Research & Publications

State leaders got the SNAP response right

Now that the government shutdown is over, maybe the federal game of chicken over SNAP benefits will end too. That fight showed just how critical state action is to protect the safety and security of Vermonters.

Thanks to the foresight of Vermont legislators this spring coupled with their quick action last month, thousands of Vermonters were able to access food assistance despite the federal government’s refusal to pay.

If healthcare tax credits expire, Vermonters face the biggest losses in the U.S.

One of the main issues at stake in the federal government shutdown is the expiration of enhanced healthcare premium tax credits, which help people buy insurance through the state marketplace. If Congress does nothing, the credits will expire at the end of 2025, and millions of Americans will see large increases in the cost of their healthcare.

Among these are as many as 30,000 Vermonters. And because Vermont’s exchange has the highest premiums in the country, Vermonters will see the biggest increases. Middle-income participants are looking at an additional $10,000 a year for an individual and $32,000 for a family of four.

How the credits work
Vermont’s health insurance marketplace launched in 2014 as part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA). The goal was to provide access to affordable health insurance to consumers who can’t get it through work or public programs. The ACA requires every state to operate an exchange with multiple qualified health plans and helps cover the cost of the premiums.

Facts still matter

Facts still matter, and the proof of that is becoming more and more evident as we continue to lose access to valuable federal government data.

Today is the day we would normally be getting information about the number of jobs employers added or cut last month. We would have learned if the number of Vermonters who are out of work rose or fell. And we should have gotten data on the ratio of job openings to the number of people looking for work, which could shed light on Vermonters’ employment prospects heading into the fall.

What’s at stake in a government shutdown: Vermont jobs and millions of dollars

Thousands of Vermont’s federal workers are at risk of getting furloughed or fired under the government shutdown which began on October 1st. Even with a continuing resolution in place, hundreds of millions of dollars in grant funding to Vermont could be at risk and lead to programmatic funding cuts, particularly in high-inflation sectors.

Congressional leaders failed to reach an agreement on a funding bill. As a result, federal discretionary funding expired on September 30th, 2025 at midnight, the end of the 2025 federal fiscal year (FFY). While discretionary funding accounts for only about a quarter of all government spending, nearly half of this amount is allocated toward employee benefits and pay, making it a significant funding source for federal workers. Until Congress takes action, many federal programs won’t be able to operate, many essential federal employees will be working without pay, and federal employees considered non-essential will not be able to work. Employees typically receive back pay when the shutdown ends, but the administration has suggested some furloughs will become permanent this time.

The property tax is the problem

Recently, residents of the town of Windham wrote about how their neighbors on fixed incomes saw a nearly four-fold increase in their property tax bills after a town-wide reappraisal this year.

Concerned that big hikes would force folks out of their homes, the authors wondered why these low-income Vermonters, who according to Vermont statute should pay no more than 4.5 percent of the income for property taxes, were now facing bills as high as 16 percent of their incomes?

It’s a good question.

Vermont income and employment both dropped

Newly released U.S. Census data show that Vermont’s median annual income decreased last year to $82,730 after adjusting for inflation. While this change was not statistically significant, Vermont was one of only six states nationwide where income declined. Only North Dakota and Rhode Island saw sharper drops. This marks a departure from the income growth Vermont experienced immediately after the start of the Covid pandemic: a rise of over 8 percent between 2019 and 2021, the fastest growth in the country.

The latest: Ed funding reform

After considerable confusion and dissent, the Legislature ultimately approved and the governor signed the education reform bill (Act 73) into law in July 2025 with the explicit goal of spending less on public education.

But neither the House plan nor the Governor’s plan address the two biggest problems we face in education funding:

• unfairness in who pays school taxes
• the biggest cost drivers out of districts’ control like teacher healthcare and inflation

And both plans are proposing some big structural changes that raise serious concerns:

• reverting to a foundation plan
• dismantling democratic participation in schools
• state-imposed school and district consolidation
• eliminating income-based taxes and doubling down on property-based taxes

Vermonters did not ask for another overhaul of our public education finance and governance system; they asked for tax relief. Our schools and communities are still reeling from the pandemic and the last decade of major changes imposed by the governor and legislature: consolidation, special education reform, and pupil weighting changes. The state has not provided any evaluation of the outcomes of those reforms, but there has been a lot of confusion and chaos and negative unintended consequences.

Vermont is losing manufacturing jobs

Manufacturing jobs have been declining for decades—and that decline has been bigger in Vermont than the nation overall.

In the last 25 years Vermont has lost nearly 20,000 manufacturing jobs, and manufacturing’s share of private-sector jobs has declined by nearly half. In July 2000, Vermont had 46,200 jobs in manufacturing—more than 18 percent of the state’s private-sector jobs. Last month the state’s 26,900 manufacturing positions accounted for just over 10 percent of jobs offered by private employers. Over the same period, the share of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. as a whole declined less sharply, from 15 percent to just over 9 percent.

