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Final Reading: It’s the last one, until 2025
By Sarah Mearhoff and Shaun Robinson,
2024-05-14
Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, D-Brattleboro, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, left, confers with Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee outside the Senate chamber at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Thursday, May 9, 2024. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Lawmakers are scheduled to be back in the building for a veto session on June 17 to potentially override any of the vetoes Republican Gov. Phil Scott opts to issue (and it looks like there could be a number of those). But for now, legislators have adjourned sine die, as they say, which is Latin for no set date.
With the end of the legislative session comes the natural end to this newsletter until January 2025. How time flies! We here at VTDigger wanted to thank all of our Final Readers for so loyally consuming our Statehouse coverage every day.
This session has been quite the ride, colored by new state fiscal realities, the dire need for flood recovery, a reckoning with Vermont’s school funding formula, heated debate over the state’s half-a-century-old land use law, escalating tensions between the executive and legislative branches, and much more.
I’m really proud that VTDigger’s Statehouse crew was there to cover it all — and have some fun along the way. Reporters Carly Berlin, Emma Cotton, Peter D’Auria, Auditi Guha, Erin Petenko, Shaun Robinson and Ethan Weinstein all contributed blood, sweat, tears and prose (perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit) to this newsletter over the past five months.
Our illustrious interns — Sophia Keshmiri, Babette Stolk, Habib Sabet and Juan Vega de Soto — were the most reliable pinch-hitters in the game. Night editor Jimmy Nesbitt did the painstaking work of building the newsletter on the daily. Photographer Glenn Russell, an institution unto himself, caught all of the action with his lens. Our newsletter looks as sexy as it does thanks to our product design director, Taylor Haynes. And our politics and policy editor, Kristen Fountain, somehow wrangled it all in order to get an email out the door every evening. Somebody buy this woman a drink!
We also want to thank you, Final Readers, for being the reason we hit ‘send.’ There are nearly 6,000 of you out there(!), and we’re so grateful for your support.
And speaking of support … Here comes the fundraising segue! You had to know this was coming.
If you value this ⭐️ award winning ⭐️ newsletter and have the means, I humbly ask that you consider supporting it monetarily . Our news is free to read because we believe that journalism that informs citizens and holds power to account is a public good, and should be accessible to everyone. But it’s not free to produce, and we need all the support we can get.
When you donate to VTDigger , you’re helping to fund the salaries of reporters like yours truly, and all of the amazing, talented, dogged folks I listed above — and then some. Thanks in advance for considering it. And to the 20% of our Final Reading subscribers who are already sustaining members: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Miss us already? Such is life. But the news doesn’t end just because the legislative session does. Visit VTDigger.org for coverage of all Vermont news. You may have heard about this thing called the 2024 election… We’re already all over it, and campaigns are only just starting to get going.
This is also the time of year that we reporters get out of the Statehouse and into communities to see how lawmakers’ policies are impacting everyday Vermonters. If you have a story idea for us, we’d love to hear it. Please email us or send us a tip .
Thanks again for reading, and see you next year.
— Sarah Mearhoff
p.s. You will likely hear from us again in the coming weeks as we seek your help in improving Final Reading. We’ll be sending out a reader survey, which we hope you’ll consider taking. We want to hear from you!
In the know
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont and MVP, the only insurers that sell health plans on the state’s insurance marketplace, are seeking permission to increase insurance premiums between roughly 9% to 19% for the upcoming year .
Roughly 45,000 Vermonters are insured by Blue Cross Blue Shield on small group and individual plans, according to the insurer. MVP said it insures nearly 26,000 Vermonters on small group and individual plans.
Blue Cross Blue Shield and MVP said the proposed hikes are needed to meet rising costs for hospital services, drugs and an increase in people seeking health care after the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Another key factor is a pending piece of Vermont legislation, H.766 , which would limit insurers’ influence over medical decisions made by health care practitioners.
Do you value your sleep and sanity? Have you maintained your primal instincts for self-preservation? If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions, you may have actually gone to bed at a reasonable time Friday night and missed the Legislature’s final adjournment in the wee hours of Saturday morning .
Perhaps your feelings of FOMO are cruel and unrelenting. No matter! Humble servants we are, VTDigger stuck out the late night to follow all of the last-minute deals struck, bills passed, speeches made and gavels gavelled. Catch up on some of it here:
Bills related to animal welfare, pesticide use and pet stores are headed to the governor’s desk. A fourth agriculture-focused bill, which would have allowed farmers to more easily repair their equipment, lost support in its final stages and will not become law this session.
In response to last year’s widespread flooding, Vermont lawmakers have passed new measures intended to give prospective homebuyers, renters and manufactured home purchasers more information about flood risk when looking for their next home .
Vermont now joins a growing list of states that mandate flood risk disclosure for real estate transactions, as climate change fuels more extreme weather.
The new requirements have not yet been signed into law by Gov.Scott, and are part of a sweeping land use and housing reform bill that the Republican governor has suggested he may veto. Yet the flood disclosure measures proved relatively uncontroversial throughout this year’s legislative session.
Gov. Scott has allowed a bill to become law without his signature that, among other measures, allows members of the Vermont Truth and Reconciliation Commission to hold deliberations outside of the requirements of the state’s Open Meeting Law.
Scott said he refused to sign the bill, H.649 , because of that provision. It allows a majority or more of the commissioners to hold private discussions about testimony they’ve received or when debating potential actions. Any official decisions by the commissioners, though, must be made in a public setting, according to the legislation.
Visit our 2024 Bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following.
On the campaign trail
Gov. Scott isn’t ready to hang up his hat.
In an announcement issued Saturday evening, the four-term Republican governor said he will seek another two-year term in this year’s election cycle.
“During my four terms as Governor, my team and I have worked to grow the economy, make Vermont more affordable, and protect the most vulnerable. I’ve done my best to rise above partisanship to solve problems, and help people,” said Scott, who has held the post since 2017.
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