The Definition

Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources publishes a planning guidebook called Mapping Vermont’s Natural Heritage: A Mapping and Conservation Guide for Municipal and Regional Planners in Vermont. It sits on the BioFinder page at anr.vermont.gov. It is the document Vermont’s municipal and regional planners use to interpret BioFinder data in land use planning decisions. It was published in 2019.

Here is how it defines a habitat block — the foundational unit of Vermont Conservation Design, the science framework embedded three times in Act 59 and used to build Act 181’s Future Land Use Map Rural Conservation designations.

Page 34: “Habitat blocks are generally forested areas of at least 20 acres with no roads or low densities of Class IV roads. They contain little or no human development such as buildings, parking areas, lawns, gravel pits, active agricultural land, and so forth.”

Page 35: “Habitat blocks are derived from the land cover data depicted on Map 2. They include all areas of natural cover surrounded by roads, development, and agriculture.”

Page 35: “Fragmenting features like roads, development, or agricultural land.”

Page 123, Glossary: “Interior forest block: The defining factor is that there is little or no permanent habitat fragmentation from roads, agricultural lands and other forms of development within a habitat block.”

Four instances. Three sections. One document. Published by Vermont ANR. Distributed to Vermont planners statewide.

Active agricultural land is listed alongside buildings, parking areas, and gravel pits as features that place land outside the habitat block designation. Vermont’s working agricultural land is a fragmenting feature.

The data underlying this planning guidebook was developed with the involvement of many of the same organizations. The BioFinder 3.0 Development Report — published the same year by ANR — lists TNC’s Dan Farrell and Rose Paul on the steering committee that developed the underlying data. Vermont Land Trust’s Liz Thompson is described in that report as “a core participant in developing the landscape-scale phase” who contributed “countless hours.” Both organizations are registered lobbyists before the Vermont legislature — documented in the Vermont Secretary of State’s lobbyist registry. Both are named as lead implementers in the Vermont Conservation Plan — documented in the VCP Draft Expanded Framework Report, January 2026.

Screenshot of page 35 of Mapping Vermont’s Natural Heritage showing the “Habitat Blocks (by Acreage): Map Interpretation” section and the fragmenting features bullet point. Caption: “Page 35 of Mapping Vermont’s Natural Heritage: A Mapping and Conservation Guide for Municipal and Regional Planners in Vermont. Vermont Agency of Natural Resources / Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, 2019. Available at anr.vermont.gov/maps-and-mapping/biofinder”]

What Jennifer Byrne Said — And What She Was Looking At

Jennifer Byrne is the Manager of the White River Natural Resources Conservation District. In April 2024 she delivered written testimony to the Vermont House Agriculture Committee describing her experience in the Act 59 planning working groups. She described being told the process “was never meant to be a public process.” She noted that Conservation Districts — the federally designated infrastructure for locally led conservation planning, governed by elected supervisors — were omitted from Act 59’s statutory stakeholder list. In the Agriculture Working Group’s final recorded meeting on March 29, 2024 she said: “I give up. If I’m not allowed to speak then I’m done trying.” Her testimony is in the Vermont Legislature’s public record.

Byrne was fighting for Vermont agriculture’s place at the table in a process built on a science framework that categorizes Vermont’s active agricultural land as a fragmenting feature.

The Grant Targeting Tool

On May 10, 2026 — while researching this series — TNC Vermont’s Vermont Biodiversity Protection Fund Reference Map was found publicly accessible through TNC’s own grant program website. The tool overlays Vermont’s State Wetlands Inventory — Class II and Class I wetlands — directly on top of private parcel boundaries across the state. It is described as a reference map for Vermont Biodiversity Protection Fund grant applicants. It shows grant applicants which parcels contain mapped wetland features within TNC’s priority landscapes.

The same ANR data infrastructure that underlies BioFinder — including Vermont’s State Wetlands Inventory — now appears in a private organization’s publicly accessible grant program reference tool.

TNC ArcGIS Reference Map screenshot. Caption: “VT Biodiversity Protection Fund Reference Map — The Nature Conservancy in Vermont. TNC’s publicly accessible ArcGIS grant targeting tool overlays Vermont’s State Wetlands Inventory on private parcel boundaries across the five focal areas. Source: The Nature Conservancy in Vermont, experience.arcgis.com © VCGI, Esri, TomTom. Screenshot May 10, 2026.”]

The Chain — Extended

The science defined the landscape. The statute designated it. The regulatory framework built on it. The grant program funds conservation within it. The reference tool shows grant applicants which parcels contain mapped wetland features in the priority landscapes.

Vermont’s working farms are in every layer of that chain — as a fragmenting feature in the planning guidebook, as land within the designated corridors, as parcels visible in a grant program reference tool.

Vermont’s working farms didn’t fragment the landscape. They are the landscape.

Parts 1 and 2 of this series asked how the science became the statute. Part 3 asks how the statute became the tool. The next piece asks who benefits — and how the data infrastructure underlying Vermont’s conservation designations connects to private conservation acquisition in the same landscapes.

If you have documents or firsthand knowledge relevant to this series, contact me at alexsys.substack.com

Support this work at ko-fi.com/alexsysthompson

Primary Sources

Mapping Vermont’s Natural Heritage: A Mapping and Conservation Guide for Municipal and Regional Planners in Vermont. Vermont Agency of Natural Resources / Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, 2019. Pages 34, 35, 123 — anr.vermont.gov/maps-and-mapping/biofinder

BioFinder 3.0 Development Report. Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, 2019 — anr.vermont.gov/maps/biofinder/creating-and-design

Vermont Biodiversity Protection Fund Reference Map — The Nature Conservancy in Vermont — experience.arcgis.com/experience/5aff22ffa024ce086b5054b4f5d62a5 — screenshot May 10, 2026

Jennifer Byrne written testimony, House Agriculture Committee, April 10, 2024 — Vermont Legislature public record

Agriculture Working Group final meeting recording, March 29, 2024 — vhcb.org

Vermont Secretary of State lobbyist registry — sos.vermont.gov

Vermont Conservation Plan Draft Expanded Framework Report, January 2026 — vhcb.org

Digging Into Act 59, Part 1 — alexsys.substack.com

Digging Into Act 59, Part 2 — alexsys.substack.com

In January 2025 The Nature Conservancy in Vermont launched the Vermont Biodiversity Protection Fund — a private grant program distributing up to $100,000 per project to land trusts, municipalities, and state agencies for land acquisition and conservation easement projects across Vermont.

The fund’s stated purpose appears in TNC Vermont’s own press release: “To meet the State’s goal of conserving 30% of land by 2030, we must work together, and quickly.”

That goal — 30% by 2030 — is Act 59. The same law whose findings name the Staying Connected Initiative, whose goals embed Vermont Conservation Design three times in statute, and whose planning process TNC participated in as a named lead implementer in the Vermont Conservation Plan Draft Expanded Framework Report published January 2026.

To date the Vermont Biodiversity Protection Fund has awarded $1 million across 14 projects protecting 3,884 acres — leveraging $8,048,847 from other sources. The fund launched January 21, 2025 with an initial $500,000 round awarding grants to seven projects totaling nearly 2,500 acres. A second round in February 2026 awarded another $500,000 to seven more projects protecting 1,460 acres. Additional rounds are planned. Both rounds are documented in TNC Vermont press releases published on nature.org and confirmed in Vermont Business Magazine

Both rounds are documented in TNC Vermont press releases published on nature.org and confirmed in Vermont Business Magazine.

The fund’s urgency language is notable. Act 59’s 30% by 2030 goal carries a statutory deadline — the same deadline embedded in the bill’s one-year inventory requirement. The compressed timeline that drove Vermont’s conservation planning process, documented in Vermont’s Conservation Plan Is Being Written — Part XV of this series — is the same timeline TNC’s grant program now cites as the reason to act quickly.

Five focal areas

TNC Vermont prioritizes the fund’s grants within five landscapes it calls Focal Areas — areas it describes as the most critical for biodiversity protection and species migration in Vermont:

• Green Mountains to Adirondacks

• Southern Green Mountains to White Mountains

• Worcester Range to Northeast Kingdom

• Berkshire Wildlife Linkage

• Northern Mountains and Headwaters

These are not new designations. They are the Vermont portions of the Staying Connected Initiative’s nine regional linkage corridors — the same corridors named as a legislative finding in Act 59’s Section 2(11), documented in Digging Into Act 59, Part 1. They are the same geography that Vermont Conservation Design identified as Highest Priority Connectivity Blocks in its 2015 and 2018 technical reports. They are the same geography that Vermont Conservation Design identified as Highest Priority Connectivity Blocks — the same VCD data that Act 181 used to build its Future Land Use Map Rural Conservation designations

The Rural Conservation designation survived S.325’s partial repeal in May 2026. LURB Chair Janet Hurley confirmed on the record that the RC designation remains embedded in regional plans.

The science identified the corridors. The law designated them. A private grant program now funds the conservation of land within them.

The chain

Digging Into Act 59, Part 1 documented the chain from science product to statute. Part 2 adds the next layer.

Here is what the public record shows, each statement sourced to a primary document:

TNC is the Staying Connected Initiative's primary fiscal sponsor and coordinator — documented on Highstead.net

TNC staff contributed to the development of Vermont Conservation Design — documented in the VCD Part 2 technical report, March 2018.

Act 59 embedded VCD three times in statute as the guide for Vermont’s conservation goals — documented in Act 59’s statutory text at legislature.vermont.gov.

TNC Vermont is a registered lobbyist before the Vermont legislature — documented in the Vermont Secretary of State’s lobbyist registry.

TNC Vermont is named as a lead implementer in the Vermont Conservation Plan — documented in the Draft Expanded Framework Report, January 2026

Act 181 built its Future Land Use Map Rural Conservation designations directly on VCD’s Highest Priority Connectivity Blocks — confirmed on the record by LURB Chair Janet Hurley, 2026.

TNC Vermont launched the Vermont Biodiversity Protection Fund in January 2025 to fund conservation projects in the same five landscapes — documented in TNC Vermont press releases published on nature.org.

Each of those statements is sourced to a primary document listed at the bottom of this piece. The public record documents structure. It does not document intent. The people and organizations involved in this work have genuine conservation records. The ecological concerns motivating this work are real.

What this series is pursuing next

The public record has opened the following questions. This series is actively researching each one. If you have documents, firsthand knowledge, or experience relevant to any of them you can reach me directly.

1. Who funds the Vermont Biodiversity Protection Fund? TNC Vermont has distributed $1 million in Vermont since January 2025. What are the funding sources behind it? TNC’s consolidated financials do not break out Vermont program revenue independently.

2. Is the geographic overlap between TNC’s focal areas, VCD’s priority blocks, and the FLUM Rural Conservation designations the result of coordinated planning — or the inevitable outcome of all three being built on the same underlying science? The geography is substantially identical across three institutional layers. Understanding whether that convergence was designed, discussed, or simply inherited from the same data source matters for how Vermont’s conservation plan is evaluated going forward.

3. What coordination exists between VHCB and TNC Vermont on projects that may receive funding from both? VHCB administers Vermont’s Act 59 conservation planning process and names TNC as a lead implementer in the Vermont Conservation Plan. VHCB’s Working Forest Fund is listed as an eligible matching source for Vermont Biodiversity Protection Fund projects. What protocols govern coordination between the two organizations?

4. When state employees contribute to science products that become statutory frameworks — and those frameworks generate private grant programs implementing the same science — what governance protocols govern that relationship? Vermont Conservation Design was built by state employees working alongside conservation organization partners using federal wildlife grant funding. It became the statutory framework for Act 59 without a public comment process specific to that regulatory use. The organizations whose staff contributed to building it are now implementing the plan built on it.

5. What did the Vermont legislature know about SCI’s relationship to TNC when it named SCI as a legislative finding?

Legislative findings routinely cite external science and organizations without disclosing their funding relationships. That is standard practice. A finding that names an organization is not required to disclose who funds it.

What makes this question worth asking is the combination of facts in the public record.

Act 59’s Section 2(11) names the Staying Connected Initiative as a legislative finding — part of the factual basis for the law. TNC is SCI’s primary fiscal sponsor and coordinator, documented on Highstead.net. TNC Vermont lobbied for Act 59, documented in the Vermont Secretary of State’s lobbyist registry. TNC Vermont’s Director of External Affairs testified in support of related legislation before the Vermont legislature, documented in the committee hearing record.

SCI is not a passive science organization. Its own website describes two explicit strategic goals: promoting and supporting government action on connectivity and supporting local action for conservation through direct technical assistance to municipalities and regional planning commissions. SCI’s website states the partnership has helped secure meaningful improvements in the land use plans and policies of nearly 20 communities and three regional planning commissions.

In other words: the organization named as a legislative finding in Act 59 explicitly pursues policy development and local land use planning as core strategies. Its primary fiscal sponsor and coordinator lobbied for the bill that named it. Whether the legislature was aware of that combination of relationships when it adopted SCI’s corridor science as a statutory finding is not documented in the public record reviewed for this series.

That is not an accusation. Legislative findings are informed by testimony, advocacy, and relationships — that is how policy is made. The question is whether the full structure was visible to the legislators who voted on it, and to the Vermonters whose land use plans it now shapes.

6. What process, if any, was considered for public vetting of Vermont Conservation Design before its statutory embedding? VCD was developed with federal wildlife grant funding and embedded in Act 59 as the statutory guide for planning the conservation of half of Vermont’s land. It was not subject to a public comment process specific to that regulatory use. Whether any such process was considered — and why it did not occur — is not documented in the public record reviewed for this series.

7. Act 59’s one-year statutory inventory deadline created the urgency that drove Vermont’s compressed conservation planning process. TNC Vermont’s grant program now cites the same statutory deadline as the reason to act quickly. Was the statutory timeline designed with the expectation that it would accelerate private conservation investment in the designated landscapes — and if so, by whom and through what process?

The Vermont Conservation Plan is due to the legislature by June 2026.

The public record documents the following: TNC is SCI’s primary fiscal sponsor. TNC staff contributed to Vermont Conservation Design. TNC Vermont lobbied for Act 59. TNC Vermont is named as a lead implementer in the Conservation Plan. TNC Vermont launched a private grant program in January 2025 funding conservation in the same landscapes. Each of those statements is sourced to a primary document listed below.

The plan will determine what comes next. These are the questions the public record has opened. They are yours to ask too.

TNC Vermont has been notified of this publication as a courtesy and is welcome to respond. Factual corrections will be incorporated promptly.

If you have documents or firsthand knowledge relevant to any of these questions, contact me at alexsys.substack.com

Support this work at ko-fi.com/alexsysthompson

Primary Sources

Act 59 of 2023 (H.126) — legislature.vermont.gov

Vermont Conservation Design Summary Report, February 2018 — vtfishandwildlife.com

Vermont Conservation Design Part 2: Natural Communities and Habitats, March 2018

Staying Connected Initiative — stayingconnectedinitiative.org

Staying Connected Initiative Policy Development — stayingconnectedinitiative.org/what-we-do/policy-development

Staying Connected Initiative Land Use Planning — stayingconnectedinitiative.org/what-we-do/land-use-planning

TNC as SCI primary fiscal sponsor — Highstead.net, September 2024

Vermont Biodiversity Protection Fund launch announcement, January 2025 — nature.org

Vermont Biodiversity Protection Fund second round announcement, February 2026 — nature.org

Vermont Business Magazine coverage, January 2025 and February 2026 — vermontbiz.com

Vermont Conservation Plan Draft Expanded Framework Report, January 2026 — vhcb.org

Vermont Secretary of State lobbyist registry — sos.vermont.gov

S.325 House Calendar, May 6, 2026 — legislature.vermont.gov

Janet Hurley on-record confirmation, LURB Chair, 2026

Digging Into Act 59, Part 1 — alexsys.substack.com

When Vermont’s legislature passed Act 59 in June 2023 it made seventeen legislative findings before setting any goals or directing any agencies. Findings are the factual foundation of a law — the legislature’s stated reasons for acting. They are part of the statute itself.

Finding number eleven reads:

“The Staying Connected Initiative is an international partnership of public and private organizations. Its goal is to maintain, enhance, and restore landscape connectivity for wide-ranging mammals across the Northern Appalachians-Acadian region, from the Adirondack Mountains to the Maritime Provinces. The Staying Connected Initiative has identified nine linkages across this vast region that are extremely important to wildlife. Six of these linkages lie within Vermont.”

No further explanation. No disclosure of who runs it, who funds it, or who its Vermont members are. The legislature named it as a fact and moved on.

Most Vermonters have never heard of the Staying Connected Initiative. Most landowners whose properties carry Rural Conservation designations in Vermont’s Future Land Use Map — designations that survived S.325’s partial repeal in May 2026 and remain embedded in regional plans — have never heard of it either.

Here is what the public record shows.

The Staying Connected Initiative: who runs it, who funds it, who its Vermont members are

SCI full Northern Appalachian-Acadian region map. Caption: “The Northern Appalachian-Acadian region showing the nine wildlife linkage corridors identified by the Staying Connected Initiative. Six run through Vermont. Image source: Staying Connected Initiative — stayingconnectedinitiative.org”]

The Staying Connected Initiative is an international partnership of more than 80 organizations spanning six states and three Canadian provinces. It works to conserve and restore landscape connectivity across the Northern Appalachian-Acadian region — roughly 80 million acres of forest stretching from the Adirondacks to the Canadian Maritimes.

The Nature Conservancy is its primary fiscal sponsor and coordinator — documented by Highstead, a conservation organization, quoting TNC’s own regional coordinator Mikael Cejtin. Vermont members of SCI include TNC Vermont, Vermont Land Trust, Vermont Natural Resources Council, Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, Vermont Agency of Transportation, Northeast Wilderness Trust, and Wildlands Network, among others — documented on the Association of Vermont Conservation Commissions website.

SCI has identified nine wildlife linkage corridors across its region that it considers critical for landscape-scale connectivity. Six of those nine run through Vermont. Two run through northeastern Vermont and the Vermont-Quebec border region. The SCI interactive map tool identifies these as the Borderlands linkage and the Northern Greens to Canada linkage — corridors covering working farms, private forestland, and small towns across Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.

To see where those corridors run through your county visit stayingconnectedinitiative.org and select Key Linkage Areas from the navigation.

SCI is not a government agency. It is not subject to public comment requirements or open meeting laws. It does not hold elected office. Its own website describes a core strategy of promoting and supporting government action on connectivity — including helping develop and promote best practices and policies that will sustain critical landscape connections across the region. A second core strategy describes supporting local action for conservation by providing technical assistance directly to municipalities and regional planning commissions — SCI’s own website states the partnership has helped secure meaningful improvements in the land use plans and policies of nearly 20 communities and 3 regional planning commissions.

TNC Vermont, Vermont Land Trust, and Vermont Natural Resources Council are among its Vermont members. All three organizations are registered lobbyists before the Vermont legislature — documented in the Vermont Secretary of State’s lobbyist registry. All three are named as partners or lead implementers in the Vermont Conservation Plan now being developed — documented in the VCP Draft Expanded Framework Report, January 2026.

That is not a conflict in the legal sense. It is a structure worth understanding.

Vermont Conservation Design: who built it, how it was funded, and what it was built for

Vermont Conservation Design is the science framework that Act 59 made into law. It appears three times in the statute — in the findings, in the goals, and in the planning mandate. It is the spine of Act 59 and the foundation of the designations that followed.

VCD was not created by the legislature. It was built in two phases by state employees at Vermont Fish and Wildlife and the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, working with conservation organization partners.

Part 1 — the Landscapes technical report — was published in December 2015. The primary author was Eric Sorenson of Vermont Fish and Wildlife. The project was overseen by Commissioner Louis Porter and Deputy Commissioner Sam Lincoln of FPR at the time. It was funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service through State Wildlife Grants — documented in the VCD Summary Report acknowledgments, February 2018.

Part 2 — Natural Communities and Habitats — was published in March 2018. Keith Thompson of FPR led the Young Forest and Old Forest workgroup. Bob Zaino of Vermont Fish and Wildlife led the Aquatic Habitats workgroup. TNC’s Dan Farrell and Rose Paul contributed to multiple workgroups. Also funded by U.S. Fish and Wildlife State Wildlife Grants — documented in the VCD Part 2 technical report contributor list.

The people who built Vermont Conservation Design were state scientists and wildlife biologists doing their jobs with federal funding. The science they produced is serious work built over years of careful analysis. That is not in dispute.

What is worth understanding is what happened next.

Vermont Conservation Design was never subject to a public comment process. It was never voted on by the legislature. It was a science and planning tool — useful for informing conservation decisions, land trust priorities, and town planning — until Act 59 made it the statutory guide for planning the conservation of half of Vermont’s land. At that point it carried a different weight. A science product developed for planning purposes became the statutory guide for regulatory decisions affecting private landowners — without a subsequent public comment process specific to that regulatory use.

TNC Vermont contributed staff to VCD’s development — documented in the VCD Part 2 technical report. TNC Vermont is a registered lobbyist before the Vermont legislature — documented in the Vermont Secretary of State’s lobbyist registry. Lauren Oates, TNC Vermont’s Director of External Affairs, testified at the H.70 hearing in February 2026 — documented in the Vermont Legislature’s public record. Vermont Land Trust is named as a partner in VCD’s development — documented in the University of Vermont’s summary of VCD published by the Rubenstein School. Vermont Land Trust is a registered lobbyist before the Vermont legislature — documented in the Vermont Secretary of State’s lobbyist registry.

To see Vermont Conservation Design’s Highest Priority Connectivity Blocks mapped across your county visit Vermont Agency of Natural Resources BioFinder at biofinder.vt.gov — select the Landscape Scale layer under Vermont Conservation Design.

The chain from science product to your regional plan

Here is the chain, documented from primary sources.

The Staying Connected Initiative identified wildlife linkage corridors across the Northern Appalachians. TNC developed the Resilient and Connected Landscapes project mapping those corridors. Vermont Fish and Wildlife, working with TNC and other conservation organizations, built Vermont Conservation Design using those corridors as a foundation. Act 59 embedded VCD in statute as the guide for Vermont’s 30x30 and 50x50 conservation goals. Act 181 built its Future Land Use Map Rural Conservation designations directly on VCD’s Highest Priority Connectivity Blocks.

S.325, which passed the Vermont House unanimously on May 7, 2026, repealed Tier 3 and the Road Rule. It did not repeal the Rural Conservation designation in the FLUM. LURB Chair Janet Hurley confirmed on the record that the RC designation survives the repeal and remains embedded in regional plans. Act 250 Criterion 10 conformance — which requires that development projects conform to regional plan designations — still applies.

What that means in plain English: the regulatory teeth were pulled. The underlying framework remains.

That designation reflects a chain of science and policy decisions documented in the public record — from SCI’s linkage mapping to Vermont Conservation Design to Act 59’s statutory goals to Act 181’s FLUM. This piece makes that chain visible so readers can examine it.

Who was in the rooms — and who had to fight to get there

The working groups that produced Vermont’s conservation planning foundation met for approximately six months beginning in January 2024. They met every other week, two hours at a time. Participants were given less than 24 hours to review final draft reports before they were due. The Act 59 Phase I Inventory Report documents that the initial oversight group included VHCB, ANR, TNC, and Vermont Land Trust. Additional statewide partners including Audubon Vermont and Trust for Public Land were invited to provide initial input and help identify stakeholders. No dissenting opinions appear in the published Phase I report despite participants being offered that option — confirmed by VHCB project manager Trey Martin on the record.

These are the same working groups that Jennifer Byrne had to fight her way into.

Byrne is the Manager of the White River Natural Resources Conservation District — a subdivision of Vermont state government, federally designated as part of the infrastructure for locally led conservation planning. Her district employs certified conservation planners, a certified forester, an agronomist, and grazing and agroforestry specialists. Conservation Districts are governed by elected supervisors.

Conservation Districts were not named in Act 59’s statutory stakeholder list — confirmed by VHCB project manager Trey Martin on the record: “They were not listed as the stakeholders we were supposed to engage with — they were omitted. I don’t know why this happened. We weren’t the drafters of the statute.” Byrne raised the omission herself and was incorporated mid-process.

In the Agriculture Working Group’s final recorded meeting on March 29, 2024 — a meeting posted publicly on VHCB’s website — after months of trying to have Conservation Districts formally named in the group’s recommendations, Byrne said: “I give up. If I’m not allowed to speak then I’m done trying.”

The meeting closed with VHCB’s Agricultural Director acknowledging what everyone in the room already knew: “I think we all will definitely agree there was not enough time for this.”

Trey Martin confirmed the time pressure extended across all five working groups: “All five working groups really felt like we could have spent a lot more time on this.” The statutory one-year deadline made anything else impossible — confirmed by Martin on the record.

In April 2024 Byrne delivered written testimony to the Vermont House Agriculture Committee — a public document in the Vermont Legislature’s record. She described the contractor hired to run the process as “an organization that specializes in facilitating access to carbon markets globally.” She described being told repeatedly that the process “was never meant to be a public process, does not have to abide by open meeting laws, and that VHCB has the final say of what is recommended to ANR.” She questioned the entire expenditure publicly and urged the committee to “reconsider the direction of or completely repeal the 30x30 Conservation Strategy Initiative.”

The committee heard her testimony. It is in the Vermont Legislature’s public record.

Full Piece on this here

The questions the public record hasn’t answered — and why they matter before June

This piece does not argue that wildlife connectivity is unimportant. It does not argue that Vermont’s landscape doesn’t need protection. The science behind VCD is real. The ecological concerns that motivated SCI are real. The loss of forest connectivity is a documented trend. The organizations involved in this work have genuine conservation records.

What the public record raises are structural questions that deserve answers before Vermont’s Conservation Plan is finalized this summer.

The statute names the Staying Connected Initiative as a legislative finding. Legislative findings routinely cite external science and organizations without disclosing their funding relationships. Whether the legislature was aware that TNC — which lobbied for the bill — is also SCI's primary fiscal sponsor and coordinator is not documented in the public record reviewed for this piece.

When Vermont Conservation Design was embedded in statute as the guide for planning the conservation of half of Vermont’s land, was there any discussion about subjecting it to a public comment process first?

The organizations whose staff contributed to building VCD are the same organizations that lobbied for Act 59 and Act 181. They are named as lead implementers in the Vermont Conservation Plan now being developed. They hold land in Current Use receiving public tax reductions — documented in the Vermont Department of Taxes Current Use data reviewed for Part XI of this series. Some administer carbon market programs available to landowners whose properties fall within the connectivity corridors VCD identified — documented in FFCP program materials and the VCP Draft Expanded Framework Report.

None of that is illegal. All of it is structural. And all of it is worth understanding before Vermont’s Conservation Plan is finalized this summer — because that plan will determine what the Rural Conservation designation means for your property, your town plan, and your regional plan going forward.

The Vermont Conservation Plan is due to the legislature by June 2026. Public input opportunities remain open. Your regional planning commission will be asked to incorporate its recommendations. Your selectboard will be asked to update town plans accordingly.

You now know where the framework came from. The questions are yours to ask.

Support this work at ko-fi.com/alexsysthompson

Primary Sources

Act 59 of 2023 (H.126) — legislature.vermont.gov

Vermont Conservation Design Summary Report, February 2018 — vtfishandwildlife.com

Vermont Conservation Design Part 2: Natural Communities and Habitats, March 2018

Vermont Conservation Design development summary — University of Vermont Rubenstein School, uvm.edu

Staying Connected Initiative member list and interactive map — stayingconnectedinitiative.org

Staying Connected Initiative — Policy Development — stayingconnectedinitiative.org/what-we-do/policy-development

Staying Connected Initiative — Land Use Planning — stayingconnectedinitiative.org/what-we-do/land-use-planning

TNC as SCI primary fiscal sponsor — Highstead.net, September 2024

Vermont Conservation Plan Draft Expanded Framework Report, January 2026 — vhcb.org

Act 59 Phase I Inventory Report, 2024 — vhcb.org

Jennifer Byrne written testimony, House Agriculture Committee, April 10, 2024 — Vermont Legislature public record

Agriculture Working Group final meeting recording, March 29, 2024 — vhcb.org

S.325 House Calendar, May 6, 2026 — legislature.vermont.gov

Vermont Secretary of State lobbyist registry — sos.vermont.gov

Janet Hurley on-record confirmation, LURB Chair, 2026

Trey Martin on-record confirmation, VHCB project manager, 2026

Lauren Oates H.70 testimony — Vermont Legislature public record, February 2026

Vermont Department of Taxes Current Use data — Part XI of this series, alexsys.substack.com

By Alexsys Thompson · alexsys.substack.com

When your forester identifies a vernal pool or a rare species habitat on your land and enrolls it as an Ecologically Significant Treatment Area, two things happen. Your property taxes go down on that portion of the land. And the ecological feature — confirmed by Vermont Fish and Wildlife — enters the state’s Natural Heritage Database.

You were told about the first part. The second part is in the documents.

The Natural Heritage Database feeds the ANR data layers that Regional Planning Commissions are using to draw Rural Conservation designations on Vermont’s Act 181 Future Land Use Maps — maps being applied to every parcel in the state on a December 31, 2026 deadline. When the Land Use Review Board confirmed to this series that Act 250 Criterion 10 applies to those designations regardless of S.325’s Tier 3 repeal, that confirmation landed on a data system built in part through routine Current Use management plan work — plan by plan, parcel by parcel, since 2008.

The state’s answer: no mandate, no requirement.

The state has been careful in how it characterizes the connection. LURB Board Member Alex Weinhagen confirmed to this series that BioFinder — ANR’s conservation data portal — is not required for FLUM mapping. LURB Chair Janet Hurley confirmed there is no mandate for Rural Conservation designations to reflect Act 59’s 30x30 or 50x50 goals.

Both answers are accurate. Neither addresses what the documents show.

The pipeline the documents show.

This series has documented the statutory framework behind this pipeline. Public records obtained through a records request to the Agency of Natural Resources show it operating.

A forester identifies an ecologically significant feature on a client’s land — a vernal pool, rare species habitat, old forest stand, natural community of statewide significance. The forester routes documentation to Vermont Fish and Wildlife for confirmation. FWD confirms the occurrence and approves enrollment. The feature enters the Natural Heritage Database. The NHD feeds the ANR data layers. Those layers inform the VAPDA methodology RPCs use to draw Rural Conservation boundaries. The map gets drawn.

The records show this process across multiple foresters, multiple properties, and multiple FWD staff from 2020 through 2026 — vernal pools in Woodstock and Bethel, rattlesnake habitat in Fair Haven, natural communities in Dummerston and Jay. Routine plan work. Standard process. Data entering the system each time.

What the records do not contain is a written inter-agency policy governing the pipeline — how FWD confirmation data flows between agencies, when pre-publication Natural Heritage Database data may be shared with private consulting foresters, or how the resulting NHD entries inform Act 181 mapping. A public records follow-up asking ANR to confirm whether those policy documents exist is pending.

191 licensed foresters. 2.5 million acres. Three weeks.

Vermont has 191 licensed professional foresters with Vermont addresses, according to the Secretary of State’s Office of Professional Regulation registry as of April 2026. They manage plans on approximately 2.5 million enrolled Current Use acres.

Source: VT Secretary of State OPR Registry, April 2026 · VT Dept. of Taxes Current Use enrollment dataalexsys.substack.com

On May 31, 2026 — three weeks from today — new Minimum Management and Plan Standards take effect, replacing standards that have governed the program since 2010. The notification came approximately five weeks before the effective date, during the window between snowmelt and leaf-out — the busiest period of the field calendar for timber marking and plan renewals.

The standards are not legislation. The title page of the 2010 Standards document states it plainly: “Standards established by the Commissioner of Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation authorized by 32 V.S.A. §§ 3750–3776.” The Commissioner issues them. A Commissioner can change them — adding ESTA categories, adjusting Reserve Forestland eligibility thresholds, rewriting how ecological data moves between agencies — without a vote, without a public comment period, without the legislature. The same administrative authority that built the current standards can dismantle them. That authority has never been exercised in that direction.

What S.325 does and does not do.

The Vermont House passed S.325 today. Tier 3 is repealed. The Road Rule is repealed. The public debate of the past several months has been about those two provisions.

Here is the complete list of what every piece of legislation currently moving through the Vermont statehouse leaves untouched: the Current Use program, the ESTA enrollment standards, the FWD confirmation process, the Natural Heritage Database, the ANR data layers, the VAPDA FLUM methodology, and the December 31, 2026 deadline for regional plan submissions.

The foresters absorbing new standards on a five-week window are the same people whose routine work has been building Vermont’s conservation data infrastructure for years. The landowners who enrolled in Current Use for the tax benefit got something else along with it. The legislature is debating the permitting mechanism at the end of the chain. The chain itself is not on the table.

Primary Sources

Vermont Secretary of State, Office of Professional Regulation — Licensed Professional Foresters Registry, April 2026. sos.vermont.gov/foresters

Vermont Department of Taxes — Current Use enrollment data, 2025 Statewide Report. tax.vermont.gov/property/current-use

Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation — Use Value Appraisal Minimum Management and Plan Standards (2010 Standards compilation, effective through May 30, 2026). Authorized by 32 V.S.A. §§ 3750–3776.

Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation — Use Value Appraisal Minimum Management and Plan Standards, 2026 Final. Effective May 31, 2026. fpr.vermont.gov/CurrentUseForestLandStandardsRevision

Agency of Natural Resources, Public Records Production — DFW-to-forester ESTA enrollment correspondence, 2020–2026. Produced in response to PRR filed by Alexsys Thompson, April 2026.

