The Vermont Statehouse. VTD/Josh Larkin
In most years, the Budget Adjustment Act is a sleepy housekeeping bill that gets attention intermittently during the legislative session – once when it’s introduced by the executive branch, and then again when it’s up for votes in the Legislature.
The BAA, as it’s called, generally doesn’t contain many surprises because it’s a vehicle for sweeping up minor mid-year budget corrections for departments across state government.
But when House representatives go to vote on the Budget Adjustment Act this week, the bill will look a little different.
When the Shumlin administration introduced the bill back in December, officials emphasized that the state faced about $25 million in unanticipated costs related to Tropical Storm Irene, but budget-writers had found enough money here and there, in reserve funds, revenues and influxes in Medicaid money to make up the difference.
But soon, lawmakers caught on to what looked like new spending buried in the Budget Adjustment Act.
The buzz around proposals to add 48 positions as part of the bill led to an unusual split on the House Appropriations Committee last week. Four Republicans on the budget panel, and at least one Democrat, initially expressed concern about the plan. After Democrats offered a compromise deal, two of the GOP members on the committee relented, and the bill passed out of committee 9-2-0. (In most years, the committee reports out unanimous decisions on the budget.)
While in the past the bill has been largely an accounting exercise that enables the Legislature to tidy up the loose ends of the current year in preparation for the Big Bill (the omnibus spending legislation for the coming fiscal year), this time around, the Shumlin administration’s proposal to add so many jobs at once before the main budget bill is approved within a few months gave some lawmakers pause.
If approved by the Legislature, the 48 workers would be hired in the fourth quarter of the 2012 fiscal year and then would be rolled into the fiscal year 2013 budget.
This new information, which came to light after lawmakers returned in January, caused a stir in advance of the Gov. Peter Shumlin’s budget address last week.
The Shumlin administration has also requested 30 positions in the Big Bill, according to Jeb Spaulding, the secretary of the Agency of Administration.
If lawmakers approve the proposals as expected, the state will add about 70 employees to the state workforce. It’s the first time the state has created new jobs since 2009 when the Douglas administration and the Legislature cut about 660 positions.
More than half of the BAA jobs are Irene-related positions for the Agency of Transportation. Brian Searles, the secretary of VTrans, has asked for 21 limited service middle management and engineering positions to handle the heavy workload in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene. (Originally, the positions were permanent, but Searles agreed to temporary placements when lawmakers questioned the proposal.)
The Department of Vermont Health Access, the arm of state government that manages Medicaid spending, is requesting 17 positions that commissioner Mark Larson says will save money. In addition, the Department of Children and Families has asked for nine social workers who would work with children who are in state custody or who are in dangerous home situations. The Department of Public Safety is looking for approval for two chemists to handle DUI testing.
The Shumlin administration says the positions are needed immediately and that waiting until July to hire workers (after May passage of the appropriations bill) will push back important initiatives in each of these departments.
Rep. Michel Consejo, D-Swanton, echoed the initial response of a half-dozen Democrats who asked nearly the identical question in committee: “Why do we need these positions? Why authorize them now, as opposed to the normal budgeting process?”
Other lawmakers wanted to know, what’s the rush? Is the governor trying to do a little backdoor budgeting? Or is he straddling positions between the BAA and the Big Bill to sidestep criticism?
Gov. Peter Shumlin was adamant that that’s not what this was about.
“No, no. Look at the positions we’re adding,” Shumlin said. “The ones we’re adding are federally funded, number 1. Number 2, the transportation positions respond to Irene. The faster we get those positions filled, the faster we’ll be able to build our roads and bridges better than Irene found us. So we have a job to go to the Legislature and say we’re dealing with a crisis; it’s called the biggest storm in Vermont’s history in some parts of the state and maybe the second biggest in other parts of the state. We’ve got to deal with it.
“The other half of the jobs is responding to what has been a very well-documented fact that we don’t have enough people at the Agency of Human Services to deliver the services that our most vulnerable Vermonters expect us to deliver and I already, a year ago, added some jobs to fill those gaps. I think we made the right judgment there. We’re doing that again. Those that believe we’re a state that takes care of our most vulnerable, also believe that we need enough people in place to get them the resources they need. We’re not meeting that challenge now and we will if we have these positions, which again are federally funded.
