Tag Archives: Budget Adjustment Act

Congratulations to Senate Republicans for Making Phil Scott’s Fondest Wish Come True

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Hooray, Phil Scott is going to get what he wants. Again.

Every time there’s an inflection point in the General Assistance Emergency Housing program (d/b/a the motel voucher program), it’s always the same thing. Scott takes a hard line against spending a dime more on vouchers… we get close to a mass unsheltering… and then he does a last-minute walk-back, offering a compromise to keep at least some people in the program.

But he simply cannot include everyone. Some folks just HAVE to be unsheltered. It’s like his one and only bedrock principle when it comes to vouchers. Some folks have gotta lose.

And here we are again. Scott rejected the Legislature’s move to extend winter eligibility rules through June, and later — as he always does — he offered a partial extension, which belies his supposedly principled argument against spending any more money on vouchers.

This is nothing new. So for the rest of this post, my attention turns to the Republican Senate caucus’ role in backstopping the governor, and the deeply misleading press release put out after the vote by caucus leader Sen. Scott Beck.

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The Scott Administration Hits a New Low

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Gov. Phil Scott has dug in his heels on the General Assistance emergency housing program, and it’s not a pretty sight. He used his Wednesday news conference to decry the Legislature’s failure to “come to the table,” but the real meaning of that phrase, in his mind, is that they failed to do precisely what he wanted them to do.

I’m sorry, but that’s not coming to the table. That’s jumping up and down on the table and holding your breath until you turn blue.

Look. First, the Legislature adopted a Budget Adjustment Act that included at least 90% of the governor’s proposal plus a few additional items that were almost entirely offset by savings in the Treasurer’s budget. Scott vetoed the bill. The Legislature then passed a new BAA that stripped away almost all their adds on one condition, and only one: That Scott agree to extend winter eligibility rules for the voucher program from April 1 to June 30. By the Legislature’s revised reckoning, the Department of Children and Families already has enough money to make that happen.

And now Scott is stamping his feet and bellowing “No, no, no!”

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Phil Scott’s Continuing Search for an Acceptable Level of Cruelty

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“Governor Nice Guy” is having a bit of a tantrum. The cause: legislative Democrats are making him look bad, and he doesn’t like it.

At issue, naturally, is the General Assistance Emergency Housing program, familiarly known as the motel voucher program. The Legislature passed a Budget Adjustment Act that would have extended winter eligibility rules through the end of June, thus preventing a mass unsheltering when the winter rules expire on April 1. Scott vetoed it, largely because he cannot stand the voucher program and would do absolutely anything to kill it once and for all. Except, you know, proposing an alternative.

Or, as House Appropriations Committee chair Rep. Robin Scheu put it, “We have been asking the Governor for four years to develop a plan to transition away from the hotel/motel program and create a long-term solution to homelessness. For four years we have received nothing from the governor or his administration.”

Anyway. Legislative leadership then made a counter-offer: They’re willing to drop virtually all of their (relatively minimal) spending adds from the BAA if the winter eligibility rules are extended. They say the Department of Children and Families already has enough funds to make that happen.

And ‘Governor Nice Guy” has shown them the back of his hand. Nope, not gonna do it.

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Phil Scott’s Two Big Money-Saving Ideas: Unshelter the Homeless, and Take Food from the Mouths of Schoolkids

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The contest for “Stupidest Veto in the History of Phil Scott Vetoes” is a richly competitive one, with numerous contenders for the honors among the [checks notes] 52 vetoes he has unleashed upon Vermont’s normally placid and communitarian political life*. But the next one he threatens to cast may prove to be the winner.

*Obligatory reminder: Scott has racked up 52 vetoes, more than twice as many as any other governor. He long ago surpassed Howard Dean’s second-place total of 21, and Dean served three and a half years longer than Scott. “Governor Nice Guy” indeed.

Scott is now promising to veto H.141, the Budget Adjustment Act, because the Democratic Legislature dared to spend a little more money on sheltering the homeless than he wanted to.

Honestly, why he has such a bug up his butt about the motel voucher program, I don’t know. He’s bound and determined to kill it, willing to go to almost any length to do so. Any length short of, you know, proposing an alternative, which he has never managed to do. Well, there’s permitting reform, which would likely increase the overall housing supply years from now.

