OUR LAND, OUR STORIES

It’s Not a Theory Anymore. It’s on the Official Record.

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 23:36:08 GMT

substack article by lexy thompson

It’s Not a Theory Anymore. It’s on the Official Record.

This week marks the 56th anniversary of Act 250 u2014 the law a Republican governor and Republican legislature created in 1970 to protect Vermont from outside development pressure. The law that Act 181 now restructures was built by Vermonters, for Vermont. This is Part IV of an ongoing series documenting what is happening to it u2014 and why.

<<Click the Substack link below to continue reading.>>

The language allows anything in the future...

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 20:31:35 GMT

ben falk, m.a.l.d. post

“Habitat” (Subchapter 001 : GENERAL PROVISIONS

(10 V.S.A. § 6001) § 6001. Definitions) "means the physical and biological environment in which a particular species of plant or wildlife lives.”

Their definition of habitat and habitat connector means they could apply either to any acre in which ANY species of flora or fauna lives. And ANY spot in between them.

That’s precisely EVERYWHERE in the state.

Have others been noticing how carefully wordsmithed into the legalese of this (and other) legislation is the ability to strip away landowner rights?

"FOREST" is contorted in definition to be:
"(48) “Forest block” means a contiguous area of forest in any stage of succession and not currently developed for nonforest use. A forest block may include features including recreational trails, wetlands, or other natural features that do not themselves possess tree cover and improvements constructed for farming, logging, or forestry purposes."

Read that again. "In ANY stage of succession and not currently developed for nonforest use. “

That’s a lot of things that are NOT forests.

That's your old field which you want to put a shop or barn on, carve off part for your child, etc. etc. That's land which could have been in ag two years ago and was planned to be again. This is how they apply this "conservation" (land taking) to as many areas as possible - all lands not shown on aerial via automated software as being hayed or pastured or your yard at the moment that photo was taken.

https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/10/151/06001?_gl=1*1i2zm3l*_ga*MTc0MzUyMzQ3Mi4xNzc1MjI3MjE1*_ga_V9WQH77KLW*czE3NzUyNTg4MjckbzIkZzEkdDE3NzUyNTg4NDMkajQ0JGwwJGgw

They're not ev e n pretending to take your land for endagenered species any more- that's so 1990's. This is simply "your land is between areas where species live; the law says you can no longer do innumerable things there without going through a cost-prohibitive, time-consuming process with dubious outcomes."

Taking your land via eminent domain at least involved them paying you something for it. This takes that process to a much more authoritarian level - a taking without any compensation, not by making anything illegal per se, just cost/time prohibitive. A perfectly bureaucratic strategy.

Montpelier’s environmentalism has a people problem

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 17:18:56 GMT

letter to the editor of vt digger by megan durling

Published April 1, 2026 in VT Digger

The brand of conservation dominating Montpelier treats humans as a threat to the land. Rural Vermonters know better — and it’s time to make that case.

Dear Editor,

“You cannot save the land apart from the people or the people apart from the land.”

Kentucky farmer, poet, and essayist Wendell Berry wrote these words just over two decades ago, observing a fundamental flaw in the conservation-based environmentalism that was displacing subsistence farmers in his home state.

The ideology underpinning that environmentalism understood people and land — along with the related issues of housing and conservation — as separable. Resisting that logic, Berry became known for holding a more fully ecological perspective, one that recognizes people as part of nature. In his view, the distancing of humans from the rhythms of the natural world is precisely what brings about ecological crisis.

The flaw in the brand of environmentalism that Berry spoke out against is this: it is inhumane and, in its inhumanity, it is anti-ecological. That environmentalism is what currently dominates Vermont’s politics.

Rural Caucus Listening Session Recording

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 16:32:15 GMT

rural caucus listening session recording

IN PLAIN ENGLISH PLEASE - Act 181 & 59 Decoded

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 15:22:55 GMT

substack article by lexy thompson

What did Vermont just do?

Vermont passed two laws in the last two years that together reshape who can build what, where, on Vermont’s land — and what happens to the land where you can’t build.

The first law, Act 181, divides Vermont’s entire landscape into tiers. Tier 1 is where growth is encouraged — downtowns, village centers. Tier 2 is the rural middle. Tier 3 is land the state considers critical for natural resources. Act 181 also brings back a rule that was repealed twenty years ago: if you build a driveway or road longer than 800 feet on rural land, you now need a state permit. That rule takes effect July 1, 2026.

<<Click the Substack link below to continue reading.>>

The Perspective of an Environmentalist and Ecological Land Planner

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 15:14:54 GMT

ben falk, m.a.l.d. post

This Act 181 is a truly insane piece of legislation. I say this as a life-long dyed in the wool actual environmentalist and ecological land planner of 25 years who's planted 12,500+ trees, has made a career of advancing watershed health and have been working in forest and wild land protection for my entire adult life. This is being flown under "environmental sustainability" as the purported goal but it seems that this can't be it.

View the maps.

They show wildlife corridors randomly starting and ending along roadways and highways. They show high ridges and deer yards sometimes mapped yet often unnoticed. High sensitive headwaters - the same - some noted, many ignored.

It's like an AI-assisted intern project of the entire state - fun perhaps as a an academic exercise but nothing you could make laws from that affect real people in real ways. It would take an army of field techs and years to make half decent maps with these implications across an area of 6 million acres. Maybe decades. You'd have to ground truth all boundaries of consequence, which are most.

It is unimaginable how these regs would/could even be enforced. Tens of thousands of landowners would be in violation in the first year simply due to normal work they do on their property.

But the most chilling part might not be that such sweeping culture-changing regulations could descend from central planners in closed door meetings without huge public input, it's that no one - not NGO leaders promoting it nor legislators who support it - will justify any of it specifically. Their only refrain is "environmental sustainability" and "affordable housing." All while passing a bill that will crush new rural housing opportunities and many existing rural livelihoods as well.

It seems to be a class war on rural peoples. I'd love to hear any justification of it's content by any representatives or any citizens. Thus far it seems that no one is even defending the contents of the legislation but spending all of their messaging attacking those who want it repealed, as though they are confused or spreading "misinformation."

Dara Torre, Candice White, Anne Watson, Ann Cummings, Andrew Perchlik please, tell it to me like I'm 10 years old - I would love to be wrong about this. You are tagged below so you or your staff will likely see this post.

If anyone can tell me why wildlife corridor would be planned only along/parallel with roads including major state highways, I'm all ears. I've planned wildlife corridor for clients for 20 years, studied it via Dave Foreman's original continental wildlands work directly for 30 years and understand quite well how corridor as a design strategy works. This mapping is antithetical to sound corridor design which seeks safe crossings, not prolonged interaction between wildlife and highways/roads. In general good corridors facilitate the movement of animals away from vehicular corridors and when that's not possible they aim for quick crossings.

Where are the steep slopes on this map? That's a 30 year old GIS layer and the starting point aside from wetlands for protecting sensitive areas. 30% grade or up (or similar) would be a base layer for these maps yet it's non existent.

Where are many upper watershed creeks and recharge areas mapped? There are some but at least 50% of them are missing. These are also a critical starting point. I am not referring to areas above 2500' (Act 250 protected - great!). I am talking about where many of then lay in the state between roughly 1500 and 2500.

Can ANY one justify these maps and this approach from a sound ecological and working lands perspective?

Editors note: Ben, and the rest of us, are still waiting for answers.

Castleton Says No to Tier1B & Pushes Back Against Act 181

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:51:29 GMT

By Keith Whitcomb Jr. Staff Writer at The Rutland Herald

CASTLETON — The select board has voted to oppose a controversial land use law and to opt out of a land use map it doesn’t believe would be helpful to the tax base.

The vote was unanimous at last week’s board meeting to both opt out of the Tier 1B maps proposed for the town and to send a letter to the town’s State House delegation and Gov. Phil Scott stating it opposes Act 181 and wants it repealed.

Land use laws, both new and old, have been a hot topic in Vermont politics recently. Published reports last week noted a large protest at the State House against Act 181, which passed in 2024 despite Scott’s veto.

Act 181 seeks to spur development, particularly housing, in developed areas with access to municipal water and sewer infrastructure. Opponents say it makes building in rural areas too difficult and would hamper development overall.

According to Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale, lawmakers planned to hold a listening session on Tuesday regarding proposed land use laws S.325 and S.328.

S.325 would extend the implementation timelines found in Act 181.

“We’ve heard clearly that many people feel left out of this process, and the only way to change that is to listen,” Ram Hinsdale stated. “This is about sitting at the table together — not as sides, not as ‘us versus them’ — but as Vermonters working toward the same goal: protecting what makes this place special while making it possible to make a life and a living here.”

Castleton Selectman Rob Steele said at the board meeting on March 23 that the previous week he attended a meeting of the Rutland Regional Planning Commission. He said the meeting was about the Tier 1B designation areas, as the commission isn’t involved in the other tiers.

Steele said the town submitted where the Tier 1B areas would be within its borders, but these were rejected by the state Land Use Review Board.

He said Castleton could only get Tier 1B status for a small area along the Route 4 corridor. This would grant Act 250 exemptions for housing and mixed use, the latter being businesses and offices with apartments above them. He said areas in Tier 2 would need Act 250 permits depending on certain factors, while anything in a Tier 3 area would trigger the need for an Act 250 permit.

Steele said only a small portion, 2%, of Rutland County falls within a Tier 1B area.

Route 4A corridor and that would grant Act 250 exemption from housing and mixed-use, which would be businesses or offices downstairs with apartments upstairs, and that would be it for a tiny area, for example.

“My opinion on it is I think the town of Castleton should oppose Act 181 in general,” he said. “I don’t think we should opt-in to Tier 1B. I think that if we’re going to oppose the whole act, we need to oppose all or nothing. I don’t think we can take the parts that we want because I think the entire thing needs to get rebuilt.”

