Vermont’s Housing Crisis: Fact or Paid Fiction?

For the first three parts of this series, VT4VT followed Vermont’s housing story forward: the claims used to describe the crisis, the organizations and reports behind those claims, and the laws, taxes and public money that followed.

Part IV goes backward.

Vermont’s current housing and property-tax debate did not begin with short-term rentals, second homes, Act 181, Act 68, or the state’s latest housing targets. The structure underneath today’s debate was built over decades. The public record leads through two major transformations: the reorganization of political representation in the 1960s and the reorganization of education finance in the 1990s.

The people involved changed. The legal questions changed. The Legislature changed. But some of the institutions—and even some of the participants—crossed from one era into another.

That history begins well before Brigham v. State.

Before Act 60: The First Transformation

For generations, Vermont’s House of Representatives was organized around its towns. Each organized town effectively had its own representative regardless of population. A series of federal reapportionment decisions changed the constitutional landscape, culminating nationally in the U.S. Supreme Court’s population-based representation decisions of the early 1960s and in Vermont with Buckley v. Hoff. Vermont responded in 1965 by replacing the old town-based arrangement with population-based districts and reducing the House from 246 members to 150. The Vermont Historical Society describes the change as the end of Vermont’s traditional one-town, one-vote legislature. Vermont Historical Society

The political coalition involved in that transformation had already been developing for several years.

Hoff and the Young Turks

Beginning with the 1961 Legislature, a bipartisan collection of younger legislators calling themselves the Young Turks began meeting outside the regular committee structure. The group consisted primarily of moderate Republicans with several Democrats and included future Democratic Gov. Philip Hoff, Republicans Franklin Billings Jr., Ernest Gibson III and Richard Mallary, and other younger lawmakers who would soon move into positions of influence. Vermont Folklife

Their own oral histories describe more than an informal social group. Billings recalled that the meetings began socially but developed into discussions of legislation and coordination over who would speak on particular issues. After Billings became House speaker, members of this younger group moved into significant committee leadership positions. Vermont Folklife

The same political period produced Vermont’s response to reapportionment. Billings hired two young legislative draftsmen to help construct the new plan; one was Patrick Leahy, then a young lawyer recently returned to Vermont. The Vermont House ultimately approved the reapportionment plan 163–62. Vermont General Assembly

Leahy later recalled that while at Georgetown Law, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy invited him to join the U.S. Department of Justice. Leahy declined and returned home, where he joined the Burlington law firm Black, Wilson & Hoff, which included Philip Hoff before Hoff became governor. Leahy subsequently participated in the Vermont reapportionment work. No evidence located by VT4VT establishes that Kennedy’s recruitment of Leahy was connected to Leahy’s later Vermont reapportionment work. They are separate documented events. StoryCorps Archive

One member of the Young Turks would eventually participate directly in Brigham.

Ernest Gibson III Crosses Both Eras

Republican Ernest W. Gibson III practiced law in Brattleboro, served as Windham County state’s attorney and entered the Vermont House. During the Young Turks’ rise he became chairman of House Judiciary. Democratic Gov. Philip Hoff subsequently appointed Gibson chairman of the Vermont Public Service Board. Gibson later entered the judiciary, and Republican Gov. Richard Snelling appointed him to the Vermont Supreme Court.

In 1997, Gibson was one of the five justices who unanimously decided Brigham v. State. The connection is chronological and institutional: Gibson participated in Vermont’s political transformation during the 1960s and, more than three decades later, sat on the Court during its landmark education-finance decision. The available record does not establish that reapportionment or the Young Turks caused Brigham or Act 60. Vermont Folklife

By the 1990s, however, a separate and much more identifiable movement to restructure Vermont education finance was already operating.

Act 60 Did Not Begin With the Supreme Court

Before 1997, Vermont relied on a foundation program to help finance public education. The formula provided state assistance to districts unable to raise the foundation amount themselves, but communities remained heavily dependent on local property taxes. The Vermont Supreme Court later found that the system left large disparities in both property wealth and educational spending. In fiscal year 1995, for example, the Court’s record showed Eden spending $2,979 per student while Winhall spent $7,726. Vermont General Assembly

Attempts to change the system preceded Brigham. Legislative proposals during the 1990s considered equalized-yield formulas, income-based mechanisms and other changes to Vermont’s education-finance structure. ERIC

William Mathis, then superintendent of the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union and later involved in the Brigham litigation, documented the political history surrounding those efforts in a 2000 participant account. His paper describes a network of legislators, school officials, school-board members, tax-policy advocates and organized interest groups working on education-finance reform. ERIC

