Montpelier – As the Vermont legislature gears up for lawmaking in 2023, a big issue in the education arena is what to do about Vermont’s 150-year-old school choice system known as “tuitioning” following the Carson v. Makin US Supreme Court decision. Makin ruled that if a state offers a school choice program, as Vermont does, it cannot discriminate against religious schools from participating in the program.

While Vermont climateers are pressing forward their broad and costly agenda here, their counterparts in New York City are well down that same road. Just before Christmas the New York City Buildings Department released the first set of final rules for a landmark climate law passed in 2019 that aims to significantly slash [carbon dioxide ] emissions from buildings that are larger than 25,000 square feet — the city’s biggest source of emissions..

On January 4, fresh off a seventy percent reelection victory, Gov. Phil Scott gave his fourth inaugural address to the legislature and the people. As we have come to expect, it was a workmanlike address, emphasizing what is good about Vermont and what his administration has done in the past six years to restrain costly government while working to address real, continuing problems not of the governor’s making.

A report by Emma Cotton in Vermont Digger (12/14) touts the new Weatherization Repayment Assistance Program to be offered to their customers by Green Mountain Power, Vermont Gas, Burlington Electric, and other utilities. It will allow homeowners to spread the cost of weatherizing and installing electric heat pumps over years of utility bills, at an extra cost of as little as $20 per month. Says Maura Collins, executive director of the Vermont Home Financing Agency, “energy savings should more than make up for the new charge that will be on your utility bill.” To assist lower income homeowners and renters, the taxpayers are putting in $9 million.

The Washington Post reports that “After two weeks of tense negotiations at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, known as COP27, diplomats reached a final agreement that yielded a breakthrough in helping vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters.”

On November 17 the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, called LCAR, voted to approve the decision by the Scott administration to conform Vermont’s clean air rules to the latest version set by the California Air Resources Board. Vermont first signed on to the California rules in 1996. It signed on to amended rules in 2001 – as decreed by Gov. Howard Dean over the objections – twice – of LCAR.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the price of heating oil, a fuel most commonly used in New England to heat homes, has gone up by 65% since October 2021. Counting propane and kerosene, 58% of Vermont households rely on petroleum heating fuels, other than natural gas.

The smoke has cleared from Vermont election. Popular Republican Governor Phil Scott won a 70% victory over a token Democratic opponent. No other Republican came close to winning a statewide office, although Senator Joe Benning, ran a credible race against former Lt. Gov David Zuckerman, who again put himself into the Number Two slot to make another run against Governor Scott in 2024.

In early August, a law took effect in Maine that will leave many Vermonters thinking “if only...”