Letter: Legislators disappoint at end-of-session forum
June 30, 2026
To the Community:
I am writing this after attending our local Vermont state representatives’ public “end of the session” meeting on June 24 at the Big Picture in Waitsfield. Present were Reps. Dara Torre, Candice White, Theresa Wood, all of whom are running for re-election unopposed in their primaries this year, and state Sen. Ann Cummings. To say this meeting was disappointing is an understatement.
Act 181 started me into an eye-opening experience of very deep, time-consuming research dives following the money into the influences that created Acts 59, 181 and 121. It shows an incestuous path of extreme NGO influence over the Vermont government, legislature, and the press, via funding, board positions, and lobbyists. It has also shown a lack of inclusion of Vermont working lands people in the process. It has been very one-sided.
I have been a lifelong Democrat leaning more toward the progressive side and have long supported some of the NGO’s that I now see in a very different light.
I respect the time and genuine caring for our state that our legislators, willing to do this work, take from their own lives. They are busy, and I doubt have had the time to take this deep dive for some of the bills they vote on, relying on committees and party recommendations on how to vote. (This session also showed that legislators who don’t vote the Democratic Party line get reprimanded.) This does not seem like the best way to represent constituents who have been trusting the process all along.
What was so disappointing was the treatment and responses to any of the multiple people who dared to stand up and ask questions and express concerns about the reasons why certain votes were made. All of the legislators present were defensive about any Act 181 issues from the get-go. All the legislators present sadly stated that the Rural Vermont Rising (originally Facebook VT 181, a non-partisan group now over 16,000 strong) social media posts and emails were threatening and full of disinformation. This has been looked into by the state police and found to have no foundation. We were treated as adversaries. This was not just my own experience; there were many who felt this way.
We went into this meeting hoping for a good dialogue since most of them are running unopposed. Theresa Wood dismissed comments that the working lands Vermonters (farmers, foresters, loggers) were not given equal time or weight, as the influence of the NGO’s was a “perception” problem, denying that it was true. There is much documentation that the working lands people were not at the table. There was some acknowledgement that people felt they had not been heard, but no mention of how that would be remedied.
I have always thought that, if you are a legislator, by law you are supposed to represent all your constituents. There should at least be curiosity about why the other side feels like they do. This is not how any commenters were treated in this meeting. It is really too bad that, for some reason, we were treated as adversaries instead of collaborators toward solving the many problems we have.
There seems to be some assumption that the working lands folk and Rural Vermont Rising are not conservationists just because we believe in property rights. In fact, the working lands have been conserved and loved for centuries. Today, 44% of Vermont is in Current Use, but Act 59 (by which 30% of land in Vermont is to be permanently conserved by 2030, 50% by 2050) does not consider that “permanent,” because it does not have a conservation easement on it (which NGO’s profit from). Act 59 was the baseline for Act 181 and is still law. There was an amendment H.70, that would have added Current Use land to the state land already conserved (27%), and it was voted down. Together, the total would be 71% already, but that may take jobs and funds away from some of the NGO’s.
All of this is complex, but if the legislature only believes “scientists, degreed people, NGO conservation groups” and places little value on the deep daily knowledge and understanding of the working lands rural people, especially multi-generational ones, they have missed a great wealth of knowledge no other “education” can replace.
If you wish to take the dive, too, a source is postings on the blog Vermont Investigative, published at alexsys.substack.com.
Wendy Bridgewater
Fayston
