Child care — and money — will be at the top of the docket next week. That’s when a long-awaited report that will cost out potential child care sector reforms intended to achieve affordable and universal coverage is expected to be unveiled. Likely the very same day, the Emergency Board, a rather ominously named special legislative panel that typically meets twice a year to receive an economic forecast, will assemble for its regularly scheduled update. And to cap it all off, Gov. Phil Scott will deliver his annual budget speech that Friday.
As is custom, Scott gave us a preview of what he’ll include in his spending plan last week, during his inaugural address. The brief nod toward child care reform in that speech prompted the state’s leading child care advocacy group, which had endorsed Scott ahead of the November elections, to express sharp disappointment.
“The Governor’s lack of emphasis on child care today is out of touch with the needs of Vermont families and businesses, and is a missed opportunity to improve our economy and set up our youngest children for future success,” Aly Richards, the CEO of Let’s Grow Kids, said in a statement that day.
Scott has long called for additional investments in child care, but never on the scale that advocates argue will be necessary to make a real dent in the problem. Crucially, he’s remained consistent in his belief that the state does not need to levy new broad-based taxes to expand access.
“I don’t think we need to raise taxes to do it,” he said without hesitation at a VTDigger debate in September, when asked how far he’d go to meet the goal set by advocates and lawmakers that no family should pay more than 10% of its income on child care. “I think there’s enough capacity within the system.”
Prior estimates have all suggested that such a child care overhaul would cost several hundred million dollars a year, and Let’s Grow Kids has maintained throughout that a fully funded program — not partial reform — is non-negotiable. But in an interview Wednesday, Richards appeared hesitant to acknowledge that the organization’s vision for change and the governor’s beliefs are fundamentally irreconcilable.
“He agrees, I would say, with the urgency and the outcome and the goal. He doesn’t want to raise new revenue,” Richards said. “And that’s where we are.”
So is Let’s Grow Kids planning for a veto override?
“It’s one step at a time at this point,” Richards replied.
— Lola Duffort
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IN THE KNOW
The Vermont Department of Corrections earlier this week sent out a request for bids on out-of-state prison space, Commissioner Nicholas Deml told lawmakers Wednesday.
Vermont contracts with CoreCivic, a large private prison operator, to incarcerate people at the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, Mississippi. As of Wednesday, 110 men were being held at the Mississippi facility, according to daily population data.
That number has declined significantly from its peak in August 2019, when 281 people were incarcerated at the CoreCivic prison. The department stopped out-of-state transfers and returned some individuals to Vermont prisons during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The new request for proposals, released Monday, solicits bids for “the confinement and supervision” of up to 300 people.
A few lawmakers on the House Corrections and Institutions Committee asked Deml if the state had looked into alternatives to private prisons.
“I’m really uncomfortable with the idea of handing someone in our custody over to a company that’s beholden to the bottom line objectives (of) shareholders,” said Rep. Conor Casey, D-Montpelier.
Deml countered that a private company would provide better treatment for incarcerated people, as the state could impose stricter requirements in a private contract than it could using another state’s public facilities.
“In some ways, we’ve kind of flipped the script and said, OK, if we’re gonna go with a for-profit company, then we’re gonna use for-profit tools to force the issue,” Deml told committee members. “Because we have housed people in other states and other counties, and the outcomes are not good.”
— Riley Robinson
Slowly but surely, Vermont’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is on its way to formation.
Damien Leonard from the Office of Legislative Counsel told a House panel on Wednesday that a group established by last year’s Act 128 is still in the process of choosing members of a selection panel, which will choose commissioners to serve on the commission itself.
“It’s important to understand that this is a multiyear process,” Leonard told the House General and Housing Committee Wednesday morning. The chosen commissioners will have a large task ahead of them, he said: to study and begin reconciling for systemic discrimination committed against marginalized people in Vermont, either directly or passively at the hands of Vermont state government.
The first selection committee has until the end of March to select the second selection panel, which will select the commission. If you’re thinking, “That’s a lot of selecting,” you’d be right — and it’s by design, Virginie Ladisch, a senior expert with the International Center for Transitional Justice, said Wednesday. The goal was to keep the commission independent from the state government, she said. Ladisch helped craft last year’s bill, and is now helping to select the selection panel.
“Some people also said, ‘Oh, a panel to select a panel to select a panel, that sounds like a lot of government bureaucracy.’ And some people cynically thought, ‘This is a way of avoiding doing the work,’” Ladisch said. “And I said, ‘No, really this is meant to put some space and some distance between the government and the issues.’”
