by Anne Galloway vtdigger.org The must-pass bill of the session is home free. Budget-writers in the House and Senate agreed on Thursday to the details of the Big Bill.
The two sides were never that far apart when it came down to dollars and cents. What divided negotiators for several days were several large policy questions that were tacked onto the money bill in the form of amendments: a provision that would allow childcare providers to unionize and a measure that would have required the stateâ s two largest utilities to return $21 million in bailout money to ratepayers.
Both amendments were passed by majorities in the Senate, despite House Speaker Shap Smithâ s warning that riders on the government spending bill were a major no-no. In the end, the Senate receded, or gave in, on the merger and childcare unionization issues.
A compromise was also struck on the third policy question (which was budget related) ‘whether the state should return 50 percent of any surplus General Fund money to the Education Fund in order to partially address a $27.5 million gap created when the Legislature rebased the fund to 2008 levels. The Senate had hoped to send property tax refunds to taxpayers, instead they agreed to the House proposal for a one-year trial period.
Sen. Diane Snelling signs the budget conference committee report as Sen. Jane Kitchel looks on. Photo by Anne Galloway
â It must be a sign itâ s almost time for us to go home,’Sen. Jane Kitchel, head of Senate Appropriations said. â I think weâ ve put together a good budget in difficult times.â
The senators and representatives hugged and shook hands; Sen. Dick Sears fist bumped his colleagues instead so he wouldnâ t pass on the flu bug heâ d come down with earlier in the week.
The Senate compromises on the amendments, Sears said, were necessary. The merger question in particular gave him pause as it garnered a 27-3 vote of support.
â Iâ m disappointed that the merger is out of the budget because it seemed like our last opportunity,’Sears said. â The CVPS thing bothers me but there was no way the House was going to move on that issue. If we didnâ t sign the budget by this afternoon weâ d be holding things up and the session would be going next week and beyond.â
The $1.3 billion General Fund budget for fiscal year 2013 is part of a $5 billion overall government spending planthat includes transportation infrastructure projects, capital improvements, statewide K-12 education spending and state Medicaid expenditures.The budget numbers, which represent a 5.5 percent increase over last year are nearly identical to the House-approved plan. The Senate added $575,000 for mobile homeowners and affordable housing.
Overall, lawmakers have funneled about $119 million in Tropical Storm Irene related expenditures, the bulk of which includes $94 million in federal and state spending on roads damaged in the flood. Budget writers redirected $18 million in capital infrastructure project spending toward the Vermont State Hospital and Waterbury state office complex. In the Budget Adjustment Act, $15 million was put in the Emergency Relief Assistance Fund and $1.6 million was allocated for costs incurred by the Vermont National Guard members who helped with Irene recovery. Lawmakers also set aside up to $15 million of any surplus money the state may receive in tax revenues before June 30 of this year.
Though lawmakers are still wrangling over the miscellaneous tax bill (current use, cloud computing taxes and a date change for annual homestead declaration were outstanding as of Thursday evening), a budget deal means that lawmakers will end the session on Saturday. The Big Bill is typically one of the last pieces of legislation to make it out the door on the way to adjournment. The tax bill goes hand in hand and a conference committee report is expected to be signed Friday morning.
The House GOP wonâ t suspend the 24-hour budget review rule to hasten the endgame, so it was imperative that the conference committee sign the Big Bill as soon as possible so that the legislation could be put on the electronic calendar Thursday evening and the legislation can go to the printers in time.
Lawmakers will now be running out the clock. The Senate will take up the budget on Friday and the House will do so on Saturday.
In the meantime, lawmakers will likely finish up any bill that is still in play, but will abandon big pieces of legislation that arenâ t near completion.
Though Sen. Dick McCormack, D-Windsor, tried again and again to resuscitate the childcare unionization bill on Wednesday and Thursday, it looks like the legislation is dead. In lieu of a bill that would allow workers to collectively bargain through the American Federation of Teachers, the Legislature will send a formal letter outlining the concerns raised by H.97 to Doug Racine, secretary of the Agency of Human Resources andBuilding Bright Futures Vermont, a nonprofit group dedicated to improving early childhood education.
A â fair game’bill that would have required non-union employees for the state to pay a percentage of union dues for services provided by the Vermont State Employees Association was not taken up by the Senate last night.Itâ s on the calendar for Friday.
Instead, the Green Room passed legislation prohibiting the cruel confinement of sows. The so-called â pig gestation’bill makes â crating’pregnant sows a misdemeanor offense. The Senate also passed a resolution chastising Readers’Digest for its portrayal of mental illness in a series of articles, â Normal or Nuts,’and another resolution asking the U.S. Department of Justice and Commodity Futures Trading Commission to determine if â anticompetitive conduct’in the dairy industry is â working to the detriment of producers and consumers.
The Senate is finished with the utility merger debate, but several House members will make last ditch efforts to assert a provision to either return bailout money to CVPS ratepayers and/or block a rate increase to cover Green Mountain Powerâ s proposed efficiency and weatherization investments in lieu of a cash payback. Rep. Oliver Olsen, D-Jamaica, will offer an amendment on the energy bill. Rep. Paul Ralston, D-Middlebury, is proposing a resolution that would urge the Public Service Board to create a mechanism to protect against the â unjust enrichment’of shareholders at the expense of ratepayers as the result of â imprudent business decisions.â
Bills remaining on the House calendar include:H.78, a bill that allows unpaid workers to place a lien on shuttered companies; S.290, a bill that requires the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living to provide data regarding abused, neglected and exploited adults (the agency stopped making information available after it was sued by Vermont Legal Aid); the repeal of school district merger incentives under Act 153.
A bill sure to stir debate will be H.753, a bill that would allow the Vermont-NEA to charge union fees to teachers who are not union members. Olsen has proposed two amendments: one would allow the fees to apply to new teachers only; a second would exempt teachers whose annual compensation whose compensation is less than 50 percent of the total annual compensation of the highest paid employee of the state teacherâ s union or less than 10 percent of the total compensation of the highest paid employee of the NEA.
The House will also take up H.794. Under the bill, the state will evaluate whether an entity other than the Vermont State Police should assume responsibility for search and rescue operations. The legislation was created in response to the death of 19-year-old Levi Duclos who went on a hike in Ripton on a warm day in January and was found by police more than 14 hours after his family had reported him missing.
May 4, 2012 vtdigger.org