Democratic leaders in the House and Senate say they are planning on wrapping up the legislative session at the end of this week.
But with few days left, and several key pieces of legislation outstanding, lawmakers will have to act swiftly to reach agreements on major proposals including a minimum wage increase, a paid family leave program, and clean water funding if they are to become law in the first year of the biennium.
House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, said adjourning next weekend is possible, but acknowledged the legislative timeline required would need to be “aggressive.”
She and Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, met with Gov. Phil Scott on Friday to plan the policy negotiations in the coming week.
“It wasn’t a negotiating meeting,” she said Friday evening. “It was more like a setting up the end of session to get the trains to run on time.”
Senate Majority Leader Becca Balint, D-Windham, said Friday that she expects the Legislature will adjourn next Sunday morning, just after midnight.
By working long hours next week, she said lawmakers should be able to iron out differences on priorities like paid family leave and minimum wage bills — two of the proposals that will require the heaviest lifts to pass this year.
“We’re constantly in communication with the House. There’s a lot of communication happening between leadership and both sides are committed to doing the dance and getting it done,” Balint said.
“We have a path, that’s all I can say,” she added.
The Senate moved last week to scale back the House paid family leave program, removing provisions that would allow workers to take leave time for personal medical issues and reducing the number of weeks that parents with newborns could receive benefits.
The Senate changes reduced the cost of the paid leave program — which would be funded by a payroll tax on employees and employers — from $76 million to about $27 million.
In the coming days, the House will likely push to increase the benefits the Senate reduced.
Johnson said that removing personal medical leave from the paid leave program “is problematic for the House.” She also indicated she would also like to the see the program provide more generous benefits for new parents.
The House is working on the minimum wage bill, S.23, which passed the Senate in March and in its current form, would raise the wage from $10.78 to $15 by 2024.
But with the governor, Republicans and some Democrats concerned that the $15 minimum wage in 2024 could hamper small businesses, and mean spending tens of millions of dollars on raises for some state-funded healthcare workers, the House is considering a more moderate minimum wage proposal.
Scott has indicated he would veto the Senate’s minimum wage proposal in its current form. If he did, the House would likely struggle to muster the 100 votes needed to override his veto.
Johnson said she expects the House will pass a minimum wage “compromise of some kind” that the governor and many opposed to the Senate bill could support.
The House Appropriations Committee is looking at proposals that could phase in the $15 wage over a longer period of time, and stop the phase-in temporarily if the state has a recession. The governor has suggested he could support a more drawn out minimum wage increase.
While top Democrats expect that the lawmakers will be able to adjourn within a week, some political observers say they could easily see the session dragging on later.
One lobbyist said he expects reaching a compromise on minimum wage in the next week may be easy, but reaching a deal on the paid family leave legislation will be harder. The session may not end until the middle of the following week, he projected.
“I think they could be done, but I just think there’s too much hanging out there,” he said.
As the end of the session nears, the momentum to create a proposal to tax and regulate commercial marijuana sales has stalled.
The bill is now under review in the House Ways and Means committee, where some lawmakers say there is still much work to be done to determine a tax rate, as well as other regulations that would come with a legal market for the drug.
Johnson reiterated that she was “willing to wait” on passing the tax and regulate proposal.
“My attitude all along on that bill is that we need to be thorough on the policy,” she said. “The policy needs to drive the timeline, the timeline cannot drive the policy.”
The governor has flagged concerns in recent days about the proposed level of spending in the Senate’s budget, which he estimates relies on $40 million in additional taxes, including the paid leave program.
“I’m concerned about the aggregate amount of revenue being proposed, additional taxes being proposed,” Scott said Thursday.
But Johnson said that despite the governor’s concerns, she doesn’t expect a major battle over the budget this year.
“The tone in general today was ‘Yeah we can work this out,’” she said.