February 24, 2024 Legislative Update

 

Urgency versus deliberation. Inclusion versus inaction. Complexity versus fairness. Unintended consequences. Some of these real-life conflicts in the process of lawmaking are front-and-center before us in the issues we will debate in the weeks ahead.

A report updating the progress of implementation of last year’s Clean Heat Standard bill makes some of these tensions dramatically clear. That was the bill that requires a financially-forced transition away from fossil fuel heating sources. Some believed it would be unsustainably costly; others that it was essential to address climate change; and others also believed it was being imposed far too rapidly.

The Public Utility Commission, working on the first phase to develop the rules that will be brought to the legislature for approval in 2025, had a message in its “check-in” status report this year. The executive summary is worth directly quoting.

“…[M]ost participants have expressed serious misgivings that the quality of the rule and the success of its implementation will suffer as a result of the aggressive schedule required by Act 18…[It] sets such an untenable pace that it will be extremely challenging for the Commission,

the Equity Advisory Group, and the Technical Advisory Group to carry out their responsibilities

in a manner that allows time for deliberative process, thoughtful input from all stakeholders, and

sufficient public participation to design such a transformative, first-of-its-kind, highly complex,

and technical program. The Commission shares stakeholders’ serious concerns that any draft rule … will suffer from the haste demanded [which] … allots mere months to the creation of an unprecedented, complex program with the potential for unintended consequences that impact the lives of all Vermonters…” The full report can be found at: legislature.vermont.gov/assets/Legislative-Reports/Checkback-report-1-FINAL.pdf

There is no indication that the legislature will agree to any delay. Instead, we are now moving ahead on a new initiative to change our current Renewable Energy Standard to require 100 percent renewable sources by 2035. That, according to some testimony, will cost Vermonters $1 billion over the next 10 years.

It does respond to a criticism over both the Clean Heat Standard and our recent past targets to significantly increase electric vehicle use: the facts that shifts to electricity result in demands that our current electric grid can’t handle, and production of more electricity requires use of more fossil fuels and thus also increases greenhouse gasses. So this next bill would block that impact by shifting electric production to all renewable energy.

We are acting in response to urgent issues but creating significant risks of failure at multiple levels. Prominent in my mind has always been the size of our state relative to the impacts caused by others, and thus the fact that when we act alone – or are first off the block – we take on a disproportionate burden that causes danger to our economic competitiveness and thus sustainability as an affordable place to live.

Across Other Issues

The same goes for a plethora of issues in front of us. We are currently looking at new tax sources to pay for ongoing costs of how we want to sustain the costs of our state responsibilities.

The costs of education have skyrocketed this year, for reasons I’ve discussed previously. News media have referenced an average 20% increase in property taxes, but for Northfield it is 24% and for Berlin it is 26%. The legislature is contemplating reducing that harm by raising new funds from elsewhere. There’s also a lot of talk about reforming the whole funding structure and school spending, but that talk has happened many times before, with only new bandages resulting. The efforts at fairness over the years have led to incredible complexities.

There are other reasons for wanting tax increases.

We locked in new burdens to the state budget and on wage-earners last year with the mega-childcare support package and now are looking at needs for significantly greater expenditures to address homelessness, record drug overdoses, mental health, a juvenile justice system in crisis and health care underinsurance. We suspended school construction contributions by the state in 2014 and the infrastructure is crumbling; we hear regular complaints about conditions of roads. The list goes on. These pressures are, at least, taking two other new initiatives off the table for now: a paid leave program, and salary increases for legislators.

But who pays?

In answer to the momentum to “tax the rich” I would warn that we already have one of the most progressive tax rates in the country. The rich do pay more. At last count, 16 percent of our state’s revenues from income tax were paid by the .17 percent wealthiest Vermonters. A full 25 percent of income tax revenues were paid by the next wealthiest bracket, made up of only 2.7 percent of taxpayers. Ergo, 41 percent is paid by the fewer than three percent of Vermonters who represent the wealthiest wage earners.

If we become radically out-of-step with states around us, economic drivers will move out.

Policy versus Cost

The budget raises another question that legislators face based on different committee assignments. Policy committees are expected to make budget recommendations to help guide the decisions of the Appropriations Committee. The Appropriation Committee then must balance among the competing “asks” and also turn to the Ways and Means Committee, which controls tax policy. What will be included in the budget, and when that exceeds the balanced-budget total recommended by the governor, how will the added money be raised?

As a member of the policy committee which oversees all of human services, I’m told that I should be recommending what would be needed to serve the wellbeing of all Vermonters, regardless of total price. While we do identify by priority levels, we are not expected to look at the bottom-line increases in the budget. That’s because we don’t have the context of the other parts of the budget, nor the decisions about the total taxes that will be raised to be available to pay for it.

If I vote now for ideal policy – regardless of cost – wouldn’t it be duplicative to vote against the future budget, no matter what taxes it requires? Usually, I think not since I can argue the money should have come from other budget lines rather than increased taxes. This year, knowing that we are dealing with revenue downfalls, that doesn’t seem legitimate.

Nicotine

A similar issue has already been through my committee and will be up for a full floor vote this coming week: the clamping down on flavored vapes and menthol cigarettes. As a public health policy, I voted in support of the bill; our committee vote was 10-0-1.

Vape products are getting into the hands of schoolkids because adults are buying them for them. These are incredibly addictive, and we know that the majority of lifetime nicotine addiction occurs if it starts at a young age. Menthol, by blunting the harshness of tobacco, also increases the appeal. If adults are the suppliers, it seems that we need to take these specific products off the adult market in order to protect kids.

But we didn’t look much at the budget consequences. That wasn’t our jurisdiction. The Ways and Means Committee looked at it last week and it will likely end up costing some $14 million to implement in direct lost tax revenue. That committee supported it on a 7-5 vote, and pushed back the implementation date by a year, to January of 2026. That’s a sly move: it means we can ignore it for the upcoming budget year, since the lost revenue won’t begin until halfway through fiscal year 2026’s budget. Clearly, the long-range cost benefits are likely massive in future saved health care costs, but that’s more amorphous.

In the shorter term, that $14 million annually is equal to thousands of nights of emergency shelter stays; hundreds of new recovery beds for those fighting addictions; one major school renovation every year; or more than half the annual cost of the universal school meals program we passed last year.

