Before Act 181, Vermont Had Act 59. Voluntary? Really?

The state calls it voluntary. The architecture tells a different story.

VERMONT INVESTIGATIVE SERIES | alexsys.substack.com

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.

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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.

The Secretary called it a willing buyer, willing seller transaction. The documents describe something more structural than a transaction.

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.

They enrolled in one program. They are now in a different one. The terms look the same. The purpose does not.

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.

It is not seizure. It is permanent encumbrance through a sequence of voluntary acts whose downstream consequences were never disclosed at the point of entry.

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.

They are not anti-tax. They want roads. They want schools funded. They enrolled in a program that asked something real of them. They are asking to know when the terms change.

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.

Now consider what happens next. Landowners learn what the pipeline produces. They stop getting forest management plans. Enrollment drops. The conservation data the state needs to reach 30 percent by 2030 dries up. The land that exits Current Use faces development pressure — the exact outcome the program was built to prevent. The architecture designed to reach a mandatory conservation goal may be building the mechanism for its own unraveling.

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 word ‘voluntary’ is doing a lot of work in Vermont right now. This series will keep watching what it is covering.

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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.

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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