RENEE McGUINNESS

Qualification: My participation in the State House as Vermont Family Alliance (VFA) Policy Analyst for the past two years has provided me with experiential understanding of the legislative process and the U.S. and Vermont Constitutions, which I hope to utilize as a state representative to further serve Vermonters. My public service is advocacy for the protection of parental rights and minors through witness testimony and commentaries that are distributed to all Vermont media outlets and VFA email contact list to inform the public about legislation that undermines parental authority and equips parents with knowledge so they can best protect their children.

Education funding: First, we need to reduce expenses by reducing the number of supervisory unions, state mandates, and healthcare costs. We need to shift the focus in healthcare from the financial health of hospitals (S.151, 2024) to the health and wellbeing of Vermonters by reducing chronic disease, which will reduce the cost of health insurance for public school employees and everyone else. Mental health services should be removed from school budgets and paid for privately when possible.

I hope people can see that Bringham v. State, which resulted in Act 60, changed the focus from educating students to school budgets, turning students into bags of money, with some students worth up to 2.5X more than others under Act 127 (2022), which violates Bringham. The result of the focus on equal spending rather than creative and fiscally conservative means determined by each town to accommodate individual learning styles, talents, and abilities, has inflated the administrative costs of education without an improvement in academic outcomes.

Local schools are the heart of the community. I proposed Pre-K – 8th community schools in MAUSD, tuitioning high school students to Vergennes, CVU, and Middlebury in 2021 when MAUSD hired District Management Group. Mount Abe property could be developed for housing, the proceeds of the sale being allocated toward education funding. My proposal had bipartisan support.

I would advocate for flat per-pupil state spending, and let local communities raise the rest of their needed funds. A flat rate per pupil given either to schools or directly to families for their education choices would result in greater accountability, with some parents opting to stay home with their children, reducing the childcare shortage. Sanctuary cities should foot the bill for the additional resources they need to teach English Language students through the federal funds they receive: no double-dipping through Act 127!

Housing: H.687 (Act 181), “an act relating to community resilience and biodiversity protection through land use,” at 171 pages, fails to streamline the Act 250 process for rural areas. It adds another level of bureaucracy, complexity, and expense by creating a six-member Land Use Review Board Nominating Committee, “created for the purpose of assessing the qualifications of applicants for appointment to the Land Use Review Board in accordance with section 6021 of this title,” along with adding several other boards and positions, compensated at taxpayer expense. I will work toward truly streamlining the Act 250 process state-wide to provide local control over development. We also cannot move forward with conserving 50% of Vermont’s land, which will cause the cost of land for homebuilding to skyrocket.

Climate crisis: I do not support the Clean Heat Standard because: 1) Vermont’s forests are a significant net carbon sink, absorbing more CO2 than we emit: we are already helping to reduce global CO2 emissions; 2) The Public Utilities Commission determined in their draft report that Vermont is too small to establish a carbon credit market: it would be astronomically expensive to administer, is susceptible to fraud, and would increase the cost of all goods and services, not just heating fuels; 3) Efficiency Vermont determined the CHS to be “grossly inefficient”; 4) Millions of taxpayer money used to research the potential costs of a CHS and to compensate legislators develop and pass the GWSA should have been designated to sewer treatment infrastructure upgrades to stop the dumping of millions of gallons of raw sewage into our waterways every time we experience heavy rain, and climate-resilient infrastructure, which would directly improve Vermont’s environment and safety.

Other priorities: We need to pass parent’s bill of rights legislation to curtail the introduction and passage of legislation that undermines the family structure and repeal existing legislation that undermines parental rights and puts minors at great risk of making life-altering decisions for which they are not developmentally prepared to take accountability, and without parental guidance and consent. Due process is being violated: there is a process under the Department for Children and Families in cases of abuse and neglect. The State needs to “butt out” of child-rearing: it is currently violating and continually attempts to violate parent’s rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution to raise their children according to their own values through bills introduced and passed in recent years.