Legislative Update February 16, 2019

Rep. Anne Donahue

Legislative Update

Feb. 16, 2019

The Appropriations Committees (House and Senate combined) will be holding hearings on this year’s budget proposals. Unfortunately, the “community-based” hearings aren’t very accessible to Northfield and Berlin residents. Presumably that’s because those nearer Montpelier can come in person to the “advocate hearings,” although those are being hosted only by the House.

The joint hearings across the state are scheduled for Monday, Feb. 25 from 6 to 7 p.m. in Morrisville, Rutland, St. Johnsbury, St. Albans, Winooski, and Springfield.

The House hearings in Room 11 at the state house are this Wednesday, Feb. 20 from 1 to 2:30 p.m. regarding budget sections for the Agency of Human Services, and Thursday, Feb. 21, 8:30 to 10 a.m. on all non-AHS sections. Although these are listed as “advocate hearings,” meaning for advocacy group testimony, they are open to any members of the public.

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Budget and Health Care

My committee has the responsibility of making recommendations to the Appropriations Committee on the budget areas related to health care. There are no real “headliners” in these areas this year, but that absence is creating concerns for us.

The governor’s budget proposes no major program cuts, but also does little to help address health care access and affordability or to respond to the crisis in access to mental health care. This crisis has received a great deal of attention because of the resulting burdens on emergency rooms that have patients waiting for days for care, to say nothing of what it does to those patients.

As I discussed in my last update, we are wading our way through many sticky, technical issues affecting the health insurance marketplace: the factors that can impact how quickly rates can rise.

Staff from the governor’s office presented testimony last week on some insurance affordability ideas that could be explored over the next several years, but would have no immediate impact.

There is a really striking graphic that shows how unequal the current cost burdens are. The concept that people should not have to pay more than certain percentages of their income for health insurance falls apart rapidly for those who are just a little bit above the level of eligibility for a subsidy.

The subsidies are also only available to those who do not receive “affordable” employer-sponsored coverage – but strikingly, affordable under that federal definition can actually translate into as much as 15 percent of family income.

Single parents or individuals can end up having to pay a higher percentage of their income than couples if they receive a subsidy, while couples with the same household income pay a vastly higher percentage after they are no longer eligible. At the “cliff” when reaching 400 percent of the poverty level ($66,000 for two people), the very cheapest coverage cost $11,000 for two people, without counting the very high co-pays included in those plans.

We are clearly not achieving equity principles. There are at least two interesting ideas in bills that other members have submitted and I hope we’ll take a look at them. One would require small co-pays from those who get full coverage under Medicaid and transfer the money for more equitable subsidies; the other would look at what we might be able to do by teaming up with a regional multi-state effort.

The one budget proposal that does affect costs is one that could drive them up. Our state regulators of hospital budgets and insurance rates get their budget funded partially through billing those who get regulated (the hospitals and insurance companies) and partially through state funds that are matched with federal funds.

We’ve got a big problem with the goose that lays our golden eggs for health care. (We get a lot more for health care from the feds than we pay in with all our taxes – in other words, other states subsidize us.)

We have a deal with the federal government that allows us flexible use of matching federal Medicaid money for a wide range of investments, as long as it stays under a cap. The cap is based on the federal money we would have been entitled to for regular Medicaid spending if it was not for the creative improvements we make with that flexibility.

We’re almost at the cap. The goose is running out of eggs. We have to prioritize where we spend them.

So the budget for the Green Mountain Care Board (the regulators) proposes to reduce the state and federal funds used, and replace them by billing more to the hospitals and insurers. The problem: our non-profit hospitals and insurance companies don’t actually pay those bills; we do, through higher prices.

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Turning to Mental Health

The Department of Mental Health issued a report to us in mid-January stressing the need for both expansion of psychiatric inpatient beds and for more community services to help prevent people from reaching that level of need.

The University of Vermont Health Network is looking at a 25-bed inpatient expansion at Central Vermont Medical Center. The DMH budget proposes only a 6-bed expansion of supported community residences. That’s a disconnect.

There was a lot of media last week about DMH investing $17 million more into school-based mental health supports to help prevent later, more severe problems. That’s false accounting. That money simply funnels through DMH from local school budgets in order to obtain federal matching funds (part of that “flexibility” deal we have.)

Finally, DMH is proposing to eliminate the funding for supervision in emergency rooms that it started supplying when the ER delays began after Irene.

I firmly believe that all health care costs belong within our health care reimbursement system, including Medicaid, but not funded through separate state money that doesn’t include other insurers. That includes for mental health care.

However, there is one small subset of mental health care that carries a unique cost. For about 10 percent of psychiatric admissions, the state has stepped in and mandated health care that individuals do not request or want: involuntary care based upon “danger to self or others.”

(Sometimes the focus on this small number obscures the fact that most people with a mental health care need want help, just like people with any other health care need.)

Because it is state law that is requiring involuntary care, I think that the costs attributed to forcing people into care – such as staffing to prevent them from leaving the emergency room – is a uniquely state obligation. We should not be transferring this cost to our hospitals.

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Paid Leave, Minimum Wage

Major bills working through House and Senate are those to increase the minimum wage and to create a mandatory paid leave insurance program. Balancing factor questions: will these help attract and retain our workforce and improve financial stability for families? Or will they stall economic growth, increase tax burdens, reduce jobs and hurt the people they intend to help?

Those are the debates on the imminent horizon. I am looking to what those bills will look like when they reach the House floor, any new insights since we debated them a year ago, and constituent input in considering what direction is in the best interest of Vermonters.

Speaking of “what they look like when they reach the House floor,” it is worth noting that 800-plus bills get introduced each year, 100 or so end up being passed, and many are never even taken up. So when you hear in the media that such-and-such has been proposed in the legislature, it is usually premature to either panic or rejoice.

Even when there are reports that a bill has been passed, it usually means it has passed either the House or the Senate – but not yet both. The deadline this year to get through at least one body, in order to even be considered by the other, is March 15. There are always exceptions, but generally speaking the failure to meet this “crossover” deadline means continuation of the bill’s path forward will be delayed at least until next year.

