Denise Watso took a seat at the back of the small meeting room and steeled herself for the press conference about to begin. Hosted in mid-December by the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs, the event would unveil the American Abenaki Curriculum, a new educational package about the histories of Vermont’s four state-recognized tribes — told, notably, through the perspective of those tribes themselves.
Watso, a citizen of the Abenaki Nation of Odanak, knew that version of history would differ sharply from her own. She does not consider the Vermont-recognized tribes to be legitimate descendants of Abenaki people, a view shared by leaders of Odanak First Nation and Wôlinak First Nation, the two Western Abenaki nations recognized by Canada and based in what is now Québec.
The scene felt familiar. More than a decade ago, when the four Vermont-based groups sought state recognition as Abenaki tribes, Watso traveled from her home in New York State to sit in crowded Statehouse committee rooms and listened as lawmakers took testimony. Like most Odanak and Wôlinak people, she was barred from testifying during Senate hearings in 2011 because she didn’t live in Vermont. Former senator Vince Illuzzi set and enforced that policy as chair of the Senate committee handling the issue.
Watso and leaders of the First Nations have long argued that Illuzzi’s restriction excluded their voices and denied the legislature key information that could have informed its decision. Lawmakers ultimately voted by wide margins to grant state recognition to all four Vermont groups: the Elnu Abenaki and the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation in 2011, and the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi and the Koasek Traditional Band of the Koas Abenaki Nation in 2012. But many of the crucial choices that shaped those outcomes had already been made in committee rooms away from the vaulted ceilings and ornate chambers of the House and Senate.
In Vermont’s state legislature, much of the real power comes into play in small, cramped committee rooms where legislators gather around conference tables and observers squeeze shoulder to shoulder on hard benches. It’s wielded by committee chairs, the lawmakers who decide how time is spent on bills and whose voices are heard. Chairs set weekly agendas, choose which bills to take up and which to leave untouched, and manage the flow of testimony, electing who gets invited to speak, when debate is cut short and when a vote is called. They juggle agencies, advocates, legislative attorneys and their own colleagues, often under tight time constraints and with little staff support.
Taken together, the procedural choices they make can shape a bill long before it reaches the floor — and determine not only which policies move forward but also whose perspectives become part of Vermont’s official record and whose never do.
For Watso and others who say they were shut out of the state’s tribal recognition process, such decisions reverberate years later.
At the December press conference, Watso listened as commissioners unveiled the new curriculum. Though the education materials took three years to develop, commissioners said, the project stemmed from testimony during the state recognition hearings. The history now designed to be taught to Vermont students had been cast, at least in part, in the committee room where a single chair decided which voices counted.
“It has caused irreparable harm to the historical context, and to our legacy, to replace us with false identities,” Watso said.
Lessons in Leadership
The first year of every legislative biennium begins the same way in Montpelier: Committee chairs are appointed. In the House, the speaker makes the picks, while in the Senate, the task falls to the three-member Committee on Committees, composed of the lieutenant governor, president pro tempore and one rank-and-file senator.
These selections are more than routine. They signal which lawmakers will exert real influence as the legislature grapples with Vermont’s biggest challenges: housing affordability, the escalating cost of health care, and how Vermont schools are organized, governed and paid for.
The outsized influence of committee chairs has been on clear display during the current struggle to reshape Vermont’s education system, work that began last year and remains contentious and unresolved. The House and Senate education committee chairs have played central roles in guiding the debate, in markedly different ways.
In the House, Speaker Jill Krowinski (D-Burlington) last year reappointed Rep. Peter Conlon (D-Cornwall) to lead the Education Committee. The decision came as no surprise. Conlon was the incumbent and has a long record of working closely with public-school advocates generally aligned with the Democratic majority.
The Committee on Committees chose Sen. Seth Bongartz (D-Bennington) to lead the Senate Education Committee. This decision quickly drew notice. Bongartz had no experience on the committee and is a vocal proponent of private schools that get public funds to educate many Vermont students. Bongartz held particularly close ties with his alma mater, Burr & Burton Academy, where he served as the board chair for 15 years.
Conlon’s House Education Committee regularly heard from public-school advocacy groups such as the Vermont Principals’ Association, the Vermont Superintendents Association and the Vermont School Boards Association — organizations so influential in Montpelier that they are commonly referred to simply as “the Vs.”
