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With adjournment delayed, lawmakers have another week to sort out disagreements on key issues. But major votes this week revealed that priority bills still had a ways to go.
Proposals to increase the minimum wage and establish a paid family leave plan have been Democratic priorities since before the session began. But compromises to the minimum wage proposal divided the caucus ahead of a key vote, and key portions of the paid leave bill put the House and Senate at odds.
The result: both passed late this week, but without enough votes to override potential vetoes. Meanwhile, Gov. Scott has been mum about whether he’d sign those bills — or what changes lawmakers could make to win his support.
“We’re seeing there’s a lot of difference between the House and the Senate,” Scott said Thursday morning. “They need to work out their differences first, and then I have something to react to.”
Negotiations on those measures will continue next week. But they’ve proven another example of the limitations of the ideologically broad Democratic caucus. On this week’s podcast, VTDigger political reporters Kit Norton and Xander Landen break down two key days of legislative action.
[showhide type=”pressrelease” more_text=”Read full transcript” less_text=”Hide full transcript” hidden=”yes”]
So you do this every day?
Kit Norton: Every day. Ray’s domain. Check in.
I’m with our reporter Kit Norton in the Statehouse cafeteria, where he’s checking in with an important source.
Kit Norton: How did the shrimp Caesar go?
Ray Wood: Really well. I went through 16 pounds of shrimp.
Kit Norton: Sixteen pounds of shrimp?
Ray Wood: Yep.
This is Ray Wood. He’s been the head chef at the cafeteria for the past 12 years.
Kit Norton: Well, what do you think about for tomorrow?
Ray Wood: I think I’m doing my French dip with French fries. Roast beef French dip. Yeah.
If you read Final Reading, Kit’s daily newsletter, you know he always talks to Ray about what’s going on the menu the next day. But in the middle of this week, when we were still guessing about when the session would wrap up, we thought Ray might have some insider info.
Kit Norton: Have you heard anything from folks about coming in on Saturday? Are we going to be here Saturday?
Ray Wood: Saturday? Yeah. That’s what I heard.
But by the next day, that schedule had already changed.
Mitzi Johnson: For me at this point, I believe we will not be in session on Saturday and we will be in here a couple of days next week.
This was House Speaker Mitzi Johnson on Thursday. And even though lawmakers are coming back next week, the action on some key bills this week revealed a lot about the dynamics we’ve seen in the Statehouse all year. I sat down with Kit and our politics reporter Xander Landen to hear more.
So tell me about how this tentatively planned adjournment for this weekend got delayed. How did that come about?
Xander Landen: House Speaker Mitzi Johnson’s explanation is that the budget got into conference later than it usually does. The budget obviously has to pass the House and the Senate, and passed the Senate a little bit later than it usually does, basically leaving both bodies a week to hammer out the final details.
Mitzi Johnson: The budget is the must pass. And so I’m not seeing a clear path as to how that wraps up this weekend.
Xander Landen: I think that there are sort of bigger issues and disagreements at play here that are that are really drawing things out. Those disagreements are over the two major priorities of Democrats this year, the minimum wage bill and the paid family leave bill. They’re trying to think about, how do we get this stuff across the finish line?
Why is paid family leave and minimum wage, why are those two policies kind of the climactic policies here? What’s the significance of those two?
Xander Landen: Well, we’re seeing versions of these two proposals being pitched and enacted by Democrats and legislators across the country, and at the federal level there are calls for a $15 minimum wage. So these ideas are not unique to Vermont. And the reason there’s so much momentum and interest and activism this year is because there was talk about them last year, they both passed the legislature yet last year, and they were both vetoed last year.
So when democrats were campaigning in 2018, one of the biggest platforms that they sort of all shared was, let’s enact a $15 minimum wage and paid family leave. And let’s elect enough Democrats — we need 100 democrats and or left leaning voters in the House of Representatives so that we can maybe overcome the governor’s veto.