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Word Games

Despite all the weightier subjects before us, much attention this week will be on the debate of H. 57, the abortion bill, which passed the Judiciary Committee on Friday and is expected for debate on the House floor on Wednesday and Thursday.

It’s had a lot of rewording, and the final version makes even more explicit what I described previously. The bill creates no new law (or expansion of legal access) than what has existed before; it also creates no new protection that does not currently exist, regardless of whether Roe v Wade were to be overturned.

Does that include the right to abortion until the moment of at least partial birth? Yes, that’s the current status in Vermont, since we have no limitations in law. Some argue that since such late abortions never actually happen currently, it doesn’t matter that we are passing a law that says there is a right to access them – a somewhat curious perspective on the rationale for passing laws.

Ultimately, it isn’t a bill that changes anything, but it is a bill that forces legislators to endorse the current status, or to oppose it. Since I do not endorse the current status, I will vote no.

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It is truly an honor to represent you. Please contact me with your concerns and thoughts; I’m best reached via email at adonahue@leg.state.vt.us.

Legislative Update, February 2, 2019

Rep. Anne Donahue

Legislative Update

Feb. 2, 2019

There is a public hearing scheduled this week (Wed., Feb. 6) on the subject of H. 57, a bill titled as “relating to preserving the right to abortion” that is now being reviewed in the House Human Services Committee. It’s set from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the House chambers.

An abortion bill controversy in Vermont? Why in the world at this point in time?

The sponsors are saying that we need to protect a woman’s right to choose, given the current makeup of the US Supreme Court and the fear that Roe v Wade might be overturned.

Roe v Wade and the decisions after it identified what can, or cannot, be restricted in terms of access to abortion. There are restrictions that are constitutionally permitted (but not required); for example, after a developing fetus reaches the age at which they could survive outside the womb, termed “viability.” If Roe v Wade were partially or fully overturned, more restrictions might be permitted by different states’ laws.

However, Vermont currently has no restrictions. Thus a change in US Supreme Court rulings would have no effect whatsoever on the laws of Vermont. The only restriction Vermont law ever had was thrown out by the Vermont Supreme Court in 1972, a year before Roe v Wade.

As former Vermont Law School Professor Cheryl Hanna wrote in a Seven Days column in 2005, “If Roe is overturned, the Vermont State Legislature could arguably criminalize abortion for both women and the professionals who perform them. If such a law came to pass, it would be instantly appealed to our Vermont Supreme Court. Given the … [1972 Vermont case] it's likely the Court would rule such a law unconstitutional.”

If the newly proposed bill passes, it would create no new rights that do not already exist in Vermont, but also would do nothing to prevent a different, future legislature from making a change such as Hanna was referencing, because a future legislature can always change any existing law.

The flag-waving over this bill reminds me a bit of the parent who “rescues” their child from a monster under the bed, and becomes a hero to the child. The monster that this bill would save us from -- a threat to abortion rights in Vermont – doesn’t exist, but plenty of legislators want to be the hero that vanquishes it.

The bill is actually having a different effect. It making some people realize for the first time that in Vermont, abortion is legal at any time during pregnancy, right up until the moment of birth. It goes far beyond the requirements of Roe v Wade, and there are many who are generally pro-choice who are uncomfortable with that extreme.

That’s what is creating new controversy. A law that would actually change nothing at all is being vigorously supported under the false belief that is it necessary for protecting women’s rights, and is being vigorously opposed under the false belief that defeating it would protect against third trimester, post-viability abortions.

It is, however, a warm-up debate for something much more significant. It is generally expected that a proposal is imminent for a constitutional amendment in Vermont that would explicitly say that human personhood does not begin until birth and that abortion is a right up until birth.

That would begin a multi-year process. A constitutional amendment requires a bill in the legislature then re-affirmation in the following legislative biennium, followed by a statewide referendum.

What has long disturbed me in this debate is the way that both sides ignore the truths that exist from the opposing perspective, as if those truths would defeat their own position.

The fact is that a developing child in the womb is not like any other life, because its continued growth depends upon the body of a woman for its sustenance. It is, in the truest sense, encroaching upon that woman’s own bodily integrity. That issue cannot be tossed aside.

On the other hand, this is not the same as cancer cells that are invading a body. They are the cells of a genetically distinct human life, which is wholly vulnerable for its survival though the safety and nourishment provided by being attached to its mother.

That becomes the true debate: at what point is a person obligated to sustain the life of another person against their will?

If we focused on that question, there might be a better understanding of the competing values at stake, regardless of which value each of us placed first.

I don’t think criminalizing the actions of a person wants to reclaim their body will ever be a solution, but I also strongly oppose the characterization of abortion as being merely an issue of “reproductive rights.”

And I would never vote for any law that establishes – as H. 57 does – that “a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus shall not have independent rights under Vermont law.”

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This Year’s Budget

The presentation of the Governor’s budget doesn’t mean legislators know much about what’s in it yet beyond the same headlines the public read. That will take many committee hearings of drilling down into budget line details: what areas are proposed for cuts? Where are the “upward pressures”?

I was struck by the absence of any mention of health care in this year’s address. I buttonholed the Governor later to ask about it. He explained that he felt the focus needed to be the issue of our workforce crisis, but that there are, indeed, health care initiatives that he will be bringing to my committee.

We are facing two ongoing issues.

The first is access, which translates mostly into affordability but also includes the issue of shortages in the health care workforce. While we can all agree that everyone should be able to access the health care they need, the “how to” menu is far-reaching.

The proposal for a tax-supported universal system for primary care is back this year (the bill died in House Appropriations last year), but there are also complex, interconnected issues regarding health insurance products.

The core concept of health insurance is, of course, that we all spread the risks of serious illness. Only some of us will get cancer; no one can afford to pay for cancer treatment on their own; if we all contribute to a pool of money, it will be possible for those who get cancer to afford to get the treatment.

