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Lawmakers returned to Montpelier this week with a focused set of policy goals: resume progress on stalled legislation like paid leave and a minimum wage increase, and work toward new measures like climate change legislation.
But election maneuvers upstaged the policy agenda from day one, as Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman’s plans to seek the governor’s office sparked a flurry of tentative campaign announcements — including from Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Burlington.
The political chatter wasn’t the only disruption. Gov. Phil Scott’s fourth State of the State address was overshadowed by environmental activists, who pressed the governor to take immediate action on the climate crisis. Some lawmakers objected to the disruption — but others agreed that Scott’s policy agenda shows a lack of vision on climate change.
On this week’s podcast, VTDigger’s Xander Landen, John Walters and Grace Elletson discuss how the opening days’ disruptions could set the tone for the weeks to come.
**Podcast transcript**
This week: the 2020 legislative session is underway. Lawmakers returned to the Statehouse on Tuesday for a focused set of policy discussions, but it was clear almost immediately that the 2020 election would change the dynamics this year.
On Friday I talked to three members of our Statehouse team about what happens next.
I’m here with Xander Landen, our politics reporter.
Landen: Hey, thanks for having me.
John Walters, our new political columnist.
Walters: Ta-da.
And Grace Elletson, our government accountability reporter.
Elletson: And then I’m also doing Final Reading, our end of the day Statehouse roundup with John.
You guys have all been in the Statehouse pretty much wall-to-wall this week, right?
Elletson: Yeah.
So, a few things I want to talk about. First off, this is the second year of the biennium, which means there’s a number of bills that didn’t cross the finish line last year that are still on the table. Some new stuff in the mix. It seemed like based on that, the first few days of the session were going to be kind of predictable. And then that all kind of blew up in our faces.
But let’s start at the beginning. John, tell me about what you were watching at the start of the week in terms of the leadership in the House and Senate.
Walters: Well, we were all expecting quick action on the two big bills that didn’t cross the finish line last year of paid family leave and minimum wage. I think we still are.
What I’m curious about with the paid family leave and minimum wage bills is, what was stopping them from moving forward? Where did we leave off with those?
Elletson: I can speak to a little bit of that, as I’ve been covering those this week. Both bills have gone to committee conference, where they’re going to be hashed out in further negotiations. So they may not move as quickly as I think we first expected. We’ll see how those negotiations play out. Minimum wage, it seems like, that will actually be the bill to move a little bit quicker. It seems like House and Senate members are OK to compromise on a minimum wage increase that doesn’t come up to 15 but hovers around probably $13 by 2022.
The paid family leave bill is where there’s a fight on the horizon. I’ve been talking to Progressive lawmakers and Democratic lawmakers who are saying that they’re going to attempt to block a veto override if it comes down to this because they feel like the bill, as it currently stands, it’s missing temporary disability insurance. And it does not have equitable parental leave for both parents if they wanted to take parental leave when they have a child or for any other reason they need parental leave, so that’s kind of the bill that people are stuck on right now. There’s a division, at least among representatives, as to whether or not a bill should be pushed through and there should be a paid family leave package, even if it’s not the best version of one, or if there should be no bill at all because if we put out a paid family leave package that’s not as progressive, you know why put one out?
We’re gonna see kind of a showdown on that.
Elletson: Yeah.
John, you wrote a column earlier this week about how Mitzi Johnson, leader of the House, and Tim Ashe, leader of the Senate, would need to come together in some way that they haven’t before in order to move those things forward. Do we have any indications of whether or not that’s going to happen?
Walters: Well, they have made all sorts of pleasant sounds about having a better relationship and working together. And not only between the two of them, but between their two respective chambers.
Mitzi Johnson: And that’s the thing — we tend, because it’s easy, because we’re human, to look at disagreements that happened in this building and make them really personal. But it’s really about the system of people that we’re representing and trying to take care of…
Tim Ashe: I think we both have some probably… we wish we could hit the rewind and play out the last week a little bit different. There’s no denying that. But you know, from my point of view, my level of respect for Mitzy, for the other people she has to serve with in her… well, that she does serve with in her leadership team, has never diminished, even when there’s the ups and downs that always come with the territory.
