A s Vermont state legislators gathered on a bitterly cold January morning to begin a new session, two freshly elected representatives shifted in their seats on the House chamber floor and took in their surroundings. The cavernous room, adorned with velvet drapes and a tiered chandelier, echoed with the restless chatter of friends and family who crowded in for the swearing-in and first day of the legislative session.
One of the newcomers, Michael Boutin, 44, looked around from his back-row seat at the sea of people, mostly unfamiliar to him. His usual stomping ground was across town at the offices of National Life Group, where he’d worked for nearly 20 years, but he’d stepped back from his job as a death-claims examiner to assume this new role as a Republican state representative for Barre City.
Boutin had some idea of the work ahead, having served more than a decade on the Barre City Council and now as chair of the Barre Unified Union School District Board. But that didn’t quell his nervous energy. In his favorite black sport coat, Boutin smoothed his red tie and gray-tipped beard and shifted his feet under the 166-year-old wooden desk. He was the only legislator wearing Crocs — his formal pair, no holes — as he knew he would be.
Boutin was humbled to have won a decisive victory that contributed to the 19 seats Republicans gained in the House. The result reassured him that Barre City seemed to want the type of conservative change he represented. Boutin had walked into the Statehouse this morning with his mom, sisters and a wish list of bills addressing issues his supporters cared about: crime, cost of living, flood recovery. He also carried a deep sense of duty not to disappoint those who had elected him.
Across the House floor, attentive in the second row, Shawn Sweeney, 61, smiled at his wife and dad sitting together. A moderate Democrat representing Shelburne and St. George, he already looked the part of a seasoned politician, dressed in a crisp blue suit with a pocket square and sharp, black-framed glasses. Sweeney hoped to be a quick study here, much as he had been throughout an eclectic career in nightclub management, film production and now as the owner of a construction business. But the unfamiliar proceedings and undercurrent of political machinations on the House floor that morning were a reminder of how much he would have to learn. The legislature was expected to take on some heavy policy issues, in particular the transformation of Vermont’s public education system.
Sweeney felt the same first-day-of-school thrill that he had growing up in Montpelier. He planned to keep his head down and ears open in hopes of finding ways to channel his temperate approach into bipartisan solutions before the legislature recessed in May. He hoped that, when all was said and done, he could feel good about every vote he cast. Nine weeks after winning his seat — an uncontested race following a close Democratic primary — he was eager to begin.
Boutin and Sweeney were rookie representatives joining the ranks of a citizen legislature that has drawn Vermonters from cities and farms since 1791 to create the laws that define the Green Mountain State. They were full of ambition, though they felt uncertain about a legislative session that was billed to be like none other in recent memory.
The pair’s experiences over the five-month session reflect the challenges often faced by Vermont’s citizen legislators, particularly those in their first year.
Two months earlier, Vermont voters had sent a wave of Republicans into the Statehouse, ending the Democrats’ veto-proof majority over Republican Gov. Phil Scott. In the run-up to the swearing-in, conversations in the Statehouse hallways buzzed about how this session would be different, more bipartisan.
Seven Days closely followed Boutin and Sweeney from January to June, during a time when Democrats faced a newly emboldened Republican party, the Scott administration proposed sweeping education reform and legislators strove to achieve bipartisanship amid the contentious work that followed.
Boutin and Sweeney came representing opposing parties, hailing from communities worlds apart and focused on different goals, both political and personal. Boutin, a softy at heart, harbored dreams of policy reform that would outstrip his standing as a first-year and member of the minority party. Sweeney, a charismatic entrepreneur, would struggle at times to cultivate a more bipartisan approach to legislating without irreparably breaking from his party. The pair’s experiences over the five-and-a-half month session reflect the challenges often faced by Vermont’s citizen legislators, particularly those in their first year: steep learning curves, party demands, halting progress and imperfect solutions. Together, their accounts of advances and disappointments help illuminate the often unseen realities of writing laws in Montpelier that affect Vermonters everywhere.
Quarrels large and small lay ahead. But on this January morning, as Boutin, Sweeney and the hall of representatives stood with right hands raised and intoned the oath of office, the House members spoke for a few brief moments in solemn unison. After members promised to be faithful and honest, protect the rights of the people, and uphold the Vermont and U.S. Constitutions, the chamber broke into applause. Boutin, Sweeney and their families joined in. The House was called back to order, and it was on to the next item on the day’s agenda.