Largely absent from the House witness seat, however, was the Vermont Independent Schools Association, which is the primary advocacy group for academies and independent schools. The association testified only briefly, to address a single narrow point. Email records obtained by Seven Days show the group’s lobbyist, Oliver Olsen, contacted the committee multiple times seeking to testify but was not scheduled.
Unlike his House counterpart, Bongartz welcomed testimony from the Vermont Independent Schools Association on several occasions and was quick to put forward a proposal of his own.
While the education reform bill was still with the House in early spring, Bongartz unveiled an alternative school redistricting map he later referred to as “the Senate plan.” The map made clear that independent schools would be able to maintain their unique position within the public school system, even amid potential consolidation. Bongartz said the map was intended as a counterproposal to Gov. Phil Scott’s plan for much larger school districts, but public-school advocates argued that it was crafted primarily to preserve school choice.
“We are not interested in gerrymandering to preserve vouchers,” Darren Allen, a spokesperson for Vermont-NEA, told Vermont Public at the time.
By the end of the session, after a flurry of tense negotiations centering around how to integrate private schools within a redesigned public education system, the legislature passed the bill. Leadership heralded it as a bipartisan success. For Conlon and Bongartz, the final product reflected a negotiated middle ground between their visions for Vermont’s schools. Independent schools would face new limits on the public dollars they could receive — an outcome long championed by Conlon in the House committee — but those caps stopped short of their maximum reach, due in large part to Bongartz’s advocacy.
Many of the most difficult decisions, however, such as how to define new school district maps, were pushed down the road. Those problems are now back before the House and Senate education committees, with increasing pressure from the administration to provide solutions before legislators adjourn this spring.
Gov. Phil Scott warned lawmakers during his State of the State address that he would not sign the state budget if they failed to deliver comprehensive education reform as laid out in last year’s law.
“The real work begins today because now, we have to follow through,” Scott said.
It’s now on Conlon and Bongartz to make that happen.
This Chair Is Just Right
There is no archetype for an effective legislative committee chair. Over the decades, Statehouse leaders have tapped lawmakers from across a wide range of professions and personalities to fill the role.
Sen. Ginny Lyons (D-Chittenden-Southeast), who was elected by the Senate to serve as the Committee on Committees’ rank-and-file member this session, said the process is all about balance. The group considers a range of factors — weighing regional representation, political affiliation, subject-matter expertise, seniority and leadership ability. The process typically leaves the majority party holding most chair positions and in control of committees, prioritizing issues.
These leaders need certain qualities, Lyons added, regardless of committee. All chairs should be able to collaborate and maintain their colleagues’ trust while managing agendas, debates and witnesses.
Speaker Krowinski said it’s important for committee chairs to share her vision for the legislature’s top priorities, which this biennium she defined as education transformation, housing, health care and the budget. Chairs must align legislation with those goals, she said, and know when to defer a bill to a task force for further study if it is not ready to be advanced.
Deputy state auditor Tim Ashe, a former state senator who served two terms as the Senate president pro tem, contrasted the styles of the late Senate Judiciary chair Dick Sears, known for his gruff and commanding ways, with the calm and methodical approach of former House Ways and Means chair Janet Ancel. Both chairs distinguished themselves as effective committee leaders, Ashe said.
In short, “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to being a chair,” he said.
The House speaker and the Senate president typically meet weekly with chairs to ensure committees stay on course and to discuss priorities. But that doesn’t guarantee alignment, according to Kevin Ellis, a former Statehouse lobbyist with the firm KSE Partners.
“There is a constant tension, sometimes good, sometimes not, between committee chairs and their boss who put them in those spots,” Ellis said.
In the 1980s and ’90s, longtime Democratic House speaker Ralph Wright would not tolerate defiance: Members who crossed the speaker were reassigned or sidelined to less influential committees, Ellis said.
Dustups are not limited to members from different parties. Republican Walter Freed was elected House speaker in 2001, the year after the legislature passed the nation’s first civil unions law, which Freed opposed. The speaker promptly stripped fellow Republican representative Tom Little, a key proponent of civil unions, of his position as chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee.
“It was pretty clear that he was not inclined to reappoint me,” Little said. “If we had not had a civil union bill the prior year, I think I probably would have stayed on as chair.”
More recently, Ellis recalled, when Rep. Tom Stevens (D-Waterbury) became chair of the House Committee on General and Housing in 2019, then-speaker Mitzi Johnson took a lighter touch than her predecessors. Stevens initially pushed for relatively aggressive tax-and-spend policies on affordable housing, but he moderated his approach after Johnson was said to have intervened behind the scenes, Ellis said.
