Debate ove Vermont's motel voucher program heats up as the Scott administration rejects Democratic compromise proposal on a mid-year spending bill.

Still optimistic that at the end of the day, we'll find a compromise.

But it's not there today.

The legislature has to understand the new dynamic with the governor vetoes it.

It's no period.

End of story.

And we will sustain the governor in the House.

Plus a Newport roundtable highlights the economic uncertainty and emotional pain caused by Trump' Canadian tariffs and Ice arrest.

Rumors in Sto put workers on edge.

All that and more ahead on Vermont this week.

From the Vermont public studio in Winooski.

This is Vermont this week, made possible in part by the Lintilhac Foundation and Milne Travel.

Here's moderator Mitch Wertlieb.

Thanks for joining us on Vermont this week.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb It's Friday, March 21st, and joining us on the panel this week, Stephen Biddix from Nbc5, Carly Berlin from Vermont Public and Vtdigger.

And Aaron Calvin from Stowe Reporter, News and Citizen.

Thank you all so much for being here.

We've got a lot to talk about.

As usual, things are heating up as we heard at the top of the show, with Governor Scot rejecting a compromise on motel housing funding.

We're going to get to that in just a moment.

Here's what Frank Nack of Vermont Housing and Homeless Alliance had to say about this issue.

They're going to be accepted into a homeless response system that has no capacity.

And so what that means is that people will live up, end up on the streets.

I mean, in situations that are going to put their lives and the lives of children at risk, this is unconscionable that we're even considering this.

Carley Berlin, you have been reporting on this extensively for quite some time now.

Bring us up to date.

Where are we now?

What is this compromise that Governor Scott is not happy about?

So you might remember last wee the governor vetoed the annual Budget Adjustment Act.

That's this, mid-year, you know, annual mid-year spending bill that moves through the legislature.

The main gripe here is over the future of the motel voucher program.

The compromise that Democratic leadership brought forward earlier this week was basically to say, you know, governor, we'll give you everything you want on the spending, disagreements in this bill.

But we're going to hold firm that we want an extension for unhoused people in the motel voucher program.

The governor did not accept that.

On Wednesday.

So we're seeing a real stalemate around this mid-year spending package in Montpelier right now, in really kind of acrimonious tension is it's getting it's getting testy.

The governor sent out a letter about this.

And tell us a little bit about that letter.

What it was contained in it and how it kind of, you know, had that first salvo across the bow, if you will.

Yeah, exactly.

So, you know, late Tuesday afternoon, Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate made public their, compromise proposal.

That basically said, you know, we are going to, hold off on this.

The state spending that the governor disagreed with.

One of the reasons that he vetoed this bill, but we are not going to giv the governor what he wants on, on, you know, not going for this three month extension for people who are sheltered in the motel voucher program.

The letter that came from the administration the next day said, you know, hey, why did you Democrats make this public?

We were having private negotiations about this.

We were getting somewhere.

Onc you put that line in the sand, that makes it hard to continue these, you know, good faith negotiations.

That's what the letter said.

So we're no seeing this sort of public spat over the future of of how we, you know, legislators and the administration move the spending package forward.

I want to open this up to everybody here, because I am a little bit surprised about this, because usually with Governor Scott, it' always been about the numbers.

It's been about the money.

And it sounds like Democrats are saying, well, we'll give you the money you want.

We'll do the cuts there.

We just want to extend the amount of time people can be in this this motel, program.

What is the governor's main problem with that extension?

I guess.

So, you know, part of this goes back to the budget that was passed last year.

If we can go back in time.

Sure.

You know, the motel program has been this controversial kind of political football for many years now, right?

The budget last year said, you know, we're going to have some new restriction on this program going forward.

Those were, you know, an 80 day limit on how long people could stay in motels.

There is a cap on the number of rooms.

You might remember we saw a large wave of evictions from the program last fall.

You know, families sleepin outside in tents in some cases.

We then hit the winter.

The program's rules loosened.

That happens pretty much every year to get more people indoors during the winter months.

What we're facing now is the end of that winter exemption ending on April 1st.

You know, there's thi the stakes here that, you know, more people would get exite who would have hit their 80 days already or would hit it.

Later in the spring, basically part of what the governor's administration is saying is, you know, hey, we agreed to these new restrictions last year.

Let's not rehash them now.

What Democratic leaders are saying is, you know, we watched how terrible this was.

You know, sure we agreed to this at the time.

