A heated discussion on the virtual Senate floor — over a contentious bill that would increase laid-off worker benefits while delaying an employer tax hike — came to an abrupt end Friday, as bad weather cut off the electricity to the Statehouse.
S.10 has sparked intense debate among labor and business lobbyists during the current legislative session. After Gov. Phil Scott’s Department of Labor proposed the employer tax delay, labor interests quickly demanded that, if businesses get a tax cushion, laid-off workers should get some benefit, too.
Heavy negotiating between Senate leaders repeatedly stalled a vote by the upper chamber during the past week, and the chamber finally took up the bill Friday — leading to one of the more charged floor discussions of the session thus far.
“I would just like to take the time right now to make the implicit more explicit,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, D-Windham, on the virtual Senate floor. “This is clearly the most contentious debate we’ve had this session, and I want us all to contemplate why that might be. This bill, at its core, is about people.”
Moments after those remarks, though, a power outage forced Balint and Lt. Gov. Molly Gray — who were attending virtually from the Statehouse — to adjourn the chamber until next week.
Kevin Moore, the legislative information technology director, told VTDigger that the Statehouse was affected by a wave of power outages that swept through Montpelier Friday afternoon. With both the lieutenant governor and the Senate president on the verge of losing their electricity, the chamber had no choice but to adjourn early, Senate Secretary John Bloomer told VTDigger.
The ill-timed outage prevented an impending vote on an amendment to S.10, and thus on the legislation.
As passed by the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs two weeks ago, S.10 would raise the maximum weekly benefit for unemployment insurance recipients by 20% for a year and permanently send additional $50-a-week payments to claimants with dependent children. It further proposes spreading a hike in businesses’ unemployment insurance taxes — which are now set to skyrocket in July — over several years.
After days of committee discussion and behind-closed-doors negotiating between Sen. Randy Brock, R-Franklin, and Sen. Michael Sirotkin, D-Chittenden, Sirotkin finally introduced an amendment Friday that sought to strike a compromise on the benefits and tax measures.
“S.10 is definitely a Covid relief bill — both for businesses and for workers,” he said on the virtual Senate floor. “We feel what we have before you is a win-win.”
The compromise amendment proposes striking the 20% benefit increase, sending claimants with dependents $50 in additional weekly benefits for five years, and freezing employers’ tax unemployment insurance schedule and taxable wage base.
It further calls for taxes employers pay into the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund to be reduced by $66 million over the next 10 years, and for the Department of Labor to conduct a survey aimed at correcting the size of the fund, which is presently projected to reach $1 billion within 10 years.
Between the dependent benefit and the adjustment in businesses’ tax schedules, the new amendment achieves a fair balance between benefits for businesses and workers, said David Mickenberg, a lobbyist who represents Working Vermont, a coalition of public- and private-sector unions, and the Vermont Building and Construction Trades Council.
Business groups including the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce, however, decried the new amendment for the “false benefit” they argue it purports to offer business owners.
A discussion on the amendment Friday exposed disagreement in the upper chamber on those issues, too, with opposition to the new proposal emerging on both sides of the aisle.
“I have spent a lot of time thinking about this bill, and it weighs heavily on me, because we get into this world of ‘if you vote one way you’re for business, if you vote another way you’re for workers,’” Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, said on the virtual Senate floor.
Kitchel went on to voice concerns about dipping into the state’s unemployment trust fund to provide more worker benefits at a moment when additional federal unemployment relief is on the way via the American Rescue Plan.
Brock, with whom Sirotkin had sought to strike a compromise via the amendment, declined to support the new version of the legislation.
“The senator from Caledonia’s proposal of using federal money to do that, to me, makes much more sense than using the trust fund to do it,” Brock said, referring to raising unemployment benefits.
“Part of the argument that we’ve heard is that employers are being benefited” by the proposed delay in the tax increase, he went on. “And that’s true. But at the same time, we have to understand that it’s not a real benefit — it’s simply a deferral.”
Other senators questioned whether the dependent benefit would truly cease after five years, and if the labor department’s aging mainframe computer system would be able to distribute dependent benefits.
Business groups ramped up criticism of S.10 over the past week as the economic development committee sought a compromise, sharing concerns from employers that greater benefits may deter laid-off workers from finding jobs again.
As lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised critiques of the new proposal, senators who have supported bigger checks for laid-off workers emphasized the continued strain that working families face in the pandemic’s waning months.
“The principles embodied in this bill, the principles of helping people and helping our communities, form the fabric of why the unemployment insurance system was created,” Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, said on the virtual floor. “And this is a better bill, because we’ve taken time to listen and work with each other.”
Despite their lack of agreement on the amendment, everything “was not lost” in his negotiations with Sirotkin, Brock said in a phone interview Thursday.
“Sen. Sirotkin and I spent a great deal of time trying to come to consensus, and I think we made progress,” he said. “And some of that progress is reflected in the bill, because there are some things that were in the underlying bill that were of much more concern that were addressed.”
The Senate is set to reconvene next Tuesday.
• This article was corrected Sunday, March 28, at 1 p.m. to clarify that the $66 million is a reduction in employers’ contributions to the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund over 10 years.
