In one of the Legislature’s first major responses to this summer’s catastrophic flooding, the House on Thursday evening preliminarily approved a mid-year adjustment to the state budget that offers a “life raft” to Vermont cities and towns battered by floodwaters six months ago.
“(This bill) extends a needed hand to those communities so impacted by the July flooding event,” Rep. Jonathan Williams, D-Barre City, said on the House floor. “A $1 billion natural disaster — by many metrics, the most expensive in Vermont state history — deserves a concerted, immediate response from our government and this assembly.”
The House on Thursday voted 112-24 to advance H.839, the state’s annual Budget Adjustment Act — an annual bill that rectifies the state’s current fiscal year budget, roughly halfway through, based on updated revenues and expenditures. This year’s budget adjustment, according to Rep. Diane Lanpher, D-Vergennes, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, increases state spending over the next several months by $56.5 million.
The bill holds particular weight this year, serving as legislators’ first major chance to direct funding to flood-ravaged cities and towns that are still working to recover.
In total, Lanpher outlined roughly $51 million in one-time funds dedicated to flood recovery in the budget adjustment: $36 million for Federal Emergency Management Agency state match funds and $10 million from the general fund, plus another $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars, to directly assist flood-impacted communities.
Those millions of dollars, according to Rep. Conor Casey, D-Montpelier, will be a “life raft for flood-impacted communities.” For some of Vermont’s hardest hit municipalities, the floodwaters wiped out downtown businesses, plummeting local sales tax collections, and decimated homes, eliminating a source of property tax revenue. As cities and towns craft their own budgets, they’ve confronted the impossible task of slashing vital public services to account for their losses, or skyrocketing local tax rates.
“Barre City is facing a $1.45 million loss and Montpelier is facing a $1.5 million loss. Our roads were destroyed. Our homes were buried under feet of mud,” Williams said on the floor Thursday. “This money was needed last week and yesterday and will be needed tomorrow. And I will be voting ‘yes’ for this Budget Adjustment Act, so that my community doesn’t dissolve in the next year.”
The bill was not universally lauded on the floor Thursday evening. With tens of millions more dollars poised to head out the door, House Minority Leader Rep. Pattie McCoy, R-Poultney, questioned: What vital expenditures would need to be cut from the Legislature’s upcoming fiscal year 2025 budget in order to account for increased spending this year? Or, “If you are not willing to cut the above expenditure items, then what taxes are you going to raise in order to fund them?”
“There’s only so much pie. We’re running out of slices,” McCoy told her colleagues. “Vermonters are running out of money.”
Also hotly debated on the floor Thursday evening was Democratic lawmakers’ decision to extend the state’s pandemic-era motel emergency housing program through the end of June. Without another extension, the program is set to sunset on April 1.
Rep. Charles Shaw, R-Rutland, called for an end to the emergency housing program, saying on the floor that “many communities in the Rutland County region are under siege by some of the bad actors in the hotel motel program.”
“On a personal note, I have a neighbor that won’t go to the grocery store anymore. I have a neighbor that won’t go to the local department stores anymore. A member of my family has been accosted twice in a parking lot, once at a department store and once at a grocery store,” Shaw said. “This has got to stop. We need to do something to get rid of the bad actors. It’s decimating the communities in my county.”
Shaw’s comments sparked fury in the House chamber. Rep. Caleb Elder, D-Starksboro, retorted that the emergency housing program in question shelters “individuals who are either age 60-plus, disabled, fleeing from domestic violence, having children, losing their house from a health code violation, pregnant or fleeing a natural disaster.”
“I can tell you that the 325 children in this cohort are not placing any community under siege,” Elder said.
Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, who chairs the House Human Services Committee, later stood up to correct Elder: “I’m sad to report that the number of children (in the motel program) is actually 603 children.”
“Six-hundred-three children that I’m not prepared to say, ‘You must leave on either March 15 or April 1’ at this point in time,” Wood added.
H.839 faces one more House floor vote before it heads to the Senate.