He said he doesn’t believe Tier 1B status would benefit the town in the area it’s currently mapped.

Steele said Castleton is already well-developed, and based on conversations he’s had with people, what the town needs more of are single-family homes. Act 181 would hamper that, he said.

Steele made the motion for the board to not go along with the Tier 1B status and to send letters to the Legislature and Governor. This was done in separate motions, both of which passed unanimously.

“It might be a great idea for cities or something like that where you have everything but I don’t think that Castleton would benefit from that, and the rest of Act 181 is going to hurt us,” said Steele.

Select Board Chair Richard Combs said the law would work well in Chittenden County but not the rest of the state.

“I’m all for conservation,” said Steele. “I don’t want to make it seem like I’m not for conservation, because that’s what Act 181 was designed to do, but I think it’s too extreme for what people are going to want to do.”

<< view article on the Rutland Herald website >>

Boots on the Ground: Full Court Stress - Vermont Business Publication

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 18:49:13 GMT

BATTLE LINES DRAWN

by VERMONT BUSINESS PUBLICATION - 3/30/26

Two weeks ago, we wrote about how the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy threaded a difficult needle with S.325, producing a unanimous committee vote on a bill that extends deadlines for Act 181's most contentious provisions while preserving the law's fundamental framework. Since then, the bill has moved through the full Senate, and the political dynamics have sharpened considerably.

The week began with a "Repeal Act 181" rally on the State House lawn last Tuesday, where rural Vermonters, landowners, and farmers gathered to make their frustrations heard in person. The rally was the latest expression of an organizing effort that has been building for months through a vibrant Facebook group, op-eds, and public backlash. Bringing that energy physically to the State House steps, right as the Senate was preparing to take up the bill, underscored just how personal this issue has become for people in rural communities across the state.

Inside the building, S.325 moved to the Senate floor, where Republicans made their play. They pushed an amendment to repeal Tier 3 outright, one of the two provisions that have drawn the most sustained opposition from rural communities. The amendment failed along party lines. There was no middle ground, no crossover, no threading the needle this time. The vote laid bare what has been increasingly obvious that the two parties have fundamentally different views of what should happen with Act 181.

S.325 is a substantial piece of legislation, and while the "road rule" and Tier 3 timelines have dominated the public debate, the bill does a lot more than push back deadlines.

Nearly every major Act 181 implementation date gets extended. The Tier 3 rulemaking deadline moves from February 2026 to June 2028. The "road rule" effective date pushes to January 1, 2030. Temporary housing exemptions covering ADUs, commercial-to-residential conversions, and the various unit-cap exemptions in designated growth areas are all extended to January 1, 2030. Those housing exemptions have broad support because they've been producing results, and nobody wants to pull the rug out from under projects that are actually getting built.

Beyond the deadlines, the bill clarifies how development transitions from Act 250 to municipal jurisdiction in Tier 1A areas, allowing municipal panels to absorb prior Act 250 permit conditions while dropping those that are outdated or already addressed. Tier 1A municipalities must also identify and plan for significant natural communities and rare, threatened, and endangered species, or exclude those areas from the Tier 1A boundary. The LURB also gets explicit authority to limit which of the ten Act 250 criteria apply to "road rule" and Tier 3 development, a meaningful concession to concerns about regulatory overreach.

The regional planning process gets significantly reworked with streamlined amendment procedures, a new minor amendment pathway for future land use map changes under 10 acres, and extensions for regional and municipal plans expiring in 2026. Village centers are clarified as not requiring public water, wastewater, zoning, or subdivision bylaws, with the stated intent that most Vermont towns should have at least one village center supporting additional housing. The DHCD must report by January 2027 on reducing negative impacts of discretionary review of housing, including whether to create a Vermont Model Code with clear and objective standards.

Importantly, the bill explicitly states that it does not alter Act 181's underlying policy goals. That language is doing real work. It signals that the legislature views this as an implementation correction, not a policy reversal.

Democrats see a law that needs more time. Their position is that the tiered system, the environmental protections, and the mapping process are worth preserving, and that the problems people are experiencing stem from an implementation timeline that moved too fast, not from the law itself. Extending deadlines, in their view, gives the LURB room to get the rulemaking right, gives municipalities time to understand what's coming, and gives the public process a chance to catch up to the policy.

Republicans see something different. They see provisions that disproportionately burden rural Vermont, particularly the “road rule” that subjects development at the end of long driveways to Act 250 review, and Tier 3 that layers new restrictions on ecologically sensitive land that happens to be where rural Vermonters live and work. From their perspective, pushing deadlines out to 2028 or 2030 doesn't fix the problem, it just delays it. The provisions are still on the books. The uncertainty remains. And rural landowners are still left wondering what their property rights will look like when those deadlines arrive.

S.325 is now in the House, and the question is whether anything changes. The honest answer is probably not much, that is, unless rural Democrats break with their caucus.

That's the dynamic to watch. There are Democratic members from rural districts who have heard from the same constituents, read the same frustrated Facebook posts, and fielded the same phone calls from landowners and farmers who want the “road rule” and Tier 3 gone, not delayed. Some of those members have expressed sympathy with those concerns. But sympathy and a floor vote are two different things. Going against Democratic leadership on a high-profile land use bill during session would be a significant move, and legislative caucuses exert real gravitational pull.

Barring that kind of break, the most likely outcome is that the House passes a version of S.325 that looks a lot like what the Senate sent over, with deadline extensions, implementation adjustments, maybe some tweaks around the edges, but no repeal of the “road rule” or Tier 3. The fundamental framework of Act 181 stays intact.

And that sets up an interesting dynamic heading into the election cycle. If the bill lands as expected, rural communities that have been organizing, testifying, rallying on the State House lawn, and pushing hard for repeal will have a clear verdict - the legislature heard them and chose to extend timelines rather than roll back the provisions they find most objectionable. For rural Democratic legislators, that's a gamble. They'll head home to districts where the frustration is real, the organizing energy is still building, and the question voters will be asking is straightforward. They will ask, “Did you fight to fix this, or did you go along with your caucus?”

Republicans will certainly frame it that way. Act 181 and its impact on rural Vermont has all the ingredients of a potent campaign issue since it's tangible, it's personal, and it connects to deeply held feelings about property rights, local control, and whether Montpelier understands life outside Chittenden County and more urban areas. Whether that energy translates into actual electoral consequences remains to be seen, but the political raw material is there.

For now, the action is in the House. But unless something unexpected breaks loose in the caucus dynamics, the bigger story may be what happens after the session ends and the campaign season begins.

Act 181 is a degradation of the original intent of Act 250.

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 15:53:01 GMT

A Post by alison despathy

Act 181 is a degradation of the original intent of Act 250. Act 250 was designed to ensure proper development that does not abuse or pollute our communities. Public participation is core to Act 250 which guarantees due process for all impacted by development projects—especially when there are irresponsible developers or town boards taken over by developers.

Act 250 has been eroded from its original intent. There is tremendous Act 250 misinformation. If we want intense development, such as data centers, telecom, solar, housing projects, quarries to happen properly then we need Act 250 restored. Prime example is the quarry in Morrisville, Act 250 was made for these projects and allows the issues to surface and be addressed. All can participate and there are not lawyer and money requirements. Developers have money and lawyers, People and towns typically do not, Act 250 created a level playing field.

Act 250 is project based. Act 181 is place based and invades property, towns, rural spaces. Act 181 is built upon weak maps, never intended for regulatory purposes and never ground truthed.

Act 181 must be repealed but the LURB maintained to restore Act 250 to work for Vermont and the environment. Act 250 is always blamed, when it is typically ANR permits holding up projects.

Act 181 is still under development but we know it hurts Vermonters. Unfortunate, yet common - complex legislation lacking understanding gets rammed through creating stress and more work. This is the pattern for years. Act 181, Clean Heat Standard, Act 59, Global Warming Solutions Act and another beast - the Renewable Energy Standard - all passed over the Governor’s veto.

The RES serves special interest. All attack Vermonters and must be corrected. Thank you for engaging in a very human, important yet messy process. If we do not step up, we will continue to get steamrolled.

Susan & Thomas

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 14:58:41 GMT

am a registered nurse, and my husband served for over 30 years. We have both dedicated our lives to service, caring for others and contributing to our communities.

I scraped together every dime I had to purchase my land in rural Vermont. This wasn’t a luxury. It was a lifelong goal built on hard work, overtime hours and sacrifice. After meeting my husband, we realized we shared the same passion for the outdoors and for living simply on the land.

Our dog roams freely as she should.

Much of our property includes headwaters, and we take that responsibility very seriously. We are committed to protecting water quality, preserving wildlife habitat, and stewarding the land for future generations.

Today, we cut our own firewood, spend time in the woods in every season, and care deeply about the wildlife and environment around us. We plan to retire on this land and produce maple syrup, continuing Vermont’s agricultural traditions.

Wilder B. Wheelock - Colchester

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 14:56:10 GMT

I have multi-generational trauma from multiple experiences with government taking of our land. Act 181, which I regard as a taking without compensation, continues a trend of abuse that spans 5 generations of my family.

My great grandfather purchased our Colchester Pond dairy farm in 1905. He didn’t put up much of a fight when the railroad expanded and took gravel from our property. He regarded it as progress and he had plenty of land. Then Velco put transmission lines through our property and again he relented.

When my great grandfather died the farm passed down to my grandfather, who continued to farm and loved what he did. But in the 1960s fervor of modernization the government took his land and flooded it to make a Colchester Pond a reservoir for the drinking water of the growing town. They forbid him to keep cows that would pollute the drinking water of the reservoir. So, without cows, he tore down the barn which he could no longer use to save money on taxes. Once the barn was gone, his house had a view of the pond they created from taking his land, and his taxes went UP!

