By Guy Page

Tomorrow, the Vermont Senate is due to vote on the House’s controversial 2025 Budget Adjustment Act (BAA), which adds $1.8 million in emergency housing for the homeless and extends these benefits through June 30. 

Senate Appropriations on Wednesday approved the mid-year budget adjustment by a partisan 4-3 vote. The House vote, which raised current year emergency housing funding to over $18 million, occasioned the first partisan roll call vote of the new Legislature. Gov. Phil Scott has not ruled out a veto, in part because the funding source isn’t identified. 

Funding source? You’re looking for a funding source, governor? On Friday, a Progressive/Democrat senator suggested a funding source: freeze salaries of all state employees earning $100,000 or more and invest the savings in emergency housing. 

Senator Tanya Vyhovsky of Chittenden County asked the Senate Appropriations Committee an amendment to freeze 100K+ salaries and spend the savings on emergency housing assistance and converting state buildings into shelter capacity. A recent Pay Act provides a 6.4% state employee pay increase this year and a 5.2% increase next year, Vyhovsky said. When asked, Vyhovsky mentioned that an effort to also raise legislative pay failed. 

“It is my view that in the light of the type of budgetary space we see ourselves in, in the humanitarian crisis, that people making over a hundred thousand dollars a year perhaps don’t need a six and a half percent increase or a five point two percent increase,” Vyhovsky said. 

The amendment also proposes assigning an existing state employee to coordinate homelessness services at the state level.

Sen. Thomas Chittenden, Democrat of the eponymous county, attended the meeting. The vice-chair of Finance and member of Housing and Economic Development seemed less than enthused about Vyhovsky’s suggestion. 

“Our committee will maybe have time to look at it. I don’t know how much time we’ll have before Tuesday. We don’t – but we’ll look at it,” Chittenden said. “And you do know, of course, that the House is deeply embedded in a comprehensive look at the General Assistance work that goes on.”

The official Senate calendar shows the Senate will vote Tuesday on the Appropriations version approved Wednesday, two days before Vyhovsky’s request. However, there’s nothing stopping her from raising the question from the floor.  

The House Committee on Housing will take a long look at a committee omnibus housing bill this week, in advance of the expected arrival of Gov. Phil Scott’s housing plan. Among the other housing bills to be reviewed in House committees this week: 

H.134 creates a new land use change tax exemption for land withdrawn to develop affordable housing. It will be reviewed in House Agriculture, Food Resilience and Forestry Tuesday. Sponsored by Rep. Charlie Kimball (D-Woodstock) and farmers Richard Nelson (R-Derby) and John O’Brien (D-Tunbridge), the bill is meant to make it more affordable for property owners to move land out of ‘current use,’ a state program in which farmland is taxed below development market value.

H.50, co-sponsored by Montpelier Reps. Conor Casey and Kate McCann, will get a hearing Wednesday in House Corrections and Institutions. The bill would require a report by January 15 of every biennium a report examining “whether any of the State’s real property, including underutilized lots in population centers, is suitable for conversion into affordable housing.” Casey told VDC last week he’s thinking less of converting old office buildings, and more about building new housing on unused or underutilized parcels of downtown state property.