One of the tricky pieces is the question of who is in which pool of risk. If everyone is in, the cost is spread evenly. But if you are 30, you have a much lower risk of getting cancer – or of almost any of the highest cost illnesses.

So if you are paying into the same insurance pool as a 60-year-old – both of you are paying the same price for insurance – your insurance is going to be much more costly than if you were in a pool with only those who were 30 or younger.

It’s no surprise that while our rate of uninsured folks in Vermont is almost down to a mere 3%, by age group, the 25-to-35-olds are at 11%. They look at the odds of getting sick and the cost of chipping in for everyone else, and some decide it isn’t worth it.

The result of that, of course, is that everyone left in the pool has to pay a little bit more. In addition, if those gamblers do get sick, they are likely to still end up getting care with costs borne by the rest of us.

Because of changes in federal law, my committee is going to be sorting our some very technical issues that relate to whether certain healthier groups can form their own pols, making insurance more affordable for their group, but stranding others.

Saying it that way might make it sound easy (why would we let some people strand others?), but part of the problem is that federal law already allows many groups to carve themselves out. Who gets to be in or out? And what happens to the remainders?

And as costs rise, even if more people are now insured, there are also more who are getting insurance that only helps pay for care at very high costs. That leaves those folks with most of their care still being unaffordable.

Our second big health care issue needs little introduction by now: it’s the question of access to mental health services. The key symptom of our crisis in this area is the fact that Vermonters often waits days, or sometimes weeks, in an emergency room waiting for a needed inpatient admission.

The administration reported to our committee a week ago that it is clear that we need both an expansion of the capacity for inpatient care in Vermont as well as an expansion of community supports. (Community services can prevent a crisis that lands someone in an emergency room, and also enable people to be discharged from a hospital sooner.)

Planning for adding inpatient beds – a multi-year process -- is underway by the University of Vermont Health Network; community capacity is usually overseen by the Department of Mental Health.

Since no new initiatives were announced as part of the Governor’s budget address, our committee will be waiting for more information on how the state plans to increase those services in the budget year ahead.

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Drugs and Guns

Most of the work of the legislature is on intricate details of laws that affect our lives in multiple ways: how is health care financed and delivered? Which government services should be funded? How do we create equitable tax laws? What do we expect of our education system?

Every one of our large, public policy issues break down into literally hundreds of smaller questions that must be translated, word by word, into legislation. Very few of them make for good headline news.

But abortion – guns – drugs – those capture our attention.

Marijuana will be back this year. Last year we made it legal for individuals to possess and grow small amounts for personal use. Now the question is whether we should allow it to be sold as a regulated substance, like alcohol, with taxes to offset the costs of both regulation and public protection.

In concept, I supported the idea that it should not be illegal to make private use of pot, and in concept, I don’t support turning it into an industry of sales and profits.

But I voted against legalization, because we didn’t develop a law that kept use truly limited to private possession. Proposals I made to prevent use around kids were rejected; there were gaps for highway safety issues; and of course, no money to address areas of concern.

I find myself more likely to vote in support of a “tax-and-regulate” system, because now that we have chosen to make it legal, it is likely the only we can improve the oversight and control of uses.

A lot will still depend upon what a final bill looks like when, and if, it makes it to the House floor. The Senate is currently working on the details of what it will propose to us.

Guns will be back again this year, as well.

Last year’s focus was on reacting to a very specific issue: a perceived mass shooting threat in our own state. Now, other proposals that did not get attention in past years are re-surfacing.

I do not struggle with either the concept that we hold a constitutional right to own guns, regardless of personal tastes or fears, or that there are circumstances where that right can be restricted. It’s easy to conclude that the state has the right to take away a gun from someone aiming it at someone else.

Last year’s bills ran the range from those that rationally restricted rights based on a demonstrated risk of harm, to those that proposed restrictions based more on fear alone. I supported “extreme risk” orders that remove gun rights from persons who show a direct risk, as well as domestic violence restrictions.

I did not support age restrictions, magazine limits, and private sales restrictions where there was no demonstrated connection to actual increases in public safety that outweighed the burden on individual rights.

Some of this year’s proposals appear easy to assess. To my technologically-unrefined mind, creation of guns that cannot be traced by using a 3-D printer seem like fantasy-world, but certainly should not be legal.

Others are much tougher. Where does the balance fall when assessing “waiting period” laws that bar purchases in the interest of protecting against impetuous actions?

Your input on tax-and-regulate marijuana and on assorted gun restriction proposals, as they emerge into specific bills this year, will be welcomed.

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It is truly an honor to represent you. Please contact me with your concerns and thoughts; I’m best reached via email at adonahue@leg.state.vt.us.

Legislative Update: Start of the New Session

In record-breaking time – literally, on the first day – committee assignments were made in the House and the work of educating new members on the issues before us began. There are far more new members than average, so many committees had to be juggled to balance the numbers of those with experience, and those without.

I was reappointed as Vice-Chair of the Health Care Committee, and as a case in point, only the chair and I have been in the legislature for more than one term. The rest of the committee is made up of those who were on the committee last session for the first time (4 of them) or who are brand new to health care (5). With such complex issues in health care, that means we are spending the better part of the first several weeks on an overview of the different parts of the system.

Icebergs Ahead

Health care will face both old and new priorities this year.

How do we adjust Vermont law to protect the stability of the Vermont insurance market given ongoing federal changes? Should those who take a free ride – fail to buy insurance that they could afford, knowing that the rest of us will pick up the cost if they end up in the hospital – face financial penalties? How do we help those who do not have access to any affordable way to get coverage?

Is there more we can do as a state to address drug pricing? What are the best responses to the crisis in access to mental health care? Is our “all payer” model for coordinating care across the payers (private, Medicaid and Medicare) and progressing as hoped? Is our health exchange (Vermont Health Connect) finally functioning as it should?

And one of the sleeper issues for this year: should Vermont shift from getting permission to add health information to a statewide electronic health record network (called “opt in”) to automatically adding it unless a person objects (“opt out”)?

