If anybody’s curious, below the fold are my first two statehouse columns. Focus was on the “Super Senators,” and the what’s at stake in the health care wrangling.
This week’s will focus on a couple different groups working in the Statehouse to get lawmakers to look at the state’s economy in different ways (and in different ways than each other).
1/8/2012 column:
The first week of the 2012 legislative session had a very distinct flavor from the first week of last year’s. As opposed to 2011’s sense of uncharted territory in the face of a new Governor, this year lawmakers, lobbyists, and activists all had a sense of the lay of the land, going into an election year where the battle lines are already being drawn.
As such, the week was dominated by message-sending. Political actors were moving with blazing speed to establish themselves either as policy agenda-setters, or as players who were not-to-be-ignored in the coming months. All of which suggests that the hopes of some to have a speedy session focused only on the budget and Irene rebuilding may not be realized.
Here are some examples:
Governor Shumlin’s State of the State Address. Many have already noted the exuberant delivery of the Governor’s address’s persistently positive “Vermont Strong” message. By acting as cheerleader-in-chief during the ongoing tropical storm recovery process, Shumlin can raise morale as well as remind Vermont voters of the universal acclaim he has received for the state’s response to the crisis.
But Shumlin also used the opportunity to lay down some lines in the sand to both sides of the political spectrum, and try to send the message that he intended to remain the sheriff in town. To the right, he made it clear that he would not deviate from those parts of his agenda they deplore – such as health care reform. To the left, he repeated his commitment to resist calls for increased taxes on wealthy Vermonters.
With the political capital he has accumulated in the disaster recovery process, he may well prove one tough sheriff indeed.
Senator Randy Brock. Brock, who is all but certain to be the Republican gubernatorial candidate in November, sent a clear message that he has no intention of allowing Shumlin to take the tax issue – which has long been the meat and potatoes of GOP electioneering – off the table. In citing last year’s increase of the Hospital Provider Tax, Brock is letting Shumlin know that he will challenge him as vigorously on taxation issues as he would any other Democrat.
Activists. It usually takes a few weeks of committee deliberations and bill-wrangling before the activists in various-colored shirts and buttons show up in the halls of the State House. This year they were there on Day One. Red-shirted supporters of the Vermont Workers’ Center were out in force, and coalesced around a noontime press conference.
The VWC worked hard on Shumlin’s behalf during the last election, focused as they were on the health care reform plan championed by the Governor. This year, however, they were there to make it clear that they could not be taken for granted. The red shirts in attendance loudly proclaimed their intention to muster what grassroots energy they could on behalf of a budget that would fund social programs adequately – even if that meant increased taxes on upper income citizens, putting them in potential conflict with Governor Shumlin.
Individual lawmakers. Lawmakers have been an orderly lot of late, but there are signs that may be changing.
Case in point: Senator Peter Galbraith (D-Windham). Galbraith – a prominent international diplomat – objected to a motion from Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell to move the issue of redistricting out of the Government Operations Committee and into a new committee specifically created to address the issue.
Galbraith raised eyebrows when he accused Campbell of not having “confidence” in the Gov Ops committee, even though the Senate took the same approach the last time redistricting came up.
Despite support for the move from Gov Ops Chair Jeanette White, Galbraith held firm and cast one of two votes against the move (the other was cast by Senator Anthony Pollina of Washington County).
Galbraith was sending a message. In his objection to the new committee, he took a swipe at “the old boys’ club who run the Senate.”
Everybody knew who he was talking about.
It’s an unwritten rule in the Senate that, to get anything done, you have to have one of four Senators on your side: Campbell, Senator Dick Mazza (D-Grand Isle), Senator Vince Illuzzi (R-Essex-Orleans), or Senator Dick Sears (D-Bennington). Sears and Illuzzi sit on the new redistricting committee.
This is not to say that those four “Super-Senators” always get their way, but there is a clear hierarchy in the Senate, and those four inhabit a stratum all their own. It is a situation many of the newer members bristle at.
