Act 250

The board will play a key role in overseeing a years-long mapping process that will cement changes to Vermont’s statewide development review law.

Lawmakers had hoped the temporary carve-outs would help ease Vermont’s acute housing shortage. Developers are using the new exemptions in at least a dozen locations across the state.

“My sense is that the majority of the residents in Putney do support the project, and that there’s a small but loud, vocal minority that really opposes it,” said the Putney select board chair.

A proposed 99-unit hotel in downtown Rutland that will include 26 residential apartments, a restaurant and rooftop bar will not need Act 250 approval, due to its location being within the designated downtown development district.

The governor’s willingness to use his veto pen — and Democrats’ ability to erase it — represents a deepening partisan chasm in Montpelier.

The legislation, hailed as a compromise between advocates for housing and environmentalists, makes major changes to Vermont’s signature land-use law.

It’s unclear whether the Democrat-led Legislature will have the votes to override the governor’s veto.

Republican Gov. Phil Scott hopes voter disaffection over new government spending will erode the supermajority that Democrats have relied on to overcome his veto power.

The question now is whether Gov. Phil Scott, who has repeatedly criticized earlier versions of the bill, will veto it.

It’s not the end of the road for the bill, which seeks to make major changes to the state’s half-century-old land use review law.