Legislators debate fees, tax yields, education funding, health and regulatory changes across multiple committees
Lawmakers across several House and Senate committees on March 19 reviewed amendments, fiscal notes and policy changes that would affect fees, state revenues, education funding, program appropriations and regulatory authority.
Finance (Senate Finance — 13:15)
The Senate Finance Committee discussed a range of measures that included fee increases, penalties and program costs tied to education and cemetery vandalism responses. Committee members reviewed language on a tobacco-related retailer fee that had been proposed at $1,000 and was recommended to be lowered in amendment language discussed in the meeting; speakers referenced moving the figure toward a $150 range and also referenced a $1.50 amount in connection with an inflationary adjustment. The committee discussed reinstating a penalty for false identification related to tobacco sales and described an administrative penalty approach for juvenile offenders who fraudulently represent age.
Committee witnesses addressed bill S.64, a scope-of-practice expansion for optometrists to authorize advanced procedures. The director of the Office of Professional Regulation testified in support of the scope expansion and described prior studies and Sunrise reports under existing professional regulation statutes.
Members discussed a proposed contribution tied to burials and cremations — a $5 contribution that every agency would remit to a preservation fund, with an exemption for persons receiving financial assistance for burial or cremation. The committee reviewed statutory collection mechanics, including an annual reporting and check submission process and a January 15 reporting deadline referenced in the discussion, and discussed procedures for disbursement and reporting where funds are used to repair vandalized cemetery property. The committee also reviewed application and final-report requirements, including a 90-day final-report timeline after disbursement and provisions for returning unused funds.
Fiscal office staff presented an estimate that a change enabling up to 14 students to access universal pre-K through a district arrangement could increase education fund expenditures starting in fiscal 2028 by an estimated maximum of about $60,000; members noted that increased education fund spending would require adjustments to homestead or nonhomestead property tax rates.
Committee discussion also covered statutory definitions and mental-state elements for vandalism, and administrative procedures for grant disbursement and accounting.
Senate Appropriations (14:30)
Senate Appropriations considered amendments that would remove or alter appropriation and tax-credit sections from bills under review. Members described an amendment striking Section Two of a housing-related bill that as introduced would have extended and increased annual tax-credit authorizations for the Vermont Housing Finance Agency; the amendment removes that section in whole. The committee reviewed a range of other amendments that would change authority and fee structures across programs.
Appropriations members discussed a proposed cannabis-related package and the transfer of hemp program authority from the Agency of Agriculture to the Cannabis Control Board, noting changes to fee structures for growers, processors and hemp-infused product licensing, including increases for some processor fees and the establishment of a fee for hemp-infused products with more than 0.4 milligrams THC.
Committee members debated language and funding tied to a universal after-school and summer grant program described in S.500. An amendment under discussion would reduce a proposed administrative set‑aside from $500,000 to $250,000 and would direct agencies to create a simplified application and reporting process intended to reduce barriers for small community organizations such as rural libraries. Appropriations members deferred final decisions on the administrative allocation to appropriations but noted the program and related administrative amounts in testimony and fiscal presentations. Act 78 was cited in discussion of current administrative costs for the program and prior appropriation levels.
The committee also reviewed renumbering and statutory relocation of the Vermont Agricultural Credit Program and discussed a Vermont Jobs Fund line of credit reference and a potential $100,000,000 cap referenced in testimony as part of prior statute drafting.
House Ways & Means (15:25)
The House Ways & Means Committee considered the yield bill and education fund reserve language. Staff described proposed property- and income-yield figures and a construct to reserve half of a one-time general fund transfer to the education fund. The draft figures presented included a property yield increase to 9,170 and an income yield figure of 12,576 in the statement of purpose; staff described reserving $52,450,000 in fiscal 2027 in the education fund to offset property tax rate increases in fiscal 2028. Committee members discussed modeling that used part of a one-time general fund transfer and referenced an estimated $22,300,000 unreserved and unallocated education fund surplus at the close of fiscal 2026 that would be used to lower FY27 property taxes in the scenario presented. Staff explained the model scenarios and the relationship between yields, rates and average tax bills.
Ways & Means members and staff discussed tax-credit and property tax credit behavior under the modeling, the effects of one-time buydowns of property taxes, and the sensitivity of rates and average bills to base growth and spending. Several members noted that, under all yield-bill scenarios presented, average tax bills were projected to increase.
House Appropriations (multiple sessions)
House Appropriations held several sessions reviewing a draft FY 2027 budget and a number of bills with associated appropriations. Committee members walked through budget items and proposed additions, including proposed one-time and base appropriations across agencies.
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Appropriations members discussed transfers from the Clean Water Fund, including testimony that draft FY 2027 Clean Water Fund revenues were estimated around $31,000,000 from recurring sources with additional capital funds increasing total draft spending estimates; the committee reviewed a technical proposal to permit transfers from the Clean Water Fund to a Solid Waste Management Assistance account over several future fiscal years with specified maximum transfer amounts in particular years.