Alex Weinhagen, LURB Board Member — on-record interview, May 1, 2026. Quotes confirmed in writing.

Janet Hurley, LURB Chair — on-record correspondence, April 2026.

ANR Office of General Counsel (Kelly Hughes) — PRR follow-up on inter-agency policy documents pending as of publication.

Note added at publication — May 7, 2026

ANR’s Office of General Counsel confirmed today that additional responsive records from this series’ public records request have not yet been produced, and that documents remain pending due to attorney review of redactions. Those documents will be reported when received.

If this reporting is useful to you, please consider supporting it.
ko-fi.com/alexsysthompson

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

Vermont’s House of Representatives is on the floor with S.325 this week — legislation repealing key provisions of Act 181, the land use law built on Act 59’s conservation framework. Rep. Amy Sheldon, who chairs the House Environment and Energy Committee, is leading that work. The public record shows she also worked with the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators to draft Act 59 — including the one-year inventory deadline at the center of this piece. As lawmakers debate the fallout from that framework, a review of how Vermont’s conservation planning process compared to the nine other states with 30x30 goals raises a question the public record has not previously addressed: why did Vermont do this differently than everyone else and at what cost?

Section 1 — The Money

Vermont set out to plan the conservation of 30 percent of its landscape by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050. To do it, the state turned to outside contractors. Neither firm is Vermont-based. Neither registered as a lobbyist. The public record does not document when or how the contractors’ backgrounds were disclosed to working group participants.

The funding behind this work is a matter of public record. The Vermont legislature appropriated $75,000 to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board for outreach, and $150,000 to the Agency of Natural Resources for staff time. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation — a federal quasi-governmental entity chartered by Congress in 1984 — provided a $1 million grant to VHCB through the America the Beautiful Challenge, a competitive federal conservation grant program that funded projects across 46 states in 2023. Trey Martin, VHCB’s Vermont Conservation Plan project manager, confirmed the funding structure, and said the NFWF grant was on pace to be fully spent by June 30, 2026.

For Phase I, VHCB contracted with Zoraya Hightower, a Vermont-based independent consultant, who used Nature for Justice as her billing and project management platform. Nature for Justice is a Virginia-based organization founded in 2020. Martin confirmed the arrangement: “She was not hired because of her connection to Nature for Justice, but for her leadership and expertise on connected Vermont issues like Environmental Justice.” N4J CEO Hank Cauley confirmed that N4J served as “the contracting and fiscal sponsor entity” for Hightower’s consultant team. VHCB’s contract with Nature for Justice, signed August 2023, carried an original cap of $225,000. An amendment authorized an additional $25,101.12 for stipends and third-party outreach costs. The total paid to Nature for Justice was $250,101.12, confirmed by VHCB General Counsel Elizabeth Egan on May 6, 2026.

Nature for Justice’s stated mission at its founding was facilitating access to global carbon markets. Cauley acknowledged that N4J’s early public-facing materials “placed greater emphasis on equitable access to carbon markets,” and said the mission language has since evolved. The organization’s current mission statement describes connecting communities to “global nature markets” alongside grant funding and technical resources.

For Phase II, VHCB selected Future iQ as the principal contractor for communications and project management. Future iQ is based in Minnesota. Their published project portfolio — spanning work from 2004 through the present — includes regional planning, economic development, tourism development, defense sector engagement, and agricultural scenario planning. It contains no prior biodiversity planning, conservation work, or 30x30 engagement before Vermont. Future iQ CEO David Beurle, in response to a right-of-reply inquiry, said the firm’s work also includes “comprehensive master planning” with “a strong focus on stakeholder engagement and input, across a range of topics.” He did not identify prior conservation or biodiversity work.

Martin described Future iQ’s role plainly: “They would be really helping us behind the scenes — not the subject matter experts or the content developers.”

Section 2 — What Vermont Did That No Other State Did

Ten states have established 30x30 conservation goals. Vermont is one of them. It is the only one that set a one-year statutory inventory deadline and hired outside contractors to run a new statewide engagement process from scratch.

The National Caucus of Environmental Legislators — the same organization that helped draft Vermont’s Act 59 — maintains a tracker of all ten states’ approaches. The picture it documents is consistent across every state except Vermont.

New Hampshire never needed a plan at all. Roughly 35 percent of its land is already conserved, largely through the White Mountain National Forest. New Hampshire counted what it had and was done.

Maine set its 30x30 goal in December 2020 through its Climate Action Plan. It used its existing state Conserved Lands Database — a GIS layer already maintained by the state’s Natural Areas Program — as the baseline. No new inventory process. No outside contractors. No compressed deadline. Maine is currently at 22 percent conserved. Maine’s approach to carbon accounting was equally direct: it assigned a statewide carbon stocks inventory to the state DEP and the University of Maine, drawing on existing USDA Forest Service data already collected annually. No new engagement infrastructure. Scientists running existing data through existing methodologies.

Maryland passed 30x30 legislation in 2023 — the same year as Vermont’s Act 59 — and met its goal in May 2024, six years ahead of schedule, making it the first state to reach 30x30. It used existing land protection data tracked through the Maryland Protected Lands Dashboard, built on six decades of existing conservation programs. No new process commissioned. Maryland is now moving toward a 40x40 goal using the same infrastructure.

New York passed its 30x30 law in December 2022. It used the existing New York Protected Areas Database as its baseline, then released draft strategies for public comment in July 2024 — 18 months after passage — before adopting a final plan. No hard statutory inventory deadline.

New Mexico set its goal through a 2021 executive order directing existing state agencies to use existing programs, funding, and authorities. No new process commissioned. No outside contractors. No compressed deadline. As of 2023, New Mexico was still completing its baseline analysis of what counts as conserved — four years after setting the goal.

California set its goal through a 2020 executive order. It undertook extensive public engagement to define what “conserved” means before setting targets. No compressed one-year deadline. California’s 2024 progress report noted that a portion of its remaining gap would be closed simply by finding already-conserved land not yet recorded in statewide databases — land that existed but hadn’t been counted.

Nevada passed the first state 30x30 resolution in the nation in 2021. No formal inventory process. No percentage reported.

Massachusetts set its goal in 2022 using existing permanent protection data. No compressed deadline. Currently at approximately 27 percent.

New Jersey announced in June 2025 that it had already met the 30x30 goal — before formally setting it. Its Green Acres program, created in 1961, had quietly done the work over 64 years.

Hawaii set a marine 30x30 goal in 2016, then quietly abandoned it in January 2023 after community opposition to the pace and design of the process.

Vermont set a one-year statutory deadline — July 1, 2024, one year after Act 59 passed — to inventory 5.9 million acres and conduct stakeholder engagement across the state. That timeline required outside contractors, compressed working group meetings, and a process built around existing conservation organizations because the timeline permitted nothing else.

The data Vermont needed already existed in state systems. The Phase I inventory report drew on existing records held by VHCB, ANR, Vermont Land Trust, The Nature Conservancy, and state tax databases. The 27 percent figure — approximately 1.58 million acres permanently conserved through conservation easements or public ownership — comes from VHCB’s own Phase I inventory report. That data existed in state systems before Act 59 passed.

Vermont set a goal and went looking for the data. Maryland had the data and met the goal the same year Vermont passed the law. New Hampshire had the data and never needed a goal at all.

Who set that timeline is a matter of public record. According to NCEL’s own website, Rep. Amy Sheldon, who chaired the House Environment and Energy Committee when Act 59 passed, had been working with NCEL staff since 2020 to develop the bill. NCEL provided draft bill language, talking points, and example management plans. The one-year deadline was in the bill NCEL helped draft. Rep. Sheldon did not respond to requests for comment.

Section 3 — What Jennifer Byrne Said Out Loud

On April 10, 2024, Jennifer Byrne stood before the Vermont House Agriculture Committee and delivered written testimony that went significantly further than anything the working group had produced.

Byrne is the Manager of the White River Natural Resources Conservation District, a subdivision of state government covering watersheds across four Vermont counties. Her district employs certified conservation planners, grazing specialists, agroforestry specialists, a certified forester, and an agronomist. She had been sitting in Act 59’s Agriculture Working Group meetings since January — every other week, two hours at a time. Conservation Districts were not named in Act 59’s stakeholder list. Byrne and other district representatives raised that omission themselves and were incorporated into the process after doing so.

Her testimony addressed the process, the contractor, and the underlying goals of the initiative.

On the contractor: “The contractor hired to facilitate the overall public engagement process, though staffed with good hearted people, are an organization that specializes in facilitating access to carbon markets globally.” She did not name the contractor. The contractor’s name does not appear in the committee record. That contractor’s billing platform was Nature for Justice, the organization whose CEO acknowledged in response to a right-of-reply inquiry that their early public-facing materials "placed greater emphasis on equitable access to carbon markets."

On the process itself: “We on the agriculture working group were reminded repeatedly that this was never meant to be a public process, does not have to abide by open meeting laws, and that VHCB has the final say of what is recommended to ANR.” She noted directly that if the process had instead sat with the Natural Resources Conservation Council and the Conservation Districts, it would have inherently been a public process.

On the working group timeline: “The initiative’s implementation has seemed hurried, with deadlines prioritized over meaningful dialogue and consensus-building.” Most of the participating organizations did not formally approve the final report because they were given less than 24 hours for final review.

On the role of large conservation organizations: Her testimony stated that large conservation organizations were playing a disproportionately influential role in the initiative, and that the initiative risked commodifying Vermont’s natural landscape for private financial interests rather than the public good.

On findings that were ignored: The Soil Health and Payment for Ecosystem Services Working Group had met for over three years examining conservation incentives before Act 59’s process began. Its final report explicitly documented concerns about what it called the “financialization of nature” — warning that “natural asset companies” had emerged as a new class of publicly traded assets “designed to create a new market whose assets generate trillions of dollars in ecosystem services annually.” Byrne testified that requests to begin the Act 59 Agriculture Working Group’s conversation where the PES working group left off “were ignored or shelved for the next phase of the process.”

On carbon market verifiers: She stated that the world’s largest carbon market verifiers, including firms promoted and used by TNC in Vermont, had been “exposed as frauds in the pages of Time, the Guardian, Bloomberg, and many other reputable publications” since the PES working group concluded its work.

On the Environmental Justice Act: Vermont passed its first EJ Act two years prior to Byrne’s testimony, setting deadlines for state agencies to come into compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and establishing the policy that no person in Vermont bear an unequal share of environmental burdens. Byrne testified that as a member of Vermont’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council, she could say that not a single deadline in the act had been met. “Where is the urgency and emphasis to meet those deadlines? If similar emphasis was put on meaningful involvement of impacted community members in environmental decision making, we would likely not even have Act 59 in its current form.”

On the budget: She questioned the entire expenditure publicly, asking the committee to “dig deeper into the budget for this initiative relative to the public good it will serve.” She described firsthand accounts of “catered lunches and day long meetings of the core oversight team, circling the drain on the same questions for hours on end,” with meeting minutes not posted publicly.

Her conclusion was not a call for reform. “I urge you to reconsider the direction of or completely repeal the 30x30 Conservation Strategy Initiative.”

Byrne’s testimony is a public document, submitted to the Vermont Legislature on April 10, 2024, and available in the Vermont Legislature’s public record. The committee heard it.

VHCB’s own Phase I Inventory Report confirms the consultant team’s role in leading stakeholder engagement from July 2023 through September 2024 — conducting approximately 50 stakeholder interviews and facilitating more than 25 focus groups across Vermont. Martin confirmed that the time pressure was real: “All five working groups really felt like we could have spent a lot more time on this.”

Section 4 — Inside the Last Meeting

On March 29, 2024, the Agriculture Working Group of the Act 59 Conservation Strategy Initiative held its final meeting. It was recorded and posted publicly on the VHCB website, where it remains available today.

The meeting opened with Ryan Patch, a Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets Agriculture Climate and Land Use Policy Manager who had been tasked with producing the working group’s final document, describing what the preceding months had felt like. “Really, it feels like an argument,” he said. “I really wish it wasn’t.” The Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets said it had no concerns about the comments attributed to Patch. Patch was on leave at the time of publication and unavailable for comment.

The group had been given less than 24 hours to review the draft report before it was due. Caroline Gordon of Rural Vermont, who had participated throughout the process, gave the draft a thumbs down. The report, she said, did not reflect the working group’s actual discourse — particularly its opposition to carbon markets as a conservation tool. “Even though our discourse was to oppose carbon markets, that’s not being reflected,” she said. “Instead, it’s literally proposing the opposite.”

Patch’s response was direct: there would be no reference to carbon markets in the document. A straw poll had found most working group members were agnostic. The report’s narrow focus — establishing that conserved agricultural land should count toward Act 59 goals — was the priority.

Jennifer Byrne had a different concern. She had been trying, across multiple meetings, to have Conservation Districts formally named in the working group’s recommendations. In the final meeting, she tried again. The discussion that followed was long and circular. Other participants said they thought districts were implicitly included. Byrne pushed back. “We’re specifically not listed in this law,” she said. “We are specifically not listed.”

She was talked over. The conversation moved on.

Near the end of the meeting Byrne said: “I give up. If I’m not allowed to speak then I’m done trying.”

The meeting closed with Stacy Cibula, VHCB’s Agricultural Director, who co-chaired the working group alongside Patch, acknowledging what everyone in the room already knew: “I think we all will definitely agree there was not enough time for this.”

Martin confirmed that the time pressure extended beyond the Agriculture Working Group: “All five working groups really felt like we could have spent a lot more time on this.” He said VHCB pushed groups to closure knowing “many people wanted to come back and continue to talk about these questions in the Phase Two process,” and that VHCB was under a statutory obligation to deliver the Phase I inventory before moving forward.

Participants were offered the option of submitting dissenting opinions as an appendix. No appendix appears in the published Phase I report. Martin confirmed this: “There were people throughout the Phase I process who expressed criticism or frustration of the process. We tried very hard to include and elevate those voices and points in the inventory report.” The Phase I report does document deep disagreement on the agricultural lands question, quoting critical comments from stakeholders and legislators verbatim. The Phase I report does not address process concerns about the contractor’s background or the working group timeline.

Section 5 — The Funding Chain and Contractor Selection

The money and contractor selection process behind Vermont’s conservation planning are now documented through both public records and on-record confirmation from VHCB.

The confirmed funding structure: $75,000 from the Vermont legislature to VHCB for outreach. $150,000 to ANR for staff time. A $1 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation through the America the Beautiful Challenge to VHCB for Phase II. These figures were presented at a public Conservation District listening session on March 19, 2026, and confirmed in writing by VHCB General Counsel Elizabeth Egan on May 6, 2026.

For Phase I, VHCB hired Zoraya Hightower, a Vermont-based independent consultant with a background in environmental policy and community engagement, who had previously served as a Burlington City Councilor. Hightower used Nature for Justice as her billing and project management infrastructure. Her team included approximately five consultants total. VHCB’s total payment to Nature for Justice, including pass-through costs, was $250,101.12, covering work from August 2023 through July 2024.

For Phase II, VHCB issued a competitive RFP on October 1, 2024, posting it publicly on VHCB’s website and Vermont’s state procurement portal. Seven proposals were ultimately received. Three firms were interviewed: Metamorphic Consulting, the Wagenvoord Group, and Future iQ. VHCB’s board approved the Future iQ contract on January 24, 2025 by resolution.

The RFP listed conservation expertise as a “strong plus” for candidates — not a requirement. The mandatory qualifications were project management experience, facilitation capacity, budget management, and demonstrated ability to produce written work product. Of the seven proposals received, Future iQ scored highest on VHCB’s evaluation rubric, earning 14 out of 15 points. VHCB’s own procurement documentation describes Future iQ as having “relevant experience in Vermont, including the Vermont Forest Strategic Roadmap” and “strong logistical and planning capabilities, with a clear and cohesive vision for stakeholder engagement and deliverables.” It does not reference prior conservation planning, biodiversity, or 30x30 experience.

Future iQ came to VHCB’s attention through two prior relationships. VHCB’s Liz Gleason, Director of the Farm and Forest Viability Program, had been a stakeholder in the Forest Future Roadmap process. Danielle Fitzko, Commissioner of Vermont’s Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation at the Agency of Natural Resources, had led that contract and recommended Future iQ highly. Martin explained the rationale: “Their work on the Vermont Forest Future Strategic Roadmap was a really important factor in the decision to hire them for this process, because they had been in Vermont, they had worked with a lot of the stakeholders who we knew would be part of the Act 59 process, and they understood a lot of the issues and cultural tensions that exist here whenever we sit down and start talking about land use.”

Martin described a second rationale for selecting an outside facilitator: neutrality. A firm without pre-existing allegiances to Vermont’s conservation community could run a process without an organizational stake in the outcome. “Another strong aspect of Future iQ’s proposal,” Martin said, “was their demonstrated ability to bring public planning conversations and projects effectively to conclusion, while supporting broad outreach and communication.”

The Wagenvoord Group — the firm of Helen Wagenvoord of Shelburne, Vermont — scored 11 out of 15 on VHCB’s rubric. VHCB’s own evaluation described the group as having “deep understanding of Vermont’s conservation history and strong qualifications, but limited evidence of delivering large-scale, comprehensive plans.” The Wagenvoord Group was subsequently engaged by VHCB in a separate consulting capacity to support internal planning processes.

Future iQ’s contract with VHCB commenced May 2025, with an original cap of $305,000. A February 2026 amendment authorized up to $120,000 in additional partner costs for stakeholder listening sessions, bringing the total contract value to $425,000. Martin said: “Our process was not intended as a gateway for investors outside the state to be involved in ownership of Vermont’s Rural Lands.” On carbon markets specifically, Martin noted that VHCB does not administer carbon market programs, and that voluntary payments to landowners should be ethical, equitable, and effective.

Section 6 — What the Law Required

Act 59 was specific about who should be at the table.

The statute named the stakeholders VHCB was required to include: private owners of forestlands and agricultural lands, land trusts, conservation organizations, environmental organizations, working lands enterprises, outdoor recreation groups, Indigenous groups, watershed groups, municipalities, regional planning commissions, conservation commissions, and relevant state and federal agencies.

Natural Resources Conservation Districts are not on that list.

This is not a minor omission. Conservation Districts are a subdivision of Vermont state government, created under the 1939 Soil Conservation Act and operating under federal guidance that explicitly designates them as the infrastructure for locally-led conservation planning. Section 500 of the USDA Programs Manual defines their role: locally-led conservation begins with the community itself, working through the local conservation district. Vermont has fourteen Conservation Districts. They are democratically governed by elected supervisors.

Martin confirmed the omission: “They were not listed as the stakeholders we were supposed to engage with — they were omitted. I don’t know why this happened. We weren’t the drafters of the statute.” He said VHCB believes it was simply an oversight. Once Conservation Districts raised the issue themselves, VHCB incorporated them: Claire Ireland from the Association of Conservation Districts joined the inter-agency planning team for Phase I, and Jennifer Byrne and Michael Fernandez from different districts participated in working groups.

In Phase II, VHCB provided grants totaling $32,000 to eight Conservation Districts for stakeholder-led listening sessions — giving districts the funding to facilitate their own feedback sessions rather than having VHCB direct the process. Byrne confirmed the structure: VHCB offered $4,000 grants to organizations willing to facilitate local engagement conversations on Act 59, with approximately 30 organizations participating, some of which were Conservation Districts.

One of those funded sessions was the White River NRCD Board of Supervisors meeting on March 19, 2026 — a gathering attended by supervisors from three Vermont Conservation Districts. Their meeting minutes, submitted as a public document to VHCB on April 1, 2026, described the current conservation plan as “overly centralized, lacking clear implementation pathways, and insufficiently incorporating grassroots input, conservation districts, and existing partnerships.”

Also present at that Conservation District meeting: Earl Hatley, President of the Ottauquechee Water Protectors Association, an Indigenous representative of Abenaki, Shawnee, and Cherokee heritage. Indigenous voices were present in the Conservation Districts’ own planning process. The Phase I report identifies Indigenous representation as a gap that was not fully addressed in Phase I.

Vermont also had another relevant body of work available before Act 59’s planning process began. The Soil Health and Payment for Ecosystem Services Working Group had met for over three years examining conservation incentives and funding mechanisms for agricultural land. Its final report explicitly warned about what it called the “financialization of nature.” Those findings were not incorporated into the Act 59 planning process. Working group participants who raised these concerns during the Agriculture Working Group meetings were told the topic was not appropriate for the current phase.

Section 7 — The public record also reflects what Vermont has built.

Alex Weinhagen, who joined the Land Use Review Board a year ago expecting to focus on refining Act 250, has watched Act 181’s implementation consume his agency’s bandwidth. He is cautiously optimistic now that the Road Rule and Tier 3 repeal have cleared the House Environment Committee. But when asked about Vermont’s conservation record, he doesn’t hesitate.

Vermont has already conserved 27 percent of its landscape — close enough to the 30 percent goal, in his view, to acknowledge what has been accomplished. "I think we should just call that a victory and move on," he said in a May 1, 2026 phone call, the substance of which he confirmed in writing. He noted that if Current Use forest land enrollment is counted the way it currently stands, Vermont is likely already very close to the 50 by 50 goal. In his individual view — he was not speaking for the Land Use Review Board — Vermonters should be proud of what has already been accomplished on conservation.

The 27 percent figure comes from VHCB’s own Phase I inventory report. Approximately 1.58 million acres of Vermont land are permanently conserved through conservation easements or public ownership. That data existed in state systems before Act 59 passed.

Jamey Fidel, Vice President of Audubon Vermont and a registered lobbyist, testified at the H.70 hearing in February 2026 that Vermont is already at the 50 by 50 goal if Current Use is counted. His concern was what acknowledging it might mean for the planning process. Counting Current Use and declaring success, he said, risks “deflating the planning effort” — the years of work still needed to understand how Vermont’s landscape will hold together as climate pressures increase and landowners face new economic realities.

The Phase II planning process began in September 2024 — three months after the Phase I inventory showing Vermont near its goals was published. Future iQ is the principal contractor. The plan is due to the legislature by June 2026.

Whether the planning process Vermont built was the right one for the moment — whether a different timeline, a different contractor selection, a different stakeholder framework would have produced something more durable — is not a question this piece can answer. What the public record shows is what was chosen, who was hired, what it cost, and what some of the people inside the process said about it while the recording was running.

What this piece does and does not do.

This piece documents the public record of how Vermont’s Act 59 conservation planning process was designed, who ran it, what it cost, and what people inside it said about it. It draws on VHCB procurement documents produced in response to a public records request, on-record interviews with VHCB project staff, publicly posted working group recordings, written testimony submitted to the Vermont Legislature, and a review of how the nine other states with 30x30 goals approached the same task.

This piece does not argue that conservation is wrong, that Vermont’s landscape does not need protection, or that the people who designed this process acted in bad faith. The Phase I inventory report is a serious document. The organizations involved have genuine conservation records. The goal of understanding and protecting Vermont’s landscape is not in dispute here.

What is in dispute is the process — and the assumption behind it.

Vermont passed Act 59 in June 2023, becoming the first government in the world to enshrine a 50x50 conservation goal in statute. At the time, 27 percent of Vermont’s land was already permanently conserved — data that existed in state systems before the law passed. New Hampshire, Vermont’s neighbor, is already at 35 percent conserved. New Hampshire never set a goal. New Hampshire never hired outside contractors. New Hampshire never built a new process. New Hampshire counted what it had and was done.

Vermont counted what it had too — and spent over $800,000 and two years of compressed working group meetings doing it.

The question this piece asks is not whether Vermont should conserve land. It is whether the process Vermont built to document what it already had was the right one — and why Vermont built it differently than every other state that made the same commitment.

Support this work at ko-fi.com/alexsysthompson

Primary sources

Vermont Legislature
Act 59 of 2023 (H.126) — legislature.vermont.gov
Jennifer Byrne written testimony, House Agriculture Committee, April 10, 2024 — Vermont Legislature public record

Vermont Housing and Conservation Board
Act 59 Phase I Inventory Report, 2024 — vhcb.org
Phase II procurement documents (RFP, scoring rubric, board resolution, contracts) — produced in response to public records request, May 2026
Nature for Justice contract and amendments — confirmed by VHCB General Counsel Elizabeth Egan, May 6, 2026
Future iQ contract and amendments — confirmed by VHCB General Counsel Elizabeth Egan, May 6, 2026
Agriculture Working Group final meeting recording, March 29, 2024 — posted publicly on VHCB website

National Caucus of Environmental Legislators
30x30 Midpoint: Are States on Track? (updated January 23, 2026) — ncelenviro.org

State primary sources
Maine Won’t Wait: Four-Year Plan for Climate Action, December 2020 — maine.gov
New York State 30x30 Draft Strategies and Methodology, July 2024 — dec.ny.gov
New Mexico Executive Order 2021-052 — governor.state.nm.us
Maryland the Beautiful Act Five-Year Plan, 2024 — planning.maryland.gov
California 30x30 Annual Progress Report, September 2024 — resources.ca.gov
New Jersey Governor’s Office announcement, June 3, 2025 — nj.gov

Federal
Executive Order 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, January 27, 2021
Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, December 2022
USDA Programs Manual, Section 500, Subpart A: Locally Led Conservation Defined — directives.sc.egov.usda.gov

Vermont public record
White River NRCD Board of Supervisors meeting minutes, March 19, 2026 — submitted to VHCB April 1, 2026
Soil Health and Payment for Ecosystem Services Working Group final report — Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets

Support this work at ko-fi.com/alexsysthompson

A companion note to Part VII — Vermont’s 40,000 Home Problem

Vermont’s housing debate rests on a single number: 40,000 homes needed by 2030. That number comes from a January 2023 projection by the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. This note explains how VHFA reached that figure, how this series reached a different one, and why the difference matters.

How VHFA built the 40,000 figure

VHFA’s projection stacks four components. First, units needed to house new households forming in Vermont — the demand component. Second, units needed to normalize Vermont’s vacancy rate to a healthy 5%. Third, units needed to address homelessness. Fourth, units needed to replace homes lost to deterioration or disaster.

The vacancy, homelessness, and replacement components are not in dispute. The demand component is where the methodologies diverge.

For the demand component, VHFA offered two scenarios in their own document. A lower scenario used pre-pandemic household growth of 0.8% per year, producing approximately 11,582 units needed for new households. An upper scenario used pandemic-era growth of 1.4% per year, producing approximately 14,712 units. VHFA chose the upper scenario as the basis for Vermont’s planning targets. The lower scenario was published and set aside.

What happened after the projection was published

The pandemic surge that drove the upper scenario was real. Between 2020 and 2021, Vermont gained approximately 1,486 net new households. But the surge did not hold.

This series obtained IRS Statistics of Income migration data — based on actual tax return filings, not survey estimates — for three consecutive years. By 2021-2022, the net household gain had collapsed to 371 — a 75% decline in a single year. By 2022-2023, it went negative. More households left Vermont than arrived.

The VHFA projection was published in January 2023. The IRS data shows that by that same month, the trend the projection was built on had already reversed. The projection was not updated when the reversal became clear. The targets derived from it were distributed to every town in Vermont regardless.

How this series reached a different number

This series uses VHFA’s own methodology but substitutes documented post-surge data for the pandemic assumption.

The conservative estimate uses near-zero net migration — what the IRS data actually shows — plus replacement only. That produces approximately 2,510 units of new growth need over five years.

The moderate estimate uses VHFA’s own pre-pandemic growth rate — the figure they published and set aside — producing approximately 10,640 units of new growth need over five years.

Adding those growth figures to the undisputed existing deficits — approximately 7,856 units combining vacancy normalization and flood replacement — produces a total range of approximately 10,400 to 18,500 units by 2030.

Every input in this reconstruction comes from either IRS tax return data, VHFA’s own published figures, or HUD’s standard housing loss methodology.

What an independent economist found

Joe Ament, Assistant Professor of Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, reviewed the VHFA model independently and reached the same range. His assessment, on the record: “When small changes to the assumptions dramatically change the outcomes, the model should be recalibrated. And certainly not made law.”

Ament’s separate peer-reviewed research on Burlington housing prices found that investor activity and down payment size — not supply shortage — account for up to 66% of housing price increases. This suggests that even if the demand figure were correct, building more homes may not address the affordability problem the 40,000 figure is meant to solve.

What this series is not saying

This series does not argue Vermont has no housing problem. The affordability pressure, vacancy constraints, cost burden on lower-income households, aging housing stock, and flood damage are real and documented. The question is whether the scale of the response — a land use framework built to produce 8,200 units per year when Vermont has never built at anything close to that pace — is calibrated to Vermont’s actual demographic reality or to a pandemic surge that the data shows had already reversed before the law was written.

The gap between 10,400 and 40,000 is not a rounding error. It is the difference between a policy calibrated to evidence and one calibrated to a peak that did not hold.

Sources: IRS Statistics of Income state migration data 2020-2023; VHFA Vermont Housing Needs Assessment 2025-2029; HUD housing loss methodology; Ament and McElroy, “It’s Not About Supply,” SSRN 2025; FEMA disaster housing data.

This piece originally stated “Let’s Build Homes not registered as a lobbyist.” That statement was incorrect and has been updated below.

Vermont Secretary of State lobbyist compensation records confirm that Let’s Build Homes is registered as a lobbyist employer in the 2025–2026 biennium through Leonine Public Affairs, LLP, with disclosed compensation of approximately $37,017 from January 2025 through March 2026. Executive Chair Miro Weinberger is also registered as an individual lobbyist as of February 9, 2026, with LET’S BUILD HOMES listed as the sole employer on all three disclosure statements and confirmed compensation of $1,217.44 from January through March 2026.

This correction was brought to our attention by Weinberger in correspondence following publication. We thank him for it. The correction does not affect the piece’s findings regarding the funding networks documented above. Arnold Ventures, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Packard Foundation, and the Bullitt Foundation do not appear in Vermont’s lobbying database across any of the four biennia reviewed (2019–2026).

Update: Corey Parent, previously unconfirmed as a registered lobbyist for Let's Build Homes, is confirmed as an active registered lobbyist in Vermont's 2025-2026 biennium through Leonine Public Affairs, LLP, 1 Blanchard Court, Montpelier. Confirmed from Vermont Secretary of State lobbyist registry, April 30, 2026

On a Friday morning in Montpelier, a Vermont state representative asked a question nobody in the room could answer.

Representative Michael Tagliavia, a Republican from Corinth who has had his land enrolled in Vermont’s Current Use program for twenty-three years, was pressing a witness from Audubon Vermont about vernal pools. His land has two of them. He wanted to know why the ecological value of those pools — the breeding cycles, the salamanders, the migratory birds, the twenty-three years of documented stewardship under a state-approved management plan — counted for less under Vermont law because he held a Use Value Appraisal contract instead of a permanent conservation easement.

He put it plainly.

“None of those birds know that I have a contract.”

Nobody answered him. The committee chair moved on. The hearing ended without a vote.

What nobody in that room said out loud is who built the framework Tagliavia was pushing back against.

And who built the one running parallel to it.

What do Houston and New York have in common?

Vermont.

Two Networks. One Legislature. Neither One Vermont.

On the conservation restriction side, the architecture is this:

The Doris Duke Foundation is a New York-based philanthropy endowed with over $2 billion.^[1] Its stated focus areas include 30x30, biodiversity loss, forest climate solutions, and state-level conservation policy frameworks. One of the organizations it funds is the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators. NCEL is a Washington DC-based nonprofit that organizes over 1,200 state lawmakers across all fifty states.^[2] NCEL explicitly states it does not lobby for or against legislation. What it does instead is provide those lawmakers with legislative research, policy frameworks, model legislation, connections to legislators in other states pursuing the same agenda, briefings, forums, and — in NCEL’s own words — the tools to pursue environmental policies in their states.^[2]

Doris Duke Foundation confirmed as an NCEL funder in NCEL’s own press materials and the foundation’s own grants database.^[3] Packard Foundation confirmed in Packard’s own grants database.^[4] Bullitt Foundation confirmed on Bullitt’s own grants page.^[5]

One of the Vermont lawmakers NCEL resources is Representative Amy Sheldon.

Sheldon’s name and testimonial appear on NCEL’s own impact page:^[6]

“NCEL is the clearinghouse for State legislators working for environmental protection. The states are where the action is and connecting us is invaluable.”

The Vermont Natural Resources Council identifies Sheldon as one of the key legislative architects of Act 181^[7] — the 2024 law that rewrote Vermont’s land use framework, embedded a tiered mapping system tied to the state’s biodiversity database, and set in motion the conservation restriction architecture that, on a Friday morning in Montpelier, a rural Republican landowner was questioning from across the committee table.

Representative Amy Sheldon chaired that committee.^[8]

This series contacted Sheldon for right-of-reply before publication. She did not respond.

None of the foundations that fund NCEL are registered as lobbyists in Vermont. None introduced themselves when Act 181 moved through Sheldon’s committee. Vermont law did not require them to. That is not an accusation. It is a description of how the system works — and a question about whether Vermont’s disclosure framework was built for a world where national philanthropy operates the way it does now.

