This week we saw the real power of well-organized advocacy. On Tuesday the House voted down a proposed amendment to the Budget Adjustment bill that came to light over the weekend. The issue was the Canteen at the State Hospital in Waterbury. The Canteen has been run for many years as a snack bar where hospital patients approved for special privileges can mingle with other workers in the Waterbury complex. Some patients even work at the Canteen.

The administration closed the Canteen in December to save the modest subsidy it has needed for the past couple of years. Historically, the Canteen paid for itself and many believe that it can be managed to do so again. As the Senate reviewed the Budget Adjustment bill (H.534), they decided to add a provision that requires the Dept. of Mental Health to evaluate the possibility of reopening the Canteen on a cost-neutral basis. When the Senate’s version of Budget Adjustment came to the House, our Appropriations Committee voted to delete the Senate language regarding the Canteen.

Over the weekend, advocates discovered that their hard-fought Senate language was threatened, and mobilized to save it. Many of us received emails in support of the Canteen. On arrival at the Statehouse on Tuesday, we found letters in our mailboxes with hand-written notes imploring us to keep the Senate language. The upshot was that all of the conversation in the cafeteria focused on the Canteen. By the time the issue came to a vote on the House Floor, the proposal to remove the Senate language had support only from a few members of the House Appropriations Committee. The vote to save the Senate language was 115-6 by division of the House (where members stand up to be counted). It was a truly a victory for good advocacy.

The House Institutions and Corrections Committee met jointly with House Education to hear testimony about the implications of moving the state school construction aid obligations from the capital bill (general fund) to the education fund. The state currently has approximately $34 million in backlog obligations owed to the towns, some dating back to 2007. In some cases the towns qualified were eligible for 30% funding, tech centers being eligible for 50% and the renewable energy projects were eligible for 90%.

Many of the projects have been completed, but in order to complete the projects without the state’s share, the towns had to borrow the money. They have been paying interest on the loans to cover the state’s share. Our towns could use the money in these tough economic times, even if it just covers the interest.

In the joint meeting, we heard from representatives of the Dept. of Education and from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. Some of the primary reasons in opposition to shifting cost of school construction aid to the education fund, from the League, were:

• The Education fund shouldn't necessarily need to contain all education costs. For example, the Brigham decision declared the old funding system "with its substantial dependence on local property taxes", unconstitutional and required "substantial equality of educational opportunity throughout Vermont." When the decision was declared, school construction and the teachers retirement system did not rely on the property tax and were already available equally across the state.
• There is no excess capacity in the property tax to absorb this new cost.
• School spending is no more out of control than that in the General fund; adding this cost cannot slow down voters interest in spending.
• State support of Education isn't that high in Vermont, including school construction (and Teachers Retirement for that matter).
• If we shift it to the Education fund, the costs don't go away.
• Trying to sell this as "property taxes won't go up by transferring this cost if only local districts would cut their budgets in an equal amount" is disingenuous.

The Governor has proposed moving the $34 million in obligations to the Education fund and paying it off in $5 million per year over eight years, with the notion that this will not increase property taxes. So, though some of the testimony we heard talked about rationale for moving school construction to the Education fund as being associated with education, one could, in turn, argue that education costs in Corrections are education; should we move those costs to the education fund as well?

The Education department has submitted a listing of the towns with a recommendation for paying the state’s obligation to each town, and they consider their recommendation as fair and equitable. The Governor’s recommend last year was $0 and the Institutions and Corrections committee found $$ to pay towards school construction in the capital bill. This will be a discussion in the committee as the capital bill is finalized.

The Institutions and Corrections committee heard testimony from the active Community Justice Centers in Montpelier, Burlington, Springfield and St. Johnsbury. The committee wanted to hear from them directly regarding the proposed release of up to 350 low risk offenders in an effort to reduce spending in Corrections. The committee wanted to hear what their current capacity is, how the proposal would impact their service and what would need to be done, if anything to help them succeed. The Justice Centers pointed out the need for housing and coordinated services to help them work with the released offenders. As the Committee works through this and the recommendations of the PSG report these are areas that will need to be looked at and considered to help the offenders with a successful reintegration and to reduce recidivism.

