Show me the Money!
The past two weeks at the statehouse have been filled with discussions about money because the crossover deadline for all money-related bills was this past Friday. Whenever this subject is addressed, a natural tension develops around raising more or spending less. This year is especially challenging as the state is experiencing the end of the Federal COVID-era ARPA funding and the uncertainty in the level of continued funding from the Federal Government based on the current scrutiny being applied to federal spending.
With that backdrop, the House committees on Appropriations, Ways and Means, and Transportation put forth, and we voted on the floor to pass, the following bills:
H.141, the Budget Adjustment Act (BAA), is a bill to accomplish mid-year budget accounting corrections. This hotly debated bill was passed with a roll-call vote and ultimately vetoed by the Governor over the inclusion of a policy change to what’s known as the “hotel/motel program”. The BAA is supposed to simply move money between accounts mid-year and is NOT to change policy. Read the Governor’s veto reasons HERE. Read a good article about the failed hotel/motel program HERE.
H.489 was a second attempt to satisfy the Governor with an alternate BAA, but it still contained the same policy change! It was again passed by the majority with conservatives again voting against it in sufficient numbers to uphold an expected second veto. Read the Governor’s very reasonable executive order, an end-around to improve the hotel/motel policy, HERE. The good news is that the passed BAA did reserve $77M of unspent tax collections from this year to buy down next fiscal year’s property tax bill.
H.491 is the famed annual “Yield Bill” which sets the homestead property tax “yield” and the non-homestead property tax rate. The towns each use this yield number to calculate their local homestead property tax rates. The reserved $77M is fully used to buy down tax rates so that, with the towns’ approved school budgets, which increased 5.5% state-wide, we will see a state-wide average 1.1% increase in property tax bills. This bill passed with broad bipartisan support. The only way we’re going to get real year-over-year control of our education spending is through the education transformation as proposed by the Governor and currently being seriously worked on in the Senate.
H.488 is the Transportation funding bill that passed the house with broad support. It allocates $883M to maintain our transportation infrastructure. This is only a 0.2% increase over FY25. A major source of revenue for the AOT is the gasoline tax, but as cars are getting more efficient and EV’s are increasing we are using less gasoline. Therefore the ability to fund our infrastructure maintenance is becoming challenging. Transportation committee chair Matt Walker noted that the state historically targeted repaving 300 miles of road annually. This year, with steeply rising costs of materials and less revenue, we will only be able to pave a little over 100 miles. A mileage based user fee is being proposed on EVs to replace their current higher registration fees to help bridge this funding gap.
H.494 is the Capital Construction bill which bonds and allocates nearly $112M over the next 2 years to maintain state properties and buildings. This is a net $3.67M or 2.9% reduction from what the Governor asked in his budget and passed with broad support. Interesting from my perspective is the approximately $5M included to meet 3-acre rule requirements on state property! Maybe if H.481 passes we can at least delay or significantly reduce that cost and save us all a bunch of money.
H.493 is the “Big Bill” that defines and appropriates the entire 2026 fiscal year state budget. FY26 cracked the $9B mark, increasing from the 2025 spending of $8.74B by 3.67% to a total of $9.06B. After many long nights of negotiation, this budget came out of the Appropriation committee with an 11-0 vote after turning down about ½ billion dollars in additional requests and thus passed on the House floor with bipartisan support in a roll-call vote. The Appropriations committee noted “All statutorily-required reserves are filled, all pension obligations are met, and essential investments in housing, workforce, economic development, human services, and education are made.”
I approach all of these bills remembering that this is YOUR money we’re appropriating. I am attempting to steward it to the best of my ability.
I remain honored to be your Representative,
Rob North
www.NorthForVTHouse.com
Addison, Ferrisburgh, New Haven, Panton, Vergennes, and Waltham
