BRATTLEBORO-The Legislature usually retires for the year in early May. Yet it is early June, it has not adjourned, and the legislators are at home.
What is going on?
The roadblock is the education bill, and that is why the Legislature is taking a two-week break before returning to Montpelier.
On June 7, four of Brattleboro's legislators - Rep. Emilie Kornheiser of District 7, Rep. Mollie Burke of District 8, Rep. Ian Goodnow of District 9, and Sen. Nadir Hashim, one of the two senators representing the whole of Windham County - met with about 18 constituents at Brooks Memorial Library to explain what is happening in Montpelier and what it might mean for the people of Brattleboro, especially in relationship to the hot topic of homeowners' tax bills.
After a great deal of labor and some clever strategizing by the leadership, the state's budget is now written, passed, and signed by Gov. Phil Scott. Several other important bills have been passed or are in progress.
Before getting into details, Kornheiser gave the group a timeline of the events that have led up to this moment.
"Because we're close to wrapping up, I thought it'd be helpful to give a full arc of the session," she said. "It feels particularly important as a representative from Brattleboro, where I think sometimes we lose track of the vibe in the rest of the state, us being in our perfect little corner."
(Kornheiser added that she was joking about her "perfect" comment. "I don't actually think we're perfect, but I do love it here," she said.)
Power shift
The legislative session began in January after an election season that saw significant losses to the Vermont House and Senate Democratic Caucus, in addition to the tumult of the presidential race and a return of control to the Republican Party at the national level.
Although Democrats still hold the majority in the Vermont Legislature, many seasoned and well-respected Democratic leaders either retired or lost their re-elections. That meant the party lost its ability to override a gubernatorial veto. It also meant that a surge of new legislators have had to be integrated into the complex legislative system.
"We had an amazing new contingent from Windham County," Kornheiser said, referring to Zon Eastes, D-Guilford, Goodnow, and Emily Carris Duncan, D-Halifax. She called them "the most amazing breath of fresh air."
But for the most part, the newly elected representatives in the rest of the state were Republicans.
"Many of them did not expect to be elected and were not actually prepared to serve," Kornheiser said. "And that changes the dynamics on committees. It changes the dynamics on the floor. It changes the dynamics for everyone."
The Democrats who remained or who were newly elected were "coming in a little more nervous than usual, because while there were lots and lots of hot takes about what the election meant, no one really knows what an election means, right?" she continued. "It creates a certain degree of chaos."
The Legislature needed time to regroup.
"So what we did this session in some places was much more collaborative, because everyone showed up wanting to - or at least saying they wanted to - collaborate," Kornheiser said.
"We passed the budget," she continued. "We passed this year's property tax bill. We passed the vast majority of our policy bills. Then we took this two-week recess for the committees of conference to spend some time meeting, and then we're all going to come back together again [on June 16] for two days, to really finish the session and then formally adjourn."
The Legislature, which would normally reconvene next January, might need to return earlier.
Vermont receives approximately 36% of its operating monies from the federal government. If the economy slides downward or the administration in Washington does something drastic, state funds might take a serious hit.
The Legislature has prepared for these possibilities by putting aside almost $100 million, Kornheiser said.
"We have very specific provisions this year in the budget to enable us to come back together, because it's possible we'll need to entirely rewrite the budget if, say, federal Medicaid rules change," she said. "If something does happen over the next six months, and we need to be prepared to manage it, it's a little bit of seed money to do that."
And on one issue, climate change, the Legislature can only hold its breath, Kornheiser admitted.
Vermont is already experiencing climate change in everything, including bird migration patterns, the effect of smoke from wildfires in Canada on air quality, and excessive rainfall and flooding. Yet in Washington, the president does not believe in climate change and is trying to eliminate all legislation to correct for it.
"In some cases, like in the case of climate, we were really just holding the line," Kornheiser said. "And even being able to do that felt really strong and important."
