Sen. Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden), the normally unflappable president pro tempore of the Vermont Senate, looked a little uncomfortable at 2 p.m. last Friday.
He was perched on a chair outside House Speaker Mitzi Johnson’s (D-South Hero) Statehouse office, waiting for a meeting that would settle a standoff between the two leaders — and determine the fate of two key Democratic bills.
Maybe he was flustered by the gaggle of reporters around him — or maybe he knew he was on a fool’s errand.
Frustrated by the lack of progress on negotiations to increase Vermont’s minimum wage and create a paid family leave program, Johnson had given Ashe an ultimatum a few hours earlier.
In a 10:25 a.m. letter, which she released to the media shortly after delivering it to Ashe as he presided over the Senate, Johnson presented five options to resolve the House-Senate standoff — and gave the pro tem a noon deadline to accept one of them.
If he could not agree to one of the packages, Johnson wrote, he should send back the remaining budget and revenue bills so they could close out the legislative session.
“It’s time to wrap up and go home,” Johnson wrote.
When Ashe arrived at her office two hours after the deadline, Johnson informed him — despite his stated willingness to accept one of the options — that she was done playing games. She had decided to adjourn the House for the year.
“I asked her to reconsider,” Ashe recalled Monday. “She said there was no time to work out a deal.”
With that, the first year of Vermont’s 2019-2020 legislative biennium effectively came to a dramatic, chaotic and confusing end. “Very bizarre” is how Republican Gov. Phil Scott put it.
The collapse of negotiations and abrupt adjournment dashed Democrats’ hopes of securing their top two policy priorities, despite controlling more than two-thirds of both chambers. That’s led some lawmakers to worry that the cause of the meltdown — strained relations between the House and Senate and their respective leaders — could have lasting implications for the legislative branch.
“This dysfunction is not serving the state and is not serving the legislature well,” said Rep. Robin Chesnut-Tangerman (P-Middletown Springs).
Every legislative session has its “squabbling,” but this year was different, according to Sen. Chris Pearson (P/D-Chittenden).
“It’s taken on a new layer that’s troubling,” he said. “People will debate about which side ‘won,’ but it’s clear who lost: working families. They need a raise, and they need the security of paid family leave.”
The session’s final hours featured a strange series of parliamentary machinations as the House attempted to adjourn for the year, and the Senate sought to keep it from doing so. In a last-ditch effort to force the House back to the table, Ashe scheduled a Senate session for this Wednesday, May 29, but he later conceded that it was a lost cause — and that the Senate would join the House in adjourning until next January.
Though Johnson was the one to call it quits, many House members — Democrats and Republicans alike — blame Ashe and his Senate colleagues for failing to compromise. They were fed up with what Rep. Sam Young (D-Glover) referred to as the Senate’s “pressure negotiation tactics,” such as holding the paid leave bill hostage until the House approved the minimum wage increase.
“I think that Mitzi was right to pull the plug,” Young said. “It’s all about pushing something to the last moment to get what you want, and I just hate that.”
Rep. Heidi Scheuermann (R-Stowe) opposed both bills, but she said she admired Johnson for standing up to Ashe. In previous years, the veteran Republican said, “some had the impression [Ashe] was really trying to push [Johnson] around a lot.”
“She put her foot down — and I give her a lot of credit for that,” Scheuermann said.
To at least one liberal activist, Rights & Democracy leader Jubilee McGill, the power plays by Statehouse insiders ultimately served nobody.
“It feels like egos really got in the way of progress this session,” McGill said Friday afternoon as hopes faded that either bill would become 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.
Scott, for his part, expressed skepticism about both initiatives, arguing that they were too expensive and could harm Vermont businesses. Though he never said whether he would veto either bill, many in the Statehouse believe he would have. He did, after all, veto similar initiatives last year.
Sen. Randy Brock (R-Franklin) said he had spoken to the governor in recent weeks about his position but couldn’t get a clear answer.
“Never has he indicated what he would or would not do,” Brock said. “I think the governor has been very good at keeping his mouth shut.”
That kept Democrats guessing — and second-guessing one another.
By Friday afternoon, the legislature was already a week into overtime, at a cost of about $250,000. With Republicans unwilling to allow last-minute legislation to speed through the Statehouse, any deal would have forced lawmakers to return after the Memorial Day weekend.
“The idea of staying another week to get a couple of bills through that we know are going to be vetoed just seems kinda pointless to me, honestly,” Young said.
The collapse of negotiations when a deal seemed so close deeply disappointed those most directly involved, according to Senate Majority Leader Becca Balint (D-Windham).
“After working so hard on both these important policies, it was just heartbreaking that we got neither,” she said.
The hardest part for her, Balint said, was what she called a loss of trust. As she and others did a “postmortem” on the frenzied final week, Balint came to believe that the House might not have been negotiating in good faith. She noted that a lot of work had gone into the letter Johnson released Friday morning.
“That letter had to have been drafted already in some form while we were still in negotiations,” Balint said. “So, that hurts.”
According to Balint, the negotiating teams had struck a tentative deal last Thursday calling for the House to approve a bill boosting the minimum wage from $10.78 to $12.25 within two years. Meanwhile, the Senate would approve a paid leave bill that included voluntary, instead of mandatory, personal injury insurance, paid for by workers.
According to Rep. Tom Stevens (D-Waterbury), the House’s negotiating team had agreed to allow temporary disability insurance to be voluntary for the first three years, phasing in a mandatory program following a report analyzing participation rates, costs and other factors. Senate leadership, however, balked at the disability component becoming mandatory, according to Stevens.
