The Senate on Wednesday voted to advance a bill that would move toward implementing ranked choice voting in Vermont for presidential primary elections. But hold your horses: Ballots wouldn’t change until 2028.
Introducing S.32 to her colleagues on the Senate floor, Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central, said ranked choice voting is “an often misunderstood and seemingly complex topic that, once understood, is actually quite simple.”
“Ranked choice voting is a system of voting that allows the voter to rank the candidates in order of preference, sort of like if you’ve ever taken your child to get ice cream,” she said. “And you ask them what flavor they want, and they say maple. And then you might ask, ‘Well, what if they don’t have maple?’ And they say, ‘Blackberry is my second choice.’ This is ranked choice voting.”
S.32 comes after a different, more robust ranked choice voting bill melted away last year. Lawmakers came back this year with the idea to limit implementation of the system to presidential primaries as a trial run.
Especially in contests with a large crop of candidates, Vyhovsky said she hoped that ranked choice voting could address some of the woes of modern political campaigning. She said “long shot” candidates are often pressured to drop out in fear of becoming spoilers, or candidates reduce themselves to toxic campaigning and “mud slinging” in order to eke out a win, or extremist candidates with a minority base can win a plurality thanks to a heavily splintered vote among moderate opponents.
In its original form, S.32 would have plowed ahead with a ranked choice presidential primary ballot as soon as the 2024 election cycle, but lawmakers heard from the Secretary of State’s Office and town clerks that the timeline was simply too tight. So 2028 it is.
In the meantime, there will be a study committee comprised of lawmakers, representatives from the Secretary of State’s Office, municipal governments and other stakeholders to take a closer look at how widespread ranked choice voting would operate in Vermont.
S.32 also contains permissive language offering municipalities the Legislature’s blessing to implement ranked choice voting for their own local elections, should they so choose, as early as 2024, but the bill does not require it.
Senators voted 23-7 to approve S.32’s second reading. It faces one more Senate floor vote before it heads to the House.
“Humans are innately capable and familiar with preference ranking,” Vyohovsky said on the floor. “It does not mean the child gets to have both kinds of ice cream. It simply means they have a backup plan should their first choice not be available. Ranked choice voting really is as simple as ice cream.”
— Sarah Mearhoff
IN THE KNOW
A last-minute amendment tacked on to the Vermont House’s $8.5 billion state budget bill, H.494, would reallocate $20 million set aside for child care to house and provide services for certain unhoused Vermonters now living in hotels.
House Human Services Committee chair Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, who crafted the amendment, told the appropriations panel that there are over 300 vacancies in manufactured home parks right now. At $40,000 a piece, she said, $10 million could buy an estimated 250 manufactured homes.
That’s enough to re-house just a fraction of those currently living in motels — a fact Wood herself appeared to acknowledge.
— Lola Duffort
Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast, who is Vermont’s first pregnant legislator in nearly 20 years, was admitted to the hospital and expects to legislate remotely for the foreseeable future.
Ram Hinsdale and her baby are healthy, but she told Vermont Public on Wednesday that her baby wanted to make an entrance sooner than her May 10 due date. The senator is expected to remain for several weeks at the University of Vermont Medical Center, where doctors are working to prolong the gestation.
Ram Hinsdale’s hospital admittance has altered the Senate’s working schedule, delaying the upper chamber’s votes on child care (S.56), housing (S.100) and labor rights (S.102) legislation.
“We’ll pick up those bills tomorrow and, again, we wish the senator all the best,” Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, said on the floor Wednesday. When Ram Hinsdale Zoomed into the floor session, her 29 colleagues gave her a round of applause.
— Sarah Mearhoff
ON THE MOVE
Vermont House lawmakers advanced legislation to tighten regulations on private schools that educate students paid for with public money, including a provision that would limit those schools’ ability to turn away publicly-funded students.
The House voted Wednesday afternoon to give preliminary approval to H.483, a bill that would strengthen anti-discrimination measures, place a moratorium on new independent school approvals, and make it nearly impossible for independent schools to reject publicly tuitioned students.
— Peter D’Auria
It’s not every day that House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, is met with absolute silence from one side of a voice vote.
But today no one opposed H.222, a bill to combat rising opioid overdose deaths statewide that was crafted to avoid controversy. In a preliminary roll call vote the day before, only one member voted against it.
Every community in Vermont has been touched by the opioid overdose crisis. New and more dangerous additives show up in the illegal supply almost monthly, as overdose deaths rose to a record for the third year running in 2022.
The bill would implement some of the recent recommendations of the Opioid Advisory Group, such as establishing kiosks that make the overdose reversal drug naloxone readily accessible to those at risk. In addition, it would, among other actions:
- Establish a statewide program for syringe and needle disposal.
- Make several technical changes to ease prior authorization requirements for Medicaid patients in medication-assisted treatment.
- Remove the sunset provision from a 2021 law that legalized possession of small quantities of buprenorphine, a withdrawal treatment.
- Clarify that municipal zoning laws must treat certified group homes for people in recovery serving fewer than eight people like other residential care homes and permit them in areas zoned for single-family residential use.
— Kristen Fountain
A bill that would give the Vermont Department of Taxes control of property appraisals passed the House on Wednesday.
H.480 would require property reappraisals to take place at least every six years and would move the responsibility for those reappraisals from municipalities to the state.
The reimagining of Vermont’s property valuation system, which would gradually take effect over the next few years, would bring the state in line with the rest of the country, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, D-Brattleboro, said on the House floor on Tuesday.
— Ethan Weinstein
Senators have given a preliminary green light to S.42, a bill that sets goals to divest Vermont’s three statutory pension plans from the fossil fuel industry.
Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, who presented the bill on the Senate floor Wednesday, referenced last week’s report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which stated the need to stop fossil fuel development in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Divestment moves toward supporting that goal by depriving the fossil fuel industry of the capital it needs to fund new fossil fuel developments,” she said. “Vermont’s pensions should not be invested in industries that are harming Vermonters by furthering global warming.”
The divestment conversation isn’t new — lawmakers have made an effort to pluck state investments from the industry for years. But a collaboration between Mike Pieciak, the new state treasurer, Third Act, a climate action organization, and the Vermont Pension Investment Commission — which withdrew its wholehearted support at the last minute — put wind in the bill’s sails.
Some lawmakers expressed concern and frustration that the bill doesn’t require the state to divest quickly enough.
Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, who chairs the Senate Government Operations Committee, which worked on the bill, responded that unwinding the state’s investments takes time.
— Emma Cotton
ON THE HILL
As U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. finished his second month as chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, he got the chance of a pro-labor lifetime: to grill the former head of Starbucks before a national audience.
At a hearing on Wednesday, Sanders called on Howard Schultz, who recently ended his third stint as CEO of the coffee company, to take accountability for what the Vermont senator called “the most aggressive and illegal union busting campaign in the modern history of our country.”
“What Starbucks is doing is not only trying to break unions, but even worse,” Sanders said, “They are trying to break the spirit of workers who are struggling to improve their lives. And that is unforgivable.”
— Olivia Q. Pintair
WHAT WE’RE READING
Auditor finds state falls short on long-term care oversight (VTDigger)
Beloved drag queen and Burlington community member Michael ‘Margaurite LeMay’ Hayes dies at age 66 (VTDigger)
Dartmouth finds Native American remains in collections (Valley News)
To die on her own terms, a Connecticut woman turns to Vermont (The New York Times)
Should Vermont require personal finance classes for students? (Seven Days)