Tag Archives: Education Fund

Phil Scott Seemingly Abandons a Universally-Held Expectation

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Gov. Phil Scott’s budget address was larded with the customary straw-man punching. Irritating, predictable, grind your teeth and move on. But one of those throwaway lines implied the abandonment of a policy idea that’s appeared inevitable for quite a long time. See if you can spot it:

…for those looking for a quick and easy fix to the [Transportation Fund] short fall, I want to be crystal clear, I will not support raising the Gas tax.

Okay, first of all, NO ONE is even suggesting, let alone supporting, an increase in the “Gas tax.” I haven’t heard a single person in Vermont politics even mention such a thing. (Leave the straw man alone!)

What I have heard for years, from everyone involved in transportation policy, is that we will need to transition to a broader tax mechanism that includes electric vehicles and hybrids. Cars and trucks are more fuel-efficient than they used to be, and we are embarking on a massive shift away from gas-powered transportation. Gas tax revenues are down and will keep on declining. We’ll still be using the roads, and we’ll still need to pay for their upkeep.

Various ideas have been tossed around. Most involve a miles-driven assessment (clunky acronym MBUF, see below) where you pay based on how much you drive, not how often you get gas.

But the idea was absent from the governor’s presentation, replaced by a boilerplate rejection of an idea that nobody has proposed. Given how he frames every tax reform proposal as a tax increase (because there’s always somebody who might pay more even if the aggregate impact is a tax cut), he’s implicitly signaling his opposition to any kind of transportation tax shift. If the Legislature did approve a new tax regime that properly assessed electrics for their use of the roads and highways, I believe the governor would veto it.

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Phil Phones It In

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For weeks, Gov. Phil Scott has been asking legislative leadership to “come to the table” and reach common ground on the school funding situation. On Wednesday, they came to the table — and the governor was nowhere to be found. He stiffed ’em.

He stiffed ’em physically by not showing up, and he stiffed ’em intellectually by presenting yet another half-baked, fiscally irresponsible “plan” for buying down property tax rates.

To me, his no-show proves that he didn’t want a deal that might be politically difficult. He’d prefer that the Legislature override his veto of the Yield Bill so he can use it as a campaign issue in hopes of eroding the Dem/Prog supermajorities.

Look, if he wanted a deal, he would have been there. If there was going to be a serious effort at compromise, he would have had to be there. His officials couldn’t have conducted meaningful negotiations in his absence.

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Mr. Milne’s Recycling Bin

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Scott Milne tried to make up for his two previous statewide campaigns, which were remarkably issue-free, by releasing a lavishly illustrated and ridiculously detailed 60-point policy agenda this week.

His Tuesday announcement got lost in what turned out to be a very big news day, including Dr. Anthony Fauci’s guest appearance at Gov. Phil Scott’s Covid-19 briefing and Scott’s veto of the Global Warming Solutions Act.

I felt a little sorry for Milne at the time. But having taken a dip in his mile-wide-but-inch-deep policy pool, I decided it’s probably better for him that this stale batch of recycled ideas didn’t attract much notice. The package is dominated by conventional Republican tropes, failed Scott administration proposals, and plenty of filler to make the agenda seem more impressive than it is. You’d think a guy who’s reinvented himself as an edgy cryptocurrency investor would have some fresh ideas to contribute.

What’s even worse is that Milne completely fails to address some of our most critical challenges. There’s nothing about our raging opioid crisis, not a mention of racism, justice, policing or corrections, and barely a nod to climate change.

Since Milne’s document is searchable, we can quantify that. “Opiates” and “racism” are nowhere to be found. The word “climate” occurs precisely once in the 33-page document. And that’s a reference to Vermont’s economic climate.

After the jump: YOU get a tax incentive! And YOU get a tax incentive! EVERYBODY gets a tax incentive!!!

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