— Sarah Mearhoff
Lack of local clinical staff has increased the costs of operating Vermont’s state psychiatric facilities in fiscal year 2023 by more than $10 million, staff from the Department of Mental Health told the House Committee on Appropriations on Wednesday. The department is asking for that amount to be reallocated from the general fund as part of the budget adjustment act to cover those costs.
The department now relies on traveling nurses to staff around 60% of the shifts at its facilities — primarily the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital in Berlin and a secure residential treatment facility in Middlesex. The total number of full-time traveling nurses employed by the state has increased from 10 to 12 nurses at any given time to between 20 and 30, Shannon Thompson, the financial director of the Department of Mental Health, told the committee.
Historically, the department has been able to pay for traveling staff with a small allocation over and above what would have been spent on the vacant positions. But over the course of the pandemic, the pay for travelers increased exponentially. The hourly rate is now over $200 per hour, which is more than double what the department would pay for permanent staff, Thompson said.
The department is negotiating new contracts that should lower the rate slightly. But psychiatric nurses are scarce across the country, so they command high rates, said Emily Hawes, Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health.
There is also a cost in morale among permanent staff. “It is very, very difficult to work next to someone who is doing the exact same job as you at a much higher rate,” Hawes said.
Rep. Tristan Toleno, D-Brattleboro, and others urged administrators to look into long-term solutions for the staffing crunch. “For 10 million bucks every year, we could do a lot,” said Rep. Marc Mihaly, D-East Calais.
— Kristen Fountain
For State Auditor Doug Hoffer, a 2022 midsummer Vermont Supreme Court decision was an existential threat to his office’s ability to fulfill its watchdog role. So he moved quickly to work with state lawmakers on a legislative solution.
In late June, the state’s highest court ruled that Hoffer’s office had no legal basis to force the accountable care organization OneCare Vermont to turn over its payroll records. But the repercussions went much further than that case.
Hoffer raised the alarm with state legislators, which led to the quick filing last week of H.24. The bill would explicitly give the state auditor the right to examine the accounting records of private contractors doing business with the state.
— Kristen Fountain
Your Final Reading Scribes heard about a “kitchen cabinet caucus” on Tuesday — an unpublicized gathering of Democrats outside of their livestreamed weekly caucus meetings.
Granted, it’s normal — and legal — for groups of lawmakers to socialize and strategize outside of public view, as long as that small group doesn’t make up a quorum, or a majority of any public body. If a gathering meets that magic number, it triggers Vermont’s open meeting law. If there happens to be a quorum, even at some unrelated social function, members “must take care not to discuss the business of the board,” according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
House Majority Leader Emily Long, D-Newfane, denied any secrecy, and described the meeting as a social gathering geared toward welcoming new members.
“We don’t discuss policy,” Long said. “I’m very adamant about that.”
She said she was unable to provide a list of attendees or specify how many lawmakers were present.
Legislators have, in recent years, skirted open meeting law, by convening offsite caucus meetings or communicating over private Zoom chats without keeping records.
Long said leadership is careful to keep attendance below the level that would constitute a quorum of lawmakers. At past gatherings, she said, she’d never had to turn away lawmakers to keep the number below the allowable threshold, adding, “but I can tell you I would.”
— Riley Robinson and Mike Dougherty
ON THE HILL
As the 118th Congress (finally) begins its work, U.S. House Republicans on Wednesday staked out their legislative effort to roll back abortion access nationwide, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year.
In her first floor speech as Vermont’s lone House member, Democratic U.S. Rep. Becca Balint on Wednesday decried the high court’s 2022 decision as “dehumanizing and dangerous,” and said Republicans’ anti-abortion bills are out of step with public opinion. She also harkened back to her time as a state senator in Montpelier, where she helped shepherd measures to protect abortion access in Vermont through the Legislature.
“While Republicans seek to control women’s bodies, to try to distract us from their extreme stances with farcical resolutions, my Democratic colleagues and I will not stop until reproductive rights are restored as the law of the land,” Balint said Wednesday. “The American people are overwhelmingly with us. They want their rights. They want their freedoms. As a woman, mother, and Congresswoman, I will continue to fight for a world where abortion care is legal, safe, and accessible for all Americans.”
House Republicans’ efforts are unlikely to make it past the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate, much less Democratic President Joe Biden’s desk.
— Sarah Mearhoff
WHAT WE’RE READING
‘Always willing to help’: Family, friends recall the activism and kindness of Beth Danon (VTDigger)
Vermont Debates How to Use Opioid-Settlement Windfall to Address Spiraling Drug Problems (Seven Days)
International Sailing School loses its home on Malletts Bay (VTDigger)