Gov. Phil Scott says he’s waiting on Democrats to send him key pieces of legislation before he decides whether they will earn his support this year, making it all but impossible for legislative leaders to figure out where they might find common ground on issues he generally opposes.
Democrats have struggled to come to agreement on key issues, including paid family leave, minimum wage, clean water funding and establishment of a retail marijuana market — despite the fact that the party has overwhelming majorities in the Senate and House.
Last year the Republican governor vetoed 11 pieces of legislation, including two budget bills, and was out front on where he stood on major issues. At a press conference Thursday, Scott said this time around he’s keeping his cards close to the vest and won’t say what he’ll approve or reject until the House and Senate strike final deals. Scott has deliberately stayed above the fray this session and has let the Democrats squabble among themselves.
“We’re seeing there’s a lot of difference between the House and the Senate.” Scott said. “They need to work out their differences first, and then I have something to react to.”
The governor’s approach is rankling some lawmakers as they try to craft legislation.
“It’s not fun,” Senate leader Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, said Thursday evening. “It leaves us doing a lot of guessing about where the governor is at on any one bill.”
Scott, a fiscal conservative who has campaigned on an affordability agenda, reiterated that he is looking at “in the aggregate” at the impact of taxes and regulatory burden that are part and parcel of the Democrats’ agenda this session.
While the Democrats hold large majorities in the General Assembly, the House has struggled to muster veto-proof votes on priority bills. As a result, the Democrats could see their economic agenda derailed by Scott’s veto pen.
The governor says he won’t take an official position on legislation like the state budget, a $15 minimum wage, and Democrats’ paid family leave plan, until the bills are finalized.
Speaker of the House, Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, said Democratic leaders have mostly received “non-answers” this year on where the governor would draw the line.
She likened the governor’s approach to negotiating with Goldilocks.
“Last year the porridge was a little too hot when in March he was giving a list of what bills he was going to veto before those bills were ever even out of committee and finalized,” she said.
“This year the porridge is a little too cold with him saying I’m going to wait and see on everything,” Johnson continued.
“We’re looking for the porridge in the middle,” she added, “where we actually have a conversation and we’re able to say here’s what’s important to me, here’s what’s important to our side and how can we make that work.”
Ashe said legislative leaders don’t know where the governor stands on other major Democratic proposals, including a broadband expansion package and funding for low-income home weatherization.
“We haven’t really had much of an indication on almost anything from the governor, in terms of what he’s enthusiastic about, what he’s pessimistic about,” he said.
Ashe said the governor’s decision to wait for final legislation “doesn’t really help” lawmakers.
“The problem is we don’t pass on aggregate we pass individual items, which then add up to an aggregate,” he said.
Asked Thursday why he didn’t want to draw clearer lines in the sand for lawmakers as they make last minute policy changes, Scott said he already tried that.
“I did that last year and I’m not sure that it worked out all that well,” he said.
On the proposal to raise minimum wage, the governor has said he could be open to supporting some sort of an increase, but has yet to signal what version of the legislation he would back.
The House on Wednesday passed a proposal to that would raise the wage to $15 by 2026, at the earliest. The House plan represents a much more moderate wage increase bill than legislation backed by the Senate, and which Scott vetoed last year. The Senate’s proposal would mandate a $15 wage in 2024.
While the governor said he voted for legislation that tied minimum wage to the consumer price index when he was a state senator, he declined to say whether he could support the House version, which increases the minimum wage by a factor of 2.25 times the CPI.
“The governor has said ‘We can’t do a bill like last year, we’re open to the conversation,’” Johnson said. “But he’s not saying what he’s open to.”
On paid family leave insurance, Scott said Thursday that he would support a voluntary program and suggested that the state needed to “test drive” the program before making it mandatory. He vetoed a version of the bill last year that is nearly identical to what was passed earlier this month by the Senate.
Scott said Thursday that he could accept the Legislature’s proposed budget even though it would spend about $23 million more than the spending package he pitched in January. But he takes issue with the fact that it doesn’t include a new long-term funding source for clean water.
“They’re not spending a lot more than we had contemplated and they left a number of things but that’s OK, we can work our way through it,” Scott said of the budget. “But again the big one is the water quality issue, because I think we need to fund that.”
The House came up with clean water funding plan that levied a $6 million tax on “cloud” software, but that was ditched by the Senate on Thursday. The Senate Finance Committee will likely vote on a new proposal Friday to raise the meals and rooms tax from 9% to 10%.
Scott is opposed to raising new revenue and wants to redirect estate tax revenue to fund water clean-up efforts.
Senate Minority Leader Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, said governor’s strategy with lawmakers this year makes sense, given that Democrats are increasing state spending by millions of dollars.
“So when he’s suggesting now that he’s waiting for the aggregate to settle out and gel, that makes sense to me,” Benning said.
“He’s not supposed to be counter pitching himself,” Benning added. “He wants to see how things sugar off before he starts making calls about how comfortable he is with X, Y and Z.”
Colin Meyn and Anne Galloway contributed reporting.
