VEDA proposes folding agricultural credit arm into main statute to cut redundancy, says CEO

On Thursday, Jan. 15, Joan Goldstein, chief executive officer of the Vermont Economic Development Authority (VEDA), told a legislative committee that VEDA will seek statutory language to fold the Vermont Agricultural Credit Corporation into VEDA as a subchapter to reduce administrative redundancy and streamline lending operations.

Goldstein said the change is intended as housekeeping and administrative consolidation rather than a change in lending policy or oversight. "We were established in 1974," she told the committee, and VEDA now proposes treating the agricultural credit program as a subchapter of the VEDA statute rather than a separate statutory entity.

The proposal, Goldstein said, would remove duplicative requirements that currently require what she described as the "same board" to meet twice—once for VEDA and once for the agricultural credit corporation—and would…