Among the people appearing in that history were legislators Paul Cillo, John Freidin, Andy Christiansen, Carl Powden and David Larsen, along with Ellen David-Friedman, Steve Jeffries, Richard Cate and Deborah Brighton. Mathis reports that Brighton’s analyses were used by participants on both sides of the debate and that the state later contracted with her for analyses during the development and implementation of Act 60. ERIC

The movement also developed outside the Legislature. Mathis identifies Vermonters Organized for Tax Equity (VOTE), Voters for Property Tax Reform, Fairness in Financing Education, the League of Women Voters, the Vermont Natural Resources Council, and school-board and professional organizations among participants in different portions of the education-finance debate. ERIC

VOTE was formed in February 1996 by Steve and Cindy Metcalf. Mathis describes Steve Metcalf as a school administrator and Cindy Metcalf as a political activist. He reports that the organization pulled previously scattered reform advocates together, gathered approximately 3,000 signatures at town meetings and became involved in pivotal Vermont Senate races. He also identifies Cindy Metcalf as vice-chair of the Vermont Democratic Party by the later 1998 election effort. ERIC

Another organization, Voters for Property Tax Reform, was associated with Freidin and Cillo, with substantial work performed by Allen Gilbert. Mathis reports that Gilbert helped write and distribute approximately 75,000 election flyers advocating reform. ERIC

The financing of that effort contains an unanswered question. Mathis wrote that the organization was funded from legislators’ own pockets and by what he described as a “major anonymous donor.” His paper does not identify the donor, and VT4VT has not located a separate public record establishing the donor’s identity. ERIC

By 1996, the reform effort was operating on more than one front.

The Ballot Box and the Courtroom

Mathis wrote that reform measures had repeatedly advanced through the House only to die in the Senate. Reform advocates consequently focused on Senate elections. According to his participant account, they sought a “reform-minded majority,” and the 1996 election produced what he described as a 17–13 reform majority along with the election of Douglas Racine as lieutenant governor. ERIC

The courtroom strategy developed alongside the political one.

St. Johnsbury attorney Robert Gensburg had practiced in Vermont since 1967 and served on the ACLU of Vermont’s legal panel. In his own account of Brigham, Gensburg wrote that a friend teaching education at Lyndon State College had urged him for several years to address disparities in Vermont’s education-funding system. After H.541 passed the House but failed in the Senate, Gensburg took the issue to the ACLU legal panel. The panel recommended litigation to the ACLU board, and the board agreed to bring the case. Vermont Law Review

At the next legal-panel meeting, Gensburg and five other lawyers volunteered to work on the case. He later recalled that when they began meeting in approximately September 1994, they knew the result they wanted to achieve but still had to determine how to construct the constitutional case. The attorneys then spent roughly two years preparing and presenting it. Vermont Law Review

The six lawyers were Robert Gensburg, David Putter, Joshua Diamond, Peter Welch, Mitchell Pearl and Franklin Kochman. Gensburg’s own account identifies Joshua Diamond as the son of former Vermont Attorney General Jerome “Jerry” Diamond. Vermont Law Review

The Vermont Supreme Court opinion independently identifies the same six attorneys as counsel for the plaintiffs. The State was represented by Attorney General Jeffrey Amestoy and Assistant Attorneys General Geoffrey Yudien and Ronald Shems. Justia Law

Jerry Diamond had served as Vermont attorney general from 1975 through 1981. He was a Democrat and had previously served as Windham County state’s attorney. Joshua Diamond would much later serve as Vermont deputy attorney general and briefly as acting attorney general. Vermont General Assembly

The existence of these relationships does not establish improper coordination. It does establish that Brigham developed within Vermont’s relatively small legal, governmental and political community.

Finding the Plaintiffs

The plaintiffs were assembled as part of the contemplated constitutional challenge.

Mathis reports that in 1994 he approached Carol Brigham, a Whiting School Board member, about having her family participate in the case. Her daughter Amanda was then a second-grade student. Carol’s father, Leo Derepentigny, had also served on the Whiting School Board. Carol Brigham later recalled that her father had also been a town lister and that the family’s familiarity with school budgets made the inequities readily apparent to them. ERIC

Amanda Brigham became the lead named plaintiff.

February 5, 1997

The case reached the Vermont Supreme Court as Amanda Brigham, et al. v. State of Vermont.