Feed our schoolchildren, or protect them from nicotine addiction? These may not be good things to present as an example of choices. But one way or another, government needs to make choices.

There are some choices I make on bills every day that I see as decisions that clearly represent my values, and thereby, represent the choices you made in the aggregate by electing me as a person closest to meeting your own values.

They are not all as clear, and that is why your input is so important to me. Please reach out, especially during the coming town meeting break. I’ll be at town meetings in both Berlin and Northfield, so it’s a great time to catch me for direct conversation.

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Thank you for your support. You can always reach me at adonahue@leg.state.vt.us, and Rep. Ken Goslant at kgoslant@leg.state.vt.us. It is an honor to serve you.

February 10, 2024 Legislative Update

 

Now that the governor’s proposed budget is before the legislature, my committee has pivoted to a deep dive into the Human Services elements of the budget.

We are all facing an average property tax increase of close to 20% on the one part of the state’s overall budget that the legislature has little control over: education spending. This is adding to the pressure on the Democratic majority to hold down increases in the general fund budget, yet additional new taxes are still under consideration to pay for other increases. The governor’s budget holds growth to match existing increases in revenue, but in reality, that will result in some cuts in services because just paying overhead absorbs those revenues.

That’s the dilemma our school boards have faced, and their response has been to increase budgets to meet perceived actual needs. The tally from around the state is a proposed $240 million increase in budgets, compared to a usual average increase of about $30 million. While local voters approve their own budgets, each district also bears a big part of the costs of what every district does in combination.

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How Did We Get Here?

There are multiple factors, ranging from inflation to the desire to backfill lost federal bonus dollars. One of them, however, was directly tied to the change in “pupil weights” the legislature made last year. One student does not equal one student, when it comes to counting them for the purpose of the state’s contribution to a local budget. They are “weighted” based on the fact that some students cost more to educate in order to spread the statewide funds equitably based on actual costs.

Towns such as Berlin and Northfield did not see any significant change, but some wealthier districts lost pupil counts. They were protected from mega-one year tax increases by a cap set on how much would be attributed to them, so that the increase would be spread over five years. There was an unexpected result of that 5% cap. Other school districts took advantage of the cap to bolster their own budgets, knowing that they could go above 5% without increasing the local share. That was a big contributor to the $240 million statewide increase.

It’s important to note that neither the Northfield nor Berlin districts did this and as a result, will not be harmed by the current legislation that is attempting to fix it. That bill is now moving through the legislature, and towns that made larger budget increases will have to pay more on their own; the hope is that they will whittle some of that down, with the result of reducing that 20% statewide increase at least by a bit.

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The State Budget

While the education budget is in the hands of the cumulative votes of school districts, the rest of the state’s spending falls in the lap of the legislature, which faces all the same cost pressures. Do we cut services to balance the budget? Do we increase taxes to keep all else level? Do we meet new needs by greater tax increases? Which are needs, and which are merely desires? How do we choose among these priorities? 

This is the time when I truly despair in facing my own committee’s work. The fact is, we do have real needs that are not being addressed. Our committee has the job of identifying the amount of money needed to address them, and then leaving the Appropriations Committee to choose from what can or cannot be down. Approps must weigh those against all the other components of the budget: funding to address climate change, the judiciary (which still has a major COVID backlog), all of health care, investments to improve the economy, just to name a few. Next week, we face a bill that will add major costs to electric generation in the important interest of achieving cleaner energy production. Where does that fall on the difficult priority item list?

Homelessness, with increases that have come about primarily because of decades of lack of maintaining adequate housing stock, is high on our agenda. Virtually everyone agrees that the top priority is increasing the backlog in housing unit construction. But that takes time, and it is how to bridge the gap in the interim that is in dispute.

The governor’s budget proposes to eliminate open access under the “cold weather exception.” It would keep the exemption only for households with children, adults over age 65, third trimester pregnancy, and those on disability income. The proposal goes further than just a return to pre-COVID criteria, because the 28-day per year limit would be reinstated, but the special 84-day limit that applies in certain catastrophic situations would be eliminated.

These limits only apply to the “emergency housing” criteria, meaning receiving a voucher to stay in a hotel. There are no such exclusions for staying in an emergency shelter. A major problem, however, in that we do not have enough shelter beds to accommodate everyone who could otherwise be left on the streets.

The governor’s budget adds millions to increase these shelter capacities, but even those take time to open. By next winter – even under the assumption that some folks can find housing on a friend or relative’s couch – we would likely be seeing more people with no access to shelter at all. There are some being turned away on the coldest days even this winter, for lack of capacity. Experts do agree that mental health needs, addiction disorders and the like contribute to the challenge of stable housing but are not the primary reason for our crisis, which is simply not having enough housing.

If this was our only state need, we could probably find a way forward. By holding the budget at a level of growth that is below inflation growth factors, numerous agencies funded by the state are effectively facing cuts. These include our skilled nursing and home health agencies, the agencies which provide mental health and development disability supports, and support to children through such as our parent-child centers.

As with schools, we have some staggering and critical “deferred maintenance” costs. The IT systems supporting child welfare, for example, are the very oldest and most antiquated in the country! A worker addressing a child taken from a home for abuse can’t open just one computer file to check on history or even the child’s current status. It puts kids in danger, and there is almost certainly a tie to the fact that we have a rate of removing children from families that is high above the national average.

Our juvenile justice system is scrambling without the capacity to provide secure places for children in major crises with high levels or risks of violence. That is driving plans to build new institutional beds for them in a way that I seriously fear is a pendulum going out of control in the opposite direction. In the next two years, plans are rolling out that will add 42 locked institutional beds to hold or treat those ages 19 and younger, contrasted to about 24 currently.

I am not trying to make a case for major increases in spending. We can’t achieve that. But it does means assessing every expenditure carefully and identifying the truly highest needs. One item that has laid our budget so thin this year has been decisions made over the past several years, such as the massive investments in making childcare more affordable. It was an important investment that had wide support, but that I voted against because of the weight of contrasting needs.

And every citizen and each legislator representing their constituents sees the priorities differently. Democracy is about coming to sometimes unhappy outcomes. The weight of statewide voter opinion right now – based on elections – is to spend more to achieve a greater number of priorities. I believe we need to be far more discriminating in how we spend tax dollars, but I have my own priorities that cost money, and if each of everyone’s were fully met, we’d collapse financially as a state.

