Education reform in Vermont remains in limbo as the Senate scraps weeks of work.

And Governor Scott insists lawmakers deliver.

If we get to a point where it's not going to move, if they wrap up and go home without an education bill, a transformation bill, they'll come back and we'll keep calling back all the way back until we get something accomplished.

Plus, state leaders shine a spotlight on the cost of health care in Vermont and disagreement over the state's housing policy continues.

All that and more ahead on Vermont this week.

From the Vermont public studio in Winooski.

This is Vermont this week, made possible in part by the Lintilhac Foundation and Milne Travel.

Here's moderator Mitch Wertlieb.

Thanks so much for joining us on Vermont this week.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb.

It's Friday, May 23rd and joining us on the panel this week, Shaunn Robinson from VtDigger, Mikaela Lefrak from Vermont Public.

And joining us remotely today from the statehouse, Calvin Cutler from WCAX.

Thank you all so much for being here.

And we're going to explain why Calvin's at the statehouse and why there is so much going on.

And a lot of this has to do with the future of education reform in Vermont.

It is in a really uncertain place right now.

Let's start off hearing from Darren Allen of the Vermont NEA.

What Vermonters have told lawmakers and the governor, and we're not convinced they've listened yet, is they support their local public schools.

They don't like the way they're paid for it.

We don't think Vermonters said, close our schools, fire our teachers, and give our students less.

All right.

So that's the view from the Vermont NEA right now.

And Calvin, you're at the statehouse.

Really appreciate you being there today.

There's a lot going on.

What's the latest update on what's happening with the education reform bill?

Yeah.

Thanks, Mitch.

So as we are recording this, as you mentioned, there's still a lot that's happening.

There's going to be an amendment that's going to be introduced later in the Vermont Senate to try to move this bill across the finish line so it can now go to conference committee, where the House and the Senate will reconcile their differences to try to send something to Governor Phil Scott.

Now, you mentioned in the offset that the Senate actually on Thursday, had, pulled the bill to the floor and ended up reverting, back to the language that the House passed months ago, essentially, scrapping about a month's work or so of committee work and scrapping their entire bill.

And it really does go to show just how, especially in the 30 member Senate, how difficult it is given the balance of power to try to account, to, or gain enough votes for a proposal that will be able to make it across the finish line here.

You know, there was a, Senate Democratic Caucus meeting on, on on Thursday night, where Senator Bruce had introduced, two amendments, one of them, he said was able to maybe move forward.

Then they would do the second, more tough one today, which was on independent schools and even for, for the easy amendment.

They, they weren't able to gain majority support.

So certainly, there's a real sticking points here dealing with, independent schools and the role of them in our new, education system, but also with our district lines and the foundation formula and how it will be rolled out.

So there a lot to pass over here and a lot of work to be done.

As you said, the Senate, four weeks of work seems now to have gone for now.

But Sean Robinson, the governor is saying we need to get something done now.

He made that pretty clear at the start there.

So what is the issue here?

We've got the NEA saying, hey, let's let's hold back on this.

But the governor saying, no, I want something done now.

Yeah.

I mean, to your point, legislators and the Senate in particular right now are really kind of between a rock and a hard place.

Right?

And to what Kevin was saying before as well, you know, we are talking at this point, you know, even today as we're taping about making amendments on the floor to the biggest policy issue of the year to the biggest issue that was on voters minds last fall when they went to the polls and totally reshaped the political makeup in the statehouse.

So there's we've heard concern from, you know, Democratic lawmakers this week in caucus meetings, like Calvin mentioned at, you know, do they even have time to understand within some of these amendments?

These are massive, you know, 100 plus page bills that we're talking about here and proposals.

And can I also just say what's going on in Montpelier can often feel very distant or esoteric to the average for whatever.

But this, debate over education reform is played out on Front Porch Forum in our email boxes.

I'm, on the Burlington School District's email list.

And the superintendent, of the Burlington School District has been, you know, emailing parents this entire past week about this bill said he doesn't support it, hoping they pull it back, which they did, and kind of rejigger it.

And, you know, Senator Bruce, the Senate president pro tem is is from the Chittenden County area.

So, you know, those those endorsements, those leaders in the communities really, really matter.

And this trickle down in all sorts of ways.

They are watching.

That's a great point, McKayla.

And you know, Calvin jump in here too, because I know you mentioned some of the things that are holding this up.

