Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Will senate please come to order. We will observe a moment of silence in lieu of a devotional. Thank you. Are there any announcements? Seeing none. Seeing one. Senator from Washington.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: Thank you, mister president. I move that the committee on finance be relieved of seven ten, an act relating to defining electricity generating facilities, and that the bill be committed to the committee on natural resources and energy.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Washington has moved that the senate committee on finance be relieved of h seven ten, and that that bill be committed to the committee on natural resources and energy. Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed nay. The ayes have it. The motion carries. We now have h five seventy eight being on the calendar for notice and affecting the revenues of the state under rule 31 is referred to the committee on finance. H seven thirty nine being on the calendar for notice and carrying an appropriation under rule 31 is referred to the committee on appropriations, And h nine forty four being on the calendar for notice and carrying an appropriation under rule 31 is referred to the committee on appropriations. We have house bill for reference. H nine fifty six, an act relating to approval of an amendment to the charter of the city of Burlington relating to the office of racial equity, inclusion, and belonging. Introduced by representative Stone of Burlington, it passed the house on 04/28/2026. Listen to the first reading of the bill.

[John H. Bloomer Jr. (Secretary of the Senate)]: H nine fifty six, an act relating to approval of an amendment to the charter of the city of Burlington relating to the office of racial equity inclusion and belonging.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Now the bill's been read the first time and having failed to meet the crossover deadline is referred to the committee on rules for rule 44 a. Orders of the day. It has been requested that we do third readings first. We have h 46, an act relating to rare disease advisory council for third reading. Are there any amendments prior to third reading? Listen to the third reading of the bill.

[John H. Bloomer Jr. (Secretary of the Senate)]: H 46, an act relating to the rare disease advisory council.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Now you've heard the third reading of the bill. Question is, shall the bill oh, senator from Orleans.

[Senator John Morley III (Orleans)]: Mister president, thank you. I got

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Washington) — Member, Senate Appropriations]: a question yesterday about a definition,

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: and, definitions are pretty hard in this one. It's fairly broad. I looked them up and there's definitions depending upon where you are in the world, but the one in The United States is, passed the Rare Disease Act of twenty two thousand two. It defines rare disease strictly according to prevalence, specifically any disease or condition that affects fewer than two hundred thousand people here in The United States. So I just wanna get back, to the senator.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Washington) — Member, Senate Appropriations]: Thank you, mister president.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Are you ready for the question? The question is, shall the bill pass in concurrence with proposal of amendment? Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. The ayes have it, and we passed h 46. We now have third reading of h five eighty two. Are there any amendments to be offered prior to third reading? Seeing none, listen to the third reading of the bill.

[John H. Bloomer Jr. (Secretary of the Senate)]: H five eighty two, an act relating to adult protective services.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: The question is, shall the bill pass in concurrence with proposal of amendment? Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. The ayes have it, and we've passed h five eighty two. We have h seven seventy eight for third reading. Are there any amendments prior to third reading? Senator from Rutland.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Rutland)]: Thank you, mister president. Yesterday, the junior senator from Addison, asked a question about which dams the two which dams were specified. And I was I found after, we broke up that it was the vans have not been determined yet. We we talked about a number that could be on the list, but that's gonna be part of the process. Thank you, mister president.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Are there any amendments prior to third reading? Seeing none, please listen to the third reading.

[John H. Bloomer Jr. (Secretary of the Senate)]: Page seven seventy eight, an act relating to dam safety.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: The question is, shall the bill pass in concurrence with proposal of amendment? Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. The ayes have it, and we've passed h seven seventy eight. We now have h nine forty nine for third reading. Are there any amendments prior to third reading? Senator from Chittenden Central.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Chittenden Central)]: Thank you, mister president. There is an amendment today in your calendar beginning on page 1,815. I have been fairly consistent since we began the process of buying down property taxes in my belief that blanket buy downs with huge amounts of taxpayer money is an irresponsible fiscal decision. I agree that there are individuals in the state of Vermont that simply cannot pay more in property taxes and that it would be best used to fine tune how we spend that money to ensure that those individuals are not paying more in property taxes. As is proposed in the 100 plus million of spending as we are putting forward, everyone gets a buy down to 3.8%, meaning those that need to pay no more are paying more, and those that may have million dollar homes and be able to afford paying more are getting taxpayer money to pay less. I have worked with our joint fiscal office and with legislative council to target our spending to buy down the property tax rates of those who are income sensitized to zero, meaning that the people who truly can't pay more don't pay more, and the people who currently are paying a fraction of a percentage of their incomes are able to pick up some of that slack. So rather than spending $100,000,000 to buy down everybody's property tax rates to 3.8%, some of whom you don't need to buy down, many of whom can't pay 3.8% more. This proposal proposes that we spend $13,800,000 to buy down income sensitized households to zero. Now, it's not exactly a buy down due to the complexity of our system. What it does instead is it increases the the renter credit that people will get this year to account for the increase in their property taxes, meaning we will hand them the money to pay the increase so that net they are paying no more in their property taxes. The other aspect that it covers is there is a small percentage of lower income Vermonters who it actually makes more sense for them to pay on their property rather than on their income. And for those individuals, taxes is tasked to use some of the reserve, whatever is necessary to cut them a check to pay that increase so that everyone who is income sensitized is held harmless for the property tax increase, meaning that they pay no more. But the top earners who currently pay maybe 0.4 of their income as opposed to our lower earners who often pay four, five or 6% of their income in property taxes will be asked to pay more. This is a fair and fiscally responsible use of these buy down dollars. This amendment retains the expanded renter credit because I think the point was well taken that we don't often provide credits to our renters, people who can't afford to buy homes in the first place. I would love to see us move forward in the future with an even further expanded renter credit. Currently, the income tax for renters is much lower than the income sensitivity for homeowners. So we tell renters who can't afford to buy a home in many instances that they can must have a lower income than those who own their home in order to gain and benefit from these types of supports. Again, this amendment doesn't change the renter credit proposals. This is my hope and aspiration that in the future we look more closely at protecting our renters who are often some of our lowest income Vermonters. This amendment. So I'm also going to explain a little bit. So a lot of times we talk about $115,000 $90,000 is actually what is in the statute as the cap for income sensitivity. But there's some algebra that our joint fiscal office delightedly offered to explain me, but as to me, but as a person who doesn't love math, I declined that explanation and took the more general explanation. There is some algebra that they do every year that starts sort of at the $90,000 and it takes us to the cap where in what you pay on income and what you pay on property intersect, meaning it would not matter if you paid on income or paid on property, it would be the same. And that is generally around $115,000 With the proposals in this amendment, it is likely and JFO authorized me to say they are fairly confident that that number might actually shift out, meaning more households would be protected and be able to pay on income and be protected from the property tax increase. The other aspects of this amendment you have seen, I mean, you've seen this concept before from me. The other aspect, though, directly you've seen before, and that is collecting more data, collecting more data on income and the percentages of income that people are paying, which would allow us in the future to more carefully fine tune who we're providing relief to without the complexity of doing it here by increased credits and refunds. But this does, in all likelihood for the vast majority of our income sensitized payers, hold them harmless for the property tax increase. And I would again argue that this is a more fiscally responsible use of the money. It holds $87,000 in reserve for or $87,000,000 in reserve for future use. And I also think it is important to note that by carving out the highest income Vermonters, we save $87,000,000 meaning that the majority of the money that we are putting to tax buy downs is going to our wealthiest Vermonters. And I don't believe in a year when our wealthiest Vermonters are receiving massive federal windfalls and tax cuts, we want to spend $87,000,000 of $100,000,000 to provide them additional tax cuts while we're asking our lowest income Vermonters to pay more. So I will say that I got this amendment due to the complexity a little bit later in the day yesterday. And while I did send it to the chair of finance, there was not time for me to come into the committee. I do hope that the Senate will consider this more fair, more targeted, and more fiscally responsible use of our tax dollars to buy down the rates to zero for those who truly need it. And I thank the Senate.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Washington.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: Thank you, mister president. Senate Finance worked on the yield bill all last week. Yesterday, I specifically asked people that had amendments to bring them to the committee. The senator from Chittenden Central has not brought this. It may well have some very good ideas, but it's pretty obvious that this is a very complex system, and if you push it here, it goes there. And without the opportunity to actually take testimony and sit down and read this bill, I can't recommend that we approve it because we haven't seen it, and we don't know what it does. And it it wasn't even brought to us as a as a concept.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Are you ready for the question? Senator from Essex.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Essex)]: Mr. President, I would love to have another tax revolt in this next year's electrics. I do believe that I know what side would win that as history has shown. But I don't think it's fair for any Vermonters to pay more taxes into the state when it is the inaction of this whole building, the whole general assembly of the reason why they'd be paying more taxes. I think that we need to do our work more. I

