MONTPELIER — The Vermont Senate granted preliminary approval Tuesday to annual legislation that trues-up state spending midway through the fiscal year — including a contentious provision, first added to the bill in the House, that would keep more people eligible for emergency shelter under the state’s motel voucher program into the warmer months.
Like in the House earlier this month, that measure and its $1.8 million price tag was the major source of debate over the budget adjustment bill, H.141, on the Senate floor.
Gov. Phil Scott did not include the measure in his proposed spending adjustment to legislators in January, and Scott has said he’s against the idea. But across the board, the bill now approved in both chambers largely follows Scott and leaders in his administration’s suggestions.
Scott’s budget adjustment proposal for the remainder of 2025 fiscal year would bump up state spending from $8.58 billion (the total of the state budget he signed last May) to $8.73 billion — a $146 million increase that’s possible because the state has brought in more revenue than it expected to, he and other officials have said.
Vermont’s 2025 fiscal year began in July 2024 and runs through the end of June.
In H.141, the House made tweaks to the governor’s proposal to increase 2025 spending by about $161 million — some $15 million more than the governor’s proposal called for. The Senate’s version would increase spending by about $17 million more than Scott’s.
Both versions of the bill make numerous changes to state spending that come as lawmakers reevaluate how and where resources should be allocated with part of the fiscal year elapsed.
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Overall, said Sen. Andrew Perchlik, the Washington County Democrat who chairs the budget-writing Senate Appropriations Committee, legislators have found more common ground than not with the governor’s administration on state spending for the rest of the fiscal year.
“I think it’s an important sign of our collaboration,” he said on the Senate floor Tuesday.
The Senate’s proposed spending increase includes an additional $1.8 million to fund flood recovery efforts in communities impacted by the major storms in 2023 and 2024. It would also fund two new positions for the Vermont Human Rights Commission, which told lawmakers in recent weeks it has badly needed to keep up with a record number of discrimination cases.
The bill would cover those costs using money Scott had proposed directing to state Treasurer Mike Pieciak’s office, but that Pieciak has since told legislators he did not currently need. Both the House and Senate have proposed using some of that money to support housing projects backed by the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, as well as to pay for extending the motel program protections, among other measures.
H.141 would keep certain eligibility restrictions for the program, which are currently on pause due to the cold weather, from kicking back in until June 30.
Senate Minority Leader Scott Beck, R-Caledonia, said he was opposed to the motel program changes — saying the program has “I’ll be kind, underperformed” — as well as to putting more money for the housing and conservation board into the budget adjustment bill, and urged his colleagues to vote against the legislation accordingly.
“I think it would be far wiser to hang on to that money in anticipation of who knows what’s coming out of Washington, D.C., and how that’s going to flow through to programs that impact Vermonters,” Beck said on the Senate floor. “We need every penny we can (get) right now.”
The bill won preliminary approval, 18-12, and is set for a final vote on Wednesday. Nearly all of the chamber’s Republicans voted against it, except for Franklin County Sen. Randy Brock and Addison County Sen. Steve Heffernan. Meanwhile, all Democrats — and the chamber’s one Progressive — voted for it, except for Sen. Thomas Chittenden, D-Chittenden Southeast.
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If the bill clears a final vote, the House and Senate would need to reconcile the differences between their two versions before it would head to Scott’s desk. The governor declined to say at a recent press conference whether he would veto the bill, or not, if it included the measure allowing more people to use the motel voucher program for longer.
Senators also considered an amendment to the bill on Tuesday — from Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central — that would have directed even more money to the motel program.
The amendment proposed raising about $7.5 million by reducing the salaries of certain state employees, and using that money to support the motel program, build out shelter capacity and create a new state position overseeing local responses to homeless statewide. The proposal would have impacted state employees who make more than $100,000 and are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement, among them Scott and members of his cabinet.
“We are in a crisis of homelessness, and people are dying,” Vyhovsky said on the floor. “This amendment is meant to help put more money — and more coordination — into a system of response.”
But senators rejected the amendment — with Vyhovsky the only one appearing to support it on a voice vote — after chamber leaders spoke up against it, saying that they had not had enough time to give the idea more thorough consideration.
Vyhovsky introduced the amendment to the Senate Appropriations Committee last week.
“The complexity of this — and, just the ramifications of changing people’s salaries and other knowns and unknowns — was too much for the committee to really take on,” Perchlik said, speaking for Senate Appropriations on the floor. “So, at this point, we do not support this.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Senate advances budget tune-up with funding to extend emergency shelter protections.