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State Representative
UPDATES
Rep Holcombe's
Floor Speech on Education Bill 4/11/2025
Governor's "Education Transformation" would cut half the people working in VT schools
The governor plans to veto the budget adjustment over $15 million of the total $8.7 billion budget (including dollars to keep 160 children housed through the winter),
House Kudos for Thetford Panthers
Panel presentation on the Carson v. Makin decisions as it relates to education in Vermont.
Dear all,
Our public education system faces an existential threat at the federal level. Meanwhile, Governor Scott's plan to "transform" education assumes we will eliminate half the people currently working in our Vermont schools.
I’ve been critical of Governor Scott’s leadership on education, but I believe it's important to give the governor his due. He recognizes the need for a new funding formula– one that is more targeted and less inflationary.
Correctly, he’s put his finger on a problem: we need to find ways to achieve more scale in the face of declining enrollment. What’s more, he’s acknowledged that we need to stop paying vouchers to out-of-state private schools– a practice that erodes affordability and quality here at home.
We can't be funding private schools in Europe and other states and then complain about property taxes. But the devil sure is in the details.
The governor’s proposed “education transformation” is unlikely to provide stability for our children, improve quality, or increase affordability. It does introduce unprecedented state disruption at a moment of unprecedented federal disruption,
including:
Eliminating half the people working in our public schools,
Moving decision-making, rule-making and oversight away from local, democratically-elected school boards and the state board of education and into his administration,
Requiring all districts to provide access to “schools of choice” for at least 10% of resident students,
Putting a select set of private “schools of choice” under the direct supervision of the Agency of Education– even paying them directly from the Agency,
Increasing reliance on high-cost, out-of-state consultants, rather than building durable state and local capacity for technical assistance and support.
Scott’s plan comes as a response to high property tax increases, but it hits familiar themes and doesn’t address the largest driver of increases: healthcare-related costs, which drove about $100 million of the increase in education spending last year.
Despite criticizing school boards for budgeted healthcare increases, the governor made no mention of his unbudgeted increase of $120 million in healthcare-related costs in the state budget– a gap the legislature is fixing in the Budget Adjustment Act. School boards worked hard to reduce spending this year, but school healthcare costs – like healthcare costs generally- are up again by double digits.
The governor’s team wouldn’t specify how hypothetical “savings” would be achieved. When the Joint Fiscal Office modelled the governor’s assumptions about staffing in a prototypical district, it found the governor's numbers assume DOGE-like elimination of about half the people currently working in our schools.
One hired consultant spoke about “starting from scratch” to create districts with at least 5 schools with 800 kids each. (We currently only have about ten public schools of that size in the state.) “Starting from scratch” is a fantasy.
The governor might as well be selling a vision of a settlement on Mars, without providing a rocket to get there, nor the resources to build the shelters we’ll need when we arrive.
Firing thousands of school employees and requiring expansion of vouchers is unlikely to drive performance gains and lower costs. Other states found these policies led to increased cost, reduced quality, and increased segregation.
This seems to be true in Vermont, as well.
In a recent commentary, the governor dismissed Vermonters with concerns as "fearful of any change from the status quo" and as representatives of "special interest groups, using talking points from national political playbooks." This name-calling is disappointing.
Those “special interests” include democratically-elected Vermont school board members. These boards demonstrated that they are serious about containing costs this year, despite healthcare increases.
With a handful of exceptions, communities supported their budgets. Vermonters urgently need Montpelier to mend our safety nets and tackle the cost of living.
Between spiking property values in some communities, a surge in the proportion of VT homes bought by investors, average healthcare market premiums that are amongst the highest in the nation, and high property taxes, too many are struggling.
Instead, the governor proposes to upend our state education system at a time of unprecedented federal instability. Vermont is very dependent on federal dollars. In 2022, federal funds accounted for a combined 43% of Vermont’s total revenues– well above the 50-state average of 36%.
Over half of Vermonters 0 to 17 years old are enrolled in Medicaid– a number that has grown over time. If federal funds are cut, what safety nets will we have in place?
We need careful planning, not a hacksaw. Moreover, who will provide the stable, competent hand that leads us through turmoil?
The state already reduced the size of the Agency by almost a quarter between 2007 and 2019– one possible driver of our declining performance.