Although manufacturing jobs generally offer higher pay, the wages for these positions in Vermont have not increased as quickly as the average wage for all private-sector jobs over the same quarter-century. In fact, manufacturing wages in Vermont have not kept pace with inflation, unlike manufacturing wages nationally, which have seen real growth over time.

Vermont workers aren’t receiving the fruits of their labor

Most Vermont workers’ pay has not kept pace with the growth of their output. From 2000 to 2024, productivity—total income generated in the economy per average hour of work—grew 47 percent in Vermont. But compensation—measured by the median hourly wage and benefits for production and nonsupervisory workers—rose by just 34 percent.

Not all counties have regained the jobs lost during Covid

Most Vermont counties saw an increase in jobs between 2023 and 2024, according to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But several were still struggling to make up the losses they suffered during the Covid pandemic. Ten of Vermont’s 14 counties added jobs last year; eight still had fewer jobs than in 2019. Rutland faced the largest gap. Even after adding 172 jobs in 2024, it had nearly 1,500 fewer jobs than before Covid. Windham County added the most jobs last year (703), followed by Washington County (484), and Caledonia County (142) was fourth after Rutland.

Missing the mark on education reform

If and when the governor and Legislature agree on something they call “transformational educational reform,” it’s unlikely to be what most people expected or wanted. Vermonters won’t see the property tax relief they were hoping for because changes to the funding system will be a few years off. Instead, the first signs of reform will be reorganization of their school districts, which they didn’t ask for. On top of that, democratic decision-making on school budgets will be a thing of the past.

Vermont job-seekers find fewer options

Vermonters may be feeling the effects of a tightening job market. Job openings in the state have fallen to their lowest level since November 2020, dropping by 4,000 positions between February and March. These openings include both full-time and part-time jobs for which employers are actively recruiting. Some of the decrease is due to employers filling positions, and some is likely due to postings getting pulled down. Meanwhile, the number of unemployed Vermonters increased over the same period, leaving fewer job openings per unemployed person. The last time Vermont had such a low number of openings per person seeking work was March 2021.

Resources for tracking federal policy changes

There have been a lot of changes to federal policy in recent months that are affecting Vermonters. Some have taken effect, some have been proposed and are under consideration, some have been implemented and then reversed, and some are working their way through court challenges. We will keep this page updated as much as possible as new changes happen.

How to make school taxes fairer this year and beyond

The two most pressing problems in public education are the unfairness in who pays school taxes and the cost drivers out of schools’ control. Current proposals in Montpelier won’t solve either of these problems. We can provide immediate tax relief to thousands of Vermonters by updating income sensitivity and ultimately moving to income-based taxes. And we can address the cost drivers without slashing school budgets, forcing consolidation, or taking away Vermonters’ say in their schools.

The economy grew, but the labor force shrank

Vermont produced $45.7 billion in goods and services last year. That was a 2.3 percent increase in the state’s gross domestic product, after adjusting for inflation. The increase was better than the previous year, but the smallest increase among the New England states.

Meanwhile, Vermont total personal income reached $45.5 billion in 2024. That represented a 4.9 percent increase from 2023, but the smallest increase in the New England states and smaller than the country as a whole.

Education reform redux

Now that the House has passed an education reform plan, it will be easy to get bogged down in the minutiae that differentiate it from Gov. Phil Scott’s “Education Transformation Proposal.” But before Vermonters get lost in the weeds debating these proposals, they might want to ask themselves if they support the radical change that both plans represent:

-Are they ready to abandon the idea that taxation for public education should be based on residents’ ability to pay and that a person’s income is the fairest measure of that ability?
-Are they ready to take control of education spending away from local voters and cede it to the Agency of Education?

House Ways & Means Committee Testimony—April 3, 2025

Homestead exemptions perpetuate unfairness – testimony by Steph Yu:

Since the 1970s, the state has been moving towards basing school taxes on income because the value of your primary residence is not a good measure of your ability to pay. For low- and middle-income Vermonters with mortgages, the value of the primary home overstates their ability to pay because their home equity is less than the home value. And many taxpayers have other debt so may even have a negative net worth. And at the high end, the primary residence is a small share of their wealth and understates their ability to pay. Any homestead exemption structure perpetuates the regressivity of the current system—meaning that higher-income taxpayers pay a smaller share of their income in school taxes than middle-income Vermonters.

Women power Vermont’s social services

The news this Women’s History Month is that women and men share an equal presence in the Vermont workforce. But the workforce is highly segregated by sex. Both men and women work in occupations where one sex accounts for at least two-thirds of the workers.