It’s almost as big a bug as the one lodged in his rectum over universal school meals. Limiting free meals to schoolkids is, after all, his one and only concrete suggestion for cutting the cost of public education. “Governor Nice Guy” indeed.

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In the Long, Storied History of Bad Shelter Ideas from the Scott Administration, This Is Another One

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When you’re proud of an idea, when you really think you’re onto something good, you showcase it to the world. You present it openly, in a way that maximizes its chances of coming to fruition.

On the other hand…

There are times when you roll out an idea like it’s a flaming bag of poop. You leave it on the doorstep and head for the hills.

Which brings us to Administration Secretary Sarah Clark’s latest proposal for addressing Vermont’s crisis of unsheltered homelessness — a crisis that’s largely the result of deliberate policy choices by the Scott administration and the Legislature.

This here administration has been desperately trying to kill the GA Emergency Housing program, a.k.a. motel vouchers, for years now. But it has never, ever proposed anything like a real alternative. Instead, it has put forward some notions that have managed to be totally inadequate and financially wasteful at the same time. The policy equivalents of flaming bags of poop, they are.

Its latest bag was delivered on Friday, because of course it was. Friday is newsdump day, don’t you know.

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It Wasn’t the Best Week to Roll Out Your Ebenezer Scrooge Impression

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Last week, the Budget Adjustment Act sailed through the House on more or less a party-line vote, with Republicans raising whiny objections over a penny-ante increase in funding for the General Assistance Emergency Housing program. Gov. Phil Scott did his share of whining as well, and there’s been some talk of a possible BAA veto. Which, if it happens, would be utterly ridiculous.

But amidst all the Republican whining, the most ignorant, shameful, bigoted remarks actually came from a Democrat. Stay tuned for more on that.

This all happened against the backdrop of a tremendous piece of journalism that dropped the day of Scott’s comments and the day before the House’s BAA debate: a story by Vermont Public‘s Liam Elder-Connors and Seven Days‘ Derek Brouwer exploring how many unhoused people have died in Vermont, a statistic the state has so far declined to keep. With that story on the front page, it was a bad time to bitch about an extra $1.8 million in motel vouchers.

The two reporters found that “at least 82 people in Vermont… died between 2021 and 2024 while appearing to reside in an emergency shelter or outdoors.” That’s almost certainly an undercount; no one in Vermont officialdom tracks that number, nor does anyone seem interested in doing so. Outgoing Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine said it would be “very challenging” to collect such data.

Not as challenging as, say, sleeping outside in the dead of winter, but sure, let’s only keep the easy statistics.

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“Will You Be Putting Somebody in a Wheelchair Out on the Street?” “Hopefully Not.”

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It appears that the Senate Appropriations Committee is ready to kill a House-passed proposal to extend the motel voucher program that shelters thousands of homeless Vermonters. So says the chatter in the hallways, which I would not take as gospel — except that the committee made its intentions more than clear in a recent hearing.

On April 2, the committee heard from Commissioner Chris Winters of the Department of Children and Families and some of his top deputies. The panel had asked him to prepare a presentation on the challenges of implementing H.883, the House-passed FY2025 budget bill that includes a broader version of the voucher program than the administration has proposed.

Mind you, the panel made no effort to hear from anyone in the House to tell their side of the story. The committee took no testimony from housing advocates or clients of the program. They sought counsel only from the very administration officials who have been responsible for repeatedly fumbling the program and trying to kill it. Committee members rarely pushed Winters or challenged his testimony. They pretty much took his word on every issue. You might think the committee was on a fishing expedition looking for reasons to kill the House plan.

Because that’s exactly what they were doing.

At one point, committee chair Sen. Jane Kitchel was seeking assurance that nothing bad would happen under the administration’s plan. She lobbed Winters a softball: “Will you be putting somebody in a wheelchair out on the street?”

And Winters replied, “Hopefully not.”

How reassuring.

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The Phil Scott Shelter Clusterfuck Takes Another Bad Turn (Plus, Bonus Eclipse-Related Unsheltering)

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No foolin’ this time: April 1 brought yet another mass unsheltering for no good reason whatsoever, and the blame appears to fall on the Scott administration’s failure to communicate with clients of the motel voucher program.

