Vermont
Final Reading: Lawmakers consider whether to keep some intoxicated Vermonters out of prisons – VTDigger
House lawmakers spent much of this week mulling how the state should treat residents who are, as a matter of law, incapacitated.
Vermont statute describes incapacitated people as intoxicated or in withdrawal, and in need of medical care or posing a threat to themselves or others.
Under current statute, those individuals can be held up to 24 hours with the Department of Corrections, at a “lockup or community correctional facility,” even if they have been charged with no crime.
Six years ago, however, Vermont tucked language into the annual midyear budget update intended to keep those people out of prisons. That language, which would prohibit incapacitated Vermonters not charged with crimes from being housed in correctional facilities, is set to go into effect in July.
But now, Gov. Phil Scott’s administration is seeking to repeal that provision — a move that would allow correctional facilities to continue to temporarily hold incapacitated Vermonters indefinitely.
“The problem is that there are no secure facilities outside of the Department of Corrections,” Vermont Department of Health Deputy Commissioner Kelly Dougherty told the House Human Services Committee earlier this month.
Some local mental health agencies, such as Washington County Mental Health and Northeast Kingdom Human Services, offer beds through the so-called public inebriation program, also known as PIP beds.Those beds are intended as temporary places where intoxicated people can stay and avoid correctional facilities.
But many of those PIP beds across the state have shut down in recent years, leaving only eight still in operation.
State health officials are planning to merge PIP beds and mental health crisis beds under one umbrella program to allow for more flexibility. Still, the shortage has left the state reliant on the Corrections Department to hold incapacitated Vermonters. Without the ability to bring them to prisons, Dougherty told lawmakers this month, the state could be forced to send people to hospitals.
This week, health care workers and law enforcement officials came to the House Human Services Committee to ask its members to go ahead with repealing the provision.
“If the only option that you give police is to bring these individuals to the ED, you will be endangering our staff and other patients,” Alison Davis, the medical director of the emergency department at Rutland Regional Medical Center, told lawmakers Wednesday.
But lawmakers in the committee seemed undecided on whether to move ahead with the repeal. On Thursday, Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, expressed uncertainty about the landscape of state services, given, on one hand, new state initiatives like the merger of PIP and mental health beds — and, on the other, potential federal funding cuts.
“I’m just wondering if it’s a tad early to be thinking about repealing the statute,” she said.
— Peter D’Auria
In the know
Advocates for migrant workers in the state continue to push for H.169, a bill that seeks to expand access to housing for immigrants without legal status living in Vermont. But the debate is shadowed by the specter of federal immigration policy.
As the administration of President Donald Trump ramps up deportation and detention of immigrants, proponents of the bill argue the state should do more to protect immigrants living in Vermont and increase their housing options. But the legislation faces headwinds from landlords and lenders.
The Vermont Landlord Association has objected to the addition of immigration status to the statute. “To make a landlord have to take somebody – even if they’re not here legally – I think is a challenge and a big ask,” Angela Zaikowski, the association’s director, told legislators in late March.
The association echoed these concerns in a “call to action” email last week, imploring its members to reach out to legislators and adding that the proposed change “has the potential to create federal issues for housing providers.”
Asked by lawmakers whether there were past examples of landlords getting into legal trouble after renting to people without legal status, Zaikowski said no.
“I think anything is possible at this point,” she added.
Will Lambek, from the group Migrant Justice, maintained that these fears of federal repercussions lacked legal basis. “Any fear of civil or criminal liability against landlords for renting to immigrant families is simply unfounded,” he said.
Read more about how federal immigration policy is looming over this debate here.
— Carly Berlin
A sudden reversal in federal funding for school districts has affected about 32 school districts and one mental health agency in Vermont, Jill Briggs Campbell, deputy secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education, told the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday.
The decision came in a March 28 letter from U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. It notified state education leaders that the federal department had reversed course on extending the deadline on a Covid-19 pandemic-era grant – the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, or ESSER – that has paid for learning support and summer programming.