Stevens said that, because Johnson did not have extensive housing policy experience, he would intentionally put forward bold policies as chair, knowing there would have to be compromises and concessions as a bill advanced. He also noted that the tenor around housing reform shifted because of COVID-19 and the influx of pandemic-relief funds.
Ashe said that, during his tenure as pro tem, from 2017 to 2021, each chair did their best, but a few pushed the boundaries.
Chairs sometimes needed to be reminded that they couldn’t run their committee without input from other members, he recalled.
Still, Ellis said it’s a relatively new phenomenon for speakers and chairs to sort out their differences gracefully.
“These things are usually addressed slowly and quietly,” Ellis said. “It’s much more polite than it used to be.”
The Chair Recognizes…
Memorable moments in the House and Senate almost always play out on the chamber floors. But that’s not where people should be looking if they want to see the real decisions being made, according to Mike Fisher. He’s Vermont’s health care advocate and represented Lincoln as a state representative from 2001 to 2015.
“What happens on the floor doesn’t matter,” Fisher said. “It happens in committees.”
Fisher said lobbyists quickly learn that committee chairs are the ones with real influence over a bill, guiding it en route to the floor. That’s influenced his approach to advocacy in the Statehouse.
“If I can, I’m going to work from the head of the table down,” he said.
The chair drives the process: lining up witnesses, coordinating bill revisions with legislative counsel and scheduling committee votes. They decide who can speak — committee members only when recognized, witnesses pending approval. Chairs said they often spend nearly as much time on administrative work as on policy. It’s the less glamorous side of the position, they said, but controlling the weekly agenda enables chairs to ensure that their pet issues are considered.
Last year, Lyons, who chairs the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, rolled out a new framework for health care reform that drew close scrutiny from experts, committee members and stakeholders. She set agendas that kept the committee focused on statewide health care delivery and reference-based hospital pricing, a system tying payments to Medicare rates.
The effort was “Herculean,” Lyons said, requiring her to build consensus, write policy and carefully select expert witnesses to maximize the committee’s limited hours. The bill passed at the end of the session and is considered one of the two most consequential health care reforms of 2025.
But Lyons’ approach to steering the committee on issues she personally championed has not always gone over so well.
In March 2024, during the crossover period when a committee must vote out most bills to keep them alive, VTDigger reported a tense exchange between Lyons and Sen. Ruth Hardy (D-Addison). Hardy questioned why Lyons was spending the committee’s time on a bill Lyons introduced containing an assortment of health care provisions even though it did not appear to have the votes necessary to advance.
“None of us support it except for you,” Hardy said to Lyons. “And it’s really just, frankly, torturing the rest of the committee.”
“Thank you for expressing your opinion,” Lyons responded. “So, we’re going to continue.”
Hardy tried and failed to force a vote on the bill, then briefly left the room before returning to press Lyons again.
“Why are you continuing to make changes to a bill that is not going to pass?” Hardy asked.
“Because I can,” Lyons replied. The bill was never voted out of committee.
Lyons said the exchange was unusual and does not reflect the health committee’s typical back-and-forth. Hardy declined to be interviewed for this story.
Ultimately, to get a bill across the finish line, chairs must ensure that all perspectives are heard during committee meetings, according to John Brabant, who was a lobbyist for Vermonters for a Clean Environment until he retired earlier this month.
House and Senate rules require that anyone who sponsors a bill or requests to testify be allowed to speak. In practice, though, chairs are rarely held accountable for sidestepping the policy, Brabant said.
“Lobbyists are afraid to go and rat on committee chairs because they’re afraid that then they’ll have a diminished effect for their organizations going forward,” Brabant said.
Last year, Brabant wanted to speak in support of a bill to ban fertilizing land with sewage sludge because it’s contaminated with PFAS. When the bill reached the House Environment Committee, Brabant said, despite his request, the chair, Rep. Amy Sheldon (D-Middlebury), did not allow him to testify. Brabant appealed to the speaker’s office, and within days he was invited to address the committee. Brabant said it was possible the timing of his testimony soon after the meeting was coincidental, but this year he felt the chair welcomed more perspectives to the table.