On the housing density side, the architecture is this:

Arnold Ventures describes itself as a philanthropy dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through evidence-based solutions that maximize opportunity and minimize injustice. It was founded by John Arnold, a former Enron natural gas trader who founded the Centaurus Advisors natural gas hedge fund before retiring to philanthropy. In January 2019, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation restructured as an LLC called Arnold Ventures — a move the organization described as creating a more integrated push for impact, combining philanthropy and political giving in a single entity that could pursue the full spectrum of strategies needed to take ideas from the drawing board to implementation as law and policy.^[9] It employs over 100 staff and grants approximately $200 million annually. As an LLC it files no public Form 990.

Its giving arm, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, does file a 990. The 2024 filing confirms two grants designated for Welcoming Neighbors Network housing advocacy: $1,000,000 through Amalgamated Charitable Foundation and $241,866 through Hopewell Fund. Total confirmed: $1,241,866.^[10] In correspondence with this series, Let’s Build Homes acknowledged understanding the Arnolds to be a funder of Welcoming Neighbors Network, while noting it had not independently researched the specific grant details. The figures cited above are confirmed in the public Form 990 filing, not in LBH’s representations.

Welcoming Neighbors Network funds Let’s Build Homes — the Vermont pro-housing coalition that launched January 14, 2025 with a Statehouse press conference and grew to over 250 member organizations. Weinberger describes LBH as “a broad, statewide coalition of employers, housing advocates, community leaders and everyday Vermonters working to address Vermont’s housing shortage” supported by “a mix of philanthropic funding and partnerships.” Let’s Build Homes states on its own website that its work includes: “Strategic Planning: Engaging in Act 250 Tier-mapping.”^[11]

Let’s Build Homes is registered as a lobbyist employer in Vermont in the 2025–2026 biennium through Leonine Public Affairs, LLP, with disclosed compensation of approximately $37,017 from January 2025 through March 2026. Executive Chair Miro Weinberger registered as an individual lobbyist as of February 9, 2026 — the period when S.325 was actively moving through the Vermont Senate — with LET’S BUILD HOMES as the sole employer listed on all three disclosure statements.^[20] Arnold Ventures, the organization whose confirmed $1,241,866 funds the network that funds LBH, does not appear in Vermont’s lobbying database across any of the four biennia reviewed.

The Vermont Housing Finance Agency serves as Let’s Build Homes’ ongoing fiscal sponsor for tax-deductible charitable donations.^[11] VHFA Executive Director Maura Collins serves on the Executive Committee of Let’s Build Homes.^[12] When contacted for right-of-reply, Collins confirmed the relationship directly:

“VHFA acts as Let’s Build Homes’ fiscal agent. I am proud to use my knowledge and experience to help create housing opportunities for Vermonters, both through my role at VHFA and through my extensive Board work. I serve on seven different boards/councils, some of which I was named to by the Governor, others by the legislature, and others through election. Each of them provides me with the opportunity to amplify the needs and voices of lower-income Vermonters, and the majority of them are housing-based organizations.”

— Maura Collins, Executive Director, Vermont Housing Finance Agency, correspondence with this series, April 16, 2026

Let’s Build Homes is led by Executive Chair Miro Weinberger — a native Vermonter, born in Brattleboro and raised in Hartland, Yale undergraduate, Harvard Kennedy School MPP, affordable housing developer, and Burlington’s mayor from 2012 to 2024.^[13] He held a Visiting Fellowship at Harvard’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government from August 2024 through December 2025, during which Let’s Build Homes launched and grew to over 250 member organizations.

Same legislature. Same session. Same enrolled land. Opposite directions.

The conservation restriction network pushing land into Tier 3. The housing density network pushing land into Tier 1. Both funded from outside Vermont. The funders behind both networks — Arnold Ventures, Doris Duke Foundation, Packard Foundation, Bullitt Foundation — do not appear in Vermont’s lobbying registry across any of the four biennia reviewed. Both are shaping the framework that determines what 2.5 million enrolled acres of Current Use land can become.

The Room Nobody Introduced Themselves In

The H.70 hearing was about whether land enrolled in Vermont’s Current Use program should count toward the state’s Act 59 conservation goals — the 30x30 and 50x50 targets written into Vermont law with bipartisan support in 2021.

The witnesses in favor of H.70 were enrolled landowners and working foresters.

Sam Lincoln, a multi-generational landowner from Randolph Center with family land in UVA, a certified master logger, and former Deputy Commissioner of Forests Parks and Recreation from 2017 to 2020, testified that Current Use connects the dots between permanently conserved tracts, that enrolled landowners already own the land, already follow state-approved management plans, and are already doing conservation work. His closing argument:^[8]

“It’s not a partisan issue. It’s a rural issue, and it’s an equity issue that’s being raised by constituents who have invested in conservation for generations.”— Sam Lincoln, H.70 hearing, Vermont House Environment Committee

Bill Sargent, a forester with 52 years of experience in Bennington County, documented what happened to the county’s working forest economy as public land ownership expanded — ten major sawmills gone within his career, zero remaining today, over 500 jobs lost not counting loggers and truckers. Bennington County is now 42% US Forest Service land — the highest percentage in Vermont.^[8] He asked the committee to recognize that land that cannot be used is a death sentence to rural Vermonters.

The Vermont Association of Realtors testified that Current Use has a withdrawal rate of roughly 0.2% per year — meaning the land tends to stay in the program for decades, often changing ownership without leaving. Enrollment has grown every year since 2010.^[8]

The witness in opposition was Lauren Oates of The Nature Conservancy in Vermont — a chapter of the national Nature Conservancy, an organization with annual revenues exceeding $1.7 billion, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.^[14] TNC opposes H.70 as drafted. Specifically, TNC opposes removing the word “permanent” from the definition of conserved in the Act 59 framework. TNC’s stated concern is durability — that Current Use, as a voluntary program landowners can exit, doesn’t provide the permanence that 30x30 conservation goals require.^[8]

This is worth pausing on.

The Nature Conservancy in Vermont holds approximately 30,000 acres. Oates confirmed in testimony that virtually all of it — she estimated 98% — is enrolled in Current Use.^[8] TNC’s 111 Vermont parcels generate $23.9 million in annual Current Use reductions, confirmed in Vermont Department of Taxes statewide data reviewed for this series.^[15]

TNC’s enrolled acres: counted as conservation. Private landowners’ enrolled acres: not counted as conservation.

Tagliavia noticed. He asked directly whether the ecological value of his vernal pools — twenty-three years of breeding cycles, of wildlife habitat, of documented stewardship under a state-approved management plan — was diminished because of which contract sat on top of his land.^[8]

Jamie Fidel, Vice President of Audubon Vermont, answered: it depends on the terms of the easement. On the management plan. On comparisons of what management is happening. He suggested Tagliavia speak to someone from the land trust community.^[8]

Tagliavia didn’t need to. He already knew what was on his land. Clean water setbacks apply regardless of any contract. The vernal pools are functionally protected regardless of any contract. Twenty-three years of state-approved forest management plans, reviewed and renewed, regardless of any contract. The breeding cycles happened. The migratory birds came back. The salamanders don’t consult the deed.

“None of those birds know that I have a contract.”— Rep. Michael Tagliavia, H.70 hearing, Vermont House Environment Committee^[8]

What Fidel’s answer revealed — without meaning to — is that Vermont’s conservation framework doesn’t measure ecological outcomes. It measures legal instruments. A conservation easement held by a land trust creates a permanent legal instrument that the trust monitors, enforces, and reports on. It generates stewardship endowment revenue. It counts toward the land trust’s conservation metrics. It appears in the Act 59 conserved land inventory. It justifies the land trust’s existence and its funding relationships with foundations like Doris Duke and Packard.

A UVA contract generates none of that institutional value. It stays between the landowner, the state, and the county forester. It doesn’t count toward 30x30. It doesn’t appear in the conserved land inventory. It doesn’t justify anyone’s grant application.

Tagliavia’s land may be doing identical or superior conservation work to an adjacent parcel under permanent easement. But only one of them counts toward the goals that national funders are paying to achieve.

It isn’t his.

The Curtain Nobody Pulled Back — And Why Tier 3 Isn’t the Real Fight

The current public debate is about Tier 3. Whether the maps are too aggressive. Whether the road rule should be repealed. Whether implementation timelines should be extended. Whether the conservation restriction side has won too much.

That debate is real. The concerns are legitimate. The enrolled landowners raising them — in committee rooms, in rural caucus meetings, in 12,000-member online communities — deserve to be heard.

But here is what the Tier 3 debate is missing.

Repealing Tier 3 does not undo what has already happened.

In 2021, Vermont amended the statutory purpose of the Current Use program itself. Act 59 rewrote 32 V.S.A. § 3751, adding biodiversity, wildlife corridors, and climate adaptation language to the foundational statute that governs 2.5 million enrolled acres.^[16] That amendment took effect July 1, 2023. The Vermont Agency of Natural Resources confirmed in correspondence with this series that enrolled landowners were not notified of this statutory rewrite through the Current Use program’s standard communications channels. Landowners receive two communications from the state annually: year-end tax information and forestry plan update notices. Neither referenced the statutory rewrite. No notification of the statutory purpose change was distributed to enrolled landowners at the time of enactment or at its effective date.^[19]

The Vermont Department of Taxes draft rule 26P008 v.16 now proposes to embed that same language into the foundational administrative rule governing Current Use enrollment — elevating ecosystems and biodiversity objectives, demoting the productive agricultural and forest language that defined the program since 1978.^[17] The public comment period for rule 26P008 closes May 11, 2026. Following that close, the rule will be revised as needed and submitted to the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules for review before taking effect.^[19]

The Ecological Sensitivity and Terrestrial Areas subcategories within Current Use allow enrolled landowners to voluntarily designate ecologically significant features — vernal pools, rare species habitat, natural communities — for specific protections and exemptions from certain working lands requirements. When a landowner elects ESTA enrollment, documentation of qualifying features is required. That documentation feeds Vermont Fish and Wildlife’s Natural Heritage Database — the same database driving the Tier 3 mapping.^[18]

The Vermont Agency of Natural Resources confirmed in correspondence with this series that prior to the current Standards revision, landowners were not explicitly told this data routing existed:

“Prior to the current revision of the Standards, landowners were not explicitly notified that enrollment in certain Ecologically Significant Treatment Area (ESTA) subcategories could result in associated feature data being included in the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department’s Natural Heritage Database or other ecological data management systems. The revised Standards clarify this potential.”

— FPR Commissioner Danny Fitzko, provided through Vermont Agency of Natural Resources Communications Director Stephanie Brackin, correspondence with this series, April 2026^[19]

ESTA enrollment is voluntary. A landowner who chooses not to enroll in an ESTA subcategory has no reporting requirement for newly identified features. But for the enrolled landowners who have designated vernal pools, rare species habitat, or natural communities — often to qualify for protections and exemptions they believed served their interests — their designation has been feeding a database they were never told about. That database is now the foundation of the Tier 3 maps they are fighting.

The Reserve Forestland subcategory — created in 2023 — already allows enrollment of ecologically sensitive forestland with no harvest requirement. Carbon sequestration agreements can already affect Current Use eligibility, with the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation as the eligibility decision-maker.^[17]

The Tier map is the fight happening in public. The statutory rewrite is the one that already happened. The rulemaking is the one with a comment period closing May 11 — a deadline most enrolled landowners don’t know exists.

One piece of this architecture can be repealed. The rest is already law, already in regulation, already generating data.

Vermont’s Disclosure Gap

This is not a story about whether conservation is good or housing is necessary. Both are. Vermont needs both working lands and housing supply. These are not radical claims.

This is a story about who decides — and who funds the people who decide — and whether Vermont’s disclosure framework was built for a world where national philanthropy operates the way it does now.

Vermont requires lobbyists to register. Let’s Build Homes did. It does not require the foundations that fund the organizations that lobby to disclose anything at all in Vermont’s public record. Arnold Ventures — which confirmed $1,241,866 to the network that funds LBH — does not appear in Vermont’s lobbying database across any of the four biennia reviewed. What NCEL does is legal. What Arnold Ventures does is legal. What The Nature Conservancy does is legal.

The question is whether Vermont voters — and Vermont landowners enrolled in a program that has protected 2.5 million acres for nearly fifty years — knew any of it was happening.

On a Friday morning in Montpelier, a man with two vernal pools and twenty-three years of documented stewardship asked why his land didn’t count.

Nobody in the room could tell him who wrote the rule.

Pay no attention to the foundations behind the curtain.

Sources

1. Doris Duke Foundation, About page and grants database: dorisduke.org

2. National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, Form 990 (2024), EIN 68-0633254; NCEL website: ncelenviro.org

3. NCEL press release confirming Doris Duke Foundation funding; Doris Duke Foundation grants database, grantee: National Caucus of Environmental Legislators

4. David and Lucile Packard Foundation grants database, grantee: National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, including $100,000 grant (2024)

5. Bullitt Foundation grants page, grantee: National Caucus of Environmental Legislators (2023)

6. NCEL Impact page: ncelenviro.org/impact — Amy Sheldon testimonial, accessed April 2026

7. Vermont Natural Resources Council website, Act 181 legislative summary, identifying key legislative architects including Rep. Amy Sheldon

8. Vermont House Environment Committee, H.70 public hearing transcript, April 2026. Witnesses: Michael Tagliavia, Sam Lincoln, Bill Sargent, Peter Tucker (Vermont Association of Realtors), Lauren Oates (TNC Vermont), Jamie Fidel (Audubon Vermont)

9. Arnold Ventures, About page: arnoldventures.org; Inside Philanthropy reporting on 2019 restructure

10. Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Form 990-PF (2024). Grants: $1,000,000 to Amalgamated Charitable Foundation for Welcoming Neighbors Network; $241,866 to Hopewell Fund for Welcoming Neighbors Network. Let’s Build Homes correspondence with this series, April 27, 2026: acknowledged understanding the Arnolds to be a funder of WNN while noting it had not independently researched the specific grant details.

11. Let’s Build Homes website: letsbuildhomes.org — strategic priorities and fiscal sponsor language, accessed April 2026; Miro Weinberger correspondence with this series, April 27, 2026

12. Vermont Housing Finance Agency website: vhfa.org — Maura Collins biography listing Let’s Build Homes Executive Committee service, accessed April 2026

13. Maura Collins, correspondence with this series, April 16, 2026

14. Miro Weinberger biography; Harvard Kennedy School Taubman Center fellowship confirmed in correspondence with this series, April 27, 2026: August 2024 – December 2025

15. The Nature Conservancy, Form 990; TNC Vermont chapter information

16. Vermont Department of Taxes, Current Use statewide data (2025). TNC Vermont: 111 parcels, $23.9 million annual use value reduction

17. 32 V.S.A. § 3751 as amended by Act 59 (2021 Adj. Sess.), effective July 1, 2023

18. Vermont Department of Taxes, Draft Rule 26P008 v.16 (August 27, 2025)

19. Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, FPR Minimum Management Standards markup; FPR Standards and Covenant documents confirming ESTA-to-NHD pipeline

20. FPR Commissioner Danny Fitzko, responses provided through Vermont Agency of Natural Resources Communications Director Stephanie Brackin (she/her), correspondence with this series, April 2026. Confirmed: (1) ESTA-to-NHD data routing was not previously disclosed to landowners prior to current Standards revision; (2) May 11 is public comment close for rule 26P008, not effective date; (3) statutory purpose rewrite notification was not distributed through Current Use program channels at enactment or effective date.

21. Vermont Secretary of State, Lobbyist Compensation Database, 2025–2026 biennium. Let’s Build Homes employer registration through Leonine Public Affairs, LLP, 1 Blanchard Court Suite 101, Montpelier. Disclosed compensation January 2025–March 2026: approximately $37,017. Miro Weinberger individual lobbyist registration, date February 9, 2026, sole employer LET’S BUILD HOMES, confirmed compensation January–March 2026: $1,217.44. Arnold Ventures: not present in Vermont lobbying database across biennia 2019–2020, 2021–2022, 2023–2024, 2025–2026.

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

Support this series: ko-fi.com/alexsysthompson
alexsys.substack.com

On April 25, 2026, Maine Governor Janet Mills vetoed the first statewide data center moratorium in United States history.

The Maine Legislature had passed it. Bipartisan. A democratic majority that said: we need to pause, we need to study this, we need to protect our ratepayers and our grid before $600 billion in AI infrastructure decides Maine is a good place to land.

Governor Mills agreed with them. In her own veto letter, she wrote that an 18-month moratorium was appropriate — given what these facilities do to electric rates, to water supplies, to the environment.

Then she vetoed it.

Her reason: one project. A $550 million data center planned for the former Androscoggin Mill in Jay, a Franklin County town that lost its paper mill and has been waiting for something to replace it. The governor wanted that project carved out. The legislature said no. She vetoed the whole bill to protect it.

Maureen Drouin, executive director of Maine Conservation Voters, said the veto “flies in the face of that responsibility and the bipartisan will of the Maine Legislature, passing the buck to the next Governor to rein in large-scale data centers after they’ve arrived.” Bill sponsor Rep. Melanie Sachs, D-Freeport, called the decision “simply wrong.”

The override vote is Wednesday, April 29. Watch it. Because what happens in Augusta on April 29 is a preview of what Vermont hasn’t been asked to answer yet. The bill passed at 79-62 in the House and 21-13 in the Senate — well short of the two-thirds required to override.

Maine’s answer, as of this week: no.

Vermont is watching. Vermont hasn’t been tested yet. The question this piece asks is whether Vermont needs to face that test to fail it — or whether the architecture of failure is already built in.

Source: Union of Concerned Scientists, September 2025 · PJM Independent Market Monitor

What a Data Center Actually Costs

Before the policy argument, the scale is worth sitting with.

A typical AI-focused hyperscale data center consumes as much electricity as 100,000 households, according to the International Energy Agency. The largest facilities now under construction are projected to use twenty times that. The cooling systems draw up to 5 million gallons of water daily — enough to serve a city the size of Burlington, or every resident of 30 rural Vermont towns. The grid demand isn’t a spike. It is a permanent, heavy, unrelenting load that changes the math for every ratepayer on the same system.

American tech companies have pledged to spend more than $600 billion on AI data center infrastructure in 2026 alone. That capital is moving fast. It is looking for land, connectivity, available power — and regulatory frameworks it can navigate or, better, bypass.

More than 300 data center-related bills have been introduced in 30 states’ legislatures in the first six weeks of 2026. Good Jobs First is tracking at least 12 states with active moratorium bills this session. At the local level, more than 54 local moratorium measures have already passed across towns and counties nationwide.

This is not a fringe response. This is a mainstream, bipartisan legislative alarm sounding in every region of the country — because the infrastructure is arriving faster than any framework built to evaluate it.

Sources: Good Jobs First; Vermont Legislature; Maine Legislature · April 2026

Vermont Already Knows This Story

Vermont has been here before. Not with data centers — but with the promise that large-scale energy infrastructure would serve the public good, and the reality that followed.

Under Vermont’s Section 248 statute (30 V.S.A. § 248), energy generation and transmission facilities don’t go through Act 250. They don’t face the state’s ten-criteria development review. They don’t go before a District Environmental Commission. They don’t need local zoning approval. They go to the Public Utility Commission, which issues a Certificate of Public Good based on criteria oriented toward energy system needs, not community impact.

That structure was built deliberately — and for defensible reasons. Act 250 was designed in 1970 to stop sprawl: subdivisions, ski resorts, shopping malls. Its ten criteria ask local questions. One town’s aesthetic objection shouldn’t block a transmission line serving the whole state’s grid. Centralizing energy siting at the PUC — with the Agency of Natural Resources at the table as a mandatory party — was the tradeoff: remove the local veto, keep environmental teeth, serve the statewide public interest.

The rationale was real. The bypass was real too.

Out-of-state solar and wind developers have used that bypass for years. Vermont hillsides have been disturbed by projects that never faced a District Environmental Commission. Vermont towns have had viewsheds altered by facilities that never went through local zoning. The Renewable Energy Vermont lobby has actively worked to keep Section 248 party status narrow — warning that expanding who can participate risks slowing permitting “without meaningful benefit to Vermonters.”

That is the template. And it is the template that data center capital will reach for next.

The Ratepayer Cost Nobody Talks About

The financial exposure from large data centers isn’t just about what they cost to build. It’s about what they cost to connect — and who pays for that.

In the PJM Interconnection region — covering seven mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states — ratepayers were on the hook for more than $4.3 billion in electricity infrastructure costs in 2024 alone, approved solely to connect new data centers, according to a September 2025 analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists. That is not a fee paid by the data center operators. That is a cost socialized across every existing customer on the grid — families, farms, small businesses — to subsidize the infrastructure a private facility needs to operate. PJM’s own independent market monitor called it a “massive wealth transfer” from consumers to the data center industry.

Vermont currently has no established framework requiring a data center to bear its own grid connection costs. The PUC process under Section 248 issues a Certificate of Public Good. It does not set tax obligations. It does not require contributions to Vermont’s Education Fund. It does not guarantee that infrastructure costs are borne by the project rather than spread across the rate base.

Vermont also has no data center tax incentive program — unlike at least 37 other states that offer sales tax exemptions and property tax abatements to attract the industry. Virginia alone lost $1.6 billion in a single fiscal year — a figure 106,000 percent above the original legislative estimate when those breaks were created.

But Vermont also has no requirement that a data center contribute anything back.

No Education Fund contribution requirement. No infrastructure cost-bearing requirement. No ratepayer protection mechanism. The absence of a giveaway on the front end is not the same as protection on the back end. What Vermont has is a gap — and capital looking for gaps finds them.

Vermont has no data center tax incentive program. Vermont also has no requirement that a data center contribute anything back. Those two facts are not the same protection.

The Door Vermont Hasn’t Talked About

Vermont’s S.205 — Sen. Rebecca White’s moratorium bill — sets its threshold at 100 megawatts. That is five times higher than Maine’s 20-megawatt line. A facility using 99 megawatts is not covered. A facility structured as multiple co-located units, each under the threshold, may not be covered.

Vermont’s H.727 — the Sustainable Data Centers Act, sponsored by Rep. Laura Sibilia and passed by the House, now in the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee — draws the line at 20 megawatts, matching Maine’s approach. It would require covered facilities to enter a “large load service equity contract” with their electric distribution company, subject to PUC approval. Both bills are in the Senate simultaneously. Neither has passed.

But there is a structural question neither bill fully answers: which regulatory pathway applies to a large data center in Vermont at all?

A data center is not an energy generation facility. It is a load — a massive, permanent consumer of power. The question of whether it belongs on the Section 248 track before the PUC, or through Act 250 and local zoning as conventional commercial development, has not been definitively resolved in Vermont law. A developer who successfully argues Section 248 jurisdiction enters a process where Act 250’s community-facing criteria — fiscal impact on the municipality, effects on adjacent landowners, community character — do not apply in the same form.

The Section 248 pathway was not designed for data centers. It predates AI infrastructure by decades. But existing exemption architecture does not need to be designed for a new industry to be useful to it. It only needs to be available.

This is not theory. This is happening right now, in Vermont, at a scale most people haven’t noticed yet.

Proof of Concept · Vergennes, Vermont · Right Now

In Vergennes, Vermont — population 2,500, the smallest city in the United States — a Virginia company called LightShift filed a 45-Day Advance Notice with the Vermont Public Utility Commission in December 2025 to install a 4.99-megawatt battery energy storage facility at 99 Panton Road. More than 250 residents signed a petition opposing it. The adjacent property owner may not build her five planned homes because of it. The Vergennes City Council was notified. It has no approval authority.

The PUC decides. That’s the process.

Under 30 V.S.A. § 248, any energy storage facility of 100 kilowatts or greater requires a certificate of public good from the PUC. There is no size at which a project escapes that review and returns to local hands. LightShift’s 4.99-megawatt project goes through the full Section 248 CPG proceeding — a process with its own criteria, its own timeline, and no local zoning veto. The community’s avenue is a PUC comment portal. That is it.

That is the Section 248 architecture operating exactly as designed — for a 4.99-megawatt battery storage project from a Virginia company in a Vermont city of 2,500 people. Now scale it up. A 100-megawatt AI data center. Same architecture. Same bypass. Same answer when the town asks who decides.

Maine just showed what the pressure looks like when it arrives. A specific project. A specific town. A governor facing a Senate primary. And a veto.

30 V.S.A. § 248 · Vermont Public Utility Commission · Act 250 · Part XIII Analysis

The Pattern This Series Has Been Tracking

This series began with Act 181 and Vermont’s rural landowners. It has documented how the working landscape program distributes its $3.56 billion in annual tax reduction — more than 52 percent flowing to entities or out-of-state owners, with only 11.4 percent of enrolled parcels held by farmer-qualified owners. It has documented the lobbying architecture, the data pipelines, the reclassification of land through processes that enrolled landowners never saw.

Part XIII is the interchange — the point where Vermont’s land use framework connects to a national infrastructure buildout that has its own momentum, its own capital, and its own political network.

The pattern is consistent:

• Act 181 Restricted rural development through a tiered mapping system built on data pipelines that landowners never consented to enroll in.

• The Current Use Program Designed in 1978 to support Vermont farmers. Today it delivers the majority of its benefit to entities and out-of-state owners.

• Section 248 Designed to serve Vermont’s statewide energy interests. It became the pathway through which out-of-state developers altered Vermont’s landscape without facing local review.

• The Opportunity Zone Program Channels capital to designated development centers while rural land stays restricted — the same rural land this series has been documenting.

Each piece has an explanation. Each was designed with legitimate public purposes. And in each case, the structure that emerged generated more friction for the individual Vermont landowner, the small farmer, the rural town — and more access for organized capital.

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

Support independent Vermont investigative journalism

ko-fi.com/alexsysthompson

alexsys.substack.com · Byline: Alexsys Thompson · Part XIII of the Act 181 Series · April 2026

Part XII by Alexsys Thompson | April 2026

UPDATE — April 28, 2026: Following publication, ANR Communications Director Stephanie Brackin responded on behalf of FPR Commissioner Danny Fitzko to three questions submitted by this series. The response confirmed on record that prior to the current revision of the FPR Standards, landowners were not explicitly notified that voluntary ESTA enrollment could result in feature data being included in the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife's Natural Heritage Database. The forester section of this piece has been updated to reflect that correction and the on-record confirmation. One additional correction: May 11 is the close of the public comment period for 26P008, not its effective date as previously referenced. The series thanks Commissioner Fitzko and Director Brackin for their response.

The word doing the work

On April 23, 2026, Julie Moore, Secretary of Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources, sat beside Governor Phil Scott at his administration’s weekly press conference and described Act 59 this way:

“Act 59 is distinct and separate from Act 181. Act 59 is thinking about conservation but it is all a willing buyer, willing seller framework transaction.

There are no mandatory or regulatory components associated with Act 59.

So while some may be trying to say the goals of Act 181 and Act 59 have a point of intersection, the fundamental starting point of those two pieces of legislation are vastly different.

A regulatory framework vs. a voluntary conservation.”

Julie Moore, Secretary, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. Governor Scott Administration Weekly Update, April 23, 2026. Timestamp: 14:29.

That is the state’s official position. The Secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, on camera, stated plainly that Act 59 carries no mandatory or regulatory components. That it is voluntary. That anyone suggesting a connection between Act 59 and Act 181 is misreading both laws.

Act 59 amended 32 V.S.A. § 3751 — the Current Use statute’s statement of purpose — adding biodiversity, wildlife corridors, and climate adaptation language. That language now appears verbatim in the proposed tax rule 26P008, currently before the Current Use Advisory Board. The FPR Minimum Management and Plan Standards, effective May 31, 2026, route ESTA enrollment data directly into the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Natural Heritage Database — the same database used in Act 181’s Tier 3 mapping process. Two agencies. Two rulemaking tracks. Both citing Act 59’s statutory framework. Both landing on the same 19,000+ enrolled landowners.

Voluntary entry. A changed mission once you’re in. A data pipeline whose destination was never disclosed at the point of enrollment.

In 2023, Vermont passed Act 59, establishing a statutory obligation to conserve 30 percent of the state’s land by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050. The Secretary of Natural Resources was directed to lead the effort. The Vermont Housing and Conservation Board was directed to produce the plan. Those are not aspirational statements. They are legal obligations with deadlines attached.

The question Act 59 did not fully answer was how Vermont would reach 30 percent on private land — where roughly 80 percent of Vermont sits — without compelling anyone to do anything.

The purpose that changed

When Vermont’s Current Use program was created in 1978, its statutory purpose was direct: preserve agricultural and forest land from development pressure by taxing it at its use value rather than its market value. Keep working land working.

In 2023 — the same year Act 59 passed — the legislature amended 32 V.S.A. § 3751, the Current Use statute’s statement of purpose. The amendment added language directing the program to serve the “protection of natural ecological systems and services, including air and water quality, wildlife habitat and wildlife corridors, enhanced biodiversity, and forest health and integrity.” It added language about assisting “in climate adaptation and mitigation.”

That language now appears verbatim in the proposed tax rule 26P008, currently before the Current Use Advisory Board with a public hearing scheduled for April 30 and a comment deadline of May 11.

Jill Remick, Director of Property Valuation and Review and Chair of the Current Use Advisory Board, confirmed this on record in April 2026. The language in the draft rule, she wrote, “is taken directly from the statutory Statement of Purpose, 32 V.S.A. § 3751.” The rulemaking, she said, contains “no new policy positions.” It is updating the rule to current law.

That framing is technically accurate. It is also incomplete.

More than 19,000 Vermont landowners are enrolled in Current Use. Many of them enrolled years or decades before July 2023, when Act 59’s amendments took effect. They enrolled in a program whose stated purpose was to preserve working agricultural and forest land. The program’s mission changed around them. The enrollment forms did not change. The notification to existing enrollees did not happen.

The program has been amended many times since 1978. Prior changes adjusted who could enroll, how buildings were valued, and how liens were structured. Those were fiscal and structural adjustments. The 2023 purpose clause amendment is different in kind. It changed what the program is for — adding biodiversity, wildlife corridors, and climate adaptation to a program originally designed to keep working land working. That is a mission change, not a structural one.

The state’s notification obligation to enrolled landowners covers one thing: the annual use value for the current tax year. There is no statutory requirement to notify existing enrollees when the purpose clause is amended, when the management standards are revised, or when new data routing provisions are added to the rules. The 2019 contingent lien change — applied retroactively to all Current Use applications ever filed — carried the same notification gap. The pattern is not new. But the stakes are.

The pipeline

Inside Current Use, landowners with certain ecological features on their property can enroll those areas as Ecologically Significant Treatment Areas — ESTAs. The subcategories include natural communities of statewide significance, rare, threatened and endangered species occurrences, vernal pools, riparian areas, forested wetlands, and old forests.

Enrollment in an ESTA subcategory is described as voluntary.

What is not described — not on the enrollment form, not in the program summary available to landowners — is what happens to the data once a landowner enrolls.

The FPR Minimum Acceptable Management and Plan Standards, currently under revision with a May 31, 2026 effective date, state it plainly for three specific subcategories. State-significant natural communities enrolled as ESTAs will be included in the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Natural Heritage Database. Rare, threatened, and endangered species occurrences enrolled as ESTAs will be included in the same database. Verified vernal pools enrolled as ESTAs will be included in datasets managed by the same database. The enrollment process for these three subcategories routes shapefiles and documentation through DFW for confirmation before county forester approval. The data doesn’t just go to the program — it goes to the state.

A commenter in FPR’s own public record connected what happens next. Resources identified in the Natural Heritage Database, the commenter wrote, are being used as a rationale to place land in Act 250 Tier 3 — the critical natural resource designation that triggers Act 250 permitting requirements for development on that land. FPR did not dispute that connection in its response.

The state’s own FAQ on Tier 3 acknowledges the value question directly: “As Tier 3 does not prohibit development, it is unclear if this would have an impact on land value.” That is the state’s answer. It does not know.

What is known is this: Act 250 permit conditions attach to land permanently and run with every future owner. A buyer inherits every condition attached to every prior permit on a parcel. A landowner who voluntarily enrolls a rare plant community as an ESTA — to protect it, to be a good steward, to work the plan the program requires — may be setting in motion a chain whose endpoint is a permanent regulatory condition on the land that binds sellers they have never met, in transactions they will never be part of.

Sources: FPR Minimum Management and Plan Standards markup, effective May 31, 2026. FPR Responsiveness Summary Comment No. 140 — NHD/Tier 3 connection stated, undisputed by FPR. Act 181 FAQ, Land Use Review Board — land value impact described as unclear.

FPR’s response to Comment 140: changes were made to clarify that the NHD routing applies only to certain ESTA subcategories, not all. The disclosure question — whether landowners are told any of this at the point of enrollment — was not addressed.

Two tracks, one deadline

Two separate agencies are simultaneously revising the rules that govern Current Use enrollment. The Tax Department is running a formal rulemaking process — 26P008, properly filed with the Secretary of State on March 25, 2026, with a public hearing and a comment period. The Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation is revising its Minimum Management and Plan Standards under the Commissioner’s administrative authority, with no formal rulemaking filing, no LCAR review, and a May 31, 2026 effective date — twenty days after the Tax Department’s comment period closes.

That position is contested — and the contestation is on the public record.

During a public webinar, FPR representatives stated they had chosen not to follow the Vermont Administrative Procedures Act. At least four separate commenters in the written public record challenged the legal basis for that choice directly.

One cited 3 V.S.A. § 846, the statute that says failure to file with the Secretary of State, the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, or the Interagency Committee on Administrative Rules prevents a rule from taking effect. FPR’s response: the Standards are not rules, so § 846 does not apply.

