It’s common sense that changing your oil is more cost-effective than waiting for your engine to seize and replacing it wholesale. So why do we handle roads differently?
That was the metaphor Jordan St. Onge, Morristown’s highway superintendent, used to describe the conundrum facing the Lamoille County town’s road budget.
He was in the Senate Transportation Committee Tuesday to talk about his community’s huge infrastructure needs and the relatively paltry state funding available for repairs.
The issue is just a breeze in the financial headwinds facing transportation funding in Vermont. The state has laid off Vermont Department of Transportation employees and is staring down a $33 million shortfall it will need to make up in order to secure $165 million in federal dollars.
That fiscal hole could lead to more physical ones, as the state chooses to pave fewer roads, possibly leaving more potholes. Consequently, 60% of state roads could fall into “poor” or “very poor” condition in the next five years, up from a quarter of roads today, according to Agency of Transportation data.
Towns, it turns out, are in the same spot.
More than 42% of Morristown’s paved roads are in poor and very poor condition, making them ripe for repair. But in their sorry state, those roads are anywhere from 2.5 to more than six times more expensive to fix than the cost of preventive care to roads in better shape, according to Morristown officials.
The town’s paving budget “wasn’t even a drop in the bucket” when it comes to the scale of Morristown’s aging infrastructure, Brent Raymond, the town’s manager, told senators.
So the town devised a plan to spend $800,000 in each of the next four years to pull its roads out of disrepair. The only problem is finding the money — an $800,000 line item would raise municipal property taxes in Morristown by more than 9%.
The town is turning to one of the few options at its disposal. At Town Meeting next month, residents will consider a 1% local option tax, which towns can levy on top of the state’s sales tax, meals tax and rooms tax.
For Sen. Becca White, D-Windsor, that approach reveals the need for the state to find new revenue sources to support transportation so towns don’t need to resort to new measures on their own.
“We don’t have a solution that will address any of your concerns at all,” she told Morristown’s leaders. “In fact, your concerns are only going to deepen exponentially because the Agency of Transportation has not sought outside revenue sources for a long time.”
And as Sen. Richie Westman, R-Lamoille, the committee’s chair, pointed out, a local option tax only serves larger communities, which make up a tiny minority of those in his district.
“It’s absolutely logical what you’re doing,” he told the Morristown staff present. “But if I’m in Eden, I look at it and go, ‘what would they do?’”
— Ethan Weinstein
In the know
Family services advocates raised concerns on Tuesday before the House Human Services Committee over Gov. Phil Scott’s proposed budget. Matthew Bernstein, the state’s Child, Youth, and Family Advocate, told lawmakers that Vermont’s approach to funding child services is in some ways “upside down,” prioritizing intrusive “deep end” programs like locked facilities over preventative measures.
Bernstein said certain cuts in the governor’s set of recommendations constituted a “catastrophic mistake,” including a 50% reduction in state funds for educational programs run by Prevent Child Abuse Vermont.
Jonathan Williams, the executive director of PCAVT, told the committee that the proposed budget would “pull the rug out from us a little bit.” His organization already had to lay off several of its dozen staff members last fall following federal grant delays and decreased philanthropic revenue.
But beyond the nonprofit’s financial health, this further reduction in state money would necessarily reduce the services it could provide, Williams said. That will cost Vermont in the long run, he argued, as without adequate prevention programs children are more likely to require high-cost services later in life.
“Prevention works,” he said, pointing to a number of studies on the effectiveness of such measures in child protective services. “Truly, this work is saving the state of Vermont money.”
Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, who chairs the committee, acknowledged the strength of Williams’ data. Once again, she said, lawmakers face a set of difficult decisions in determining their financial priorities.
— Theo Wells-Spackman
Vermont Agency of Education officials are still waiting on some districts to submit their Town Meeting Day budgets, but they are getting a clearer picture of Vermont’s education spending.
“The good news is we are really getting there,” Kelly Murphy, the Agency of Education’s education finance director told House Ways and Means committee members Tuesday. Almost 90% of the state’s school districts have submitted budget information, she said. But officials are still waiting on about 20 districts.
Based on that preliminary budget information, the agency has since projected a 4.3% increase to total education spending — less than the 5.8% projected rate of growth in the Tax Department’s annual in the “Dec. 1 letter” projection.
That will likely change once the agency has all of the districts’ budgets in and could further change based on results from Town Meeting Day. Murphy added that the agency is “getting really close to this being a good working number.”
But, “heavy emphasis on this being preliminary,” Murphy told lawmakers. “This is our best guess based on the information we have at this time.”
— Corey McDonald
Things got a little heated in the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday. It was the first time the committee took testimony on a bill that would unmask federal and local law enforcement officers operating in Vermont. The bill, S.208, was recently assigned to the committee after passing the Senate Thursday.
Falko Schilling, who directs advocacy for the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, said he supported the bill — and especially supported its intent — though he did think it was fair to say it may put overly narrow restrictions on law enforcement in its current form.
Reps. Thomas Oliver, R-Sheldon, and Kenneth Goslant, R-Northfield, both grilled Falko and expressed concern that civilian protestors could wear masks and conceal their identities in public or at protests but that law enforcement wouldn’t be able to do the same if the bill became a law.
“I think it makes sense to treat law enforcement officers differently than folks who might happen to be on the streets exercising their first amendment rights,” Schilling said.
“Even though they’re doing it for the same reasons?” Oliver countered.
He and Rep. Tom Burditt, R-Rutland, argued that law enforcement officers might put their personal safety, or that of their families, at risk if they do their jobs without hiding their faces.
— Charlotte Oliver
Legislative LinkedIn
Anna Oblak, a former legislative committee assistant, is now the No. 2 aide to House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington. Oblak started in the role two weeks ago after Molly Moore left the speaker’s office to manage Ryan McLaren’s campaign for lieutenant governor.
Before working in the Statehouse, Oblak attended Arizona State University, where she studied mass communication and media.
— Shaun Robinson
On the court
Following former Rep. Jim Harrison’s retirement at the beginning of the year, the Statehouse’s annual March Madness bracket competition has been in need of new leadership. On Tuesday, Harrison revealed — via the contest’s email newsletter and an announcement on the House floor from Rep. Woodman Page, R-Newport City — those who will take up his stead.
Swanton Republican Rep. Matt Walker, who sits in Harrison’s old desk on the floor, will now manage the bracket pool for the men’s tournament alongside Charlotte Democratic Rep. Chea Waters Evans and Sarah Mearhoff, the principal assistant at the state Department of Taxes.
There will be no changes in leadership for the women’s pool, however, with Rep. Ashley Bartley, R-Fairfax, returning to her post, Harrison said. As for the longtime Chittenden Republican himself, Harrison suggested a new, “fancy title”: Commissioner Emeritus.
Capitol basketball fiends will be able to fill out brackets for this year’s tournament starting March 15.
— Shaun Robinson
