Tag Archives: Phil Scott

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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If You’ve Stuck Your Head Up Your Fundament, Keep On Pushing Until You See Daylight

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This past weekend, former Vermont Republican Party Executive Director and Ashley’s husband Jeff Bartley posted a lengthy thread on Twitter about what’s wrong with the party and how to try to fix it. The thread was thoughtful and substantive. And there’s not a chance in hell that the VTGOP will pay him any heed. Instead, the party is doubling down on the strategery that landed it in the political wilderness.

I can tell because at its most recent meeting, the party’s state committee doubled down on election denialism. It appointed a special subcommittee to investigate Vermont’s “election operations, procedures and integrity.”

(This from the Vermont Daily Chronicle because no mainstream media outlet bothers to cover state party meetings anymore.)

That’s right, having failed to get anywhere with its much-touted (and still extant) Excess Ballot Reporting Form, the VTGOP is broadening its search to include every potential source of funny business in the desperate hope of finding any. Because the alternative is to actually admit that it’s losing elections because its policies are deeply unpopular.

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With Plenty of Misrepresentation and Condescension, Plus Some Astonishingly Retrograde Comments, the Vermont Senate Again Refused to Extend the Motel Voucher Program

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In the above photo, Sen. Bobby Starr is expounding on the moral failings of the “able-bodied” poor lazing around in taxpayer-funded motel rooms while his colleagues try to conceal their discomfort. It was just one of many dispiriting passages in Friday afternoon’s meeting of the Senate Appropriations Committee, in which the panel briefly took up and immediately dismissed one last effort to extend the motel voucher program (the one that currently provides shelter to 80% of Vermont’s homeless) beyond the end of June.

Well. Now that I’ve dropped you directly in the middle of the story, let’s go back and set the stage. After the full Senate on Thursday gave preliminary approval to an FY2024 budget that would end the voucher program on schedule, two first-term solons — Nader Hashim and Tanya Vyhovsky — did something very unusual for a pair of rookies in the seniority-heavy upper chamber: They tested the patience of their superiors by submitting a last-minute amendment that would have dedicated another $20 million to the voucher program. (It would have also defunded the detestable remote worker grant program, but that was just a bonus.)

The figure was based on conversations with housing advocates, who believe it’s the minimum amount required to prevent a large-scale unsheltering of voucher recipients. But multiple members of the committee, including chair Jane Kitchel, dismissed the number as inadequate. Kitchel said the $20 million would run out by year’s end, meaning the program would require a midyear injection of funds. She refused to engage in what she called “deficit” budgeting.

Hashim, who presented the amendment to the committee, didn’t have the information needed to counter Kitchel’s assertion, and no one else was given a chance to testify. Committee members also claimed that spending more on vouchers would mean fewer dollars for permanent housing, as if it was impossible to shift money from elsewhere in the budget or even — horrors! — raise revenue to cover the cost. So you see, they said with a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders, they had no choice but to end the voucher program.

I could go on, and I will, but let’s get back to Bobby Starr. You won’t want to miss this.

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When the Sun Expires and the Earth Is a Cold, Dead Place, Only Cockroaches and Vermont’s Remote Worker Incentive Program Will Survive

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Now comes VTDigger to ask a question with only one reasonable answer: “Amid a housing crisis, will Vermont keep paying people to move here?”

Sadly, the reasonable answer — “No” — is not the real life answer — “Of course we will.”

Yep, our Wise Political Heads may be prepared to kick our homeless where the sun don’t shine, but they seem bound and determined to continue the remote worker incentive program. You know, the one that reimburses people to move to Vermont? Meaning it helps people with enough resources to pay their moving expenses up front and wait for the incentive payment to arrive? The program with absolutely no objective evidence to support its premise?

This thing got started in 2018, before the pandemic and before the related in-migration of the affluent helped create a desperation-level housing shortage. It was the brainchild of our incentive-lovin’ Governor Phil Scott, but legislative Democrats glommed onto it like a lamprey that’s found a nice fat fish. And they’re still firmly attached; the current FY24 budget, going before the full Senate today, would provide $1 million in incentives for people who can afford to buy homes in our overpriced, undersupplied housing market.

These are the same lawmakers who routinely delay and defer and defeat good ideas over a supposed lack of evidence. A lack repeatedly and thoroughly documented by Our Inconvenient Auditor Doug Hoffer, who has looked and looked and found no evidence that the program has any tangible impact.

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…And It Begins

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Even as the Legislature moves forward with a budget that will end the motel voucher program this spring, local people are preparing to deal with the consequences. One little piece of that is covered in the new issue of The Bridge, Montpelier’s twice-monthly paper, in a front page story entitled “Local Orgs Prep for 30% Increase in Homeless Population.” (The above photo accompanies the online version of the story.)

The story outlines the frantic preparation efforts involving municipal officials and local nonprofits. It’s pretty damn daunting stuff, and I’m sure a parallel version could be written in any one of Vermont’s cities and larger towns — well, those blessed with an active media presence, anyway.

Short version: Local shelters are full, and the end of the voucher program will increase the area’s unhoused population by an estimated 30%. Two nonprofits that provide shelter and assistance, Good Samaritan Haven and Another Way, are trying to raise $20,000 to pay for camping supplies, food, medical supplies, and other basics.

Yeah, “camping supplies.” We’re giving tents to our unhoused and sending them out to fend for themselves.

The city of Montpelier allocated $425,000 in its current budget for addressing homelessness. That money is likely to run out. The city may open another shelter in its Barre Street Recreation Center, but would have to bear the cost of preparations (the building has issues with lead, asbestos, and lack of accessibility). and would need someone to operate it. Good Samaritan says it doesn’t have the capacity to do so.

These are small-bore examples of what I’ve said before: The costs resulting from ending the voucher program will exceed the cost of extending it. But the state won’t have to pay, at least not directly, so the budget writers can pretend these consequences don’t exist. At least for now.

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