House and Senate leaders have pledged to develop a long-term revenue source for cleanup of Lake Champlain this legislative session, since the Scott administration failed to come up with a proposal.
Last year, lawmakers directed the administration to develop a long term-funding plan to fill a gap in the 20-year, $2 billion-plus cleanup effort. However, a group led by Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore, did not submit a proposal to lawmakers as mandated by legislation that was signed into law by Gov. Phil Scott last session. Instead, Moore, the tax commissioner, the secretary of agriculture and other administration officials [recommended] using the capital budget to pay for state’s remaining share of the costs, which the state treasurer estimates at $25 million a year.
House Speaker Mitzi Johnson and Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe both expressed frustration that the administration didn’t come up with a funding source. Johnson said the House would move forward with a tax or fee to pay for the cleanup. She offered no specific plan and outlined the pros and cons of the most discussed method, a per parcel fee.
“Not doing anything isn’t an option,” the speaker said in an interview. “Somebody has to be the grown-up in the room and think about the future of Vermont, creating that strong, healthy future where we acknowledge that clean water is absolutely essential for an enormous part of our economy, for our property values, for our drinking water, for our recreation, for our reputation and I’m not the one who’s going to be willing to put that in jeopardy.”
Ashe said the governor’s “non-responsive funding strategy” to use the capital budget wasn’t practical, but he also said any new tax could be targeted for a shorter amount of time than the full 20 years. Ashe suggested compiling a list of water-quality projects similar to the five-year plan laid out for road projects by the Agency of Transportation.
“Asking people to raise $25 million or more a year for an extended period like 20 years without any current sense that there is a coherent plan on how to spend the money on actual projects, that is a bit of a rub,” Ashe said.
Johnson and Ashe said they supported State Treasurer Beth Pearce’s view that no more than half of the state funding gap should come from the capital budget.
The state is under an order by the Environmental Protection Agency to achieve significant reductions in phosphorus levels in Lake Champlain — a chemical that contributes to toxic algae blooms that have closed beaches.
Johnson said the most-often mentioned tax idea, a per parcel fee, makes sense because it is tied to the main sources of pollution, runoff from farms and parking lots. The downside, she said, is the apparent high cost to levy the tax, compared to what needs to be collected.
The House Speaker said she would also push for property tax reform that puts more of the funding for education on income taxes.
Ashe has long supported a more progressive funding of education, but he said a balance is needed since income taxes are more vulnerable to economic volatility than fixed property tax rates.
Both legislative leaders said they would advocate for a $15 minimum wage and a family leave bill and both insisted the proposals were complementary. Johnson said the two proposals “don’t need to compete with one another” for political support. The minimum wage is a top priority in the Senate, while paid family leave, which would be funded by workers, passed the House last year.
Johnson and Ashe acknowledged their relationship last year was at times rocky. They blamed miscommunication and miscues on the fact that they were both new to their leadership roles. The joint press conference on Thursday was a display of unity going into the next legislative session.
“We had a good working relationship in a way but it was very infant last year and I think that will improve,” Ashe said. The two leaders are planning weekly meetings this year that “will just be more effective and more productive on behalf of the House and the Senate than they would have been last year and that’s just because of our experience,” Ashe added.
The two held a joint press conference this week to outline their priorities. At one point last year, they held separate press conferences outlining education proposals and seemed not on the same page.
As for dealing with the Scott administration, Ashe called the blow up at the end of the session that pitted Scott against lawmakers over health care funding for teachers an “outlier” after otherwise communicating “decently” the rest of the session.
“I think our meetings with the administration will be more productive as well, just because we have our legs beneath us in a different way. How to avoid the turbulence of something like the education policy is a good question,” Ashe said.
Call it naive, Ashe said, but he said he doesn’t expect an “April surprise” like when Scott last year pushed for teachers to pay more for their health care and initially pushed for teachers to negotiate health care on a statewide basis, not at the traditional local district level.