The five justices were Chief Justice Frederic Allen and Justices Ernest Gibson III, John Dooley, James Morse and Denise Johnson. The decision was issued per curiam, meaning in the name of the Court rather than a single identified author. There was no dissent listed. Justia Law

The Court’s factual record documented large disparities. More than 60 percent of Vermont public-education revenue in fiscal year 1994 came from local property taxes. In fiscal year 1995, the Court reported that Richford had a property-tax base of approximately $140,000 per student and spent $3,743 per pupil, while Peru had approximately $2.2 million of property wealth per student and spent $6,476. The disparity could also appear through tax rates: the Court compared an $85,000 home in Sherburne, with a tax of $247, to the same-valued home in Stannard, where the tax was $2,040. Justia Law

The Court concluded that Vermont’s education-finance system, with its substantial dependence on local property taxation and resulting disparities in available revenues, deprived children of equal educational opportunity under the Vermont Constitution. Justia Law

But the Court did not write Act 60.

The opinion expressly said its role was to determine the constitutional requirements, “not to fashion and impose a solution,” and that the remedy properly belonged to the Legislature. The Court also observed that while public education is a constitutional obligation of the State, financing it through locally imposed property taxes is not constitutionally mandated. Justia Law

That left Vermont’s elected branches to decide what system would replace the one the Court had rejected.

The Court Itself Was Part of Vermont’s Institutional History

The five justices had arrived at the Court through different administrations and different sections of Vermont’s legal establishment. Two had been appointed by Republican Gov. Richard Snelling, while three had been appointed by Democratic Gov. Madeleine Kunin.

The institutional connections are not evidence of conflicts or explanations for the unanimous decision, but they help document the relatively small professional world in which the litigation occurred.

Justice Ernest Gibson III connected directly back to Hoff and the Young Turks.

Justice Denise Johnson entered the Vermont Attorney General’s Office as an assistant attorney general in 1980. Jerry Diamond was Vermont attorney general through 1981, placing Johnson in the office during the final portion of his tenure. A later U.S. Supreme Court filing independently identifies Johnson as a Vermont assistant attorney general. Vermont General Assembly

The connections surrounding Jerry Diamond extend further backward. Diamond himself testified that after graduating from law school in 1968, he clerked for federal Judge Ernest W. Gibson Jr., father of future Brigham Justice Ernest Gibson III. Diamond then became Windham County state’s attorney before his election as attorney general. Vermont Courts

Those records establish professional connections across generations of Vermont’s legal community. They do not establish that those relationships affected Brigham.

From Brigham to H.527

The Legislature did not begin with a blank sheet of paper after the Court ruled. Education-finance proposals had already circulated for years, advocacy organizations had been active, and the 1996 election had changed the political environment described by Mathis.

The legislation that became Act 60 was H.527, An Act Relating to Equal Educational Opportunity.

Subscribe now

The House passed H.527 on March 20, 1997, by 81–62. The Senate passed its version on May 22 by 21–9. After House and Senate negotiators reconciled the versions, the House approved the conference report 87–56 on June 12. Gov. Howard Dean, a Democrat, signed the legislation later that month. P2004

Former Rep. Paul Cillo, who was House majority leader during the Act 60 debate and chaired the House-Senate conference committee, later described the House version as separating homestead and nonresidential property and incorporating an equalized local income-tax approach. According to Cillo’s account, the Dean administration opposed that income-tax mechanism, and the Senate removed it before the final compromise was reached.

Act 60 ultimately established a statewide education-property-tax system, an Education Fund, a base amount of education funding per pupil and a mechanism intended to equalize the ability of communities to spend above that base. It also incorporated income sensitivity for eligible households. Contemporary and later analyses describe the law as combining foundation funding with power equalization and recapturing excess statewide property-tax revenue from property-rich communities. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

Gov. Dean signed Act 60 on June 26, 1997, at the Whiting schoolyard with Amanda Brigham present. Addison Independent

The Supreme Court had established the constitutional requirement of equal educational opportunity. The Legislature and governor chose the financing mechanism used to respond to it.

Act 60 Was Not the End

The system created in 1997 did not remain intact.

Six years later, Vermont rewrote major portions of it through another law bearing a familiar number: Act 68 of 2003.

The 2003 Act 68 should not be confused with Act 68 of 2023, the statewide reappraisal law VT4VT has been following during the FY2027 property-tax cycle.

