[{"_1":2,"_100":-5,"_101":-5},"loaderData",{"_3":4,"_26":27},"root",{"_5":6,"_17":10,"_18":19,"_20":21,"_22":10,"_23":-5,"_24":-5,"_25":10},"user",{"_7":8,"_9":10,"_11":10,"_12":-5,"_13":-5,"_14":15,"_16":-5},"roles",[],"isAuthenticated",false,"isPremium","planName","subscriptionStatus","featureFlags",{},"insightsBudget","isDevelopmentHost","userPreferences",{},"recaptchaSiteKey","6LcvOJcUAAAAAHsB-gPGfGktcRlKpH7OTIU_dMTD","isImpersonating","impersonation","affiliateStatus","isFreedomPortal","routes/v2/article/layout",{"_28":29,"_30":31},"notFound",true,"relatedArticles",[32,76,88],{"_33":34,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":40,"_41":42,"_43":44,"_45":46,"_47":48,"_49":50,"_51":52,"_53":54,"_55":56,"_57":58,"_59":60,"_61":62,"_63":64,"_65":66,"_67":68,"_69":70,"_71":72,"_73":74,"_75":74},"mediaId",6311531,"mediaKeyId","2395491-bb6d08c9d0e573ae7a84990e58f47cdc","parentId",2395491,"title","House General & Housing committee reviews draft bill to prioritize housing appeals, tighten standing and extend housing-related energy provisions","audioSeconds",2355,"startMs",47000,"endMs",2402000,"viewUrl","/Search/View?dp=1&key=2395491-bb6d08c9d0e573ae7a84990e58f47cdc&start=47&end=2402","thumbnailUrl","https://assets.pipeline.soar.com/2395491-bb6d08c9d0e573ae7a84990e58f47cdc/thumbnail_47000.jpg","articleUrl","/articles/6311531/Vermont/House-General-Housing-committee-reviews-draft-bill-to-prioritize-housing-appeals-tighten-standing-and-extend-housing-related-energy-provisions","mediaUrl","https://secure.pipeline.soar.com/6311531-a481bf75cec0e9e095a8b84e6228f1b8/orig.mp4?Expires=1773608131&Signature=oyG77zxleGgXAdbiLTqfhiRr44INnfuceYl3olIkbnxhr8LHq~53VyVJc0EkKvFgMGTyuuprXwgAAXdPp1Hk4s8IEGf2ViyF3yxQam-nzPEsSJGw138TQ81o1n0bXz1BlnMJUWTT6dfRc-f2SXPchcwfQYZ4lNQoq3Fh4qRG-JuYWd0oYvILB6rBIfceRLfp4xb-~55AIALGMcAk6VPiTyIbIIqd23wXh7IsHGnr6hpAn91zzU6ve1Dmh~TAcNtQNVy5NPdkt7eLIHwoy26XFWBWTQem8J4Um-LRbDinvmTkPpLNMBYzocDajGIfM0tEgfHdBCKkQMkInE~UMIfOLg__&Key-Pair-Id=KUT5TJCACFTXG","author","Vermont House Committee on General & Housing","date","2025-02-25T00:00:00Z","article","Ellen Tchaikovsky, legislative counsel for the House General & Housing Committee, told the committee that draft 3.1 of the committee bill (draft 8.38) gathers several changes aimed at speeding housing-related appeals and clarifying who may bring land-use challenges.

The draft would add a provision directing the Environmental Division of the Superior Court to assign appeals involving residential housing for hearing “at the earliest practical date” and to expedite those cases; it would also insert new language intended to narrow either who can appeal municipal land-use permits or what an appellant must prove once a case is before the court.

The change is intended to reduce docket delay and to make clear whether the Legislature seeks to limit standing (who may sue) or to change the court’s standard of review (what an appellant must prove). Tchaikovsky summarized the proposal: “a party appealing a land use decision shall demonstrate a clear and substantial departure from the comprehensive plan or land use regulation,” language taken from an administration proposal she said the committee previously saw.

