House Environment committee votes to move Act 181 repeal bill forward

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2026 Telegraph Publishing LLC

By a roll call vote this morning (Thursday, April 30), the Vermont House Committee on the Environment unanimously approved a heavily revised version of Senate bill 325 and sent it on to the full House. The newly minted legislation, among other things, repeals Act 181’s Road Rule and Tier 3 provisions.

Act 181 of 2024 is a law that was supposed to reform the state’s groundbreaking land use law, Act 250, in ways that would encourage housing by reducing its regulations in village centers and downtowns. At the same time, Act 181 looked to add greater oversight of and restrictions to rural development including housing. The Road Rule and Tier 3 are the mechanisms for such regulation.

Outcry from rural landowners spurred the creation of Senate bill 325. That bill  was passed on March 27 with the intent to move the deadlines for implementation of Act 181 further into the future to allow more time to discuss and rewrite the law. As it was passing the Senate, a crescendo of opposition was building, and lawmakers six months out from an election heard the rumble and rushed to makeover the Senate bill.

The next step for the bill is a review by the House Ways and Means Committee, which is an automatic referral for any legislation that carries an appropriation or could affect state revenues.

Once it passes the House, which is expected, it will return to the Senate for passage — or perhaps more revisions and a conference to align the legislation to the liking of both houses.

Either way, the repeals are expected to happen and the board charged with implementing those parts of Act 181 has already stopped putting time and effort into them. On April 21, Alex Weinnhagen of the Vermont’s Land Use Review Board told The Telegraph, “We are suspending work on the Tier 3 and the Road Construction Jurisdiction provisions of Act 181 given the Legislature’s likely repeal of these two elements of the law.”