Based on strong constituent input, one of mine is to reduce taxation of military retiree benefits, which comes at a very small loss to the state’s tax revenue. In the latest survey data, Vermont ranked a dismal 50 out of 50 among states with financial stability for military retirees. These folks are often still in prime wage-earning years and can fill critically needed occupation gaps and contribute to the tax base if we don’t chase them away.

My other is the Medicare cliff: the way Vermont drops health care support like a hot potato when someone with low income turns 65. There was an excellent news piece describing this last week in VPR, which you can read at: https://www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2024-02-02/capitol-recap-some-low-income-vermonters-face-sudden-spike-in-health-care-costs-when-they-turn-65

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Thank you for the honor of representing you. Please reach out anytime to me (adomahue@leg.state.vt.us) or Rep. Ken Goslant (kgoslant@leg.state.vt.gov) with questions or input. You can receive my biweekly reports by email request.

January 28, 2024 Legislative Update

 

An old adage says, “a good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied.” My Human Services Committee voted 10-0-1 this past week to pass a ban on all flavored vape products, which are getting kids rapidly hooked on nicotine. The ban is effective next January.

Check in at any school. Marketers even sell hoodies that have tubes in the hood strings so that they can vape surreptitiously. Why ban an “adult-only” product when it’s already illegal to sell to those under 21? The data says kids aren’t buying nicotine products from stores. They are getting them, overwhelmingly, from adults.

The bill came to us from the Senate, and it banned many more products from sales in Vermont. It included all menthol cigarettes (they reduce the harshness of the tobacco and make it easier to take up) and all other flavored tobacco products (pipe tobacco, etc.) We removed the adult-use ban on the “all other” tobacco products, where there was no evidence it has drawn kids in. We did also increase the penalty on those who give access to those under 21.

We were split on the issue of menthol cigarettes. (The federal government already bans other flavored cigarettes.) The evidence wasn’t as strong on whether it has special appeal to youth. In addition, adults in minority groups prefer menthol. Were we discriminating against them for their particular flavor of choice in contrast to other adults? Yet some in those groups urged the ban, saying their members were targeted by tobacco companies to get them addicted in the first place. The compromise was to defer that ban for an added six months, until July of 2025, and to ask the Health Equity Advisory Council to weigh in. We can repeal it next year, before it takes effect, if that is the recommendation.

The bill has to go through the House tax committee before it gets to the floor. My committee makes public health policy; they make tax policy. The estimate is that we will lose about $4 or $5 million in tax revenue with the vape ban, and perhaps double that when the menthol ban goes into effect.

A big struggle for me was the question of consistency. We have two other “adult-only” substances: cannabis and alcohol.  We only recently legalized cannabis, saying “prohibition doesn’t work.” Two years ago, we allowed convenience stores to start selling fruit-juice-flavored spirits. Alcohol companies have jumped on board, and you can now see products like “Sunny D” spiked with alcohol on the same shelves. Surely, this, too, is particularly appealing to youth, and alcohol misuse is a major social problem, scooping up kids at even earlier ages than vapes. Why target one substance for a new prohibition. I had an “aha” moment from one person’s testimony, who pointed out that we do ban some of those other products when they are higher risk, such as limiting the percentages of alcohol or THC. In the same way, we are further regulating nicotine, not banning it, regarding the highest risk types.

However, I argued to tighten up regulations to protect youth on the other products as well. The other committee members strongly supported this in principle, but not under our House rules, which carve out “jurisdiction” of subjects. The outcome is that we are sending a strong Chair-to-Chair memo urging that the correct committee looks closely at these issues as they take up related bills this year.

Our committee was flooded with hundreds of emails urging us to pass the Senate bill, and almost an equal number opposing it. Almost all were the identical message written by lobbying organizations. Each of us did the same thing: sorted through to find the ones from our own constituents and deleted the rest. (Some were even from out-of-state.)

I received some from my district on each side of the issue, and a few that were written personally, along with several phone messages. Getting views from residents of Berlin and Northfield is really important to me, and I appreciate everyone who contacted me, even if I didn’t end up fully sharing your perspective. I tried to answer each individually, but some phone messages came to the statehouse without return numbers and some emails with only the lobby group’s return address. Alas, with cell phones, the days of help from the phone book are gone.

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This week’s biggest floor action was the budget adjustment act, which increased the current year’s budget by $31 million. Supporters argued that the budget was still balanced, since state revenues had increased slightly over the projections from last May. The problem is that the coming year’s budget will be much tighter: less revenue as related to ongoing needs plus inflation. The governor presented the fiscal year 2025 budget this week with a mere 3.5% increase, keeping it balanced without new taxes.

The budget adjustment is a tool to shift money midway through the year if less was spent in one account and more is needed in another. But if anything is added to the base it limits our opportunity to identify the greatest needs as we work through next year’s full budget, because we have added $31 million that is locked into the “adjustment” lines items.

There was a lot of pollical posturing on the floor saying those voting “no” would be denying help to their neighbors for flood relief funds. Voting “no” actually was only to send the bill back to remove some increases, not necessarily flood aid.

Most in contention was the extension and major increase in funding for the motel program for homeless individuals. There was a hue and cry about throwing children and the elderly on the streets on April 30. That was the extension we voted on last spring for the phase-out of the COVID program. About half of those 1,600 or so households have not found housing yet.

That wasn’t the key issue, however. What the bill does is to reverse the decision last spring to end the open-door COVID policy for those who were NOT in those vulnerable groups and to return to pre-existing criteria. It reverses the phase-out and returns to the COVID emergency standards.

For example, until the COVID exemption, those who were not in emergency circumstances had time limits on emergency housing. The exception was for “adverse weather,” providing shelter for anyone in need during the winter months regardless of the reason for having lost housing.

Time limits are now gone, through June 30, and the adverse weather policy applies at any temperature.

This topic is in my committee’s jurisdiction, and I supported extending the existing protection for those more vulnerable folks that we were housing based on COVID. However, we heard nothing about the proposed policy change to re-open to all groups coming in, without limits, until we were asked to vote on it half an hour before it was proposed to the Appropriations Committee, which then itself had only a half an hour to review it. It was all vetted in private leadership conversation, not within the committees. The scope of the housing change was not fully explained on the floor, and by House protocols, I could not get up to speak against a decision of my own committee. Both Rep. Ken Goslant and I voted against the budget adjustment as presented, but it passed on a 112-24 vote. It now goes to the Senate.