While the money from ESSER originally had to be spent by Sept. 30, 2024, President Biden’s administration had approved an extension to allow schools to use the money through the 2025-26 school year. (Public schools in Vermont operate on a July 1 through June 30 fiscal calendar; the federal government’s fiscal year ends on September 30.)
McMahon’s letter noted that the federal department had “reconsidered” requests from state leaders to continue the extension after finding it “was not justified” and terminated the program at 5 p.m. on March 28 — three minutes before the statement was sent.
Vermont school districts have at least $10 million pending in that grant funding, Briggs Campbell estimated. The department has received about $800,000 worth of invoices but cannot request funds until it goes through the new process outlined in McMahon’s letter, which states the federal department will consider extensions “on an individual project-specific basis.”
“All of these were approved for extension by the previous administration,” she said in the hearing.
Read more about how the funding loss is affecting school districts here.
— Auditi Guha
On the move
After an extensive — and mysterious — delay, the Vermont House’s massive education bill, H.454, survived a voice vote on second reading Thursday. The bill is expected to face a vigorous challenge on the floor tomorrow.
—Ethan Weinstein
Visit our 2025 bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following.
Two empty seats
The leaders of both the Vermont House and Senate will not be running for reelection. So who will fill their shoes?
Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast, said she’s running for Senate president pro tempore.
Ram Hinsdale has served in the legislature for 14 years and is the first woman of color to serve in the Senate.
“I have seen so many types of leadership, so many tools in the toolbox that you can use to move people in the same direction,” she said.
While spending more than a decade in the Legislature, Ram Hinsdale said she’s lived through many crises and charted the state’s path through them. She was a lawmaker during the Great Recession, the Covid-19 pandemic and two years of record breaking floods.
With multiple long-serving legislators retiring this year, Ram Hinsdale said she thinks she will bring needed institutional knowledge and experience, along with a willingness to rally new people.
Along with Ram Hinsdale, lawmakers have eyed Sen. Andrew Perchlik, D/P-Washington, who currently chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, as a future pro tem.
Perchlik said Friday that he’s considering running for the position, though he didn’t want to definitively say until after the primary election in August.
“I’ve been approached by many senators asking me to do it,” Perchlik said. And he said he thinks it makes sense, given his past leadership roles as the whip for the majority party in the Senate and his former role as chair of the Senate Transportation Committee.
Perchlik has chaired the appropriations committee for the last two years, receiving bills from every committee and managing the state’s funds. That role has allowed him to work with lawmakers across the chamber and different parts of the executive branch, he said.
“You get a really broad picture of the entire government,” Perchlik said.
Just a day after House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, surprisingly announced that she won’t seek reelection, a handful of likely Democrats to succeed her said they were mum on their plans to run for speaker.
House Majority Leader Rep. Lori Houghton, D-Essex Junction, said it’s too soon to say if she will run, though she didn’t rule out the possibility.
“She just announced yesterday,” Houghton said, adding that she’s trying to focus on finishing out the session.
Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, D-Brattleboro, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, similarly said she’s considering running, but right now she’s focused on finishing legislative work, too.
Rep. Charlie Kimbell, D-Woodstock, said, “I haven’t made up my mind about it.” Kimbell previously ran for speaker in 2020 before dropping out of the race to endorse Krowinski. He also ran for lieutenant governor in 2022 before losing in the primary.
Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-Dover, who challenged Krowinski for speaker at the beginning of 2025, said, “I have not ruled it out.”
In the know
At the eleventh hour, lawmakers let the law enforcement masking bill supported by immigrant rights activists, S.208, die.
“I’m very disappointed with what has happened to S.208,” said Sen. Nader Hashim, D-Windham, the bill’s lead sponsor, on the Senate floor Friday.
The decision comes after a committee of lawmakers from the House and Senate agreed on a version of the bill that would have largely banned all law enforcement operating in the state — including federal agents — from wearing masks or failing to visibly identify themselves.
Committee members decided to make that provision of the bill go into effect March 15, 2027, rather than upon passage, reasoning it would give the state time to see how similar laws in other states play out in the courts.