Another commenter was more direct. Citing 3 V.S.A. § 831 — which requires an agency to initiate formal rulemaking wherever statute directs an agency to adopt rules — the commenter wrote that FPR was attempting to grant themselves authority to mandate what citizens do on private property. The commenter stated that if FPR did not proceed through the lawful rulemaking process, the next step was a filing in Washington Superior Court for an injunction, and a declaratory judgment action under 3 V.S.A. § 807.

A third commenter noted that the original 1984 Forest Management Standards were adopted through the legislative rulemaking process — and argued that major changes more restrictive than those 1984 rules must go through the same process now.

FPR’s response to all of it: the Commissioner’s authority under 32 V.S.A. § 3752 does not require formal rulemaking. No changes were made on the authority question.

The Standards take effect May 31, 2026. As of publication, no court filing has been made. The legal question those commenters raised has not been answered anywhere other than by the agency whose conduct is being questioned.

What is not contested is the timeline. Both tracks — formal and informal — land on the same landowners on overlapping effective dates. The tax rule that redefines the program’s purpose and the management standards that route enrollment data into the state’s conservation database are moving together.

Keith Thompson, FPR’s Private Lands Program Manager, was contacted and asked whether the two timelines converged by design, whether enrolled landowners were directly notified of the Standards revision, and whether the ESTA-to-NHD data pipeline is disclosed to enrollees at the time of enrollment.

As of publication, no response has been received.

Seven generations

Michael Shephard of Starksboro, Vermont, is the sixth generation on land his family has owned since 1835 — before the property tax system existed. His sons are the seventh. Their hundred acres came together in two pieces: forty acres purchased from their great aunt, where the house sits, and sixty acres Michael’s father gifted him, adjacent land used for mapling and forestry. Michael runs a timber framing company. He maple sugars. He and his partner Erin Buckwalter have an active forest management plan on the property, reported to the state annually. They work the plan.

Buckwalter is Deputy Director of Engagement and Development at NOFA-VT, the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont. She works with farmers and landowners across the state and understands from the inside what program participation actually demands.

Neither of them knew, until they read this series, that both the tax rules and the forest management standards governing their Current Use enrollment were being rewritten simultaneously.

Act 181 changed that. Buckwalter said Act 181 is generating the most inbound engagement NOFA has seen on any single issue in quite a while — not because NOFA is recruiting landowners into the conversation, but because landowners are driving it to them. People are showing up because of the noise in the system. NOFA is still learning the specifics, she said, but the signal from the field is unmistakable.

On the idea that Current Use landowners are getting something for nothing: she pushed back firmly. The program requires a paid-for forest management plan. It requires annual reporting. It requires working the land in accordance with that plan. The chickens they used to keep are gone — wildlife populations have expanded enough on their actively managed land that keeping small livestock became unworkable without significant investment in additional infrastructure. The stewardship the program demands is real, and it changes what working the land looks like in practice.

When landowners face the land use change tax on exit — the mechanism that makes leaving Current Use expensive — the work they did while enrolled is not credited against what they owe. Buckwalter was direct about what that work produces: a public good. Clean water. Wildlife habitat. Carbon storage. Working forest. The state benefits from that stewardship every year the land is enrolled. When a landowner exits, none of that contribution is recognized. The penalty is calculated on development value. The public good delivered is not part of the equation.

Michael looked into carbon agreements for small parcels a few years ago through the Family Forest Carbon Program. He found them predatory — significant upside for carbon companies, limited benefit for the landowner. He did not sign. Now, buried in 26P008 v.16, a new provision gives FPR authority to determine whether a carbon sequestration agreement on enrolled land affects Current Use eligibility. The landowners most likely to be targeted by carbon companies — working families with modest acreage — are the same ones who were never told this provision was being added.

The carbon tension runs in both directions. A reader enrolled in Current Use wrote in response to this series that her enrollment is currently preventing her from participating in the Family Forest Carbon Program at the level her management plan requires. She asked whether enrolled landowners would face new work requirements tied to biodiversity or climate adaptation. It is a reasonable question. The answer is being written right now — in two rulemaking processes most enrolled landowners have never heard of.

That is not an unreasonable ask.

The architecture

Act 59 is described as voluntary. Current Use enrollment is voluntary. ESTA subcategory enrollment is voluntary. The FPR Standards revision was described, in FPR’s own communications, as not subject to formal rulemaking requirements.

Secretary Moore’s framing assumes that landowners who do nothing are unaffected. But some already cannot. Landowners enrolled before July 2023 did not opt into the new purpose clause — it was amended around them. Landowners with ESTA data already in the Natural Heritage Database cannot retrieve it. Landowners who want to exit face a land use change tax that makes leaving expensive. And the carbon provision now gives FPR a seat at the table for agreements landowners may pursue independently — whether they invited that oversight or not.

Voluntary entry. No clean exit. A statutory deadline the state must meet. And 19,000+ enrolled landowners who were never told the terms were changing.

And yet: Vermont has a statutory obligation to conserve 30 percent of its land by 2030. The Vermont Conservation Plan, being developed by VHCB with a legislative deadline of summer 2026, will account for that progress. The Natural Heritage Database — fed in part by voluntary ESTA enrollment — is used in the Act 250 Tier 3 mapping process. A commenter in FPR’s own public record stated that resources identified in the Natural Heritage Database are being used as a rationale to include land in Act 250 Tier 3, which can trigger Act 250 permitting requirements. FPR did not dispute that connection. Tier 3 rulemaking is currently suspended pending legislative action. But a commenter in FPR’s own public record noted that ESTA data had already been added to the Natural Heritage Database without disclosure — before the Standards revision named the practice explicitly. The suspension does not reach data already collected. The rulemaking revising the purpose of Current Use cites Act 59’s statutory language as its authority.

A mandatory goal. Voluntary mechanisms. A data pipeline connecting them. Rules being rewritten on parallel tracks, landing on the same landowners, on overlapping dates, without direct notification to the 19,000+ people enrolled.

Here is what every one of those landowners signed when they enrolled. Form CU-301, the Current Use enrollment application, contains four certifications. The information they provided is accurate. They are subject to rules as adopted by the Current Use Advisory Board and the Commissioner of Taxes. They are subject to state statutes. And the state can enter their property without notice.

That is it. Nothing about the program’s purpose being changed after enrollment. Nothing about ecological data being routed to a state database. Nothing about downstream regulatory consequences. Nothing about what “rules as adopted” means when the rules haven’t been written yet.

That last phrase is the mechanism. By signing, a landowner agrees to rules that don’t exist at the time of signing. Including 26P008. Including the revised FPR Standards. Including any future amendment to the program’s purpose. The form is broad enough to cover all of it. The landowner had no way of knowing that when they signed.

Every change described in this installment is technically within what 19,000+ landowners agreed to. None of it was disclosed to them. All of it is legal.

Consider what this means for the person the program depends on most. A landowner hires a licensed forester to prepare a management plan. The forester walks the property and finds a rare species or a vernal pool. Under the revised FPR Standards effective May 31, 2026, the forester is required to inform the landowner of the feature. If the landowner chooses to enroll it as an ESTA subcategory, that data is then routed to the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Natural Heritage Database. If the landowner chooses not to enroll, there is no requirement to report the feature to the state.

The choice is the landowner’s. What was never disclosed — prior to the revised Standards — is what that choice produces. The state confirmed on record in response to this series that before the current revision, landowners were not explicitly notified that voluntary ESTA enrollment could result in feature data being included in the Natural Heritage Database. The revised Standards clarify this. The prior ones did not.

But clarifying that data goes to the database is not the same as explaining what the database does. The revised Standards notify landowners that ESTA enrollment may result in data being included in the Natural Heritage Database. They do not describe what the Natural Heritage Database is used for. They do not disclose that the data, once entered, cannot be retrieved. They do not address the downstream regulatory consequences that a commenter in FPR’s own public record identified — that NHD data is used as a rationale to place land in Act 250 Tier 3, with permit conditions that attach permanently to the land. Disclosure of the database was added. Disclosure of what the database does was not.

A commenter in FPR’s own public record acknowledged the consequence directly: once enrolled, ecological data on private land becomes a rationale for placing that land in Act 250 Tier 3. Tier 3 triggers Act 250 permitting requirements for development. Act 250 permit conditions attach permanently and run with every future owner. The land the forester mapped is now worth less to anyone who wants to do anything with it. The landowner who hired the forester to protect their forest has a permanently encumbered parcel they can neither develop freely nor exit cheaply.

The state does not take the land. It takes the decision-making power over the land — incrementally, through a chain of voluntary acts, none of which individually looks like a taking, but which collectively produce a result the landowner never anticipated and never consented to.

Secretary Moore said it is a willing buyer, willing seller framework. But if the seller’s land is worth less because of what the forester was required to report, and the buyer knows it, and leaving costs money — how willing is that transaction?

The Vermont Conservation Plan is due to the legislature in summer 2026. It will describe how Vermont intends to reach 30 percent conserved by 2030. The data that plan draws on is being assembled now — in the Natural Heritage Database, in the ESTA enrollment pipeline, in the rulemaking processes described in this installment.

The April 30 public hearing on 26P008 is open to the public. The comment deadline is May 11, 2026. Written comments may be submitted through the Vermont Department of Taxes website at tax.vermont.gov. Find the Current Use Advisory Board rulemaking under Proposed Rules.

What this covers

• The Act 59 → Current Use → ESTA → NHD pipeline, documented in primary sources

• Two agencies rewriting rules simultaneously on the same landowners

• What Form CU-301 says — and what it doesn’t

• The forester’s new role under the May 31 Standards

• Julie Moore on record, April 23, 2026

What this doesn’t cover yet

• How much ESTA data is already in the NHD — PRR pending

• The full carbon market pipeline — TNC, FFCP, who benefits

• The Vermont Conservation Plan — not yet published

• Whether anyone files the Superior Court injunction

Questions still open

• If Act 59 is voluntary — how does Vermont reach a mandatory 30% goal?

• If the forester routes your data to the state — do you have a claim?

• What else has been applied retroactively that enrolled landowners don’t know about?

Support this work: ko-fi.com/alexsysthompson | alexsys.substack.com

Primary sources

32 V.S.A. § 3751 — Statement of Purpose, Use Value Appraisal Program, as amended by 2021 No. 146 (Adj. Sess.) § 2, eff. July 1, 2023 (Act 59). legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/fullchapter/32/124

Vermont Act 59 (2023) — Full text as enacted. legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2024/Docs/ACTS/ACT059/ACT059%20As%20Enacted.pdf

26P008 v.16 — Proposed Current Use Advisory Board Rule, filed with Vermont Secretary of State March 25, 2026. Vermont Secretary of State Proposed Rules.

FPR Minimum Acceptable Management and Plan Standards — Markup reflecting changes from August 12 draft, effective date May 31, 2026. Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.

FPR Responsiveness Summary — Final Standards. Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. Public record on file. Comment No. 140 cited directly.

Jill Remick, PVR Director and Chair, Current Use Advisory Board — correspondence of record, April 23, 2026. Confirmed on record: purpose clause language drawn from 32 V.S.A. § 3751 as amended; hearing scheduled voluntarily; 26P008 filed with Secretary of State March 25, 2026.

Press inquiry to Keith Thompson, FPR Private Lands Program Manager — FPR was contacted. Response pending as of publication.

Michael Shepherd and Erin Buckwalter — interview conducted April 2026. Pre-publication review of relevant passages provided to both sources prior to publication.

Julie Moore, Secretary, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources — Governor Scott Administration Weekly Update, April 23, 2026. Timestamp: 14:29. Archived at ORCA Media / YouTube.

Form CU-301 — Vermont Current Use Enrollment Application. Vermont Department of Taxes. tax.vermont.gov/property/current-use

UPDATE 3: April 28,2026

• May 11 is the comment deadline, not the effective date — factual correction

• ANR confirmed on record that prior to the revised Standards, landowners were not explicitly notified of ESTA-to-NHD data routing

UPDATE 2— April 23, 2026 A response from Jill Remick, PVR Director and Chair of the Current Use Advisory Board, has corrected an error in the original version of this post. The biodiversity, wildlife corridors, and climate adaptation language in draft rule 26P008 v.16 is not new to the rulemaking — it reflects 32 V.S.A. § 3751 as amended. The correction is significant: that language entered the Current Use statute through Act 59 of 2021 (Adj. Sess.), effective July 1, 2023 — the same Act 59 this series has been covering as part of Vermont's conservation and climate legislative arc. The rule is not inventing new policy goals. The legislature added them to the statute in 2023. The original Finding A has been corrected below.

UPDATE 1: A reader with direct knowledge of the FPR Standards has flagged an additional finding — the new rules cap forestland-to-open-land conversion at 2 acres. Previous policy allowed up to 20%. The public comment record runs more than 300 pages. The Department proceeded anyway.

Vermont Is Rewriting the Rules for Current Use.

The hearing is April 30. Comments close May 11. Here’s what’s changing and why it matters.

UPDATE — April 23, 2026

A response from Jill Remick, PVR Director and Chair of the Current Use Advisory Board, has corrected an error in the original version of this post. The biodiversity, wildlife corridors, and climate adaptation language in draft rule 26P008 v.16 is not new to the rulemaking — it reflects 32 V.S.A. § 3751 as currently written. The correction matters: that language entered the Current Use statute through Act 59 of 2021 (Adj. Sess.), effective July 1, 2023 — the same Act 59 this series has been covering as part of Vermont’s conservation and climate legislative arc. The rule is not inventing new policy goals. The legislature added them to the statute in 2023. Finding 1 below has been corrected accordingly.

Vermont’s Current Use program — the 47-year-old tax reduction that’s supposed to preserve the working landscape — is being updated by rule for the first time in years. Two proceedings are underway simultaneously. The Department of Taxes has drafted new rules (26P008 v.16). The Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation is revising its Minimum Management Standards, effective May 31. Most landowners enrolled in Current Use are unaware of either.

A public hearing on the Tax Department’s draft rules is scheduled for April 30, 2026. Written comments close May 11. Here is what the proceedings actually involve.

The program’s statutory purpose changed in 2023. Most landowners don’t know.

In 1978, Vermont created Current Use to preserve the working landscape and productive agricultural and forest use. That purpose remained largely intact for decades.

In 2023, Act 59 amended 32 V.S.A. § 3751 — the Current Use statement of purpose — to add new goals. The statute now reads that the program exists:

“to encourage and assist in their conservation and preservation for future productive use and for the protection of natural ecological systems and services, including air and water quality, wildlife habitat and wildlife corridors, enhanced biodiversity, and forest health and integrity”

“to assist in climate adaptation and mitigation”

Draft rule 26P008 v.16 updates the rule to reflect the current statute. Jill Remick, PVR Director and Chair of the Current Use Advisory Board, confirmed this on record: the language in the draft rule is taken directly from § 3751 as amended.

The finding stands — the program’s purpose now includes biodiversity, wildlife corridors, and climate adaptation. What changed is the author: it was the legislature, through Act 59, not the rulemaking agency. Most landowners enrolled before 2023 enrolled under a different statutory purpose than the one that governs their enrollment today.

Your voluntary enrollment may be feeding a regulatory database.

The draft rules formally define “Ecologically Significant Treatment Areas” (ESTAs) as an enrollment subcategory. The FPR Standards document is explicit about what enrollment means:

“Enrollment of some State Significant ESTAs will result in their inclusion in Vermont Fish and Wildlife’s Natural Heritage Database or other datasets to track ecological features.”

The Natural Heritage Database is the same database used to generate Act 181’s Tier 3 mapping. Tier 3 maps determine where Act 250 jurisdiction applies starting December 31, 2026.

A landowner who enrolls certain parcels in Current Use to reduce their property tax bill may be contributing data that shapes the regulatory map of their own land. The enrollment materials do not appear to disclose this.

Carbon agreements now affect your eligibility.

Under the draft rules, if you have signed a carbon sequestration agreement or hold a conservation easement that restricts active management, the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation — not you, not the Tax Department — makes the final determination about whether your land stays enrolled in Current Use.

What you can do before May 11.

Public hearing: April 30, 2026

Written comments due: May 11, 2026

Leave a comment: tax.vermont.gov/public-comments

Draft rules: View draft rules on tax.vermont.gov

If you are enrolled in Current Use, or advise landowners who are, these rules affect you. The comment period is the public’s opportunity to put concerns on the record before the rules are finalized.

This series will continue to cover what happens at the April 30 hearing and what comes out of the parallel FPR Standards revision. If you have information about either proceeding, you can reach me through Substack or at alexsys.substack.com.

Questions have been submitted to the Vermont Department of Taxes and the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation regarding the procedural status of both proceedings. Responses will be reported as received.

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

alexsys.substack.com | ko-fi.com/alexsysthompson

PRIMARY SOURCES

Vermont Department of Taxes, Draft Rules for Implementing Use Value Appraisal of Agricultural and Forest Land in Vermont, Revision v.16, marked-up August 27, 2025. Posted March 30, 2026. tax.vermont.gov/document/draft-rules-implementing-use-value-appraisal-agricultural-and-forestland-vermont

Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, Use Value Appraisal Minimum Management and Plan Standards — Markup Comparison, Final Changes from August 12, 2025 Draft. Effective May 31, 2026. fpr.vermont.gov/CurrentUseForestLandStandardsRevision

Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, Use Value Appraisal Minimum Management and Plan Standards — Responsiveness Summary, April 10, 2026. fpr.vermont.gov/CurrentUseForestLandStandardsRevision

32 V.S.A. Chapter 124 — Use Value Appraisal of Agricultural, Forest, Conservation, and Farm Buildings (1978).

32 V.S.A. § 3751 — Statement of Purpose, Use Value Appraisal Program. As amended by 2021, No. 146 (Adj. Sess.), § 2, eff. July 1, 2023 (Act 59). legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/fullchapter/32/124

Jill Remick, PVR Director and Chair, Current Use Advisory Board — correspondence of record, April 23, 2026. Confirmed on record: biodiversity, wildlife corridors, and climate adaptation language in 26P008 v.16 is taken directly from 32 V.S.A. § 3751 as amended. Confirmed hearing was scheduled voluntarily by the CUAB. Confirmed 26P008 was formally filed with the Secretary of State on March 25, 2026.

alexsys.substack.com | ko-fi.com/alexsysthompson

An Investigative Series · By Alexsys Thompson · April 2026

In 1978, Vermont passed a law with a clear purpose.

The Use Value Appraisal program — what almost everyone now calls Current Use — was created, in the words of 32 V.S.A. Chapter 124, “to preserve the working landscape, preserve the rural character of Vermont, and protect the natural ecological systems and natural resources of the forestland of Vermont.”

Forty-seven years later, the program reduces the taxable value of more than 19,000 Vermont parcels by more than $3.5 billion a year.

18.7% of that annual reduction goes to Vermont’s 2,268 farmer-qualified parcels.

53.6% of it goes to trusts, LLCs, corporations, or out-of-state owners.

Those two numbers come from Vermont’s own data. They are the subject of this piece.

To understand the impact of Vermont’s land use laws on the working landscape, you first have to understand who holds that landscape and under what terms. Current Use — Vermont’s 47-year-old tax reduction program for enrolled land — is the first layer. It will not be the last. What the data shows about who benefits from this program is a necessary foundation for any honest assessment of what Act 59, Act 181, or any future policy actually does, and for whom.

Vermont has passed two laws in recent years that name the working landscape as their subject. Act 59 (2023) set a goal of conserving 30% of Vermont’s land by 2030. Act 181 (2024) restructured how Vermont land use is regulated. Both laws name the same landscape. The data below documents who currently holds the tax benefit meant to protect it.

What the data is

This analysis joins two Vermont state datasets on SPAN number: the Vermont Department of Taxes 2025 Current Use Statewide Report (tax year 2025, published at tax.vermont.gov/property/current-use) and the Vermont Center for Geographic Information Statewide Standardized Parcel Data — Grand List Year 2025 (geodata.vermont.gov/pages/parcels).

Those two datasets must be joined because the information a reader would want — who owns the parcel and where they live — does not sit with the Tax Department. Tara Hewett, paralegal in the Vermont Department of Taxes Property Valuation and Review Division, confirmed on April 22, 2026 that owner name and mailing-address data are held at VCGI, not at Taxes, and directed this series to the Grand List table.

Statutory framing comes from 32 V.S.A. Chapter 124 and from a Joint Fiscal Office overview presented January 29, 2025 by Fiscal Analyst Ezra Holben. No secondary sources. Primary documents only.

The scale of the program

This is a large transfer. The program is working at scale. The question is for whom.

Who receives the benefit

Parsing the Owner Name 1 field in the joined dataset for entity-type keywords and the Mailing Address State field for residency yields the following categories.

Vermont individual owners — an in-state mailing address and no entity keyword — account for 11,037 parcels (56.7%) and $1.65 billion in annual reduction (46.4%).

Entities or out-of-state owners, combined — the union of any non-individual entity name and any out-of-state mailing address — account for 8,449 parcels (43.3%) and more than $1.9 billion in reduction (53.6%).

Broken out by entity type:

Out-of-state owners

4,420 parcels (22.7%) enrolled in Vermont Current Use have a mailing address outside Vermont. They receive $923 million in annual tax reduction — 25.9% of the statewide total.

The top five states by dollar value of reduction received:

Two named institutions in the data

Two organizations appear by name in the public record and warrant identification because their Current Use enrollment is, by operation of the program, a matter of public record.

• Vermont Land Trust: 25 parcels enrolled, $5.2 million annual tax reduction.

• The Nature Conservancy: 111 parcels enrolled, $23.9 million annual tax reduction.

Those are figures, not allegations. The purpose of naming them is the same purpose served by naming Massachusetts as a state: the reader is entitled to see where the program’s benefits actually land.

Where the benefit goes, county by county

The program’s entity and out-of-state capture is not uniform across Vermont. The ski corridor — Lamoille, Windsor, Bennington, Windham — shows the highest capture rates. The agricultural northwest — Franklin, Addison — shows the lowest. Essex County is the outlier for reasons that have nothing to do with ski resorts.

A note on method

The 53.6% combined figure uses a union of two categories — non-individual entity name or out-of-state mailing address — so that a parcel appearing in both is counted only once.

The entity-keyword parse is a floor, not a ceiling. Some trusts and LLCs are titled with personal-sounding names and will not be captured. The real share of Current Use reduction flowing to non-individual ownership is therefore likely higher than 53.6%, not lower.

The data does not describe intent. It describes enrollment and reduction. Vermont families use trusts for ordinary estate-planning reasons. LLCs hold land for ordinary liability reasons. Out-of-state owners may have long-standing Vermont ties. None of that is in dispute here. What is in dispute is whether a program whose statutory purpose names working landscapes and Vermont’s rural character is serving that purpose when a majority of its annual benefit flows outside the category of resident individual Vermont owners, and when the farmer-qualified share is 18.7%.

This is the baseline against which Act 181 and Act 59 operate.

The open question

The program’s statutory purpose is to preserve Vermont’s working landscape and rural character. 81.3% of the annual benefit now flows to non-farmer enrollees, and 53.6% to entities or out-of-state owners. Whether that divergence from original purpose is a policy failure, an intended evolution, or something else is a question the data raises but does not answer. That is the reader’s assessment to make.

———

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

If this work is useful to you, you can support it at

ko-fi.com/alexsysthompson

Primary sources

• Vermont Department of Taxes, 2025 Current Use Statewide Report. tax.vermont.gov/property/current-use. Tax year 2025. Extracted February 11, 2026.

• Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Statewide Standardized Parcel Data — Grand List Year 2025. geodata.vermont.gov/pages/parcels. Downloaded April 22, 2026.

• 32 V.S.A. Chapter 124 — Use Value Appraisal of Agricultural, Forest, Conservation, and Farm Buildings (1978).

• Joint Fiscal Office, “Current Use Overview,” Ezra Holben, Fiscal Analyst, January 29, 2025. ljfo.vermont.gov/assets/Subjects/2025-Session-Documents/GENERAL-379922-v4-Current_Use_1-21-25.pdf.

• Vermont Department of Taxes, Tara Hewett, Paralegal, Property Valuation and Review Division — correspondence of record, April 22, 2026.

An Investigative Series · By Alexsys Thompson · April 2026

It appears in the Vermont Secretary of State’s lobbying compensation disclosures, across four biennia, for seven organizations registered on land use, housing, natural resources, and environmental policy during the window Act 181 was developed, passed, and implemented.

What that figure does not include is the 11,500+ Vermonters in a Facebook group who had never lobbied anyone. The 16 selectboards that passed formal letters in public session. The 57 legislators who signed a piece of paper calling for repeal. The farmer’s wife who built a state-grade analysis tool at her kitchen table in two nights.

This piece examines both records.

Every claim is sourced to a primary document or confirmed public record. Open questions are labeled open. The reader assesses what the pattern means — the series does not tell them.

The $2.96 Million Record

This series pulled Vermont’s registered lobbying compensation data for four consecutive biennia — 2019–2020, 2021–2022, 2023–2024, and 2025–2026 — and totaled compensation for organizations registered on the policy areas that produced Act 181.

Seven organizations. Four biennia. more than $2.9 million.

That lobbying spend is one part of the institutional record. Others have been documented in earlier installments.

VNRC received at least $80,000 from the Lintilhac Foundation in 2024 alone, confirmed from the foundation’s Form 990-PF via Grantmakers.io. Let’s Build Homes secured a grant from Arnold Ventures in November 2025 that moved the coalition more than halfway toward its $1.3 million fundraising goal, confirmed from LBH’s own press release. The Vermont Futures Project — whose report has been cited in legislative correspondence defending Act 181 — counts the Vermont Chamber of Commerce as Founding Partner, confirmed from vtfuturesproject.org.

The National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, funded by the Packard Foundation, provided Rep. Sheldon with draft bill language, talking points, and example management plans for Act 59 beginning in 2020 — three years before that bill passed. NCEL staff connected her with legislators in other states introducing similar legislation. The Center for American Progress later named Vermont as one of eight states implementing 30x30 conservation targets, citing Act 59 as a national model.

That is the institutional record. It is not a secret. Every dollar of it is disclosed, published, and searchable.

The Sixteen Towns- 10 Counties

On the other side of that record: sixteen Vermont towns that filed formal selectboard letters opposing Act 181.

This series documented the letters through direct community outreach and public records requests. Sixteen towns. Ten counties. Approximately 25,000 Vermonters.

Fairfield is the third-largest town in Vermont by land area — 68.5 square miles, population 2,044. Its selectboard wrote in February 2026: “The state’s Future-Land-Use projections have not been informed by our families, our efforts, our stories or our history.” The letter named the fiscal reality plainly: “Our grand list is just over $1.5 million dollars and our total expenses on governmental activities were $2.3 million dollars.” Act 181’s restrictions, the board wrote, could impose “an unfair economic burden” on the town’s overall economic stability.

The Cabot selectboard letter, dated April 7, 2026, named a specific number: 25 percent or more of Cabot was slated for Tier 3. “If this goes through as written, with the road rule and Tier 3, 80% of Cabot will have to go through Act 250,” the board wrote — while other municipalities received no Tier 3, no road rule, and all the exemptions.

Vershire — signed April 9, 2026 by the town lister, a planning commission member, the former planning commission chair, and a former selectboard member — documented what voluntary conservation already looked like without state mandates: 69.1 percent of the town’s land base, 16,133 acres, enrolled in Current Use. That stewardship equated to $14.9 million removed from the grand list voluntarily. “Vershire is effectively subsidizing the state’s ‘Green’ landscape with a very narrow tax base,” the letter stated. “Vershire is already doing more than its ‘fair share’ of conservation — and our taxpayers are literally paying the price for it.”

Eden documented a contradiction at the center of the law’s design: the town had been assigned a target of 70 homes by 2030 under the state’s regional housing targets, while Act 181 simultaneously made building those homes harder.

Franklin County alone had five towns on the record: Berkshire, Enosburgh, Fairfield, Franklin, and Highgate. Orange County had two: Corinth and Topsham. Windham County had two: Whitingham and Halifax. The rest stretched from Winhall in Bennington County to Charleston in Orleans County to Weathersfield in Windsor County to Grand Isle on its island.

These were not form letters. Each one described what the law would do to the specific land, families, and working landscape of a specific Vermont community.

Source: Town of Fairfield selectboard letter, February 25, 2026. Town of Cabot selectboard letter, April 7, 2026. Vershire citizen testimony — Debra S. Kingsbury (Town Lister), Michelle E. Massa (Planning Commission Member), T. Wm. Baylis (Former Planning Commission Chair), Marc McKee (Former Selectboard Member) — April 9, 2026. Eden selectboard letter, April 2026. Halifax selectboard letter, Deerfield Valley News, April 16, 2026. All letters on file with this series.

Two Nights. One State Contract. A Year Apart.

While the state’s outside contractor worked on its socioeconomic analysis of Tier 3 mapping, a Vermont farmer’s wife built one herself.

Neil Ryan documented it in VTDigger on April 17, 2026: “One farmer’s wife, in consultation with a Middlebury geography professor, built the methodology and programming to evaluate the socioeconomic implications of Tier 3 mapping. In two nights of work, she created a tool that the Agency of Natural Resources hired an outside technology firm to create. Theirs won’t be ready for at least another year.”

Source: Neil Ryan, VTDigger, April 17, 2026.

Nineteen Days

On March 27, 2026, Vermont Public and VTDigger reported that Rep. Amy Sheldon was not open to rolling back elements of Act 181.

On April 15, 2026, she told her committee she was “looking at repealing the road rule and the Tier 3 and revisiting how we structure that.”

The same day, Speaker Krowinski issued a formal press release: “Following extensive feedback from communities across Vermont, it is clear that the ‘Road Rule’ and ‘Tier 3’ need to be repealed.”

Between those two positions: nineteen days.

What the record holds in those nineteen days: a WDEV radio conversation between Neil Ryan and Jamey Fidel on April 2. A Rural Caucus listening session on April 7, attended by LURB Board Member Alex Weinhagen. The House Environment Committee testimony on April 8 — Ryan, Ornela Mata Figueroa, Jamey Fidel, Sam Lincoln — all on the public record, all timestamped. Megan Sullivan of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce testifying on April 9 that maps preceded process, engagement was reactive rather than formative, and trust was broken. The 57-member Rural Caucus sign-on letter on April 10. Part VII published April 14. Part VIII published April 15.

And the letters. Sixteen selectboard letters, voted on in public session, filed through town clerks, addressed to legislators by name.

Source: Vermont Public/VTDigger, Carly Berlin, March 27 and April 15, 2026. Speaker Krowinski formal press release, April 15, 2026. WDEV Hot Off The Press, April 2, 2026. House Environment Committee public recordings, April 8–9, 2026. Rural Caucus sign-on letter, via Rep. Lisa Hango constituent newsletter, April 10, 2026.

As of publication, repeal has not occurred. The Road Rule and Tier 3 remain on the books. Repeal requires a House vote on amended S.325, Senate concurrence, and the Governor’s signature.

What the Record Shows and What It Doesn’t

The record shows more than $2.9 million in registered lobbying compensation across four biennia, foundation funding from Lintilhac to VNRC, from Arnold Ventures to Let’s Build Homes, from Packard to NCEL, and a sixteen-member NRB steering committee that included no rural landowners, farmers, foresters, or loggers. That finding is documented in Part VI.

The record shows sixteen selectboard letters, ten counties, 57 legislators, 11,500+ Facebook group members, and a socioeconomic analysis tool built in two nights.

The record shows that within nineteen days of the primary author of Act 181 saying she was not open to rolling back elements of the law, the Speaker of the House called for repeal.

The record does not show that the institutional advocacy was improper. Foundation funding of advocacy organizations is standard practice. Registered lobbying is disclosed by design. Coalition letters and model legislation are legal and common across the political spectrum. This series does not assert otherwise.

What the record does show is a pattern worth naming: the same organizations that funded the policy also shaped it. Some of the same individuals who drafted it testified in support of it. Some who testified in support of it later administered it. Some who administered it are now managing its public narrative during the amendment process.

That is not a conspiracy. It is how institutional policy gets made. The question the record raises is a structural one: when the funding, the drafting, the testimony, the implementation, and the public defense of a law flow through the same interconnected network — who was representing the 25,000 Vermonters whose selectboards had to write letters to be heard?

The record does not answer that question. It only makes it harder to ignore.

What Comes Next

The Road Rule remains scheduled to take effect July 1, 2026. Tier 3 designations remain scheduled to take effect December 31, 2026. As of April 19, 2026 — the day this piece published — all eleven members of the House Environment Committee, including Chair Sheldon, have verbally agreed that the Road Rule and Tier 3 need to be repealed. No draft bill language exists. No vote has been taken. The bill must still pass committee, the full House floor, the Senate Natural Resources Committee, the Senate floor, and reach the Governor’s desk. Repeal is not done.

On April 19, 2026, two voices said so from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Collie Gold, administrator of the Vermont Act 181 Facebook group, told 11,500+ members: “What we do have is verbal agreement from all 11 members, including chair Amy Sheldon, that they need to and will repeal the two sections of Act 181 for the Road Rule and Tier 3. That is huge, but far from done.” The group — two months old — passed 10,000 members six days ago. It is still growing.

Vermont Senate Republicans posted the same day: “It is almost certain that some will try to accomplish through different means what Act 181 was intended to do. Senate Republicans will remain vigilant and push for repeals, reform, and processes that place Vermont landowners at the table.”

Different messengers. Same message.