The 78th biennium, and Boutin and Sweeney’s legislative adventure, had officially begun.
Settling In
Across town from the Statehouse, on a chilly evening little more than a week into the session, Sweeney listened closely as one of his fellow first-year representatives shared her hopes for the session. The legislative workday was over, but more than 40 first-year lawmakers from both parties had trekked through darkened, snowy streets to a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall for pizza and conversation.
Sweeney, the Democrat, had planned the get-together with Rep. Rob North (R-Ferrisburgh) in hopes of preserving the camaraderie that sprouted during their December orientation. Sweeney was a natural social organizer. He sought connection with his new colleagues, stopping to say hello in the Statehouse halls and chatting over early breakfasts in the cafeteria. He didn’t pay close attention to others’ party affiliation, but he could already feel the tug of partisanship stemming from caucus meetings and party-line votes.
Boutin intended to go to the pizza get-together but decided at the last minute to head home to Barre City to tend to his German shepherd, Leah, and catch up on the hundreds of emails that poured into his personal, school board, Statehouse and work accounts. He was starting to feel like he was drinking from a fire hose.
Boutin had continued to work at National Life on Mondays, the one weekday when the legislature didn’t meet, in large part because he loved the job. The gig also let him supplement the $800 a week he got in legislative pay and keep his health insurance, which the state does not provide to legislators. Boutin realized that he was unlike many of his colleagues who were retired and could afford to work solely in the part-time legislature, despite the high demands and low pay.
Before the first week was through, Boutin had introduced his first bill. The legislation, sponsored with fellow rookie Rep. Teddy Waszazak (D-Barre City), was more housekeeping than sweeping reform — it would authorize a change to Barre City’s charter that voters already had approved. Still, it represented a bigger bite than many newcomers took on right away.
Boutin was already preparing a second bill that would create stricter punishment for drug offenders, drafting a handful more with the help of Statehouse attorneys and toying with the idea of video pitches to win over cosponsors.
Friends and colleagues had warned him not to get his hopes up in the first year, particularly as a member of the minority party in a body often fixated on seniority and process. His Republican caucus held a little more than a third of the House seats and so was unable to muster the votes to pass bills. That power largely lay in the hands of House Speaker Jill Krowinski (D-Burlington) and the people she appointed to chair the House committees, nearly all of whom were Democrats.
During the first month, reality sank in as Boutin adjusted to work as a member of the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee. He was bemoaning his committee assignment, which was a distant second to his top choice, government operations. Everything moved slower than he preferred, though that could be said of the entire Statehouse. He longed for the control he held over school board meetings, where he could call for a vote rather than sit through protracted discussion. His spirits were lifted only by the others with whom he was serving.
Day in and day out, Boutin sat at the cramped conference table through monotonous presentations of little interest to him on topics he knew little about, often from interest groups that had not supported his candidacy. A creeping thought gained purchase: What have I done?
Across the hallway, in the House Corrections and Institutions Committee room, Sweeney was trying to find his own rhythm. The first weeks were an onslaught of presentations, witness testimony, budget spreadsheets, legislation walk-throughs, side meetings and learning the ropes as the committee’s appointed clerk. Sweeney had planned to drive home to Shelburne most nights to be with his wife but wound up lodging at the Capitol Plaza Hotel on weeknights to keep up with the workload. The lifestyle reminded him of college.
As with Boutin, Sweeney’s committee assignment wasn’t his first pick, but the silver lining was that he now had the opportunity to serve under chair Rep. Alice Emmons (D-Springfield), whose 42 years in the House made her its longest-tenured current member. The two clicked. As owner of his construction business, Sweeney DesignBuild, Sweeney felt valued for the perspective he was able to bring to the committee’s work managing state properties and prisons. He’d largely handed off company operations to his staff for the legislative session but still showed up on Mondays to check in and visit worksites.
Sweeney had intentionally entered the session without a legislative wish list of his own so that he could focus on meeting new people, learning the legislative process and finding his place among fellow Democrats. In time, he trusted that he’d find the right issue to take on, perhaps under the tutelage of Emmons and their committee.
But everyone knew that the session’s 800-pound gorilla wouldn’t be economic development or prisons — it was education reform. In late January, both chambers gathered as Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders unveiled the Scott administration’s plan to overhaul the way Vermont’s schools are organized and funded. It would create a new “foundation formula” to determine how much money school districts received. The state’s 119 districts would be clustered into five regional ones. There would be a single property tax, though details of the overall scheme were thin.
