As we enter the holiday
season, Vermont’s state legislators are getting ready for the 2012
session that will open on January 3rd. While there are a number of issues that will
have carried over from this year’s session, the extreme weather events of 2011
will be foremost on the agenda.
House and Senate members were
called back to Montpelier on November 10th to hear reports on the
status of the Hurricane Irene recovery effort, the Green Mountain Care health
system planning, the economy and fiscal situation, and the Comprehensive Energy
Plan. The good news is that the repair
of the damage done to state roads will cost a lot less than was originally
expected, about $185M instead of $550M.
Also, for the first three quarters of the year state tax revenues were
up. Senators Patrick Leahy and Bernie
Sanders led the effort to restore disaster relief funding in the U.S. Senate,
and Congressman Peter Welch organized a bi-partisan coalition in the House to
do the same. The result is that federal
funding will reduce Vermont’s share of the restoration to about $40M. However, the effect on municipal revenues as
a result of tax abatements due to property losses compounded by the additional
costs to local roads is considerable, and the loss of state tax revenues
post-Irene has not yet been determined.
These are factors that we hope will be known by January. In all probability we will have to budget for
both spending cuts and revenue increases.
The 2011 session resulted
in a number of significant pieces of legislation that have implications for
2012. The Green Mountain Care Board has
been meeting and is in the process of analyzing and mapping out a strategy that
will be presented to the legislature in January. The Energy Bill of 2011 required two reports,
a state energy plan and a biomass evaluation report, to be completed and
presented to the legislature by the end of the year. The Department of Public Service has held
hearings throughout the state on its draft Comprehensive Energy Plan. It is now reviewing more than 2000 public
comments that it received and will have the final report ready by January. The non-governmental Biomass Energy Research
Group has been analyzing the capacity of Vermont and nearby states for
sustainable harvesting of low-grade biomass to be used as a source of renewable
energy generation. There have been three
new biomass electric generation plants proposed for southern Vermont which will require legislative approval before they
can be built. Two plants, one in Ryegate
and the McNeil plant in Burlington, have been operational for decades in
northern Vermont.
I very much want to know
what concerns and thoughts my constituents have, so I will be holding a general
information session at the Town Office on Thursday, December 8, at 7:30
PM. I invite you to attend and let me
know what’s on your mind that the legislature needs to address.
