This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
The Vermont Senate passed a bill on Thursday that will delay the implementation of Act 181, a contentious 2024 law that overhauled the state’s land use permitting system.
But that vote followed several rounds of heated debate over rolling back or further postponing land conservation measures, fueled by a Tuesday protest attended by hundreds of rural landowners who called on lawmakers to repeal the law altogether.
The sparring over Act 181 has surfaced a rural-urban divide at the Statehouse. Rural conservatives argue that the law’s benefits flow only to Vermont’s larger cities and towns, and that its conservation rules place an undue burden on private property owners. Democrats have defended the law’s goals to both boost housing in downtowns and villages and increase environmental protections elsewhere, though they’ve heeded calls to pump the brakes.
Details: Vermont is overhauling Act 250. Here’s what the development maps look like so far
On the Senate floor, Republicans contended that new development regulations set forth in Act 181, which bolster protections over sensitive ecosystems, effectively undermine personal property rights. Sen. Steve Heffernan, R-Addison, framed the issue around affordability — wealthy second home-owners can afford more land-use permits, he said, but regular Vermonters can’t.
“We must ask ourselves … are we protecting Vermont’s lands, or pricing Vermonters out of it?” Heffernan said.
Democrats, who control the chamber, countered that the new rules are critical for preserving Vermont’s landscape for the good of the broader community.
“Future generations may not have the same ecosystems that we have access to because of development,” said Sen. Becca White, D-Windsor.
The bill in question, S.325, is a set of tweaks to Act 181, which the Legislature passed over Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s objections two years ago.
Act 181 aimed to encourage more homebuilding in already-developed areas of Vermont by removing state level review under Act 250, Vermont’s signature land use law. At the same time, the law beefed up protections for to-be-determined critical natural resources.
The 2024 law mandated a first-of-its-kind mapping effort that will essentially dictate where future development will be subject to Act 250 scrutiny, and where it won’t be, through a tiered land-use classification system.
That mapping process is still underway, and the board overseeing it has asked for more time to complete its work — in part because of feedback from municipal officials and rural residents who objected to early drafts.
S.325 would postpone the implementation of many pieces of Act 181. It would extend temporary housing exemptions, delay the start of a new “road rule” that would require a permit for private road construction over a certain length in much of the state until 2030 and pushes out the beginning of new “Tier 3” rules. These rules would heighten scrutiny over building near headwater streams, habitat connectors and rare natural communities.
The fate of Tier 3 garnered the most attention on the Senate floor. Republicans backed an amendment on Wednesday to scrap the tier entirely.
Sen. Russ Ingalls, R-Essex, a cosponsor of the amendment and an organizer of Tuesday’s rally, argued that the entirety of his Northeast Kingdom district would fall into the tier and suggested that a majority of Vermonters currently live in Tier 3 areas.
“We should be able to live like the rest of Vermont does, and not be restricted,” Ingalls said.
Yet the bounds of Tier 3 have not yet been set, and the Land Use Review Board, which is creating its boundaries, has said the tier will only make up a small portion of land in Vermont. The board is also looking to limit what kinds of construction would trigger the need for an Act 250 permit in these zones.
“It may be that a single house, for instance, depending on where it is, doesn’t even matter. It won’t be counted,” said Sen. Seth Bongartz, D-Bennington, one of the architects of Act 181 when he served in the House.
The amendment to roll back Tier 3 ultimately failed in a party-line vote on Wednesday. A separate amendment to further delay its implementation failed on Thursday. Another Republican-backed amendment that was adopted eases state regulations for housing in rural areas that lack local zoning.
“We absolutely hear the concerns from different corners of the state of Vermont and we take those seriously."House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington
Scott, Act 181’s longest-standing detractor, vetoed the legislation in 2024, arguing that it was a “conservation bill” that did little to boost housing growth in rural areas. The governor said at a Thursday press conference that he thinks the bill to delay its implementation is “moving in the right direction, but we need more.”
Scott was pleased to see protesters this week heeding his message.
“I’ve said this before: this hurts rural Vermont. And now they’re just waking up to the fact that, yes, indeed, it will,” Scott said.
The bill now heads to the House. House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, said she sees the need to delay Act 181 — and that she hears the upswell of pushback against the law from beyond the Statehouse.
“We absolutely hear the concerns from different corners of the state of Vermont and we take those seriously,” Krowinski said.
S.325 will land in the House environment committee, helmed by Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, one of Act 181’s initial drafters. Sheldon understands the rationale to postpone pieces of its implementation, she said in a Wednesday interview. But she is not open to rolling back elements of the 2024 law.
Sheldon believes that some of the arguments raised by opponents of the law are overstated and misguided. She still stands by the core aims of the law, she said, gesturing toward Vermont’s state motto.
“We’re balancing freedom and unity, right? That’s what we do,” Sheldon said.
