One of the Vermont legislature’s frequent set pieces was performed once again on Friday: A member of the minority proposed an inconvenient amendment, then the majority quickly derailed it and tossed it in the dustbin. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but in its place the Senate approved — wait for it — a committee to study the idea.
Yeah, that’s the stuff.
Senate Minority Leader Dustin Degree (R-Franklin) played the role of the Determined But Doomed Underdog. Senate Democrats and Progressives were the Mustache-Twirling Majority.
The issue before the Senate was H.509, a bill to establish statewide education tax rates. Degree offered an amendment to include Gov. Phil Scott’s recent proposal to negotiate teacher health care benefits on a statewide basis, which he said would save $26 million a year. In the Degree amendment, one-third of the savings would go to the state’s general fund, one-third to the teachers’ retirement fund, and one-third would reduce the residential and nonresidential property tax rates.
Oh, and one thing Degree didn’t mention until after his amendment was defeated: It would have imposed a ban on teacher strikes.
Democrats raised various objections to the plan — it was introduced too late, it has broad implications, it would interfere with the tradition of local teacher negotiations. Degree echoed Scott’s argument, that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity because all teacher health care plans are changing at the end of this year.
Then, Sen. Phil Baruth (D/P-Chittenden), chair of the Senate Education Committee, introduced an amendment to Degree’s amendment. Baruth’s plan would gut the Degree plan and replace it with a committee — including one representative each from the Vermont-NEA, the Vermont School Boards Association and the Vermont Superintendents Association — that would study Scott’s proposal .
A little more than an hour of debate was followed by a roll-call vote on whether to kill Degree’s amendment in favor of Baruth’s. It passed 19-10, with Democrats Bobby Starr (D-Essex/Orleans), John Rodgers (D-Essex/Orleans) and Dick Mazza (D-Grand Isle) joining the seven Republicans in voting no. Sen. Brian Campion (D-Bennington) was absent.
And that was the predictable end of the Degree amendment. There followed a voice vote on the bill as amended by Baruth, with only one voice crying “no.” And then H.509 won final Senate passage on a 20-9 vote.
Afterward, Degree was less frustrated with the loss than with the procedural derailment. “They should be on-record voting against it,” he said, “instead of substituting a study, which is what we do in Montpelier when we want to make things go away.”
The House and Senate must now reach agreement on a uniform bill. The Senate version includes a shift of teacher pension fund obligations from the general fund to the education fund, a move that would result in a roughly $8 million increase in property taxes.
Degree refused to say if he would advise the governor to veto H.509, but he did say he expected Scott to do so if need be.
“I’m confident that the governor will veto a [bill] that raises taxes or fees,” he said. “But this [bill is] going to conference. We’ll wait and see what comes out of conference. But Phil Scott sticks to his word.”
Corrected April 29 at 4:27 p.m.: An earlier version of this story inaccurately described how the $26 million in savings would be allocated under the Degree amendment.
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The Democrats have once again put their true allegiances on full display, VTNEA or bust! #VTNEAbuysvotes
Thank you Dustin Degree for fighting the good fight, you’ll have more help after the next election.
Too bad the idea of state wide health insurance got so mucked up. It makes sense that combining all the teachers insurance under one roof would lower costs, possibly allow for better coverage at lower cost and potentially reduce property taxes, something we all need. It’s right up there with single payer and letting the government negotiate better drug prices using the economics of scale to force prices down and save us all money. Why did it have to get mucked up with BS like banning teacher’s strikes and the like? That just looks like deliberate sabotage. I would also like to see, here come the dreaded proposal.. state wide teachers contracts making salaries uniform across the state while leaving the power to hire and fire with local school boards so the best teachers don’t gravitate to the richest towns and leave the pool shallow everywhere else. That could save a lot of money too. This could move us to a state wide method of taxation for our schools that decouples the school funding needs from the property tax. I’m all for local control but not when it makes things more complex and costly like it does now as it pertains to schools and taxes.
I think I’d feel at least a little better about the Democratic Caucus in the Legislature if they just came out and admitted that they are owned by the state employees union and the teachers union. Owned. Can’t we just get that open secret out on the table and move on?
A statewide health care negotiation for the teachers makes 100% perfect sense. There is no rational argument to be made against it. And it’s absolutely laughable that the Democratic leadership in the Legislature says they “don’t have time” to address that issue. Laughable.
Wow, this is a throwback to the Straddlin’ Madeleine years. Let’s get a committee to study the committee.
To the Governor and Legislative Republicans and their moderate Democratic allies: don’t settle for anything less than a full STATEWIDE contract on teacher health care benefits!!! Now is the time!!! Now is the opportunity!!! Save the taxpayers!!! There is NO REASON why healthcare benefits should be negotiated separately in each of the state’s school districts for a total of a few thousand teachers and 80,000 students!!!