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Join us on WDEV today at 11 AM to talk about taxes, housing and health care insurance costs
by Guy Page
On Common Sense Radio at 11 AM today, your editor will join host Bill Sayre to discuss the chief challenges facing Vermont, and to be considered in the upcoming Legislative Session – property taxes, education cost and quality, housing availability and cost, health care costs and wait times, and the general burden of taxes and regulation. Listen online at www.radiovermont.com or tune in to 96.1 FM or AM 550. Calls are welcome at 802-244-1776.
To prepare Bill and myself for this program, I’ve jotted down a few notes in preparation about property taxes and the rising cost of housing and health care. I share them below….
Property taxes. The House Democrat leadership is promising to keep property taxes below the 5.9% increase projected by the governor in his early December letter. On the surface, that’s encouraging news for property tax payers. But the statement alone raises three big questions.
Question #1: Will the House (led by its yet-to-be-appointed Chair of Appropriations Committee replacing the unseated Diane Lanpher of Vergennes) merely reduce property taxes by increasing taxes elsewhere? That’s what they did this spring to get the 20% statewide property tax down to about 14%.
Question #2: Will the House make significant reductions in education spending? When VDC asked her at a press conference last week, Speaker Jill Krowinski indicated that spending cuts like universal free school meals – an estimated $25 million – are on the table. But as the legendary Cola Hudson (R-Burke) used to say about legislators’ intentions vs. how they actually vote, “there’s many a slip between the cup and the lips, and therein lies the mystery.”
Question #3: Will Krowinski will be the Speaker after the Speaker election on the first day of the Legislature. 18 Democrat House Caucus members last Saturday voted against requiring Democrats in leadership positions. This vote is a ‘soft’ indicator of unrest in the caucus and – perhaps – support for the candidacy of Rep. Laura Sibilia (I-Dover), who Krowinski has refused to meet in a public debate organized by Rep. Jay Hooper.
In a couple weeks, the Commission for the Future of Education will release a report predicted to be short on itemized school spending cuts but waxing eloquent on the theme of education spending reform by turning around Vermont’s housing, health care, and worker shortage crises. It will say there’s no quick-fix, education-specific silver bullet because health care insurance increases, housing and worker shortages are major drivers of ballooning school spending.
Nevertheless, all the major players in the House, Senate, governor’s administration, and local school leadership are singing from the same sheet of music about reducing spending and property taxes. Will taxpayers be applauding at Town Meeting? See reference to Cola Hudson.
Housing shortage. VDC is unaware of any new housing data, except that the state treasurer reports that in 2023 Vermont experienced another year of net migration – the number of people moving into the state subtracting the number of people moving out. NM in Vermont in 2023 was 7,592, more than twice the 2022 figure but just half of the Covid Migration of 2021 (14,458). Vermont Public reported this week that new, relaxed Act 250 requirements are leading to construction of more urban housing, most of it multi-family buildings such as apartment houses.
No doubt the 2025 Legislature will receive updated housing reports and take action (or not).
Healthcare insurance. As reported yesterday by VDC reporter Mike Bielawski, Vermont is likely to see the highest health care insurance premium rate hikes in the country. In an effort to control costs, the Green Mountain Care Board has ordered the UVM Health Network to cut $122 million in spending. The hospital network said those cuts will require closing a mental health center, transitioning dialysis center operations to local hospitals, and other cuts. A GMCB study recommending downsizing some local hospitals and redistributing their services to other facilities has been met with hostility. It’s unlikely those steps will be taken, but the financial unsustainability that prompted them remains.
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Categories: Legislation
You mean like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul ? Surely our citizen law makers don’t think that we, their constituents, are so stupid that we would not notice that slight of hand, do they ?
Offer Elon a place in VT — and ask him to come straighten us out… clearly we are incapable of doing so, due to the tangled web we’ve woven of compromising ethics and morals for short term convenience and long term capital gain… sold our souls we have… only a complete taken down and restart will fix this one… a la Elon and Vijay style…what say you?