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The updated bottle bill – vetoed last spring by the governor – only received 17 of the required 20 votes needed for an override in the Senate. Almost as many Democrats as Republicans voted against the override. Many of us would like to expand our very successful deposit policy to include more glass and plastics but the bill also completely changed our current system. I voted for the bill and the override in the House, but with a great deal of trepidation over the changes. I am somewhat relieved that the override failed in the Senate. It clears the path to expanding the bottle bill more in line with the existing system.

January 14, 2024 Legislative Update

 

Legislative Update

Rep. Anne Donahue

Jan. 14, 2024

 The major action on the House floor last week was passage of the “safe injection” site bill.

It legalizes the operation of facilities where people can bring illegal drugs to be used under the supervision of health professionals. The purpose is for the ability to have an overdose addressed rapidly.

Only one other state has passed such a law, and its own center has not yet opened. Several are operating in Canada. Our Health Commissioner testified in my committee that the research was insufficient to establish that they are a benefit: we’re putting passengers on a plane that is still under construction.

My greatest fear is that it will cost us more lives than it will save. The public messaging is that there are “safe” (and legal) ways to use drugs. After all, the state is creating the funding for them.  How many more people will feel less afraid to try highly addictive substances? We don’t know. Both Rep. Ken Goslant and I voted “no.”

There was a bright side to the 2-day debate. Those who opposed the bill identified some serious gaps. Those who supported the bill could have passed it “as is” because they represent a (veto-proof) super-majority, but were willing to listen and accept amendments to strengthen protections. One of our Independent members commented on the floor the next day about how refreshing it was to see collaboration, despite disagreement.

As a result, the bill added the requirement that local community leaders must vote to allow a center before it opens there, and that strengthen requirements for the staffing of such sites. The bill did require development of operating guidelines that a center must meet to receive approval to open. But once approved, there was nothing that required ongoing compliance with the guidelines. I drafted an amendment that would terminate the legal immunity of a center if it fails to meet good faith compliance, and that was also accepted.

Left unresolved was the concern about the lack of any age restrictions or special guardrails when a minor comes to a center to use drugs. The bill now goes to the Senate.

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In what feels like a radically inconsistent direction, my committee is working on a Senate bill that would make all flavored tobacco products (cigarettes and vapes, and including menthol flavors) illegal to sell in Vermont. The purpose is to protect youth, who have latched on to the appealing vape products despite the fact that it is already illegal to sell to minors.

We would, in effect, shift from a “tax and regulate” system for the products into a prohibition: an exact opposite of the successful lobbying just a few years ago to change from prohibition to “tax and regulate” to permit adult choices to use cannabis. The slogan then was, “prohibition doesn’t work.”

While alcohol is highly regulated, we also recently began permitting single-serving products to be sold at any store. Ergo, the new market in convenience stores for appealing, flavored alcoholic beverages right by the check-out… while tobacco must be inaccessible except by a clerk.

Tobacco kills in huge numbers, over time. Drugs are taking lives all over the state through immediate overdoses. But alcohol misuse has never changed in its level of serious harm. There is a strong parallel to the issue of prohibition versus regulated adult use versus protection against youth addiction for all of these mind-altering substances.

I agree on how crucial it is to prevent the targeting of youth for these enticingly flavored tobacco products (“cotton candy,” is one), likely resulting in lifelong nicotine addictions. But given existing gaps in protection regarding cannabis and alcohol targeted to enticing young users, I will be struggling with whether I can get on board with this bill unless we also address some of those gaps in other adult use substances.

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It was great to see Rep. Ken Goslant’s bill to address one of the (many) unintended consequences of our efforts to remove adult criminal processes for those teens who need stronger guidance rather than punitive measures. Our state’s attorney has told us that high-level drug dealers are now focusing on recruiting help from teens, since they will be sanctioned less severely if caught dealing. Ken’s bill would make it a specific crime to “employ, hire, use, persuade, induce, entice, or coerce a minor” to sell drugs. It’s one of many efforts this year to respond to a plethora of unintended consequences being seen from a variety of laws passed over the past several years that are helping to drive increases in crime rates.

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The legislature and the administration continue to struggle with addressing how to restructure the ways we help protect Vermonters who lose housing during this time of a severe housing shortage. Increased efforts over the past six months have reduced by almost half the number of existing households living in state-funded emergency hotel rooms, but new needs have continued to grow.

We know some of the hotels exploited the COVID crisis since the state had its back against a wall, but our committee heard one budget figure last week that was shocking. Many of them have been charging the state a rate that is much higher than the standard rate for anyone else walking in the door, an average of $132 per night. At the same time, they don’t include the amenities you or I would get if we were paying a lower rate: room cleaning, breakfast buffets, etc. – and the higher cost includes none of the social service supports these folks need to stabilize their lives.

By aggressively clamping down on this, funds can be freed up to transition to shelter programs that offer direct assistance to people in moving out of the emergency system more rapidly. My committee will also be beginning work on a bill to reform the entire “general assistance” program for housing.

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I was thrilled to hear a new report from our off-session Government Accountability Committee, because its recommendations tackle some issues that have frustrated me for years. A few examples:

Every year, with complicated issues that we can’t address in the short time available, we direct that the administration to prepare an in-depth report, or we create a study committee of legislators to work off-session to take testimony and recommend next steps. (Or some combination of those.) All too many times, these reports never even get read, let alone acted upon. New issues take over a committee’s time, and the level of interest in last year’s issues has dropped.

Another example: We pass laws that the administration is supposed to implement. But does it always actually happen? We don’t follow up to find out; there is no tracking mechanism in place (unless we asked for another of those reports that take resources to write and that don’t get read…) And when we draft new laws, do we actually look into the history of what was done before? Often, not.

Then, there is the budget. Every year, instead of discussing all of the funding of all of the state’s programs, the focus is almost exclusively on what are termed the “ups and downs.” Where is the governor proposing increases, and where is the governor proposing cuts; do we agree or do we want different priorities funded? The big picture is simply too big to review… but we need to create a better overview mechanism if we are going to be accountable to Vermonters for how their taxes are spent.

