Tag Archives: House Human Services Committee

The Slow-Motion Train Wreck of Act 143 Continues Apace

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Our sadly diminished news media is all but ignoring the fact that (1) a humanitarian crisis and (2) a deeply consequential dispute between the Scott administration and the Legislature are both happening in the closing weeks of an election campaign. It’s been several weeks since this thing has gotten any coverage at all.

At issue is the administration’s implementation of Act 143, the bill designed to reform Vermont’s emergency housing system — making it more responsive to the needs of clients and less dependent on hotel/motel rooms. According to one of Act 143’s primary authors, House Human Services Committee chair Theresa Wood, the bill allowed a full year for implementation of a new system. Instead, the administration rushed it through and launched it on September 1. The result? Predictable chaos.

Last Friday, the two policy committees that shepherded Act 143 through the process (House Human Services, Senate Health & Welfare) held a joint hearing on the law’s implementation. (The video of the hearing can be viewed here.) The proceedings were dispiriting, to say the least. Witness after witness testified to the costs of a rushed implementation: new burdens on already overtaxed providers, local governments, and the health care system, massive confusion, bureaucratic waste, and an increase in unsheltered homelessness.

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

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Scott Administration Policy on Sheltering the Homeless Hits a New Low

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The battle over Act 143 has taken place largely out of the public eye, due in large part to our media’s failure to cover a highly consequential dispute between the Scott administration and the Legislature. But it’s about to boil over in ways that should be unignorable by our Wise Heads in editorial offices.

That’s partly because two different legislative hearings on Act 143 implementation will be held in the next ten days. It’s also because the effects of administration policy are coming into focus, and they are truly disastrous. It is, in the words of a blogpost by the ACLU of Vermont, a “Crisis By Design.”

Or in the words of housing advocate Brenda Siegel, we are on a path toward “catastrophic outcomes like we never have before.” For those in the back thinking to themselves, “But isn’t Brenda Siegel a nagging bitch?” my response is, “Sure, and that’s what makes her so effective as an advocate for an unpopular cause.” She has served, very effectively, as the conscience of Vermont on an issue that Our Political Betters would prefer to ignore.

Siegel also calls the current situation “the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” and she has seen more bad shit in her years as a housing advocate than any of us should have to endure in a lifetime. Her words deserve to be taken seriously by all Vermonters with a soul. Which may or may not include Mr. Phil Scott.

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Scott to Drowning Man: “A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats”

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When pondering a title for this post, I was tempted to borrow one of the most famous headlines ever written: the New York Daily News’ encapsulation of then-president Gerald Ford’s refusal to consider a federal bailout for New York City, which was then at risk of bankruptcy. But this post is about Vermont’s homelessness crisis and people are literally dying for lack of shelter, so I chose a slightly less on-the-nose title than “Scott to Homeless: Drop Dead.”

The point remains. People are going without shelter, people are dying, people are suffering, and Gov. Phil Scott doesn’t care. At least he doesn’t care enough to actually do anything about it. After setting up two Potemkin village “family shelters” capable of housing 17 whole families, the Scott administration has done nothing further to increase shelter capacity or give aid to the helping agencies that are doing their absolute best to keep people from freezing.

The governor has had time to put together significant new proposals on the public education system and on housing, which is to his credit, but there has been no similar effort for the homeless.

Meanwhile, we’re in the middle of another cold snap with nighttime temperatures well below freezing and daytime temps being frigid enough to pose a danger to human life.

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So Why Isn’t “Lived Experience” Part of Every Legislative Process?

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The House Human Services Committee did it again Friday. They went and injected the experiences of homeless Vermonters into the normally dispassionate exercise of lawmaking. The results were, as usual, breathtaking, heartbreaking, and disruptive.

Which begs the question, why is this such an unusual event in the halls of government? Why do we rarely hear from those directly impacted by policy decisions made on high? Modest Proposal: Require every policy committee to hear “lived experience” testimony, especially those that deal with our tattered, inadequate, often cruel, social safety net. (Credit to End Homelessness Now, which has helped these folks remain housed and enabled their testimony in the Statehouse.)

Hey, maybe even we could establish “lived experience” advisory committees for the Agency of Human Services (including the Department of Corrections, you betcha). Not now, of course; it’ll have to wait until sometime after Phil Scott’s disembodied head in a jar loses its bid for a twenty-seventh term in office.

Those pesky “lived experiences” do inject a sometimes brutal dose of reality into the proceedings, making it more difficult to justify byzantine social service policies that are seemingly designed to punish participants and limit demand more than to actually address a real, tangible need.

Then again, they also display the indomitability of the human spirit, the intelligence and resourcefulness of those who live their lives on the edge. Giving them a seat at the table wouldn’t be an act of pity; it would be taking advantage of an underutilized resource.

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Shock, Dismay Over Completely Predictable Consequence

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Well, it’s looking like the Legislature’s plan for extending the emergency housing program is in danger of falling apart for reasons that were pretty obvious from jump. As I put it at the time, “I’ll be pleasantly surprised if this thing actually works.”

As Carly Berlin, Designated Homelessness Correspondent for both Vermont Public and VTDigger, reports, motel owners are balking at a proposed $75 or $80 per night cap on GA housing vouchers. The former figure is in the House plan; the latter is in the version passed last week by the Senate.

As a reminder, the current average nightly voucher is $132 per night. And that figure was achieved after months and months of bargaining by the state, which was directed by the Legislature to negotiate lower rates for vouchers.

