Vermont faces a central contradiction in progressive governance: policies meant to advance affordability, equity, environmental protection and opportunity can sometimes impede the very outcomes they seek to achieve. Drawing on the framework developed in Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, this paper argues that the problem is not progressive goals themselves, but the means chosen to pursue them. Government should be judged by whether it helps people—especially young Vermonters and working families—afford a home, educate their children, access care and build a future here, not by the number of rules it adopts, the money it allocates or the complexity of the systems it creates.
Every section below applies the same test: What did Vermont promise to achieve, what policies did it choose, what results did people experience, and what should change if the results are falling short?
Is Vermont building enough homes, in the places and at the prices people need?
It isn't one bad rule or one slow office. The laws limit what can be built, and the process gives anyone repeated chances to delay what's left.
A single housing project can need a town permit, then a separate Act 250 permit, and then face appeals of that permit to the Environmental Division and the Vermont Supreme Court. A 32-home project in South Burlington did exactly that: the city approved it in July 2021, and the Vermont Supreme Court upheld the permit in 2025, nearly four years later. Major Act 250 projects waited an average of 472 days in 2024 and 381 days in 2025 from a complete application to a decision. That delay and uncertainty alone make it difficult to build.
- Town permit
- A separate state Act 250 permit, for larger projectsMajor permits: 381 days on average, 2025
- Appeal to the Environmental Division
- Appeal to the Vermont Supreme Court
- Build
- Clear, objective standards tied to the town plan
- Homes that meet them are built by right
- Apply to every board at once
- One combined public hearing
- Build
Neighbors are still heard. Builders get an answer.
Nearly four years from the city’s approval to the Supreme Court’s decision.
Today, Vermont builds far fewer homes than it once did. The state permitted 4,810 new homes in 1988 and 2,294 in 2025. Its own Housing Needs Assessment says Vermont needs 24,000 to 36,000 new homes from 2025 to 2029, roughly 5,000 to 7,000 a year, more than twice what it is building. And this year is running behind last year: permits from January through August 2026 ran 16 percent below the same months of 2025. By Census figures, a typical Vermont home cost about two years of household income in 1970; today it costs nearly four. A median-priced home ($325,000 in 2023) now takes about $104,000 a year in income, while households headed by someone 25 to 44 earn about $98,000.
There is a better way, and it isn't a partisan idea. In 2007, at the request of their legislature, Massachusetts' regional planning agencies laid out how towns can streamline local permitting. As Democratic state Rep. Michael Rodrigues put it, the goal is to "get to a yes or no answer as quickly as possible" without lowering environmental or other review standards. Two of their recommendations fit Vermont. First, write clear, objective standards tied to the town plan, and let homes that meet them be built by right. Second, stop sending builders from one board to the next: let them apply to every board at once and hold one combined public hearing. Neighbors are still heard. Builders get an answer.
Are Vermonters receiving strong educational outcomes for a very high level of spending?
It isn't a lack of money. Vermont pays among the highest prices in the country for average and slipping results, through a system that leaves voters little real say over the cost.
Vermont spends more per student than almost every state in the country. In fiscal year 2024, Vermont spent $28,818 per public-school student, second highest among the states and far above the national average of $17,619. Yet Vermont’s academic results do not match that price. On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress—the Nation’s Report Card—Vermont fourth graders scored below the national average in math and were statistically no different from the national average in reading. And the trend is down: fourth-grade reading fell from 227 in 2002 to 213 in 2024, and the share of fourth graders reading below the basic level rose from 27 percent to 42 percent.