You can see the full report online at legislature.vermont.gov/assets/Legislative-Reports/SGAC-Report-Final-2023.12.13.pdf. Hopefully, we as the legislature will also pay attention to reading and implementing items in this report.

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My bill requiring prominent notice to those renting a lot for a mobile home if it has a known flooding risk has been reviewed by the Housing Committee and will likely be addressed as part of a package of flood-related bills. The bill I introduced about businesses maintaining cash options for customers will be reviewed in the Commerce Committee next week.

What I am most pleased about, however, is that the issue of seniors who go onto Medicare and lose significant financial support for their health care as a result (the opposite of what we assume and would want!) has become a priority in the Health Care Committee, with testimony beginning next week. I introduced a bill on this last year, co-sponsored by a Democratic colleague to show bipartisan support, and it has gained significant momentum.

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Thank you for the honor of representing you. Please be in touch with me (adonahue@leg.state.vt.us) or Rep. Goslant (kgoslant@leg.state.vt.us) at any time. You can access all of my legislative updates at representativeannedonahue.blogspot.com.

Legislative Preview, 2024

 

Every year, the Times-Argus asks local legislators to share their priorities for the legislative session ahead, and the first half of this preview report is a copy of that – a fairly quick read. After that are some details.

If you don’t like to delve into numbers, stop after the preview!

I see the overall role of government, and therefore our necessary priority, as funding essential services at a cost that we can afford. Affordability does not mean by personal perception. It means not letting the state economy crash, hurting us all but those who struggle financially the most.

The details that bedevil us? What are “essential services,” which is a subjective decision. What is affordable for economic stability, which is more objective, if we are following fiscal expertise. For example, our state fiscal analysts tell us we are still facing about a 50/50 chance of a recession in the near future.

My fiscal priority this year is to push back against the momentum to increase new initiatives. These have been caused in part by the number of new legislators this session who have only lived through the recent years of unprecedented federal funds flowing into Vermont. The desires are good ones, but we have added major new programs already and sustaining them will be extremely challenging as we return to more modest revenues. We need to stabilize and meet existing needs before we add more.

Within existing core responsibilities, costs are rising more steeply than the governor’s plan to increase base budget spending by only three percent. His may thus be an unrealistic goal. We are already locked in to a 15% increase in health costs and a four percent pay act increase plus a new paid family leave program for state employees. We have the inflation jump of the past year, retirement fund obligations, and further budget increases to pay for last year’s bill to significantly expand support for childcare. We also need to maintain climate change mitigation efforts and address the unresolved homeless motel program.

All of those require more than three percent growth, so deep cuts would be required in other vital services if we restrict ourselves to this; even more reason that it is critical to avoid any and all new initiatives.

Education costs are predicted to increase by 20% due to some similar pressures, adding to the need for fiscal restraint. Once again, health costs are a driver that will not change without more aggressive reforms. Economic stability also demands a priority of ongoing state intervention in grappling with the critical housing shortage and labor force recruitment challenges.

I have two priorities for the budgets in existing essential services. In health care, we need to stop abandoning low-income senior citizens when they go on Medicare and face a cost cliff due to our drop in state support. For children in trouble, we need to rebuild foster care, mental health treatment, and treatment capacity for youth violence.

My policy priority continues to be the full incorporation of mental health into our health care system, which will bring better access and better care. We also need to reassess our criminal justice system so that it does a better job of protecting citizens while also respecting civil rights and avoiding measures that increase cycles of criminality.

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Fiscal Details

Our December presentation from the Joint Fiscal Office consultant was a summary of the national economy and implications for our own. Their take on it is an improving economy with the rate of inflation down, solid growth, and low unemployment. Consumers see the economy with a great deal more pessimism yet spending trends (which drive the economy) do not reflect that pessimism.

There are also “mounting headwinds,” with the risk of a recession dropping but still at about a 50/50 chance, and with low unemployment creating a risk of wage-price spirals. That’s when wages increase in order to attract workers, but then drive increased prices for products. Vermont’s worker gap far exceeds the national average, with fewer than 7,000 unemployed versus 17,500 job openings, which often means the market is even tighter than it appears due to lack of enough of the matches between skills and job openings.

As reflected in some further data, our continuing demographic challenge makes the picture even worse, because we will be losing numbers in our existing labor force in the years to come. Between 2010 and 2022, we already lost five percent in the ratio of labor force to population. However, the 35-54 age group – those moving into peak earning years (Interpretation: tax revenue) – dropped from 32 to 24 % of our population, and incoming the future incoming work force – those 0-14 – dropped from 20 to 15%. Those soon-to-leave the workforce, ages 55-64, increased from 9 to 15%, and those already into retirement years, 65 and older, increased from 13 to 20%.

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Housing

The shortage of housing didn’t come out of the blue. We’ve sharply dropped in construction of new units since the 2008 recession. Multiple factors have made it much worse, and we are not remotely close to closing the gap, without even including possible population increases or the loss in housing units from age/decay over time.

A healthy housing market is defined as having a 3% vacancy rate in owned housing and 5% in rental housing. In Washington County, the rate for owned homes is 1.57% and for rental housing, it’s 1.65% -- well below the state average and on par with Chittenden County. There are many fascinating details about individual community and county data for those who enjoy knowing that kind of detail about their communities on the website, https://www.housingdata.org/profile/housing-needs.

The deficit in current construction of new units is a whopping 4.7 (based on a 5-year average.) What that means is that for every new home or apartment unit currently being built, we actually need almost five more to be built if we were to close the vacancy gap. This is despite the $268 million the state (with a great deal of the recent federal money) has invested in the past two years to support what would normally be a private market process for housing construction. Much of that is still in the pipeline for the shovels to actually hit the ground.

Other data I’ve discussed earlier in this update can be reviewed there and in much greater detail on these sites:

https://accd.vermont.gov/press-releases/webinar-housing-deficit-data-presentation

https://ljfo.vermont.gov/publications/legislative-briefing

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Education

When a system changes, there are usually winners and losers, and that will be the case with the new method for assessing the costs of educating out K-12 students. Pupil weighting was revised last year to more closely match the actual costs of educating children in different communities. One child in a school does not count as one child for “pupil weight,” or cost, for the purpose of how much the school district receives from the Education Fund. High school students cost more than elementary, for example, so they are weighted more and school districts’ costs are adjusted differently if the elementary-to-high school ratio is different.

