House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, D-Grand Isle, and Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, said Monday afternoon that they had confirmed a Tuesday meeting with members of Gov. Phil Scott’s administration.
The meeting will be the first time the parties will sit down together since the Legislature adjourned in May. Lawmakers and the governor are at impasse over teachers’ health insurance benefits.
Dissatisfied by the plan offered by lawmakers, Scott executed his promise last week to veto the property tax rate bill and the state budget bill for the next fiscal year.
The meeting is scheduled eight days before the House and Senate reconvene for a special veto session. Before the Legislature adjourned in May, leadership told members of both chambers to plan to return for two days, though the session could go longer.
Rebecca Kelley, the spokesperson for the Scott administration, said Monday afternoon that the governor’s office was trying to set up a meeting with legislative leaders early in the week.
Kelley also said that on the final day of the legislative session, the parties were close to reaching an agreement.
“We made a lot of progress really, really the most amount of progress, I would say, on that final day,” Kelley said.
The administration is optimistic a deal can be reached by the veto session next week.
“We hope that we would be able to come to an agreement,” Kelley said. If they cannot by the beginning of the veto session, then by the end of it, she said.
Johnson said that without the pressure of the last day of the session, the parties involved would be able to “think more clearly about the possibilities that are in that very narrow overlap.”
The House Speaker will be joined at the table by House Education Chair Rep. Dave Sharpe, D-Bristol, House Majority Leader Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, and House Dean Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield.
Ashe said he believes it is possible to reach an agreement the House, Senate and the governor’s office can be happy with.
“Arriving at the table with good faith always presents an opportunity for a handshake and a deal,” Ashe said.
Ashe will be joined at the negotiations by Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, Sen. Ann Cummings, D-Washington, and Sen. Phil Baruth, D-Chittenden, who chair the committees on appropriations, finance and education. Sen. Dick Mazza, D-Grand Isle, dean of the Senate and a friend of Scott’s will also come to the meeting.
Scott’s veto of the budget marks the second time in the state’s history that a governor has vetoed the state financial package for the next fiscal year. Gov. Jim Douglas was the first to do so in 2009, and the Legislature overrode his veto.
If negotiators do not reach a deal, the Legislature could move forward with the budget and yield bills as they initially passed. Each piece of legislation would need to go through the process of introduction and three readings in both the House and Senate — a process that would take more than a week.
“Remember, we’ve already voted to save taxpayers money, we’ve already voted to explore a statewide teacher health benefit, and we’ve already voted to create another moment when all health care contracts will be up for renewal at the same time. So the ‘gap’ is not as extreme as some partisans would make it out to be,” Ashe said.
Meanwhile, as negotiations on the budget and yield bills have stalled, behind-the-scenes actions on marijuana legalization have continued.
Stalled pot bill
Legislators involved with the pot bill worked to address the issues that Scott outlined in his veto message when he nixed the legislation, including penalties for using pot in cars and for giving it to people under age 21.
The bill would have allowed adults to possess up to an ounce of marijuana without civil or criminal penalties, and would have allowed people to grow up to two flowering and four immature plants at home, as of July 2018. It also created a panel to explore the possibility of setting up a regulated sales system in Vermont.
Lawmakers sent the governor a draft last week to review, and Kelley said the administration expected to return feedback to lawmakers Monday.
She said there has been a “good faith effort” among lawmakers to address Scott’s concerns, and the administration is “very optimistic” that there can be an agreement.
The bill could face substantial parliamentary hurdles if it comes before the Legislature next week, because the House Republican caucus likely will not agree to suspend the rules in order to allow the revised legislation to pass both chambers within the time constraints of the veto session.
Kelley said the administration had not reached out to House Republicans on the issue yet, and would not until Scott and lawmakers come to consensus on a new version of the bill.
“As we come to that agreement, we’ll decide the next steps forward,” Kelley said.
In Johnson’s view, marijuana legalization is a secondary issue as lawmakers come back for the veto session.
“The top priority is making sure that the state has a budget and our communities set their tax rates for their schools,” Johnson said.
Once there is a path forward on the budget and yield bills, she said, “we can think about how to move forward on that.”
Ashe said the Senate is waiting to hear from the governor for his reactions to the latest draft legislators proposed. He said it will be “critical” for the governor to help get Republican support to bypass parliamentary rules to pass the measure in June.
“Otherwise the new draft is meaningless until January,” he said.
Three vetoes in Scott’s first session
Retired Middlebury political science professor Eric Davis said that the veto has been used “very infrequently” in Vermont politics.
According to a catalogue by the State Archivist, there have been 144 vetoes in Vermont history, including the three that Scott issued this year.
Davis said in recent memory, the most similar instance of the gubernatorial veto in action was 2009, the year that Gov. Jim Douglas vetoed the budget, the marriage equality bill and a bill decommissioning Vermont Yankee.
That year, the legislature overrode the vetoes of both the budget and the marriage equality bill. Legislative leaders chose not to act on the Vermont Yankee measure.
Davis said that in his view, the three vetoes Scott issued are distinct from each other.
On the marijuana bill, the governor and legislative leaders are fairly close in their opinions of the legislation. On the budget and yield bills, however, the sides are at “fundamental, philosophical, ideological” disagreement.
Davis expects the budget and yield bills will be resolved through the veto session, but he expects that it will become an issue parties use to recruit candidates ahead of the next election.
“This will become a big issue in the election in 2018,” he said.