Committee members and counsel spent most of the discussion on whether the provision is properly framed as a standing limitation or as a standard of review. Tchaikovsky explained that standing is an initial gatekeeping question—who has the right to bring a claim—while the standard of review governs what a party must prove after the court accepts the case. She advised separating those concepts in drafting and said she had offered an alternative in the draft that would place a clearer standard-of-review provision in the Environmental Division statute (10 V.S.A. § 8504).

Tchaikovsky noted the draft also removes the phrase “directly affects their property” and instead refers more generally to “the property,” a deliberate edit intended to broaden or clarify coverage. She cautioned the committee that directing court internal procedures risks separation-of-powers concerns; in past legislation the Legislature has set hearing-time goals for the Environmental Division, but giving explicit docket-priority language is unusual.

The bill would also amend municipal procedures: one proposed section would allow towns to adopt bylaw changes required by a change in state law without holding local hearings when the change merely implements the state-mandated amendments. The draft incorporates a recommendation to move the Land Use Review Board’s report deadline up: the board’s study and recommendations would be due by November 1, 2025, instead of the later January date that appeared in prior law.

Energy provisions are included in the same committee draft. One section would restore or extend an exception to the Act 179 restriction on virtual (off-site) group net metering for affordable multifamily rental developments: rather than allowing the one-year administrative exception created last year, the draft would permit multifamily rental buildings with qualified low-income units to use virtual group net metering on a longer-term basis (committee members discussed a five-year compromise). Tchaikovsky said the change responds to developers’ testimony that many affordable multifamily sites have no adjacent land to host panels.

Another energy-related addition in the draft would require electric efficiency utilities to dedicate a fixed share of annual budgets to lower-income residential customers (the draft cites 25 percent) and to small businesses and nonprofits (the draft cites not less than 12.5 percent), and to exclude the cost of those services from cost-effectiveness calculations used elsewhere in utility oversight.

Committee members asked counsel to redraft the standing/standard-of-review language after hearing from litigators and other stakeholders; counsel said she would prepare an alternative and place the clearer standard-of-review language in the Environmental Division statute as one option. No formal vote was taken; members directed staff to continue stakeholder outreach and to bring a revised draft back to the committee for further review.

The committee flagged potential legal and policy questions for follow-up: whether the Legislature can prescribe docket priority without implicating separation-of-powers concerns; whether the standing language would operate equitably for both neighbors and developers; and whether the virtual net-metering carve-out should be time-limited or permanent.

Tchaikovsky closed by noting that other drafts and stakeholder proposals (including those from regional planning commissions and the National Renter/Developer Coalition) will be compared as the bill is redrafted for the committee’s next meeting.","mediaType","Video","parentTitle","House General - 2025-02-25 - 1PM","oneSentenceSummary","Ellen Tchaikovsky, legislative counsel for the House General & Housing Committee, told the committee that draft 3.1 of the committee bill (draft 8.38) gathers several changes aimed at speeding housing-related appeals and clarifying who may bring land-use challenges.","taxTitle","General & Housing, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Committees, Legislative , Vermont","taxId",30954,"location","Vermont","headline","","shortSummary",{"_33":77,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":78,"_41":79,"_43":80,"_45":81,"_47":82,"_49":83,"_51":84,"_53":85,"_55":56,"_57":58,"_59":86,"_61":62,"_63":64,"_65":87,"_67":68,"_69":70,"_71":72,"_73":74,"_75":74},6311522,"Tax Department cautions that expanded landlord-register fields could hinder renter-credit processing and raise privacy concerns",1531,5009000,6540000,"/Search/View?dp=1&key=2395491-bb6d08c9d0e573ae7a84990e58f47cdc&start=5009&end=6540","https://assets.pipeline.soar.com/2395491-bb6d08c9d0e573ae7a84990e58f47cdc/thumbnail_5009000.jpg","/articles/6311522/Vermont/Tax-Department-cautions-that-expanded-landlord-register-fields-could-hinder-renter-credit-processing-and-raise-privacy-concerns","https://secure.pipeline.soar.com/6311522-0a97eee52faa7184233af8eec291dfa3/orig.mp4?Expires=1773608131&Signature=EVZnmSdWlvZffSQKM9U-GfyecFQiqpE8x7Mlymr5IC5MTseH~6JFdt-8Wrm7DfHlzIBi7K7jImgpHCRu36JOCQzMmFngRuN5nsC3Pzgjj5gcphQJXOc0-Z0fYG0cAqGGOgX0oUlhyeuhxolQMGRZJvthcMzNbjFLUltp4hVoc1odpc55y9clKgzsVJF2klUEhBGStbtv7EZi~tx5NSSnWZuaCshyE5im-vGc9YBP9ZPnKqgIOGsiH3~hzKQi3cObcodeNpULRUJc5WuOCutNewLBmiY7sCvfHnaYJZkUgT4uYunBjlxOyYIYB~8kdtyZrcnaqSpTKGN8LlrJYZNmRg__&Key-Pair-Id=KUT5TJCACFTXG","Rebecca Sam Roth, deputy commissioner at the Department of Taxes, told the House General & Housing Committee that the department’s landlord certificate — the form used to verify claims for the renter credit — already provides many data points and that adding the unit-level survey fields in Act 181 of 2024 risks reducing compliance and slowing payments to eligible low-income renters.