What happens if federal cuts gut an additional 40% of the Agency’s positions in the middle of this radical “transformation”?
We can protect our children even as we work on bringing down cost, just as we must confront the states’ housing and health care crises and anemic economy. For that, we need the governor to show the same care for our public schools that we expect those schools to provide for our children.
We need to fix our funding formula and weight tuition payments to reflect student need, but we also need to depoliticize the Agency of Education, put limits on tuition vouchers to private schools, and ensure all taxpayer-funded schools follow the same rules.
We need to achieve scale through larger class sizes, but also through shared services, including special education services.
We passed a bill last year that would have advanced regional collaboration to support delivery of special education that was better for kids and better for taxpayers, but learned when the Agency came in to testify that they had stalled on this while they worked on the governor’s plan for radical "transformation" instead.
We can learn from districts like the White River School District, which did hard work to merge two middle and two high schools. In doing so, they doubled opportunities for students without increasing cost. We need an agency staffed and competent to provide expert technical assistance, including related to special education.
We must give the Agency of Education the capacity to provide accurate performance data and accurate, real-time statewide finance data and analysis, but also the capacity to help our districts get better at teaching our children.
These achievable steps would set the state up for a future with more affordable and resilient public schools-- schools that provide better opportunities for our children and which are deeply connected to their communities.
As I think about the Governor's proposal, which assumes cuts of up to half the people working in our schools, it is hard to not think about the President's decision this week to fire half the people working at the US Department of Education.
My grandma was a foster child who depended on public schools. Later, when she was widowed, she again depended on public schools and a public afterschool program, which cared for my mother so that my grandma could work to support her family.
For my family, as for so many American families, public schools were engines of opportunity that introduced us to learning and gave us the skills to write our own lives.
I think about this-- and about all the Vermonters across the state who count on our community schools to care for their children-- as I read these proposals being brought forth.
I am determined to do what I can to make sure our communities are places people can afford to live, but not at the expense of education that all our children can count on.
We can do better on cost without sacrificing our children.
They have only one chance to grow up.
Panel on the Carson v. Makin Decision
I was invited by the Montpelier League of Women Voters to join Harrison Stark of the VT ACLU for a panel discussion titled: "Carson v. Makin. Public Funds for Religious Schools".
This was a discussion of the supreme court decision that states do not have to pay vouchers to any private schools, but if they do, they must include religious schools.
You can watch that presentation here.
House resolution in honor of the Thetford Academy Panthers Division II boys’ championship indoor track and field team
The House of Representatives passed a resolution to honor the Thetford indoor track and field team for its outstanding 2025 season and championship.
Despite playing up in Division II, the Panthers managed to set a new Division II record (6.55 seconds) in the 55-meter dash and capture first in the 1,000-meter dash (2:40.52), the 4x200 relay (1:37.41), the 4x400 relay (3:46.12), and the long jump (21’ 5.25”). In summary, I guess you could say they just left everybody else behind.
There was a lot of hard work, a lot of heart, and a lot of determination behind that championship!
You can read the full resolution here.
House resolution to recognize Ken Cadow for "Gather"The House of Representatives passed a resolution to recognize Ken Cadow of Norwich. You can read that resolution here.
Even better-- see if you can get your hands on a copy and curl up in a chair for a very good read.
The book “Gather” was chosen by Vermont Humanities as their 2024-2025 Vermont Reads book.
Over 6,500 copies have now been distributed in 91 different Vermont towns for 120 community projects.
In places less important than Vermont, "Gather" garnered critical and popular acclaim as a National Book Award Finalist, a Michael Printz Honor Book, and as the winner of the Kirkus Prize for Young Adult Literature.
Ken is currently a Co-Principal of Oxbow High School in Bradford.
ICYMI:Based on feedback from you, tackling healthcare costs in Vermont is a TOP priority.
Here is a good listen or read on why Vermont's health insurance costs keep increasing, even though the average marketplace premium in Vermont is already more than 140% higher than the national average in 2025. Yes-- 140% higher.
That is a big part of why our property taxes and municipal budgets and state budgets keep growing.
Governor plans to veto the FY25 Budget Adjustment
The Governor objects to about $15 million out of the total $8.7 billion in the adjusted FY25 budget. At the Governor’s request, we addressed about $120 million of his unbudgeted increases in healthcare costs.