Vermont has fewer children in its public schools, yet education costs continue to rise sharply. Some increase is understandable: labor costs, health insurance, transportation and maintaining rural schools are real pressures. But the state cannot treat those pressures as the end of the analysis. It must ask whether its governance, funding rules and institutional structure enable districts to adapt—or make it easier to preserve existing arrangements while passing higher costs to taxpayers. Vermont’s education-finance system was built to ensure that a child’s education does not depend on the wealth of the town where that child lives. But the system also separates the people who write school budgets, the people who vote on them, the state formulas that determine tax consequences, and the statewide fund that redistributes the revenue. Local voters are often left with one blunt tool: accept or reject an entire budget after the central choices have already been made. Their control is indirect, late in the process, and usually limited to a binary vote on a complex package. That structure can make school finance more equitable across communities while making it less transparent and less accountable within them.
Vermont's own reform points in the right direction, but it rests on assumptions the state has not tested. Act 73 of 2025 creates a foundation formula: the state sets a base amount per student, $15,033, adjusted for inflation and weighted for students who cost more to educate, and it caps how much a district may spend above that amount. That makes the price clear before budgets are written. Michigan showed this approach can work. Its 1994 Proposal A set a per-student foundation and limited how fast spending could grow, and a peer-reviewed study found it narrowed the gaps between districts and raised scores in the lowest-spending ones. But Vermont has directed its consultant to set the formula's weights taking into account cost savings from larger merged districts, savings its own record has not established. The state's redistricting task force found no evidence that mergers on the scale Act 73 contemplated would reliably lower costs, and the Agency of Education could not find a reliable way to measure whether earlier mergers saved money. The rules deciding which small schools qualify for help have not yet been written, and the new formula has already been pushed back to 2029, contingent on further legislation.
There is a better way forward, and each piece of it has been tried. First, keep real limits on how fast spending can grow, as Michigan did. Second, make every increase a visible vote: under Utah's truth-in-taxation law, when property values rise the tax rate falls automatically, and a school board that wants more must publish notice and hold a public hearing. Third, spend on what raises reading. Mississippi's 2013 reading law required early screening and teacher training in how children learn to read, and the state sent reading coaches to struggling schools, and fourth-grade reading rose from 209 to 219 by 2019 while the nation slipped, at far less per student than Vermont spends. Fourth, measure it and publish it: hold cost growth to inflation, and track reading against Vermont's own 2019 and 2002 results every year. Taxpayers see the price. Children get the results.
Are climate goals pursued through practical, affordable and measurable approaches?
Vermont has set ambitious climate goals, often before showing what its policies will achieve, what they will cost, or who will pay.
A percentage target—like Act 59 of 2023, which sets goals of conserving 30 percent of Vermont’s land by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050—is not a conservation strategy unless Vermont can identify which land should be protected, what ecological result that protection will produce, what it will cost, and how the policy will avoid unnecessarily constraining housing, farming, forestry and local economic activity. Conservation policy should identify the environmental benefit sought—not merely the number of acres or percentage of land covered—and compare that benefit with its costs and trade-offs.
The same standard applies to climate policy. Vermont should act on climate change and conserve its natural resources. But environmental policy cannot be judged by ambition alone—by whether a target is legally binding, politically popular or well intended. It should produce measurable environmental benefits through a credible implementation plan, with transparent costs and a fair distribution of burdens.
The essential questions are straightforward: How much emissions reduction will occur? At what cost? Who pays? What technology, workforce and infrastructure are required? And could Vermont achieve the same environmental objective through a simpler, fairer or more effective approach?
Vermont has already run this test once. In 2023 the Legislature enacted the Clean Heat Standard to reduce emissions from home heating. After roughly 18 months of work, the Public Utility Commission reported in January 2025 that the proposed program would cost about $956 million over its first ten years. Its analysis projected higher heating-fuel costs, including an estimated increase of roughly 8 cents per gallon of fuel oil in 2026, rising to 58 cents per gallon by 2035. The commission concluded that the program was “not well suited to Vermont” and recommended building on existing programs rather than layering on a new and complex regulatory structure. The commission closed the proceeding in January 2026, and the program never took effect.