Roth said recent reform of the renter-credit system substantially reduced paperwork and corrected confidentiality problems; as a result, the department now issues 96 percent of renter-credit claims within 60 days, compared with about 25 percent under the old system. She said adding “unnecessary and problematic survey fields to the form as prescribed by Act 181 of 2024 would make the problem worse.”

Department analysts explained the practical differences between a landlord-certificate data set and the unit-focused information a rental registry would collect. The landlord certificate is organized around people who can claim the credit (lines for each renter who lived in the property during the tax year) and uses the SPAN (school property account number) to link property records. It is filed after the tax year (by Jan. 30) and is not designed to collect prospective unit-by-unit attributes (for example, the year each unit was built, unit-level ADA accessibility or gross monthly rent for every unit).

The department said it can and does provide owner name, owner mailing address, e-mail and phone number and property location tied to the SPAN. It can also provide aggregated information to the Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA) and to the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) for official purposes; such sharing must observe confidentiality rules and cannot publish disaggregated tax data for groups smaller than 10 taxpayers. Officials noted the law already authorizes sharing with DHCD and entities conducting the state housing needs assessment and that Emergency Management receives limited data for disaster planning.

Officials cautioned that collecting gross monthly rent on each unit would raise confidentiality and compliance concerns and could create taxpayer confusion about whether the tax department would use that information for income-tax audits. They also said unit-level fields are not collected today and that adding them would require new definitions, data standards and implementation resources.

Jill Remick, director of Property Valuation and Review, added that some unit- and parcel-level fields — year built, number of units, number of stories, heating system, year of major renovation — already exist in municipal grand-list (property valuation) systems and can be transmitted through existing municipal data feeds (the grand-list/Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal systems) if the committee wants a parcel-level inventory of housing characteristics. She and Department staff urged defining a small set of practical fields and standards and using municipal grand-list submissions rather than adding burdensome new fields to the landlord certificate.

