[T]he head of the Vermont Senate wants his colleagues to make cuts in the budget that’s been approved by the House.
Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell said the $5.77 billion spending plan the House passed is simply too much. He acknowledged the hard work by the chairs and members of the House Appropriations and Ways and Means committees.
“There are some big numbers on the budget, and, frankly, I’m still looking for cuts,” Campbell said Friday. “I believe that we should not only be ready to make cuts, we should be looking to.”
The Windsor County Democrat also noted the House had the difficult task of going first.
“It’s easy when you go second,” Campbell said.
His comments came the day after the House passed its budget. Rep. Sarah Copeland-Hanzas, D-Bradford, the House majority leader, was ready to celebrate, particularly in light of how far she said the House had gone to make the numbers work.
“When we looked at the trends a year ago with rate of growth of state government outstripping our revenues, I thought, ‘I don’t know how we’re ever going to come to a consensus,’” she said.
“Everybody feels disappointment that they weren’t able to get that new initiative funded,” she said. Otherwise, Copeland-Hanzas was “elated” how the budget came out.
Senate Minority Leader Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, already knows he will vote no on the budget.
“What I’d like to see happen is we come to terms with the fact that we’re outspending ourselves … and cobbled another budget together again,” said Benning.
“This never-ending cycle is driving me crazy,” he said.
House Minority Leader Don Turner also believes the House-approved budget is too expensive and plans on lobbying senators to make cuts.
“That means I got to do work in the Senate. I got to share all the information I got. I got to bring forth the ideas, the ideas and stuff we brought here,” Turner said. “Hopefully they’ll get some traction there” in the Senate.
The Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take testimony on the budget all week. Campbell is one of the seven members.
Another key issue to be further debated before lawmakers adjourn, perhaps in the first week of May, is marijuana legalization.
The Senate approved the sale and possession of small amounts. The bill is currently being reviewed in the House Judiciary Committee. Copeland-Hanzas said it will also go to the Human Services Committee and Government Operations.
Skepticism about the wisdom of the bill remains, she said.
“They’ll continue to do this work over the next couple of weeks, and then I think they’ll take a moment, at some point decide, ‘Hey, are we going full steam ahead or does this not have legs?’” the majority leader said.
“It’s not clear right now, but they’re taking their time to go through it diligently to really seek feedback from other committees of jurisdiction, and we’ll see where we are in a couple of weeks,” said Copeland-Hanzas.
She noted because House members serve on only one committee, they are inclined to spend more time on an issue than their Senate counterparts might. “We tend to go through (legislation) with a fine-tooth comb,” she said.
Is there enough time to pass the pot legislation?
“That’s always the challenge when the bill comes over from the Senate, and they did their work pretty diligently and pretty quickly, but the House just has a different level of intensity and focus,” she said. “Because we only have one committee assignment, our committees tend to like to spend the whole day on whatever topic they’re working on.”
Turner is hoping the marijuana bill dies and said he is unaware of any Republican House members who will support it.
“We have enough issues with opioids,” Turner said. “We don’t need to introduce another substance for abuse and so on under the idea that it’s going to raise a lot of income when we know there’s going to be a lot of burden.”
The Milton Republican said recreational marijuana will be legalized in Vermont someday, but he wants other states to go first.
“Let somebody else be the test, the guinea pig on the East Coast,” he said.
Campbell said he would like to see the Senate take up several other issues as well.
For one, he’d like to change the funding method to clean up Lake Champlain and other impaired waterways. Campbell wants the fund financed through a fee on parcels of land, instead of the property transfer tax. Campbell said that tax is not performing well and is unreliable.
The Senate leader also said he wants a State Ethics Commission established.
Campbell also called for the House to pass a bill approved by the Senate that would make it a crime to threaten bodily injury of a social worker and enhance penalties for someone who assaults a social worker. The bill was introduced after the slaying last summer of Lara Sobel, a social worker with the Department for Children and Families.
Campbell said it had been a “quiet” session, despite the controversy over the suspension of Sen. Norman McAllister, R-Franklin, who has been charged with sexual assault. Campbell said he had expected “more clamor” over issues like pot legalization.
“The hills are alive with the sound of music, just not with the same beat as last year,” he said.
