By Rob Roper
We have some pretty serious issues facing our state: a shrinking workforce, a public school system that is hemorrhaging students while it vacuums money and a structural sate budget deficit, just to name just a few. These problems are not new, and the policies our state government has enacted to address them have not worked. Vermonters are now among the most highly taxed people in the country, but what do we have to show for it?
Today we spend roughly $1.6 billion to educate 77,000 K-12 students. That’s well over $20,000 per child, more than almost every other state in the union and nearly twice the national average. This is more than twice the total we paid before Act 60 became law in 1997, despite serving thirty thousand fewer kids in 2017.
Student outcomes are not improving, and, if anything, they are declining. In the latest round of standardized tests only 48 percent of Vermont’s students were learning enough to be considered proficient in their subjects. In every category in every grade but one, scores fell between 2016 and 2017. This despite programs mandating and expanding universal pre-K, “proficiency based” learning, and spending $31 million to incent school districts to consolidate to, no joke, save money. If nothing dramatically different is done in the next few weeks, we are looking at a 7 percent property tax increase, or 9.4 cents per $100 of home value.
Vermont has implemented many wealth redistribution programs to ostensibly help the poor. We have the most progressive income tax in the nation as well as the most progressive property tax system. Vermont spends more money per capita than all but just five other states. A single-parent family of three in Vermont receives Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) that is 51 percent higher than the national average. Roughly 35 percent of Vermonters receive some form of Medicaid. Our $10.50 state minimum wage is already in the top five highest in the country, and a 2013 study by the Cato Institute calculated a typical welfare benefit package family was worth $37,705, or the equivalent of a pretax wage of $42,350. This puts us in the top ten “most generous” suppliers of welfare.
Despite all this, Vermont was the only state in 2016 to see a rise in the number of citizens living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. According to the Vermont Food Bank, 83,630 Vermonters are “food insecure,” including 24,530 children. The Public Assets Institute recently reported “income inequality is getting worse — most Vermonters are not sharing in economic growth.”
Vermont is a wonderful place to live. But despite everything our state has to offer in terms of scenic landscapes, clean air, healthy and safe surroundings, etc., ours is one of only three states since 2010 to have actually lost population.
What is happening that fewer people want to live in the greatest place there is to live?
Political historian Michael Barone, best known as the author of “The Almanac of American Politics,” recently explained that this “can be chalked up to Woodstock-era migrants — Bernie Sanders, Howard Dean. They’ve liberalized the state’s culture and politics, so with the state’s high taxes and stringent environmental bans, no one is following.”
Indeed, beyond the direct government forays into our paychecks, Green Mountain Power customers will see a 5 percent rate increase due to progressive renewable energy policies, and the Green Mountain Care Board approved a 9 percent increase for Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance, no thanks to a phalanx of progressive-minded health care laws — including the one that created the same Green Mountain Care Board supposedly to rein in costs!
So, given the true challenges facing our state, it is a bit frustrating to see the Legislature immediately take up, of all things, the legalization of marijuana, passing the bill before even reading the study they ordered last year. After that, it’s more items off the same menu of failed ideas. House and Senate leaders proclaimed their priorities will be to increase our already high minimum wage to $15 an hour, and to pass a government-run, government-mandated paid family leave insurance program that is so attractive on its own merits that proponents admit if people weren’t forced to participate, no one would buy it.
Does anybody really think these measures are going to solve any of the serious problems facing Vermont? Rather than waste time trying to determine which next big government bell or whistle is the one that will finally cause the population tide to rise, why not figure out what it is you’re already doing to scare people off. Then stop. If we want to turn our state around, that means by definition we will actually have to change direction.
Rob Roper is president of the Ethan Allen Institute.
To paraphrase the late George Carlin: “When you have selfish, arrogant citizens you will get selfish arrogant politicians. So maybe something else is wrong around here, like THE PUBLIC!” Nuff said.
Hate to put cold water on everything but the folks that are still in Vermont that “think” it’s going to change in their life time can keep on dreaming. I admire your courage to try and see this through but it’s not going to happen. The lefties that came to VT in the 60’s and 70’s now run the show, they’ll ride the “philosophical” boat the bottom beating their drum.
Until VT starts to see the real income tax erosion, like what’s happening in CT now you can continue to ride that boat down or jump ship while you can. If you wait that long it’ll be too late.
I am in full agreement with Rob Roper’s excellent article – however, the elephant in the room is the electorate who insist on continuing on the same path that leads to destruction.
“Mr. Roper is correct. Vermont needs to undertake a seismic shift. The people ,we sent to Montpelier need to repeal legislation they have already passed”
I miracle of that magnitude will never happen with the same people in the in the Statehouse.
This article says it all ,
Vermont and its Liberal politicians , you vote these ( Idiots) in year after year what do you
expect , you need to hold there feet to the fire !!
If you want change you have to make a change , so far Vermonters haven’t seen the light
by the time they do it will be to late ………….. Sad !!
Education in VT is a joke , you would think that with the size of the state and the money we
spend on our kids we should be in the top 1 % percent ( Nope) What we have is over inflated wages thanks ( NEA ) over inflated school budgets and kids not learning , what’s wrong with
this picture ???
Today Burlington has a school Budget $85 M and superintendent Yaw Obeng stated they
need a double digit increase why ?? Oh yea he received an pay increase and extended
contract….. Once again why ??
Wake Up Vermonters , real Vermonters not all these transplants !!
Keep voting for Bernie the communist – this is what you get
Mr. Roper is correct. Vermont needs to undertake a seismic shift. The people ,we sent to Montpelier need to repeal legislation they have already passed .The goal must be what can we cut? Why are our very youngest kids being forced into school? Why is daycare so regulated no one can afford it? Why do we want to encourage drug addiction with methadone centers and safe shoot up places and legal pot? Start peeling back the legislative garbage and bring us back to an affordable state that will no longer drive out both our youth and retirees, discourage business, bring in drug addicts, and saddle us with costly schools. I suspect Vermont will not deal with facts and reality but will raise our taxes and fees because the US,is cutting them. It would be ironic if this mindless liberal bastion taxes away all of the federal cuts.