The following 1/4/2022 statement by Senate Pro Tem Becca Balint outlines, in her own words, the priorities of the Vermont Senate this year – her last as Pro Tem. She is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. House. – Editor
On Tuesday, the Vermont Senate began its work for the 2022 legislative session. Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint issued the following statement outlining her legislative agenda to support Vermont working families:
“As we head into another session marked by the ongoing pandemic, my top priority is making the most of the historic federal stimulus dollars available to Vermont to improve the lives of working families. This means real and sizeable investments, with much-needed policy support, in:
- pandemic response
- addressing the housing crisis
- meeting our critical workforce shortage
- protecting our climate and planet
- accountability in our criminal justice system
- supporting our teachers, public employees, and their pensions, and
- enshrining reproductive rights in our constitution
By meeting these challenges head on, we signal to all Vermonters that we take seriously the grave ways their lives have been impacted in the pandemic and give them real opportunities to thrive in the Green Mountain State.
We must continue to stand with Vermont families, businesses, and communities and support them as the pandemic lingers in our lives. Our very first legislative action in the Senate today was adopting resolutions requiring Senators to be vaccinated or tested weekly, to wear masks when conducting legislative business, and to allow ongoing flexibility for remote legislating. By the end of this week, we’ll pass out a bill giving towns flexibility in deciding how to hold Town Meeting to ensure healthy and safe participation in our local democracy. In the coming weeks, our committees will hear from public health experts and struggling hospitals, schools, and local businesses on how we can best support them. This work will take time, and I continue to call on the Governor to put in place statewide mitigation strategies as soon as possible to reduce the spread of disease and help protect our health care and education systems.
One of my biggest priorities this session will be addressing Vermont’s major housing crisis. Vermonters across the state struggle with housing costs, access, and stability. Businesses can’t recruit employees, workers can’t fill jobs, and individuals and families suffer. The “Investing in Vermont’s Future” community conversations that the Speaker and I held with Vermonters around the state this fall drove home that we need housing at every level—from emergency transitional housing to affordable rentals, houses that first-time buyers can afford to supported housing for seniors. Over the next three years, we will be investing $250 million in building and rehabbing more housing, but we must use other policy tools too. I look forward to tackling the safety and availability of rentals, continued development for downtowns and villages, and pathways to homeownership for more Vermonters.
We also face a broad workforce shortage that greatly impacts businesses and families across the state. This is particularly difficult in essential industries – nurses, childcare providers, educators, mental health professionals, and professionals who support Vermonters with physical, cognitive or behavioral challenges. We also see shortages in the hospitality sectors and in the trades. We will continue to invest in higher education, training, and development programs for key professions, and work to identify new tools to help businesses recruit and retain employees.
We need to address families’ concerns about affording high energy bills, and about what kind of planet our children will inherit. The immediate recommendations of the Vermont Climate Council offer an opportunity to address both issues simultaneously by investing more money in weatherization, energy efficiency, and electrification, to reduce both costs and harmful emissions. We must root these efforts in environmental justice – ensuring that those most impacted by environmental degradation are helped by our solutions.
We also can take meaningful action on racial justice, by seeking to end qualified immunity. This would help Vermonters have access to justice when they are mistreated by members of law enforcement. Vermonters deserve their day in court and they should be entitled to access to judicial oversight when they are abused. The systems we create must be accountable to Vermonters.
We’ll seek a shared solution that ensures a sustainable pension system for our teachers and state employees, and keep pushing for a secure retirement for all Vermonters. We’ll set up a bipartisan, fair redistricting process that strengthens Vermonters’ trust in our democracy. And we will finish our efforts to protect reproductive liberty in our state’s constitution and send the issue to the ballot in November 2022.
This session, we will work hard to deliver incredible results for the working families we represent and make sure all Vermonters see their lives supported by our work. As Pro Tem, I will make sure the Senate stays focused every day on how to make important investments for our state. I look forward to working with the House and the Governor to get our priorities across the finish line, and to live up to the hope Vermonters invest in our process. Together, we can make great change for our state.