Prior to taking his land he wanted to strip the topsoil off the area to be flooded to generate income. They denied him the ability. After completion of the reservoir, due to excess nutrients from the topsoil, the water was not fit to drink and the project was abandoned as a water source. The Barn now gone, He gave up on farming, which he loved, and moved to Burlington.

My Father, after serving in Vietnam, came home and bought the farm from his father and was determined to save it. In 1993, under duress and behind on his taxes, sold six acres of waterfront property (the former site of the barn) for peanuts after the town told him they would never let him build on it. That 6 acres is where the parking lot is now.

My dad passed away and I am raising my own family on the remnants of the farm. The Pond is now a major attraction and the town is eyeing part of our land for a future bike path.

Act 181 continues the trend of government abuse. Though we are in Tier 2, the description of tier 3 could easily fit our land. If the legislature wants to preserve 50% of Vermont by 2050, then tier 3 will expand and we are sitting ducks.

The land is precious to me and I don’t particularly want to develop, but after all the government has done to my family, the decisions about what to do with what is left of our farm should be made by us, not someone who got elected for one term, or an unelected board of technocrats.

Thank you for listening to my story.

Act 181 is an infringement of our property rights and I regard it as a taking without compensation.

802 Scoop Coverage of 3/25 Act 181 Rally

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 23:09:18 GMT

published by 802 scoop on 3/26/26

Several hundred protesters call for Vermont lawmakers to repeal a major land-use reform law.

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 23:06:40 GMT

PUBLISHED BY VPR 3/27/26

Road Rule Can Kicked Down The Road

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 22:46:00 GMT

Vermont Daily Chronicle article | In The News

Anger over Act 181 bubbles up as Vermont lawmakers consider postponing its implementation

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 22:33:01 GMT

VT Digger article | In The News

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE VERMONT STATE LEGISLATURE

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 22:22:56 GMT

BY HANNAH BURRILL

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE VERMONT STATE LEGISLATURE

Regarding Act 181 (H.687) — An Act Relating to Community Resilience and Biodiversity Protection Through Land Use

My name is Hannah Burrill, and I am a Vermonter. I am a neighbor, and a member of a rural community that is watching this Legislature quietly and methodically rewrite the rules of land ownership in this state — and doing so in a way that the vast majority of my fellow citizens do not yet fully understand.

I am here today not to be angry, but to be precise. I have reviewed H.687, Act 47, the tier structure documents, the road rule, the 802 Homes Catalog, and the Land Use Review Board's own February 2026 public update. What I am going to share with you today is not opinion. It is your own law, your own language, and your own record — read plainly and presented honestly.

I am asking this Legislature to do the same. Speak plainly. Because what is being done to rural Vermont deserves a plain explanation — and the people in this room deserve to hear it.

I. What This Law Actually Says — In Plain English

Act 181 has been presented to the public as a streamlined approach to housing development growth in designated areas. I want to ask this Legislature directly: designated by whom? Streamlined for whom?

The law divides the entire state into tiers. Tier 1A and 1B areas — downtowns, growth centers, village cores — receive exemptions from Act 250 review. That sounds helpful until you read what it takes to qualify. A municipality must have permanent zoning, subdivision regulations, an approved municipal plan, municipal water and sewer infrastructure, and sufficient staff capacity to administer development review. Towns like Newark, Granby, Averill, Maidstone, Glastenbury, and dozens of others across this state have none of these things. The exemption that is supposed to help rural communities is structurally inaccessible to the rural communities that need it most. It was designed for places that already don't need it.

And it is not just the smallest or most remote towns that fall through this gap. Burke — a growing, thriving, economically active community that people actively want to move to — does not yet have municipal water and sewer. Under Act 181, Burke cannot qualify for Tier 1B exemptions. Burke gets the road rule. Burke gets Tier 2 triggers. Burke gets the full weight of a permitting system designed to discourage exactly the kind of organic, community-driven growth it represents. 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?

Tier 2 covers the majority of Vermont's remaining land and now carries a new jurisdictional trigger that did not exist before: the Road Rule. Written into Section 19 of H.687, this rule states that any single road exceeding 800 feet, or any combination of roads and driveways exceeding 2,000 feet, automatically triggers a full Act 250 permit review. Eight hundred feet is roughly the length of two and a half football fields. In rural Vermont, where properties are measured in acres and building sites are often set back from public roads through woods and fields, an ordinary driveway to a single family home can easily exceed that threshold.

And Tier 3 — areas designated as critical natural resources — requires a full Act 250 permit for any construction whatsoever. Commercial, industrial, or residential. One house. One garage. Full review. The boundaries of Tier 3 are defined entirely by rules written by the same board that benefits from expanded jurisdiction. The definition in the bill includes river corridors, headwater streams, habitat connectors, riparian areas, Class A waters, and natural communities. In a state where roughly 80 percent of the land is now forested, that definition could apply to an enormous percentage of rural Vermont land.

"The construction of improvements for commercial, industrial, or residential purposes in a Tier 3 area... shall require an Act 250 permit." — H.687, Section 21, 10 V.S.A. § 6001(3)(A)(xiii)

That is not streamlining. That is a reclassification of rural Vermont as a place where building a home requires the same regulatory apparatus we use to review major commercial developments.

II. Your Own Implementation Board Is Raising the Alarm

On February 20, 2026, the Land Use Review Board — the board this Legislature created to implement Act 181 — testified before the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee and recommended delaying its own law's implementation.

The board recommended pushing Tier 3 jurisdiction from December 31, 2026 to December 31, 2027. It recommended pushing Criterion 8C — the new forest block review standard — by one full year. It recommended pushing the road construction jurisdiction from July 1, 2026 to December 31, 2027. An 18-month delay on the road rule alone.

Why? The board's own words: Vermonters need more time to learn about and prepare for these substantive statewide land use permitting changes. Many people I have spoken with have expressed concern that their neighbors and fellow community members are unaware of these Act 250 changes.

Read that again. The board charged with enforcing this law is publicly stating that most Vermonters do not know it exists. This Legislature passed a law with sweeping consequences for rural land ownership across the entire state and the people responsible for implementing it are now telling the Senate that the public was not adequately informed. That is not an administrative footnote. That is a confession.

The board also flagged that the road rule's current start date of July 1, 2026 falls directly in the middle of Vermont's road construction season. Contractors, landowners, and families who have already planned, permitted, and budgeted for road construction this summer may find themselves subject to Act 250 jurisdiction mid-project, with no warning and no time to comply. The board knows this is a problem. They asked the Legislature to fix it. As of today it has not been fixed.

And the bill currently being drafted to address these implementation failures — S.325 — is described in its own language as providing technical clarification, transitional certainty, and implementation alignment to Act 181 without altering its underlying policy goals. Delays and technical patches are not the same as reconsidering whether this law is right for rural Vermont. The house is exactly as designed. They are just adjusting the plumbing.

III. The Real Cost to Real Vermont Families

Consider a scenario that plays out across rural Vermont every single year — in Newark, in Cabot, in Irasburg, in Craftsbury, in Readsboro, in communities across this state that will never make the evening news but are home to real families with real roots here. A parent gives their child a 10-acre parcel of land. Under current law, that child already navigates state wastewater permitting, local zoning where it exists, and any other applicable permits. It is not easy. It is not cheap. But it is possible.

Under Act 181, that same scenario — depending on where that parcel falls on a map drawn in Montpelier — may now trigger a full Act 250 permit review. Let me tell you what that actually costs.

Act 250 permit fees are calculated at $6.65 per $1,000 of construction costs, plus an additional $0.75 per $1,000 for Agency of Natural Resources review — a combined rate of $7.40 per $1,000. A family building a modest $200,000 home faces a base permit fee of approximately $1,480 before a single attorney is hired, before a single engineer is consulted, and before a single hearing is scheduled. That fee is just the entry price to a process that routinely takes months and often takes years. Add legal representation, site assessments, engineering reviews, and lost time during Vermont's short construction season, and the real cost of an Act 250 permit on a modest rural project can easily reach tens of thousands of dollars.

Notably, municipal and state projects are entirely exempt from these fees. The state builds wherever it wants at no permitting cost. You pay to build on your own land. They do not.

This is not a hypothetical concern. Neil Ryan, a third-generation Vermont farmer, has written publicly about exactly this impact on working landowners. As one Vermont legislator acknowledged plainly: if you have enough money, enough patience, and the ability to get good legal representation, you can build just about wherever you want in this state. What she was describing is a system that works for the wealthy and fails everyone else.

And this Legislature admitted in its own fiscal analysis of the road rule that a lack of data makes it unclear how many developments will fall under this rule. A new jurisdictional trigger affecting an unknown number of Vermont landowners, passed without knowing its scope, that will cost those landowners thousands of dollars to navigate. That is not responsible governance. That is legislating blindly and letting rural families bear the consequences.

IV. Vermont's Own History Dismantles the Environmental Justification

This Legislature has framed Act 181 as an environmental protection measure. I want to address that claim directly — with history.

In the mid-to-late 19th century, Vermont had been cleared of roughly 75 to 80 percent of its forest cover — primarily due to the boom and bust of sheep farming. Only about 20 to 25 percent of the state remained forested. That clearing happened without a tiered land use system, without Act 250 triggers on family parcels, and without Montpelier drawing circles on a map. Today that statistic has almost entirely reversed. Vermont is now approximately 78 to 80 percent forested — one of the most dramatic ecological recoveries in American history, confirmed by the USDA Forest Service, the University of Vermont, VTDigger, and the Vermont Historical Society.

That recovery happened organically. It happened because rural Vermonters — farmers, landowners, and families — made choices on their own land over generations. Farms consolidated. Marginal land reverted to forest naturally. The market and the landscape found their own balance. No state board mapped it. No tier system managed it. Vermont's people and Vermont's land did it together.

Vermont went from roughly 20% forested to roughly 80% forested in about 150 years — without Act 181. What crisis, precisely, is this Legislature preventing that 150 years of Vermont land stewardship could not handle on its own?

