Tag Archives: Phil Scott

Hey, Here’s an Idea: Let’s Attack Phil Scott and Then Ask Him to Save Our Bacon

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Well, in case you were wondering where Vermont Democrats’ heads were at regarding the unsheltering of thousands of Vermonters, now we know: Still firmly lodged up a windowless orifice. Instead of trying to resolve a humanitarian crisis of their own creation, not to mention heal a divide in their beloved legislative caucus, they’ve been trying to find a way to deflect the blame onto the governor. While, at the same time, begging him to solve a huge political problem for them.

Right.

Admittedly I’m somewhat burying the lead, because the most impactful thing is that Democratic leadership remains bound and determined to end the motel voucher program even though it currently provides shelter for 80% of Vermont’s unhoused.

This is [checks notes] the party of compassion, right? The party that fights for the metaphorical Little Guy? Yeah, gee, I wonder what the hell happened to that party.

That’s the real lead — the Vermont Democratic Party has lost its way — but the thing that grates on my nerves as a Vermont Political Observer is how profoundly stupid the politics of this maneuver are.

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Dignity: A Modest Proposal

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. conceived of the Poor People’s Campaign as a way to bring the voices of the poor to Washington. D.C. It was one of those radical ideas conveniently memory-holed by conservatives in their annual one-day co-opting of Dr. King, but it was central to his efforts to bring a measure of economic justice to America. He never got there in person, thanks to an assassin’s bullet.

The debate over extending Vermont’s motel voucher program has made it clear we need a Poor People’s Campaign right here in Vermont, because it’s obvious that the voices of the poor need to be heard as loudly as any other in the halls of the Statehouse.

Well, to be fully accurate, one part of the debate has made that clear. It’s the part provided by Brenda Siegel, who’s been bringing the stories of voucher clients to our attention and, in so doing, forcing The Comfortable to feel a wee bit less comfy.

So, modest proposal: A lobbying organization which, for placeholder purposes, I’m calling “Dignity.” Anyone who does the actual work gets to take as little or as much of this idea as they want.

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You Know, It Was a Pretty Great Session Except For That One Horrible Thing.

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In fairness to legislative Democrats, at least for a moment, they did accomplish quite a lot this session. They went much farther than they have before in standing up to Gov. Phil Scott and daring him to [obligatory journalism phrase] wield his veto pen over and over again. In that sense, they lived up to the promise made to voters that, if given a bigger supermajority, they would enact a progressive agenda over the governor’s objections.

Too bad they pulled up short on the most urgent humanitarian imperative of 2023. And too bad that their many legitimate accomplishments will be overshadowed by their willingness to unshelter some 2,500 Vermonters.

It’s as though they got a custom-tailored tuxedo and got all spiffed up and then, just as they were heading out the door, they shit their pants.

And then went to the prom anyway, thinking that no one would notice the stink and the stain.

But wait, this post was supposed to be “in fairness to legislative Democrats.” Okay, then. Let’s look at what they accomplished.

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Objects In Mirror May Be Larger, Or Smaller, Than They Appear

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Speaking in purely political terms, last night’s House vote on the FY2024 budget was a truly remarkable thing. The Democratic majority lost a stunning 17 votes from its own Dem/Progressive caucus and came ten votes short of the two-thirds margin needed to override a likely gubernatorial veto.

Those 17 objected to the budget’s lack of funding for the motel voucher program that currently shelters 80% of Vermont’s homeless, and they stood firm under what I’m sure was heavy pressure from caucus leadership. It’s especially noteworthy that so many of the dissidents were new to the Golden Dome. Eight of the 17 are in their first term in office. They’ve only just entered the kingdom and now they’ve pissed off the royal guard.

