Common Sense Radio: Affordability and Education Reform with State Senator Steve Heffernan
Friday, October 23, 2026, on Common Sense Radio with Bill Sayre, weekdays, 11 o’clock till Noon.
Steve Heffernan, State Senator from Addison County, and member of both the Education Committee and the Agriculture Committee, joins Bill to discuss the major challenges and opportunities before Vermont and her people — with special emphasis on how best to make the cost of living affordable for Vermont families, especially young families; and how best to create a tax and regulatory climate in which Vermont businesses want to invest, grow, and hire — and can afford to do so.
Potential Questions and Issues
What are the chief concerns you are hearing from voters last summer and this fall? Property taxes, education costs, school consolidation, energy costs and mandates, costs of health care and health insurance, housing affordability, declining population, particularly working age population, public safety, opiate addiction.
Vermot is one of the highest taxed States in the nation. And likewise one biggest spending States. For example, our per student spending is about 75 percent over the national average, including many rural States just as rural or more so than Vermont — South and North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Kansas and Nebraska.
Do we have a Revenue problem or a Tax problem. If education did not cost so much, would we have more money for repairing and maintaining roads and bridges? 50 miles of paving this year, 200 to 300 required to keep from falling behind. If we wait too long to make repairs, aren’t repairs more expensive?
What are the key elements of the education reform legislation signed by the Governor a short time ago? How will these reforms help reduce, or at least slow the growth, in property taxes? What is the Foundation Formula, and how will it work? Some have said that without local control of tax rates, there is no local control of eduction? How will the Foundation Formula strengthen local control, that is, strengthen the connection between District Spending with District Taxes? Who will determine the weights for an individual School District — the State Agency of Education? Will larger Districts — both in student population and in geography — tend to reduce the volatility in weights? Will there be some type of auditing of weights assigned? Given the importance of assigned weights to the size of State Aid that a District receives, do you think Legislators will be unable to avoid the temptation to get involved in determining the weighting for their Districts?
Why does it seem that Education Test Scores have dropped in the nation as a whole, but that Vermont’s seem to have fallen further than in the nation as a whole? Before Act 60, Vermont had high per student costs, but also among the highest student test scores. Are our students different from those in States with comparable demographics, or, have we changed the way we teach our students, or have we changed the way we measure what our students have learned?
If Vermont’s cost per child were closer to the national average, how much cost would we save — per student, and overall? What are some other uses for this savings? Particularly for addressing the affordability crisis in the cost of living for Vermont families and businesses? Housing costs, health insurance, energy costs, capital investment, and returning part of the savings to the taxpayers?
Why is it important for government, like families and businesses, to live within its means? Why is it better for government to raise revenue by growing the economy than by raising tax rates?
What were the chief issues examined and address by the Senate Agriculture. Committee?
How did it come to be that the Legislature corrected some of the flaws in Act 181, the law passed over the Governor’s veto, to reform Act 250? In particular, the Road Rule and tier 3 Land Designation.
What other affordability issues should we be considering this session? Housing availability and cost; health insurance costs and the cost of health care; energy cost and regulation; Act 181 and State Land Use Plans and Regulation. Why is it important to grow the economy? And to live within our means — as businesses, families, and all levels of government? Why is it important to grow the tax base, so that we can raise revenue for the necessary functions of government, without raising tax rates? Why is it important for Vermont’s tax rates to be competitive with those in other States? Why do some of us believe that the best social program is a good job?
What is the connection of the above public policy issues to Vermont’s demographic crisis — as both cause and effect? Vermont, being one of the few States in which population has declined two years in a row. Vermont having the second oldest population. And the lowest fertility rate? Births far below Deaths? The lower number of Births since before the Civil War? Including declining school populations in rural schools.
What should we know about the Rural Urban Divide in Vermont? How do we heal it? With improving communication technologies, such as via the internet, why shouldn’t Vermont welcome entrepreneurs who want advanced communication technologies, but do so while living in a rural landscape such as Vermont’s?
What are some ways a healthy rural economy — including in our traditional industries of farming and forestry help achieve environmental and social goals without such burdensome and complex regulations and taxes? Carbon absorption and storage, for example, in working forests, and the product of working forests — flooring, furniture, cabinetry, wooden homes, and now — mass timber structures that are as much as 18 stories tall, and meeting all fire and safety codes.
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