Primary Care Access

One report we received last week was the results of the Household Insurance Survey which is conducted every three or four years to get a clearer picture of coverage issues. The big positives: our second-lowest-in-the-nation rate of uninsured – just over three percent – dropped even a tad lower. Also, the number of people who said they delayed or couldn’t afford needed health care dropped.

The negative: those who are considered under-insured increased. Under-insured means you have insurance, but the money you have to spend for co-pays or deductibles is an unaffordable percentage of your income. People in this category are in the income level just above those eligible for Medicaid, but are working in jobs that do not offer insurance.

There has been a clamor for a while about creating a “universal primary care” system to ensure that everyone has access to basic preventative and routine health care. This survey supports my perspective that the majority of Vermonters have really good access: almost everyone with Medicaid, Medicare or strong private coverage. I think we need to target our efforts on ensuring access for the much smaller group of uninsured or under-insured folks.

Mental Health

Our committee attended a community presentation on the efforts of the University of Vermont Health Network to address access to mental health care, and one part of CEO John Brumsted’s overview was striking. He said that the all-payer model is finally enabling the system to invest in meeting mental health needs.

That would be a striking sign of success in at least one aspect of this health reform initiative.

A key to the reform is that health care providers will eventually no longer get paid for each service they give. Part of the problem with that system was that the way a particular service was valued determined how much access there was. Mental health has a long history of being under-valued, and low reimbursements meant there was a dis-incentive to giving that care.

On the other hand, specific types of care fell in the opposite category. For example, some services actually created revenue for hospitals because they were reimbursed at more than what they cost to provide. That created a financial incentive to do more of those services. After all, even though they are non-profits, our hospitals still need to keep afloat financially.

The reformed model pays per-person for all of that person’s needs to keep healthy. The new incentive is to ensure care is well coordinated to avoid wasting resources, and to ensure that people get what they need early on, before needing more expensive services.

Because we now recognize how interconnected our mind and body are, we recognize that mental health is a crucial investment in keeping people healthy. According to Brumsted, the new flexibility of the payment reform is enabling UVM to move more money into mental health with the prospect of better health outcomes. The UVM network is moving more mental health providers onto primary health care teams. It is also developing a project to increase inpatient psychiatric capacity at Central Vermont Medical Center to help address the crisis in emergency rooms around the state, where some people wait weeks to get access to a hospital bed.

There is one clear consensus on this issue: we won’t resolve that crisis without investing in both hospital and community mental health service. Some of those people waiting in emergency rooms might not have ended up there if they had access to care before they reached a mental health crisis point.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence and health care? Yes, it’s already here, and our committee attended a meeting of the new study commission that is working on recommendations for whether state oversight is needed. What is AI? Your email server may already be one that offers a choice of replies that you can click to answer a message sent to you. There are no people on the other end, reading your incoming email to identify answers you might want to send. Instead, there is artificial intelligence: a complex computer algorithm that scans for key words in the message to spit out (with amazing accuracy) your possible desired response.

There are a lot of health care applications that could get to the point of diagnosis and recommended treatment. That could be promising; it could be scary.

Picture going in for your annual physical. Your doctor states aloud some symptoms you’ve been having and her thoughts about causes. The computer (secured by voice recognition of the provider) has your full electronic health record, and might respond, “That is a reasonable diagnosis, but did you remember the family history of xyz? Perhaps a test for pqr is indicated in this situation.”

But think about the vast amount of information you already give out via the choices you make on your social media accounts, plus the tracking of your physical location you make available on various devices.

Research has shown that based on your online choices and the messages you send, it is possible to identify that you may be depressed. If you are now identified as walking towards a high bridge crossing, your iPhone could ping you to ask if you are OK and offer support. Do we want Google to be doing this?  What if instead of offering help, it automatically sends police to pick you up to involuntarily hold you for screening at a hospital?

In our grand balance of altruism versus personal liberties, there is a lot to think about in this brave new world.

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Forced Mergers

Act 46 established a statewide public policy to create larger school districts in order to ensure that students had more equal access to educational opportunities. Even though we have some local control of our budgets and thus our property taxes, all of us fund education on a statewide basis and the state has the obligation to ensure equal opportunity. Act 46 mandated larger districts, but first provided a window of time for communities to decide the best ways to achieve them locally. The new Paine Mountain School District (Northfield-Williamstown) is an example of a forced – yet self-directed – merger. We have reached the end of that window, and the law created a mechanism for reviewing alternative proposals from towns that did not establish a merger plan.

Berlin was one of those, and the state Board of Education rejected its alternative plan and has mandated an involuntary merger with a number of its surrounding, un-merged communities. These remaining communities are now crying foul, saying it is undemocratic for the state to overturn the decisions of local voters. The reality is more complex than that. Act 46 was passed as state public policy by democratically elected state legislators, and then allowed local decisions about how to accomplish the policy.

The issue now is how to address communities that appear to not be meeting that state policy. It would be very unfair to simply allow those communities to do as they please. Northfield might not have wanted to merge with Williamstown but did so in compliance with the law; others should not get to opt out by not complying. (As an aside, I would say the early evidence is that the Paine Mountain district’s school board is pursuing the exact benefits hoped for under the law. It is working as intended.)

On the other hand, we need to make sure as a legislature that our process for assessing the situation of those remaining communities is actually creating the intended result. If the alternative plans they developed are a better route towards the goal of equal opportunity, but the state Board of Education did not give adequate deference to how it met the goals, it would not be supporting that intent. Berlin, as a community, worked very hard to reach a solution that complied with the law, and we need to make sure that its plan was assessed fairly before being rejected. Yes, we in the legislature do sometimes create laws that have unintended consequences and don’t produce the results we wanted.

That is why I signed on to a bill proposing a moratorium – a delay – on the forced mergers until we have a change to do a more thorough assessment of whether we sent up the right process for making those decisions. My district-mate, Rep. Ken Goslant, also co-sponsored it.