Eighty-two legislators who voted for Act 181’s veto override are on Vermont’s 2026 ballot. The filing deadline for challengers is May 28, 2026. The primary is August 11, 2026.

What happens next is up to the people who live here.

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

If this reporting is useful to you, you can support the series

alexsys.substack.com · Part X

Primary Sources

Vermont Secretary of State, lobbyist compensation disclosures, 2019–2020, 2021–2022, 2023–2024, 2025–2026 biennia.

Lintilhac Foundation, Form 990-PF, 2024 tax year. Via Grantmakers.io.

Let’s Build Homes, “Let’s Build Homes Awarded Catalytic Funding from Arnold Ventures,” November 18, 2025. letsbuildhomes.org.

Vermont Futures Project, donor listings, last updated March 2025. vtfuturesproject.org.

National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, published materials. ncelenviro.org.

Center for American Progress, “State Policy Leadership to Conserve Nature,” April 2024. americanprogress.org.

Town of Fairfield selectboard letter, February 25, 2026. On file with this series.

Halifax selectboard letter. Deerfield Valley News, April 16, 2026. deerfieldvalleynews.org.

Selectboard letters, 14 additional Vermont towns. On file with this series.

Rural Caucus sign-on letter, April 10, 2026. Via Rep. Lisa Hango constituent newsletter, April 10, 2026.

Vermont Public/VTDigger, Carly Berlin, March 27, 2026.

Vermont Public/VTDigger, Carly Berlin, April 15, 2026.

Speaker Jill Krowinski, formal press release, April 15, 2026.

Vermont House Environment Committee, S.325 testimony, April 8–9, 2026. Public recordings, Vermont Legislature YouTube channel.

Neil Ryan, VTDigger, April 17, 2026.

Collie Gold, Administrator, Vermont Act 181 Facebook group, public post, April 19, 2026.

Vermont Senate Republicans, official Facebook page, public post, April 19, 2026.

For documented findings on the steering committee composition, the consensus claim, the funding networks, the housing math, and the full series record, see Parts I through IX at alexsys.substack.com.

Neil Ryan named it. He said it at timestamp 15:35, before the House Environment Committee, on April 8, 2026. Seven days later, the chair of the committee that built the law confirmed it.

This piece documents what the process record shows. Every claim is sourced to a primary document or confirmed public record. Open questions are labeled open. The reader assesses what the pattern means.

The Reversal

On March 27, 2026, Vermont Public and VTDigger reported that Rep. Amy Sheldon, chair of the House Environment Committee and primary author of Act 181, was not open to rolling back elements of the law. She described some arguments raised by opponents as overstated and misguided.

Nineteen days later, on April 15, 2026, she told the committee:

The same day, Speaker Jill Krowinski issued a formal press release:

The nineteen days between those two positions is the public record of what this series has been documenting since Part I.

[ The 19-Day Reversal — Source: Vermont Public/VTDigger, Carly Berlin, March 27 and April 15, 2026. Speaker Krowinski formal press release, April 15, 2026. ]

Source: Vermont Public/VTDigger, Carly Berlin, March 27, 2026 and April 15, 2026. Speaker Jill Krowinski, formal press release, April 15, 2026.

What the record shows is that this outcome was visible in the process documents long before it became visible in the legislative record.

What the Process Record Shows

The September 28, 2023 Conceptual Recommendations document — obtained via public records request, produced by LURB General Counsel Jenny Ronis on April 8, 2026 — states explicitly that the facilitators of the NRB stakeholder process found no consensus on any particular recommendation. The document does not appear in publicly posted materials at the LURB project page. It was produced only in response to a direct records request.

VNRC described the same process as producing a consensus document and specifically called the road rule “a consensus recommendation” — in June 2024 materials and again in January 2025. These are not characterizations from opponents. They are VNRC’s own published documents. The facilitators’ own document contradicts them.

The steering committee that oversaw the NRB process included the Natural Resources Board, the Agency of Natural Resources, a residential developer, VNRC, a housing nonprofit, the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, a conservation nonprofit president, an environmental attorney, a regional planning commission director, an engineering firm, and a municipal planning director.

It did not include a rural landowner, a farmer, a forester, a logger, or a representative from an unzoned rural town. That finding is no longer contested. It was acknowledged in official legislative testimony by the equity oversight body Act 181 itself created.

Jamey Fidel spent 23 years at the Vermont Natural Resources Council as General Counsel and Forest and Wildlife Program Director before joining Audubon Vermont in August 2025. He was a named VNRC witness in the legislative record on H.687. On April 8, 2026, he said:

On the process itself, at timestamp 51:17:

Representative Ela Chapin, a member of the House Environment Committee, wrote to constituents after two weeks of testimony:

The legislature’s own legal counsel reached a parallel conclusion. Ellen Czajkowski of the Office of Legislative Counsel, reviewing the Tier 3 statutory language before the committee:

Alex Weinhagen, board member of the LURB, presented a public engagement slideshow in October 2025 at meetings across Vermont. One slide was titled “Areas that need more work.” The example shown was labeled “Road buffer overreach, Sheldon, VT.” The slide labeled portions of the mapping explicitly as “Overreach areas” versus “Actual connector areas.” That document was obtained via public records request, produced by LURB General Counsel Jenny Ronis on April 14, 2026.

On April 15, 2026 — the same day as Speaker Krowinski’s press release — VNRC sent an email newsletter to its membership. The organization that had called the road rule “a consensus recommendation” in June 2024 and January 2025 now wrote:

Source: NRB Conceptual Recommendations, September 28, 2023, produced via PRR April 8, 2026. LURB Role and Members document, produced via PRR April 8, 2026. Ornela Mata Figueroa testimony, timestamp 43:13, April 8, 2026. Jamey Fidel testimony, timestamps 36:21 and 51:17, April 8, 2026. Rep. Ela Chapin, constituent newsletter, April 2026. Ellen Czajkowski, Office of Legislative Counsel, timestamp 19:46. Alex Weinhagen public engagement presentation, October 2025, produced via PRR April 14, 2026. Vermont Natural Resources Council, email newsletter, April 15, 2026.

The process record is one thread. The data record is another.

The Coalition’s Own Data

Let’s Build Homes launched January 14, 2025 with a stated goal of defending Act 181’s framework and producing 40,000 homes by 2030. Miro Weinberger, former Burlington mayor, is its executive chair. VHFA Executive Director Maura Collins sits on its board. VHFA serves as LBH’s fiscal agent. Arnold Ventures granted LBH more than half of its $1.3 million goal in November 2025.

On April 13, 2026 — the day before Part VII of this series published — Let’s Build Homes released its own geospatial analysis of Vermont housing production from 2021 to 2025, sourced from the DHCD Vermont New Housing database.

Source: letsbuildhomes.org/reports/act-181-exemption-analysis. DHCD Vermont New Housing database. Released April 13, 2026. ]

The organization defending the law released data showing that the rural housing Vermont needs most — single-family homes on rural land — is being built almost entirely outside the framework the law was designed to encourage.

The data does not prove Act 181 is suppressing rural housing. What it documents is that the areas Act 181 exempts from permitting are not where Vermont’s rural housing is being built.

On the same day, John Bossange published a VTDigger commentary citing American Enterprise Institute data: Vermont has a housing shortage of approximately 3,959 units — 1.2 percent of its housing stock, second lowest in the nation. That figure sits at one end of a range. The 40,000 figure sits at the other. The gap between them is examined in Part VIII of this series.

Source: letsbuildhomes.org/reports/act-181-exemption-analysis. DHCD Vermont New Housing database via ArcGIS REST API. John Bossange, VTDigger, April 13, 2026.

The data is one layer. The human record is another.

The People the Record Shows

Neil Ryan built his farm owner-financed. He started with $1,000 in his bank account and a $1,200 trailer. His farm, and two others his family started in Vermont over fifty years, would have triggered Act 250 review under Act 181’s road rule. His childhood farm is now largely mapped Tier 3, including the cow pastures and barn complex.

He testified unaffiliated. He spoke for the young, newly married farmers in his town who placed their entire savings into a small piece of raw land on a Class 2 road mapped entirely as Tier 3 — before they had even begun to build their own homes, with their own hands.

Ryan testified that people were preemptively subdividing and building roads in patterns they otherwise would not have chosen — not because they wanted to, but because the regulatory uncertainty made it rational to move before the rules locked in.

Representative Herb Olson ran for office in 2024 because of Act 181. He is listed as a signatory at the January 2025 launch of Let’s Build Homes — the organization defending the law. In correspondence to this series on April 9, 2026, he documented the math plainly: planners project that only 60 percent of Vermont’s needed housing growth can happen in larger population centers. Forty percent must come from rural areas. In those areas, Act 181 adds permitting burdens and provides no financial incentives.

He described a friend in Monkton trying to build four units of housing for farmworkers — six years and $32,000 later, still no permit.

Representative Rob North, also a member of the House Environment Committee, wrote on his campaign blog on April 11, 2026:

Source: Neil Ryan, written testimony, Vermont House Environment Committee, April 8, 2026. Vermont NRCD formal report, April 2026. Email, Rep. Herb Olson to Alexsys Thompson, April 9, 2026. Rep. Rob North, campaign blog, northforvthouse.com, April 11, 2026.

Senator Scott Beck, Vermont Senate Minority Leader from Caledonia District, spoke on camera to VTSU Lyndon's News7/Newslinc as the mobilization was unfolding. He had served twelve years at the State House

Source: Senator Scott Beck, Vermont Senate Minority Leader, Caledonia District, on-camera interview, VTSU Lyndon News7/Newslinc, April 2026.

The legislative record tells a parallel story.

The Legislative Record

The series has received responses from legislators across the political spectrum since Part I published:

[ Source: Direct written communications, series correspondence log, updated April 15, 2026. ]

What the Record Shows and What It Doesn’t

The record shows a process that concentrated engagement with organizations that had the capacity and access to participate, produced a framework document handed to a broader group after key decisions were already framed, and resulted in a law whose most contested provisions are now being repealed by their author.

The record shows a coalition defending the law that released its own data showing 88 percent of Vermont’s rural single-family housing is being built outside the areas the law is designed to benefit.

Source: Let's Build Homes, Act 181 Exemption Area Analysis. letsbuildhomes.org/reports/act-181-exemption-analysis. DHCD Vermont New Housing database via ArcGIS REST API. Released April 13, 2026.

The record shows a LURB board member using the word “overreach” in a public presentation to describe his own agency’s mapping — before anyone outside state government had seen the maps.

The record shows, in the words of Senator Scott Beck, Vermont Senate Minority Leader, Caledonia District: “This is nothing as I’ve ever seen in my 12 years at the State House. When they mobilize and push back on government, they can make a huge difference.”

The record shows, as documented in Part VIII of this series, that the foundational number used to justify the law’s structure was built on methodology choices that produced a figure seven times larger than the same agency’s prior assessment, was not independently reconciled before being embedded in statute, and has since been revised downward by the same agency that produced it — after the law passed.

The record does not show that anyone acted improperly under Vermont law. Vermont’s conflict of interest standard is narrow by design.

The record does not show that the Road Rule and Tier 3 will be formally repealed. The bill still needs a House vote, Senate concurrence, and the Governor’s signature. What the record shows is that the primary author of the law has called for that repeal.

What Comes Next

The repeal of the road rule and Tier 3 is not the end of the story. It is a confirmation that the record always pointed toward.

What the series has not yet examined is the statutory framework beneath Act 181 — including Act 59, the conservation land designation law passed the year before, and the legislative and institutional infrastructure that positioned both laws as a coordinated policy architecture.

Parts I through III of this series documented the pipeline through which the UN’s 30x30 conservation framework arrived in Vermont statute — from the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to America the Beautiful to NCEL to the Vermont Legislature. That thread, and what happened to the statutory language connecting Vermont’s maps to those global targets on April 1, 2026, remains part of the record this series is building.

The series has also not yet examined what these laws have done to Vermont’s local governments — the selectboards, the town listers, and the planning commissions navigating a framework that restructures local land use authority from Montpelier.

And the series has not yet examined the national network of funders, legislators, and advocacy organizations that positioned Vermont’s experiment as a model for other states — and what happens to that network now that the experiment’s two most contested provisions are being unwound by their own author.

If this reporting is useful to you, you can support the series

Primary Sources

Carly Berlin, Vermont Public/VTDigger, “Vermont House Poised to Roll Back Portions of Act 181,” April 15, 2026.

Representative Ela Chapin, constituent newsletter, House Environment Committee update, April 2026.

Ellen Czajkowski, Office of Legislative Counsel, Vermont General Assembly, House Environment Committee, S.325 session. Timestamp 19:46.

Vermont Natural Resources Council, email newsletter “Where Act 181 Stands Today,” April 15, 2026. advocacy@vnrc.org. Copy on file.

Representative Rob North, campaign blog, “Collaboration and Democracy,” northforvthouse.com, April 11, 2026.

Senator Scott Beck, Vermont Senate Minority Leader, Caledonia District, on-camera interview, VTSU Lyndon News7/Newslinc, April 2026.

NRB Conceptual Recommendations, September 28, 2023. Produced via PRR by LURB General Counsel Jenny Ronis, April 8, 2026.

NRB Steering Committee Role and Members document, June 26, 2023. Produced via PRR by Jenny Ronis, April 8, 2026.

Ornela Mata Figueroa, Co-Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board, testimony, Vermont House Environment Committee, April 8, 2026. Timestamp 43:13.

Jamey Fidel, VP Vermont, Audubon Vermont, testimony, Vermont House Environment Committee, April 8, 2026. Timestamps 36:21 and 51:17.

Neil Ryan, farmer, Corinth VT, testimony, Vermont House Environment Committee, April 8, 2026. Timestamps 12:01, 15:15, 15:35, 16:33.

Alex Weinhagen, LURB Board Member, Act 250 & Tier 3 Areas Public Engagement Sessions, October 2025. Produced via PRR by Jenny Ronis, April 14, 2026.

Let’s Build Homes, Act 181 Exemption Area Analysis. letsbuildhomes.org/reports/act-181-exemption-analysis.

John Bossange, “You can build it, but they will not come,” VTDigger, April 13, 2026.

Speaker Jill Krowinski, formal press release, April 15, 2026.

Email, Senator Anne Watson to Alexsys Thompson, April 13 and April 14, 2026.

Email, Representative Herb Olson to Alexsys Thompson, April 9, 2026.

Representative Karen Lueders, Front Porch Forum, April 15, 2026.

Senator Steven Heffernan, Addison Independent, March 5, 2026.

For documented findings on the steering committee composition, consensus claim, funding networks, and full series record, see Parts I through VIII at alexsys.substack.com.

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

alexsys.substack.com · Part IX

Over the past month I've published nine pieces of original investigative journalism on what's happening to rural Vermont — who's behind it, how the legislation was built, where the money came from, and what the math actually says. This is not a conspiracy theory. It's on the official record.

1. No One Is Coming to Save Rural Vermont

2. Act 59 is the lock. Act 181 is the Key. Together they close a door- and bolt it shut

3. Vermont Has What They Want. And They’re Coming for it

4. In Plain English Please (added as a quick way to onboard)

5. It’s Not a Theory Anymore. It’s on the Official Record

6. Vermont Rewrote the Rules for Rural Land

7. The Meeting You Weren’t Invited To

8. Vermont’s 40,000 Home Problem: When the math doesn’t Math

9. Vermont’s Moving Target. How a Housing Number Grew Seven Times in Three Years

10. Vermont’s Act 181: The Process was the Poison

11. Vermont is Rising to Save Itself

This research is free to read. It always will be.

If it matters to you — if you live here, own land here, or care about what’s happening to rural communities — consider supporting the next series.

leave a one-time contribution

Your support means the world to me. If keeps me going.

What This Piece Found

► The 40,000-home figure originated in a January 2023 VHFA blog post. This series has not located any publicly documented independent verification before it was embedded in statute.

► The same VHFA researcher produced a figure seven times smaller in 2020 — same agency, same planning cycle, same methodology base.

► Three new components were added between 2020 and 2023. Two of them — vacancy normalization and pandemic-era demand — VHFA flagged with question marks in its own legislative presentation.

► The IRS migration data shows the pandemic surge that anchored the upper scenario had already reversed before the projection was published.

► The vacancy target — 5% — is a national benchmark. Vermont’s long-term owner vacancy average was 1.3%. The gap between those two numbers accounts for 11,023 units in the projection.

► Act 181 passed in June 2024. Two months later, the same agency revised the figure downward. This series has not located any public reconciliation of that revision with the number already in statute.

There is a number at the center of Vermont’s housing debate that most Vermonters have heard but few have examined.

Forty thousand homes by 2030.

It appears in Act 181’s justification framework. It appears in the Let’s Build Homes coalition letter signed by legislators, employers, and advocacy organizations. It appears in DHCD press releases, regional planning documents, and legislative testimony. Senator Anne Watson cited a figure derived from it at an Act 181 press conference this year. The series documented that in Part VII.

What the number’s public appearances do not include is an explanation of where it came from, what assumptions produced it, or why the same agency produced a figure seven times smaller three years earlier.

This piece examines that record.

Every claim is sourced to a primary document or confirmed public record. Open questions are labeled open. The reader assesses what the pattern means — the series does not tell them.

The Number Everyone Knows

On January 25, 2023, Vermont Housing Finance Agency Research and Community Relations Director Leslie Black-Plumeau published a blog post on the VHFA website. The title: “30,000–40,000 More Vermont Homes Needed by 2030.”

It moved fast. Within weeks it was in legislative testimony. Within months it anchored the HOME Act of 2023. The following year it was the justification framework for Act 181. By January 2025 it was the organizing principle of the pro-housing advocacy apparatus at the Statehouse.

Here’s what that number looked like across the documents it traveled through:

The range across all five documents runs from 24,000 to 41,185 — a gap of more than 17,000 homes. Nobody reconciled these figures publicly.

This series could not locate a side-by-side methodology comparison in the public record. So we built one.

To understand how a range that wide is even possible, you have to go back to where the number started — and what it used to be.

Where It Started: 5,800

Three years before the 40,000 figure appeared, the same agency published a very different number.

The 2020 Vermont Housing Needs Assessment — the federally required five-year report VHFA produces for DHCD — put the number at about 5,800 primary homes needed by 2025.

Same agency. Same lead researcher. One-seventh the number.

The 2020 methodology followed a straightforward trajectory. Household projections purchased from Claritas LLC showed near-flat growth at 0.18% annually — meaning Vermont was projected to form 2,353 new households statewide between 2020 and 2025, with 89% of that growth concentrated in Chittenden County. Most of the rest of Vermont was projected to lose households. There was no vacancy normalization component, no pandemic-era demand scenario, no housing loss replacement component.

Household formation is the demand side of the equation. Housing stock — the total number of physical dwelling units — is the supply side. In Vermont, both had been declining for forty years. The rate at which new homes were being added to the state’s housing stock had dropped every decade since the 1980s:

That was the trajectory. That was the baseline. That was 5,800.

Source: 2020 Vermont Housing Needs Assessment, VHFA for DHCD, February 2020.

So what changed between 2020 and 2023 that produced a number seven times larger? VHFA answered that question themselves — in a slide deck presented to the Vermont Legislature.

What Changed: Three New Components

On April 12, 2023, VHFA Executive Director Maura Collins presented to the Vermont House Energy and Environment Committee, which was considering S.100 — the bill that became the HOME Act. The presentation broke the 40,000 figure into its component parts and labeled each one. In VHFA’s own words:

Slide 9, Maura Collins / VHFA presentation to the Vermont House Energy and Environment Committee, April 12, 2023. Vermont public legislative record.

Those question marks on the right side of the slide are not editorial characterization. They are VHFA’s own language, on their own slide, in their own presentation to the committee writing the law.

Here’s what each new component actually means:

Component 1 — Vacancy normalization: 11,023 units

Not in the 2020 model. Added in 2023. Built on a 5% vacancy target that VHFA described as “a nationally accepted standard.” Vermont’s actual long-term owner vacancy average was 1.3%. Neither owner nor rental vacancy ever reached 5% historically. At 11,023 units, this component alone exceeds the entire 5,800 figure from the 2020 assessment. It is one of five components that together build the projection to 40,000.

VHFA’s own slide asked: “Is this really needed?”

Component 2 — Housing loss replacement: 2,570 units

Not formalized in the 2020 model. Built on a 0.15% annual housing destruction rate. The April 12, 2023 presentation puts the loss at approximately 370 homes per year due to poor quality — consistent with that rate applied to Vermont’s housing stock.

Component 3 — Pandemic-era demand: adds 10,231 units over pre-pandemic

The 2020 assessment used purchased projections showing household formation of 0.18% annually — near flat. The 2023 projection introduced two scenarios built on higher household growth rates: pre-pandemic at 0.8% annually producing approximately 29,000 homes needed, and pandemic-era at 1.4% annually producing 40,000. Vermont planned from the top number.

VHFA’s own slide asked: “Exceptional growth?”

Source: Maura Collins, VHFA, House Energy and Environment Committee presentation, April 12, 2023. Vermont public legislative record. Slides 7 and 9. John Bossange, “Do we really need 40,000 new homes by 2030?” VTDigger, April 8, 2023.

The vacancy normalization component accounts for more than 11,000 of the 40,000 units. The question is what benchmark it was built on, and whether that benchmark makes sense for Vermont.

The 5% Question

The vacancy normalization component accounts for 11,023 of the 40,000 units. It rests entirely on a single benchmark: 5% vacancy as “healthy.”

To be clear: this is not 5% of the 40,000 figure. It is 5% of Vermont's total housing stock — meaning roughly 16,100 units should sit vacant at any given time for the market to be considered healthy. Vermont's actual vacancy fell well short of that target. The gap between where Vermont was and where VHFA said it should be produced the 11,023 unit component.

VHFA’s own April 12, 2023 slide laid out exactly where Vermont stood relative to that target:

Slide 7, Maura Collins / VHFA presentation to the Vermont House Energy and Environment Committee, April 12, 2023. Vermont public legislative record.

The 5% figure is a nationally accepted real estate economics benchmark — the vacancy rate at which neither landlords nor tenants have outsized market power and prices stabilize. It makes sense in high-churn urban markets with high population turnover and speculative building.

Vermont’s long-term owner vacancy average was 1.3%. Not because the market was broken. Because that’s Vermont’s normal — a small rural state with stable communities, high homeownership rates, and people who don’t move often.

If you use Vermont’s own historical norm instead of the national benchmark, the gap between current vacancy and “healthy” shrinks dramatically. So does the number of homes needed to close it. So does the 40,000 figure.

This series has not located any public challenge to the 5% benchmark before the number was embedded in statute.

Source: Maura Collins, VHFA, House Energy and Environment Committee presentation, April 12, 2023. Vermont public legislative record. Slide 7.

The benchmark problem is only part of it. The demand scenario the projection was built on had a timing problem — one the public record makes visible.

The Timing Problem

The 40,000 figure’s upper scenario was built on household growth data from 2019 to 2022. That period captured Vermont’s historic migration surge. It did not capture what came next.

The IRS Statistics of Income state-to-state migration data — released March 2026 and analyzed directly by this series — shows the reversal in three steps:

The January 2023 blog post was published when the 2021–2022 data would have been available. The IRS releases state-to-state migration files on an approximately 18-month lag. The trend the pandemic-era scenario was built on had already reversed before the projection went public.

VHFA published a post on April 3, 2023 addressing the 40,000 figure. It does not acknowledge the reversal in the underlying household flow data. It does not note that net household gain had declined 75% from its peak and was months from going negative.

The 2024 Housing Needs Assessment — released in August 2024, two months after Act 181 passed — produced a lower figure: 24,000–36,000 by 2029. It does not explain what changed. This series has not located any public reconciliation of that revision with the figure already embedded in statute.

Act 181 passed in June 2024. The revised assessment came two months later.

Source: IRS Statistics of Income, State-to-State Migration Data, 2020–2023, analyzed directly by this series. VHFA blog post, April 3, 2023. VHFA/DHCD 2025–2029 Housing Needs Assessment, August 2024.

The migration trend problem isn’t the only structural issue the methodology carries. Vermont’s housing stock has a feature the vacancy calculation doesn’t fully account for.

The Seasonal Housing Problem

Vermont’s vacancy gap — the distance between current vacancy rates and the 5% target — accounts for 11,023 of the 40,000 units. But the gap calculation has a structural problem the methodology doesn’t address.

The 2020 Housing Needs Assessment — authored by Leslie Black-Plumeau — documented that 17% of Vermont’s housing stock consists of seasonal or vacation homes. Vermont has the second-highest rate in the nation. Those homes are structurally unavailable for year-round occupancy regardless of how many new units get built. The people who own them chose not to make them primary residences. Building 40,000 homes does not convert a single ski chalet in Stowe or a lakefront camp in Addison County into a year-round rental.

The vacancy normalization component targets 5% across Vermont’s entire housing stock. If 17% of that stock cannot realistically absorb year-round residents, the gap the methodology is trying to close is considerably smaller than the numbers suggest.

Then there is this. The 2025 Housing Needs Assessment states the model assumes 15% of new homes added will be acquired as second homes — based on historic usage patterns. Applied to the lower end of the target range, that means roughly 4,200 of the 27,867 homes Vermont is targeting will immediately re-enter the seasonal category that the vacancy normalization component treats as a shortage to fill.

The report that documents the seasonal constraint also projects that new construction will partially replicate it.

In plain terms: the methodology is building to solve a problem it is simultaneously recreating.

VHFA's own presentation asked the question directly: is this a housing supply problem or an occupancy problem? That's worth sitting with. If 17% of Vermont's homes are vacation properties that can't be rented year-round, and new construction keeps partially adding to that pile, then building more homes may not close the gap. Vermont's own history says a 1.3% vacancy rate is normal here — not broken. The national 5% benchmark was built for cities where people move in and out constantly. Vermont isn't that. The math points somewhere worth looking.

Source: 2020 Vermont Housing Needs Assessment, February 2020, p.4. VHFA/DHCD/VAPDA Housing Targets Appendix, January 2025, methodology section.

Behind all of these methodology questions is one person — the researcher who produced every version of this number, across every planning cycle, for the same agency.

The Analyst

Leslie Black-Plumeau is listed as a primary contributor to the 2020 Housing Needs Assessment that produced 5,800. She is the author of the January 2023 blog post that produced 40,000. She is a named contributor to the August 2024 assessment that produced 24,000–36,000. She is a named contributor to the January 2025 Housing Targets Appendix that produced 27,867–41,185.

Her VHFA biography describes 25 years of professional experience in program evaluation and public policy research, including prior work as a Congressional housing and community development program evaluator at the U.S. Government Accountability Office in Washington, D.C. Her current title at VHFA is Research and Community Relations Director.

Since 2003, she has simultaneously served as president of Black-Plumeau Consulting LLC. In her right-of-reply response to this series, Black-Plumeau confirmed that as a consultant to the Department of Children and Families, she prepared quarterly Reach Up caseload forecasts through July 2025, based on program entries, exits, and the statewide unemployment rate. The Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office’s own published records document the firm’s work on those forecasts as far back as October 2021.

On February 15–16, 2023 — three weeks after the VHFA blog post and during the legislative session considering the HOME Act — Black-Plumeau submitted written testimony to the Vermont legislature. She submitted it in her personal capacity, describing herself as a 25-year Vermont resident. The testimony cited the 40,000 figure and reproduced a chart from VHFA’s own housing data. In her right-of-reply response, she confirmed: “Yes, I submitted a personal statement for the public hearing on 2/16/2023.” She did not address whether she identified her VHFA role when submitting in personal capacity.

In March 2025 — after the 40,000 figure had been embedded in statute — she joined the board of the Public Assets Institute. In her right-of-reply response, she confirmed this is accurate. PAI is a Vermont member of the State Priorities Partnership, a national network of more than 40 state policy organizations coordinated by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C. The partnership launched in 1993 with funding from the Ford Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The Rockefeller Foundation granted $500,000 to CBPP for the network in 2020.

In her right-of-reply response, Black-Plumeau offered three explanations for the methodology changes between the 2020 and 2023 assessments. She described a shift from purchased third-party household projections to VHFA’s own internally developed methodology since 2019. She cited updated Census data, with the 2020 Decennial Census replacing the 2010-based estimates used in the prior assessment. And she pointed to pandemic-era changes including a small population increase, rising homelessness, and slowed home building that reduced vacancy rates. She also suggested the series consider the role of shrinking household size as a driver of housing demand. These are her explanations. The methodology choices the series documents — the 5% vacancy benchmark, the pandemic-era upper scenario, the components added between 2020 and 2023 — remain in the record as documented.

The series does not characterize any of this as improper. Vermont’s conflict of interest standard is narrow by design. What the record shows is that the researcher who produced both the floor and the ceiling of Vermont’s documented housing need simultaneously held outside consulting contracts producing quantitative forecasts for Vermont legislative committees through July 2025; submitted personal testimony in support of legislation built on her own agency’s figures without addressing her institutional role in that capacity; and subsequently joined the board of a Vermont member organization of a nationally coordinated policy network — after the number she produced became law.

Source: VHFA staff biography, Leslie Black-Plumeau, vhfa.org. Black-Plumeau Consulting LLC, Reach Up caseload forecast, October 2021, Vermont Legislature Joint Fiscal Office published records. Leslie Black-Plumeau, right-of-reply correspondence to this series, April 15, 2026. Rutland Herald, March 21, 2025. InfluenceWatch, State Priorities Partnership. CBPP, cbpp.org. Rockefeller Foundation grant, 2020.

What the Record Shows and What It Doesn’t

The record shows a housing projection that grew sevenfold between 2020 and 2023 through documented changes in methodology: three new components added, a demand scenario built on pandemic-era data that had already reversed, a vacancy target significantly above Vermont’s own historical norm, and a seasonal housing constraint the methodology does not fully account for.

The record shows the same researcher produced both the 5,800 figure and the 40,000 figure, over the same federal planning cycle, for the same agency.

The record shows the vacancy normalization component — built on a nationally accepted benchmark rather than Vermont’s historical norm — accounts for 11,023 of the 40,000 units. This series has not located any public challenge to that benchmark before the number was embedded in statute.

The record shows the 2025 Housing Needs Assessment acknowledges that new construction will partially replicate the seasonal constraint that inflates the apparent shortage.

The record shows the figure originated in a self-published agency blog post and traveled to the HOME Act, to Act 181, to DHCD regional planning targets distributed to every Vermont town. This series has not located any publicly documented independent verification at any stage of that journey.

The record shows the same agency revised the figure downward two months after Act 181 passed. This series has not located any public reconciliation of that revision with the number already in statute.

The record does not show that Vermont’s housing shortage is not real. Genuine affordability pressures, vacancy constraints, and workforce housing deficits are documented. What the record shows is that the specific number used to restructure Vermont land use was produced through a methodology that expanded significantly between 2020 and 2023, and has since been revised downward by the same agency that produced it — after the law passed.

What Comes Next

The number is one thread in a larger fabric. Part IX examines what the process record shows — the stakeholder failure, the consensus that wasn’t, and what happened when the chair of the committee that built Act 181 confirmed what the record had been showing all along.

Primary Sources

2020 Vermont Housing Needs Assessment. Vermont Housing Finance Agency for DHCD, February 2020.

Leslie Black-Plumeau, VHFA, “30,000–40,000 More Vermont Homes Needed by 2030,” January 25, 2023. vhfa.org.

Leslie Black-Plumeau, VHFA, “Why Vermont Needs 30,000–40,000 More Homes,” April 3, 2023. vhfa.org.

Maura Collins, VHFA Executive Director, House Energy and Environment Committee presentation, April 12, 2023. Vermont public legislative record. Slides 7 and 9. Committee confirmed by Maura Collins in right-of-reply correspondence to this series, April 15, 2026.

John Bossange, “Do we really need 40,000 new homes by 2030?” VTDigger, April 8, 2023.

Vermont Housing Finance Agency, 2025–2029 Housing Needs Assessment, August 2024. Produced for DHCD.

Vermont Housing Finance Agency / DHCD / VAPDA, Housing Targets Appendix, January 2025.

IRS Statistics of Income, State-to-State Migration Data, 2020–2023. Analyzed directly by this series.

DHCD press release, “New Regional Housing Targets and Housing Data Dashboard,” January 20, 2026.

Black-Plumeau Consulting LLC, Reach Up and Reach Ahead Caseload Forecast, October 2021. Vermont Legislature Joint Fiscal Office published records.

Leslie Black-Plumeau, Research and Community Relations Director, VHFA, right-of-reply correspondence to this series, April 15, 2026.

Maura Collins, Executive Director, VHFA, right-of-reply correspondence to this series, April 15, 2026.

Rutland Herald community news, March 21, 2025.

State Priorities Partnership, statepriorities.org. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, cbpp.org. InfluenceWatch, State Priorities Partnership entry.

Rockefeller Foundation, grant to CBPP for State Priorities Partnership, 2020.

For documented findings on the stakeholder process, steering committee composition, and full series record, see Parts I through VII at alexsys.substack.com.

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

alexsys.substack.com · Part VIII

Leslie Black-Plumeau responded to this series’ right-of-reply inquiry on April 15, 2026. Her responses are incorporated in The Analyst section above. Maura Collins responded to this series’ right-of-reply inquiry on April 15, 2026. She confirmed the April 12, 2023 presentation and VHFA’s role as LBH fiscal agent. Her response is incorporated above.

