Analysis - Vermont Spent Four Years Building a Road Salt Fix. Trial Lawyers Killed It in 24 Minutes
Vermont's legal lobby took issue with a financial cap on lawsuit damages that New Hampshire agreed to.
Vermont’s waterways are getting saltier. Eight streams across Chittenden County and northwestern Vermont are listed as chloride-impaired by ANR’s Watershed Management Division — meaning road salt runoff has pushed contamination levels beyond what state standards allow.
A ninth is proposed. The Winooski River, which drains much of central Vermont, shows one of the steepest upward trends in the state.
Lawmakers knew this. They spent four years building a bipartisan fix. On February 17, the Vermont Senate passed it 29-1. On April 15, the House passed it 85-54. On May 6, Governor Phil Scott vetoed it.
But the veto wasn’t where the bill’s fate was sealed. That happened on the House floor on April 15, in a voice vote that left no record of who voted which way, on an amendment that the Vermont League of Cities and Towns says would have made the whole thing work.
Understanding what happened in that 24-minute window — and who was in the room — is the real story of S.218.
What the Bill Actually Did
Before getting to what killed it, it’s worth establishing what S.218 actually was — because Governor Scott’s veto letter mischaracterizes it in a way that matters.
Scott wrote that the bill works “by requiring Vermont’s municipalities and commercial businesses to reduce the amount of salt” they use. Section 1362(a) of the bill says otherwise. The program was established explicitly for “the voluntary education, training, and certification of commercial salt applicators.” Participation was optional. No municipality or private contractor was compelled to enroll.
Washington County Sen. Anne Watson, the bill’s lead sponsor, made this point publicly after the veto. The bill text confirms she was right.
What S.218 would have done is create a voluntary certification program run by the Agency of Natural Resources. Commercial applicators and municipal road crews who completed training in best management practices for salt application would receive a certification. In exchange, they would receive an affirmative defense against slip-and-fall lawsuits — meaning if someone was injured on an icy surface they maintained, they could argue in court that they had followed state-approved practices and therefore shouldn’t be held liable.
The program was modeled after New Hampshire’s Green SnowPro certification, which has been operating since 2013 under RSA 508:22. The program has been cited by water quality advocates as evidence that states can reduce road salt usage without impacting public safety.
There was one catch. The entire program was contingent on a General Fund appropriation under Section 6 of the bill. Even if Scott had signed it, nothing would have happened until the Legislature separately funded it.
VLCT’s Position — and the Ask Nobody Met
The Vermont League of Cities and Towns represents every city and town in the state. Its members maintain more than 13,000 miles of public roads — 83 percent of Vermont’s road miles, according to VLCT. Whatever S.218 required of municipalities, VLCT’s position on it mattered.
When Josh Hanford, VLCT’s Director of Intergovernmental Relations, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on March 31, his organization’s official position was neither support nor opposition. He told the committee that VLCT appreciated the training component and recognized that municipalities want to reduce salt use — it’s expensive, supply is inconsistent, and no road crew wants to apply more than necessary. But the liability protection the bill offered wasn’t sufficient to get VLCT to yes.
What VLCT wanted was the same liability caps the State of Vermont has carried under 12 V.S.A. chapter 189 — $500,000 per person and $2 million per occurrence, in effect since 2011. Vermont municipalities have no equivalent protection. A slip-and-fall lawsuit against a municipality faces no statutory cap on damages.
New Hampshire, whose Green SnowPro program Vermont’s bill was modeled after, has carried a municipal tort cap statute — RSA 507-B — since 1975, and a specific provision — RSA 507-B:2-b — protecting municipalities from liability for snow and ice hazards when acting under a written winter maintenance policy. Vermont has neither. The result is that Vermont municipalities operate under unlimited liability exposure that their New Hampshire counterparts do not face, independent of anything a salt reduction program does or doesn’t provide.
