by Anne Galloway vtdigger.org Lawmakers got right to work on opening day of the second half of the biennium. Within an hour of the first gavel fall, senators and representatives were in committee. There they began the work of legislating ‘ of evaluating statutory changes, assessing the effectiveness of programs and listening to the conflicting points of view of state officials, constituents, advocates and lobbyists.
By the end of the day, several committees had already voted on draft legislation. A bill to allow child-care workers to unionize passed unanimously out of the Senate Education Committee. A Senate and House conference committee voted out a campaign finance bill that will lift the ceiling on contributions to political parties to $10,000 and allow parties to make contributions in unlimited amounts to candidates.
The Vermont Speaker of the House, Shap Smith of Lamoille County, before the start of the 2014 legislative session. Photo by Roger Crowley
Over the course of the next 16 weeks, Vermont’s citizen lawmakers who hail from every corner of the state, will debate and vote on scores of bills addressing issues small and large that affect Vermonters. Everything from whether Burlington can include restrictions on guns in its city charter to regulating police use of Tasers to creating a statewide school calendar. Climate change, an issue that was front and center last year with the appearance of activist Bill McKibben at the Statehouse, doesn’t appear to be a priority. (Rep. Tony Klein urged his colleagues to consider climate change, ‘the most serious problem facing the planet,’ as a factor in every decision they make.)
At the top of the list are the state’s annual appropriations for government operations, transportation and capital expenditures. The money issues are the pivot around which all the other legislation takes shape. Without money, it’s hard to pay the state’s bills, let alone launch ambitious programs. And this year will be unusually tight. The difference between the state’s revenues and expenditures is about $70 million this year. Though there have been similar sized gaps in each of the last six years, this year federal and other funds that were previously available have dried up.
Click below to listen to Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell’s address.
The new mantra in the House and Senate Appropriations committees is ‘results-based budgeting,’ which is shorthand for building more efficiency into state agency budgets. Shumlin has promised to hold the line on new broad-based taxes to support existing government programs, and belt-tightening will likely be part of the equation in the governor’s budget address next week.
In an interview, John Campbell, Senate president pro tem, explained how lawmakers will close the gap.
‘The priority, of course, is the budget. And what the key is, for me, is to try to balance the budget without raising any revenue. And people say, ‘Well how do you do that?’‘ Campbell said. ‘So, again, you always go back to see how programs are working, whether there are certain costs that are being incurred by certain departments or agencies that may be superfluous or their not getting the result we had intended when we first started the program.’
Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell of Windsor County addresses the members on opening day. Photo by Roger Crowley
The Shumlin administration and the Democratic leadership, which holds a supermajority in the House and Senate, however, will need an infusion of cash or a diversion of resources to address the governor’s top priority this year ‘ addressing the thorny issues of poverty and ‘opiate addiction epidemic.’ Lake Champlain cleanup will also be costly for the state; towns may have to raise taxes to prevent pollution runoff from roads and sewage treatment centers.
Money will also dominate the health care reform debate. Gov. Peter Shumlin’s ambitious plans to make Act 48, the state’s universal health care framework, a reality in 2017 will require the Legislature to begin ‘groundtruthing’ (as Sen. Claire Ayer puts it) whether the state can afford to move ahead with the first-in-the-nation ‘single-payer’ medical insurance system.
Shumlin made a rare appearance before the House Health Care and Senate Health and Welfare committees to announce that his administration will hire an outside group to analyze the bumpy health care exchange rollout in Vermont. In addition, Lawrence Miller, the secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, will lend his expertise as an entrepreneur to the Vermont Health Connect team, which has struggled with the insurance enrollment technology for the exchange website.
Education spending and funding pressures are building and lawmakers will begin to consider whether to recalibrate the property tax system this year, but it’s unlikely that any major changes to the property tax ‘ or income and sales systems ‘ will be made. 2014 is an election year, and the governor has asked lawmakers to hold off on proposals so that his administration has the political elbow room to develop a tax mechanism for universal health care.
Marshaling agreement on the wide variety of contentious issues that will come before the House and the Senate will be no small task. House Speaker Shap Smith who is renowned for his disciplined leadership reminded the 150 lawmakers in the House that no matter what party they are affiliated with, they are unified by the same goals for their constituents and for Vermont as a whole ‘ they merely differ on how to get there.
‘We want a healthy economy with good jobs,’ Smith said. ‘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,’ Smith continued. ‘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.’
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