[I]n the Statehouse cafeteria the morning of the day the new governor was to be inaugurated, one of the more incisive and less reverential observers of the state scene said that the 2017 legislative session “is all about Governor Ashe.”
Asked about that assessment, another waspish and somewhat sardonic Statehouse veteran thought for a moment and then said, “Maybe it’s all about Governor Trump.”
It was, of course, neither State Senate President Tim Ashe, P/D-Chittenden, nor President-elect Donald Trump who took the oath of office a few hours later as the 82nd governor of Vermont. It was Phil Scott.
But Scott’s 31-minute inaugural speech indicated that he is aware that his hopes and plans for his first legislative session are likely to be complicated both by the decisions of President Trump and the Republican Congress and by the two new young, energetic leaders of the Legislature, Ashe and House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero.
Hardly a fair greeting for Vermont’s first Republican governor in six years – a federal government dominated by nominal allies who are hardly his kind of Republican; and an overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature with two determined, ambitious, leaders with plans of their own.
Perhaps aware that he’s stuck in an unenviable middle, Scott pledged “a centrist governing philosophy,” and acknowledged that “the change in Washington creates a level of uncertainty.”
So does the change in Montpelier. The irreverent Statehouse observer focused on Ashe first of all because there is general if not universal assumption among people who follow these matters that the new Senate leader sees himself in the governor’s office one day.
Not that he’s ever expressed interest in the job. But young men (he’s 40) who in five terms go from avant-garde back-bencher (he started off as a Progressive Party candidate for the Burlington City Council) to unanimously elected Senate leader do seem to be aiming for something else eventually.
So as the session progresses, legislators, lobbyists and the new governor and his aides will be perusing Ashe’s every move with an eye toward figuring out which bills he will shepherd through the Senate and which he will scuttle, and how either course might effect his potential candidacy.
This could be a mistake. First of all, if Ashe is so politically shrewd, he must know that he could be better off running for governor in 2020 (Vermonters tend to give their governors a second two-year term) and also know that trying to plan that far ahead makes little sense.
Besides, it seems a mistake to assume that Ashe is motivated solely by political ambition. He’s a genuine policy wonk with deeply held social views. Like most people (yes, even in politics) he wants to do what he thinks is right.
There has been less political Kremlinology devoted to Johnson. Maybe that’s because her rise hasn’t been quite as meteoric (she’s been in the House for 14 years). Or maybe it’s just because nobody’s yet thought about it. At 45, she’s pretty young, too, and seems reasonably ambitious. Right now, her ambitions seem limited to making the House of Representatives as efficient and proficient as possible. But as ambitions go, that’s at least as bold as it is limited.
Scott is going to have to work with both of these leaders, and while they all share the same basic goals – “providing access to health care, protecting our environment, and ensuring all our citizens have safe, clean, drinking water,” as Scott put it in his speech – they differ on how to reach those goals.
Like many inaugural speeches, Scott’s was long on ideals, short on policy specifics. He promised more of the latter in his budget address in three weeks. Meanwhile, he said he wanted to “do things differently.” His administration, he said, would “not approach our challenges from the top down, but from the bottom up.” He will direct all state agencies to focus on “strengthening the economy, making Vermont more affordable, and protecting the most vulnerable.” He urges Vermonters to “be bold, together.”
All this is not exactly meaningless. Simply setting goals can create the skeleton of government policy. But there was little in the way of flesh.
Scott was specific, if not detailed, on some subjects. He pledged to “protect all citizens and safeguard the human rights of all people.” He indicated he thought Vermont spends too little on both early childhood education and higher education, but too much on elementary and secondary education, though he didn’t say how he would fix that problem except to say “we can revitalize the entire system, so we no longer have to accept rising taxes and compromises in the quality of our children’s education.”
We can?
Maybe, but as Johnson said after the speech, “if that was easy to do, we would have done it already.”
Scott also pledged, as he did during his campaign, to veto any budget which grows “faster than the economy or wages of working Vermonters.”
Keeping that pledge may not be easy, thanks in large part to those fellow Republicans of his in Washington. Congress has already started the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act, which might eventually mean that the state would have to spend more on health care for Vermonters whose coverage depends on the Medicaid expansion of the law. Congressional Republicans want to cut Medicaid spending in general, which would require state government to spend even more, or see thousands of people lose their coverage.
Also on the Congressional chopping block is funding for programs of the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s the agency Trump once talked about eliminating. It’s also the agency helping the state fight the pollution that causes the algae infestations in Lake Champlain, a fight Scott pledged to continue, as he pledged to continue the extensive (and expensive) treatment and prevention of opiate addiction.
Even without a decline in federal funding, keeping all those programs going without some kind of tax increase would be difficult. If Trump and Congress do what they say they’re going to do, difficult would understate the dilemma.