Walters: Differences between the House and Senate were what derailed paid family leave and minimum wage last year. You know, good intentions are easy to have before the shooting starts and before things get really active. I’m not sure how the calculus changes, for better or worse now that Tim Ashe is running for lieutenant governor, but it does add a little dash of something else into the mix as well. So we shall see.
Let’s talk about that a little bit. We were only a couple hours into the session before it was clear that the 2020 election was going to kind of cast a shadow over all the proceedings over there. Xander, will you talk a little bit about how this cascade of election news is going to change things over there?
Landen: We broke the story on Monday that David Zuckerman, the lieutenant governor, is running for governor in 2020. We confronted him, you know, with the story early on Tuesday, the first day of the legislative session, just so happened that that’s when we had sort of had our reporting ready to go, we go to him and you know, he’s basically saying in this interview with Kit Norton, our colleague, ‘I’ve made a decision about 2020. I’m going to announce my decision next Monday, but I’m not going to tell you what that decision is.’ So he was sort of not saying one way or the other, but playing very coy. I think it’s pretty clear the decision that he’s made.
Zuckerman: I have made a decision. And I’m planning to make my intentions clear next week. This week really is about the legislature rolling out its priorities, the State of the State address, listening to Vermonters and hearing what we’re going to get done here at the Statehouse.
Landen: And our reporting certainly is clear that he’s running in 2020.
Walters: And is announcing something, he will not say what, on Monday morning.
Landen: Right. So it did, in many ways, cast a bit of a shadow over the week because once people heard that David Zuckerman was running for governor, they learned that the lieutenant governor’s office was going to be opened up in 2021. And so we saw a slurry of announcements and people talking about their political considerations. Tim Ashe, the Senate leader, said the next day, told Seven Days, that he was running for lieutenant governor, which is going to have an impact one way or another on the business in the Senate.
What is that? Is that just, like, a distraction because there’s going to be media coverage of the political maneuvers as well as the policy stuff? Or is it more than that?
Landen: Well, he said that he wanted to announce this week that he was running for lieutenant governor because he didn’t want it to look like he was hiding anything from his colleagues in the Senate, and that he was using his position as a way to campaign. Obviously, when you’re the leader of the Senate, you have a lot of power to bring legislation forward, to stop legislation from going forward, to make political statements. And he said, you know, he’s going to be very conscientious and very careful about making sure that that does not happen during the next year that he’s in this role or the next five months during the legislative session. And that he wants his colleagues to basically be able to hold them accountable for that. And that that’s why he wants to sort of come out early. As soon as he’s hearing about this news with David Zuckerman stepping down and running for governor.
Walters: The cynical among us might think that he wanted to get out first and preempt the field, which doesn’t seem to be happening, at least not so far.
Thursday of this week was Governor Scott’s State of the State address, and it was also this huge day for protest about the climate crisis. Grace, can you talk a little bit about how that played out at the Statehouse this week?
Elletson: Yeah. So I think in the press release that went out by Extinction Rebellion, you know, kind of previewing what this protest was going to look like they use the word pandemonium, and it was definitely pandemonium outside and inside the Statehouse. A rally started outside the Statehouse at around noon where activists took the podium and basically said to lawmakers, we’re here and we’re listening to you, we’re watching you, and we’re going to hold you accountable to come up with climate change solutions.
Protesters: We’re here, we’re watching, we’re holding you accountable.
Elletson: And then, you know, that same message was eventually brought inside to the Statehouse where protesters kind of immediately disrupted Governor Phil Scott’s State of the State address.
Phil Scott: We meet at a time in our nation’s history when too many elected officials on both sides are choosing confrontation and partisan politics over collaboration.
Protesters: Listen to the people! We are here to declare a climate emergency! We’re calling on everyone to help!
Elletson: Which went on for about 10ish minutes until he cut them off and said, you know, we have to proceed with business, and they’re eventually taken out.
Scott: OK, thank you very much, we appreciate that.
Protesters: Listen to the people!
Scott: We just did. Thank you very much.
Protesters: We demand a just transition!
Scott: And now it’s time for you to listen to us. We got it.
