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.
