Editor’s note: Editor Anne Galloway, reporter Alan Panebaker and freelance reporter Greg Guma contributed to this report.
Governor Shumlin takes a break
Don’t try reaching the governor for the next few days. He will be in Anguilla — a small Caribbean island. At a press conference announcing the release of the state’s final Comprehensive Energy Plan Thursday, Gov. Peter Shumlin said he would be unreachable for six days while he visited with family and inevitably took advantage of the island’s white sandy beaches.
Shumlin’s father, who is in his 80s, was involved in a car accident on Oct. 31. Susan Allen, special assistant to the governor, said he was remarkably OK and went home shortly thereafter.
The governor’s vacations in the past have drawn fire from Republicans, particularly when he took a three and a half day trip to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, shortly after Tropical Storm Irene. Another trip in March made the news when the governor took a vacation to the Caribbean and did not release the destination until he returned.
Since taking office in January, the governor has taken regular trips, often to his vacation home in Nova Scotia. The governor is in the habit of working through most weekends, and immediately after Tropical Storm Irene hit, he worked 39 out of 43 days, according to remarks made by Allen at the time.
~Alan Panebaker
Welch leads charge on pushing ahead with Defense Department cuts
It’s all about sequestration, and no we’re not talking about that weird geoengineering approach to capturing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and burying it underground.
No, this kind of sequestration, though equally arcane, is political in nature. It’s what pols in Washington refer to as the process in which automatic reductions in spending are imposed equally on defense and non-defense spending, according to Roll Call.
The sequestration process came into play when the so-called “Super Committee” failed to come up with a debt reduction plan last month. The sequester rules kicked in when the GOP and Democratic lawmakers couldn’t agree on how to lower the nation’s deficit.
Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said in an interview a few weeks ago that the impact of the sequester is preferable because it was a fair way of approaching spending cuts, which would result in a total of $1.2 trillion in reductions, half of which, $600 billion would come from defense expenditures,over the next decade. The cuts would go into effect starting in 2013.
Enter the GOP proposal to renege on the sequester. Sens. John McCain and GOP whip Jon Kyl, both of Arizona, are floating legislation that would restore the Defense cuts by repealing the sequester and, according to The Hill, “wiping out the $600 billion in Defense cuts with an equal amount of cuts from other areas of the federal budget.”
This week, Welch is leading the Democratic pushback on the GOP’s effort to repeal the sequester.
“A deal is a deal,” Welch said in a press conference on Thursday, according to Roll Call. “Failure has consequences.”
Welch has rallied 80 Democrats in the House of Representatives to support President Barack Obama’s “threatened veto of the proposal,”according to a press release from his office.
Welch says the GOP proposals would “unravel” the bipartisan debt ceiling deal Congress agreed to in August. That deal included the possibility of a sequester, according to Welch, should a balanced budget compromise was not reached.
Read the Burlington Free Press story.
~Anne Galloway
Illuzzi introduces health benefit exchange legislation
Sen. Vince Illuzzi, R-Essex-Orleans, has introduced legislation that would define small employers under a health benefit exchange as an employer with 50 or fewer employees through 2016. Sen. Hinda Miller, D-Chittenden, the assistant majority leader for the Democrats, is the bill’s co-sponsor.
Under the federal Affordable Care Act, starting in 2014, all states have to develop an exchange that guides individuals and small businesses through the process of purchasing insurance. Plans on the exchange must meet certain yet-to-be determined federal requirements. Between 2014 and 2016, states have the choice of bringing employers into the exchange at either the 50-employee or 100-employee threshold. After 2016, employers with 100 or fewer employees will be considered “small employers.”
Illuzzi said businesses that employ 50 to 99 employees, about 2 percent of the state’s private sector employers, have done a good job of containing health care costs. Businesses have championed the idea of keeping the exchange limited to the smaller employers. Some contend the exchange may limit the flexibility employers have achieved through working with their insurers and the reduced costs that come with it. On the other hand, the state plans to use the exchange as a stepping stone for a universal health care system, which it hopes to achieve in 2017. From this standpoint, the more lives are covered in the exchange, the more widely the risk will be spread around all of the insured and the more prepared the state will be to implement universal coverage in 2017 when it can obtain a waiver from the feds.