The size of the increase in classified jobs is unusual (in the recent past typically fewer than a dozen positions have been added in the budget adjustment process), and lawmakers from all three major parties have questioned why the positions are in the Budget Adjustment Act instead of the Big Bill (the omnibus spending legislation).
The administration prepared a memo on the positions, but it did not include total costs for the additional workers. Partial sums are available, however. On an annual basis, the AOT district tech positions will cost $1.228 million ($491,000 state/$737,000 federal match) in 2013 (the jobs are subsidized by federal money in the last quarter of 2012). The 17 new positions at the Department of Vermont Health Access will cost about $1 million and will save about $5 million, according to commissioner Mark Larson. The social workers would cost roughly $500,000, and the Department of Public Safety chemists would cost at least $120,000.
The grand total appears to be roughly $2 million.
Kate Duffy, commissioner of the Department of Human Resources, who went before three committees last week to allay concerns about the budget adjustment positions, says the Shumlin administration is not increasing the size of state government.
“I can assure you the governor is not looking to grow government,” Duffy said. “He’s made that very clear to me.”
The jobs are not new positions, she says, they’re reconstituted slots derived from the “position pool” — a human resources netherworld where old positions from a given department that have been left vacant for a year or more are held as open slots until they are reclassified for use by other departments.
Duffy said the total size of state government, which includes the “vacant” or “pooled” positions and the filled positions, has grown 0.83 percent over the last year. There are currently 7,204 permanent jobs, 452 limited service, or temp jobs, and 608 exempt positions. The grand total as of this month is 8,264; a year ago, there were 8,196 jobs.
There had been 8,768 total filled and vacant positions in January 2010, but when the Douglas administration left office a year ago, the 660 positions that had been eliminated during the 2009 purge were also scrubbed from the “position pool,” which meant that the Department of Human Resources no longer had a bank of unclassified positions to draw from.
Duffy is now in the process of “pulling back” long-term vacant slots from departments throughout state government. As of November she had seven positions; she hopes to have about 70 by mid-year. Her department, she says, needs the flexibility to hire more people and would obviate the need for the administration to come back to the Legislature to ask for more positions.
Democrats in the House Appropriations Committee struck a compromise with Republicans and agreed to limit the number of new workers to positions from the pool.
This decision satisfied most of the Democrats and Republicans who had qualms about adding workers to state government because of the shaky economic climate.
Rep. Mitzi Johnson, D-Grand Isle, said the change was enough to garner support from two GOP members. “It was a compromise we made to compensate for the number of positions growing in the BAA,” Johnson said. “We work very hard to get consensus on the committee. We normally do get significant consensus and work very hard to get it.”
One of the dissenters, Rep. Bob Helm, R-Fair Haven, said he voted against the BAA in the House Appropriations Committee last week because of the jobs that were created.
“I don’t think it’s time to start doing that,” Helm said. “It’s the cost in the end that’s the issue. I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet. … It’s a fragile economy.”
Helm speculated that the governor wanted to split the positions up between the BAA and the 2013 budget “to make it seem less to those who were fast asleep. There’s 50 jobs there, that’s a whole lot in the BAA. I can’t wait to see what’s in the 2013 budget.”
DVHA, DCF and AOT
Mark Larson, commissioner of the Department of Vermont Health Access, told lawmakers that he needs more resources to sustain “core functions” and manage the Medicaid programs that are a part of new cost-saving initiatives.
Overall, Medicaid caseload and utilization rates are dropping, but the department doesn’t have the resources to analyze the statistics to determine why the rates are down and where the savings are coming from. This information, he said, will help the state make the Medicaid system more efficient. Four new personnel would collect and analyze data related to “payment reform.” There would also be a coordinator who helps to expand the Blueprint for Health (a team-based disease management program) and a Pharmacy Health Services coordinator who would help to manage the chronic care initiative, which is designed to help patients manage symptoms. The additional 11 jobs are related to ensuring more effective care for patients.
The total pricetag is $1 million. Larson estimates his department could save $5 million in Medicaid spending, if the proposal goes through.
“We have moved positions into the BAA, in order to book savings right away,” Larson said. “We need to hire positions and have in the job long enough to start seeing better savings.”
The Department of Children and Families is not in compliance with the federal government over foster care programs. The additional nine social workers would help to ensure that children who are under threat of abuse are adequately monitored.
Most of the 21 jobs at AOT are district techs.
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Good job, Anne. Thanks