The bill the committee approved would have given the Vermont attorney general’s office the responsibility to enforce it, bringing a civil lawsuit if officers violated the law.
Upon passage, the bill also would have required a Vermont law enforcement board to create a statewide policy on masking and identification for local and state police.
All members of the conference committee signed on to support the newest version of the bill except the committee’s lone Republican appointee, Sen. Chris Mattos, R-Chittenden North. During a committee meeting Thursday, Mattos said he was unsure he could support the bill because the committee hadn’t heard from the attorney general’s office about whether it was on board to enforce the policy.
After the conference committee approved the bill, it sat on the House’s calendar Friday but was not taken up on the House floor.
For the bill to pass before adjournment, lawmakers would have needed three-quarters of the House to suspend legislative rules, which would allow lawmakers to speed up the legislative process. That would have required Republican support.
Lawmakers on the Senate floor decided to adjourn around 5:50 p.m., giving up on the idea of receiving the bill from the House.
“It was barely a year ago that I watched Mohsen Mahdawi be taken by masked men in unmarked vehicles,” said Sen. Becca White, D-Windsor, expressing her frustration that the bill didn’t pass.
— Charlotte Oliver
Lawmakers on the House floor Friday made a failed attempt to override the governor’s veto of a bill, H.727, that would have set strict guardrails for any future huge data centers in Vermont.
The bill contained provisions that would prevent any large data centers in Vermont from increasing electricity costs for average ratepayers. The bill also contained provisions that would restrict how data centers discharge chemicals and use water to stay cool in an attempt to limit environmental impacts.
Gov. Phil Scott vetoed the bill Thursday. In his letter to lawmakers, Scott said he believes Vermont’s existing regulations would prevent harmful impacts from data centers.
Lawmakers voted 83-52 in favor of overriding the veto, but they needed 90 votes to do so.
— Charlotte Oliver
On the move
Vermont’s House and Senate budget writers reached a deal Thursday night on a state spending package for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts in July.
Agreement on the budget bill, H.951, came with likely just a day left in this year’s legislative session. Overall, the joint House and Senate conference committee’s version of the budget totals $9.38 billion, close to the amount of spending Gov. Phil Scott proposed at the start of the session in January.
The bill was expected to get a final sign-off on the House floor Friday after weeks of both public and closed-door negotiations. The conference committee signed off on the bill around 11 p.m. Thursday.
Among the last pieces of the nearly 150-page legislation to get resolved in the committee was a controversial plan to take money out of a state-run college scholarship fund to help pay for a long-stalled athletic complex at the University of Vermont instead. The fund, called the Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund, saw a historic infusion of cash last year from Vermont’s tax on the estates of high-wealth individuals.
Read the full story here.
— Shaun Robinson
Say cheese
“A crime has been committed, and we do need justice by the end of the day.”
Rep. Conor Casey, D-Montpelier, told his colleagues on the floor Friday morning that he was set on getting to the bottom of a putrid predicament that has been vexing him and other members of the House Corrections and Institutions Committee for weeks.
As he told it: Casey walked into the committee room a couple of months ago to “a rancid smell.” After weeks of searching high and low, he realized that the desks making up the committee’s table had small drawers underneath that he had never noticed before. He opened his drawer, only to find “a moldy, disgusting, offensive glob of cheese,” with a note that read, “say cheese.”
Casey is well known around the Statehouse for pulling pranks on his colleagues, so the cheese may have been an effort to get back at him before he steps down from the House. He then pulled open the drawer of his seat-neighbor, Barre Town Republican Rep. Gina Galfetti, to find yet another glob of cheese.
“It was a bipartisan cheesing, Madam Speaker,” he exclaimed Friday.
If the person who lodged the offending dairy did not come forward by the end of the day, Casey said, he would subject his colleagues to a full recitation of James Joyce’s mammoth novel, “Ulysses,” on the floor. Coming from the man who recited part of a play he wrote during a floor session last year, that seemed far from an empty threat.
As of this newsletter’s deadline, at least, the mystery remained unsolved.
