Unfazed by a critical report about the state’s remote worker program, Sen. Michael Sirotkin hopes to increase the incentives for new Vermonters when the Legislature reconvenes next year.
Sirotkin, chair of the Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs Committee, hopes that lawmakers look again at the notion of helping people pay off their student loans as an added incentive to move to Vermont. That idea came up as legislative activity was winding down last spring.
“We’d maybe start first with people who graduated from Vermont schools, or who grew up in Vermont,” said Sirotkin, speaking Nov. 16 from Morocco, where he was on vacation. Sirotkin, D-Chittenden, was one of the creators of the remote worker program in the winter of 2018. “That might be the tipping point for them to come back.”
Vermont’s remote worker program, which reimburses newcomers for up to $10,000 of some expenses if they move to Vermont to work for a job outside the state, generated international interest when it became law in 2018.
The state Agency of Commerce and Community Development, which administers the program, has said nearly 300 people have moved to the state — either the remote workers themselves or their friends and relatives -— as a result of the program. State officials said publicity about the program generated 1 billion social media impressions internationally.
But State Auditor Doug Hoffer has been critical of the program. A Nov. 12 report from the auditor’s office says there’s no way of knowing if people would have moved to Vermont without the incentive. Hoffer added that ACCD doesn’t have any way of verifying its own reports of how many more people moved to Vermont because of the grants.
Legislators authorized ACCD to reimburse new arrivals for things like moving expenses, co-working space fees, and broadband and equipment that they would need to work remotely. But Hoffer’s report said ACCD gave out grants for an airline ticket, one homeowner’s underground conduit for broadband and the landscaping that followed, three high-def computer monitors, and several security deposits — choices he deemed “questionable.”
“The ACCD has to answer for that; I thought we were pretty clear on what we had to pay for,” said Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, who helped create the program. “I‘m not going to comment on ACCD’s choices until I’ve looked at the context and heard the reasons for them in committee.”
The details Hoffer cited didn’t bother Sirotkin. He said the overall expenditure for the remote worker program, a one-time $500,000 appropriation, was low, and the benefit is potentially very high.
For many business leaders and to the Scott administration, population growth is the state’s largest economic development priority.
“It doesn’t change my opinion of the program,” said Sirotkin of the report. “I respect the auditor, but I think this particular report doesn’t pay enough attention to the big picture here.
“There are things we can learn from the report,” he added. “But we need to compete with other states in attracting people, and we’ve done precious little to incentivize people to come here.”
Critics of the program last winter noted that with unemployment hovering around 2%, lower than the national average, Vermont needs new workers for Vermont jobs, not remote jobs. So last winter lawmakers authorized a new $1.2 million program with grants for people who move to Vermont to take jobs in the state. Starting Jan. 1, these workers can apply for up to $5,000 for moving expenses if they move to areas like Chittenden County, where the economy is doing relatively well compared to the rest of Vermont, and up to $7,500 if they settle in places like Springfield, which has more financial problems.
Chittenden County has benefited disproportionately so far. Nearly half of the remote workers moved to the populous county, which is one of the few Vermont regions where the economy and the population are growing. Evan Carlson, who runs a coworking space in Lyndon, said he’d like to see lawmakers next year find a way to encourage newcomers to head to the more sparsely populated southern counties or Northeast Kingdom. The one new remote worker in the Northeast Kingdom is a Maine transplant who joined Carlson’s coworking space, Do North.
But “it takes time; you have to be patient with these programs,” Carlson said, noting that the new arrival has purchased a home. “It’s hard when you are looking at it in Year 1 and expecting to see amazing results.”
Carlson said the program should be viewed as one of many measures being taken to draw new residents.
“We want to see young people and young families move here, but it has to be a multi-pronged approach,” he said. “This is one of just many things that need to take place.”
To Hoffer’s criticism that the program rewards people who probably would have moved to the state anyway, ACCD has countered that the reimbursement pushed a lot of people to make a move they had been considering but hadn’t acted on.
Cameron Ruscitti said that’s how it worked for him. Ruscitti, 28, moved with his wife to Vernon from Natick, Massachusetts, this year and works remotely for an educational company in Washington, D.C.
“We had already been thinking of making the move to Vermont before the program was announced, and then when it was, that kind of sealed the deal,” he said. “I was like, ‘OK, that does it; we’re definitely going to move to Vermont now.’
“It’s not like we never considered Vermont and then this program came up and we were like ‘Now we have to go,’” he said.
The original remote worker program is probably reaching the end of its life; ACCD had spent $400,000 of the appropriated $500,000 by this summer. Hoffer said Tuesday that he wants to measure the outcome of the new $1.2 million program that starts in January.
“We’re now talking about another program that is probably going to be equally problematic,” he said. “The question is, as I say all the time: Do people really believe this is the highest and best use of these funds? How much are we spending, for what, and what are we getting?”
Ruscitti, in Vernon, said he understands Hoffer’s point. But “I feel like the program is smart because, in a sense, it shows that Vermont is betting on itself,” he said. “It’s hoping that once people come to Vermont, they’ll stay.”
He’s one of those people.
“Now that I’m here, I don’t want to leave,” he said.