Categories: Legislation
Nice laundry list. Wondering why you left out forced veganism, keeping our thermostats at 55 degrees September – May, and replacement of the Ceres statue on top of the Capital building with a a statue of Che Guevara? And, why stop at “reproductive rights”? Please…..place in the state contitution a provision for free prescriptions to abortion pills, decriminalization of prostution, and alllowing illegal immigrants full voting rights? Really!!!
“Wondering why you left out yada, yada, yada, ” They have to leave something on the table for next year .
How about the rights of those who can’t speak for themselves? There is a market for organ harvesting and body parts of babies. This may help to explain Prop 5. So much for the reproductive health death cult.
this BALINT person will NEVER get mt vote…..and I always do vote…and I always try to persuade many others to do as I do…..
This is basically the political ‘Woof-Woof’ of an unqualified wannabe. Hollow promises and a progressive-liberal’s wish list, using the sham and fake science of climate change as the justification for spending the outlandish taxes we currently pay, and the higher taxes we’ll pay in the future. We have a worthless, do-nothing Vermont Representative now. Ms Balint would not be an improvement…
As a former New Yorker (L.I. precisely) but a very outspoken & proud conservative libertarian – I used to get angry decades ago when “native” or long-term Vermonters would bad-mouth out-of-staters coming in here accusing them of changing things & transforming VT into something it wasn’t.
No more. These types need to be shown the border(s) ASAP!!!
We live in a state that actually produces nothing but self entitled liberals who contribute very little to actual society. Balints leading the charge.
Interestingly, every issue Balint seeks to “fix” is an issue directly caused by past legislative actions. Decades of liberal thinking and legislation brought these problems to Vermont.
Every issue.
If you believe Balint now, that she can and will rescue Vermont- think back just at the carnage wrought to Vermont in the past 14 years. She will bring more of the same liberal and socialist thinking to “solving” these problems.
Of particular note, this seemingly new desire to remove qualified immunity from law enforcement is a deliberate deception. That law enforcement is racist is a narrative designed to strip the ability of police to do what we expect of them. The resulting increase in criminal activity will cause further hand wringing and demands for more laws restricting those that do follow the law. It is an ideal tool to remove constitutional guarantees, from the Vermont and US Constitutions. We are seeing the effects of this in Burlington, among other larger Vermont cities. Is the kind of abuse of political power, such as in New York acceptable to you? Are the 1st and 2nd Amendments important to you? How about Vermont’s Articles 1,3, 4, 9 and 16? They are not seemingly worthy of protection by Balint and the “leadership” in Vermont’s legislature, should these socialist even know what these articles guarantee.
Balint certainly laid out her agenda, both the one she want you to believe and the one she wants to enact.
I am so sick of these woke clueless morons! All I can say is pull your head out, Balint. (out of the sand, of course).
Kathy, You’re to kind. You did not mean the sand. You’d think where there collective heads are in fact at, that they would be in a hurry to extricate them so as not to sicken themselves though.
If they are going to end qualified immunity for our brave hardworking police, they should also end it for all state officials. Lets start with the governor !
???? We have voted this person into office and encouraged her such that she wants to keep on doing stuff to us…and we remain inert? Shame on us.
This is the government Vermont deserves. A true representation of the idiots who voted for it.
Senator Balint is utilizing ActBlue for her campaign contributions – a deep dive into this organization reveals much about how money is laundered for BLM and the DNC. The Dem/Progs are well versed in how to pocket copious amounts of money. Senator Balint is looking forward to the Capitol Hill stock options, but if it doesn’t work out, the laundered campaign contributions will help her bottom line. The Dem/Progs are a well organized, inbedded criminal syndicate.
Property taxes go up, so too does the cost of housing. Burdensome regulations make it difficult to build new housing projects. When will these tax and spend liberals understand that decades of legislative craziness is exactly why the state does not have affordable housing. Shortage of workers? No place to house workers. Those under the golden dome have broken the backs of hard working Vermonters for too long and based on this article, they have every intention to keep doing so!