The Vermont Senate approved legislation Wednesday that addresses the impacts of development on forest blocks and sets a framework for managing the state’s recreational trails.
What happens now is up to the Vermont House of Representatives.
With fewer than seven legislative days left until the Legislature adjourns for the year, the Democratic-controlled Senate approved a modest 10-page version of H.926, a bill to reform Act 250, Vermont’s 50-year-old land use law.
“Act 250 is not a relic. As we change and as our use of the land changes, so too does Act 250 need to change with it and today we face two problems and H.926 brings forward two solutions,” Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison, said on the virtual Senate floor Wednesday.
Bray, who chairs the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, got the job of shepherding the Act 250 reform bill through the Senate after the House of Representatives approved what was then a 46-page bill in late February on a 88-52 vote.
After months of discussion in the Senate, interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, senators decided to cut the bill to just 10 pages and narrow the focus to best management practices for trails and outdoor recreation, and to begin to address forest fragmentation and development patterns that break up natural habitat.
On the Senate floor Wednesday, Bray said this bill works to properly regulate recreational trails, while also setting up criteria and beginning to mitigate developments that break up forest ecosystems.
“We’re seeing for the first time in a century that we’re losing forest land,” Bray said.
“Within the forest land that remains, it’s being broken and broken into smaller parcels and such fragmented parcels are less capable of supporting wildlife, less capable of supplying clean water and less capable of participating in our wood products industry,” Bray said.
The Senate bill establishes new forest block and connecting habitat subcriteria in Act 250, with the goal of avoiding fragmentation of forests and reducing the breakup of any connecting habitat by development.
The trails section of the bill stipulates that trails and “interested parties” in creating trails can continue to operate through the end of December 2021 without an Act 250 review. A working group will report back to the Legislature early next year, and lawmakers are then mandated to create a framework for managing the demands and needs of the different types of trails in the state.
Of the two proposals, the part of the bill addressing forest fragmentation was far more contentious than the regulation of recreational trails.
Sen. Bobby Starr, D-Essex-Orleans, raised concerns about the impact this bill might have on private landowners’ ability to subdivide property.
Starr’s seatmate, Democratic Sen. John Rodgers, who sits on the natural resources committee, took issue with the forest management criteria because the measure contains no additional appropriations to support the Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Agency of Natural Resources.
“They will also have to do a huge amount of work on developing this new criteria and the rules around it and there’s no funds for them to do this work,” Rodgers said.
“My wish is that, if this is going to move forward, there’s actually a realization by the Senate that this work is going to take money and it’s going to take people and that we fund it properly and we staff it properly,” he said.
Sen. Corey Parent, R-Franklin, proposed dividing the bill into two sections, one on recreational trails and the other on forest fragmentation. Roll call votes were taken on both aspects of the legislation.
The Senate voted 24-6 in favor of sections addressing forests and building development, and there was unanimous support for the portion of the bill addressing trail management.
While the upper chamber has completed its work on H.926, the fate of the bill remains unclear as it heads back to the House of Representatives in the waning days before adjournment.
On Tuesday, during a Senate Democratic caucus, Bray told his colleagues he’s not sure what will happen to the bill.
“I’ve looked carefully at the calendar, I’ve talked to my colleagues on the other side, but I would never opine on what will happen when it gets there,” he said.
If the House does take up and approve the Senate measure, there are no guarantees that Gov. Phil Scott will sign it.
Last week, Julie Moore, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, told the Senate Natural Resources Committee that the Scott administration could not support the narrowly focused bill because in her mind it “leaves behind some of what we saw as critical elements in any final bill.”
Scott himself said Tuesday during his press briefing that he was discouraged by the direction the Senate had taken with the legislation, signaling that, unless it changes, he is unlikely to support it.
“I don’t believe that the latest version of the Senate bill is all that we had hoped for,” he said.