Every year, for roughly five months, the Vermont Legislature takes up the people’s business, debating policies and passing laws that impact all aspects of Vermonters’ lives.
As part of our annual Legislative Guide, we’ve gathered the essential information to follow along, with links to deeper explainers and tools you can use all session.
No matter where in Vermont you live, you have at least one person representing you in each chamber of the Legislature — the House and the Senate. You can find out who they are and how to contact them in the state’s legislative directory, or learn about other ways to contact them directly at the Statehouse.
Lawmakers in each body are elected every two years. Those two years are considered one biennial session, though each annual lawmaking period is also described as a session.
You can watch representatives and senators work in real time. Anyone can show up at the statehouse, at 115 State St. in Montpelier. Plus, the Vermont General Assembly — what we usually just call “the Legislature” — livestreams most of its activity on YouTube. That includes debate and votes in both chambers. Since the Covid-19 era, the offerings have also included committee meetings where lawmakers craft and vet bills in specific policy areas.
Each committee has its own YouTube channel. New streams begin every time the body convenes, and videos are saved on the channel for later viewing.
The House and Senate calendars, posted daily on the Legislature’s homepage, list the bills and other items that each chamber plans to take up. You can also read about what’s happening in Final Reading, our daily Statehouse newsletter.
Who runs things?
To be a good observer, you need to know who’s in charge. There are a number of key roles in the Vermont Legislature.
The most powerful individual in the statehouse, at least on paper, is the speaker of the House. That person has abilities that, in the Senate, are distributed among several officials. Specifically, the speaker sets the agenda for the chamber and is responsible for moderating the action on the floor. She also makes committee assignments and assigns committee chairs.
Unlike the House, the Senate does not choose its presiding officer. The people do that, when they vote for lieutenant governor. But while the lieutenant governor technically runs Senate meetings, the president pro tempore (often referred to as the “pro tem”) does so in practice.
In the Senate, committee chairs and members are appointed by a three-member Committee on Committees, which includes the lieutenant governor, the pro tem and the so-called third member. That last person is selected by a vote of all 30 senators at the start of the biennium.
Each political party in the House and Senate selects one member in each chamber to serve as its leader. The parties also generally elect an assistant or deputy leader — sometimes known as the “whip” — to help enforce priorities and count votes before a bill reaches the floor.
Two offices carry the institutional knowledge of the House and Senate: the clerk of the House and the secretary of the Senate. As chief parliamentarians, they ensure that each chamber’s rules are followed by lawmakers. And as the chambers’ chief administrative officers, they keep the building running.
Read about these leaders and other supporting officers in the Legislature here.
What do they do?
One of the primary jobs of the Legislature is to create and adjust the laws of the state by approving bills.
A bill becomes a law if a majority of the members in both chambers — the House and the Senate — vote to approve it, and the governor signs it. Simple, right?
Not quite. There are lots of ways a bill can die before it reaches the governor’s desk — and even then, the governor has a few options for how to treat legislation that’s been passed by the House and Senate. Only bills that clear all the potential hurdles become state laws.
Here’s a more detailed look at the process.
Another key role for the Legislature is to approve government spending and taxation. That involves voting on annual budget bills, tax bills and bills involving infrastructure investments. Typically, though not necessarily, these bills are developed with the input and approval of the governor. The executive branch is then charged with raising and spending the money necessary to keep the state running, and it has a certain amount of discretion to determine where that money goes.
There is, of course, a longer answer.
For more tools to follow the 2026 session, including a curated bill tracker, a look-up tool for your legislators and our latest Statehouse reporting, visit our full Legislative Guide.