Boutin, who had long admired Scott, a fellow Barre native and Spaulding High School alumnus, loved the plan’s boldness. It felt aligned with the change voters clearly wanted when they elected him and a wave of Republicans in November after Vermonters revolted against double-digit property tax increases the previous spring. Now the Scott administration was proposing a solution. If elements didn’t work, Boutin figured, the legislature could make changes next year. Better to act than do nothing.
Sweeney wasn’t so certain. He assumed the Scott administration was acting with the best intentions, but still he braced for what could be months of acrimonious debate over vouchers and independent schools.
In the ensuing days, word spread that education reform would be one of the rare issues to reach all committees as it increasingly sapped the Statehouse’s limited resources, staff and attention. Boutin and Sweeney hadn’t expected education to collide with their work, but, like the rest of the assembly, they would have to adjust.
Training Ground
With a blank greeting card at the ready, Boutin waited at his desk for the House chamber’s morning announcements to hear which of his colleagues was celebrating a birthday. It was mid-February, six weeks into the session, and he had fully stocked his desk with the necessary supplies: cards, envelopes, stickers, pens.
Boutin had decided to pen handwritten notes as a way to make inroads with other lawmakers. He’d dropped his previous plan to make cosponsorship videos: not enough time. Briefly, he had considered making balloon animals his niche — it had always been a hit at National Life — but as luck would have it, Rep. VL Coffin IV (R-Cavendish) had already laid claim.
So, note writing it was: birthday cards, cosponsorship requests, offers to testify, thank-yous, just-because messages. Earlier in the month, ahead of Valentine’s Day, Boutin had spent hours making more than 300 cards. Eighth graders working as student pages crisscrossed the capitol complex in their signature green jackets to hand-deliver the missives. He liked the idea that the gesture might brighten someone’s day.
The cards went over better with some colleagues than others. Many members found it endearing, if unexpected. Others wondered who “Michael” was and why he’d spent so much time and money on such a thing.
On the House floor, polite applause rippled across the chamber as Rep. Marc Mihaly’s (D-East Calais) birthday was announced. Boutin quickly addressed the envelope and flagged a page to deliver it. Moments later, Speaker Krowinski rapped her gavel to signal an end to morning business and the start of the day’s committee work.
Sweeney was learning to discern possible ulterior motives buried in the recesses of bills and how to forge compromise across party lines.
Sweeney gathered his things and headed to the House Corrections and Institutions Committee room. He and his colleagues were deep in their first major task of the session: a $110 million bill to fund the bulk of state infrastructure projects. They’d heard weeks of testimony. Now they had to translate that information into airtight legislative text.
The committee had proven to be the training ground Sweeney hoped it would, thanks in large part to Emmons, a fellow Democrat and the chair. From his seat just to her left, he closely watched how she annotated the text of bills’ legalese and led the group in discussions. He was learning to discern possible ulterior motives buried in the recesses of bills and how to forge compromise across party lines. Unlike some committee chairs, Emmons was a stickler for consensus and was not satisfied with party-line votes when passing bills out of committee. Sweeney felt as if he had a front-row seat in a master class on legislative leadership.
Navigating his party’s internal dynamics had proven the greatest challenge for Sweeney so far. The House’s Democratic leaders had not taken kindly to the events he’d helped organize for first-year lawmakers, particularly those for just the rookie Democrats.
As February wound down, Sweeney was approached by Rep. Lori Houghton (D-Essex Junction), the majority leader, in the cafeteria and then pulled into Speaker Krowinski’s office, where they had a conversation about his unsanctioned events that grew tense. They agreed that the first-year Democrats would meet on their own one more time before leaders stepped in.
Sweeney was disappointed but wanted to be a team player, and he knew that political capital was a finite resource. Even the Republican Boutin saw how much of it Houghton wielded. From his seat on the House floor, Boutin watched how the majority leader could steer her caucus with the slightest nod during voting roll calls.
Days later, it was Boutin’s turn in Krowinski’s office, but he had asked to meet. Boutin had grown fond of the speaker, despite their party differences, and he’d asked her for tips on how he could advance his bills, which had stalled. She taught him that big legislation, like the emerging education reform package, can sometimes act as vehicles for smaller, related bills. He’d keep that insight in mind for later in the session. He also learned that a bill’s fate can hinge on which committee it gets assigned to.
