Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.
[I]s this Statehouse big enough for both of them?
As it stumbles to its end, the 2019 session of Vermont’s Legislature has become a drama featuring two antagonists, each of whom insists that the other surrender.
Pass my pet bill or I won’t let yours come to the floor, is the message Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, P/D-Chittenden, has been sending House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, for weeks.
Her reply: pass mine or you’ll only get a pallid version of yours, one you won’t accept.
As performances go, this one is less than gripping. At stake is nothing as dramatic as a gold mine, a gushing oil well, a vast inheritance, or true love. It’s just legislation – a higher minimum wage (Ashe’s priority) and a family and medical leave program (Johnson’s preference).
Not a plot likely to keep the audience enthralled.
But enough to keep the session going overtime, and the last remaining unresolved issue as the Legislature began its last two days (probably) Thursday morning.
Late Wednesday both House and Senate negotiators were predicting agreement on a minimum wage bill. If that agreement is reached, the Senate is likely to take up the paid family leave bill passed by the House in early March and passed on second reading by the Senate.
So both bills could pass. But that would not mean a happy ending for the drama. The third star of this show and its only Republican, Gov. Phil Scott (the one playing the role of the strong, silent, type), might veto both measures.
So it all might end as farce.
Still, one reason agreement seemed likely (if by no means certain) Thursday is that it is in the interest of the Democrats to get both bills to Scott’s desk, even if he vetoes them. On election night last November, flush with expanding their majorities in both houses, they said this is what they would do.
No, that understates the case. They proclaimed to the world that with their “veto-proof majorities” they would raise the minimum wage and require Vermont businesses to provide several weeks of paid leave for illnesses, new babies, and family emergencies. Failing to put both measures on Scott’s desk would be an embarrassment to the entire Democratic Party, leaving it open to the “can’t these guys do anything?” challenge.
But as it turned out, the supermajority in the House wasn’t so super. A lot of those new Democrats were not convinced either of the wisdom of those bills or of the importance of party discipline. They didn’t necessarily want to follow their leader.
And the leader – Speaker Johnson – never appeared all that enthusiastic about a big minimum wage hike, either. She is, by Statehouse reputation, a pro-business, moderate Democrat, quite possibly the only kind who can get elected in South Hero.
She was more enthusiastic about the family leave bill, which in its first versions would have imposed no new cost on businesses, and which particularly benefits women. Speaker Johnson may be moderately liberal; she is entirely female.
Even so, the House did not pass the family leave bill with quite enough votes (100 would be needed) to override a veto. And once the bill got to the Senate, Ashe made sure it did not get to the floor. He and his committee chairs were waiting to see what the House did about the minimum wage.
This was more than just obstructionism for its own sake and Ashe playing tough to show that he was the more powerful leader.
There is a real policy connection between the two measures. Family leave would be financed by a small payroll tax on workers (and, as amended, on businesses), and Sen. Michael Sorotkin, D-Chittenden, the chair of the Economic Development Committee, noted that “if we’re going to impose a new tax on workers, especially lower-paid workers, we ought to make sure that they can afford to pay it.”
But that doesn’t mean that Ashe was not engaging in obstructionism for its own sake and trying to show that he was the more powerful leader. This is what happens in legislatures, especially when one party dominates both houses. Political leaders (or maybe just human beings) have to squabble over something, and if the policy differences are small, they’ll fight over institutional power.
Here Ashe has the upper hand. There aren’t that many senators. The Senate has fewer newcomers. It’s more dominated by old-timers, and though Ashe hasn’t been in the Senate that long (a mere 10 years), he has effectively made himself one of them.
Johnson has a bigger caucus (95 as opposed to 22), and like Ashe, not much leverage. In many states, a legislative leader can promise a member a bigger office or staff, or threaten the member with a smaller office or staff. Vermont legislators have neither their own offices nor their own staffs. The leaders can try to persuade. They can cajole. They can beg. They can’t really threaten.
Absent the House-Senate rivalry, the internal Democratic battle over how and how fast to raise the minimum wage might make no sense at all. It seems that the organized leftish constituencies pushing hardest on the issue would be satisfied with either the Senate version (two larger wage hikes over two years) or the House’s (more gradual increases over a longer term).
Kate Logan, the legislative liaison for the Raise The Wage Coalition of liberal organizations, said, “They’re both wins.”
But that’s only for low-income workers. That doesn’t determine who wins between the chambers and their leaders.