The two largest categories that gained “weight” in the new counts were low-income children and those with English as a second language, with a new rural school component as well. A more detailed explanation of pupil weighting and changes can be found at: https://ljfo.vermont.gov/assets/Subjects/Issue-Briefs-Related-to-Education-Finance/8e94aa83db/GENERAL-371568-v3-Understanding_Pupil_Weights-v3.pdf

Berlin and Northfield will be affected differently. Based on the early estimates, Northfield will see little impact from the change, because current weighting of students in the Paine Mountain district will likely be fairly close to the new counts. Berlin will gain some, because the pupil count in its in the Washington Central district will increase given its higher number of pupils with a higher weighting.

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Policy Bills

There are a record-breaking number of new policy bills being introduced by individual legislators this session, creating a big and likely wasted workload for our legislative counsel drafters. Why wasted? In the second year of a biennium, most of the legislature’s time is taken up by finishing last year’s “must do” work and addressing this year’s required tasks.

Bills that were taken up last year, but didn’t make the deadline, will be up first for consideration, and bills that passed one body but not the other are yet to be reviewed. In my committee, for example, we’re already getting heavy lobbying about the ban on flavored vaping products that passed the Senate last year, and we didn’t get to yet.

By the time new bills get introduced and allocated to committees this year, there will be virtually no time for them to be addressed. That’s not to say they don’t have merit – but a lot of ideas may have merit without beating out the competition for limited time. We had an unusually high turnover in the House this session, which likely accounts for some unrealistic expectations.  Ergo, this year more than ever, if you see a headline about a new bill – check in with me or Rep. Goslant about whether its odds of getting action before you get too excited about it (pro or con.) 

My bill initiatives are fairly modest. I’m mostly focused on having the Senate pass my right-to-repair bill for consumers in its broader form. The House passed the agricultural equipment component last year. I’m also hoping for some action on my existing bill to increase health care support for low-income elders who lose coverage when they move to Medicare.

A few short bills (some requested by constituents) address narrower needs: a notice requirement when renting a mobile home lot that is in a designated flood plain; a requirement that businesses maintain cash payment options; and public meeting access protections in our evolving digital world.

I’ve also been deeply involved in a personal effort to identify burial locations for those who died at our state hospital in the late 1800s and 1900s before the laws required hometowns to take responsibility. Some were buried in unknown locations on the grounds, and it turns out that may have happened at other state institutions as well. I’d like to see an inventory done of such sites and some efforts to identify and protect those that can be located.

These are mostly in what are termed “short form” bills, which are quick to draft, because they present the basic idea but leave the concept to be fleshed out only after a committee has made a decision to take it up.

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As we begin the new session on January 3, please remember to keep in touch with me and district-mate Rep. Ken Goslant when you have questions or concerns to share. We are here to serve you and listen to your voices. It is an honor to do so. Emails are adonahue@leg.state.vt.us and kgoslant@leg.state.vt.us All of my updates, current and all through the past, are accessible at representativeannedonahue.blogspot.com.

June 22, 2023, Veto Session

 

Legislative Update, Veto Session

Rep. Anne Donahue, with Rep. Ken Goslant

This year’s legislative session is officially over with the completion last week of overrides votes on several vetoes by the Governor. There were no great surprises because the Democrats have a supermajority. That means having enough votes to override any veto. Both Rep. Ken Goslant and I are scared by the outcome in terms of the cost increases. We don’t think that increasing state spending by 13 percent, and raising taxes to achieve it, is what Vermonters want to see.

While most of the new initiatives being funded are good ones, responsible budgeting is about living within one’s means by setting priorities, not by just starting up anything one might want. I was in the legislature the last time we had a recession. We – and that includes a Democratic majority at that time – had to go through incredibly painful decisions about layoffs and program cuts. The more we overinflate the budget now, the deeper those cuts might be if the economic indicators before us for the next several years hold true. A majority of current legislators haven’t experienced that and instead have been here at a time of extraordinary surplus revenues. The only budget decisions have been where to spend money, not where to hold the line. And in this budget, spend we did.

Nowhere is the challenge of cutting something once it’s been created as evident this year as in addressing the hotel program for those who are homeless. During the COVID emergency, group emergency shelters that exposed multiple people could have led to disastrous spread of virus. Separating people by using federal emergency money to place them in hotel rooms made sense for everyone’s protection.

It was an “everyone in the door” effort, including eliminating the standard requirement for all subsidized housing in Vermont that people contribute a third of their income – no matter how small, but never more than a third – to their housing costs. Emergency use of hotels or motels when shelters were full has always existed, but it was time-limited and restricted to defined emergencies or to the “cold weather” exemption. As a result of the unlimited access, the number of households receiving shelter exploded over these past several years and it became a semi-permanent home for many, not just a safety net for a month or two.

Now that the emergency (and the federal money) has ended, there has been outrage that these folks would be thrown to the streets. That’s a very legitimate reaction. We created this reliance on a program that exceeds any typical or reasonable approach to helping people have safe housing. It was also destined to create a big number of people in crisis all at once as it ends.

We wanted people to make use of it for our overall benefit; they did. Housing is exceptionally difficult to find right now; it realistically cannot be found for several thousand people all trying to find affordable options at the same time. But it’s a bad “program,” if it can be called a program at all. There have been inadequate supports beyond a roof over the heads of people, many of whom have serious struggles in life coping skills in general. It hasn’t been a positive option for them, beyond the question of costs. It also placed major burdens on communities like Berlin that are hosting these hotels, which suddenly found themselves with large groups of needy people, including that small minority who gum it up for everyone else up by abusing it.

So, what to do?

Some more liberal legislators who wanted the whole program extended threatened to support the governor’s veto in order to demand a new budget with increased spending, by joining with Republicans who were voting “no” because of overspending. Advocates, including many who are living in or recently already lost hotel housing, were chanting loudly from the public seating areas as we assembled for the one-day veto session: “housing is a human right.” (They respectfully stopped shortly after we began work.)

