MONTPELIER — Legislators convened for the new biennium on Wednesday, and on Thursday, the six statewide elected officers will be sworn in and Republican Gov. Phil Scott will deliver his inaugural address.

Lawmakers will have plenty on their plates over the next four or five months.

Is this the year Vermont finally scraps its complex education funding system and creates a model that doesn’t result in double-digit property tax increases? Will the Legislature create more pressure to close rural schools?

What does the future hold for the state’s climate policy amid a call from voters for affordability?

And, speaking of affordability, can government keep health care delivery viable and within the reach of average Vermonters? Where will people live?

How will a resurgent Vermont GOP wield its newfound numbers?

We spoke with a selection of Addison County lawmakers to hear their thinking just before the 2025 session began to get their takes on what’s ahead. Here are some of our longest-serving legislators and a couple new faces.

PETER CONLON

Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, is a four-term incumbent who represents the Addison-2 House district. Last session he chaired the House Education Committee and hopes to again this term.

Activities in the House Education Committee will be closely watched this year. Last spring, voters defeated roughly one-third of Vermont’s school budget proposals as weary taxpayers said reached their limit and lobbied for relief.

Conlon is well aware of taxpayers’ frustration.

“Obviously, Vermonters have sent a strong message, since last spring, that the cost of education and its impact on property taxes needs to be addressed. That’s going to be a main issue, quite frankly, of most committees in the House,” he said.

He expects several House committees to share in the heavy lifting of education finance reform, since spending in schools touches so many areas.

“There’s probably something for just about every committee, from school meals in Agriculture & Food, to healthcare in the Healthcare Committee, to mental health services in the Human Services Committee, to education policy in our committee, and taxes in Ways & Means.

“It’s going to be the thing we focus on the most,” he predicted. “What we need to do is have a coordinated vision that marries good education policy to good tax policy and help relieve the burden on Vermonters.”

Conlon acknowledged the remedy must go beyond simply tinkering with Act 68, the education funding law.

“There are certainly deficiencies with it,” he said of Act 68. “People are demanding a system that they can understand, and we need to do the best we can to provide that while still meeting the Brigham (Vermont Supreme Court decision of 1997) requirements and living up to our goal of having kids in Vermont get a great education at a price Vermonters can afford.”

Making a change is going to require a lot of hard work, Conlon said, made harder by the state’s demographics. Vermont is one of the oldest states, and its K-12 enrollment decreased by 14.2% between 2004 and 2023, according to a recent Vermont Agency of Education report.

Vermont will need to make systemic changes to attract more young families to fill schools and increase the tax base, Conlon noted. And that’s not going to be easy, he acknowledged.

“Since we haven’t addressed it, and we haven’t addressed our (school) facilities needs, every decision the Legislature makes is going to find a pocket of fierce opposition,” Conlon said. “Change is hard, and we need a change in culture almost as much as we need a change in policy. And a change in culture is really hard.”

LEADERSHIP NEEDED

That said, Conlon is guardedly optimistic that substantive changes in education funding can be made this biennium.

“I’m confident we can get something done if we have leadership from the governor (Phil Scott). But if the governor just sits back and says, ‘I’m just going to wait and see what the Legislature does,’ that’s a recipe for a lack of vision and not really setting ourselves up for success over the next decades,” he said. “We’re a bunch of citizens who are (in the Statehouse) for four and a half months. (Scott) can’t look to us to solve this alone. He needs to be an active participant.”

Conlon said Scott has thus far “shown a lack of interest, other than to complain … We are looking forward to hearing what his vision is for a public education system in Vermont, and what his vision is for the Agency of Education to take a leadership role in that vision.”

Outside of education funding, Conlon cited creating more housing and making health care more affordable as the 2025 state Legislature’s other top goals.

RUTH HARDY

Sen Ruth Hardy, D-Middlebury, is beginning her fourth two-year term. And due to substantial legislative turnover, her six years of service make her the eighth-most senior state senator of 30.