[Senator John Morley III (Orleans)]: think we need to

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Essex)]: do a better job. I think we're trying to get there, but we're still being a little bit late to the party with it. And I just don't think it's fair to ask any Vermonter no matter where they are in the income, sensibility or sensitivity or anything. I don't believe it's fair to ask any Vermonter to pay more in taxes. When we have the means to do something in the meanwhile to lessen the burden. So I will vote no on this. Thank you, mister president.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Are you ready for the question? Senator from Chittenden Central.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Chittenden Central)]: May I please interrogate the

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: The presenter is interrogated.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Chittenden Central)]: I'm asking this question just for clarity because there were a lot of words and a lot of explanations. The presenter of the amendment said that the higher earners would be would be paying more I believe what she was saying is they would be paying the stated tax rate correct?

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Chittenden Central)]: Yes that is what I was saying and I and to that point I did not bring it because props are not allowed on the floor of the Senate but when you look at a graph of what people pay the vast majority and a percentage of people's income the burden is on the bottom two thirds of payers while the top one third it trails off and they pay significantly less. This does not increase the stated increase. It simply says that in order to build towards more equity in the property tax system, are providing relief to those who are already paying much more of their income and not providing relief to people who are paying much less, but they are not going to pay above the stated increase.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Chittenden Central)]: I appreciate the clarification and I thank the presenter of the amendment and thank you, Mr. President.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Are you ready for the question? The question is shall h nine forty nine be amended as offered by the senator from Chittenden Central? Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. No. The nays appear to have it. The nays do have it, and the amendment failed. The question is, shall the bill nope. The question is, are there any further amendments before third reading? Please listen to the third reading.

[John H. Bloomer Jr. (Secretary of the Senate)]: H nine forty nine, an act relating to homestead property tax yields, the nonhomestead property tax rate, and technical changes to education finance.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: The question is, shall the bill pass in concurrence with proposal of amendment? Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Nay. The ayes appear to have it. The ayes do have it, and we've passed h nine forty nine. I believe now we will go back to the top of the calendar. We have on the calendar for action h nine thirty three, which was passed by the house 04/21/2026. It was referred to the committee on finance, which reports it is considered the bill and recommends that the senate propose to the house that the bill be amended as it appears starting on page seventeen forty seven of today's calendar, and that with such proposal of amendment, the bill ought to pass. Affecting the expenditures of the state, the bill was referred to the committee on appropriations, which recommends that the bill ought to pass in concurrence with proposal of amendment as recommended by the committee on finance. Listen to the second reading of the bill.

[John H. Bloomer Jr. (Secretary of the Senate)]: H nine thirty three, an act relating to miscellaneous administrative and policy changes to the tax laws.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Recognize the senator from Washington District for the report of the committee on finance.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: Thank you, mister president. This is this year's miscellaneous tax bill, and there's a way of background, I gave you a little bit on the yield bill yesterday. Miscellaneous tax usually starts out as a semi tax department housekeeping bill. Sometimes there's policy, sometimes major policy that's brought to us by the tax department. It's then worked on in the other bodies. Sometimes other bills are added to it, subtracted to it, and then it comes here. Because the term tax is so broad, many bills are germane to this bill, and it tends to be what we call a Christmas tree, which means if there are other things involving taxes or raising revenue, they can get hung on this tree. This year, we have a combination of things. The first, probably half of this bill is tax department housekeeping. I think there are four or five sections in which we change the date from April 1 to January 1 for when the towns need to send reports to the tax department. They're getting the towns actually more time to do tax appeals and work on their grand list. Then there is a couple of sections that we've done that have some policy. And then the last section of the bill, there are several sections. One is policy that, was reflected in both the budget and will be reflected in the transportation bill. What as the senate finance voted it out last night. There is a change in funding for the transportation fund. And then the other one is a lot of decoupling and re coupling somewhat incestuously with the federal tax code. And the reason that that is happening is because last year, July 4, I believe HR one or the big beautiful bill, however you wanna refer to it, made some changes to tax code. And we were focused on the personal income tax because that's the primary source of revenue to the state general fund. It took a little longer to start working in and out of the minutiae of the changes to the corporate taxes. They tend to be a lot more complex. And so when the revenue forecast was done, there was no real adjustment for loss of revenue in the forecast that was done in July. It's only a couple weeks after the big beautiful bill. That means that when the governor built his budget, he did he he built it on that revenue forecast. When we got back here in January and when the second revenue forecast was done, we were still thinking we had 2 to $5,000,000 maybe lost in the transport in the corporate income tax area. As our fiscal staff and I wanna thank them because I'm not sure how many night hours they put into this. But as they worked through the minutiae of this bill, it became obvious that we stood to lose closer to $20,000,000, which is not decimal dust. It's real money. And so the house and by the time the house got to work on this, that budget was already done, and it was also wasn't accounted for budget adjustment. So we've got a $20,000,000 hole as the budget came to the Senate. The, so this bill includes

