Grow What’s Good Here2026

take action and serve the Needs of rural vermonters

The candidate commitment.

Candidates are asked to publicly commit to eight actions starting next session, one for each part of the platform:

  1. 1Save Vermont’s farms. Pass a dairy processing investment and stability package; exempt all bona fide farming from zoning regardless of parcel size; repeal the 2026 on-farm event restrictions; take the state tax out of farm succession.
  2. 2Keep forests working. Capitalize a Working Forest Fund; enact a buy-Vermont-wood preference and native lumber certification; exempt wood processing from Act 250; keep Current Use for land managed to produce.
  3. 3Cut the cost of doing the work. Pass a Rural Regulatory Relief Act with shall-issue permitting and a 30-day small-project lane; exempt agricultural and processing construction from sales tax; replace grant-led scaling with a working-lands production tax credit; seat a Working Vermonters and Small Business Advisory Council.
  4. 4Let rural families stay and start. Create a wastewater bottom tier with automatic approval at 45 days; extend the owner-builder exemption; repeal the ADU rental cliff; assess owner-built homes at cost.
  5. 5Keep land in Vermonters’ hands. Count Current Use toward Act 59; close Current Use to new Reserve Forestland enrollments; fund VHCB conservation grants by annual appropriation with project-level accounting; enact a Landowner Bill of Rights for conserved land; require host-town approval of state land acquisitions.
  6. 6Follow the public money. Build a public grant and pass-through contract database; bar state grant funds from lobbying with certification and clawback; zero-base rebid agency grant portfolios; adopt a cooling-off period and an overlap audit.
  7. 7Stop overburdening small towns. Require a rural burden review and a small-town mandate cost test, calculated for a town under 2,500 people, before any municipal mandate takes effect.
  8. 8Make serving possible. Adjourn by April 15; cap bill introductions per member; require a problem statement on every bill; give towns plain-language notice before crossover; schedule working-lands testimony outside the workday with guaranteed remote access.

Candidate

Office sought · District · Date

This platform is owned by no organization and available to any candidate who commits to its specifics. It asks that Vermont be governed for the people who keep its landscape working and for everyone who would choose to make a life here in relationship to the land. Full text: growwhatsgoodhere.com · Grow What’s Good Here