Vermonters Call For Action, not the status quo.

Centering the well-being of the most vulnerable people in our community is our collective concern and our shared obligation. We reject the idea of a zero sum mentality that misleads us to think one good policy solution must compete against another good policy solution for the same limited amount of resources. We remain committed to creating policy with a commitment to the Solidarity Dividend – a concept developed by author Heather Magee. The Solidarity Dividend prioritizes policy solutions that support communities’ needs by investing in the public good while valuing the role of government and the work of public sector workers. We need responsive and equitable policies to address issues resulting from the serious crisis points facing Vermonters: climate, substance use disorder, housing, economic inequality, and continued attacks on BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities. These crisis points accelerate the undeniable increase in crime and we must address these sources rather than merely fear mongering the resulting indicators.

With his State of the State address, Governor Scott indicates himself as a “realist” in his acknowledgement of the legislative supermajority and the role we collectively play in serving our constituents as we create responsive policy. Governing via veto isn’t leadership. Nor is governing with an unwillingness to work in partnership with the legislature to address pressing needs in our community such as real solutions for saving the lives of people struggling with substance use disorder, supporting all working people with comprehensive paid family leave, and funding long-term recovery efforts in communities ravaged by recent flooding. These are not actions of a realist. It’s an abdication of collaboration, a disregard for the inability or unwillingness of his administration to execute, and a preemptive scapegoating of the impact we will see as we continue to respond to Vermonters in crisis. Vermonters have elected progressive policy makers to the General Assembly in overwhelming numbers. The House and Senate Progressives are committed to collaborating with our colleagues to create transformative policy that keeps us moving toward a more equitable and just Vermont.

Governor Scott betrays his true viewpoint of working families when he characterizes them essentially as sources of revenue and taxation. We envision a community where small business owners won’t need to post receipts for free meals onto their storefront windows in order to serve Vermonters who aren’t paid a living wage. We can develop solutions that build community, meet Vermonters’ basic needs, and protect marginalized people’s rights.

The Vermont Progressive Party platform is grounded in intersectional principles of social, racial, economic, and environmental justice. Our work during the 2024 session will continue to operationalize these values as we construct an inclusive, fair Vermont for everyone.

This will be identifiable when the basic needs of each person and our planet are met – that’s the definition of a just society.

We must address the economic inequality that has widened since the pandemic began. This gap is only increasing when we consider the disproportionate impact felt by working Vermonters from inflation and the housing emergency. When the pandemic hit, state and federal government solutions supported working people’s survival with the temporary expansion of many programs. Now that federal funds used to fund these programs are ending, the resulting calls for austerity must not continue to disproportionately impact the working class.

In the 2024 session, we need to move forward with policies that center working people and families. Such policies must include workplace protections, worker rights, livable wages that reflect the cost of living in Vermont, and housing policy that does not leave renters and low to moderate income homeowners struggling to keep up. Keeping up is not moving forward. Vermonters also need real, universal paid family leave that is funded and accessible to everyone. Any resulting policy we create must be viable and equitable for working families.

The Senate passed S.102 the PRO (Protect the Right to Organize) Act in 2023. The bill is now in the House and must be a priority labor bill this session. Rep. Emma Mulvaney-Stanak is the lead sponsor on H.219, the House companion bill.

The House passed H.66 (paid family leave) in 2023. The bill is now in the Senate and we must find the votes to support working families. All House Progressive members proudly co-sponsored this bill.

The House currently holds three charter changes to protect renters by establishing just cause eviction rights for renters in Burlington, Winooski and Essex. All House Progressive members sponsored two of these three charter changes and have worked for the last two years to advance this issue. We will continue to advocate for these charter changes which represent the clear will of voters in those communities.

Finally, the House Progressive members also took a leadership role in advocating for a more humane end to the General Assistance (GA) Emergency Housing Motel Program in 2023. While the program was extended for the most vulnerable Vermonters experiencing homelessness, many more Vermonters were moved off the program and are now on the streets of our communities. Rep. Kate Logan efforts to successfully move the implementation date of new municipal zoning laws from December 2024 to September 2023 within Act 47, the HOME Act last session. This critical change allowed at least 3 new emergency shelters to open across the state in towns where zoning permits had previously been denied.

