Shap Smith accepts another term as House Speaker.
Editor’s note: Inside the Golden Bubble is an occasional column about the Vermont Statehouse.
[I]t was all politics all the time on Saturday in Montpelier. The Democrats convened at the Statehouse and Capitol Plaza Hotel, while the Vermont State GOP met the Elks Club on the edge of town.
The occasion? For the House Dems it was old home day at the Statehouse. The newly elected lawmakers were eager to celebrate their very comfortable majority. The Dems have 13 fresh faces after the election and they still hold a healthy margin of votes in the House. The Dems elected leadership, listened to speeches from Gov. Peter Shumlin and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch and met to discuss the major issues they’ll take up come January. Among them: Property tax and health care reform, the $100 million budget gap, environmental protection and economic development.
Shap Smith was voted in for his fourth term as House Speaker. Sarah Copeland-Hanzas takes the place of Willem Jewett as majority leader, Kate Webb will be majority whip (also known as assistant majority leader) and Tim Jerman will be deputy assistant majority leader.
The Senate Democrats caucus, which also holds the majority, conducted business with little ado. Two years ago John Campbell was fighting for his political life, but he managed to quell growing dissatisfaction with his leadership and was re-elected as Senate President Pro Tempore. On Saturday, there was no question about who was in charge. Campbell easily regained his leadership post with little fanfare. Phil Baruth was re-elected majority leader, Claire Ayer will be assistant majority leader and Dick Mazza will be the third member of the powerful Committee on Committees, which determines what committees senators serve on.
The senators got right to work and broke out into work sessions to discuss the three thorny issues they are most concerned about: health care reform, education finance reform and Lake Champlain cleanup.
For the GOP, it was a time to take stock of the election and engage in a little breast beating. After all, the Republicans led by Scott Milne, a political neophyte, nearly beat out a sitting Democratic governor, swept up nine seats in the Senate and won 13 new seats in the House. Not bad for a party that was written off by pundits six months ago.
The House GOP elected Rep. Don Turner as minority leader and Rep. Brian Savage as assistant minority leader. The Senate GOP caucus will be led by Sen. Joe Benning, minority leader, and Norm McAllister, assistant minority leader. Both caucuses met last month.
To people outside the Golden Bubble, the election of leadership and the bonding of lawmakers before the opening day of the Legislature may seem mushy and unimportant. The House Democratic caucus, for example, was in a laudatory mood. There were a dozen standing ovations and raucous applause as members gave worshipful, jocular speeches about each of the leadership candidates.
These cheerleading moments, however, tend to be fleeting. Two months from now, it will be harder for lawmakers to be so sanguine as they slog through complex policy decisions and argue over the details of draft legislation.
Politics is a people business and the development of new legislation is a human process. Lawmakers from all over the state, of all political stripes — independents, Progressives, Democrats and Republicans — meet in small groups (committees) to hash out thorny policy issues. They must consider legislation that could hurt their districts or be detrimental to their party’s agenda. Even so, their obligation is to look at proposals for improving education, health care, the environment and the courts from all angles and figure out what will work and what won’t.
The leadership in the Statehouse is crucial to the efficacy of that process. It’s the glue that helps to hold together a very large, disparate group of leaders from local communities with big ideas and a short period of time in which to make a mark. They have little in common except the desire to make Vermont a better place to live.
But by May, the lawmakers will know each other very well. Maybe too well. Tensions will run high, tempers will flare and legislation will be passed despite the divisions that inevitably form.
This year the fault lines are difficult to see in advance. With more Republicans in the Statehouse and a post-election sense that the electorate put many Democrats who won on probation, there could be a number of divided votes in both the House and Senate chambers. Property tax rates are a worry stone for many Dems who have heard from their constituents that they can’t pay any more to support education.
Senate Pre Tem John Campbell accepts a third term.
Lawmakers have to pass a budget bill in order to leave the Statehouse in May, and that omnibus piece of legislation is inevitably one of the most difficult for lawmakers to agree on. This year the appropriations process will be even more onerous than usual because leaders in the House, Senate and the Shumlin administration agree that something must be done to address the structural budget gap that is growing wider every year.
Cuts — big cuts — are in the offing and when the governor proposes his budget in January it’s likely there will be no proposals for new taxes. Lawmakers, however, may very well propose revenue hikes of their own. They handily exercised this power in 2013 when they rebuffed the governor’s proposal to rob the Earned Income Tax Credit program to pay for child care programs and to place a tax on break open tickets to pay for thermal efficiency.
In a year when the governor could lapse into lame duck status, given his unexpectedly narrow win over Milne, he will need to redouble his effort to woo his former colleagues in the Golden Bubble. To start with, he needs the Democratic caucus to vote for him on Jan. 8 to retain office. Milne has not conceded and he has publicly asked lawmakers to back his nomination to the post.
On Saturday, the governor had his hat in hand. The swagger with which he has addressed the Democratic caucuses was gone, despite the fact that he made time for them in the middle of his “chopper” tour of storm damage (compliments of Vermont Electric Co-op).
“I’m going to partner with you in any way we can for the next two years to do what’s right for Vermont,” Shumlin told the Senate Democratic caucus. “We have no exclusive on good ideas, we’re all in this together. I’m incredibly proud of all of you for getting elected. I’m proud that because you got the most votes you won, and I hope you’ll afford me the same privilege.”
The biggest political unknown is whether Shumlin will be able to push through his single payer financing plan, which he has kept under wraps for two years. The governor promised to deliver the plan in 2013 and has managed to put off disclosing how he will shift $2 billion in premiums to a new tax structure that will likely tap revenues the payroll and income tax, according to sources who spoke with VTDigger.
Health care is not Smith’s highest priority; property tax reform is his No. 1 issue. How the state will advance both ambitious reforms simultaneously remains an open question.
Shumlin, the ultimate chess player, hates to lose moves on the board. Now that the governor has finished his tenure as the chair of the Democratic Governor Association, and will be spending less time in Washington and jetting around the country raising money for the DGA (and himself), expect to see the governor bring his powers of strategic thinking and persuasion to bear on the end game at the Statehouse this year.
It helps that two of his key assistants — Susan Allen and Erika Wolfing — will be regulars in the Statehouse. Allen, his former communications director, will be the governor’s liaison in the Legislature in her new role as Secretary of Civil and Military Affairs. Wolfing, a former researcher and policy analyst for the Vermont State Employees Association, is also a longtime aide to the governor: She has served as treasurer for the governor’s re-election campaign, worked as deputy commissioner of Department of Labor, and most recently did a tour of duty at the DGA. Wolfing will be well-placed to serve as a key conduit for the governor in her new role as Campbell’s chief of staff.
Gov. Peter Shumlin addresses the House Democratic caucus.