Many readers have seen that the House Ways and Means Committee and then the full body of the House has passed H. 485, an act relating to the Use Value Appraisal Program (UVA, also known as Current Use). This bill came about due to the increasingly difficult budget situation that the state is facing in light of the challenging economy and the unwillingness of the Governor and legislative leadership to look towards a temporary upper income tax to fund critical areas of state government.

At the end of the session in 2009 various land use interest groups (with a range of viewpoints on the political issues surrounding land use, taxation, and regulation) were tasked by the legislature to find $1.6 million in savings. This was a positive step as the original proposal was to simply cut $3.2 million from the UVA program.

While no one wanted to make drastic changes to the program, it is apparent across state government that there will be 5-20% cuts across the board. At $1.6 million (out of about $40,000,000 or 4%), we are looking to keep UVA from taking significantly larger hits as the session gets to the end.

So, what are the changes? There is one fundamental change to the program and one short term effort to find short term savings in a way that will not jeopardize the program in the long run. For different groups, each of the issues are causing quite a stir. But in the aggregate, they are some of the least harm options that were available.

First, we implemented a one year moratorium for new enrollments. What is particularly challenging about this is we applied it to those properties that are in the application process this year. While it is unfortunate that these individuals will need to wait a year to be enrolled, the forestry plans that were created and the ag uses will all be able to commence. While it may appear unfair, and in some respects it is, there is no way to make any changes that will be deemed fully fair. If we did not do the immediate moratorium, then we would have had to increase the taxes on all parcels already enrolled. What this would have created is a slope for the long run that could lead to the end of the program.

Current use works by a formula for farmland and forestland that assesses land at the value of what can be produced in the fields of forestry and agriculture. If we made a temporary assessment adjustment to save the $1.6 million, then other property owners could argue, "if they can afford a little more this year, why not a little more next year" and the year after, etc. This would pit fair market taxpayers against the current use tax payers: a battle that nobody wants to get into.

The second change that we made was the Land Use Change Tax (LUCT) that is applied to land that has been enrolled and is withdrawn from the program. The idea is that a property owner has enrolled their land because they are using it for ag or forestry purposes. These are not high yielding professions per acre. Nor are they high expense uses for the land either (no more kids in the schools, little use of the roads, etc., on a per acre basis). However, once land is being removed for development, it will no longer remain viable for those sectors in the future. The current law was a tiered LUCT based on how long the land had been enrolled and was assessed based on the prorated value of the land removed (3 acres of a 100 acre lot would be paying a LUCT based on the $6000 value of the acres if the 100 acres was worth $200,000 (or 3 times $2,000 per acre)). At a rate of 10 or 20% that would amount to $600 or $1200. Given the increase in land values for 3 acre lots, the taxes saved would have amounted to that much in a year or less (If a three acre lot is worth $50,000, the taxes at $2/$100 would be $1000 per year). This meant that folks who were planning to develop a 100 acre parcel into twenty five four-acre lots would save tens of thousands of dollars just by enrolling for the year or two of planning. This was not the intention of the UVA program.

The new rate for the LUCT will be 10% of fair market value of the dis-enrolled land. Therefore, the tax on that three-acre (valued at $50,000 for development purposes) would be $5,000. While significantly more, it would still only take 5 years of enrollment to have made it worthwhile to be enrolled. For those that were enrolled for 10-20 years, the tax savings is still significant under either scenario, but it removes the incentive of short term enrollment for planned development.

By changing the LUCT, the tax impacts for the long run will continue well beyond the immediate $1.6 million that the moratorium provides in year one.

We also included a provision that allows for 90 days of withdrawal window for those people who are currently enrolled. This will allow folks to withdraw a parcel if they had been planning to in the near future so that they will not be assessed the new LUCT without fair warning.

Nobody really likes the changes, but given the economic climate and the scarcity of resources, this was seen as one of the least painful ways to save money while preserving the heart of the UVA program.

As a Representative on the House Ways and Means Committee the numbers game can be quite a slog. Recently we voted out the Fee Bill 10-0-1. This bill is the annual bill that reviews state fees for the "privileges" that Vermonters enjoy. This is everything from licenses (drivers, hunting, service, trades), to permit fees across the board.

As a Progressive my goal is to keep the fees as low as possible for working people, while reminding the committee and others that we should be funding state government through broad based income taxes to provide government services.

