A key House committee has neutered a controversial proposal that would have created a statewide Act 250 review board.
The House Ways and Means Committee voted 10-1 Friday to take out the funding mechanism for a new three-member statewide board that would review major Act 250 projects. The move comes shortly before the crossover deadline for the House to vote on an almost 100-page Act 250 reform bill, H.926. If approved, it would go to the Senate.
Removing that provision will make it “incredibly difficult” for Gov. Phil Scott to back a broader package of reforms to the state’s 50-year old land use law, which lawmakers have been working on for two sessions, said a key Scott administration official.
The Vermont Natural Resources Council, an environmental group that teamed up with the Scott administration to recommend the change, also criticized the elimination of the statewide panel from the legislation.
Janet Ancel, D-Calais, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in an interview that she and other committee members had concerns about limiting the power of the district commissions.
“I think having a professional board is going to add to the costs of Act 250,” she said, adding “I think it’s going to become much more of a lawyer’s game.”
With the funding mechanism removed, the House Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife, is expected to amend the bill’s language to take out the new review board, according to Ancel. The legislation had already passed out of Natural Resources.
The rest of the reform package, including exemption of designated downtowns from Act 250 review and modifying criteria to include climate adaptation and mitigation, will go ahead.
The statewide panel would have significantly changed how projects are reviewed.
Currently, regional volunteer panels known as “district commissions” review Act 250 permit applications. Each commission has a professional coordinator who assesses minor project applications. Only major projects go before the district commission for full review, which includes a public hearing.
In 2017, the Legislature created a six-member commission to analyze the effectiveness of Act 250 and propose 21st century updates, which they unveiled at the start of last session. House Natural Resources, spent most of last session working on a behemoth Act 250 reform bill.
Last month, the Scott administration and environmental group Vermont Natural Resources Council offered a proposal to have major projects reviewed by a three-member, professional board rather than the district commissions.
But this shift was greeted with concern by some members of the House Natural Resources Committee and public who felt it would make it harder for citizens to participate in Act 250 review and reduce local control. In an effort to strike a compromise, the committee came up with a plan for a hybrid panel — made up of the new three-member board and two regional representatives — for the review of major projects.
Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, chair of House Natural Resources, said on Friday that her committee will now offer a floor amendment to leave regional project review untouched.
“Our committee was split — we struggled with this a lot,” she said in an interview Friday. “And when it got to Ways and Means, they were struggling with some of the same issues and they weren’t really resolved.”
She added that she was “comfortable enough” with the status quo for project review to leave that unchanged. In previous interviews, Sheldon has stressed that the bill contains a number of other changes — such as exempting designated downtowns from Act 250 review and adding criteria around climate adaptation and environmental justice — that she feels are crucial improvements.
“In the vein of first do no harm, there are too many unknowns with this proposal, and if it’s a good proposal, it will come back to us in the future,” said Sheldon.
That view was not shared by Peter Walke, deputy secretary of the state Agency of Natural Resources, who expressed frustration that the reversal came after the natural resources committee had already approved the new board structure following “a year and a half” of deliberation.
“It was one of the key pieces in our work with the Vermont Natural Resources Council to come to a balanced package of changes to Act 250 that will improve the process and improve protection for Vermont’s environment,” he said in an interview Friday. “And to strip that out after it’s been voted out of the committee makes not a lot of sense to me.”
“It is going to be incredibly difficult for the administration to support the bill,” he added.
Walke said the administration thinks the best way to “provide a reliable and predictable process” for Act 250 review is through having a “permanent, trained, full-time board with local representation.”
Brian Shupe, director of VNRC, said that while he feels the bill still has a lot of good measures that will promote environmental protection and smart growth, VNRC is “disappointed that they’re not fixing a broken system.”
“They need more support,” Jon Groveman, of VNRC, said of the district commissions, adding “That’s where most of the decisions get made and 50 years into Act 250, relying on a volunteer system solely to make those decisions with the same (financial) support we’ve given them since 1970 … is not sustainable.”
