MONTPELIER — The Vermont Legislature sent roughly $600 million of proposed COVID-19 relief spending to Gov. Phil Scott’s desk Friday before lawmakers adjourned until late August.
The economic relief packages the House and Senate passed on Friday, which spend funds Vermont received from the Federal CARES Act in April, contain about $300 million for the state’s health care industry and $35 million for farms.
They also include hundreds of millions in economic relief dollars for businesses, for broadband expansion, and for assistance for renters, landlords and programs for homeless people.
In recent weeks, legislators have been racing to spend the majority of the $1.25 billion Vermont received from the federal government’s Coronavirus Relief Fund to address costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to federal guidance, those dollars have to be spent by the end of December.
Gov. Phil Scott has signaled that he will sign the spending bills, but he says they don’t include enough funding for businesses in need.
According to a breakdown of the Legislature’s allocations of federal COVID-19 aid, lawmakers have spent, or proposed spending, about $220 million in aid for businesses.
Scott had urged the Legislature to adopt the $400 million economic relief proposal that he pitched in May, which contained about $250 million in grants and loans for businesses.
“While the Governor appreciates that some funding to save businesses and jobs was passed, Vermont’s small businesses and agriculture sector will see far less money than what the Governor proposed,” said his spokesperson, Rebecca Kelley.
The House passed HB 965, and HB 966, another major COVID-19 spending bill, last week; the Senate worked to finalize the legislation in recent days.
The Legislature’s health care and human services aid package, HB 965, includes $275 million in grants for the health care sector, which has faced major losses during the pandemic.
Providers eligible for the funding include hospitals, independent doctors, dentists, mental health providers, rural health clinics, federally qualified health centers, medical labs and pharmacies.
The Department for Children and Families would receive $12 million to distribute to child care providers, after-school programs and summer camps that require funds to reopen, and parent child centers that have seen an increased demand for services during the pandemic.
The Vermont Foodbank would receive $4.6 million.
Under HB 966, the Senate increased spending on grants for nearly all businesses that have struggled during the pandemic. The package sent to the governor’s desk contains $82 million, up $12 million from the House bill.
These grants come on top of the $70 million of financial aid the Legislature approved for businesses earlier this month.
The Senate cut spending in other areas in favor of additional business grants. Senators removed a $4 million proposal to modernize Vermont’s unemployment system.
The unemployment insurance system, which was overwhelmed at the outset of the COVID-19 crisis — largely because of its outdated technology — caused tens of thousands of Vermonters to see delays in benefits.
Some senators questioned cutting investment in the unemployment system.
“I see that as one of the failures we had over the last few months and using some of this money to invest before a potential second wave in the fall, it seemed to make a lot of sense to me,” said Sen. Corey Parent, R-Franklin.
Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that her committee favored sending more funding to the struggling business community.
She later added that the Legislature has provided the unemployment insurance system with additional funding for its operations, including $4.7 million in the first quarter budget bill.
“Right now, our priority was to move money out as much as we could to Vermont businesses,” Kitchel said.
Other grant programs in HB 966 include $5 million to the Vermont Arts Council to distribute to nonprofit arts and cultural organizations that suffered revenue losses, and $5 million for minority- and women-owned businesses with five or fewer employees.
Some $35 million in aid for the forest industry and farms was included in a separate piece of legislation, SB 351, sent to Scott Friday.
HB 965 includes a largely scaled-back version of the hazard pay program for essential workers that was passed by the Senate in May.
House lawmakers had shrunk the program to $20 million from the $60 million in the Senate’s May plan. In the final bill, however, the Senate increased the size of the grant program to $28 million.
The House noted that federal guidance for the Coronavirus Relief Fund allows only public health, public safety, health care and human services workers to receive grants. Many private sector workers like grocery store employees cannot.
The Senate had included frontline workers in a variety of industries including grocery store employees, health care workers, child care providers and nursing home staff.
“It was with great unhappiness that we have — in spite of our pushback and best efforts — that we have been told that we cannot include many of those workers that we had wanted to include,” Kitchel said of the House’s hazard pay program.
The Senate also cut the amount the House had proposed spending to help individuals and businesses cover the cost of utility bills that have piled up during the pandemic. The House recommended using $20 million to help Vermonters address utility arrearages. Senators reduced that to $8 million, figuring that businesses can use the other grants available to them to help pay these bills.
“We’re assuming that some of the money that we’re helping with businesses would help with the fixed costs of utilities that they have been experiencing,” Kitchel said.
To address housing needs, HB 966 includes $25 million for tenants who have struggled to pay their rent during the pandemic, and $5 million in “technical and financial assistance” to low- and middle-income homeowners in an effort to prevent foreclosures.
It would use $6.2 million to create a grant program for property owners to refurbish “blighted” or vacant rental housing for low income residents. And the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board would also receive $9 million to expand shelters and other assistance for people who are homeless throughout the state.
Sen. Michael Sirotkin, D-Chittenden, the chair of the Senate Economic Development Committee, lauded the Legislature’s efforts to prioritize spending on efforts to decrease homelessness by investing in long-term affordable housing.
“We are pretty close to being on the verge of not only dealing with the homeless now right now, but potentially eliminating the problem,” Sirotkin said.
The Senate increased the amount of federal dollars that would be used to expand broadband from $13 million to about $17 million. This funding includes dollars to help telecom providers to build broadband out to underserved areas.
The Department of Public Service will oversee the funding, and prioritize connecting low income households where people need the internet to participate in remote learning, work remotely or seek medical care via telehealth.
According to the Joint Fiscal Office, with the proposals sent to the governor’s Friday, plus previous Coronavirus Relief Fund spending approved by the Scott administration and included in other legislative proposals, the state has allocated nearly $1 billion of the federal money.
Kitchel said lawmakers would like to set aside $100 million of remaining Coronavirus Relief Fund dollars to the state’s K-12 education system which will need funds to help reopen in the fall.
Legislators also plan on saving $140 million for other needs that may arise, related to health care, business or other sectors.
Lawmakers won’t resume work until late August, when they reconvene to pass a complete budget for the upcoming fiscal year. (They passed a partial spending bill to fund the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, which begins on July 1, earlier this week.)