It will be the Education Committee that ends up with the responsibility to do the “deep dive” and assess whether changes are needed, and propose a response for the full legislature to consider.

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It is truly an honor to represent you. Please contact me with your concerns and thoughts; I’m best reached via email at adonahue@leg.state.vt.us.

June 23, 2018 Legislative Update, budget saga continues

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.

June 17, 2018 veto override update

Legislative Update, June 17, 2018

H. 13 Veto Override Vote

Rep. Anne Donahue

This will be a somewhat meandering, think-aloud commentary on the budget stalemate and pending veto override vote. I’m sharing it with those who have written about the vote and those of you on my email list, but not in the Northfield News or Front Porch Forum, because you can better engage in dialogue if it generates more questions than answers. There is too much complexity for sound bites, and I’m sharing thoughts that I’d might not want to share in a more public forum (understanding, of course, that email is a public forum …)

Near the end of our regular session, I voted for the fy 2019 budget and against the tax bill. If the reason for opposing the tax bill was the increase in property taxes, that would be an inconsistent vote, since the money to prevent the tax increase was being appropriated elsewhere in the budget bill.

That wasn’t the reason for my vote. The budget was a good, reasonable, restrained budget. The increase in property taxes reflected the education budget decided upon by voters, with the primary state role only being to come up with the money through the traditional combination of a standard share of the general fund plus by setting an adequate property tax rate.

We had some bonus money from a tobacco case settlement, ergo called “one-time money” since it won’t repeat in the annual revenue cycle. Investing it in artificially reduced property taxes for a year, rather than putting it into a one-time investment, didn’t make much sense to me. Among other things, it would exacerbate the existing problem of the disconnect between local budget votes and tax rates: increase the budget but get no tax increase.

I voted against the tax bill for other reasons, primarily because it failed to add aggressive steps to deal with future education spending. We have a big problem when we try to say that local spending determines local property taxes, because it is false in significant ways. We have a statewide property tax that pools the money and pays out to high spending towns at the expense of low spending towns. That’s why the focus on maintaining “local decision-making” over schools is a false construct. They aren’t just local decisions, but we’re allowing them to be made locally. We need a different split between state and local shares. There are other complex problems that further add to the inequities – including the challenges of the “common level of appraisal” that attempts to compare values across the state -- and we continue to punt on solutions. It was not just that I had a theoretical desire to see progress on these issues. Some steps were included in earlier versions of the bill but dropped out, and were in proposed amendments that were rejected.

I was also concerned (though I wouldn’t have voted against the tax bill on this issue alone) about the lack of transparency regarding the tax shifting that we did with the state income tax. We claimed to adjust rates to, on average, make people whole for the increase in state taxes that would have occurred as a consequence of the mechanics of the federal tax reduction. If we hadn’t, there would have been a big bonus to the state coffers, and the benefits people are getting from the federal cut would have been reduced. But we didn’t actually give it all back. We used a small piece of it for two other (worthy) goals: eliminating the tax on Social Security for low income retirees and increasing the earned income tax credit for low income workers. The problem is that we didn’t tell the public that this was how we funded those two pieces of resulting reduced state revenue.

But the bottom line in terms of the budget is that I would not have voted to sustain the veto of the budget we passed in May. I would have gone against the governor because I disagreed with his position. I would have voted to sustain the veto of the tax bill. I would have stayed consistent with my prior votes on both bills.

But there was never going to be a veto override vote. That was a plan made by the Democratic majority of the House and Senate. They laid down the gauntlet early on, ending the session without scheduling an override vote date and thus telling the governor that if he vetoed the bills, he would have to call a special (new) session. That created the opportunity to renegotiate everything and anything. We are now in a new session, and all bills from last session that did not get passed and signed are dead. Everything must start over.

This is where the news media sound bites and blame game began in earnest. There has been talk about the governor throwing in last minute proposals and demands. That simply isn’t true. He presented a comprehensive, balanced budget in January that incorporated all the mechanisms to achieve his aim of not raising taxes or fees, including property tax rates – and that was before anyone knew about the extra settlement money.

The legislature didn’t like some of it. That’s its prerogative. The new budget spent more on assorted items but remained balanced, in part thanks to higher-than-projected tax revenues and in part due to the bonus money. The governor did not threaten to veto the budget saying, “I am opposed to your spending choices and any increased spending.” He met the legislature half way, saying, “Go ahead with your added spending, but keep the tax rates level by using some of the increased revenues to stay with my original budget target of not increasing taxes.” He presented ideas about how that could be achieved without cutting the other spending through using the one-time money as a loan based on planned future saving – savings through combining some of the plans already discussed earlier in the session. I thought that was not a great idea to rely on planned future savings, which is part of why I did not support it, but these were direct responses to the legislature’s decisions to try to avert a veto, not last-minute new proposals.

Ironically, part of the jump in property tax rates this year is that the legislative majority opted last year to use one-time money (from the reserves) to equalize the money not saved when it rejected the governor’s proposal for a statewide teacher’s healthcare benefit. Those reserves had to be refilled this year. Using one-time money was not a good idea then, either; it was not a good compromise, but the governor lost any room to push for a stronger resolution by responding to news media inquiries immediately after that budget veto regarding whether a stalemate would create the risk of a government shutdown. He said it would not – because he would compromise his position before he would allow that to happen. (Any wonder why he refused to say the same thing this year – and thus was being blamed almost immediately for creating the supposed risk of a shutdown?)

The Democratic majority wants to invest the settlement money into the debt we owe on the teacher’s retirement fund, which raises the question of how we have such a staggering debt – and why anyone would not want to try to begin to address it. The shortfall came from underfunding what the actuaries said we needed back in the 1990’s. But just a few years ago, we adopted an aggressive plan not just to meet current payments, but to begin restoring the shortfall. That is now part of the budget every year, including this year. In other words, the proposed use of the extra revenue to put towards the retirement fund would be an extra investment – and it’s not a bad idea. But failing to do it is not a shortchanging of the fund, which we are already rebuilding.

