House and Senate negotiators finally hammered out their latest compromise on paid leave legislation after a day of tense talks Wednesday.
However, it is likely to face a fraught path forward. While the measure is poised to pass both the House and Senate with comfortable support, it faces a likely veto from Gov. Phil Scott. And a small block of Progressives and Democrats who want a more robust program are seeking to scuttle a potential override vote.
Scott vetoed a paid leave bill in 2018, and has signaled that he will once again strike down a paid leave program if it is funded by a mandatory payroll tax for all employees.
The main point of contention in this week’s conference committee meetings between House and Senate members was the amount of leave available to new parents.
Under the version passed by the Senate at the end of the last session, which formed the basis for negotiations, both parents were allowed 12 weeks of leave, but a household was only allowed a combined 16 weeks, to be split however parents chose.
That benefit was bumped up through committee negotiations — now, two parents can take a combined 24 weeks of consecutive leave, an original provision of the House bill.
But after a tense early afternoon exchange in conference committee, that win for House members seemed unstable.
At the last minute, Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury, raised concerns that the paid leave proposal would leave about 60,000 Vermonters ineligible to receive paid leave benefits. While every Vermont employee will see a 0.20% tax to fund the paid leave program, Vermonters who earn less than $11,400 are not eligible for the benefits.
Sen. Michael Sirotkin, D-Chittenden, said Steven’s suggestion came “out of the blue” and that it was a “big wrinkle” that the senators would need more time to research before agreeing to.
“I’m not sure even what we’ve agreed to is acceptable to the Senate given what’s being proposed now,” Sirotkin said.
By the end of the day, however, senators came around to the idea. When lawmakers came together for a final round of negotiations, Sirotkin agreed to a lower eligibility threshold. In the revised bill, the cutoff for eligibility is $7,400.
Lawmakers said they don’t know how many people still remain ineligible. Despite more people being covered under the new bill, they said the costs could be absorbed under the existing payroll tax rate.
Those concessions weren’t enough for some House members. A Progressive-led group says they won’t back the bill because it doesn’t offer generous enough benefits. Among their chief concerns with the legislation is the Senate’s decision to strip temporary disability insurance from the bill.
The House’s version of the bill last year would have allowed workers to take time off for personal medical issues. But to bring down the cost of the program, the Senate made the personal insurance coverage optional — meaning workers have to voluntarily pay extra if they want to receive it.
Rep. Robin Chesnut-Tangerman, P-Middletown Springs, the chair of the House Progressive Caucus, said of the seven Progressives in the House, most would be inclined to kill the bill over supporting a program they feel is inadequate.
“Instead of saying in two years, ‘this has been a great start, let’s expand it,’ we’ll say in two years, ‘well this has been failure it’s under-enrolled, let’s kill it,’” Chesnut-Tangerman said.
The House’s version of the bill last year got 97 votes — three short of what would be needed to override a veto.
Republicans and some of the Democrats who voted against the bill last year — because they believed the program was too expensive — will likely also oppose the bill this year.
Chesnut-Tangerman said there are about a dozen Democrats and Progressives who are considering voting against the compromise bill.
“I think at this point we would be the determining factor,” he said of the group.
Rep. Randall Szott, D-Barnard, is helping orchestrate the effort to oppose the paid leave legislation, and says he is working to convince both liberal Democrats, and moderate Democrats who opposed the bill last year, to make sure the program isn’t enacted.
“I’m having conversations with the people who have previously voted no, trying to solidify their support on the no. They’re doing it for a different reason, but it still accomplishes the same end,” he said.
“The ‘something is better than nothing’ argument doesn’t hold water in this case. Passing something will end up damaging Vermont’s brand nationally and politically,” he added. “We will pass the worst paid leave program in the country.”
Stevens said that “in the spirit of compromise” House lawmakers are settling for “less than what [they] want” in the program.
But he called the bill a “remarkable step forward” for the state and criticized the block of Democrats and Progressives threatening to stand in its way.
“It’s up to them whether they want to join the governor in preventing Vermonters from getting this benefit, or supporting the will of the people when this bill passes at a substantial level in the House and the Senate, which it will,” Stevens said.
House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, had little to say about the efforts to stifle a veto override. But she made clear that she believes the plan coming out of the conference committee is better than the status quo.
“If they think that current law is better than what the conference committee ends up producing, then that’s their right to vote that way,” Johnson said. “I think that a step toward supporting families is worth making.”