The new Criterion 8C added by H.687 states that a permit will not be granted for any development within or partially within a forest block or habitat connector unless the applicant demonstrates no undue adverse impact. The bill defines a forest block as a contiguous area of forest in any stage of succession and not currently developed for nonforest use. After 150 years of natural reforestation driven by Vermonters themselves, the overwhelming majority of rural land in towns like Brunswick, Walden, Albany, and Marshfield meets that definition. This Legislature has written a criterion that could apply to nearly any rural parcel in the state — and left the definition of what qualifies to a board that is still asking the public to help it figure out what Tier 3 even means.

V. Who Gets Exemptions — And Who Doesn't

The exemptions written into Act 181 and its road rule tell you everything about who this law was written for. Read them carefully.

State roads are exempt.
Municipal roads are exempt.
Electric utility corridors are exempt.
Roads used primarily for farming or forestry purposes are exempt.
Tier 1A and 1B development areas are exempt.
Every entity with institutional scale or infrastructure investment gets a carve-out.

The private landowner building a home on their own rural parcel gets none of these exemptions. I want to be clear — I have no quarrel with those exemptions existing. Farmers need to work their land. Foresters need to move timber. Utilities need to run lines. Those are legitimate Vermont industries and this letter is not a criticism of them. My criticism is of a law that extends generous protections to institutional land users while leaving individual families — the people with the least political power and the fewest resources — to bear the full weight of a permitting process that now costs them thousands of dollars to even enter.

And then Section 19(V) makes it worse: if you convert a road that was used for farming or forestry purposes to any other use, that conversion itself becomes a development trigger. A family that has worked land for generations and wants to subdivide a back parcel for their children is penalized for the access infrastructure that already exists on their property. The road that served their land for decades becomes evidence against them the moment they try to use it differently.

Meanwhile the temporary housing exemptions written into the law are available in unlimited quantities in Vermont's 24 designated downtown areas and priority housing projects in growth centers. For a designated village center the limit is 50 units. For a commercial-to-residential conversion, 29 units. The further you get from a city the smaller the exemption and the harder the requirements. By the time you reach a rural town with none of the required infrastructure you get nothing at all.

VI. This Is a Coordinated Multi-Session Plan — Not a Housing Bill

Act 181 did not appear in isolation. It is the second major piece of legislation in a deliberate, multi-session restructuring of how Vermont is governed, planned, and built — and most Vermonters have not been watching closely enough to see the full picture.

In 2023, this Legislature passed Act 47 — the HOME Act. That law mandated that every municipality create a housing element in their town plan with specific density targets set by the state. It required that any area served by municipal sewer and water must allow five or more dwelling units per acre. It gave affordable housing developments an automatic 40 percent density bonus plus an additional floor of height beyond local zoning limits. It effectively overrode local zoning decisions in every municipality with infrastructure — without most Vermonters knowing it happened.

In 2024, this Legislature passed Act 181, which restricts development outside those same infrastructure corridors through the tier system, the road rule, and the forest block criteria.

Now in 2026, the Agency of Commerce and Community Development is launching the 802 Homes Catalog — a state program producing 10 pre-approved standardized home designs for communities that demonstrate development readiness. The three pilot communities are Essex Junction, Hartford, and Manchester. Not a single rural community. Not a single town from Orleans, Essex, or Caledonia County.

The pattern is complete and it is coherent. Act 47 forces density into municipalities with infrastructure. Act 181 restricts everything outside those areas. The 802 Homes Catalog pre-designs the housing the state wants built. The state has written the zoning, designed the homes, and drawn the maps.

What exactly is left for Vermont communities to decide for themselves?

The stated purpose of Act 181 — written directly into Section 1a of H.687 — is to further assist the State in achieving the conservation vision and goals established in 10 V.S.A. § 2802. Conservation vision. Not a housing vision. Not a rural economic development vision. Conservation. Governor Scott vetoed this bill and called it plainly what it is: a conservation bill. This Legislature overrode that veto. The bill's own purpose clause proves him right.

VII. The Board That Will Decide Your Future Has Already Declared Its Values

Act 181 restructured the Natural Resources Board into the Land Use Review Board — a five-member, full-time, professional body with expanded authority over Act 250 permits, Tier 1A designations, and regional plan compliance. This board will determine what land in your town falls into Tier 3. It will write the rules defining forest blocks and habitat connectors. Its decisions will determine whether a family in Cabot or Irasburg or Burke can build a home on land their family has owned for generations.

The nominating criteria for this board are written directly into H.687. Every candidate must have a commitment to environmental justice. Not a commitment to property rights. Not a commitment to rural economic development. Not a commitment to Vermont's deep tradition of local governance and town meeting democracy. Environmental justice — a specific ideological framework — is the stated and mandatory filter through which every board member must pass.

The selection process is also largely confidential. The names of applicants are not public. The deliberations of the nominating committee are not public. The board that will make consequential decisions about rural Vermonters' land is selected through a process that rural Vermonters cannot meaningfully observe or participate in.

The Moretown planning commission chair submitted comments to the Land Use Review Board describing the Tier 3 draft maps as disproportionately disadvantaging Moretown's potential for housing development — calling it beyond demoralizing. The Vermont Chamber of Commerce has testified three times urging the Legislature to slow implementation. These are not fringe voices. These are the people closest to the ground telling you this system is not working the way you have described it to the public.

VIII. What Happens to Rural Vermont When You Make It Impossible to Build

I want to be clear about what I am not arguing. I am not arguing that Vermont needs no land use regulation. I am not arguing that environmental protection is unimportant. I am not arguing that growth centers should be left without oversight.

I am arguing that the scale of restriction being imposed on rural Vermont does not match the scale of any problem that has been documented in rural Vermont. And 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.

Schools close when there are not enough children. Post offices close when there are not enough residents. Local businesses close when there are not enough customers. The volunteer fire department loses members. The town loses its selectboard candidates. The general store closes. No amount of Tier 1A exemptions in Burlington or Essex Junction will restore what is lost when Newark or Averill or Maidstone can no longer sustain the next generation.

Oregon has operated an urban growth boundary system since the 1970s — one of the closest American models to what Act 181 is attempting to build here. The results are well documented. Portland became one of the least affordable cities in the country. Rural Oregon stagnated economically while urban areas absorbed all available development. Vermont is being steered in the same direction and told it is a housing solution.

Vermont is not California. Vermont is not Oregon. We are a state of fewer than 650,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in communities that will never resemble Burlington regardless of how many state planners wish otherwise. Our rural communities are not problems to be contained. They are places where people live, where families put down roots, and where the actual Vermont — not the Vermont being designed in Montpelier — continues to exist.

IX. A Question This Legislature Must Answer On the Public Record

Before I close I want to make something very clear to this room. I am not here with a general complaint. I am here with specific evidence drawn from your own documents, your own bill language, and your own board's public statements. And I am going to ask a specific question that requires a specific answer.

I am going to state four facts from your own law and your own record. Not my interpretation. Your law. Your record.

Fact one. The stated purpose of H.687, written in Section 1a, is to achieve the conservation vision and goals of the State. Not the housing vision. Not the rural development vision. The conservation vision.

Fact two. Every unlimited housing exemption in this law applies exclusively to designated downtown areas and growth centers. Outside those areas exemptions shrink, requirements multiply, and eventually disappear entirely for communities that cannot meet the infrastructure threshold.

Fact three. The 802 Homes Catalog — your own agency's housing program — is being piloted in Essex Junction, Hartford, and Manchester. Not one rural community was selected.

Fact four. The Land Use Review Board — the board you created to implement this law — testified before the Senate on February 20, 2026 and stated publicly that most Vermonters are unaware of these changes. The board you trusted to implement Act 181 is telling your own Senate committee that the people most affected by it don't know it exists.

Those are your facts. Written by you. Funded by you. Testified to by your own board.

So here is my question — and I am asking for a specific answer, not a general statement of intent:

Can you identify — by page number and section — any provision in H.687 that affirmatively protects and expands the right of a Vermont family to build a modest home on rural land outside a designated growth center, without triggering Act 250 review, without a multi-year state approval process, and without infrastructure requirements their town does not have and cannot afford?

Not a promise. Not a principle. A specific provision. Page and section number.

If that provision exists, read it to this room right now. Every person here who owns rural land or hopes to build on it is waiting to hear it.

If it does not exist — and I have reviewed this bill carefully and I do not believe it does — then I need this Legislature to answer a different question on the public record, in plain English, in front of the Vermonters in this room:

Is it the deliberate policy of this Legislature to concentrate Vermont's future development within designated urban growth centers and restrict it everywhere else — yes or no?

Because if the answer is yes, say it. Say it clearly. Say it to the people in this room who own land in Newark and Burke and Granby and Cabot and Averill who will be directly affected by that policy. They deserve to know what has been decided about their future. They deserve to hear it from you directly instead of reading it buried in 179 pages of statutory language.

And if the answer is no — if this Legislature genuinely does not intend to restrict rural Vermont development — then explain to this room why your own purpose clause says conservation, why your own exemptions exclude rural towns, why your own board is delaying implementation because the public doesn't know the law exists, and why not a single provision in H.687 affirmatively protects the right of a rural Vermont family to build on their own land.

There is no answer to that question that does not require this Legislature to either own this vision openly or acknowledge that this law needs to be fundamentally rewritten.

X. My Demand

I am calling on this Legislature to repeal Act 181 or fundamentally overhaul it so that its restrictions apply where the problems it claims to address actually exist. Restrict development where the housing pressure and greenspace loss are documented and real — in Chittenden County, in Burlington's watersheds, in the communities that have genuinely overdeveloped and asked for intervention.

But stop treating a family's 10 acres in Newark the same as a 500-unit development on the edge of a city. Stop drawing maps from offices in Montpelier that determine what a landowner in the Northeast Kingdom can build on property their grandparents cleared by hand. Stop calling it streamlined when what you mean is restricted. Stop calling it a housing bill when your own purpose clause says it is a conservation bill. And stop implementing it quietly while the people most affected by it are, by your own board's admission, unaware that it exists.