But if you could be a little more pointed about that because people are probably wondering, why can't they get something done through redistricting their school size, what are some of the major sticking points?

Yeah, I think Mikayla just really hit hit it on the head there about the impact on schools, the impact on taxpayers.

It came out, I believe it was last week in Senate Finance that the way that they were rolling out the foundation formula, which essentially would remove, it would pay school districts a flat rate or a rate of what it is determined to educate a student.

Rolling out that formula by a certain date, but without knowing where the district lines are and which schools and which towns fall into which.

Jurisdictions that potentially could raise property taxes in the near term.

In some low spending towns by 20 to 30%.

And when we talk about low spending towns, these are towns that, are really somewhat critical, maybe of their school budgets.

They're a little bit more thrifty.

They are generally lower income towns as well.

Maybe less affluent is the way to put it.

And so it came out that this could put a really huge burden on, on some of those towns.

So that's why we're hearing calls from many to really pump the brakes and slow down here.

Quick follow up here though, Calvin on that point, I got to ask because I thought this was taken care of.

Would using that that general fund money, you know, paying down the property taxes that we're gonna keep it at a 1%, you know, almost level.

Yep.

Exactly.

And that's the thing this year, it is about its level.

Because we're using over $100 million of surplus funds that have just been pouring through our economy.

But there is no guarantee that that that money will be there next year, especially given the, federal uncertainty of of potential cuts.

The big, beautiful bill is moving through through Congress.

That's going through the Senate.

We'll see where that lands.

But there is a real concern about what are we going to do about property taxes next year, which gets to the governor's point, saying, I will not let lawmakers leave this session without, passing something that is transformational and that, you know, will really get the ball rolling on bringing down costs for Vermonters.

Senator Scott back.

I talked to him earlier today, and he said that the House version of the Foundation formula spends more per student.

And he said, you know, that's something that that they cannot support.

So this is we are in the 11th hour.

In fact, we are in overtime already.

Just today they penciled out another two weeks, for them to potentially do that work.

We are in overtime here and there's still quite a few, big, big sticking points that have to be addressed.

And we didn't even talk about independent schools.

Yeah, that's going to be another issue too.

And as you say, another could be another two weeks of reminded of that that scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off where his friend says he's going to keep calling me and calling me and calling me.

And that's what Governor Scott is going to do, right?

I mean, he's basically said, if they don't get something done, I'm going to just keep calling him back.

They better not have vacation plans right.

Yeah.

And and that kind of gets to the point of if we cannot come to a compromise.

Part of this is so tricky is because of the new balance of power.

We no longer have a Democratic supermajority.

And this is the thorniest issue in in many, many years.

And so whether it's housing, which I'm sure we'll get to or education, we're seeing a lot of unlikely coalitions.

Among, you know, it's not just a red versus blue issue here anymore.

And so to to that point, you know, will they be able to come up with a proposal that can win majority support and win support of the governor?

Using multiple parties here, multiple factions, parts of the state that still remains to be seen.

But that's kind of the thinking here, the political dynamic that we really haven't seen in years.

In fact, this is kind of the way things used to be in some ways.

Before, before, 2019, 2020.

Okay.

You mentioned the massive, federal bill that's passed the House.

Michela.

That is going to do it's going to do quite a number on health care, frankly.

I want to start up, by hearing what Senator Bernie Sanders and Lisa Ventress from Vermont Health Care number one had to say about this.

We cannot continue to ignore this crisis nationally, the cost of health care per person, unbelievably, is $14,500 per person in Vermont.

It is even higher than that since 2018, health insurance premiums in Vermont have grown a gobsmacking 92%, compared to the national average of 12%.

Mikayla, I know you've been digging into a lot of this.

I think you spoke with Senator Sanders about this at some point.

What is going on with what is the danger for Vermonters and health care in relating to what's going on with this federal bill?

Yeah.

So that footage we just saw was from a press conference on Monday at the Burlington Airport with Senator Sanders and, state legislators as well, and local leaders in the health care sector.

And yet this budget reconciliation bill that the House just passed, it's a big deal.

It would reduce federal support for Medicaid by nearly $700 billion over the course of a decade.

So they estimate about 7.6 million people across the country would lose access to Medicaid.

A big caveat, of course, is that this still needs to pass the Senate.

But, yeah, there's a lot of a lot of changes here that would affect Vermont, including, work requirement, which is the strictest work requirement that Republicans in Congress have ever put forward.

So that would make it easier to lose your benefits.

