This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
Lawmakers gave their final stamp of approval to a midyear budget tuneup Wednesday afternoon. But hours earlier, Gov. Phil Scott told reporters he planned to veto the bill once it arrives at his desk, making it his first rejection of the 2025 legislative session.
A key point of contention over the annual budget adjustment bill is the fate of Vermont’s motel voucher program for unhoused residents.
Legislators have signed off on an extension of the program’s looser winter rules through the spring, until June 30. The move, promoted by Democrats, is an attempt to head off a wave of evictions from the program slated to begin on April 1. The policy shift comes with a roughly $1.8 million price tag.
Without the intervention, restrictions on the number of days someone can have a voucher through the program — as well as the number of rooms available in the motel system — will once again be capped, as they were this fall. On April 1 alone, nearly 600 adults and over 160 children could lose their access to motel-based shelter, according to data compiled by the Department for Children and Families last month.
But Scott — a Republican who has long advocated for a wind-down of the motel program’s pandemic-era expansion — disapproves of the Legislature’s move. At a midday press conference, he called the motel program a “failed system” that has not adequately helped people transition out of homelessness.
“Warehousing people in a hotel or motel is counterintuitive to helping them get through it. It’s really just putting them aside,” Scott said.
At a late February hearing, members of Scott’s administration went to lawmakers with a counteroffer: To avoid his veto, they could set aside $2.1 million for flexible grants to municipalities, for cities and towns to use however they wanted to respond to people leaving the motels. Municipalities could set aside the money for motel rooms or use it to expand shelter capacity.
But legislators did not take the administration up on the idea. “The Governor’s current proposal would abruptly remove state support, shifting the burden onto municipalities that lack the staff and resources to take on such a complex crisis with less than two weeks’ notice,” House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, wrote in a statement Wednesday afternoon. She urged Scott to allow the bill to become law.
Scott objects to about $15 million in the Legislature’s budget adjustment bill overall, according to Jason Maulucci, Scott’s director of policy development and legislative affairs. Beyond the motel program extension, some of that additional funding would go toward affordable housing production and staffing at the Human Rights Commission and the attorney general’s office.
Scott said he thinks the state should shelve that money, at least for now, as state officials anticipate federal funding cuts.
“We should be saving those dollars, especially with what we’re seeing out of Washington — or the unknown out of Washington,” Scott said.
The budget adjustment veto would be Scott’s first of the session. After a wave of Republican victories for seats in the House and Senate last fall, Democrats no longer have the two-thirds majorities they need to override Scott’s vetoes.
That makes the political path forward unclear. The budget adjustment isn’t a “must pass” bill in the way the budget itself is — meaning, the government is not at risk of a shutdown if the midyear adjustment does not pass. But some programs would get increased spending authority through the bill, including Medicaid, according to Conor Kennedy, chief of staff for Krowinski. If the bill does not become law, the program could run out of money, he said.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and his counterpart in the Senate, Ashley Moore, chief of staff for Senate Pro Tem Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, had not yet signaled Democrats’ strategy following Scott’s expected veto.
“It’s too early to say,” Moore said.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Phil Scott plans to veto budget adjustment over motel program and spending .