Vermont’s Act 181: The Process Was the Poison
The output is only as strong as the process
alexsys.substack.com · Part IX · By Alexsys Thompson · April 2026
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.
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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