Now both sides are involved in what I think is a foolhardy game of blaming each other for the specter of a shutdown. It’s foolhardy because I don’t think the public cares who would be at fault if it happened. The public would be mighty mad at both sides for failing to resolve the stalemate; no one wins on that one. And in fact, both sides would share the blame. I think the media gets a share of the blame on this as well, by early and often raising the “what if” question, long before it was really any threat at all. Given last year, the governor was bound to say, “I’m not changing my position but it will be the Democrats at fault,” and of course the Democrats had to push back and say “we’re willing to compromise so it will be his fault.” The prospect of a shutdown has now become a big focus in the media and thus the public eye and has helped back both sides into corners and contributed to a stalemate that now brings us to the point of brinksmanship.

One immediate result that has been a major distraction and that has delayed progress has been the legislature’s passage of H. 13 – the budget created during the new session – and its inevitable veto, leading to the vote on whether to override it that is expected this week. I already referenced that we can’t have a veto session, because the legislature ended the session without holding a date open. But we can, in this new session, pass new bills that can be vetoed, and we can have a veto override vote of that.

The anticipated process was that there would be negotiations resulting in a new, compromise, tax bill and budget bill, and we would be called in to take it up and vote on it (as occurred last year during the veto session, after a veto override vote failed.) Instead the Democrats, frustrated by perceived intransigence of the governor and unwilling to compromise themselves, parlayed the “shutdown threat” into a sound bite solution: let’s pass a new budget that only has all the things both side agree on, and thus be able to reassure everyone there won’t be a shutdown, and then negotiate just the areas of disagreement. (Among other things, that would allow for accusing anyone who voted against it as not caring whether there was a government shutdown.) The new “budget” bill included all the regular budget items but held aside the disputed surplus money. It then also included all the items in the tax bill that had consensus – the state income taxes changes. Plus one other thing: it included a flat tax rate for residential property (something already achieved with some of the added revenue), but left in the increase for the non-residential property tax rate. So it did not include only items not in dispute. It included a default position – barring a future compromise and revision – of the underlying tax increase.

The legislature said that suggesting that this meant they would allow that default to occur by not resolving the tax dispute was an unfair suggestion that it would fail in its commitment to find a solution, and that the governor was rejecting it purely because he wanted “all the cards” for negotiating the tax solution. But that is a two-way street. The Democratic majority was not willing to have the default in H. 13 to be a level tax rate because it would mean trusting the governor to still be motivated to resolve the dispute, and the legislature wants to be the one to hold the cards.

Just as a reminder, non-residential doesn’t mean out-of-stater. It means Vermonters who run businesses and provide jobs; it means renters who pay property tax indirectly through their rents; it means folks with a camp; yes, also (a minority of the total), out-of-state property owners. The irony of leaving the residential tax rate flat and increasing the non-residential rate is that part of the reason for two rates is that the residential rate is tied to actual budget decisions under the theory that those who don’t get to vote on the budget shouldn’t have their taxes tied to that vote. A business owner, for example, may live in another town (where their residential tax is impacted by their vote), but they don’t vote in the town where the property is being taxed. So agreeing to keep residential taxes flat but increasing non-residential is the reverse of any move to try to refocus voters on why they need to be vigilant about cost containment.

There is something else that has changed between passing the original budget and what is in front of us now with the new combination budget and tax bill. Last week, we received yet another revenue upgrade. For the first time in years, the economy is perking up, and instead of facing rescissions due to lower-than-projected revenue, we have an increase in regular revenue. This is no longer about “one-time” money from a lawsuit settlement.

If we are taking in more taxes than we need to fund our planned expenditures, we have two choices: add to our spending, or return it to taxpayers. In the ideal world, we would return it to those who paid it (income tax payers and business tax payers), but that would be hopelessly complex. But it could be used to hold property taxes down. It’s not enough to keep property tax rates completely flat, but if in combination a part of the one-time funds were used to pay some of the one-time education fund expense that exist (namely, the tax incentives given to towns under Act 46 mergers), we could achieve the compromise that has been eluding us.

In light of that, it would make no sense whatsoever to proceed with a budget that injects the non-residential rate increase as the default position. It also would make no sense to argue for a budget that leaves a flat rate as the default. There is no reason to pass a bill (assuming there ever was) that creates this confounding additional dispute on a “default position” in order to achieve a claimed relief from the threat of a shutdown. There is less reason than there ever was to respond to the red herring of a shutdown with anything short of addressing the actual dispute: whether we should or should not – need or do not need – to increase property tax rates.

So I will be voting to sustain the governor’s veto of H. 13, the false consensus bill, and hoping that getting that distraction out of the way clears the way to start the real route to problem-solving. The real route is almost always to address the problem head on.

May 25, 2018 Legislative Update

Sigh.

I held off on an end-of-session update to be able to include the outcome of our special session last week, but we did nothing but “gavel in and gavel out.”

It turns out that while the governor can call us into a special session, we, the body (which actually means the leadership), can then decide how long it goes.

Since the leadership wants more time to work in committee and also pass new bills, we’re breaking for a week to allow that work time, and then reconvening next week, probably for several days.

A solution to the stalemate between the governor and the legislature seems daunting, given the non-negotiable positions they have laid out on the budget and taxes.

I’m going to try to summarize what those are and share my perspective, understanding that everyone’s description of the facts is biased – intentionally or not -- based on our own points of view.

Understanding what happened last year is absolutely critical to this year’s stalemate.

The governor wanted to protect Vermonters from a big jump in property taxes, and a change that was occurring in teacher’s health insurance gave a unique opportunity to shift to a statewide contract and save an estimated $17 million.

The legislature refused to make the insurance change, leading to a veto of the budget and tax rate bills.

The compromise was a façade, and both sides could claim victory: no insurance plan change, but the $17 million was saved.

How? A big part of it was through using reserves to fill in the education fund. What we knew was that this would only defer the issue for a year and carry the deficit over to this year – and so here we are.

That deficit increased further for all the standard reasons of costs and higher budgets, despite school boards keeping a tight line on budget increases.