Kit Norton: And to be clear, it was it was even more than that. It was, you give us that amount of seats, and we will get you these priorities done. And I think that’s really the key here is that it wasn’t just: we’ll work on getting these done. You get us these number of seats, and we will go out there and get these priorities done and signed.
So what you now have is the governor, you know, not saying whether he’ll support them this time around in their current form. And then you also have, specifically in the House chamber, factions in the Democratic Caucus right now. You have moderate Democrats, more left leaning Democrats. And it’s really the difficulty wrangling them from leadership’s point of view, to get them all on the same page.
Rep. Jim Masland: There’s a considerable amount of frustration in the caucus as we weigh these different, different approaches, three different approaches…
Kit Norton: Before they started their debate on the minimum wage proposal, House Democrats were meeting. They were getting a rundown of the bill. And one of the concerns brought up by more liberal democrats is that the way this this current proposal is set up, which they did end up voting to approve, you’d get the $15 minimum wage by no earlier than 2026, as opposed to the original version, which would have gotten that wage increase by 2024. And what this really is, is a much, much more diluted proposal than the original.
And what you have are folks in the caucus saying well wait a second, we’re going to get a $15 minimum wage, and that’s going to match the livable wage in the state now. So why are we getting this long phase in? That is actually not going to truly help Vermonters who are struggling now.
And then you have moderate democrats who are saying, we’re concerned about Medicaid funding, we’re concerned that recession might hit. So we have to one, study it and see if this is effective. And two, put in provisions that we can pause the wage increase, or if you know, the state hits bad times. So those were really the two main arguments being played out in the discussion before it even hit the floor.
Rep. Jay Hooper: The reason we’re in this square we’re in now is because the House Democratic caucus was pretty shaky on this whole concept at large.
This is Representative Jay Hooper, a Democrat from Randolph. Jay belongs to the working Vermonters caucus, a smaller group of lawmakers that discusses policies that affect working people. He said even they didn’t reach consensus on this.
Jay Hooper: We’ve got a lot of new Democrats who kind of said hey, I didn’t really run on this. And I don’t — I’m not sure if I agree with the fundamentals enough to, you know, be able to quickly say, yeah, let’s do this. So there was enough uncertainty within the house dems, I think, that we kind of had to go a different direction.
Xander Landen: Wasn’t that sort of the point of this compromise, to win over the more concerned more moderate Democrats? I mean, doesn’t that seem to be the point of this period, this proposal?
Jay Hooper: I think it does win over a couple. You know, it’s an easier bite to chew on and swallow. And the progressives are saying, this is just so typical, that we aren’t willing to stand by what we’ve been preaching for a decade, you know, or more. But I agree with Tom Stevens ultimately, that you know, this is what we’ve got to because of the circumstances politically, and we want to advance something, not nothing, because I think even half a loaf is better than crumbs.
Xander Landen: I think it’s important to note that House leadership in previous years, and even this year, backed the $15 minimum wage by 2024, the more aggressive minimum wage increase. The reason that they ultimately went with this more slow rollout is because they wanted to win over some some of the moderate Democrats to get a stronger vote on the floor, and they wanted to potentially win over the governor.
Jim Masland: We never want to engage in here on perhaps to repeat over half our constituents and everyone else in there want to get a good workable piece of legislation forward and that’s our job here. And that may be frustrating to many people here. So that’s how it is. Thank you.
Xander Landen: But what really makes the task for Democrats even more difficult now, is that the vote that they got on the floor yesterday wasn’t close to the number they need. I mean, it was close, but not close enough to the number they need to override a veto. It would be very hard for them to get the 100 votes. They got 90 yesterday. They need 100 to beat a veto.
David Zuckerman: Please listen to the second reading of bill. H.137, paid family and medical leave…
Xander Landen: On the paid leave side, there are a lot of senators, democrats that don’t think that the paid leave plan is necessarily what we should be investing in right now.
