Full-day pre-K is out of the Vermont Senate’s child care bill. But paid leave — or at least parental leave — may be in, setting up a potential showdown with the lower chamber.
Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, appeared before the Senate Health and Welfare Committee Tuesday morning to present the outlines of a parental leave amendment to tack onto S.56, the child care legislation that the panel plans to vote out this week, ahead of the Legislature’s mid-session “crossover” deadline.
“This is really the nexus to caring for a child,” said Kitchel, who chairs the chamber’s powerful budget-writing Committee on Appropriations.
Legislative language is not yet publicly available, and is expected to be presented to the health and welfare panel on Wednesday. But Kitchel said her amendment would offer 12 weeks of paid leave for new parents, apply to all genders and be available in the case of both births and adoptions. In an interview, she said she is still “working out” what the wage replacement should be.
Kitchel said the benefit could cost $15 million a year, which she stressed was a very preliminary estimate. The benefit would be means-tested, with eligibility restricted to families earning below 600% of the federal poverty level. For a family of four, that’s $180,000 a year.
Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, who chairs the health and welfare panel, said she planned to accept Kitchel’s amendment. The group of lawmakers that had worked on the child care bill initially sought to include a parental leave piece in it.
“This does fit,” she said. “It’s nice to feel that, at least in the Senate, we’re getting to be on the same page.”
But Kitchel’s proposal could clash with one in the House. Leadership there has gone all in on H.66, which would enact the most generous paid family and medical leave plans in the country.
On the same day that Kitchel presented the outlines of her amendment, the House’s tax-writing Committee on Ways and Means advanced H.66 on an 8-4-0 vote. As currently drafted, it would offer 12 weeks of paid leave not just for parents but also Vermonters taking extended time off because of their own illness or a family member’s. The comprehensive bill also includes paid leave for military families and people fleeing domestic violence.
The cost would be several times what the Senate is contemplating: benefits, credits and ongoing administrative costs are estimated at $117.6 million in fiscal year 2027, according to a legislative analysis.
Senate leadership has consistently been much more lukewarm on paid leave, arguing that child care is more important. Kitchel, one of the chamber’s most influential members, repeated those arguments again Tuesday.
“Our priority has been child care, right from the get-go. When we go to communities, what do they want? They want housing, workforce, broadband, and child care,” she told VTDigger.
Asked if she was interested in the other types of paid leave that House lawmakers are poised to pass, she replied that lawmakers “have to be honest about what we feel that we can generate revenues to support.”
Michelle Fay, the executive director of Voices of Vermont’s Children, and the lead lobbyist for a coalition of organizations pushing for paid leave, blasted the Senate proposal on Tuesday.
The amendment was crafted without input from stakeholders pushing for paid leave, Fay said, despite the groups she represents attempting to engage with the Senate several times on the matter. They were told, she said, that the chamber was letting the House take the lead on the subject.
“It just raises the question: Who’s really calling the shots here?” Fay said. “To whom are our senators accountable? It’s not to everyday Vermonters who are asking for this benefit.”