adheres to those ethical standards.”

She also noted crisis pregnancy centers would still be subject to false and misleading advertising statutes under the latest law, even though they aren’t named explicitly.

Vermont House Majority Leader Lori Houghton, D-Essex Junction, who chaired the House Health Care Committee in 2023 and still sits on the panel this year, also pushed back against the characterization that the changes were prompted by the lawsuit, saying, “I do not agree with it at all.”

Houghton added that legislators heard testimony from a number of different witnesses about the changes — some for, and others against — before approving them. Supporters included Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, which wrote in a late March memo to the House committee that it was “pleased to see these standards elevated for all medical professionals.”

The majority leader noted, though, she was “personally disappointed” that some of the legislative “findings” about crisis pregnancy centers were removed from the law this year. 

Alliance Defending Freedom did not respond to a request for comment this week about its decision to drop the lawsuit. The conservative, Christian legal group is based in Arizona and played a key role in the successful effort to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. 

Crisis pregnancy centers have expanded their reach in recent years as abortion clinics have been shuttering at the same time. The centers ramped up activity after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. Without a nationwide right to an abortion and with dozens of states outlawing or restricting access to the procedure, the centers have proliferated to fill the void. With that expanded reach, though, has come intensifying scrutiny of the facilities, particularly for their advertising strategies. 

There are seven such facilities in Vermont, according to the Crisis Pregnancy Center Map, a project of the University of Georgia.

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark’s office had been defending the state in the lawsuit. Clark wrote in an emailed statement Tuesday she was “pleased” the suit had been pulled.

She also signalled support for the changes enacted this month, saying that when she testified to legislators as the 2023 law was being written, she supported “a broader bill that more closely aligns with the changes” legislators made recently.

“I will always support strong consumer protection laws that prohibit lying, misrepresentation, and obfuscation across all sectors of Vermont’s economy,” Clark wrote.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Anti-abortion advocates drop federal lawsuit against Vermont after lawmakers nix language targeting crisis pregnancy centers.

“It’s complicated.”

That’s what I told a group of friends over the weekend when they asked me, with some concern for my sleep schedule, whether the Legislature had adjourned at the end of last week. Because while legislators say most of their work is done for the year, this year’s landmark policy effort — reforming how the state’s schools are funded and governed — is still a work in progress.

House and Senate leadership, and Gov. Phil Scott’s administration, have said they need a bit more time to work out a deal on the education bill, H.454. They’ve now set their sights on June 16, the day that legislators had previously set aside for votes to override potential Scott vetoes, to reach a consensus on the education bill, along with several other bills left outstanding. 

Until then, the plan is to hold brief floor sessions featuring little, if any, real business — known as “token sessions” — in order to essentially head off final adjournment until a deal is reached.

“We did not get to the finish line, but that’s alright,” Baruth said Saturday, addressing nobody in particular as he presided over an empty Senate chamber during a token session. “It’s an extremely complicated area of policy work.”

The Senate held another token session Tuesday, while the House did the same Monday.

As for the real work — in the conference committee for H.454 — there were small signs of activity following Friday night’s dysfunction. Over the weekend, Baruth, Scott and House Speaker Jill Krowinski issued a rare joint statement in what appeared to be an effort to reassure Vermonters they “remain committed to working together to find a path forward in the coming weeks that achieves better outcomes for our kids at a rate taxpayers can afford.” 

Scott has previously said he won’t let legislators go home until they put a bill on his desk.

Tuesday afternoon, the conference committee members from the House sent a letter to their Senate colleagues — CCing Scott’s team — outlining a tentative plan. House members will bring forward a “further proposal to consider next week,” allowing time for legislative staff and the administration to work through the plan’s details. 

The new proposal will address “the remaining areas of disagreement,” the representatives wrote, and they said they would be available June 12 and 13 — next Thursday and Friday — to meet and deliberate in the publicly-accessible conference committee. 

As of Tuesday late afternoon, it was not immediately clear whether that schedule would work for the Senate. 

Beyond H.454, there are several other bills lawmakers expect to take action on later this month. That includes H.480, the miscellaneous education bill, which has a measure that would ban cell phone use in schools. The legislation could, also, provide a vehicle for education-related policy that doesn’t wind up in the ed reform bill. It’s currently on the House’s calendar for action.

