The best news of the week was that Mohsen Madawi was released from detention here in Vermont.
The federal government offered no acceptable justification for Madawi’s detention, and, as a result, Judge Crawford of Vermont’s U.S. District Court freed him. The conditions of his release seem relatively simple: he is now free to go back to Columbia University and resume his life as a student, and he can live in Vermont and continue his process of becoming an American citizen.
This was such welcome news.
More good news followed on May Day. The House passed Proposal 3, which means that this proposed amendment to our Vermont constitution will be on the November 2026 ballot for a vote. Proposal 3 would enshrine the right for Vermont workers to organize unions and collectively bargain. The language, which had to be passed in both chambers in two consecutive biennia, states that “no law shall be adopted that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to collectively bargain.” Six other states explicitly affirm this right in their constitutions, and several other states have laws that have further enhanced these rights.
I was also heartened to see the Johnson Public Library, which had flooded numerous times, moved to higher, hopefully, flood-free land. In an impressive engineering feat, this 1909 40 x 45-foot brick library was lifted and moved on 48 wheels half a mile away to the grounds of the elementary school. It took three hours in the middle of the night, between 3 and 6 a.m., to accomplish this, despite it getting stuck at one point. This example of resiliency is inspiring.
At this point in the session, a great deal is in play. In a typical session, this week’s passage of the Senate’s version of the FY26 Budget H.493 would indicate that we were about two weeks away from adjournment, but not this year.
This year our top priority, on top of many other top priorities, is the education transformation work. This effort is now embodied in H. 454, which has just passed out of the Senate Education Committee and will be considered by two other Senate committees before it goes back to the House for consideration.
At stake is how we fund education (shifting to a foundation formula); district, school, and class sizes; state aid for school construction; education governance; how career and technical education is to be re-organized and financed; the timeline for accomplishing all this and the future of public tuition funds. This bill, which will require a great deal more negotiation, both with the House and the governor, is really the barometer of when the 2025 session will wrap up.
While the education transformation work is high-profile, many other bills will be finalized in the coming weeks. All the legislative committees are in the last stages of finishing their work on their bills —on housing, data privacy, health care, transportation, the re-organization of how we manage those who are unhoused, updating unpaid family leave, cannabis regulation, our capital investments, regulating child care educators and a host of other issues. May promises to be an intense and very busy month.
Vermont Sen. Clarkson can be reached by email: [email protected] or by phone at the State House (Tues-Fri) 802-828-2228 or at home (Sat-Mon) 802-457-4627.
