Editor’s note: Digger Dirt is a column on politics and government.
Time is on your side — or it’s your worst enemy. At the moment, it’s a most noxious adversary for the Legislature. The clock is ticking at the Statehouse, and it’s sounding most loudly and relentlessly in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
That’s normal in the end-of-session push to get as much legislation as possible through the Statehouse before adjournment.
This year the angst, legislators say, is more intense than usual, and the cause is an aberration in their lawmaking process.
But this year the angst, legislators say, is more intense than usual, and the cause is an aberration in their lawmaking process. The complicated, controversial Challenges for Change bill — the government restructuring legislation that’s supposed to produce $38 million in permanent savings, has gummed up the works and may well delay adjournment scheduled for Saturday.
That’s because, lawmakers say, the process for evaluating and refining the Challenges has been shoehorned into just a matter of days.
Typically, the House and Senate take months or even years to consider major changes in state law. The unemployment insurance trust fund fix, for example, took a full year to develop and negotiate. There was an administration study, a legislative study, hearings were held, lawmakers drafted bills, and finally the governor, the House Speaker and the Senate President Pro Tem met to forge a deal.
The process for the Challenges for Change legislation, which will create huge shifts in state policy, has been a rush job by comparison. Neither the Senate nor the House has had time to take testimony, and the bill is being drafted on the fly. As it is, the House had about two weeks to pass it; the Senate has just eight days in all to write and approve the bill.
The onus is on the Senate Appropriations Committee to vote out the government restructuring bill as soon as possible. That will enable the full Senate to consider it, the House to review changes, and lawmakers to adjourn Saturday with a final bill. The longer the Challenges bill sits in committee with no resolution to some of the biggest issues, including major policy changes and reductions to education, economic development and human services programs, the more unlikely a Saturday adjournment is.
If the bill doesn’t make it onto the Senate floor today, lawmakers will have to extend their Montpelier stay into next week.
The committee was still drafting language for the bill through 11 p.m. Thursday and will continue to sift through the details this morning. If the bill doesn’t make it onto the Senate floor today, lawmakers will have to extend their Montpelier stay into next week. In that scenario, they would likely hold conference committees on Monday and Tuesday, and come back to finish the session Wednesday or Thursday.
That’s because GOP members of the House want at least 24 hours to read legislation before enabling the Democratic House majority to expedite passage in time for a Saturday adjournment. The Dems need three-quarters of the House members to support suspension of the rules for fast-track passage, and with its 48-member caucus, the GOP can effectively block the bill.
Rep. Patti Komline, R-Dorset, House minority leader, says at this point no one knows what’s in the Challenges legislation, and her caucus needs time to consider the potential ramifications of the law.
In addition to the Challenges, the budget, capital, tax and judicial restructuring bills, have to be finalized in conference committees.
Fast-track passage
Though the House and Senate Government Operations Committees had conducted initial research on the Challenges overhaul, the restructuring concept didn’t get legs until after last year’s bitter battle between the governor and the Legislature over budget cuts and the realization that because of the recession, government spending would outstrip tax revenues by $154 million in fiscal year 2011. House Speaker Shap Smith and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin asked if the committees could find $38 million in savings through restructuring. The Challenges 1 legislation passed without much debate in February, and the administration developed plans for the full reorganization effort at the end of March.
One lawmaker high in the legislative food chain told me that the Challenges should have been enacted after a full two-year vetting of the details.
That gave lawmakers just five weeks to consider Part 2 of a law that will revolutionize – for better or worse – the segments of state government that have the greatest direct impact on Vermonters: human services, education and economic development.
One lawmaker high in the legislative food chain told me that the Challenges should have been enacted after a full two-year vetting of the details.
Complicating matters further is a mutual distrust between the Democratic House and Senate and the Republican administration. Though the leadership teams have tried to mend fences, rancor lingers among some rank-and-file officials and lawmakers, and the situation was exacerbated when the administration first released its plans for the reorganization.
The Legislature tasked administration officials with designing new government systems that would create better results, or “outcomes,” for Vermonters. Instead, even the Democratic leadership has admitted that in many cases the administration handed them rehashed government cuts lawmakers had previously rejected.
