House General & Housing panel pauses on S.127 language tying bond-bank funding to Vermont Community Index

The House General & Housing Committee on April 17 continued its walkthrough of S.127, the Senate housing bill, and debated whether application criteria for the infrastructure sustainability fund should rely on the Vermont Community Index when the Vermont Bond Bank and Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) rank applications for funding.

Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Council, reviewed a side-by-side comparison of the House-passed language and the Senate version and identified subdivision f(4) on page 9–10 as the main point of contention. "The language in the senate version is the application criteria will look at the ranking of the community on the Vermont Department of Finance and Management, Vermont Community Index," Wood said as he walked the committee through the draft.

The committee debated three linked concerns: whether the index remains an appropriate statutory reference, how prescriptive the statute should be about ranking methodology, and whether the application criteria…