Vermont should not have to choose between protecting the environment and preserving the ability of working families, farms and small businesses to afford to live and operate here. Climate policy that ignores household finances, available technology or infrastructure limits risks imposing substantial local costs without delivering results proportionate to those costs. Vermont’s limited share of global emissions makes it especially important that state policy demonstrate real reductions at a cost Vermonters can sustain.
These questions matter especially because Vermont is pursuing climate and conservation goals while also confronting high housing costs, high heating costs, workforce shortages, aging infrastructure and difficulty retaining younger households. A target is not a result. A mandate is not an implementation plan. And public spending is not proof of environmental progress.
Vermont should pursue climate and conservation goals—but measure success by environmental results achieved per dollar spent and per burden imposed, not by targets announced, mandates adopted or money allocated. Ambition is not a substitute for proof.
Can young adults build a life in Vermont?
Can a young family build a life here on Vermont wages? For too many, the answer is getting harder.
Vermont’s demographic challenge is not simply whether the state gains or loses population. It is whether young adults—people building careers, forming households and raising children—can afford to stay, return after college or move here for work and put down roots. The trend is clear. From 2010 to 2024, Vermont’s population aged 65 and older grew about 65 percent, and the state’s median age is now 43.9, against 39.2 nationally. Deaths now outnumber births: 6,748 to 4,979 in 2024–25. Between 2020 and 2024, Vermonters aged 25 to 39 increased by 2,171, but the working-age population, ages 25 to 64, fell by about 5,500. In Addison County, residents 65 and older grew 49.6 percent while the number of children fell 14.6 percent between 2010–14 and 2020–24.
Vermont has not lost its appeal. Its communities and quality of life still draw people, including those who arrive with savings, remote income or equity from a home sold elsewhere, and they should be welcome. But a young teacher, nurse or tradesperson trying to build a life on Vermont wages faces a different calculation. A median-priced home takes about $104,000 a year in income, more than households headed by someone 25 to 44 typically earn. On top of that come the highest benchmark marketplace health-insurance premiums in the country, and school property taxes tied to the second-highest per-pupil spending among the states, held down over the last two years by about $219 million in one-time money. A single worker’s marginal Vermont income-tax rate nearly doubles, from 3.35 percent to 6.6 percent, on taxable income above $50,750, while across the river New Hampshire taxes no wage income. Child care is more affordable than it was, but it remains hard to find. Vermonters say as much themselves: in a July 2026 University of New Hampshire poll, about four in ten said they were likely to move out of Vermont within five years, citing housing costs, the cost of living and taxes. Each of those costs is affected, in part, by the policy choices described in this paper.
The question is not whether Vermont can attract residents. It clearly can. The question is whether Vermont can offer a realistic path for a young teacher, nurse, tradesperson or family to build a life here on Vermont wages. If housing, care, taxes and public services make that path harder rather than easier, then the state’s policies are failing a basic test: not whether they express worthy goals, but whether they make Vermont livable for the people whose work, families and future will sustain it.
Building a future here
Vermont does not need less concern for affordability, equity, conservation or opportunity. It needs policies that are more honest about what works, what does not, and who bears the cost when government gets it wrong.
The test should be simple. If a policy is meant to make housing more available, are more homes being built? If schools demand more from taxpayers, are children learning more? If a climate program raises costs for families and businesses, are emissions falling in a measurable and cost-effective way? If government promises opportunity, can a young Vermonter working a normal job afford to stay, build a family and plan for the future?
Those are not conservative questions or progressive questions. They are Vermonters’ questions.
Good intentions are not enough. A new program is not progress. A larger appropriation is not proof that a problem has been solved. Vermont should judge its policies by whether they deliver the affordable homes, strong schools, accessible health care, reliable child care, cleaner energy and economic opportunity they promise.
That means judging policies by outcomes, not intentions; by what people can afford, not how complicated the system becomes; and by whether Vermont is becoming a place where the next generation can build a life.
The choice is not between caring about people and demanding results. Demanding results is how government proves that it cares.