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Lt. Governor's April 7th Newsletter | Crossover Updates

Submitted by Lisa.Gerlach@v… on

Friend, 

 

Last week we finished “crossover”. This meant many major bills came out of their committees and were debated, amended and passed on the House and Senate floors. Here are status updates on a few of the Senate bills that I have been watching closely.  

 

Having passed through the Senate, the House will now deliberate whether to take them up and what changes they would like to make. While there’s still a long way to go, I’m excited about some of the progress that’s been made. I also hope for more improvements on some bills to address the economic, social and environmental challenges that Vermonters are facing. 

 

S.56, Child Care  

S.56 is landmark legislation that greatly expands childcare access for families and supports our childcare workforce with financial stability (you can read more about it in last week’s newsletter). With its passage last week, I am pleased the Senate addressed Vermont’s childcare crisis. I think of childcare as part of our infrastructure, just like our roads. Without this essential infrastructure, too many people cannot participate in the workforce and provide for their families. This means that our small businesses struggle to find workers, fewer goods can be produced and services can be provided, and parents cannot earn the money that they need to care for their families. We need to invest in the human infrastructure of our state as well as the physical infrastructure. 

 

S.102, Labor Protections  

The Vermont Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) act, which I wrote about in a previous week’s newsletter, passed through the Senate by a vote of 23-7. While I am excited to see these major labor protections make progress in the legislature, there were some pieces of the original bill- such as “good case” termination, meaning that employers would have needed to give cause for firing an employee- that were not included in the final version. I do hope that the House considers the benefits of these additional worker protections when they review the bill in their committee. Ideally, these worker protection bills will also be part of a larger discussion about the value of all our workers in our society.  

 

 

S.100, Affordable Housing  

S.100, the housing bill, has passed through the Senate on a vote of 27-2. While I am still concerned that it does not do enough to build permanently affordable housing, as I highlighted in a recent newsletter, I am pleased to see Vermonters from all corners of the state come together in support of creating affordable housing. To protect our environment while building more affordable housing I believe we need to build more multi-unit housing options and go up, not out as we build our town and village centers. This will make communities more walkable and compact, while maintaining the wide-open landscapes that we cherish. 

 

S.42, Fossil Fuel Divestment  

S.42 is a bill I have discussed in a previous newsletter. This bill, over many years, would divest Vermont’s state pension funds from the fossil fuel industry while maintaining the States fiduciary responsibility to Vermont State workers, Teachers and taxpayers who have invested in the retirement fund. This sends a clear message that Vermonters do not support short term profiteering while neglecting the impacts we are experiencing from the climate crisis. 

This bill passed the Senate last week on a vote of 22-8. 

 

 

S.32, Ranked Choice Voting 

Ensuring that voters are accurately represented is an important part of creating a healthy democracy. S.32 helps with that by advancing ranked choice voting (RCV) in Vermont.  

If you are unfamiliar with RCV, it is a voting system that allows for more voices and perspectives to be in the system by removing the “spoiler” problem through the equivalent of a run-off system. Candidates cannot win until they get a majority of the vote. To do this, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote after counting first choices, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to the second-choice candidates that their voters chose. This continues until a candidate is able to secure the majority vote.  

RCV increases voter choice, ensures that the winning candidate is the most popular option, and greatly reduces the possibility that a candidate without majority support can win because a “spoiler” candidate splits the vote.  

When would this apply? This bill would allow municipalities to opt-into ranked choice voting for local elections without needing town by town legislative approval. It will take effect for the 2028 presidential primaries. It will also create a committee to study expanding ranked choice voting to all statewide elections. 

S.32 has passed in the Senate with a vote of 23-7 and is now in the House Government operations committee. 

 

 

S.18, Banning Flavored Tobacco Products  

Vermont has a youth tobacco use epidemic. The General Assembly found that 28% of all high schoolers in Vermont use tobacco. S.18 works to address this issue by banning flavored tobacco products that target youth and others to take up nicotine consumption by covering up the harsh flavor of tobacco. E-cigarettes with youth friendly flavors are the leading reason kids today pick up smoking, with 70% of youth smokers citing flavor as the reason for their use. Tobacco use is the #1 cause of preventable deaths in Vermont, and making smoking less appealing to young people is an important step to bring the number of tobacco use-related deaths down in the long term. S.18 passed the Senate on a voice vote and has been taken up in the House committee on Human Services. 

 

 

This is just a fraction of what has happened in the statehouse in the last few weeks. Our next newsletter will have some House bills that have also made it through “crossover” as there is a lot of work that was accomplished in the House as well. If you have questions about other bills that you have been following or suggestions for topics that you would like to see highlighted in the Lt. Gov. newsletter, you can always reach out to my office with questions or suggestions. We are happy to discuss them with you and highlight them in future newsletters. 

 

As always, I encourage you to contact your legislators and the Governor’s office on these issues and others that are important to you. Your voices in the conversation do help move the needle. If you do not speak up, then other voices will be the ones that are heard. In the past we have been able to move important legislation with your help. Let's continue to work together to move these important topics forward. 

 

 

Lt. Governor David Zuckerman