By Don Keelan
If ever leadership was absent during a Vermont Legislative session, it was in 2023. Leadership was essential when over one-third of the body was new to being legislators.
I can only go back to 1986 for a basis of reference. Still, I do not recall any session of the Legislature having so many bills introduced and adopted as this recent one when there are so few State funds to pay for the bills’ underlying cost.
Don Keelan
The adoption of Family Leave, Child Care, Universal School meals, Affordable Heat, Homeless sheltering, Mental Health, and Housing were only a few of the many bills that were advanced to the Governor for his signature.
Governor Phil Scott’s signature was not forthcoming on many of the bills. Although he agrees that there is a great need for many of the bills’ purposes, he is responsible for reconciling how such legislation will be paid for without stripping untold dollars from Vermont residents and businesses.
The Legislature leaders knew this and had a duty to inform their new members; there is a limit on how much money the State can raise in taxes, so priorities need to be set. This was not the case.
The new members and many non-leaders knew that 2023 was the year to open the floodgates. They had control of the House and Senate and a super-majority when it came to overriding the Governor’s veto.
The secret is out about Vermont. It is no longer just a pristine state with rolling hills, quaint villages, farms, and thousands of miles of unpaved roads. It is a state with an opioid epidemic, homelessness and housing crises, gun violence in once peaceful towns, and a lack of employees to fill over 20,000 open positions, especially in medical/mental health care, first responders, education, and many other sectors. For decades, this Vermont underbelly has been denied.
How the legislature conducted itself is analogous to a house on fire, with the owner walking around the burning structure accompanied by a landscape architect to decide where to place the pergola. The leadership was responsible for addressing one or two significant issues facing the State, not caveating to the whims of new members.
Effective leadership takes the most serious issues and evaluates how the State might address them with its limited financial resources and limited personnel to manage any proposed solutions. One does this by establishing priorities. Yet, there was an abject failure in Montpelier: the leaders placated their members by adopting legislation covering every issue confronting the State.
We often hear the adage concerning the illegal drug issue: we cannot police or arrest our way out of the problem. Similarly, we cannot legislate or tax our way out of all the difficulties confronting Vermont that have been neglected and ignored.
We need policing when dealing with drug purveyors, and we must have laws and state spending to bring solutions to the abovementioned issues. But, we do not need the legislature’s leaders unloading all issues onto the governor’s desk. Passing the buck is not leadership.
The legislature’s leaders should have educated, compromised, and persuaded, if necessary, its members that it is only possible to address some issues impacting Vermont. Tough choices must be made; their constituents expect leaders to make them.
Instead, they decided that every issue had to be addressed and funded regardless of from where the funding came. Vermont does not have the capability to print money to fund hundreds of millions of dollars in new State spending, albeit some in Montpelier think otherwise.
Don Keelan writes a bi-weekly column and lives in Arlington, Vermont.
Welp, what the writer has done here actually is explained to us just why the state works to create social problems– because look at the payday they get from them!
Look at the Democrat jobs that problems create!
The southern border is being invaded by unvetted criminals as we are being flooded with drugs and then the Democrats decide that having no police is a good idea?? whatever can go wrong, IS GOING WRONG.. and their answer: Gimme More Money.. as if that solves the core issues that create the problems.
How about close the border and get rid of all the people here illegally?
Then they are not in your town committing crime or living on our welfare system raising our cost of living.. THAT IS THE REAL SOLUTION.
So why isn’t this happening?
Well, as you can see, there is much to be gained from all these illegals when you’re profiting from human trafficking.
Now rinse and repeat this example over and over.
Over my life of watching this political theater I’ve come to see: People don’t have issues- I think for the large part- in trying a new idea to solve a problem, but if it doesn’t solve the problem, then the idea should be ended.
In many cases what was going on before worked better than the ‘new solution’. The answer is not to throw money at it, it’s to END IT.
I think all these new laws -that are but ideas about how to solve things- should have a sunset date required.
If the idea is not working, then then it’s gone. If it is, then prove this to the people and renew it.
AND, it’s really important to see that many ‘Problems” are really the fallout of bad policy that was all created on purpose as a constant source of revenue to “solve” them..
These crooks in government are not creating “solutions”, they are creating jobs and revenue streams!!