We also agreed with about 98% of the governor’s proposed recommendations.
We did add money to extend emergency housing, including for some 160 children, through the winter.
When the senate reviewed the budget, it chose to use another $2m for 2 positions at the human rights commission, another attorney in Attorney General Clark’s office to fight federal changes that hurt Vermonters, and grants to support flood affected communities with significant property loss and resultant (and unexpected) loss of tax revenues.
We also provided $220,000 to the emergency personnel survivors benefit fund to help the dependents of 3 emergency responders who lost their lives in the service of the public.
Onward!
Best to you all,Rebecca
Education Update
Dear all,
As we begin the third week of the legislative session, we hope to begin hearing details of the governor's "vision" for education reform. His team has said he will not be making recommendations on healthcare, which is one of the biggest drivers of higher cost in every budget. However, he will be making recommendations in his budget address related to expanding housing-- aother driver of higher cost and dropping student numbers.
The governor is proposing a new education funding formula, massive consolidation of school districts and public schools, consolidation of rulemaking into the administration, and policies that protect payment of tuition to private schools.
I am reserving comment on the governor’s proposed "vision" for education reform until we have enough details and specifics to know what his vision involves. There is no question we are facing challenges of both cost and quality. In addition, the Agency of Education has been both politicized and decimated through loss of state-funded positions. This may contribute to the decline in student performance and the burdens on local districts. We will be working hard to stay in close contact with our local boards and superintendents as we contemplate this monumental proposed change.
Moreover, “education reform” in recent years has tended to emphasize expansion of choices and diversion of K12 funding to other sectors, not improvement of teaching. That means we are spreading out our K12 dollars over more programs, which does increase the cost per pupil, but does not necessarily improve quality or fairness, as we now see in the little bit of data that is available.
In some cases, the funding for various proprams appears to be duplicative. For example, we have discovered that a handful of students are simultaneously enrolled in and funded for two full time programs (e.g., career and tech education and early college). And, some students are eligible for both full-time child care subsidies and PK vouchers. In addition, some school districts are building in mental health costs to their budget to replace gaps at the state-funded community mental health agencies. Given the cost pressures, we in the legislature have an obligation to evaluate duplication as well as cost shifts to the education fund from other budgets. These dollars are precious. We need to stretch them as far as they can go.
In addition, some programs that were set up years ago to provide modest tax relief to a targeted population have grown into significant annual expenditures. It is worth evaluating whether the K12 budgets, as opposed to other budgets, are the right place to make these investments, given the extreme burden on property taxes right now.
I have linked below to documents the governor used to introduce his vision. At this point, as I told one constituent, there is a lot of sentiment to “just do this,” but also very little in the way of clarity about what “this” is.
There are elements that are promising. I agree that we need a new funding formula, and wish the state had adopted a foundation plan when it first tackled the problem of making sure districts that educate more students who are disadvantaged have the resources to do so. A foundation plan could be more targeted and much less inflationary than our current formula, though the details matter quite a bit. Beyond that, I am waiting until enough details are on the table so that we can figure out what is being proposed.
1. This is the powerpoint presentation outlining the governor’s “vision” for reform:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R0_4qZV0fs0YYvYHgApWVIFQLjaGbWEJ/view?usp=sharing
3. This is the related "policy brief"
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ci69ljGa4j49jPXYaX3DCpYtCsyAk1m-/view?usp=sharing>
Again, and I need to stress this, we have little information beyond what you see here, though we expect the governor will be adding detail and recommending legislative language in the coming weeks.
Here is the initial presentation of the Governor’s proposed changes to the funding formula:
With respect to his proposal to consolidate all school districts into five regional school districts, here is prior guidance and analysis on consolidation that may be relevant to this conversation:
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Analysis: multi-town district providing different opportunities based on town of residence (To be consistent with the prior guidance, I assume the five new proposed districts would have to either operate public schools for all their resident children or be districts that pay tuition vouchers to what the secretary is calling the “portfolio of schools.” (I apologize for any formatting errors which happened when the document was uploaded to the drive.)
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Discussion of the Brigham decision, which requires us to make sure students have substantially equivalent opportunities.