She chaired the Senate Government Operations Committee and served on the Health & Welfare Committee during the past biennium.

Hardy believes the top issue lawmakers will need to tackle during the next two years is reworking the state’s education finance system.

Ideally, Hardy said she’d like to lead the Senate Finance Committee, but noted its current chair — Sen. Ann Cummings, D-Montpelier — is returning to the Statehouse. So Hardy has offered to chair the Senate Education Committee, but with the expanded jurisdiction of education finance.

“Right now, education finance isn’t in the purview of the Education Committee; it’s in the Finance Committee,” she said, “I’d really like to chair an Education Committee that has an expanded jurisdiction to cover both education policy and finance, and how we fund schools.”

Hardy believes she has the credentials to lead the Senate’s foray into education finance reform. She served three terms on Middlebury-area school boards, including the Mary Hogan Elementary (chair) and Addison Central School District (ACSD) boards. She previously worked as assistant budget director at Middlebury College and was a fiscal analyst for the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, specializing in education issues.

“Unless you’re on a committee of jurisdiction, it’s really hard to have a direct impact on something,” Hardy said of the legislative process. “We basically get the bills after the committees work on them and it’s hard to make major changes by that time, because most if the work is done in committee. That’s why I’m trying to make the pitch to chair the committee that will work on education funding and policy. We’ll see if that happens.”

She believes she could work well with her House Education counterpart, Conlon, if his chairmanship is extended by House leadership. The pair previously worked together on education issues on the ACSD board.

HEALTH CARE

Hardy predicted the state’s housing and healthcare crises will join education finance at the top of the Senate’s 2025 priorities list. She looks forward to influencing the healthcare debate if she’s returned to Senate Health & Welfare.

“We really need to find ways to reduce the cost of healthcare and also shore up our pretty fragile healthcare system,” she said. “I’m really concerned about our ability to do that given the possible changes at the federal level.”

She’s referring to the incoming administration of President Donald Trump, who’s picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the U.S. Agency of Health & Human Services. Kennedy has made headlines for spreading conspiracy theories, including on the subject of vaccines.

“It’s a precarious situation,” Hardy said.

“We will have a lot of work to react at what’s happening at the federal level and also protect Vermonters from some of the negative consequences,” she added, referring to the potential the feds won’t extend health insurance subsidies to some Vermonters who otherwise would find it tough to afford insurance.

Hardy said Vermont should also be on its guard for potential federal laws banning abortion, reducing rights for LGBTQ individuals, and deporting migrant workers who are critical to farming in the Green Mountain State.

STEVEN HEFFERNAN

Sen. Steven Heffernan, R-Bristol, is gearing up for his first term in the Legislature’s upper chamber after being elected to fill one of two Addison District seats this past November.

Asked about his expectations for this session, Heffernan said he aims to help prevent the property tax bill increases Vermonters saw this past year, which rose an average 13.8% across the state.

“I’m going to try to stay in alignment with the governor on this to have at a minimum, hopefully no, increase, and if anything, maybe even a small decrease, if possible,” he said.

Heffernan said he’d like to serve on the senate Transportation Committee and Natural Resources & Energy Committee.

Heffernan noted that as a first-term senator he doesn’t have a set agenda for this session, though he said pressing issues for voters include education and the Affordable Heat Act (S.5).

The law establishes a “Clean Heat Standard,” to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions in the thermal sector and creates a collection of studies exploring the details of such a program, which is expected to be presented to the legislature this session. Legislators will review those reports and determine how to move forward.

“Getting the (Affordable Heat Act) either voted out and something more palatable in its place; what that is at the moment I have some ideas … I want to check with colleagues and other people to make sure that they would think it’s worth pushing up the chain,” Heffernan said.

Heffernan said that he’s just starting to get his feet wet when it comes to his new role and that his committee placement will decide how he’s able to tackle various issues.