That being said, there are over 100 fees that are being changed this year.

One of the biggest nuggets this year was related to Entergy Vermont (the nuclear power plant). It turns out that there is an annual fee for generation facilities that discharge waters into the state. The Administration was looking to increase the per gallon fee by $0.0001 per gallon from $0.0009 to $0.001 per gallon. While appearing small, this can amount to thousands of dollars. The other change that they proposed was to increase the maximum amount this fee could be from $27,500 annually to $60,000 annually.

The rate is based on the daily design flow capacity. To put this in perspective, the McNeil wood generation plant in Burlington is designed such that this charge is only a few hundred dollars a year. However, Entergy is designed to discharge up to 543,000,000 million gallons of heated water each day. Therefore, the maximum cap limits their exposure to the fee. At their design flow, the fee would be $543,000 per year, or in other words, they receive a subsidy of $483,000. The Ways and Means Committee raised the cap to $210,000, thus recapturing some of that subsidy. I pushed to remove the cap entirely, but was unsuccessful.

To put this into perspective, the recent supreme court ruling in favor of Entergy to allow for a 1 degree increase in the net temperature for the Connecticut River (from 12 to 13 degrees) allows Entergy to save approximately $1.3 million dollars in cooling costs for the water that they discharge (for which this fee applies). For the privilege of heating the water and discharging it into the waters of the state, we are willing to still subsidize Entergy by $333,000 per year, while we are allowing them to make $1,300,000 more by heating the water more.

Once again, Entergy is making money due to a subsidy from Vermont taxpayers. While we know there will be increased costs to Vermont taxpayers in the future, it is frustrating that we do not capture legitimate resources today.

In the $150 million sea of proposed cuts to next year's budget, it can be daunting to identify all the long-term costs to Vermont. The integrity of so many state policies are at stake. The methodology used to find reductions in programs for senior citizens focused simply on saving general fund dollars. In other words, if an expenditure is not matched by federal funds at the state level, the governor’s budget will eliminate the entire appropriation. As a methodology, this is fairly straightforward. As a policy, it seems misguided. The results can be draconian.

One example of such an ill-conceived cut is the small appropriation for a program called Neighbor to Neighbor. Administered through the Area Agencies on Aging, this program has used $120,000 of state funds to match a federal grant twice that amount. This fund provides the modest stipend for 20 AmeriCorps workers to assist the elderly in staying independent. Not only does the program offer needed help to the target population; it fosters a much larger network of local volunteers, strengthening the community supports we have always encouraged in Vermont. This is an area where a modest state investment leverages not only significant federal funds (paid to the agency, not the state), but more importantly mobilizes hundreds of local volunteers who contribute countless hours to helping their neighbors. Elimination of the state appropriation will effectively unravel a whole community network.

Such a result is somewhat puzzling given the often-stated goal of the current administration to rely on “our community partners” in meeting the needs of Vermonters. Neighbor to Neighbor would appear to be the poster child for community involvement. Not only are 20 people employed by AmeriCorps, they coordinate the work of 800 volunteers to provide over 5000 hours of direct service to seniors and people with disabilities. This appropriation is truly an “investment,” and we need to think carefully before we cut this or similar investments in our people and our communities.

I am lead sponsor of H.540 whose main purpose is to establish a standard of care for motor vehicles to observe when passing and sharing the road with “vulnerable users” such as bicyclists and pedestrians; persons operating a wheelchair, on roller skates, roller skis, or rollerblades; a highway worker; a person riding or herding an animal; and a person operating a farm vehicle.

It states that the operator of a motor vehicle must use every “reasonable precaution” to increase clearance when approaching and passing the vulnerable user. It goes further in specifically prohibiting crowding and harassment of vulnerable users. And it establishes the requirement to yield to cattle, sheep, goats, or horses.

The legislation also lays out operating standards for bicyclists including the use of hand signals. It requires reflective material on pedals or ankles for night time riding.

This legislation has been a priority of the Vermont bike/ped coalition for more than two years. A similar version passed the Senate in 2008 but was never taken up by the House transportation committee.

It has now been introduced as a House bill and is currently waiting for the House Transportation committee to vote it out for consideration. This will be a challenge, given the number of transportation bills awaiting consideration, and the focus of the committee on its budget.

