Legislative Update
Rep. Anne Donahue
June 23, 2018
Was it only insider baseball, that doesn’t really matter?
I don’t think so. I think voters need to know about the very
sad – shocking, even -- chain of events in our state’s House of Representatives
Friday night.
Someone’s word has always meant something before. A
commitment was a commitment. A handshake on an agreement could be counted on.
On Friday morning, the governor and the Speaker of the House,
with the support of the minority leadership, finally reached a compromise on
the question of the state’s property tax rates.
As in true compromise, both sides gave something. In fact,
given the depth of the disagreement, both sides gave a lot in the interests of
resolving the budget stalemate and acting in the best interests of the state
rather than based on pride or saving face.
The governor agreed to allow the non-homestead tax rate to
go up to the level proposed in the new Senate budget and tax bill, despite his
resistance to any tax rate increase. The contested “one-time” lawsuit
settlement funds would stay in the teacher’s retirement fund paydown.
The House Democratic leadership agreed to allow the expected
surplus tax revenue coming in this year to be set aside in a 50-50 division:
half to add to paying down the teacher retirement debt, and half to the
Education Fund for next year, to potentially bring the non-homestead rate back
down.
The amount of money involved is as of yet uncertain, and no
legislature can bind the action of a future legislature. The governor was
willing to accept in good faith that legislators returning next year would
stand by the intent to use those revenues, once determined, to lower the tax
rate.
No longer was there a proposal to use hoped-for future
savings to pay for a tax rate reduction this year. This is applying actual
money, after it is received.
But the House leadership was agreeing to have this surplus
allocated for next year, despite its resistance to using surplus money to bring
down a tax rate.
This agreement was due to come before the full House in the
early afternoon. Suddenly, there was delay, after delay, after delay, for the
House to be called to order.
Behind closed doors, leadership of the Senate was objecting
to the terms of the agreement between the House Speaker and the governor and
demanding that the Speaker back out of it.
So she did. She backed out of her agreement.
At that point, House Democratic leaders proposed a
compromise of the compromise: divide the anticipated surplus three ways,
between the retirement fund, the education fund, and the last third reverting
to the general fund.
Chairs of the money committees (Appropriations and Ways and
Means) asked their Republican members if they supported the revised deal as a
midpoint between the governor and the Senate leadership. They did. The new
proposal was unanimously supported by both committees.
Before bringing that proposal to the House floor, there were
new cold feet: what if the Senate still didn’t accept it? What if the governor
refused the revised division of the revenues?
So they reversed themselves again, and brought out a plan to
essentially accept the Senate bill with only minor changes, ditching any
compromises and turning their backs on both the agreement with the governor and
with their own later proposal made to their Republican colleagues.
They did not ask for a vote of their own committees on the
new plan; they knew they would have lost the unanimous support that they sought
just hours before.
When an amendment was offered on the House floor to restore
the language of the 3-way split compromise, they stood to oppose it, raising philosophical
objections to the concept: the very concept that they had proposed to their
committees just a few hours earlier.
When a stunned member of the committee asked for a brief
recess to discuss this with his chair, the Speaker refused. In my 16 years in
the House, this is the first time I have every seen any Speaker refuse a
request for a brief recess.
The process was now well into the night, and some members
had left. When the roll was called on the vote for restoring the 3-way split,
the amendment lost on a 46-61 vote, meaning that 43 members were already absent.
The voting on this year’s state budget and taxes combination bill was happening
with barely more than the 100 constitutionally required members.
Disgusted by having had two agreements broken, some dozen or
so Republicans were determined to not allow the process to continue, hoping
that if the vote were deferred to Monday, cooler heads could prevail. Loss of
the quorum would achieve that; they began leaving their seats.
The Speaker, seeing what was happening, rushed into the
final vote, catching members off guard before anyone could ask if there was a
quorum. (There was not – but if it is not challenged, it is presumed to exist.)
She made an error, though – and I give her the benefit of
the doubt in terming it an error. She failed to call on the member who still
had a pending amendment offered in advance in the calendar, the House minority
leader.
He cried foul, and she said that the vote, once taken, could
not be withdrawn and the amendment could no longer be offered.
The idea that an amendment would be blocked from being
offered is something else that I have never seen in my entire time in the
House.
The unfortunate outcome is that instead of merely finishing
the ongoing process once a quorum is achieved again Monday, there will need to
be a request for reconsideration of the vote, which is permitted by the rules.
That starts consideration of the bill all over again.
The prelude to the chain of events on the voting was a
challenge to the constitutionality of the bill itself. Our constitution is
pretty clear: all tax bills must start in the House.
This tax bill came from the Senate (tacked onto a completely
unrelated vital records bill, so that it had a House number on it.) There was
an easy fix – take the exact language from the Senate but give it a new House
bill number and add any approved amendments to that.
Why not do that? Apparently, fear that it would offend the
Senate.
If it was simply a matter of numbers was there any
consequence to leaving it with the same number as sent over by the Senate?
The Independent member from Barre City who challenged it
thought so, as did I. The constitution sets up different roles for House and
Senate. What seems inconsequential in one moment of expedience sets a precedent
for the future.
The challenge failed, and we went forward with debate on the
bill, but the deference to the Senate was a foreshadowing of that next debate,
where the House decided to bow to the desires of, and control by, the Senate.
I believe in a system of government with the checks and
balances that come when there is more than one party, forcing dialogue among
different perspectives. But for it to function, there must be respect for the
process and for all members.
That was not present on Friday night.
I don’t know what will happen next. It will essentially be
in the hands of the Senate whether to further gamble with the state’s future by
refusing to consider the compromise that had been reached with the governor.
I do know that when commitments made to accept a compromise
are broken, the ability to reach compromises in the future is severely
impaired. It also destroys the ability to trust that agreements made within the
compromise – such as a commitment to future intent – can be relied on.
What I can only hope is that at some point in the future, we
will be able to look back on Friday’s events as an aberration, and not as a
start of a new era where rancor and distrust become the norm.
***
Please stay in
touch as you hear about issues affecting you and to keep me informed about your
views. You can reach me at adonahue@leg.state.vt.us.
Thank you for the honor of representing you. My blog of legislative updates can
be found at representativeannedonahue.blogspot.com.
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