Dear Constituents –

The week after crossover in the Legislature is one of “hurry up and wait”. The bills that had to pass out of committees by March 13 moved on to money committees this week. Those discussions were difficult, as the reality is that there are far more funding requests than revenue coming into State coffers. The Appropriations committees have an unenviable job to balance that budget while fulfilling their obligation to protect the most vulnerable, create economic opportunity, and return affordability for Vermonters.

Committee members spent their time writing or hearing amendments to their bills, hearing testimony on new bills that have come over from the Senate, writing floor reports, and determining which bills to take up in the second half of the biennium.

On the House Floor, we debated and passed a large number of bills in two weeks.  As previously reported, many committees didn’t pass bills until the end of last week, so they were stacked up for hours to be heard, debated, and voted on the House Floor. For complete information, one can go to the General Assembly website to read the daily House and Senate Journals.

Most of my time for the past two weeks has been spent drafting H.935, a committee bill on Emergency Management, which can be found on the House Government Operations & Military Affairs webpage, that we built over two months, including requests brought to us by various agencies and organizations such as the Department of Public Safety, the VT Division of Emergency Management, the VT Foodbank, the VT Language Justice Project, VT Access Network, and the Urban Search and Rescue teams.

The Rural Caucus has heard an outpouring of concern about the implications of implementing Act 181, which has also been reported in this column and on my website, hangoforhouse.com, where I will be posting regular updates from the Land Use Review Board (LURB) on their activities.  You may also go to https://act250.vermont.gov/home for contact information to make public comment, learn about Act 250 and Act 181 as enacted in VT statute, and hear recordings of their public hearings.

S.325 at this writing is the only vehicle available for Act 181 reform; while not going so far as calling for repeal of the egregious “Road Rule” or the Tier 3 mapping process, it does call for implementation delays, and for greater outreach to the public on Act 18’s provisions in general.

Please feel welcome to reach out to me at [email protected] with questions and concerns.  It is an honor to serve in the General Assembly.

Stay well,

Rep Lisa Hango, Franklin-5 (Richford, Berkshire, Franklin, Highgate)