The core of our education financing is that local voters decide on budgets, and the state government then sets the tax rate necessary to fund those budgets.

In that sense, the House and Senate leaders are correct in saying that we are not the ones raising property taxes: the voters made that choice, in budgets adopted both last year and this.

But it’s more complicated than that.

First, we made the outcome artificially low last year, something voters would not have known in understanding budgets this year.

Second, our financing system, in its efforts at equity, create a disconnect.

Despite what a Northfield or Berlin voter decides about a local budget – and despite how restrained it might be – it is what all our school districts spend statewide that results in a large part of the rate that everyone pays.

So the governor is correct in saying that raising rates “because the voters made knowing choices” is a false attribution.

We, in state leadership, have done little over the years to either restructure the system or to help lay out a path for more sustainable budgets that reflect our shrinking number of students. (School consolidation makes sense for educational opportunity, but not for significant cost savings.)

As students go down but staffing stays the same, we end up in the situation of having both the highest per-pupil costs and the highest student-teacher ratio (by far) in the nation, without better educational results.

Something is wrong with this picture.

So the governor wants two things: a series of steps in a five-year plan to reduce costs, and an up front investment this year – money borrowed from the general fund – to keep the tax rate from going up.

The savings, he believes, will not only pay back the loan but also keep rates the same for five years plus generate more money that can be reinvested in other needs – higher ed or pre-K, for example.

The legislative leaders oppose the plan for two reasons.

They are skeptical of the savings and not supportive of some of the more aggressive measures, such as putting pressure on schools to reduce staffing ratios.

The source of the money is a bigger problem.

It is what is called “one-time money,” meaning we won’t have it from ordinary tax revenues next year. It comes from a settlement we received from past tobacco litigation.

So next year, if we don’t achieve the savings, we are stuck again with an even big gap and facing an even bigger rate jump.

I think it’s a mistake to keep tax rates down artificially through mechanisms that only push the problem down the line for a year. We already did that last year. Banking on a future savings plan is risky.

And if rates keep staying artificially stable, why would voters think there is any need to start reconsidering local budget in ways such as evaluating staffing ratios?

However, the education funding bill the legislature passed is also very problematic because it does little to help address the core problem of property taxes increasing faster than the economy, despite fewer students.

It also does nothing to add protection for low-spending towns having to pay towards higher-spending towns. That would be easy to do, by reducing the percentage of state payments versus locally raised money to pay local budgets.

In other words, I think the governor’s five-year savings plan is solid. I voted against the education funding bill because it lacked measures that could have and should have been included to put more pressure on “high spenders.”

But we shouldn’t rely on these potential savings in advance and borrow one-time money that will have to be paid back from the core statewide budget in future years.

There is one piece to both sides that isn’t getting much notice. Both what we passed and what the governor proposes includes a built-in tax increase for some taxpayers, mostly middle-income ones.

One of the biggest costs to our system is the money we pay back for income sensitivity, so that at lower incomes – actually, all but upper incomes -- taxes are paid based on income level rather than property value.

That gets capped at a homestead value of $300,000, and the cap is being reduced. Those making more than the medium income in Vermont but with higher value homes will thus be seeing a tax increase, regardless of which plan (or what compromise) is eventually adopted.

Stay tuned.

***

A lot of bills were passed in the last week of the session, and some that didn’t quite make deadline will get passed during our special session. Whether that’s good or bad will depend upon whether you support the bill.

One that is being taken up in my Health Care Committee is a bill that requires lower co-pays for chiropractic visits, on the theory that the co-pays should fall somewhere between a primary doctor co-pay and a specialty co-pay rather than as a specialty visit.

I think it requires more thought about overall impact on health premiums and how we spread costs, but there is some good logic behind it. The problem is that we are now heading into June, and the insurance rate-setting oversight process is well underway.

A lot of work would have to be re-done to incorporate it at this point in time. The boat has been missed. I think we need to wait until next year, not jam it through in this late, special session.

Another one is a bill that makes changes to Act 250 to protect forestland. I think it has some solid features. But the state has a major study underway – under the legislature’s directive – on broader Act 250 revisions, and it is due out this fall.

So that’s another one that I think needs to wait.

Then there is the bill that adds yet another piece to our “we must do something about Fair Haven” changes in law (whether they make sense or not.)

This one relates to threats being make against a school, and whether they result in reasonable fear being experienced by “any person.”

I was assured by our House Judiciary Committee it had no interest in moving this, so I held off on preparing an amendment to ensure it was limited to when the fear caused to others was foreseeable and intentional on the part of the person making the threat.

Now the bill is being moved forward again. After all, we have extra time!

Consider what just happened in Randolph.

Two kids get in a fight; one says in anger that he’s going to “shoot up the school.” We used to say, “your mamma wears Army boots” as our fighting words, but school shootings are what’s in all the news.

Does he realize the other kid is going to report this to his parents, who report it to the police, who report it to the schools for a precautionary districtwide school closing until investigated, which thereby strikes reasonable fear in many parents’ hearts?

(What if it got reported on social media, and someone in Arizona was put in fear of what might happen in Vermont?)

Under this proposed law, the kid would be guilty of a felony-level crime, punishable for an 18-year-old by three years in prison.

I know times have changed since it was a day’s suspension for calling in a bomb scare to get out of a test. The fear of something actually happening is real.

I still think we should punish based on the fear a person intends to cause, not an unforeseen impact on any other person under the sun.

***

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. You can find all of my updates at representativeannedonahue.blogspot.com. Thank you for the honor of representing you.

May 5, 2018 Legislative Update

Legislative Update

Rep. Anne Donahue

May 5, 2018

Home stretch fever has hit: rule suspensions to whip bills through quickly, long days on the floor, conference committees to work out differences between House and Senate, and committee time squeezed into random time slots to review proposals coming back from the Senate.