But the next morning, Boutin’s goodwill evaporated when Krowinski directed one of his struggling bills to a committee where it was all but certain to languish, even though he had expressly asked that it go to a different committee. He was irate. He calmed down only after he learned from a colleague that he was supposed to make his request to the House clerk, not the speaker, to have it processed properly. Boutin had erred, not Krowinski.
Still, the legislature’s upcoming weeklong recess for Town Meeting Day couldn’t come soon enough. He anticipated a relatively quiet break focused mainly on whether he would retain chairmanship of the Barre Unified Union School District Board, depending on who else got elected.
Sweeney, for his part, was feeling nervous as he departed for the week, knowing he was to appear before constituents at Town Meeting Day events in Shelburne and St. George. Amid a blizzard of national headlines about constituents lambasting members of Congress at town hall events in their districts, he was sensitive to the fact that he — and the House as a whole — had few concrete achievements to point to so far. Even education reform, the Scott administration’s top priority for the session, had formally become a bill only that day. Two months into what was scheduled as a four-month session, he felt that progress was scant.
But come Town Meeting Day, few people pressed Sweeney about what was happening — or not — in Montpelier. Their concerns lay with Washington, D.C., where the Trump administration was rolling out tariffs that spelled uncertainty for businesses across the region.
Crossing Lines
On a mid-March afternoon, Sweeney turned on the microphone at his desk on the House floor, stood and began to read remarks he had prepared for the full House. More than a week had passed since the General Assembly returned from its Town Meeting Day break, and Emmons had chosen Sweeney to present a bill on prisons — one that he cosponsored and felt could produce a tangible, positive impact on the state — on behalf of the committee.
He had helped rally near-unanimous support among his colleagues on the corrections committee to advance the bill, which would expand the funding and reach of family support services for incarcerated parents and guardians. Sweeney had learned how such strong, bipartisan backing was a powerful indicator for the rest of the chamber to support a bill. As he addressed the House, he reassured himself that he wasn’t expected to answer every question from other members — he just needed to say something intelligent.
He concluded — there were no questions — and got a cheerful fist bump from one of his committee mates as he sat down. He breathed a sigh of relief that the bill appeared all but certain to pass when it came up for its full vote the next day.
Sweeney could use the win. Things were still settling after his tête-à-tête with Houghton. He had collaborated with party leaders on the meetings of first-year Democratic lawmakers, as requested. And he had repeated talking points on the House floor, as instructed by leaders. Still, he felt tension. After Sweeney bucked his caucus on a criminal justice bill without warning leaders in advance, he checked his suit for burn holes from the glares he received across the room. The party did not like being caught unaware like that. Sweeney continued to walk a tightrope as he organized events for first-years that included Republican members.
Boutin regretted that he hadn’t made time to attend any of those gatherings, especially as the session’s mounting partisan pressures made it harder to keep relationships separate from politics. His years on the council in Barre City had shown Boutin how bonds could erode with each divisive issue.
A recent example, he thought, was the House debate over the motel voucher program to shelter unhoused Vermonters. He had watched Democrats bring motel residents to the Statehouse to press the case for continuing certain winter exemptions after April 1, extensions that his fellow Republicans broadly opposed. The actions seemed to him performative, aimed more at scoring points than solving a housing crisis that had no easy answers. If advocates wanted to bring Republicans to their side, Boutin thought, that was not the tack to take.
Sweeney harbored his own doubts about the motel program, primarily because he considered it a disservice to taxpayers and patrons for its multimillion-dollar price tag and lack of long-term solutions. As a stand-alone service, he likened it to his construction team building a roof without a foundation and walls to support it.
But rather than dwell on the motel question, which was not a matter before his committee, Sweeney leaned into work that was. In the process, he stumbled onto the issue that would allow him to make his first real splash as a legislator: the Bennington Battle Monument.
Sweeney, ever the construction expert, was intrigued when state officials appeared before his committee to request $40 million to repair the 306-foot limestone obelisk, which had become saturated over the years with 66,000 gallons of water. The officials were proposing to build a scaffold to dry out the monument, though they did not offer a permanent solution aimed at preventing future damage and more costly repairs.
