The Vermont Legislature closed out the 2023 legislative session on Friday evening by passing an $8.5 billion state budget that would inject tens of millions into housing, child care reform, universal school meals, and the human services.
But while the spending package — the largest in state history — funds a slew of initiatives that would, in a different year, have offered Democrats, buoyed by supermajorities in both chambers, the chance at a victory lap, one subject overshadowed the rest: homelessness.
A final budget deal between the House and Senate held firm to the decision to end, come July 1, a pandemic-era program that has sheltered the vast majority of the state’s unhoused population in motels and hotels. Federal funding for the emergency program has come to an end, and both Gov. Phil Scott and legislative leaders have argued Vermont simply can’t afford to pick up the tab.
But advocates note that this will kick roughly 2,500 people — including nearly 600 children — into the streets amid a worsening housing crisis. And service providers have been clear: Even before the program ends, shelters are already full and services are overwhelmed.
A mutiny is underway in the Vermont House, where 17 Democrats and Progressives voted against the budget on Friday. The measure still passed by a vote of 90 to 53. But that vote tally could spell trouble for Democratic leadership in June, when they will likely need to override a gubernatorial veto of the budget. If enough of Friday’s ‘nay’ votes don’t flip, Democrats won’t have the two-thirds majority required.
Rep. Conor Casey, D-Montpelier, told his colleagues on the House floor there was “so much in this budget he’d be proud to vote for” — but that he couldn’t. Before coming to the Statehouse, he’d been on the city council in Montpelier, which has seen a spike in homelessness in recent years.
“We begged the state — you gotta give us more, or bad things are gonna happen. And they did. We tried our best but it wasn’t enough. A lot of bad things happened,” Casey said, pointing, for example, to the brutal stabbing of a shelter worker in February.
Service providers are trying to open a new shelter in the city’s recreation center, he said, but it isn’t even ADA-compliant. Meanwhile, volunteers are handing out tick spray to the people who are living in tents in the city’s Hubbard Park, and others are making lists of people who will have no place to refrigerate their insulin, or plug in their oxygen concentrators, once they lose their motel rooms.
“This is before the voucher program has expired. It’s gonna get worse,” he said. “I don’t know how to tell people it’s going to get worse because it feels so bad already.”
Other Democrats acknowledged the crisis — but argued that the budget before them nevertheless made great strides forward.
“The words we’ve heard are true. The situation we face is difficult,” said Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury. “However, I rise in support of this budget because it continues investments that we have been making that are addressing many of the issues in front of us.”
The budget includes $50 million in one-time money for the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board to build housing, $10 million of which is earmarked for shelter expansions and homes for those exiting homelessness. And there’s another $10 million for the Vermont Housing Improvement Program, which gives grants to landlords to get vacant and derelict units back online.
Others pointed to the significant reimbursement rate increases — which total nearly $100 million — health and human service providers are set to receive under the bill.
Republicans, meanwhile, uniformly denounced the budget’s increases in spending as irresponsible, and its new taxes and fees as unaffordable. The bill includes 20% across-the-board increases in Department of Motor Vehicle fees, puts $30 million in additional pressure on property taxes to fund universal school meals, and will require a 0.44% payroll tax to pay for child care.
“While there are many good things this budget funds — and this may sound strange — that is exactly the problem,” said Rep. Pattie McCoy, R-Poultney, the House Minority Leader. “With the passage of the childcare bill this evening, this budget is an overall increase of 13.3%. Given we are already seeing downgrades in our incoming revenue, I am concerned we will be back here in January cutting many of the initiatives we approved tonight.”
After years of Vermont ranking nearly last in the nation for funding to public higher education — and a financial crisis in 2020 which almost closed three campuses — the Vermont State Colleges System is, for the fourth consecutive year, set to receive a significant influx of additional cash.
The system’s base appropriation — the figure it can count on year-over-year — would grow to $48 million, up $2.5 million from this year, per the Big Bill. That’s a 60% increase over what the colleges received from the state in 2020, and in line with the recommendations a report commissioned by lawmakers made that year.
The spending bill also zeros out the budget for Vermont’s worker relocation incentive, offers organic dairy farmers $6.9 million in one-time help, and gives retired state employees and their union veto power over changes to their health benefits, all but certainly blocking a Scott administration proposal to switch retirees over to private Medicare Advantage plans.