Updates from Montpelier A LOOK AT THE SESSION AHEAD (Courtesy of LCCOC) CONTINUED PANDEMIC RELIEF This global pandemic is taking its toll on everything. It will require the legislature to be supportive where they can while also causing no undue friction in the Vermont economy, which is already burdened. The pandemic will be approaching its second year as they begin legislating, and we’re on our second variant. Who knows what can happen… The Vermont Bridge Grant program designed to provide relief to businesses has a great deal of funding still available that has not been allocated due to stringent and burdensome criteria. In addition, some $25 million was promised for the second tranche of funds in that program this session. PER-PUPIL WEIGHTING STUDY A legislative task force was established at the end of the last session to unravel, understand, and provide suggestions on how to improve Vermont’s incredibly complex school funding formulas. It’s an issue so needlessly complex it can bore you to tears if it doesn’t put you to sleep first. Still, it will have massive implications on the future of Vermont schools. It is becoming more and more apparent that the more urban schools, particularly those in the Chittenden County region, have the most at stake. These towns have the most diverse populations and the highest tax rates in the state. The Agency of Education published a calculator to evaluate the impact on your town.
SIGNIFICANT, SYSTEMIC ISSUES; HOUSING, CHILDCARE, & WORKFORCE The third is caused by the first two, and any conversation to remedy the third inevitably becomes a discussion over the first two. Housing will be contingent upon legislators not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. There are good, ubiquitously agreed-upon changes that can be made in policy, such as Act 250, which would drive more development to downtowns. This was recently called for the Climate Action Plan due to the Global Warming Solutions Act. However, it has failed to move the past three sessions due to the instance of some environmental groups that what is needed is a “balanced bill,” meaning that it would need to do things to make development harder outside of downtowns. We need a win for affordable housing and a win for the environment where we can get it, and there is no reason we see to stall these downtown provisions any longer by holding them hostage for the other conditions. Childcare may see some movement around the margins to assist in workforce issues; however, the hefty price ticket item (hundreds of millions of dollars in funding) will be in the next legislative session in the next legislative biennium. Much of this will also likely be dependent on what happens in Washington D.C. as the Build Back Better would make massive federal investments in childcare and early childhood education. Workforce development is a complicated topic, as we alluded to above because it is other structural deficits in Vermont that have created our workforce issues. It’s clear that the cavalry is not coming; we just don’t have enough people in the state to meet our workforce demands, we can’t easily recruit them to come here because of housing issues, we can’t pull some people back in due to childcare issues, and we do not have enough young people even coming out of school to meet our needs. Simply put, a conversation about workforce development really needs to be about how to best assist employers with the workers they do have, automate where possible, and deal with other deficits in the Vermont landscape. That said, this year may see changes in the CTE system LCC has long advocated for, and the State College’s were the subject of a summer study committee that has sought to restructure the system to meet Vermont needs.
