On the first day of the Vermont legislative session Tuesday, Speaker Shap Smith addressed the House of Representatives, setting forth his priorities and highlighting the need to work across the aisle to tackle a number of difficult issues.’
‘We all share the same goals for Vermont. We want a healthy economy with good jobs. We want to make sure that our friends and neighbors have the tools necessary to unlock their individual potential. And we want strong, lively, vibrant communities that are safe for our kids,’ said Speaker Shap Smith.
Speaker Smith’s priorities include closing a $70 million budget shortfall within current revenue, reviewing increased education spending and seeking ways to slow its growth, funding shortfalls in retiree teacher health care, investments in our downtowns, and working to address the growing opiate epidemic.
Full text of the speech can be found below.
Speaker Smith Opening Remarks January 7, 2014
As we embark on a new legislative session, it is wonderful to see those who are returning, and I offer a special welcome to Kathy Hoyt and Marjorie Ryerson who are just joining us. It's great to welcome Kathy and Marjorie to the body, though it is with some bittersweet-ness. Marjorie replaces Rep. Larry Townsend, who was a generous man, unafraid to express his own views, and who really embodied public service in doing his utmost to bring the concerns of his constituents to this body. Those of us who did have the opportunity to serve with Larry are very lucky. Kathy replaces Margaret Cheney. I want to express my congratulations to Margaret; I don't quite understand why anybody would want to leave this august body for the Public Service Board. But our loss is the Board’s gain. They're lucky to have someone with keen intellect, empathy for Vermonters, and willingness to build a consensus. She will be a real treat and it’s good to finally have another woman on the board.
I've struggled quite a bit to decide what I would say at the beginning of the session. Often, I'll go through a laundry list of legislation. I know we are already familiar with this list and we will have the opportunity to work on that list as we move forward. But I think of the second year of a biennium as an opportunity for us to reflect --to reflect on the successes of the past session, to think about what went right, and also to consider what might not have gone as well as we had hoped.
We all share the same goals for Vermont. We want a healthy economy with good jobs. We want to make sure that our friends and neighbors have the tools necessary to unlock their individual potential. And we want strong, lively, vibrant communities that are safe for our kids and for our neighbors. We don't always share the same views on how to achieve those goals. And that’s good. That’s okay. Because democracy is about the free exchange of ideas. If we were all a big monolith moving in one direction, we would not serve the constituents and the citizens of this great state as effectively as we do.
There is an inherent tension in the work that we do, reflected in the motto of the seal that hangs above this podium: Freedom and Unity. Freedom: the individualism that is the bedrock of the citizens of this state of Vermont. And Unity: the idea that we can’t have a successful community without those individuals coming together. As lawmakers, we must work to create policies that benefit both the individual and the community as a whole. I hope that we will remember that as we face the challenges that we have ahead of us this year.
We have a budget gap to close. We have concerns about the opiate epidemic in our communities. We have continued growth in our education spending and pressures on our education funding system. We know that we want to do better for our kids. We know we face real challenges in our environment. Our lakes are sicker because pollution continues to affect them and we haven't been able to reach a consensus about how to fix that problem. And we’ve had a bumpy rollout of the health care exchange this past month.
We have a number of issues that we have to fix, but just like at the end of last year, we know that in the end we’ll come together to solve these problems. Each year we have significant challenges that present themselves. And we know that each year we come together, with the input of our constituents, the expertise of our legal and fiscal offices, and the hard work of the individuals within each of the committees, and find solutions to the challenges that we face.
When I look out at you all, I don’t see Democrats. I don’t see Republicans. I don’t see Independents. I don’t see Progressives. I see people who are here to represent their communities, to represent the individuals within their communities. And I know that our communities sometimes send us here with conflicting instructions. They want us to represent them as individuals and they also want us to represent their community. It is our job to try to resolve those disparate interests and knit together the individual interests that ensure that we have the fabric of a strong society.
So, as we embark on this next session let us remember how much we’ve done so far. Let us look forward to the opportunity we have to continue our work.
Let us not ever forget that we are working for our families, our neighbors, our friends.
Let us find strength in the diversity of our views and work to knit those diverse interests together for the common good of this state that we all so love.
And let us get to work.
Thank you.
VIDEO: vtdigger.org
‘