Vermont's Act 181 Rollback Deleted the Senate's Own Housing Expansions — and the Senate Voted 28–2 to Pass It
The housing expansions in the package — a new village-center exemption and a longer timeline for the exemptions already in law — were deleted before the bill reached the Governor
The bill headed to Gov. Phil Scott's desk repeals the "road rule" and Tier 3. The version-by-version record shows it also removed two housing expansions the Senate itself had written into the bill: a new village-center exemption and a longer runway for the exemptions already on the books.
When the Vermont Senate gave final approval to S.325 on May 27, the headline was the rollback itself: a partial repeal of the 2024 land-use law. Gov. Scott — who vetoed the original bill in 2024 as too focused on conservation to solve the housing crisis — did not embrace the repeal.
But the bill’s own version history tells a story that framing leaves out. The housing expansions in the package — a new village-center exemption and a longer timeline for the exemptions already in law — were written by the Senate, and they were deleted before the bill reached the governor. The chamber that authored them voted, nearly unanimously, to send the narrower final version to Scott’s desk.
What the final bill does
S.325 repeals the two provisions at the center of this spring’s protests. It strikes Act 181’s “road rule,” which would have triggered Act 250 review for certain development built along new private roads, and it eliminates Tier 3, the designation meant for ecologically significant areas that would have faced stricter review under the 2024 law. The final bill strikes Act 181’s own Sec. 19 (road jurisdiction) and Sec. 21 (Tiers 2 and 3) outright, and repeals two more pieces of the 2024 law — its Tier 3 rulemaking (Sec. 22) and its Tier 2 area report (Sec. 34).
What survives is the deregulatory side of Act 181. The Tier 1A and Tier 1B permit exemptions — the provisions designed to speed housing in already-developed areas — remain in place. S.325 removes the 2024 law’s conservation provisions while leaving its development exemptions intact.
The housing expansions that disappeared
Here the version record matters, because the chambers did not pass the same bill.
The version the Senate approved had set every interim Act 250 housing exemption to sunset on Jan. 1, 2030, and it added an entirely new exemption — a 50-unit allowance, with at least 20 percent mixed-income housing, for designated village centers and the quarter-mile around them, written into 10 V.S.A. § 6081(dd)(4). That exemption was tied to designated village centers, the compact settlements found in many of Vermont’s smaller towns.
When the bill moved to the House, the House Committee on Environment did not refine those provisions. It cut them. The House version pulled the exemption sunsets back two years, to Jan. 1, 2028, and deleted the new village-center exemption entirely.
A joint committee of conference then reconciled the two versions over ten further amendments — and not one of them restored the Senate’s 2030 sunsets or the deleted village-center exemption. The provisions were not lost in conference negotiation; the House had already deleted them, and the conference declined to revive them. The Senate — the chamber that wrote the broader housing language — then voted 28–2 to adopt that final text.
The vote chain
The procedural sequence is worth stating plainly, because the final-week coverage compressed it.
After the House passed its full-repeal proposal of amendment in early May, the Senate refused to concur and appointed a committee of conference. The conferees reported back, and the House adopted the conference report on May 22 on a voice vote — “considered and adopted on the part of the House,” with no roll call taken — so there is no record of where individual representatives stood on the final bill.
The Senate took it up on May 27, and the recorded vote was not as clean as reported. The Senate first adopted the conference report 27–3, with Sens. Gulick, Heffernan, and Vyhovsky opposed. Senate President Pro Tempore Philip Baruth then moved to reconsider; on the second vote the report passed 28–2, with Sen. Steven Heffernan (R-Addison) switching to yes. The two remaining no votes — Sens. Martine Gulick, a Democrat, and Tanya Vyhovsky, a Progressive who caucuses with Democrats, both of Chittenden County — were the only recorded opposition to S.325’s final form in either chamber. Whether anyone opposed the bill over its housing cuts is not on the record: the House took no roll call, and the two Senate dissenters left no floor explanation.
Roughly $300,000 in, $30,000 out
The Senate’s version carried real money for the work Act 181 set in motion: $200,000 for additional model plans under the 802 Homes program and $100,000 for the Land Use Review Board to conduct public engagement on Tier 3 areas. With Tier 3 repealed and the rest cut, the final bill funds a single $30,000 study to design a public-engagement plan.
What the bill orders studied
One measure of where the bill leaves Vermont’s housing question is buried in its own reporting requirements. The conference committee expanded Section 21 to direct the Department of Housing and Community Development to report, by Jan. 15, 2027, on the data behind the Act 250 housing exemptions already on the books — not just how many units were built under § 6081(dd), but their type: affordable units, market-rate units, second homes, short-term rentals, long-term rentals, and single- versus multi-unit dwellings, along with their price and location.
The Legislature, in other words, repealed Act 181’s conservation tiers while ordering a study to establish whether the development exemptions already in place have produced primary homes, second homes, short-term rentals, or some mix of those uses. That is related to the concern Scott raised in 2024, when he vetoed the original bill as doing too little for housing. The repeal does not answer it; it commissions a study to find out.
The state is asking regions to enable more, not less
The repeal lands at a moment when Vermont’s own housing agency is telling regions they have not gone far enough. Under Act 181, regional commissions are now drawing the Future Land Use maps that determine where housing can be built with Act 250 relief, and in its formal reviews of each draft plan the Department of Housing and Community Development has pressed commissions to map more land for housing so their plans can absorb the state’s housing targets. Asked about the gap, DHCD Commissioner Alex Farrell said the department’s comments on the draft plans urge regional commissions “to be more expansive with their mapping” so the maps account for more of each region’s housing targets.
The repeal did not change those targets. It removed two tools the Senate had written for that purpose.
What else rode along
The final bill creates a standing Joint Legislative Environmental Oversight Committee — six lawmakers, three from each chamber, with continuing oversight of both Land Use Review Board and Agency of Natural Resources permitting — set to sunset July 1, 2029. It resolves the spring’s most contested late addition, the accessory on-farm business exemption, by specifying that exempt events may include concerts and farm stays with five or fewer dwelling units, capping noise at 70 decibels measured at the property boundaries, and barring events after 10 p.m.; those farm provisions take effect July 1, 2027, while the rest of the act takes effect July 1, 2026. It also pushes several Environmental Justice rulemaking and mapping deadlines back by one to two years.
What happens next
Scott vetoed H.687 — the bill that became Act 181 — in 2024, telling lawmakers in his veto letter that it was “heavily focused on conservation and actually expands Act 250 regulation”; the Legislature overrode him. He has not said whether he will sign S.325, and will have five days to decide once the bill is formally delivered, which typically takes a few days after final passage.
Either way, the rollback leaves the question Scott raised in 2024 unresolved: whether removing Act 181’s conservation tiers produces any of the housing the law was faulted for failing to deliver. The study meant to answer it is due Jan. 15, 2027 — after the bill takes effect, and after the next election.
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