Editor’s note: This letter is by Tom Licata, a resident of Burlington.
“Not seeing the forest for the trees” is an idiom. It means missing the big picture by focusing on the various details instead of discerning an overall pattern from these various details.
With regards to Representatives Stebbins and Bluemle’s recent FPF State House Update, I was prepared to analyze many of the House passed bills, which they laid out in their update.
But as I began to dissect each “tree,” I found, number one, it would be a very long posting, probably too long for a Front Porch Forum submission. But in analyzing many of these bills I began to see a disturbing pattern, and it is this that I will focus on.
Increased taxation, greater regulation, government expansion, civil society’s contraction and loss of individual freedom and business mobility are the forest.
The bottle bill (H.175), the modernization and recalibration of Vermont’s tax system (S.53), the bill requiring registration of construction contractors (H.157) and the COVID recovery bill (H.315) all increase revenues to the government while adding greater burdens on business and individuals. In addition, the roughly $6 billion dollars in unfunded liabilities was, once again, deferred and not resolved.
Pre-COVID, Vermont has had more deaths than births and more people leaving the state than coming in. The February 2021 Tax Commission report, commissioned by the Vermont Legislature, has plans to expand the sales tax to the service industry and to increase income taxes.
The forest isn’t green and pristine. The forest is browning and wilting.
The above is another descriptive manner in pointing to Vermont’s overburden via taxes, regulation, loss of individual freedoms, and massive expansion of government. More government is not content with just that level at that time, it continually expands, costs the taxpayer more and more, and the contributor to the tax dept gets less and less in terms of return on his/her investment. Some of us have been ringing the warning bells for 30 or more years, warning of just what is happening today. What is worse, is the people who are racking up all this massive expense etc, take less and less responsibility when something doesn’t work as planned, Take a look at the retirement situation; teachers, and state workers. How can a 4 1/2 billion $ deficit be justified and the can kicked down the road for another year before seriousness in this matter kicks in? This is derilection of responsibility of the first order. And the Governor is complicit in this problem too. Leadership? ZIP!!
Big government serves the taxpayer less and less, and begets bigger and more and more. This is what has happened in Vermont. Just take a look at public schools…. massive failures at best. A total housecleaning is in order but probably will not gather up the attention needed until the state petitions the bankruptcy court for relief and the comes back to the taxpayers wanting them to pay the relief plan. What a mess and needlessly so.