Galbraith’s message (as well as the message sent by Chittenden Senator Philip Baruth in casting the lone vote to overturn a gubernatorial veto the same morning): don’t expect me to obediently do what I’m told this year.
All told, Vermonters may be in for a lively legislative season.
1/15/2012 column
Capitol Notebook
Week of 1-15-2011
John Odum
Week two of the legislative session saw the players, agendas, and actual bills starting to take shape. From the controversial (S.134 decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana) to the consensus (S.173, which would make it simpler to start a new business). From the technical (S.162, clarifying power-of-attorney rules) to the ideological (S.237, which would replace the state’s “gross domestic product” figure with a measure of social and economic well-being).
A minority of the total number of bills proposed will proceed, and it’s the maneuvers among the lobbying crowd now that will determine which bills that aren’t “must pass” will be among them. This being the case, the Statehouse was consumed more with quiet conversation than outright debate, making for a fairly buzz-free week.
All the heat under the dome for the week, then, was generated by Governor Shumlin’s budget address – not so much by what was in it, but what wasn’t.
It’s no accident that the budget address came early, nor was it an oversight that the specifics were spotty at best – non-existent at worst. What direction the legislature will take in any given session is disproportionately determined in the first few weeks, and the “bully pulpit” of the gubernatorial budget address is an opportunity to seize control of that direction. Moving the budget address up was an implicit recognition of that fact. Expect all future Governors to follow suit.
In an election year, this is even more important, and these first couple weeks have had their share of positioning for this year’s gubernatorial election. Shumlin got much of his ambitious agenda underway in the last session. Now, he wants to keep the ship of state steady enough to win re-election as its Captain, while his opponents will want to derail his prospects by suggesting he’s about to run us into an iceberg.
Whoever’s message wins is off to a big head start for the November election, and – as always – the advantage goes to the incumbent Governor. His presumed challenger -Franklin County Senator Randy Brock has his work cut out for him.
Listening to the budget address, it’s clear Governor Shumlin wants to talk about the state’s recovery from Tropical Storm Irene – and why wouldn’t he? By all accounts, the response of the state under his leadership has been good – almost astonishingly so.
Shumlin also shrewdly repeated the slogan he so strongly pushed in his State of the State as a collective motto: “Vermont Strong.” If he says this enough (and he will), it becomes a state-sponsored, omnipresent re-election slogan.
And that’s why Republican leaders – with the help of the occasional frustrated Democrat – are so eager to recast the debate based on what wasn’t in the address: health care reform.
It’s a high-risk topic for Republicans with high-reward potential, and could tip the debate over the summer and put Shumlin on the defensive. That’s why so many Republicans are talking about it, and why they are pushing the topic into friendly media outlets.
At first glance, it may seem counterintuitive. Governor Shumlin ran for office on his health care reform ideas, more than on any other issue – and it worked. Why, then, wouldn’t it work again? Shouldn’t this be a topic his electoral opponents would want to avoid?
That depends on how it’s talked about.
It’s a truism in politics that it’s always easy to get broad consensus on general ideas and principles. But when general ideas become specific policy proposals, you inevitably lose some people – and given that Shumlin defeated Brian Dubie by a razor thin margin, Republicans know it may not take very many changing sides to tip the next election to Brock.
Under Shumlin’s timetable for reform, there is no need to bring up the specific hows (and how much) of his health care reform plan until next year – indeed many, such as House Health Care Committee Chair Michael Fisher – suggest it would be irresponsible to bring out details before the overall roadmap is complete.
But the GOP is demanding just that – and is backing its demand with a pair of bills to force Shumlin to present the cost of his plan before Election Day.
If the Republicans succeed, the controversy will go up to 11 – which is precisely why these bills will die in the Democrat-controlled legislative committees. Expect, then – in coming weeks and months – to see Republicans putting out their own worst-case scenario numbers as a basis for debate, while at the same time promoting the idea that Shumlin is afraid to come clean on the real costs of his proposals.
But until then, we have a legislative session to play out, and as the nuts and bolts of that session become clearer in the coming weeks, expect the early jockeying for position in the Governor’s race to subside – for a time, at least.