It went unnoticed at the time because our media was dominated by stories of the newly-unhoused being evicted from state-paid motel rooms, but last Thursday Gov. Phil Scott announced what he called “continued progress” toward his voluntary paid family leave program.

You remember that, don’t you? It’s the plan he and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu came up with in 2019 as an alternative to universal paid leave plans. It was supposed to be a joint effort, but that quickly unraveled. Instead, each governor set out to establish equivalent programs in their respective states.

Phase 1 of Scott’s plan takes effect on July 1, ironically enough on the next scheduled mass eviction event. On that day, Vermont state employees will be enrolled in a paid leave plan that will offer up to six weeks of leave at 60% of an employee’s average weekly wage for new parents or those dealing with urgent family situations. The state workforce will then serve as a base for a voluntary program to be offered to Vermont employers in July of next year.

Sununu’s plan took effect last year for New Hampshire state employees. The second phase was announced last summer with a $1.9 million state-funded “publicity blitz.” December 1, 2022 was the date that private employers could start enrolling.

And although Sununu officials are furiously lipsticking that pig, the program is, in fact, off to an unimpressive start. So unimpressive that it casts serious doubt on the prospects for Scott’s program.

After a big publicity blitz and four months of employer enrollment, a mere one-third of one percent of NH employers had actually enrolled as of the end of April. That’s 149 companies out of a possible 44,509. And that’s in spite of tax credits covering half of a participating employer’s contributions to the leave plan.

Of course, employers are not required to contribute at all. They can choose to offload the cost onto the workers who sign up for leave insurance. And only 60% of that meager 149 are making full contributions.

The program is also open to individual Granite Staters whose employers aren’t offering it. But only 644 individuals signed on during the initial two-month enrollment window. That’s out of more than 600,000 private sector workers.

A top Sununu official tried to spin this as “pretty remarkable,” but one can imagine the sweat beading on his forehead as he tried to peddle that line. It’s early, but that kind of response threatens to collapse the Sununu program like a house of cards. MetLife, the program administrator, set initial premiums at a pretty low rate, less than $5 per week. It needs a sizeable pool of participants to make the program work. Otherwise it will have to raise prices. And if a cheap, state-underwritten program can’t even approach 1% participation after a “publicity blitz,” then higher premiums could trigger a death spiral.

This isn’t great news for Scott’s plan, although I’m sure his officials are armed with plenty of lipstick themselves. By the time his plan goes live statewide, Sununu’s may be circling the drain. Perhaps it’s just as well that last week’s announcement was swamped by The Great Unhousing. Scott’s big idea is in jeopardy even before its launch.

Postscript. While I was researching this piece, I came across an op-ed that hasn’t aged well. It was written by Democratic State Treasurer Mike Pieciak in 2019, when he was Gov. Scott’s commissioner of financial regulation. In it, he lauded the joint Scott/Sununu venture as “A Paid Leave Program That Works.”

Pieciak writes that a universal leave program would be costly and full of risk, and that the Scott/Sununu idea was “more affordable and more economically beneficial.” Does Pieciak still view one of his party’s top priorities as too dangerous? Or was he simply playing the tune called by the one paying the piper?

Here it is, in all its glory.