Editor’s note: This commentary is by Rep. Janet Ancel, D-Calais, who is chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Joint Fiscal Committee. She was legal counsel to Gov. Howard Dean and served as tax commissioner from 2000 to 2002.
[I]n Vermont we’re a citizen Legislature, and that means we rely on nonpartisan staff to do our bill drafting, support our committees and do fiscal analysis of proposals that come before us.
I know, for example, that I can talk with a member of our nonpartisan staff at Legislative Council or Joint Fiscal about an idea and they won’t share my idea or information they develop for me with anyone else without my permission. And that cuts in the other direction as well.
Recently, the Joint Fiscal staff has come under fire from a member of the Scott administration.
Jason Gibbs, the governor’s chief of staff, has criticized the analysts who did a review of the governor’s five-year plan as politically motivated — a classic example of attacking the messenger because you don’t like the message.
These attacks trouble me on several levels. As chair of the Joint Fiscal Committee, and a chair of one of the four “money” committees, I depend on these nonpartisan staff members and I work with them on an almost daily basis. I value and respect their work and it troubles me that they have been pulled into a dispute that is really between a governor who has taken the Grover Norquist “No New Taxes” pledge and a Legislature that is called on to balance a multitude of constituent voices. That dispute is still unfolding and much has already been written about what’s at stake.
But what really troubles me is what’s happened to our political debate. The Scott administration is the first in my memory to attack nonpartisan legislative staff. The Scott administration is the first in my memory to have its chief of staff — Mr. Gibbs — assume the public face of education policy which increasingly seems to mean a policy of dismantling the public school system. The Scott administration is the first in my memory to risk a government shutdown over a campaign pledge and it is the first in my memory not to negotiate in good faith over the final budget and tax deal.
We gave the administration several hours over the last couple of weeks to present their plan and the “math” behind it. Their plan continues to depend on assumptions and speculation. It continues to use “savings” that may or may not materialize in ways that require real money, not money we hope will appear. I wouldn’t balance my checkbook on hopes and wishes and we shouldn’t balance the state’s books that way either.
On our part, we will continue to depend on thoughtful and nonpartisan fiscal analysis in evaluating that plan and any other that comes before us. We encourage the administration to stop name-calling and to share information with our analysts and to begin serious work toward consensus and resolution.
