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Senate tweaks Vermont capital bill; lawmakers hear Lake Champlain Walleye Association request
Summary
The House Corrections and Institutions Committee received a briefing on Senate Institutions’ changes to the recommended capital bill and later heard testimony from the Lake Champlain Walleye Association seeking $25,000 for hatchery work. Legislative counsel John Gray outlined shifts of roughly $700,000 between fiscal years and cash fund
Legislative counsel John Gray told the House Corrections and Institutions Committee on April 29 that the Senate Institutions Committee reordered and shifted items in the current capital bill, moving about $700,000 of bonding between fiscal years and reallocating cash appropriations to cover several small projects.
Gray said the senate changes included reducing a fiscal‑year 2027 bonded item for a statewide three‑acre stormwater compliance program by $250,000, removing a $200,000 planning appropriation for the Pittsford Academy firing range, and trimming $250,000 from a parking‑garage repair line at 32 Cherry Street — a set of edits that together shifted $700,000 to an earlier fiscal year. He said the senate also converted or reallocated another $1.1 million in cash versus bond splits to preserve full funding for the Windsor County Courthouse renovations while adjusting the mix of cash and bonded dollars used to finance the work.
The senate’s changes also added a number of smaller cash items that were not in the House‑recommended version, Gray said: a $100,000 site study for the federal post‑office block in Montpelier focused on economic development, parking and flood mitigation; a $250,000 competitive grant program for recovery residences; $175,000 for a fire apparatus narrowly targeted for brush‑fire response; and $25,000 for the Lake Champlain Walleye Association, among others. Gray provided committee members a compiled version of the bill with footnotes explaining the changes.
Later in the meeting, the committee heard testimony from Chad Lambert, president of the Lake Champlain Walleye Association, who described the association’s hatchery work and asked for a $25,000 cash appropriation. Lambert said the association has moved from raising fry in ponds to an intensive culture hatchery system that uses round tanks and biofilters; he told legislators the group placed roughly 330,000 fingerlings in the water last year and is targeting about 400,000 fingerlings this year. Lambert said recent tank purchases cost roughly $47,000 for two tanks and that the association partners with the Department of Fish and Wildlife for stocking and health‑monitoring.
Committee members pressed for clarity on process and ownership. Several members said they support the program’s goals but objected to ad‑hoc placement of cash items in the capital bill without prior briefing to the committee. Representative members asked why funding had not been routed through the Department of Fish and Wildlife budget process or the governor’s capital request so that Fish and Wildlife — which operates the state hatcheries and employs the staff who handle day‑to‑day care — would be the formal recipient of infrastructure appropriations.
Chad Lambert and DOC and Fish and Wildlife staff explained the arrangement as a longstanding partnership: some equipment has been procured through pass‑through federal or state grants that the association helps administer, while state hatcheries provide the tanks’ day‑to‑day operations. Committee members asked for clearer documentation on who owns the tanks and which purchases should properly be budgeted as state hatchery capital projects versus community or nonprofit investments.
Mike Covey, who identified himself as an executive director associated with the partnership that brought the request forward, said he would accept responsibility for the process and that future requests would be routed through the agency and the governor’s budget process.
Committee members asked staff to pursue answers in conference committee: to document the provenance of the cash items the senate added, to confirm which items are properly appropriated to state agencies and which are grant‑style pass‑throughs, and to ask Fish and Wildlife to present on the hatchery partnership and the program’s operating budget. The committee did not take a vote on capital‑bill changes during the hearing; Gray said the items will be part of conference committee negotiations between the chambers.
