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Committee amendment makes flood buyouts a discretionary use of resilience grants, not a standalone program
Summary
May 8, 2025 — The Senate Government Operations Committee reviewed draft 1.3 of its amendment to H.397, which removes a stand‑alone, mandatory voluntary buyout program from the House bill and instead adds voluntary buyouts for flood‑impacted properties as a discretionary use of the Community Resilience and Disaster Mitigation Grant program (20 V.S.A. §48).
May 8, 2025 — The Senate Government Operations Committee reviewed draft 1.3 of its amendment to H.397, which removes a stand‑alone, mandatory voluntary buyout program from the House bill and instead adds voluntary buyouts for flood‑impacted properties as a discretionary use of the Community Resilience and Disaster Mitigation Grant program (20 V.S.A. §48).
Why it matters: The House version created a separate buyout program but did not appropriate funding to operate it. The amendment keeps buyouts in scope but authors said it shifts the program from a mandated, separate authority to an allowed use of an existing grant fund, which only will be available if funds are appropriated or otherwise available.
Tucker (legislative counsel) told the committee, “the important distinction between the two is that H.397 as passed by the House stood up the voluntary buyout program, but didn't appropriate any funds for purposes of the buyout programs.” He added the amendment instead “allows, if there are future funds available, this particular grant program, it allows, those grants to be used for buyouts.”
Committee members and counsel discussed the bill’s interplay with the budget bill. Counsel said some provisions in the budget and in this amendment overlap or conflict; the committee’s amendment includes a clause intended to “supersede any inconsistent provisions” depending on the conference committee outcome. A committee member said she would hold the amendment until the conference committee reports back to determine whether striking or reconciling language is needed.
The amendment removes the separate statutory section that would have created a mandatory program (20 V.S.A. §51 in the House version) and instead amends 20 V.S.A. §48 to list voluntary buyouts as an allowable discretionary expenditure of the community resilience grant fund. Committee counsel said the revised approach “is just calling out the discretionary authority for VEM to do this moving forward and specifically to use these ones.”
No formal motions or votes on the amendment were recorded in the transcript excerpt.
What the record shows: Committee counsel and members repeatedly framed the change as aligning policy with available funding and preserving flexibility for future appropriations. The committee also flagged that if the budget conference committee removes inconsistent provisions, the amendment’s language may be adjusted.
Next steps: Committee members said they planned to wait for the budget conference report before finalizing whether to keep or alter the buyout language.
