by Anne Galloway vtdigger.org Negotiations fell apart Thursday night on the budget, tax and health care bills, even as lawmakers got closer to the new magic number: $30 million. That’s the amount budget-writers need in revenue to fill a remaining gap in the General Fund. The number has dropped from $35 million just a few days ago as lawmakers continue to scrub the budget for more savings.
Lawmakers appear to be getting closer to agreement on the money bills, but talks with the governor, who has issued thinly veiled veto threats, didn’t make sufficient headway.
If legislators aren’t able to finalize the bills by this afternoon, prospects for Saturday adjournment could dim. The budget has to be printed later today in order to meet that deadline. Extending the session means appropriating more money to keep lawmakers in the Statehouse beyond the 18 week mark.
Statehouse mavens tend to look for omens this time of year since objective data is scarce. The negotiations over what gets sliced and diced are held in private, and public meetings between Senate and House conferees are often charade like.
Signs are good, however, that the end of the session is nigh. VIPs schlepped hourly from the governor’s office to the House Speaker’s office on Thursday. Emotions were running high (the Senate President Pro Tem and a reporter got into a shouting match when he was barred from a full committee meeting in the pro tem’s office). And a bat flew into the House Chamber. (Last year it was the Senate Chamber.)
The last deal on the table from the Senate raises $25 million in income taxes. About $15 million of that is the governor’s proposed elimination of the state and local income tax deduction. The remaining $10 million comes from a cap on itemized deductions. The cap is two times the standard deduction and affects all itemized deductions except donations to charity charitable and medical expenses.
About $4 million comes from a variety of sources, including $300,000 from the universal service fund, $1 million from a meals tax on vending machine food, $2.3 million from garnishing the wages of workers with delinquent taxes, $100,000 from intercepted Medicaid payments and $500,000 in use taxes.
The tax conference committee didn’t meet all day. Proposals instead were floated in the health care conference committee, which broke up early in the evening. The budget conference committee kept going until 10 p.m. last night.
Health care funding appears at this point to be coming from two sources: A $5 million extension of the sales tax on soda and a $2 million increase in the employer assessment.
Lawmakers will pick up where they left off late this morning. Progress could be waylaid, however, by a vote on a controversial renewable energy bill in the Senate.