The Vermont Statutes Online

Title 3 : Executive

Chapter 059 : Community Action Agencies

• § 3902. Office of Economic Opportunity

  (a) The Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity is hereby authorized to allocate available financial assistance for community action agencies and programs in accordance with State and federal law and regulation.

  (b) The Director may provide financial assistance to community action agencies for the planning, conduct, administration, and evaluation of community action programs to provide a range of services and activities having a measurable and potentially major impact on causes of poverty in the community or in areas of the community where poverty is a particularly acute problem. Components of those services and activities may involve, without limitation of other activities and supporting facilities designed to assist participants with low income:

  (1) to secure and retain meaningful employment;

  (2) to obtain adequate education;

  (3) to make better use of available income;

  (4) to have access to safe, secure, and permanent housing;

  (5) to obtain prevention, intervention, treatment, and recovery services for individuals with substance use disorder;

  (6) to obtain emergency assistance through loans and grants to meet immediate and urgent individual and family needs, including the need for health services, nutritious food, housing, and unemployment-related assistance;

  (7) to remove obstacles and solve personal and family problems that block achievement of self-sufficiency;

  (8) to achieve greater participation in the affairs of the community;

  (9) to make more frequent and effective use of other programs related to the purposes of this chapter; and

  (10) to coordinate and establish linkages between governmental and other social service programs to ensure the effective delivery of such services to persons with low income and to encourage the use of entities in the private sector of the community in efforts to ameliorate poverty in the community.

  (c) The Director is authorized to adopt rules pursuant to chapter 25 of this title appropriate to the carrying out of this chapter and its purposes.

  (d) Annually, the Office shall provide a written report to the House Committees on Appropriations and on Energy and Digital Infrastructure and to the Senate Committees on Appropriations and on Natural Resources and Energy on appropriations utilizing existing resources within State government available in the Office of Economic Opportunity’s weatherization data management system that compiles performance data available on households weatherized in the past year to include the:

  (1) number of households weatherized;

  (2) average program expenditure per household for energy efficiency;

  (3) average percent in energy savings;

  (4) energy and nonenergy benefits combined;

  (5) benefits saved for every dollar spent;

  (6) average savings per unit for heating fuels;

  (7) gallons of oil saved related to the equivalent number of homes heated;

  (8) projected number of households to be weatherized in the current program year;

  (9) projected program expenditures for the current program year ending March 31;

  (10) total number of all units that had weatherization deferred, and the reasons why;

  (11) number of rental units that had weatherization deferred, and the reasons why;

  (12) number of rental units deferred specifically because of vermiculite;

  (13) backlog of deferred rental units deferred specifically because of vermiculite; and

  (14) potential energy savings for all deferred weatherization that do not require disturbing the vermiculite. (Added 1981, No. 173 (Adj. Sess.), § 1, eff. April 20, 1982; amended 2025, No. 18, § 20, eff. May 13, 2025; 2025, No. 99 (Adj. Sess.), § 1, eff. July 1, 2026; 2025, No. 157 (Adj. Sess.), § 14, eff. July 1, 2026.)