By Guy Page

Today on Hot Off The Press at 11:05 AM on WDEV, we’ll be talking about cutting spending in Vermont State Government. Not just me talking – I want a conversation with you. I know you care about this. About your tax bills. About out of control spending. I will be attending the governor’s press conference at noon today and I want your questions. Your ideas. Please call in at 802-244-1777.

I think we’re past the idea of trimming around the edges. No “reimagining investments.” We’re talking about Cutting spending. Because taxpayers need relief — and right now, no one else in Montpelier is seriously talking about it.

Yesterday I spoke with a Democrat state senator. Not exactly a champion of budget cuts. Not only are many of her voters reliant on government or government funded jobs, she gets dozens of calls from needy people. I’m living in my car with my mother. Please help us. If anything she said Vermont needs more money to spend on human need. 

She turned the question back on me: “Okay — what would you cut?”

Fair question.

So today I’m turning that question over to you.

If you were a senator… if you were on the House Appropriations Committee… if you had the red pen in your hand… where would you start? What would you cut from state spending? From school spending? And how would you actually do it?

Here are four places I’d begin.

First: DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion spending.

How much are we spending statewide? I don’t know. And that’s part of the problem.

If the City of Burlington alone budgets roughly $900,000 for its diversity office — and taxpayers struggle to identify measurable outcomes — how much is flowing through state government agencies? What are the metrics? What are the results?

I told the senator this: DEI spending in Vermont looks like a solution in search of a problem — at least compared to the real crises facing this state. High property taxes. Crushing energy costs. Young families leaving. Seniors wondering if they can afford to stay in their homes.

Sometimes, in prosperous times, you can afford expensive virtue signaling. But when people are thinking about selling their homes because it’s too expensive to live here — the priority has to shift.

Second: climate spending.

We’re told Vermont is committing something close to half a billion dollars on climate initiatives of one kind or another. Maybe more, depending how you count it.

Climate change, if it’s a crisis, is a global issue. Vermont is 0.02% of global emissions. We cannot afford to act as if we are leading a world war effort on our own.

Marching out front waving the banner may feel noble. But it doesn’t change global temperatures — and it does raise electric bills.

Third: transparency.

The state budget is, frankly, impenetrable. Even legislators admit that.

Yes, Vermont has an Agency of Administration “Spotlight on Financial Transparency” page. I went there. I tried to find out how much we spend on DEI statewide.

Nothing popped up.

If citizens can’t easily figure out where their money is going, that’s a problem.

Fourth: the little, death by a thousand cuts programs. Those expensive, forgotten little step-children of some legislator’s ‘hey, why don’t we do this?’ idea. 

Let me give you a small example. The Automotive Emissions Reduction Assistance Program — AERAP. Nearly a million dollars set aside in 2023. Only a fraction actually reached Vermonters for repairs. Tens of thousands went elsewhere, including media-related spending.

It’s death by a thousand cuts. That’s what Rep. Rob North calls it.

Hundreds — maybe thousands — of small programs. Each one “only” a few hundred thousand dollars. But together? They add up to property tax hikes that knock people off balance.

And here’s another structural problem: agencies are incentivized to spend every dollar this year so they can ask for more next year.

The culture is: Spend it now.

Not: Cut it back.

State unions won’t like hearing this. The VSEA. The NEA. The superintendents. Their job — understandably — is to secure more jobs and higher compensation for their members.

It is not their job to protect taxpayers.

That responsibility belongs to elected officials. And ultimately — to voters.

Don’t call it DOGE if that raises partisan hackles. Fine.

Call it the Vermont Overspending Solutions Act.

But learn from what worked elsewhere: use data. Use technology. Use AI. Bring in smart, independent auditors. Open the books. Make every program justify its existence from zero.

Zero-based budgeting.

If a program can’t clearly explain what problem it solves, how it measures success, and why it’s worth the cost — it shouldn’t automatically continue.

You may say I’m a dreamer.

But I’m not the only one.

There are thousands of Vermonters right now dreaming of something simple: staying in their homes. Affording their property tax bill. Keeping their small business open. Raising their kids here.

So I’ll ask again:

If you had the red pen — what would you cut?

Let’s crowdsource it.

Because if we don’t start this conversation now, the next tax bill will do the cutting for us.