So the Legislature, in all its not-quote-infinite wisdom, has approved H.454, the sweeping “education reform” bill. In doing so, it pressed a gun firmly to its own neck. This bill threatens to backfire big-time if they don’t fix it next year, so in passing this bill they set themselves up for an even more contentious education debate — this time during an election year.

Yeah, no pressure.

As I’ve noted previously, the bill’s best feature is its raw unpalatability. To me, it’s virtually certain that H.454, in its current form, will never take effect. It’s political poison in so many ways that lawmakers will have no choice but to reopen this Costco-supersized can of worms next January.

Again, in an election year.

The best not-funny-ha-ha but funny-oh-God moment of the day was the Senate’s final vote on H.454. The tally was 17 yes, 11 no, and one (Sen. Robert Norris of Franklin County) absent. That’s not funny, but the partisan breakdown sure as hell was.

Only seven Democrats voted “Yes,” while 10 voted “No.” That’s right, the bill passed the Senate with more Republican votes than Democratic. Which is kind of a big fat no-no for leaders of majority caucuses: You try to avoid, at all costs, passing a bill over the objection of your own caucus. Because that’s usually a big flashing neon sign that the process has gone badly haywire and you’ve lost the confidence of your own members.

And if you’ve been reading me, you know where. The appointment of an evenly-split Senate Education Committee with a chair who’s deeply tied to Burr and Burton Academy, one of the private schools that gets public tuition dollars. That committee’s bill was DOA on the Senate floor and had to be hastily rewritten at the last minute. And then Senate leadership compounded its strategery by appointing two members of the House-Senate conference committee who were effectively lobbying on behalf of those private schools — Education Committee Chair Seth Bongartz, nominal Democrat, and Senate Minority Leader Scott Beck, Republican.

Those two men repeatedly drove conference committee discussion toward the interests of those private schools. House members came very close to walking out. The committee finally managed to agree on a bill that’s so full of “off-ramps,” “unknowns and contingencies,” that I’m willing to bet it never takes effect.

And I think that’s exactly what House conferees had in mind when they floated what turned out to be the final version of H.454.

And I think that’s why the House’s vote was not nearly as close as the Senate’s. The final vote on the House floor was 96 yes, 45 no, and 8 absent.

I knew somebody would ask for the partisan breakdown. I did my best to assemble one based on the official roll call in the Legislature’s website, which does not list party affiliations in its tally, so I had to toggle back and forth between the vote page and individual lawmakers’ bio pages, which is all kinds of confusing. So I can’t guarantee that I got everything right. But here’s my count:

Republicans: 49 yes, 2 no

Democrats: 46 yes, 35 no.

So again in the House, H.454 attracted more Republican votes than Democratic, although the partisan split wasn’t as dramatic as in the Senate.

Add the two chambers together, and you get 53 “Yes” votes and 45 “No” votes from Democrats, and 59 “Yes” votes against only 9 “No” votes from Republicans.

Remind me again who’s got majorities in the House and Senate? Loudly, for those in the back?

On a purely political level, legislative leadership was backed into a corner of its own making. The deep and obvious divisions between House and Senate prevented Democrats from coming together in a united front against Gov. Phil Scott. As it stood, leadership faced a stark choice: Whip through a bill their own caucuses didn’t like with heavy support from Republicans, or fail to pass a bill at all, which would have allowed the governor to blame the Democrats for failing to address education reform.

And as distasteful as it is to pass a bill in spite of majority caucus opposition, the prospect of playing right into Scott’s hands was — politically speaking — even worse.

If Senate leadership hadn’t stacked the deck in favor of centrist, pro-private school legislation, the conference committee could have passed a bill that would have earned support from the Democratic majority caucuses. Scott would have blamed them, but they could have blamed him with equal validity.

It’s a mess, and the Vermont Democratic Party has to hope that school unions and personnel — not to mention liberal voters who strongly support public schools — are in a forgiving mood when the 2026 campaign season rolls around. There might be grounds for hoping that short memories and other priorities will rally the troops behind Democratic candidates, but then there’s that gun at the Legislature’s throat: They’ll have to address this mess all over again in the 2026 session, when the election will be right around the corner.