Sweeney considered the project an awful waste of taxpayer money. So, on a sleepy Tuesday afternoon in early April, he arrived at the committee room with a PowerPoint presentation and a homemade Styrofoam replica to pitch an alternative plan for the monument: Build a frame around the obelisk, wrap it in copper, dry it using convection and employ the copper sheath to protect it. He estimated that the plan would spell a one-time cost of $10 million — a fraction of the state’s proposal.
The two committee members from Bennington were skeptical, but the overall reception was positive.
“To me, this is citizen legislature at its best: people bringing their skills to this building here,” Sweeney’s committee mate Rep. Conor Casey (D-Montpelier) said.
Sweeney was delighted. He didn’t care whether the historic preservation community would nix the copper or the ventilation system. His bigger goal was to get people thinking in unconventional ways and save taxpayer money. Plus, it felt good to bring some levity to the building.
Word of the copper sheath quickly spread. Senators high-fived Sweeney in the hallways. Scott chatted him up about it. Copper pennies appeared on his desk.
The excitement carried Sweeney for days, until all eyes turned at last to the issue that everyone had been waiting for: The education bill was finally written and ready for its first full House vote.
Sweeney and Boutin were both present on the House floor that Thursday as members rose one by one to debate the education bill, which emerged from committees bearing little resemblance to the Scott administration’s proposal. It didn’t take long before Boutin decided he’d heard enough and shuffled out of the chamber to snack on Easter candy in his committee room. He could sense that the Democrats were scrambling for votes, but given the bill’s current state, his wasn’t up for grabs.
The night before, he had used ChatGPT to compare the Scott administration’s proposal to the 150-plus-page bill that the Democrat-run House had produced. Boutin was particularly wary of the backroom work incorporated from the “acronym mafia,” Boutin’s term for lobbyist organizations. The chatbot analysis confirmed what Boutin had heard from fellow Republicans: The House version slowed or removed many of the governor’s suggested reforms, such as redistricting, and instead echoed policies favored by public school advocates. The by-product was a bill Boutin could not vote for.
“I voted yes … because I want this bill to advance to the Senate, where I hope they will take a more bipartisan approach in drafting a compromise version.” Rep. Michael Boutin
But then, suddenly, he did. The next afternoon, when Boutin’s name was called to vote, his voice rang out. “Yes,” he said. “With explanation.” Sweeney was also a yes. The bill advanced 87-55, with Boutin’s vote one of only nine that Republicans cast in support.
He stood to explain his rationale to the chamber.
“I voted yes, but I did so because I want this bill to advance to the Senate, where I hope they will take a more bipartisan approach in drafting a compromise version,” Boutin said.
He noted that Barre City would benefit from the bill’s funding model. Nonetheless, Boutin continued, what had begun “as a bold and immediate reform” proposed by the governor had been turned into “a lackluster and meandering plan.”
That weekend, Krowinski texted Boutin to thank him for his vote. He had wanted to honor his relationship with the speaker by helping her, but more so he believed his yes was a way to help Scott keep his education reform prospects alive. In all, Boutin reasoned at the time, breaking with his caucus didn’t carry a great political cost.
But the longer Boutin reflected on voting for a bill he didn’t believe in, the queasier he felt. He hoped the Senate wouldn’t make him regret that action before the session was through.
Overtime
As April drew to a close, leaving only days before the session’s planned finish, Sweeney walked out of the Statehouse and climbed the steps of the pink clapboard building across the street: the Joint Fiscal Office, headquarters of the Statehouse’s professional financial analysts.
The flow of bills to his committee had slowed, and key decision making seemed to rest increasingly with senior legislators. Sweeney had wrapped up the bipartisan first-year gatherings for the session days earlier, drawing roughly 35 members together to compile their final policy requests of committee chairs. Even the near-constant chatter over education had quieted in the House as the Senate took over crafting its own version of the legislation.
Sweeney filled his newfound time by visiting the drafters across the street to discuss plans for his first bill. It wasn’t the Bennington Battle Monument’s copper makeover, although that was still under consideration. He’d set his sights on housing.
Sweeney wanted to write a bill that treated housing as a root cause, rather than a symptom, of Vermont’s biggest problems. Sweeney hadn’t decided exactly what it would look like, but he knew any bill would need bipartisan support to have a chance of success. He was shooting for unanimous passage, 150-0. He hoped that if he worked on his own bill language over the summer, he might have a stand-alone package ready when the General Assembly reconvened in January 2026.
He’d gotten a taste of housing policy during the session as a member of the tripartisan Rural Caucus. The caucus was closely following the session’s marquee housing bill, designed to spur new residential development and forecast to reach the House in the coming weeks.