There’s also S.51, now sitting on the Senate’s calendar, which includes tax benefits for low-income families, workers and veterans, as well as retirees and people receiving military pensions. In a conference committee late Friday, Senate members sided with the House’s version of the bill, leaving out a previous proposal for an unpaid caregiver tax credit.

And there’s another bill on the House calendar that would, broadly, require people to attach a disclaimer to AI-generated content featuring political candidates that they publish within 90 days of an election. The bill, S.23, which has already passed the Senate, is up for third reading.

As for your favorite Statehouse newsletter, we’ll be back in your inbox when the full Legislature return for a complete day of action — and sign off, for good, whenever they do.

— Shaun Robinson, with reporting from Ethan Weinstein

On the move

Gov. Scott on Monday signed the state’s annual transportation funding and policy bill, H.488, into law. The legislation lays out new rules for conduct along Vermont’s rail trails and paves the way for the state’s largest public transportation agency, Green Mountain Transit, to transfer much of its service in rural areas to other providers, among other changes.

— Shaun Robinson

Scott also approved H.401, a bill that broadens exemptions for small home-based food manufacturers from annual fees and other requirements. The law, which goes into effect on July 1, increases the exemption threshold for cottage food producers from $10,000 in annual sales to $30,000 per year. Those businesses that fall under the new cottage food producer definitions who want to take advantage of the exemptions will need to attest to meeting training requirements set by the Vermont Department of Health. 

— Kristen Fountain

Visit our 2025 bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following. 

Kudos

I’m an AI skeptic. But I need to shout out goldendomevt.com and its AI-generated transcripts of the Vermont Legislature’s committee meetings and floor sessions. Kind of a game changer for those of us trying to keep track of a dozen things at once. 

— Ethan Weinstein

While you’re here…

If this session’s Final Reading helped you make sense of the Statehouse — or even, if it just made you laugh after a long day — please consider supporting it by making a one-time or monthly donation to VTDigger. We can’t do this work without you!

— The Final Reading team

Read the story on VTDigger here: Final Reading: In the Vermont Legislature, it’s now a game of hurry up and wait.

MONTPELIER — After a drawn-out day of disagreements and false starts, the Vermont Legislature bailed on its plan to wrap up business for the year on Friday, failing to come to a deal, at least for now, on this year’s landmark education reform bill.

So strained were the talks, the House and Senate couldn’t even immediately agree on when negotiations would continue.

The Senate gaveled out for the night shortly after 11 p.m. Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, told his colleagues that coming to an agreement needed more time, and the Senate would instead gavel back in at 2 p.m. Saturday.

“We’re going home now,” Baruth said. 

Soon after, around 11:30 p.m., the House adjourned until Monday at noon. From there, House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, said the chamber would be holding brief sessions without taking any actions, known as “token sessions,” until mid-June. That’s when legislators had previously penciled in to hold votes to override potential vetoes by Gov. Phil Scott.  

“We’ve been putting compromises on the table all day, trying to find a path forward,” Krowinski said in an interview after ending her chamber’s business for the night. “This is a top priority for this legislative session, and we have to get it right. And at the end of the day, everyone was feeling like it needed more time.”

Legislative leaders said they expect the joint House and Senate panel hashing out the education bill, H.454, to continue meeting in the coming weeks, though the schedule was not immediately clear.

Both chambers signed off on a handful of other bills Friday, including sweeping housing legislation that would set out a program to finance infrastructure around new developments, a bill that would make it harder for neighbors to sue farmers over impacts the farm may have on their properties, and other bills on motor vehicles, cannabis and drug price caps.

However, the outcome leaves the session’s highest-profile work unfinished. Following an election where property tax rates drove voters, leading to a wave of Republican victories in the House and Senate, Democratic legislative leadership pledged to heed voters’ call for a more affordable education system. 

Yet four months in, the path toward that future state remained murky.

The parties began Friday closer than they ended it. Early in the day, the House and Senate conference committee members appeared to reach some tentative agreements on H.454. But as the hours wore on, negotiations — at least in public — faltered. The committee had been unable to lock in key details. Left unsettled was which funding formula to use, what to do about school choice and private schools and how to limit spending before school districts consolidate down the road. 

Meetings of the conference committee — three senators and three house members — were continuously postponed. Legislators and legislative staff scrambled in and out of rooms. Lobbyists lingered in the halls. As the conference committee drifted further and further from either chamber’s original position, the possibility of explaining the hugely complex and fast-changing piece of legislation to 180 lawmakers looked near-impossible. 