Rural Vermont is not a problem to be solved. It is not a forest block to be preserved from the people who live in it. It is home. And the people who call it home deserve a Legislature that treats their land, their families, and their futures with the same respect it extends to every designated downtown in this state.

Respectfully and without reservation,

_______________________________

Hannah Burrill

Burke, Vermont

Spring 2026

Sources Referenced

H.687 — An Act Relating to Community Resilience and Biodiversity Protection Through Land Use (Act 181, 2024), Vermont Legislature

Act 47 — An Act Relating to Housing Opportunities Made for Everyone (HOME Act, 2023), Vermont Legislature

NRC Summary of Act 250 Jurisdictional Tiers and Designation Process, Vermont Natural Resources Board

802 Homes Catalog — Homes for All Initiative, Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development (2026)

Ryan, Neil — "Act 181 Is Ending Small Vermont Farms and Most Vermonters Don't Even Know It," Vermont Daily Chronicle

Land Use Review Board — February/March 2026 Public Update on Tier 3 Rulemaking and Road Construction Jurisdiction

Act 250 Permit Fee Schedule — Vermont Land Use Review Board, Vermont.gov

Vermont Forest Cover Historical Data — USDA Forest Service; University of Vermont; VTDigger; Vermont Historical Society; The Orianne Society

Act 250 Program & History, Vermont Land Use Review Board — act250.vermont.gov

Noone is coming to save rural Vermont

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 22:04:38 GMT

Alexsys Thompson

Click here to read other posts on Alexsys Thompson's Substack

Three forces — Vermont’s Act 181, the UN’s 2030 Agenda, and Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership — are converging on the same outcome: the managed hollowing-out of rural life.

This week, hundreds of rural Vermonters descended on the Statehouse. They were angry — and they were right to be. The Vermont Senate just passed S.325 to delay Act 181, the sweeping 2024 land use law that critics say funnels all investment, housing, and development into Vermont’s cities and towns while locking rural areas under tightening environmental review. Governor Phil Scott, who vetoed Act 181 when it passed, summed it up plainly: “This hurts rural Vermont. And now they’re just waking up to the fact that, yes, indeed, it will.”

But what most of those protesters don’t yet know — and what this article is going to name plainly — is that Act 181 is not an isolated Vermont political fight. It is the local expression of a global and national blueprint, decades in the making, to concentrate population in designated urban centers, free up rural land, and reshape who lives where. The Pandora’s box is already open. You need to understand what came out of it.

Act 181 is not an isolated Vermont political fight. It is the local expression of a global and national blueprint to concentrate population in urban centers and reshape who lives where.

ACT 181: VERMONT’S PIECE OF THE PUZZLE

Act 181, passed by the Legislature in June 2024 over Gov. Scott’s veto, does two things simultaneously. It loosens Act 250 — Vermont’s landmark environmental review law — for development in designated urban and village growth centers. And it extends Act 250’s reach across virtually all of rural Vermont, shifting the trigger from the size of a project to the location of the land. One house, one driveway, on the wrong coordinates of a state-produced map: Act 250. The map itself was published with its two most consequential layers hidden by default — collapsed and unchecked, invisible to anyone who didn’t know exactly where to look.

The communities most penalized are the ones that have done the most. Towns with the highest voluntary conservation enrollment — Current Use, private easements, generations of land stewardship — are precisely the communities most heavily mapped into the new restricted zones. The law rewards designation and punishes stewardship.

The coalition defending Act 181 is not a grassroots environmental movement. It is a coordinated network of professionally staffed, nationally funded organizations — and they have direct access to the legislators who wrote the law.

The Vermont Natural Resources Council, Sierra Club Vermont Chapter, Conservation Law Foundation, Vermont Conservation Voters, VPIRG, and ACLU Vermont have formally aligned to support Act 181 and block its repeal. The Sierra Club’s Vermont chapter has explicitly named Act 181 a legislative priority — in the same sentence as the Global Warming Solutions Act and the Climate Superfund law. These are not local conservation clubs. They are organizations with professional lobbyists, litigation arms, and decade-long relationships with the legislators who drafted this law. Rep. Amy Sheldon, Act 181’s primary author and chair of the House Environment and Energy Committee, holds a lifetime score of 100% from Vermont Conservation Voters. The organizations defending the law gave a perfect score to the legislator who wrote it, every single year she has served.

↳ Sierra Club Vermont: “Vermont Sierra Club at the Legislature” (sierraclub.org/vermont)
↳ VNRC, CLF, Sierra Club VT, VCV, VPIRG, ACLU VT joint statement, 2026
↳ Vermont Conservation Voters legislative scorecard: Amy Sheldon, Addison-1

On the other side of that coalition: rural landowners finding out by accident. Most of them still not knowing their rights have changed. No lobbyists. No litigation teams. No access to the committee room. Just a map they weren’t supposed to read.

The organizations actually doing the work on Vermont’s land — the ones that have been stewarding forests, farms, and working landscapes for decades — were not at the table when Act 181 was written. The paid advocates were.

The Vermont Farm Bureau — whose members are the farmers, foresters, and rural landowners most directly affected — has formally opposed Act 181’s Road Rule, collecting documented stories from across the state. Farm Bureau president Mary White told the Legislature plainly: “In rural Vermont, we measure land in acres, not feet. The road rule itself will cripple our rural communities and hinder growth where we need it to flourish.” The Bureau submitted to the Legislature a real-world account of Ian and Caitlin Ackermann of Cabot — fifth-generation Vermonters who built a home and an 18,000-tap sugaring operation on 150 acres, their driveway well over 800 feet from any town road. Under Act 181 as written, their story would be impossible for the next family that tries it.

↳ Vermont Farm Bureau testimony: Mary White, president — S.325 hearing, March 11, 2026
↳ Vermont Farm Bureau: Ackermann family story, Cabot VT — submitted legislative testimony

NOFA Vermont — the Northeast Organic Farming Association, founded in Vermont in 1971 and the oldest organic farming association in the United States — has raised specific Act 181 concerns, arguing that the law must not compromise Vermonters’ fundamental right to grow food regardless of what tier their land falls in. The Vermont Woodlands Association, Vermont’s oldest forestry nonprofit, has long championed the Use Value Appraisal program — the very voluntary conservation enrollment that Act 181 uses as the basis for mapping restrictions. Rural Vermont, the statewide agricultural advocacy organization, is actively fighting to protect farm operations from the same regulatory overreach that Act 181’s framework enables.

These are not organizations that appeared last month in response to a Facebook post. They have been doing the actual work of stewardship — on the ground, in the soil, in the sugarbush — for decades. Some for generations. What they know about Vermont’s working landscape cannot be produced by a GIS model or a Montpelier planning meeting. And they were not meaningfully included in the process that produced this law.

The Vermont Farm Bureau, NOFA Vermont, Vermont Woodlands Association, and Rural Vermont have been stewarding this landscape for generations. They were not at the table when Act 181 was written. The paid advocates were.

THE MAP DOESN’T LIE: TWO ROADS, TWO VERMONTS

Act 181’s defenders have a ready answer for critics who say the law punishes rural Vermonters. The Road Rule, they say, targets wealthy outsiders punching long private roads deep into Vermont’s backcountry — McMansion builders carving up the forest for profit. VNRC calls it Vermont’s way of making sure those decisions “get the review they deserve.” The Sierra Club describes the Road Rule as aimed at “a wealthy landowner carving out their remote slice of the Vermont landscape.”

Then look at the map. And look at who is actually being exempted.

Route 17 runs across Addison County from the Lake Champlain Bridge through Bristol and Starksboro, climbing into the Green Mountains and flowing directly into the Mad River Valley — home to Sugarbush Resort and Mad River Glen. It is a Vermont State Scenic Byway. The farms, woodlots, and working family land along Route 17 are home to multi-generational Vermonters. A family that wants to carve 5 acres off their own land along this corridor to build a home for their child — on land their family has owned and stewarded for generations — may face a full Act 250 state environmental review under Act 181’s Road Rule if their driveway exceeds 800 feet. That review can take months and cost thousands of dollars. The family building the modest home on inherited land pays. The corporate resort developer up the road does not.

↳ Vermont Act 181 Road Construction Jurisdiction, 10 V.S.A. § 6001(3)(A)(xii), effective July 1, 2026

Route 100 runs north through the Mad River Valley and continues to Stowe — Vermont’s most expensive real estate market, where the median luxury home price is $2.85 million and home values have skyrocketed 121% since 2010, the highest appreciation in the state. Route 100 and Route 17 share the same Vermont Scenic Byway designation. The same state recognition. The same official acknowledgment of scenic and cultural value.

↳ Green Light Real Estate: Vermont luxury market — Stowe median luxury price $2.85M
↳ Home Stratosphere: “25 Most Expensive Towns in Vermont” — Stowe ranks #1 at $949,452 median
↳ Mad River Byway Corridor Management Plan (Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission)

And yet the Stowe Mountain Road corridor — the access road to Spruce Peak, the Stowe Mountain Lodge, and Vermont’s highest-priced resort real estate — is actively pursuing Tier 1B designation: the maximum Act 250 exemption available in Lamoille County.

↳ Stowe Reporter: “Planning commission: expand Act 250 exemptions in Stowe” — October 30, 2025
↳ Stowe Selectboard meeting packet: Tier 1B designation request — November 5, 2025

STOWE MOUNTAIN ROAD — EXEMPTED | Tier 1B: Maximum Act 250 Exemption

Vermont’s #1 luxury real estate market. Median luxury home price: $2.85 million. Spruce Peak development owned by AIG Global Real Estate — an $18.8 billion international investment corporation. A $400 million resort development on land partly leased from Vermont taxpayers. Pursuing maximum Act 250 exemption — and getting it.

