Accounting is a creative art. Governing is an applied science. As a legislative session ends, somebody has to get them to mesh.
Somebody – the legislative leaders, Gov. Peter Shumlin, and the scientific artists who work for them – seem to have managed that trick Friday, meaning that the 2014 session of the Vermont State Legislature will probably end Saturday after approving a budget of roughly $5.6 billion and tweaking enough taxes to pay for it.
“Probably” does not mean “absolutely, definitely, and without any doubt.” As a footsore Friday (lots of standing around on hard floors) dragged toward its end, there remained the possibility that something would scuttle the Saturday adjournment plans.
That’s because while governing may be an applied science, legislating has its artistic elements, its primary art form being drama, or perhaps just petulance. By either name, one grouchy lawmaker (perhaps having stood around too long on hard floors) can sometimes delay passage of necessary legislation, and hence put off adjournment.
This seemed unlikely, though, not because no one was grouchy, but because whatever differences remained between the two parties, the two houses, or the Legislature and the governor were … well, if not minor, not the kind of differences that inspire anyone to assault (or defend) the barricades.
Who, after all, is likely to risk reputation or ridicule over whether the (rather small) budget gap ends up getting filled by a small increase in the tax on health insurance claims, or by an increase on the assessments paid by employers that do not provide health insurance, or by an increase in the cigarette tax, or by taxing bottled water?
Perfectly illustrating the melding of art and science, Commissioner of Finance and Management Jim Reardon said that $800,000 of the roughly $6 million gap between expenses and anticipated revenue would be bridged by shaming delinquent taxpayers. Reardon said the names of the most blatant tax scofflaws would be publicized, in hopes that they would fork over their back taxes to escape further humiliation.
That still left officials about $5 million short, but in the context of a $5.6 billion budget, or even the roughly $2.3 billion in state funds (most of the rest is federal money), $5 million isn’t such a daunting figure. In a big budget like the state’s money can be “found” in this account or that one.
Or (as a couple of lobbyists explained over coffee in the Statehouse’s second floor cafeteria), it can be filched, by taking a few dollars away from this function and a few more away from that one. This year, it seems, budget balancers are going to take a couple of hundred thousand dollars away from the meager increases (1 percent) planned for higher education, and another hundred thousand or so from the State Housing and Conservation Board.
Still, as the day wore on, it seemed inevitable that finding and filching would not be enough, and that some “new revenue,” as politicians prefer to call higher taxes, would be part of the solution.
According to some legislators, one problem delaying final agreement on a tax package was that the House was holding out for reducing the statewide school property tax 1 cent lower than the Senate’s proposal.
Why the two houses differed here was not clear, but one possible reason is that the senators wanted one thing precisely because the House wanted another, or vice versa. Privately, and sometimes not so privately, members of the two houses occasionally gripe about each other, senators claiming the House is chaotic, House members grumbling that the senators are hoity-toity.
When the two houses pass different versions of the same bill, joint conference committees meet to try to resolve the differences. The conference committee members are almost always members of the standing committees that considered the bills to begin with, and many of the members have pride of authorship in the version they approved. The conferees usually reach agreement, but often at the price of even lower inter-house admiration.
On occasion, a single lawmaker can delay passage of a bill that has majority support both inside the Statehouse and among the electorate. Until this week, that seemed to be what was happening to the measure designed to outlaw the use of handheld cellphones while driving. The House passed the measure easily, but Sen. Dick Sears, the North Bennington Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee, would not bring it up for a committee vote.
Sears said the state should deal with other “distracted driving” problems. Since he was unlikely to propose a ban on drinking coffee in the car, many suspected that he was really holding up the bill because Shumlin didn’t like it.
In this case, the canny veteran lawmaker was outmaneuvered by House backers who attached the ban to a broader transportation bill which passed both houses and was signed by the governor, who perhaps still didn’t like it but was unwilling to veto a popular measure.
House-Senate differences came close to scuttling the minimum wage hike backed strongly by Shumlin, House Speaker Shap Smith, and Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell, not to mention President Barack Obama. The House approved a measure raising the wage to $10.10 by Jan. 1, 2015. The Senate passed its own version, with a higher ($10.50) minimum, but after four years, and with smaller raises in the first two years.
Late Friday, House Democrats were forced to accept the Senate version because House Republicans would only agree to suspend the rule requiring a 24-hour wait before voting on an amended bill for a vote on the Senate bill.
Rep. Don Turner of Milton, the House minority leader, said the Senate bill would “give employers more time to adjust” to the higher wage. The bill passed quickly and Shumlin signed it before day’s end.
The Senate barely suspended its comparable rule to allow a vote on a bill to control toxic chemicals in children’s products. Industry lobbyists fought the measure to the end, but the suspension vote squeaked through 23-7 and the bill, which went to the governor for his signature, passed by a 26-3 margin.
CORRECTION: The House originally proposed a minimum wage increase to $10.10 by Jan. 1, 2015.
