[T]he state’s Emergency Board voted Monday to approve $700,000 in special funds to help two companies hire more people in Vermont.
The board also voted to raise the 2015 limit on a special section of the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive, or VEGI, from $1 million to $1.2 million in order to accommodate a Brattleboro company.
The board includes the chairs of the two money committees in each legislative chamber: Sen. Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, Rep. Janet Ancel, D-Calais, and Rep. Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero.
Gov. Peter Shumlin serves as the Emergency Board chair, and Johnson was absent Monday. The discussion took nearly two hours in a closed-door executive session, and the lawmakers voted on the issues in a 15-minute open meeting.
The committee voted 3-1 to approve $500,000 for G.W. Plastics in Bethel to build a new facility. Ashe voted against the appropriation. The expansion would add up to 73 jobs to the company’s 300 existing jobs, according to the Shumlin administration.
The money will come from the Enterprise Fund, which currently has $2.1 million to be used at the discretion of the governor with the approval of the Emergency Board. The $700,000 in awards leaves $1.4 million in the fund.
G.W. Plastics was already approved in June for between $540,434 and $977,125 from VEGI, for the years 2015 to 2019. The company pays starting employees $12.50 per hour, trains them and gives raises along the way.
Brenan Riehl, the president and chief executive officer of G.W. Plastics, testified before the Legislature in April that the company was considering a building expansion in Vermont, Arizona or Texas, and Riehl said the “enhanced VEGI program would provide a meaningful incentive.” At the time, he said the decision would be made within two months.
“There is no such thing as enough jobs,” Shumlin said. “I don’t think anything’s a drop in the bucket in the economic development field. I believe my job as governor is to create as many jobs as possible.”
The other $200,000 appropriation from the Enterprise Fund would go to an unnamed Canadian company to help it start a branch in the Northeast Kingdom.
Shumlin said it would be “inappropriate” to disclose the name of the company at this point or for anyone on the Emergency Board to discuss with the public what happened in the executive session.
The company was in discussions with the state before lawmakers appropriated $100,000 this year to the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce to do outreach in Montreal, according to Pat Moulton, the secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development.
The Emergency Board also decided to raise the cap on how much money the Vermont Economic Progress Council can allocate under the VEGI program to projects that would have a net cost to the state. The cap is $1 million per year but will now be $1.2 million for 2015. The cap for the entire VEGI program is $10 million per year.
Despite requests from Shumlin and Moulton, the board declined to raise the $1 million annual cap for 2016. The company pushing the Vermont Economic Progress Council over its 2015 and 2016 caps is G.S. Precision, located in Brattleboro, which Moulton said has bought land in New Hampshire and may leave Vermont.
Shumlin called G.S. Precision “a big one.”
Moulton said the VEGI money would help the state retain 300 jobs and create 100 more.
In June, G.S. Precision of Brattleboro was approved for between $842,064 and $1,063,378 from 2016 to 2020. Stephen Morse, the chair of the Vermont Economic Progress Council, said, “New Hampshire is being very aggressive” in recruiting G.S. Precision.
“The company that we’re trying to retain in Brattleboro hopes to close, assuming that everything is getting to final approval, sometime in December,” Moulton said. “The council needs to make an affirmative vote to exceed the cap sometime between now and December.”
The state typically awards money from VEGI, which is awarded similarly to a tax rebate after companies create the jobs they promised, in a package with more money from the Vermont Training Program for training their workers.
The board told the administration and the Vermont Economic Progress Council to come back to them if they want the 2016 cap raised to accommodate the company.
Correction: This story was corrected at 9:37 a.m. Oct. 20 to note that the board’s vote on the appropriation for G.W. Plastics was not unanimous. The article has also been corrected to reflect that the $1 million cap only represents part of the VEGI program.
