DOVER-“The reality of this Legislature is that compromise is not optional” said Windham County’s only independent lawmaker, Rep. Laura Sibilia (I-Dover, Jamaica, Somerset, Stratton, and Wardsboro).
Sibilia is returning to the House of Representatives with an agenda to strengthen systems that are under real strain. She is the ranking member of the House Energy & Digital Infrastructure Committee, the ranking member of the House Rural Economic Development Caucus, co-chair of the Vermont National Guard & Veterans Affairs Legislative Caucus, and co-founder and co-chair of the House Discrimination Panel, among other committees.
Education is one of her main concerns.
“Vermont’s public education system is changing in an urgent and haphazard way,” Sibilia said. “State policy, leadership, and support are not moving at the same pace.
“The folks on the ground are making the best decisions they can within their sphere of responsibility and with the perspective and tools that are available to them,” she continued. “The result is that local control is remaking the geographic availability of public education in the state of Vermont without a statewide or future needs perspective.”
Progress on education reform is always very difficult “because it is so personal for so many,” Sibilia said.
“Many people have deep-seated beliefs around education,” she said. “Success usually brings together unexpected and unlikely alliances.”
The continuing electrification of energy is another of her concerns.
“Electrification of the energy sector is moving forward without American leadership,” Sibilia said. “This means that especially poor and rural Americans and Vermonters are being left behind — as they always are in market-driven transformations.”
She also wants to address how Vermont handles large electric loads like data centers. She hopes to increase the oversight of major energy and transmission decisions. She also advocates closing a lobbying loophole and improving legislative oversight of cybersecurity for public systems.
‘The difficulty isn’t a lack of ideas’
Among Sibilia’s other concerns, she wants to fix notice and fairness problems in Act 181, which modernizes Act 250, the state’s land-use and development law, originally enacted in 1970.
She also supports some small targeted bills related to child care subsidy eligibility and telecommunications consumer protection.
“These are about protecting Vermonters as conditions change and helping them adapt to change,” Sibilia said.
Federal help with the costs of natural disasters is diminishing, and Sibilia wants to figure out another way to protect Vermonters and “to ensure that we are prepared” under current realities.
Difficulties and roadblocks are proliferating, she said.
“The difficulty isn’t a lack of ideas,” Sibilia said. “It is that our systems were not built for this pace or complexity of change.”
Vermont, she said, “has relied heavily on federal funding to stabilize things, and while new federal support for rural health care may buy us some time, it does not solve the underlying structural problems of our demographics and risk pool.”
No matter what the difficulties, Sibilia has one overreaching priority.
“My priority is protecting all Vermonters’ legal, civil, and human rights regardless of immigration status, gender, religious affiliation, or sexual orientation,” she said. “Protecting older Vermonters, LGBTQIA people, poor people, and immigrants means strong oversight and government that leads, not observes. Vulnerable people are the first to be harmed when systems fail.”
The administration of Gov. Phil Scott must cooperate with the Legislature, Sibilia said.
“Neither the governor nor either party can accomplish much on their own,” she said. “Compromise is not optional. Vermonters need help, and they need it from a government that can still function.”
She said she believes deeply in the power of people and in democratic self-government, “even as the rule of law and democratic norms are under attack nationally.”
“If we want Vermont to remain strong, we need to invest in state, regional, and local capacity and focus on making systems work, especially in rural communities,” Sibilia said.
This News item by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.