A slew of fundamental changes
The Challenges for Change 2 bill that the Senate Appropriations Committee is grappling with in the race to finish the session on Saturday will, lawmakers say, mandate a slew of fundamental changes in the delivery of human services programs. Many fear the result will be the dismantlement of support services for elderly, needy, mentally ill and disabled Vermonters, as well as children.
The Douglas administration has proposed applying corporate-style strategies to human service programs in order to promote efficiency, and the Legislature has balked at a number of the changes.
Decades ago the state turned over treatment and support for the developmentally disabled and mentally ill to a network of nonprofits, such as the community mental health system.
The Douglas administration has proposed applying corporate-style strategies to these programs in order to promote efficiency, and the Legislature has balked at a number of the changes.
Sen. Doug Racine, D-Chittenden, chair of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee and a candidate for governor, described the administration’s approach to human services as “Reaganite.” Though Racine voted for the original Challenges legislation in February that set the sequel bill in motion, he has expressed grave concerns about changes to general assistance for the needy and regulated nursing home care for the elderly that he believes may fail to produce savings.
He asked Sen. Diane Snelling, R-Chittenden, to go over new spreadsheets for the human services Challenges with his committee yesterday afternoon.
“These aren’t cuts,” said Snelling. “There are some exciting things here for vulnerable Vermonters. We have $32 million of the $38 million (in reductions), and we’re going to try to go to the $38 million.”
Racine questioned whether some of the proposals would save as much money as she believed they would. He pointed out that a new integrated employment training program for disabled and poor Vermonters called Creative Workforce Solutions, that would have purportedly saved $488,000 a few weeks ago, was now booked at $1 million on the Senate Appropriations tally.
“(There) are areas where the money can be saved through efficiencies,” Racine said. “Where we’re skeptical is where they turn into cuts.”
“How did they get there?” Racine asked. “It sounded aggressive at $488,000.”
Snelling wasn’t able to say how they arrived at the new number. “Sometimes we’re booking more because sometimes we think there is more,” she said.
The economic development Challenge, Racine noted, had dropped from $3.4 million in savings to $965,000. “Obviously, Appropriations has rejected the administration’s proposals,” Racine said. “That means we’ll have to take bigger cuts elsewhere.”
“(There) are areas where the money can be saved through efficiencies,” Racine said. “Where we’re skeptical is where they turn into cuts.”
One of those areas is the proposed reductions for the network of state-funded community mental health and developmental disability nonprofits.
The administration has insisted that the Legislature eliminate guaranteed funding for the agencies, and to force them to seek performance-based contracts through a competitive bidding process. In addition, officials want to reduce funding for the winning bidders by millions of dollars.
At the same time, some Department of Corrections savings the state hopes to garner would come from preventing Vermonters with substance abuse and mental health problems from ending up in prison.
Thursday evening, Patrick Flood, a deputy secretary for the Agency of Human Services, pushed for a 1 percent cut for the state-funded nonprofits that provide developmental disability services, and 2.5 percent reduction in funding for community mental health centers.
Sen. Bartlett, speaking as chair of Senate Appropriations, countered that the administration had not offered “outcomes” and therefore Flood’s proposal was not a Challenge but merely a bundle of “cuts.” (A word she had earlier banished from usage in her committee.)
Bartlett said she’d rather take money from other areas of state government than impose any reductions for programs with developmental disabilities.
An expedited process
Typically, a member of legislative counsel, who has written the bill based on members’ instructions, reads out and explains draft language for bills.
The process can take hours, depending on the complexity of the issue and the legislation.
Yesterday, members of Senate Appropriations showed impatience with the traditional reading of the bill. They insisted that the portions that didn’t need much massaging be pushed through without detailed descriptions – such as “charter” units, performance contracts and regulatory reform.
All of these Challenges were accepted virtually verbatim from the House version of the bill.
The tedious recitation of the language regarding the state’s plans to purchase new computer systems led Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, to remark: “This reminds me of Dick and Jane going up the hill – without Spot.”
The momentum, however, started to bog down again when they got to the education Challenge. Bartlett advocated for mandating that supervisory unions take a 2 percent cut in school spending. In the end though, after a back-and-forth with Senate Education Committee members advocating for local control, Bartlett relented. The mandate disappeared, with the caveat that the voluntary reductions “shall be structural.”