We must do more to support renters and homeowners struggling to find and stay in affordable housing and more to support communities left to navigate historically high numbers of unhoused Vermonters largely on their own.

We continue to witness a barrage of attacks on our education system and the autonomy of our educators around the country as we engage in the critical work of instructing our children on the history of race in this country, concepts of racial identity, and the persistence of structural and systemic racism. These attacks align with the equally alarming assaults on curricula that acknowledge LGBTQIA+ people and, specifically, gender identity and gender affirming approaches to education.

We will continue to prioritize the funding of public education and our educators who deliver our curricula. To improve the indicators of student performance, we must protect the environment in which they learn and the delivery methods for that education. Our students have the capacity, the ability, and the need to read and learn from a diversity of voices.

We worry about the clearly developing national trends that would weaken our public educators’ ability to effectively teach all Vermont children. Our teachers are losing motivation within this environment of budget impacts and the micro-management of their curricula delivery methods.

Rep. Troy Headrick introduced H.106, a bill that intends to protect the academic freedom of public educators and their right to teach on matters of gender identity and systemic and structural racism.

At the urging of House Progressives, the House Education Committee has committed to redefining and strengthening the definition of student harassment with H.523, an act relating to harassment, hazing, and bullying in schools. We look forward to including language that protects a teacher’s right to instruct on the root causes of discrimination, harassment, and bullying in order to create truly inclusive learning environments.

House Progressives also fought to make certain that H.483 remains definitive that private and independent schools receiving public funds remain compliant with all anti discrimination policies that apply to public schools. As this bill moves to the Senate, we commit to making certain that all Vermont students are protected from policies that would limit their full expression of self in any way.

We are encouraged by and supportive of two pending bills to be introduced by our Democratic colleagues that will prohibit censorship and book bans in our school libraries. We trust our educators and our librarians to choose literature that educates our students with an honest reckoning for the systemic racism and white supremacy upon which this nation was built.

We know that our educators have been hired as the experts in how our children learn best and that we have an obligation to protect our teachers as they engage with that expertise. We can create a classroom environment of trust and protection for our educators and very likely anticipate a migration of educators from around the country who will seek the opportunity to join a community where they are free to instruct our children within an honest and affirming environment.

Even in the midst of a variety of overwhelming social problems, we can improve the way that we react to trauma, violence, and suffering. We can foster community safety while promoting equity by investing in practices and policies that improve the social determinants of health and mitigate the social determinants of crime. We hear too much rhetoric informing a reactionary push to increase criminal penalties, make new crimes, and incarcerate more people. We know that this does not work. The United States incarcerates more of it’s population than anywhere else in the world, if this approach to public safety was actually effective, it would follow that we would be the safest country in the world. Instead, we rank 129th out of 163 countries in the Global Peace Index measure of safety, firmly in the bottom fifth globally. Furthermore, the ranking for the United States has fallen every year since 2016. This is attributed to a decrease in life satisfaction, an increase in political division, and a widening wealth gap.

“The social determinants of health affect public health and the social determinants of crime impact public safety. These social determinants are intertwined.” This understanding informs policy decisions such as the recent addition and expansion of social workers embedded within police departments. When physical needs for food and shelter are satisfied, we experience a reduction in crime and improved community health. When interpersonal conflict is resolved through restorative practices that promote inclusion, belonging, and reconciliation, the public health and community safety benefits to both individuals and society are amplified.

Multiple public health emergencies have been acknowledged by the General Assembly, including racism, substance use disorders, COVID-19, and climate change. In an emergency, people thrive when assistance arrives at the moment they are most in need. Due to centuries of inequitable policies and decades of neglect of community-based services, emergency calls related to the impact of poverty, racism, mental health conditions, substance use disorders, and criminogenic behavior currently exceed the capacity and training of armed law enforcement officers. Changes are coming to our emergency response system due to a combination of factors across the federal, state, and local levels.

The City of Burlington now uses unarmed community support officers to respond to Level 3 calls, those that impact quality of life such as noise complaints. Regions across Vermont are soon going to respond to Level 2 calls (substance abuse and mental health incidents) with interdisciplinary teams of health care providers that fully staff mobile crisis response. This evidence-based approach allows armed law enforcement officers to focus on other emergencies, while people experiencing a medical emergency are more deliberately served by the appropriate resources.

