Act 250 explained

Act 250

Explained by Elizabeth Courtney
Courtney, executive director of the Vermont Natural Resources Council, was first appointed a member of the Vermont Environmental Board by Gov. Madeline Kunin; she served as the chair of the Environmental Board for four years under Gov. Richard Snelling and Gov. Howard Dean.

Q. What is Act 250?

"It's a statewide land use regulatory law that was passed in 1970. There are 10 criteria that the developer needs to address that some people argue is actually 43 criteria because of all the subcriteria within the criteria. There are nine district commissions, so an application is filed with a district commission in the district that your project is located in, heard by a panel of three commissioners, and party status is allowed to a variety of different qualifying entities."

Q. Anyone?

"Not anyone, but it is broad. And there are statutory parties and non-statutory parties; parties that can appeal to the Supreme Court and the parties that can't."

"...I think in 1972 there was an amendment to it which eliminated the capability in development plan. It was essentially a set of maps that said this is where you have the green light, this is where you have the red light in developing; here are our prime agricultural soils, don't go there, here oure secondary forest soils,don't go there. And the state really had a strong reaction to that map, and some people called it statewide zoning, and just didn't like it. One of the reasons that Act 250 has had such a controversial track record ever since is because it doesn't have that basis that it was meant to have to begin with. People try to use it as a planning tool, when it's a regulatory tool. And for that reason, because many towns don't do an adequate job of local planning, that there are many decisions that should be made way prior to a proposal for development that aren't made prior to development and get made piecemeal through the review process...and that's very unsatifactory for everyone."

Q. When the business community talks about the regulatory environment here, they--?

"They're wanting to change Act 250. Sometimes the criticism of Act 250's party status, the ability for people to participate, is a criticism that some people would say is nothing more than just wanting to get the people out of the process. Streamlining is a code word for getting people out of the process.

"In my opinion I think that the resolution of this is, will probably someday come down to let's make Act 250 like every other court in the state, and let's say, let's just use the standard for regular court proceedings to be the standard for Act 250 party status standing. Let's follow civil rule of procedure number 28, which is if you're an interested party and you can demonstrate interest or impact on you personally, you can participate in this process."