The Platform

Vermont’s crisis is not one-dimensional, and the solution cannot be either. It is a housing issue, a wastewater and infrastructure issue, a student debt issue, a farm viability issue, an energy-cost issue, and a local business development issue, and a public financing issue. The common thread is capital. Working people, small towns, farmers, builders, and local producers are all being asked to carry the weight of a financial and regulatory system at the state and federal level that makes it too expensive to build, repair, expand, or stay.

A People’s Bank would change that. It would be a state-owned single depositor public bank that would partner with local credit unions and mutual banks to put public money to work for public purposes. Together we could defang predatory student and medical debt through sliding scale debt refinancing, implement loan programs that are rent-verified for home purchase or construction, ADUs for aging-in-place housing, restoration of vacant and abandoned homes, small-scale wastewater and green heating, municipal sewer and wastewater, permanently affordable multi-unit housing, working lands and conservation bridge loans, green manufacturing, local business development, and decentralized community scale energy independence. That is what makes the Peoples Bank a real working-class solution. It does not treat housing separately from sewer, or farm viability separately from financing, or affordability separately from debt, energy, and infrastructure. It treats these as connected problems that require a connected response.

A People’s Bank would help protect Vermonters from predatory lending practices, help renters become owners, help older Vermonters age in place, help towns build the infrastructure needed to support housing, help families bring older homes back to life, help farmers and land stewards make productive and conservation investments, and help local businesses expand. And because the interest generated by those loans would stay here, not flow to Wall Street, it would do more than finance projects. It would build public wealth. Part of that return could capitalize a long-term sovereign wealth fund, and part could be reinvested directly into improving education, healthcare, and food access. Vermont does not need one more fragmented program. It needs a tool equal to the scale of our collective problems. A People’s Bank is that tool. It is how we start putting the financial system on the side of the people who do the work.

Read the Full Campaign Policy Paper Here

Vermont does not need another layer of land use bureaucracy. It needs a better architecture.

Act 250 was built for the development pressures and climate of the last century at a time where only 8 of Vermont's 284 jurisdictions had local zoning, planning commissions, conservation commissions, and development review boards.  Now 224 jurisdictions, 78% of the state, have locally responsive local land planning entities. Act 181 tries to patch a failed system of centralized control that centers GIS mapping with no boots on the ground, designated tiers, appointed non-judicial boards, and more administrative control. But the challenges ahead — flooding, housing, farm viability, forest fragmentation, water quality, road failures, wetland loss, and climate instability — will not be solved by a system that waits for projects to become permits and conflicts to become appeals. 

The alternative is to modernize and empower Vermont’s conservation district system for the climate change era.

Conservation districts were born from crisis. The Dust Bowl taught the country that soil, water, farming, weather, and local economies could not be treated as separate problems. Vermont’s 1939 Soil Conservation District framework was built on the right idea: local people, supported by technical expertise, working through public institutions close enough to the land to act.

That idea is still right. It just needs to be rebuilt for the challenges now in front of us.

This proposal would reorganize Vermont’s land use, clean water, working lands, and climate resilience systems around watershed-based conservation districts. Each town would have two watershed representatives meeting weekly with district staff, creating a real local intelligence network for road failures, farm concerns, flood risks, development pressure, forest fragmentation, habitat issues, and conservation opportunities. Those town reps would elect delegates to HUC-10 councils, which would coordinate subwatershed priorities, and those councils would send representatives to HUC-8 watershed boards — governing at the scale where land, water, farms, forests, roads, and infrastructure actually interact.

Agriculture, forestry, and wildlife would have standing seats. District staff would provide outreach, program navigation, technical assistance, and implementation support. Contested matters would still have a judicial backstop, but the system would no longer be built around reactive review as its first instinct or the drawing of maps that always start out as non-regulatory but somehow finds a way to turn into a regulation at a later date.

This is not about eliminating standards. It is about putting power, knowledge, and responsibility in the right place.

Not more bureaucracy.

Better democracy. Better conservation. Better government for the climate change era.

Stay Tuned for the Campaign Policy Paper

Vermont’s education debate is being flattened into a false choice: either working people pay more, or local communities give up more control. That is not reform. That is managed decline dressed up as efficiency.

The cost problem is real. Property taxpayers are being hit by health insurance inflation, construction costs, transportation costs, special education volatility, energy costs, and administrative duplication. But those pressures are not caused by local democracy. They are caused by structural cost inflation and weak public systems.

The answer is functional consolidation without civic consolidation or the erosion of our civil society.

Consolidate payroll, HR, procurement, transportation, special education support, IT, legal compliance, grant administration, and capital planning. Build regional service institutions that reduce redundancies. But do not confuse back-office consolidation with the consolidation of community life.

The biggest missed opportunity is health care. Vermont should create a public-sector-wide benefits compact for schools, towns, libraries, state agencies, quasi-state agencies, and regional entities. A larger pool could reduce HR overhead, stabilize premiums, improve bargaining power, simplify enrollment, and better manage risk — without cutting worker benefits.

Working people should not pay higher property taxes because every public entity is left to fight health care inflation alone.

Education reform also has to be tied to a Vermont public bank. A public bank would reinvest Vermont’s own money into school construction, housing, childcare, water and wastewater systems, municipal infrastructure, small businesses, farms, and working lands — the conditions families need to stay.

Vermont will not reverse demographic decline by closing schools and weakening towns. It will do it by lowering duplicated costs, broadening the revenue base, pooling public-sector benefits, and financing the communities that still make Vermont possible.

Stay Tuned for the Campaign Policy Paper