Vermont Government Affairs Update December 17, 2024

In a short three weeks from today the first fall of the gavel will occur at the Vermont State House signaling the start of the 2024/2025 legislative biennium. After a wild election season with national and state political shake ups voters are anxious to see what their newly elected leaders will accomplish, or not.

The first couple weeks of the Vermont legislature are filled with ceremonial and educational traditions. Legislative committees will be assigned to members, and they will get to see where their desks will be for the next two years. The House of Representatives has 13 committees that meet each day, all day when the floor is not in session, and each has 7-10 members. The Senate has 11 committees that meet each day, but only for half the day. The Senate has only 30 members unlike the Houses 150, which requires Senators to participate in two committees to complete the workload.

The members of the legislature will also spend time in either committees or on the floor of their respective chambers taking trainings. The trainings they receive range from ethics to sexual harassment to procedural education so that everyone is on the same page though the session. In committees, the chairs spend time bringing their members up to speed on their duties and perennial issues they tackle.

The first weeks of the session are also filled with legislators seeking support on bills they are introducing. Both the House and Senate have different rules and timelines required for submitting bills usually ending mid-January. By the end of November, legislators are already working on policies with legislative council who writes the actual bills. Once the bills are written the lead sponsor of the bill seeks other legislators to “sign on” as co-sponsors of the bill. Creating a list of cosponsors can be very important in getting the committee chairs to act on their bills once they are assigned committees by the Speaker of the House.

To make a busy month even busier by mid to late January legislative study groups that met over the summer time will bring their formal reports to committees of jurisdiction for the study. This takes quite some time as the reports are generally from working groups of 5-15 volunteers from the public who report on either their contribution to the report and sometimes offer dissenting views submitted. The committees then take these reports and they either are relegated to a file cabinet or are used to influence legislation.

During this first month of the biennium the Governor is hard at work finalizing his budget request for the fiscal year. Vermonts budgeting process for everything from education to construction begins with an initial budget request from the Governor that is generally delivered mid-January to the legislature. The Governors budget request is based on reports from the different government agencies as well as other initiatives he finds important. The legislature will then use the budget as a template for their appropriation and taxation process. Eventually the legislature will pass out a budget, and the final step is the Governors approval. If the Governor does not approve of the budget it will receive a veto and the legislature will have to either override with a 2/3 majority vote or negotiate towards an agreeable outcome. This year unlike many years past the majority party does not have the votes alone to override a veto. Vermonters are at the edge of their seats to see how their votes will influence policies tied to their wallets, safety and housing.