So, a deal was struck. It still officially ends the open-door program on June 30, including not changing the termination of hotel payments for those had already lost them this past month. Those were the folks who did not have someone with a designated level of disability, children, or a person over age 60 in their household. But it creates a special, more gradual “off ramp” program for the households with that greater vulnerability who are already there as of June 30. (Note that new folks are still enrolling until that end date, since the old program doesn’t end until then.) Between now and next April, the Agency of Human Services is tasked with finding a housing option for each such household before terminating hotel payments, working with case managers gradually over those interim months.

There are a lot of great goals and concepts for parameters set out in this new legislation. Unfortunately, none of it – neither the protection for those vulnerable individuals, nor the assurance of a program end in April nor the standards for participant compliance – are worth the paper they are written on. This was a deal that saved face for both sides: On one side, “we aren’t being mean and tossing people to the wolves, but we have set limits”; on the other side, “we saved the day by keeping the program going until everyone has replacement housing.”

It was my committee that reviewed the bill, and I identified all the reasons that it actually has no assurance of achieving either of those and has little likelihood of success. But I also voted for it in my committee – it was an 11-0 vote – as well as on the floor. Why? I do not believe in rejecting a proposal that attempts to solve a problem unless I have a better alternative in mind that would address it. I don’t have a solution for resolving this crisis, and we are the ones who created it.

What are its failings? It’s a very long list, but here are a few highlights that touch on them:

It will depend on the ability to hire additional staff for case management and for administrative tasks (we piled on a vast amount of data demands for legislative oversight.) Has anyone noticed we have a major workforce shortage, with every single business and profession unable to fill essential positions?

It lacks definitions and creates no authority as to who will establish them. What is the meaning of “misconduct” that will allow a discharge, and who determines whether that has occurred?

How are criteria established for whether someone met a mandate that they “participate in” their case management or “engage in” their own independent search for housing?

What does it mean that AHS must offer “alternative housing” – which includes emergency shelters – before someone can be cut off? If the offered alternative will only last a week before the household will be homeless again, have we actually done anything to prevent the identical outcome?

Yet if it had said, “appropriate housing,” who would have defined whether it is appropriate? (On the House floor, the bill’s presenter already suggested that if the offer was in another part of the state and the person had reasons for not wanting to go there, it wouldn’t count as an offer even under the current language.)

Any decision can be appealed. On the one hand, allowing an appeal from an arbitrary decision is legitimate. The bill is rife with possibilities of arbitrary and inequitable application of the undefined criteria. Yet open-ended appeals of legitimate decisions will cause long delays in actual implementation.

It came with no cost estimate for either the extension of hotel stays or the added services. It does set out the funding as coming from shifting funds in the existing budget, not adding new money. But any shift means something else – previously determined to be necessary – will not be funded. There is a goal to re-negotiate rates with hotels (which up until now, could name their own price) but there is no guarantee of success.

The reality is that there is no true end to it. Those still stranded in April (which could be almost as many as those there on June 30) will be in front of us yet again. We created this crisis, and we haven’t found a way to solve it.

Perhaps we will make progress between now and April, and perhaps those added months will give us time to figure out some additional approaches. Let’s hope. We have put hundreds of millions into developing new housing, some of which can move quickly; that might also help.

But make no mistake about it. The housing crisis itself will ensure that new families will be in need as well. The new compromise bill doesn’t touch that issue yet, not does it help those on the streets today who relied on our COVID program but don’t meet the federal disability, child, or “aged” categories.

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The other challenge was the issue of childcare. The vast expansion of subsidies and state rates to providers was a major part of the overall budget expansion and the reason for a new payroll tax. I know of no one who disagreed with the need for major new investments to support childcare.

The issue was, by how much and how quickly? Many people, including myself and Rep. Goslant, voted no because there was a better alternate to adding some $230 million over the next two years. (The benefits only start halfway through the year for the first year, which is why the cost will nearly double next year.) Staging it more carefully would not have required a new tax. The governor’s balanced budget had proposed $50 million for this year.

It was the very strongest of the override votes because of the intense desire to demonstrate support for childcare. Some of my colleagues then voted against the underlying budget. I think that was a bit disingenuous. If you vote to create one the biggest of the new programs in the budget, you probably need to vote for the budget that funds it.

There were 98 votes needed for the required 2/3rd majority, as three members were absent. The childcare override vote was 116-31. The budget vote was 105-42.

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There were five other vetoes besides the childcare and budget bills, and the supermajority in the House made short order of overriding three of those; the Senate then also backed those overrides.

Those were the professional regulation changes with $7m in fee increases (109-38); a charter change in Brattleboro allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local elections and serve on local boards (110-37); and the charter change for Burlington to allow noncitizen legal residents to vote in local elections and on the school budget for the statewide Education Fund (111-36.)

Two other veto bills were in the Senate, and they did not choose to vote to override either of them, so they are dead for this session: the legislative pay raise, and the ban on deceptive interrogation of criminal suspects under age 22.

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Ken and I both work hard to try to balance the needs of all Vermonters in the legislative process, understanding both how the state has a key role in providing supports but also to not overburden struggling taxpayers. That means listening to all perspectives and trying to work together and reach compromise, regardless of party labels. Sometimes it feels as though that balance keeps getting tougher to reach.

The session is over, but we are still here and ready to listen. Please get in touch with questions or concerns that can help us gain your perspective for the year ahead. Email anytime at adonahue@leg.state.vt.us or kgoslant@leg.state.vt.us

May 7, 2023 Legislative Update

 

Legislative Update

Rep. Anne Donahue

May 7, 2023

 

In theory, May 12 is the closing day for this session, but if that actually is to happen, we will be having some very long nights this week, because so little moved in the past several days. Of course, resolution of the budget is what dictates the close, so it is now essentially in the hands of the six members of the conference committee who are resolving the major differences between House and Senate versions.

This year, several other bills hang in that balance as well, and might end up swept into the budget bill in the end. The House had the funding for its paid medical and family leave bill in the budget, but the Senate has refused to move forward on it this year, so House leadership has now conceded and dropped that from the budget.

The Senate’s childcare bill has had a lot of revisions made in the House but has not yet been sent back to the Senate. Instead, it sits in the House tax committee, because the two bodies have different ways they want to fund it. So, both funding and the system reforms for childcare are still in flux. In an unusual move, the chair of the House Human Services Committee was appointed as one of the three House budget conferees. It’s usually all Appropriations members. That’s the clearest sign of how entwined the issues have become.