Breaking down the tally, 90 voted yes, 53 no, six were absent, and the House Speaker doesn’t vote unless needed. Four of the six absentees were Democrats likely to support the caucus (Brownell, Masland, O’Brien, Pearl), and two were Republicans almost certain to vote “No” (Graham, Wilson). That brings us to a hypothetical count of 94 in favor and 55 against, with Krowinski waiting in the wings. If my math is correct, the majority would have to swing five votes to win an override (with Krowinski casting the 100th vote). That’s assuming every single representative is present and voting and that no vacancies will have occurred in the House between now and the override session in late June.

The outcome of the vote means that caucus leadership will either have to negotiate with the dissidents on a budget amendment or convince at least five to rejoin the Dark Side.

That’s the good news, and it’s far from inconsequential. The bad news? More than 800 households will be evicted from their motel rooms at the end of this month. Nothing can change that now, barring a divine or gubernatorial intervention. Phase One of a preventable humanitarian crisis is definitely going to happen.

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This Is Not the End (UPDATED)

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The House and Senate steamed ahead with their motel voucher-free budget, but they fell critically short at the very last hurdle. Thanks to a group of Democrats and Progressives unwilling to evict thousands of Vermonters because “it’s time” or “we just couldn’t find the money,” the House came short of the margin needed to override a gubernatorial veto.

The final tally: 90 votes for the budget, 53 against. House leadership will have to persuade at least three members to abandon their principled stand in order to win an override vote. And Gov. Phil Scott appears bound and determined to deliver a veto.

Update! The official roll call shows that 17 Democratic/Progressive lawmakers voted “No” on the budget. That means leadership will have to flip at least six votes to override a veto, not three. Working on a fresh post about this.

So what happens now? The Legislature is adjourned until June 20, when a three-day override session is scheduled. If Scott does veto the budget, leadership will face a choice: Convince three or more dissidents to join the Dark Side, or craft a compromise on housing that will meet their demands. Looming ahead of it all: The requirement that the state must have a budget in place when the new fiscal year begins on July 1.

One big fly in the ointment: Nearly half of the 1,800 households in the motel voucher program will have already been evicted by then. The program’s eligibility standards tighten at the end of this month, so a last-ditch fight to save the program will come too late for more than 1,000 people facing unsheltered homelessness in less than three weeks.

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Dear Democrats: Congrats on Your Quick Dispatch of the S.5 Veto. Now, Could You Spare a Nickel of Your Political Capital for the Homeless?

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This was the happy scene yesterday as Senate Appropriations Committee chair Jane Kitchel peremptorily ended discussion on the housing portion of the FY2024 budget, which makes no provision for extending the motel voucher program that currently shelters 80% of Vermont’s unhoused. Kitchel herself seems excited; the rest of them look like they’d rather be anywhere else.

This morning saw a much more celebratory occasion, as the House quickly dispatched Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of S.5, the Affordable Heat Act. And much as I hate to rain on the majority Democrats’ victory parade, I have to wonder why they couldn’t spare just a tiny bit of their abundant political capital to avoid the imminently avoidable humanitarian crisis that will unfold if the voucher program ends on schedule.

The 107-42 override vote in the House was an impressive display of political power. The Democrats easily walked over a governor who, at last check, enjoyed a 78% approval rating among the voters.

And yet, on the voucher issue, legislative Democrats made common cause with the Scott administration and threw 1,800 of our most vulnerable households under the bus. It’s a point of comparison that cannot be ignored.

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The Empire Strikes Back

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Apologies for the mixed metaphors, but I’m so mad I can’t write straight.

The House-Senate budget conference committee has yet again refused to extend the motel voucher program that’s currently sheltering 80% of Vermont’s unhoused. In so doing, they ignored the pleadings of a small group of determined small- and capital-P progressives who say they won’t vote to override a gubernatorial veto of any budget that fails to address our crisis of homelessness.

And in so doing, they worked hand-in-glove with the Scott administration. I can say so because conference committee member and, God help us all, chair of the House Human Services Committee, Theresa Wood, said so: “This has been a collaborative process with the Agency of Human Services and the governor’s office.”

