Legislature committee hearings cover education funding and reforms, appropriations adjustments, tobacco regulation, bottle bill overhaul, hospital affordability and energy code proposals
Education (House and Senate)
Committees in both chambers held lengthy hearings on education policy, budget pressures and structural reforms. Testimony before the House Education committee focused on career navigation and the "Graduate with a Plan" initiative, emphasizing professional development for adults who guide students and the need for schools and organizations to operationalize plans coherently. Witnesses described the role of therapeutic independent schools in educating students with complex behavioral and mental health needs, noting they serve a small number of students across many public schools and arguing those schools can provide economies of scale compared with district staffing.
Participants discussed credential pathways and workforce needs, referencing S.55 in testimony on credential mixes and the distribution of required credentials for promising jobs (including figures such as 48% requiring a bachelor’s degree, 5% an associate degree, and 3% a registered apprenticeship). S.300 and S.14 were cited in Senate Education committee testimony in the context of governance and cost-savings modeling for regional education service agency proposals. Speakers highlighted past Acts — Act 46, Act 60 and Act 73 — and presented analyses of potential cost savings from regionalization and ESA-like structures, including modeled savings on the order of hundreds of millions annually and ranges expressed as percentages of total spending.
House Education witnesses also described funding instability for literacy and career-navigation efforts and the need for stable resources and technical support to expand tools like My Future VT.
Appropriations (Senate and House)
Senate Appropriations reviewed budget items and reversion/reappropriation requests tied to education and human services. The Department of Education sought reappropriated funding to support statewide literacy implementation under Act 139, describing the advantage of funding through a budget adjustment authority that would allow additional planning time and noting the literacy work also appears in the FY27 request.
Senate Appropriations debated base funding impacts for home and community‑based providers and implementation of rate changes, describing a prior 2% increase that, as implemented, reduced a provider rate rather than raising it; committee members discussed restoring reimbursement so providers "don’t drop." The committee also considered requests to restore $85,000 in general fund match to gross up roughly $850,000 in federal funds for an item the administration had reduced from the budget.
House Appropriations received presentations touching on public defense budgets, pension and OPEB funding, and the Administrative Unit’s budget priorities. The Secretary of State’s office and lottery/lottery-related funds were discussed in a later House Appropriations session (14:15). The Secretary of State reported a substantial decline in expected federal HAVA funding — from about $1,000,000 historically to $272,000 in 2025 — and requested $1.1 million in general‑fund support composed of $450,000 ongoing support plus $650,000 to backfill the HAVA shortfall. The lottery office reported revenue fluctuations, noting FY2025 declines and variable jackpot-driven sales.
Other appropriations testimony flagged provider rate and payment changes in human services, criminal history record account deficits and potential fee increases, and multiple one‑time and ongoing spending pressures tied to health, housing and energy programs.
Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs — Tobacco and nicotine regulation
The committee heard testimony on nicotine product regulation and S.198 (referred to as S‑one 198). Attorneys and public health witnesses described enforcement under the Master Settlement Agreement, past state MSA receipts, and proposals in S‑198 to ban products that mimic non‑tobacco items, strengthen licensing and raise fees, separate alcohol and nicotine licensing, and increase penalties for sales to underage persons. Testimony also addressed youth use patterns, product design that appeals to youth, and proposals to eliminate penalties for youth possession and instead shift accountability to retailers and systems-based responses. Witnesses described concerns about stealthy device designs, flavored products, and the need for retail licensing and enforcement changes.
Environment — Bottle bill revisions, tire stewardship and producer responsibility
Environment committee hearings addressed substantial revisions to beverage-container redemption (a reworked "bottle bill" and extended producer responsibility framework). Agency testimony described a draft redraft to set up a producer responsibility organization (PRO), changes to redemption center certification, handling fees and redemption-rate goals, and potential diversion of some abandoned deposit funds from the Clean Water Fund to the solid waste management account and waste management assistance fund to provide grants supporting manufacturer and distributor responsibilities. The agency proposed grant‑based reimbursement of up to $3.5 million (structured as phased payments) to support infrastructure and equipment needed to transition collection and sorting systems; agency witnesses emphasized grant oversight and reimbursement rather than open appropriations.
House and House/Environment panels examined provisions proposing specific redemption-rate milestones (for example, a 75% redemption goal noted in testimony), elimination of brand sorting at points of redemption, and the administrative and public‑notice procedures for stewardship plans. Witnesses representing redemption centers flagged long‑standing handling-fee adequacy (3.5¢ per container), rising labor costs, and capital investment needs for mechanized sorting.
