This is the third in a series of roll call vote analysis of the 2019 legislative session. The first was a roll call analysis of the House vote on abortion rights. The second was the Senate vote on a gun purchase waiting period.
[L]ast week, the Vermont House was divided over a proposal to double the tax on heating fuel.
Legislators in the lower chamber passed the tax increase on Thursday, bringing the levy up from two cents to four cents per gallon, in an effort to raise millions in new revenue for the state’s low-income weatherization program.
Though the chamber’s large Democratic majority mostly backed the tax hike, the vote on the weatherization bill, H.439, was among the most narrow of the legislative session so far.
On a first vote, the bill passed 81-60, with the entirety of the Republican caucus and almost 20 Democrats and independents voting against the measure.
Democrats say that giving more low-income residents funding to modify their homes and reduce carbon emissions not only protects the environment, but also saves residents hundreds of dollars in long-term energy costs.
Hiking the tax on heating fuel from two to four cents will raise an estimated $4.6 million in additional revenue for the state’s weatherization programs.
But those who opposed the bill argued it was regressive and would place an undue burden on low-income Vermonters. Each of the 42 Republicans were present for the first vote on the fuel tax proposal opposed it.
“We’re taxing a commodity and the cost of that is being passed on to the very people that we’re trying to help,” Rep. Topper McFaun, R-Barre Town, said of the proposal last week.
Concerns about hiking the tax weren’t limited to the Republican caucus, however — 12 Democrats voted against the bill on the House floor.
Rep. Cynthia Browning, D-Arlington, opposed the measure over worries that the tax was too regressive.
She proposed amendments aimed at avoiding a two cent tax hike, while still coming up with the weatherization dollars. One would have raised the top income tax brackets, instead of the fuel tax, to raise the money. The other proposed a more modest one cent rate hike. Both failed.
But before the measure passed on a final voice vote on Thursday, lawmakers voted to exempt farmers and the timber industry from paying the two cent per gallon tax hike on dyed diesel.
In addition to heating oil, propane and kerosene, the tax also applies to the diesel fuel, which is commonly used to power machinery in the logging and farming industries.
The bill has moved to the Senate, where it is being debated by the finance committee.
Here is how lawmakers voted on the second floor reading. The final vote was a voice vote.