Key senators Thursday agreed on their own version of the state budget for the fiscal year starting July 1. The Senate Appropriations Committee voted unanimously to move the $1.4 billion General Fund spending plan to a full Senate vote next week.
The panel’s proposed amendments to the House-passed budget include, most notably, increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates for healthcare providers from 0.75 percent to 2 percent, on par with Gov. Peter Shumlin’s recommended budget increase. (The total cost of the rate increase is roughly $4 million.)
The Senate plan also would increase the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board’s budget by $400,000, and add another half-million in spending to a long list of programs.
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s proposal counts on $3 million in new additional revenue from their colleagues across the hall in the Senate Finance Committee. There is also some money leftover from the current year’s budget, including a handful of vacant positions and $200,000 in unspent vehicle purchases for the Department of Public Safety.
The Senate committee came up with ways to fund three pieces of legislation that have emerged since the House passed its version in March:
- a $75,000 program to help Vermont businesses export their products to other states,
- a $5,000 study of a public retirement system,
- and $10,000 to help train lawmakers on a results-based accountability system.
The results-based accountability provision was originally $20,000, but senators Thursday cut that amount in half. They also did not choose to fund H.239, which called for $32,000 to run a public outreach campaign regarding landlords’ and tenants’ rights and responsibilities and eviction protocols.
Much more money was on the line with a proposal to absorb the cost of errors made by the Department of Families and Children for assessing food assistance benefits for recipients. The Senate Appropriations Committee’s “wish list” included $317,710 that would cover the cost of repaying the federal government for the department’s eligibility errors. Without that, beneficiaries who unwittingly received extra Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program benefits would have to pay them back.
Not everyone wished to hold the beneficiaries harmless.
“It’s as if you said the IRS made a mistake, but you don’t have to repay it,” said Sen. Diane Snelling, R-Chittenden.
“You think they should keep it?” asked Sen. Alice Nitka, D-Windsor.
“No!” Snelling responded.
Neither did Nitka. In the wake of their strong opposition and with no debate, the item was struck from the wish-list.
In all, almost $19.7 million from the wish list ended up on the cutting room floor, whether for ideological reasons or for lack of revenue or a combination of both. The vast majority of that was comprised of:
- $13 million for the Child Care Fee Scale,
- $2 million for weatherization programs,
- and $1.2 million to raise the disregarded level of income for Reach Up recipients
“This is pitiful,” Kitchel said as the committee trimmed $10,000 from the Department of Family and Children’s $40,000 request for a program to prevent child abuse. “But, we’re squeezed,” she said.
They also agreed to not send an extra $50,000 to Bennington Meals on Wheels operation, partly because it didn’t seem fair for a single site to ask for a special appropriation outside of the broader Meals on Wheels funding process.
The committee also slashed payments-in-lieu-of-taxes for the Agency of Natural Resources, from a “wish list” amount of $500,000 to just $35,000.
