MONTPELIER — Gov. Phil Scott called members of the Vermont Legislature’s Democratic supermajority “a bit arrogant” at a press conference outside his office in Montpelier Tuesday afternoon, a day after lawmakers moved to enact a historic number of bills he had refused to sign into law.
Scott, a Republican, said he was disappointed — but not surprised — by the results of Monday’s marathon veto session. Legislators voted to override six of the governor’s vetoes Monday, though they failed to greenlight a seventh: a sweeping data privacy proposal. (The Senate previously decided not to attempt to override an eighth Scott veto — of a bill that would have banned the sale of flavored e-liquids and nicotine products.)
Still, that’s the most vetoes lawmakers have ever overridden in a single day. Scott, meanwhile, has vetoed far more bills than any other governor in Vermont history.
Branding Monday’s votes “sad,” the governor also repeated his assertion that the bills lawmakers approved would hurt, rather than help, many Vermonters. At the top of that list, he told reporters, was the annual bill that funds Vermont schools and is expected to increase the average property tax bill by 13.8% this year in order to do so. (Actual increases will vary widely from town to town.)
“Many will frame this as a loss for me and a win for the Legislature,” Scott said of the vetoes. “The reality is, it’s a major loss for Vermont taxpayers, workers and families.”
Lawmakers also approved bills over Scott’s objections to reform Vermont’s decades-old land use law, ban seeds treated with a group of pesticides called neonicotinoids and establish a renewable energy standard, as well as legislation to authorize the creation of an overdose prevention center and to ensure equitable access to restorative justice programs.
Scott has wasted little time turning the results of Monday’s veto session into material for his reelection bid. His campaign sent a mass email Tuesday afternoon calling the Legislature “out of balance and out of touch,” highlighting the education funding bill and the renewable energy standard, among other bills lawmakers approved.
The mailing also includes a call for people who “will actually work with the governor” to run for a House or Senate seat in this fall’s election.
At a separate press conference Tuesday shortly after Scott’s, House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, framed Monday’s session in nearly opposite terms and, in response to a reporter’s question, criticized the governor’s comments.
“I’m really sad about the rhetoric that’s happening out there — that this is a ‘he said, she said’ — but I think what Vermonters are going to start to see is the impact of these bills and how it’s making their lives better,” the speaker said, talking to reporters at her office in the Statehouse.
Krowinski acknowledged that reducing the property tax burden was “a very difficult problem to solve,” adding that lawmakers’ work was “far from done.” She pointed to a measure contained in this year’s education funding bill, often called the “yield bill,” that charges a study committee with proposing cost-saving ideas later this year, so that they could be taken up by the Legislature in January.
The speaker said she expected the committee to start meeting this summer and that she would be publishing a letter outlining her expectations for the panel’s work.
Scott, meanwhile, criticized the committee on Tuesday as an inadequate solution.
“I would say it’ll be — by the time you study it, come up with something in bill form, get it across the finish line — that’d be two years before we see any relief,” Scott said, smiling.
“So,” he added, “we have something to look forward to.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘A bit arrogant’: Phil Scott hits back at lawmakers after they overrode 6 of his vetoes.