We’re but two weeks into the 2024 legislative session and things are already getting personal under the Golden Dome.
Last Friday, Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden-Central, introduced S.221, a bill that would slash the weekly compensation of Vermont’s governor and cabinet heads to that of legislators.
For those of you keeping track at home, that’s currently $812 per week during the session. Over a full calendar year, that’s just over $42,000, compared to Gov. Scott’s current salary of nearly $192,000.
Why the dramatic hypothetical pay cut? Well, some lawmakers are still salty over Scott’s veto last year of S.39, which would have increased legislators’ salaries to $1,210 per week during the legislative session by 2027. Currently, legislative take-home for four-plus months is roughly $15,000 per year.
Proponents of increasing legislative pay have said for years that the status quo makes it near impossible to serve in the Legislature without a high-earning partner or the security of retirement. The end result, they say, is a body of only legislators who can afford to serve — and therefore, not representative of Vermont’s population.
Last year, Scott took issue with increasing legislators’ pay when everyday Vermonters were struggling under the weight of historic inflation and a housing crisis. Asked about this year’s renewed effort, he told reporters Wednesday, “My feelings haven’t changed.”
After Scott vetoed last year’s bill, lawmakers failed to override his veto by a single vote despite their historic Democratic supermajority.
At the time, Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, the bill’s primary sponsor, fired back at Scott for his opposition. Pointing to his own above-average salary, she said the gov was being “hypocritical” — and floated the concept of introducing a bill to slash his salary.
Instead, Hardy wrote a bill (S.224) which largely mirrors last year’s, but does not include health insurance benefits to cut costs. The annual estimate of the compromise pay bump is between $2.5 and $3 million versus a $4.7 million annual price tag for last year’s proposal.
Vyhovsky, however, in a separate bill, is taking a jab at not just the governor’s salary, but those of his cabinet members. Not to troll, she told VTDigger in an interview Wednesday afternoon, but to make a point.
During last year’s debate, she began to ponder the concept of equal branches of government — and the inequality of those branches’ salaries. “While the General Assembly is … among the lowest paid general assemblies (nationwide),” Vyhovsky said, “the governor is the fifth-highest paid governor.”
Asked about Vyhovsky’s bill on Wednesday, Scott replied, “It sounds like retribution.”
Vyhovsky disagrees, but she also admitted she thinks it’s “pretty unlikely” to pass.
“I think it’s worth a conversation, and I think that there is a valid point to be made about building equal branches of government,” Vyhovsky said. “Given the massive pay discrepancy, we’re certainly not there.”
— Sarah Mearhoff
In the know
Gov. Phil Scott and a tri-partisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday pitched a sweeping housing proposal that they hope will ease regulatory barriers and hasten the pace of housing development across Vermont.
“Right now, due in part to our antiquated regulatory system, it takes far too long and costs far too much to build,” Scott said at a press conference in his Statehouse office, surrounded by a broad coalition of legislators and administration officials.
The bill, H.719, tackles everything from permit reform to tax policy to funding for housing programs. Primarily, though, it takes aim at Act 250, Vermont’s half-century-old land-use law.
— Carly Berlin
The Vermont Judiciary plans to seek funding for three new superior court judge positions — and 10 new judicial assistants — in the 2025 fiscal year, court officials said Wednesday morning.
Teri Corsones, Vermont’s court administrator, said she hopes the new positions will bolster capacity as the court system struggles to wade through a backlog of some 14,500 open cases, keeping many of those accused of crimes in a state of limbo for years.
One of the proposed judge positions would serve as a “floating” judge covering cases across northern Vermont counties, with a likely focus on Chittenden County, officials said. Another judge would serve the state’s five regional benches focused on people with substance use disorders, known as “treatment court dockets.” A third would oversee juvenile cases.
Lawmakers on the House and Senate Judiciary committees — which held a joint hearing Wednesday during which Corsones spoke — are weighing a number of proposals this year aimed at reducing the backlog, which was greatly exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
— Shaun Robinson
Vermont agencies are still directing millions of dollars in public money toward temporary nursing staff, or travel nurses, underscoring how much health care facilities are still relying on them amid a widespread staffing shortage.
That’s a key takeaway from requests for additional funding made by two departments within the Agency of Human Services.
This week, Emily Hawes, the commissioner of the Department of Mental Health, asked lawmakers for an extra $2.7 million for nursing costs for the state-run Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital.
“We’re still experiencing vacancies in the direct care positions,” Hawes told the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday. “And while we’ve implemented some recruitment and retention strategies, we continue to rely heavily on travel nurses. That is driving this line item.”
Monica White, the departing commissioner of the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living, also came before lawmakers this week seeking approval to expend another $17 million in emergency funds for skilled nursing facilities this fiscal year. (Those funds will be covered by the federal Medicaid program.)
“Part of what we have seen driving the increased costs for skilled nursing facilities is traveling staff, which is enormously, enormously expensive,” White told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.
In addition to the added expense, lawmakers expressed concern about the workplace environments at facilities that employ travel nurses.
“It creates morale problems within your organization,” Sen. Bobby Starr, D-Orleans, said Wednesday. “With two nurses working side by side, and one’s getting almost double the pay of the nurse that’s been with you for 10 years.”
— Peter D’Auria
On the hill
U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., is one of six members of Congress sponsoring a bill that would allocate funds to extend a federal program offering subsidies on internet service to low-income households.
The Affordable Connectivity Program, created in 2021 under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is projected to run out of funding by April unless new money is allocated, according to a press release from Welch’s office. More than 25,000 Vermont households are currently enrolled in the program, which provides subsidies ranging from $30 to $75 on internet service bills.
Welch and the other lawmakers’ legislation would provide $7 billion to extend the program.
“Access to high-speed internet isn’t a luxury anymore, it’s a necessity,” Welch said in a press release Tuesday. “That’s why it’s never been so important to avoid this funding cliff.”
— Shaun Robinson
Notable quotable
Tim Lueders-Dumont, legislative and assistant appellate attorney for the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs, stopped himself from talking up one of Vermont’s southern neighbors one too many times during a joint morning hearing of the House and Senate judiciary committees.
“I won’t talk about Connecticut, because I’ll probably just get jealous again,” he said, in a sentence that may have never been uttered in northern New England before.
— Shaun Robinson
Just for funsies
Well, apparently I can’t read a room.
The gov’s Statehouse ceremonial office was packed today for his weekly press conference, where the topic du jour was housing legislation (see above). But listen! I had places to be, people to see, newsletters to write — and other questions to ask the man in charge.
As my esteemed colleagues asked their housing-related questions, there was a pause. A lag. Dead air! I had to fill it. I asked the gov about the big House’s vote scheduled for that evening on overdose prevention sites. (Debate on that bill went on well past our newsletter deadline, but we’ll have a story by tomorrow on VTDigger.org recounting the action.)
Tisk tisk, Gov. Dad scolded me. We weren’t at off-topic questions yet. I had to wait my turn. When it eventually came — aka, when everyone else left (afraid of our probing questions, perhaps?) — I had the floor. The gov turned to me:
“Well, talk about a wet blanket,” he said to your intrepid reporter. The nerve!
— Sarah Mearhoff
What we’re reading
Beekeepers rebuke Agency of Agriculture’s assessment that industry is in good health, VTDigger
Vermont opts out of new federal food assistance program due to administrative costs, Vermont Public
Vermont’s prison education programs give incarcerated people a second chance to learn, Seven Days