Great. No collaboration with housing advocates, then? No contact with the lawmakers threatening to withhold support for a budget plan that manages to combine the cruelty of Ebenezer Scrooge with the unctuousness of Uriah Heep? Nope, they confined themselves to working with an administration that has been adamant about its intent to kill the voucher program and damn the consequences.

And at almost the precise moment when this “collaborative process” came to fruition in the discussion-free approval of the new housing budget, I got a fundraising text from Vermont Democratic Party chair David Glidden urging me to support their fight against “Phil Scott and extremist Republicans [who] ae determined to sabotage us at every turn.”

Well, at every turn except when the Democrats eagerly collaborate with “Phil Scott and extremist Republicans.” If I harbored any notion of opening up my wallet to the VDP, it vanished instantly. I hope anyone else who was thinking about a donation will instead make a gift to their local homeless shelter. Fuck the Democrats.

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Phil Scott Wants to Have His Cake and Veto It Too

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Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of the Affordable Heat Act followed a familiar pattern for the most veto-happy governor in Vermont history. Rather than taking a conservative stance on policy, he focused on a flimsy process-oriented argument. It’s a tactic that allows him to claim the mantle of moderation even as he makes himself an obstacle to progressive ideas.

Just ask him, he’ll tell you he’s all for fighting climate change — but not this way.

The problem is, if we restricted ourselves to climate policies with the Phil Scott Seal of Approval, we’d miss our legally mandated targets for emissions reduc —

— oh wait, we are missing our legally mandated targets for emissions reductions!

Less than a week ago, Scott’s own Agency of Natural Resources issued its latest report and forecast on greenhouse gas emissions, which “predicts that Vermont will get halfway to its 2025 requirements and slightly less than halfway to its 2030 requirements.”

But that’s no big deal for an administration that thinks it’d be just fine to miss the 2025 and 2030 requirements as long as we hit the big one in 2050. ANR Secretary Julie Moore has said so herself. And the governor has expressed the same sentiment.

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Hand-Wringing at House General

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Now that we’re within shouting distance of adjournment, it is belatedly dawning on the Legislature that something terrible is about to happen. After months of studiously avoiding the implications of ending the motel voucher program this summer, many lawmakers have awakened as if from a deep slumber, looked around, and realized that the state is about to evict more than 2,000 people in one fell swoop. Well, two fell swoops, one at the end of May and the other at the end of June.

This afternoon, the House General & Housing Committee devoted an entire hour to some heartfelt wailing and gnashing of teeth. (The second hour of this two-hour hearing archived on YouTube.) Members got a statistical breakdown of the situation from Scott administration officials (downloadable from the committee’s “Documents” list) and then spent some time making statements like “This is awful. Isn’t there something we can do?”

It was not an inspiring performance. This committee has been involved in discussions about emergency housing and the voucher program. Two of its members helped devise a budget item that sunsetted the voucher program, and that item was then presented to the entire committee. There was testimony from people in the housing advocacy community who made clear the direness of the situation and who presented well-crafted, doable solutions. Members seemed to have absorbed little to nothing of those presentations.

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Whoops, the Governor Let the Cat Out of the Bag

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Wow, for a minute there I thought our looming homelessness crisis had been averted. It sounded like Gov. Phil Scott had swooped in to make the big save.

At his weekly press conference on Wednesday, the governor said the following:

At a time when Vermont has historic surpluses, we’re going to have $200 million probably at the end of this fiscal year in surplus, it’s hard to communicate to Vermonters as to why we’re…

I know what’s coming next! It’s clear as day: It sure is “hard to communicate” as to why we’re fixing to throw two thousand-plus Vermonters out on the street by ending the motel voucher program when we are, in fact, swimming in loot!

I mean, obviously the governor is about to announce that we can afford a temporary voucher extension at the same time we invest in permanent housing solutions.

Right?

Nope.

Here’s the full sentence.

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