The rest of us are all left in wait-and-see mode. Either budget version is headed towards an increase of 12 or 13%, which will require new taxes and fees to balance it. That’s not sustainable, and not something I can support.

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The Senate accepted the House version of the clean energy bill, so it went straight to the governor, who has vetoed it. That sets up a veto override vote for as early as the coming week. As explained in detail in my last update, I voted against the bill and will stay with that position and vote to sustain the veto.

The session’s other major bill still in progress addresses our housing crisis, and that is expected on the House floor this week. In both the House and Senate, it has ping-ponged between the perspectives of the economic development and natural resources committees. In concept, everyone agrees: we need to prevent barriers to new housing, but we need to do that in ways that don’t back off the commitments to protect our environment.

Updating Act 250, the state’s land use law, hasn’t been stalled for years for nothing. It’s a tough line to draw. Once that gets through the House sometime this week, it will still need Senate approval, which is by no means assured. Thus that, too, may come just in time for the closing bell.

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No parts of the constitution are absolute, and I have supported gun restrictions where they increase protection and meet constitutional standards. I voted against (and will vote to sustain a gubernatorial veto if it occurs this week) the 72-hour waiting period and safe storage bill. Existing data shows the waiting period would not have an impact in Vermont. The bill also fails to meet standards for constitutionality.

However, I am in support of a pending bill makes it a crime to knowingly possess a firearm that has had its serial number removed, and to knowingly buy a firearm on behalf of a person who is prohibited by law from possessing it (referred to as “straw purchases.”) It allows individuals between 18 and 22 who have been found delinquent regarding a crime that would have been a felony if it was an adult conviction, to have the confidential juvenile record sent to the national background check system – as it would have been if convicted in adult court.

That is a segue to another issue this same bill addresses. It is a bit of a corrective course after several years of bills called “Raise the Age” to treat older teens as juveniles. I have generally supported the idea that when a young adult commits a minor crime, they should be handled with supportive rather than punitive measures, and not gain a lifelong stigma for a youthful mistake. The crimes under our “Raise the Age” law, however, include all but the most high-level violent crimes. Making a youth a legal juvenile also means the public never knows the outcome.

Current law now considers an 18-year-old to be a juvenile. This bill will delay the plan to also add 19-year-olds as juveniles. It also creates a review process for identifying whether there show be additions to the list of crimes that are still permitted to be moved to adult court.

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Other bills of Interest

Important bills move that are under the news media radar, often because there was work done to build consensus. No controversy… no headlines.

The Senate sent back my committee’s overdose prevention bill with a big new section that creates a legal mechanism for individuals to get small samples of illegal drugs tested for the more and more toxic new additives, which are killing people even faster that previous ones. I’m leery of creating an implication that something like heroin is “safe” because it doesn’t have fentanyl in it, or of creating a scenario where dealers can clam (falsely) that what they are selling has been tested for “purity.” But we are losing more and more Vermonters to this epidemic.

The Senate proposal was a loosely worded liability protection that allowed almost anyone to establish a testing site. I got the language considerably tightened, so that any provider who offers the testing would lose any protection if they did not follow operating guidelines established by the Department of Health. They could be charged criminally for possession of illegal drugs. The Department supported the language, and I think it minimizes the risks of abuse, so I supported the amendment.

That’s not the same, though, when it comes to the new overdose prevention bill that my committee is now working on. (It is too late for the Senate to take up this year, so if we pass it this coming week, it will be in the hands of the Senate for next year.)

That bill would sanction sites where people could use their drugs in the presence of people who are trained to reverse an overdose. Our Health Commissioner testified that the research is not strong enough yet to show that the benefits outweigh the risks. There are only two sites in the United States, both in New York City and both relatively new.

Both our Attorney General’s Office and the Vermont Medical Society, despite deep concerns about the overdose crisis, have indicated they have concerns about starting a program like this at this point. I listened closely to testimony both pro and con, and told my committee I was not going to be able to support it. It will almost certainly be controversial when it gets to the floor this week.

My Right to Repair bill for agriculture and forestry equipment passed out of the Commerce Committee on a unanimous vote and through the House with a 137-2 roll call vote, so it will be primed up for Senate action next year. This bill requires manufacturers to make tools and parts available for sale directly to equipment owners to fix themselves. With our increasing technology, more and more things we buy can only be repaired (at high cost and delay) by the manufacturers. Our Vermont roots are as thrifty, do-it-yourselfers, and that is being robbed from us when it requires a specialty tool even to just open the item up! This bill is a starting point. I’m hoping next year that we can move forward on the larger version of the bill, which covers a broad range of consumer products.

In another consumer protection measure, we are also asking the Department of Financial Regulation to review the existing laws on automobile insurance and covered car repairs to ensure consumers are not being misled or over-charged based on requirements regarding after-market parts or limits on authorized repair shops.

We passed a Burlington charter change that will allow legal non-citizens to vote in its municipal elections, including the school budget. This is the second city to do this; Winooski was approved last year. Montpelier was the first, but with an important distinction, because its charter does not permit those voters to vote on the school budget, which directly affects our statewide education fund. I was fine with Montpelier deciding who can vote in its own local decision-making, but not with it being extended to votes that affect other towns and I voted against the Burlington change as I had with Winooski.

With some dismay, I heard proponents on the House floor state that Vermont’s Supreme Court had found both the earlier changes to be constitutional. Not true! It found Montpelier’s was constitutional, but explicitly said its opinion did not address situations where the vote might be a statewide issue. There has been no ruling on the expansion in the Winooski expansion.

I dug up the direct quotes from the court decision to read to the body – so that decisions could be based on accurate information. The bill did pass. Hopefully the court will make a decision in the next year, and we will have clarity one way or the other.

Finally, it was great to be congratulating two groups of young people with resolutions this past week – the U-32 hockey team that won a thriller to become Level 2 champions this year, and the Northfield Junior Rifle team that brought back so many gold medals from New Hampshire.

I missed Green Up Day this year for the first time in eons. I was in New Jersey for my oldest grand-nephew’s First Communion. How quickly time flies! It seems like he was a toddler such a short time ago…

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Please share your input and thoughts. You can reach me at adonahue@leg.state.vt.us, or Rep. Ken Goslant at kgoslant@leg.state.vt.us It is an honor to represent you.