Vermont is among the top states in the country in terms of women’s representation in its legislature. But wait a second before you brag about it on Twitter, girlbosses!
According to a report published Tuesday by Rutgers University’s Center for American Women in Politics, Vermont ranks No. 10 in the nation, with 41.7% of its state legislators identifying as women.
But the Green Mountain State has actually fallen in the ranks over the past five years. As recently as 2017, Vermont ranked No. 1, with 40.0%. In fact, for a 10-year streak from 2007 to 2017, Vermont was either No. 1 or 2 every year.
So, what happened? Other states have caught up, while Vermont has stayed relatively stagnant.
In the past five years, Vermont’s representation by women has hovered between a low of 39.4% (2018) and an all-time high of 42.2% (2020). Compare that to Nevada, whose Legislature from 2018 to 2019 shot from 39.7% to 52.4% women. It has remained No. 1 since 2019, and is still the only state in the nation to elect a majority-women legislature (58.7% this year).
In Vermont’s executive branch, the disparity is starker. Two of the state’s six statewide elected officials are women (Lt. Gov. Molly Gray and Treasurer Beth Pearce), making for a 33.3% women executive branch.
And, notoriously, Vermont remains the only state in the nation to have never sent a woman to Congress. But that could change this year.
Accompanying Vermont in the top 10 this year are fellow New Englanders Rhode Island, at No. 3 with 44.2% women, and Maine, at No. 4 with 44.1%.
Are we really going to let them beat us?
— Sarah Mearhoff
IN THE KNOW
The House now has the Senate’s blessing to high-tail it to its next phase of House district reapportionment.
In a series of rule suspensions and votes on Tuesday, the Senate approved the House’s draft legislative district map proposal. The maps are far from final. Tuesday’s passage was the first in the Legislature’s unique two-vote process to approve new legislative maps.
Now, the House Government Operations Committee can move on to the work of hearing testimony and debate on the different map options. At the heart of the debate is whether to stick with Vermont’s multi-member district model, or switch to single-member districts. Lawmakers have until April 1 to get the job done.
House Gov Ops, in a series of hearings this week, plans to take feedback on the different map proposals from Bennington, Windham, Windsor and Orange counties.
— Sarah Mearhoff
“We are in a five-alarm fire,” Steve Howard, the executive director of the Vermont State Employees Association, told the Senate Government Operations Committee on Tuesday about Vermont’s prison staffing crisis.
The Department of Corrections is facing a 44% turnover rate for correctional officers, Howard said. For three years prior, it had been about 30% each year.
The state and the union recently agreed on a deal for a one-time, $2,000 retention bonus with a total price tag of about $6 million. But Howard said that actually getting the system on the right track will require an ongoing and “significant investment,” on the order of $10 million to $20 million.
“When I asked our members to describe some of the words that I should use in my testimony here, when I’m talking with the Legislature, the words that I hear are ‘crisis,’ ‘urgent,’ ‘dangerous,’ ‘help,'” he said.
— Lola Duffort
Members of the Legislature’s Social Equity Caucus wrote in a statement Tuesday that they were “deeply concerned” about a proposal made by a special task force charged with pitching a plan for education finance reform.
At issue is how to treat English language learners in Vermont’s complicated school finance system. The task force recommended giving schools an additional flat amount per ELL student. A coalition of districts advocating for reform, on the other hand, has argued that schools simply want the state to adjust how heavily it “weighs” ELL students when calculating the all-important per-pupil spending number that determines what a local district’s tax rate will be. (A “weight” adjustment was recommended in a landmark 2019 study commissioned by lawmakers.)
“We expect any legislation to move toward implementing the empirically derived weights to ensure we are providing adequate resources to all students, not causing greater harm to our most vulnerable populations,” wrote the caucus co-chairs, Rep. Kevin “Coach” Christie, D-Hartford, and Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden.
The caucus also endorsed a middle path: a weight adjustment as a default with the option to instead for schools to choose a grant program if that works better for them. (Districts with very small numbers of ELL students might receive more financial help in a grant scheme.)
There is no bill yet. Both the Senate education and finance committees are considering what legislation might look like.
— Lola Duffort
Warmer summers. Less snow. More floods. These are just some of the risks Vermonters may be exposed to as the climate changes.
Members of the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare this week are asking the state to consider and prepare for the health implications of these projections. If passed, S.19 would require the Department of Health and the state’s chief prevention officer to study and prepare for the health issues Vermonters may face in the coming years.
Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden, who co-sponsored the bill, said she’s gotten “a lot of pushback” on the issue.
“People think, ‘Oh, we’re already doing it,’” she said. “But we’re not.”
— Liora Engel-Smith
The House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday approved a bill, S.30, that would prohibit the possession of firearms inside hospitals.
But before sending the legislation to the House floor, the panel tacked on a new provision that would strengthen the state’s rules governing background checks to purchase guns.