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Chittenden) — Former Williston Selectboard Chair]: some

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: realignment of where Vermont connects and just passes through the federal tax cuts and where we treat these tax this revenue differently in the Vermont code. The end product is that it covers the $20,000,000 hole, and it also raises $10,000,000, which is spent both in the budget, in the transportation bill, and in this bill. And I will explain that to you. I can go through very quickly. One, two, three, four, and five are all housekeeping changes, and if anyone wants me to go through them, basically repeals the denied of tax credits for s corps. We allow these credits for everybody else, so we're gonna do it there. Grants department authority to investigate whether a bona fide landlord tenant relationship exists for the purposes of applying the property transfer tax. You're gonna see this change also in the education bill. When we did the property transfer tax two years ago, I think, we increased the property transfer tax for second homes, and that was based on an attestation. I'm not gonna use this as my primary residence. What I don't know if it's happened, but what could happen and we're concerned about is it's possible someone could own a business or form an LLC. The LLC could buy that property. My solely owned company could buy that property and then rent it to me as a long term rental, and I therefore would not pay the increased property transfer tax. This would say, no. You have to show that you're not renting it to yourself, essentially. Okay. A lot of them just clear up when PBR collects valuations. It clears up some appeals process and timelines. We didn't make any real changes until we got to section six. Section six, you may have gotten emails. I think it was two years ago. I believe the number was $2.79. There was a bill that went through the legislature, and it was one of those omnibus bills. It had, like, three bills attached and did three very different things. But the one thing it did do was up until that time, telecommunications property, and we were looking at cell towers, attached buildings, the land underneath had been treated as business personal property tax. The bill at that time changed that classification from person business personal property to business to real property, meaning it is taxed under as real estate, and the revenues went to the education fund. And I think it was $14,000,000 the number 14, and I'm sure we wouldn't have done it for $14,000 So and there was concern by property valuation at that time. And we took things out like equipment and the value of the computer that might be sitting on the desk. And it basically was limited to towers and things attached to towers. And so as it has played out, property valuation, and I believe they are doing this through a third party contractor, has sent out notifications to everybody they can think of that has telecommunications equipment and told them, we need a list of all your equipment. In doing that, they also said to quit those letters to broadcast companies, so your local radio stations, your local TV stations, which were never intended to be included in this. The difference is two way communications. Telecom, it goes out, it comes back. Broadcast, it just goes out. It you can't talk back to the radio station. Even though I did used to pick up the Green Mountain power trucks on my TV in the olden days. And first thing in the morning, they would come over captain kangaroo. Can't do that anymore. So what this does is it makes clear that broadcast equipment is not and we've talked to the tax department and asked them to make it clear that you some of these places have, like, three people in the studio and trying to inventory every piece of equipment in there has become a back breaking work. So we've asked them to communicate and made it clear that broadcast equipment is not covered. Okay. Yes. Section eight, for the purposes of the equalization study requires property valuation to use 100% of the CLA when determining tax rates for municipalities that just completed a mass reappraisal. This has been an issue. I just did a reappraisal, and now I'm at a 110% or suddenly I'm at 98%. And they said, when you just do a whole town reappraisal, that's your base. That's 100%. Extends nine through 10, extends the Health IT fund sunset for five years. I think this is something we do on a regular basis. We are still it's used to pay for IT, for health. Okay. 11 through 14. It updates the inflator reference from NEEP to NIFA because NEEP no longer exists. This is an inflator for health care? No. Education. We use one national standard, and that has gone away, and a new one has taken its place, so we changed all that reference. Okay. This allows the property yeah. It allows a 100% of the property tax liability to be if you're in the process if you're separated, you're in the process of getting a divorce, the person living in the house has a 100% of the liability. If you're moved out of state, you move down the street, you're not liable for the property transfer. Section 16 aligns the estate filing threshold with tax liability threshold so the taxpayers aren't required to re file a return when their tax is due, extends the down payment assistance program in seventeen to 2031 and increases the maximum total award from 250 to $2.30. There's this lovely graph, but this is this program goes out through VHFA, and it basically helps first time homebuyers come up with a down payment. If and I can speak from experience. The ideal for down payment is 20%. With the inflation in house prices and the inflation for rent and everything else, coming up with a 20% down payment is very difficult. Coming up with any down payment can be very difficult. 20 is ideal because if you're below that, you have to pay mortgage insurance, and that can be hundreds of dollars a month. And so this is a program BHFA uses to help supplement and help first time homebuyers be able to make that first step. They can pay the mortgage, but getting that first chunk of change is is hard. Yes. The next place. And when we go through a bill, I do little red flags next to places where we had one. Section six, which was the telecom, was my first flag. This is my second flag. This section sections has to do with a federal tax credit. This year, on your federal tax bills, everyone can opt to take a $1,700 federal income tax credit provided that they donate it to a scholarship granting. SGA? Yeah. SGA. SGL, scholarship granting organization, which will provide scholarships or tuition to students. Their this is a deviation, again, from the house. They had said, we're not joining this year. The problem is the rules haven't been written. Treasury's still writing them to schools in Vermont, which some members of my committee and of this body think would be not a good thing to do. We were sent a proposal from the education committee that said this could be an opportunity for Vermont to help some lower income kids. The kid that's really smart but can't afford to go to aerobics, summer camp, can't afford to go to after school, you know, can't afford tutoring. And so why doesn't Vermont set this up so that we we could do that? And it's very clear that if we are not allowed to do that, it won't go forward. But if we are, we're risking one year before we get back here. If we are allowed to do this, then it could mean this summer, some kids could get to go to camp that they wouldn't otherwise or get tutoring or get whatever. Section 21 through 23. Again, this week, we went with the house, and what this does is sometime this year, and I'm pretty sure I got emails on it. I'm sure a lot of people did. Fish and Wildlife right now, I was told in 2005, we gave them permission to set the fees for the use of the conservation camps and for rental of on buildings on property they own. This year, they proposed a fee on accessing state property. When they came to us, they talked about boat ramp access, but it's not clear that that's what it is. A lot of people took, if I'm just going out and walk and look at birds, I've gotta have a sticker somewhere that says I've paid for it. This also gets into the kind of tension between the legislative and the executive branch because I think we all know we used to do fees on a rolling three year schedule. We examined a third of our fees every year and determined if they were covering the cost of the service they were providing. If they were doing more, we actually did decrease fees on occasion. If they were doing less, we would adjust the fees. The present administration stopped that policy. And when you don't do fees for a number of years, but the cost, and it's usually personnel cost, keeps going up, eventually, you reach a break point. But even the Supreme Court of the United States has found out that the rule that setting fees, setting tariffs is a function of the legislative branch. And so we felt setting a new fee was stepping over that line, and I think we're getting a little protective of that line because it has been being stepped over. And so what this does, and it is accounted for in the budget, Fish and Wildlife get the funding that they anticipated getting for this revenue. My understanding is they continue to set the the tuition at the conservation camp and, you know, for rental of the facilities on their their property. And that next year, they should bring a request for fees. We we set the license fees for fishing and hunting. And if they want a fee for accessing state property, that kinda needs to be a little better defined, and it should come to the legislature. Okay. Yes. Grand list submission 24 through 48, moved to January 1. '49, removed statutory language director to supervise collection of delinquent taxes by tax collectors. They don't do that. Municipal tax collectors tax it, so we deleted it. We deleted okay. From the pilot the expenses from PBR, expenses from the pilot special fund, We direct JFO to conduct a ten year study on Vermont taxes. This is a study they do every ten years, and it's been ten years. Okay. Then 55 is all the coupling and decoupling. Vermont income tax decouples from the federal threshold for bonus depreciation on qualified production property, federal deductions for domestic research, and experimental product procedures for taxpayers with average gross income over $31,000,000, federal deductions for foreign source income, income excluded from the sale of qualified small business stock, also adds clarifying provisions relating to federal provisions that Vermont had previously decoupled from, Allows taxpayers to amortize domestic r and I think most of it think of it as research and development, but it's it's technically called experiment. That's the decoupling session sections. And there is a thing let's see. You use I'll get this wrong, so I'm gonna look at a friend. With research and RNA, let's see. You used to be able to deduct it all at once over time. Okay. In 2017, the tax cut jobs bill said, no. You could depreciate or deduct that expense not over five years. You could deduct it all in one year. HR one said, no. We're going back to over five years. Well, you've got these folks, they're kind of caught in the middle, and this says, for the things you expenses you incurred before a date certain, you can continue, at least in Vermont in for Vermont's portion, to deduct it over five years, and for everything after that, you follow the federal government. We also increased Vermont's research and development tax credit from 27 to 75%. There was a feeling that if we with the decoupling, we may have been putting a burden, and we don't wanna discourage research and development in Vermont. So we increased their our percent of their credit. So they now can get 75% of their federal tax credit on their Vermont taxes. Okay. 59 is increases the amount of the downtown and village tax credit. I believe this came to with a $1,000,000 finance, and I believe this body had formally, in the budget only increases that down tax tax credit by 500,000. Again, just recognizing the financial, this is $500,000 in taxes we are going to collect. Okay. The next section is 62 through 63. The transportation bill, when it originally came out, we all know that the transportation fund is in serious trouble. It's broke. The governor's proposal was for this year to transfer $10,000,000 to the education fund, and then $10,000,000 of purchase and use tax would go to the transportation fund. Next year and for the preceding four years, an additional $10,000,000 in per in purchasing use tax would come out of the education fund and go to transportation. That worked very well for transportation because they were going to see 50 to $60,000,000 in additional funding. However, it would leave a 50 to $60,000,000 hole in the education fund, which would have to be made up by property taxes. That's about a 5¢ increase if nothing else increases. The median finance is a little protective of the education fund since it's under our jurisdiction. So what came to us from the other body is that rather than do that scenario you remember this, we deduct $10,000,000 in purchasing use funding. That percentage, it changes the percentage of revenue that comes to the education fund. We reduce that by whatever the equivalent amount that raises $10,000,000 is. That goes to the transportation fund in perpetuity. So they've got $10,000,000 as long as the tax revenues hold additional. It then increases the percentage of the rooms and meals tax that comes to the education fund in an amount equal to $10,000,000. So the education fund is held whole, And then all the coupling and decoupling that was going on in the former sections raises covers the $20,000,000 hole and raises $10,000,000, which goes

