[co-author: Jessica Griswold]
Legislative Chess
It’s the time of year when the legislature plays chess. Sometimes it even plays speed chess, with programs, initiatives, and tax code changes flying in and out of bills as they move back and forth between chambers. Each chamber attempts to position its priorities to its best advantage, sometimes by holding the other chamber’s priorities as hostage.
A House committee may remove a section of a bill that its Senate counterpart spent months discussing. And vice versa. A committee may also attach one of these pieces to a different bill, using it as a “vehicle” to shore up its chances of survival. In non-COVID times, legislators play a version of three-dimensional chess, with players sitting on different floors in the Statehouse working their own individual chess boards.
[co-author: Jessica Griswold]
Senate passes budget
On Friday, the Senate gave final approval to the $7.17 billion FY 2022 budget, H.439. Senate Appropriations Chair Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, called it “as complicated a budget as I’ve ever had to put together in my time in the Senate” due to the flood of federal aid to Vermont for coronavirus relief and an unexpected $211 million revenue surplus.
The bill spends $478.5 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds, while incorporating only a portion of Gov. Scott’s ARPA spending proposal. Kitchel said the governor’s plan did not focus enough on the legislature’s funding priorities, including service delivery structure, court re-opening and higher education needs. Scott had asked the legislature to place all of the ARPA expenditures in a separate bill. Kitchel rejected that request, instead placing all ARPA spending in one designated section of the budget bill.
Tim Newcomb Internet service was agonizingly slow when Ed and Elizabeth Childs moved into their rural Corinth home in 2012. Nearly a decade later, it s not much better. The couple pays $75 a month for DSL service over the copper wires of their local telephone company, but it s useless for many modern tasks. Any kind of teleconferencing or uploading files is a real problem, Ed said. To upload video, even in a compressed format, you re talking hours and hours even days. So Ed, a retired electrical engineer, did two things. He joined the Space on Main in nearby Bradford, a coworking space where he has the high-speed internet connection he needs to develop a new business venture. And he joined the governing board of the East Central Vermont Telecommunications District, better known as ECFiber.
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High-speed broadband internet service is a necessity for every Vermont household, yet one out of every four households struggle without it. H.360, the $150 million broadband bill that passed the Vermont House last week, offers a clear, bold community-based strategy for universal broadband access. For those who have been looking for Vermontâs ârural electrification projectâ for broadband, this is it.
Of the intensifying inequities we have seen laid bare in the last year, one of the most visible is Vermontâs digital divide. It is the divide between Vermonters who could participate in remote schooling and those who lost a year of education. Those who could visit with their doctor and share medical test results, and those who deferred necessary medical care. Those who could participate in local select board meetings or visit with a grandparent, and those who must wait for the pandemic to end.