Legislative Update
February 3, 2017
Rep. Anne Donahue
The first lengthy, contentious and partisan debates
occurred in the House last week.
One was almost purely symbolic, on a proposal by
Rep. Paul Poirier of Barre City that he said was intended as a way for him to
be able to show his opposition to the governor’s school budget proposal.
The other was highly substantive, with the House
voting to re-open a settled election after the person who lost made a complaint
to the legislature.
***
School
Budgets
The school vote came about when Rep. Poirier tried
to amend a minor bill by adding a change in the date for voting on school
budgets from March to May. That was a change proposed by Governor Phil Scott in
his budget address as a part of an aggressive initiative to reshape our
education funding process.
Poirier opposed his own amendment and urged others
to defeat it.
Delaying local budget votes would have been the only
way for the legislature to have a serious discussion on the various elements of
the governor’s proposal this year.
The proposal included the unpopular idea of having
zero increases in budgets, and the popular idea of shifting money into
pre-school and college education. (It seems to be human nature to want to be
getting something for nothing.)
The amendment was defeated, 87-47.
Given that it was essentially acknowledged to be a
symbolic vote, I voted for it to express my disappointment that, yet again, we
won’t take up any serious cost containment or funding reform this year.
***
Election
Recount
Earlier in the week, we voted on a recommendation by
the Government Operations Committee to have our own members conduct a second
recount of the ballots in the Orange-1 district (Williamstown, Chelsea,
Corinth, Orange, Vershire, Washington, and West Fairlee).
The House, under the state constitution, has the
right to rule on the qualifications of its members, so the question was whether
the winner of the election was qualified – in other words, whether he won the
election fairly.
Rep. Patti Lewis gave a sterling “minority report”
from the four Republicans on the committee.
It was pretty generally acknowledged that there was
no evidence that there was any fraud or misconduct in the election. There had
already been one recount, a judge had verified the outcome of the recount, and
another judge has rejected a request for a second recount. So the losing
candidate came to the legislature.
The only cloud over the election was the fact that
the loser was complaining about it, but the majority party decided that the
only way to lift that cloud – to ensure confidence in the system – was for the
House to conduct a recount.
I argued that we needed to have some basic reason
that called an outcome into question before holding a recount. Otherwise, any
losing candidate could get a recount by the House, by virtue of creating such a
“cloud” by simply calling out, “it wasn’t fair.”
That argument failed, and the final vote was 76-59
to authorize the recount. (A few brave Democrats, and most of the Independents,
voted with the Republicans.)
If as a body we had been bending over backwards to
protect the rights of a minority among our members, there might have been some
honor in this vote. The election’s 7-vote winner, however, was a Republican,
which made this effort by the majority party quite disturbing.
The one small victory in the course of the 5-hour
debate was adoption of my amendment to require the Government Operations
Committee to return to the House for approval of the policies and procedures
they develop to conduct the recount.
Amazingly, the committee was asking for House
authority for the recount without saying how it would be done, and refusing to
even agree to follow the guidance of state law for recounts. As the committee’s
chair told me under questioning on the floor, the constitution allows the House
to handle a recount in any way it wants… so the committee was going to develop
its own procedures.
Thanks to my amendment, those procedures will now
require full House approval before the recount can occur.
The downside, since the committee had not developed
them in advance, is that we’ll have to face another long debate when we review
them. Agreeing to follow state law would have saved a lot of time. It would
also have done a lot more to create confidence that there are no underhanded
intentions.
***
Drug
Pricing
In my Health Care Committee last week, we heard from
the Attorney General’s office on the outcome of last year’s bill to force some
transparency from pharmaceutical companies that jack prices way up on their
drugs.
Our committee worked on a tri-partisan basis to
develop a consensus bill to require explanation of major price increases. While
many states have complained about the impact of these increases on state
Medicaid budgets, we are the only state to take action.
We did it carefully to protect confidential “trade
secrets” and one result was that, rather than suing us, the companies complied.
Unfortunately, by allowing the Attorney General to
keep trade information confidential, the information that was released to us
was pretty watered down into general information, instead of being
drug-specific or company-specific. It didn’t provide any real insights into how
they justify the pricing.
The companies have “pricing committees” that assess
when to change a drug’s price. The factors they said they consider in deciding
to increase a price included cost effectiveness (meaning the value to patients
given the effectiveness of the drug compared to other drugs); the size of the
patient population for the drug; investments made and the risks undertaken;
creation and maintenance of manufacturing facilities; cost of ingredients;
competition, including for drugs in the same class; return on investment; and
the percentage of their sales in commercial, Medicare or other government
channels.
What was fascinating to me was the result of the
state’s work in identifying the ten drugs that we were asking for information
on. The criteria – something I suggested just based on what sounded
unreasonable as an increase on an existing drug – was to develop a list of
existing drugs that had a price increase of 50 percent or more over the past
five years or 15 percent or more over the past 12 months.
There were a stunning 8,221 drugs that fit the 50
percent increase category, and 3,975 that fit the 15 percent within one year
category. No wonder the average cost per prescription for specialty drugs has
tripled over the past seven years.
Pharmacies aren’t the ones seeing that increase.
Even chain pharmacies are only making a net profit of about two percent, while
the pharmaceutical firms are at 22 percent.
We are determined to try to reshape our new law this
year so that we can squeeze more transparency out, while keeping within the
required confidentiality laws.
***
Silliness
Silly bill of the month: A proposal to fine stores
that prop open their outside doors if the heat or air conditioning is running.
OK, I get it. Someone’s worried about energy efficiency. But it seems that
stores would want to watch their own energy bills, and if the door is propped
open, there might just be some other reason.
Do we really want to send energy police around to
hunt down stores that have a wedge in the door?
This bill does offer a good opportunity to remind
folks that hundreds of bills are introduced each year, some of them purely on
the request of someone’s constituent. It doesn’t mean it will get even five
minutes of a reviewing committee’s time.
When the news media highlights a newly introduced
bill it can create an automatic misperception that it is under serious
consideration. It might just be that it caught a reporter’s eye as unusual or
silly… just as I am doing with this “door prop” bill.
***
Thank
you for the honor of representing you. Please contact me with your questions
and your opinions. You can reach me by message at home at 485-6431, at the
statehouse at 828-2228, or at this email at counterp@tds.net