It is time for us to think differently about public safety and to create a society where all community members have their basic needs met and are positioned to thrive. It is time for us to stop investing millions of dollars in failed approaches focused on the increase in punishment. Instead, we must invest in the systemic changes that we know will work to prevent violence and theft. Each time the state responds to crime limited by a mindset that only considers punishment, we jeopardize public safety and harm public health. True and equitable justice must include both accountability and care while providing meaningful consequences that reduce recidivism and improve public health. This may require a paradigm shift. Justice-involved individuals “experience chronic health conditions, infectious diseases, substance use disorders, and mental illnesses at much higher rates than the general population.” Both incarcerated individuals and correctional workers experience negative health outcomes due to the harm, trauma, and violence associated with the current models of incarceration. This results in little (if any) benefit at a great cost to our government as well as to individuals, families, and communities.

We are encouraged by the consideration of H. 645 currently being developed within the House Committee on Judiciary. This bill intends to improve and support pretrial Services, Community Justice Centers, and restorative justice by creating pre-charge and post-charge diversion programs under the administration of the Community Justice Unit of the Office of Attorney General.

Senator Vyhovsky will be working to end the unjust use of cash bail while creating a system of pretrial support, service, and accountability that will keep people employed and connected to their families and communities. Such a system will decrease the rates of recidivism. Pre-trial incarceration only serves to increase recidivism while inflicting harm and trauma.

Instead of building more correctional facilities, Vermont can reduce criminal behavior by investing in a continuum of housing and community-based services for all people by reallocating correctional appropriations to fund increased access to housing and community-based services for justice-involved individuals. In 2024, Rep. Brian Cina and FreeHer Vermont are introducing four bills that propose alternatives to incarceration. These bills will seek to:

Explore the use of secure recovery residential facilities to treat mental health conditions and substance use disorders for justice-involved individuals;

Expand access to health care for all people and especially to justice-involved individuals (those incarcerated as well those in the community on probation and parole);

Create meaningful economic opportunity for justice-involved individuals through the use of an earned allowance program that rewards justice-involved individuals for work, participation in programming, and engagement in community-based services.;

Develop more supportive and transitional housing options for all people, including justice-involved individuals.

Facilitate the decarceration of people who are at minimal risk to recidivate. These people are better served in our communities through policies outlined in S.155. We must eliminate life without parole, implement comprehensive second look policy, and utilize hospice furlough.

We will modernize our sentencing practices, our responses to technical violations, and end our habitual offender laws as proposed in S.225. This bill would require minority impact statements in order to alleviate disparity in our criminal legal system.

Vermont must acknowledge that the housing crisis is a public health emergency. We must ensure that every person has housing that meets their special needs and supports their health. The lack of affordable housing is a primary reason that justice-involved individuals are incarcerated past their minimum sentencing dates in Vermont. Housing First and housing for all, including justice-involved individuals, would yield benefits for generations to come – housing built on a foundation of equity and wrapped in community care.

Vermont must do more to address the public health emergency of substance use disorder.

We will continue to champion H.72, a harm-reduction criminal justice response bill to drug use. This bill moved through the House Human Services committee as a direct result of Rep. Taylor Small’s leadership and advocacy.

H.72 will remove legal barriers and provide funding to open Vermont’s first overdose prevention site. After Vermont set another record for overdose deaths in 2023, we recognize the devastating effects the war on drugs has had on our communities and must prioritize the prevention of death. This bill has already passed through the House with numbers to override the pending veto. We commit to ushering H.72 through the Senate with an equal priority.

Our climate and housing crises are converging into a crisis of equity and environmental injustice. This became particularly visible during the July 2023 flooding that displaced hundreds of Vermonters, many of whom were low and moderate income (LMI) households. We must transition from an extractive economy that treats natural resources and basic human rights (such as housing) as opportunities for profit. By contrast, a regenerative economy facilitates growth that remains in harmony with the limits of our entire ecosystem. We must transition to an economy where every community member has the opportunity to thrive.

