If Tuesday was any indication, things are getting tetchy at the State House. Lawmakers came back from their Town Meeting break, with committees under pressure to move legislation. Which had a couple of unexpected results:

1. The child-care unionization bill was voted down in a Senate committee, with a co-sponsor casting the deciding “No” vote.

2. A House committee dumped Gov. Shumlin’s much-derided tax on break-open tickets and grabbed money from other sources to pay for energy efficiency programs.

And now the details…

1. The Senate Economic Development Committee voted 3-2 against the child care unionization bill, with co-sponsor Bill Doyle doing a last-second 180. His explanation:

“It caught my attention that the only people that could vote for the union would be those who are subsidized by the state,” Doyle told VTDigger on Tuesday afternoon. “There’s not a lot of give and take when some of the people opposed to this union are not at the table.”

Ahem. This is Senator Doyle’s 44th year in the senior chamber. This legislation has been around for quite a while, and he’s a frickin’ co-sponsor. And I’m supposed to believe that a key provision only just “caught [his] attention”? Smells fishy to me. Especially since, as VTDigger reports, Doyle “toured around central Vermont just last week with a pro-union organizer, visiting child care providers.”

I also, at the risk of venturing into tinfoil-hat territory, detect another fishy undertone.  

Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell opposes the bill, but promised it would get a full hearing in committee. And then he played his usual pre-session role in choosing the committee. He chose Republican Kevin Mullin, who strongly opposes the bill, as committee chair. Was that coincidence? Campbell apparently felt no compunctions about packing the Natural Resources Committee with opponents of utility-scale wind; maybe he had his thumb on this scale as well.

Franklin County Democrat Don Collins cast the other “No” vote, while Dems Ann Cummings and Phil Baruth voted “Yes.”  

The vote was a setback, but the bill isn’t dead. Chief sponsor Dick McCormack says that “many options remain.”

2. The House Committee on Natural Resources and Energy made a dramatic (and unexpected) move on Gov. Shumlin’s plan to boost energy efficiency and low-income heating assistance (LIHEAP) through a new tax on break-open tickets. The committee dumped the break-open tax, dropped LIHEAP from its bill, and appropriated up to $11 million from other sources to fund weatherization and renewable-energy initiatives.

The action has only been reported (as far as I know) in the paywalled Mitchell Family Organ, by Peter “Vermont Press Bureau” Hirschfeld. The revamped legislation, which awaits a full committee vote, relies on existing revenue from a tax on sales of heating fuels to commercial users. That money is currently split between the general fund and education fund. If the committee passes the bill, the House Appropriations Committee would have to reverse the action or fill an $11 million hole in the budget by some other means.

Committee chair Tony Klein (D-East Montpelier) is ready for the fight over what he calls “the climate change bill of 2013.” He argues that heating fuel is a primary source of carbon emission, and fuel-tax revenue is an appropriate source of funds to battle climate change.

During the hearing, Klein expressed frustration over a lack of solid funding for what’s been billed as a high priority for the Shumlin Administration:

“We’re struggling with it. We’re getting lambasted for it, frankly,” Klein said during a committee hearing. “No one seems to want to pay for (these policies) in any way, shape or form.”

The Administration claimed that the break-open tax would net $17 million, enough to fully fund weatherization, clean energy, and LIHEAP. But the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office reported that the tax would only bring in about $6.5 million.

As for stripping LIHEAP from the energy bill, the committee decided that the issue was better left to committees that deal with human services issues. In doing so, of course, it also off-loaded another multi-million dollar problem. Klein has proposed a partial solution: he’d like to see LIHEAP recipients moved to the top of the weatherization list. That makes a lot of sense; if you tighten up low-income housing, you cut fuel consumption and the burgeoning cost of LIHEAP.

All that, and it’s only Day One of the second half of the session. Could be a barnburner the rest of the way to adjournment.