If you’re a Vermonter who wakes up wondering why everything feels harder and more expensive — housing, heating, utilities, construction, transportation, starting a business, keeping one — you’re not imagining it. The pattern is real — and it’s time to call it what it is: a Policy Preference Cascade.
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s not incompetence. It’s not even partisan. It’s a structural political dynamic that quietly shapes how decisions get made in Vermont, and it explains why everyday people feel unheard while the priorities of activist groups, NGOs, unions, advocacy networks, and appointed boards keep showing up in law after law. (Think: When’s the last time you cared about what kind of vehicle your neighbor drives?)
For years, Vermonters have sensed something was off. This is the framework that makes it visible.
First, What a Policy Preference Cascade Actually Is
In plain English, what we’re calling a Policy Preference Cascade is what happens when the political system becomes more responsive to the most organized and active stakeholders — not the majority of regular voters. It’s a simple name for a pattern that political scientists describe through a bunch of overlapping concepts: interest-group capture, hyperpluralism, minoritarian dominance, regulatory capture, and pluralism drift. Vermont has all of them at once.
Who are the most active stakeholders?
- Environmental NGOs
- Innumerable Non-profits
- Climate action organizations
- Housing activists
- Public-sector unions
- Renewable-energy lobbyists
- Specialized policy nonprofits
- Advocacy coalitions
- Regulatory boards with narrow mandates
Who is not?
- YOU
These groups testify, lobby, organize, donate, pressure committees, and influence primaries. Legislators know they will show up and enforce consequences.
Meanwhile, the people most impacted — working Vermonters, small business owners, tradespeople, families, renters, retirees on fixed incomes — are busy living their lives. They do not have the time, structure, or funding to insert themselves into Montpelier’s process every week.
And political systems follow incentives.
Over time, policy drifts toward the demands of the loudest and most coordinated groups, while the costs of those policies are spread quietly across everyone else.
That’s the cascade.
If you’ve ever felt like the Legislature is listening to everyone except you, you’ve felt the symptoms.
Vermont Is Not Experiencing Just One Cascade — It’s Experiencing Many
This is the key point:
Vermont doesn’t have a single policy cascade. The entire system shows cascade behavior across multiple sectors.
The examples below are not the point — the pattern is the point.
1. Land Use and Act 250: Development by Permission Slip
Act 250 was created to protect Vermont’s character. But over time, its criteria, interpretations, and regulatory layering have created a system where:
- Small housing projects struggle to get approved
- Towns can’t grow even if they want to
- Local contractors get drowned in process
- Housing supply falls while demand rises
- Costs skyrocket for everyone
Who supports keeping it rigid?
Conservation groups, environmental advocates, and regional planners.
Who pays the price?
Renters, young families, middle-income workers, and small towns starving for growth.
Classic cascade.
2. The Global Warming Solutions Act: Policy by Lawsuit
GWSA turned climate targets into legal mandates. Agencies must meet them, regardless of cost. If they fail, they can be sued.
Who pushed for it?
Climate NGOs and activist networks.
Who carries the cost?
Ratepayers, drivers, homeowners, and businesses who face higher energy burdens.
Cascade.
3. The Clean Heat Standard: Heating Your Home by Committee
The Clean Heat Standard gives unelected regulators the power to redesign Vermont’s entire heating economy:
- Credits
- Penalties
- Fuel-switch requirements
- Compliance structures
Who shaped it?
Advocacy groups focused on carbon reduction.
Who feels it first?
Lower- and middle-income Vermonters who heat with fuel oil, propane, or wood.
Cascade.
4. Renewable Energy Credits: Paying More Without Getting More
Vermont sells the green label on its electricity to other states, so Vermonters pay for the renewable infrastructure but lose the right to count the power as clean. The REC system is designed to satisfy regulatory compliance and industry stakeholders, not consumer transparency.
Who benefits?
Utilities, renewable developers, policy NGOs.
Who pays?
Consumers who assume “green” means green.
Cascade.
5. Regulatory Boards and Agencies: Narrow Mandates, Broad Power
Across Vermont’s bureaucracy, agencies with narrow missions — environment, energy, land preservation, conservation — influence policy without balancing economic impact.
Their mandate is not affordability.
Their mandate is not working families.
Their mandate is not population retention.
But their decisions affect all three.
Cascade.
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So Does Vermont Have a Problem? Yes — And Naming It Is the First Fix
If Vermont were facing a single policy failure, the solution would be straightforward. But Vermont is facing something deeper:
a structural political imbalance where high-engagement groups shape policy direction, while low-engagement Vermonters absorb the consequences.
That’s the Policy Preference Cascade.
It explains why:
- Housing stays scarce
- Heating gets more expensive
- Electricity bills climb
- Regulations multiply
- Small towns hollow out
- Workers leave
- Families can’t get ahead
- The Legislature seems out of step with daily lived experience
The system isn’t broken.
It’s working exactly as its incentives dictate — just not for the people paying the bills.
What Vermonters Can Do Right Now
Now that the problem is clear — a policymaking system more responsive to NGOs, lobbyists, advocacy networks, unions, and activist groups than to voters — Vermonters should take action immediately. With the Legislature heading back into session, this is the moment to tell your senators and representatives, directly and plainly, that you expect them to represent you —> that’s why you elected them.
For years, many Vermonters assumed their elected officials were already speaking for them. The cascade shows something different: lawmakers may not realize how far the system has drifted from the people who actually sent them to Montpelier.
So tell them.
Tell them what matters to you, what’s hurting you, and what needs to change.
Make them hear the people they’re supposed to represent.
What to Ask Candidates Going Forward
And when the next election cycle arrives, Vermonters should be asking every candidate — regardless of party — a question that cuts straight through the slogans:
“Who are you actually going to represent — the people who live and work here, or the NGOs, lobbyists, unions, advocacy groups, and activist networks that already dominate Montpelier?”
Candidates should have to answer that plainly.
No hedging. No clever phrasing. No hiding behind talking points.
Naming the Problem Gives Vermonters Power Again
Once you identify the cause, you can design the cure:
- Demand economic impact analyses alongside environmental impacts
- Broaden representation in committees and hearings
- Require regulatory agencies to consider affordability first
- Simplify permitting for housing and businesses
- Prioritize the median Vermonter, not the organized minority
Vermont doesn’t need to abandon its values.
It needs to rebalance who its government is listening to.
Now that the dynamic has a name, Vermonters can finally confront it.
Dave Soulia | FYIVT
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