Amy Sheldon has been offered multiple opportunities to respond to this series and has not responded. That is

Update — May 1, 2026

Since publication, Joe Ament, Assistant Professor of Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, reviewed the Vermont Housing Needs Assessment and offered the following on-record assessment:

“My biggest concern is that if the assumptions that go into a model change it so radically that the policy implications are opposite one another — a housing shortage or a surplus — it is a poor model. Assumptions are part of every model, but the changes should be small. When small changes to the assumptions dramatically change the outcomes, the model should be recalibrated. And certainly not made law.”

Ament’s independent analysis of the study reached the same range documented in this piece using IRS Statistics of Income migration data. Two separate analyses — one using federal migration data, one working from the study’s own lower scenario assumptions — arrive at the same conclusion: the upper-bound figure that anchored Vermont’s housing policy debate is not supported by the evidence available at the time it was adopted.

Part VII of an ongoing investigative series documenting Act 181, Vermont’s 2024 land use law, its drafting process, its implementation, and its impact on rural Vermont landowners and communities.

Every major policy argument has a foundation. For Act 181 — Vermont’s 2024 land use law that extended state permitting authority across most of rural Vermont — the foundation is a number.

Forty thousand homes. Vermont needs 40,000 new homes by 2030. That number has been repeated in legislative testimony, cited in constituent correspondence from House Environment Committee members, embedded in regional planning targets distributed to every town in the state, and used as the justification for a land use framework that restricts what rural Vermonters can build on their own property.

The number deserves scrutiny. This piece provides it.

What follows is not an argument that Vermont has no housing shortage. The evidence for affordability pressure, vacancy constraints, and cost burden on lower-income households is real and documented. The question this piece asks is narrower and more specific: does the 40,000 figure accurately represent Vermont’s housing need, and are the assumptions underneath it sound enough to justify the land use architecture built on top of it?

The data says no. Here is what the record shows.

Where the Number Came From

The 40,000 figure originates from a January 2023 publication by the Vermont Housing Finance Agency. VHFA projected Vermont would need between 30,000 and 40,000 additional year-round homes by 2030 to meet expected demand and normalize vacancy rates.

VHFA’s own document presents two scenarios explicitly. The lower scenario — pre-pandemic demand — assumes household growth of 0.8 percent per year, producing a need for approximately 13,000 additional households by 2030. The upper scenario — pandemic-era demand — assumes household growth of 1.4 percent per year, producing the 40,000 figure. The state chose the upper scenario as the basis for its planning targets, distributed those targets to every regional planning commission and town in Vermont, and built the tier mapping framework of Act 181 around them.

The pre-pandemic scenario was not discarded because it was wrong. It was set aside because the pandemic-era scenario was larger.

The higher scenario also arrived at a moment when Vermont’s legislature was developing what would become the HOME Act of 2023, which required VHFA to produce regional housing targets — targets that were subsequently embedded in Act 181’s tier structure. The record does not explain why the upper scenario was chosen as the planning basis. It documents that it was.

What Happened to the Growth

The pandemic-era migration surge that generated the upper scenario was real. Between 2020 and 2021, Vermont gained nearly 5,000 net new residents — the largest single-year population increase the state had seen in at least a decade. The surge was concentrated in ski areas and tourist regions, driven largely by remote workers from New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut seeking space during the pandemic.

That surge did not hold.

Vermont’s Joint Fiscal Office documented what followed. Between 2022 and 2023, Vermont gained just 350 people total — a number so small it barely registers against a state population of 647,000. Deaths exceeded births by 1,800. Migration provided a slim offset. In 2024, the most comprehensive Census Bureau estimate found that 511 more people moved out of Vermont than moved in.

From 2020 through 2024, Vermont’s cumulative net population gain was approximately 6,160 people — less than what the Vermont Treasurer’s office reported moving here in 2021 alone.

The pandemic surge came, and it left.

The people who drove the surge were specific. IRS tax return data shows that in 2020–2021, households arriving from New Jersey averaged $148,513 in adjusted gross income — the highest of any inflow state. California arrivals averaged $126,234. Connecticut, $111,818. These were not households in need of affordable housing. They were high-income remote workers and equity buyers whose presence temporarily inflated demand signals. By 2022–2023, that cohort was no longer arriving in those numbers, and the average income of arriving households had fallen to $81,842. The demand the 40,000 figure was built on was not broad-based Vermont housing need. It was a specific, temporary, high-income migration event.

The Surge That Already Reversed

The Vermont Treasurer’s office has publicized migration figures showing net population gains, but those figures are based on American Community Survey data — a sample survey — with known reliability limitations for small states and rural geographies.

This series obtained Vermont’s state-level migration files from the IRS Statistics of Income division for three consecutive years — 2020–2021, 2021–2022, and 2022–2023 — released March 2026. The IRS data is based on actual tax return filings, year-to-year address changes reported on Form 1040, making it more comprehensive than the survey estimates the Treasurer’s office has publicized.

The three-year picture is as follows.

In 2020–2021, the surge year, 12,212 households arrived in Vermont and 10,726 departed — a net gain of 1,486 households. The people arriving earned an average adjusted gross income of $92,318 per return. The people leaving earned $71,064. Vermont gained $365 million in AGI on net.

By 2021–2022, the net household gain had collapsed to 371 — a 75 percent decline in a single year. Vermont gained $270 million in net AGI, down from $365 million the prior year. Florida, which received 1,095 departing Vermont households that year, had become the highest-income outflow destination at $126,178 average — higher than the average income of households arriving from most states. Vermont’s equity-rich households were beginning to exit.

By 2022–2023, the net household count went negative. More households left Vermont than arrived — a net outflow of 370. Net individuals were essentially flat at plus 27. The net AGI gain had fallen to $87 million — a 76 percent decline from the surge year in three years.

VHFA published the 40,000 homes projection in January 2023, using pandemic-era household growth data as its primary planning scenario. The IRS data shows that by January 2023 — the month the projection was published — the net household gain had already fallen 75 percent from its peak and was three months away from going negative. The trend the projection was built on had reversed before the projection was released.

The projection was not updated when the reversal became clear. The targets derived from it were distributed to every town in Vermont regardless. The land use architecture of Act 181 was built on top of them.

The Survey Problem

The 40,000 figure and the regional targets built from it rely on American Community Survey data for their inputs. The ACS is not a full count. It is a sample survey — roughly 3.54 million households contacted nationally each year — with results extrapolated to the full population through statistical weighting.

For small states and rural geographies, the ACS has a documented reliability problem. Research published in peer-reviewed literature has found that margins of error on ACS tract-level estimates are on average 75 percent larger than those from the 2000 decennial long-form census. In some Vermont communities, the margin of error on specific estimates exceeds the estimate itself. The Census Bureau’s own guidance to planners cautions that data should not be used without first checking the coefficient of variation.

The 2020 ACS data — the pandemic-era data that fed VHFA’s January 2023 projections — was the worst collection year in the survey’s history. The response rate collapsed to 71.2 percent, down from a typical range of 86 to 97 percent. The Census Bureau flagged the 2020 data as unreliable and did not release standard one-year estimates, publishing only experimental figures instead. The pandemic surge in Vermont household counts — the inflection point that drove the upper scenario — was measured during the year the measurement instrument was least reliable.

The Seasonal Housing Problem

VHFA’s projection includes approximately 7,000 to 10,000 units dedicated to normalizing Vermont’s vacancy rate to a target of 5 percent. The current owner vacancy rate is 0.5 percent and the rental vacancy rate is 3.7 percent — well below target.

That calculation assumes zero of Vermont’s 51,000 seasonal units are available for year-round occupancy. Vermont has the second-highest rate of seasonal housing in the nation — 15 percent of the total housing stock — and the Census Bureau’s own vacancy rate formulas exclude all of it from the denominator before any math is done. The seasonal classification rests on self-reported intended use with no physical inspection, no heating system assessment, and no structural evaluation. The Census Bureau merged its ‘seasonal’ and ‘occasional use’ categories in 1990 specifically because its own field enumerators could not reliably distinguish between them.

If just 10 percent of those 51,000 units — roughly 5,100 homes — are actually habitable year-round, they alone offset more than 70 percent of the vacancy gap. If 20 percent are habitable, the vacancy normalization need disappears entirely. No physical assessment of Vermont’s seasonal housing stock exists in the public record. The 7,000 unit vacancy figure is therefore an upper bound, not a floor — and it is being treated as a floor.

The Production Gap That Isn’t What It Appears

In January 2025, the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development announced that Vermont is currently building only 27 percent of the homes it needs annually to meet its 2030 targets. The dashboard on which this figure is based uses the average of homes built between 2021 and 2024 — approximately 2,200 units per year — compared against a target of 8,200 units per year.

The target is derived from the pandemic-era upper scenario. Measured against the pre-pandemic scenario, Vermont’s production gap looks entirely different.

Vermont permitted 2,302 new homes in 2022 — more than in most prior years of the past decade, according to VHFA’s own housing stock analysis. Single-family building permits have averaged just over 1,000 per year for the last several years. Vermont’s historic building pace has never approached 8,200 units per year. The record monthly permit figure for the state — 1,021 units — was set in August 1988.

The state is not failing to build 8,200 homes per year because of regulatory barriers. It has never built at anything close to that pace. The target was set by choosing the highest available projection scenario and distributing it as settled fact.

The Claim, the Source, and What the Data Shows

At the Act 181 press conference earlier this year, State Senator Anne Watson stated that housing starts in Vermont are up 39 percent since Act 181 was implemented. This series contacted Senator Watson before publication. She responded, corrected the record — ‘housing starts’ to ‘housing permits’ — and provided a primary source: the Federal Reserve’s VTBPPRIVSA series, seasonally adjusted monthly building permit data for Vermont.

Her arithmetic is correct. Comparing the monthly average of permits under the Scott administration before Act 181 (January 2017 through June 2024, 90 months: 158.79 units per month) to the monthly average after enactment (July 2024 through January 2026, 19 months: 222.94 units per month) produces an increase of approximately 40 percent. Watson said 39 percent. Her math checks out.

The same dataset tells a more complicated story. Of the 19 months in the post-enactment window, two months are statistical outliers unprecedented in the modern era of the dataset: December 2024, at 632.54 units — the largest monthly reading in the dataset going back to 1988 — and September 2025, at 560.92 units, the second largest. Remove December 2024 alone and the increase falls from 40 percent to 26 percent. Remove both months and the increase falls to 13 percent. Two months out of 19 account for the majority of the headline figure.

What drove those two spikes is a question the permit data alone cannot answer. December 2024 is five months after Act 181’s enactment, well before any of the law’s operative permitting provisions took effect. September 2025 falls during the period of active legislative debate over Act 181’s road rule implementation deadline. Both dates are consistent with a pattern of preemptive permit filings — landowners moving applications before new regulatory requirements take effect — rather than a sustained increase in housing production attributable to the law. That question remains open and is under investigation.

What is documented: Watson’s arithmetic is correct. Her original statement used the wrong metric — starts, not permits. Her causal claim — that permits are up because of Act 181 — is not established by the data she cited. The two anomalous months are documented in the public record she provided.

The Number Vermont Should Be Using

This series does not set housing policy. But the data makes a straightforward question unavoidable: if you run VHFA’s own methodology with the numbers that actually exist instead of the scenario they chose, what do you get?

The answer is in the record.

VHFA’s 40,000 figure rests on two primary inputs: a household growth rate and a vacancy normalization target. The growth rate chosen — 1.4 percent annually in the 2023 projection, revised upward to 1.8 percent in the 2024 update — was drawn from the pandemic surge period. VHFA acknowledged a pre-pandemic scenario in its own original document, one that produced a significantly lower number. That scenario was set aside. Vermont planned from the higher figure.

The IRS migration data obtained and analyzed by this series provides a third data point: what actually happened after the surge. In 2020–2021, Vermont gained 1,486 net households at an average arriving income of $92,318. By 2021–2022, the net gain had collapsed to 371 — a 75 percent decline in a single year. By 2022–2023, it went negative. More households left than arrived. Net AGI had fallen to $87 million — a 76 percent decline from the surge peak in three years.

This series does not independently estimate natural household formation — the rate at which Vermont’s existing residents form new households — because the documented demographic data does not support a clean figure. Vermont’s Joint Fiscal Office has documented that deaths exceed births by approximately 1,800 per year. Back-calculating from VHFA’s own pre-pandemic growth rate and documented pre-pandemic migration figures suggests natural household formation may run as low as 521 per year, and Vermont’s aging population may be dissolving households through deaths nearly as fast as young adults are forming them. Rather than assert a number that cannot be precisely sourced, this series uses two documented anchors: VHFA’s own pre-pandemic scenario as the moderate estimate, and the replacement rate alone — drawn directly from VHFA’s own model — as the conservative floor.

The replacement rate, used in VHFA’s own methodology and sourced from HUD, is 0.15 percent of total housing stock per year — approximately 502 units annually — representing homes lost to destruction, flooding, conversion, or deterioration.

Two scenarios result from substituting these documented inputs for the pandemic-era assumption.

The conservative scenario uses post-surge IRS actuals — near-zero net migration — plus replacement only, making no additional claim about natural formation. That produces a growth need of approximately 2,510 units over five years.

The moderate scenario uses VHFA’s own pre-pandemic rate of 0.8 percent annual household growth — the figure they published and set aside — producing approximately 10,640 units over five years.

Vermont also has real existing deficits independent of growth projections, fully documented in the public record. VHFA’s own analysis identifies approximately 7,000 units needed to normalize vacancy rates to a functional level. The July 2023 and July 2024 flooding destroyed or made uninhabitable at least 856 homes, per FEMA data. Combined existing deficit: approximately 7,856 units.

Adding growth need and existing deficit together produces the following range:

Conservative estimate: approximately 10,400 units by 2030 — roughly 2,100 per year.

Moderate estimate: approximately 18,500 units by 2030 — roughly 3,700 per year.

Current law basis: 41,000 units — 8,200 per year.

The pandemic-era projection overstates Vermont’s housing need by a factor of roughly two to four times compared to what the evidence supports. Every input in this reconstruction comes from either IRS tax return data, VHFA’s own published figures, or HUD’s standard housing loss methodology. This is not a competing analysis produced by outside critics. It is VHFA’s methodology, run with the data that exists.

Vermont is currently permitting approximately 2,200 to 2,300 units per year. On the conservative estimate, Vermont is already meeting or exceeding its evidence-based production need. On the moderate estimate, a gap of approximately 1,400 units per year remains — a policy challenge achievable through targeted intervention without restructuring how rural land is regulated across the entire state.

The gap between 2,100 and 8,200 is not a rounding error. It is not a methodological quibble. It is the difference between a land use policy calibrated to Vermont’s actual demographic reality and one calibrated to a pandemic surge that the data shows had already reversed before the law was written.

What the Data Actually Shows

Vermont has a real housing problem. It is not the problem described by the 40,000 figure.

The documented reality: an aging housing stock, with more than 25 percent of homes built before 1940. Approximately 10,285 homes classified as ‘other vacant’ — not listed for rent or sale, often in disrepair. An estimated 19,637 households living in homes with serious quality deficiencies. A median home price that has increased 50 percent since 2019, squeezing lower-income households out of the market entirely. Flood damage that destroyed or made uninhabitable more than 850 homes in the July 2023 and July 2024 flooding events alone.

These are tractable problems with specific dimensions. They do not require 8,200 new units per year. They require investment in rehabilitation of existing stock, replacement of flood-damaged homes, and targeted production of affordable units in communities that need them.

What they do not require is a land use framework built on a pandemic-era projection that the demographic data has since contradicted, measured by a survey instrument that performed at its worst during the period that generated the peak numbers, anchored to a vacancy rate target that excludes 15 percent of the state’s housing inventory before the calculation begins.

One additional variable is absent from the demand model entirely. Vermont’s baby boom generation — those born between 1946 and 1964, now ages 62 to 80 — represents the largest single cohort of homeowners in the state. Vermont’s population of 65 to 79 year-olds grew by more than 10 percent between 2020 and 2023 alone, the largest increase of any age group, according to the Vermont Joint Fiscal Office. As that cohort ages through their 80s and beyond over the next decade, the homes they currently occupy will re-enter the housing market through deaths, moves to assisted living, and estate sales. Vermont is already the third-oldest state in the nation by median age. By 2030, one in three Vermonters will be older than 60, according to Seven Days reporting on Vermont Department of Health data. The housing stock that generation releases over the coming decade is not a marginal factor. Vermont’s demand model projects forward to 2050 without appearing to account for it. A projection that does not model the housing stock being released by an aging population is not a complete projection — it is a floor without a ceiling.

The foundation of the argument for Act 181 is a number. The number was chosen from two available options. The record does not show that the choice was revisited when the pandemic surge reversed. The towns that received production targets derived from that number have not been told it was the upper scenario of two. The legislators who cite it in constituent correspondence have not, in the public record, disclosed the methodology behind it.

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both. The data on Vermont’s housing need tells a different story than the one Vermont’s land use law was built on. That gap is now in the public record.

Sources

Vermont Housing Finance Agency, “30,000–40,000 More Vermont Homes Needed by 2030,” January 25, 2023. vhfa.org.

Vermont Housing Finance Agency / DHCD, Vermont Housing Needs Assessment 2025–2029, published 2024. outside.vermont.gov.

Vermont DHCD / VAPDA / VHFA, Statewide and Regional Housing Targets, January 20, 2025. accd.vermont.gov.

IRS Statistics of Income Division, State-to-State Migration Data, Calendar Years 2020–2021, 2021–2022, and 2022–2023. Released March 2026. irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-migration-data. Vermont state files obtained and analyzed directly by this series.

Vermont Joint Fiscal Office, “Vermont’s Population Estimates for 2023,” October 2024. ljfo.vermont.gov.

Campaign for Vermont, “VT Population Growth: Why It Matters.” campaignforvermont.org. Citing U.S. Census Bureau NST-EST2024-COMP.

U.S. Census Bureau, Home Vacancy Rate for Vermont [VTHVAC] and Rental Vacancy Rate for Vermont [VTRVAC]. FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Updated March 2025.

U.S. Census Bureau, Housing Vacancies and Homeownership Survey — Definitions and FAQ. census.gov/housing/hvs.

U.S. Census Bureau, “Most U.S. Vacant Housing Is Seasonal Housing,” May 2023. census.gov.

Spielman et al., “Patterns and Causes of Uncertainty in the American Community Survey,” PMC4232960.

CCRPC, “Best Practices for Reporting American Community Survey in Municipal Planning,” 2018. ccrpcvt.org.

Vermont Treasurer’s Office, “Vermont Gained 7,500 New Residents from Other States in 2023,” December 11, 2024. vermonttreasurer.gov.

Vermont Public / VTDigger, “Even With More Vermont Homes on the Market, Prices Are Still Rising,” September 11, 2025.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, American Housing Survey Components of Inventory Change: 2015–2017, Table B15.

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, New Private Housing Units Authorized by Building Permits for Vermont [VTBPPRIVSA]. fred.stlouisfed.org. Cited by Sen. Anne Watson in written response to this series, April 2026.

Vermont Joint Fiscal Office, “Vermont’s Population Estimates for 2023” — age group data, 65–79 cohort growth. ljfo.vermont.gov. October 2024.

Seven Days Vermont, “Getting On: An Aging Population Is Transforming Vermont,” 2024 series. sevendaysvt.com. Citing Vermont Department of Health and U.S. Census Bureau data.

Senator Anne Watson was contacted by this series before publication. She responded, corrected ‘housing starts’ to ‘housing permits,’ and provided a primary source. Her arithmetic was verified as correct. The fuller data picture from her cited source is documented above.

Amy Sheldon has been offered multiple opportunities to respond to this series and has not responded. That is documented and on the record.

Methodology note: The conservative housing need scenario uses the replacement rate from VHFA’s own published model (0.15% of housing stock annually, per HUD) as the growth floor, making no independent estimate of natural household formation. The moderate scenario uses VHFA’s own published pre-pandemic growth rate of 0.8% annually. All IRS migration data was obtained directly from the IRS Statistics of Income division and analyzed by this series. Source files are available for independent verification.

Editor's note, April 9, 2026: A statement in The Defense section of this piece, as originally published, incorrectly characterized remarks made by LURB Board Member Alex Weinhagen at the April 7, 2026 Rural Caucus session regarding ski areas and Tier 3 mapping. The original text stated that Weinhagen confirmed ski areas were excluded from Tier 3 mapping because they did not fall within sensitive wildlife corridors. Weinhagen contacted this series on April 9 to clarify that ski areas were not excluded from Tier 3 mapping — portions of ski area properties appear in the draft mapping released in October 2025 — and that ski areas already require Act 250 permits for new development regardless of Tier 3 designation, as Act 250 jurisdiction has always applied to commercial development above 2,500 feet in elevation. The Defense section has been corrected below. This series regrets the error.

On the morning of April 8, 2026, the Land Use Review Board’s General Counsel Jenny Ronis produced two documents in response to public records requests filed by this series. One of them — the facilitators’ September 28, 2023 Conceptual Recommendations draft — does not appear in the publicly posted materials at emcenter.org/vermont-act-250 or on the LURB’s project page.

Those documents are the subject of this piece.

They show who was in the room before Act 181 was written. They show what the people running the process said — in writing — about whether that room reached agreement. And they show how the law was described publicly after it passed.

Those three things do not match.

The Room

In 2023, the Natural Resources Board convened a sixteen-member steering committee to develop recommendations for updating Act 250. The NRB’s own Role and Members document describes what that committee was for: members would “act as liaisons with these interest groups, facilitating conversations, debates and building consensus.” They would identify the broader set of stakeholders — approximately 50 to 60 people — who would contribute to the recommendations. The goal was “to develop recommendations that the NRB supports and stakeholders either openly support or have reached compromise on.”

Here is who they were, with affiliations taken directly from the primary source document, and relevant context from the public record.

Sabina Haskell, Natural Resources Board, Chair. Peter Gill, Natural Resources Board, Executive Director. Kirsten Sultan, Natural Resources Board, District 7 Coordinator. Billy Coster, Agency of Natural Resources, Director of Planning. Maggie Gendron, Agency of Natural Resources, Deputy Secretary. Chief Superior Judge Tom Zonay, Vermont Judiciary.

Jon Groveman, Vermont Natural Resources Council — the organization that would later testify in support of H.687 before the House Environment Committee, confirmed from the official bill status page on legislature.vermont.gov. VNRC is a Forest Partnership member and a confirmed Lintilhac Foundation grantee, receiving grants totaling $80,000 in 2024 alone, confirmed from the foundation’s Form 990-PF via Grantmakers.io.

Megan Sullivan, Vermont Chamber of Commerce — the organization listed as Founding Partner of the Vermont Futures Project, the economic research organization whose report a member of the House Environment Committee cited to a constituent defending Act 181. Sullivan also testified on H.687, confirmed from the official bill status page.

Kathy Beyer, Evernorth — the housing nonprofit confirmed as a Let’s Build Homes coalition member, the housing advocacy group that publicly supported Act 250 reform and tier mapping.

Andy Rowe, Snyder Homes — a Chittenden County residential developer founded in 1976, confirmed from the company’s own website. Snyder Homes is the founding partner of Snyder Braverman Development LLC, whose South Burlington City Center project has produced more than 675 residential units in a Tier 1 growth center — precisely the type of development Act 181’s framework was designed to facilitate, confirmed from the Snyder Braverman website.

Charlie Hancock, listed in the document as: North Woods Resource Group, President. North Woods Resource Group is a private forestry consultancy in Montgomery, Vermont. The public record at the same period shows additional roles: co-founder and President of Cold Hollow to Canada, a conservation nonprofit whose seven-town operating geography aligns directly with Act 181’s Tier 3 habitat connectivity framework, and which lists VNRC as a partner organization; Franklin and Grand Isle County Forester with the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation — a state employee position; Vermont Land Trust Board Trustee from 2015 to 2024; Vice Chair of the Vermont Working Lands Enterprise Board from 2018 to 2024; and Montgomery Selectboard Chair since 2016. The steering committee document identifies one of those roles. The public record confirms five.

Geoff Hand, SRH Law, Environmental Attorney — the firm formerly known as Dunkiel Saunders, confirmed from the firm’s own website. Brian Dunkiel, co-founder of that firm, later became a board member of Let’s Build Homes, confirmed from the Let’s Build Homes About page and Vermont Business Magazine’s February 2025 board announcement.

Peter Gregory, Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission, Executive Director. Brent Rakowski, Otter Creek Engineering, Vice President. Chip Sawyer, City of Saint Albans, Director of Planning and Development. Tom Little, District 4 Environmental Commission, Chair.

That is the room. The Natural Resources Board. The Agency of Natural Resources. The Vermont Judiciary. A residential developer. The state’s leading conservation advocacy organization. A housing nonprofit. The Vermont Chamber of Commerce. A conservation nonprofit president listed under a private forestry consultancy. An environmental attorney from the firm whose co-founder later joined the housing advocacy coalition. A regional planning commission director. An engineering firm. A municipal planning director. A district commission chair.

All present before the bill was drafted. All named in the NRB’s own document.

The constituency not represented by a named member: rural working landowners.

What the Working Lands Group Said

The Environmental Mediation Center, hired by the NRB to run the stakeholder process, organized six interest-based focus groups. Their meeting notes are publicly posted at emcenter.org/vermont-act-250.

The Working Lands focus group met three times. Their positions are documented in the EMC’s own notes.

On August 17, 2023, the Working Lands group stated this in the Jurisdiction section, recorded as a verbatim bullet point: “Working lands enterprises should be exempt from Act 250, full stop.”

On August 31, 2023, discussing the emerging Tier 3 framework: “Seems like there’s a roadblock every time you go to do something on the land, hearing more jurisdiction and seems counter productive to wanting development here, making it harder.” And: “Not sure how Tier 3 would work without a lot of redundancy with existing state laws and policies.”

On the Road Rule specifically, the August 31 notes record the Working Lands group raising the 800-foot threshold directly — noting it “might mean that road should be longer than 800 feet” and flagging driveways as an “important consideration about not stifling development.” The Road Rule passed at 800 feet.

None of these positions appear in the September 28, 2023 framework document the facilitators circulated to the broader stakeholder group. Working lands appear once in that document’s entire text — a passing note in the Fees section about considering “exemptions and/or discounts for affordable housing and working lands.” The full-exemption position, the redundancy concern, the roadblock language: absent.

The steering committee was the filter between what the Working Lands group said and what the broader stakeholder session was handed to react to.

What the Facilitators’ Document Says

The September 28, 2023 Conceptual Recommendations document — obtained via public records request, not appearing in the publicly posted materials at emcenter.org/vermont-act-250 or on the LURB’s project page — is the straw proposal circulated at the final stakeholder session before the NRB produced its report.

Its introduction states, in the facilitators’ own underlined words: “The facilitation team is not suggesting that there is consensus on any particular recommendation.” And: “It is the Steering Committee, not the facilitation team, that will decide recommendations, in accordance with group protocols on consensus that we agreed to at the beginning of this process.”

On Tier 3: “To date there is not a clear consensus among the Steering Committee on more preferred approaches.”

The Road Rule appears as one option among several. It is not presented as a consensus item.

What Was Said Publicly

In June 2024, as the Vermont Legislature prepared to vote on whether to override Governor Scott’s veto of H.687, VNRC published materials describing the process that produced the bill.

Their overview document published June 5, 2024 — twelve days before the override vote — described the Road Rule as “a consensus recommendation in the NRB’s Necessary Updates to the Act 250 Program Report.” Their detailed overview published in January 2025 describes “the NRB’s consensus Necessary Updates to the Act 250 Program Report” as one of the foundations on which H.687 was built.

The facilitators’ own working document, circulated to participants eight months before those materials were published, stated explicitly that no consensus existed on Tier 3, and framed the Road Rule as one option among several.

The documents are in the public record. Readers can compare them directly.

The Defense

When the law needed defending in legislative correspondence, a data framework was available.

The Vermont Futures Project describes itself as an independent, nonpartisan 501(c)(3) providing data-informed economic research. In an email to constituent Ben Falk on April 7, 2026 — obtained by this series with Falk’s permission — Representative Sarita Austin, Clerk of Amy Sheldon’s House Environment Committee, wrote: “Read the ‘VT Futures Report’ — it is all data driven regarding what VT needs to do to keep taxes low and services maintained.” She cited this document while defending Act 181 against Falk’s request for repeal.

The Vermont Futures Project’s donor list is public, last updated March 2025. The Vermont Chamber of Commerce — whose Government Affairs VP sat on the NRB steering committee — is the Founding Partner. Its Government Affairs VP, Megan Sullivan, sat on the NRB steering committee that built the Act 181 framework and testified in support of H.687 before the House Environment Committee.

Also among Vermont Futures Project’s donors at Level 1, $10,000 or more per year, multiyear: Ski Vermont, the trade association for Vermont’s ski industry. LURB Board Member Alex Weinhagen clarified on April 9, 2026 that ski areas were not excluded from Tier 3 mapping — portions of ski area properties appear in the draft mapping released in October 2025, and ski areas already require Act 250 permits for new development regardless of Tier 3 designation. The relationship between Vermont’s ski industry, Act 181’s implementation, and the Vermont Futures Project’s donor structure is a documented open question this series will continue to report on as the mapping process develops.

Also at Level 1: Also at Level 1: Casella, waste management and construction. At Level 2: Jay Peak, O’Brien Brothers, Pomerleau Real Estate, PC Construction, ReArch. At Level 3: Vermont Council on Rural Development — confirmed in earlier installments of this series as a Lintilhac Foundation grantee, sitting simultaneously in the conservation philanthropy network and the economic growth data infrastructure.

A participant at the April 7 Rural Caucus meeting named the resource disparity directly: ski and golf organizations have the legal teams and institutional capacity to navigate Act 250 permitting. Rural landowners generally do not. Weinhagen’s response at the Rural Caucus addressed the science. It did not address the resource disparity.

The economic data infrastructure that provides the defense language in legislative correspondence is funded by the industries most directly affected by Act 181’s implementation. The ski industry — whose properties appear in portions of the draft Tier 3 mapping and which already navigates Act 250 permitting — is a top-tier multiyear funder of the research organization whose report is cited in legislative correspondence to defend the law. Whether that funding relationship shapes the research is not a question this record answers. What the record shows is the overlap. Readers can assess what it means.

Who Wasn’t There

The NRB’s own Role and Members document defined the steering committee as representing constituencies with “an active stake in the Act 250 program”: applicants, consultants, attorneys, economic development organizations, housing organizations, municipalities, environmental advocates, and state agencies.

Working landowners are not in that list. Farmers are not in that list. Foresters are not in that list. Conservation Districts are not in that list. Indigenous communities are not in that list.

The definition of who had a stake was written before the room was assembled.

Vermont’s 14 Natural Resources Conservation Districts are statutory public bodies with locally elected supervisors. They have been doing on-the-ground conservation work with Vermont’s farmers and forest owners for 85 years — technical assistance, conservation planning, direct relationships with the working landowners most affected by Tier 3. They are not environmental advocacy organizations. They are locally accountable public bodies whose elected leadership represents working landowners. Not one of them held a seat on the steering committee.

Their formal report to VHCB and ANR, submitted April 2026, states on the official record that Act 59’s conservation framework “was not developed with meaningful input from Conservation Districts or Indigenous communities and does not reflect how conservation functions in Vermont.” That is their language, in a government document, submitted through official channels.

The Vermont Farm Bureau — the state’s primary organization representing working farm families, with more than 5,000 member farms — was not on the steering committee. Vermont Farm Bureau President Mary White testified before the Senate Natural Resources Committee in March 2026, describing the situation facing families like the Ackermanns of Cabot: 150 acres, 18,000 maple taps, three children they hope to pass the land to. That testimony came two and a half years after the steering committee met.

NOFA Vermont, which represents organic and diversified farm operations across the state, was not on the steering committee. Rural Vermont, the state’s primary agricultural advocacy organization, was not on the steering committee. Rural Vermont staff wrote to Ben Falk on the morning of April 8 that the organization was discussing with its board that evening whether to shift capacity toward Act 181.

The Working Lands focus group — the one space in the process nominally designated for rural landowners — had its positions documented in the EMC’s own publicly posted notes and absent from the framework document the broader stakeholder group was handed.

Beyond the organizations: the people.

Retta Dunlap of Woodbury: caring for a husband with Alzheimer’s on 12 acres, fixed income. Angela Farrar of Chester: came to an Act 181 meeting open-minded, left opposed, wrote to her senators. Ashley LaRoche of Concord: registered nurse, 100% disabled veteran husband, 29 acres, four miles from her grandparents’ land. Lucas Farrell and Louisa Conrad of Townshend: 16 years farming regeneratively, woodlots in Current Use. Denis O’Brien of Burlington, whose property touches Tier 3 and who cannot build a garage or shed without triggering Act 250 review — confirming the issue reaches Vermont’s largest city.

Several hundred Vermonters stood on the Statehouse steps on March 24, 2026. Forty-five attended the April 7 Rural Caucus listening session. Nearly 30 more submitted written testimony. What began as a few hundred people has grown to more than 9,000 organizing online and in their local communities through the Vermont Act 181 Facebook group.

None of them were in the room in 2023. Most of them did not know the room existed.

The Committee Record — April 8, 2026

Source: Vermont House Environment Committee, S.325 testimony, April 8, 2026. Vermont Legislature public recording, House Environment Committee YouTube channel. Timestamps noted.