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White (Windsor)]: and our pilot special fund running a surplus, something that was unheard of even five years ago when we were in this body. Even after changing the local retention from 70% to 75% last year, the surplus has continued to grow. And in fiscal year twenty twenty seven, our state will be collecting from an additional 13 towns who approved local option taxes in March. And I think it's reasonable to expect that the fund will likely grow again the next year and perhaps in the year after that as more towns continue to adopt local option tax, in, I believe, an effort to reduce their own property taxes in many regards. And this will enable us to give more money back to those municipalities this year. We know that thanks to that growth, the legislature has been able to, within itself, appropriate 10,000,000 already out of that fund this legislative session. $10,000,000 we are using for our own purposes within this building, not going back to the individual communities or to the pilot payments. And we even in doing so leave more money on the table in that surplus with using that amount. What my amendment hopes to do is find a way to both fund those state needs and help our municipalities balance their stretched budgets. The formula change that you'll see in the amendment passed out changes just a mere 5% from 75 to 80 going back to the towns. And while I argued in front of the finance committee that I believe it should be a 100% that goes back to those communities, I think it's a fair compromise to increase it again this year. Additionally, I heard from the finance committee and others that they were concerned that with this eightytwenty split, that we would get below the necessary surplus needed to cover the pilot fund payments or that we would be rating the fund to a too large of an extent. So what I present to you in this amendment is that we only move to this eightytwenty split if the funding of statutory obligations such as the pilot and that new base funding for the reappraisal that we just approved in the big bill, all of that would be funded and we would have an eight have to have an $18,000,000 surplus, in that fiscal year with its, fiscal year obligations, as presented. You can see that in the second instance of amendment. I'll just read it because I we spent some time and I appreciate both legislative counsel and joint fiscal office for assisting in this. But what do we change? We change section 50 when we have the 8020 go into effect. It will only take effect on October 1 following a determination by the commissioner of taxes that the balance of the pilot special fund was in excess of $18,000,000 at the close of the immediate proceeding fiscal year. I think that answers the question and concern that I've had raised to me by those who want to vote for this bill, that we would be putting at a detriment the $3,000,000 from the transport to the highway transportation fund, money that we were going to put towards appraisals or other ideas. Rather, I would argue that this puts us in the position to guarantee that we have the money to pay those obligations and then giving back as much as we possibly can to our municipalities. This is a generous surplus to hold in reserve without my amendment. It's not fair that more municipalities who have seen their own budgets dwindle are watching as the state holds a reserve. Why do we hold a reserve is my question, and how much is fair to keep in reserve when towns like Royalton can't afford to match a 20% for a bridge project because they can't afford to pay the town share? Is it fair for us to hold money in reserve when we have towns like burl cities like Burlington, which are laying off 20 plus employees because they can't afford to maintain their staffing levels. Is it fair to sit on a reserve in this way when we have communities that are letting go of staff, whether it be parks and recreation employees or their department of public works or their basic administrative officials who keep the town together. Is it fair? I don't believe it is. I know that there are ideological differences about how to use the share of the local option tax revenues within this state, even within the finance committee. But my amendment offers a compromise that should satisfy all perspectives. We can meet our full obligations to the pilot receiving towns. We can share these revenues with every community through the new local option, municipal transportation special fund that we created just in another bill, which we kicked off with that $3,000,000 investment. And through securing a future per parcel grand list payment to towns, we can do all of that while also changing the formula to eighty twenty in the future so that communities who choose to pay these extra taxes can keep more money in their local budgets. This is a fair, fiscally responsible amendment that will help 51 towns and growing balance their local budgets. I wanted to point out to each member that if they would like a copy, I have a list of each of their towns that receive local option tax revenue. And it's no surprise that Windsor has seven communities, the largest of, or the highest number of towns in the state within our district have local option taxes. And they do that as border communities in many instances, meaning they're choosing to be out competed on cost with across border communities because they are so desperate for revenue and they need a local option tax. In conclusion, I understand that this is a divisive motion because there are those who want to support their municipalities but also don't want to reflect poorly on the good work of the finance committee. And I respect that debate. And I hope that we can have, a response from the finance committee on this amendment, because I've not heard yet. So I would love to get that information as well before we take a vote. But I would ask that the body please consider this amendment as it benefits our communities. And I'll end with just one story. I have felt a lot of peer pressure to not have this motion come forward, to withdraw this motion. And last night I had the opportunity to meet with a group of constituents over Zoom from Hartford. I explained to them how I was feeling really just beat down that I didn't want to introduce it. I felt like I was swimming upstream. I said, but it's only going to be $40,000 for Hartford. And they said, fight. Fight like heck for that $40,000 because that's the difference between our hazard mitigation plan getting funded. That's the difference between parks and recreation having a summertime safe lifeguard number at the pool. It's those basic things that they can't fund anymore. And so I take it very seriously to introduce an amendment that's controversial, but I believe it's in the best interest of our seven communities that have local option taxes. And I implore every senator who has a community with a local option tax to consider this reasonable compromised amendment. Thank you.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: The question is, shall the proposal amendment of the committee on finance as amended be further amended as recommended by senator White? Senator from Washington.