Elletson: 16 activists were detained, one was arrested, for charges of disorderly conduct. And I think, in speaking with lawmakers after that whole situation happened, I think everyone kind of agreed like, that was probably the proper way to handle it. You know, we do need to get back to business at some point. But I think following Governor Phil Scott’s address, many were disappointed that he didn’t take a harder stance on climate change and was really adamant about the solutions that he was proposing. So I think that was kind of disappointing following the interruption to some lawmakers.
Landen: I think that the governor’s speech really kind of lays bare the fight that we’re going to see between the Scott administration and Democratic lawmakers on climate change this year. You have Democrats who are under a lot of pressure from the public to take some pretty drastic action to do something immediate on climate change. And they have a couple of big proposals on the table. And the governor is really signaling in his State of the State address as he has been in the last few months that he’s not going to be able to support some of these proposals because they would, in theory, raise costs for Vermonters, particularly at the gas pump.
Elletson: Hinting pretty hard at TCI, the Transportation Climate Initiative.
Landen: Actually, it’s the Transportation AND Climate Initiative, which is something I’ve gotten wrong in almost every story that we published. And Cate, our editor, caught yesterday.
Basically, the way it would work is we and other states would be charging the fuel and gas companies that bring fossil fuels into the state and that money would be used to invest in a variety of initiatives that would help the state and residents wean off of fossil fuels, cut carbon emissions, but because you’re charging these companies, inherently costs at the gas pump are going to go up because they’re going to pass those on to consumers, it could be as much as something like 20 cents per gallon increase in fuel costs. And that’s something that the governor is very unlikely to support if it ends up meaning that costs go up for consumers, people who have to drive long distances, low income and middle income people, who he’s sort of set out to protect from such cost increases since he took office in 2017. There’s no way he’s going to support that.
Scott: I hear from Vermonters across the state, like those traveling long distances for work out of necessity, not choice. And others, like our seniors living on fixed incomes, the struggle to fill their gas tanks and heat their homes. I simply cannot support proposals that will make things more expensive for them.
Walters: The thing I would point out about the TCI is his own administration officials were involved in negotiating with other states and establishing what the TCI would look like and it doesn’t seem like their work got a warm reception in the corner office.
So there’s there’s definitely a disconnect here between what folks who are out protesting on the Statehouse steps and in the chamber want to see and what the governor touched on in his speech yesterday.
Elletson: Yeah, absolutely. Big disconnect. And it carried into what we saw today at the Statehouse with the Youth Climate Lobby, who held a press conference. I spoke to one of the lobbyists who said, you know, she was disappointed to hear that the governor didn’t take a stronger stand to support climate change initiatives in his address yesterday too.
Walters: And the Youth Climate Lobby, they are going to be in the Statehouse every Friday during the session, they really want to not just have a big protest and then go away. They want to be a determined lobbying force on behalf of the generation that’s really going to bear the brunt of whatever does change with the climate.
Landen: To be fair, the governor is proposing some investments and initiatives that would address this. He’s continuing to emphasize and say that he’s going to prioritize putting money in incentives for people to purchase and get into electric vehicles, hinting at some legislation or proposals that would expand the renewable energy sector.
Scott: Instead, my budget will propose more incentives and a greater focus on affordable clean energy, as well as expanding our battery and renewable energy storage sectors and the jobs they can create.
Landen: But these kinds of proposals are not the flashy and drastic measures that the climate protesters are looking for and the Democrats are looking for in 2020.
Walters: And there does seem to be a greater determination among the Democratic majority in the Legislature to really push this issue. On many issues in the past, they have tried to find common ground and soften legislation, including on things like minimum wage and paid family leave, in order to try to meet the governor halfway. And this time, they seem to be more determined to pass a climate package that they can be comfortable with and that they can feel a sense of accomplishment about, and then leave it up to the governor to make the call.
Got it. And Xander, you’ve written recently about how, again, this being an election year, that there’s some added weight to that, that if they put the governor in that position, it could become a real liability for him when the elections roll around this fall?
Landen: Yeah, I think it depends on the way you look at it. You know, there are people who say, well, Phil Scott was elected by, you know, moderate Democrats, Republicans and Independents who supported him, because they are concerned about the rising costs of living in the state of Vermont, and they want someone who’s going to protect low income and middle income people from having to bear additional costs. There are people who say, well, if Phil Scott opposes these measures, like the TCI that would raise the cost of fuel or raise the costs that the state has to bear to cut carbon emissions, he’s just doing what people put him in office to do.
