Sen. Bobby Starr, D-Orleans, knows a bit about farming, having represented agricultural communities in the Northeast Kingdom at the Statehouse for more than 40 years. So he wanted to hear directly from Jason Struthers, the Essex Junction cannabis and duck farmer who has run afoul, so to speak, of both his city’s zoning bylaws and his neighbors’ good graces.
Struthers made a pitstop in Starr’s committee in the morning before hitting House Government Operations on Tuesday afternoon. That’s where representatives are considering H.549, a bill that would prohibit outdoor cannabis cultivation in particularly densely populated areas.
Starr had a burning question for Struthers: How does the small-scale farmer — on only a roughly half-acre residential lot — have the space for the up to 125 cannabis plants allowed by his state license AND his flock of more than two dozen free-range ducks? Struthers assured him: “I have plenty of land for both my cannabis and my ducks.”
The good senator no doubt appreciated the farmer’s gesture to the statue that adorns the Golden Dome. “That’s Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture,” Struthers said in his testimony. “That’s because agriculture is a foundation of Vermont and it’s part of our identity and culture.”
Starr could certainly relate to the situation. “That’s gone on, you know — neighbors complaining about neighbors, from manure spreading to cows roaming loose… it’s gone on forever,” he said.
That’s part of the reason Vermont has the protections it does for farms, Starr said, then musing, “but when you get down under an acre, an acre or so, that’s kind of a real, real small farm.” Last year’s miscellaneous cannabis law, Act 65, extended those agricultural allowances to all outdoor cannabis cultivators.
Struthers’ conundrum, Starr said, is that his farm is located in a section of Essex Junction zoned for residential use. Although farms are largely exempt from local zoning regulations under Vermont law, municipalities with use districts can put up some red tape.
“If you’re in an (agricultural) district, they can put up all the red flags they want, and holler as loud as they want, and tough luck, but you’re stuck in a residential district,” Starr said. “They do have a leg to stand on.”
The fate of Struthers’ farm operation depends on two different appeals of Essex Junction’s zoning board — one by Struthers and one by some of his neighbors — which are making their way through the state’s environmental court. It will also depend on what happens in the House committee, which is preparing a new draft of the bill.
House Government Operations Committee Chair Mike McCarthy, D-St. Albans City, asked Cannabis Control Board Chair James Pepper to give the committee some sense of how many growers might be affected by the law.
Pepper said the numbers could be significant, particularly because of the Vermont cannabis regulation’s special focus on encouraging small growers with the goal of drawing more people into the legal market.
“So this sets up a conflict where, you know, the (people participating in the) former illegal market were growing in their garages and their cellars and their spare bedrooms,” Pepper said. “Now that it’s legal they’re asking to move outside.”
— Kristen Fountain
In the know
Lawmakers are now talking about replacing a controversial cap on homestead property tax rates with a new tax “discount” that would apply only to districts losing tax capacity.
“Five percent cap is over,” Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a joint hearing with the House Committee on Education on Tuesday.
She also said that lawmakers were drafting language “to allow districts to move their budget votes out a little bit to give them time to redraft their budgets,” now that lawmakers are again planning to adjust the details that govern the state’s education funding system.
The specifics of the new proposal are expected to be made public on Wednesday, Kornheiser said. Voters typically consider school budgets on Town Meeting Day, which is four weeks away.
— Ethan Weinstein
More than two-thirds of the Vermont Senate has signed on to legislation that would add an equal protection clause to the state’s constitution. In calling for the change, the bill’s proponents have cited attacks on marginalized communities nationwide and U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have whittled away key federal protections.
Proposal 4, sponsored by 23 senators, seeks to amend Article 7 in Chapter 1 of the Vermont Constitution to say that “the government must not deny equal treatment and respect under the law on account of a person’s race, ethnicity, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or national origin.”
— Auditi Guha
At a press conference where Gov. Phil Scott declared this week Domestic and Sexual Violence Awareness Week, state officials, domestic violence advocates and representatives of M&T Bank celebrated a new program to offer financial literacy resources to survivors of abuse.
Funded through a $100,000 donation from M&T Bank’s Charitable Foundation, the state Treasurer’s Office is partnering with the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence to provide financial educational resources to survivors to help them leave abusive relationships, or rebuild their lives after they’re free from their partners.
“I hear many different stories of abuse on a daily basis,” Ari Menard, an advocate from the Washington County-based domestic violence shelter Circle Vermont, said at Tuesday’s press conference. “But there is one form of abuse that is the single biggest barrier to housing, and to allowing survivors to move on with their life. And that is financial abuse.”
— Sarah Mearhoff
Ta ta for now
With longtime Vermont political journalist Stewart Ledbetter slated to sign off his final television broadcast later this month, the House surprised him with a unanimous resolution honoring his 40-year career in journalism.
The NBC5 anchor and longtime host of Vermont Public’s “Vermont This Week” show made his all-too-familiar commute to the Statehouse on Tuesday under the guise that his station was just filming a special episode on his career, set to air when he retires on Feb. 16. Little did he know that his colleagues, a slew of other Statehouse reporters and the entire House were scheming to surprise him.
Come Tuesday morning’s floor session, the House pivoted to a resolution notably absent from the daily calendar, honoring Ledbetter’s “four decades of insightful reporting.” After the resolution passed by a unanimous voice vote, Rep. Jim Harrison, R-Chittenden, in a floor speech celebrated “one of the legends of Vermont media.”
“For 40 years, we have seen him daily on WPTZ, bringing us the latest in Vermont news,” Harrison said. “Some might say he hasn’t changed a bit — sort of the Dick Clark of Vermont.”
Unwilling or perhaps unable to retire from the hustle fully, Ledbetter will still appear on NBC5 post-retirement as a political commentator.
He was met with a raucous standing ovation Tuesday — including from his colleagues in the House gallery press box. Cheers, Stew.
— Sarah Mearhoff
Visit our 2024 Bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following.
Corrections section
Friday’s newsletter was incorrect about the type of credential that the Secretary of State’s office would provide for peer support specialists upon passage of a new bill, now with a number: H.847. It will be a certification, which will not be required to practice.
What we’re reading
177 lawmakers decry recent acts of homophobia in Vermont, cite ‘disturbing pattern’ nationwide, VTDigger
Attorney General brings case against central Vermont loggers, VTDigger
Correction: An earlier version of Final Reading misquoted Sen. Bobby Starr and contained the incorrect bill number for H. 549.