Department officials said they will meet with VHFA and other stakeholders to explore workable changes and that they will propose statutory adjustments through the appropriate vehicles; they highlighted the department’s mission to administer credits efficiently and to avoid introducing fields that reduce compliance or create taxpayer privacy concerns.","Rebecca Sam Roth, deputy commissioner at the Department of Taxes, told the committee the landlord certificate already supplies essential verification for renter credits and warned that adding Act 181’s unit-level fields would reduce compliance and jeopardize fast payments to eligible low-income renters.",{"_33":89,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":90,"_41":91,"_43":92,"_45":93,"_47":94,"_49":95,"_51":96,"_53":97,"_55":56,"_57":58,"_59":98,"_61":62,"_63":64,"_65":99,"_67":68,"_69":70,"_71":72,"_73":74,"_75":74},6311527,"Experts tell committee a state land bank could speed reuse of vacant and contaminated properties and support housing production",1055,2720000,3775000,"/Search/View?dp=1&key=2395491-bb6d08c9d0e573ae7a84990e58f47cdc&start=2720&end=3775","https://assets.pipeline.soar.com/2395491-bb6d08c9d0e573ae7a84990e58f47cdc/thumbnail_2720000.jpg","/articles/6311527/Vermont/Experts-tell-committee-a-state-land-bank-could-speed-reuse-of-vacant-and-contaminated-properties-and-support-housing-production","https://secure.pipeline.soar.com/6311527-a2ffb21dd90f32c9b29675e70be40231/orig.mp4?Expires=1773608131&Signature=lBHhCbJMe4Kt6sXxF9DztJhhWfAdzX0rzNMorwZ0YbVnJZ7yNcYC2Ue72EOeVqsWiYS-P1~Bk~3mW02xqC17XpH52v~gip68wk315ikT0C3OshDJINsWrntaW4mWmKzgxQeRYmiVQb1jnXHw7sUaW1mGJNoF4fhoP-8Ifwe87ptLncCFcoZdNs1B6D~E64sD05ZJ6ONZeuis4S2KCH67dvzhjXzgcYomgLAHdnc~Ecb1ggnheors6VS0Qd-~RmsOo6jZqMga0W3dXgVQO2w4iSIKaYq7ITG0Fi9hKJNDOFov5eeKKmfxxv7VUMqFncS~gYpQeJtuyo8ph~eDTIYuaQ__&Key-Pair-Id=KUT5TJCACFTXG","Jim Tishler, development director of the Michigan Land Bank Authority, told the committee that state-level land banks can play multiple roles: take title to surplus or problem properties, hold and ready parcels for redevelopment, serve as a repository of last resort for contaminated sites, and support local land banks that lack capacity.

Tishler said the number-one challenge he sees nationwide is capacity — local governments often lack staff, budget and time to carry out cleanup, due diligence and project management. “There is simply not enough budget, there’s not enough personnel allocation and not enough time to be able to service the activities that are so vital in order to move properties to productive reuse,” he said.

He described legal and financing tools Michigan uses: the state land bank takes title to properties (including surplus state facilities and county tax-foreclosed parcels), uses project-based tax-increment financing to capture future tax value for redevelopment costs, and in limited cases holds extensively contaminated brownfields under an exemption in federal CERCLA law that reduces liability for bona fide public-purpose repositories.

Jamie Bauer, the author of the state study the committee received, said Vermonters she interviewed favored a single statewide land bank to serve sparse rural populations and small towns that lack in-house development capacity. Bauer said her team interviewed more than 50 stakeholders and highlighted use cases such as project management, financing assistance, post-disaster stabilization and coordination with federal funds where timing and eligibility rules impede projects.

Sean Gilpin, director of the Housing Division (Department of Housing and Community Development), told the committee the department is interested but cautious: HCD could prepare an action plan and draft legislative language, but staffing and resource limits make producing a completed bill before the next session a heavy lift. He said the agency would prefer an action plan and proposed statutory language by November of next year to inform a possible 2026 bill.

Committee members asked about funding models. Witnesses described different approaches used elsewhere: Maine’s land bank program is supported in part by construction/demolition tipping fees, Michigan uses project-based tax-increment financing and sometimes federal grants, Ohio has captured a small portion of late tax fines, and Georgia used a blight bond. Tishler recommended matching the land-bank design to Vermont’s fiscal architecture and seeking a full study of funding options before authorizing a permanent program.

Committee members asked for a phase of follow-up work: an HCD-led action plan or study committee to set governance, define the repository role, identify revenue mechanisms, and align redemption and tax-foreclosure timing rules with redevelopment goals. No vote was taken; members signaled support for further study and requested a timetable and resource estimate from HCD.","Witnesses from Michigan and the consulting team told the House General & Housing Committee that a statewide land bank could provide capacity, hold title quickly, manage brownfields and support mixed-income housing projects; they urged a study/action plan to define funding and governance.","actionData","errors"]

Article not found

House General & Housing committee reviews draft bill to prioritize housing appeals, tighten standing and extend housing-related energy provisions

Tax Department cautions that expanded landlord-register fields could hinder renter-credit processing and raise privacy concerns

Experts tell committee a state land bank could speed reuse of vacant and contaminated properties and support housing production