Dear Editor,
In a recent article on controversy regarding Act 181, VTDigger reported that the legislation mandates a “first-of-its-kind” mapping effort that will “essentially dictate where future development will be subject to Act 250 scrutiny.”
Many of your readers, including legislators, may not realize that Act 250, as originally enacted, did require that a state-wide land use plan be prepared for legislative review and adoption. This plan was to map where and how future development would be subject to Act 250 scrutiny.
As one of Governor Deane Davis’s planning staff charged with preparing the land use plan at the time, I can attest that it was indeed prepared, but that during public hearings on the plan, opposition was so fierce that the legislature removed the land use plan and its purpose from the Act 250 law.
Many of my generation have long believed that the inability of Act 250 to guide where development would occur has sabotaged Act 250’s original goal of development serving the greatest good of all Vermonters.
Ben Huffman,
Montpelier, Vt.
