This commentary is by Matt Wormser, vice chair of the Shelburne Selectboard.
Oceans of ink have been spilled since last November around the root cause of Democratic electoral failures, which in percentage of legislative seats lost was larger in Vermont than any other state. A couple of recent books — “Abundance” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and “Why Nothing Works” by Marc Dunkelman – offer both a compelling explanation of “what went wrong” with Democratic governance, and a path forward for those still aligned with the goals, if not always the delivery, of the D side of the aisle.
The summary argument is that a series of well-intentioned policies in blue states have created such an unwieldy regulatory environment that Democrats can no longer realize their stated goals of affordability, environmental progress, education, healthcare and a public sector efficiently delivering for its citizens.
In Vermont we feel that directly — it’s disproportionately costly and difficult to build here. Most of the Champlain Parkway in Burlington is set to finally open this year… about 40 years after large sections of it were initially completed. Housing shortages mean we have among the highest rates of homelessness and “housing cost burden” of any state. This is paired with an equally high overall tax burden, driven by among the highest per pupil spending nationally. Lastly, we see a disproportionately high percentage of our workforce nearing retirement, challenging our economic vitality going forward.
How did we get here and more importantly, how do we best move forward?
Housing
Legislators of both parties realize how stressed our housing market has been for many years, and happily passed legislation to address this during the last session, with additional measures in the works. With that said, critical challenges remain with labor shortages and high interest rates that limit our ability to accelerate growth in housing.
Financing: High interest rates test the viability of many projects, especially when coupled with our labor shortages and tariff-driven materials costs. Solutions might include a tax-advantaged state bond bank to help finance multi-family housing in our town centers at preferred rates.
Developing skilled labor: A builder friend of mine said his labor costs are 30% higher in Vermont vs. New Hampshire. As we enter the age of AI, many predict that knowledge workers will see a larger and faster displacement than traditional trades. We should be driving career conversations from the onset of high school to have our kids examine futures beyond college as the only path to success. Apprenticeships in the trades for our high schoolers can both drive meaningful, high-paid work in the early stages of their careers and help broaden career options going forward.
Further permitting reform: Some significant permitting reform passed in the last session. Assuming we continue to badly miss on our housing targets, lawmakers need to look hard at additional measures to accelerate permitting statewide.
Governance
Since our founding, national debate has waged between “Hamiltonians” who believe in a strong, central government empowered to make decisions, and “Jeffersonians” who are distrustful of that decision making. Much of the day-to-day activities of governance — roads, public safety, wastewater, etc. are managed by volunteer selectboards in Vermont, where our need for those services are increasingly regional and statewide in nature.
I serve on the Selectboard in Shelburne, and that lack of scale, especially when much of our municipal labor force is nearing retirement, severely hampers our ability to deliver. Improved regional or statewide management of key public functions is urgently needed if we are to meet 21st-century challenges.
Education
One of the key points made in the book “Abundance” is the frequent inability to recognize trad-eoffs in policymaking. An example here is the cost of not making tough choices to “right-size” the number of schools in response to a steadily declining enrollment. The result is that students from larger schools in effect pay to subsidize what amounts to a boutique education for schools with unsustainably small class sizes.
Simultaneously kids from those very small schools suffer from a lack of opportunity, and taxpayers foot the elevated bill. Happily, lawmakers are actively debating substantial changes to both our district and education funding structures, and time is obviously of the essence.
There would be significant benefit for the state to take over functions best suited to centralized management — curriculum, HR, transportation, facilities, finance, food service, data and reporting — in short most of the back-end functions that are less vital to manage at the school level. This would ensure consistency of service across the state, greatly improve our ability to measure success between our schools, and help drive change where deficiencies are identified.
The case can be made to have one statewide school district to best drive accountability, rather than the patchwork and costly system we have today. Regional sub-districts could then be empowered to make decisions around consolidation.
Innovation
We need better public-private partnerships to ensure that the next Betas continue to be founded within our boundaries, which may mean increased support for internship and apprenticeship programs from high school through college and beyond. The state needs to be actively soliciting what our employers need to grow and investing to help them realize it.
In short, the process of rethinking how we more effectively deliver on Democratic objectives around an affordable “Abundance” agenda has just begun, and the debate engendered by the books above is welcome and overdue.
I hope that the discussion inspires legislators to renew their focus on removing roadblocks around how to deliver for Vermonters, and acknowledge and address the very real costs that our highly decentralized, inefficient and too often sluggish governance has wrought.
