Fans of inside baseball, please take your seats. Today, we’re talking process under the golden dome.
On Monday, Vermont’s longest-serving state senator, Dick Mazza, announced his resignation from the Grand Isle district seat he occupied for nearly four decades. The moderate Democrat’s resignation not only leaves an open seat in the 30-member chamber but also on one of the building’s most influential panels: the Senate Committee on Committees.
Composed of the lieutenant governor, Senate president pro tempore and a so-called third member, the committee holds the quietly powerful job of assigning senators to the chamber’s committees and selecting who will chair those panels. Like the pro tem, the third member is elected to the position each biennium by the full chamber.
According to Senate Secretary John Bloomer, Mazza occupied the influential role since 1997. With his resignation, the position is open for the first time in 27 years. Vying for the open seat is Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, according to an email obtained by VTDigger on Wednesday.
“The thing about the third member is, they really have to be somebody who’s highly trusted by all three parties,” Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, said Wednesday.
“The Republicans want to make sure that their rights as the minority are protected and that they’re not getting shut out of things that they want or need. So it’s usually somebody with substantial experience,” he added. “That’s a category that Sen. Kitchel definitely fits.”
Baruth spoke to VTDigger Wednesday afternoon — rather serendipitously, from the Senate Transportation Committee room that Mazza occupied for years as committee chair. The pro tem said the role of the third member “is really interesting because they don’t tend to be known or understood by anybody outside the Legislature, even most people in the House.”
Baruth gestured to a corkboard affixed to the transportation committee room’s wall that serves as a sort of scrapbook to Mazza’s tenure. Tacked onto the board beside numerous photos of Mazza smiling with his colleagues is a Seven Days cover dubbing Mazza “The Advisor,” depicting him in the style of “The Godfather” movie poster.
“Dick Mazza was that person who, behind the scenes, exerted a lot of power,” Baruth said.
With Mazza’s resignation, the search for a new third member commences. At noon on Monday, Baruth sent out an email to the chamber laying out the timeline:
- Friday, April 12: Deadline for placing one’s name in contention
- Tuesday, April 16: Democratic caucus candidate forum and Democratic caucus vote
- Tuesday, April 23: Formal vote of all senators on senate floor
Once the Democratic caucus anoints its candidate next week, Baruth said, it’s typical that the nominee runs unopposed in the full Senate vote — but another senator could go rogue and challenge the nominee then.
If someone does, they may face a formidable opponent. Less than 20 minutes after Baruth sent his note to senators Monday, Kitchel emailed her colleagues to say that she would throw her hat in the ring.
“After discussion with some of my colleagues, and recognizing that our work in the Senate has to continue, I have made a decision to run for the position of third member to fill the vacancy left by Senator Mazza,” Kitchel wrote.
Baruth said that, as of Wednesday afternoon, no other senator had submitted their name to the caucus for consideration.
Time is of the essence to fill the seat. In the waning weeks of the legislative session, the committee will have the all-important task of appointing senators to conference committees to hash out differences between House and Senate bills.
Perhaps most vital among those conference committees will be the six-member panel selected to reconcile the House and Senate budget drafts — a behemoth bill spearheaded in the Senate by none other than Senate Appropriations Committee chair Kitchel.
— Sarah Mearhoff
In the know
The Vermont House’s tax-writing committee rolled out a preliminary proposal this week that would radically reimagine education finance in the state.
The plan, written into the annual bill that helps set tax rates statewide, would provide school districts a base payment student, meaning voters would only consider any spending in excess of that base.
The Ways and Means Committee, led by Rep. Emilie Kornheiser, D-Brattleboro, plans to hash out many of the details by the end of the week. As written, the biggest changes, including the base or “educational opportunity payments,” would not take effect until fiscal year 2027, two budget cycles from now.
— Ethan Weinstein
The federal Environmental Protection Agency issued a landmark rule on Wednesday that regulates the amount of PFAS, a harmful class of chemicals, in public drinking water for the first time.
Exposure to PFAS, or per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, has been linked to cancers, liver and heart problems, and immune and developmental damage to infants and children, according to the EPA.
In Vermont, the state’s Agency of Natural Resources has been regulating PFAS in public drinking water systems since 2019. The process began after state officials discovered high levels of the substance in private drinking wells in the Bennington area.
Despite the existence of state regulations, Vermont will still need to adapt to the new federal rules.
— Emma Cotton
Vermont officials estimate that some 160,000 people traveled by car into the state ahead of Monday’s total solar eclipse, based on preliminary data collected by the Agency of Transportation.
Those people came in some 60,000 vehicles, state officials said Wednesday, noting they started measuring the traffic volume last Friday. Those figures match the upper limits of what the state was projecting in the leadup to the eclipse.
— Shaun Robinson
On the move
The House advanced S.25, which bans the production, sale or distribution of a variety of consumer products that are made with PFAS chemicals.
The Senate advanced H.603, which allows small farms to sell cuts of poultry directly to a consumer or restaurant. Current law allows only whole birds to be sold.
The chamber also advanced H.621 and H.741, which removes copayments for imaging services used to detect breast cancer and expands coverage for colorectal cancer screening in accordance with national standards and for those who are at the highest risk.
Final approval is expected this week, after which the bills would go to Gov. Phil Scott for his signature.
— VTD Editor
Visit our 2024 Bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following.
What we’re reading
Prosecutor details past police encounters of suspect in arson at Sen. Bernie Sanders office, VTDigger
Zoie Saunders, Gov. Scott’s pick for education secretary, faces questions about her qualifications, Seven Days
Upper Valley towns seek voice in Wilder Dam’s future, Valley News