Lyons said the legislature’s part-time schedule makes time constraints real, forcing chairs to schedule testimony and discussions carefully. Senate chairs, in particular, can only convene their committees for a few hours each day because senators split their time between two standing committees. (House chairs, in contrast, are able to meet with their members both morning and afternoon as long as the full House is not in session.) The limitations of the Senate schedule mean that if an interested party does not reach out early, they may simply miss their chance.
“Sometimes we have to say, ‘You’re too late. You’ll have to go to the House,’” Lyons said, adding that in those instances people can still submit comments in writing.
Time constraints are why Illuzzi, the former chair during the Abenaki recognition process, said he felt it necessary to limit testimony to Vermont residents. People who lived outside the state were allowed to submit written material for the record. Illuzzi said it was not the first time he’d implemented the policy for a bill before the Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs Committee.
“We only meet for three hours a day and only have so much time to take direct testimony,” Illuzzi told Seven Days in 2011.
Ashe, who served as the committee’s vice chair at the time, said in a recent interview that he could not recall if or why Illuzzi chose to hear in-person testimony only from Vermonters.
At one point, though, Illuzzi appeared poised to come around. In January 2011, when his committee was considering recognition for the Elnu Abenaki Tribe and the Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe, Illuzzi emailed legislative counsel to say the committee would take more time to hear from witnesses before voting.
“We are obligated to give everyone, including opponents, the opportunity to testify,” Illuzzi wrote.
Following a recommendation from an Abenaki advocate, Illuzzi cleared Watso, her cousin Jacques Watso and Skip Bernier of Newport to testify.
Denise Watso was thrilled to learn the group would be allowed to address the committee.
“All we wanted to do was to be heard, and then the facts and the evidence would speak for themselves,” Watso said.
But a week later, Illuzzi rescinded the invitation, according to Watso. The Watsos never appeared to speak. Bernier and his grandson, Tim de la Bruere, both residents of Newport, were the only two Odanak or Wôlinak Abenakis to testify in either the Senate or House. Illuzzi said recently that he did not recall the exchange with Watso but that if he had to run a committee considering Abenaki state recognition again, he would do it the same way.
Watso said she and other Abenaki citizens provided written comments but did not testify before the House committee, either, even though it did not prohibit out-of-state residents. That wasn’t for lack of will, she said, but because it felt as though “the system was stacked against us.”
“Why must they attempt to silence our voices, and deny us our aboriginal, civil, and human rights?” Watso wrote in her blog documenting the hearings at the time. “Why can’t they look us in the eyes and hear our voices as we speak in defense of the truth of Abenaki history and the need for justice and respect?”
Watso suggested in a recent interview that Illuzzi’s decisions as chair, including the policy to hear testimony only from Vermont residents, were key in securing state recognition of groups she does not consider to be Abenaki and amounted to malfeasance.
“It felt like he put up a stockade fence around Vermont to keep Indigenous people out of Vermont,” Watso said.
Illuzzi rejected any idea that he had unilateral control over the committee — or the ultimate fate of the legislation.
“I played a big role, but we persuaded the vast majority of the House and Senate, and the governor signed it,” he said. “It wasn’t a hard lift. I didn’t jam it through.”
All Together Now
Rep. Alice Emmons (D-Springfield) has seen generations of chairs operate in the Statehouse since 1983. The longest-tenured member of the state legislature, she has led the House Committee on Corrections and Institutions for more than 15 years.
That experience has led her to different conclusions about legislative committees and who controls them.
“It’s natural for a new chair to think they’ll get their way once they take the helm,” Emmons said. “But most realize within a few weeks that you’re usually the last person to get what you want.”
That doesn’t mean chairs can’t steer issues, she added, but their first duty is balancing the voices and perspectives at the table. The most effective chairs, Emmons argued, are still able to regularly achieve unanimous committee votes. This session, she reports a high success rate on her committee.
Rep. Alyssa Black (D-Essex), chair of the House Health Care Committee, has made consensus her top priority. Black aims for every bill that her panel votes out to have unanimous support, calling for additional testimony or delaying votes when necessary to ensure every member feels fully informed.
Black said she works closely with her vice chair, Rep. Francis McFaun (R-Barre Town), and ranking member, Rep. Daisy Berbeco (D-Winooski). She provides members a list of all bills, lets them rank priorities and structures the week around the group’s top choices, ensuring each member sees at least one priority advance.
The coordination and collaboration are time-consuming, Black said, but it means that when it’s time to vote on a bill, everybody is comfortable with the group’s decision.
