Hannah Burrill, a real estate agent in the Northeast Kingdom, was floored when she learned while gearing up for her license renewal this winter about a slate of land-use law changes coming down the pike from Montpelier. To her, Act 181 seemed to represent an infringement on rural landowners’ property rights and a death knell for future growth in small towns – and few people knew about it.
“There’s plenty of people not paying attention because they’re simply too busy trying to keep their head above water,” Burrill said.
Act 181 is a politically contentious overhaul of Vermont’s signature development review law that will remove regulatory hurdles in some population centers and designate certain ecologically sensitive areas as needing additional protection. It passed the Legislature two years ago and its implications are swiftly becoming a reality.
As a key Senate committee faces a deadline to tweak the legislation, ire over the law has bubbled up beyond the Statehouse among rural communities awakening to its future impacts.
A Facebook group has cropped up to share information about Act 181 and organize opposition to it. The Vermont Farm Bureau has begun collecting stories from rural landowners. A VtDigger opinion piece this week argues that the law’s environmental protection aims are ultimately exclusionary. And an open letter to lawmakers penned by Burrill has been shared on social media hundreds of times.
“I am arguing that when you make it structurally impossible for families to build modest homes in small towns — and then charge them thousands of dollars just to try — those towns do not stay the same. They decline. And then they disappear,” the letter reads.
When Act 181 passed, its supporters framed it as a “grand bargain” between housing proponents and environmentalists. The act sought to lift Act 250 regulations in areas that are already developed to encourage more homebuilding amid an acute housing shortage, even as it bolstered protections for sensitive ecosystems.
Those housing exemptions apply to places that have zoning and infrastructure, like water and sewer systems. Without those pieces in place, towns like Burke, where Burrill lives, would lose out on access to permitting relief, she wrote.
“What is Burke supposed to do? Wait? Wait for what, and for how long, and who decides when Burke has earned the right to grow on its own terms?” Burrill wrote in her letter.
Throughout the 2024 legislative session, Republican Gov. Phil Scott called Democrats’ reform effort a “conservation bill” that would ultimately harm rural communities that couldn’t meet the bar for housing exemptions. He vetoed the legislation, but the Legislature’s Democratic supermajority overrode him.
Much of Scott’s pushback then and now has centered around a new “road rule.” Expected to impact the majority of land in the state, the rule stipulates that Act 250 would kick in when a private entity wants to build a road longer than 800 feet, or a combination of roads and driveways longer than 2,000 feet. As written, the rule is slated to take effect on July 1.
Proponents of the road rule say that it will encourage development close to roads and prevent the fragmentation of forests.
Mary White, president of the Vermont Farm Bureau, told legislators this week that the rule and other new regulations would place an undue burden on rural landowners, adding considerable expense.
“In rural Vermont, we measure land in acres, not feet,” White said. “The road rule itself will cripple our rural communities and hinder growth where we need it to flourish.”
Recent pushback has also focused on new protections for sensitive natural areas, where, once mapped by the state’s Land Use Review Board, Act 250 review will be automatic for most development. In response to harsh feedback from municipal officials and landowners, members of the board have signaled that they want to limit the scope of these areas and to pare down the permitting requirements in them.
Facing an important deadline on Friday, a key legislative committee is currently poised to advance a bill that would delay Act 181’s implementation, postponing the road rule’s kickoff this summer along with the new sensitive ecosystem rules. Democratic leaders in the Legislature have said that they want to see the housing reforms of the last few years play out before making major changes.
Scott said at a news conference on Wednesday that the delays envisioned by lawmakers don’t go far enough. He has called for a repeal of the road rule and a dramatic curtailing of the sensitive ecosystem maps.
“We have a long way to go to reverse course in the areas that will unfairly impact rural communities,” he said. “I won’t accept a short extension so they can get through the November election.”
This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VtDigger and Vermont Public. This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.