Session Opening
January 7, 2024
The Vermont Legislature got off to a productive start on January 3. Having updated you on the priorities of the Legislature in last week’s Vermont Standard, it was interesting, but not surprising, to hear from the Governor on Thursday January 4th that his priorities are slightly different. In his annual State of the State speech, Governor Scott addressed many priorities we hold in common—but one was glaringly missing: flood recovery.
While he spent some time at the end of his speech talking about the extraordinary acts of community support in the aftermath of the July and December floods, he didn’t address the challenging issue of how we are going to help Vermont recover from the devastating 2023 floods and what we are going to do to prepare ourselves and prevent further impacts of these natural disasters in the future.
This was surprising, as the Governor and the Treasurer together have presented their plans to implement a resiliency strategy. Perhaps the Governor is saving addressing this tough issue until his budget address which will be delivered on January 23rd. Flood recovery for the State is difficult because: 1) Vermont faces a 25% match for all the federal FEMA assistance (over $500 M to date in federal funding) the state and towns received. That will be a significant financial challenge for the FY25 budget. 2) Flooding displaced many residents who need a place to live for the winter and there is almost no housing available. People are choosing to stay in damaged and substandard housing as a result. 3) Vermont families and businesses will feel the impact of the recovery costs. 4) Mitigating the impacts of flooding in Vermont will require that every river corridor develop a plan which will take a great deal of work, time and community cooperation. Luckily, the Agency of Natural Resources has just finished mapping all of our river corridors. 5) Mitigating future flood impacts and enabling future resiliency will cost a great deal of money. Creating flood plains, buying out homes, land & businesses which are in the flood plain, increasing culvert sizes and shoring up dams—all of these efforts will be expensive. These are the difficult and thorny conversations and choices we face if Vermont is truly going to embrace protecting its citizens and economy into the future.
So, the Legislature faces tough work addressing resiliency and mitigation, as well as fighting the root cause. We need to continue to rein in Vermont’s contribution to the problem—we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels and reduce global warming as much as we can. We have just experienced the hottest year on record and are seeing the impact that climate change-induced damage is beginning to wreak on our world.
I appreciate hearing from you. I can be reached by email: aclarkson@leg.state.vt.us or by phone at the Statehouse (Tues–Fri) 802-828-2228 or at home (Sat–Mon) 802-457-4627. To get more information on the Vermont Legislature, and the bills which have been proposed and passed, visit the legislative website: legislature.vermont.gov.