In what is likely to be its final week, the Vermont Legislature, like all legislative bodies in their closing days, faces a great deal of talk and a certain amount of grouchiness – or sound and fury as it is sometimes known.
Macbeth, whose situation was far more precarious than even the most troubled lawmaker’s, famously concluded that all the world’s sound and fury signified nothing.
That’s not true of the 2014 Vermont legislative session. The sound and fury which will reach a crescendo and then subside this week will signify … well, not nothing.
But not a whole lot more than nothing, either.
“It hasn’t been a very dramatic session,” said Karen Lafayette, a former legislator who is now a lobbyist.
In recent years the Legislature has grappled with same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide and establishing a universal health care system.
This year’s agenda has been more managerial – shoring up the teacher’s retirement fund, making surer solar-powered households can “net meter” their surplus juice – and less emotional. The debate over involuntary medication of mentally ill patients (S.287, awaiting final passage in the Senate) was emotional, even gut-wrenching. But it applies to very few people.
All in all, few Vermonters will find major changes in their jobs, their commutes to work, their children’s education, their health care, or their recreational pursuits because of what happened in the Statehouse since January.
In most towns, property taxes will go up (a shared state and local responsibility) but most other taxes will stay the same. For now, neither the education nor the health care systems will change. There will be neither additions to nor incursions into the state’s parks and forests. The lawmakers neither added more protection to nor launched new assaults on the state’s environment.
This is not to say that some of the laws passed (or about to be passed) won’t have a real impact on the lives of some people. But not, for the most part, all that many people. Increasing the minimum wage from $8.73 to $10.10 an hour (or thereabouts, depending on which version is agreed to before week’s end) will obviously mean a great deal to those who now earn less than that.
But that’s only about 4 percent of the work force. The new rate will be important to them, and perhaps to their employers, but its effect will be limited.
Perhaps so too will be the effect of one of the most contentious measures of the session, the one requiring food manufacturers to label food made from crops grown by using genetically modified organisms.
It was nationwide news. Gov. Peter Shumlin is scheduled to sign the legislation on the front steps of the Statehouse Thursday afternoon. Vermont is the first state to require GMO labeling, which would begin July 1, 2016.
Unless it is overturned before then in a court challenge which everyone in state government expects and few are confident of winning.
Besides, even if the law survives, GMO-produced foods will remain legal and available. It’s just that they’ll be labeled. And if the experience of the rest of the world is any guide (and so far it’s the only guide), the labeling might not matter much. In the 64 countries that require labeling, consumption of GMO-made food products continues apace.
Theoretically and potentially, the most sweeping proposal before the Legislature is the one that would force or encourage a far-reaching consolidation of the state’s local public school districts, reducing the present 270 districts to more like 40 or 50.
But the Senate is resisting the House version of H.883, which uses a combination of inducements and pressure on local school districts. The end result, then, is likely to be a law that is all inducement and very little pressure, and which therefore does not lead to many district consolidations.
Even the stronger House bill gives local districts six years to complete the consolidation process, and as Rep. Tony Klein, an East Montpelier Democrat, said, “a lot can happen in six years.”
Some things, Klein said, are already happening. He said he and other lawmakers recently met with school officials from Montpelier (which passed a reduced budget on a second vote last month after its first budget was defeated in March), and the nearby U-32 school to discuss cost-cutting measures.
Advocates across the political spectrum were more disappointed about what the Legislature did not pass than upset about what it did. Liberal lobbyists were hopeful when the session began that lawmakers would pass mandatory sick leave for workers in the state. But that proposal fizzled after Gov. Peter Shumlin and Democratic leaders decided to get behind the minimum wage increase instead.
More than 40 organizations put a great deal of effort into a bill that would allow licensed dental practitioners to establish practices under a dentist’s supervision but not necessarily in the dentist’s office. The bill, which advocates hoped would bring lower-cost dental care to low-income rural Vermonters, won the approval of the Senate Government Operations Committee, but was blocked by the Finance Committee.
Business lobbyists remain unhappy about the impending approval of the minimum wage increase, and they are still fighting a bill (S.239) that would authorize the Health Department to regulate toxic chemicals found in children’s products.
History teaches that almost nothing is impossible in the final days of a legislative session. Huddled in private meetings, leaders and committee chairs, sometimes joined by the governor, can reach agreements previously considered unreachable, and convince a majority of their members to go along. Bills thought to be slam dunks can be scuttled, bills thought to be dead can be brought back to life.
Few seasoned Statehouse observers expect that this week, though. They expect a great deal of sound, a little fury, and not much that signifies.
