I stood on
the House floor last week – correct that – I sat in front of my laptop on Zoom
last week, and addressed my colleagues about the capital construction bill we
were about to vote on.
“Last
week, hundreds of my constituents from Berlin and Northfield waited in their
cars in line for hours – not a couple of hours, but some for five, six hours –
to get a box of food,” I told them. “How could I ever look them in the eye and
say I voted for a bill today to spent $75,000 for new drapes and carpets in the
statehouse?”
It was not
a rhetorical question.
Every year
we pass a capital bill, which authorizes bonding for major investments that are
needed to keep our buildings safe and sound, and sometimes to replace them.
This year’s bill was solid. It was well thought through and responsible. But
all the work on the bill was completed before we left the House floor on March
13 as COVID-19 reached Vermont: before “stay at home”; before our businesses
closed down and almost a quarter of Vermonters were left without jobs; before tax
revenues plunged; before, in short, life as we knew it had completely changed.
The House
Corrections and Institutions Committee had added an important clause to the
bill. It noted the intent, and the importance of, investing these dollars as a
part of rebuilding Vermont as we re-open. It went on to give authority to the
Emergency Board, a group of Representatives and Senators who are chairs of the
financial committees, to re-allocate any of the money from an approved project
to a different capital project if a new COVID need emerges after the session
adjourns next month.
I believed
we needed to be more proactive as a legislative body. We are still very much in
the dark about what the picture will look like in just a few months, enough so
that for our operating budget, we are only planning to complete a first quarter
bill in time for the new fiscal year that begins July 1. We will come back in
late August to reassess and built the budget for the remaining three quarters.
I believed
we needed that same process to occur for our capital budget – not to hold off
on starting what is outlined in the bill, but to take stock of where we are and
fully evaluate whether some priorities need to change, in August.
There is a
difference between the bonding authorized in the capital bill for major
expenditures, and the raising of taxes for the general fund. We can’t take some
of that bonded money and shift it, for example, into buying food. But sometimes
there is some wriggling that can be done to move some types of general fund
expenses into the capital bill as longer-term investments, thereby giving some
relief to the general fund.
As of
right now, we are facing the need to cut every state program by eight percent
or more. When you consider fixed costs and employee contracts, the impact could
be massive, and could include major layoffs. There is also always the
possibility that a necessary expense that we don’t even recognize right now
will arise. If so, there could be a possibility of fitting it into a capital
budget category.
We must
take that deep look, in August, when we are building the rest of the budget and
we know whether there are more federal support options and we know more about
whether our re-opening of the economy is taking hold.
So, I
introduced an amendment to require a report back from the administration in
August that would identify all the impacts regarding the capital bill during
these interim months, along with identifying any potential new needs that might
be able to be shifted between budgets. In that way, we will have the
opportunity, at the same time that we are building the general fund budget for
the remaining three quarters of the year, to make changes that might help us
get through this very difficult year ahead.
This, I
told my colleagues, would enable me to stand behind the work done in the
capital bill, and be able to assure my constituents that we are being
appropriately cautious and responsible with the state’s resources in this
crisis. I’m glad to say that when I presented the amendment to the Institutions
Committee itself, the members worked with me to get the wording right, and then
endorsed it. It was then accepted on the House floor.
It is a
good capital bill. Even things like drapes in our historic statehouse do need
to be maintained, and not left to crumble after years of damage by the sun. But
we need to ensure that our capital investments do not in any way detract from
our ability to respond to our more immediate crisis-level needs, and with my
amendment, I believe we’ve done that. (And I received email notes of gratitude
for the amendment from others on the House floor – the virtual floor –
including Progressives, Democrats and Republicans alike. I think a lot of
people were struggling with the idea of supporting a “business as usual” bill.)
***
Last week
we worked our way through several additional bills that waived ordinary
requirements in the law to ensure folks are protected from the coronavirus. One
of them waived the requirement for a physical visit to a property by members of
a Board of Civil authority when they are hearing an appeal of a property
appraisal.