It would be harder to reenroll, and it would apply to a larger set of Medicaid recipients, including older Vermonters.

But I should note that that those work requirements are generally actually pretty popular, in nationwide polls, both with Republicans and less so with Democrats.

But still, there is a lot of support for those.

But yeah, last week I interviewed the CEO of Community Health Centers, which is based in Burlington.

But they do, they run federally qualified health centers in Burlington, or then and Grand Isle counties and, their CEO, Jeff McKee says, yeah, this is the thing that's that's keeping him up all night.

And in particular, their federally qualified health centers, they serve a lot of folks who are homeless, a lot of new Americans who require or who, lean on federal dollars to be able to pay for health care and, if they if these health centers are not getting those funds, they're not going to be able to stay open.

The bill also has a cut of about $500 billion to Medicare, which I know affects older Vermonters, too.

Yeah, yeah.

That's right.

I mean, there's so many changes coming.

I talked to, Phil Boru, the Senate president pro tem, about this this week as well.

And, like Calvin was saying, they're they're trying to make these plans to figure out what Vermont is going to do if these federal dollars disappear.

And they're talking about, you know, topping off their reserves.

And they're, they're putting in what's, what's sometimes called a waterfall.

So if we get more revenue and then was predicted, as Calvin was mentioning, that money could be added to their other reserve and could be used to cover cuts to Medicaid, but it's still a drop in the bucket.

And that money is as you said, it's being used to cover some other pretty important stuff right now.

So there's a lot of demands on those reserves.

Calvin, there is a health care reform bill moving forward.

Is that right?

What can you update us about that?

Yeah, it's a it's a great question.

And this dovetails a lot with the work that's done with act 167.

You know, there's a lot there's as Mikayla talked about, there's things that we can't control.

But there's things that we actively can control.

Here in Vermont.

And as we know, hospital spending is really, huge cost driver here.

So there's been a number of health care bills.

One, there's one dealing with, the cost of, outpatient pharmaceutical drugs, but another one that would deal with, continuing the work of act 167 and really move the ball forward.

And it basically deals with, from what I understand, the, the, jurisdiction of, the agency of Human Services and what power they have to compel hospitals to make changes.

You know, we know that, a lot of our health care is delivered in a inpatient hospital setting, and these hospitals play a really critical role, from from an economic perspective in, in communities, I'm thinking, like Newport, but also just from a community perspective and having peace of mind and knowing that that it's there.

It's a huge part.

And so there's a really thorny, conversation, actually, it passed through the House earlier today about sort of what are the next steps and what is the impact?

On, on some of these, these hospitals.

So we'll see where it goes from here.

It now goes to governor Bill Scott's desk.

But certainly, you know, that's this is just one more piece of the puzzle.

But in terms of, you know, the double digit rate hikes that we're seeing for, hospital budgets for, for, insurance premiums.

This does not begin to, to address those, but I think there is a wide understanding when we talk about property taxes, when we talk about housing and affordability.

I think this year especially, in this biennium, there's really more of an understanding here in the state House that our health care costs are directly linked to how many people are paying into the commercial insurance pool and the need for, for housing.

So it's, it is tricky, but health care is definitely on the minds of state lawmakers and all wrapped up and interconnected.

Sean Robinson, one thing that, has been done and completed is the state, budget has been signed into law, $9 billion.

And I understand that there are some, things in there dealing with immigration that the governor has gotten some praise for working.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, it's it's interesting normally or so our two different bills on that.

So that's okay.

Yeah.

Any there's a lot of bills to keep.

Yeah.

It's time of year.

Yeah.

Any you know most legislative sessions the state budget is sort of the final act of the year.

They do it, you know, at the end of the night and the session is over right after that.

But now we're in this over time period that I think Calvin alluded to earlier, right, where we have these huge, massive policy issues still to deal with.

But to your point, yes, the budget, is wrapped up for the year.

The governor signed off on it this week.

It's about a $9 billion, slightly more budget, only slightly more, in state spending than the governor initially proposed.

They were pretty close.

In the end, the legislature and the governor.

And to your point about those those other bills.

Yeah.

So there's obviously been a huge focus the past few months on immigration enforcement in Vermont with the, you know, the cases of the students that were heard here in court in Burlington.

And the governor signed two bills this week that relate to immigration.

There's one it's s 56.

That would set up a committee to study if the state should create a new office or a committee to study the creation of a new office, and that's an office that would support, new Americans as a term that the state uses.

