[L]awmakers haven’t forgotten about economic development as they head into the second half of the session.
House Speaker Shap Smith is working with an advisory committee to sift through citizen proposals to improve job growth, and will share results with the House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development.
Smith, D-Morrisville, sent out a request to the general public in January for economic strategy proposals. Smith then recruited an 11-member team of state business leaders to sift through about 75 proposals totaling 200 pages.
Smith asked Paul Ralston, a former state representative and owner of Vermont Coffee Co., to coordinate the advisory committee. Ralston met with the team on Wednesday and said he plans to divide the ideas into categories. The proposals will be submitted to legislative committees and state agencies by March 14.
“We always talk about economic development, and I thought first it would be good to pull from Vermonters what they thought we should do,” Smith said. “My hope is there may be some things we can do this session, but also it should be a long-term, sustained initiative.”
Ralston said the proposals will be broken down into short-, medium- and long-term initiatives. “Our role is triage, so we’re just trying to understand what all the different parts are on, the different suggestions, grouping like things,” Ralston said.
In December, Smith released a similar request asking the public to make suggestions for changing state education policies. Smith said he wanted to hear from average Vermonters, rather than the special interest groups that lobby for particular agendas at the Statehouse.
Smith said Vermonters want the legislature to “lower my taxes” to “build more broadband.” The speaker declined to say if he had any favorites. In general, he said the state needs to focus on education, transportation and technological infrastructure, and making laws and regulations “understandable and transparent.”
Smith said he wants to keep the advisory committee past next week, and he may “broaden” its purpose and include members from beyond the business community.
“I think of economic development as making sure that we have opportunities for employment for all Vermonters,” Smith said.
Jobs and Wages
A July 2014 report from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics ranked Vermont number 36 out of 50 for statewide employment growth, and Chittenden County falls at 260 out of 334 among large counties. Chittenden County had 0.4 percent labor growth in 2013, and the national average was 1.8 percent.
The average weekly wage in Vermont was $848, below the national average of $1,000 per week. Chittenden and Washington counties had the highest weekly wages — at $994 and $895, respectively. Grand Isle, Essex, and Orleans counties were the lowest — at $624, $660, and $676.
The Missouri Department of Economic Development puts the cost of living in Vermont as No. 11 in the country.
A January study from the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office said $13.11 per hour is the baseline living wage for a single person with shared housing in a rural area. The rate is $14.52 in an urban area.
Those numbers jump to $15.42 and $17.26 for a single person living alone, and to $19.66 and $20.96 for a household with two working parents and two children. The numbers jump again if the person or family relies on Vermont Health Connect.
Broadband
The Federal Communications Commission considers “broadband” anything at or above 25 Mbps (megabits per second) for downloading and 3 Mbps for uploading.
Many addresses in Vermont only have access to 4/1 Mbps. In a telecommunications plan from December, the Public Service Department set an aggressive goal for high-speed Internet levels of 100 Mbps for downloading and uploading available for all Vermonters by 2024.
But in the same plan, the department presented ballpark estimates for laying fiber optic cable from $12,991 to $52,602 per mile. That has fiber advocates estimating that building fiber across the state would cost around $1 billion, although the closest estimates come from a proposal from Nebraska, which has starkly different land and soil makeup.
Rep. Steve Carr, D-Brandon, told VTDigger in February that the issue with broadband access in Vermont comes down to “last-mile” infrastructure, a term the telecommunications industry uses to mean the final step from a transmission fiber line to a distribution line into a home.
Carr said the state has the “backbone” of fiber optic transmission lines running through the state, but doesn’t have enough “tentacles” coming off the backbone to reach customers.
Jim Porter, telecommunications director for the Public Service Department, said his staff is hoping to get “some good broadband build out” — which doesn’t necessarily have to mean fiber — from the state’s connectivity initiative, which is funded from a 2014 increase to Vermont’s universal service fee, and from FCC funding for unserved census blocks.
“There’s no all-fiber state,” Porter said. “Everyone’s interested in it and looking at it, but it is a terribly expensive proposition.”
The department submitted a request for proposals asking companies to use $963,350 to bring high-speed Internet — at least 10 Mbps for downloading and 1 Mbps for uploading, which does not require fiber technology — to up to 28,000 underserved addresses. Porter said the department will have a better idea of how much fiber costs per mile in Vermont after it receives responses March 18.
Smith said bringing broadband to the state is expensive, but added, “If we don’t build broadband, it will cost us a lot more.”
