On Tuesday, Gov. Phil Scott laid out his funding priorities in a 40-minute speech to the Legislature. Scott’s 2019 budget maintains his pledge to avoid increasing taxes and fees, and offers only modest proposals for new spending. Or, as Finance Commissioner Adam Greshin put it in a press briefing that same day, “There are no bells and there are no whistles in this budget.”
Democratic legislators, who responded to the speech Tuesday afternoon, said the governor’s proposal lacked specifics and failed to recommend a specific way to deal with education costs.
VTDigger political columnist Jon Margolis says Scott’s proposal mainly builds on policies laid out in previous years. “It was kind of a caretaker budget,” he says, “and so far this has been a kind of a caretaker administration.”
Scott’s ambiguity about the education funding gap ensures it will remain an issue throughout the legislative session, Margolis says. Yet his proposed solutions to problems like the state’s stagnant workforce and the pollution of Lake Champlain may be so ambitious as to be “utopian.”
On this week’s podcast, Margolis breaks down the budget address.
Subscribe to the Deeper Dig on Apple Podcasts or Google Play.
