Phil Scott Has Got To Go A Vermont Retirement Committee

The Record

Nine years, itemized

Every factual claim below links to its source. Items marked Opinion are commentary and are labeled as such.

01
State employees
On the record

Return to office, by force

He ordered nearly all state employees back to their desks three days a week without bargaining it with their union first. The union sued. A judge declined to block the order, and it took effect on schedule.

Then the Vermont Labor Relations Board ruled against him — the state, it found, should have bargained the change, and it ordered the requirement rescinded. His administration appealed rather than negotiate, and the Vermont Supreme Court heard argument in June 2026. The remarkable part is not the policy. It is that the confrontation was optional: a governor who describes himself as a listener picked a fight with his own workforce and has spent a year litigating it.

4 sources
02
Administration
On the record

The state IT situation

VTBuys, the new state procurement system, was so broken on rollout that the state discontinued the deployment outright. Contractors went unpaid. Staff were told to sit on invoices and avoid signing new contracts.

The state's own IT chief attributed the failure to the “human side” rather than the technology. Meanwhile the $70 million Workday overhaul of payroll and human resources was postponed after lawmakers raised cost and delay concerns, and officials have described a spiraling IT deficit they find challenging to track. Nine years is long enough to own the results.

5 sources
03
Legislature
On the record

Mr. Veto

Cannabis. Paid family leave. The minimum wage. The Global Warming Solutions Act. The Affordable Heat Act. Child care. The bottle bill. Sixty-five vetoes across ten years — more than three times the previous record for a Vermont governor.

Howard Dean held the old record at 21, over a longer tenure. The veto has stopped being a last resort and started being the first draft of a governing agenda. Seventeen of the sixty-five have been overridden, which is the part worth sitting with: several of Vermont's signature laws of the last decade exist specifically because his veto did not hold. In 2023 and 2024 alone the legislature overrode him twelve times.

2 sources
04
Budget
On the record

Affordability, as an argument against everything

“Affordability” is the reason given for most of the vetoes. It was the objection to the child care payroll contribution, to the minimum wage increase, to paid family leave, and to the heating bill.

The legislature overrode him on child care and the state now has one of the country's most substantial child care investments. It overrode him on the minimum wage. It overrode him on climate. In each case the thing he called unaffordable was affordable enough to become law, and the cost of waiting was borne by the people who needed it in the meantime.

3 sources
05
Education funding
On the record

The property tax spiral

Close to 30% of school budgets failed at the polls in spring 2024, a record, as voters braced for the education property tax hike everyone knew was coming. In June the legislature passed H.887, the annual "yield bill" that sets the actual rate — an average 13.8% increase.

He vetoed it, arguing the increase itself was too steep, and floated deferring the pain into future years by drawing on other state funds instead of confronting it. It is a very on-brand instinct: not lower spending, not raise revenue differently, just move the bill to later. The House overrode him 103–42 and the Senate 22–7, and the 13.8% became law as passed. The tax revolt he presided over, and then offered no real alternative to, became one of the through-lines of the campaign that cost his allies their legislative seats that November.

2 sources
06
Homelessness
On the record

Emergency shelter, cut by rule

The motel voucher program that housed over 2,000 households at its pandemic peak was scaled back by administrative rule, not a vote. In spring 2024 around 1,500 households were told to check out under a new seasonal cap. Vermont Legal Aid sued to slow it down and lost.

In 2025 the legislature tried to replace the whole system with one run by regional nonprofits (H.91). He vetoed that too, saying it didn't cut the program's size or cost enough. The override attempt failed — the first time in years one of his vetoes actually held, because that November's elections had cost Democrats the supermajority that used to override him routinely. A court later had to order the state to give voucher recipients more notice before evicting them, which is not the kind of thing a functioning program needs a judge to specify.

4 sources
07
Consumer protection
On the record

The privacy veto

H.121 would have limited how platforms collect data on Vermonters and target ads at kids, and let consumers sue over violations. It passed with broad support. He vetoed it in June 2024, calling it a legal and economic risk to businesses — the same argument the ad industry's own lobbyists had made against it.

The House voted to override him 128–17, about as lopsided as a vote gets. It died anyway: the Senate fell short, 14–15, well under the two-thirds required. The state's own Attorney General had publicly urged the override. His suggested alternative was that Vermont adopt Connecticut's weaker privacy law instead — regional consistency, he said, is good for business.

3 sources
08
Corrections
On the record

The prison reversal

In 2019, citing a 33% rise in Vermont's violent crime rate since 2007, his administration launched a reform effort to shrink the incarcerated population and cut probation revocations. It worked, for a while, then reversed. By 2025 the direction was a public-safety push for tougher bail and sentencing rules — and in April, a Department of Corrections policy letting the state hold people past their court-ordered minimum release dates.

