There may be a few days left before the Vermont Legislature is scheduled to adjourn, but Tuesday had the air of a final day in the Statehouse.
The Senate met three times throughout the day, suspending its parliamentary rules to take up bills immediately and quickly send them over to the House.
The lower chamber, for its part, met twice to finish up business on bills, while committees of conference hurriedly worked to find compromises between competing versions of a number of “must pass” pieces of legislation.
It tends to be difficult to cover conference committees. What appears accurate one minute may become inaccurate the next. However — at least as of the time of writing — two bills in conference today have been settled: H.449, which establishes a task force to address the state’s pension problem, and H.433, this session’s transportation bill.
The fiscal year 2022 budget, H.439, is still in play, with both House and Senate conferees committing to completing their work by Friday.
Early on Tuesday, Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, who chairs the Senate Committee on Appropriations, expressed interest in finishing the budget by the evening. But that was not to be, as lawmakers continued to mull how to fund health insurance for teachers.
The panel that’s hashing out the budget is also being forced to wait on the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs, which for weeks has been studying H.159 — the vehicle for workforce and business investments.
But despite these holdups, Kitchel said she fully expects to finish up by the end of the week.
“Obviously this is Tuesday. It would be desirable to be out of here Friday,” she said. “I would hate to have the Senate out on Friday, and the House have to come back on Saturday, but sometimes that happens.”
“You would not hate it as much as we would hate it, senator,” responded Rep. Mary Hooper, D-Montpelier, who chairs the House Committee on Appropriations. “Our goal is to get this done by Friday.”
Click here to get Final Reading in your inbox.
