Vermont Legislature

A bill likely to become law would allow additional TIF districts in the state of Vermont. TIF stands for "tax increment financing" and proponents point to the districts as a way to revitalize downtowns around the state. Critics say they divert money that would otherwise go to the Education Fund.

The state's nearly $6 billion budget faces a veto and a lot of uncertainty after that – all because a $26 million question over teachers' health insurance wasn't solved. On Vermont Edition, we talk with the teachers union and the Vermont School Boards Association about what this debate means to the health plans of teachers and to the bottom lines of school districts.

The Vermont Legislature sent its marijuana legalization bill to the desk of Republican Gov. Phil Scott Thursday, initiating a five-day countdown during which Scott will have to decide whether to sign the legislation, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature.

Late Thursday night, the Legislature adjourned for the year after passing a state budget that Gov. Phil Scott has said he will veto. Our panel of top political reporters looks at the two weeks of deadlock over the budget, and what happens next.

The 2017 legislative session has adjourned, but Vermont’s fiercest political fight in recent memory has only just begun.

Every year as the Legislature is finishing up in Montpelier, lawmakers pass a bunch of new bills. And around that time, the governor signs some of them. But how exactly does a bill get from lawmakers to the governor?

Vermont appears to be headed for its first budget veto in nearly a decade.

A news conference was held Wednesday at noon in Montpelier by House Speaker Mitzi Johnson and Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe to discuss the status of negotiations around Vermont teachers' health care and subsequently the Vermont state budget.

As Gov. Phil Scott ponders the future of the marijuana legalization bill, both supporters and opponents of the legislation are calling the governor's office hoping to influence his decision.

Democratic House Speaker Mitzi Johnson has unveiled a plan she hopes will end the month-long standoff in Montpelier over the issue of health benefits for public school employees. But Democrats’ efforts to appease Republican Gov. Phil Scott could cost them a key political ally in the process.

It always makes the headlines when a police officer shoots someone who is undergoing a mental health crisis. But when the police defuse a potentially violent situation, the news doesn't travel as far.

A seemingly unbridgeable divide between Republican Gov. Phil Scott and Democratic lawmakers has again postponed legislative adjournment, forcing the two sides back to the Statehouse next week to try to negotiate a compromise over the issue of teacher health care benefits.

A bill that would legalize possession and cultivation of limited amounts of marijuana has won joint approval in the Vermont Legislature, leaving Republican Gov. Phil Scott as the final hurdle to passage of a legalization law in 2017.

Rather than rush to judgment on some key pieces of legislation, Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe decided last week to reconvene Wednesday and Thursday. Now as state lawmakers head back to Montpelier, Sen. Ashe is our guest.

A push to drive down health care costs for public school employees has suddenly taken over the political debate in Montpelier, but efforts to control those expenses have actually been going on behind the scenes for two years now.