Sure, Gov. Peter Shumlin unveiled a $5.3 billion budget proposal Thursday. And he disclosed the $1.6 billion price tag of his single-payer health care plan. And his transportation secretary outlined a $28 million new gas tax.
But the question on many people’s minds at the Statehouse was this:
What the hell is a “break-open ticket?”
For those who don’t hang out at the local American Legion hall Saturday nights, break-open tickets are little scratch-off, lottery-like cards sold by nonprofit organizations. And believe it or not, Vermonters buy somewhere between 135 and 224 million of them a year, the Shumlin administration says.
In his budget address to a joint session of the legislature Thursday, Shumlin proposed slapping a ten percent tax on the tickets, which he said would raise $17 million for low-income heating assistance, home weatherization and clean energy development.
“The overall reaction in the audience was ‘break-away what?'” said Senate Finance Chairman Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden), butchering the name of the tickets Shumlin hopes to tax.
(Pictured at left, Ashe investigating a sample break-open ticket provided by the Department of Liquor Control at a Senate Finance Committee meeting Thursday afternoon.)
That the governor managed to identify a $17 million source of revenue half the Statehouse had never heard of provided legislators a brief moment of levity as they stared down a budgeting process filled with bleak choices.
Beyond break-open tickets, Shumlin’s third budget address exposed two great contradictions in his professed approach to governing:
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