On the same morning the documents described in this piece arrived in response to public records requests, the Vermont House Environment Committee heard testimony on S.325 from witnesses whose words belong in this record.

Neil Ryan, farmer, Corinth and Orange, Vermont.

Ryan testified unaffiliated. He built his farm owner-financed. At the time he started it, he had $1,000 in his bank account and a $1,200 trailer. Under Act 181’s road rule, that farm — and two others his family started in Vermont over fifty years — would have triggered Act 250 review. His childhood farm is now largely mapped Tier 3, including the cow pastures and barn complex.

He testified that the implementation delay is already producing the opposite of the law’s stated conservation goals. People with means are subdividing and building roads now, before the deadline, in patterns that are not ecologically sound. The collaborative model the law claimed to build has been turned adversarial. Trust has been broken.

He testified that LURB’s Alex Weinhagen acknowledged on the record that Fish and Wildlife has no datasets for where wildlife actually move in Vermont, and that the habitat connector mapping used a novel theory to link connectivity blocks.

At timestamp 15:35 of his testimony, Ryan said: “The process was the poison.”

He called for full repeal of the Road Rule and Tier 3.

Ornela Mata Figueroa, Co-Director, Land Access and Opportunity Board.

The Land Access and Opportunity Board is the equity oversight body named into Act 181’s own rulemaking structure. Mata Figueroa’s title was confirmed on the record at timestamp 28:27.

At timestamp 43:13, she said: “We pushed through regardless of what was the whole of Vermont and that inadvertently created a real violence. We pushed through with a super majority, we silenced, and we didn’t mean to, and this is where we are.”

Jamey Fidel, Vice President for Vermont, National Audubon Society and Audubon Vermont.

Fidel has held his current position since August 2025. Before that he spent 23 years at the Vermont Natural Resources Council as General Counsel and Forest and Wildlife Program Director — one of the named VNRC witnesses in the legislative record on H.687 documented in earlier installments of this series. He testified in support of S.325.

At timestamp 36:21 he said: “I remember calling Alex when that map came out and saying this map should not be here, this map needs to go away — it is not an accurate reflection of the road rule. It actually presented it as if 800 feet away from an existing road you are under Act 250, and that was never the intent of the road rule.”

At timestamp 41:16, on Tier 3: “Overreach in Tier 3 is simply not a good outcome. It is not a good idea.”

At timestamp 51:17: “I think the process has had mistakes and I am totally open to the feedback that is registering that there is disagreement over whether certain percentages or policies are the right outcomes.”

Sam Lincoln, Randolph Center.

Lincoln is a farmer, logger, contractor, and certified master logger who has worked with state agencies and trade associations in four states on forest practices. He served on his local planning commission and development review board. He described himself as a parent who wants his two sons to be able to have homes, families, and careers in rural Vermont.

At timestamp 2:22 he said: “I am not here to trade example for example about where Act 250 works or does not work. I am here to say plainly that it is too blunt of an instrument to apply across such a broad area of this state.”

At timestamp 11:19: “Repeal Tier 3 and the road rule in full. These provisions are not thoughtful conservation. They are top-down restrictions that place more weight on maps, models, and theory than on the lived reality of rural people.”

These are not outside agitators. Neil Ryan is a farmer whose land is mapped under the law he is describing. Ornela Mata Figueroa is the co-director of the equity oversight body the law itself created. Jamey Fidel spent 23 years at the organization most associated with Act 181’s drafting and advocacy, and testified that the maps were wrong and the process had mistakes. Sam Lincoln is a certified master logger who has spent his career working between landowners and state agencies, calling it too blunt an instrument for too broad an application.

All four testified in the public legislative record on April 8, 2026 — the same morning the primary source documents described in this piece were produced in response to public records requests filed by this series.

The Pattern

The conservation funding network shaped the framework. The stakeholder process that generated the drafting template stated in its own documents that no consensus existed on the most contested provisions. The Working Lands group’s positions — full exemption, Tier 3 redundancy, the roadblock language, the road rule threshold — were documented in the process notes and absent from the framework document the broader stakeholder group was handed. The economic data infrastructure that provides the defense language in legislative correspondence is funded by the industries the law exempted.

The Tier 1 growth centers — the areas where Act 181 actually removes regulatory barriers — cover an estimated 2 to 2.5% of Vermont's land area, according to a projection by Devon Neary, Director of the Rutland Regional Planning Commission and chair of the Vermont Association of Planning and Development Agencies, speaking to Vermont Public on February 5, 2026.. The remaining 98% falls into Tier 2 or Tier 3. Until final Tier 3 maps are adopted, the state itself has acknowledged it does not know how many parcels or landowners will be affected.

Rural working landowners were not represented in the steering committee that built the framework, were not among the organizations funding the research cited to defend it, and in some cases were still learning the law existed while its implementation was already underway.

That is the documented pattern. Every claim in this piece is sourced to primary documents or confirmed public records. Open questions are labeled open.

No villain is required. The architecture shows itself.

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

Primary Sources

• NRB Steering Committee Role and Members document, June 26, 2023. Publicly posted at nrb.vermont.gov. Produced by LURB General Counsel Jenny Ronis, April 8, 2026.

• NRB Conceptual Recommendations for Necessary Updates to Act 250: Facilitators’ Draft Straw Proposal, September 28, 2023. Produced by LURB General Counsel Jenny Ronis, April 8, 2026. Does not appear in publicly posted materials at emcenter.org/vermont-act-250 or on the LURB project page.

• Email, Alex Weinhagen, LURB Board Member, to Alexsys Thompson, April 9, 2026. Clarification of April 7 Rural Caucus remarks regarding ski areas and Tier 3 mapping. On the record.

• EMC Working Lands Focus Group Discussion Takeaways, August 17, 2023. emcenter.org/vermont-act-250. Publicly posted.

• EMC Agriculture and Working Lands Stakeholder Meeting Notes, August 31, 2023. emcenter.org/vermont-act-250. Publicly posted.

• H.687 Bill Status, legislature.vermont.gov — Groveman and Sullivan testimony confirmed.

• VNRC, H.687 Summary As Passed by the Vermont Legislature, June 5, 2024.

• VNRC, Detailed Overview of Act 181 As Passed by the Legislature, January 2025.

• Lintilhac Foundation Form 990-PF, 2024 tax year. Grantmakers.io, confirmed April 8, 2026.

• Vermont Futures Project, Meet Our Donors page, last updated March 2025. vtfuturesproject.org.

• Let’s Build Homes, About page — Evernorth and Dunkiel board membership confirmed.

• Snyder Braverman Development LLC website — South Burlington City Center confirmed.

• Cold Hollow to Canada, Team & Board page — Hancock roles confirmed.

• Vermont Business Magazine, VCRD award announcement, August 2024 — Hancock state forester role confirmed.

• SRH Law website — Dunkiel Saunders/SRH Law confirmed.

• Email, Representative Sarita Austin to Ben Falk, April 7, 2026. Obtained with Falk’s permission.

• Correspondence, Ben Falk and Rural Vermont, April 1–8, 2026. Obtained with Falk’s permission.

• Vermont NRCD formal report to VHCB and ANR, April 2026.

• Vermont Farm Bureau, Senate Natural Resources Committee testimony, March 2026.

• Vermont Public/VTDigger reporting, March 24, 2026 — Statehouse protest attendance confirmed.

• Rural Caucus listening session, April 7, 2026 — attendance figures confirmed.

• Vermont House Environment Committee, S.325 testimony, April 8, 2026. Public recording, House Environment Committee YouTube channel. Witnesses: Neil Ryan, Ornela Mata Figueroa, Jamey Fidel, Sam Lincoln. Timestamps cited in text.

• OpenCorporates Vermont — North Woods Resource Group, Inc., company number 0129827.

• Devon Neary, Director, Rutland Regional Planning Commission, quoted in Vermont Public, February 5, 2026 — Tier 1 land area projection of 2–2.5% of Vermont's land base.

• FYIVT reporting, February 2026 — state officials’ acknowledgment that parcel counts remain unknown pending final maps.

Who Built the Law

The record of who drafted Acts 181 and 59, what their professional interests are, and the funding infrastructure behind the effort.

The questions this piece asks are not about character.

They are about structure.

When a state legislature rewrites land use law — when it redraws the map of which Vermont land can be developed, which cannot, and which body holds the authority to decide — the public is entitled to know who built it. Not who voted for it. Who wrote it. Who shaped its scientific foundation. Who testified in its favor. Who celebrated its passage. And what those people do for work.

This piece documents what the public record shows about those questions for Acts 181 (2023) and 59 (2024) — Vermont’s two most significant land use restructuring statutes in a generation.

One element of that record is documented constituent impact. Ashley LaRoche, a registered nurse farming 29 acres in East Concord, submitted a written statement about what Act 181’s tier framework means for her property. She is one of the few people willing to be named. More than six others contacted this publication after Part IV with similar accounts. They asked not to be identified. The reason, documented in private correspondence, is fear of retaliation from active permit processes.

That pattern — constituents unable to speak publicly about legislation affecting their land — is part of the record this piece examines.

The Primary Sponsor

Act 181’s primary sponsor and the chair of the House Environment and Natural Resources Committee during its passage is Rep. Amy Sheldon (D-Middlebury). S.325 — the bill that would delay Act 181’s implementation — passed the Vermont Senate and now sits in the House Environment Committee. Sheldon chairs that committee. She has said publicly she is not open to rolling back elements of Act 181. “We’re balancing freedom and unity, right? That’s what we do.”

She is also, per her own Vermont Legislature biography and her 2023 House Ethics Disclosure Form, the owner of Landslide Natural Resource Planning Inc., a consulting firm she has operated since 2005.

Sheldon’s 2023 House Ethics Disclosure Form, publicly available through the Vermont Legislature, lists Landslide LLC as her employer. Vermont’s ethics disclosure form asks legislators to identify their employer. It does not require disclosure of the nature of that employer’s work before state or federal agencies, its clients, or its contracts. Vermont is one of only three states in the country that does not require legislators to disclose outside income comprehensively.

Act 181 restructures Vermont’s Act 250 development review system, centralizes authority in a new appointed Land Use Review Board, and creates a tiered framework that designates which parts of Vermont are suitable for development and which are not. The law’s implementation shapes where in Vermont environmental permitting is required, where it is waived, and at what density. A principal of a natural resource planning firm — a firm whose work involves navigating exactly this kind of permitting and land use framework — has a professional relationship to the landscape Act 181 creates.

Vermont’s conflict of interest statute sets an “immediate and direct” standard. Legislative attorneys have advised members that unless they are among a small number of people who would directly benefit from a bill, they have no conflict of interest. No recusal by Sheldon is on record for either Act 59 or Act 181.

Sheldon’s legislative biography documents several additional roles that establish her position within the conservation policy network shaping both laws.

She is Vermont’s State Lead for the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators — a formal organizational role, not simply membership, that includes supporting NCEL’s mission within the state and advising on the agenda for NCEL’s national forums. The National Caucus of Environmental Legislators documented that Act 59 is consistent with the federal America the Beautiful conservation initiative. NCEL’s own published account confirms that its staff provided Sheldon with draft bill language, talking points, and example management plans for Act 59 beginning in 2020 — three years before the bill passed. NCEL staff also connected her with legislators in other states introducing similar legislation and continued providing research and assistance through passage in 2023. NCEL is funded by the Packard Foundation.

Before her election to the Vermont House in 2014, Sheldon served on the Board of the Middlebury Area Land Trust — the same category of organization that holds conservation easements on the habitat blocks and wildlife corridors Act 181’s Tier 3 framework designates for protection. She also currently serves on the Middlebury Conservation Commission and is listed on her legislative biography as Senior Faculty at the National Outdoor Leadership School, a wilderness education nonprofit based in Lander, Wyoming.

Each of these roles is listed on her own Vermont Legislature biography or documented in NCEL’s own published materials.

The primary drafter of Vermont’s most significant land use law in fifty years received draft bill language and talking points from a nationally funded conservation policy organization, holds a formal leadership role within that organization, previously served on the board of a land trust whose conservation interests the law directly benefits, and owns a natural resource planning firm whose work involves navigating the permitting framework the law restructures.

Vermont’s conflict of interest statute sets an “immediate and direct” standard. No recusal by Sheldon is on record for either Act 59 or Act 181.

What the record also shows is that Sheldon, in her own words, describes this not as a single bill but as a decade-long project. In a November 2024 interview published in From the Ground Up, she said:

“I have been working on this for the last 10 years, the whole time I’ve been in the legislature. I would say I didn’t necessarily know that that’s what I came for — but it turns out, that’s what I came for.”

She confirmed in the same interview that Acts 59 and 181 are “Part One, Part Two, Part Three” of a deliberate legislative sequence. She confirmed she moved the Tier 3 definition out of statute and into the appointed LURB deliberately.

That 30x30 language was subsequently removed from the rural conservation areas category of S.325. Legislative counsel Ellen Czajkowski confirmed the removal on the record during Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee proceedings on S.325 — specifically during the April 1, 2026 session. The language was removed from the statute. The framework it described remains in the implementation architecture.

The pattern of committee process itself is now documented from multiple independent sources. The legislative record shows a single witness on the Road Rule during the H.70 hearing. A March 26, 2026 VTDigger piece by Farrell and Conrad documented the pattern further. A third independent source, speaking on background, corroborated the same pattern of committee conduct — including that testimony from Audubon Vermont conceding that working lands should be incorporated into the conservation framework did not result in a committee vote.

Rep. Tagliavia, who sits on the Environment Committee, has described Acts 59 and 181 in his own words as “an affront to rural Vermont living and an attack on private property rights.”

Amy Sheldon was contacted with specific questions before publication. This piece will be updated with any response received.

The Co-Sponsor

Act 181’s co-sponsor is Sen. Seth Bongartz (D-Bennington), who served on the House Committee on Environment and Energy during the bill’s drafting and passage. He is now a Vermont State Senator and sits on the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee — the committee that oversees Act 181’s implementation.

During the same period he co-sponsored Act 181, Bongartz served as board chair of Grow America — formerly known as the National Development Council — a national nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution headquartered in New Jersey. He has held that role for 22 years. Grow America’s core programs include New Markets Tax Credits, affordable housing finance, technical assistance to municipalities, and community development lending. These programs map directly onto Act 181’s designated growth center investment architecture — the tier framework that channels development investment into designated areas.

Vermont’s conflict of interest statute sets an “immediate and direct” standard. No recusal by Bongartz is on record for Act 181.

Bongartz was contacted with specific questions before publication and did not respond.

The Organization That Wrote the Law

The Vermont Natural Resources Council served as the primary organizational drafter of Acts 181 and 59. Three VNRC staff members testified repeatedly before the House Environment Committee during both bills’ passages: Brian Shupe, who served as Executive Director until summer 2024; Jamey Fidel, General Counsel and Forest and Wildlife Program Director; and Jon Groveman, Policy and Water Program Director. Their testimony is in the public legislative record. All three appear on VNRC’s 990.

Who Funds VNRC — and Why One Funder Is Specifically Notable

VNRC’s audited financial statements, prepared by McSoley McCoy & Co. and dated March 14, 2025, show total revenue of $1,536,793 against total expenses of $1,922,828 in FY2024 — a $386,035 operating deficit. Outstanding government grant commitments at year end totaled $1,718,500, described in the audit’s Note 3 as reimbursement-type governmental grants restricted almost entirely to water projects.

The same audited statements document a formal Resource Sharing Agreement between VNRC and Vermont Conservation Voters — a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization. Under that agreement, VNRC provides program, administrative, and fundraising services to VCV. VCV reimbursed VNRC approximately $190,100 in FY2024. Lauren Hierl, who ran VCV as Executive Director from 2018 to 2024, became VNRC’s Executive Director in August 2024 — after Act 181 passed.

Among its private funders, the Lintilhac Foundation — a family foundation based in Shelburne — is confirmed as a VNRC grantee in the foundation’s own published grant reports and on its website. The foundation’s stated priorities include “land conservation, especially projects that include integrative land use planning.”

The Lintilhac connection is notable not because foundation funding of advocacy organizations is unusual — it isn’t — but because of what exists beyond the funding relationship. Three members of the Lintilhac family hold simultaneous roles across the foundation and VNRC.

Will Lintilhac is a trustee of the Lintilhac Foundation. He is also Chair of the VNRC Board of Directors — the board of the organization the foundation funds.

Louise S. Lintilhac is President of the Lintilhac Foundation, confirmed in a February 2026 Vermont Secretary of State biennial report. She is also Communications Director at VNRC, confirmed on VNRC’s own staff page. The foundation’s President runs communications for the organization the foundation funds.

Crea S. Lintilhac is Executive Director of the Lintilhac Foundation. She is also listed as an advisor to Standing Trees on standingtrees.org. Standing Trees is the organization identified in a March 26, 2026 VTDigger piece as having shaped Act 59’s permanence-based conservation definition alongside Sheldon. The Lintilhac Foundation granted $15,000 to the Global Justice Ecology Project in 2022 specifically for “General Support for the Standing Trees Project” — confirmed from the 2022 990-PF.

The foundation funds the organization. A foundation trustee chairs the board. The foundation’s President runs communications. The foundation’s Executive Director advises the organization that shaped the law’s core conservation definition.

Vermont Secretary of State records show three entities registered at 886 Northgate Road in Shelburne, sharing the same registered agent — Langrock Sperry & Wool LLP: Lintilhac Foundation Inc., Lintilhac LLC, and Lintilhac Slat LLC. The last carries NAICS code 523110 — Investment Banking and Securities Dealing.

These relationships are documented from the foundation’s own website, VNRC’s own staff and board pages, Vermont Secretary of State filings, and IRS 990-PF records.

Who Sits on VNRC’s Board

The board of the organization that drafted Acts 181 and 59 is documented from public records.

Diane Snelling served on the VNRC board. She was previously Chair of the Natural Resources Board — the body Act 181 restructured into the Land Use Review Board. The former chair of the body the law restructured sat on the board of the organization that wrote the law that restructured it.

Kathy Beyer serves on the VNRC board per 990 filings. She is also Senior Vice President for Real Estate Development at Evernorth, Vermont’s largest nonprofit affordable housing developer. In November 2025, VNRC published a piece on its own website in which Beyer described, in her own words, how Act 181’s tier framework affects Evernorth’s development projects. The URL: vnrc.org/evernorths-kathy-beyer-on-how-act-181-can-blend-vermonts-housing-and-conservation-needs/

A board member of the organization that drafted the law described, in that organization’s own publication, how the law’s tier framework affects her employer’s development work.

On March 18, 2026, VNRC published a full public messaging document on its website titled “Your Act 181 Questions, Answered,” defending the law’s implementation framework. The primary organizational drafter of the law is also managing its public narrative during the amendment process.

The Stakeholder Process — “Unprecedented Consensus”

VNRC’s summary of H.687, published June 14, 2024 — two days after Governor Scott’s veto and three days before the legislative override — described the bill as representing “unprecedented consensus reached among diverse stakeholders committed to modernizing our state’s development framework.”

The primary documents from the stakeholder process tell a different story.

The Natural Resources Board hired the Environmental Mediation Center, a New Hampshire nonprofit, to run a stakeholder process and produce a report. The EMC’s own project description states its mandate was to “build consensus that would enable recommendations on changes to Act 250 by the NRB to be enacted into law.” That is not neutral facilitation language. That is outcome-oriented facilitation with a predetermined destination.

The process convened six focus groups and a 16-member steering committee. Steering committee members served as liaisons relaying focus group feedback to the steering committee. The steering committee then negotiated consensus among themselves. The focus groups did not reach consensus. The steering committee did. The steering committee meeting notes are written without attribution — the public record does not show who argued what position or who conceded what.

The six focus groups were: Working Lands (8 members), Attorneys (10), Consultants and Engineers (9), Environmental (8), Housing/Economic Development/Environmental Justice (13), and Planning and Municipalities (7).

The Working Lands group was the only group representing actual rural working landowners — dairy farmers, timber harvesters, small farm operators. The Housing, Economic Development, and Environmental Justice group — whose name implies rural equity concerns — consisted of a ski resort representative, a utility company representative, real estate developers, housing nonprofit staff, architects, and Vermont Realtors. There was not one rural landowner, rural municipal official, or environmental justice advocate representing low-income rural communities.

The parcel owners whose land falls under Tier 3 had no formal participation mechanism in the stakeholder process that produced the law. In written testimony submitted to the joint Senate Economic Development and Senate Natural Resources and Energy committees on February 10, 2026, VNRC Policy Director Jon Groveman — one of the three VNRC staff members who testified repeatedly during Act 181’s drafting — stated:

“To be clear, as we sit here today the Tier 3 and Road Rule jurisdictional requirements have not been set. Accordingly, it is impossible to say where Act 250 will apply and what properties will be affected.”

The organization that drafted the law confirmed in legislative testimony that the scope of the law’s most consequential provisions remains undetermined.

What the Working Lands group actually said is documented in the EMC’s own meeting notes:

“Working lands enterprises should be exempt from Act 250, full stop.” (August 17 session)

“Forest management should be exempt from Act 250, especially if enrolled in Current Use.” (August 17 session)

“Seems like there’s a roadblock every time you go to do something on the land.”

“Not sure how Tier 3 would work without a lot of redundancy with existing state laws and policies.”

None of those positions appear in the final NRB report. The Environmental group’s primary asks — a new forest fragmentation criterion, a strengthened road rule, a professional NRB board — were substantially adopted.

Ahn Ryan, a professional researcher and facilitator who has reviewed the full process documentation, is on record: “The description — ‘unprecedented consensus reached among diverse stakeholders’ — is a lie on two fronts. There was no unprecedented consensus with regard to rural land. Consensus was manufactured. And the stakeholders were not diverse.”

Not everyone who participated in the 2023 stakeholder process shares that characterization. Megan Sullivan, Vice President of Government Affairs for the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, testified before the same committees on February 10, 2026 that the process produced “real stakeholder buy in and a shared belief that Vermont could advance housing production and natural resource protection together.” Sullivan also testified, however, that the LURB’s interpretation of its authority represents “a significant departure from what many participants understood to be legislative intent” — a concern she said is shared across stakeholder groups that supported the original law.

Source: Megan Sullivan, Vermont Chamber of Commerce testimony, Senate Economic Development and Senate Natural Resources and Energy committees, February 10, 2026.

VNRC was contacted with specific questions about the consensus claim before publication. This piece will be updated with any response received.

The Scientific Foundation and the Advocacy Loop

Vermont Conservation Design is the document Sheldon cited as the foundation for Act 59. It was co-authored by Liz Thompson and Bob Zaino.

Thompson is the Managing Editor of From the Ground Up, the advocacy publication of the Wildlands and Watershed Forests Coalition — a publication explicitly described as embodying the vision of protecting 80% of New England as forests. She interviewed Sheldon twice in her own publication. Sheldon provided an endorsement quote for Thompson’s Wildlands in New England report, published by Northeast Wilderness Trust.

In the inaugural issue of From the Ground Up, WWF&C Policy Director Alex Redfield’s entire Vermont policy section reads: “We’re happy to highlight some of the recent successes for biodiversity and conservation in our interview with Rep. Amy Sheldon.” Vermont’s entire policy entry. One interview. One legislator. The primary sponsor of the legislation the publication advocated for.

Thompson testified in favor of Act 181 before the committee Sheldon chaired.

Thompson also served as an official member of the Act 59 State Lands Working Group — confirmed by Commissioner Danielle Fitzko in a public House Environment Committee hearing transcript. Fitzko referred to Thompson as “an independent ecologist who I know you all know.”

At the time of that appointment, Thompson was simultaneously the co-author of the scientific document the law is built on, the managing editor of the advocacy publication amplifying the law, and a recipient of the 2025 ANR Sally Laughlin Award presented by Secretary Julie Moore — who sits on the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board responsible for implementing Acts 59 and 181.

The document that became the law’s scientific foundation was written by people who testified for the law, managed the publication that amplified it, served on the working group that implemented it, and were recognized by the agency now administering it. Every element of that is documented in the public record.

The Beneficiary Organization and Its State Financial Relationships

The Vermont Land Trust holds conservation easements on farms, forests, and natural areas across Vermont. Act 181’s Tier 3 designations create conservation value for habitat blocks and wildlife corridors — the exact geography VLT actively acquires and holds. The law institutionalizes a conservation framework VLT has been building for decades.

Vermont’s public grants and contracts database shows VLT received a $200,000 state contract from the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation in FY2023 for the Worcester Woods III land conservation project. VLT also holds a $2 million line of credit from the Agency of Natural Resources, active from August 2023 through August 2028.

VLT’s FY2025 audited financial statements show $8.5 million in purchase of development rights activity, $658,000 in carbon credit sales through its Vermont Forest Carbon LLC subsidiary, and a repeat material weakness in internal controls — a finding carried over unchanged from the prior year’s audit.

The Vermont Land Trust was contacted for comment before publication. This piece will be updated with any response received.

The Board Writing the Rules

The Land Use Review Board — the five-member professional body created by Act 181 to replace the Natural Resources Board — is now writing the Tier 3 rules. Act 181 eliminated the former citizen board structure, which drew volunteer members from communities across Vermont, and replaced it with five full-time appointees with professional backgrounds in planning and land use administration. The stated rationale was consistency — the old system produced uneven decisions across nine district commissions. The practical result is a board composed entirely of career planners and land use administrators writing rules for rural Vermont land.

This is the body Sheldon confirmed she deliberately moved the Tier 3 definition into, out of statute. The definition of what counts as a critical natural resource area — and therefore what triggers Act 250 review on rural land — is being written by an appointed professional board, not by the legislature that passed the law.

That is not a neutral administrative delegation. When a legislature passes a law and leaves the definitions that determine its scope to an appointed body, the people most affected by those definitions have no direct recourse through the electoral process. They cannot vote out the LURB. They can comment during rulemaking. They can appeal individual decisions. But the fundamental question — what land is a critical natural resource area, and what development on that land requires a state permit — is being answered by five appointees, not by elected representatives, and not by the Vermonters whose land it describes.

The Vermont Legislature passed Act 181 with that structure intact. Whether that delegation was intentional, pragmatic, or simply unremarked upon is not established by the record. What is established is that the body now writing those definitions was created by the law, appointed by the Governor, and is not accountable to voters in the way the legislature that created it is.

Janet Hurley was appointed LURB Chair by Governor Scott in December 2024 and seated January 27, 2025. She previously served as Assistant Director and Planning Program Manager at the Bennington County Regional Commission. Source: act250.vermont.gov/land-use-review-board-members.

Rep. Laura Sibilia — an independent who represents five Windham County towns — published a commentary on March 31, 2026 calling for repeal of Tier 3 and the road rule outright. “That starts with acknowledging that we got the sequence wrong,” she wrote. “We moved ahead without enough shared understanding with rural Vermonters of what this would mean for their land and communities, and we are seeing the consequences of that now.”

The law’s implementation is encountering municipal resistance in the county it was designed to benefit most. Vermont Public and VTDigger reported in February 2026 that a third of the towns Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission designated as potential Tier 1B areas chose not to opt in — including Colchester and Essex. Charlotte’s Selectboard declined to bring the opt-in resolution to a vote, deferring the question to town voters — confirmed by the Charlotte News and a CCRPC document.

These are not rural towns resisting conservation policy. These are the suburban and exurban communities Act 181 was specifically designed to channel development into. When the towns the law was built for are declining to participate, and a legislator who supported the law’s goals is calling for repeal of its core provisions, the gap between what the process produced and what Vermonters understood they were getting is no longer an open question.

The National Frame

The National Caucus of Environmental Legislators published a piece celebrating Sheldon for passing what it described as the nation’s most ambitious conservation goal. The Packard Foundation is a documented NCEL funder.

Vermont’s law is being positioned nationally as a model. The infrastructure that produced it — legislative, organizational, and philanthropic — is connected to national networks with explicit policy goals.

Who Is Administering the Law Now

The people now administering the law include Amy Sheldon — who chairs the House Environment Committee and controls what happens to S.325, the bill that would reform the law she drafted. Seth Bongartz sits on the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee overseeing Act 181’s implementation. Anne Watson, who received Renewable Energy Vermont’s 2023 Legislative Champion award and Vermont Conservation Voters’ 2024 Rising Star award, chairs that committee.

S.325 — the bill that would delay Act 181’s implementation — passed the Vermont Senate and is now in the House Environment Committee. As passed by the Senate, the bill would push the road rule effective date from July 1, 2026 to July 1, 2030 and delay Tier 3 sensitive ecosystem rulemaking. Amy Sheldon chairs the House Environment Committee. She has said publicly she is not open to rolling back elements of Act 181. The current status of S.325 and any amendments will be updated as the legislative record develops.

What the Record Does Not Show

The record does not show that any of these individuals acted improperly under Vermont law. Vermont’s conflict of interest standard is narrow by design.

The record does not show that VNRC’s advocacy was anything other than legitimate nonprofit participation in public policy — which is legal and common.

The record does not show that foundation funding of advocacy organizations is improper. It is standard practice across the political spectrum.

The record does not show that any professional whose employer benefits from this legislation took any action that was not permitted under the rules they operated within.

What the record does not resolve is whether those rules are adequate — whether a conflict of interest standard so narrow it is almost never triggered is the right standard for legislation that restructures the property rights of tens of thousands of Vermont landowners. Whether an appointed board writing the definitions that determine what rural land can and cannot become is an appropriate delegation of democratic authority. Whether the loop between scientific foundation, legislative drafting, advocacy amplification, official working group membership, state recognition, and public messaging — all within the same network — is the kind of process Vermonters understood was shaping their land use law.

VTDigger’s Full Disclosure series documented in 2024 that Vermont legislators are not required to disclose outside income — one of only three states in the country with that gap. The conflict of interest standard is so narrow that legislators almost never formally recuse. The methodology and full database are at vtdigger.org/2025/02/11/want-to-know-if-your-legislators-have-any-conflicts-of-interest-we-have-a-tool-for-that/

Those are not legal questions. They are democratic ones.

What Remains Open

Several threads documented in this series remain open. The relationship between the regulatory framework Acts 181 and 59 created and Vermont’s Section 248 energy permitting process — which explicitly exempts utility-scale solar projects from Act 250 review — is the subject of forthcoming reporting. A Connecticut commodities company is preparing a PUC application for a 300-acre solar installation adjacent to Dead Creek Wildlife Area in Panton. That project, and the financial network behind it, will be addressed in a separate piece.

The federal preemption question on glyphosate and wetlands protection has oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on April 27, 2026. That reporting is also in active development.

The public records requests submitted to Act250.General@vermont.gov on April 7, 2026 — seeking the Steering Committee Role and Members document and the September 28, 2023 Conceptual Framework from the NRB stakeholder process — remain pending. This will update as this series evolves, and it is moving quickly.

The consulting firm owned by Act 181’s primary drafter — Landslide Natural Resource Planning Inc. — returns zero results in the Vermont VISION central contracts database for the drafting window. That absence is documented. State contracts executed as subcontracts, through agency-delegated authority, or outside central reporting would not appear in this database. The gap is documented. Whether it reflects an absence of financial relationship or a gap in the database’s visibility is an open question. A public records request is pending.

What Vermonters Can Do With This

The LURB rulemaking process is ongoing. Public comment periods are the moments when the Tier 3 definition gets written — when what happens to Ashley LaRoche’s farm, and to thousands of properties like it across rural Vermont, gets decided. Those comment periods are the democratic opening that remains.

The legislative record is public. Committee testimony, floor debate, ethics disclosures, 990 filings, and state grants and contracts databases are accessible to anyone who looks.

Members of the House Environment Committee are hearing from constituents. Rep. Pritchard has described the committee process as “one-sided.” Rep. Tagliavia has described Acts 59 and 181 as “an affront to rural Vermont living and an attack on private property rights.” Multiple committee members are now engaged with the questions this series has raised.

Closing

On March 24, 2026, several hundred Vermonters gathered on the Statehouse steps in Montpelier. They were farmers, landowners, loggers, and small business owners. Their signs read: “Hands off our land.” “No more decisions about rural Vermont without rural Vermonters at the table.” Since that day, the online organizing group has grown to over 9,000 members.

A Central Vermont legislator who voted yes on Act 181 told land planner Ben Falk of Moretown in a phone conversation: “We didn’t deal with tier 3 or even tier 2 when we passed the bill. But that is where most people live. We don’t have a vision for rural Vermont.”

That is not an opponent saying it. That is a yes vote.

The record documented here does not answer why Acts 181 and 59 were written the way they were. It does not establish intent. It documents who was in the room, what interests they held, who funded the effort, and what the stakeholders who were supposed to be heard actually said.

The pattern is in the record. The record is public. What Vermonters do with it is up to them.