On the other end, there are a lot of people who supported Phil Scott, who also want to see something big on climate change this year. It really you know, what it comes down to is if they’re doing political calculus on this, which I’m not sure they are, sure they are to some extent, they’re saying, well, what matters more? The people that want to see something immediate and drastic or the people that want us to fend off cost increases?
Got it. A lot of different dynamics at play. How do you think all this is going to affect what we see in the coming weeks? Predictions for the near future?
Walters: Well, in some ways, this is just the prelude. You know, Governor Scott’s State of the State is a ceremonial address. He gives his budget address in two weeks, and that’s where he really put some meat on the bone. Or he really, you know, some things he hinted at in the State of the State, he’ll actually present his proposals, and that will set his agenda for the session. You know, we already have a pretty good idea of what the Democrats are going to focus on first, and then there’s always the unexpected. We always have things come up. The other thing that’s going to be a big issue that the governor did not mention in the State of the State at all, is the Department of Corrections scandal at the women’s prison. His administration is working hard to contain that and clean it up and turn a potential political negative into a positive. But that’s already been the subject of legislative hearings this week. Quite a bit of them, in fact, and that will be a focus of the key committees for the ongoing future.
Elletson: Yeah, I think it’ll be really interesting to see if lawmakers can hammer out a deal on paid leave and the minimum wage. I think both are incredibly crucial pieces of legislation. And both of them seem kind of uncertain, at least, you know, minimum wage a little bit more certain than paid leave for sure.
But both that they’ve made a lot of promises on.
Elletson: Yes. And yeah, I would say conflicting promises almost from either the Senate side and the House side. There’s some tensions rising between representatives and senators on these deals.
Walters: And on the other hand, there’s a huge amount of embarrassment over their failure to pass these bills last year, and a very strong desire to not have a repeat this year.
Got it. Xander, anything you want to add?
Landen: Well, one thing we haven’t talked about yet is the legislation that would legalize marijuana sales in Vermont. We’ve obviously had legal possession for a year and a half now, but we still don’t have a legal market and the Senate passed a bill early last year to legalize sales. The House has had the bill for, well now it’s been almost a year, and they have a support to pass the thing.
The issue for this bill is the fact that the speaker is not crazy about it. Speaker Mitzi Johnson has serious reservations about legalizing marijuana sales. She says she’s not going to hold the bill up if the support is there to pass it and if it meets certain criteria that she has about public safety and education initiatives that she wants funded if we have a legal system, but the fact that she has such strong reservations does not bode well for the bill. And it does raise the question as to when and how is this thing going to get passed? Even if it has the support, without someone at the top saying I want this thing on the floor, you have to get it done. It’s hard to see the path forward, I think it’s probably going to pass, but the question is when and how.
Got it.
Walters: And if leadership isn’t wholeheartedly behind it, then you have a greater difficulty getting a critical mass of votes. You might pass a bill, but you might not get anywhere close to the number you’d need to override a gubernatorial veto. So you know, leadership being on board with it is a crucial part of this.
Before I let you guys go — in the spirit of Final Reading, the newsletter that John and Grace work on every day, I’ve got to ask, how is the new cafeteria administration working out? How are you guys finding the food?
Elletson: I haven’t eaten the food personally. You have.
Walters: I have. I mean, the initial thought when they changed the management of the cafeteria was that it was going to be a new and healthier menu. And they did take the Doyle dogs off the menu, but otherwise I can’t say that it’s particularly healthier than the old menu. You know, I had the the Cuban roast pork yesterday, and it was good, it was a little bland for my taste, it was more like Vermont Cuban.
Elletson: I think new head chef Sarah Bishop is taking a no-nonsense approach to her menu every single week, when I introduced myself to her at the beginning of the session, she just handed me a menu for the week ahead. So she’s very organized and I think that was not the style the last head chef Ray Wood.
Landen: He was kind of shooting from the hip. What’s he cooking the next day? ‘Well, might be this, might be that.’
Elletson: He had a much more whimsical approach to things, to my understanding.
Landen: I will say one thing: word on the street is lawmakers are not happy about the new portion sizes. Too small.
You heard it here first.
Thank you all for coming. I really appreciate it.
All: Thank you.
