Rep. Stevens on H.454: ‘A finished bill is never perfect, and is always a compromise.’

June 19, 2025  |  By Rep. Tom Stevens 

I’d like to share with constituents how I voted on H.454, why I voted the way I did, and how I got there. 

The conference committee report passed on a voice vote, which obfuscated how a particular representative voted for the bill, but it was not a mockery of democracy. Any representative could have called for roll call at any time prior to the vote, and no one did. The vote did come to pass, the bill came quickly, and the next parliamentary step was to message the bill to the governor. 

While many representatives were surprised, many were glad to not have to publicly declare their stance on the vote. When a point of order was asked, the Speaker of the House conferred with the Clerk of the House and allowed representatives to share what they might have said during debate on the bill. A roll call was granted, and we were able to state our vote. It was not officially on the bill itself, but provided a proxy to those of us who wanted a vote on the record.

Had there been a roll call on the full bill, I would have been on the record as a “no,” as I was on the follow-up roll call.

And to be clear, I do not disrespect the choice of my peers on how they voted on the bill. It was the hardest vote for many of us, and I know the difficult path we all took to get to where we were. So please be kind when asking, and then receiving our responses to your emails.

Until the close of the conference on Friday, I supported the bill, because I felt the House version was thoughtful and, while fraught with many contingencies over a long period of time, it addressed the fact that, overall, the education system that we know (and many of us support), has been failing our students in ways that are identifable but no one person’s or group’s fault. The emails I’ve received have certainly identified many of the dangers to the system, but not all, and many of the dangers were perceived differently if you lived in Waterbury or Duxbury, or the Valley towns, or Bolton or Huntington, or the rest of the Mount Mansfield Union School District.

H.454 is a big bill, and it proposes many evolutionary changes, while setting up a process in which all the adult “stakeholders” have a voice. The changes will not happen overnight — with upwards of a five-year timeline before the final pieces of the puzzle are to take place.

In conversations over the whole of the session, I strongly supported the House version of H.454. Many people wondered why we were not working solely on tax relief, or addressing the largest cost drivers of the expense of education in order to make education funding “affordable.” I told constituents that, based on the testimony received by the committees of jurisdiction, it was clear that the tax structure could not meaningfully change without changes in governance, and changes to the meaningful changes to governance could not happen without changes to the tax structure. Within each of these two parts there are many facets, and the House bill addressed as many as possible to deal with this year, and many more for next year. 

Depending on where you live, and where you choose to educate your children, and how you think public dollars (which are not only property tax dollars) should be used for education, you may have opinions about the changes proposed.

I upheld this support and hoped that the House version would win out. But the two Senate conferees with deep ties to our private/public schools and the governor held out for the changes that were, to me — after many years of trying to make those schools accountable for fairness and equity in the way they accept students, and how they teach them — completely unacceptable. I don’t fault the House conferees — if they walked away, the political rhetoric would have been extremely vitriolic from the Executive Branch and they, in good faith, “won” most of the key points. But for me and many others, that was not enough.

I have served in the Legislature long enough to have voted on Act 127 and Act 46 — the two most recent attempts to provide an educational system that works for those who fund it and those who receive the benefits of a top-notch education. This tension is real, and while many of us put the students first, we must consider the expense of educating a diminishing number of students in buildings that are aging and in communities that are shrinking. 

H.454, in my opinion, acknowledged and respected those differences, up until the forced inclusion of continued benefits for the private publics and the loss of the protection of the use of public dollars for strictly private schools. The inclusion of this language and the weakening of a long-needed accountability for these schools led me to my “no” vote.

What I heard in your emails was a fear and a lack of trust that the long under-capacity and ineffective Agency of Education, the Executive Branch and the General Assembly, in partnership with school boards, principals, superintendents, and teachers, would stay true to the best version of the bill. Hearing this fear, and the lack of trust, after voting “yes” on the past attempts, and once having faith that we as Vermonters would truly feel we are all in this together, I could not vote based on blind faith this year.

The bill passed on a voice vote, and the follow-up vote was 95-46 for forwarding the bill to the governor. I’m sure a roll call on the bill would have been a bit closer, but from experience, the bill would not have been on the floor unless the Speaker was sure of its outcome.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us on this incredibly important issue. A finished bill is never perfect, and is always a compromise. That’s democracy. Your willingness to share your thoughts shows how much you followed the debate and how important it is to you. And for that, thank you.

Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury, is a member of the House Appropriations Committee. He represents the Washington-Chittenden district covering Waterbury, Bolton, Huntington and Buels Gore. tstevens@leg.state.vt.us