The leader of the Vermont state Senate is advising key committees to clear their schedules during the first week of the upcoming legislative session in order to hear property tax reduction proposals from Governor Phil Scott and his administration.
The Vermont Department of Taxes is required by state law to release a forecast of property tax rates for the upcoming fiscal year by December 1st each year. The figure is based in part on education spending and pupil counts. Last year the department projected an average 18.5 percent increase.
This week state Senate President Pro-Tem Democrat/Progressive Phil Baruth noted that preliminary estimates project property tax rates could again be in the double digits for the next fiscal year.
“There is some speculation about what the final number would be. But I’m basing it mostly on the continued skyrocketing of insurance rates, health insurance rates. So, the educational system is primarily personnel. You know it’s teachers and staff and it’s a lot of people and they have benefits, health benefits, and good health benefits,” explains Baruth. “And so, when there’s a huge spike in insurance rates, last year it was 16 percent looks like it could be a similar amount this year, you have to project that the overall spending is going to go up significantly.”
Baruth is calling the situation a “de facto emergency.” To address it he is directing the Senate Education, Finance and Appropriations committees to clear their agendas for the first week of the legislative session to hear proposals from the Scott administration.
“It’s very unusual and long overdue. Typically when we go in we know property taxes are going to be an issue. So, Democrats in the majority tend to work on our proposals all the way through the session. And then over the last 8 years, the Scott Administration at the very end will veto the tax bill and often the budget and they’ll come to us with a sort of quickly sketched menu of ideas that we should take a look at, turn into legislative language, in a month,” said Baruth. “And what we need are systemic reforms that we work on together with the administration all the way through. And that means the Governor needs to come to the table at the start in January.”
Scott, a Republican, did not hold a briefing this week. In an email his office said he did not issue a statement in response to the Pro Tem’s comments. But it sent an extensive outline of proposals and ideas that the administration has put before the legislature over the years to address rising property taxes and school costs. They include, from 2017, an 80/20 health care cost share. In 2018 the administration says more than a dozen reforms were suggested to save $75 million. In 2022 the Scott administration called for half of the education fund surplus to be rebated to taxpayers. That idea was rejected by the legislature.
During his latest weekly briefing, held before Senator Baruth’s proposal to set aside a week for administration proposals, Governor Scott was asked about the impending letter from the tax department.
“I would expect that it’ll be an increase, but I don’t know if it’ll be double digit at this point.”
Scott also said with the legislature losing its supermajority he believes there is a better opportunity to work together to create compromise. But he notes whatever proposals they put forth will be a multi-year effort to fix problems in the education system.
“We didn’t get here overnight. We’re not going to work our way out of it overnight and in this session. So, we’re going to do everything we can to keep the rate down as best we can,” Scott said. “Now, we are going to propose certain things. The legislature is going to have some ideas as well and we will obviously welcome those and work together. You know, we’ve received some feedback from some superintendents and they were very good suggestions, practical solutions that could be effective. So, we’ll pull those in as well. Again, we don’t have all the answers. But collectively we’ll have a lot of ideas.”
Vermont’s legislative session begins January 8th .
