MONTPELIER — House Speaker Mitzi Johnson ended days of negotiations on two of the Democrats’ major priorities and adjourned the House — without an agreement with the Senate.
Johnson gave Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe an ultimatum on Friday morning.
In a letter, she gave Ashe until noon to agree on a paid family leave and minimum wage compromise, or she said she would adjourn the House.
At the end of the day, she and the House made good on that promise, turning what had been a long-running feud with fellow Democrats in the Senate into a victory for representatives who said they were tired of being held hostage by Ashe.
It was a major victory for Johnson who has struggled to negotiate with Senate leaders over the minimum wage and paid family leave bills. The acrimony between the House speaker and Ashe has been building for weeks and on Friday the bile spilled over into what one lawmaker compared with a standoff at the O.K. Corral.
Rep. Sam Young, D-Glover, said he was proud of Johnson “because she drew a line in the sand.” Other lawmakers said the governor was going to veto the paid leave and minimum wage bills anyway and staying another week for more painstaking and possibly fruitless negotiations was a waste of time and money.
For days, the Senate tried to force the House to take up their version of paid leave and minimum wage bills by holding the budget and revenue bills hostage. That standoff continued on Friday morning until Johnson laid down the adjournment gauntlet.
The Senate continued to believed it still had the power to keep negotiations going until the House did a strike-all of a sugar sweetened beverage bill, S.141, and used it as a vehicle for the conference committee reports for the budget and revenue. After messaging the legislation to the Senate, they passed a joint resolution to adjourn.
The Senate did not accept the House’s joint adjournment resolution on Friday and will take it up Wednesday afternoon.
It’s the first time in memory, longtime House representatives and senators say, that the General Assembly has not agreed to a joint adjournment resolution, and the move put the end of the session in limbo.
Under the Vermont Constitution, the House and Senate must agree to a joint resolution to adjourn.
If they don’t, the bodies have to return to the Statehouse after three days and find agreement. The governor may intervene if the dispute continues.
Just as Johnson prepared to strike the gavel, shortly after the governor gave a traditional farewell speech, the Senate messaged over their version of the budget.
In the spirit of “anything can happen at the end of the session,” Johnson asked the House to approve the Senate version.
Rep. Kitty Toll, D-Danville, said, “It’s a bit like Groundhog Day,” as representatives tittered and applauded.
And with that, House members cleaned out their desks and bid each other goodbye for the summer.
As representatives streamed out of the Statehouse bearing boxes of papers, Ashe told reporters he remains optimistic the House will come back to negotiate a deal. Ashe said the two bodies were close and could work things out in a few days.
“We would be disappointed if we had to wait another year to take up both of those issues,” Ashe said. “From our point of view if our action today had been to adjourn, we would have been closing the last door on reaching agreements on both of those bills.”
When asked if he had spoken to Johnson about that possibility, Ashe replied: “No.”
Johnson told reporters the House won’t be coming back next week. “We’ve adjourned until January,” she said.
Each legislative day beyond the 18 weeks allotted costs between $50,000 to $60,000. The General Assembly went into overtime this week at a cost of more than $250,000.
Ashe said that’s a small price to pay to put $3,000 more a year in low-income Vermonters’ pockets.
While Dems dominate the House, Johnson had trouble getting a veto-proof majority to support Senate — and even House-crafted — versions of both the paid family leave and minimum wage bills.