House Majority Leader Rep. Lori Houghton, D-Essex Junction, seen on the opening day of the Legislature at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Wednesday, Jan. 8. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerVermont policymakers are facing a $200 million question.
That’s the amount of spending — according to the Green Mountain Care Board — that the state’s health care system would need to trim in order to keep Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont’s premium increases to around 5% in 2026.
It’s a big ask, and a short timeline. Earlier this week, Blue Cross Blue Shield issued its proposed premium increases for 2026: 13.7% for small group plans and 23.3% for individual ones. Without significant cost savings within the next few months, those numbers will likely stand.
Lawmakers are working on several measures intended to lower health care costs. But many of those initiatives — such as reference-based pricing, a system that caps how much hospitals can charge for procedures and a bill to reduce the cost of building or renovating facilities — are years away from bearing fruit.
Earlier this month, Rep. Lori Houghton, D-Essex Junction, introduced an amendment to a large bill, S.126, intended to trim spending in Vermont’s teetering health care system more quickly.
The initial amendment, dated May 2, would have required the Agency of Human Services to “coordinate efforts by hospitals” to cut Vermont hospital spending by 10% in their fiscal year 2026, which begins Oct. 1.
By the next week, the language had been softened: the agency would “facilitate collaboration and coordination” to help providers “identify opportunities” to improve health care services and reduce spending by 5%.
A day later, lawmakers trimmed that savings goal further: to just 2.5%. That figure still stands in the most recent version of the bill, which was advanced by the House Appropriations Committee Friday afternoon.
In an interview last week, Houghton said the initial goal of a 10% reduction in health care spending would have actually added up to $400 million — twice the number the Green Mountain Care Board asked for. So lawmakers trimmed it to 5%, which comes out to $200 million.
“Then for various reasons — of just people not (being) happy, and not sure how they can do it — we did move it down to 2.5%,” Houghton said.
But whatever the number is, the legislation is not intended to force health care facilities to cut spending: “There’s no mandate,” Houghton said.
“Lots of times when we pass legislation, it is the intent that’s important, right?” she said. “And it’s also the fact that we need Vermonters to see that we’re all trying to find a solution to this really immediate problem.”
— Peter D’Auria
In the know
Vermont is on track to join a growing list of states that have banned smartphones from the classroom.
This week, lawmakers in a key committee advanced legislation that would require all of the state’s public school districts and independent schools to develop policies prohibiting students from using smartphones and other personal devices like smartwatches during the school day. The policies would need to take effect by the 2026-2027 school year.
A school cell phone ban was previously introduced in a standalone bill that has failed to move forward this legislative session. But on Thursday members of the Senate Committee on Education voted to graft the ban onto H.480, a miscellaneous education bill that includes several smaller adjustments to Vermont’s education laws.
Now, with broad support in both chambers, lawmakers hope to send the bill to Gov. Phil Scott’s desk by the end of the session.
Read more about the new bill language here.
— Habib Sabet
Gov. Phil Scott has issued his third veto of the session, rejecting H.219, a bill that would require the Department of Corrections to roll out a program providing free family support services to incarcerated parents and guardians across state prisons. (Scott also vetoed two versions of the fiscal year 2025 budget adjustment bill.)
Scott wrote in a letter explaining his decision Thursday that he supported the bill’s intent but not specific language within it that would require his administration to put funding for the program in future budget proposals to the Legislature. Such a requirement violates the state Constitution, he said.
The veto may not matter much, though, since funding to run programs for incarcerated parents at two state prisons has already been included in the 2026 budget bill, which the House and Senate both approved this week. Scott supports that funding, too, he said in his veto letter.
Rep. Troy Headrick, a Burlington Independent who sponsored H.219, said in an interview Friday that Scott has also expressed support for legislators’ intent, also laid out in the bill, to have the administration expand the program to all state prisons by 2028.
Legislators may rework some of the language that Scott opposed in H.219 in the remaining weeks of this year’s session, Headrick said, or could take the legislation up again at the start of next year’s session.
— Shaun Robinson
On the move
A key Senate committee advanced the Legislature’s landmark education bill Thursday, but not before nearly every committee member vented their discomfort with the legislation.
“I can’t remember ever feeling as bad about a vote as I do on this one, but it will move us forward,” Sen. Ann Cummings, D-Washington, the Senate Finance Committee’s chair, told her colleagues after voting out H.454.
The bill proposes generational changes to Vermont’s school governance and finance systems that would phase in over multiple years, including school district consolidation and a new education funding formula, but leaves open some key decision points for the future.
Read more about the Senate’s version of the education reform bill here.
— Ethan Weinstein
The Senate on Friday passed H.1, a bill that would eliminate a requirement from state law that the Legislature’s two internal ethics panels consult with the State Ethics Commission over cases in which lawmakers are accused of potential misconduct.
Legislators have argued that the consultation requirement, part of a sweeping set of changes to state ethics laws enacted in 2024, infringed on the separation of powers guaranteed in the state Constitution. But the proposal has drawn repeated opposition from the Ethics Commission, which argued it could be the start of a slippery slope of reneging on last year’s accountability measures.
The bill will now head back to the House to consider the Senate’s changes.
— Shaun Robinson
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