ROUTE 17 — BRISTOL TO WAITSFIELD — RESTRICTED | Tier 2 / Tier 3: New Regulatory Burden

Multi-generational Vermont farm families. Same state scenic byway designation as Route 100. A parent carving 5 acres for a child’s home may trigger full Act 250 state review. Communities that have stewarded this landscape for generations — mapped into restriction zones.

Here is what makes this comparison not just ironic but structurally dishonest. The Spruce Peak development at Stowe — the luxury resort corridor now pursuing maximum exemption — is owned by AIG Global Real Estate, the real estate arm of American International Group. AIG is not a Vermont family. It is an $18.8 billion international real estate investment corporation — the same AIG that required an $85 billion federal government bailout during the 2008 financial crisis, the largest corporate bailout in American history. AIG retained the Stowe Mountain Lodge, Stowe Mountain Club, and future development rights after selling ski operations to Vail Resorts for $41 million. The land under part of this development is owned by Vermont taxpayers — AIG was leasing state land.

↳ Vail Resorts / AIG: Stowe Mountain Resort acquisition announcement — February 21, 2017
↳ AIG Global Real Estate: $18.8 billion AUM, Spruce Peak future development rights retained
↳ Vermont Business Magazine: AIG $400 million Spruce Peak development, state land lease

VNRC says the Road Rule protects Vermont from wealthy outsiders carving up the backcountry. AIG Global Real Estate — an $18.8 billion international corporation that needed a federal bailout — is being exempted. A Vermont family building a home for their child on their own land is potentially not.

That is not a McMansion problem. That is a power problem. And the map proves it.

AIG Global Real Estate — an $18.8 billion international corporation that needed a federal bailout — is being exempted from Act 250. A Vermont family building a home for their child on land they have stewarded for generations may not be. The Road Rule was sold as protecting Vermont from wealthy outsiders. The map tells a different story.

The Vermont Legislature’s own study flagged this risk — noting that the Tier opt-in system “could result in wealthier and higher opportunity municipalities maintaining higher barriers to affordable housing than others.” The prediction came true before the ink was dry.

↳ Vermont Legislature Act 181 Study Group Report (CPR Final Report) — January 14, 2025

SDG 11: THE GLOBAL FRAMEWORK NOBODY MENTIONED

To understand why Act 181 looks the way it does, you have to understand the policy framework it mirrors. SDG 11 — “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” — is the cornerstone of the global smart cities movement. It is the UN framework under which trillions of dollars in public and private capital are being directed toward urban infrastructure: IoT sensor networks, digital twins, AI traffic systems, smart grids, automated transit, and green-certified buildings. The global smart city market is projected to grow from $699 billion in 2025 to over $1.4 trillion by 2030.

The 2030 Agenda explicitly calls on governments to “take account of population trends and projections in national, rural and urban development strategies.” That is policy language for managed urbanization — nudging people, investment, and services toward cities, away from dispersed rural settlement. The UN framework promises that “no one will be left behind,” but in practice, the tools it deploys — smart growth zoning, location-based permitting, designated development corridors — systematically favor urban density over rural dispersal.

Vermont’s Act 181 is, whether its authors intended it or not, a near-perfect local implementation of SDG 11. Future land use maps. Designated centers. Tiered jurisdiction. Investment flowing to compact, walkable, connected communities. Protective restrictions everywhere else.

↳ United Nations: Transforming Our World — The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (sdgs.un.org/2030agenda)

The global smart city market is projected to reach $1.4 trillion by 2030. The tools it deploys systematically favor urban density over rural life.This is paragraph text. Click it or hit the Manage Text button to change the font, color, size, format, and more.

PROJECT 2025: THE FEDERAL SIDE OF THE SQUEEZE

Here is where the story gets uncomfortable for people across the political spectrum. Because while the UN 2030 Agenda is a progressive global framework, the pressure on rural America is coming from the right as well — through Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, the Heritage Foundation’s nearly 1,000-page federal blueprint that has already shaped the current administration’s policy agenda.

Project 2025 does not call for pushing people out of rural areas. It doesn’t need to. What it proposes is the systematic elimination of every federal program that makes rural life economically sustainable. The effect is the same.

The document calls for eliminating the Conservation Reserve Program — a primary income source for small family farms across Vermont and the rural United States. It proposes ending the Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs that protect farmers from catastrophic price drops. It targets SNAP food assistance, Medicaid, Head Start, Title I education funding, and the Small Business Administration’s disaster recovery loans — programs that disproportionately sustain rural communities where private alternatives don’t exist.

Rural communities were nearly 15 times more likely to lack broadband access before the Biden-era infrastructure law. Project 2025 calls for repealing all unspent infrastructure funds. Rural health care, already threadbare, faces Medicaid cuts and voucherization. Sixty percent of rural Americans already live in child care deserts — and Project 2025 proposes eliminating Head Start, which provides between 21 and 59 percent of all child care slots in rural communities.

↳ Heritage Foundation: Mandate for Leadership — The Conservative Promise (Project 2025, 2023)
↳ Center for American Progress: “Project 2025’s Plan to Gut Checks and Balances Harms Rural America” (2024)
↳ The American Prospect: “Rural America’s Project 2025 Problem” (September 2024)

THE CONVERGENCE VERMONTERS DIDN’T SEE COMING

What is happening in Vermont is not a conspiracy. It is something more mundane and more powerful: convergence. A global sustainable development framework pointing investment toward cities. A federal policy agenda stripping the supports that keep rural communities alive. And a state land use law that, whatever its drafters intended, channels Vermont’s limited development capacity toward designated urban centers while placing the rest of the state under tightening restrictions.

Vermonters who thought they were immune — who moved here, or stayed here, precisely because Vermont felt apart from all that — are now discovering they are directly in the path of it. The rural-urban divide surfacing at the Statehouse is not just a fight over permitting thresholds and tiered jurisdictions. It is a fight about who Vermont is for, and who gets to stay.

When the people most affected by a law are consistently characterized as too confused to understand it by the people who wrote it — that is not a communications problem. That is a power problem.

What makes this particular convergence so corrosive is the attitude embedded within it. When Act 181’s supporters are confronted with rural opposition, the response has been remarkably consistent: the concerns are overstated, the arguments misguided, the protesters simply don’t understand the law. Rep. Sheldon told reporters that opponents’ arguments were “overstated and misguided.” VNRC’s own FAQ characterizes rural landowners as responding to “misunderstandings.” The Sierra Club frames the Road Rule as aimed at wealthy outsiders — not the multi-generational Vermont families building homes for their children on land they have stewarded for generations along roads like Route 17. The same families the Stowe map just exempted from review — except it wasn’t families at all. It was AIG.

↳ VTDigger / Vermont Public: “Act 181 debate pokes at the heart of Vermont’s rural-urban dynamics” — March 27, 2026
↳ VNRC: “Your Act 181 Questions, Answered” (vnrc.org)

This is the tell. The rural Vermonters showing up at the Statehouse, packing listening sessions, and pulling up the LURB map for the first time are not confused. They are reading the map. They parsed the hidden layers that their own legislators apparently never turned on. They tracked the methodology revisions. They asked questions their regional planning commissions couldn’t answer. They did the work. They just weren’t supposed to notice.

Rural Vermonters are not confused. They are reading the map. They tracked the methodology revisions. They asked questions their planning commissions couldn’t answer. They just weren’t supposed to notice.

The protesters at the Statehouse this week were right to be angry. But the fight is bigger than S.325. It is bigger than Act 181. What is being contested — in Vermont, across rural America, and in the gap between the UN’s 2030 promises and its policy instruments — is whether rural life, rural communities, and rural people have a place in the future being designed for them.

Vermont has been a rural state, shaped by the relationship between its people and their land, for 300 years. The Vermont Farm Bureau, NOFA Vermont, the Vermont Woodlands Association, and the farmers and foresters who have worked this landscape through every season for generations — they are not a special interest group. They are Vermont. That is not nostalgia. It is the foundation of everything here that is worth keeping.

That question deserves a direct answer. And Vermonters, who have always had a stubborn, independent relationship with the land they live on, are exactly the people to demand one.

SOURCES CITED IN THIS REPORT

Vermont Act 181 (H.687, 2024) — Vermont Legislature
VTDigger / Vermont Public: “Act 181 debate pokes at the heart of Vermont’s rural-urban dynamics” — March 27, 2026
Vermont Farm Bureau testimony: Mary White, president — S.325 hearing, March 11, 2026
Stowe Reporter: “Planning commission: expand Act 250 exemptions in Stowe” — October 30, 2025
Stowe Selectboard meeting packet: Tier 1B designation request — November 5, 2025 (stowevt.gov)
Vermont Legislature Act 181 Study Group Report (CPR Final Report) — January 14, 2025
Vershire Act 181 Citizens’ Briefing: Michelle Massa & Debra Kingsbury — March 2026
Vail Resorts / AIG: Stowe Mountain Resort acquisition announcement — February 21, 2017
AIG Global Real Estate: $18.8 billion AUM, Spruce Peak future development rights retained
Vermont Business Magazine: AIG $400 million Spruce Peak development, state land lease
Green Light Real Estate: Vermont luxury market — Stowe median luxury home price $2.85M
Home Stratosphere: “25 Most Expensive Towns in Vermont” — Stowe #1, $949,452 median (2025)
Mad River Byway Corridor Management Plan — Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission
NOFA Vermont: nofavt.org — founded Putney, Vermont, 1971
Vermont Woodlands Association: vermontwoodlands.org
Rural Vermont: testimony on municipal regulation of agriculture, March 2026
Neil Ryan: “Save small farms from Act 181” — VTDigger, February 24, 2026
United Nations: Transforming Our World — The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (sdgs.un.org/2030agenda)
Heritage Foundation: Mandate for Leadership — The Conservative Promise (Project 2025, 2023)
Center for American Progress: “Project 2025’s Plan to Gut Checks and Balances Harms Rural America” (2024)
Sierra Club Vermont: “Vermont Sierra Club at the Legislature” (sierraclub.org/vermont)
Vermont Conservation Voters: Legislative Scorecard — Amy Sheldon, Addison-1
StartUs Insights: “10 Emerging Smart City Trends 2025–2026”

WHERE WE STAND TODAY

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 19:34:50 GMT

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JIM FROM BENNINGTON

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 18:56:26 GMT

I have experienced a number of situations with my land that has involved restrictions from the Agency of Natural Resources. I do not know if they involve Act 181 but they DO involve restricting rights, in my opinion.