“The craven still hides in the shadows,” Casey wrote in a text. “But rest assured they will be brought to justice. The session may end, but my lust for vengeance will endure…”
— Shaun Robinson
Nearly 1,000 Vermont students will bring live jazz to downtown Burlington this June as part of the 2026 Discover Jazz Festival, with dozens of school ensembles scheduled to perform free concerts on Church Street.
According to a community announcement, 44 ensembles from 36 schools, representing 993 students from across Vermont, will take part in the festival’s 43rd year.
The student concerts are organized by The Flynn, which produces the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival and oversees its education and community programs. All student performances are free and open to the public.
Student performances highlight statewide participation
Participating schools span Vermont, including Chittenden, Franklin and Grand Isle counties, central Vermont, Addison County, Lamoille Valley, the Northeast Kingdom and southern Vermont, along with visiting ensembles from New York, according to the announcement.
Chittenden County schools listed include Burlington High School, Champlain Valley Union High School, Charlotte Central School, Colchester High School and Middle School, Edmunds Elementary and Middle schools, Essex High School and Middle School, South Burlington High School, Winooski Middle High School and Vermont Commons School, among others.
The student performances will take place during the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, which runs June 3–7 and features free outdoor concerts alongside ticketed performances by internationally recognized artists curated by MacArthur fellow Jason Moran.
Featured collaboration includes Vermont Youth Orchestra musicians
A featured performance during the festival, “My Heart Sings: Jason Moran Plays Duke Ellington”, will include musicians from the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association jazz ensemble, according to the announcement.
The concert will also feature guest vocalist Rachel Ambaye, a South Burlington native studying with Moran at Berklee College of Music. Ambaye will join the student ensemble for a collaboration tied to one of the festival’s signature performances.
Flynn Executive Director Jay Wahl said in the announcement that bringing student musicians into the center of the festival highlights jazz as a living tradition shared across generations.
This story was created by Dave DeMille, ddemille@gannett.com, with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Journalists were involved in every step of the information gathering, review, editing and publishing process. Learn more at cm.usatoday.com/ethical-conduct.
MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) – Republican Gov. Phil Scott filed Thursday to seek a sixth term in office while the heads of both legislative chambers announced they will not run for reelection.
Thursday marked the deadline for candidates to get on the ballot for the August primary elections. For months, it has been unclear if Scott would run again.
“I don’t want to see anything move backwards; we need to keep pushing ahead,” Scott said.
Scott filed the necessary 500 signatures on Thursday. If he serves a sixth term, he would be the longest-serving consecutive governor in state history.
“It’s not easy work, it weighs on you, but at the end of the day, I feel the responsibility to stick this out,” Scott said.
The governor has won by larger margins each cycle. Potential Democratic challengers have waited to see whether Scott might step aside, providing a chance not to run against a popular incumbent.
Those who political observers speculated might be interested in the governor’s race included Democratic Attorney General Charity Clark and Treasurer Mike Pieciak. Both instead decided to seek reelection.
Pieciak told reporters he has experienced several personal tragedies this year and wants to continue with his office’s work. “It’s really been a year of reflection, and I think I’m excited about continuing this job that I enjoy,” Pieciak said.
Scott will face an opponent in November. Democrats Aly Richards and Amanda Janoo will face off in the August primary.
Three other Democrats, Molly Gray, Ryan McLaren, and Esther Charlestin, will face off for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor and the chance to challenge incumbent Republican John Rodgers in November.
House Speaker Jill Krowinski received a standing ovation from House lawmakers as she announced she will not seek reelection, joining Senate President Phil Baruth.
“The next group of leaders will do a great job continuing on with this work. I wouldn’t be leaving if I didn’t think that we had the right people in places to do this work,” Krowinski said.
That means there will be fresh leadership in the House and Senate next legislative session.
And there is competition in the race for Congress. Republicans Gerald Malloy and Mark Coester will face off in the GOP primary to determine who will face Congresswoman Becca Balint in November.
“To deliver results for Vermont. They are tired of the constant complaining and angry rhetoric,” Malloy said.
There are at least three dozen state House and Senate races that will see fresh faces as another large contingent of lawmakers steps back.
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