It seems that somebody realized sometime last week that roughly 800 households — which, by the standard calculation of 1.6 persons per household, would be about 1,280 individuals — were eligible to stay in their state-paid motel rooms, but in order to do so they had to apply for reauthorization by April 1. And they hadn’t done so.

According to designated unsheltering pool reporter Carly Berlin, a mad scramble ensued. Well, she used “scramble.” The “mad” part is mine. Berlin:

The [Department of Children and Families]’ pleas were captured in an email sent to service providers on Friday afternoon, in which a DCF official said more than half of the 1,600 households “have an authorization that ends on 4/1/24 that has yet to be renewed.” In the message, Lily Sojourner, interim director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, asked for providers’ help in securing residents’ renewals.

To clarify: Sojourner “asked for providers’ help in doing the job DCF should have done.” Ugh.

The scramble brought the number of evictions down to about 360 households (570 individuals) as of early Monday afternoon. Great!

On top of this comes the cheery news from Seven Days that in Chittenden County, “more than 150 households” (at least 240 individuals) will lose their rooms on Saturday and Sunday nights so motel operators can rent ’em out to eclipse tourists at extortionate rates. It’s unknown how many will lose their shelter outside of Chittenden County. There are eight other counties in the totality zone, so the total unsheltered could be much higher.

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There’s Probably a Humanitarian Disaster Happening, But the Judge Said It Was Okay

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Truly bizarre happenings over the last 24 hours, even by the bizarre standards of this seemingly never-ending crisis of housing and homelessness. We’ll get to the judge’s decision allowing Gov. Phil Scott’s ridiculous policy to go forward, but first a note from an official in the city of Burlington, timestamped 4:45 p.m. yesterday:

There are 192+ folks outside in Chittenden County; 0-5 motel rooms available.

This was after the Scott administration had decided to close its four temporary shelters on schedule Friday morning. And almost four hours before the administration reversed course, announcing at around 8:30 p.m. that the Burlington shelter would reopen at least for Friday and Saturday night.

I guess they decided it was a bad look to close a shelter in the face of a severe winter storm with close to 200 people known to be unsheltered in Vermont’s most prosperous county. Too often, it seems as though administration policy is designed to be cruel until the optics get too bad, and then they change course just enough to limit the damage. So they opened the shelter unexpectedly at 8:30 p.m. How many more people could have accessed the shelter if it had never closed in the first place? How many didn’t find out the shelter was available at all or couldn’t make their way to Cherry Street that late in the evening? Or, God have mercy on our souls, how many had already found a refrigerator box or an overpass or other makeshift shelter and didn’t want to lose their spot?

The good thing, from the administration’s point of view, is that this is all happening on a weekend when our news media are essentially unstaffed. As of Saturday afternoon I’d seen no coverage from VTDigger, Vermont Public or Seven Days. Don’t even ask about the Free Press, whose top story right now is “Chittenden County Irish Pub Closes.” There’s a brief item on WCAX-TV’s website announcing the shelter’s reopening, but that’s about all.

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Come On Down to Big Phil’s Policy Lot!

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Automotive metaphors are always a temptation when writing about the man behind the wheel of #14, Gov. Phil Scott, but sometimes you gotta go with it. Now, the governor doesn’t look like a used car salesman when he’s holding court in his ceremonial office. He can sound convincing when he tells you about this sweet little number, low mileage, owned by a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sunday. You’ll look great behind the wheel of this baby!

But if you drive it off the lot, pretty soon it’s leaking fluids and making funny sounds and belching smoke out the tailpipe.

Which brings us to, you guessed it, the governor’s shambolic temporary shelter “plan.” He calls it “a successful mission” and gives himself top marks: “I think we did a good job.” His sales associate, Human Services Secretary Jenney Samuelson, is effusive about how her people were all over the state, keeping in close contact with those about to lose their motel rooms, “actively communicating, going door to door last week,” and being “really flexible” about helping folks fill out the necessary waivers to achieve eligibility for continued motel vouchers.

Get into the real world, though, and this thing starts looking like a complete lemon.

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