[T]he fiscal year 2017 budget, tax and fee bills passed the House already, but the Republican caucus is not happy.
GOP members gathered in the Cedar Creek Room Friday to air complaints about the budget and on the process for putting it together.
House Minority Leader Don Turner, R-Milton, charged that the majority party failed to consider and adopt measures his party put forward to curb state spending.
Turner and other Republican House members say that the rate of growth in the budget is too high. Turner pointed to the 4 percent increase in general fund spending in the FY 2017 budget.
Democrats highlight the rate of growth in all state funds, which comes in at 2.7 percent. House Majority Leader Sarah Copeland-Hanzas, D-Bradford, says that is a better measurement of state spending because it accounts for major pots of money beyond the general fund — such as the transportation fund and special funds.
Turner charged that the Democrats failed to live up to intent language passed in the 2016 budget. He said that his party members introduced bills and amendments that would reduce expenditures.
Turner shared a list with VTDigger of more than 30 bills that he says would reduce spending, drive down the property tax rate, improve health care access and encourage economic development. Turner says the bills were introduced in the committees of jurisdiction, as requested by the Democratic leadership.
But Democrats says that Turner was not clear in communicating his party’s proposals for the budget.
Copeland-Hanzas said that she invited Turner to share a list of legislation and proposals with her, but that she never got it.
She said that Republicans have introduced bills that collectively add up to between $15 million and $38 million in new spending.
“For him to contend that all we had to do was take down the bills off the wall and pass them, kind of is a little disingenuous,” Copeland-Hanzas said. “Which bills did he mean?”
Turner acknowledged that that may be true.
“I am sure that there are Republican bills that add costs, because they represent their constituents just like every other representative,” Turner said. “They have very right to bring forth a bill.”
However, he contends many bills that Republicans introduced would help reduce expenditures if they came off the wall and passed out of committee. Because the bills don’t get passed, the GOP introduces them as amendments, he said. Then, Democrats challenge the ideas as not properly vetted, he said.
“But there are more bills, bills that fit this priority that I have been talking about for two years that are on these walls that will do what we’ve talked about doing,” Turner said.
“And if I was in Mitzi’s chair, we would do it without the taxes,” Turner said.
Democrats say that the proposals Turner brought to the House Appropriations Committee were not specific. They charge that his suggestions would shift the spending burdens to other state funds, such as the capital fund and the transportation fund, without really impacting the overall spending on the state.
“I think what’s going on here is nothing more difficult to understand than that this is a very difficult budget,” Copeland-Hanzas said. “It is hard to make the decisions that need to be made to cut spending.”