“They didn’t view [disability insurance] as the heart of the bill, and we did,” Stevens said.
Then on Friday morning, around 8 a.m., the Senate negotiating team met again and agreed to scale back the minimum wage increase to $12.20, Balint said.
The next thing senators knew, the speaker’s letter was circulating on Twitter.
Such a public missive — rather than a private counteroffer — represented a “new dynamic” between the House and Senate, according to Balint.
“This was the kind of thing we were getting from the governor for the last two years, not from the other chamber,” she said.
According to Johnson, the House “desperately” wanted to raise wages for Vermonters but was more concerned than the Senate about the impact that would have on rural businesses and Medicaid service providers. She said there were real unanswered questions about how a higher minimum wage would affect critical services for seniors in the state.
“I don’t feel like those concerns were really heard or considered or listened to by the Senate,” Johnson said.
The speaker denied she was concerned that her top priority, paid family leave, might get vetoed by the governor while minimum wage might not. She said she had no idea what Scott would sign.
“When I tried to open that conversation with him, with the pro tem sitting right there, [the governor] still wouldn’t have the conversation,” Johnson recalled.
Ashe, on the other hand, seemed convinced that Scott would allow a modest wage increase.
“I believe there is a strong chance that it can become law,” Ashe said, though he admitted that he had no special insight into the governor’s thought process.
At the beginning of the session, according to Balint, Democratic leaders in both chambers agreed that they should focus their energy on bills that would either be acceptable to the governor or could win enough votes to override a veto.
With that in mind, Balint thought Johnson should have thrown her weight behind the policy with the best chance of becoming law: a higher minimum wage, not paid family leave.
“At some point, you cut your losses,” Balint said.
Decoupling the two measures could have posed a risk to House members who favored paid family leave, Balint conceded, because the Senate had shown comparatively little interest in the issue. But the majority leader argued that she and other senators would have continued to champion the initiative.
Since a bill cannot be reintroduced in the same biennium after being vetoed, Johnson concluded it made more sense to continue to build support, better understand Scott’s concerns and revisit both issues in January.
“There is a strong majority of people in the House who want to raise the wage, and we’ll find a way to do it,” she predicted. “We just want to make sure there aren’t any casualties along the way.”
Clarification, May 29, 2019: A previous version of this story misstated when Ashe received Johnson’s letter.
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This article appears in May 29 – Jun 4, 2019.
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What really needs to be considered here is not what kind of political deal can be made, but what is good for the people of Vermont. Both chambers listening to testimony from the Joint Fiscal Committee and hearing from witnesses found there were many unanswered questions and potential serious drawbacks in passing sweeping new stand alone Vermont social benefit legislation. It may be for the best to have time to consider these well intended laws that could have unintended consequences similar to the debacle of Vermont Health Connects and Act 46. What is needed is to focus on nuanced legislation that is practical and not what is most politically advantageous.
The next Legislative session will opened after the SHTF in DC. So much will be revealed, so many indicted, the climate in our nation will be entirely different, hopefully for the better.
It was reported that the house and senate had a deal, and when the speaker reviewed the language in what the senate had sent, it wasnt what they had agreed upon.
Whats that called? A bait and switch?
So if there is any trust issue, its on senator Bailant and Ashe.
I hope you are right Timothy. Go get em Horowitz.
“Balint came to believe that the House might not have been negotiating in good faith”
!! What a colossal hypocrite !! Ashe & Balint’s underhanded, double-dealing, hostage-taking, self-serving brinkmanship, playing chicken with the calendar, failed. Speaker Johnson’s patience with their shenanigans exceeded what I’d have put up with by a week. If the Senate doesn’t rethink its leadership… well, I get to vote against one of them and look forward to the opportunity.
“She noted that a lot of work had gone into the letter Johnson released Friday morning”
Well, duh. What else did she have to do for a week and a half while the Senate “negotiated” by declining to negotiate, daring them to adjourn? I imagine each and every member of the House had mentally composed a detailed draft of that letter. It only needed typing and printing. Ashe & Balint’s calculated procrastination precipitated this, their adversarial machination led to this, their no-show bullying brought us to this point. Even now they seem to think they can manipulate the House through petulance and feigned bewilderment. Tools.
None of which means the House versions are superior to the Senate versions. Personally, I think they’re not. But Senate tactics were disrespectful, insupportable, reprehensible — and ultimately, properly, futile. “Good faith” indeed.
Games playing like in dc has come to Vermont, snark, not so impressive! I thought Vermont legislators were mature and able to decide for the greater good of the whole state. Sad to learn I was wrong. Sad to learn 5G lobbyists own Vermont legislators, too, so we don’t get paid family leave, OR higher minimum wage OR safe environment cos they pave the way for increased radioactivity with 5G infrastructure ..
Leads to more health risks, costs, and eventual death. Are we lemmings? I thot we are Vermonters. Thot we were smarter than manipulators. We deserve better from our state guvmint.
It should be noted that the Democrats that voted against the House version of PFL wanted an amendment that would have been more financially sound and legally sound. Although wanting PFL, by not voting for a bill that is so flawed no responsible legislator would have voted for it makes it a republican vote. Assumptions like their constituents voted them in to vote party line (and progressive assumption yet) is utterly naive and infantile. Some Bennington Dems also cover the Rutland district. Poor reporting of the situation. Very sad that the dem county leaders believe they understand all the constituents versus their own activist oriented party push. There are responsible and educated representatives in place who look at the details and work with the Senate, the House members and the Administration because they believe they can truly help all Vermonters. Not just talk and activism but instead good intelligent analysis and action. Kudos to those four Bennington county Dems.