ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. — With about a month left in the legislative session, one Northeast Kingdom senator at the NEK Chamber of Commerce Legislative Breakfast on Monday referred to it as “money season” in the Statehouse, and a discussion of money matters consumed much of the monthly breakfast hour.
The end of the five-month session means lawmakers in both chambers need to settle on a state budget to send to the governor. The House passed a $9.3 billion budget, and the Senate is considering a $9.4 billion budget. There’s also the need to settle on the yield bill, which determines property tax rates to fund education.
Sen. Russ Ingalls, R-Essex, said it’s “money season” in Montpelier, and it’s a period in the session “where a lot of the damage gets done.”
Resident Al Ames, who owns property in Peacham, Vt., and Danville, Vt., said property taxes are so costly that people are choosing not to move here, and others who are here are choosing to leave.
“You’re driving more people out of the state than attracting people,” Ames said to the seven NEK legislators present for the breakfast on Monday at St. Johnsbury Athenaeum.
“Our tax bill was $30,000 on our property tax and all the other things that the state taxes for versus New Hampshire,” he said. “New Hampshire, for us, would have put $30,000 a year back in our pockets.”
Ames said he has moved a lot over the years for his work and had lived in New Hampshire before, but his wife wanted to come to Vermont. “Now she doesn’t want to be here,” he said.
He said he doesn’t have hope that the state will rein in the cost of education.
“There’s just never enough money for government,” he said.
Sen. Ingalls said the proposed budget is $2 billion higher than it should be. He said a sustained spike in spending stems from the state’s inability to readjust spending priorities once federal COVID dollars stopped coming.
“We need to get back to affordability,” he said. “I still believe that we can make Vermont affordable.”
Sen. Ingalls said Gov. Phil Scott should have challenged the majority Democratic party to propose a budget to fund only the essentials in state government.
“I wish the governor would have said this, ‘I am going to fund the essential part of government, and for all the other $2 billion worth of stuff that was created during the pandemic with the promises that once the money was gone, so would those programs and positions, I’m going to let you, the majority party, figure out what you’re going to cut and what’s important to you.’”
Sen. Scott Beck, R-Caledonia, who serves as the Senate Minority Leader, told the audience what a $2 billion budget reduction could mean for taxpayers.
“If we’re spending two billion too much, we can eliminate the Homestead Education Property Tax and the sales tax, which is the most regressive tax out there, and income tax for people under 30, and income tax for people under 100,000 (dollars), and income tax for Social Security recipients, and we still would have half a billion dollars left over,” said Sen. Beck. “That’s what high spending gets you.”
No legislative member from the state’s majority Democratic party attended the breakfast on Monday. Among the 16 representative and 3 senator seats in the Kingdom, the only Democrats are Rep. Scott Campbell in St. Johnsbury and Rep. Leanne Harple, of Glover, Vt. They attended last month but were absent on Monday.
Rep. John Kascenska, R-Essex-Caledonia, a House Appropriations Committee member who voted in favor of the proposed $9.3 billion budget, said the property tax burden is so significant that employees are trying to negotiate higher wages to offset the tax impact.
“I find that disturbing, quite frankly, that we’re in that situation,” he said.
Rep. Kascenska said people do want to move here. “They want to come here and work in health care and other sectors out there because they enjoy this place, because they’ve probably been here before. They might want to come back to be closer to the family here, and it’s really difficult for them to make that move for that very reason … The affordability piece is huge.”
The representative from Burke, Vt., said it requires lawmakers willing to have the “hard discussions” and make the “hard decisions” to streamline state government.
One audience member asked the all-Republican gathering of lawmakers what can be done to address what she sees as a costly “agenda driven by ideology.”
Multiple legislators said the opportunity to make changes happens at the polls every two years on Election Day.
Rep. Beth Quimby, R-Caledonia 3, called out what she believes is wasteful spending with legislators drafting too many bills that “are going nowhere and never were going to go anywhere.”
Referring to a photo that Rep. Debbie Dolgin, R-Caledonia-Essex, had shown earlier of the bulletin board of proposed bills in the House Committee on Housing, “on the wall.” She called the modest number of slips of paper stuck on the board as “cute.”
“Government ops (committee) has so many bills they have two bulletin boards,” said Rep. Quimby.
Among what she said were 950 proposed bills; only a third of them will “maybe see the light of day.” She said it costs at least $1,000 to have each bill drafted.
“What an incredible waste of resources, time and money,” she said.
Rep. Marty Feltus, R-Caledonia 3, the vice chair of House Appropriations, who also voted for the House budget, said there’s a desire by some legislators to address state revenue problems by seeking more money.
“Even though it might be nice to say we want to tax the rich, they’re already taxed very high,” she said. “Frankly, I don’t think that’s a fair way to look long-term at state finances.”
Sen. Beck said the highest earners are already paying the most in taxes, and adding to the tax burden will deter people considering a move to Vermont.
“The top one percent of all income earners in the state of Vermont pay 30 percent of all income taxes,” he said. “The top 20% of all income earners in the state of Vermont pay 80% of all income taxes. The bottom 40 percent pay less than one percent of all income taxes in the state of Vermont. We have a millionaire’s tax already; it just starts at $325,000.”
The audience size was unusually small for a monthly legislative breakfast on Monday. NEK Chamber Director Loralee Tester said she recalls the April meeting last year also having a lighter attendance. She said there may also be people who are choosing not to attend because they don’t feel like their concerns are being addressed in Montpelier.
Sen. Ingalls talked about the power rural Vermonters can have when they rise up in numbers. He referenced the outcry among rural Vermonters over land-use controls in Act 181. A rally in front of the Statehouse and extensive correspondence with lawmakers helped address some of the controls targeting rural properties.
“That is advocacy at its best,” he said. “You have to keep government accountable; you have to make sure that the little voices are heard. In this care it’s right to be riled up.”
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