The education bill
During the session, the landmark education reform bill has moved back and forth, being written and rewritten between the two chambers of the Legislature. It is now in conference committee, where the House and Senate, using a limited number of chosen legislators, will try to reconcile the two sides.
When they succeed, the rest of the Legislature will return to Montpelier for a vote.
Kornheiser, as chair of the House Ways & Means Committee, is on the conference committee, which hammers out differences in the versions of the bill as passed by the House and the Senate.
Although drastic changes to Vermont's education system are always controversial, most people statewide seem to agree on two things: first, that last year's school budgets caused most towns to increase their property tax rates by double digits, and second, that no one wants to see it happen again.
It is the reason that Brattleboro's proposed municipal budget, raised by a second 12% this year, was greeted so angrily by voters that it was voted down by Representative Town Meeting and had to be trimmed before it could be passed in a Special Town Meeting on May 27.
Scott has put the Legislature under pressure to pass an education bill before adjourning for the year. At the beginning of the year, the governor offered his own draconian education reform package, one that received a great deal of blowback from educators as well as the general population.
His proposal called for the elimination of almost all local control over school districts by consolidating the current 52 supervisory units into five regional ones; by introducing significant restrictions on private schools eligible for public money; by controlling the number of students in a class; by closing down some small rural schools; and by creating a new funding mechanism or "foundation formula."
A foundation formula provides districts a set amount of money per student in each district.
Complex issue
Education is complex, to say the least. Kornheiser gave the group at the library a short history lesson on recent attempts to make education funding fair and equal.
Everything began in 1997 with the Vermont Supreme Court's decision in Brigham v. State, which stated: "[W]e decide that the current system for funding public education in Vermont, with its substantial dependence on local property taxes and resultant wide disparities in revenues available to local school districts, deprives children of an equal educational opportunity in violation of the Vermont Constitution."
The decision continued: "In reaching this conclusion, we acknowledge the conscientious and ongoing efforts of the Legislature to achieve equity in educational financing and intend no intrusion upon its prerogatives to define a system consistent with constitutional requirements."
In other words, prior to the ruling, money available to a school depended on the size of its grand list. Wealthy towns, or "gold towns," as they were called then, could afford to carpet their schools and give every student a computer. Poorer towns, with less property tax money available, could maybe buy one computer for a whole class - and forget the carpets.
To make a Vermont education equal for all students, Act 60 was born.
"At that time, we had about double the number of students that we have in Vermont right now," Kornheiser said, noting that "back then, Act 60 actually did a tremendous amount to create a lot of equity between tax and between schools."
"But it has slowly tended towards inequality since then, and right now, in our schools, we have the same scale of inequality from school to school and district to district and town to town that we had in the '90s, when the Supreme Court decision passed and when Act 60 passed."
It's no secret how that happened. Certain towns and counties have more money than others, wealthier grand lists, and district school spending is entirely up to local control. Inequality inevitably crept back into the system.
"So communities were voting to spend really extraordinarily different levels of dollars for their students, even though their tax rates were somewhat equalized around the state, because the only sort of control mechanism we had was taxes," Kornheiser said.
Despite the legal construct that sets an education tax rate statewide and redistributes those funds to schools in a way that satisfied the Brigham decision, "Some districts have chosen to spend as much as they think their students need, and some districts have chosen to spend as little as possibly possible to keep tax rates down," she said.
"And that has a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, where some districts tend to pass a small increase every year, year over year, and other districts tend to keep cutting a little bit every year, or keeping their budget steady every year, which is essentially a cut in the face of inflation, right?" Kornheiser continued.
"And so over time, that's really created some tremendous inequities between districts and, actually, between some folks' tax rates," she said.
The Legislature has made attempts to control inequity, Kornheiser said, but last year, when property taxes skyrocketed - and did so outside the control of the Legislature - it became clear that the Legislature had to do something significant.
