Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Gov. Phil Scott on Wednesday vetoed pending legislation that would legalize marijuana in Vermont. But he promised to work with lawmakers to fashion a new bill that might win his support next month.
“I am not philosophically opposed to ending the prohibition on marijuana,” Scott said at a highly anticipated press conference in his Montpelier office. “However … we must get this right.”
The legislation would have allowed adults over age 21 to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and grow as many as two mature plants per household, starting in July 2018. It also would have created a commission to report back by November with a plan to tax and regulate marijuana sales, as other states have done.
The Republican governor said Wednesday that he would provide legislators with “explicit” recommendations to craft a bill that might meet his approval. He suggested that lawmakers tackle them when they reconvene July 21 for an expected two-day veto session.
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Friday, May 19, 2017
And if there is no agreement by July 1, the state government could shut down.
The governor seemed to have the upper hand. The single unresolved issue was how to negotiate public school teacher health insurance: at the school board level, at the state level, or in some other way? The governor had seized the political high ground by repeatedly emphasizing the potential taxpayer savings — the fabled $26 million — that could be realized by changing the system.
And then, at a Friday afternoon press conference, he strongly defended his position — but also acknowledged that he would rather lose on the issue than risk a government shutdown.
Tags: Phil Scott , Mitzi Johnson , Tim Ashe , teacher health insurance , Vermont budget , Vermont legislature , Image , Web Only
“Please understand it gives me no satisfaction to say so,” Scott told the Senate in a brief adjournment speech to the chamber. “But I truly believe we can eventually find common ground.”
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Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, has repeatedly said he’ll only sign a budget that includes a plan to reduce teachers’ health insurance costs. Scott, though, wants to realize the savings by bringing collective bargaining to the state level while most Democrats do not.
After several weeks of negotiations, legislative leaders announced Wednesday that they would go ahead and pass the budget on their terms, with or without the governor’s blessing. A vote could come as soon as Thursday.
If Scott follows through on his veto threat, the Democrat-controlled legislature would break and then return to hold a “special session,” likely in mid-June.
Tags: Phil Scott , Vermont legislature , budget veto , Mitzi Johnson , Stephen Klein , Image , Web Only
Legislators plan to fold an affordable-housing bond that Scott strongly favors into the budget bill. If he vetoes the budget, he essentially kills his own puppy.
The move came hours after legislative leaders pulled the plug on stalled negotiations with the governor over what to do with savings from less expensive teacher health insurance. Lawmakers expect to hash out their own teacher health care solution and sign off on the budget bill as early as Thursday.
Rep. Sam Young (D-Glover) said he and fellow House and Senate conferees on the housing bill settled final differences Wednesday afternoon over how to fund debt service for a $35 million housing bond. In the process, they agreed to fold the bill into the budget bill that the governor is threatening to veto, he said.
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“We have reached an impasse,” Johnson said at a Statehouse press conference. “We’ve really worked to bring as many ideas and compromises to the table as possible, and we don’t have much of a negotiating partner, and that’s unfortunate.”
The announcement came less than two hours after Scott, Johnson and Ashe met privately in the speaker’s office.
After saying he was open to any proposal that would lead to health insurance savings, Scott has rejected several legislative plans that met that goal but didn’t do so through a statewide contract, as he originally proposed.
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The bill, which sailed through the legislature with very little opposition, will protect journalists from being forced to reveal confidential sources or release unpublished material. Vermont becomes the 41st state to afford such protections to reporters.
"[The bill] creates a new statutory privilege protecting journalists from the compelled disclosure of confidential sources or other information received in confidence," Scott said. "This protection enables sources, from whistleblowers to victims of a crime, to feel confident in their ability to speak freely to the press."
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Tuesday, May 16, 2017
At issue is Scott's demand that negotiations for teacher health care benefits be done on a statewide basis — the best way, he says, to maximize taxpayer savings from pending changes in health insurance due to the federal Affordable Care Act. Democrats have pushed back on Scott's idea as an encroachment on the collective bargaining process between teachers and local school boards. House and Senate leaders have sought common ground with the governor, so far without success.
Johnson's plan has not been made public, but its outline has been widely circulated. It would leave negotiations at the local level while establishing statewide parameters for health care bargaining.
Tags: Mitzi Johnson , Phil Scott , Martha Allen , Rebecca Ramos , teacher health care , Vermont budget , Image , Web Only
Friday, May 12, 2017
But Scott, who has said he would not sign a budget that doesn't cut teacher health care costs, soon made clear he wasn't satisfied. “It doesn’t meet some of the standards that I had put in place,” the Republican governor told reporters several hours after the vote. By the end of the day, even a short-lived agreement between the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate had broken down.
The extended impasse led legislative leaders to abandon — for the second week in a row — their plan to adjourn for the year.
Asked late Friday whether they could still reach an agreement with Scott, Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) said, "Of course we can." But by then, increasingly antsy rank-and-file members had already begun filtering out of the Statehouse — with plans to return next week on a to-be-determined day.
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Last week the Senate, with support from the state Agency of Agriculture, amended the miscellaneous agriculture bill to exempt the plans from the Public Records Act. Environmental groups, including the Conservation Law Foundation and the Vermont Natural Resources Council, objected. They argued that residents have a right to know what measures farmers are taking to contain pollution given that those efforts rely on significant public funds.
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