PRIMARY SOURCES

↳ Vermont Legislature biography, Rep. Amy Sheldon — legislature.vermont.gov

↳ Vermont House Ethics Disclosure Form, Amy Sheldon, 2023 — legislature.vermont.gov

↳ National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, “Vermont Rep. Amy Sheldon Passes Nation’s Most Ambitious Conservation Goal” — ncelenviro.org

↳ From the Ground Up, Issue 5, “Putting Hope on the Ground: An Interview with Representative Amy Sheldon,” Liz Thompson, November 2024 — fromthegroundupne.org

↳ Vermont Legislature biography, Sen. Seth Bongartz — legislature.vermont.gov

↳ Grow America board listing — growamerica.us

↳ VNRC 990, FY2024 — available via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer

↳ VNRC audited financial statements, FY2024, McSoley McCoy & Co., March 14, 2025 — vnrc.org/financial

↳ Lintilhac Foundation grant reports and website — lintilhac.org

↳ Vermont Secretary of State biennial report, Lintilhac Foundation Inc., February 2026 — sos.vermont.gov

↳ VNRC staff page and board of directors page — vnrc.org

↳ Standing Trees advisor listing — standingtrees.org/contact

↳ Lintilhac Foundation 990-PF, 2022, Global Justice Ecology Project grant — IRS / ProPublica

↳ VTDigger, Farrell and Conrad, March 26, 2026 — vtdigger.org

↳ VNRC, “Your Act 181 Questions, Answered,” March 18, 2026 — vnrc.org/your-act-181-questions-answered

↳ VNRC, “Evernorth’s Kathy Beyer on how Act 181 can blend Vermont’s housing and conservation needs,” November 2025 — vnrc.org/evernorths-kathy-beyer-on-how-act-181-can-blend-vermonts-housing-and-conservation-needs

↳ Environmental Mediation Center, Act 250 stakeholder process documentation, 2023 — EMC meeting notes, NRB report

↳ Jon Groveman and Kati Gallagher, VNRC testimony, joint Senate Economic Development and Senate Natural Resources and Energy committees, February 10, 2026 — legislature.vermont.gov

↳ Megan Sullivan, Vermont Chamber of Commerce testimony, joint Senate Economic Development and Senate Natural Resources and Energy committees, February 10, 2026 — legislature.vermont.gov

↳ House Environment Committee hearing transcript, Commissioner Danielle Fitzko testimony on Act 59 State Lands Working Group — legislature.vermont.gov

↳ ANR Sally Laughlin Award, 2025 — anr.vermont.gov

↳ Vermont Land Trust FY2025 audited financial statements — vlt.org/about/financial

↳ Vermont Spotlight contracts database, VLT Contract #42387, FY2023 — spotlight.vermont.gov

↳ Land Use Review Board member listing, Janet Hurley — act250.vermont.gov/land-use-review-board-members

↳ Rep. Laura Sibilia commentary, March 31, 2026 — Bennington Banner / Reformer / Vermont Business Magazine

↳ Vermont Public and VTDigger, Carly Berlin, “Vermont is overhauling Act 250. Here’s what the development maps look like so far,” February 5, 2026 — vtdigger.org and vermontpublic.org

↳ Charlotte News, Selectboard Tier 1B deferral, May 2025 — charlottenewsvt.org

↳ CCRPC Tier 1B status documentation — ccrpcvt.org

↳ Vermont Legislature, S.325, 2026 session — legislature.vermont.gov/bill/status/2026/S.325

↳ House Environment Committee, S.325 walkthrough, Ellen Czajkowski, April 1, 2026 — legislature.vermont.gov

↳ VTDigger Full Disclosure series, outside income disclosure gap — vtdigger.org/2025/02/11/want-to-know-if-your-legislators-have-any-conflicts-of-interest-we-have-a-tool-for-that

↳ Vermont Acts 59 and 181 — legislature.vermont.gov

↳ Rural Vermont Rising investigative series, Parts I–IV — alexsys.substack.com

Alexsys Thompson writes this investigative series at alexsys.substack.com. All sources cited are in the public record. Open questions are labeled as open. This series does not attribute intent. It documents pattern and convergence and invites readers to assess what the record shows.

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

EDITOR’S NOTE ON METHODOLOGY: Every factual claim in this piece is sourced to primary documents: Vermont Legislature biography pages, ethics disclosure forms, federal grant records, nonprofit 990 filings, Vermont Secretary of State filings, Vermont Spotlight grants and contracts databases, audited financial statements, organizational websites, published interviews, legislative testimony, and public hearing transcripts. Where a claim is attributed to an individual, the source is that individual’s own public words or confirmed public record. Where a question is unresolved, it is identified as open. This series does not take a position on whether Acts 181 or 59 are good policy. It documents who built them and what their professional relationships are.

This publication contacted Amy Sheldon, Seth Bongartz, the Vermont Natural Resources Council, and the Vermont Land Trust with specific questions before publication. This piece will be updated with any responses received. Public records requests seeking the Steering Committee Role and Members document and the September 28, 2023 Conceptual Framework document from the NRB Act 250 stakeholder process were submitted to Act250.General@vermont.gov on April 7, 2026.

The questions this series asked. The answers the record just delivered.

Alexsys Thompson

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

This week marks the 56th anniversary of Act 250 u2014 the law a Republican governor and Republican legislature created in 1970 to protect Vermont from outside development pressure. The law that Act 181 now restructures was built by Vermonters, for Vermont. This is Part IV of an ongoing series documenting what is happening to it u2014 and why.

Part III of this series ended with a list of open questions. We had documented the convergence — Vermont’s land use architecture, global conservation frameworks, the data economy’s interest in Vermont’s water and cold air — but we were honest about what the public record had not yet established. We did not know whether the pattern was coordination or convergence. We said we would keep asking.

On April 1, 2026, the record moved. Twice. In opposite directions. On the same day.

That morning, Vermont’s Natural Resources Conservation District supervisors — locally elected, 85 years on the ground, the people responsible for delivering conservation on Vermont’s working landscape — submitted a formal public report to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. In it, they named the United Nations’ Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework as the driver of Act 59. They said Vermont’s conservation law was built to implement a global framework without meaningful local input. They called carbon markets a false solution. They asked for repeal.

That afternoon, the House Environment Committee — chaired by Act 59’s primary author — conducted a technical walkthrough of S.325. During that walkthrough, legislative counsel noted that the bill removes language from the Future Land Use Map statute stating that Vermont’s maps are intended to help meet the 30 by 30 and 50 by 50 targets. The direct statutory reference connecting Vermont’s land maps to the global conservation framework was removed. The removal is documented in the public transcript. No member went on record with a reason.

The insiders named it. The committee erased it. Same day.

Both are in the public record. Neither references the other.

Three days later, on April 4, 2026 — the same day this series published its Plain English guide to Acts 181 and 59 — Speaker of the Vermont House Jill Krowinski issued a formal statement on Act 181. In it, she acknowledged that parts of the law “are problematic and need to be addressed” and that Vermonters “have not felt heard or a part of the process, especially in rulemaking for the road rule and Tier 3.” It was the first public acknowledgment from House Democratic leadership that the law has real problems requiring real solutions. The Speaker’s statement is in the public record. The Plain English guide it landed alongside documented those same problems from primary sources.

I. What the Insiders Said

The listening session report was submitted by the White River Natural Resources Conservation District on behalf of supervisors from three districts: White River, Ottauquechee, and Winooski. The session was conducted March 19, 2026 as a public meeting under Vermont Open Meeting Law. Indigenous partners participated. Thirteen people attended. The report was submitted to VHCB on April 1.

These are not outside critics. They are the entities Vermont’s own statutes designate as responsible for locally led conservation planning and program delivery. They have been doing this work for over 85 years. They employ more than 60 staff statewide. Federal law — the NRCS Locally Led Conservation framework, Title 440, Part 501 — designates them as the lead entities for the locally led conservation process.

Their overall finding was unambiguous:

“This session made clear that the draft Vermont Conservation Plan is not aligned with how conservation is currently practiced or delivered in Vermont.”

↳ VT NRCD Supervisors Listening Session on the VT Conservation Plan, submitted to VHCB, April 1, 2026, p. 21

And their identification of the global framework driving the law was explicit:

“Participants raised concern that the plan and underlying law reflect alignment with externally driven global conservation frameworks, such as the United Nations’ Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and related ‘30x30’ and ‘50x50’ targets, rather than locally grounded conservation priorities. Participants emphasized that translating these global targets into state-level policy has occurred without sufficient integration of Vermont’s locally led conservation systems, working lands realities, or governance structures.”

↳ VT NRCD Report, Section 5, p. 17–18

This is not analysis. This is not inference. This is Vermont’s locally elected conservation district supervisors stating on the official public record, in a document submitted to the state agency overseeing Act 59, that the law was built to implement a UN global framework without meaningful local input.

That same framework’s language was removed from Vermont statute later that day.

II. What the Committee Did

S.325 is the bill currently moving through the Vermont Legislature that modifies Act 181. On the afternoon of April 1, 2026, the House Environment Committee — chaired by Rep. Amy Sheldon, Act 181 and Act 59’s primary author — conducted a section-by-section walkthrough of the bill with legislative counsel Ellen Czajkowski.

During that walkthrough, Czajkowski noted changes to the rural conservation areas category of the Future Land Use Map statute. Among the amendments: the bill strikes two sentences from the existing language.

The first sentence being removed states that the mapping of rural conservation areas “is intended to help meet 30 by thirty and 50 by 50” — a direct reference to Act 59’s conservation targets and their connection to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

The second sentence being removed addresses Tier 3 overlay requirements. Czajkowski noted the planners were having difficulty with the tier mapping timeline. But it is the first sentence — the one removing the explicit 30x30/50x50 reference — that matters here.

There was no discussion of why the global framework language was being removed. No committee member asked about it. It was presented as a technical cleanup. The transcript records no objection.

↳ House Environment Committee transcript, S.325 walkthrough, April 1, 2026, goldendomevt.com

Removing language from statute does not change what the law does. Act 59’s 30x30 and 50x50 targets remain in statute. The Future Land Use Maps still serve the same function. But removing the explicit sentence connecting the maps to those targets makes the connection harder to prove. When people point to the global framework connection, they can now be told that language is not in the statute. The paper trail gets shorter.

This is how institutional memory disappears. Not in dramatic reversals. In technical walkthroughs. In language quietly struck.

III. Where the Framework Came From

Parts I and II of this series documented the organizational network behind Acts 181 and 59. Part III documented the global smart city economy and its interest in Vermont’s resources. What the public record now establishes is the specific pipeline through which the UN 30x30 framework arrived in Vermont statute.

In her own words, in a published interview with the Sierra Club: “I’m very familiar with E.O. Wilson’s Half-Earth, and it just seemed like Vermont was really well situated to move forward in a meaningful way with the goal of 30 by 30 and 50 by 50.”

↳ Rep. Amy Sheldon, Sierra Club interview, 2023

But Sheldon did not develop the model alone. The National Caucus of Environmental Legislators — a Washington DC-based organization that identifies conservation policy models effective in other states and connects them to state legislators — explicitly describes working with Sheldon to identify those models and sponsor Act 59. NCEL describes Vermont’s law as establishing “the most ambitious conservation goal in the country” and positions it as a model for other states to replicate.

↳ NCEL, ‘Vermont Rep. Amy Sheldon Passes Nation’s Most Ambitious Conservation Goal,’ ncelenviro.org

NCEL is funded by major philanthropic foundations. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation — one of the largest U.S. philanthropies, with over $8 billion in assets — has made multiple grants to NCEL. Packard is also one of five lead funders of Invest in Our Future, a $180 million fund alongside the Hewlett, MacArthur, and Rockefeller foundations and Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy, specifically designed to implement climate and conservation legislation at the state level across America.

↳ Packard Foundation grants database, packard.org; Inside Philanthropy, July 2023

The Center for American Progress — itself funded by the same foundation network — published a report in April 2024 explicitly naming Vermont as one of eight states successfully implementing 30x30 conservation targets, citing Act 59 as a model. The report was co-authored by a Packard grantee.

↳ CAP, ‘State Policy Leadership to Conserve Nature,’ April 2024, americanprogress.org

The pipeline is documented: UN framework to Biden’s America the Beautiful initiative to foundation-funded national organizations to state legislators to Vermont statute. In her own words, Sheldon was an active champion who wanted Vermont to “be a leader” and show other states how to implement 30x30.

IV. What the Conservation Districts Found

The NRCD supervisors did not file their report to confirm a journalist’s thesis. They filed it because they have been watching the same pattern from inside for years and reached the point where the official record needed to reflect what they know.

Their findings go beyond naming the global framework. They document a systematic pattern of exclusion, misrepresentation, and structural disconnect that runs through every element of the Vermont Conservation Plan.

Conservation Districts were not merely left out of the planning process. They were excluded from Act 59’s initial conception. The law does not name them, while explicitly naming other entities. When districts sought involvement, they were repeatedly told they would be more included in the next phase. That promise was never kept. The report documents this pattern across multiple years.

↳ VT NRCD Report, Section 4.2, p. 6–7

The plan’s two references to Conservation Districts are both inaccurate. One proposes that VHCB develop a centralized curriculum for districts to use for landowner education — apparently unaware that districts have been running these programs for decades. The other groups districts with small NGOs and municipal bodies as potential holders of simplified easements — a characterization the supervisors describe as diminishing their statutory role.

The supervisors noted that the Vermont Conservation Plan’s planning process received approximately $1.2 million in state and federal funding — roughly twice the total annual state funding allocated to all Conservation Districts combined. A significant portion went to websites, out-of-state contractors, and an out-of-state planning firm called Future iQ, which compiled the Framework Report that the supervisors were critiquing.

↳ VT NRCD Report, Section 3, p. 4; Vermont Conservation Plan Framework Report, Future iQ/VHCB, October 2025

The supervisors described the plan’s top-down structure in terms that mirror the pattern this series documented from outside: decision-making centralized at the state level, primarily through VHCB and ANR, while responsibility for on-the-ground delivery is expected to fall on local entities that had no meaningful role in shaping the plan. Their phrase for it: “a pre-determined outcome established early in the process and development of the underlying law.”

↳ VT NRCD Report, Section 4.3, p. 7

V. Carbon Markets and Permanence

The NRCD supervisors raised a concern this series has been building toward since Part II: the relationship between Act 59’s emphasis on permanent conservation and the carbon market infrastructure that benefits from permanent land restrictions.

Their finding was direct. Carbon markets were identified as a false solution and as a likely driver behind the emphasis on “permanent” conservation within Act 59’s statutory definitions. They noted that organizations involved in developing the Vermont Conservation Plan are actively promoting carbon market contracts in Vermont. They cited the State’s own Soil Health and Payment for Ecosystem Services Working Group, which explicitly identified risks with commodification of nature and financialization of land — and noted that despite this, the plan appears to align with or enable exactly these approaches.

↳ VT NRCD Report, Section 4.10, p. 13; Section 5, p. 16–17; VT Legislature, PES Working Group Final Report, January 2023

The permanence framing is the mechanism. A conservation easement that lasts forever is worth more to a carbon credit aggregator than one that can be modified. The statutory definitions in Act 59 — the same definitions the NRCD supervisors want revised or repealed — are written to satisfy carbon accounting frameworks and long-term financial instruments, not to reflect how Vermont’s farmers and foresters actually manage land.

Parts II and III of this series documented the closed funding loop between The Nature Conservancy Vermont and VHCB, and the organizational network positioning itself to benefit from Act 59’s implementation. The NRCD supervisors confirm from inside what the series documented from outside: the plan reflects externally driven financial frameworks, not locally grounded conservation priorities.

VI. The July 1 Convergence

The April 1 convergence is not the only date that matters for this series. There is a second convergence, three months away, that places everything documented here in operational context.

On July 1, 2026, two frameworks take effect simultaneously.

Vermont’s Road Rule triggers. Under Act 181, any driveway or road longer than 800 feet on rural land requires an Act 250 permit. Rural Vermont’s working landscape — farms, forests, family land — becomes more expensive and complicated to develop starting that date. S.325 proposes to delay this to 2030. That bill is moving through the same committee, chaired by the same legislator, that quietly removed the global framework language from statute on April 1.

On that same date, enhanced rural investment incentives under the permanent Opportunity Zone framework enacted by P.L. 119-21 (commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025) take effect — reducing the investment threshold for rural Qualified Opportunity Zones from 100 percent to 50 percent, making Vermont’s existing rural Opportunity Zone tracts significantly more attractive to outside capital. Vermont is classified as 100 percent rural for Opportunity Zone purposes under IRS Notice 2025-50. Every qualifying census tract in Vermont is eligible for the enhanced rural investment benefits.

↳ P.L. 119-21, signed July 4, 2025; IRS Notice 2025-50; 10 V.S.A. §6001(3)(A)(xii)

The left hand of policy — conservation law, global frameworks, foundation-funded organizations — makes rural land outside the designated centers harder to develop starting July 1.

The right hand of policy — federal tax incentives, private capital, Opportunity Zone funds — makes the designated centers more attractive to outside investment starting July 1.

Both hands are moving capital in the same direction. Different politics. Different funders. Different language. Same date. Same result.

VII. What the Series Now Knows

This series has held a consistent standard: document what is sourced, label what is analytical, be honest about what remains uninvestigated. Part IV is no different.

What is now on the official record, from primary sources:

Act 59 was built to implement the UN’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and 30x30/50x50 targets without meaningful integration of Vermont’s locally led conservation systems. Source: VT NRCD Supervisors Listening Session Report, submitted to VHCB, April 1, 2026.

The statutory language connecting Vermont’s Future Land Use Maps to those global targets was removed from statute on the same day the NRCD supervisors named it. Source: House Environment Committee transcript, April 1, 2026.

The policy model was brought to Vermont’s primary author by NCEL, a Washington DC organization funded by Packard, Hewlett, MacArthur, and Rockefeller foundations. NCEL describes Vermont as a replicable national model. Source: NCEL website; Packard Foundation grants database; CAP report, April 2024.

Conservation Districts were excluded from Act 59’s conception, repeatedly deferred, and misrepresented in the plan. $1.2 million was spent on the planning process — twice what all Conservation Districts receive annually. Source: VT NRCD Report, Sections 3 and 4.2.

Carbon markets are a documented driver of Act 59’s permanence framing. Organizations developing the plan are actively promoting carbon market contracts in Vermont. Source: VT NRCD Report, Sections 4.10 and 5.

Two frameworks from opposite ends of the political spectrum converge on July 1, 2026 — one making rural land harder to develop, one routing capital into the designated centers those restrictions create. Source: 10 V.S.A. §6001(3)(A)(xii); P.L. 119-21; IRS Notice 2025-50.

What remains uninvestigated — and what this series will continue to ask:

→ Whether there are direct financial relationships between the organizations guiding Vermont’s land use transition and the carbon market entities named in this series.

→ Whether Vermont’s designated growth centers are being planned or marketed with Opportunity Zone capital in mind.

→ Whether the Future Land Use Maps have been shared with or shaped by input from data center developers, real estate investment trusts, or smart city platform companies.

→ What Landslide Natural Resource Planning’s client list looks like — and whether any clients benefit from the laws their principal author wrote.

VIII. What the Conservation Districts Are Asking For

The NRCD supervisors did not file this report only to document what is wrong. They made specific, actionable recommendations that Vermont’s Legislature, VHCB, and the Agency of Natural Resources can act on.

They asked that Conservation Districts be explicitly named as primary implementers in the Vermont Conservation Plan — with direct funding, recognized capacity, and authority consistent with their 85-year statutory role. They asked that carbon markets and offset schemes be explicitly excluded from the plan’s implementation framework. They asked that Act 59’s statutory definitions of conserved land be revised to reflect working lands, adaptive management, and locally led conservation. They asked that the state disinvest from the current planning process and reinvest in the systems that already work.

And they raised the question this series raised in Part I, from a different direction, with different standing:

“Participants identified repeal or substantial reconsideration of the statutory framework as one potential pathway — as it was not developed with meaningful input from Conservation Districts or Indigenous communities and does not reflect how conservation functions in Vermont.”

↳ VT NRCD Report, Section 6.10, p. 20

Vermont’s conservation district supervisors — the people who know this landscape best, who have been doing this work the longest, who have the most standing to speak — are saying on the official record: this law was not built with us. It was built around us. And it should be reconsidered.

The Vermont Conservation Plan is due to be finalized and submitted to the General Assembly in June 2026. The Road Rule takes effect July 1, 2026. Tier 3 designations take effect December 31, 2026. Eighty-two legislators who voted yes on the veto override that passed Act 181 are on the November 2026 ballot. The filing deadline for challengers is May 28, 2026.

The clock is running. The record is public. What happens next is up to the people who live here.

PRIMARY SOURCES

↳ VT NRCD Supervisors Listening Session on the VT Conservation Plan — White River Natural Resources Conservation District, submitted to VHCB, April 1, 2026. whiterivernrcd.org

↳ House Environment Committee transcript, S.325 walkthrough, April 1, 2026 — goldendomevt.com

↳ Vermont Conservation Plan Framework Report — Future iQ / VHCB, October 2025. vhcb.org

↳ Center for American Progress, ‘State Policy Leadership to Conserve Nature’ — April 2024. americanprogress.org

↳ NCEL, ‘Vermont Rep. Amy Sheldon Passes Nation’s Most Ambitious Conservation Goal’ — ncelenviro.org

↳ David and Lucile Packard Foundation grants database — packard.org

↳ Vermont Legislature, H.126 (Act 59) and H.687 (Act 181) — legislature.vermont.gov

↳ Vermont Legislature, S.325 — 2026 session, legislature.vermont.gov

↳ Vermont Legislature, Soil Health and Payment for Ecosystem Services Working Group Final Report — January 2023

↳ United Nations Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, 2022 — cbd.int/gbf

↳ P.L. 119-21 (commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act), signed July 4, 2025

↳ IRS Notice 2025-50 — rural Opportunity Zone designations, September 30, 2025

↳ NRCS Title 440, Part 501 — Locally Led Conservation and Program Delivery

↳ Rural Vermont Rising investigative series, Parts I–III — alexsys.substack.com

EDITOR’S NOTE ON METHOD

I am not a journalist by training. I am a Vermonter who loves this land and knows how to follow a document trail. I have no organizational affiliations, no funding sources, and no political candidacy history. I do not know the players in this story personally — and that helps me report the patterns without agenda.

Documented facts are stated as facts with source citations. Analytical conclusions drawn from patterns across multiple sources are labeled as such. The claim that Act 59 implements a UN global biodiversity framework is drawn from the NRCD supervisors’ own report, not from this series’ analysis. The July 1 convergence of the Road Rule and Opportunity Zone enhanced incentives is documented in public law. The NCEL funding chain is documented in foundation grant databases and NCEL’s own published materials. What remains uninvestigated is explicitly labeled as open. Readers are encouraged to consult all primary sources and reach their own conclusions. The author has no financial relationship with any organization named in this piece.

Update. We are not there yet.

S.325, which would delay the Road Rule to 2030 and Tier 3 rulemaking to 2028, passed the Vermont Senate on March 27, 2026 and is currently before the House Environment Committee. It has not yet been signed into law. Notably, S.325 is a delay — not a repeal. The underlying statutory framework of Acts 181 and 59 remains intact.

Part IV of an ongoing investigative series • alexsys.substack.com

PLAIN ENGLISH GUIDE • APRIL 2026

What Just Happened to Vermont’s Land.

In Plain English.

Acts 181 and 59, Decoded for Vermonters.

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

You don’t need to understand land use law to understand this. You just need five minutes and a willingness to look at what the public record actually shows. This is a quickly evolving story line. Please subscribe to state looped in.

Editor’s Update — April 10, 2026

This piece was published April 3, 2026. The record has moved significantly since then.

VNRC’s own FAQ and legislative testimony have since confirmed that the Road Rule and Tier 3 scope remain undefined — the organization that drafted the law has said so on the official record. The facilitators’ own process documents, obtained via public records request, show no consensus existed on the law’s most contested provisions — despite public claims that it did. The steering committee that built the framework is now fully documented. And the people most affected by it were not in the room.

The full account of who was, what they said, and what the documents show is in Parts I through VI of this series at alexsys.substack.com. If this piece is where you’re starting, that’s where the deeper record lives.

Data tells stories. Patterns show convergence. Curiosity validates both.

1. What did Vermont just do?

Vermont passed two laws in the last two years that together reshape who can build what, where, on Vermont’s land — and what happens to the land where you can’t build.

The first law, Act 181, divides Vermont’s entire landscape into tiers. Tier 1 is where growth is encouraged — downtowns, village centers. Tier 2 is the rural middle. Tier 3 is land the state considers critical for natural resources. Act 181 also brings back a rule that was repealed twenty years ago: if you build a driveway or road longer than 800 feet on rural land, you now need a state permit. That rule takes effect July 1, 2026.

The second law, Act 59, goes further. It sets a goal of permanently conserving 30 percent of Vermont’s land by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050. Permanently means forever. Not a lease. Not a temporary restriction. A legal designation that runs with the land indefinitely, regardless of who owns it in the future.

Together, these two laws determine where Vermonters can live, build, farm, and pass land to their children — and where they cannot.

2. Who wrote these laws?

Both laws share a primary author: Amy Sheldon, a Democratic state representative from Middlebury who chairs the House Environment Committee.

Sheldon is not just a legislator. She is a professional natural resource planner. She owns a private consulting firm called Landslide Natural Resource Planning. Her professional career has been spent in exactly the field her laws now govern.

Before being elected in 2014, she served on the Middlebury Planning Commission for ten years. She served on the District 9 Act 250 board — the regulatory body her laws restructure. She served on the Middlebury Area Land Trust board — the type of organization that directly benefits from Act 59’s permanent conservation framework.

She has been rated 100 percent by Vermont Conservation Voters every year since she was elected. Vermont Conservation Voters was the only organization designated as a formal witness on the Road Rule provision — the most controversial part of Act 181.

She ran unopposed. In Vermont’s citizen legislature, that is not unusual — contested races are the exception, not the rule. The Vermonters most affected by Act 181 are only now becoming aware of what it does.

3. Where did the framework come from?

These laws did not emerge from Vermont’s own planning process. They arrived here through a documented pipeline.

The National Caucus of Environmental Legislators — a Washington DC organization funded by major foundations including Packard, Hewlett, MacArthur, and Rockefeller — identifies conservation policy models that have worked in other states and brings them to state legislators. NCEL’s own published materials describe working with Sheldon to identify those models and sponsor Act 59. NCEL celebrates Vermont’s law as the most ambitious conservation goal in the country and positions it as a model for other states to replicate.

The Center for American Progress explicitly named Vermont as one of eight states successfully implementing the United Nations’ 30 by 30 conservation targets — the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework — through state legislation. NCEL’s own published materials describe Vermont’s law as a model for other states to replicate.

In her own words, in a published Sierra Club interview: “I’m very familiar with E.O. Wilson’s Half-Earth, and it just seemed like Vermont was really well situated to move forward in a meaningful way with the goal of 30 by 30 and 50 by 50.”

Vermont’s conservation laws were not designed in Vermont for Vermont. They were delivered here through a national organization, carried into statute by a legislator whose professional background is in exactly the field her laws now govern. That overlap is documented in the public record.

4. Who was supposed to be included but wasn’t?

Vermont has 14 Natural Resources Conservation Districts. They are locally elected, publicly accountable bodies that have been delivering conservation on Vermont’s working landscape for over 85 years. They work directly with farmers, foresters, and landowners. They employ more than 60 staff across the state. Federal law designates them as the primary entities responsible for locally led conservation planning.

They were not included in the writing of Act 59. They are not named in the law. While other organizations — conservation commissions, regional planning commissions, watershed groups — are explicitly identified, Conservation Districts are not.

Districts actively sought involvement for multiple years. They were told they would be more included in Phase 2. That did not occur. The same message is now being given about Phase 3.

The planning process for Act 59’s Vermont Conservation Plan received approximately $1.2 million in state and federal funding. That is roughly twice the total annual state funding allocated to all Vermont Conservation Districts combined. Much of that money went to websites, an out-of-state contractor called Future iQ, and a planning framework the districts say does not reflect how conservation actually works in Vermont.

5. What did those people say when they finally got to speak?

On April 1, 2026, Vermont’s Natural Resources Conservation District supervisors submitted a formal public report to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. The session was conducted under Vermont Open Meeting Law. Indigenous partners participated. The report was signed and submitted to the state agency overseeing Act 59.

Their overall finding:

“This session made clear that the draft Vermont Conservation Plan is not aligned with how conservation is currently practiced or delivered in Vermont.”

They named the global framework directly:

“Participants raised concern that the plan and underlying law reflect alignment with externally driven global conservation frameworks, such as the United Nations’ Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and related ‘30x30’ and ‘50x50’ targets, rather than locally grounded conservation priorities.”

They identified carbon markets as a false solution being used to justify permanent land restrictions. They noted that organizations developing the Vermont Conservation Plan are actively promoting carbon market contracts in Vermont. They called for repeal or substantial revision of Act 59’s statutory framework.

6. What happened the same day that report was filed?

On April 1, 2026 — the same day the Conservation District supervisors submitted their report naming the UN global framework as the driver of Act 59 — the House Environment Committee was conducting a technical walkthrough of S.325, the bill that modifies Act 181.

During that walkthrough, legislative counsel noted that S.325 removes specific language from the Future Land Use Map statute. The language being removed stated that the maps are “intended to help meet 30 by 30 and 50 by 50” — a direct reference to Act 59’s conservation targets and their connection to the UN Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

That language was removed. The removal is documented in the public transcript. No member went on record with a reason.

On the same day Vermont’s own conservation insiders formally named the global framework connection on the official record, the committee was removing that connection from the law.

7. What does this cost you directly?

Debrah Kingsbury is the Official Lister for the Town of Vershire, Vermont. A lister’s job is property valuation for tax purposes. This is her professional analysis, posted publicly on April 2, 2026:

“If the access is limited and the owner has to go through Act 250 to give the owners permission to subdivide, access, or build — even the driveway — it will clearly impact the future value of the parcel. It’s in the Act that those parcels will be adjusted downward in the Grand List. So EVERYONE will bear the burden of the lost land values — we still have to collect a stated amount of taxes each year to run the towns and schools. It simply shifts the burden to the dwellings, house-sites and smaller acreage not affected by this Act. So YES, we will ALL individually bear HIGHER TAXES.”

Read that carefully. This is not speculation. This is how property tax works in Vermont.

When large rural parcels get restricted under Act 181 — Road Rule, tier designations, permit requirements — their assessed value drops. The Grand List shrinks. But the town still needs to collect the same tax revenue to run schools, roads, and services. So the burden shifts. The house you live in, the small lot you own, the modest property you bought to raise a family in rural Vermont — your tax bill goes up.

Kingsbury put a number on it: for the everyday working family in a $275,000 to $425,000 home, taxes will increase dramatically. Those are not wealthy landowners. Those are working Vermonters in the kind of house most Vermonters can barely afford to begin with.

The large landowner whose parcel gets restricted gets a lower assessment. Outside investors deploying capital into Vermont’s designated growth centers get enhanced tax incentives under the federal Opportunity Zone program. The working family in a rural town pays more property tax to cover the gap.

That is the tax equity argument no one in the Statehouse is making. But Vermont’s own town listers are doing the math.

On April 2, 2026, the Town of Highgate Selectboard sent a formal letter — signed by five members — to the LURB, NRPC, VLCT, and four named legislators. They warned that Act 181’s restrictions “could have substantial negative impact on multi-generational family land owners, seeking to develop land for their families or others to enjoy while keeping their families local or agricultural operation in tact, who could become financially prohibited by high fees to do so.” They also noted their concern about “our existing slowly growing Grand List” — the same tax equity concern Kingsbury raised, from a different county, on the same day.

8. What happens now?

The Road Rule takes effect July 1, 2026. If you own rural land in Vermont and need to build or extend a driveway or road longer than 800 feet, you will need an Act 250 permit starting that date. S.325 proposes to delay this to 2030. That bill is moving through the legislature now.

On that same date, enhanced rural investment incentives under the permanent Opportunity Zone framework — enacted by P.L. 119-21, signed July 4, 2025 — take effect, reducing the investment threshold for rural Qualified Opportunity Zones from 100 to 50 percent. Vermont’s designated growth centers become more attractive to outside capital on the same day Vermont’s rural land becomes more expensive to develop.

The Tier 3 designations — the critical resource areas with the most restrictive protections — take effect December 31, 2026.

The Vermont Conservation Plan is due to be finalized in June 2026 and submitted to the General Assembly. Vermont’s conservation district supervisors have called for repeal or substantial revision of the statutory framework. That request is now on the official record.

On April 2, 2026, a VTDigger opinion writer acknowledged that Act 181’s Tier 3 rules were “advanced by outside interests.” This series documents who those interests are.

82 legislators who voted yes on the veto override that passed Act 181 are on the November 2026 ballot. The filing deadline for challengers is May 28, 2026. The primary is August 11, 2026.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

This is an investigative series published on Substack at alexsys.substack.com. The series documents Vermont’s land use legislation — Acts 181 and 59 — their origins, their organizational networks, and their implications for rural landowners. The series is nonpartisan. Every claim is sourced. Where analysis goes beyond what the documents establish, the series says so.

PRIMARY SOURCES

VT NRCD Supervisors Listening Session Report (April 1, 2026)

Vermont Conservation Plan Framework Report (Future iQ/VHCB, October 2025)

House Environment Committee transcript of S.325 (April 1, 2026)

Town of Highgate Selectboard letter to LURB, NRPC, VLCT, and legislators (April 2, 2026)

Center for American Progress, ‘State Policy Leadership to Conserve Nature’ (April 2024)

NCEL published materials (ncelenviro.org)

Packard Foundation grants database

P.L. 119-21 (commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025)

IRS Notice 2025-50 — rural Opportunity Zone designations

Vermont campaign finance public records

Debrah Kingsbury, Official Lister, Town of Vershire, public statement (April 2, 2026)

Gabe Lajeunesse, ‘The lesson of Act 181 is that trust matters,’ VTDigger (April 2, 2026)

All are public documents.

alexsys.substack.com