The committee reviewed an extended producer responsibility bill and discussed whether Clean Water Fund money would be available to support related solid-waste activities. Members also discussed multiple bills and positions to be treated in the FY 2027 construct, including adding staff positions for labor-relations mediation, Medicaid school-based services, and other programmatic items; the group referenced Act 121 and Act 73 in budget line‑item conversations.
Appropriations also reviewed H.2 and other housing and homelessness-related appropriations and considered whether funds in the draft budget aligned with bills pending in committee.
House Ways & Means (14:15) — Transportation, mileage and pilot funds
A Ways & Means panel reviewed a large highway and transportation package and a rework of a proposed mileage-based user fee. Committee staff described transfers of $2,200,000 from a transportation infrastructure bond fund into the transportation fund and explained an allocation of $1,700,000 to general state aid for town highways, with language to appropriate those amounts for class 1–3 town highways and to exclude that allocation from certain annual inflationary adjustments. Staff also described a proposal that would have previously routed excess revenues from a pilot special fund to town highway aid; amendments under discussion would strike that provision.
Committee counsel walked through a restructured Chapter 43 that would split road usage charges into two subchapters, one addressing mileage-based user fees and the other addressing different road usage charges. The amended language presented would change reporting and payment timing, eliminate an immediate pay-as-you-go implementation option, and set administrative timelines for assessments and appeals. Committee discussion included provisions for rental transactions and an added 1% road usage charge on certain rental transactions subject to an existing rental-use tax, which would in one example increase a transaction charge from 9% to 10% for those rentals.
Ways & Means (16:04) — Education yield split proposal
House Ways & Means returned to yield-bill tradeoffs later in the day, where members discussed a committee concept to make a 50/50 split of a $104,900,000 proposed general fund transfer to the education fund: half to be used in FY27 to lower property taxes and half reserved in the education fund to offset FY28 rates. Members debated the tradeoffs between one-time tax relief and multiyear fiscal stability and expressed differing views on the use of one-time funds for ongoing operations or for future stabilization.
Ways & Means (10:35) and Background checks (House Ways & Means / House Appropriations)
Members of House Ways & Means and House Appropriations discussed proposals to require criminal record checks for certain education-related applicants and employees and whether the associated fingerprinting and FBI record-check fees would be borne by applicants or by the Agency of Education. Committee discussion reflected amendments shifting payment responsibility to the agency and estimates that fingerprinting and FBI fees combined would be modest — testimony estimated roughly $47 per applicant and an estimated 34 applicants per year for an approximate $1,600 FY27 cost to the agency.
House Health Care and related bills (H.585, S.1, S.197)
The House Health Care Committee discussed H.585 and a floor amendment to remove a section that had drawn concern. Committee conversation focused on Section 10 of H.585, which would have required certain disclosures or reporting related to health care sharing arrangements; members debated First Amendment and religious-liberty concerns, the consumer-protection purpose described by sponsors, and the size of a proposed civil penalty ($5,000) that some members questioned. Separate testimony in health-care hearings referenced primary care payment reforms under S.1 and S.197, with witnesses describing per-member-per-month payments and primary-care investment as a way to expand access and reduce downstream costs.
Education committees (Senate and House)
Education committees considered governance reform under Act 73, class-size minimums, and the fiscal and operational costs of district consolidation. Testimony described enrollment declines and estimated near-term costs associated with equalizing teacher and staff pay across merged districts, including a cited example estimate of about $5.5 million to level teacher salaries across three supervisory unions, and noted additional transition costs for bargaining, systems integration and administrative support. Committees discussed Act 73 implementation timelines and delayed counting of class-size noncompliance toward statutory consequences until rules are adopted or until July 1, 2027.
Data brokers and consumer privacy (H.2 / Ways & Means / Appropriations)
House committees considered amendments to data-broker registration and enforcement. The bill language discussed would increase an annual registration fee from $100 to $900 and raise civil penalties for failure to register or to provide required information — one change would increase a daily nonregistration penalty to $200 per day with no stated cap in one section; other proposed civil penalties include $1,000 per day for failure to correct materially incorrect registration information after notice and a one-time civil penalty of $25,000 for materially incorrect filings that are not corrected. The bill also would appropriate $50,000 for a Secretary of State study of a deletion mechanism that would enable consumers to request deletion of data held by registered data brokers; committees discussed the scope and costs of such a mechanism and examples from other states.
Conclusion
Committees in both chambers on March 19 considered a range of measures affecting fees, taxes, appropriations, education finance and regulatory authority. Major items discussed included proposed fee adjustments and penalties for tobacco retailers and data brokers; transfer and appropriation language impacting housing tax credits, cannabis program funding and clean water fund transfers; an education yield-bill construct that would reserve half of a one-time education fund transfer; background-check fee payment shifts for Agency of Education applicants; proposals to alter primary care payment models; and testimony on costs and timelines associated with school governance changes. The coverage above reflects discussions and fiscal estimates presented to the committees on March 19.
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