January 16 2021 Legislative Update

 Legislative Update

Rep. Anne Donahue

January 16, 2021

As we start a new session staying fully on remote platforms, the extent to which good legislative process is impaired becomes even clearer. 

Last year, the sudden shift to “Zoom” meetings came after a year-and-a-half of working together in committees and on the House floor. Now, we begin a new session with new legislators who have no opportunity to first build those working relationships. 

Vermont benefits from healthy turnover in our House of Representatives, with a blend of the new ideas and energy brought by newcomers together with some “institutional knowledge” from longer-term folks like myself who can help prevent wheels from being re-invented every two years.

The newbies, however, do have a learning curve. There is a need to understand the process itself, how committees function, how bills make their way through the system. Then there is grappling with the complexities of the subject matter itself addressed by each committee.

Just ask our district’s other rep, Ken Goslant, who is so pleased to have been reappointed to the Judiciary Committee. He will be able to really dig in this year, after having gotten that first session under the belt.

I have been re-appointed as Vice-Chair of the Health Care Committee, and we are fortunate to also have the same two other members on our committee leadership team. However, of the eight rank-and-file members, five are new to the committee and four of those are first-year legislators.

The orientation process to our tangled and multi-layered health care system has barely begun, and our plate is already full with issues that demand immediate attention: updating and revising the laws we passed in response to COVID-19 last year, and responding to the midyear budget adjustment proposals (with next year’s budget just around the corner.)

Under the Zoom constraints, we’re operating with roughly half of the time in committee we would formerly have had.

And we’re already half way through January! Yikes.

***

COVID Responses

Our committee met jointly with the Human Services and Senate Health and Welfare Committees to get updates on the state’s response to the pandemic, the vaccine rollout, and the expenditure of federal emergency funds; next week we’ll hear about the new federal legislation and what opportunities it will offer the state.

We had a presentation Friday to review the bills we passed last biennium, and it was a reminder of how many pieces need follow up. The crisis in our shrinking health care workforce is a huge one.

At the same time, both House and Senate acted quickly on one new response: a bill allowing towns some alternatives for this year’s town meetings in order to maintain safety.

Our local select boards will have the option of postponing town meeting for several months or moving all issues to an Australian ballot that is mailed to every voter (as was done for November’s general election.) Funding for the mail-in option will be provided through the federal relief funds.

***

Bill Explosion

The start of a session is when there are often news media sound bites about all sorts of new “legislative initiatives” that catch the eye. Be careful not to read too much into them – or you can ask Ken or me for specifics.

The reality is that hundreds of bills are introduced at the start of each session, reflecting the individual ideas of 150 House members and 30 Senators. The vast majority will not even be taken up by the committee they are sent to, let alone make their way through the long path to the governor’s desk.

Ten have been introduced in Health Care in the first week. Last year, the session’s total was 66. Of that, our committee passed 12, but only six of those came from individual legislators rather than through our internal committee work.

Although chairs hold the decision-making authority, most take input from the full committee about priorities, and that winnows out many of the proposals. But time often is just as much a limiting factor as lack of interest, along with the “must do” work outside of bills.

One thing is likely for any efforts by our committee in addressing large scale health care reform issues – access and affordability -- this year: there won’t be the ability to take any actions. Federal law (and to an even greater extent, federal money) heavily controls our options.

In the past four years, we had a dual focus. We were monitoring the “all payer” deal with the feds that allowed us to make payment system reforms that could be aligned between Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance; that 5-year deal was one of the few mechanisms available for reform under existing federal parameters.

We also spent a lot of effort protecting the stability of Vermont’s insurance market from changes being made at the federal level.

While it is highly likely that there will be major changes in federal law under a new administration, those will not be happening in the next three months’ time. We won’t have any ability to adapt or take advantage of changes, because we won’t know the new directions, yet.

One of the biggest variables is whether a federal law is written to control what happens, superseding state law, or creates options that allow states to establish their own initiatives. 

The classic example is “ERISA,” a longstanding federal law that bars states from regulating insurance that large companies create for their own employees. Whenever Vermont creates insurance coverage requirements, they actually only affect a limited number of insurance plans.

So, we will likely be on hold this year. There is no point in investing time and energy in restructuring health care if the work will be upended in six months.

***

My Bills

Notwithstanding the above comments, we legislators do keep introducing bills in the hopes that they will gain committee attention, if not this year, then the next. 

My list this year includes three bills that continue the efforts at parity and integration of mental health into health care, and one for creation of a working group for recommendation on much-needed reforms to our laws on addressing criminal justice system interrelationships with mental illness; 

Also, along with Rep. Goslant, a bill requested by the National Guard to match federal law in protecting employment rights, and the repeat bill on the effort to have military retirement pay exempted from income tax;

Whistleblower protection for law enforcement officers (to protect against retaliation when they do as we have directed them, and report wrongdoing by colleagues); removing the sales tax exemption from candy (I don’t believe in candy as being “food,” whereas food is an essential that should be exempt);

Can you believe that some car rental contracts in Vermont ban you from using them on dirt roads? It’s buried deep in the contract, and I think consumer deserve prominent notice!

I’m also the sponsor on a bill request from the American Kidney Association to extend medical leave and insurance to cover organ donors – an example of a bill that a committee wanted to support last year, but time was the barrier.

***

Access to Your Government

The upside to our Zoom world is your new level of access to seeing what we are doing. Every committee meeting is aired live on YouTube, but also archived. Just go to the legislative web site to look up bills, floor sessions, committee agendas, and committee meetings: legislature.vermont.gov, and feel free to ask Ken or me to guide you on finding what you are looking for.

There is also a wealth of information from presentations made to committees and developed by our staff, in particular both the overviews and “deep dives” by our legislative joint fiscal office (ljfo.vermont.gov), everything from revenue updates to how much a bill will cost the state.

Just meandering through that web site is an eye-popping number of “issue briefs” and topics that may rapidly suck you in... but in a more intelligent way that the way we sometimes get sucked into Facebook posts!

Some immediate examples of resources you might want to look at: the “health care 101” presentation that we are working through as our health care committee orientation (the second topic found under: ljfo.vermont.gov/subjects/healthcare/other-health-care-issues-and-information); the COVID-19 vaccine response plan presentation (legislature.vermont.gov/committee/document/2022/15/Date/1-13-2021#documents-section); and the 2021 presentation to us on “Principles of a High Quality Tax System” (found under the tab: ljfo.vermont.gov/subjects/revenue-and-tax/friday-tax-workshops-2019-session). 

***

And Then Other Stuff

As legislators, we also spend time outside the statehouse connecting with constituents and interest groups to help identify needs – such as touching base with the Northfield Select Board last week.

Ken and I also met last week to hear from the Northfield Savings Bank about some of the impacts of COVID. That presentation included an important information tidbit to pass along:

Were you expecting an automatic bank transfer of the $600/$1200 economic stimulus money but have not seen it posted to your account yet? There is an IRS glitch that occurred that relates to people who had accounts through their tax preparers which are now closed. 

If you might be in that category, you (or anyone) can check on the status of your payment directly through the IRS website.

***

It is an honor to represent you. Please contact me (adonahue@leg.state.vt.us) or Ken (kgoslant@leg.state.vt.us) anytime to share your input, ask questions, or raise concerns.