Boutin, meanwhile, had all but given up on his own legislation for the year. Only the Barre City charter change was going to make it into law. He sent friends a cartoon he generated with the help of ChatGPT that depicted him slumped at his desk on the House floor next to a stack of his bills collecting cobwebs, while Democrat-sponsored bills swirled around the chamber. Although he was trying to be lighthearted about it, Boutin was clearly frustrated by how prescient the warnings had proven about getting his hopes up as a minority party member, let alone a first-year.
Nonetheless, he found purpose fighting to get two bills across the finish line: one to ban cellphones in schools; the other to require social media safeguards for minors. Both bills were making late-session advances.
He wasn’t sure whether the phone-free schools bill could pass on its own, but he kept an eye out for larger bills that could carry the proposal, the way Krowinski had taught him. A bill with miscellaneous education policies looked promising.
Boutin and his colleagues on the Commerce and Economic Development Committee had taken up the social media bill, known as Kids Code, and a number of other bills that kept them busy, unlike members of some other panels, as the calendar flipped to May. Boutin had hoped to squeeze in some afternoon ATV joyrides in Barre City, but the promise of downtime in spring never materialized. Instead, he hunted votes for Kids Code, persuading some colleagues and getting cussed out by others.
The legislature’s scheduled end date, May 9, came and went while the education bill inched through Senate committees. Sweeney joined with other representatives to place bets on when they’d finally adjourn. The date kept shifting later. When Sweeney made his customary Monday visit to his company’s office, his team asked with a hint of urgency when he would return to work full time. He couldn’t say.
On May 23, when the major housing package came up for its House vote, Sweeney once again found himself at odds with his party. Democratic leaders asked Sweeney to turn against an amendment he’d sponsored and helped craft for months with members of the Rural Caucus. To add insult to injury, Sweeney felt that their objections stemmed less from the amendment’s substance than from having been blindsided by the caucus’ eleventh-hour proposal. His options were clear: He could vote his conscience or vote his party.
He chose his party. It was by far his most difficult vote of the session. He’d set out to feel good about every vote he cast, and he’d violated his own terms.
The same afternoon, across the building, the Senate finally, grudgingly, passed the education bill after days of its own political wrangling. The House and Senate still had to work out differences between their versions of the bill in a small committee of senior representatives from each body before the legislature could send it to Scott. But the session’s finale was in sight.
When Boutin and Sweeney walked into the Statehouse on May 30, they felt all but certain the session would wrap up before the night was through. The day before, the assembly had passed a flurry of legislation, including Kids Code and a revived version of the corrections bill Sweeney had championed to expand family support services in prisons.
But hopes of a breakthrough on the education bill faded with the day’s light. Negotiations made little progress.
A waiting-room air settled over the House. Some representatives gathered to play cards; one entertained her neighbors with a possum hand puppet. Boutin, looking for something useful to do, sat at his desk prepping birthday cards in bulk. Sweeney wandered over to the Senate balcony to see what the other chamber was doing. Not much, it turned out.
At 11:30 p.m., Krowinski finally announced the verdict. There would be no vote on the education bill that night. Everyone would go home. She gaveled out.
As people left the chamber, word spread that they’d all be back in a couple of weeks.
Anticlimactic, Sweeney thought as he walked out. He’d be going back to his team at Sweeney DesignBuild the next week. But after five months of work, plus this 14-hour day, the nonending felt like coming up empty-handed. He exchanged looks with a visibly frustrated Emmons. It was clearly not how the veteran lawmaker thought things were supposed to go, either.
Boutin was feeling ready for a little break from the plot twists of the Statehouse. He would still make the daily drive into Montpelier. But instead of turning right to the capitol, he’d proceed to National Life, his real job. The predictability of work would be a welcome change.
Boutin turned into his committee room to get the last of his belongings. In the corner, one of his committee mates, a Democrat, was swearing in frustration about the Senate leadership and failed education negotiations. Boutin stood, frozen; he’d never heard her swear. No one seemed proud of this outcome.
Parting Shots
On the evening of Monday, June 16, five months after Boutin and Sweeney swore their oaths of office, the two men took their seats in the House chamber for the final time as first-year legislators. They were back after a two-week hiatus, amid heightened security resulting from the recent assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker, to finish their work and vote on the most hotly contested reform of the session: the education bill. (See related story, page 15.)
