Town Meeting Legislative Report 2026

Happy Town Meeting Week! The Legislature is on recess this week so we can attend town meetings, talk with constituents, and take a mid-session breather. I’m happy to sleep in my own bed and be out in the community having great conversations with folks. Below you’ll find information about meetings I plan to attend and an update on some legislative activity.

Town Meetings & Other Events. I try to attend as many town meetings as possible each year, but can’t make it to all 25 of them. On Saturday I went to four town meetings – Starksboro, Monkton, Salisbury, and the tail-end of Ferrisburgh. On Monday evening, I plan to go to town meetings in Bristol, Ripton, Weybridge, and Middlebury. On Tuesday, I will try to make it to Hancock, Huntington, Bridport, and Whiting. Check out the excellent Addison Independent Town Meeting overview or your town website to see when your town meeting is scheduled and remember to vote on Tuesday!

In addition, on Wednesday 3/4 at 5:30pm at the Hub in Rochester, I will be meeting with folks at an event hosted by the Stockbridge and Rochester Parent Teacher Organizations to talk about Act 73 and Vermont’s education funding system. Finally, on Friday 3/6 at 9:00am at the Orwell Free Library, I will be attending a “Coffee and Conversation” event organized in partnership with Slate Valley Unified USD and the Orwell Free Library. Come hear updates from the legislative session and learn more about Act 73 & the education system.

Education. A big focus this session was supposed to have been implementing Act 73, the major education reform law passed last session. Read this Seven Days article, “Vermont’s School Enrollment is Dropping at an Alarming Rate,” which features the Mount Abe School District as an example of why action is needed. So far, however, there isn’t a clear path forward.

The education committees are working on competing maps for re-organizing school districts. You can see both the proposed House Education Committee map and the proposed Senate Education Committee map, although neither has been approved by the committees yet. Generally, I don’t believe that top-down, forced mergers will be successful or save money. Recall that the Redistricting Task Force charged with proposing at least two maps did not ultimately back a map, but did recommend creating regional educational service agencies and strategic district mergers.

Meanwhile, the House Ways & Means Committee has been working with the Tax Department on implementing the tax changes in Act 73, many of which are outlined in this report on property tax classifications and this report on regional assessment districts. The Senate Finance Committee, which I’m a member of, has been debating bills that would reduce school costs or limit education expenditures and/or raise revenues to offset/lower property taxes. I’m cautiously optimistic that we can arrive at a compromise that will do both. The Joint Fiscal Office has finalized a contract to produce a report on the forthcoming foundation formula, due in December for consideration next session.

Finally, school boards have been working hard to propose responsible budgets that would meet student needs and limit property tax increases. Collectively, they have reduced total education spending by nearly $30M since the preliminary estimate on December 1, even at a time when inflation is driving up costs and federal funding is evaporating. School leaders in the Addison District have been especially prudent, limiting budget increases to fairly modest levels. I plan to vote for my school budget, and I hope you will too.

Health Care. Our work last year to reduce health care costs has had a measurable impact, slowing the growth in health insurance rates. Unfortunately, many people did not benefit from these decreases due to the elimination of federal health insurance subsidies in the Republican tax bill passed by Congress last summer. However, Act 55 which limits the amount hospitals can charge for outpatient prescription drug administration, combined with the limits put on hospital budgets by the Green Mountain Care Board, reduced school health insurance costs by $25M, and had similar impacts on other health insurance policies.

This session there is a big focus on primary care. The Senate is working on S.197, which would create a package of reforms to make primary care more sustainable and accessible for Vermonters. I know that many town meeting ballots will include a resolution related to universal primary care and a House bill about universal primary care, H.433. The House won’t likely vote on that bill, so S.197 will probably be the primary care bill that passes and could include some provisions that could move Vermont closer to universal primary care.

Finally, last week the Senate approved H.545 which would create a Vermont process for recommending immunizations, temporarily moving away from the federal process, which has been co-opted by political actors who do not follow sound medical and scientific evidence about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. We want to ensure that Vermonters are protected from both deadly diseases and inaccurate & misleading medical information.

Accountability for County Officials. Last week, the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs released the results of an internal investigation of Addison County State’s Attorney Eva Vekos which outlined “significant failures” in the way she has been conducting her work as the county’s top prosecutor since 2023. You can read stories about the report from both the Addison Independent and Vermont Public. The Addison County Legislative Delegation has twice called for her to step down, and this report further confirms our concerns with her work on behalf of our constituents.

Also last week, the Senate passed a bill that establishes a pilot program to expand the funding and duties of county sheriffs, despite years of significant issues with multiple sheriffs across the state. I tried to amend the bill to strengthen existing oversight of sheriffs before the pilot could go into effect, but my efforts were blocked by several senators, including Senator Steven Heffernan who ultimately killed my amendment.

In 2022, former Addison County Sheriff Peter Newton was charged with sexual assault and recently the Windsor County sheriff was charged with sexual misconduct. Over the past five years, sheriffs in Addison, Bennington, Caledonia, Franklin, Orange, and Windsor counties have been charged with serious crimes or involved in significant scandals. It is astounding that legislators would vote to expand the work of sheriffs before completing significant statutory and constitutional reforms to improve accountability, oversight, and the ability to expediently remove them from office for misconduct.

Other Bills of Note. There are quite a few bills on the move, so I can’t cover them all, but want to highlight three of my bills that passed recently. I sponsored, S.23, a bill to protect election integrity by requiring disclosure of deceptive political ads that use AI to manipulate images, sound, or video. It finally passed and was delivered to the Governor for his signature last week. Also last week, the Senate Agriculture Committee approved the House’s work on S.60, a bill that would create a Farm Security Fund to help farmers & loggers recover from natural disasters. The bill, which I worked on with a coalition of farming groups led by NOFA-VT, must pass on the Senate floor before it goes to the Governor for his signature. 

Finally, my latest bill to improve support for public libraries in Vermont, S.232, passed in the Senate Education Committee last week. The bill would create a Vermont Library Day every October, and expand support for libraries by making them explicitly eligible for current grants and other state and local programs. I will advocate to strengthen the bill as it moves through the process. Yay Libraries!

That’s all for now. If you’d like to receive my updates in your email inbox, sign up here to join my mailing list. Thank you for reading and take care.

Photo: Monkton Town Meeting in the Monkton Town School gym, on Saturday, February 28, 2026.