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: Thank you, mister president. I'm going to speak first as the mother of the pilot program and do a little history lesson, which I found is my role as the dean of the senate. Even before I was here, I was the mayor in Montpelier. And the city of Montpelier at that point had about 8,000 people. And on any given day, there were 20,000 people. Most of them in this building are state offices. That was before we did remote work. And the city of Montpelier was receiving, I think, $30,000 of payment in lieu of taxes. We're providing fire. There was no Capitol Police. I don't even know that there was state security. So we were doing fire, police, ambulance for all of those people. And we wanted to get a payment in lieu of taxes. And in working on that, we also realized that there were other towns that had state property that weren't getting paid. There was a preexisting law, and I don't know how old it was, that if you have a state forest or I think a state park, if it's a land, you get a payment in lieu of taxes. But if you have the state capital, you didn't. And if you have a town garage, you don't. So started PILOT stands for payment in lieu of taxes. We started copilot, which was bringing together all those towns that didn't, and most of them were very small towns, that didn't that might have a garage, that might and, yes, that $10,000, $5,000 payment really helped them. So we set that up. I spent many Tuesday mornings at 8AM sitting in the cafeteria meeting with legislators, and anyone who served on a committee with me knows how well I liked 8AM meetings, but we were here. Montpelier did a local option tax, and the first two times we passed it, it didn't even get taken up in this body. The third time, I came up here to present it. And the reason my committee has the standing rule, we treat participant we treat witnesses with respect, was coming out of my experience up in this body. It was a long time ago, but it was not a pleasant experience coming up here and trying to make the case for why the city should be able to do a rooms and meals tax. So copilot pilot bill passed. Local option taxes passed. At that time, it was before Wayfair, and only a few larger cities could do that. At first, local option taxes were allowed for towns negatively impacted by act 60. Then every year, we have fought to expand it. But it's been the big towns that have enough sales to tax. Wayfair, the ability to tax online sales, has made other smaller towns perhaps be able to access some money. But the those are small towns. And so I'm now going to go into my finance committee hat. I will say that the committee discussed this. It was after we finished work last night, and I think our we were divided. Nobody wants to hold on to money that the towns could use. On the other hand, this was not brought to us by the league or anyone else while we were considering the yield bill. And the yield the league is a professional organization. Nobody came in and talked to us. So this is hitting us again before third reading. We know that the towns can use the money. Everybody can use money. Welcome to a declining or leveling economy. It's not the first time, but it is the first time for many of us, and things are tight. And if there's any money anywhere, everyone is looking for it. What our balance is is trying to figure out this year, we know the amount going out is more than the amount coming in. We know we have 13 more towns, but I doubt I don't know how much is Jamaica gonna know, how much are those towns going to generate into the fund as compared to going out. Only the the 80%, the set we only went to 75% last year, so we have no track record. And the 80% will only go back to those towns. It's 80% of what they send in. It only goes back to those towns. It doesn't help all the other towns. The pilot program, sometimes there's overlap, and sometimes there's a whole different group of towns that would get payment. And so I will speak I think we had a three three vote, and I should have broken it, and I told the committee I was conflicted. I feel a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that that fund remains whole so that we can continue to pay the 75% back and to pay the pilot payments, and we haven't upgraded the pilot payments in a while either to make sure that all towns get to share in this and not essentially, the money will be going back to our biggest towns because they're the towns that generate the most money. And so this is this is really a difficult call, I think, for all of us to make. I think given that this wasn't brought to me personally as a member of the committee that I'm would opt on the side of being conservative and wait another year. The other risk here is the national economy. This is mostly sales tax money. If the economy keeps going down and gas keeps going up and groceries keep going up, the odds that people are going to start spending less increases, and that will decrease the revenue. So it's it's it's just a lot of change very quickly in a time that is economically uncertain. And so I think the vote is probably gonna go to everyone's personal conscience on this one.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Are you ready for the question? Senator from Chittenden.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Chittenden)]: Thank you, mister president. I rise in support of this motion. I just wanna remind, two things that I hadn't heard yet, and it's just, I think, important to put into the discussion as well. Last year, we made it easier for towns to opt in to tax themselves to actually enact the local options tax in small towns, big towns, all the towns. And I believe I heard the LCT mentioned in the discussion yesterday of the 50 ish towns that have this, half of them are very small towns. And I I just think that's important to realize for the second point I wanna make, which is I don't see this money as the state's money. This is a local option tax that they chose to tax upon themselves. They took a vote. They said, we wanna tax this. We we want to have this be a revenue stream so that we can fund our roads, fund our police services, fund our rec center, fund our park, fund whatever we feel like is the priority on that bridge project. So I I fully support this $80.20 on what was before us yesterday. I don't think we had the $80,000,000 language, so I think that's too it was questionable. I just want to applaud the, senator from Windsor on this, and I do think this is the right discussion to be had, and I'll be voting yes. Thank you, mister president.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Washington.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Washington) — Member, Senate Appropriations]: Thank you, mister president. While this is an amendment to the miscellaneous tax bill, which is a finance bill, it definitely directs change in the appropriation of state money. This is very much an appropriation question. I have my own views, but I think given the words we heard from the senior center from Washington now, this is a kind of a divided issue. I would like to ask for a quick recess so appropriations can mute on me very quickly.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: We'll take a brief recess. Well, senate, please come to order.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Chittenden Central)]: Let's do it. If I were just taking.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Washington) — Member, Senate Appropriations]: I don't know. I thought it

