Legislation

With adjournment in sight, vast differences remain on key issues

Graph credit Lake Champlain Chamber

The Legislature is working towards adjournment, with only about 14 legislative days left for the Senate’s morning committees to finish their business before shutting down. Traditionally, that puts the adjournment about two weeks after or around the 12th or 13th of May this year, however, the discussion is starting to foreshadow a slightly later adjournment.

This session is unprecedented in a number of ways. It has the largest class of first-year legislators in history, and it likely also has the highest number of new committee chairs the Legislature has ever seen.

These circumstances necessitated legislative work to start much slower than a typical session, leaving less time for deliberation of massive legislative changes. Despite this, the Legislature is looking to tackle and tame numerous thorny issues that the seasoned legislatures before them have not been able to address, such as housing, childcare, and paid family medical leave, just to name a few.

As if this weren’t enough, the House, Senate, and Governor could not be far enough away from each other in the positions they’ve staked out on nearly every issue thus far.

Pictured in the graph are just a few examples of the divisions between the two bodies, and with much deliberation still ahead on items such as the HOME Act, we haven’t seen the full chasm yet. – Lake Champlain Chamber

Categories: Legislation

7 replies »

  1. Ahh, $340 mil, $400 mil, What’s a few tens of millions between already overtaxed citizens anyway ? Chicken….feed !

  2. The largest class of 1st-year legislators in history……why? Because many of the long-term moderate democrats bowed out – prior to committing hari-kari.

    This exodus caused this super-majority of current “progressive” socialist democrats running roughshod over the constituents of VT.

    Again, once the LT Governor is anointed – it’s all over for this state. We are no longer a brave little state, but a sad little state. Which one of us is going to make a few bucks running that plate through a template for sale?

  3. The best news in this report is: “The Vermont Legislature is working towards adjournment on the 12th or 13th of May.”

    Question:
    Were these “1st year legislators” voted in by The Voters of Vermont OR “selected” through the many options for cheating opened up by the Legislators remake of Vermont’s Elections to an “ALL Mail Ballot System?”

    Remember: There is NO LONGER a Chain of Custody for Ballots in Vermont.

    Also: Check out ERIC – Electronic Registration Information Center which is a
    non-profit, non government organization. Vermont has joined and our Director of Elections is a member of their board. ERIC has been given access to “work on” Vermont’s Voter Checklist. What could possibly be wrong with this???

  4. Maybe if they hadn’t introduced 500+ new bills, most of which were asinine to begin with, they could have gotten something useful done. I am convinced that the Vermont Legislature official motto should be “Since we can’t fix anything. we’ll spend our sessions breaking things.”

  5. The working mandate for our legislators is to pass new legislation…lots of it. Repealing laws is not part of their agenda. Perhaps they could consider expanding their deliberations to include an audit function. What’s the impact of our laws? Have they accomplished what they intended…are there other unintended outcomes? Does the law still have a supportive consensus among your constituents? Does such an audit suggest laws to be repealed? Should you be writing sun set clauses into our laws? Does an auditing mind set reveal an unnecessary permanence about much legislation?

    • Peripheral, largely unimportant technicalities you bring to the fore. The important thing is to appear “politically enlightened” & force “diversity”. C’mon man.

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