By Keith Whitcomb Jr. [email protected]
MONTPELIER — The House voted Friday to approve a bill that makes several amendments to Act 250.
The bill, H.926, passed 88-52.
“Our state, and the challenges we face, have evolved in the 50 years since Act 250 was enacted,” said Speaker of the House Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, in an email Friday. “It’s time to modernize this landmark law to reflect today’s needs.”
She said the bill makes it easier to develop in downtown and village centers while protecting forests. It also strengthens environmental protections.
Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, Fish & Wildlife, which has been taking testimony and working on the bill since the Legislature convened this year, said changes to Act 250 are needed.
“This bill proposes changes that integrate new awareness of climate change, ecosystem protection, and environmental justice,” she said in a statement released by the speaker’s office. “H.926 strikes a balance between increasing project review to protect important resources while releasing certain areas from Act 250 review where we want to encourage development and where jurisdiction no longer applies.”
Jon Groveman, policy and water program director at Vermont Natural Resources Council, whose organization worked with Republican Gov. Phil Scott to propose several changes, said Friday VNRC supports the bill as passed, but didn’t get everything it wanted.
Groveman said VNRC and the Scott administration proposed to replace the District Environmental Commissions, of which there are currently nine, with a single board consisting of three permanent, professional members supplemented by two members in whatever region a project is taking place.
Groveman said it was largely known the week before Friday’s vote that the committee had dropped that aspect of the bill. Friday’s vote made it official.
He said the bill goes to the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy. While he expects the Senate will pass some version of the bill, he said he doesn’t know what it will look like.
“We support the bill as passed because it contains a lot of environmental protections,” he said.
According to Groveman, the bill expands Act 250 jurisdiction into how projects impact forested areas and makes mitigating those impacts part of the regular Act 250 criteria. It does the same for climate change.
He said the bill still has many steps to get through in the Senate, and right now it doesn’t look like the Legislature will have the votes to override a veto if the governor chooses to do so.
He said lawmakers debated a number of proposed amendments Thursday and Friday. One proposal was to lower the elevation at which a project can trigger an Act 250 permit. Right now, anything above 2,500 feet automatically requires a permit. One proposal called for lowering the limit to 2,000 feet, but didn’t get enough support, he said.
The administration is disappointed in the bill that came out of the House Friday.
“Our position is this bill has a long way to go right now,” said Peter Walke, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation.
He said the Scott administration and VNRC worked through summer and fall to draft a bill they thought would have enough to support to pass — one that contained a number of key provisions the governor would support.
“Many of those pieces were left on the cutting-room floor,” Walke said.
The big piece that got cut, Walke said, was the part about District Environmental Commissions. What the administration and VNRC proposed initially was meant to create consistency in Act 250 permit decisions.
He said there are elements in the bill that have broad support, namely the easing of permitting requirements in downtowns and villages.
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