[M]ONTPELIER — House Speaker Mitzi Johnson ended days of negotiations on two of the Democrats’ major priorities and adjourned the House — without an agreement with the Senate.
Johnson gave Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe an ultimatum Friday morning. In a letter, she gave Ashe until noon to agree on a paid family leave and minimum wage compromise, or she said she would adjourn the House.
At the end of the day, she and the House made good on that promise, turning what had been a long-running feud with fellow Democrats in the Senate into a victory for representatives who said they were tired of being held hostage by Ashe.
It was a major victory for Johnson who has struggled to negotiate with Senate leaders over the minimum wage and paid family leave bills. The acrimony between the House Speaker and Ashe has been building for weeks and on Friday the bile spilled over into what one lawmaker compared with a standoff at the OK Corral.
Rep. Sam Young, D-Glover, said he was proud of Johnson “because she drew a line in the sand.” Other lawmakers said the governor was going to veto the paid leave and minimum wage bills anyway and staying another week for more painstaking and possibly fruitless negotiations was “a waste of time and money.”
For days, the Senate tried to force the House to take up their version of paid leave and minimum wage bills by holding the budget and revenue bills hostage. That standoff continued Friday morning until Johnson laid down the adjournment gauntlet.
The Senate continued to believed it still had the power to keep negotiations going until the House did a strike-all of a sugar sweetened beverage bill, S.141, and used it as a vehicle for the conference committee reports for the budget and revenue. After messaging the legislation to the Senate, they passed a joint resolution to adjourn.
The Senate did not accept the House’s joint adjournment resolution Friday and will take it up 4 p.m. Wednesday, May 29.
It’s the first time in memory, longtime House representatives and senators say, that the General Assembly has not agreed to a joint adjournment resolution, and the move put the end of the session in limbo.
Under the Vermont Constitution, the House and Senate must agree to a joint resolution to adjourn. If they don’t, the bodies have to return to the Statehouse after three days and find agreement. The governor may intervene if the dispute continues.
Just as Johnson prepared to strike the gavel, shortly after the governor gave a traditional farewell speech, the Senate messaged over their version of the budget.
In the spirit of “anything can happen at the end of the session,” Johnson asked the House to approve the Senate version. Rep. Kitty Toll, D-Danville, said, “It’s a bit like Groundhog Day,” as representatives tittered and applauded.
And with that, House members cleaned out their desks and bid each other good-bye for the summer.
As representatives streamed out of the Statehouse bearing boxes of papers, Ashe told reporters he remains optimistic the House will come back to negotiate a deal. Ashe said the two bodies were close and could work things out in a few days.
“We would be disappointed if we had to wait another year to take up both of those issues,” Ashe said. “From our point of view if our action today had been to adjourn, we would have been closing the last door on reaching agreements on both of those bills.”
When asked if he had spoken to Johnson about that possibility, Ashe replied: “No.”
Johnson told reporters the House won’t be coming back next week. “We’ve adjourned until January,” she said.
Each legislative day beyond the 18 weeks allotted costs between $50,000 to $60,000. The General Assembly went into overtime this week at a cost of more than $250,000.
Ashe said that’s a small price to pay to put $3,000 more a year in low-income Vermonters’ pockets.
The negotiations
While Dems dominate the House, Johnson had trouble getting a veto-proof majority to support Senate — and even House-crafted — versions of both the paid family leave and minimum wage bills.
Gov. Phil Scott vetoed minimum wage and paid leave legislation last year and has not said whether he would approve compromise bills going forward. At a press conference last week, the governor said he would wait for the House and Senate to work out their differences.
Some, including Progressives in the House, criticized Johnson for failing to finalize a minimum wage and paid family leave deal. Rep. Robin Chesnut-Tangerman, P-Middletown Springs, the leader of the House’s Progressive caucus, said that Johnson shouldn’t use the threat of a veto from Scott as an excuse to not to pass the legislation this year.
“The calculus that Mitzi’s making is that no matter what we do he’ll veto it and so we don’t lose anything by waiting until January,” Chesnut-Tangerman said. “I would rather see us put something across the finish line, then it’s on him if it doesn’t advance. It’s not on us and we’ve done what we were brought here to do.”
In the last two years, legislation to establish a $15 minimum wage by 2024 has been a priority for Senate Democrats. But Democrats in the House have had reservations about the impact the higher wage could have on small businesses, and Medicaid funding.
To address these concerns, the House passed a watered-down version of the Senate’s bill earlier this month that would have phased in the wage at a much slower rate. It wouldn’t have reached $15 until 2026 — at the very earliest.
The Senate rejected the House’s minimum wage schedule, and in recent days, sought to get the House to agree to a $12.20 wage by 2021.
Meanwhile, senators reduced the benefits offered under the House proposed paid family leave program, making it hard for Democratic leaders in the lower chamber to agree on a minimum wage compromise.
To make the program less expensive, the Senate scaled back the number of paid weeks workers could take to care for sick family members, or newborn children. Senators also cut out a provision to allow employees to take time off to address personal medical issues.
The Senate version of the paid leave bill would cost $29 million; the House version is closer to $80 million.
The Senate had offered to add the personal medical leave back into the legislation — but only if workers could opt to pay for the benefit voluntarily.
The House had agreed to the Senate’s position on paid family leave until recently, and then decided to push for additional benefits, according to Senate Majority Leader Becca Balint, D-Windham.
She said that senators are committed to coming to an agreement with House leadership in the coming days.
“We’re not ready to quit on this issue. We want to get to yes,” Balint said. “We as a Senate do not want to go home without passing these two pieces of legislation.”