Boutin was poised to support the measure. By his analysis, the new financing structure would lower Barre City’s tax burden. An endorsement by Scott only bolstered his decision. Boutin sensed that a majority of members across both parties was leaning in favor of the bill, too. He was relieved that his gamble two months earlier to vote the bill out of the House chamber had paid off.
Sweeney had spent the day, and much of the weekend, being bird-dogged by Democrats trying to flip his vote from a no to a yes. But he held firm against the bill. The process and envisioned reforms, which included new language agreed upon three days earlier, felt too rushed. More than 100 emails flooded his inbox, urging him to oppose the legislation. It was unlike anything he’d experienced before. No one reached out in support. Sweeney couldn’t go against his constituents.
He’d learned the hard way with his housing-amendment vote: It was better to follow his heart and deal with the consequences. He would not relive that moral anguish to appease his party’s leadership.
But the moment for Boutin and Sweeney to declare their votes was over before they knew it had even begun. Somehow, the two first-years — and, seemingly, most other members — didn’t realize Krowinski had begun the year’s most consequential vote. With no request for a legislator-by-legislator roll-call reckoning to record votes in the permanent record, the matter proceeded as a chamber-wide voice vote. Boutin joined the chorus of yeas; Sweeney, the nays.
Confusion ensued when the speaker called House leaders to the front of the chamber. Other members crowded around to figure out what had happened. Within minutes, it became clear that the bill had passed and was about to be sent to the governor.
Sweeney couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed to see the bill’s journey end so abruptly and unceremoniously after months of buildup and intense lobbying. Boutin was amused to see the chamber, primarily Democrats, in disarray. Then, to his delight, the House passed the cellphone-free policy as part of a grab-bag bill containing various education policies — the last piece of legislation to make it out of the Statehouse for the year.
After speeches by party leaders and a cameo by Scott, who thanked the representatives for their work over the previous five months, the session came to a close shortly after 8 p.m.
Sweeney double-checked that he had grabbed everything from his desk before joining the flood of members moving out of the chamber. Different groups would be using the space while the House was in recess until January, so nothing could stay.
Sweeney’s off-season schedule had filled up fast. In addition to his full-time work with Sweeney DesignBuild, he had a planned trip to Ireland with a legislative delegation, a family vacation, a summer study committee, a Corrections and Institutions Committee excursion to Bennington, and a state legislator conference in Philadelphia.
Plus, he’d be working on his first bill. Sweeney saw a new opening for his prospective housing legislation — to find a lasting solution for the motel voucher program — after Scott vetoed the legislature’s latest reform attempt days earlier. He knew it would be a reach and that he’d need the administration’s buy-in.
Sweeney couldn’t resist proposing an initial meeting with Scott’s policy director, Jason Maulucci, as he headed for the Statehouse exit. The two paused outside the governor’s office.
“It all worked out, right?” Sweeney asked.
“It ended the way I think we all thought it would in January,” Maulucci said.
Over the past five months, Sweeney had shown himself to be the quick study he’d always believed he could be. He’d learned who the power brokers were under the golden dome — and that, sometimes, a little advance notice mattered just as much to them as the policy itself. He’d figured out that political capital was finite, and you only got so many chances to speak before people stopped listening. Some of those lessons came the hard way.
Nearly all of his own bills had fallen short this year, but Boutin didn’t regret trying.
But he knew what he was doing now, Sweeney thought — just enough to be dangerous.
Back in the chamber, Boutin put a laptop and a crocheted chicken, gifted by another member, into his backpack before heading out of the building.
Nearly all of his own bills had fallen short, but Boutin didn’t regret trying. The bills, including one to enhance punishments for drug offenders, proved he had done what he could; it wasn’t his fault the Democrat-run House wasn’t interested. Boutin would pursue the initiatives again next year.
He was grateful to end on a good day with some big wins. He couldn’t overlook the fact that the education bill, the most significant policy reform of the year, was the by-product of a major bipartisan compromise. It was, he thought, a step in the right direction.
But he was ready to be done for a bit: done with whipping votes, navigating political land mines, wearing a tie every day. He was ready to get home to his dog and return in the morning to the calm reliability of his other job.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Mr. Sweeney and Mr. Boutin Go to Montpelier | Two newly elected Representatives headed to the Vermont Statehouse full of ambition. Their inaugural session delivered a dose of reality.”
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This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2025.
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