Now well past the Legislature’s usual adjournment time, there are relatively few, but vital bills still being negotiated in Montpelier: First, there is this year’s education “transformation” bill, the details of which I will leave to the experts at VTDigger and Vermont Public to explain.

 

Second, and very important to all of you, is some kind of deal on housing. There are still two housing bills alive: H.479 and S.127. Both packages contain many of the same broad strokes, but they hold key differences in their architecture of the new project-based TIF proposal, known as CHIP. The intent of CHIP has been to utilize tax increment financing to offset infrastructure costs for smaller, individual housing projects throughout the entirety of Vermont. Unlike a traditional, large-scale TIF district, the goal of CHIP is to help builders and developers cover expensive infrastructure so that new housing projects from Fairfax to Dover could pencil out.

But last week, differences of opinion on CHIP came to a head in the House over a slew of amendments made to the program by the House Ways and Means Committee. In the name of stewarding the state’s education fund, that committee wrote a series of guardrails to CHIP: the so-called “but for” test, square footage requirements, primary residency and affordability requirements, a yearly cap to the program and more. The House’s Rural Caucus, in particular, raised alarm bells that the program had been made too complicated to navigate – especially for smaller developers, or rural towns with limited administrative resources to navigate these rules and regulations.

And so, while House lawmakers scrambled to negotiate yet more amendments to CHIP in S.127 and delayed a scheduled vote on the bill, the Senate sprang into action. Senators cleared the companion housing bill, H.479, through several key committees over the span of the week, then twice voted unanimously to pass the bill on the floor Thursday – doing their part to ensure that a housing vehicle remained alive this session. In H.479, the Senate wrote their preferred CHIP language, which does not contain the House’s guardrails. The Senate made clear: Amid what we all call a housing crisis in Vermont, their goal is to spur – not cap or contain – housing growth, and they were unified in their message.

So what happens next? Both bills are still alive, and both could still go into a so-called conference committee, where three House members and three senators would negotiate a deal between the two chambers. While AGC-VT prefers the flexible CHIP language contained in H.479 compared to the latest version of S.127, what’s important is that at least one housing bill makes it to the finish line this session.

I’ll leave you all with some (more!) reading for the holiday weekend: In this Vermont Public article, UVM graduate and Cabot native Lucia McCallum asks, “Should I stay or should I go?”

I’ve talked with a number of you about your difficulty finding young employees, or even how many of your children have left Vermont to make it elsewhere. Housing is a major factor in these conundrums. Lucia’s story seemed especially prescient this week.