During the 2023 session, Progressives succeeded in centering and strengthening the commitment to inclusion and equity in housing development and climate policy:

We articulated a firm obligation to prioritize the installation of affordable “clean heat measures,” such as cold weather heat pumps, for LMI households in the “Affordable Heat Act” (S.5, Act 18)

We solidified our commitment to include BIPOC and LMI Vermonters in our process to create a new statewide land use plan (H.126, Act 59)

We secured a temporary removal of exclusionary and discriminatory housing zoning standards in statewide and local zoning and development standards that will promote development of new housing that is affordable for LMI households (S.100, Act 47)

We expedited the implementation (9/1/2023) of a new statewide requirement that every municipality in Vermont must provide zoning for emergency shelter (S.100, Act 47)

We authorized a study to consider how we might streamline our development review and permitting processes to promote faster and more affordable development of housing for LMI households (S.100, Act 47)

In 2024, progressives will be advocating for:

Affordable renewable energy for all. As we take large and necessary steps toward 100% renewable energy in Vermont, we must prioritize and enable access to affordable, renewable solar power for low to moderate-income (LMI) households.

Construction of new housing for low and moderate income Vermonters. We must modernize our development review and permitting process to encourage expedited development of thousands of units for LMI rental housing and home ownership opportunities, without sacrificing on beauty, safety, or climate resilience.

Regulation of short-term rentals. With thousands of homes taken off the market for short-term rentals in recent years, Vermont should reserve the opportunity to earn additional income from short-term rentals to those who are active members in their communities, and create a greater incentive to put rental housing and single family homes back on the market.

Support for the Climate Solutions Caucus efforts to Make Big Oil Pay: Pending legislation will create the Vermont Climate Superfund Cost Recovery Program and Fund. This fund will require the largest fossil fuel polluters to pay a cost recovery assessment to Vermont and those funds will be used for climate mitigation and resiliency projects. Rep. Kate Logan will be offering an amendment that will dedicate a portion of the funds specifically for clean energy, heat, and transportation measures for LMI households – these households have contributed the least to climate change and are likely to bear the largest relative costs associated with correcting the impact.

In the upcoming legislative session, our focus remains steadfast on fostering a more accessible government and ensuring fair elections that empower every Vermonter to participate actively. Our efforts will center around the following key pillars:

Accessible Government:

Pathways to Serve: We are committed to enhancing pathways for all Vermonters to engage in public service. This involves initiatives to remove barriers and encourage diverse representation within our legislative bodies, ensuring that our elected officials better mirror the rich tapestry of our communities.

Legislator Compensation: A vital aspect of accessibility is equitable compensation for legislators. We will work toward addressing the antiquated compensation system to attract a diverse range of candidates who can dedicate their full attention to public service without financial constraints. Currently, the General Assembly is composed largely of those who can most easily afford to be there. This is not a true representation.

Fair & Accessible Elections:

Campaign Finance Reform: We firmly believe in keeping big money out of politics. Our focus will be on advocating for meaningful campaign finance reforms, including exploring publicly financed campaigns to level the playing field and diminish the influence of money in elections.

Preserving Access: We are committed to safeguarding and enhancing access to the electoral process. Any proposed legislation impacting Vermont's elections will be carefully evaluated to ensure it broadens access and participation rather than restricting it. We aim to champion initiatives that encourage robust participation by all constituents.

Supporting a Strong Three-Party System: Vermont prides itself on a robust three-party system. We will work to preserve this dynamic by fostering an inclusive political landscape that values diverse perspectives and encourages engagement from all parties.

Last year our Caucus worked hard to keep you informed about the Democrat’s elections bill, ​​H.429, and its unfair and frankly undemocratic impacts on Vermont’s elections. Together, with your support, we were able to prevent this bill’s passage and encourage our legislative colleagues to instead focus on Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) proposals.

In the last biennium, the legislature approved a charter change request to expand the use of RCV in Burlington for all local elections and we hope to expand this access to statewide elections. Another bill, S.32, requires ranked choice voting (RCV) in presidential elections (effective in 2027) and would also allow towns to use RCV without needing to amend town charters. We will be following and advocating for these and other critical priorities for the betterment of Vermont’s democratic process.

During the 2024 session, you will continue to witness Progressives advocating for legislation, amendments, and other actions to advance the principles of a just society. We have a lot of work to do and this list is in no way inclusive of all that is possible. We look forward to working together with our allies in the legislature and the community as we complete this biennium. A Vermont that is built on sustainability, equity, and compassion requires this commitment.