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Discussion of the US Supreme Court decision in Carson v. Makin and the implication for paying tuition vouchers in VT. The case clarifies that while VT does not have to pay vouchers to private schools, if it does, it must treat them the same way it treats all state-funded private schools. The secretary stated in a meeting that the administration proposes to maintain all the "choice" options that exist.
Again, to support our communities as this conversation develops, my colleague Rep. Jim Masland and I will be in regular communication with our local school superintendents and school boards.
Here is what is coming up this week related to this proposal.
Week of January 27th:
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We will get draft funding numbers, and the policy choices will be built into whatever final funding model choices the Governor proposes to us.
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We will get additional details on what schools, districts and supervisory unions will be rolled up into each of the 5 proposed districts.
Week of Feb. 3:
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The Scott administration will provide legislative language
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The Scott administration will flesh out what they call “additional policy considerations regarding program delivery under the new funding formula for Prekindergarten, CTE, school choice, teacher salary, afterschool/extended learning.”
What has the State Auditor been working on?
Here are the Auditor's 2024 Updates & Reports
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Disabilities Department: Adopted nearly all 2023 audit recommendations, including annual inspections for residential care homes.
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Jay Peak EB-5 Audit: Highlighted oversight failures and risky agency structures to prevent future fraud.
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Hazard Mitigation Plan: Found gaps in planning and action for disaster readiness.
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TIF Audits: Reviewed Burlington and Milton districts; Burlington owes $100,000 to the Education Fund.
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COVID Grant Programs: Found weak oversight and documentation in awarding $50M.
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UVM Housing: Exposed flaws in data affecting student housing agreements and regional markets.
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Health Care Costs: Promoted reference-based pricing to save millions in public employee health expenses.
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Sheriff Audits: Ensured accountability in county law enforcement spending.
Rebecca
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Bring Back the Babies
October 6, 2024
Dear All,
As a state, we are struggling with huge challenges around affordability. We want a lot of services, and we want the same access we had 20 years ago. However, we are struggling with the high cost of it all. And, we are in the midst of a housing crisis.
Something big has changed in recent decades that explains some of the pressure we feel: our demographics. I say this as someone growing her own headful of gray hair. Our average age is growing and as our population gets older, how we use services changes in ways that affect our affordability.
The figure below shows what is happening.
The left axis represents number of people.
The bottom axis represents age groups within our population.
The green bar represents our school-aged population, and the blue bar represents people in their prime working years.
The lines represent how the distribution of our population by ages is shifting over the decades between 2010 to 2030.
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Just think about the story here!
A large proportion of our population is aging out of the workforce and the number of people in the workforce is declining. Young families are not moving in behind them. State migration data suggest that while a handful of wealthier families are choosing to relocate to Vermont, we are losing moderate income families, especially those whose income is under about $100,000 year.
These families represent an essential part of our workforce.The challenge of an aging population is more severe in Windsor and Orange counties than it is in some counties.
For example, this second chart (below) of demographics for the Gifford Hospital region suggests we can expect our local workforce to shrink by 41% in the next ten years, unless we turn trends around. Just think about the impact of that. That is a staggering and sustained trend.
The median age in Windsor county is now about 48– one of the highest in the state– and growing. That compares to 37 in Chittenden County.
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Impacts on Housing Availability and Prices:
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For those of us who are aging, our kids have left home, which means many of us have fewer people living under the same roof than we did ten years ago. Statewide, that means we need more homes to house the same overall number of people.
That puts upward pressure on housing prices.
At the same time, it means fewer kids in our schools, which means higher costs per pupil to preserve good public education opportunities for our children. Higher per pupil costs mean higher tax rates. In turn, since housing costs include the cost of property taxes, those rising property taxes mean even higher housing costs.
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This just makes it even harder for young families to move here.
It is even harder on them when their wages don't keep pace with inflation. And it is hard, of course, on seniors who also fear being priced out of their homes.
When families can't afford to live here, employers struggle to find employees. When a hospital tries to hire nurses, but those nurses cannot find housing, then the hospital is forced to hire traveling nurses at up to three times the cost.
These high housing prices and scarce availability also contribute to the increase in unsheltered homelessness across the state.
Impact on Healthcare Prices:
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As we age, we use different kinds of healthcare, and often more healthcare. More significantly, we are covered by Medicare.
