Rep. Paul Poirier, D-Barre City, pulled his amendment to postpone the Challenges for Change implementation deadline; House Speaker Shap Smith announced that the Legislature may hold a special session to resolve remaining issues not addressed in the legislation.
Poirier proposed delaying implementation of the Challenges for Change law until July 1, 2011, and placing a 7 percent surtax on the income tax, which he said would raise the $38 million needed to balance the budget for fiscal year 2011. In his view, this would have given the Legislature time to conduct the research necessary to thoughtfully advance the outcomes, efficiencies and savings set under Act 68, the Challenges legislation. The sponsors of the amendment included Poirier, Rep. David Zuckerman, D-Burlington, Rep. Peg Andrews, D-Rutland, and Rep. Suzi Wizowaty, D-Burlington.
The following is a Q and A with Poirier regarding the Challenges amendment.
Poirier’s second amendment, which called for the Department of Corrections to limit the number of prisoners released into Vermont communities that already have a high number of people under the department’s supervision. The latter passed on Thursday as part of the main Challenges 2 bill.
Q. What is the surtax?
Poirier: The surtax is a tax on your state liability. Here’s an example: If a person has a $500 liability, they would end up paying $535 for the 2010 tax year.
Q. You’re talking about doing this for 2011 as well?
Poirier: It really depends on if they decided they could implement Challenges next year, the sunset would go into effect next year. So it would be a one year, temporary increase. If they take the two years of the biennium, then it would be in effect for two years.
Q. Under your amendment there would be a delay in implementation of the Challenges through July 1, 2011. Why?
Poirier: I’m proposing it because of my three decades of working in this building I have never seen a process that has been rushed as fast as this. And we are making significant policy changes. Some of these policies took 30 years to build up.
And so to come in and literally at the 11th hour and the 59th minute to make these changes, I just find it irresponsible.
I’m not against the premise of Challenges for Change. I just think we ought to let it play out, let these committees do their work and then in January discuss what are the effects and where we think it should go.
Q. Why do you think it’s happened so fast?
Poirier: I think for two reasons: Gov. (Jim) Douglas is accomplishing what he’s wanted to do for years, which is cut programs and cut the workforce. No. 2, it’s an election year and we have so many people running for governor or lieutenant governor that everybody wants to look like a fiscal conservative. That doesn’t help the men and women and children who are going to be hurt by this.
Q. How do you think people are going to be hurt?
Poirier: They’re going to be hurt because in mental health alone they’re going to be cutting back on services to children and adults. The police chief of Burlington was in here yesterday and he was talking about the impact it’s going to have on people who are now going to be on the streets without access to mental health services, not taking their meds, and he said we’re not trained as policemen to deal with people who are having episodes of violence and stuff because they have a mental condition and aren’t taking their medications.
Q. What are the chances of your amendment passing?
Poirier: I think it’s going to be very interesting. We’ve been hearing for two years from people in this building and mostly from the majority that we didn’t come here to cut, we came here to preserve the programs that the Democrats have put together 30 years ago and now tomorrow they’re going to have their chance to say yes or no and we’ll find out where there heart is.
Q. Why do you think there is resistance to raising taxes?
Poirier: I think we have a very conservative Speaker, and I think Peter Shumlin (the president of the Vermont Senate) is fiscally conservative – I think that’s why they get along so well, and they made a decision they don’t want to raise a tax, they’d rather cut.
Q. What do you think the rank and file response has been to the Challenges?
Poirier: I know many rank-and-file legislators have come to me and said Paul, Have you ever seen anything like this? They treat me as kind of a dinosaur in this building (Poirier was House majority leader in the late 1980s), but I mean they’re upset about it. So now they’re going to have their chance when they tell the advocates I’m with you, well tomorrow they’re going to have their chance to prove it.
Q. Do you know how many votes you might get?
Poirier: No, I don’t. Rep. Zuckerman is working with me. We’ll see. It’s such a short time and I’m trying to get a health care bill passed, trying to get some Corrections changes – I mean we’re a committee of one or two people.
Q. What do you think about the Douglas administration’s proposals?
Poirier: They’re trying to get things passed they could never get passed on their own.
In the Challenges for Change there was a recommendation from the administration to repeal the involuntary medication statute. I fought that battle 10 years ago on this House floor to get the system we’re in now.
Q. Why didn’t the Democratic leadership reject the administration’s proposals?
Poirier: Douglas outgamed them. Shumlin’s running for office and he wants to be the most fiscally responsible of the five Democratic candidates so he’s doing what he has to do, he’s taking a hard line. And I think the Speaker just tends to be conservative in nature.
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I think Poirier is nuts. He’s proposing another tax at a time when Vermonters are already taxed throug the teeth, but hey this guy has never seen a tax he didn’t like.
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Its time for the democrats to start acting like democrats and not like republicans in discusige. They need to adhea to a more liberal agenda and have so political wil to raise taxes. A budget is a document of VALUES. Inclusion is a birth right
Protecting the most vulnerable is not a lugury.
Raise taxes yes we can
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Finally! Thank you Rep. Poirer for understanding what people have been saying for years. It is truly sad that as much as Gov. Douglas has already cut state workers and decimated public services it’s apparently still not enough. Even sadder is how the Democratic leadership in Montpelier have caved in and thrown state government under a bus called Challenges for Change.
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Senator Shumlin, what can be done with Challenges? Did Douglas outgame the democratic house? Or has Douglas been outgamed? And how do you think the house will re-act to S.88′s coming up in this challenges atmosphere? What about the idea of temporarily raising taxes on those that can best afford them?