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: was ridiculous. I bet you. I bet

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Washington) — Member, Senate Appropriations]: No. I get it.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: No. I'm gonna check. I I appreciate you. Thank you very much. Okay. Senator from Washington.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Washington) — Member, Senate Appropriations]: Thank you, mister president. The appropriations committee did have a straw poll, straw poll of five two. We did, support to the amendment, but I think it's important to clear the support is only because of the second instance of amendment. If this was to be divided, we'd have very different vote. The I'm guessing the vote and if we voted on what was in the calendar, it'd be zero seven. It was not support for that. But with this trigger of $18,000,000, that meets the concern of getting into funds that could be used for the pilot payments. We didn't want to draw down the the surpluses in there. I agree with the presenter of the amendment that there's a level of surplus that would be too much. This this is a high level of of surplus. So on that, we did vote five two in support.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Washington.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: Thank you, mister president. Just for clarity, we knew there was a potential trigger, but when the bill came to us, that cushion wasn't there and we did not have a number in finance.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Washington.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Washington) — Member, Senate Appropriations]: I forgot to say also, we wanted to just express our concern for these kind of things happening at third reading. We know that sometimes that's the way it works out and the difficulty, but but when major kind of policy decisions get get dropped on third reading, it's it's not preferred. We just want to remind the senators of that.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Chittenden.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White (Windsor)]: Thank you, Mr. President. I think where we are in this process is that

[Senator Philip Baruth (Chittenden Central) — President Pro Tempore]: we all care about our municipalities. We all want to get to yes on something that's fiscally responsible and allows us to look into the future each year and make a determination in a more careful way. This has been evolving on the floor. This is actually second reading to my knowledge. So I I would I think it would be better for us and the process if the good senator from Windsor was willing to work with the Finance Committee, this afternoon on the amendment and that it was introduced for third reading in a way that could garner additional support. I think right now we're seeing divided votes on different questions and with some sense of false urgency that this was third reading. And I think we're at our best when we do careful work in the committee, and I would hope that we could reintroduce this amendment instead for third reading and I'll just leave it that.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Windsor.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White (Windsor)]: I do not plan to withdraw this amendment at this time. However, if the amendment fails I'm very willing to work with finance to present an alternative amendment on third reading.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Addison.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Addison)]: Thank you, mister president. I totally respect the senator from Windsor and this amendment and her efforts and her passion in particular. I, and I like everyone in this body would like to, be able to help our municipalities they are struggling. 50 municipalities that have, local options taxed is about 20% of our towns. A higher percentage, and I don't have the full percentage, but it's much higher. I think it's closer to 40% of our towns get pilot payments. Up until 2024, those pilot payments were lessened. They were prorated because we didn't have enough money in this fund and so for twenty plus years those payments twenty five years those payments were prorated and the towns that had state buildings in them didn't get the full pilot payments for them. So, you know, one could argue that the first thing we should do is go back and reimburse all those towns for the many, many years that they didn't get their full pilot payments. And many of those towns I'm looking at the map that there's an excellent map and a lot of analysis that JFO has done, and so I encourage all of you to look and see how many of your towns have local options taxes versus how many of your towns get the pilot payments. So one thing that I would support more is looking at those pilot payments and making sure that we're making those towns whole, just because those towns tend to be our smaller town or often are smaller towns. They also include the larger towns like Burlington and many of the Chittenden County towns and and larger towns in my district like Middlebury that does both, but they're also the very, very small towns that have state state buildings in them. And so looking at whether or not we have been fair to those towns first, I think, would be an important first step. So up until 2024, which was two years ago, two years ago this fund didn't have enough money in it to fund the original purpose of it, which was to fund those pilot payments. And last year, we just made an adjustment going from 70% to 75%, which was a big jump, and it was just last year. And last year, as the senator from Chittenden and Central, South said, we also made it easier to have towns, do a local options tax. So there's a lot of change that's happened over the last two years for this fund. And, the Transportation Committee has a great proposal that we haven't heard yet on the floor about redistributing some of the balance in this fund out to local towns based on a formula for local transportation needs, roads needs. And I think that kind of redistribution of the balance in the fund is an excellent idea. So while I'm very, supportive of wanting to make sure that we fund our towns as much as possible, I think it's not fiscally responsible to do an amendment like this at this time. We need more time to let the changes go into effect, more time to consider or not whether we're being fair to all the towns that are impacted by this fund, and more time to reconsider, other options. No pun intended. Thank you, mister president.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Are you ready for the question? Senator from Caledonia.

[Senator Scott Beck (Caledonia)]: Thank you, mister president. I think what's really important to remember here is we're not changing the size of the pot of money. And effectively, what is, on the table here is for the the largest commercial centers in the state to get a bigger share

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: of

[Senator Scott Beck (Caledonia)]: the pie. Who gets the smaller share of the pie? Those towns that don't have those commercial centers. And those towns that don't have commercial centers, they frequent the commercial centers and they shop there, which adds to the economy there, it adds to tax base. And so, you know, we were at 70%, we went up to 75%, but for me that's that's really the ceiling. I think that the all towns in Vermont should share in that 25%, while still providing 75% for those commercial centers and other people that are in the LOT. I do acknowledge they have increased costs for maintaining that infrastructure, and they do do they do deserve a greater percentage, but 75% is a very large percentage. So I'll be voting now on this amendment.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Are you ready for the question? Senator from Washington.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Washington) — Member, Senate Appropriations]: Thank you, mister president. So in our discussion in, our our huddle with appropriations, I was, one of the yes votes and I do plan to, vote to support it, but I do wanna express my frustration, with, the the process. Have full respect for the senator from Windsor and know that, she's carrying forward concerns of the, of the cities and towns, but the fact that this came at at this point is I I think ends up sort of short shrifting the the discussion around the pilot payments. I think there's a lot of concerns. I'm appreciating the the concerns from the senator, from Addison County that there's there's a lot to be discussed here, and this, cut short of all of this the discussion. And in thinking about you know the way I prefer to make decisions I would love to see the graphs, would love to see the data and the projections and have all of that in front of me and that is something that we did not get to to do. So, for for the the forces at work, know, pushing this forward, we'd love to just express that, this is not not the preferred way to make this kind of decision. Thank you.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Are you ready for the question? Senator from Chittenden North.

[Senator Christopher Mattos (Chittenden North)]: Thank you, mister president. May I interrogate the presenter of the amendment?

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: The presenter is interrogated.