Both Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements are capped by the federal government, and do not cover the real costs of care in VT. Somebody has to pay the difference, and that means those costs shift on to people insured through commercial insurance companies.
In the last eight years, the cost of some of these plans has doubled.
This causes three problems:
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First, a lot of people are underinsured, because they can't afford the premium.
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Second, a shrinking workforce means fewer people with private insurance. If our workforce shrinks as much as current trends suggest, the commercial insurance of that shrinking pool of workers will have to bear the burden of that cost shift from Medicare and Medicaid. In turn, that creates a spike in the price of private insurance.
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Third, as those commercial rates increase, those higher costs are baked into every budget, from the state budget to your school budget to the budgets of local businesses.
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In fact, the Green Mountain Care Board identified out-of-control healthcare premium increases as a major driver of increased cost in school budgets. Similarly, businesses across the state have struggled to afford benefits.
Many have had to choose between increasing wages and providing good healthcare benefits. In fact, wages in Vermont have not kept pace with inflation, which means a lot of working households are worse off than they were a few years ago.
Some families have reduced hours or wages to remain eligible for Medicaid, which improves their family finances, but which drives more cost back on to the federal government and commercial insurance rates.
To bring down property taxes and make Vermont affordable, we need serious leadership on development of housing near jobs and on healthcare reform.
While it would be easy to blame private insurers, the reality is that BCBS has run a deficit in five of the last six years, even with double-digit rate increases, because the actual underlying growth in cost of care is just that great.
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That brings us to property taxes.
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Vermont faces a crisis of affordability across multiple sectors, from housing to healthcare.
And this unaffordability is all coming together to drive up your school property taxes.
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This year, the biggest drivers of increased spending in school budgets was teacher healthcare (almost five cents on your rate), mental health for students (about five cents on your tax rate), infrastructure (about five cents on your tax rate), and about five cents needed to fill in the hole created by using surplus to buy DOWN your tax rate last year.
For most people in the state, that explains their entire increase.
Some of the most durable reductions in property taxes will come from building housing, especially in high tax rate communities near jobs and from tackling healthcare reform.
The state must take the lead on developing municipal wastewater systems in communities near job density in order to help bring down tax rates.
I wrote about priorities for tackling our high property taxes in detail last May.
I will continue to advocate for durable changes that make Vermont affordable, not just today, but into the future.
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Best,
Rebecca
THE LATEST FROM REBECCA
Housing
Sept 28, 2024
Dear all,
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It has been a very hard couple of weeks for many families across the state, as the state unhouses hundreds of Vermonters, including very young children and adults with serious medical conditions and disabilities. As Thetford resident and health policy expert Anne Sosin has said, “This crisis was both predictable and preventable. It is also still solvable.”
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This has also been frustrating for the many of you who have worked hard locally, thorugh advocacy and direct service, to prevent this from happening. Your efforts have kept this from being worse, but we need a state solution. This is a tragedy, and it needs state leadership to turn it around.
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The Governor keeps emphasizing his belief that we “need to wean ourselves” off of this program. However, people are not puppies, and there are no happy adoptive homes for these people once they are “weaned”-- just emergency rooms, tents and streets. We are now “weaning” toddlers off their only housing.
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The governor’s reason has been that the program is unsustainable, however throwing people in the streets does not cut costs. It just shifts costs to other budgets, including hospitals and municipal budgets and school districts.
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Each year for three years, the legislature asked the governor to come up with a transition plan. In the midst of this, his policy director said about the General Assistance program: “We just need to rip the bandaid off and end this program.” We didn’t do that, but we still don’t have a coherent strategy for how to keep people safe while they get back into stable housing. Moreover, the subsidies provided by Reach Up, which is Vermont's income assistance program for very low-income families with children, still uses 2001 housing prices as the base for calculating the size of the benefit. Those subsides are no longer sufficient in the 2024 housing market.
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Instead of spending $80 a night for someone with a medical condition, now we will spend $3000 a night in a hospital. Instead of providing a place for families with young kids to live, so those schools can easily provide for young children during the day, schools are now obligated by federal law to provide more services to make sure these unhoused children can still reach and thrive at school.
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Effectively, the Scott administration is reducing cost at the state level by making budgets managed by others pick up the cost.
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The 2024 “point in time” survey found that Vermont has approximately 3,500 individuals who are homeless, including over 500 children.