Sen. Jane Kitchel: We talked about the importance of affordable housing for the people that we have, who are really struggling with housing instability or homelessness. We talked about the importance of higher ed and yet we are funding our higher ed system at a level that’s kind of at the bottom of the nation, and the list goes on. So from my perspective, I am wearing this not that it’s not meritorious, that people don’t benefit from it. I certainly don’t dispute that at all. I just see that this is taking revenue that will never be available. And therefore, I view it as almost putting at risk for a threat to our ability to ever substantially address the commitments that we are failing to fulfill.
Xander Landen: It would cost basically, depending on how you look at it, depending on what proposal you’re looking at, between about $30 million and $80 million to fund this thing. It’d be funded by mandatory payroll tax, at least the democrats plan, on workers and or employers. So it’s a lot of money. And there are democrats that say that if we levy this tax on folks, it’s going to eat into our ability to raise money for other priorities because we’re putting more burdens on people to fund this thing when we have all these other things that maybe we should be funding that are higher priority. So these are all kind of things that are going to have to be worked out in the coming days.
And can the governor get on board? He’s not really being super clear.
Kit Norton: He’s remaining mum on this. You know, even though he’s kind of hinted here and there, you know, he’s not coming out. And this is when things — where House leadership just today said, basically, how irritated it’s been with the lack of clarity coming from the governor’s office.
Mitzi Johnson: I’m still hoping that in our meetings and frequent communications with the governor administration, we get some actual guardrails from him. We’ve met a number of times, we’re continuing to meet. And when I asked about questions of, you know, where are you willing to go? What were the guardrails on this conversation for you? I’m mostly getting on answers that that are either, we’ll see what the whole package of legislation looks like, or let me wait and see what a vote looks like.
Xander Landen: Do you feel like he’s not being forthright enough in this end part of the session, that he hasn’t been clear enough about where he will support and will not support a budget, or the minimum wage bill, and these other sort of big pieces of legislation?
Mitzi Johnson: That’s exactly how I feel. I actually liken it a little bit to the tale of 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 this year. The porridge is a little too cold with him saying, I’m going to wait and see on everything.
Xander Landen: House Speaker Mitzi Johnson compared the Governor’s negotiating with Goldilocks and the Three Bears today. I thought that was very interesting.
Mitzi Johnson: I’m looking for the porridge in the middle 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 this year. He’s not being clear enough about where he could be able to strike a compromise on some of these things, even though he said he’d be open to it.
Xander Landen: She said, the porridge is a little too cold. We need something more in the middle, she says. So interesting metaphor.
Let’s jump ahead to today. Early today, the Governor holds a press conference. What do we learn?
Xander Landen: Well, I don’t know if we learned too much today. He basically said what he’s been saying since the beginning of the session, which is that he’s going to wait until he receives these major pieces of legislation like the minimum wage proposal, paid family leave, and the budget. He’s gonna wait to weigh in on them until they get to his desk.
Gov. Phil Scott: I’m looking at the aggregate. I say this a lot. But it’s real. When you look at the aggregate burden on Vermonters, whether you’re looking at the the paid family leave, whether you’re looking at the increased taxes, whether you’re looking at things outside of even our budget.
Xander Landen: He’s taking a much different approach than he did last year when he was sort of openly threatening vetoes. I mean, there’s some clear indications of proposals he would or would not support, but democrats are complaining that he’s not being clear enough.
Kit Norton: And I think it’s fair to note that lobbyists in the statehouse are are noting how really the governor from a kind of strategic communications point of view this session has been pitch perfect. You know, the entire session. He stayed out of the fray unlike last session, and has really made it so the House and the Senate have just been teed off against each other, and he’s been staying out of it.
Gov. Phil Scott: Well, I think they need to work it out. I mean, we see a lot of difference between the House and the Senate. This isn’t just about the differences between the legislature and administration or me. They need to work out their differences first, and then I have something to react to.
Kit Norton: Instead of either in the house or the senate coming up strongly against the governor months ago, you know, they’ve been bickering amongst themselves.
