The time has come where we’re nearing the end of the legislative session and work needs to be completed on bills if they have any chance of being enacted in this session. For the House, this includes many Senate bills now under consideration. These include bills for taxing and regulating recreational cannabis sales (S.54), increasing the minimum wage (S.23), requiring a 24-hour waiting period for handgun sales (S.169), and raising the age for buying tobacco products to 21 (S.86). House bills waiting for similar action in the Senate include broadband development, taxing e-cigarettes, increasing weatherization assistance, increasing child care assistance, and paid family leave, not to mention the major money bills for capital spending, fees, transportation and the budget. Bills that were not passed before crossover (March 15th) can have a second chance if their provisions are added to a bill that was passed by the other body and deals with the same topic.
The Word in the House 4/25/2019 - Legislative Timeline Is Getting Short
The cannabis tax-and-regulate bill is now assigned to the House Government Operations Committee. Recently, Governor Scott stated that he would not sign the bill if it didn’t allow for roadside saliva sampling for THC levels. The Senate did not include such testing because of the concerns that the results do not conclusively indicate impairment and because saliva testing impacts privacy. The House Judiciary Committee has been asked to review the appropriateness of including saliva testing before Gov Ops bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
The imposition of a 24-hour waiting period for handgun sales is also in House Judiciary. About half of suicides are by gun and result in fatality 90% of the time compared to other methods. Failed suicides by other means allow a victim to get counseling and treatment. A 24-hour delay can short-circuit an impulsive act that is irreversible. This bill passed the Senate as a compromise from the first draft requiring a 72-hour waiting period. Concerns about how a longer waiting period would impact gun shows led to the compromise since gun shows are usually held on weekends. One possible amendment being considered is to include long guns (rifles) in the waiting period.
Raising the age to purchase tobacco products to 21 has been passed by the House in previous years only to die in the Senate. This year the Senate passed a Tobacco-21 bill and sent it to the House. A lot of progress has been made over the years in reducing smoking, especially among our youth. However, with the advent of vaping, addiction to nicotine is on the rise not only in high school but even in middle school. Raising the age for tobacco products would also apply to e-cigarettes and accessories. There is a long list of supporters of this bill, including the leadership of the Vermont National Guard, and the bill is likely to pass on a floor vote.
The House Energy and Technology Committee has possession of Senate bill S.95 which will allow municipal electric utilities like Washington Electric Co-op or the Stowe Town Electric Department to borrow amounts up to 50% of their assets without requiring a vote of their members. This provides our committee an opportunity to add language that will increase the allowable net metering capacity for school districts that have merged from 500 kW to 1,000 kW. This will provide merged school districts the ability to offset a greater amount of their electrical needs with renewable energy while saving taxpayers money.
And a quick note on the weatherization bill that would raise heating fuel prices by 2 cents per gallon. The Senate considers the fuel tax increase too onerous and is considering raising money for low-income weatherization another way. Meanwhile, fuel oil prices went up 5 cents per gallon in the past month, two and a half times the fuel tax increase, and Vermonters are not getting any additional benefit from it. Did anyone notice? Just sayin’.
The Word in the House 4/11/2019 - Paid Family Leave Supports Working Families
The need of parents to bond with a newborn, or a son or
daughter to tend to an ill elderly parent, or any number of similar situations can
have an impact on a person’s ability to stay on the job. These situations not only impact our
work-life balance but can also cause significant financial impacts as
well. Providing Vermonters with the
ability to take time to care for themselves and their loved ones will support
people when they need it most and build a foundation for future generations to
thrive.
The Federal Family Medical Leave Act ensures certain rights
for workers to take time off to care for family members when necessary but does
not provide for financial assistance to do so. However, there is a need in
today’s economy for such a benefit. A majority of Vermont businesses are small
and employ a significant percentage of the workforce. Yet these are the very
businesses that struggle to provide robust benefit packages to their employees
and struggle to retain the workers who leave to work for larger companies that
can. Vermont small businesses
overwhelmingly support the creation of a strong, universal family and medical
leave insurance program. Recognizing this, the Vermont House passed the Paid
Family Leave Insurance (PFLI) bill (H.107) last week on a 92 to 52 vote.
Governor Scott supported a PFLI program in partnership with
New Hampshire that would apply to state employees and to any employers that chose
to opt into the program. However, the legislature considered this option and
concluded that there were several drawbacks. First, a voluntary program would
not cover all employees unless their employers opted in. Second, fewer
participating individuals would mean higher premiums and higher risk. Third,
the wage replacement benefit of 60% would represent a substantial pay cut.
As passed H.107 is an insurance program that allows an
employee to take time off for an eligible reason without a significant loss of
income. A person is eligible for the benefit if
a) they earned wages during six
months of the last 12 months; and
b) they earned an amount equal to 1,040 hours
times the minimum wage.
The benefit would be 90% of an employee’s average
weekly wage up to $533 per week and 50% of the excess above that amount up to a
maximum of $1,334 per week. The leave duration would be up to 12 weeks for
parental bonding or up to 8 weeks of their own medical leave or family care
leave with no more than 12 weeks in a 12 month period.
