There are still about 64 out of 250 Vermont Towns that meet in person each year to vote on municipal and school district budgets. Concord Massachusetts, where I spent my adolescent years, has a population similar to Colchester's and still has an in-person town meeting. It can be grueling three-day set of late nights. The town of Southport Maine where I spend time each summer had a town meeting a few weeks ago to vote on 64 different articles many of which were individual expenditures by the school system.

But in most of the rest of the country things are very different. Our relatives from the Midwest are amazed that we vote on school budgets. It's all handled at the county level there. Democracy takes many forms.

School Budget Vote Results

School budget votes took on added importance this year as the projected state-wide average education property tax bill is projected to increase by double-digits. The results were presented to my committee on Tuesday as follows:

Districts Students

Passed: 62 39.43%

Failed: 30 39.74%

Re-Warned: 8 7.32%

Not yet voted: 19 13.50%

The Students column show the percent of total long-term weighted students in the state.

The impact of so many budget rejections has yet to be determined. We don't know how much the State will need in order to fund public education until all the budgets have been approved.

A troubling situation

One particularly troubling vote was the rejection of a town with a non-operating school district. A non-operating school district has students, but no schools. The students are all tuitions to other districts. When syuch a town rejects their school budget, they cannot pay the tuition needed by the other districts. No one knows how this is resolved.

What if no school budget is approved?

Towns have until July 1st to pass a budget. If  no budget is approved, Vermont law says the town can borrow up to 87% of the previous budget. The school board decides how that 87% is spent.

What next?

The General Assembly continues to work on how to reduce this year's projected property tax bill. We are also looking for long term solutions as well.

There's a lot of tension accompanying crossover week. The lobbyists are desperate to get their pet projects into legislation. Committee Chairs are packing agendas with testimony and votes. Because more bills are coming to the floor for full House votes, there is less time for committee works. It's a big time crunch.

Last week was also a preview of what's to come. One evening we were on the floor from 3:00 in the afternoon until 9:00 in the evening. And that was after a full morning of committee work.

What are we working on?

Flavored Nicotine Products: S.18, the bill that bans the sale of flavored nicotine  products finally came to the floor for a vote. That's the one that kept us there until 9:00 PM. It pass on a roll-call vote of 83 to 53. Here's how everyone voted. 

In spite of the fact that the bill has been kicking around the House for several weeks, there was still confusion over exactly what was being banned and what is already banned or just heavily regulated. S.17 is off to the Senate because we made some changes. We will see it again.

Neonicotinoids

While we're on the subject of nicotine, another bill, H.706, bans the use of nicotine base insecticides in hopes of bringing back the pollinators and general health concerns. Last week we voted this version out of committee. It will come to the floor for a vote on Tuesday.

The bill has two sections. The first bans the use and sale of neonicotinoid "treated article seeds." This section does not go into effect until January of 2029. The idea is that alternative seeds will be available by then. Quebec has already banned them and New York should have a ban in effect by then. Worse comes to worse farmers can apply for an exemption.

The second section regulates the application of neonicotinoid pesticides. The bill specifies that they can't be used while crops are in bloom. There are several other restriction as to what plants can be sprayed with the poison.

The Wealth Tax Bills

There are two wealth tax bill under consideration: H.827 is a 3% income tax surcharge on those that have more than $500,000 of yearly income. We are still working on that bill. The other is H.828, which is a tax on unrealized capital gains for the very wealthy. That one has now been turned into a study and included in our Miscellaneous Tax Bill (H.546). We passed that bill out of committee on a 11, 1, 0 vote (for, against, absent). Here's the version that will come to the floor next week.

Access Media Organizations (AMOs)

Lake Champlain Access TV (LCATV) is an AMO. It provides commercial free programming including coverage of select board and schoolboard meetings, concerts, talk shows, forums and plenty more. The funding for AMOs comes from the Political, Education and Government (PEG) fee on on your cable provider's bill. If you use cable channels, there is a 5% charge for the service. But people are "cutting the cable" and moving away from cable providers. As a result, Vermont's AMO are facing a loss in revenue.

The Legislature is considering several ways of making up for that loss of revenue and continue to support AMOs. The first approach was a proposed amendment to H.657 that would have established  a Pole Attachment Fee whereby each communications service provider that attaches to a telephone pole within the State's right-of-way would pay a fee of $15 per year for each attachment. After much discussion that approach was dropped. 

Currently, we are considering a Streaming Tax on video services. The funds collected through this tax would be used for a good deal more than funding the AMOs. 

How this will all work out is still unknown, and it may not get resolved this session.