The House Natural Resources Committee has rejected the Scott administration’s proposal to do away with the district commissions which regulate development under the Act 250 environmental law.
“We are inclined to keep the district commissions,” said the committee chair, Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, adding that this decision has “helped us hone in on areas of agreement to help Act 250 work better.”
Eliminating the district commissions — local citizens who first examine whether a proposed development is consistent with the law’s environmental goals — was a key component of the overhaul proposed by Gov. Phil Scott with the support of the Vermont Natural Resources Council, an environmental advocacy group.
Though their proposed amendment to the 1970 law contains other major changes to Act 250, it was not clear whether the other parts of the reform package would survive the committee’s insistence on keeping the district commissions.
“This proposal was a delicate balance,” said Peter Walke, deputy secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, who has been leading the Scott administration’s effort to change the law. “We have to sit back and see whether this plan is going to meet the governor’s goals.”
But Sheldon said the argument over the district commissions was just part of what she called the “administrative bucket” of the proposed changes to the law. She said her committee is closer to agreement on other goals, such as encouraging more development in downtowns and village centers, and preventing fragmentation of forests and wildlife habitat.
Sheldon’s committee was scheduled to continue its work on those parts of the bill even after deciding to keep the district commissions.
Act 250 is recognized as one of Vermont’s most important environmental laws, credited with protecting mountain and forest areas from haphazard vacation home development and housing sprawl. But in the process, it has angered some loggers and land developers whose projects have to meet several criteria, which they say are erratically applied, in order to be approved.
Sheldon said one change the committee members have agreed to is making district commission proceedings “on the record,” making them more formal than they have been in the past.
That was not considered a step in the right direction by Brian Shupe, head of the VNRC.
“I’m extremely concerned about that,” said Shupe. Putting those proceedings on the record “requires adherence to strict administrative procedure,” Shupe said, which may be beyond the professional capacities of the commissions and the Natural Resources Board as they are now constituted.
One goal of the administration and the VNRC in proposing changes to Act 250 was to make the process more professional by eliminating the local commissions, replacing them with district coordinators overseen by a stronger Natural Resources Board.
Shupe said Act 250 has been “effectively broken since 2004 when the Natural Resource Board was weakened.” Eliminating the district commissions was designed in part to give the board some of the strength it had before then.
In the view of some legislators, the proposed changes would also have strengthened state regulators while weakening local influence.
“It was top-down government,” said Rep. Paul Lefebvre, R-Newark. He called the district commissions “the heart and soul of Act 250.”