When people get what is really going on, they then vote to change all this, to end it- which is why we have voter fraud– which is but an effort to keep the grift in place.
You didn’t get the memo, the money is free. Grant money is free. All this money Montpelier takes in is free, he’ll they don’t even have to spend money printing it! It’s totally free!
If you noticed, VTDigger has an new format, the state of Verrmont is now blue! The Green Mountain State is officially blue!
Of course all our problems are now solved. Free money for everybody!
You should really take some time to read the memos.
Wait, we must have a printing press for money, as with all the liberal nonsense
bills proposed, as a working tax-payer the liberals must have a printing press,
as I know what I can afford and so do all the other hard-working Vermonters.
You live within your means, so why can’t the Government, balance the budget
like I balance my spending budget……….necessity comes first.
Liberals and their policies are like cancer, it will eventually kill the state and the
people within…………………….. wake up people, before it’s too late !!
Actually, the State of Vermont does print money, in a manner of speaking. Every time the legislature or the governor creates an unfunded or underfunded program, they create debt. Is debt the same as ‘money’? Well, yes.
When I earn a dollar and put it in the bank, the bank allows me to borrow a dollar using the one I put in the bank as collateral. Instantly, there are now two dollars in the money supply where there was only one dollar the day before.
Not only that, the bank lists my transaction to borrow that dollar – and pay interest on it – as an asset on its financial statement. If I’ve agreed to borrow the dollar for seven years and pay 10% interest, at the end of the seven-year period the bank realizes another dollar in its net worth. Now there are three dollars where, previously there was only one.
Now consider that every Vermonter, and every bank, are creating transactions like this every day. I earned a dollar. I saved it in a bank. I borrowed another dollar. The bank earned interest and over seven years created a third dollar. Meanwhile, I then used the dollar I borrowed to buy something from someone else who – yes, you guessed it – did the same thing I did. They took the borrowed dollar I spent, saved it in a bank, borrowed against it, and the bank earned interest on the transaction.
Money is being ‘printed’ perpetually, if not in dollar bills, then on everyone’s financial statement.
This is called ‘the velocity of money’. And it happens over and again with almost everyone in Vermont. But Vermont (the State) borrows more money than everyone else combined. So, in effect, Vermont is printing (i.e., creating) money as fast as the legislature and the governor can write and pass legislation.
Yup. Borrowing billions as VT does, is almost the same as printing money…with one caviat. The Federal Treasury can “print” dollar bills ad infinitum, and never have to pay it back. VT’s piggy bank of depending on DEBT to fund much….debt has to be paid back somehow. But as some VT debt comes close to maturity, VT just goes to Wall St and sells more debt…to pay off the old…but borrows MORE, to pay for more WOKE. That ruse will only last as long as Wall St and the credit rating agencies believe VT is sound fiscally. Clearly it is not…to spend $8.5 billion on WOKE for a tiny 640k people…combined with an unfunded $5 BILLION union retirement/healthcare liability. Basically, VT is a ponzi type scheme that works only as long as your credit rating is good enough to get Wall St to buy your debt. But if credit worthiness/risk is downgraded in VT…(and it will be some day)….borrowing becomes more risky and Wall Street will make VT pay far higher % coupon to fund it’s massive, wasted, un-needed… WOKE spending. If you look at any country, company, person that collapses…in all of history…it is too much that does it.
Re: “The Federal Treasury can “print” dollar bills ad infinitum, and never have to pay it back. VT’s piggy bank of depending on DEBT to fund much….debt has to be paid back somehow.”
Not so. Vermont is the only state in the union that doesn’t have a balanced budget requirement.
Any Balanced budget thingy is not worth much. Look at California – for 2023…they are projecting something like a $30 billion deficit? Ain’t no “balanced budget” in CA! Nor is there in VT…if you back out the soon pissed away Gov’t Covid money. What a gift that was…it saved VT from fiscal crisis for maybe 4 years…but the crisis will come.
Wall street and credit rating agencies will be the ultimate arbiter of VT’s fiscal health. If VT is ever not able to sell it;s debt to Wall Street, easily and low interest…VT coudl face a real crunch
Nice try. You know what he meant, even though you are technically correct. I guess that’s what would be called creating money out of thin air.
‘Tis better to be ‘Technically correct’ than untechnically incorrect.