The “Donahue rule” [aka, “the 24-hour rule”] remains in effect, an unofficial policy that started some eight or so years ago after a session where I dug my heels in over being forced to vote on bills that we were seeing for the first time, still warm from the printer, rewritten in a conference committee. Since then the minority party has drawn the line to say that it will not suspend a rule to move a bill in less than 24 hours unless everyone is comfortable that they have had time to review and digest it. For many minor bills, it isn’t a problem. For major ones, the leadership has to plan for adequate timing, because a rules suspension to move faster than that requires a three-quarters vote, so this is a requirement we can enforce.

Will we actually adjourn next Saturday? Will we be back for a veto session? It’s anyone’s guess right now, as the power-brokers in the House and Senate battle differences with the Governor. The headliners are the tax bill (and property taxes), the budget, the minimum wage increase, and paid family leave, but there are many other issues in contention.

***

Water Clean-Up

It is our dirty little secret that rather than the pristine mountain streams and lakes that tourists envision, we have a serious pollution problem that shows up most blatantly when all those streams flow into Lake Champlain and it blooms with toxic algae in the summer.

So does a restaurant and hotel tax increase (on those tourists, along with ourselves) make sense as a way to address the multi-million dollar federal cleanup mandate? Raising this money in some fashion is a non-negotiable, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think this proposed tax is the best route. I liked the proposal from Rep. Cynthia Browning to dig into all possible revenue sources that are directly tied to sources of pollution – but that got knocked when tied to waiting a year to making a decision.

But here’s the thing: despite media reports that we voted for the rooms-and-meals tax, the bill doesn’t put it into effect until 2020. We have funding already in place until then, but we keep doing temporary measures without establishing a long-term funding plan. We’ve put it off for several years in a row. So I voted in support of the bill. I think we need the hammer over our heads. It will push everyone to work on a better solution, because if we don’t, we’ll be stuck with this one.

***

Missing Commerce

Twice last week, we had long floor debates on bills that will have a significant impact on our business community, but that never went through the Commerce and Economic Development Committee for review. They just came straight from the Judiciary Committee.

The first was a bill that imposes a first-in-the-nation liability to cover medical monitoring for persons who have been exposed to toxic waste by a chemicals company, and might develop an illness in the future as a result. The concept initially sounds reasonable, until you drill into details: “exposure” means even .001 percent more than routine public exposure; “risk of a related illness” means .001 percent increased risk than the general public of developing the disease; and “reasonably necessary” monitoring means that your doctor has agreed to recommend it.

The cost will be borne by liability insurers for businesses, and insurance is the jurisdiction and expertise of the Commerce and Economic Development committee, not Judiciary. However, a motion to send it there failed 55-64, an unusually close vote that showed some Democratic support for more careful scrutiny.

There was a similar debate over a consumer protection bill that creates a presumption that certain clauses in contracts are unconscionable, and that businesses can be fined for using them. Currently, courts make these rulings: unconscionable clauses can result in an entire contract being thrown out in favor of a consumer. This bill would, in effect, predetermine that some clauses should not be enforced, regardless of the willingness of a consumer to agree to certain conditions.

We were deluged with messages from every sector of our outdoor recreation industry about the economic impact on waiver agreements for sports that have known risks. Again, a motion to send the bill for review by the Commerce and Economic Development Committee failed 57-73, again with the support of some Democrats. An amendment to specifically exempt the recreation industry – which the Judiciary Committee had claimed would not be affected by the bill -- failed 72-59.

I voted against both bills in the form they were being presented.

***

Health Care Mandate

I’m on the conference committee with the Senate regarding our bill to create an individual mandate for purchasing health insurance to replace the one no longer being enforced by the federal government. A requirement that everyone has coverage is an essential trade-off if health insurance is being required to cover conditions that you already have when you sign up.

My committee didn’t include a penalty for not complying, because we wanted a work group to think this through this very carefully and make recommendations for us for next year: What exemptions should apply? What should the penalty be?

But we thought it was essential to put the mandate in place so that people were forewarned that this was happening. Our insurance experts told us that without doing at least that, insurance rates for everyone else would increase by two percent even in the first year (two percent on top of whatever increase was already occurring due to cost pressures.)

The Senate supported having a work group, but not the mandate itself. When the three Senators and three House members met for our first conference, we learned that the issue is that one of the Senators believes that there has to be a penalty included right from the start, or it’s worthless.

Do we come back with a compromise that creates a $25 penalty for the interim? Stand our ground and risk the bill dying? Conference committees are a surprisingly formal process of offer and counter-offer. The fate of this bill will be determined by this negotiating process.

***

Who Is a Child?

Under a bill we passed this week on juvenile court, a child can be defined as someone who is 18 or 19 if a judge thinks the case should be heard in Family Court. (That’s different even from the “youthful offender” status we have for those 18-to-22 years old.) Although the law will exclude violent felonies, I nonetheless thought we were being a bit inconsistent as policy-makers, given the level of urgency we’ve been placing on coming up with a new law so that in the future, someone like 18-year-old Jack Sawyer can be locked up for life.

Though I supported the Family Court bill, I am introducing an amendment to ensure that these young adults have the right to have their cases heard in a Criminal Court if that is what they want. The right to a jury trial is one of the things at stake. In addition, some may prefer an adult court fine or probation over the intrusion of having the Department of Children and Families in their lives.

***

DNA Rights

Speaking of civil rights, the new parentage law has come back from conference committee with a final, agreed-upon version. It includes requiring that DNA taken from an uninvolved family member by court order must be destroyed after it is no longer needed and the case is final.

An example of this situation would be your brother’s girlfriend suing to establish paternity of her child after your brother splits town. Under this law, you can be required to provide a DNA sample to see if there is a family link that might establish that your brother is the baby’s father.

I was very concerned about this, and the House Judiciary Committee did accept some of the protections I proposed, such as the right to a hearing. It refused my amendment to have the DNA destroyed, and the amendment was defeated on the House floor by a single vote. I brought the issue to the Senate; they added it in. Now the House Judiciary Committee has accepted its inclusion.

***

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. You can find all of my updates at representativeannedonahue.blogspot.com. Thank you for the honor of representing you.