Rep. Kathleen James (D-Manchester) chairs the House Energy & Digital Infrastructure Committee. She was appointed to that post by Speaker of the House Jill Krowinski (D-Burlington). Krowinski also assigned multiple bills that would repeal controversial, unaffordable, climate laws, such as the Clean Heat Standard (H.16), the Global Warming Solutions Act, and the Clean Car mandates that will start making it harder to buy a new internal combustion engine vehicle in Vermont and impossible after 2035 to James’ committee – where they will never get a vote.
James said bluntly in a February 11 committee discussion, “For me, finding a path forward does not begin with any of the repeal bills that are on our wall [emphasis added]. So, I can be as clear as I can be that repealing the work of the legislature, especially when we’ve, I think, pretty clearly established that the clean heat standard is not taking effect, isn’t a starting point. So that’s where I stand on all the repeal bills.” And since she decides which bills get a vote or not, that’s that! (Barring enough public outrage to blast those bills off the wall).
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The three Republicans on the nine-member committee pushed back hard. Rep. Richard Bailey (R-Hyde Park) summed up the mood of the electorate pretty well when he said, “I think we need to look at repealing [the Clean Heat Standard]. Step back…. Vermonters are tapped out. We don’t have any more money to for taxes…. It’s getting out of control. My constituents are saying we’re tapped out.”
Rep. Michael Southworth (R-Walden), frustrated after making several appeals and arguments in favor of repeal, concluded, “I just feel like we owe it to Vermont [to repeal], and we’re shoving Vermonters aside again by not repealing the Clean Heat Standard.” Which is an exactly correct assessment of the situation.
Rep. James countered that the Clean Heat Standard carbon credit system as designed and presented by Public Utilities Commission “…isn’t gonna happen right now,” and so implied that the voters should be happy with that outcome. But this also comes with the implication that the Clean Heat Standard – or some modified version of it – would be implemented in the future. Just not right now. And that is not something the voters should be happy about.
This line was further emphasized by Rep. Laura Sibilia (I-Dover), Ranking Member on the committee and chief architect of the Clean Heat Standard legislation who continues to beat this not-dead-yet-or-soon-enough horse. In her opinion, “Like, let’s work on it. You know? I think that working on it in this biennium feels difficult given the toxicity of the conversation that surrounds this policy…. But maybe there’s no reason we can’t work on it with it still hanging on the wall and talk about, you know, are there things that we can do to fix it?”
No. Sorry, but this awful bill cannot be fixed. What Sibilia likes to refer to as a “market mechanism,” the carbon credit scheme at the heart of this law, is nothing but a complicated tax on heating fuel. It is THE problem identified by the PUC with the policy as ripe for fraud, too expensive to implement, and regressive in nature. You can’t fix this, or apparently, the stupid that created it. It needs to be repealed.
But, grasping for another excuse to keep Act 18 on the books, proponents on the committee say that there are positive aspects of the law worth keeping, like the fuel dealer registry. But here’s the problem, or I should say problems, with that defense. The first is that the registry was so poorly designed that it requires every Vermonters who fills up a barbecue grill propane tank at a store across the border in New Hampshire, for example, to register with the state. If it’s to be kept, it needs a major overhaul, which Chair James is not considering.
But here’s the real kicker. As Chair James noted, the three employee positions created by Act 18 for the PUC to administer the Clean Heat Standard are not funded in the current budget. “They’re not in the governor’s proposed budget, I don’t believe, for FY26, and the PUC is not planning to ask for that money.” So, um, if the fuel dealer registry is so important, why aren’t you funding the people who will build and maintain it? Without them this critical thing will not exist. Sorry but the this argument doesn’t fly either. Just repeal the darn law.
As for the repeal of the Global Warming Solutions Act, if as Chair James says, she is not writing a bill to implement the Clean Heat Standard, or any substitute for it to meet the 2030 GWSA targets for the thermal sector’s greenhouse gas reduction, how can Vermont have any chance of meeting those targets? On top of that, no one has put forward a bill to meet the transportation sector either. Or the agricultural sector.
If the chair of this committee and the majority party controlling the legislature has no plans or intention of putting forth programs/funding in time to meet the 2030 GWSA mandates, then at the very least they should not put the taxpayers on the hook for the cost of legal jeopardy for not achieving mandates they have no plans or political will to meet. So, yeah, repeal the Global Warming Solutions Act too.
Rep. Southworth had it right when he said failure to repeal the Clean Heat Standard after the voters spoke on November 7, 2024, is “shoving aside” the will of the voters. And Rep. Bailey had it right when he observed those voters — their constituents — are tapped out. But common sense and the will of the people don’t matter as the Democrats are going to side with their special interest donors over the people they are supposed to represent. Again.
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- Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.
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