H.454 amendment would divide State Board appointment power, preserve governor removal authority and fund rule review

A proposed change in H.454 would alter the appointing authority for the Vermont State Board of Education, require a board-led review of rules and include a $200,000 general fund appropriation to support the board’s rule work, committee staff said during a July 1 walkthrough.

Under the amendment, the composition of the State Board would not change numerically — it would remain 10 voting members (11 including the secretary as a nonvoting ex officio member) — but appointment authority would shift. Committee staff said the governor would appoint eight voting members, including two student members and six nonstudent voting members, while the speaker of the House and the Senate Committee on Committees would each appoint one of the remaining two voting members.

The amendment also specifies transition rules for current members: members may continue to serve for the terms to which they were appointed, and as terms expire after July 1, 2025, successors would be appointed by the authority that made the initial appointment. Committee staff clarified that if the governor removes a member, the original appointing authority would fill the vacancy. The statute governing removal (section 1 62 as amended in the draft) would continue to give the governor removal power over all members regardless of appointing authority.

The amendment asks the State Board to conduct a “sunset review” of its rules and submit a written report to the education committees by Dec. 1, 2026, with recommendations about which rules are no longer needed and a plan and cost estimate to update the rules that remain necessary. To support that review, subsection b appropriates $200,000 from the general fund to provide the State Board with staffing and resources for the work.

Representative Holcomb asked why the State Board would receive the appropriation but the Agency of Education — which supplies much of the data used in rulemaking — was not similarly resourced. Beth, a staff member with the Agency of Education, replied: “My understanding is that this $200,000 is literally just to to give the state board the money it needs to be staffed appropriately to update rules or do that review of rules, which could include hiring outside counsel to do that, which they've done in the past.” She added that accelerating State Board rulemaking would also accelerate work at the agency, but that the agency’s staffing needs were not specifically contemplated in the appropriation language.

Committee members discussed order-of-operations for appointments and vacancies, and no formal vote on these appointment or rule-review changes was recorded during the walkthrough.