Editor’s note: Renée Carpenter is a resident of East Montpelier, and a successful party to an Act 250 hearing process that protected Coburn Pond for swimming and year-round recreation.
The group of 22 business associations that recently sent a letter to Gov. Phil Scott identified limits in legislative process caused by the “extraordinary era of the pandemic.” They accurately reflected that, “meetings will take place on Zoom and the hundreds of people who typically crowd the Statehouse each winter will have no access to the conversations that usually flow in corridors and committee rooms.” They went on to suggest that, “legislation focus solely on the health and safety of Vermonters, must-pass state bills/budgets, and our economic recovery.”
As usual, this might make common sense, until one considers that returning to our “normal” conception of economic recovery disregards that the underlying causes of the global pandemic and global climate change evolved from the same roots. To solve both of these crises, we need to shift our thinking to some of the lessons we have learned from Covid-19.
When we “stayed at home to stay safe,” our carbon emissions were considerably cut. Urban areas like L.A. and Mumbai had clean air for the first time in decades. Even in Vermont, the steady whirr of too many cars on our main highways was mostly absent in the early weeks of the pandemic. Working from home gave us more family time. We revised our definition of “essential work.” When state and federal unemployment programs kicked in, some of us became more secure. When it became clear that the needs of many in the community had increased, people became creative, and developed programs that met multiple needs, like the Everyone Eats program that supports both farmers and restaurants to distribute nutritious local meals.
Zoonautic diseases, like Covid-19, are the result of too much human encroachment on once-wild places, and the industrial scale by which most of our commercial food is produced exacerbates a wide range of related health and ecological issues too broad to cover in a brief commentary.
“’This is not a time for business as usual,” wrote the groups, that included the Lake Champlain and Vermont Chambers of Commerce, Vermont Association of Realtors, Agri-Mark, and the Vermont Farm Bureau. “With the spontaneous back-and-forth of citizen lawmaking unavailable this year, ‘we ask that legislation focus solely on the health and safety of Vermonters, must-pass state bills/budgets, and our economic recovery,’ the letter said.” (They failed to mention that, as lobbyists for the business community, they have easier access to the Legislature than those “hundreds of people” they cited in their letter.)
It is easy to agree that the Zoom-facilitated legislative process is deeply flawed for the reasons given. Where the disagreement lies is with the details of what might, or might not, be acceptable policies that comprise “economic recovery.” A number of people and organizations echoed similar concerns about the remote process last year, as the Legislature attempted to push through repeals of critical parts of Vermont’s Act 250 land use law, couched under other terms. Zoom was flawed then, as it is now. The challenge is with communication, whether or not it is inclusive enough to reflect a democratic process that determines how to effectively enact public policy that addresses the concerns of us all.
Act 250 was developed more than 50 years ago to protect the environment from increasing development pressures. This law effectively created a process to engage individuals, organizations, and communities to participate in a quasi legal hearing process that considers the details of development in their communities. Most Act 250 permits are granted, often after implementing changes that address those considerations and values that we, in Vermont, have declared to be important, as evaluated by the 10 criteria of Act 250.
Vermont’s sensitive ecosystems have been defined: Our wetlands and watersheds, ground water and waterways; intact forest blocks, especially those in upper elevations; identified wildlife corridors; and irreplaceable agricultural soils. These ecological resources are on the front lines of resilience, to protect us from the impacts of extreme weather caused by climate change.
Act 250 creates a democratic process which is the compromise between economic development and necessary protection of Vermont’s ecosystems. And while there is room for improvement, repealing parts of Act 250 under the guise of “the economy” is an unwise and unconscionable choice.
If Covid-19 has taught us one thing, it should be that we must take care of what is most essential and valuable: our people, our landscape, our ecosystems. That’s the top priority.
We have seen initiatives to meet the basic needs in our communities outside of the “normal” employment-cash economy. We have seen the federal and state governments step up to the plate in ways that made a difference to human lives and our economy. In this time of polarized wealth, exacerbated further with the pandemic, our Legislature should be able to determine economic solutions that support Vermont’s highest values without undermining our ecological resilience. The health and safety of Vermonters depends on healthy ecosystems. A healthy economy must find its place within that context.