“I’ll listen to constituents, and if anybody has a good idea or plan to help with what’s plaguing Vermont, from education to the environment, I’m willing to listen and try to find the best solutions for Vermonters,” he said.

ROB NORTH

Rep. Rob North, R-Ferrisburgh, won his first seat in the Legislature on Nov. 5. He said his legislative priorities have not deviated from the concepts he campaigned on as informed by the people who voted for him.

“They still fall under the mandate to improve the affordability and safety of living in Vermont,” he said.

While that coves a broad spectrum of areas to address, he said he has categorized them under five categories: Education, Energy & Taxes, Housing, Healthcare and Public Safety.

Like other lawmakers, he said that a no increase in homestead property taxes this year is an essential ingredient to a successful session. Like other Republicans, he also prioritizes “zero increase in heating fuel prices due to the Clean Heat Standard.

When it comes to revamping Vermont’s education delivery and funding system, North said that “everything is on the table and all of Vermont needs to come together to meet the goals of both reducing cost and improving quality. This can be done.”

One way to promote affordable resilient housing development is through continued updating of the Act 250 land use development law, he said.

AMY SHELDON

Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, is entering her 11th year in the House. She is in line to retain her chairmanship of the House Committee on Environment & Energy. And while the panel is slated to shed an element of its jurisdiction — “energy,” which will be delegated to another House committee — its workload won’t diminish, and it will have a more refined focus.

“Our committee will go back to being focused on the environment,” Sheldon said. “This is pretty exciting to me. We’ll be getting back to our roots.”

One of the House Committee on the Environment’s tasks will be to examine some of the laws that it’s spearheaded in recent years. Among them: Vermont’s Clean Water Act.

“We’re going to check in on all the things we’ve passed and see what’s working, what’s not working, accountability, is the money headed in the right direction, and do we need to change anything?” Sheldon said.

She also wants the panel to follow up on a 2022 Vermont Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) petition that requests the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) either “force the state to correct its failed administration of the Clean Water Act or step in to regulate clean water enforcement in Vermont itself. Right now, the state’s Agency of Natural Resources and Agency of Agriculture both oversee clean water regulation on farms, a situation which leads to confusion and mistrust among farmers,” reads a CLF statement on the issue.

Sheldon described other plans for the committee.

“Last year we were focused on energy and land use. So we’ll be elevating some of the other areas of jurisdiction,” she said.  “We’ll look at solid waste issues again — both in terms of what people think of traditionally as solid waste, and also some of the toxins related to solid waste. We’ll have time in our committee to look at the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) issue, and PCBs in schools, which we sort of spread out over the last biennium — to the Health & Welfare Committee, Health & Human Services, and schools.

She called the PFAS issue “probably the most imminent threat to our public health that we have.”

PFAS are chemicals are used in many products and are also known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the environment.

“How we move forward on that really does matter. And because it’s so important, there are opportunities for working in a bipartisan way to make progress — even in the face of an EPA that’s going to be less engaged,” she said, alluding to the Trump administration.

BIODIVERSITY

Another one of Sheldon’s priorities: Reviewing progress on the Community Resilience and Biodiversity Protection Act of 2023. The new law, among other things, sets a goal of conserving 30% of Vermont’s landscape by 2030, and 50% by 2050.

“I think we need to look again at a more aggressive public-lands conservation program,” she said. “So I’m hoping to bring in all of our partners, including the federal government — which has been doing more selective conservation work than historically.”

What does Sheldon think the House, as a whole, will focus on?

“Education will be front and center. It will be my intention to remind folks that it’s the students we need to talk about first, and improving the outcomes in education, while also right-sizing the education system,” she said. “It’s a priority I ran on 10 years ago, along with the environment and healthcare. I think education and healthcare will be important again this year.”

And, like Hardy, Sheldon is girding for potential headwinds from the Trump administration, which she fears could dial back the national focus on the environment.

Contributing to this story were John S. McCright of the Independent, and Ethan Weinstein and Shaun Robinson of VTDigger.org.