Debate over S.4 pits Vermont landowners’ property-rights concerns against town authority to maintain legal trails

Landowners and municipal officials presented sharply different views Thursday to the Vermont Senate Transportation Committee about S.4, a bill that would explicitly authorize towns to maintain “legal trails” mapped on town highway surveys and otherwise recognized as public rights of way.

John Echeverria, a professor at Vermont Law School and a Tunbridge landowner, told the committee that S.4 would “dramatically change Vermont law” by giving towns authority to enter private land to repair or maintain legal trails. Echeverria said that under his reading of current law — Title 19 of the Vermont statutes and related precedent — towns do not have authority to maintain legal trails and that landowners therefore retain the right to decide whether and how to maintain trail segments that cross their property. He warned that authorizing maintenance would allow towns “to come onto your property” with heavy equipment and called S.4 “a straightforward unconstitutional take.”

Echeverria described his family’s conservation work at the Dodd Farm on the Tunbridge–Strafford line — including a donated conservation easement covering nearly the entire…