The Joint Fiscal Office’s history of Vermont education finance says the 2003 law eliminated Act 60’s two-tier system and sharing pool, divided the property-tax base into homestead and non-homestead property, established a uniform statewide non-homestead tax rate, and retained locally determined education spending as a factor in homestead taxation. It also increased the income threshold under which qualifying households could pay education tax based on income rather than solely on homestead value. LJFO Vermont

Vermont’s present education-finance system is therefore the product of multiple revisions, including Act 60 in 1997, Act 68 in 2003 and subsequent legislation. Vermont General Assembly

Twenty years after the 2003 Act 68, Vermont enacted another law carrying exactly the same Act number.

2023: Act 68 Means Something Different This Time

In 2023, the Vermont General Assembly enacted H.480, Act 68, An act relating to property valuation and reappraisals. It was sponsored by the House Committee on Ways and Means and signed by Republican Gov. Phil Scott on June 14, 2023. Vermont General Assembly

The legislative record shows testimony from Property Valuation and Review, the Department of Taxes, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, the Vermont Assessors and Listers Association, municipal assessors and legislative counsel as the bill moved through the House and Senate. Vermont General Assembly

The law removed the Common Level of Appraisal as a trigger for reappraisal orders and began phasing in a system requiring every Vermont municipality to reappraise at least every six years. Under the new system, a municipality can be required to reappraise when its coefficient of dispersion exceeds 20 or when it has not begun a reappraisal within six years of the beginning of its previous one. The Department of Taxes says the first municipalities under the new schedule were to complete reappraisal on or before April 1, 2027. Vermont Tax

That brings this history directly into VT4VT’s FY2027 property-tax research.

A constitutional dispute over unequal educational opportunity produced a statewide education-finance response in 1997. That response was substantially revised in 2003. Two decades later, Vermont changed the rules governing how frequently municipalities determine the taxable values entering the property-tax system.

Those were separate legislative decisions addressing different issues. They now interact when a Vermont property owner receives a tax bill.

From Education Equality to the Property-Tax System Vermonters Know Today

Brigham required Vermont to provide equal educational opportunity regardless of the property wealth of a child’s community. It did not dictate the tax system Vermont had to use to satisfy that requirement. The statewide property-tax machinery that followed was constructed by the Legislature and executive branch through Act 60 and then substantially rebuilt through Act 68.

Act 60 was Vermont’s first legislative answer to Brigham. Act 68 of 2003 changed that answer. Twenty years later, another Act 68 changed the assessment side of the property-tax system through regular reappraisals. Justia Law

Vermont’s modern housing debate developed on top of that existing tax structure. Housing policy subsequently added public investment, land-use regulation, short-term-rental taxation, property classifications, development incentives and proposals directed at second homes and other residential property.

The state’s own housing research shows that Vermont’s housing problem is real, but it also shows why the underlying categories cannot simply be combined. The 2025 Housing Needs Assessment estimates that Vermont needs 24,000 to 36,000 additional year-round homes during 2025–2029 to meet projected demand, normalize vacancy rates, house people experiencing homelessness and replace homes lost through flooding and other causes. Vermont Commerce Agency

The same research estimates that roughly 15 percent of Vermont’s housing stock—about 50,000 homes—is seasonal, while cautioning that many seasonal properties are not suitable for year-round occupancy. Seasonal housing has also been a substantial component of Vermont’s housing stock for generations; the assessment says Vermont has ranked among the three states with the highest seasonal-housing shares since 1940. Vermont Outside

A statewide estimate of seasonal homes therefore cannot simply be converted into an equal number of available workforce homes. Likewise, a target for additional year-round housing does not establish that an identical number of existing Vermont households are presently waiting for houses. The state’s housing target itself incorporates projected demand, vacancy normalization, homelessness and replacement of housing lost from the stock. Vermont Commerce Agency

Earlier Vermont housing reports concentrated heavily on affordability, cost burden and housing for lower-income Vermonters. Employer research added workforce recruitment and wages. More recent planning increasingly connects housing production with workforce and population objectives.

The public record leads back to the question at the center of this series: What problem is Vermont trying to solve?

If the problem is affordability, the record should measure affordability. If insufficient construction is the problem, the record should identify what prevents construction and where additional homes are needed. If employers cannot recruit workers because wages and housing costs do not align, both sides of that equation belong in the analysis. If Vermont’s objective is substantial population growth, that objective should be evaluated separately from the housing needs of the population already here.

And if state policy increasingly uses taxation, property classification and land-use regulation to influence how Vermonters use privately owned houses, camps and land, those policies should be evaluated against the problem they were enacted to solve.

