This commentary is by Neil Ryan, a third-generation Vermont farmer and consultant helping brands and nonprofits in Corinth.
“I’m looking at repealing the road rule and the Tier 3 and revisiting how we structure that.”
Those words, spoken quietly on April 24, 2026, by Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury — a devoted conservationist, an architect of Act 181, and the chair of the House Committee on Environment — must have been excruciating for her in some ways. Her words may also be the most consequential sentence uttered in the Vermont statehouse in years.
Within hours, House Speaker Jill Krowinski echoed her: “Following extensive feedback from communities across Vermont, it is clear that the ‘Road Rule’ and ‘Tier 3’ need to be repealed.”
Capping an extraordinary two weeks of testimony on S.325, the vehicle for reform of Act 181, legislators who had previously been committed to their vision showed great humility by embracing the ideas of others.
Rep. Ela Chapin, D-East Montpelier, deserves particular commendation. I listened closely to her over the course of testimony taken in the House Committee on Environment and saw a legislator who asked probing questions and grappled diligently with a torrent of information. In a public process, she embraced one of the hardest things to do in life — the willingness to change one’s mind, for which she should be acclaimed.
Republican legislators understood the issues with Act 181’s tiered architecture intuitively or through reliance on their principles. For Democrats, this was a journey. It’s important to note that multiple bills addressing the road rule and Tier 3 died in committee early this session. Democrats had no appetite to revisit the issue. But with the utilization of good processes in committee, everyone has shone in the last few weeks.
Vermont’s part-time legislators try their best. They don’t deserve the venom they receive. They deserve our constructive engagement. Absent citizen involvement, special interest lobbyists fill the void, and sometimes drive the legislature into the ditch.
The trajectory of the debate over Act 181’s road rule and Tier 3 has been remarkable. Limping along in rulemaking for almost two years, Act 181’s provisions were tinkered with by so-called “stakeholders.” The sweeping expansion of Act 250 jurisdiction only intermittently warranted a news story.
That changed this winter. Rural Vermonters found each other and found their voice.
Op-eds appeared. A truly grassroots, nonpartisan coalition organized. In late March, several hundred Vermonters — farmers, landowners and working families — arrived at the statehouse steps. One farmer’s wife, in consultation with a Middlebury geography professor, built the methodology and programming to evaluate the socioeconomic implications of Tier 3 mapping. In two nights of work, she created a tool that the Agency of Natural Resources hired an outside technology firm to create. Theirs won’t be ready for at least another year.
When S.325 passed the Senate, legislators were still mostly insulated from Vermonters. When S.325 reached the House Committee on Environment, the doors opened.
The explosion of engagement around S.325 in recent weeks is possibly unprecedented. People across Vermont were livestreaming committee hearings from work. First-time testifiers delivered precise and personal accounts of how policy would touch their lives and those of their neighbors. By the end of last week, major reforms, dismissed a month ago as impossible, were suddenly inevitable.
The original process failure of Act 181 was remedied by a powerful interplay of witnesses and legislators.
Supermajorities are unhealthy. They develop a flywheel of conformity that includes assumptions that the right people are in the room and create greater intolerance for differing opinions. The second half of this decade may end up being a period of revision for actions taken in the first half of the decade. That’s frustrating for everyone. It’s healthier when Vermont’s Legislature is more balanced.
Whatever the composition of the Legislature, the corrective to what has ailed governance of late is procedural humility. That means actively recruiting testimony from people who will be governed by rules, not just the people who design them.
This approach would also produce better law. Policies tested against a broader range of lived experience are more durable, more legitimate and ultimately more effective. The lesson of Act 181 is that laws imposed without broad consent are on borrowed time.
In the last few months, rural Vermonters of all political stripes remembered what they valued about each other. They reasserted reverence for who we are as one of the most rural states in America. They articulated appreciation for land in a lexicon utterly absent in the current environmental lobby discourse.
Many have struggled in recent years with the temptation to conflate complaint with action. What worked was showing up — civilly, accurately, emotively — and sticking with it. Testimony works. Articulate constituent contact works. True unaffiliated organizing works. Letters and commentaries that blend deeply personal narrative and rigorous facts work.
Rage achieves nothing. Presence makes just about anything possible.
There is also a lesson here about collaboration. The people who moved mountains to repeal the road rule and Tier 3 did it by minimizing party politics. In and out of the Statehouse, it was human dialog and reaching for shared understanding. That’s a return to an older Vermont way of doing things and something that has been eroding in the social media age.
So what’s next for rural Vermonters? S.325 isn’t over the finish line yet, so keep your eyes on it.
And keep going. All 180 legislative seats are up for grabs this fall. If you care about rural issues, run for your district’s House or Senate seat. Pick whatever party affiliation you want, but commit to not losing yourself to a party label. You have a little over a month to get on the ballot.
Do your research. Strive for accuracy. Articulate your ideas plainly, earnestly and consistently. If you win, empower the broadest range of voices from your community to testify before you. If you don’t win this fall, be one of those voices that shows up to be heard in the next biennium.
Vermont faces intersecting crises of affordability, livability and opportunity. We now have a new model to face those challenges.