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The impact on young children of housing instability is significant, and can harm long term cognitive, social-emotional and health outcomes.
People need places to live. We have a grotesque shortage of housing in the state, and the result has been higher rents and house prices, and more people on the edge of losing their housing. People don’t end up in emergency housing because they do not work. In fact, most have jobs and also have to do extraordinary work to stay in that emergency housing. At one point, the state required people to check in every day…at great cost both to the state and families.
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People often end up in the emergency housing program because they have less of a safety net and some bad luck: a medical emergency, a disability, a flood that destroyed their home, a landlord who decided to cash out at the top of the housing market, a death in the family, a loss of a job. One was a man with progressive dementia whose condition left him unable to manage his finances. In the end, he lost his house. We will always need temporary shelter to support people who have been hit by adversity as they work to find permanent housing.
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Last session, the House passed H.879 which would have created, in statute, an emergency shelter program. This was an acknowledgment that we need to have appropriate shelter to provide a safety net for those who are in between stable housing arrangements. The bill failed to pass the Senate. Some elements of the bill were modified and added to the budget (Act 113). The legislature expanded the definition of disability to include documenting disability or health care condition from a health care provider. (Previously a person had to have SSI or SSDI, but cuts at the federal level have limited the number of people who have had access to this federal identification.) We still have work to do.
Over the summer, members of the House Human Services committee are again working to propose a shelter program that can provide a safety net for people as they get back on their feet.
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Of course, this work goes hand in hand with efforts to make sure the state has enough housing for the people who live here– a problem that is made worse by the fact that almost one in five houses in VT is now a second home. Residents of Norwich and Thetford are feeling this on the pocket book front as well: second homes are now taxed at a rate that is about 30 cents lower than homesteads, effectively rewarding people financially for using this valuable housing stock as a second home rather than a residence. The legislature asked the Tax Department to come back with recommendations on how to effectively identify and distinguish second homes from the rest of the property tax base, so that this problem can be addressed.
In the meantime, I will also push for state funding for municipal wastewater systems near areas of job density. We can't address our cost challenges, our education challenges, our health care challenges, or our workforce challenges without supporting the development of affordably homes near where people work. This is how we take care of people while climbing out of our current cost "bomb."
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We will keep working,
Rebecca
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What did our FY 25 budget provides on housing?
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$7.5M GF for Emergency Housing in addition to a $16.5M GF one-time appropriation and a $20M GF contingent appropriation
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Provides $7.2M GF for shelter bed expansion
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Provides additional $753K to support programs for homeless youth
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Provides a $10M contingent appropriation for shelter beds and permanent supportive housing
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Provides $25.8M to DCF for the Housing Opportunity Grant Program (HOP) which provides for shelter operations, flexible supports, rapid rehousing, etc.
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Provides $900K GF for the State Refugee Office to support transitional housing for refugees
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Directs $1.2M from the Opioid Abatement Fund for recovery residences, including two new residences
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Provides $1M GF to extend 10 DCF positions to support Emergency Housing
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Provides $1M GF to the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) for the Manufactured Home Improvement and Repair Program
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$6M GF to DHCD for the Vermont Housing Improvement Program (VHIP)
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$4M GF to DEC for the Healthy Homes Initiative
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Provides $332K GF for 2-1-1 to operate 24/7 (211 approves emergency shelter nights and weekends)AC
Ongoing data collection and reporting can be found at this site: https://dcf.vermont.gov/Addressing-and-Preventing-Unsheltered-Homelessness
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Rep. Rebecca Holcombe: Vermonters deserve affordability, but Gov. Phil Scott has no ‘grand plan’
​The yield bill is more responsible than the governor’s offerings, and some of his ideas would raise taxes.
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June 11, 2024, 8:02 am
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This commentary is by Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, D-Norwich. She represents the Windsor-Orange-2 district and is a member of the House Appropriations Committee.
It’s Groundhog Day. Gov. Phil Scott vetoed the yield bill, again leaving Vermont school districts adrift. The reason: the school budgets voters approved add up to more than Gov. Scott wants them to spend.
None of us like an increase. Some legislators are leaving because they can’t afford to serve. We need people to call our communities home, operate our businesses, care for us when we are sick and educate our children. We know property taxes affect the cost of housing. That cost makes too many people say “no, thanks.”