I’m sure you mean Vivek rather than Vijay.
Will the pain of taxes result in actions taken from the pain of health care???? We are going down the road where no one will be safe.
They run the school budgets
They oversee the medical budgets
They oversaw EB-5
They oversee the drug and crime issues
We are run by non-profits and lobbyists, unelected I might add.
We have massive censorship, propaganda.
We have a cancel culture in full force.
Nothing has changed in Montpelier.
Why do we think things will change?
They will steal more money from us, just a different pocket. People will wonder, how come my lifestyle is more difficult?
We must change before our leadership changes.
A couple of corrections: on the WDEV discussion, there were several references to health care cost being “$1,000 per person per year,” likely a slip of the tongue, as the number is at least $10,000 per person — or more. BlueCross/BlueSheild paid out at the rate of $6,320 per person per year in Jan, 2020 and $10,080 in June, 2024, and that doesn’t include what people paid in copays and coinsurance. A policy for a family of 4, with an out-of-pocket maximum of $18,000 (silver plan, high copays and deductibles), now costs $38,000. Yet at least 4 hospitals are at risk of closing in the next 2-3 years, and access is declining, overall. Yes, we have a crisis, and yes, it impacts school budgets — as well as budgets for municipalities, the state, and businesses.
Second, the “mental health center” being closed by UVMHN is actually the 12-bed CVMC inpatient psychiatric unit, meaning patients returning to waits for multiple days in the EDs waiting for beds elsewhere and straining ED capacity. CVMC is among the 3 largest hospitals in VT, but will be only one not offering psychiatric inpatient care, right at a time that these needs are increasing.
Health care and hospitals need to change delivery structures as one element of change, but they need to do them wisely in terms of overall health impacts in the state. Among the cuts, this is the only one that is immediate, provides no alternative access to the service, and has a set closure date, not a phased process. I have no idea where the closing comment in the article — “it’s unlikely those steps will be taken” — comes from. This closure is underway and irreversible, because staff will find other jobs and new recruitment won’t be possible.
only way they can pay for too high budgets,especially education, is to move to getting revenue from bigger tax bases,income and sales.we have a spending problem not a revenue problem
I listened to the show with great frustration because they never gave the phone number so I could call in and participate. Like Anne Donahue, I wanted to correct the information about health insurance costs. Also, they talked about some type of reward for choosing healthy life styles. Well, we used to have health insurance that rewarded our healthy life style with lower rates. But the Vermont Legislature forced insurance companies to leave the state to give BLue Cross & Blue Sheild a more or less monopoly. Vermont went with community rating. Now BCBS is having severe financial problems. The state gave so many people help that it left too few private pay to support they system. What a mess and I feel the situation is much more serious than most people think. Sen. Lyons said when the Legislature addresses the health care problems , she will only deal with the low lying fruit. She obviously does not care about economic problems most Vermonters are facing.
I believe that 75 to 80% of our taxes go toward education. Our student population keeps declining but our support staff remains the same.
If I were a business, with less orders to fill, I would reduce my staff. with that said, I would reduce the education staff. And I would have the staff contribute more to their health care expenses. The Maintenace staff would remain the same as the buildings still require the same maintenance regardless of the number of people working there.
I would reduce the compensation of the supervisory staff.
I like your comments but with additions. The school support staff doesn’t stay the same. It constantly increases as more counselors are added and more students qualify for a staff member to be with them the entire day. The state, (teachers union) tries to claim less cost per student by coming up with their “student equivalent” program. For example a student who is an immigrant is 2 student equivalents, if English is not their first language they become 3 student equivalents. I read an article in Vt Digger about students in the Winooski school system who were worth up to 4 student equivalents. This all comes down to the state claiming they are giving out tax dollars to schools for 4 students that it actually serves 1 student.