The Vermont Senate on Friday passed its version of this year’s Budget Adjustment Act, a fiscal plan slated to quickly disperse state aid to flooded municipalities and make a last-minute change to the handling of Vermont’s emergency motel housing program.
After an hourslong debate the day prior on an afterschool program provision in the bill, the upper chamber on Friday voted 25-3 to pass its version of H.839. As Senate lawmakers made substantial changes to the House-passed version, the bill will likely head into conference committee next week, where leaders from the two chambers will hash out their differences. From there, it will go to Gov. Phil Scott’s desk for his signature or veto.
Historically a sleepy annual affair of balancing out the remaining few months of the fiscal year, the Budget Adjustment Act has taken on new significance in recent years thanks to Vermont’s slush fund of federal pandemic-era aid. But this year’s Budget Adjustment is monumental for a different reason: It is the first in recent memory in which those federal dollars are, for the most part, already spent or obligated, marking a return to normal budgetary restraints.
Additionally, this year’s budget adjustment is the Legislature’s first and fastest opportunity to appropriate meaningful state dollars to the state’s recovery efforts after this summer’s historic flooding.
And on Friday, senators scrambled to address the impending end of pandemic-era enhancements to the state’s motel program, with the Senate Appropriations Committee taking in testimony from the state Agency of Human Resources in the half-hour ahead of the upper chamber’s vote on the final version of the bill.
Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, told VTDigger after Friday’s floor session that the main difference in the Scott administration’s version of the BAA is that the governor’s version would set aside additional funds to meet Federal Emergency Management Agency match requirements.
Legislators, on the other hand, say that such a large set-aside should be part of the coming fiscal year’s budget, to be completed at the end of the legislative session. What is important now, they contend, is to get money out the door for affected municipalities and Vermonters in need.
“We appreciate that the Senate version has moved closer to the Governor’s recommended BAA, but we’re still concerned with additional spending that would be better contemplated during the (Fiscal Year 2025) budget discussions,” Scott’s spokesperson Jason Maulucci wrote to VTDigger on Friday. Scott’s team will provide more detailed recommendations to the conference committee next week, Maulucci added.
Baruth said senators gave Scott’s team “a lot of what they wanted.”
“They think the spending is too much, but what we spend it on is really hard to argue against, I think — flood victims and homeless (programs),” he said.
With the pandemic-era version of the motel housing program slated to end on April 1, the Senate’s final version of the bill approved a plan to continue housing Vermont’s most vulnerable populations experiencing homelessness — families with children, pregnant people, people over 65 and people with disabilities — through June 30.
Under the Senate plan — which could face further changes once in conference with the House — certain Vermonters outside of those vulnerable groups currently housed in the motel program would become subject to pre-pandemic time limits on their stays. The Senate’s version also would place a cap on the state’s nightly payments to motels participating in the program, at $80 per room per night.
The program has become a major source of contention between the Scott administration and legislators. The administration has argued that the millions of state dollars would be better spent on permanent housing solutions, while legislators respond that those investments take years to bear fruit, and vulnerable Vermonters deserve shelter in the meantime.
Notably in the Senate’s version of the budget adjustment is $12.5 million in state grants slated for flood-impacted communities to either spend on municipal or residential losses. It’s a proposal that, according to Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, attempts to allow municipalities flexibility to use state flood dollars in the way that best suits their needs. She also said the plan will likely be further hashed out in conference with the House.