We don't want to see families, disabled people.

List goes on outside again this spring.

Right.

Stephen Brooks.

I do have to wonder, though.

I mean, we know there's no more supermajority for Democrats in the legislature.

Sure.

If they're up for a fight with Governor Scott on this.

You know, is there going to be, if, as it looks like now, the governor would veto such a bill?

Do they have the votes to override?

They do not definitely hav the votes to override anymore.

And speaking of overriding is interesting.

I was talking to some House lawmakers earlier in the week and they were confused.

They're like why do we see a different bill number or not a veto override?

And I was kind of trying to explain it is like because they don't have the numbers to override Republicans anymore.

So it has to go bac to a new bill form going through second and third reading again.

So some of the lawmakers have only had their first biennium last time around.

Were kind of learning that process, which was interesting to see.

But as you heard Representative Harrison say in the clip that started the show they have to respect the numbers that they have now, the 55 Republican lawmakers that broke up, that supermajority.

And it's interesting to Speaker Krowinski held a press conference right after the budget adjustment votes Friday morning, where they said they're now looking into what happens if a bar is not passed because it seems like they are not willing to give up this program.

We've seen Governor Scott is not willing to go forward.

And, Carly it sounds like you were paying attention to the big message out of Democrat as they were explaining their vote or trying to get others to vote with people over politics.

We heard it again and again and again from representatives on the floor.

Kind of amazing.

The budget adjustment bil usually kind of a technicality.

You know, I can't remember a time in recent memory when there's been this much fight over something like that before you even get to the larger legislation.

The that' one of the issues, too, because muskrats are saying, hey, Governor Scott, we took everything else out we're trying to pursue.

But then the administration's also saying this is not a policy bill, and none of these things should have all been added and to begin with, and now you're taking them away to make it sound lik you are appeasing what I want.

That just should have never been the case to begin with.

Well, it's interestin because, you know, the advocates for, homeless people that I've spoken with, they don't like the hotel system either.

Nobody seems to like the hote system, but what they're urging.

Governor Scott and lawmaker to do is to come up with a plan or try to have a plan ready before ending, or pushing more people out of the hotel program.

Carly Berli Is there a long term plan here for dealing with this issue?

There is a plan that's, starting to move through the house, actually.

So, the House Human Services Committee has been working on a bill for the last couple of months that would basically get rid of the motel program as it currently exists.

And, you know, shif a lot of funding and authority over to the regional Community Action agency.

So private nonprofit groups to d homeless services in the state.

So they could decide wit new money and new responsibility to spend some of that on mote rooms for people in their areas.

They could use it to expand shelter, you know, invest in a homelessness prevention programs, the list goes on.

But that's a really kind of existential shift, right?

To move.

This kind of core service, for unhoused people in the state, from state government to, you know, these private nonprofit organizations.

So that would be a longer term thing.

I want to emphasize, you know, there would be this bill that they've now passed out of their committee envisions a year long implementation process.

So we would need to see where it goes and where some of the details get hashed out, of course.

But there now is a sort of plan on the table.

It sounds like Governor Scott really wants to sunset the motel voucher program, though, that he seems really committed to that.

So if he were to say, I think that's fair to say, you know, the sort of language we've been hearing him and members of his administration and Republican legislators, user at it is is, that the program has been a failure, that it has warehoused people and isolated them and not actually helped them.

So just that even in the sort of language they've used around it over the last couple of week in this, spat about the budget adjustment has been, you know, in some ways pretty extreme.

Yeah, it's it's really interesting.

And of course, we're goin to have to keep following that.

But you're right.

They took the words out of my mouth.

It existential change.

This really could be if that program goes away and their responsibility is no longer with the state.

Aaron Calvin, you mentioned that, homeless people that you've, spoken with and homeless advocates in Lamoille County.

I understand that podcast it's being launched now to to help some of these issues get out, to the public more.

What can you tell us about that?

Yeah, it's a very inventive, new podcast that the Lamoille Community House is publishing.

They are offering up, their production capabilities to their residents to tell their stories in their own words, under pseudonyms, with full control over the editing process and how their storie are being presented out there.

So it's not necessarily a traditional journalistic, enterprise, but, it is really fascinating.

And you'll notice the the title of the podcast is lives of Lamoille County.

The word homeless or unhoused does not appear in that title at all.