Separate Environment testimony focused on a potential tire stewardship program and related fees, discussing how legacy tire piles are created, potential consumer incentives, deposit or fee designs, concerns about cross‑border flows, the administrative cost of large stewardship programs, and the balance between small per‑tire fees and program administration. Committee testimony noted potential use of Clean Water Fund or solid waste funds to seed startup grants and identified tradeoffs in program scope, costs, and impacts on small businesses and consumers.
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Environment committee hearings also reviewed agricultural discharge and CAFO permit language, examining federal discharge requirements and whether state provisions would exceed federal standards; testimony raised legal limits and referenced court interpretations requiring a discharge to trigger permitting.
Finance and Health care — Hospital affordability, pharmaceuticals and price reforms
Senate Finance received detailed presentations from insurers and state purchasers on major health cost drivers. Testimony identified hospital prices and pharmaceutical spending as the largest components of health spending; hospital claims were said to account for roughly 55% of total spending, with pharmaceuticals about 20% (75% combined). Finance witnesses described reference‑based pricing analyses and price‑regulation reforms, citing prior actions (including Act 55 and other Acts) that produced estimated savings in the tens of millions and showing percentages used in vendor analyses and benchmarking efforts.
House Health Care heard hospital leaders and system CEOs testify about affordability and transformation efforts. Hospital witnesses described multi‑hospital affordability action plans, local expense reductions (for example, a $2.5 million cost‑reduction at one critical‑access hospital), workforce and transport challenges, and commitments to shift care closer to home where feasible. Testimony acknowledged 2025 reductions in expected federal financial support and emphasized institutional efforts to reduce operating growth from historical trends (for example, reducing operating-expense trend assumptions from about 8% to 3% in one instance).
Finance and related testimony also discussed vendor partnerships for chronic care management, stratification of high‑cost populations, and impacts of GLP‑1 class drugs on insurer reserves and rates, with references to prior decisions that affected projected spending.
Energy & Digital Infrastructure — Residential energy code, contractor training, VoIP transition and backup power
House Energy & Digital Infrastructure and a separate Energy committee considered H.17 and H‑718 proposals to strengthen residential building energy standards, align enforcement and training, and create a residential contractor registration task force and energy‑education modules for trades. Witnesses from architecture, building and fire safety communities supported creating a residential building code framework administered through the Division of Fire Safety and urged coordinated training emphasizing integrated systems, moisture management and energy performance.
Committee discussion included the legal and practical authority for municipalities to enforce building codes through agreements with the Division of Fire Safety, and the challenges of transferring energy code authority to entities with existing enforcement capacity. Supporters recommended a phased, task‑force‑driven approach and funding for outreach and contractor registry improvements.
Separately, the committee reviewed state monitoring and reporting language regarding telecommunications transitions from legacy copper and wireline services to VoIP and fiber. Testimony proposed quarterly reporting requirements and department review of outage data to identify areas vulnerable to extended loss of 911 access, and debated the scope of state authority versus federal preemption. The bills would require carriers to disclose information about service obligations, backup power options, consumer protections and incident reporting; enforcement language and potential penalties were discussed but not universally agreed.
Ways & Means and General & Housing — Property valuation, RADs, and limited‑equity mobile home cooperatives
House Ways & Means discussed property valuation mechanics tied to reappraisal and the implementation of Regional Appraisal Districts (RADs) under Act 73. Tax department and stakeholder testimony asked for technical fixes to contiguous‑parcel language and discussed funding for reappraisal per‑parcel fees; the department noted the $8.50 per‑parcel fee over six years covers roughly half the typical per‑parcel reappraisal cost and floated possible fee increases to better align costs.
House General & Housing considered legislation addressing limited equity cooperatives (LECs) in mobile home parks. Testimony explained statutory changes shifting manufactured housing transfers from sales and use tax to property transfer tax, and proposals to exempt the real property owned by mobile home LECs from property tax on the basis that cooperative land has restricted transferability and public-purpose disposition requirements. Committee discussion explored subleasing limits (including a statutory 110% cap on sublease payments referenced in testimony), municipal tax impacts and policy rationales for exempting cooperative land to preserve affordability.
Conclusion
This article summarizes committee hearings held on February 6, 2026 across multiple legislative panels. Committees reporting included House and Senate Education, Senate and House Appropriations, Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs, House Environment, Senate Finance, House Health Care, House Energy & Digital Infrastructure, House Ways & Means, and House General & Housing. Major subjects covered were education programming and structure, appropriations and reappropriation requests, smoking and nicotine product regulation, bottle bill and producer responsibility proposals, hospital and pharmaceutical cost drivers, residential energy code and contractor training, telecommunications transition and backup power concerns, property valuation and tax provisions for mobile home cooperatives.
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