Legislative leaders and Gov. Phil Scott are zeroing in on an education reform compromise that could break their impasse over forced school district mergers and result in a key Statehouse vote as early as Tuesday.
“We’re getting pretty close,” Jason Maulucci, Scott’s legislative affairs director, said on Friday afternoon. “We’ve substantially narrowed the areas of disagreement.”
A team of four Democrats, two from the House and two from the Senate, have been meeting all week with the administration to hammer out a compromise that Scott will accept.
“I’ve said all along this is always a cooperative process, and what you are seeing is cooperation in action,” Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth (D/P-Chittenden Central) told Seven Days.
The media are “always salivating” for a story about a standoff that might lead to a government shutdown, Baruth said, but Scott and lawmakers recognize that that’s in no one’s best interests.
“I think we’ve all been at the table in good faith working really hard around the clock to figure out a bill that we all feel good about,” said Ashley Moore, Baruth’s chief of staff.
Baruth first hinted that a deal was possible on Wednesday, when the Senate held off voting on its version of the House’s education reform bill, H.955.
In postponing a vote on the bill, Baruth said lawmakers were “trying our best to put together an amendment that may be acceptable to all of the relevant parties.”
The amendment was being fine-tuned Friday with the goal of having it publicly available on the Senate’s calendar by later Friday evening.
Since Monday is a public holiday, that would allow the Senate to vote on the amendment Tuesday. If other rules were suspended to speed things up, the House could quickly follow suit. That could pave the way for the legislature to adjourn next week.
It could also all blow up, several lawmakers said.
There seemed to be growing optimism, however, that the apparent standoff between lawmakers and the governor had been replaced by significant momentum toward a deal.
Scott had vowed to not sign the state budget and keep the legislature in session over the summer if the reform effort did not include mandatory mergers of school districts. Democratic lawmakers have strongly opposed that approach, arguing that the majority of Vermonters don’t support forced mergers.
Scott seems to have backed away from his threat. Sen. Scott Beck (R-Caledonia) said the compromise language instead creates very strong incentives for districts to merge.
“We hope the people who are going to merge are going to merge by 2030,” Beck told Seven Days.
Asked why the governor now appears to accept a reform framework that involves voluntary mergers, Beck said everyone involved understands the need to compromise to move the complex process forward.
“It’s the end of the biennium, and everyone is trying to find common ground,” Beck said.
It’s wasn’t immediately clear what will happen to districts that don’t merge by 2030. Some have been concerned that certain districts could become “orphans” if they can’t find a partner with which to merge.
Beck said language was still being crafted to give someone the “authority to assist” districts to merge.
“Somebody will be able to step in and make sure that every district finds a home where there is scale and stability,” Beck said.
Gov. Scott has previously said he doubts enough districts will merge voluntarily to create the kind of cost savings needed for a state with steadily declining enrollment. One of the sticking points in the negotiations has been figuring ways to keep costs down in all districts while the consolidation process plays out, according to Maulucci.
Beck said forced mergers may not be necessary because districts will realize that merging makes sense.
“Every district will have a very strong incentive to get to scale,” Beck said.
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