To meet a federal deadline, Gov. Phil Scott’s administration hopes to exempt certain projects financed by the American Rescue Plan from a key environmental vetting process.
Lawmakers are raising questions about the environmental implications of the request.
A proposal by the administration would allow American Rescue Plan-funded development initiatives in downtowns, village centers and neighborhood development areas to proceed without a permit under Act 250, Vermont’s landmark conservation law. It also calls for more staff at the state’s District Environmental Commissions, so Act 250 permits may be granted more quickly than usual for projects in other areas.
The administration says the steps are needed to ensure the money is spent by a 2024 deadline set by the federal government.
Among the projects involved is a $249 million plan to help address the state’s longstanding shortage of affordable housing, according to Housing Commissioner Josh Hanford.
But members of the Vermont House Committee on Natural Resources questioned whether the request is needed, arguing at a committee hearing Tuesday that, at its longest, the Act 250 permit process usually takes months — not years. The oversight analyzes the impacts those projects could have on nearby ecosystems, they said.
“I feel that we should go by the principle of ‘do no harm,’ and make sure that we abide by the systems that have worked well for us in the past,” Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, the committee chair, said in an interview Wednesday. “We just have the potential here to lose a lot of what makes Vermont Vermont if we’re not careful here.”
The projects covered by the administration’s proposal are part of Scott’s pitch for how to spend $1.3 billion drawn from the massive Covid-19 relief bill, a plan that needs the Legislature’s approval. In total, Vermont will receive $2.7 billion from the plan.
Act 250, a landmark land-use law passed in the 1970s, placed environmental regulations on development projects at a time when Vermont’s population was growing. The law seeks to promote economic and real estate development in a way that protects the state’s natural resources.
As the state faces a drastic shortage of affordable housing, Hanford, the housing commissioner, said the administration’s proposal offers a way to quickly solve part of the problem, so Vermonters without homes can be moved out of temporary residencies such as hotels.
“We need to be positioned to quickly build and transition folks to more permanent housing that we can afford,” Hanford told lawmakers Tuesday.
Scott’s American Rescue Plan budget supports building new, affordable homes and refurbishing dilapidated ones, among other housing initiatives.
The Act 250 exemptions would apply to a slate of other projects in the governor’s Rescue Plan budget, including economic development and water infrastructure proposals, according to Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore — provided those projects are in downtowns, village centers and neighborhood development areas.
Brian Shupe, executive director of the Vermont Natural Resources Council, said his organization supports the staffing increases in the administration’s request. Those will likely be three-year positions that will aid in the permit reviews as the funds’ spending deadline nears, Moore said.
On the other hand, the natural resources council sees the Act 250 exemptions as “very problematic,” Shupe said, and are part of an ongoing effort by the development sector to shake Act 250 oversight.
“It seems like the administration wants to do this because they think they have an opportunity to take advantage of the ARPA funding” to create Act 250 exemptions, Shupe said.
Sheldon, the House Natural Resources Committee chair, emphasized that the committee needs to learn more about the location and scope of specific projects that would be granted Act 250 exemptions.
She shares the administration’s goal of ensuring that the money is spent appropriately and before the deadline. But the state should avoid rushing its decisions on how to spend the massive, once-in-a-lifetime funding influx, she said.
“My concern here — not with this proposal, necessarily, but just with the amount of dollars coming in — is that we want to be sure that we don’t go to sleep in Vermont one night and wake up in New Jersey,” Sheldon said.