[Senator Christopher Mattos (Chittenden North)]: Thank you. Yesterday, committee, brought up a question about, the second instance of amendment in the $18,000,000 threshold. And what happens when we hit that threshold, it changes to $80.20, And then that following fiscal year, a fiscal year that's further out, it falls back below that $18,000,000 surplus. I posed the question to the senator from Windsor, and I'm wondering if she had any fault, if the senator had any follow-up to that question.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White (Windsor)]: Yes, and I believe that question was asked and answered in committee, so I'm happy to express that the eightytwenty would remain the same if the fund went down based on the language of the amendment.

[Senator Christopher Mattos (Chittenden North)]: Thank you. Does the senator have any further information on if that eightytwenty split would deplete the pilot or the the fund down to where we couldn't make those pilot fund payments out to towns as the senator Madison was alluding to in the past?

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White (Windsor)]: Yes. I think if I'm understanding the concern and I've heard from others is that we hit the 18,000,000, let's say 2029 hypothetically, and then in 2030 we have a recession or the local option tax number gets depleted below. My first point to that, because then the way the amendment's written is it would remain at eightytwenty. And I think I've heard from folks say, well, could it drop back down to 70 fivetwenty five if that happens? I'm open to that conversation ultimately if this amendment does not go through, but I would say that we are already as a legislature taking out $10,000,000 from this pilot fund. So if we wanted to keep it being stable, it's not the 5% percentage change, it's whether or not we as a legislature will choose to continue to raid this specific fund as it grows in its surplus. If we didn't take out the $10,000,000 that we're doing this time or the $3,000,000 for town highway aid, which we did pass in the budget yesterday, we wouldn't be putting ourselves in that situation as well. So I think it's a twofold question. And I do wanna note that I think it would be difficult for the communities who might see an eightytwenty. I think there is a risk to that, but to go to an eightytwenty switch and then to revert back to 70 fivetwenty five, I think also has risks and would be detrimental to our communities. And then in my last point would be, I think it's unlikely we would go down. As I pointed out in my original speech, one of the main changes that we saw with this fund balance was due to the addition of short term rental taxes, cannabis retail, and the increase in online sales that have resulted in local option at option tax revenue increasing. So I do think that we are we saw changes that caused the surplus to grow. It's not that the fund was underfunded and we did nothing and it grew. It's that we made changes to the revenue sources going into it. So I think it's less likely we will slip back down based on those changes we've made to the fund, if that answers your question.

[Senator Christopher Mattos (Chittenden North)]: It does. And I thank the senator. And I I have reservations on both sides of the argument. I don't I don't want this fund to be used as a slush fund to be used elsewhere. I think it should lie with the towns. I think the senator from, Caledonia brings up a good point that it's not just the folks in those municipalities that have local option taxes that frequent and shop. I'm one of those people who lives in a town. We don't have local option tax. I'll frequent Essex Junction, Williston, South Burlington, I just went to last night. So I do want to strike that balance and I think we did last year by seeing how much money was in in this fund, increasing that share up to 75%. And I think that's something we can continue to do

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: in the future when

[Senator Christopher Mattos (Chittenden North)]: we have a better picture of where this fund is going. So I will not be supporting the amendment currently. It would be something that I would look at again in the future, but thank you, mister president.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Chittenden.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Chittenden)]: I don't know if I can speak again, mister president.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: You have only spoken once, so you are welcome to speak a second time.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Chittenden)]: I just wanna say, mister president, we welcome the senator from Chittenden North to South Burlington anytime he so desires. And, I just wanna highlight one thing to that, since I do live in South Burlington, has a local options tax as does Williston, as does, I believe, Shelburne now too. They are communities, but I I wanna highlight one thing. There's population of South Burlington, it's about 20,000 that sleep there, that rest their heads. But during the day, it almost doubles. We we when I was on city council, we'd see that people come in and work in South Burlington and shop in South Burlington, which we welcome. Come on in anytime. But what's important to mention is that that requires a lot more police, fire, EMT, parks, roads. So these local option taxes isn't a a slush fund for these towns. It's so that they can continue to operate these commercial centers, and that's why I just don't see it as the state's money, and I think as much of this should go back to this low these local communities of this local option tax. But I already said that. I'm sorry

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Washington) — Member, Senate Appropriations]: to speak twice, mister president.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Washington.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: Thank you, Mr. President. I think this is my second time as my person, not in community. I think what this discussion shows is that in the history of this building, there has been an unwritten rule that we don't do amendments that haven't had time to be considered by the committees of jurisdiction. We the finance committee got this bill yesterday afternoon. It didn't come in. The league that has been pushing for it did not come in. We haven't had an opportunity to see the graphs and the maps of where the towns are and where and that was the original deal. There was a former speaker of the house who would get apoplectic. My vice chair could get apoplectic because we were charging their people more to shop in our towns. And I made the same argument the senator from Chittenden made. You have a heart attack on our street. We don't ask to see your residence card before we resuscitate you. We are providing the service for 20,000 people. But the deal was that because those other people that didn't have the big commercial centers were going to be sharing in that tax cost, they were going to be paying it, they should get a split. And that split was the pilot payment. And we have not looked at the pilot I don't ever remember looking at the pilot payments and how they're assessed and if they are being fairly assessed. And I think it is really difficult because we all know, I know what my tax bill is going up in Montpelier to pay those. We're up to being the third highest tax rate state again, which is what we used to fight against. I know what it costs, and I know where the potholes are. But I also know that there's a lot of folks that are coming down here to shop or, you know, grab a hamburger or do a whole lot of other things. And they should share in this revenue. And we just haven't had time to look at the system and say, what is the fair balance? We don't know what the ongoing we've only done the 75% for one year. We don't know what the ongoing cost is gonna be. Some of the costs we've taken out would get put back on the the towns. We're either gonna give them $3,000,000 or they're not getting $3,000,000 for local roads. This is kind of a zero sum game, and the question is, how do we divide it up? And the bottom line is the committee on finance or whoever local, you know, government that we haven't had a chance to look at this and to reach a decision as to what is accurate about.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Chittenden,