Illuzzi’s bill would also amend Act 48, Vermont’s health care reform law, to set the floor of a bronze level of insurance plan rather than silver, a more robust level as defined by the Affordable Care Act. He said the reason for this change was to allow employers to retain high-deductible plans where the employer pays into a tax-advantaged health savings account. In these cases employees have low premium, high-deductible insurance plans, but often employers pay them the amount of the deductible into the account.
Illuzzi said he does not see the bill as contrary to or undercutting the goals of implementing a universal health care system.
“It is just leaving in place systems that appear to be working until we pull the trigger,” he said.
~Alan Panebaker
Apportionment plan previewed in Burlington
Attendance was sparse at a public hearing in Burlington Thursday night on reapportioning House districts in several Chittenden County municipalities. After months of discussion, the Legislative Apportionment Board (LAB) has released a plan to adjust legislative boundaries reflecting changes in population identified by the U.S. Census. The map under discussion proposes 82 one-member districts and 29 with two seats.
The Vermont House of Representatives currently has 66 single-member and 42 two-member districts. In a 4-3 vote last summer, the LAB initially backed a plan with all single-member districts, and later considered a modified version with 138 single-seat districts. According to Megan Brook, an LAB member representing the Progressive Party, single-member districts increase participation and communication,equalize representation, and “reduce barriers” to running for office. Although preferring the original plan, she supports the final version because it “moves us in the right direction.”
Chittenden County currently has 12 two-seat and 11 single-seat districts. The LAB initially proposed all single-member districts. South Burlington, Shelburne and Charlotte liked the idea, but BCAs in 10 communities opposed it. Towns with two-member districts — Williston, Essex, Colchester, Winooski, Jericho, Underhill and Milton — want as few changes as possible. Hinesburg meanwhile wants to become a single-member district on its own, without sharing population with Charlotte.
The board says that Burlington’s population growth warrants 10 rather than the current nine seats, but this means removing some Burlington residents from a current Winooski district. To compensate, the board proposes including part of Colchester in the Winooski district. Winooski supports the move, Colchester opposes it.
In July, the Burlington Board of Civil Authority rejected the LAB’s plan for the city. As a result, the report says only that Burlington should have 10 House members, leaving decisions on district lines to the BCA and ultimately the Legislature.
Kurt Wright, the Republican candidate for Burlington mayor, doesn’t expect much debate when lawmakers act in January. “The last time we had divided a Legislature, with a Republican-controlled House, so there was a pitched battle,” noted Wright, who has been a state legislator for more than a decade. “But this time everything is controlled by Democrats. Republicans won’t have much influence.”
~ Greg Guma
Cold shower tax or renewable energy assistance?
Proposed legislation by Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden, has already got one industry group in a tizzy.
Lyons introduced legislation that, along with establishing a renewable portfolio standard, would ensure that Efficiency Vermont “successfully implements programs that result, by Jan. 1,
2025, in the use of solar water heating in each residence in the state and the discontinuance of fossil fuel water heating in each such residence.”
The legislation would also include a “fossil heating fuel efficiency tax.” This would mean a 5 percent tax, up to 12.5 cents per gallon, on heating oil, propane, natural gas and coal.
In its online newsletter, the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association called the legislation a “cold shower tax.” The newsletter says the legislation would effectively ban heating water with oil and gas. It says the tax could cost consumers $40 million a year.
“While the idea of government forcing Vermonters to take a cold shower when it’s cloudy may seem like a joke, this is no laughing matter,” it reads.
Matt Cota, executive director of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association, said the legislation does not outright ban heating water with fossil fuels, but it’s pretty close.
Lyons said the purpose of the proposed legislation is to promote the efficiency utility’s going around and installing solar hot water heaters in people’s homes. It is not a mandate, she said.
~Alan Panebaker
