The House Ways and Means Committee approved its version of the beleaguered water clean up bill, S.260. The legislation was amended to include funding — still only partial, and much delayed — for the state’s federally-ordered water clean-up efforts.
After a week of weighing imperfect solutions — and wrangling with Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore, whose attempt to represent the view of the Scott administration on Thursday succeeded only in infuriating committee members — the committee settled on a version of S.260 that was a variation on the version proposed by House natural resources chair Rep. David Deen, D-Putney, who had proposed a $2 per night surcharge on hotel rooms.
The House Ways and Means Committee approved the bill on 7-4 vote. It calls for pollution-reduction efforts to be funded with an increase of 0.25 percent in the state’s rooms and meals tax, and with revenue from unclaimed bottle and can deposits, which beverage distributors currently keep for themselves. Both versions are seen as stopgap measures, taking effect in the year 2020 only in the event the state has failed to identify other sources of funding by then.
Even if S.260 is passed by the full House, and reconciled with the version the Senate approved in a unanimous vote in March, that may be as far as it gets. Gov. Phil Scott has promised to veto any bill with new fees or taxes.
The Scott administration’s refusal even to consider funding for water clean-up efforts amounts, in effect, to defying a federal order to reduce phosphorus pollution in state water, which included meeting a December 2017 deadline for the state to establish a longterm funding source for pollution control. Total local and state clean up costs are expected to be $1.2 billion over the next 20 years.
Absent action by the administration, S.260 represents the Legislature’s attempts to do move ahead with efforts to raise money for phosphorus mitigation.
Which is why members of the House Ways and Means Committee were distinctly unreceptive to attempts by ANR Secretary Moore to deflect debate away from funding. Moore tried to steer lawmakers toward a review of existing laws having to do with cost-sharing of pollution-control subsidies, stormwater regulations, and other rules.
Asked by Rep. Sam Young, D-Glover, exactly what the state was seeking from this review, Moore was unable to say.
“I think it needs to be looked at in the context of what our overall clean water goals is,” she said. “I don’t have a specific proposal to bring to you today.”
Lawmakers were left mystified by what Rep. George Till, D-Jericho, described as “dissonance” between what the Scott administration is saying, and what everyone else seems to be saying.
“Some of the dissonance seems to be related to the sense of urgency that some of us feel, based on the letter from the EPA earlier this month where they say that they’re going to re-evaluate our situation in the middle of 2019, and they specifically cite the need for us to identify long-term funding sources,” Till said.
“The dissonance is, we feel — some of us — a sense of urgency, and then I keep hearing from the administration, ‘No, we don’t need to do anything,’” he said.
Moore responded, “I think in order to maintain the level of public support we need for the long term, we have to get this right, and we have to straight-face to the public that what we are doing is the most efficient and effective way to get to our clean water goals.”
The explanation was not well-received. Rep. James Masland, D-Thetford Center, described Moore’s testimony as a “wall of words” designed “to postpone doing anything real for another 18 months at least.”
“I think we’re hearing a wall of words as to why to stick with the same mantra of ‘no new taxes, no new fees,’ no matter how relevant and necessary, and that’s where you’re ending up, and I’m really disappointed,” Masland said.
Rep. Johannah Donovan, D-Burlington, went further.
“I have a little bit of rage going on,” she said. “I do think the administration is sort of taking a campaign slogan and making it policy, and really interfering with the good of the people of Vermont.
Other potential funding sources the committee reviewed this week included the following:
- Proceeds from unclaimed deposits on bottles and cans, about $2 million annually.
- A fee on car washes, a fee with direct ties to water, House Ways and Means Chairwoman Rep. Janet Ancel, D-Calais, pointed out.
- Hotel occupancy fee: The House Committee on Natural Resources, Fish, and Wildlife had proposed a $2 per night per room occupancy fee as a revenue source, for an estimated $7 million per year.
- Docking fees, effectively a tax on boats using Lake Champlain.
- Impervious surface fees. Impervious surfaces are second only to agriculture as a pollution source. There have been several proposals to assess fees tied to the acreage of impervious surface on property.
- Sand, gravel, and asphalt tax, floated by Rep. Cynthia Browning, D-Arlington, as a tax on the ingredients of impervious surfaces. Browning also suggested a tax on cattle feed and fertilizer, as farms are the primary polluters of Vermont’s public waters. By taxing the products that most directly contribute to the state’s water pollution, Browning said, “you raise revenue, and people use less.”
In the version of S. 260 that the committee approved, the state would recoup unredeemed bottle deposits, and increase the rooms and meals tax by a quarter of a percent (to 9.25 percent).
The rooms tax increase would raise $4.55 million per year and the unclaimed beverage deposits would another $1.94 million, according to estimates prepared for the House Ways and Means committee.
The roughly $6.5 million would be roughly the same as the $7 million that House Committee on Natural Resources, Fish, and Wildlife Chairman Rep. David Deen, D-Putney, proposed with a $2 occupancy fee per night on hotel rooms.
Both Ancel and Deen said that the funding mechanisms were meant as “a backstop,” in Ancel’s words — meaning that they would take effect in 2020, only if other means have not been found.