The approach seems to have worked. Every bill to pass out of the House Health Care committee last year has since been signed into law except for one, which Black anticipates will pass this year.
Close coordination with Black’s Senate counterparts, including Lyons, the Senate health chair, helped. The two committees have held several joint hearings throughout the session, which Black and Lyons see as an effective way to save committee time. They also agree that clear communication and transparency about their priorities help ensure the two panels stay on track.
“If the House Health Care Committee wanted to move on something that the Senate chair wasn’t going to touch, that would be a waste of our time,” Black said.
Rep. Michael Marcotte (R-Newport) leads the House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development and is one of only two Republicans among the 15 House committee chairs this session. He said close coordination with his vice chair, Rep. Edye Graning (D-Jericho), has been instrumental to their committee’s success. Marcotte and Graning work together to set the committee’s agenda each week, with a standing invitation for other members to participate.
Despite working under a Democratic speaker, Marcotte said he has never felt as if he’s had to put any of his policy priorities aside because of the party differences.
“People don’t realize that we really do work together here,” Marcotte said. “We’re not Washington.”
The two House committees with Republican chairs this session — Commerce and Transportation — concern themselves with relatively nonpartisan issue areas, Marcotte noted, making it unlikely for political differences to pose problems.
The same is largely true in the Senate, where Republicans lead three of the chamber’s 13 committees — Agriculture, Government Operations and Transportation — all of which tend to generate less ideological friction. In each of those committees, Marcotte added, Democrats hold a majority of the seats.
“If anything comes up, it could get squashed pretty easily,” Marcotte said.
This session, more than half of Marcotte’s committee members were serving their first terms. In some ways, Marcotte said, that makes the job easier, as members are still developing a sense of their roles.
You can mold your committee the way you’d like it to run.
Rep. Michael Marcotte
“You can mold your committee the way you’d like it to run,” he said.
Marcotte said he has tried to establish an informal, collaborative and respectful tone to put both colleagues and witnesses at ease. He aims to create the feel of kitchen-table conversations, even when tackling difficult topics.
But as much as he’s enjoyed the process, the position has taken a toll and at times limited the attention he can devote to advocating for his constituents.
“Sometimes I just wake up and wish I didn’t have the responsibilities of being a chair,” Marcotte said.
After 22 years in the House, including eight as a chair, Marcotte has decided this will be his final term. Retirement, he said, will allow him to spend more time with his wife — and will offer him relief from the constant pressures of leading a committee.
“I worry about losing that institutional knowledge, but the place will survive without me,” Marcotte said. “It always does.”
Barred Again
After members of the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs wrapped up the presentation portion of their December press conference and turned to questions from the audience, Denise Watso rose to speak.
“I’m here on behalf of the Abenaki Nation of Odanak,” Watso announced. “I’m here as an observer and a witness to this event today.”
Watso objected to the curriculum’s portrayal of history and vowed to discuss it further with Odanak leaders. She was particularly troubled by the commission’s portrayal of the hearings and testimony that had originally shaped Vermont’s approach to Indigenous education.
Her remarks, however, did not last long. Organizers declared the press conference was over and there would be no more questions or comments, then summoned security guards. Watso was escorted from the room, while several leaders and supporters of the state-recognized tribes continued to address attendees.
She briefly regrouped in the lobby with the few allies who had also been in attendance. Watso needed to head back to her home outside Schenectady, N.Y. It could be frustrating to stay engaged in Vermont’s affairs, she said, but she was doing what she could. In a few weeks, the legislature would reconvene, and there would be at least a couple pieces of legislation related to state recognition that she’d be following.
Among them is a bill introduced last year by Rep. Troy Headrick (I-Burlington) calling for a task force to revisit the state’s previous tribal recognition decisions and to guide a truth and reconciliation process.
It is precisely the kind of measure Watso urges the legislature to embrace. In her view, and that of Abenaki leaders, it would be a necessary step to correct the record and give historically excluded people a voice.
The bill remains in the House Committee on General and Housing. This January, its chair, Rep. Marc Mihaly (D-East Calais), met with his vice chair and ranking member to prioritize legislation before presenting the list to the broader committee for consideration. The state recognition bill did not make the cut. ➆
Disclosure: Tim Ashe is the domestic partner of Seven Days publisher Paula Routly.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Seats of Power | In the Vermont Statehouse, legislative committee chairs hold sway over the bills that shape public policy”
This article appears in February 11 • 2026.
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