Stakeholders tell Vermont committee regional government could ease services, but funding and accountability remain unresolved

Montpelier — Stakeholders told the House Government Operations & Military Affairs Committee that Vermont’s patchwork of municipal responsibilities is straining services and that county or regional governance could create scale, improve service delivery and relieve volunteer-driven programs.

Austin Davis, director of government affairs at the Lake Champlain Chamber, told the committee the state routinely tries to solve modern problems with an outmoded structure and urged the lawmakers to inventory existing county and regional entities and identify which services would be better handled regionally. Davis cited emergency medical services, transit planning and permitting as areas that often hit “the town line,” and said a regional approach could both yield efficiencies and better service for residents.

“In the state of Vermont, it’s very difficult to do that in partnership with just a municipality,” Davis said, arguing some investments — including efforts to build a regional convention center — require pooled resources across towns. He told the committee the region has “foregone about $70,000,000 over the last 10 years of conference and event business” because municipalities cannot easily share the cost of such regional infrastructure.

Why it matters: Witnesses framed the question as one of preserving local voice while gaining the benefits of pooled capacity. Charlie Baker, executive director of a regional planning commission and a representative of the Vermont Association of Planning and Development Agencies, said any model must protect elected-official accountability even as it centralizes certain services. Baker pointed to studies and pilot projects that recommend looking more closely at which services belong at municipal, regional or state levels, and at how regional units should be funded.

Baker urged the committee to add a catalog of services and funding approaches to the panel’s scope, including whether municipalities should be invoiced for specific services as many solid‑waste districts do today or whether a broader revenue model is needed. He noted some regional approaches in other states place local elected chairs at the center of county governance; other models hire a regional board or professional administrators.

Legal and funding limits: Tim Lidders of the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs told lawmakers a 1976 Vermont Supreme Court decision describing counties as single‑purpose entities placed limits on what county funds may pay for — a decision that has complicated efforts to use county revenue for law-enforcement coverage. Lidders suggested that narrow, local pilots such as S.255 (a Windham County pilot mentioned in testimony) could test new governance arrangements before broader statutory change.

Property-tax administration: Jill Remick, director of the Division of Property Valuation and Review at the Department of Taxes, told the committee Act 73 of 2025 created 12 regional assessment districts and a six‑year reappraisal cycle, but that the state lacks an existing entity to carry out district-level reappraisals and appeals. She described contractor backlogs and uneven land records and said some small towns are effectively unable to secure reappraisal contractors without a regional organizing entity.

What’s next: Committee co-chairs said the conversation will continue; the committee adjourned and is scheduled to resume work the next morning at 9 a.m. for additional bills and stakeholder testimony.