That's folks who are newly arrived in the state from, you know, places all over the world to provide them with economic support, social services.

And that's obviously a community that, you know, you'll see a lot of leaders in the state who say, we need to support these people to, you know, help with our workforce issues.

Right?

So, you know, to build out our tax base, things like that.

So that's one bill that he signed.

The other one, is Senate Bill S 44.

And that would put some new restrictions on how local and state law enforcement can collaborate with federal immigration enforcement.

So by that I mean like Ice, you know, agencies like that, that folks care a lot about.

And yeah, well, we've seen a lot of that happening recently.

There have been, some high profile arrests of, dairy farm workers and folks being detained.

Some were sent back to Mexico.

So this would be a big deal.

And I understand that the governor has gotten some good marks from those folks, from Migrant justice and folks who are watching these issues and saying, yes, this is something where we don't necessarily want to have Vermont officials working in tandem with Ice.

And the governor is getting some praise for that.

Yeah.

He got some, some positive words from the ACLU of Vermont this week, for signing off on that, which is not something we we always see.

So definitely some, some support for on that front.

Yeah.

We're looking at, Calvin, you had mentioned, that housing is currently mired in some legislative disagreement.

What what is the latest on the housing policy there?

Yeah, it's a great question.

And it's a it's changing again, like education changing by the moment.

As we are taping right now on on Friday afternoon, the House of Representatives is voting on S1 27, which is a omnibus housing bill, has a lot of programs, for like the hip, the housing improvement program, you know, more funding for, for mobile homes.

But the big one, the Golden goose this year in terms of housing policy is something that's known as the chip or chips program.

The Community Housing infrastructure, program.

And basically it, it uses TIF, tax increment financing to build out project based, water and sewer, something that, you know, developers have long said that is a hindrance and is, especially cost prohibitive for them to build out housing.

And I'm not just talking like, you know, big buildings, but we're talking like neighborhood or different swaths of town, you know, think about South Burlington and some of the investment that's been made there.

So right now the House is proposing, and moving forward with a number of amendments.

There's a lot happening there.

And it does include some, some, some pieces that Governor Phil Scott at his, press briefing this week really came out swinging against.

These are, you know, policies like, a covenant on some of the housing that's built with these, these funds or with the Tiff districts or Tiff, chips, I should say, you know, a covenant saying that somebody that lives there has to live there 365 days of the year, full time resident.

You know, another one.

You'd have to prove that the project would not have happened were it not for, for this, this, this tiff or for this chip.

And also there's, there's other guardrails on it that, for the education fund there is especially in the House of Representatives and Ways and Means Committee, there's a real concern about, you know, we are making massive changes to our education funding system.

As it stands with the Ed bill, if we are also taking money from, even temporarily from, from the education fund or in theory, shortchanging it is what the criticism is.

There is a real concern there.

So that is is still being debated hotly on House side.

Whereas the Senate also they took some of the original chip language, put it into their own housing omnibus bill.

Both of those bills, whether they get passed through the House or Senate, will have to, go to conference committee and be reconciled with the other chamber.

But I think, you know, it really is a question of which Bill will make it to the governor's desk first and which one, will arrive in a form that he can support?

Certainly the one that what the Senate is working on.

Is, is probably a little bit more acceptable to, to, Phil Scott.

But again, we'll, we'll have to see, this this has been the, the biggest housing bill.

And, you know, project based Tiff, has it's an idea that's been kicking around for almost a decade, and has never made it across the finish line.

So this is, we'll see where we go from here.

In addition to that, there's also the motel, housing program, which the governor is not a fan of, and that's going to have to get reconciled somehow.

And I know there's still some wrangling over that a couple of weeks left in the session, perhaps.

Could be more.

Mikayla, I know you've been speaking, with folks like the governor and Senator Philip Ruth about this.

What are we expecting these last couple of weeks of the session?

I mean, there's a lot obviously, you know, my favorite part of this period of the session is what's up?

And I don't mean to to make fun Calvin or Sean, but I like, right.

When you get to the very end of the session and you dogged state House reporters start getting this, like, acronym brain scramble thing going on with like the chip 1278 4 or 5 and becomes a toll and somehow they keep it all straight language.

Yes it is amazing to me.

But yeah, there's so much going on right now and it is really down to the wire.

I mean, we've been trying to figure out when the end of the session is going to be.

And then there's also like all this stuff happening at the federal level.

