For much of the past two weeks, the House Human Services Committee has been thinking about PFAS.
PFAS (not “pee fast,” as my transcription software renders it) is short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, chemicals found in a wide array of manufactured products from cosmetics to firefighting foam to clothing.
According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, exposure to high concentrations of PFAS may cause developmental delays in children, reproductive harm, increased cancer risk and other negative health effects.
A common feature of PFAS, according to the EPA, is their long lifespan in the environment — giving them the ominous nickname of “forever chemicals.”
Last year, Vermont’s Senate passed S.25, an attempt to tamp down the spread of those forever chemicals. Earlier this month, lawmakers in the House Human Services committee took up the legislation.
S.25 would ban the production, sale or distribution of cosmetic and menstrual products made with PFAS, or with an alphabet soup of other chemical substances linked to negative health effects. (It’s a shame the Vermont State Scripps Spelling Bee just happened because I would have liked to see those kids try “octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane.”)
The legislation, in its current form, would also ban a suite of other products made with PFAS, including clothing, juvenile products, cookware and athletic turf fields. Research has shown high levels of PFAS in artificial turf fields, raising concerns about health impacts on athletes.
As currently written, S.25 would exempt turf fields that are already installed or approved by voters before 2025.
Much of the bill is similar to legislation passed in other states, although legislators have said that Vermont would be a trailblazer in some areas.
“We’re looking at turf, which no other state has done,” Rep. Dane Whitman, D-Bennington, said in a Wednesday committee discussion.
Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury and the chair of the committee, said Wednesday that she hopes to vote the bill out next week. As currently written, the PFAS ban in consumer products would take effect Jan. 1, 2025, while the ban on other chemicals in menstrual and cosmetics would take effect in 2027.
In the past two weeks, a procession of environmental and public health advocates have hailed the committee’s work on the ban and urged them to pass it.
“The truth is that the Vermont public is suffering from contamination without their consent,” Marguerite Adelman, the coordinator of the VT PFAS/Military Poisons Coalition, told committee members Friday.
— Peter D’Auria
In the know
Rep. Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, P/D-Burlington, plans to step down from her seat in the Vermont House on Monday, the same day she is set to be sworn in as Burlington’s next mayor.
The mayor-elect announced her Statehouse resignation in a letter read on her behalf in the chamber Friday morning.
Mulvaney-Stanak was elected Burlington mayor on Town Meeting Day and had reportedly been weighing whether she would serve in the House concurrently. She is set to be the first woman, and the first openly LGBTQ+ person, to hold the city government’s top job.
In her letter, which was read by House Clerk BetsyAnn Wrask, Mulvaney-Stanak said she chose to step down from the chamber so she could “effectively serve the city.”
— Shaun Robinson
“So we are back on chickens,” Sen. Bobby Starr, D-Orleans asked in a Senate Committee on Agriculture meeting on Thursday.
Lawmakers there have been considering a bill, H. 603, which aims to change the way small-scale farmers can sell poultry.
As of now they can only sell them directly to a consumer or restaurant as whole birds, but “people want to buy breasts, they want to buy legs, they want to buy wings. They don’t want to buy a whole bird,” Elizabeth Roma, co-owner of a farm called Putting Down Roots in South Royalton, said in testimony earlier this month.
The current version of the bill, which passed the House earlier this year, says that any farmers who slaughter no more than 20,000 birds annually can directly sell poultry in parts.
While the bill has received a positive response from most farmers, some worry about health risks if farmers are cutting up birds but are not under inspection. However, in testimony on Thursday, Steve Collier, the general counsel of the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, said the bill is “permissible under federal law.”
— Babette Stolk
A new report released by State Auditor Doug Hoffer this week affirmed a longstanding conclusion of the EB-5 scandal: that a lack of state oversight allowed the fraud to happen.
“In short, we found a pattern of misplaced trust, unfortunate decision-making, lengthy delays, and missed opportunities to prevent or minimize fraud,” Hoffer wrote in an introduction to the audit findings.
But the audit, which began in 2018 but was interrupted by the criminal investigations and related trials, does not appear to offer many new details, which Hoffer himself appeared to acknowledge in releasing the report on Thursday.
“At the highest level, our findings should not be entirely surprising,” Hoffer wrote.
— Babette Stolk
On the move
“Out of control,” “off the rails,” and “bizarre”: These are just a sampling of the insults Republicans in Montpelier have lobbed at Democrats over the past week leading up to the House’s approval of an $8.58 billion state budget Friday morning.
On the defense against the GOP’s accusations, Vermont’s Democratic leaders have retorted: Their Fiscal Year 2025 bottom line surpasses that which was proposed by Republican Gov. Phil Scott earlier this year by merely a fraction of a percentage point.
The House passed that budget, H.883, via voice vote Friday morning, after a preliminary 104-39 vote Thursday night. It now will be sent to the Senate for inevitable edits.
But drawing the most controversy in the Statehouse in recent days is what has been left out of the House’s version of the budget: proposed tax hikes on corporations, high earners and expensive property transfers, recently advanced by the House in three separate bills.
— Sarah Mearhoff
State senators advanced a bill that would apply the “polluter pays” model to climate change, requiring that some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies — and those that have contributed most to the warming of the planet — pay for damage related to climate change in Vermont.
Senators voted on S.259 by voice on Friday. Earlier, a 21-5 vote on an amendment indicated the support of a large majority of lawmakers in the upper chamber.
Adapting to climate change is expensive, Sen. Nader Hashim, D-Windham said as he presented the bill to lawmakers on the Senate floor.
“In order to remedy the problems created by washed out roads, downed electrical wires, damaged crops, and repeated flooding, the largest fossil fuel entities that have contributed to climate change should also contribute to fixing the problem that they caused,” he said.
— Emma Cotton
Visit our 2024 Bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following.
What we’re reading
Crossing the border? Watch out for tracking devices, VTDigger
Abenaki nations call for Vermont to reconsider state recognition is getting mixed response, Vermont Public
The pending sale of Williston’ Isham Family Farm exposes fragility in the agricultural succession model, Seven Days