And that's, because they these advocates, are trying to bridge the gap between these nebulous policy questions that we're having around whether it's and the hotel voucher program, whether it's wasteful or not, and focus on who is actually being affected here and what happened that led these people to becoming, homeless and losing the roof over their head.

And when you listen to the they have two episodes, available right now on the podcast.

And what becomes clea when you listen to those stories is that this, you know, there are so many people in Vermont across the country that are living paycheck to paycheck that are one misunderstanding, one, housing opportunity being taken away, away from from becoming homeless.

It's kind of fascinating.

So that's already started.

You can actually already hear a couple of that for the first two episodes.

And, Lamoille Community House just got, an all seasons shelter.

And they're working on more programs like opening up family, a family shelter, and shelter specifically for people who are elderly o were just released from surgery and needed more care than your typical person.

But don't have a home.

Thank you for bringing that to our attention.

Stephen Brooks, we know that there's a lot going on in the legislatur dealing with education reform.

As I understand it, there's another plan now to bring down property tax rates even more.

What's the latest on that?

Yeah.

So the latest is Friday morning House Ways and Means actually vote to use $77 million to buy down property taxe for this coming year and restore a few school budgets to go for revolts to happen.

But at the moment, that buy down would bring the average property tax increase statewide to 1%.

So let's just under about 6%, 5.8% with the latest numbers that we had before Friday morning when that came out.

But education plan wise in general, it was interesting following House education this week because they've been working o an amendment changing Governor Scott's 170 plus pag proposal down to under 15 pages.

And basically what it does is it creates a new su commission within the Commission for the Future of Public Education to study redistricting and then say, come back next year and then maybe g along with the plan like that, but then you hop over to the Senate and members in power in the same party.

Senator Seth Bongarts chair of Senate Education, says, no way we're leaving this building without getting something that's going to have an impact sooner than later.

Because right now, school districts that we've seen in this past budget cycle, the only way to get voters approval is to cut.

And he's like, that's not good for anybody.

It's like, granted, the five districts might be not enough that Governor Scott proposed.

He's like the foundation formula and the redistricting has to happen.

His proposal has nine wha you can call overall entities.

Six of them would be school districts slash supervisor unions.

And then there would be three other separate schools with some smaller school districts.

But overall, nine overarching entities, if you will.

Two things I want to get some clarity on the $7 million you talk, talked about that would bring these rates down to about 1%.

Where does that come from?

Those are coming from reserves, which some that hesitancy on ways and means with what we've seen in the federal government, with what's potentially happening with the Department of Education, or if there was some other kind of issues, should we be using reserves to buy down property taxes this year?

But the overarching message was we saw it at the polls in November.

People made promise to their constituents, we have to do something this year.

And while we see people tryin to reform education, say, worst case scenario, something doesn't happen, they're at least helping their property taxpayers this year by using this money and these commission studies, if you will.

Why does it sound familiar to me?

It sounds familiar because that's exactly what we got last year, abou probably a month in the future from where we are now when we left the state House, which is just where they're just going to study.

Keep going.

Part of the ideas from the House came from the Vermont Superintendents Association and some other superintendent that have gone around testifying with their own timeline if they would like to see which is a bit slower than Governor Scott's in their plan, there would be full redistricting, full everything would be ready to go for the 2029, 20, 30 school year.

That's very far out in advance saying that all 2030 but that school year when there.

So everyone's kind o just moving at their own pace.

Definitely the Senate a bit quicker than the House though it seems.

It seems they're much more pressed to get something done now.

Well, other priorities, have to do with housing.

And this is this is a perennial thing and obviously it's not going away anytime soon.

What's the latest on housing priorities and state House.

Yes.

So housing would solve a lot of the issues lawmakers and the governo says that we have in the state, whether it is dealing with the hotel motel program, property taxes it always comes back to housing, it seems.

So the house is working on a housing bill that is going through the full body coming up here, where it would make it harder to appeal developments.

We hear a lot about NIMBYism.

So under this bill, someone would have to go throughout the whole entire process showing exactly how they would be affected for them to then be able to appeal.

Compared to once upon a time, just in recent years, one person could go, hey, not in my backyard, and that could pretty much shut something down.

It also works a little bit with infrastructure funding within the Vermont Bond Bank, and they also are trying to help with some financing, with infrastructure.

But one House representative I talked to said, if this is all that comes out of the legislature this year, that's not good.

And they're hoping the Senate can do a lot more because Governor Scott's Act 250 exemptions extension is also not coming off the House environment.