The insurance premium would be a payroll deduction on wages
up to the Social Security maximum ($132,900 in 2019) at a rate of 0.10% of
wages for the first six months and 0.55% afterward. For a worker making minimum
wage, the premium would be about a penny an hour rising to 5 and a half cents
per hour after six months. For someone making $50,000 per year, the cost would
be $50 rising to $275 for the year. The employer has the option of paying none,
some, or all of the premium for the employee. The state will seek to contract
with an insurance carrier to run the program, which is similar to the
Governor’s proposal. Several insurance
carriers have expressed an interest in doing so. Companies that offer similar benefits that
are as good or better than the state program can opt out, and their employees
will not be subject to the premium withholding; or they can opt in and replace
their program with the state program. The bill now moves to the Senate for
review and possible amendment.
Legislative Report 4/3/2019 - Steps to Address Climate Change
This past week in the Vermont House saw several major bills
passed with significant floor debate. They included Broadband Deployment
(H.513), Childcare (H.531), Workforce Development (H.533), and the major money
bills including Transportation (H.529), Revenue (H.541), and the Budget (H.542)
plus a controversial Weatherization bill (H.439) that increases the Fuel Tax by
2 cents per gallon. After many weeks of
long hours and input from all the policy committees, the administration, and
individual legislators, the House Appropriations Committee presented a balanced
budget, which passed 139 to 1,
that is 2.6% higher than last year’s but less than the 3.1% increase proposed
by the Governor. These bills, now headed
to the Senate, are significant and deserve describing in more detail than this
article will allow. Instead I will focus
on elements of the budget that address climate change.
Three reports that were issued last year highlighted the
importance of addressing climate change during this session: the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on global
Warming, the Fourth National Climate Assessment released by the Trump
administration, and the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory Update.
The IPCC report noted that we are already seeing the effects of a 1
degree Celsius rise in global temperature and gave a dire warning that we have
to reduce global CO2 emissions 45% by 2030 to avoid a 1.5 degree increase which
would have catastrophic geologic and demographic results worldwide. The Vermont
DEC reported that Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased 16% over
1990 levels, mainly from transportation (43%) and heating (24%). We have a
global problem which will require global action, including Vermont’s, to solve.
The House
has taken a number of steps in this direction with the passage of the budget
and revenue bills. The budget includes $1.5M for an electric vehicle (EV)
incentive program, $300,000 for public charging stations, $500,000 for EVs and
charging stations for state government, $250,000 to Efficiency Vermont for
weatherization assistance for moderate income families, and $350,000 for weatherization
workforce training. While the budget
passed almost unanimously, The Weatherization bill with the fuel tax increase
was the most controversial.
We currently
pay 2 cents per gallon on heating oil, propane, and dyed diesel fuel and
0.75% on natural gas. The revenues fund the Weatherization Assistance Program for
families below 80% of median
family income to reduce the
amount of fuel needed to heat their homes. Combined with federal funds, the program
benefited 860 families in 2018. The need is much greater, however. Because of the understandable prioritization
to serve the lowest income families first, many eligible, low income Vermonters
are waiting years to be served while thermal energy continues to be wasted,
unnecessary amounts of fossil fuels are burned, and Vermonters continue to live
in cold, unhealthy and dangerous conditions. By increasing the tax from 2 cents
to 4 cents on liquid fuels and from 0.75% to 1% on natural gas, an additional
400 families can be assisted.
This tax increase was debated over two days with several
amendments offered. Opposition centered
on the additional cost to the low-income families it’s supposed to help as well
as the additional cost to farmers and loggers who use large amounts of dyed
diesel. One amendment was passed to exempt farmers and loggers not only from
the increase but also from the existing 2 cents per gallon. (The House earlier
also approved an exemption from the sales tax for logging equipment.) This
bill, which passed by voice vote, is beneficial for the following reasons:
1) The weatherization program, in existence from the
1970s, has been very successful in helping low income families reduce their
heating bills, live healthier, and reduce
greenhouse gas emissions.
2) The additional cost is minimal. A typical household using 750 gals of heating oil a year
will have an additional cost of $15 over the entire heating season.
3) The price of fuel oil varies ten times as much
during the heating season. This year my
deliveries ranged from $2.75/gallon to $3.00/gallon. A 2 cent increase adds only $2 more on a 100
gallon delivery which today costs $290.
4) The savings are huge. Weatherization typically
saves 29% of fuel use resulting in $500 to $600 savings per season and results in cumulative savings over time instead of cumulative wasted
fuel and money heating a leaky house. This
is money that stays in Vermont compared to 80% of fuel dollars which leave
Vermont.
5) It reduces dependence on LIHEAP and other fuel
assistance which lasts only for the season.
6) It creates more construction jobs in the
weatherization field.
I see this as a win for low-income families, a win for
the economy, and a win for the environment!
Addendum: While I normally don't link to other publications within articles I write, I want to link to this VTDigger column which speaks to the same topic for reasons you will find obvious.
Margolis: In the legislative arena, worthy goals can sometimes conflict
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