The amendment, sponsored by Rep. William Notte, D-Rutland City, would close the so-called “Charleston Loophole,” which allows a person to buy a gun whether or not they pass a background check, so long as that check takes longer than three days. That process is known as a “default proceed.”
The amendment, as adopted, would allow a transaction to proceed without a background check only after 30 days.
The Judiciary Committee approved the bill along party lines, with its four Republican members voting against the measure.
As initially introduced in the Senate last year, the bill would have banned firearms from hospitals, government buildings and child care centers. A whittled down version, prohibiting them only in hospitals, passed the Senate last March.
If the version advanced Tuesday by the House Judiciary Committee were to pass the House, it would return to the Senate for that body to consider the new language closing the Charleston Loophole.
— Ethan Weinstein
COVID CORNER
The largest hospital in Vermont has called off emergency staffing procedures enacted after Covid-19 sidelined too many staff members to continue normal operations.
Late last week, as patient volumes began to decline, University of Vermont Medical Center officials halted the plan, according to spokesperson Annie Mackin. She said that hospital leaders may need to reinstate it if the Burlington hospital fills up again in the future.
— Liora Engel-Smith
The Vermont Department of Health reported 105 people were in the state’s hospitals with Covid-19 Monday, the latest in a string of days with high numbers of Covid hospitalizations.
There were 111 people hospitalized with Covid on Saturday and 104 on Sunday. Monday was the 11th consecutive day with more than 100 Covid patients in Vermont hospitals.
— Erin Petenko
ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
YOU GET AN ENDORSEMENT! AND YOU GET AN ENDORSEMENT!
It’s endorsement week — again. (We suspect next week will be, as well.)
U.S. House candidate and Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, D-Windham, was out today with an announcement that three national LGBTQ PACs — including the LGBTQ Victory Fund — have endorsed her. The Victory Fund has tiered candidate endorsements, and Balint has been designated a “Game Changer” candidate, the highest tier.
State Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden, who is also vying to be the Democratic nominee in this year’s U.S. House race, was out Monday with an endorsement from the AAPI Victory Fund, which helps elect Asian American and Pacific Islander candidates to public office. That same day, Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, another candidate in the primary, said she had nabbed the backing of The Next 50, a PAC that supports “next-generation candidates in districts across the country that are on the frontlines of defending voting rights and our democracy,” per a campaign press release.
— Lola Duffort
ON THE FIFTH FLOOR
Gov. Phil Scott drew heat on Twitter on Monday after posting a clip from his budget address. In the video, Scott proposed returning half of the education fund’s $90 million surplus in property tax rebates.
“It’s not a surplus if you have not funded the teacher pensions!” one user replied.
“Fund pensions. Get COVID response support $ to schools. Help our schools fix their failing infrastructure. Make sure multilingual learners and special education students have their needs covered. Etc.,” Rep. Selene Colburn, P/D-Burlington, tweeted in reply.
When asked to respond to the comments at Tuesday’s press conference, Scott said schools “have a lot of money right now.”
“I think affordability is an issue for us and if we have an opportunity to make it a little more affordable by giving some back, I think we should do so,” Scott said.
When it comes to school infrastructure and construction, “Money’s not necessarily the issue with those projects sometimes,” Secretary of Education Dan French said at the presser. “It’s often finding the contractors to do the work, finding the workers to do the work, and so forth.”
Scott also declined again on Tuesday to weigh in on the pension reform proposal.
“I think it was two weeks ago I said that the devil is always in the details; I don’t have any details, and the same thing holds true today,” he said at the podium.
— Riley Robinson
WHAT’S FOR LUNCH
Statehouse cafeteria connoisseurs can look forward to chicken quesadillas on Wednesday. But setting tomorrow’s menu was a close call: Tuesday’s food shipment was late, and it wasn’t until 2 p.m. that chef manager Bryant Palmer was able to make a decision. Asked around 1:30 p.m. if he was stressed about the whole ordeal, Palmer waved it off. The show must go on.
— Sarah Mearhoff
WHAT’S ON TAP
Wednesday, Jan. 26
9 a.m. — House Ways & Means hears from the Joint Fiscal Office on H.510, An act relating to creating a Vermont child tax credit
9 a.m. — Senate Judiciary takes testimony on qualified immunity for police officers
9:15 a.m. — House General, Housing & Military Affairs will hear introductions for a few bills related to tenant rights and no-cause evictions
1:15 p.m. — House Judiciary will take testimony related to drug decriminalization
WHAT WE’RE READING
Opioid deaths in 2021 set new state record (VTDigger)
2 dozen athletes with Vermont ties named to US Olympic team (VTDigger)
Vermonter wins top award for his watercolor illustrations in children’s book Watercress (Burlington Free Press)
Correction: In an earlier version of Final Reading, the item on women’s representation in state government misstated Vermont’s ranking compared to other states in one time period, due to an error in the report that was cited. Vermont ranked third in the nation for women’s representation in the Legislature in 2018. The state was ranked No. 1 or 2 in the nation for a 10-year streak from 2007-2017.