1) For nearly 20 years I owned two lots on Woodford Lake, Vermont at Woodford Lake Estates. The total land measurement was 100’ x150’. When all the stars aligned and I was ready to build a camp in 2022, I was told NO by ANR. Holding tanks for waste were now outlawed. Reason? Someone didn’t pump when required so no none but public or religious use is lawful. Town had no idea. Useless land.

2) I have a three acre parcel in Shaftesbury, Vermont. The neighboring owner in 2024 had a septic design engineered for an added dwelling. The design included a 150’ septic field runoff on MY property. It is called Shadowing. It is legal. The Rutland ANR agent told me that project would be OKed if it was submitted.

3) On the same Shaftesbury property I have an artesian well approximately 300’ deep that was put in during the 1960s by the former owner. The water has been tested yearly. ANR told me that well cannot be used because it has not been attached to a dwelling for five years. 2024 The Shaftesbury town office knew nothing of the restrictions being possible.

4) I have a 22 acre parcel in Bennington, Vermont. The Rutland ANR engineer told us we would not be able to build where we are today. Wetland is growing in a low area because Vermont has outlawed clearing the small brook crossing the property.

I would like to make it clear that the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources and governing committees are strangling the rights of Vermont landowners. Their restrictions are choking my rights and they are, daily, coming up with land management maneuvers that THEY feel are more important than the stewardship of generations of Vermont landowners. I am appalled by their presumptive diagnoses that are only based on probability or reasonable belief. They are acting with unwarranted confidence. They are also acting and voting along party lines.

Did Act 181 create a galvanizing moment for rural Vermont?

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 16:48:34 GMT

By todd hEyman of fat sheep farms & cabins

There’s no doubt that rural Vermonters are growing tired of the politics of urbanist Vermonters who embrace rapid urbanization as an environmental win. Recent public letters penned by Hannah Burrill and Loralee Tester explaining how Act 181 ’s zoning maps disproportionately burden rural residents have spread like wildfire. While certainly not a call to arms, these letters hark back to the warning often attributed to Ethan Allen: “The gods of the valleys are not the gods of the hills.” Distant edicts from Montpelier may finally have gone one step too far.

<<click below to read full article on SubStack>>

Sibilia: Land Use Policy Won’t Work If Vermonters Aren’t Part of It

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:40:47 GMT

laura sibilia blog post

....many Vermonters are just beginning to understand all that Act 181 does and how it could affect their land, and the reaction is telling. We are seeing deep concern and frustration that reflect how much of this work moved forward without them....

<<read more on Laura Sibilia's Website>>

VNRC Shattered its Legitimacy This Week

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:15:41 GMT

BY MacIsaac Highland Cattle

Letter to Chittenden County & Lamoille State Reps

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:08:15 GMT

by Mikaela Poley Butler

Dear Representative,

I am writing to you today as a constituent and a landowner, a business owner, and a farmer who is deeply concerned about the future of our state. I am calling for the full repeal of Act 181 (2024) and a fundamental overhaul of Act 250 to exempt families and small businesses trying to make a living on their own land.

Currently, these laws do not protect Vermont; they cripple the very people who steward its landscape or landowners Specifically:

The "Road Rule" is a Financial Barrier : Requiring an Act 250 permit for a driveway longer than 800 feet (effective July 1, 2026) is an attack on rural families. In our part of the state, 800 feet is an ordinary distance to reach a homesite. Forcing a family to spend tens of thousands of dollars on state-level permitting just to build a single home or a small shop for a business is an infringement on our property rights.
Tier 3 Mapping is a "Regulatory Taking ": The new Tier 3 designations for headwaters and "habitat connectors" are being drawn by planners in Montpelier without local input. This effectively "locks up" private land, destroying its resale value and preventing us from building housing for our children or expanding our small businesses.

Crippling Small Business Diversification: For small businesses and farms to survive today, they must diversify. Act 181 makes it nearly impossible to add a farm-stay, a processing shed, or a small workshop without triggering a bureaucratic maze that most of us cannot afford.

Act 181 was designed to push everyone into high-density "Tier 1" centers, but many of our towns lack the sewer and water infrastructure to ever qualify. This leaves rural Vermonters with all the restrictions and none of the benefits.

I urge you to support House and Senate efforts to repeal the Road Rule and Tier 3 designations immediately. We do not need a "delay" until 2030; we need a permanent exemption for families and small-scale developments that are the backbone of our rural economy.

Also… The money being collected from Act 250 and Act 181 is being used to build a permanent bureaucracy of full-time board members and planners. Instead of that money going toward infrastructure for our small towns, it is being spent on mapping and enforcement that makes it harder for regular Vermonters to live on their own land.

The "Historical Catch-22": How Act 250 is Killing Small-Scale Farm Stays

I am currently attempting to restore a historic brick house for use as a farm stay—a project intended to help our family farm stay financially viable. Despite this being a pre-existing building, we have been forced into the Act 250 process, which has created an impossible and expensive stalemate between two state-mandated authorities:

The Historic Preservation Conflict (Criterion 8): Under Act 250’s historic review, the state requires us to maintain the original architecture, specifically the original staircase, to preserve the building’s historical integrity.
The Commercial Code Conflict : Simultaneously, because Act 250 classifies a farm stay as a "commercial" development, we are held to modern commercial building codes. Our contractors have made it clear: to meet these safety codes, the original staircase must be ripped out and replaced.

The Result : I am being ordered by one branch of the state to keep the stairs and by another branch to destroy them.

This is a "regulatory deadlock" that costs me time and money I do not have. Act 250 was supposed to protect Vermont’s character, but instead, it is forcing me to choose between violating state historical standards or violating state safety codes. For a family trying to diversify their land to survive, this level of bureaucracy isn't "protection"—it's a barrier to entry that only large developers with unlimited legal budgets can overcome.

The "Dual-Income Trap": Why Families Can’t Win Under Act 181

Beyond the physical stalemate of the renovation, I am being crushed by the financial and jurisdictional requirements of Act 181. To make this project viable and support my family, I need to maximize the building’s income by using it for both traditional farm stays and short-term rentals (Airbnb) when we aren't hosting farm guests.

However, the state has created a system where I am penalized for this self-sufficiency:

Forced into Act 250: Because I am using my land for 'commercial' purposes (STR/Agritourism), I am denied the simple residential exemptions that would allow me to restore this house affordably. Instead, I am forced into a full Act 250 review, which treats my family project with the same level of scrutiny as a corporate hotel.

Targeted by New Taxes:

Under Act 181, if I use this building as an STR, I am hit with a 3% surcharge on top of existing rooms taxes, and potentially a much higher non-homestead property tax rate (which is projected to jump significantly by 2029).

The Infrastructure Barrier:

Act 181’s 'Tier' system funnels all support to downtown 'Tier 1' hubs. As a rural landowner, I receive none of the tax credits or infrastructure grants available to big developers in Burlington or Montpelier, yet I am expected to meet the same high-cost commercial safety and historical codes.

The state claims Act 181 is about 'housing,' but by making it impossible for a farm family to renovate an existing building for dual income, you are actually destroying the economic diversity that keeps rural Vermont alive. We are trying to work our land so we don't have to sell it to a developer, yet the state’s own regulations are the biggest threat to our survival.

19 Acres, 19 Years, and Still Fighting to Stay

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:12:34 GMT

BY LOU WHITE - HARTLAND

My Story

My name is Lou or Lulu (Sarah Louise White). I grew up on a pig and PYO farm in rural England. While I’m not a native Vermonter, I deeply share in the concerns of those who are.

I moved to Hartland in 2007 with my partner and a vision of building a simple, grounded life, starting a small business, raising animals, and living as much as possible off the land. We purchased 19 acres with a modest ranch home, a small cottage apartment, and a horse barn. Not long after, we split up, and I’ve been financially struggling ever since, having to buy him out. I cashed out what remained of my 401k and hired the lowest bidder I could find on Craigslist (disastrous story unto itself!) to convert the hayloft of the barn into a place I could live so I could rent out the house.

The plan was simple: live as cheaply as possible, rent out the house and cottage, grow my own food, and build a small business. In 2013, I started Lulu Web Design, which did fairly well for a time, until Covid disrupted everything.

Over the years, I’ve had some wonderful tenants, but it only takes a few bad ones to undo everything. I experienced firsthand how little protection landlords have in Vermont. When tenants stop paying rent or damage your property, there is often little to no recourse, leaving small-time landlords financially devastated. At one point, after six months of unpaid rent and ongoing damage, my lawyer advised me to offer “cash for keys” just to get a tenant, who was 6 months behind on rent and damaging my home, out. That was the turning point. I know many small landlords in the same position. The reality is that local property owners carry far more risk than large, well-funded developers who can absorb losses, but Vermont's laws do not take that into account.

That experience is what pushed me to convert my rentals into short-term rentals and, for the first time in years, I felt a sense of stability. But now, with new layers of regulation on the horizon, even that feels uncertain again.

It’s the same pattern we’re now seeing with Act 181. Layer more regulation and uncertainty onto people like us, and you don’t create more housing or stronger communities. You push out the very people providing it.

There is another piece to this that is deeply personal.

