Editor’s note: Montpelier sneak peek is a weekly preview of legislative doings.
[T]hank God for the Gilfeather turnip. Vermont’s venerable, if humble, vegetable will likely provide the only comic relief in the Statehouse this week.
But before we go further, let me set the record straight right here: the Gilfeather is NOT a turnip. It is a rutabaga. And if you don’t know the difference, well you don’t know your root vegetables. (Turnips are a seasonal delicacy; rutabagas are a heavily waxed staple.)
And maybe, like the Legislature, you have amnesia about the fact that kale was also a contender for the state designated vegetable a few years ago. One might ask: How did a rutabaga and kale, veggies reviled by children everywhere, become political fodder?
But so it goes in the Legislature, where the plight of the oft-maligned Gilfeather is the first item on this week’s very full agenda on the House floor.
Second in line is the spending cap, which has been MUCH-maligned lately, and lawmakers have had a case of amnesia there, too.
Last week lawmakers discovered that there was a miscommunication between the Agency of Education and the House education panel: One hand didn’t know what the other was doing.
To wit: Lawmakers thought the agency had excluded special ed and school construction funding from the per pupil funding formula. Only problem was, agency officials included those costs in the formula. Which means the state gave school districts the wrong numbers. School districts, to stay under new spending caps, cut more than they otherwise would have.
Never mind that school boards have to submit budgets for public hearings in the coming weeks, and those budgets are now based on inaccurate numbers.
In spite of all that, Rep. Dave Sharpe, D-Bristol, chair of House Ed, is still pushing for a 0.9 percent “tweak” to the variable spending cap.
His Republican colleagues, meanwhile, are having a field day. The agency’s mistake will give the GOP caucus more “what’s wrong with Montpelier” fodder for months to come.
There are six amendments on the House calendar already, and at least two more are in the works and will be offered from the floor tomorrow.
Rep. Chip Troiano, D-Stannard, is asking for a repeal; Rep. Patti Komline, R-Dorset, (who also prefers repeal) wants to lower the 100 percent spending cap penalty to 50 percent or 25 percent, depending on what the House will support; and Rep. Paul Dame, R-Essex Junction, wants schools that exceed the cap because of inaccurate agency numbers to be held harmless.
The GOP caucus, which has 54 members, stands by the Dame proposal, but with a twist.
Rep. Don Turner, R-Milton, says the Republicans want “to leave the bill alone.” That is to say, they don’t want to repeal the spending cap, nor do they want increase the cap by the 0.9 percentage point proposed by House Ed.
“We feel over 150 districts complied, and we feel that raising the cap increases property taxes,” Turner said. “That’s our position. We believe we need a long-term fix and this short-term fix is not the answer.
“The Agency of Education screwup should not cost taxpayers money,” Turner maintains. “We don’t want to penalize districts when they did what the law said to do.”
Turner said he has no sympathy for the agency because officials should have known better. Donna Russo Savage, a former member of legislative counsel who was hired by the agency last fall to help implement Act 46, helped to draft the law and so Turner believes the agency has no excuse.
The agency should be held responsible, Turner said, and suggested that accountability starts at the top “with Rebecca [Holcombe] or whoever did the work.”
There is no such blame and confusion emanating from the Senate where lawmakers all along have questioned the wisdom of the spending caps, which were a last-minute add-on to the school merger bill made in the waning hours of the 2015 session.
As the House engages in an epic floor fight akin to a bruising end of session battle, the Senate is expected to quietly pass a bill to repeal the spending caps on Tuesday morning.
If the House doesn’t have the votes for the various tweaks or chooses not to repeal, the GOP caucus will get what it wants: The status quo.
The drama this week in the Legislature doesn’t end there. On Wednesday at noon, a crowd of protesters will crowd into the Cedar Creek Room to urge lawmakers to adopt renewable siting standards that put parameters on large-scale solar and wind projects they say are harming Vermont’s environment.
Meanwhile, the state’s economists will look into the crystal ball Tuesday for insight into the distant revenue future. Will tourism take a big hit, thanks to the paltry snowfall so far this year? Is personal income going to fall? Will corporate taxes drop again?
And Gov. Peter Shumlin will give his budget address on Thursday. At that point, all will be revealed. How will the governor pay for huge Medicaid cost increases? What will get cut and what will survive the scythe? Will the 53rd week of pay for state employees be pushed forward into the 2018 fiscal year budget?
In committee, be ready for slow movement on a host of issues, including the Budget Adjustment Act, which will be voted out on Wednesday. Senate Economic Development will take up the paid sick leave bill. And lawmakers in Senate Finance will get the lowdown on banking options for pot distributors.
With any luck, the Gilfeather turnip will land in the Vermont Senate bill basket by the end of the week.
