This commentary is by Lt. Gov David Zuckerman.
Taxes have a bad rap. In part, this is because we never discuss who pays which taxes. Taxes have gone up for working people while wealthier people have gotten tax cuts. But taxes exist for important reasons, and we must make our tax system more fair and decrease the burden on everyday people.
Do we want roads, bridges, police? How about licensing of doctors, lawyers, teachers? Licensing of drivers? Do you want a Health Department to test water for lead or radon? We might all have different opinions about some of the things our tax money funds, but it’s important to acknowledge that many things we need can only be accomplished as a community. Often this requires funds that taxes provide.
The key question is who is going to pay? And how much? Right now, the tax system is greatly skewed to help wealthy people pay a lower overall rate than working people. Our federal and state taxes are filled with loopholes and exceptions that only wealthy people can take advantage of. I believe that taxes should be paid based on ability to pay, without exceptions and loopholes that only lawyers and accountants can figure out to help high-wealth individuals.
Vermonters have seen double-digit increases in property taxes this year. We are now seeing double digit health insurance increases on the horizon. These increases are making it impossible for everyday working people to live in Vermont.
Everyone sees this problem. No one has offered a fair solution: not the governor, not the legislative leadership, not my opponent who got the most votes in the lieutenant governor’s race.
Why? Because it’s complicated. If it was simple to solve, everyone would have solved it by now. But, as soon as one offers a solution, others can always find something to criticize about it. Something has to give, whether it’s multiple small community schools closing, or class sizes getting much bigger, or decreasing the individualized attention that many kids need, or cutting teachers’ pay or benefits which would decrease our competitiveness for good teachers. OR, some will pay more taxes. The question, then, is who? If one solely articulates the problem, you gain support. If you offer solutions someone suffers and you lose support.
The governor has had eight years to come up with a real plan. He has always blamed the problem on the Legislature including the many years when they did not have a supermajority. The governor’s office has the tools and the staff to come up with a plan and put it out there. It is time for him to move from stating the problem to presenting a comprehensive solution that addresses the economic struggle without cutting the critical services that our most vulnerable need.
I would argue that we must fix our education funding system so that everyone pays based on their income, not just those with household incomes under $115,000 (for 2024).
When our students graduate high school, we often are ranked as one of the top 10 education systems in the country. Do we want to keep high-quality schools? I think so. They are a key to attracting young people to move here to raise a family while building our workforce.
So, we can close a ton of schools. Or we can cut a lot of funding for vulnerable kids. Or we can have the political courage to tell the wealthy to pay their fair share and lower the burden on working people. We can also save taxpayer money by getting serious about bureaucratic reforms to stop duplicating efforts. We can require second-home owners (of expensive vacation homes, not hunting camps) to pay more.
Or we can continue to do nothing and watch the governor and the Legislature point fingers at each other while Vermonters become more bitter, more divided, more angry and less able to afford to live here. The course we choose will be determined by people continuing to make their voices heard, not just at the ballot box, but by calling the governor and their legislators and insisting on real reform that preserves our small community schools, reduces bureaucratic costs and allocates the tax burden in a fairer way so that working Vermonters,can afford to stay in Vermont.