Numerous letters of support for this bill have been coming in to the transportation committee, mainly from bicyclists who are increasingly finding Vermont roads to be dangerous and hostile to biking. Bike tour companies also cite the economic benefit their business brings to the state, and the “bicycle friendly” reputation that this bill would establish to support their business.

The overall benefit of this bill would be to establish a “share the road” philosophy and give vulnerable users protection in statute. It may slowly begin to change the perception of the automobile as the only legitimate form of transportation.

Anyone who would like to support this bill may send an email to the transportation committee at: fcerulli@leg.state.vt.us.

State government departments (including the Department of Corrections-DOC) are looking at ways to reduce their budgets and at the same time maintain essential services, safe communities, and citizen access to justice. In 2008, the Corrections and Institutions Committee worked with the Council of State Governments to look at policy changes for term probation, reintegration, electronic monitoring, transitional housing, and alternatives to arrest of non-violent misdemeanants. The committee’s good work resulted in the passage of the Justice Reinvestment legislation, H.859 (Act 179). Act 179 called for a series of progress reports and benchmarks concerning corrections population management and responses to overcrowding. The bill called for looking at the probation caseload capacity and assess the risks to re-offend to reduce recidivism, along with screening and assessments of each felony drug and property offender for substance abuse treatment needs prior to release. The legislation called for the feasibility and costs of establishing transition units, reorganization of the correctional facilities, the Dale Correctional Facility in Waterbury to be closed, the mission of the facility in Windsor changed to be a therapeutic community in a work camp model, and the facility in St. Albans reconfigured to house and program women.

The legislation also called for the Commissioner of Corrections and the Court Administrator to report on implementing a pilot program to provide screening, assessment and triage in order to:

• divert individuals with substance abuse issues committing felony property and drug crimes from the criminal justice system and incarceration to treatment;
• report on the prevalence of co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders among those committed to the custody of the Commissioner of Corrections and
• progress in establishing a comprehensive system of community substance abuse treatment services.

Act 179 called for a detailed description of the progress made on increasing the use of electronic monitoring and the bill gave the DOC specific policy direction to move beyond the initial pilot program with expanded criteria for use for offenders on community release status.

To me, the work done by the Committee in H.859 laid the groundwork for reducing recidivism and also called for collaborative work between the Department of Corrections and the Court Administrator and the Department of Human Services in pilot projects.

The latest consultants’ report: "Challenges for Change: Corrections Rebalance," challenges the DOC to "improve the recidivism rate and community safety while spending 8% less in FY11 and FY12. The report specifies redesign options stating that: "Vermont may be incarcerating some offenders who do not need to be incarcerated and would be less likely to recidivate if not incarcerated in traditional setting. Substance abuse treatment that uses early evidence-based intervention can also reduce recidivism."

The reports list of some design options (many of the same options in H.859) for reducing the prison population include:

• Lower cost alternatives for public intoxication -including expanding the Chittenden County pilot
• Establish lower cost alternatives for weekenders
• Probation time limits for non-violent offenders
• Identify lower cost alternatives for non-violent offenders with terms of less than 90 days
• Increase substance abuse treatment interventions at evidence-based appropriate times
• Provide increased transition housing of at least 200 beds in 2011
• Either close a state facility or move out-of-state placements in state to replace beds used currently by non-violent less than 90 days offenders, weekend sentenced offenders and or offenders lacking transitional housing.

In FY2011, a one-time investment of $5 million will be made available to the Department of Corrections to establish a transition housing program, weekender program, chemical dependency treatment programs, and other measures that evidence shows will decrease recidivism.

While the latest consultants’ report is very similar to Act 179, we must ask: “What if the DOC doesn't realize the savings through recidivism in the time frames outlined?” Sometimes money has to be spent up front to save, or you may not see the savings for a given time period. The report shows a reinvestment of $5M with an aggressive $15M in savings, but will reducing recidivism take more time to see the resulted savings? Though reductions in DOC spending and reducing recidivism are goals most of us want, we should not kid ourselves. If this is not accomplished as challenged by reaching the goals for reducing recidivism, savings will be accomplished through cuts in the Department of Corrections. So, are we putting the cart before the horse without the inclusion of the judiciary restructuring? And who's holding the axe?