Vermont did not arrive at its present system through one law or one court decision. The record stretches from the transformation of legislative representation in the 1960s, through decades of education-finance reform, Brigham, Act 60, the 2003 Act 68 and the modern reassessment and housing laws examined throughout this series.

Vermont has repeatedly connected housing production to workforce needs and its ability to attract and retain people. The state is now targeting tens of thousands of additional year-round homes while employers continue to report difficulty finding workers.

So where are the jobs?

That is where Part V begins.

VT4VT Is Building the Record

VT4VT is collecting municipal grand lists, reassessment notices, tax bills and public records from across Vermont as the FY2027 property-tax cycle develops.

Complete the anonymous Vermont Reassessment Survey, submit your municipality’s grand list or a public link to it, and share reassessment and property-tax records that can help expand the statewide database.

Vermont Grand List Survey:
https://survey.vt4vt.com/2026-vermont-grand-list-survey/

Vermont Reassessment Survey:
https://survey.vt4vt.com/2026-vermont-reassessment-survey/

Submit public records and grand lists:
grandlist@vt4vt.org

Website:

https://VT4VT.com

VT4VT is a project of Fort Aldrich Incorporated, a 501(c)(3).

Worth Protecting.
Damn Right.

Sources

Vermont’s First Transformation — Reapportionment and the Young Turks

Vermont Folklife — The Young Turks
https://www.vtfolklife.org/big-bucket-media-fieldwork/program-2-the-young-turks

Vermont Historical Society — Political Power Shifts / Reapportionment
https://vermonthistory.org/freedom-unity-political-power-shifts

Vermont House Journal — 50th Anniversary of Reapportionment
https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2016/Docs/JOURNAL/hj150514.pdf

StoryCorps — Patrick Leahy and Peter Welch
https://archive.storycorps.org/interviews/peter-welch-and-patrick-leahy/

Education-Finance Reform Before Brigham

William J. Mathis — Interest Group Influences in Advancing and Inhibiting Educational Finance Reform: The Politics of Equity in Vermont’s Act 60
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED438608.pdf

Vermont Joint Fiscal Office — Legislative Initiatives Related to Changing the Education Financing System, 1994–1998
https://ljfo.vermont.gov/assets/Meetings/Tax-Structure-Commission/2019-06-24/2e5ca32749/Ed-finance-reform-bills-1995-96_1997-98.pdf

Brigham v. State

Vermont Supreme Court — Brigham v. State, 166 Vt. 246, 692 A.2d 384 (1997)
https://law.justia.com/cases/vermont/supreme-court/1997/96-502op.html

Robert Gensburg — The Road to Equal Educational Opportunity for Vermont Schoolchildren
https://lawreview.vermontlaw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/22VtLRev1.pdf

ACLU of Vermont — ACLU of Vermont Remembers Robert Gensburg
https://www.acluvt.org/press-releases/aclu-vermont-remembers-robert-gensburg/

Allen Gilbert — Testimony to Vermont Senate Finance, April 23, 2025
https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2026/Workgroups/Senate%20Finance/Bills/H.454/Witness%20Testimony/H.454~Allen%20Gilbert~Testimony~4-23-2025.pdf

Vermont Department of Taxes — Listers and Assessors
https://tax.vermont.gov/tags/listers-and-assessors

Vermont Housing History and Current Housing Targets

Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development — Vermont Housing Needs Assessment
https://accd.vermont.gov/housing/plans-data-rules/needs-assessment

Vermont Housing Needs Assessment 2025–2029 — Statewide and Regional Housing Targets
https://outside.vermont.gov/agency/ACCD/ACCD_Web_Docs/Housing/HUD-Consolidated-Plan/VT-HNA-2025-Housing-Targets-Appendix_1-14-25.pdf

Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development — 2026 Housing Targets Report
https://legislature.vermont.gov/assets/Legislative-Reports/2026_Housing_Targets_Report_FINAL.pdf

Vermont Housing Finance Agency — 2006 Housing and Wages Report
https://vhfa.org/documents/housing-wages-2006.pdf

Vermont Housing Finance Agency — 2010 Vermont Housing Needs Assessment
https://vhfa.org/sites/default/files/publications/2010HNA_complete%20final%20report.pdf

Vermont Housing Finance Agency — 2020 Vermont Housing Needs Assessment
https://vhfa.org/sites/default/files/publications/vt_hna_2020_report.pdf

U.S. Census Bureau — Historical Vacation and Seasonal Housing Data
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/coh-vacation.html