(Jon Margolis writes political columns for VTDigger.)
[J]ust what was it all about, all that yelling and screaming, sturm und drang, sound and fury, charge and countercharge that kept the Legislature in session two weeks longer than necessary?
Maybe not much.
Because it’s not clear that the single cause of the tumult — Gov. Phil Scott’s insistence that teachers’ health care benefits be negotiated statewide — would do as much good as Scott claims or as much harm as its opponents charge.
And now it seems possible that even though he has held the political high ground, Scott will yield, or at least accept the kind of deal he just rejected.
Perhaps because he knows the political landscape is likely to shift next month.
Back to the politics in a minute. First let’s stick to the substance of the dispute, such as there was substance to the dispute.
Could the governor’s proposal save “up to $26 million,” as Scott always put it, potentially reducing property taxes by that amount?
Maybe, but:
• In governmentese, “up to” means “less than.”
• That much and more is going to be saved anyway, as teachers (and other school employees) switch to a new health insurance system.
• In context, $26 million is about 1.6 percent of the roughly $1.6 billion Vermont spends on elementary and secondary education, and by the time the savings filtered down to taxpayers, they would be in the tens of dollars per household.
• And that’s if the plan worked as envisioned, or at all, which is uncertain.
But neither does it seem certain that implementing the Scott plan would have done any harm. The Democratic leaders of the Legislature and their allies in the teachers union complained that removing health insurance from districtwide negotiations would diminish the collective bargaining rights of school employees.
Whatever those may be, they are not in the Constitution, they are not absolute, and Scott’s opponents never explained just why his proposal would violate them.
Making that explanation isn’t easy these days. Unions have been so weak for so long that “collective bargaining” hasn’t been part of the public discussion for years.
But it is one of the great achievements of Western civilization of the 20th century. It provided a mechanism for dealing with the relatively new reality of scores or hundreds (later thousands) of workers employed by the same company, far too many to be dealt with individually.
Collective bargaining’s solution is not perfect, but preferable to the most obvious alternative: reciprocated head-bashing and bomb-throwing. In general, collective bargaining works.
It seems to work specifically in the Vermont public school system, where in 50 years it has led to roughly 5,000 settlements and only 26 strikes (according to the Vermont-NEA). One of the strikes lasted 87 days. Almost all the rest were short. On the face of it, this is not a system crying out for fundamental change.
But that doesn’t make it perfect, nor even prove that the change Scott proposed was all that fundamental. Had the union and the Democrats made a specific argument against the change, Scott might have had to rebut it, leading to a substantive debate over the issue.
Dream on.
Removing health insurance from the local bargaining table would alter collective bargaining, perhaps for the worse. In bargaining, every issue on the table helps find a solution for every other issue, as the parties demand (or offer) a little less of this in exchange for a little more of that, or vice versa. Taking one major item off the table diminishes that potential.
But no one knows which side, if either, would benefit from that change. Statewide negotiations could lead to a statewide strike. Possibly illegal, said the Office of Legislative Council, but illegal does not mean impossible. Ronald Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers for an illegal strike. Would Phil Scott fire all the teachers?
Not likely, at least not the same Phil Scott who indicated on Friday that he might give in to the legislative leaders next month rather than risk a government shutdown.
“I know that’s not great negotiating skills to tell people you’re willing to put aside your own preference for the benefit of the state,” Scott said, “but that’s just the way I am as a leader.”
A little vague, but no one should be surprised if House Speaker Mitzi Johnson and Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe now figure they don’t have to give in to Scott when the Legislature reconvenes to consider his likely vetoes of the tax and budget bills.
The tentative date for that session is 10 days before the end of the fiscal year. If the new year begins with no budget, state government can’t spend money. So far, Scott has been in the enviable position of looking like the governor who is trying to cut property taxes. Being the governor when, for instance, the state parks shut down for even a few days is a very unenviable position. Scott understands the politics.
And maybe this whole brouhaha was mostly about politics from the start. As one of the shrewder Statehouse veterans noted on the last day of the session, every elected official listens to the advice to “dance with the one who brung you.”
That meant Democrats had to pay attention to the Vermont-NEA and Scott to the Republican base. That base is a minority in this state, where Donald Trump got just 29 percent of the vote, but Scott needs that 29 percent, and Republicans in the Legislature acknowledge that these voters are not happy with the governor. He’s been downright liberal on immigration and the environment and (from their perspective) too cooperative with the Legislature’s Democratic leaders.
Who were in turn cooperative with him, giving him a budget (the one he says he is going to veto) with no tax or fee increases as he insisted. Only after both houses approved that budget almost unanimously did Scott threaten to veto it unless lawmakers inserted the statewide health insurance negotiations provision.
Now even if he compromises to avoid a government shutdown, he will have pleased that base just for trying and for challenging the NEA, an organization conservatives love to hate. He still looks like the governor trying to cut property taxes, and the Democrats still appear to be befuddled.
Did that justify two extra weeks of the legislative session?
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