Without that floor, Hanford told the committee, municipalities that enrolled in the program and then failed to meet one of its conditions — missed a training year, left a gap in their per-event recordkeeping — would find themselves worse off than if they’d never participated at all. The affirmative defense the bill offered was, in VLCT’s assessment, a trap as much as a protection.
The 24-Minute Window
S.218 came to the House floor on April 15 with a path forward. Reps. Boutin of Barre City, Priestley of Bradford, Galfetti of Barre Town, and Soucy of Barre Town proposed an amendment directly addressing VLCT’s concern.
The amendment was simple. It added a single subsection to Section 4 of the bill stating that if a municipality failed to qualify for the affirmative defense — missed a training, left a recordkeeping gap, fell short on any of the bill’s conditions — any resulting tort claim would be treated the same as a claim against a State employee under the Vermont Tort Claims Against the State Act. The municipality would lose the affirmative defense but retain the state’s liability caps as a backstop.
This was precisely what VLCT had asked for. It required no new funding. It added one paragraph to a 13-page bill.
At 1:22 in the afternoon, the Chair declared a recess. At 1:46, the House came back to order. The House Journal records only that the question “was disagreed to.” No roll call was demanded. No yea/nay breakdown exists.
The Vermont Association for Justice — the statewide organization representing Vermont’s trial lawyers — appeared in committee through attorney Chris Maley and its paid lobbyist Adam Necrason, according to the House Judiciary agenda. VLCT has identified VTAJ as the only organized opposition to the amendment.
The Vermont Association for Justice was contacted for this story and asked to explain the basis for its opposition. A response had not been received by publication time.
VTAJ’s opposition aligned with the direct financial interests of its members. Trial lawyers representing injured plaintiffs recover more in cases where municipal liability is uncapped. The Boutin amendment would have reduced that exposure in exactly the category of cases — slip-and-fall injuries on icy surfaces — that S.218 addressed. VTAJ did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
After the amendment failed, the House passed S.218 itself 85-54. Three of the four amendment sponsors — Boutin, Galfetti, and Soucy — voted no on final passage. Priestley voted yes. The bill that VLCT said could have worked with one paragraph added went to the Governor without it.
What’s Left
An override would require 93 votes — eight more than S.218 received on final passage. Democrats do not have enough votes in the House to reach that threshold without significant Republican crossover. Unless lawmakers revive the issue through another vehicle, the proposal is dead until at least the 2027 session.
What remains is the problem the bill was designed to address. Eight Vermont waterways are listed as chloride-impaired by ANR’s Watershed Management Division: Sunnyside Brook in Colchester, a tributary to Muddy Brook in Williston, Potash Brook in South Burlington, Englesby Brook in Burlington, Centennial Brook in Burlington, Morehouse Brook in Winooski, Bartlett Brook in South Burlington, and Stevens Brook in St. Albans. A ninth is proposed in ANR’s 2026 listing cycle, currently posted for public comment through May 22.
Several of those waterways — Bartlett Brook, Englesby Brook, Potash Brook, and Stevens Brook — are formally designated warm water fish habitat under Vermont Water Quality Standards, carrying water quality obligations that, according to ANR’s own monitoring data, the state is not currently meeting.
Bethany Sargent, Deputy Director of ANR’s Watershed Management Division, confirmed in response to questions from Compass Vermont that the state has no data on commercial salt application volumes anywhere in Vermont and no municipal-level data outside a handful of communities covered by stormwater permits. “We do not have data at the municipal level broadly,” Sargent wrote, “or have any data about commercial salt application, even in MS4 communities.”
S.218 would have created Vermont’s first mechanism for tracking commercial salt use. That too is gone.
The Winooski River, which drains the watersheds of Montpelier, Barre, and much of Washington County before reaching Lake Champlain, shows one of the two steepest upward chloride trends among Lake Champlain’s major tributaries, according to ANR’s long-term monitoring data.
Every winter without a program, the baseline moves.