Just days after criticizing the state legislature for its overzealous spending, Gov. Phil Scott again used his weekly press conference to criticize political opponents at the Statehouse who successfully overrode all of his vetoes.
“Even that one day was a bad day for Vermont,” Scott said. “I wasn’t surprised and I don’t want to lament about what could have been, but as a result of their actions Vermonters can expect to pay a lot more in taxes and fees in the future.”
The goal is a permanent one-party state run by people who get paid a lot more than most to rob everyone else. And there are no examples of Democrat rule where this is not the case.
The upper chamber decided Tuesday morning to avoid veto override votes on two bills, including the controversial legislative pay and benefits increase.
Vermont’s hotly contested budget is now law. The Senate joined the House late Tuesday in overriding Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of the $8.45 billion fiscal year 2024 budget. Votes were 25-5 in the Senate and 105-42 in the House of Representatives.
The Democratic majority House on Tuesday voted to override Republican Gov. Phil Scott’s vetoes on House Bill 494, the state budget, and House Bill 217, a piece of legislation that would impose a payroll tax to draw funding that would be used to provide childcare.
Among the many poorly formed bills that Democrats send to Gov. Scott, the most audacious one, and one that is likely to be sustained, was the bill that doubled legislative pay.
The word “historic” is seriously overused these days, too often to describe events more curious than momentous. A case can be made, however, for the events taking place this week in the “veto session.”
Vermont is a state with an opioid epidemic, homelessness and housing crises, gun violence in once peaceful towns, and a lack of employees. We cannot legislate or tax our way out of all the difficulties confronting Vermont that have been neglected and ignored.
At the statehouse this past session, a majority of Vermont legislators took a brazen, controversial and unconstitutional step away from representative government towards technocracy — defined as rule based on an elite of “technical experts.”
With the special session to override the budget veto set to begin June 20, legislative leaders are working behind the scenes to develop an alternate funding plan to house recipients indefinitely until they and state workers can “identify an alternate stable setting,” Senate President Phil Baruth is quoted saying.
The Vermont Legislature purposefully broke the state’s childcare system when they placed a slew of unnecessary regulations on small, independent childcare providers. Now those same legislators want $125 million per year — to start — via a new payroll tax to “fix” the problem they created.