The Vermont Senate passed its version of a state budget for the upcoming fiscal year, but not without debate over a plan to use money from a student scholarship fund to help the University of Vermont build a new sports complex.
Senators approved this year’s “Big Bill,” H.951, on a voice vote Wednesday. The $9.4 billion proposal amounts to just shy of a 2% increase in state spending compared with the budget lawmakers and Gov. Phil Scott enacted for the current fiscal year, which ends in June.
As always, the Senate made a number of changes to the version of the bill that cleared the House last month. Among them: Senators added back in a plan, proposed by Scott at the start of the session, to direct some of the state’s Higher Education Endowment Trust Fund to the stalled “multipurpose center” project at UVM.
The center would host UVM’s basketball teams as well as concerts and other events, with capacity for 5,000 spectators.
Gov. Scott and UVM were asking legislators to take $15 million out of the trust fund for their project. The pot of money is managed by the Vermont State Treasurer’s Office and helps pay for aid to students at UVM, as well as in the Vermont State Colleges System or at other schools in-state.
The proposal would make use of a historic $26 million windfall the fund received last year from Vermont’s estate tax, which is one of its sources of revenue.
The House Appropriations Committee rejected UVM’s plan, though, saying it would make less money available for first-generation students, whom the pot of money largely supports now.
The Senate’s budget would take $15 million from the trust fund but divide it up among several recipients. It would direct $12 million of that amount to the UVM project, but also $600,000 to a housing project on the Vermont State University campus in Johnson. And, the Senate bill would use $2.3 million from the fund to expand access to scholarships administered by the Vermont Student Assistance Corp.
That additional VSAC funding was added to the budget by the House, but the House proposed paying for it with a different source.
In addition, the Senate’s proposal would give the trust fund a new source to draw from: taxes on retail cannabis sales. Under the bill, 20% of the state’s cannabis excise tax — money that currently goes into the state’s General Fund — would support the trust fund.
Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, gave a defense of the plan on the floor Tuesday. Baruth is an English professor at UVM.
He said the slice of tax revenue, estimated to be at least $4 million a year, would repay the trust fund in three or four years for the amount proposed for building projects. And, because it’s a new funding source, he argued, it would mean more money for scholarships in the long run.
Moreover, Baruth said UVM’s project would bring economic benefits to the Burlington area, especially since the city’s Memorial Auditorium has been defunct for years, “and there is no place at this scale to host an entertainment event, a concert or a very large sporting event.”
Shortly after, Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, proposed an amendment on the floor that would have stripped the money for both the building project at UVM and the state college campus from the budget, calling both “a completely inappropriate use of this fund.”
Hardy said she agrees that it is “really tempting” to use the fund’s windfall for a new purpose, but she thinks that if anything, it should be used to give students more money directly.
“We should be increasing student scholarships — not spending it on a basketball stadium,” she said.
Sen. Becca White, D-Windsor, said she agreed with Hardy’s case. She told her colleagues that Vermonters are struggling to pay for “luxuries” like tickets to a basketball game or home building projects, and she thinks directing state money to a major new athletic facility would show senators were out of step with their constituents.
“It feels as if we are prioritizing a culture of sports fandom over reality,” White said.
After Hardy presented her amendment, Sen. Andrew Perchlik, D/P-Washington, called for a recess so that he and the other members of the Appropriations Committee could discuss Hardy’s proposal. When the Senate gaveled back in, Perchlik said the committee had taken a straw vote and rejected Hardy’s change unanimously.
The full Senate then rejected the amendment on a roll call vote, 23-7.
Now that the Senate has passed its budget, H.951 will head back to the House for further consideration. But because of the trust fund debate, and other disagreements, it’s all but certain to go to a conference committee to work out a final bill.
After that, the bill would head to Gov. Scott’s desk. Notably, the governor has continued to threaten to veto the budget bill — if lawmakers don’t send him an education bill that he likes.
In the know
Sen. Hardy had more success, however, with another amendment she proposed to the budget bill. On a voice vote, the Senate on Wednesday approved her proposal to add a measure into H.951 that would reduce by 30% the compensation for any state’s attorney who is not licensed to practice law.
Notably, that could apply to the top prosecutor in Hardy’s district: Addison County State’s Attorney Eva Vekos. The Vermont Supreme Court earlier this month suspended Vekos’ law license while disciplinary proceedings play out that stem from her drunken driving conviction.
Hardy’s amendment mirrors a change lawmakers and Gov. Scott enacted two years ago that reduced, by the same amount, compensation for sheriffs who are not certified police officers.
The Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs supports both measures, Hardy said on the floor Wednesday. Like the rest of the Senate’s changes to the budget, the language related to state’s attorneys will now get another set of eyes in the House.
— Shaun Robinson
House lawmakers are hashing out a bill, S.193, that would create a locked facility for people charged with serious crimes who are deemed incompetent to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Under the bill, people held in the facility could take part in treatment or programming to restore their competency. People could be involuntarily committed to the facility only if they’re facing charges that could carry a life sentence and if they don’t meet the clinical threshold to be held in a psychiatric hospital.
Proponents of the facility think the bill would fill a gap in Vermont’s mental health system while protecting public safety, citing the fact that some people — who were already charged with violent crimes — have committed more violent crimes while under a court order to receive outpatient mental health treatment. Gov. Scott and his administration support creating the facility.
A previous version of the bill would have put the facility within the Vermont Department of Corrections. Corrections officials floated the idea of carving out a wing at the state prison in Springfield for the new purpose.
The most recent version of the bill, though, puts the facility within the wider purview of the Vermont Agency of Human Services. And it requires that someone’s release from the facility be reviewed every 12 months.
Defender General Matt Valerio told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that reviewing someone’s commitment every 12 months “feels extraordinarily long.”
That requirement is so infrequent it could even constitute a due process violation, he said. His concerns stem from the fact that people involuntarily committed to the proposed facility haven’t been convicted of a crime.
Rep. Barbara Rachelson, D/P-Burlington, said earlier in the meeting that the timeline raised concerns for her, too. Many states with similar facilities require much more frequent reviews, she said, ranging from every 30 days to every 90 days.
— Charlotte Oliver
Arts corner
I’ve been enjoying Rep. Mollie Burke’s art show in the Statehouse cafeteria — specifically, her “roll call doodles” that are on the wall outside the speaker’s office. She’s had a number of pieces on display in the Capitol over the past month, collectively titled, “Realism & Magical Realism.”
Burke’s intricate “roll call” drawings, mostly of plants, were created “during the sometime(s) endless” floor votes in which every legislator is asked for a verbal “yea” or “nay,” a placard reads. The Brattleboro Democrat, who is retiring at the end of the session after 18 years in the House, sketched all of the designs on the backs of legislative paperwork, she said.
— Shaun Robinson
