Like a bride left at the altar, the Vermont Senate dutifully convened Wednesday, but their colleagues in the House stood them up.
The Senate had hoped that House members, frustrated by the collapse of negotiations on a minimum wage and paid family and medical leave package, would reconsider their abrupt Friday decision to adjourn until January 7.
Alas, it was not to be.
“We are sorry that we had to ask you to come back for this,” Senate Majority Leader Becca Balint (D-Windham) told her colleagues during a caucus before the brief afternoon floor session, “but it felt important enough for us to leave that possibility open.”
After a few speeches, a recounting of legislative accomplishments and well wishes for the summer, the upper chamber of the general assembly did the only thing it really could do: It accepted the lower chamber’s adjournment resolution and went home.
Before the final gavel fell, however, Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) gave his colleagues a pep talk.
“In my opinion, this Senate can really stand proud of all that it has achieved,” Ashe said.
In one of the few references made during the brief afternoon session to the turmoil and discord of a week earlier, Ashe noted he’d previously described himself as a Senate sponge.
“Sometimes, it turns out, I’m also a punching bag,” he said. “But I’m happy to be a punching bag, or suffer any abuse, when I know that the Senate has done what it believes is right, and I believe is right.”
Both Ashe and his counterpart in the House, Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero), have come under intense scrutiny for their inability to negotiate versions the other chamber could accept of bills to increase the minimum wage and create a paid family and medical leave program.
Both were top Democratic priorities for the session, and there was optimism that the strong and theoretically veto-proof majorities in both the House and Senate would give the legislature enough leverage to get the bills passed into law.
The Senate has long prioritized raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, while the House has favored a family and medical leave program. Versions of both proposals secured approval in both chambers, but in recent weeks, the House slowed the pace of the wage increase and the Senate watered down the paid leave program.
The intense effort to find common ground fell apart last week in spectacular fashion, with Johnson sending Ashe an ultimatum to agree to a deal by noon last Friday or wrap things up for the year.
Ashe, who had been on the podium when he received the letter around 10:30 a.m., made his way to Johnson’s office at 2 p.m., where she told him he’d missed the window for a deal.
“I know the past week has been tough for some, but we all know from time to time, stuff like this happens,” Gov. Phil Scott told the Senate in his parting address Wednesday. “What we must not do is let the last week define the entire session.”
He urged them to be proud of the work done to dedicate funds for clean water; boost investments in child care and higher education; increase funding for weatherization, mental health and substance abuse programs; combat lead in water; and address the rise of vaping among teens.
And, in a line that was surely written before the acrimony and disappointment of the previous week, Scott praised legislators for how well they worked together.
“This session, we have proven that the spirit of civility and respect are important, productive and, hopefully, contagious for the rest of the country,” the governor said.
Disclosure: Tim Ashe is the domestic partner of Seven Days publisher and coeditor Paula Routly. Find our conflict-of-interest policy here: sevendaysvt.com/disclosure.
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The arrogance of Tim Ashe is at the core of this epic failure. He has become a punching bag because he has earned it! Congratulations to Mitzi Johnson for being the adult and saying enough is enough. Senator Starr nailed it, next year is not guaranteed either. Re-election jitters will separate true moderates from far left progressives quickly.
Tim Ashe the blushing bride left at the altar?
The author of this piece must be a progressive.
Given the subtle, and not so subtle (looking at you Jon Margolis), sexism that has pervaded the House vs. Senate discussion in the past few weeks, maybe choosing a less gendered analogy was the right way to go here.
If they want to figure out something on a family medical leave act, do so, but there is no reason I should have to pay for someone else to be on a paid leave. If they want this then it should not be funded with a tax. Vermonters are already taxed beyond means.
Our Vermont Progressive leaders can’t get anything done. Our Vermont Democrat leaders can’t get anything done. Our Vermont Republican leaders can’t get anything done. Our Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy is rapidly working towards retirement. And our Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is gallivanting around the country pursuing HIS dreams.
Pathetic. Silly me, I thought we elected and hired them to work for WE, THE PEOPLE OF VERMONTER!
I for one would like these folks to get their butts back to Montpelier. And get to work. And work hard. Stop the cocktail breaks and back room back-scratching. Reduce our health care costs. Bring real, higher paying jobs to Vermont (not just Bernie’s skimpy $15 an hour kind of jobs, I am talking real, career jobs that provide stability and a long term future). Reduce red tape and MAKE our government work for us. Clean our Lake Champlain in a fiscally responsible way. Lower our carbon footprint in a fiscal responsible way. Control immigration and create laws that control immigration in a responsible law abiding way…
…Get our kids test scores higher in our schools. Teach our kids about rules and discipline and ownership of ones actions. Grow business so that we can somehow someday pay the $2.5 billion unfunded debt owed to state employers and teachers. Start focusing on issues (as in issue by issue) and stop fighting for sides. Fix our roads once and for all in a cost effective manner. Agree to disagree and cut real, fair, win-win deals. Improve our hospitals. Teach all to respect our policemen, our firemen, our National Guard, and all those in service who pout their lives on the line each and every day to protect us. And teach them in turn to respect we the common citizen, to understand our needs and fears. Fight to eliminate racism while at the same time teaching those of different race and color that our country is built for fairness, but that life will not always be fair and ultimately each and every individual most own their own life, for better or worse. Protect women’s sacred right to her body and her unborn child, while at the same time working hard, very hard, to help those not wanting pregnancy to in fact not have an unwanted pregnancy. to not have to face that awful, awful, choice. And for crying out loud, stop talking about a “revolution”. And don’t give convicted felons the right to vote – jail is supposed to deter crime after all. And last, but not least, get our politicians back to Montpelier, to work, and TO LEAD. To make our great Vermont even greater. Because that is what we elected and paid them to do. COME HOME AND WORK FOR US. Please.
The Mitzi Johnson and Becca Balint F-35 fighter jet Democrats in the House unfortunately seem to be following in the footsteps of Shap Smith and Peter Shumlin. In taking their orders from Patrick Leahy and Ernie Pomerleau. They, once again, like Shap and Shumlin, suppressed proposed legislation to reexamine the F-35 basing. The Democratic Party pretends to be pro-environment and pro-public health while actively ignoring US Air Force’s Environmental Impact Statement that rated Burlington dead-last among multiple locations to base the F-35 because of severe negative public health impacts. As Boston Globe reported, Obama’s Pentagon “fudged the numbers” per Leahy’s demand, to force the basing. With yesterday’s take-offs at Burlington’s International Airport, the approximately 127,000 civilians within 4 to 5 miles of the airport were forced to confront the fact that, despite all the spin, US Air Force was telling the truth all along that F-35 is indeed 4X louder than F-16. Sue Mintner and Christine Hallquist unfortunately both deserved to lose to Phil Scott because they refused to seriously stand up on this issue. Like Hillary Clinton in 2016, today’s Democratic Party seems determined to provide zero credible alternative to the GOP. Like Obama-Biden continuing the Bush-Cheney wars for their entire 8 years & expanding the neo-con, intervention-first regime change nonsense to Libya, Syria, Ukraine, etc., the only clear value they stand for is military Keynesianism uber alles.