House leaders say Gov. Peter Shumlin’s proposal to cut millions of dollars in the budget is too little, too late.
On the eve of a vote in the Senate on the Big Bill scheduled for Thursday morning, Shumlin told senators that they didn’t do enough to reduce state spending.
The governor doesn’t like a Senate plan that would raise $20 million in income tax changes and expand the sales tax to candy, soda and bottled water.
The total amount of revenue needed to close the budget is $35 million. The Legislature has already agreed to the governor’s proposal to eliminate a $15 million deduction for state income taxpayers.
The governor wanted lawmakers to drop the sales tax increases and changes to income tax deductions. Instead, he suggested that lawmakers find an additional $10 million to $15 million in budget cuts Wednesday night. Thursday morning his administration identified $8 million in additional savings, including $3 million more from personnel. (That’s on top of $10.8 million the Shumlin administration has already pledged to reduce labor costs.)
The Senate budget and tax bills mirror the House proposals, which have been developed over a four-month period.
Rep. Sarah Copeland-Hanzas, majority leader in the House, says for the governor to come out at this stage of the game and “say we need to cut more and raise less revenue kind of ignores the fact that we took a bigger problem, and we fixed it with overall less revenue.”
Copeland-Hanzas, D-Bradford, said she is disappointed with the governor’s message to lawmakers, which she said boils down to “you didn’t do your homework.”
The House used $35 million in new revenue to close a $113 million gap. When the governor presented his budget on Jan. 15, he closed a $94 million gap “with the same $35 million,” Copeland-Hanzas said. “We closed a larger gap with the same amount of revenue.”
The chief budget-writer for the House says she is frustrated and disappointed that Shumlin waited until the very end of the session to present a balanced budget proposal.
The governor’s original budget resolved a $94 million budget gap. Five days later, the Emergency Board downgraded revenue projections by $18.6 million, and the state budget gap widened to $113 million.
While his administration made suggestions for the additional $18.6 million gap, Shumlin left it to lawmakers to resolve the issue.
Rep. Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, says the governor’s budget was “whacked out of balance on Jan. 20.”
“He’s had three months to put his ideas for a balanced budget on the table, and we haven’t seen it, Johnson said.
“And so for him to come forward, not as the Senate is developing their budget, but as the Senate is about to vote on the floor is frustrating,” she said.
Johnson said House leaders are irritated by the way Shumlin has characterized “us as tax-and-spend” Democrats when his budget “raised more and spent more.”
The governor, also a Democrat, proposed a $90 million payroll tax to support health care programs that failed to garner support in the Legislature.
