[A] paid family leave bill could come to the floor of the Senate as the legislative session winds down.
The Senate Committee on Economic Development approved H.196 on Thursday in a 4-1-0 vote.
The panel amended the House version of the bill. The new draft expands the length of leave time, while decreasing the amount paid out to employees caring for family members by 10 percent. The program is funded through a 0.141 percent payroll tax.
The draft legislation features a 12-week combined paid parental leave and six-week paid family care with 70 percent wage replacement. The House plan included an 80 percent wage replacement and a six-week paid leave, six-week unpaid parental leave plan.
In addition, the committee’s draft of the bill expands eligibility to include anyone who has made more than $10,710 at a company in the 12 months prior to the leave.
The votes were split along party lines. The committee’s one Republican member, Sen. David Soucy, R-Rutland, said he could not vote for the bill because it would increase taxes and fees, a hardline for Republicans this session set by the governor. Soucy was appointed by the governor earlier in the session to replace Kevin Mullin, who is now the director of the Green Mountain Care Board.
The bill, which was a main priority for the House this biennium, is set to go before the Senate finance and appropriations committees before it will be taken up on the Senate floor.
Senate Finance will analyze start-up costs for the program. According to an outside consulting agency, P&C Software Services, the exact start-up costs depends on a series of questions that have not yet been answered.
In an April 14 memo, P&C estimated it would cost about $10 million to $15 million in state funds to launch the program.
“The difficulty in preparing an estimate for PFL system costs arise from the fact that there is currently no clarity on which functions are required or optional, and of those functions which would be performed by an IT system and which would be performed by staff,” wrote Daniel Smith of P&C.
The state would collect about $15.9 million for the paid leave benefit annually and the program would cost $1.2 million a year to administer, according to a 2017 Vermont Joint Fiscal Office fiscal note.
Moving forward, advocates of the bill say it has the votes to pass both committees and the entire Senate but faces a gubernatorial veto.
Gov. Phil Scott has said he will veto any bill that increases taxes and fees, and in a March 20 letter to legislators, he specifically said he does not support a mandatory paid family leave program.
The bill passed the House and was the source of controversy between the House and Senate earlier in the session, when House members said that Senate Pro Tem Tim Ashe,D/P-Chittenden, did not support the bill.
Ashe told a constituent in an email at the beginning of the session that he thought paid family leave would be better when funded on the national level and disagreed with the regressive tax funding the bill, but he also said he could not think of a better way to fund the program.
If Vermont were to pass the bill, it would be the sixth state to offer paid family leave in the country — with wage replacement being the highest in the nation.
