Page 9 - Funding Task Force News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

[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 ...

We are in the home stretch of the 2021 Legislative Session. COVID-19 cases are on the decline, Vermonters are lining up for vaccinations, and spring has arrived in Vermont. It’s hard to believe it was only a year ago that we were resigning ourselves to the reality that our somewhat predictable way of life had become uncertain and unpredictable. Schools went on line, businesses shut down, travel halted, and family members sheltered in place. The spigot, as Governor Scott would refer to during his weekly press conference, was closed. The decisions that were being made focused on saving liv...

Don't miss the big stories. Like us on Facebook.   It was my great pleasure and privilege to participate in another Council of State Governments Eastern Regional Conference (CSG ERC) webinar on Friday and Saturday, this one titled “Carbon Sequestration from the Ground Up: Opportunities in Northeastern Farms and Forests.” This is a topic the Vermont House Agriculture and Forestry Committee has been working on for several years that excites me because it reveals the roles that agriculture and forestry can play in climate change mitigation that, at the same time, may benefit our far...

Don't miss the big stories. Like us on Facebook.   MONTPELIER — To this point, the focus of revamping the state pension system’s governance and benefits to address its multi-billion dollar unfunded liability has been squarely on the House Government Operations Committee and on House Speaker Jill Krowinski, the lawmakers who took up the complex and emotionally charged issue. That’s about to change. The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday signed off on H. 449, a bill which proposes expansion of the Vermont Pension Investment Committee and a Pension Benefits, Design and F...

Don't miss the big stories. Like us on Facebook.   Vermonters deeply value our teachers, troopers and state employees. Many of the most active and engaged citizens in small town Vermont are retired state workers and teachers. While these public servants do not make as much as they might in a private sector career, the opportunity to earn a pension and have the guarantee of income in retirement is key to the recruitment and retention of these important workers, and a huge benefit to our local economies. Unfortunately, it has been clear for decades that those benefits paid out to future reti...