That one
worried me. We need to be cautious that in our efforts at protection, that we
don’t harm people’s rights. I proposed an amendment, and once again it was
members of the committee themselves who recognized that the change was needed,
and helped with framing it. It now allows a property owner to request that
there be a “virtual inspection” by video or still photo which is initiated by
the board and physically created by the owner. It’s not perfect, but it helps.
We have
also begun to take up our first non-COVID response bills, to the extent time
permits between essential bills. A bill to clarify tree warden
responsibilities, one of those that had been sitting on the House calendar
since March 13, passed after a fair amount of debate over whether it encroached
too much on the local municipal process. It eventually did pass, and I voted
no, but not because I thought it was bad to protect our town shade trees. It
was simply because the member presenting the bill couldn’t answer my questions
about the current statute, and how it works.
Chalk it
up to the challenges of legislating by Zoom; I couldn’t feel comfortable voting
for a change I couldn’t quite follow.
***
In my
Health Care Committee, too, we have begun to take a small amount of time to try
to finish a bill that was underway just before March 13. I’m particularly
hoping that we can get a few key pieces through.
One is an
effort to get insurers all on the same page to waive pre-authorization
requirements in situations where they virtually always are approved,
regardless. It’s a headache, and a big paperwork cost, for doctors to have to
go through an approval process when approval will always be granted, and when
among five different insurers there are five different sets of rules about when
approval is required. We worked hard to get all the players on board with a
process to jointly develop more streamlined approaches, so it would be a pity
if we could not get this bill across the finish line.
Likewise
with a part of the bill that requires some quality oversight components
attached to the additional funding the state is giving to the Brattleboro
Retreat to keep it afloat. We backed ourselves into a corner with the Retreat
by creating greater and greater state dependence on one hospital to deliver so
much of the inpatient psychiatric care in the state. Now they are too big to
fail.
But the
problems there are not just financial. In my regular job as the editor of Counterpoint,
the state’s mental health newspaper, I see the firsthand accounts of patients
who have suffered from poor quality of care there. The staff of my agency spend
time there, and report about changes in policies that are demeaning and
inappropriate, such as keeping bathrooms locked so that a patient must find a
staff person to let them in.
So, one of
the sections in our bill will require the Retreat to collaborate in clinical
team meetings with the Department of Mental Health to foster quality
improvements and improve patient experience of care.
***
The first
proposal for what to do with a really significant portion of the state’s $1.25
billion federal CARES Act coronavirus funds came from the governor last week.
It suggests using about a third of it immediately to help bail out some of our
businesses. If they fail, we all fail, since the jobs, taxes and economic base
go with them. The legislature will need to dive in rapidly to assess the plan and
make decisions, because it won’t do any good to help a business if it has
already gone under.
It hasn’t
been defined yet, but we know another major portion of money will be needed to
shore up our health care system. This crisis has really underscored one of the
things wrong with our current financing for health care. It is paid for as
though it was any other sort of business, by the sale of goods: you get your
cut stitched up and the doctor gets paid. But health care isn’t a commodity
like shoes where the merchant is trying to entice you with the latest style.
You’re never going to buy stitches unless you need them, but when you need
them, you want the best ones, available right away.
We didn’t
use care in March, April and May because we were preparing for a major health
catastrophe. That was the public health priority. The result was that no one
was paying for the system continuing to be there for us. We are going to need
to pay that bill now. But if we believe that the system needs to exist for when
we need it, then it needs a more reliable mechanism for maintaining its
infrastructure. That’s one of the components of health care reform that we need
to keep chipping away at.
***
Please
continue to stay in touch with me and with Rep. Ken Goslant. We’re both here to
serve you, so contact us with questions or issues of concern. We were so glad
to be able to intervene and help more than two dozen constituents from Berlin
and Northfield who were jammed up in the unemployment system backlog. All but a
few have finally been resolved. You can reach us anytime at adonahue@leg.state.vt.us or kgoslant@leg.state.vt.us
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