However, exactly what the governor expects the legislature and local school districts to cut is a mystery. As Seven Days noted: “Scott cautioned the public not to expect he’ll have any grand new proposals.”
So, why the veto?
We need real leadership — not politicking — to move us forward.
Health insurance premiums are up by double digits for yet another year, not just for school budgets (almost $50 million or 5 cents on the tax rate), but also for the state budget, business budgets, municipal budgets and family budgets. Out-of-control health care costs hurt everybody, but we can’t fix them at our kitchen tables or in school board meetings. What has Gov. Scott done — not said — to help?
Rising costs associated with mental health demands explain another 5 cents of the increase in this year’s property tax rate. Addressing mental health means treating risks at the source, including supporting parents, so parents can support their children. For that, the governor needs to bring his social service agencies — or what is left of them — to the conversation.
Increased infrastructure costs explain another 5 cents of the increase, and are aggravated by ambitious but poorly thought out policy on PCB mitigation. We need the governor’s help on this too. What we have instead: the administration continues to turn up problems then leave solutions (and cost) to others.
Just those items alone account for most of this year’s tax spike.
Gov. Scott claims he has no “grand solutions.” His one big idea was to borrow from the future to pay for today. Then State Treasurer Pieciak explained his proposal could erode our state’s credit rating, making the future even more unaffordable.
As he did in 2018, the governor insisted on using “one-time money” to pay for ongoing costs — a bad and unsustainable business practice. The legislature compromised by using $70 million for this purpose. There are no additional dollars to throw at this problem.
Voters voted on school budgets. The governor signed the state budget. At this late date, what can we cut? We have few tools:
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We could eliminate the property tax exemption for charitable and religious purposes, “saving” about 4.5 cents on the tax rate.
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We could reduce or asset-test the exemption for current use, “saving” up to five cents on the rate.
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We could asset-test income sensitivity, “saving” by limiting who gets this credit.
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We could phase out TIF funding, about which the Joint Fiscal Office said “the core theoretical assumption upon which tax increment calculations are based is flawed and unsupported by the data and economic theory.”
All of these actions would yield savings for the majority of taxpayers. Will the governor advocate for them?
The reality: in education, as in health care, taxpayers are paying for too much infrastructure, both in Vermont and out of state, often in units that are too small to affordably provide quality care.
As a colleague used to say, a person can’t go to a 28-course buffet, pay only four dollars, and expect the food to be edible. Too often, our answer to rising cost and sagging quality is to add another course.
We could reduce and improve “courses” by bringing more children into fewer, more robust schools. The state’s actions do the opposite.
There is no path to affordability that involves forcing public schools to compete with private schools that are narrow in scope, out-of-state, or exclusive in enrollment. Taxpayers in every community help fund tuition to:
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out-of-state prep schools for more privileged children
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religious schools that refuse to comply with public accommodations laws.
None of these programs can replace public schools or inclusive private schools like Thetford Academy. They do erode the scale and affordability of schools with a public mission.
If you support this, as the governor does, don’t complain about cost. This is a recipe that, across states and in Vermont, results in higher cost and worse outcomes overall. Let’s keep our dollars in Vermont, in schools of sufficient scale and in schools which meet the public obligations of our public education fund, as defined in our Education Quality Standards.
I’m disappointed we did not do better this session, but I will vote to override this veto. The bill is more responsible than the governor’s offerings, and some of his ideas would raise taxes. The bill requires summer work that puts us in a different position next year. It cushions the blow this year, while protecting children and our most vulnerable taxpayers.
OUR CHALLENGES ARE REAL
Sept 27, 2024
Dear all,
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I generally try not to engage in the divisive political talk coming out of the Governor’s office during this election season because at the end of the day, we have to figure out how to work together. We have to work together if we hope to solve the big problems that face our communities, from the acute lack of housing, to high property taxes to the high cost of health care.
I have to believe we are on the same team: Vermont’s team.
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However, this year has been extraordinary in both the level of misrepresentation and the aggressive tone coming out of Governor Scott’s office. The rhetoric has been particularly misleading and accusatory around property taxes and the Afforrdable Heat Act, which I have written about here and here.
He even used the Agency of Transportation to send out an accusatory political message on education property taxes-- an unusual use of taxpayer-funded transportation resources.
