Vermont leaders have been outlining their priorities as the legislative session begins. House Minority Leader Pattie McCoy, a Republican, told WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley that there is consensus about education reform being a top priority.
The priorities really are, I think, first and foremost education reform that we dealt with a lot last year. Got it over the finish line, but the task force that was appointed during the summer really didn't do the one task that we asked of them, which was to draw new maps, new district mapping, so that we could come back now in January to pass the map, so that our government operations committee could begin working on the government structure of the new education reform. So that didn't happen. So we're still kind of in limbo on that. We've got to start ramping up on that. The other issues are, you know, due to the Affordable Care Act credits going away, we have a health care reform package that will be presented. The clean, affordable renewable energy that's going to be on the table. Housing will be on the table and public safety. Those four issues, aside from education, is where House Republicans are going to spend most of their energy this session.
How much do you think those issues meshes with the Democrats and Progressives in the House?
So what usually happens when we present these omnibus proposals, they'll pick a few pieces out of each bill. But the main, you know, the ones that will get to the crux of it, like repealing the clean heat standard bill that's kind of sitting in limbo right now because they were supposed to come back last year to say, you know, if we could do it and the Public Utility Commission came back and said it's prohibitively expensive for Vermonters, so no. But it still sits there. A repeal of that needs to happen so that we clean the slate and start again on some type of a, you know, clean, reliable renewable energy package that Vermonters can afford and can back.
Representative McCoy, it seemed like in the first part of the session there was a good amount of compromise on a lot of the bills that went through. What do you expect in this part of the biennium?
I'm hopeful that it will be the same. But given that it's an election year, I don't know. Our only card, really our ace in the hole, is the governor's ability to veto. Most of Governor Scott's term, he's been dealing with a super-majority. Right now they only have a majority in both House and Senate. So they do know that they have to work more with us in order to get anything past the finish line.
Now, obviously, there's a lot of lobbyists that spend time in the State House. Earlier, the individuals who are Palestinian advocates called for five legislators to resign after their trip to Israel and you and the Senate Minority Leader released a fairly terse statement about that. Will it at least lead to better transparency regarding disclosure of trips that representatives do take?
I'm not sure because the state did not pay for their trip. This was trying to get Vermont's name out there that we are open for business. I don't know if they have to let anybody in the state know.
Pattie McCoy, how optimistic are you about this half of the biennium and what you and the rest of the Republican caucus can accomplish?
Well, I'm always optimistic. I always hope for the best and there was compromise by the majority party last year. I'm hoping for the same this year. I would hope that they would take some of our bills off of the wall, as we call it. When they're sent to a committee I'm hoping that some of those bills actually get off the wall and the committees actually, you know, at least have some witnesses to discuss what the bill is proposing to do.
Representative Pattie McCoy is the Republican Minority Leader of the Vermont House.
