If you’ve visited the Statehouse this session, you’ve likely noticed that X-ray machine stashed by the loading entrance, draped in a tarp like a grill in winter.
This year’s capital investment bill, H. 494 — which directs spending on state infrastructure and received preliminary approval on Friday, sets aside $100,000 in part to reimburse the sergeant-at-arms for the device, which is “designed to screen baggage,” the bill reads.
“There’s always been this balance of really making sure that (the Statehouse) is an open building,” said Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, who as chair of the House Corrections and Institutions Committee leads the development of the capital bill every year. “But as things start changing on a national level and social level, I mean, there’s more heightened concern about security. There’s more heightened concern about protecting people in the building.”
On a typical day, people come and go from the ‘People’s House’ through any entrance. There’s no officer checking your bag, no metal detector, just a sign reminding you to leave your gun at home.
But sometimes, when special events or worrisome intelligence spur heightened security, Capitol Police direct all visitors to the loading door, and, more recently, out comes the X-ray.
On one such single-point-of-entry day last year, officers questioned me for my lack of state-issued badge. (No such thing exists for the press.) Luckily, a House member vouched for my trustworthiness, and I hurried inside.
Agatha Kessler, the statehouse sergeant-at-arms, declined to speak on the record about the building’s security, the X-ray machine, or plans for enhanced safety measures.
But at an October meeting of the Joint Legislative Management Committee on the topic of Statehouse renovations, Kessler told lawmakers she had “a lot of security ideas” for the future. At that meeting, lawmakers entered executive session, during which they approved the purchase of the X-ray machine.
The day may come when lobbyists and lawmakers submit to the piercing gaze of a daily X-ray. But knowing the building, they’ll probably have the equivalent of TSA PreCheck. We reporters, we’ll expect to take our shoes off with the people.
— Ethan Weinstein
In the know
Gov. Phil Scott took executive action on Friday to extend motel voucher stays for unhoused families with children and certain people with acute medical needs through June 30.
Without the extension, this group of unhoused Vermonters would have faced a cliff next Tuesday, when the voucher program’s loosened winter rules will expire for the season. Democratic legislators had sought a three-month extension for all people sheltered through the program, a move Scott and fellow Republicans fiercely opposed.
Scott’s order came down just hours after Senate Republicans blocked an attempt to advance a bill that would have provided an extension for all 2,300 people currently receiving motel vouchers.
The extension will apply to just over 400 households, according to Amanda Wheeler, Scott’s press secretary. State data shows 1,439 households are currently sheltered through the program.
Read more about Scott’s executive order here.
— Carly Berlin
The Vermont House and Senate have constructed diverging versions of education reform proposals in recent weeks, setting up a clash between the two chambers.
In a Thursday press conference, House Democrats shared their desire to delegate the creation of new school district maps, drawing out the transition to a consolidated public school system until summer 2029. That timeline is two years slower than the Scott administration proposal presented to lawmakers earlier in the session.
“Creating these new districts must be done right, must be done carefully and thoughtfully by the right people,” said Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, chair of the House Education Committee. His committee’s proposed legislation, still in draft form, would task a team of education stakeholders with devising at most three possible configurations to present to lawmakers next year.
That tactic drew ire from Scott, who alluded in a Thursday statement to “delayed action” by lawmakers. Amanda Wheeler, a spokesperson, later confirmed the governor was referencing the House’s plan.
“I will not support adjourning this session without a bill to transition to a new funding system, establish a new governance structure that unlocks transformation, and includes a specific implementation timeline,” Scott said in the statement.
Read more about the two chambers’ developing plans here.
— Ethan Weinstein
On the move
The House passed its version of the state budget for the 2026 fiscal year on Friday, including a proposal that would let top lawmakers access more state dollars to plug feared future losses in federal funding. It now heads to the Senate.
The so-called “big bill,” H.493, would allow the state’s Emergency Board to use a portion of the state’s “rainy day” fund to reduce the impacts of potential federal cuts. The board, which includes the governor and the chairs of the Legislature’s four taxing and spending committees, is able to meet when legislators aren’t in session.
It’s not clear exactly how much federal funding is at risk from sweeping cuts that President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed, or is already making. But it is clear, lawmakers have said, that the impact to the state’s budget — of which about a third comes from the federal government in a given year — could be substantial.
Read more about the House’s budget proposal here.
— Shaun Robinson
The House also passed legislation Friday that seeks to protect the personal information of the state’s public servants.
The bill, H.342, would give Vermont’s judges, law enforcement officers and public defenders, among other public servants, the legal right to request that their private information be taken down from data broker website like White Pages.
“Right now, judges, law enforcement, victims advocates and other frontline workers face real harm because their personal information is openly bought and sold online,” the bill’s main sponsor, Rep. Monique Priestley, D-Bradford, told fellow lawmakers before Friday’s vote. “Today we have an obligation to protect those who protect us.”
As passed by the House, the bill would establish a private right of action for covered parties, allowing Vermont’s public servants to sue data brokers who refuse to comply with their requests.
The right for consumers to sue tech companies has long been a flashpoint in debates surrounding other data privacy bills. Earlier this week, state senators voted to strip away the private right of action from S.71, a broader data privacy bill that would apply to all Vermonters.
Now H.342 heads to the Senate, where it could face a similar future.
— Habib Sabet
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