Things that need changing
Three things have to happen together in order for complex changes to occur, Kornheiser said, adding that "we need to move to a system where students can be guaranteed a level of resources in their school to meet their educational needs, regardless of decisions happening at the local level."
"Then we need to create a property tax system way more consistent and dependable and ideally more equitable, especially in the face of some really skyrocketing house values around Vermont," she said.
"We need to do governance changes, we need to have fiscal changes, and we also need education policy and quality changes in Vermont in order to make a difference," Kornheiser said.
All those changes would also need to take place "in the aftermath of the pandemic and the aftermath of significant inflation and the demographic changes," she said.
The Legislature agrees with the governor in that the state needs fewer school districts "that are much more consistent in order to have consistent educational opportunities," Kornheiser said.
From two bills to one
Now the whole process comes down to the conference committee.
"The structure of a committee of conference means that the only things under a conversation or discussion should be the differences between the two bills," Kornheiser said. "Anything that's the same between the two bills is technically not open for consideration. And so we're taking a pause so everyone can sort of realign themselves with that basic rule, and we're going to go back next week."
There are no "back room" deals being made, Kornheiser said, even though she is seeing many emails accusing legislators of making them.
"Sometimes late-night backroom deals happen," Kornheiser said. "But we are not taking a break to conference privately. We are genuinely not conferencing during the break. I am not talking to the Senate conferees during the break."
The basic pillars of this bill:
• Moving toward fewer school districts over the course of the next four to five years.
• Moving to a foundation formula that is based on national best practices of education finance, which means that every student is guaranteed an amount of money in their school.
• Moving to a system of property taxes that is much more sensitive to changing property values, improving the situation for the majority of Vermonters who pay property taxes.
Some of the disagreements between the House and Senate that need to be resolved? Timelines, for one thing, as well as details about how independent schools operate and how second homes would fit into all this.
'A pretty extraordinary experience, actually'
This is definitely not the governor's plan, Kornheiser said.
"We're sort of carrying the three pillars of his plan, but doing it in a very different way than he described," she said. "And it will not just be however many districts. We're setting up a commission that will draw new district maps based on very specific criteria. That's in the bill."
The governor could still veto the bill, but Kornheiser thinks that would be unlikely.
"We're pretty actively engaged in finding something that everyone can agree on," she said.
Kornheiser has been a major player on the education issue this year, and The Commons asked her what it was like to play such an important role on such a significant issue.
"I went into this legislative session feeling really committed to being a facilitator and not a hero," Kornheiser said. "And I've really enjoyed that sort of very clear role as facilitator. The House - knowing how hard education reform is - has done more than I think we ever have before. We've been able to communicate internally, to bring in lots of different stakeholders, to be extra diligent and careful with each step we took. And it's been a real pleasure to be part of such a good process."
From where she sits on the House side, "it's been really incredible, collaborating with superintendents and school business managers and teachers unions, and my colleagues. All across the new members, the longtime members, Democrats, Republicans, Progressives. It's been a pretty extraordinary experience, actually."
One thing is known, Kornheiser said: Brattleboro's education property taxes will not go up this year.
A win for local-option tax towns
There was "a huge win" for Brattleboro on the local option sales tax front, the legislators were happy to report.
Brattleboro, like many towns, has a 1% local-option tax on sales. But the money doe not directly go into the town's pockets. Instead, it goes to Montpelier, where it is put into a fund. Part of that fund is used for Payment in Lieu of Taxes, a program that shares money with municipalities for state and federal buildings that are exempt from property taxes.
When municipalities approve the sales tax question, the local-option taxes are collected by the state along with the usual state sales tax. The town has gotten 70% of that money back. Now it will get 75%.
"I know it doesn't feel like a lot, but it's actually a huge political win, and it's been a decade in the making," Kornheiser said.
"Five percent is a big deal, even though I know it's not everything. But we were able to expand the amount of local option tax that was available to local towns," she said.
This News item by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.