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We are lucky so far in our region, but in some regions, his tone has fueled threats against other legislators, including at their homes.
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I understand the politics can get heated, but the problems we face as a state are serious. They have developed over years, and not one session. They are complex and cannot be solved with slogans.
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Moreover, they cannot be solved unless the Governor steps up. He and his team are there year round, and they run the agencies and the data. We need him to propose viable solutions. On the other hand, legislators only show up for 4 to 5 months, and our total compensation is only a little more than the raise that he received this year.
In our VT constitution, the legislature is best positioned not to propose, but to dispose of policy put forth by the Governor. When he does not step up and help with sensible, evidence-based recommendations, we struggle. That is great for his politics, but very hard on the state and taxpayers.
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I sit in the House Appropriations, and I see first hand that to the Governor, cost containment means not filling positions in state government (there are at least 1000 vacancies at any given time), then using the vacancy savings to offset out of control health care costs. Who pays the price? The people who need the services these now vacant positions would have provided, and teh people who would have benefited from policy developed with the healp of experts.
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I also see how fiscally constrained we are as a state. Several of our current challenges: constrained revenues, housing shortages, higher costs, are related to the demographic changes we are undergoing. The answer cannot always be more money or more programs. It sometimes has to be: we need to do things differently and focus on priorities and core operations.
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When the failure to recruit and retain staff includes failure to access critical expertise, the whole state pays the price.
For example, the Agency of Education has struggled to recruit and retain a state director of special education. The agency went for months without a director of special education. This staff person is responsible for providing technical assistance and guidance to school districts, so that they can provide special education as directed in rule and statute.
Unsurprisingly, after months with no captain at the helm, multiple districts were struggling to comply. The fact that the Governor’s administration posted the state director position with a salary of only $66,000 was probably part of the problem; a skilled special education can make twice that in a school district.
The lack of education expertise in the Agency leadership and the turnover (the position is again vacant) have eroded the ability of the Governor and his administration to provide technical assistance and support that would protect kids and keep districts in compliance with federal law. That means less effective use of tax dollars at the local level and worse outcomes for children.
Similarly, instead of adequate funding technology at the Department of Children and Families, our Foster Care Information System is so outdated that it impairs the ability of state workers to do their jobs and renders the state unable to apply for some federal funds to support the needs of foster children…dropping that cost back on Vermonters and leaving children less safe.
Again, this inaction led to higher cost to taxpayers for worse service.
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And as always, putting current operations on a credit card, which has basically been the governor’s strategy to force cuts on public education, can lead to higher cost and loss of service for the most vulnerable people in particular. Failure to do the hard work means pain for those who are least able to protect themselves, usually children, seniors on fixed incomes, people with disabilities, and families with modest incomes.
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The governor’s most recent press release touts 2018 proposals that he claims would reduct tax burdens on Vermonters. This claim is not accurate. At the time, I had recently stepped down as secretary of education, and I was concerned enough by the budget games that I wrote this.
Back then, as now, Scott was trying to overturn budgets that had been approved by local voters, while proposing a budget gimmick that might lower tax rates on paper, but which would have increased tax bills. You deserve better.
The legislature has made mistakes as well.
I support funding equitable education opportunities AND I strongly believe the current education funding formula is deeply flawed and should not have been signed into law.
It is inflationary and poorly targeted in ways that will do real harm-- and not just to children-- if we don't fix it. We can change weights, but need to do so in a different formula.
I will continue to push for this change.
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We need better. We really do. People cannot afford the crushing growth of cost in health care and education and housing, especially since these higher costs are not leading to better access or better quality.
And at the same time, we can't just cut our way out of these challenges, all of which are aggravated by our lack of housing. We need a coordinated and aggressive effort to turn the corner on housing, including by leveraging waste water investments and zoning for greater density near job centers. This alone would solve a whole host of our challenges. But this heavy lift is something we need to do together.
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I will keep working with anyone who wants to help address the crushing costs that are driving higher property taxes, a lack of affordable housing, and health care that people can no longer afford. I believe these problems can be addressed. But I regret that the kind of aggressive blame game coming out of the Governor’s office is chilling efforts to collaborate and propose solutions before the next session even begins.
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Best,
Rebecca