News – Politics – Opinion – Podcasts
Rob Roper 
I read the Vermont Democrats’ post-mortem report following their 2024 election debacle, in which Republicans picked up 19 House seats, 6 Senate seats, and the lieutenant governorship (the first time an incumbent LTG was ousted from office since 1815), ending their supermajority status in both chambers. The key insight in the document leaves me wondering … Read more
Remember back in 2024 when the Democrats and Progressives in the Vermont legislature passed H.72 (Act 178), establishing a much hyped “overdose prevention center” in Burlington? (No Republican voted for it, and the Governor vetoed it only to see that veto overridden by the supermajority.) The law basically gave the Queen City around $2 million … Read more
Vermont ranks low when it comes to political ethics accountability. According to the Coalition for Integrity’s S.W.A.M.P. (States With Anti-Corruption Measures for Public Officials), Vermont ranks in the bottom ten nationally. The Center for Public Integrity gives us a D-. The general reasoning behind the bad grades is we have few rules governing our politicians’ … Read more
The Cost of Joining New York’s (Still Non-Existent) Cap & Invest Carbon Tax Scheme As the Vermont House Energy & Digital Infrastructure (HEDI) Committee debated whether or not to blow $800,000 (and $500,000 every year subsequent) establishing a new fossil fuel registry (H.740), Treasurer Mike Pieciak (D-VT) chimed in with a February 25, 2026, letter … Read more
Stop Giving It More Money! As Vermonters gear up for Town Meeting Day and prepare to vote on the local school budgets that will determine our statewide property tax bill, please consider that the post-Act 60 public school system we have created is destroying our state. It has become a money-sucking vortex of incompetence eating … Read more
Voter ID Is Critical, Especially Now In order to ensure anything we decide as a society by voting – elections, referendums, budgets, etcetera – is a fair and accurate reflection of the voting public, the system has to be able to safeguard the principles of one person/one vote and the secret ballot. If the system … Read more
A provision of the federal law H.1, aka the One Big Beautiful Bill, allows taxpayers to receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit on your federal income tax of up to $1700 for contributing to a state-based 501c3 organization classified as a Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO). The SGO then uses that money to, as its name suggests, … Read more
Just before I took off for a week’s family vacation, Senator Andrew Perchlik (D/P-Washington) held a press conference flanked by Secretary of State Sara Copeland Hanzas (D-VT) where they were handing out $10,000 and $5000 checks to a bunch of local media outlets. Oh, this is bad, I said to myself with some excitement. I’ve … Read more
Going into the November 2026 elections, Vermont Democrats are eager to impress voters with the notion that the Clean Heat Standard, the “Rube Goldberg” carbon tax scheme they passed over the veto of Governor Scott in 2024, is dead and gone. A bad but fading memory to be hopefully forgotten about by this coming fall. … Read more
Skiing is a big part of the Vermont brand, along with maple syrup and fall foliage. Our little state produces an inordinate number of Olympic-caliber athletes, which is both a major source of local pride and a major source of international free media attention promoting tourism – kind of important for our economy. And a … Read more
Let’s start with the equally sad, infuriating, and hilarious news story about Green Mountain Transit’s electric buses, too big to even be useful as doorstops. Electrifying our public transportation system has long been a priority for Vermont’s Net Zero agenda, and it was with great fanfare that GMT touted the purchase of five electric buses … Read more
During testimony in the Senate Education Committee regarding Vermont’s taxpayer-funded universal preschool program (Act 76), Senator David Weeks (R-Rutland) challenged advocates with some stunning numbers. Vermonters gasp when learning our K-12 system spends around $30,000 per student on average (second-highest per-pupil spending in the country). But what about Pre-K? That gasp may escalate to a … Read more
The Vermont Transportation Fund – the pool of money used to maintain our roads and bridges – is facing a shortfall somewhere in the thirty millions of dollars (I’ve heard numbers between $31 and $37 million). If we don’t find a way to fill that hole, the state will miss out on federal matching funds … Read more
That WCAX Misses or Chooses to Ignore Last week, WCAX’s Calvin Cutler interviewed me for a story he was doing about state senate Democrats putting in a bill to enshrine the federal Voting Rights Act into state law as a hedge against the Trump Administration’s desire to restrict mail-in voting and to ensure only citizens … Read more
The Vermont Futures Project’s Economic Action Plan has a page or so touching on childcare. It notes that “over the past decade, Vermont has seen a decline in childcare capacity, particularly with the closure of home-based providers.” Hmmm…. What happened a decade ago that would have precipitated the rapid closing of hundreds of home-based childcare … Read more
And Vermont Is Leading the Pack – But a new study shows it doesn’t have to be this way! A coalition of New England think tanks released a new study this week pithily (and accurately) titled, Alternatives to New England’s Energy Suicide, questioning the viability and cost of the renewable energy mandates adopted by most … Read more
The Vermont Futures Project, a project of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, made a big splash last week by declaring our state ranks last for economic momentum. Smack! In a January 7th op-ed, they write: The Vermont Futures Project’s Competitiveness Dashboard shows Vermont trailing most states in economic outlook, cost competitiveness, and regulatory efficiency. Vermont … Read more
As the legislature returned to Montpelier for the 2026 session, Representative Gina Galfetti (R-Barre) announced her proposal for a bill that would freeze property tax rates for the next three years. We like this! It is a necessary response to the 14 percent statewide increase in 2024 – an insane 40 percent increase over the … Read more
The Democratic Socialists around the country are feeling their oats! Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York and Katie Wilson’s in Seattle are sparking speculation that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could emerge as the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2028. That’s a serious political high! But we in Vermont know – or should know – a few things others … Read more
Last Monday’s Climate Council meeting featured a tense conversation about putting a price tag on what they call the number one “priority” recommendation in their updated Climate Action Plan. The project: a mandatory reporting system for carbon emissions from fuel suppliers and other significant emitters. The price tag, as requested by the Agency of Natural … Read more