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Chittenden) — Former Williston Selectboard Chair]: Thank you, mister president. Everybody has just said everything I was gonna say, but I'm gonna repeat it anyway, and I will do a little historical analysis discussion. So this all started with act 60 in about 1998. I happen to be chair of my select board at that time, and there was huge transitions taking taking place in Chittenden County, including in my own town. And at that time, the issue about development was a big deal. The more development you have, the lower your property taxes because you could benefit from that development. It was huge. It was wonderful. And so there were huge development pressures on some of our smaller towns, including the one that I live in where the population was less than 2,000. And so the developers came in. We wanted development. We wanted to have that revenue. We wanted to lower our property taxes. And that was what was going on at that time. We had a volunteer fire department. We had a small police department. And we helped out Richmond. And we had our own Williston chief. And then development started to take place. But then, the law changed, and they called us a gold town. And the money that we were saving for our property taxes and the lowest property taxes in the county, all of a sudden, we were looking at paying more for the development that we had put in place so that we could lower our property taxes. And I will say that, I had a few things to say about that as chair of the select board. It took courage by our local representative, Rose, to come into this building and to argue for some compensation to local communities that had developed so that they could have the results of that development through taxes. And it's his courage that provided for a local option tax to go into place in the first place. It didn't take a long time to make it happen. It didn't take protect protracted, testimony. It happened pretty darn quickly. I wanna just share that because I know it's almost every year that we talk about local option taxes. So we're all pretty gifted in understanding what what's going on here. I did and then it took a while for other towns and cities to realize the benefit of having a local option tax. It took us two or three years to have it put in place in Williston. It didn't happen overnight. People didn't like it. They didn't like the 1% tax. It wasn't fair. How come we have to pay more? Sure. We understood that. But gradually, they understood that the pressures being put on, as you've heard, our fire, our police, our EMTs, our roads. That there was huge pressure. And then, as I came into this building and I realized I had a fellow senator from Bennington who was very also interested in this, and we worked hard to make a change to that so that other towns were eligible besides those that were originally identified. Just a couple towns identified originally. So the change happened. Now we see a change in the economy, and we see a need to have more dollars go locally for whatever local folks need. There was a time when we were looking to take money from schools and try and put it into municipal because the municipal taxes were lower. And we wanted to have moved some of the school projects out so the school taxes could go lower. That's all part of that this discussion on local option tax. So next step, we're in a different place. We have we have pressures at the local level. I think it makes eminent sense to change this this to 8020. And I'm I'm gonna be supporting it. I don't like going against any committee that's come out with a recommendation. Or I think it's time for us to face the fact that these towns are bearing the brunt of the development that we were asked to do in the first place to support the state economy and that we have done very carefully to lower property taxes. And it hasn't always worked out that way. Fortunately, in my town, we're still pretty low. But I will say this is not an issue we can leave on the table. I think we need to support it, and I think we should go forward with it. So the history catches up with us. I understand that. But it's time for us to face the reality of the needs that our local towns need and that our towns need and and let let the towns think about what they can do. They can they can put a property option tax in if they would like. Sure. There are a whole lot of other mitigating circumstances within the language itself, but I think the way this is written, there's time for the Finance Committee, the Appropriations Committee, and others to weigh in on how to make improvement to this. But I I cannot ignore the needs that we face in our, in our smaller towns and in our larger towns. Our population in our town as a senator for Chittenden, Northeast also indicated is astronomical during the daytime. And just don't drive down the local roads when it's shopping time, especially around holidays. So we need the help, and I would say, please support this. Thank you.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Chittenden Central.

[Senator Philip Baruth (Chittenden Central) — President Pro Tempore]: Thank you, mister president. I will say I can't remember an issue on the floor of this divide. And by that, I mean, the the two committees of jurisdiction, both money committees split to the point where a huddle just doesn't unravel knot. So where I'm going with this is I think our majority leader had a very wise suggestion, which was to delay this discussion until tomorrow. We are at second reading. We are under no obligation to finish this today. I was prepared to vote very reluctantly yes on the amendment But hearing that the offer of the amendment was open to a safeguard about the fund falling below 18,000,000. I do believe that would be a wise addition to this. That can very easily be done in committee this afternoon. I believe with a little work in the hallways, we can come in tomorrow and generally coalesce around a proposal. So what I would suggest is two part. I think the easiest thing to do would be for the presenter of the amendment to withdraw the amendment. If, the senator does not choose to withdraw the amendment, I would suggest to the body that we vote the amendment down on the understanding that the presenter of the amendment has indicated a willingness to come back tomorrow with a different version. Again, I think the most efficient, the most collegial way would be to withdraw the amendment and agree to work with a finance committee and come back to us tomorrow. I will guarantee the senator that if that happens, I will be a yes vote on this with a much clearer conscience. And I would just reiterate all of the complaints that have been made about the lobbying on this bill, how late it came forward, how little interaction the advocates had with the committees of jurisdiction. But the senator is moving an urgent issue. I just don't think the urgency is a second reading ish urgency. I think we can easily finish this discussion tomorrow and as the clock tells us, we've spent quite a lot of time here already. Thank you, mister president.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Windsor.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White (Windsor)]: I ask to withdraw my amendment.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: It will be considered withdrawn. Are there any further amendments?

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: I do have an amendment.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Washington, you've already presented your

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: done one.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Amendment.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: I I did do one. Right?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Washington) — Member, Senate Appropriations]: Yes.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Okay. The question back to regular split. Right? The question is, shall the senate propose to the house to amend the bill as recommended by the committee on finance? Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. No. No. The ayes appear to have it. The ayes do have it. And you've proposed to the house to amend the bill as proposed by the committee on finance. The question is now, shall the bill be read a third time? Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. No. The ayes appear to have it. The ayes do have it, and you've ordered third reading of h nine thirty three. Senator from Chittenden Central.

[Senator Philip Baruth (Chittenden Central) — President Pro Tempore]: Thank you, mister president, and my thanks to the senator from Windsor. I think that is certainly the best path. With that said, mister president, I think we've worked enough this morning, and we can complete work not only on that will but bill but make, greater progress moving down the calendar tomorrow. So pending announcements, I would move that the senate stand in adjournment until 11:30AM, Friday, 05/01/2026. Thank you.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Are there any announcements? Senator from Washington.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: Thank you, mister president. I think finance is scheduled to start at one, but I'm gonna say 01:15 just so they can get through the cafeteria line. I've already scheduled the senator from Chittenden Central who has a very long amendment to this bill. I hope we can get to her by four, and I'm gonna ask the senator

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: From Windsor.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Washington) — Chair, Senate Finance; Dean of the Senate]: Windsor to come, after we finish with the senator from Chittenden Central, and I hope, we can get copies of the information that the senator from Addison have so we can look at the entire issue.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Washington.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Washington) — Member, Senate Appropriations]: Thank you. Senator appropriations will meet at 02:00.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Rutland.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Essex)]: Thank you, mister president. Government operations will be at 01:15.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Windham.

[Senator Wendy Harrison (Windham)]: Thank you, mister president. Senate institutions is planning meet at one, but let's make it by 01:10. K.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Thank you. Senator from Bennington.

[Senator Philip Baruth (Chittenden Central) — President Pro Tempore]: Mister president, we were scheduled for 01:15, but I think we'll push it back to 01:30, the education committee.

[Lt. Governor David Zuckerman (President of the Senate)]: Are there any further announcements? Seeing none, the senator from Chittenden Central has moved that the senate stand in adjournment until 11:30AM, Friday, 05/01/2026. Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor, aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Ayes have it, and we'll stand in adjournment until 11:30AM, Friday, 05/01/2026.