The vast majority of lawmakers dawdled as the conference committee worked in fits and starts, with people playing cards and sipping drinks throughout the Statehouse. 

The House, Senate and Scott have made education reform the year’s key issue. All three parties agreed on the need to consolidate school districts and transition the state to a new funding formula. But for months, the parties have reached little consensus on the intricacies and the timeline of that generational transformation. 

Baruth had told his chamber around 10 p.m. that agreement still looked possible.

“It’s frustrating,” he said on the floor, describing the delay, “but the way I think about it is, your constituents and my constituents sent us here for this night because they want us to do our work, they want us to finish it up, pay strict attention and then be done and go home.”

That proved overly optimistic.

Read the story on VTDigger here: With education bill at an impasse, Vermont Legislature kicks the can on adjournment.

MONTPELIER — A bill that would make a host of changes to the state’s election laws, including an expansion of who must file campaign finance disclosures, appeared to be facing dim prospects Friday — even though the House approved the legislation in March.

The reason the bill, H.474, hadn’t yet advanced in the Senate, on what could be the final day of this year’s legislative session?

“He’s right there,” Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas told VTDigger at the Statehouse Friday afternoon, pointing at Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, as he walked by in a hallway.

According to the secretary, Baruth told Rutland Republican Sen. Brian Collamore, chair of the Senate Government Operations Committee, which has been reviewing the elections bill, not to advance it to the floor unless the House Government Operations Committee advanced another, unrelated bill — a Burlington charter change proposal on which Baruth is the primary sponsor.

Rep. Matt Birong, D-Vergennes, said the House panel he chairs didn’t have the votes to pass out the Burlington bill, S.131, which would ban guns from bars and other venues that serve alcohol in the city.  The Senate passed the measure last month, though Gov. Phil Scott has signaled he does not support it.

“We were told that the (elections) bill would not move until the Burlington charter” advanced in the House, Birong said in an interview Friday on the House floor.

Baruth also lives in Burlington and represents the city in the Senate.

Asked about Copeland Hanzas and Birong’s comments Friday evening, Baruth said, “I wouldn’t repeat private conversations” and contended that he “wouldn’t link” the charter change with the elections bill.

Baruth said the elections bill wasn’t moving forward in the Senate because lawmakers ran out of time to take it up amid other competing proposals. Legislative leaders had been planning to adjourn for the year late Friday, though it wasn’t certain they would. 

“Burlington has waited 12 years for that charter — and it’s crazy that it’s being held up in the House,” the pro tem added. The city also attempted to get a ban on guns in bars approved by the Legislature in 2014, but wasn’t successful.

Copeland Hanzas and Deputy Secretary of State Lauren Hibbert were both at the Statehouse Friday pushing to get the election bill over the finish line, Copeland Hanzas said. As it passed the House, the bill also includes a slate of measures she said would improve how municipal clerks can run local elections.

Copeland Hanzas accused Baruth of playing “political gamesmanship.”

“The important reforms that are in that elections bill are going to benefit every single municipal clerk across the state, and benefit our office and make it easier for us to ensure that we have fair, secure and error-free elections,” she said. “And so for one person to stand in the way of it is, really, unacceptable.”

Copeland Hanzas added that it’s possible the bill would not advance in a similar form during next year’s session, in 2026, because legislators typically try to avoid making many changes to election laws in a year when they, themselves, would be on the ballot.

Collamore, the Senate Government Operations Committee chair, said Friday that he believed his committee would have passed out the election bill with four of its five members in support. He declined to say whether Baruth, the pro tem, had influenced the bill’s fate.

“I won’t comment on that,” he said in an interview Friday evening. 

Birong said some Democrats on his House committee were concerned the charter change would be confusing if guns were prohibited in bars in one city, but nowhere else in the state.

Gov. Phil Scott had expressed similar concerns with the bill and told reporters last week at a press conference he would veto it if it reached his desk. Legislators would be unlikely to succeed on a vote to override any potential veto this year. 

Birong had strong words for the pro tem, as well.

“I find it very discouraging that, especially in this day and age where we’re trying to do everything we can to maintain the sanctity of our elections, that a charter request from the pro tem’s district would jeopardize such an essential piece of legislation,” he said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Election bill falters at 11th hour after Senate president ties its fate to Burlington gun bill he backed.