If I Were Your State Representative…

July 29, 2026

While campaigning, I’ve heard firsthand about the challenges our neighbors face: a local business owner unable to hire staff due to the housing shortage, a retired nurse worried about being priced out of her home by property taxes, and parents anxious about the future of their local schools. If elected, I am committed to tackling these critical issues. I am writing to share my priorities, potential solutions, and to ask for your vote on August 11.

As I meet you at your doors and at events, I am hearing a clear message: People in our communities are really concerned about the cost of living here, and really struggling to find ways to cope with scarce housing and high costs on their own. Doing nothing is not an option. 

You have expressed concern that with the second oldest population in the nation, our state may not have the workforce to build the housing we need or to do the work we take for granted. These pressures are also driving out families, reducing the number of students in our schools, which in turn raises the education costs associated with the students who still live here. This is not sustainable. 

Several of you have asked what I would do about these issues as your state representative in Montpelier. Some solutions will ensure our communities can thrive, but the situation demands that we make some changes to how we have been working and thinking. 

I bring to this work not only state and national experience with policy development, but also strong leadership experience and demonstrated effectiveness at planning for successful implementation. It makes no difference what policies we put in place if we don’t have the capacity to implement them; Vermonters need better. 

In addition, our challenges are complex and related. We cannot tackle them in isolation. Good housing policy will also be good climate, workforce, and economic development policy. Good economic development policy will also be good health care policy. With that in mind, here are a few strategies I will promote if elected to be one of your two state representatives for the Windsor-Orange 2 district:

Housing

• Ensure that all non-homestead homeowners pay their fair share of property taxes–currently many have a lower tax rate than those who live here–so that we make more effective use of the housing we already have.

• Invest in the conditions that make the development of climate-friendly and affordable housing possible. This includes duplex and multi-family mandates, green financing initiatives, and elimination of parking minimums and expansion of incentives and investments in public transportation, water, sewage, and broadband near where job density is the greatest. 

• Build in ways that are responsive to our labor shortage and need for efficiency, including expanding the new pilot revolving fund for manufactured housing to support the development of Vermont-made manufactured homes that are labor-efficient and energy-efficient. Manufactured housing can be built more quickly and more affordably than stick-and-brick housing, and can be built to pre-approved codes.

Health Care

• Work to control our highest-in-the-nation cost of health care by broadening and strengthening reference-based pricing, benchmarking medical service rates to Medicare standards to curb runaway hospital costs. 

• Work to secure universal access to primary care. Universal access to primary care will save the state money and lead to better patient outcomes. 

• Anticipate and address the pending federal cuts to Medicaid, not to mention federal reductions in ACA subsidies, to minimize the risk to Vermonters, our businesses, our school budgets, and our health care system. 

Education Quality and Cost

• Pursue modifications to the proposed foundation formula to ensure it is designed in a way that is consistent with research and evidence and likely to drive more affordability and better, more equitable outcomes. To the extent additional revenues are provided for certain students who cost more to educate, I will work to ensure that those students are the beneficiaries of those additional dollars. 

• Prioritize evidence-based literacy instruction for struggling learners to improve statewide outcomes, enhance student opportunities, and lower remediation costs.

• Advocate for better oversight of the Vermont Agency of Education. The U.S. Department of Education recently identified Vermont as one of four states, along with Washington, DC and the Bureau of Indian Education, that "Needs Intervention" based on core performance indicators for students with disabilities (including reading and math proficiency, graduation, and dropout rates). This is unprecedented for our state, and puts our federal funding at risk. 

• Ensure our shared public education property tax dollars are not used for schools that exclude some Vermont students based on who they or their parents are, or for schools that do not meet the same responsibilities as public schools.

• Support the development of regional high schools where they make sense, including through targeted construction aid, to ensure better opportunities at a price our communities can afford. 

I am grateful to the members of our communities who have given generously of their time to share the challenges they face and potential strategies to address these challenges. If these were easy problems, we would have solved them already. I am prepared and eager to work hard on your behalf. I do not have all the answers, but I am ready to learn from you– and also ready to grapple with the tradeoffs required –to make our state both appealing and sustainable.

Don’t forget to cast your vote on August 11. You can vote early by mail or in person at the Town Clerk’s office. I am eager to earn your support, and look forward to working on your behalf as your state representative. 

Thank you,

Lauren