When the Legislature adjourned last week, the leaders of the House and Senate wrapped up a challenging first year at the helm of each chamber.
After they were sworn in in January, Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, D-Windham, and House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, had to contend with the coronavirus pandemic and, thus, a second year of remote legislating.
“The emptiness within the building makes it feel much more lonely,” Balint said in an interview this month at the Statehouse, where she has been working through most of the session. “To be in a position of leading a chamber at a really hard time, but the people aren’t physically here.”
Then came a doomed effort to reform Vermont’s struggling pension system, with the two Democratic leaders facing sharp criticism over a House plan to cut the state’s mounting debt.
But throughout the session, the two leaders worked well together — and managed to avoid big showdowns with Republican Gov. Phil Scott. Recent legislative sessions have ended in pitched disagreements between the House and Senate and the occasional budget veto by Scott, but this year’s concluded without a major battle.
Scott, who has indicated he will sign the state budget proposal that the Legislature passed last week, gave Krowinski and Balint high marks for their ability to navigate the remote legislative session. He said he met with them at least every two weeks and “it’s been a good dialogue, good discussion, very open, and they adhere to their word and everything’s been working fine.”
“We don’t agree on everything, but we’re honest about that and we’re able to talk about that,” he said.
But that may change next year. Lawmakers will face controversial issues that were pushed off this year — including the looming multibillion-dollar pension problems.
Another big change: They expect to return to in-person work at the Statehouse, leaving behind the world of remote lawmaking.
Year 1 defined by Zoom
The remote session strained many legislators, as some said meeting via Zoom made it hard to build relationships and take on complex policy debates.
Balint and Krowinski were no exception.
On many days during this year’s legislative session, Balint was the only legislator at the Statehouse in Montpelier.
Balint, who took the reins of the Vermont Senate in January, worked out of a small room that belongs to the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs, at a table covered with books, boxes and papers.
On a morning in mid-May, when Balint walked upstairs to attend the day’s Senate session, the halls were empty, and Vermont’s 29 other senators were waiting for her in the virtual chamber, displayed in squares on a large video screen.
Balint, who describes herself as an extrovert, said it was strange conducting legislative business without her fellow lawmakers in the Statehouse.
While Balint was based in the Statehouse, Krowinski often led the lower chamber from her home in the Queen City’s Old North End, though she also worked from Montpelier at least once a week.
Sitting in her Statehouse office that same day in May, Krowinski said that, despite the obstacles, lawmakers had already passed major pieces of legislation, including significant investments in broadband and affordable housing, and a pathway to more generous child care subsidies.
What she missed in the virtual meetings was person-to-person interaction.
“When we’re in the chamber, there are points and times where people stand up, and there’s a flow for the debate, and it’s just a little different when you’re doing it on Zoom,” the speaker said.
Unifying over Covid-19
This year, at least, legislators managed to unify in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
“If a war breaks out, everybody’s behind the war effort,” said Sen. Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden. “And in this case, we had a pandemic break out, and everybody has been pulling together.”
Baruth said the level at which Vermont’s three political parties have worked together is “historic.”
“I hope that lasts, but history would suggest that when the crisis is over we kind of go back to our respective corners,” he said. “But for right now, it’s been a very tranquil session.”
Veteran Statehouse lobbyist Adam Necrason said the pandemic was not only a unifier between the Legislature and the governor, but that it also eliminated the capacity for picking political fights.
“They’re busy with the pressing issue of Covid as the top priority,” Necrason said.
Necrason and others also pointed out that the windfall of federal money the state received from the American Rescue Plan Act made it easier for the House, Senate and Scott to reach consensus.
That federal legislation provided lawmakers and the governor with $1 billion to deploy for public health and infrastructure projects, providing “room to fund everyone’s priorities,” Necrason said.
The budget bill lawmakers passed last week harnessed $599 million of the federal funds, including for affordable housing, clean water projects and measures to combat climate change. Lawmakers and Scott were generally in agreement about spending priorities.
“There was less to argue about because there were no programs that were necessarily on the chopping block,” said Sen. Anthony Pollina, P/D-Washington. “So there doesn’t have to be the kind of horse trading that goes on when things are being cut and there’s limited funds.”
While Scott has vetoed one bill this session, a measure shielding the records of young adults accused of some crimes, the Democratic majority refrained from sending the governor legislation he would likely oppose. Lawmakers, for example, decided early on that they would not attempt to pass a paid family leave bill, which has been a top Democratic priority and campaign issue for years. Scott vetoed paid leave bills in 2018 and 2020.
Lawmakers have scheduled a veto session for next month, but it’s unclear if they will return to attempt to override the bill the governor killed last week. Scott could still veto other legislation in the coming days, though it doesn’t appear that he plans to.
Pension problems pushed
Lawmakers also decided to push some of this year’s thorniest legislative discussions to 2022, avoiding — for the most part — major political discord.
At the beginning of the year, Democrats said reforming the state’s pension system in an effort to address its mounting debt was a top priority.
But after the House’s initial plan drew sharp criticism from state employees and unions, lawmakers dropped it. Instead, they established a task force to come up with recommendations to address Vermont’s ballooning pension debt. Lawmakers expect to discuss those recommendations next year.
A report commissioned by legislators has also called for a substantial overhaul to its education finance system. But instead of taking on education finance reforms this year, the Legislature decided to punt the matter to a summer task force and plan on returning to it in early 2022.
Balint said that the second year of the legislative biennium is always going to be “much more fraught with tension” than the first because bills die after lawmakers adjourn. The current biennium began this year, so any bills that did not make it across the finish line this session could reemerge next session.
Democratic leaders had improved lines of communication between their chambers and the governor’s office, Balint said, which could make it easier to take on tougher policy debates next year.
“I would argue that we’re establishing healthier patterns for how to have those difficult conversations,” Balint said. “I’m actually feeling very optimistic today that we are going to be able to wrestle with those big things next year because we modeled a different way forward this session.”
Balint and Krowinski will likely have to address the pension system in 2022, which would again test the new leaders.
In March, Democratic House members proposed a pension plan that would trim benefits while asking for higher contributions from teachers and state employees. The proposal was blasted by public sector employees and ultimately dropped by Krowinski.
The disagreement between state employees and House leadership may have soured relations between organized labor and Krowinski, according to Rep. Selene Colburn, P/D-Burlington.
“I know that Jill is very committed to working people and working families, but to me it also feels important, just the Legislature as a whole, that we really lead with policies that make that clear in the second half of the biennium, just given how some debates shaped up,” Colburn said.
Krowinski said she’s happy with where lawmakers landed on the pension issue, pointing to the task force and a series of reforms lawmakers passed this year to overhaul the board that governs the system.
“We have a crisis with our pensions, and my goal all along has been to ensure that our state employees and our teachers can retire in confidence, and they can’t do that now,” Krowinski said.
Scott expressed interest in going further to reform the pension system this year and supported the House’s initial plan. But after lawmakers scrapped the proposal, the governor didn’t press the matter.
“They left without any big dustups, but that’s because no one seemed to want to have a fight,” said Patti Komline, a lobbyist with the firm Downs Rachlin Martin and a former Republican House minority leader.
Komline suggested that strain from remote legislating may have had something to do with it.
“Zoom fatigue maybe?” she said.