With 800 or so bills likely to arise in a typical legislative session, a group of business associations is trying to keep the body focused this year on one general theme: Lifting the state’s economy from its Covid-based slump.
The 22 associations wrote to lawmakers and to Gov. Phil Scott on Dec. 28, asking them not to try for a typical legislative session in the extraordinary era of the pandemic. They noted that meetings will take place on Zoom and the hundreds of people who typically crowd the Statehouse each winter will have no access to the conversations that usually flow in corridors and committee rooms.
“This is not a time for business as usual,” wrote the groups, including the Lake Champlain and the Vermont chambers of commerce, Vermont Association of Realtors, Agri-Mark, and the Vermont Farm Bureau. With the spontaneous back-and-forth of citizen lawmaking unavailable this year, “we ask that legislation focus solely on the health and safety of Vermonters, must-pass state bills/budgets, and our economic recovery,” the letter said.
The legislative session that starts Jan. 6 will be unlike any other in the 230 years or so that the General Assembly has been meeting to make laws. The Vermont House won’t be meeting in person at all, and the Senate is expected to meet only briefly to swear in members before moving to an all-remote format.
The Legislature hastily went all-remote last winter as the Covid-19 infection rate rose, and lawmakers, lobbyists and the public have become accustomed to watching legislative meetings on YouTube. But for many, videoconferencing is no substitute for the real thing.
“You get better legislation when you’re able to do it face-to-face,” said Chris D’Elia, director of the Vermont Bankers Association, which signed the letter.
Spontaneous Statehouse conversations can help refine legislation to prevent unintended consequences and foster collaboration, D’Elia said. It’s nearly impossible to offer that kind of input when watching legislative proceedings — themselves conducted on Zoom — on YouTube, although observers do send mid-meeting comments to lawmakers by text or email.
But without a means to gather in person, “I would like us to try to narrow the focus to critical issues that need to be addressed, and then those that are non-critical can wait a few months, or wait until 2022,” D’Elia said. “When you’re doing public policy in a virtual world, there are times when issues fall through the cracks.”
The letter describes the critical issues as slowing the spread of the virus, distributing the vaccine, supporting health and safety measures, and working toward economic recovery. It does not detail what issues the writers believe shouldn’t be addressed in the coming year.
“Of course we have to focus on the budget, transportation bills … it’s not the goal of these organizations to pick on any one of the issues” that normally come up in a legislative session, said Matt Musgrave, deputy executive vice president of the Associated General Contractors of Vermont, which also signed the letter. “But we need to figure out how we can make the economy better, and we also need to focus on physical health.”
Musgrave did say that the contractors group believes raising taxes this session will harm an economy that is already struggling. Before the pandemic, Vermont was headed toward a record budget surplus.
It’s not yet clear how much damage the nearly 10 months of Covid-related limits have done to the economy, but many thousands of people are unemployed or underemployed, and the Agency of Commerce and Community Development has gathered data from thousands of businesses that haven’t been able to operate at full capacity.
Child care is going to be a priority of the contractors group, because many Vermonters need support in order to return to work, Musgrave said.
The House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development will also focus on childcare, said Mike Marcotte, R-Coventry. Housing and higher education — both critical issues before the pandemic began — will also be on the table.
Marcotte said by Dec. 29, a week before the session, there were already 500 pieces of proposed legislation being drafted. In a normal winter, D’Elia said, 800 to 900 bills are proposed.
“For myself, I’m only planning on dealing with what we can do to help the economy presently and going forward when we come out of this,” Marcotte said. Early childhood care and education are part of that, he said. “If we can get that figured out, we stand to prosper in the future.”