Xander Landen: I mean, the thing is, though, that I mean, they do know that the governor would almost certainly veto their paid leave bills, because they’re funded through mandatory taxes on people. They do know that the governor wouldn’t go for the $15 minimum wage proposal by 2024. Because he vetoed that proposal last year. So they’re aware of these things, but what’s come to the forefront in the last two weeks or so is that on their biggest priorities, they can’t they can’t agree with themselves.
You’re saying that kind of rallying together that “veto proof majority” would be a safer way to get those bills through then depending on the support of the governor.
Xander Landen: Well, I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think, if anything, we’re learning that rallying that, quote, unquote, veto proof majority — in the case of the minimum wage, for example, it may actually be easier to give the governor a proposal that he could sign as opposed to getting a proposal that a hundred members of the House of Representatives could sign. And that’s kind of what they tried to do with this proposal that passed yesterday in the house.
The problem is now for them is that the governor is not saying what he would or would not support.
Kit Norton: The other big one actually, which happened earlier this session, which kind of you look at it nowadays. You see a lot of the factions that are there now, they started then when there was the weatherization — it was a vote that would have hiked the tax on heating fuel. And there’s a very contentious debate on the floor, contentious in committee, contentious all over the building and you had a lot of, one, freshman members having to make a really tough vote, you had moderate democrats who oppose the bill all the way through. And then you had more progressive Democrats who were fully in support of this. But already — this was a couple months ago now — this kind of set up these internal lines within that supermajority or that super coalition that we continue with, that we have continued to see play out across the session, which has really been the main story.
Xander Landen: And I think that, you know, House leadership has never been hiding the fact that the caucus falls under a very large tent. The political leanings of Democrats in Vermont are all over the spectrum. There’s some left leaning very left leaning Democrats, and there’s some more centrist democrats. They have not been shy about that.
Kit Norton: I was just going to say again going back to democratic caucus meeting before the minimum wage debate, House Majority Leader Jill Krowinski did say how proud she was of the caucus for working through the legislative process and moving towards passing the minimum wage. And that would have been the last of the big five priorities that they outlined at the beginning of session.
Rep. Jill Krowinski: We said that we were going to pass a paid family leave bill, we were going to pass a minimum wage, though affordable childcare bill, a broadband bill, and clean water bill. This is the last one and I am so proud of the people in this caucus for making this happen. It’s been messy, but we have been working really hard to find our collective voice.
Kit Norton: Whether they’re enacted or not is a separate matter, but simply doing the work there to get them out. So that that was also mentioned in caucus.
I imagine most people will probably be listening to this after the session wraps up or or next week when things are a little bit further along. I know we don’t know what’s going to happen over the next few days. But do you have an overall takeaway from what played out this session?
Xander Landen: I can take the takeaway sort of, and this is the way it’s really going to be every year and in probably in any legislature in the country, is that there is more than one piece of the puzzle when it comes to all these different things. I mean, there’s no one leg of government has has its way. Everyone, every piece of government is going to have a different way to approach the same policy.
I mean, the governor came out with a paid family leave proposal. He had a proposal. He pitched it that went to the legislature that already had its own idea about a paid lead proposal. You had the house do something. The Senate didn’t like what the House did. The governor doesn’t like what the legislature has done. And now you have to find a way to hammer something out in the 11th hour that at least the Senate and the house are going to agree with to some degree. And maybe the governor can agree with.
I think the takeaway for me — government is divided, and that that can make it hard to get things done. And it often results in policy that maybe no one thinks is ideal. No one entity or branch of government thinks is ideal, but it’s a representation of multiple views and negotiations. If any of these big things pass, it’s likely going to be something that is a compromise, that isn’t a resounding success. Success for any one branch of government or any one entity.
Kit Norton: One lawmaker said, you know, his rule of thumb is to keep everyone equally unhappy. And that’s really what it kind of seems like going into the end end game here of the session. It really does seem like everyone’s just playing around, you know, moving moving the shells around the table trying to make sure that everyone is equally unhappy with everything.
Thanks, Kit. Thanks, Xander.
Xander Landen: Thank you. [/showhide]
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