The Legislature set aside $32 million earlier this year to deal with PCBs in schools but has not directed where the money will go. Burlington school officials plan to make the case that $22 million should go toward Burlington High School.
“This is one of the best bad forecasts that we’ve ever presented,” Tom Kavet, the Legislature’s economist, told the governor and top lawmakers on Thursday.
Including all the pandemic-related federal aid that has flowed to businesses, residents and state government, a whopping $10 billion in extra federal cash has now found its way to Vermont.
State economists project that tax receipts will come in hundreds of millions of dollars higher than expected thanks to federal Covid-19 relief.
The projections were better than expected, but they still exemplify how Vermont has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
The state of Vermont is putting some money where its mouth is — $800,000 to be exact — to assist disaster relief from Tropical Storm Irene.
“We’re still in a situation of uncertainty,” Kavet said. Much depends, in his view, on how the federal government withdraws funding for states and what the “capacity of the private sector is to fill that void.”
The Vermont Economic Progress Council's programs have cost the state millions for jobs that would have been created without cash payments.
