The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a top oil and gas industry trade group are suing Vermont over its new law requiring that fossil fuel companies pay a share of the damage caused over several decades by climate change.

The federal lawsuit filed Monday asks a state court to prevent Vermont from enforcing the law, which was passed last year. Vermont became the first state in the country to enact the law after it suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather. The state is working to estimate the cost of climate change dating back to Jan. 1, 1995.

The lawsuit argues the U.S. Constitution precludes the act and that the state law is preempted by the federal Clean Air Act. It also argues that the law violates domestic and foreign commerce clauses by discriminating “against the important interest of other states by targeting large energy companies located outside of Vermont.”

The Chamber and the other plaintiff in the lawsuit, the American Petroleum Institute, argue that the federal government is already addressing climate change. And because greenhouse gases come from billions of individual sources, they argue it is impossible to measure “accurately and fairly” the impact of emissions from a particular entity in a particular location over decades.

“Vermont wants to impose massive retroactive penalties going back 30 years for lawful, out-of-state conduct that was regulated by Congress under the Clean Air Act,” said Tara Morrissey, senior vice president and deputy chief counsel of the Chamber’s litigation center. “That is unlawful and violates the structure of the U.S. Constitution — one state can’t try to regulate a global issue best left to the federal government. Vermont’s penalties will ultimately raise costs for consumers in Vermont and across the country.”

A spokesman for the state’s Agency of Natural Resources said it had not been formally served with this lawsuit.

Anthony Iarrapino, a Vermont-based lobbyist with the Conservation Law Foundation, said the lawsuit was the fossil fuel industry’s way of “trying to avoid accountability for the damage their products have caused in Vermont and beyond.”

“More states are following Vermont’s lead holding Big Oil accountable for the disaster recovery and cleanup costs from severe storms fueled by climate change, ensuring that families and businesses no longer have to foot the entire bill time and time again,” Iarrapino added.

Under the law, the Vermont state treasurer, in consultation with the Agency of Natural Resources, is to issue a report by Jan. 15, 2026, on the total cost to Vermonters and the state from the emission of greenhouse gases from Jan. 1, 1995, to Dec. 31, 2024. The assessment would look at the effects on public health, natural resources, agriculture, economic development, housing and other areas. The state would use federal data to determine the amount of covered greenhouse gas emissions attributed to a fossil fuel company.

It’s a polluter-pays model affecting companies engaged in the trade or business of extracting fossil fuel or refining crude oil attributable to more than 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions during the time period. The funds could be used by the state for such things as improving stormwater drainage systems; upgrading roads, bridges and railroads; relocating, elevating or retrofitting sewage treatment plants; and making energy efficient weatherization upgrades to public and private buildings. It’s modeled after the federal Superfund pollution cleanup program.

The approach taken by Vermont has drawn interest from other states, including New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a similar bill in December.

The New York law requires companies responsible for substantial greenhouse gas emissions to pay into a state fund for infrastructure projects meant to repair or avoid future damage from climate change. The biggest emitters of greenhouse gases between 2000 and 2018 would be subjected to the fines.

This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

Gov. Phil Scott has appointed the members of a new board that will administer Act 250, Vermont’s statewide development review law.

The new Land Use Review Board replaces the old Natural Resources Board, a shift mandated under Act 181, a major land-use reform law passed last year. That law takes steps to relax Act 250’s reach in existing downtowns and village centers across the state, and also lays the groundwork for extending Act 250’s protections in areas deemed ecologically sensitive.

But the new law also changes how Act 250 is administered. The Land Use Review Board is made up of five full-time members with relevant professional experience — a significant change from the former citizen-board structure. The new members have backgrounds in municipal and regional planning, environmental law, and civil engineering. The review board will also play a key role in overseeing a years-long mapping process that will cement Act 250’s jurisdiction in the future. (Regional district offices still make permitting decisions on individual projects, however).

“Vermont faces a significant housing crisis and the work of this board will play a very important role in helping us address it, while protecting our beautiful landscape and environment,” Scott said in a statement announcing the appointments earlier this week. “I’m confident this board has the diverse expertise, work ethic, and passion to tackle the work that’s required in Act 181 while also forwarding common sense improvements to the law to further our shared goals.”

The new board chair, Janet Hurley, currently serves as the assistant director and planning program manager for the Bennington County Regional Commission. Before that, she worked as a local planner throughout the state, in Manchester, South Burlington, Milton, and Westford, according to a press release from Scott’s office.

Since Act 250 was enacted in 1970, “it can certainly be credited with saving Vermont from rampant development,” Hurley said in an interview. “But it can also certainly be responsible for the depth of our housing crisis, because the burden of Act 250 permitting — often duplicative, especially in our town and village centers — just made housing development that’s affordable much more difficult to achieve for so many years.”

In the past, new housing projects would trigger Act 250 review based on how large they were, and how many homes a developer had already built in a given area during a given timeframe. That system could in fact lead to the sprawl it was trying to prevent, prompting developers to avoid bumping up against Act 250 permitting by building “smaller scale, single family home development dispersed around our towns and villages,” Hurley said.

Act 181 shifts the permitting program toward “location-based jurisdiction,” meaning some areas of the state that already have robust local zoning review and water and wastewater infrastructure could be exempt from Act 250 altogether. That new system will take years to implement, though, and the transition will be one of the board’s primary tasks.

As that longer process plays out, lawmakers made temporary exemptions to Act 250 last year. They were designed to encourage dense housing in already-developed areas, and so far, the carve-outs appear to be working as intended. Hurley thinks loosening Act 250’s rules around housing will make a big difference.

“The market just can’t bear the cost of construction at this point, and so any relief to the financing of new housing development is going to be meaningful,” Hurley said.

More from Vermont Public: Vermont loosened Act 250 rules for housing. Here’s where developers are responding

Still, members of the board think Act 250 will continue to play an important role in years to come.

“The housing crisis requires us to act swiftly, and that means a lot more housing, period,” said Alex Weinhagen, current director of planning and zoning in Hinesburg and another new board member. “But larger projects have impacts, and the whole point of having a development review process is to make sure that we acknowledge those and that the projects, you know, do what they can to minimize them.”

To Weinhagen, Act 181’s goals were to reform statewide development review so that “it’s smarter, it works better, it’s applied consistently across the state, and it’s only used when it’s needed — and not used in places where there’s adequate local level development review happening,” he said.

The board will study whether appeals of Act 250 permits should be heard by the board itself — or continue to be heard in state environmental court. Legislators and administration officials hotly debated the issue last session, arguing over which option would in fact speed up lengthy appeal timelines, and ultimately directed the new board to assess it further.

The other members of the new board include L. Brooke Dingledine, an environmental attorney in Randolph; Kirsten Sultan, an Act 250 district coordinator in the Northeast Kingdom with a background in engineering; and Sarah Hadd, a former local planner and current town manager for Fairfax, according to the press release.

The new board appointments took effect on Jan. 1, and the board will begin its work on Jan. 27.

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MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) – New data shows Vermont now has the fourth highest rate of homelessness per capita in the country. But that’s down from the second highest in the nation last year.

Federal data shows disasters elsewhere are pushing other states higher.

Since winding down government-funded hotel rooms for the homeless, Vermont has struggled to find enough shelter space.

Providers say despite dropping in the national ranking, Vermont is still in a homelessness crisis.

“Through the last several months we have been straight out. We are utterly exhausted from the level of provision of services keeping to keep people alive and out of the elements,” said Julie Bond, the executive director of the Good Samaritan Haven.

Later this month, Vermont will participate in the national Point in Time Count to assess the needs of the homeless. But even then, experts say that data has limitations.

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