Well from my understanding.

So the Senate once again, seems like they might be the ones that are going to have the vehicle for whatever the big housing bill is this session.

And briefly remind me, what's the sort of the time frame on all this?

Is there some urgency to thi as far as getting things done.

So there is we had non financial crossover last Frida financial crossover this Friday.

But with the way lawmakers work with rules exemptions and things they can do there are these timelines and these deadlines we've seen time and time again where they can kind of bypass them to get some of these bigger policies passed, like housing and education and things along those lines.

Okay.

One issue that we're not delving deeply into this week is health care.

But we talk about our law.

It's a big thing, but we have some news on that because Vermont state lawmaker, progressive Democra Kate Logan, who's representative from Burlington, was arrested recently in Washington, D.C. this happened last week during demonstrations opposing Medicaid cuts by the Trump administration.

Representative Logan, attended a march and a rally.

It ended with a sit in at th Russell Senate Office building.

Capitol police gave a warning that those who did not leave would be arrested, and Logan was charged with unlawful demonstration.

She was allowed to pay a fine and forfeit the right to a trial.

Representative Logan says she hopes that this act of civil disobedienc will bring attention to an issue she says could have an enormous impact on low income Vermonters.

Let's hear what she had to say.

Drawing attention t what's happening in Washington, DC is maybe the least that we can do right now.

Just be devastating for us as a state, for there to be even any, any cuts to Medicaid.

We want more Medicaid funding, not less.

We're going to be dealing with this issue, well into the next year and beyond, where, you know, there's news about Vermont's largest health insurer losing a ton of money.

So scary things happening there.

But again, that was Representative Kate Logan talking about her arrest in Washington, DC.

This sort of moves us to, another big issue.

And that's economics.

And of course, the Trum tariffs, levied against Canada and other places as well.

There was a roundtable in Newport recently highlighting the impacts of these Canadian tariffs.

And let's hear a couple of people talking about that that were at that meeting.

I think the fact that we've had some of the most natural snow in the country has brought folks here.

But what we've seen is that while they held on to their vacations and they came to visit, they spent much less money when they were here.

And I think that that's an act of, you know, defending their position as Canadians to spend as little as day as they can in the country.

We have never seen Canadians so united.

And, I'm sad to say that it takes longer right now to do our grocery because we look at everything we buy.

And if it's made in America, we don't buy it.

This is oh, I got to say, this is a weird thing to be seeing, you know, the Canadian American relationship here but especially here in Vermont, we're just across the border.

There's been so much transaction throughout the years.

Peopl haven't even thought about it.

And now it seems like it's really, it's coming home in a big way.

Stephen.

Senator Welch was at that meeting.

And what did he have to say about what he can do, if anything?

Well, he said it's really tough to handle because every day you have no idea what is going to be coming out of Washington, what potential executive order is going to get signed on what given day, Senator Welc was actually in our own Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday talking with them and they had a lot of questions.

And he was kind of saying, like, I'm trying my best, but it's just so volatile and it's so hard to tell.

But being there is very interesting watching his reactions and just other people's reactions to hearing that member of Canadian parliament go, we look and take longer in the grocery store because we don't want to buy American products, which you could feel it in the room a little bit after she said that, that sat with a lot of people.

But talking with Senator Welch afterwards, he said it was really interesting hearing just how businesses are trying to adapt.

There was one business owner in specific who is taking on the extra tariff costs to try to help his clients, but he's saying, I can only do that for so lon and I believe out of the around 2000 businesses there, he's the only one that financially was able to do that because it is bearing such an extra cost.

And it was also interesting because we heard from a lot of Canadian businesses that were in Newport as well, less than 20 minutes from the border, doing our stories here in Vermont, talk to a lot of Vermont businesses.

But it was really interesting hearing it from the Canadian side as well.

Aaron Calvin, another thing that you know is affecting us here out of Washington, our, you know, immigration policy and you had a story in the star reporter about rumors that turned out to be a bit exaggerated on Ice agents, coming into restaurants, perhaps looking, you know, for deportations, etc..

However, what's not a rumor is the fact that people are really on edge, right?

What can you tell us about what they're hearing, what they're saying about ice?

Well, some, an important job of the media in today's climate, as you know, is dispelling rumors that are easily spread across social media and, unverified statements that can catch fire, when some people notice, some people wearing, vests and hats that say ice on them.

