by Austin Davis, Lake Champlain Chamber
On Wednesday, the Vermont Senate passed the $8.61 billion state budget and sent it back to the House with a price tag that was about $2 million cheaper and without the more than $100 million that the House has raised in new taxes. The Senate budget is still over $60 million more than what the Governor proposed.
The House and Senate will now need to form a Committee of Conference to work to work out their differences in the bill.
As noted in last week’s update, the smaller price tag and fewer tax increases reflects the dichotomy of addressing problems with spending, as opposed to addressing problems with policy.
The housing and public safety legislation sent to the Senate by the House relied on new taxes and more spending while the Senate has curtailed spending and sought more policy levers.
In the final days of the legislative session, the House and Senate Committees on Judiciary are going to need to close the gap on a number of pieces of legislation. In these situations, a negotiation about one bill is never just about that one bill.
Overlaying all of the legislation is the broader conversation around funding. The House had sent a budget that funded 60+ new positions in the state’s criminal justice system; the Senate this week returned one that funds less than half of those. The Senate also agreed to fund three new superior court judges.
House, Senate working out differences in S.195 – Repeat Offender and Violations of Conditions of Release
The House Committee on Judiciary finalized their work on the legislation this week, making changes to the lifting of a cap on bail for repeat offenders, while still allowing for some discretion by judges.
The bill has now been referred to the House Committee on Correction and Institutions who will likely finish their work on it this afternoon and pass a version that looks close to this. The Senate’s budget as passed contains the funding for the pre-trial monitoring positions.