End-of-Legislative Session 2020 – A Recap
On Friday September 25th, the virtual gavel brought to conclusion what will no doubt go down in VT history is one of the most challenging legislation sessions – EVER!
As most of you may recall, on Friday March 13th, in response to the Governor’s emergency order in response to the COVID-19 health emergency, the entire legislature, all the staff and all the lobbyists and advocates were abruptly ejected from the State House. Thus, began a period of intense adaptation to carrying out the state’s business (which was primarily focused on responding to the pandemic) “virtually” through a combination of Zoom meetings and YouTube livestreams and recordings of those meetings. It was difficult but thanks to some incredible work by the state’s IT and legislative committee staff the work continued. It was particularly challenging to carry out Rural Vermont’s style of grassroots advocacy in the new virtual environment and much was lost in terms of direct democracy.
However, on balance, some good things happened:
With help from NOFA-VT and other agricultural groups, we were able to successfully advocate for Vermont’s diverse non-dairy farms to gain access to some of the millions of dollars allocated to the state by the federal government in Coronavirus Relief Funds. Click here for important updated info on this funding program – including an extension of the application deadline to Nov. 15th.
In collaboration with Migrant Justice and other allies, Rural Vermont supported an initiative to provide funding for Vermont residents who were left out of the federal economic stimulus payments because of their immigration status. This program will deliver parity payments ($1200 per adult and $500 per child) to Vermont’s immigrants.
The Payment for Ecosystems Services and Soil Health Working Group (new name) received authorization to continue its work.
The legislature authorized the VAAFM to continue the 2014 Hemp Pilot Program and established a Hemp Seed quality control and labeling program.
The Agency of Agriculture was essentially level funded for the 2021 budget year so many of its critical programs for farmers will be able to continue including support for Farm-to-School and other local food programs.
On the “down” side:
The legislature passed a cannabis tax & regulate bill that Rural Vermont and many other organizations did not support. There is still a chance that the Governor will veto this bill.
Due to the pandemic and its accompanying limitation on what the legislature could address during the session, we had to pause our coalition effort to pass further changes to Vermont’s regulation of pesticides and on-farm composting of food residuals.
At this time, we are still waiting for the Governor to take action on the bills that were passed in the final days of the session. Stay tuned for updates.