Vermont officials tell committee existing emergency plan covers proposed changes; warn buyout funding would be costly

Douglas Farnham, chief recovery officer for the state of Vermont, and Eric Foran, director of Vermont Emergency Management, told the House Committee on Government Operations & Military Affairs that several provisions in a proposed emergency-management bill duplicate existing law and programs and would carry significant fiscal and operational consequences if enacted as written.

Farnham and Foran testified that the State Emergency Management Plan already establishes an all-hazards framework and that many of the bill’s details would more appropriately be addressed through the plan’s regular update process or a dedicated task force. They also cautioned that a statutory program to lend or provide interest-free loans to municipalities after disasters would carry very large costs and would overlap with functions the treasurer’s office and the Vermont Bond Bank are better suited to administer.

Why it matters: Committee members are considering multiple changes to state emergency-management authority, funding and programs in the wake of recent severe flooding. Lawmakers requested technical guidance from senior recovery and emergency-management staff; those witnesses urged using existing statutory structures and targeted working groups rather than embedding operational detail directly into statute.

Foran described the state’s emergency-management framework and its update cadence. “It’s a living document that always gets updated,” Foran said, noting the state compiles after-action reviews following incidents and exercises and incorporates those findings into the five-year update of the State Emergency Management Plan. Foran recommended removing or narrowing many of the bill’s specific requirements because they duplicate or risk conflicting with the plan already codified in Title 20, chapter 1, section 41.

On funding and buyouts, Farnham and Foran said municipal damage in recent years has driven substantial local debt. Farnham told the committee the state currently bonds about $50,000,000 a year for capital-construction needs and that municipal damage from recent disasters has been estimated at over $300,000,000 across two years, with roughly $65,000,000 reimbursed by FEMA so far. Both witnesses said the fiscal exposure of an interest-free lending program to municipalities could reach tens of millions of dollars in a statewide disaster and would require appropriation or a separate action by House Appropriations to fund.

Foran outlined existing tools that the state and towns already use: the Community Resilience and Disaster Mitigation Grant Program (20 VSA §48), the flood-resilient communities fund, a community disaster recovery fund used for elevations and buyouts, and an emergency relief and assistance funding mechanism intended to incentivize mitigation. Foran said the state and its partners executed roughly 200 buyouts between Tropical Storm Irene and 2023 and another roughly 200 between 2023 and 2024 using a combination of FEMA and state funds, but that the available state program money is largely obligated.

Both witnesses urged cautious statutory drafting on program coordination. The draft would add the Agency of Commerce and Community Development (ACCD) as a required partner for buyouts; Farnham and Foran said environmental conservation and public-safety considerations should drive buyout priorities and that adding multiple required coordinating agencies can slow program delivery. Farnham suggested clarifying statutory references by amending the existing state emergency-management plan provision or creating a task force to work with the director and relevant recovery officials following the on‑going after‑action review process.

On public alerts and communications, Foran said the Vermont Alert system already exists and can deliver both subscriber-based messages and mandatory wireless emergency alerts. He said roughly 80,000 Vermonters are subscribed to VT Alerts, about 70 towns have administrative accounts, and the system can push life‑safety messages to all phones in a geographic cell. Foran characterized the primary barrier to broader use as outreach and municipal capacity to administer the system, not a systems gap.

Committee members asked about municipal capacity to run local emergency plans and shelters, the number of regional coordinators (six, upgraded from three), and options to regionalize emergency-operation-center functions to match local capacity. Foran and Farnham described existing regional emergency management committees and suggested continuing to build capacity through training, exercises and targeted state assistance during activations.

The committee did not adopt statutory changes during this hearing. Witnesses recommended using the existing statutory framework, the pending after-action reviews, and targeted task forces or working groups to refine program design and funding needs before embedding detailed operational requirements in statute.

The committee will consider revised drafts at later meetings; both state recovery and emergency-management officials said they will continue coordinating with committee staff and the Agency of Human Services on programs that intersect with long-term recovery.