So it's kind of like whatever gets figure it out in the next couple of weeks at the state level.

Could be like some I move after the Senate votes on this big, beautiful bill, and then they're going to come back and it just keeps going and going.

Yeah, I mean, it's even possible that legislatures or legislators could have to come back later this year and rework the state budget.

Right.

And we don't, you know, we don't know yet.

We don't know what that might be.

Depends on Congress largely.

But we could, you know, even see a special session for that reason.

You know, it's amazing to me, too.

And to your point, Mikayla, about this, all the scrambling that's happening these last couple of weeks, so many thorny issues to deal with and a really big one is it seems like is not getting dealt with and it's preparing for future flooding.

I mean, we know in the last couple of years alone, Vermont has been devastated.

What's being done on that front?

Yeah.

We did a whole show about this on Vermont Edition this week.

It was a really interesting conversation, talking with folks like the mutual aid community level as well as, Eric Forehand, who's the head of Vermont emergency management, trying to figure out how the state is going to prepare, because, yeah, we're getting closer and closer to that July double anniversary date, the flooding of 2023 and 2024, and the other big thing at the federal level that folks are keeping an eye on is that this kind of reimagining or reforming of FEMA.

And, just this week, the Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, testified before a Senate committee and, and said that there needs to be massive FEMA reform, which, you know, our own Senator, Peter Welch and other, state representatives have called for, too.

And and we don't know what that's going to look like.

It could be like increased cost sharing for states, a policy shift towards FEMA only coordinating federal assistance, like when it's deemed necessary, which means they just might do it less, yeah, there's there's lots of changes afoot.

Well, it's really interesting.

And you all can weigh on this if you want.

But when we hear Chris, you know, I'm talking about, you know, FEMA needs reform and Peter Welch talking about the amenities reform, they're talking about two very different things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, Peter Welch never liked the way that, you know, the money was getting to the states that needed it.

But what we're hearing on the federal level is states need to do all this stuff, most of it by themselves.

FEMA's not going to be going door to door anymore.

They're not going to be doing the immediacy.

Where does this leave Vermont when the next big flood happens and it will happen?

That's that's the million dollar question.

Yeah, I don't know.

We may not forget now that, you know, we're still in the recovery process from these recent floods.

I mean, the state is still actively negotiating with FEMA over how much it's going to cost to rehabilitate parts of the Capitol complex in Montpelier.

You know, these discussions are still happening and they don't have an agreement yet.

And that's been, you know, almost two years, right, since that 2023 flooding.

So this is a long process.

And like you said, you know, how do we both address that and also be proactive looking forward.

All right.

Very quickly happening this weekend I'd like to talk about something that's that's nice.

That's happening.

It's the Vermont City Marathon.

Michela, you recently interviewed someone who's written a book about this.

Yeah, I'm really excited about the marathon.

It's on, Sunday.

It's.

It always is on Memorial Day.

Looks like there's going to be pretty good weather for it by 50.

It's not supposed to rain.

And, yeah, I recently talked to somebody who, was inspired to begin running because her mother ran the Vermont City Marathon.

At 50 was her first marathon.

And, her mother since passed away.

And, this woman, Emily Howland, who grew up in Lincoln, has become an ultrarunner.

She ran the entire length of Oregon since then and more than 20 marathons.

Oh, so not that big a snow.

I think it I'll do it.

She's coming back to speak on Saturday before the marathon, along with another local ultrarunner.

So it's really fun.

And I got to finish with you, Kelvin Cutler at the state House.

I have been wondering about that picture that is behind you in the room.

What is that?

What were we looking at there?

Yeah, it's a great it's a great question.

So I'm on the third floor right now.

In the, in the state House.

This is the Vermont State Capitol.

Fire of 1857.

If you can see it right behind me, it's, the the golden dome in the, frame, you can see the Winooski River.

It's, somewhat of a chilling, painting, but, really, you know, encapsulates a, a really pivotal time.

And in what led to the creation of the beautiful statehouse we have today.

And that is our art critic, Calvin Cutler.

I really appreciate you assessing that painting for us.

So we're gonna have to leave it there.

Thanks so much for all of you for being here today.

Shaunn Robinson from VtDigger, Mikaela Lefrak from Vermont Public and joining us remotely from the statehouse, Calvin Cutler from WCAX.

I'm Mitch Wortley.

Thanks for watching and listening.

And we'll see you next week on Vermont this Week.