Act 250 Will Reform Give to or Take Away from Addison County? Douglas and Businesses' Reform Plan Clashes with Gossens and Environmentalists' Vision

Author: Kelsey Rinehart

According to Sen. Gerry Gossens (D-Addison) and his fellow lawmakers, when it comes to the permit process, compared to residents of many other states, Vermonters have it pretty good. "I've talked to folks in other states, and all they do is complain about their permit process," Gossens remarked in an interview with The Middlebury Campus, noting that people often cite Vermont's Act 250 as an example of a thorough, effective law. Still, Gossens said, "Here in Vermont, they say, 'Man, you can go to any other state and it's better. I know a guy who went to New Hampshire after waiting five years for a permit, and he got one in 24 hours!'" Many Vermonters, however, would have something to say to this. "I'd say, 'I'm glad New Hampshire got him one - it sounds like something we didn't want,'" Gossens remarked. Gossens is one of many who believe in the power of Vermont's permit process. "Vermont has an infrastructure that has protected the environment."
In a letter to The Addison Independent, Cornwall resident David Van Vleck wrote, "Act 250 was established to protect the environment so that sprawl and destruction of Vermont's environment would be minimized." He pointed to states such as Florida and California, which lack an Act 250 and have been plagued by tension between environmental and business concerns, as examples of why Vermonters should appreciate the act. "Act 250 is one of the best laws of its kind in the United States," Van Vleck said. Still, he agrees with the majority - reform is necessary.
Reform requires a thorough understanding of the law's inner workings. Gossens explained, "Act 250 is an umbrella process to which zoning permits given by towns go, environmental permits given by the agency of natural resources go, and any other permits from any other part of state government [go]."
Permits arrive at the Act 250 hearing only after a long process of discussion, debate and review. "All those permits have been issued, appealed and resolved," Gossens said. "When the permits come together, what often happens at the Act 250 process is that someone says, 'This is what I want to do and what I have permits for.' And then citizens say, 'Well, I live right here. Did you ever think of this, what it's going to do there?'" Contractors and builders talk to concerned citizens, working out the final, unresolved kinks. "They could say, for example, 'There's an important historic swimming hole; could you move your bridge 200 yards upstream?'" Once an agreement is made, "that consensus is all put into what becomes the Act 250 permit." Gossens noted that only 25 to 40 permits out of 600 a year cannot be resolved in this means and must be brought to the Act 250 permit process.
This process, many say, is burdened with aspects that make timeliness impossible. Lawmakers and citizens have debated the causes of the delays and how to allay them. The central source of trouble, according to Gossens, is with the permits themselves. "Local permits, for example, are done by volunteer citizens of a small town," Gossens said. For one reason or another, the permits are often appealed in one or more courts, and the process inevitably drags on for months. Gossens said trying to "increase the quality of the permits being issued" is a better solution than removing review processes which take into account the opinions and concerns of environmental groups, citizen groups and individuals.
Others, like James B. Stewart, executive director of Addison County Economic Development Corporation (ACEDC), disagree about the root of the problem. They say that Act 250 is burdened by repetition and unnecessary reviewing. Stewart has worked with several projects involving Act 250 and has been in communication with many other entities that have participated in Act 250 review, among them, builders, engineers and land developers. Stewart said that he was indeed a participant in the debate in Montpelier. "Gerry [Gossens] is correct in saying that Act 250 discussions really are an umbrella for a number of issues," Stewart said.
Rather than seeing value in the permit review process, Stewart said, "The single greatest impediment to permitting projects is the redundancy of review. Local permits and Agency of Natural Resource permits are often reviewed a second or third time when an Act 250 application is reviewed."
He did, however, agree with Gossens that political debate was dominating the issue. "We have seen Act 250 coordinators routinely provide party status to groups who have no direct interest in a project, but who do have a particular philosophy that they wish to advance," Stewart said. This deliberate attempt at fostering party-based unity, Stewart said, is a central problem. Stewart agreed with Douglas' and Republicans' plan to simplify the act by downsizing the appeals process. "While making no changes to the criteria for review of an application under Act 250, it does change the process, eliminating several levels of redundancy," Stewart said. "It also sets some limits on rights of appeal (to materially affected parties)."
Stewart defended the bill and its supporters, saying, "No one is asking for a weakening of our environmental laws. The problem is the lack of predictability in the process caused in some measure by bureaucrats who use their position to further their own personal philosophy." Stewart did not see a clear end, concluding, "Unfortunately it is very difficult to legislate this problem away, hence the lack of consensus on how to solve the problem in Montpelier."
Rep. Mike Fisher (D-Middlebury), a critic of the bill Stewart supports, said, "As passed, this plan will lead to a less predictable, more time-consuming and far more litigious process." He suggested a different solution, which involves the formation of a group of "permit advocates who would help applicants move through the permit process. This approach would give applicants a single point of entry, predictability and assure that community members continue to have a voice at the table."
After all the arguments are over, what will become of Act 250, and what will Middlebury's reaction be? If one side leaves the table content and the other remains unhappy, a resolution will not have been accomplished. At the heart of the debate is the need for reforms that please, or at least placate, both sides.
At this point, many, including Gossens, believe that, with the Republican-controlled House and a Republican, in-tune-to-business-concerns governor, the scales are tipping in one direction - away from environmental concerns. Those concerned say that this puts in jeopardy two fundamental platforms of Act 250 - its commitment to environmental protection and its inclusion of each Vermonter's voice in the permit process. Gossens says this should be remedied immediately. "We have to find a common ground," he said.
Many lawmakers are frustrated with the politicization of this and other issues, but Gossens conceded that the legislature will get past the impasse and accomplish something meaningful in the end. "The legislative process is sort of like making sausage. It's very unpretty, very slow and frustrating, but what comes out is something pretty good," he assessed. Gossens was optimistic about the end result, saying, "A balanced and sensible permit reform bill will emerge. It will be based on bipartisan agreement about what problems to be solved really are."
Van Vleck, too, was optimistic about Vermont's commitment to environmental protection, noting, "Everyone here is an environmentalist, because the alternative is to be an anti-environmentalist, which would be a person who is against clean water, clean air and other aspects of the environment in which we wish to raise our children." He continued, "Anyone who wishes not to fight for a viable environment can choose to live in any of the many states that have chosen to forgo a first-class environment."
The bottom line, Gossens said, is that "we must keep in mind that the primary purpose of Vermont's environmental regulation is to
protect the environment from unreasonable or unnecessary adverse impacts. A timely and predictable permit process is indeed necessary. But the most important criteria must be that Vermont's environmental standards are consistently and reliably met, and that individual Vermonters are not excluded from the process."