Ways & Means considers floor amendments to H.454 on redistricting, school voting wards and tax study

The House Ways & Means committee on Friday, April 11 reviewed several floor amendments to H.454, including provisions to add nonvoting legislators to a boundary redistricting subcommittee, to create a school district voting-ward task force, and to require the commissioner of taxes to submit a property-tax-classification implementation report by Dec. 15, 2026.

Representative Casey Toofe, who identified herself for the record as representing St. Albans Town and a member of the House Education Committee, walked the committee through the amendments. She said the first change would add two nonvoting members of the House and two nonvoting members of the Senate to the District Boundary Committee subcommittee; the House appointees would be selected by the Speaker and the Senate appointees by the Committee on Committees and must not all be from the same political party or the same school district. The amendment also increases the number of (nonlegislative) members in one section from five to nine, as written in the calendar presented to the panel.

Another amendment on the calendar would establish a task force to advise on school-district voting wards and governance. Toofe said the task force would include the secretary of state or a designee; three members appointed by the Vermont Municipal Clerks & Treasurers Association; two members appointed by the Vermont School Boards Association; and the director (or designee) of the Vermont Center for Geographic Information. The task force would consult with the District Boundary Committee subcommittee and work to identify an ‘‘optimal number of school board members’’ and boundaries for school-district voting wards; it would have administrative, technical and legal assistance from the secretary of state's office and technical assistance from the Agency of Digital Services and the Vermont Center for Geographic Information. "The task force may contract with such expert services as may be necessary," Toofe said.

A separate amendment would direct the commissioner of taxes to study the property-tax classification implementation and submit findings on new classifications for non-homestead property taxes on or before Dec. 15, 2026. A committee member noted appreciation for the Department of Taxes' relationship with lawmakers and said formalizing a study in statute "seems perfectly fine."

Members questioned the math and composition of the committee changes during discussion. Committee members asked for clarification on whether the draft language produced nine nonvoting members overall and how many of those would be legislative appointees; participants noted confusion during the floor explanation and deferred line-by-line effective-date checks to legislative counsel. One committee member said they opposed what they described as a political overlay to what should be an empirical process but agreed to move the amendment forward to continue discussion.

The panel conducted a straw poll on the floor amendment. The chair asked those in favor to raise their hands; the tally was announced as 11 in favor and the amendment was advanced to the House Education Committee (and, as noted in committee discussion, the amendment also has a stop in Appropriations). No formal roll-call vote on the amendment was recorded in the transcript excerpt.

Background: The changes discussed are floor amendments to H.454 for third reading; the committee noted there were three amendments on the calendar and that additional amendments could be added on the floor. Several procedural items—effective dates and cross-references in multiple sections—were flagged for review by legislative counsel.

The committee paused after the floor action and prepared to send the amendment package to the Education Committee for further consideration.