Nearly half of Vermont’s legislative committee chairs will turn over in 2027
Several committees central to the 2025–2026 debates over land use, education, health care costs, data privacy, and ethics oversight will return to Montpelier in January with new people at the gavel.
ANALYSIS | Thirteen of 27 committee chair positions counted in this analysis are held by lawmakers who did not file for reelection or have announced they are leaving. The turnover includes the House Speaker and Senate President Pro Tempore.
House Speaker Jill Krowinski announced last Thursday — on the same day the candidate filing deadline closed — that she will not seek reelection. Her decision dominated weekend coverage. It is also one piece of a larger pattern shown by Compass Vermont’s cross-reference of candidate filings, committee rosters, and current legislative leadership posts.
Compass Vermont’s cross-reference found that 13 of the 27 committee chair positions counted here — 14 House standing committees plus House Rules, 11 Senate standing committees plus Senate Rules — are held by lawmakers who did not file for reelection or have announced they are leaving before the 2027 session. That includes both chambers’ top officers: Krowinski in the House and Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, who announced his retirement in February. Eight more House committee chairs and three more Senate chairs are also among the departures.
This analysis is a snapshot. Independent candidates file on a later schedule under Vermont law, with the deadline for petitions to appear on the November general-election ballot falling on August 6. None of the four current Independent members chairs a standing committee, so independent filings will not change the 13-of-27 number, but they remain part of the larger turnover picture.
Several committees central to the 2025–2026 debates over land use, education governance and finance, health care costs, data privacy, and ethics oversight will return to Montpelier in January with new people at the gavel.
The House: 9 of 15 chair positions gone
The House loses the chairs of:
Health Care — Alyssa Black (D-Essex Town)
Environment — Amy Sheldon (D-Middlebury)
Education — Peter Conlon (D-Cornwall)
Transportation — Matt Walker (R-Swanton)
Government Operations & Military Affairs — Matt Birong (D-Vergennes)
Human Services — Theresa Wood (D-Waterbury)
Energy & Digital Infrastructure — Kathleen James (D-Manchester)
Commerce & Economic Development — Michael Marcotte (R-Coventry), first elected in 2004
Rules — Krowinski, ex officio as Speaker
The Senate: 4 of 12 chair positions gone
The Senate loses the chairs of:
Judiciary — Nader Hashim (D-Windham)
Institutions — Wendy Harrison (D-Brattleboro)
Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs — Alison Clarkson (D-Woodstock), first elected to the Senate in 2016
Rules — Baruth, ex officio as Pro Tem
Senate Judiciary’s loss carries an additional dimension. Hashim only took the gavel at the start of the current biennium, after the June 2024 death of his predecessor, longtime chair Dick Sears (D-Bennington), who led the committee for roughly 30 years. The committee will lose its second chair in three years.
The Health Care case
Some committees lose only the chair. Some lose the entire top of the gavel. House Health Care is the most depleted. Chair Alyssa Black, Vice Chair Daisy Berbeco (D-Winooski), and Ranking Member Valorie Taylor (R-Rutland-11) all declined to file. Taylor was appointed to the legislature in January 2026 and leaves after a single year on the committee.
The committee whose jurisdiction includes health insurance, healthcare policy, and oversight of major state health agencies will begin 2027 with no continuity at its chair, vice chair, or ranking member positions.
The Environment case
House Environment is similar. Chair Amy Sheldon was a principal architect of Act 181, the omnibus land-use reform now in its first phase of implementation. She leaves alongside Vice Chair Larry Labor (R-Morgan) and Ranking Member Larry Satcowitz (D-Randolph). All three top leadership positions on the committee that built the law will be open when the legislature reconvenes, as implementation questions continue into the next biennium.
Transportation: chair, ranking member, and clerk
House Transportation loses Chair Matt Walker, Ranking Member Phil Pouech (D-Hinesburg), and Clerk Chloe Tomlinson (P/D-Winooski). Member Mollie Burke, an 18-year Brattleboro Democrat, is also leaving. The committee whose jurisdiction includes transportation funding, roads, bridges, rail, and Department of Motor Vehicles issues turns over its top three positions plus a senior member.