And hey, extra bonus fail points: The new cap would take effect on March 1 — a mere 15 days from now.

That bit hadn’t been reported before. Top marks to Ms. Berlin for catching it.

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The Striking House/Senate Divide on Homelessness Policy

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You don’t need to know the details of what’s going on in the House and Senate to realize how different the two chambers are when it comes to providing for the homeless and creating a better social safety net. All you have to know is that last week, when the House was addressing how to fix the system, they called on expert advocates Anne Sosin (seen above) and Brenda Siegel. And when the Senate Appropriations Committee was trying to fine-tune the current program, it called on two Scott administration officials directly involved in the policy failures of the last several years.

Siegel had submitted written testimony (downloadable here) to Senate Appropriations and was present in person at the Friday hearing, and yet the committee didn’t invite her to speak. They depended instead on the architects of doom: Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner of the Department of Children and Families’ Economic Services Division, and Shayla Livingston, policy director for the Agency of Human Services.

Appropriations wrapped up its disgraceful week with a brief hearing on Friday morning, in which it quickly finalized the details of a half-assed emergency housing plan and sent it on to the full Senate, which rubber-stamped it within a half hour.

The short version of the House/Senate divide: The House is trying to build a robust bridge to a comprehensive system to help the unhoused. The Senate is patching and filling the current system with an eye more on the bottom line than the human need.

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Senate Committee Votes to Unshelter 1,600 Vermonters for Obscure and Arguably Bogus Process Reasons

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One of the necessary quirks of the legislative process is that almost every bill passed by a policy committee must also go through one or more “money committee” — if a bill raises revenue, it goes to House Ways & Means and Senate Finance, and if it spends a damn dime it goes through House and Senate Appropriations. If a bill both raises and spends, it must be passed by all four.

There are good reasons for this. The money committees look at the entire landscape of government spending and taxation and make sure everything fits together. They are fiscal gatekeepers, in essence.

However… these committees can also derail a good piece of legislation without serious consideration of the rationale behind it. And that’s exactly what happened yesterday afternoon in the Senate Appropriations Committee. The potential consequence is a mass unsheltering event in mid-March affecting roughly 1,600 individuals, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities.

Not that anybody noticed, because there were apparently zero reporters present. It was the latest in a series of failures by our ever-shrinking media ecosystem. But hey, let’s get on with the story.

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Further Adventures in Performative Budgeting

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Following his boffo turn unveiling the Scott administration’s short-term plan for dealing with homelessness, Commissioner Chris Winters was back before the House Human Services Committee today to go over the FY2025 budget for his Department of Children and Families. The biggest area of concern: the administration’s plan for dealing with Vermont’s homelessness crisis.

Which, as usual, was a sad exercise in prioritizing cost over humanity. And after Winters was done, committee chair Theresa Wood let him have it. “I’m trying to figure out how to be polite,” she began. “We recognize that money is not unlimited, but we think it’s not responsible for us to consider implementing what you proposed. I think that’s exactly what you expected to hear form us.”

Wow. By budget hearing standards, that’s a big ol’ slap in the puss. And I’m pretty much certain that Winters was, indeed, expecting to get exactly that sort of response. By extension it seems likely that Winters himself doesn’t think much of this budget, but he’s a member of the Scott administration and he has to act within its parameters. “I know you receive instructions from the fifth floor,” Wood told Winters, using the customary shorthand for Scott’s office on the top floor of the Pavilion Building.

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Blows Against the Umpire

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It’s been a bad month for “print” media between the abrupt shutdown of Sports Illustrated, the purchase of the Baltimore Sun by a right-wing rich guy, mass layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, and the assimilation of music review site Pitchfork by GQ. There are signs that the already parlous state of journalism in America is about to get a whole lot worse.

Here in Vermont, we are relatively blessed on that front. We have robust nonprofits like VTDigger and Vermont Public and a reduced but still energetic Seven Days, plus a number of daily and weekly newspapers that are battling to produce meaningful reportage on a shoestring. A lot of energetic, smart people are doing their best to keep us informed.

But over the past couple of weeks, our media have repeatedly failed us. I feel compelled to point this out because the worse they do, the less informed we are. In the words of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

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A Bit of Tobacco Skulduggery is Afoot in House Human Services

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Don’t look now, but S.18, the bill to ban flavored tobacco and tobacco substitutes is in line for a substantial haircut in the House Human Services Committee.

The bill passed the Senate last spring and was sent to House Human Services, which has heard from numerous witnesses this month on the subject — including, as noted in this space, a batch of out-of-state lobbyists presenting an array of, shall we say, creative arguments against the ban.

It didn’t seem like their testimony would have much effect — but clearly, something has gotten to the committee, because it is now considering an amendment, posted publicly today/Wednesday (downloadable here), that would remove menthol cigarettes from the ban on what seem to be specious equity grounds. The rest of the ban would remain intact, but the subject of menthol smokes would be referred for, Lord help us all, a study to be submitted by next January.

The amendment cites the fact that that use of menthol cigarettes is more common among smokers of color than white smokers and more common among LGBTQ+ smokers than their straight counterparts, and that “there are differing views” on whether a ban “would be racist or would discriminate against persons of color and members of other marginalized communities.”

I don’t know where this thing comes from. The committee has heard from multiple persons of color plus a leading LGBTQ+ organization in favor of S.18, and absolutely none from those marginalized communities who raised equity issues or opposed the ban.

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