I’m glad to be home. While I do love being in the thick of the legislative process, I am relishing my home, my dog, and getting back to my normal life. But I thought I’d share with you some of the highlights (or perhaps to some the lowlights) of this past legislative session.

As you may know, I served on the Appropriations Committee for the last two years. The best aspect of being on this committee is that you get to see everything. Every issue that wants to spend taxpayer dollars (except capital expenditures) has to be approved by this committee. The main work of the committee, though, is putting together the annual budget for the state’s general fund expenditures, and this year was especially grim as we started with a $154 million hole based on expected revenues.

The process is one in which the governor proposes and the Legislature disposes, but we must do so in a way that leads to a signature by the governor or we are faced once again with last year’s scenario where the governor vetoed the budget and was overridden by the Legislature. That was messy. This year, while as of this writing the governor hasn’t yet signed the budget, we are expecting Kumbaya. (Fellow campers will recognize this as the song sung around the campfire with everyone holding hands.)

The budget document that finally emerged did solve the $154 million hole and did it in a sustainable way. It also contained something for everyone to hate, so it must be a fair use of taxpayer money. That, in my opinion, is one of the significant accomplishments of this year’s legislative session.

Within that budget is a statewide education property tax rate that is level funded with this year’s rate. I am especially proud to have played a key role in maintaining the current rate, which I felt was only fair as statewide school boards and voters also level funded education spending.

Looking at a budget through a different lens, you see also a process of making winners and losers, as only money can do. This year there were few opportunities to make outright winners. Level funding became this year’s winner with most categories of expenditures taking a hit, some significantly. This is just as true of the process undertaken by the administration as it prepared its budget submission to the Legislature, as it was of the legislative process in putting its own policy stamp on the budget.

Here’s an example of a winner/loser action taken this session. No longer can people use their felt-soled waders when fishing. Is this the government telling me yet again what I can and cannot do? Yes it is. But here’s why it’s a winner, in two words – rock snot. Didymosphenia geminate, better known as diddymo or rock snot, was discovered in the Connecticut River in 2007. It is an invasive organism that results in mats of dead organic material on the bottom of rivers and streams, getting in the way of food sources for fish and generally being ugly. That is not good for fish, for people who want to fish, for Vermont’s several thousand miles of streams and rivers, or for Vermont’s economy. There is considerable evidence that felt-soled waders can carry this organism from one stream to another, and there is a worldwide effort to ban them.

Fixing the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund was high on everyone’s to-do list this year. This is not a taxpayer supported program, but it is a government-run insurance program that is supported by employers to provide benefits for laid-off workers. Employers pay into the state fund and into the federal fund based on their history of laying off workers. Because of the economy, the state fund ran out of money last February. We are now borrowing from the federal fund to pay benefits, which we can continue to do for some time, but then an interest payment kicks in if we don’t bring our state fund into balance. That will be a taxpayer expense. Intense negotiations over several weeks resulted in an agreement that makes no one happy, but which spreads the pain fairly between employers and unemployed workers and results in a state fund projected to be healthy by 2015 and remain sustainable thereafter. When it costs you more or pays you less it does feel like losing. But the winner here is broad, and it is the Vermont economy which benefits all Vermonters. Unemployment benefits are an essential piece of the safety net, providing not only sustenance for workers who lose their jobs but also putting nearly all the money from those benefits back into the economy.

A multi-year effort culminated this session in a restructuring of our judicial system, saving the state general fund $1 million yearly, and property taxes, which support the county court system, will be reduced by $1.2 million. We now have a unified court system that can take advantage of flexible staffing to accommodate uneven work loads, cross training staff to serve several functions and other administrative improvements. It is hard for me to see this as anything but a win/win.

Many bills were enacted that don’t involve money but which nonetheless are beneficial to some or all Vermonters. They include banning texting while driving and banning all electronic communications while driving for those under 18; free disposal of e-waste, your computers, cell phones and other electronic gadgets; improving safety on our roads for bicycle riders; two efforts to encourage more hunting, one a program whereby a licensed hunter-mentor can take a mentee hunting and another encouraging youth hunting by giving them a special time when only they can hunt; protecting parental rights of our military while on deployment; advancing the date of the election primary to assure our military are able to vote; requiring health insurance companies to cover children from 18 months to 6 years old with autism; banning plastic containers containing bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that makes containers hard, in products used by babies and young children.

For those of you who would like details on this legislative session, the Burlington Free Press had a long story in its Sunday, May 16, edition, entitled “Lawmakers Have a Long List of Accomplishments.”

If you have any questions regarding any of these actions or want to know how they might affect you or your family, please don’t hesitate to contact me. My phone is (802) 464-2150 and my e-mail is sandbox@sover.net. And thank you all for your support.