Why Conlon is leaving
Education Chair Peter Conlon (D-Cornwall), who has led House Education through four years of education finance reform, gave a specific reason for leaving. Conlon, 62, and his wife buy health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace and were among the Vermonters who lost federal subsidies this year. They face an additional $20,000 in annual premiums. He told Seven Days that the cost was the “nail in the coffin” in his decision to seek full-time employment with benefits outside the citizen legislature.
His explanation adds a specific systemic dimension to the turnover data: a sitting committee chair leaving the chamber that legislates Vermont’s healthcare costs in part because of his own healthcare costs.
The Appropriations pattern
A different pattern shows up at House Appropriations, the committee that writes the state budget. Chair Robin Scheu (D-Middlebury) filed for reelection. But Vice Chair Martha Feltus (R-Lyndon, herself a recent appointee to the vice chair role), Ranking Member Tiff Bluemle (D-Burlington), and longtime member Tom Stevens (D-Waterbury, 18 years) all declined to file. The chair remains; several senior members and leadership-position holders do not.
The counter-example
Rep. Alice Emmons (D-Springfield), first elected in 1982 and identified here as the longest-tenured current member of the General Assembly, is running again. Emmons chairs House Corrections & Institutions and the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee. Her continuation provides one of the few continuity anchors heading into the next biennium.
Senate Health & Welfare offers a similar contrast. Chair Ginny Lyons (D-Williston, first elected in 2000), Vice Chair Martine Gulick (D-Burlington), and member Ann Cummings (D-Montpelier, first elected in 1996) all filed for reelection. Several committees will reorganize. Others will not.
What the filings don’t yet capture
The chair-loss count is derived from candidate filings reported by the Vermont Secretary of State by the May 28 deadline for Democratic, Republican, and Progressive primaries. Four independent legislators — Anne Donahue (Northfield), Troy Headrick (Burlington), Jed Lipsky (Stowe), and Laura Sibilia (Dover) — file separately for the November general election by August 6, and could yet return. None of the four currently chairs a standing committee, so their decisions will not change the 13-of-27 number.
As of the Secretary of State candidate-filing data used for this analysis, the Vermont Progressive Party’s 2026 primary field listed two candidates statewide, neither identified here as a current legislator. The party’s House caucus members who hold dual Prog/Democratic affiliations and did not file for either the Democratic or Progressive primary are treated here as non-returners under their current major-party affiliations; Independent petition filing for the November general remains theoretically open until August 6, leaving a narrow possibility that some may re-emerge. That category includes Kate Logan (P/D-Burlington), who held Krowinski’s seat alongside her in Chittenden-16, Brian Cina (P/D-Burlington), Mary-Katherine Stone (D/P-Burlington), and Chloe Tomlinson. Their absence accounts for the chair-and-clerk emptying of multiple Burlington-area committee seats.
ANALYSIS: What happens next
Committee chairs in the Vermont General Assembly are assigned at the start of each biennium — by the Speaker for the House and by the Committee on Committees (a three-member panel that includes the Pro Tem) for the Senate. Both bodies select from current and returning members. New chairs in 2027 will therefore be selected from a returning membership pool that is thinner in several policy areas than it was at the start of the current biennium: in domains like Health Care, Environment, and Transportation, the chair, vice chair, and ranking member will all be gone.
Continuity between sessions — knowledge of which witnesses testified on which provisions, which amendments were considered and dropped, which compromises held the votes — is partly carried by committee staff, though staff continuity is a separate question from legislator turnover. The 2027 Health Care committee will not be the 2026 Health Care committee with three new members; it will be a substantively different body legislating on the same issues, including bills that may have been left mid-process at adjournment.
The data
Compass Vermont’s full cross-reference of the 180 current legislators against the May 28 candidate filings — including filing status, tenure, residence, and committee assignment — is available as a spreadsheet alongside this analysis. Primary sources used for the cross-reference include the candidate filings published by the Vermont Secretary of State and the committee membership pages maintained at legislature.vermont.gov. The 2025–2026 roster pages of the Vermont House of Representatives and Vermont Senate on Wikipedia were used as a cross-reference for tenure dates and seat assignments.
Compass Vermont is an independent, reader-supported Vermont news outlet. This is the first of three pieces examining the 2026 candidate filings. Coming next: where the Vermont Progressive Party went. And after that: what is driving the broader retirement wave.