Many of the state’s social services, such as education and healthcare, rely on women’s labor. Women fill roughly three-quarters of Vermont’s more than 28,000 jobs in educational instruction, including tutors, librarians, teaching assistants, and teachers at all education levels. They represent a similar share of jobs in healthcare, office and administration, and social services occupations, including counseling, social work, and therapy.

House Ways & Means Committee Testimony—March 26, 2025

Good Public Schools & Fair Taxes – testimony by Steph Yu:

The most pressing problem with education funding isn’t how much we spend.

The two biggest problems we face in education funding are unfairness in who pays school taxes and cost drivers out of districts’ control like teacher healthcare and inflation.

There are two ways in which how we pay for education taxes are unfair now:
1. The richest Vermonters pay a smaller share of their income in school taxes than low and middle-income Vermonters;
2. Income sensitivity has gotten out of whack for many low and moderate-income Vermonters, leaving them facing tax cliffs that can double their bills from one year to the next. This is because the thresholds determining income sensitivity have not been updated in decades.

Teacher health insurance, inflation, and rising demand for special education services and mental healthcare for kids are biggest cost drivers in school budgets and are outside of school districts’ control.

These aren’t school funding problems; they’re societal issues.

Rainy days are beginning; Vermont should prepare for federal cuts

The federal government is making massive cuts to government functions that Americans—and Vermonters—count on and is planning to make more cuts. Layoffs of federal workers, funding freezes, tariffs, and cuts to government programs, including public benefits for those most in need, could threaten the well-being of Vermont’s people and its economy.

While we may not know the scale of these cuts, the timeline, or where cuts will occur, this crisis needs attention. To address funding gaps and ensure that families can meet their basic needs, now is the right time for the legislature to craft its response to federal actions before the end of the legislative session, which is rapidly approaching.

The long arm of DOGE reaches into Vermont

More than 3,000 Vermonters are caught in the on-again, off-again firings and layoffs of federal employees by the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It is challenging to keep track of who has a job and who doesn’t, or even of which departments still exist.

During the first two months of Trump’s second term, DOGE ordered mass layoffs of federal agency employees. Federal judges reinstated the workers in 19 agencies, including the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and temporarily paused firings. But uncertainty remains as to whether the reinstatements will hold and how long the pause will last—if, that is, the administration complies with the court orders.

Leslie Black-Plumeau Joins Public Assets’ Board

Montpelier – Leslie Black-Plumeau, Research and Community Relations Director at Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA), has joined the board of the Public Assets Institute.

A nonpartisan nonprofit in Montpelier, Public Assets is Vermont’s independent research organization on state budget, tax, and economic issues and the source for timely and in-depth state fiscal and policy analysis.

Leslie’s work at VHFA includes overseeing the agency’s research, data, communications and public engagement activities. She has 25 years of professional experience in program evaluation and public policy research in the areas of housing, human services, and community development. Her work has most recently been focused on Vermont, and she has a broad understanding of housing issues and HUD programs as a result of her many years of experience in Washington, DC as a Congressional housing and community development program evaluator.

Press conference: Keep the Public in Public Education

Public Assets is part of a coalition of students, parents, teachers, and community members who support public education. The group gathered at the statehouse on Tuesday, February 25 for a press conference and sledding party. Press conference speakers included: Susan Clark, author and community facilitator; Liz Schlegel of the Alchemist Foundation; Jamie Kinnarney, Superintendent of the White River Valley Supervisory Union; Vermont 2017 Teacher of the Year and Montpelier Representative Kate McCann; Harwood Union High School Tenth Grader Harmony Belle Devoe; and Bekah Mandell, Communications & Development Director at Public Assets Institute.

What Congressional budget reconciliation means for Vermont

If you’re following the national news, you’ve probably heard that Congress is in the midst of the budget reconciliation process. What is reconciliation, and how will it impact Vermonters?

Reconciliation is a budgetary process Congress can use to fast-track changes to federal spending and revenues. For lawmakers in the majority, it is popular and effective because it requires only a simple majority in the Senate—51 votes—rather than the 60 typically needed to advance legislation.

There are restrictions on what’s included in a reconciliation package. Under a rule adopted in the 1980s and named after the late Senator Robert Byrd (D-W. Va), each provision of the bill must: …

Migration: Millennials and the wealthy moved in. Most Vermonters stay put

Recently released IRS data from tax filings in 2022 provide new information about people moving in and out of Vermont. For the third year in a row, the state continued to see more filers enter than leave. Two of these years of growth occurred during the COVID pandemic—2021 and 2022. Over half of those arriving in 2022 were millennials—the generation born between 1981 and 1996—and a quarter of all new filers had incomes of $100,000 or more.