A close friend of mine, Don, is a small residential builder who rents a home in Windsor. Over the years, he has helped me countless times, fixing things I could not afford to fix, asking for nothing in return. Without his help, I genuinely don’t know if I would have been able to stay here.

My hope has been to give him a small piece of land on my property so he can build a modest home of his own when he retires in a few years. A simple, meaningful way to give back, and to help someone who has helped me survive.

But that would require a driveway longer than 800 feet.

Under Act 181’s road rule, that simple act of giving back may no longer be possible.

This is what these policies miss. They are not just lines on a map or abstract regulations. They reach into real lives, real relationships, and real plans for the future.

Everything I’ve built here has come from my own hard work. No family money, no trust fund, no inheritance. I came to the U.S. in 1994 with nothing, and this property is the result of decades of long hours in the corporate world, then building my own business in Vermont, and figuring things out as I went.

This isn’t just land to me. It’s my home, my livelihood, and my only investment. It’s everything I’ve worked for. I don’t have a financial cushion. I don’t have backup options. Every new tax, every new regulation puts that at risk. I know of several folks who have left Vermont for this very reason. More will follow if Vermont doesn't stop taxing and regulating us into a move we don't want to make.

Policies like Act 181 don’t just affect land use on paper, they affect whether people like me can continue to live and work on the land at all.

New Concerns Raised About Road Rule Impact

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:30:55 GMT

Road Rule & Property Valuation Concerns - By Lou White

One of the most concerning changes of Act 181 is the new “road rule.” In simple terms, if a driveway or access road is 800 feet or longer, it can trigger a full Act 250 review, even for a single home. In a rural state like Vermont, where long driveways are often necessary, that’s not unusual. This means simply accessing your home, or the home you plan to build on your land for your children (etc.) can now trigger a complex permitting process, with potential costs in the tens of thousands of dollars for engineering, legal support, and environmental review (plus months of delays and no guaranteed outcome). Everyday Vermonters cannot afford this. Well-funded developers, of course, can.

Homeowners and Builders Speak Out: Permit Uncertainty and Property Devaluation

Across Vermont, a growing number of homeowners, builders, and landowners are raising serious concerns about the uncertainty surrounding permitting and what it could mean for the value of their property.

At the heart of these concerns is a simple but urgent question:
What happens when you can no longer rely on what you’re allowed to do with your own land? The answer is: nothing good.

We are already seeing Vermonters pushed out by rising taxes and increasing regulation. For many, this feels like insult added to injury and the tipping point of whether they stay in Vermont, or leave.

A Cloud of Uncertainty

For many Vermonters, property ownership has always come with a sense of stability and long-term planning. Families invest not just financially, but emotionally as they imagine future homes, additions, or the ability to pass land down to the next generation. But increasingly, that clarity is being replaced with ambiguity.

Will a permit be required for a future build?
How long will approval take?
What will it cost?
What happens if the rules change midway through the process?

Even when no immediate project is planned, the uncertainty itself becomes a burden- making it difficult to plan, invest, or move forward with confidence.

The Real Cost of Delays

Permitting delays are not just inconvenient, they can be financially damaging.

Builders and contractors report projects being:

Postponed indefinitely
Made financially unviable due to added costs
Abandoned altogether

For homeowners, this can mean:

Increased costs for materials and labor over time
Lost opportunities to build when conditions were favorable
Stress and frustration navigating unclear or evolving requirements

And for small builders (many of whom operate on tight margins) uncertainty can mean the difference between staying in business or shutting down.

Property Value at Risk

Perhaps the most alarming concern being voiced is the potential for property devaluation .

Land has traditionally held value based on what can be done with it. When that becomes unclear, or restricted, the value can shift dramatically.

Homeowners are asking:

Will buyers hesitate if future use is uncertain?
Will banks view these properties as higher risk?
Will resale value drop due to regulatory complexity?

Even the perception of risk can impact the market. When buyers are unsure, they pause—and when they pause, values can soften.

A Shared Concern Across Communities

What’s striking is how widespread these concerns are. They’re not limited to one group or perspective. They are being voiced by:

Lifelong Vermont residents
Newer homeowners trying to build a future here
Small, local builders and tradespeople
Families hoping to create housing for loved ones

These are people deeply invested in their communities—economically and personally.

More Than Just Policy

For many, this isn’t just about permits or regulations, it's about the ability to make reasonable, predictable decisions about one’s own property. When that ability feels uncertain, it doesn’t just affect projects—it affects peace of mind.

Moving Forward

As conversations continue, one thing is clear:
Vermonters are increasingly alarmed by what feels like a steady erosion of property rights.

This isn’t just about permits or process, t’s about control. Who gets to decide what can be done with private land, and how far that authority extends.

Senator, We’re Waiting for You to Lead. A response to Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale’s new overtures to rural Vermont

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 16:42:47 GMT

By neil ryan

Senator Ram Hinsdale published a commentary this week in the Vermont Daily Chronicle under the headline “Where 100% of Vermonters Agree.”

https://vermontdailychronicle.com/ram-hinsdale-where-100-of-vermonters-agree/

She’s right that Vermonters agree on at least one thing: we want our kids and grandkids to be able to stay. That’s not a political position. That’s a shared hope that crosses every town line, every party registration, and every hill farm and woodlot in this state.

But with respect to the Senator, you’ve misrepresented S.325. And you’ve inserted your own interests without meaningfully acknowledging rural Vermont’s.

>>Click below to read full article<<

Act 250 reforms spark debate in rural areas

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 23:37:35 GMT

published by WCAX on 3/10/26

When ‘protection’ becomes exclusion

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 16:55:12 GMT

Opinion piece by loralee tester, published in vt digger

Act 181’s regulations do not effectively respect the rights of rural property owners and, furthermore,

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 13:10:35 GMT

letter from select board - fairfield, vt

February 25, 2026

ATTN: Sen. Randy Brock, Sen. Bob Norris, Rep. James Gregiore, Vermont Land Use Review Board, Vermont Woodland Association, Vermont Sugar Makers Association, VLCT, NRPC, State of Vermont

REGARDING: Vermont Act 181

To Whom it May Concern, It is the opinion of the Town of Fairfield Selectboard that Act 181’s regulations do not effectively respect the rights of rural property owners and, furthermore, the Act’s imposed restrictions are not equitable to rural towns such as Fairfield. An aspirational vision of conserving the natural beauty of Vermont should not be translated into state-imposed, Future-Land-Use projections that undermine property owner rights, and municipal control.

We support all bills and ideas being considered that will reduce the impact of Act 181. The state’s Future-Land-Use projections have not been informed by our families, our efforts, our stories or our history.

Although the formation of our country includes the government claiming control of rural lands from rightful owners, the tragic consequences to native peoples and rural farm families have, since, been made clear. In our opinion, imposing state-level, Future-Land-Use restrictions and organizing all land into “connectivity blocks”, to impose limitations and state-level reviews on municipal level road development, only continues this tragic legacy of claiming control of rural lands from rightful owners.

It also does not take into consideration the fact that families, as stewards of their lands for sometimes more than 10 generations in Fairfield, also are custodians of historic rock walls, ancient roads, and ruins of old schoolhouses, civil war activity and industry. These structures and ruins may not show on our current E911 registration or on state maps but they are often utilized and woven into the activities of our community for multiple purposes including education, maple sugaring, farming and recreation.

Act 181 restrictions will be felt more severely by large, rural, towns such as Fairfield, which insults the integrity of the hard-working custodians of these lands and this municipality. The Town of Fairfield is the third largest town in VT, by square miles, but has held about the same population, 2,044 as of the most recent census, for over a hundred and fifty years. At 68.5 square miles, Fairfield is only 4.2 square miles smaller than the next largest town in Vermont, Stowe, according to Vermont’s Open Data Portal, but with significantly fewer financial resources. For comparison, Stowe’s population is estimated to be 4,339 and their total Government Expenses in 2025, according to their most recent audit, was $19.5 million dollars. Fairfield has only 1046 taxable properties, no opportunities for local option taxes, and has no enterprise funding. Our grand list is just over $1.5 million dollars and our total expenses on governmental activities were $2.3 million dollars.

Although Fairfield is expansive, it is not affluent. The extra fees and restrictions that will result from Act 181 could realistically result in the end of many family farm and maple sugaring enterprises; the majority of these already have careful land management practices in place to meet their obligations for Current Use land management, NOFA standards for land care, Fairfield Zoning Regulations, Agency of Natural Resources permitting, and more. Furthermore, any new restrictions on development in Fairfield could undermine the Town’s ability to grow it’s grand list to pay for its own governmental activities, including road maintenance, town clerk operations, zoning and town administration and more.

Navigating and enforcing Act 181’s requirements locally will result in undue hardship to our municipality and our families. Maintaining our rural landscape, with careful, steady growth strategies over time, is already embedded into our Town Plan and our Zoning Bylaws. We are concerned that, if unchanged, Act 181’s land use restrictions will impose an unfair economic burden on, not only our landowners, but also The Town of Fairfield’s overall economic stability into the future.

As such, we strongly encourage you to do all in your power to pull the brakes on as many Act 181’s restrictions as possible, including but not limited to:

H.70 - Use existing “current use” laws to meet conservation goals and prevent skyrocketing land H.602 - Repeal the “Road Rule” permit requirement and extend Act 250 relief
H.730 - Require notification & property tax reduction for Act 250/181 designation impacts o H.805 - Streamline Act 250 permitting & provide property tax relief for restrictive land use designations
H.749 - Remove requirements to permanently preserve 30% and ultimately 50% of Vermont land from Act 59

Thank you for the important role you play in advocating for what is best for our state. We encourage you to be wise, moving forward, and hope you will share our concerns as you tackle this legislation.

Respectfully Yours,

The Town of Fairfield Selectboard, Tom Howrigan, Chair Gavin Ryan David Persons Ron Bocash Brian Dubie