A new electric vehicle fast-charger at Mad River Taste Place in Waitsfield When the Vermont Senate passed its 2022 budget bill in late April, administration officials were less surprised by what was in the $7.1 billion bill than what wasn't in it. Despite their heated rhetoric about the need to act urgently on the climate crisis, lawmakers had passed a bill that contained $28 million less in climate investments next year than Gov. Phil Scott had proposed. "The idea that climate didn't rise to the same level for the legislature as it did for the administration was striking to me," Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore said last week.