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Asked last week who is in charge of enforcing the laws against Vermont’s chief law-enforcement officer, Gov. Peter Shumlin dodged the question several times, concluding with, “You research it and get back to me.” Secretary of State Jim CondoS, meanwhile, said he did not plan to investigate whether Sorrell committed unrelated campaign finance infractions, which Seven Days documented last week. “Our office serves as a filing cabinet for campaign finance reports and does not have any investigatory or prosecutorial powers,” Condos wrote in an email. “Given this, when individual instances of possible noncompliance are brought to our Office’s attention we recommend that anyone who suspects a violation report it to the Attorney General’s Office directly.” We’ll get right on that.
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Gov. Shumlin is one courageous dude, he’d like you to know. Three months ago, he proposed raising $90 million through a new, 0.7 percent payroll tax. Much of that, plus another $100 million in federal matching funds, would go to undercompensated medical providers who treat Medicaid patients. Since those docs would no longer have to shift costs to the privately insured, Shumlin argued, everyone’s premiums would become more affordable. “What I was trying to do was solve this problem that no politicians have yet had the courage to solve,” Shumlin proclaimed last week with characteristic modesty. “And I think we should solve it.” But as he’s noted several times in the past few weeks, his Democratic colleagues in the legislature aren’t nearly as courageous as he sees himself. In March, the House Health Care Committee cut Shummy’s plan to $47 million and proposed paying for it with a smaller payroll tax and a new tax on sugarsweetened beverages. Weeks later, the House Ways and Means Committee cut it to $22 million and got rid of the payroll tax altogether. The resulting legislation, Shumlin told Vermont Press Bureau chief neal GoSwami, is “really miniscule, and it does nothing to address the cost-shift.” “Their bill will not make a dent in the problem we’re trying to solve together. Everyone agrees we’ve got to fix the costshift,” he said, before pulling out the C-word again. “Well, let’s have the courage to fix it.” Translation: If you don’t do what I say, you’re a wuss. House Speaker ShaP Smith (D-Morristown) didn’t much like Shummy’s courageous rhetoric. In an interview last week, he said the governor’s inability to pass the centerpiece of his legislative agenda was nobody’s fault but his own. “I think that the proposal the
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administration put on the table in the first instance did not hold together,” the speaker said. “And as a result of that, it was dead almost before it started.” The problem, Smith argued, was that not all the money Shumlin proposed raising through the payroll tax would have gone toward addressing the cost-shift. Some of it was earmarked for other health care expenses that Smith thought should’ve been in the base budget. “It didn’t add up to the rhetoric that was used around it,” Smith said. “The notion that the dollars raised were going to go back into Vermonters’ pockets didn’t end up bearing out.” Shumlin, who opposes taxing sugar-sweetened beverages, hasn’t explicitly said he would veto the House bill if it reaches his desk, but he might not need to. Since it limped out of Ways and Means two weeks ago by a six to five vote, the measure has been stuck in purgatory — better known as the House Appropriations Committee. “I think we’re still working to make it the right bill,” said Rep. mitzi JohnSon (D-Grand Isle), the committee’s chair. “It’s no big secret that it has struggled.” House leaders are reluctant to bring even the smaller health care bill to the floor, where Republicans and Connecticut River Democrats opposed to the sugarsweetened beverage tax might vote it down. “It’s on pause,” Ways and Means chair Janet anCel (D-Calais) said diplomatically. Even if the bill cleared the House, it wouldn’t stand a chance in the Senate in its current form. “I don’t think the Senate will pass the sugar-sweetened beverage tax, nor do I believe it will pass the payroll tax,” said Sen. tim aShe (D/P-Chittenden), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. “Unless or until a majority of the Senate appears interested in them, they don’t appear to be moving.” Asked at a Statehouse press conference last week whether a single member of the Senate supported his payroll tax proposal, Shumlin said, “You’d have to ask them.” But did the governor know of any? “I’m going to let them speak for themselves,” he responded. “But, listen … I mean, if you’re asking the question, ‘Is it easy in public life not to take on tough challenges?’ the answer is yes.” Ah, right. Courage. Sounds kind of like the governor who spent five years promising to pass the nation’s first single-payer health care system, only to lose his courage last December when its financing plan came due. As he said three months earlier at his reelection campaign kickoff, “I was elected to get tough things done, and this may well be the toughest, but I will not rest until it is done.” My, how fleeting this courage is. m