Joe McDonald:

SHUMLIN ADMINISTRATION HITS WORKFORCE ONE MORE TIME

The Shumlin administration presented the Senate a short menu of options for cutting an additional $8 million in state spending for fiscal year 2016.

Gov. Peter Shumlin was displeased with a tax proposal that caps certain income tax deductions and extends the sales tax to bottled water, candy and soda.

He reportedly chided senators for not cutting enough from the budget Wednesday night.
To accommodate the governor, the Senate delayed debate on the budget Thursday morning. Later in the day, the Senate passed on a vote of 23 to 6.

Chief among them is a proposed $2.87 million cut to personnel. Details about how the savings would be achieved were not presented and senators were skeptical about whether they could count on the reductions since the Shumlin administration has already struggled to find $10.8 million in workforce cuts.

Steve Howard, executive director of the Vermont State Employees’ Association, said Thursday that the union considers Secretary of the Administration Justin Johnson’s statement to lawmakers last week that the labor cut will result in 50 or fewer layoffs a commitment.Jim Reardon, commissioner of finance, told committee members that by a rough estimate, that amount would equal three-dozen positions.

“And while 50 positions is too many, we believe they should be held to that agreement,” Howard said.

However, some committee members backed up the administration’s position that legislators needed to make further reductions to the budget.

“If we need to cut another $10 million from the budget we need to cut real programs,” Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, said. “Time to do away with working lands, time to do away with libraries, time to do away with you-name-the-program that isn’t core to the central function of government.”

The only reduction Sen. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, chair of Senate Appropriations, was willing to immediately support was a cut to additional payments for extraordinary pharmaceutical benefits worth $1.3 million, which she said was “an easy save.”

According to Reardon, the administration expects that the federal government will require the change in payment methods soon.

Other proposals include:
• Using $2 million in RGGI money for low income weatherization, which would reduce the amount available for middle income weatherization by $2 million;
• $500,000 from aligning Medicaid readmission rates with Medicare;
• $250,000 from the Community High School of Vermont;
• $300,000 from Working Lands, eliminating grants going forward.

“TWO OUT OF THREE AIN’T BAD”

After the morning’s delay, the Senate handed the big bill preliminary support in the afternoon with a vote of 23 to 6.

The budget, which totals $1.47 billion for the General Fund and represents a 3.9 percent increase over last year’s spending level, will be back on the floor Friday for a final vote.

There will likely be an amendment with language that will allow lawmakers to make additional cuts when the bill goes to conference committee. Shumlin administration officials are expected to meet with budget-writers at 8:30 a.m.

On the floor of the Senate Thursday, Sen. John Campbell, D-Windsor, president pro tempore, made an impassioned plea to lawmakers who were skeptical about whether the appropriations committee had cut enough from state government.

He said the budget process had been open and inclusive. Members of the Senate and the public had been given ample opportunity to make suggestions for cuts, and he challenged lawmakers who didn’t support the budget to come up with alternatives.

Campbell suggested that at this point cutting services to organizations like Prevent Child Abuse Vermont, the Low Income Heating Assistance Program and supports for the elderly were the only options left. And those choices, to his mind are unacceptable.

The Senate budget, he said, is $47 million less than what Gov. Peter Shumlin proposed and raises $55 million less in revenues. (Shumlin pitched a $90 million payroll tax for health care programs that has been roundly rejected by lawmakers.)

“We have cut to the marrow,” Campbell said.

Republicans bristled at Campbell’s speech.

“We all have our reasons for voting for or against this bill, but none of us should take heat from any of the rest of use for voting the way that we do,” Sen. Peg Flory, R-Rutland, said in response to Campbell.

Kitchel defused the tension with a line from a Meat Loaf song she’s been using to come to grips with the realities of this year’s difficult budget process.

The song? “Two out of three ain’t bad.”

She summed up the budget with a line from the 1977 lyric: “I want you, I need you, but there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you.”

“Everybody has something they want from state government,” Kitchel said. “And they need it.”

But there ain’t no way, she said, they’re going to say I’m really going to love you.

People hate the cuts, they are furious about taxes, but all the changes are necessary, Kitchel said.

Two out of three ain’t bad, she said.