Making a mess of teachers' health insurance

May 21, 2017

To the Editor,
  
As most people are well aware by now,  the Legislature and Gov. Phil Scott are at an impasse over the state budget, and the sticking point seems to be Gov. Scott’s strong desire to utilize the putative potential savings that the new health insurance coverages might generate.  More specifically, the governor has based his calculations on what would happen of teachers picked up 20 percent of their premium costs.  

Well the dumb farmers and truck drivers down here  in Windham Northeast (Athens, Grafton, Rockingham and Westminster) already have that in their teacher's contracts now.  What we’re really talking about is Phil Scott’s ability to make good on his “No New Taxes” campaign pledge.  

But the budgets are already passed and the teacher contracts signed, so what it amounts to in the cold light of day is simply a 3 percent cost shift to local taxation. 

If you’re wondering how we ever got in this mess, let’s take a stroll back through time to the passage of the statewide property tax legislation, Act 60.  The idea behind Act 60 was a noble one, equitable resource allocation to all Vermont public schools from state funding and a mechanism to “equalize” the burden of that funding.  

Except in practice it didn’t work.

What it did do was create subsets  of winners and losers, and every time the Legislature decided to tinker with the formulas, new and different subsets of winners and losers emerged, my favorite current examples being Brattleboro and Dummerston where their Homestead tax rates subsidize their commercial tax rates, (comprised of all property that’s not your primary residence) to the tune of 10 and 15 cents respectively.  

Still the beat goes on and the school consolidations mandated under Act 46 are supposed to be the latest panacea for a situation created by stripping local control of local school budgets from local towns who spent what they could afford without overspending their taxpayers' means.  

When I went to my annual training session with the Vermont School Boards Association last week at the Lake Morey Inn, the question was pointedly raised about what happened to the much touted savings from all those consolidations that the VSBA has so forcefully lobbied for, and the answer was a loud, simple and uncomfortable silence.  

Enter now Phil Scott, who, with his Chief of Staff Jason Gibbs whispering in one ear, and the no longer locally accountable Vermont School Boards Association whispering in the other, has announced his intention to repudiate not only statute but literally decades worth of case law, because he intends to strip teachers of their legal right to collectively bargain the benefits part of their wage and benefits package.  

This is a classic grand standing political play in which the lawyers stand to end up as the biggest winners and taxpayers as the biggest losers. 

A big shout-out to everyone in Montpelier who has made this nightmare reality possible.  

David M. Clark
Westminster, Vt.
May 21, 2017