• H.167 (Vermonters Feeding Vermonters Bill) passed the House Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry Committee; read more below for the details on this bill’s content and progress. Read more…
• House Budget is out of the Appropriations Committee and includes $500k in base funding to support emergency food response, recovery, and readiness work with Emergency Management and $500k in one-time funding to support Vermonters Feeding Vermonters’ local farm food purchasing. The remaining requested funding of $4 million was not included in the House version of the FY26 budget, we continue our work.
• The Governor vetoed the Budget Adjustment Act (H.489), primarily over the General Assistance emergency housing extension. The House passed a new version extending the program, but removing the funding. If unresolved, this program could end for many vulnerable households on April 1, worsening food access challenges for impacted individuals. Read more…
• Language repealing Universal School Meals was removed from the House version of the FY26 budget. Read more…
• Federal food programs are under threat, Vermont Foodbank and our partners are actively advocating to our federal delegation in Washington D.C. to protect SNAP, TEFAP, CSFP and other essential nutrition programs. Read more…

Vermonters Feeding Vermonters Bill and State FY26 Budget Update

We are pleased to share the H.167 the Vermonters Feeding Vermonters Grant Program Bill passed unanimously out of the House Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry Committee 8-0-0 before the “crossover” deadline on March 14th. After passing out of the committee, H.167 made its way to the House Appropriations committee due to the $2 million included in the bill to fund local farm food purchases.

In its next stop in House Appropriations, the bill was amended to remove the funding from this bill, which then unanimously passed the committee 11-0. The bill will move to the House floor next. The funding was put into the FY26 budget bill so that the Appropriations Committee can determine funding based on their budget process.

By late Friday evening, the House Appropriations Committee had decided to include $500,000 in one-time funding for Vermonters Feeding Vermonters in their version of the budget. The House budget is being finalized this week to head to the House floor for a vote. After that, the Budget bill goes to the Senate for its work on it.

H.167 headed back to the House Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry Committee for an explanation about the amendment. The next stop for this bill is the House Floor for a vote.

On Monday, the House added $500,000 in base funding for Vermont Foodbank’s Responsive Readiness work into the Vermont Emergency Management budget section. This funding would support emergency preparedness, response and recovery work with our network in coordination with Vermont Emergency Management and the State Emergency Operations Center team. This is a positive step forward and recognizes the important work we and our partners have done over the past few years including responding to the pandemic and multiple catastrophic floods.

At this time, the remaining $4 million that Vermont Foodbank is seeking from the legislature to support our work and our network in FY26 has not been funded. Our detailed funding request is available here.

State of Vermont Legislative Session Updates

• Universal School Meals repeal language removed – the House Appropriations Committee removed the repeal language from the House version of the FY26 budget, which is great news! That means that, should the budget pass as it is written now, Universal School Meals would remain in its current form with Universal free breakfast and lunch for all public school students in Vermont.
• Housing and the Budget Adjustment Act– as many of you may have heard, the Governor vetoed the Budget Adjustment Act that the House and Senate passed earlier this session. This bill is the state’s effort to true up the state budget mid-year. This veto seems to be about the extension of the General Assistance (GA) hotel housing winter weather deadline from April 1 to June 30. This means that many people currently housed through the GA hotel program will lose that housing option making it even more difficult for these neighbors to access food resources, and to store, cook, and prepare food – especially if they end up living outdoors in tents. We remain deeply concerned about this potential change. Last week legislators worked to find a compromise, and the result is an updated Budget Adjustment Act which now has the bill number H.489, which passed the House yesterday. If you would like to take action, follow this link for ways you can take action to ask Governor Scott to allow the Budget Adjustment Act to become law, or go to End Homelessness VT to learn how you can help neighbors experiencing homelessness.
• Franklin County Legislators toured the Sheldon Food Shelf on Monday, March 17. Our partners at the food shelf shared their personal experiences and the history of the facility. Legislators representing towns across Franklin County asked insightful questions and were grateful for the opportunity to connect the dots between the experience of their constituents and resources available.
• Rutland County Legislators visit the newly renovated Vermont Foodbank Rutland Distribution Center on March 24th. A group of Rutland County legislators joined Vermont Foodbank CEO John Sayles and Rutland Distribution Center Director Casey Thomas for a tour to view the renovated space, which has expanded capacity for fresh and frozen food, as well as created space to handle federal USDA food through The Emergency Food Assistance Program.
• Shout out Battenkill Valley Health Center, Vermont Foodbank partner and VeggieVanGo site, who shared about their work, their patient community, and their VeggieVanGo location with the Rural Caucus members of the legislature last week. Thanks for doing great work and sharing it with legislators!

Federal Advocacy

Federal food programs have started to be impacted by the Trump Administration’s changes. Over the past two weeks, Politico has broken two stories about these changes.

Local Food Purchasing Agreements (LFPA25) and Local Food for Schools and Childcare (LFSCC) were abruptly canceled earlier this month. Local Food for Schools and Childcare did exactly that, providing a framework for more local food in schools and childcare food programs. The LFPA program has provided funding to the food banks and farm partners over past years of this grant cycle. This program was funded by the USDA with discretionary funding, and this was not a congressionally funded program. That means that while this change was abrupt, it was within the options that the new administration has to change discretionary spending based on their priorities. It will, however, result in less access to fresh, local food for people across Vermont. You can hear Abbey Willard from the Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets explaining the change to the House Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry committee meeting last Friday.

We have heard some questions about how this relates to Vermont Foodbank’s Vermonters Feeding Vermonters program, and, fortunately, in this instance, the Vermonters Feeding Vermonters program does not rely on federal funding and was not impacted by this change.

Network Partners from NEKCA and BROC joined Vermont Foodbank in Washington, D.C. for Feeding America Federal Advocacy Fly-in. Amy Scott, food shelf manager at BROC Community Action and Suzanne from Northeast Kingdom Community Action’s food access programs, joined our Sr. Manager of Government & Public Affairs, Carrie Stahler, in Washington, D.C. to meet with our federal delegation to advocate for continued support for critical federal food programs like SNAP, The Emergency Food Assistance Program, and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program. BROC was also a 2024 recipient of the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, and Amy spoke to the value of having additional local food to distribute to BROC’s neighbors. Read more about our work together in Washington on the Vermont Foodbank blog.

Funding cuts for a portion of The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) were also shared in a recent Politico article, showing a number of food banks across the country have been impacted. Here in Vermont, we have had just one order that appears to have been rescheduled, so we are not seeing the scale of impact that other regions are experiencing, however we are keeping an eye on our order and delivery dates and will communicate with our network if something changes.

What can you do?

We know that the many rapid changes to federal policy are difficult to follow and more difficult to parse. If you rely on federal food programs like TEFAP, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, or 3SquaresVT (SNAP), please reach out to our congressional offices and tell Senator Sanders, Senator Welch, and Congresswoman Balint how important these programs are to you, your family, or friends. The first step in protecting these programs is to ensure that our federal delegation understands how these programs support people across Vermont.

Senator Sanders’ office: 800-339-9834
Senator Welch’s office: 802-863-2525
Congresswoman Balint’s office: 888-293-9874