And so all of a sudden, there's these rumors that there are arrests happening, that there are raids going on at different restaurants.

Now, what I thin it's important to remember here is that a lot of peopl think of Stowe as an affluent, ski centric community.

But a large portion of the Stowe community, are immigrant workers.

They are the people that mak that town run, and a lot of them are scared right now.

And I talked to one worker who works at a farm in Stowe and, you know, is tapped into the local community.

That was telling me that peopl are afraid to go out at night.

They're afraid to go to the grocery store.

You know, she's in the grocery store with her two kids looking over her shoulder.

Because, you know, we've had numerous instances, in the news recently where people with, you know, very valid visas, and all their paperwork in order are still being taken to jail, taken away by, by Ice agents.

So part of that reporting was to dispel the rumors, but to affirm that, you know, there was at least one restaurant owner that did get a warnin from the DHS agent saying that, they were going to come by and check people's paperwork and that people are noticing an uptick in, ISIS presence in Stowe and people are concerned and worried.

And again, you're saying these workers are important to these businesses?

Absolutely.

Everyone I talked to, even the restaurant owners, there was like, no, we haven't seen anything from or heard anything from, Border Patrol or Ice, you know, emphasized that we don't like this fear.

We don't like this climate of fear.

And we need, these foreign visa workers to make our businesses run.

I mean, we've seen this happen, dairy farms, you know, there there are, workers ther that it's vital to those farms that they are able to do their business.

And there's a lot of fear an uncertainty going on right now.

But I appreciate in the article you were saying you were, you know, passing away.

What's rumor from fact?

But the fact is people are scared up in Stowe now, so we do.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let's talk about, a couple of things for the UVM.

First of all, they have a new president who was named this week.

It's Doctor Marlene Tromp named UVM next president.

She comes, from Boise, Idaho, where she was, president.

The universit there, says that she can bring, you know, some rural understanding, having been in a rural state, to Vermont.

And she's hoping very much, that she can, do that here and make UVM a successful university.

She also talked about, quite frankly, some of the political division that's going on in the country right now.

And, her her answer to tha was, look, we want to bring in everybody to have open discussions about things here at the University of Vermont.

Talk to people that maybe don't share your point of view and get to talk to them.

So we'll see what happens.

With that.

And again, the name is Tromp not Trump just want to make absolutely sure about that because these days, you know that sort of thing will stand out.

I do want to mention as well, the University of Vermont women's basketball team is playing tomorrow, round one of the NCAA tournament.

This is why I'm wearing my green tie today.

It's my favorite one I'm hoping for.

Good luck for the UVM women's team.

I had a chance to speak with their head coach, at Lisa Kresge this week.

And I'll tell you, they are a remarkable team.

Now they are going up against a powerhouse.

I don't know how many college basketball fans we have here at the.

Stephen, you are one.

NC state is very good.

They're the two seed for a reason.

Vermont comes in as the 15 seed.

They probably don't have much of a chance to win that game.

But however, I really believe everybody should watch this game because the team itself is fantastic.

They play great team defense, they're well-coached, they're passionate, and they have a will to win.

It's been a remarkable season.

Have you been watching them at all?

Yeah, I mean you know, that's what they call it March Madness right.

Anything is possible.

Yeah.

And so it's just a great opportunity for the coaches and the players to just get to go through somethin as cool as playing in the March Madness have been with all of just the different events that go on, and UVM is getting pretty comfortable down in Raleigh, it seems to.

After the men's soccer team wa down there a couple months ago.

No question about it.

It's a national audience.

The game is on ESPN tomorrow at 2:00.

And, you know, athletes from the America East Conference don't get on that biggest stage very often which I think is enough reason, just to watch and see the team play.

And, you know, like Aaron said, if you do watch and the upset happens, you're talking about one of th greatest upsets in the history of college basketball.

And then you can say that you actually saw it.

Also, Maple Open House is happening this weekend.

That's a tradition in Vermont.

We're trying to, you know, give you some good, fun things to do to to get, through some of the tougher news that we have to talk about every week here on Vermont this week.

And that's what we're goin to have to leave it for today.

Thank you so much to our panel, Stephen Biddix from Nbc5, Carly Berlin from Vermont Public and Vtdigger.

And Aaron Calvin from Stowe Reporter news and Citizen.

I'm Mitch Wertlieb.

Thank you so much for watching and for listening.

Hope you'll tune in next wee as well for Vermont this week.

And meantime, have a great week.