The "risk containment" policy was directed by his own office, according to court hearing transcripts, and it dropped the forensic evaluation previously required before denying someone's release, assessing risk instead from in-custody behavior, past supervision violations, and criminal history. Before the policy, fewer than 10 people were held past their minimum sentence on risk grounds; by September 2026 that was 77, and petitions for post-conviction relief had tripled. That same stretch put Vermont's prison population at a five-year high in July 2025 — over 1,550 people, up from under 1,240 in 2020, with the number of women held pretrial up almost 150% since 2021 and now exceeding the number actually serving sentences. None of this happened with more staff to manage it: guard vacancies run 17% statewide and 48% at the Southern State facility, and his corrections commissioner's position is that pay isn't the problem. The policy pivot added to the population the system has to house at the same time the state couldn't recruit or retain enough people to house them — two pressures compounding each other into the crisis now under legislative scrutiny. The administration's proposed fix is a prison expansion priced at more than $500 million, roughly $800,000 to $900,000 per new bed, to hold a population his own 2019 initiative had shown could be reduced instead.

7 sources
09
Leadership
Opinion

Affable is not a policy

He is pleasant. He is a race car driver. He is, by most accounts, a good man to be stuck in an elevator with. None of these are policies, and all of them have been doing a great deal of work for a very long time.

The reasonable-Republican brand survives contact with almost any specific decision, because the brand is about manner rather than outcome. Vermonters keep re-electing a temperament and then waiting for it to produce something. This is commentary, not a factual claim — but after nine years it is a fair one.

10
Leadership
Opinion

Quiet when it counts

Asked to speak plainly about corruption and the rule of law in Washington, he reaches for the same register he uses for a budget adjustment: measured, regretful, non-specific.

Being the reasonable Republican is a position that costs nothing, which is why it has lasted. Vermonters keep waiting for the sentence that costs him something. This is opinion, offered as opinion.

Timeline of the veto pen

2017

Cannabis legalization, vetoed

Veto stood

S.22 would have legalized possession and limited home cultivation. Sent back over roadside testing and youth access. Legalization arrived anyway, later and messier.

1 source
2018

Minimum wage and paid family leave, vetoed

Veto stood

Both framed as unaffordable. He vetoed four bills that May, including a $15 minimum wage and a mandatory paid family leave program.

1 source
2020

Minimum wage, vetoed again

Overridden

The House overrode him 100–49 and the increase became law. His paid family leave veto survived the same session by a single vote.

2 sources
2020

Global Warming Solutions Act, vetoed

Overridden

H.688 became law on September 22 when the House overrode 103–47 and the Senate 22–8. Vermont's binding climate targets exist because the legislature declined to take no for an answer.

2 sources
2023

Affordable Heat Act, vetoed

Overridden

S.5 set up a clean heat standard for further study and guaranteed the legislature a second vote before anything took effect. He vetoed the study. The Senate overrode him 20–10.

1 source
2023

Child care funding, vetoed

Overridden

H.217 was vetoed on June 6 over its payroll contribution. The House overrode 116–31 and the Senate followed. It is now Act 76, and it is among the most significant things Vermont has done for families in a generation.

2 sources
2023

Bottle bill expansion, vetoed

Veto stood

Vermont, of all states, told that expanding the bottle deposit was a bridge too far. The House overrode him 112–32. The Senate came up short at 17–13, and the veto held.

2 sources
2024

Property tax yield bill, vetoed

Overridden

H.887 set education property tax rates for the year at an average 13.8% increase. He vetoed it, wanting to defer the increase instead. The House overrode him 103–42, the Senate 22–7, and the increase took effect as written.

1 source
2024

Data privacy act, vetoed

Veto stood

H.121 would have limited data collection and let consumers sue over violations. He vetoed it after ad-industry lobbying. The House overrode him 128–17; the Senate fell short, 14–15.

1 source
2025

Risk containment policy adopted

Still in effect

The Department of Corrections started holding people past their court-ordered minimum release dates on "risk" grounds, directed by his own office. Fewer than 10 people were held under it at the start; 77 were by September 2026.

1 source
2025

Motel voucher overhaul, vetoed

Veto stood

H.91 would have replaced the shrinking motel program with one run by regional nonprofits. He vetoed it as inadequate. The override attempt failed — Democrats had lost their veto-proof majority that November.

1 source
2025–26

Return-to-office order

Before the Supreme Court

Ordered without bargaining. A judge declined to block it. The Labor Relations Board then ruled he should have bargained and ordered it rescinded. His administration appealed, and the Vermont Supreme Court heard argument in June 2026.

2 sources

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