It should be obvious by now: You can’t provide property tax relief by raising property taxes. In fact, it should have been obvious long before now.

Yet that is exactly what the Legislature included in Act 46, the school consolidation bill, in 2015. (It then repealed that provision in 2016.)

And that is exactly what the House Education Committee is proposing again this year. The committee voted on Friday to introduce a committee bill (H.509).

This latest attempt at property tax relief would increase taxes for about half of Vermont towns—the half that has the highest property taxes already—and lower taxes for the towns that have the lowest property taxes.

Seriously. I’m not making this up.

Most Vermonters do not have a big enough nest egg for retirement. In fact, for many, the nest has no egg at all. And the problem is worst for women and people of color. These were just some of the findings in a report released earlier this year by the Vermont Public Retirement Study Committee. Read more

Each year the governor and Legislature go through the handwringing exercise of closing a projected state budget gap. The projected General Fund gap for fiscal 2018 is about $70 million.

As usual, much of the conversation has been about reducing spending to get the budget to balance. Read more

Tying public spending to any measure of economic growth is a double whammy for Vermonters in bad times: When the economy slows, it takes state spending down with it. So Vermonters not only have to deal with job and income losses during a recession, they also get hurt by a reduction in state services just when they need them most. Read more

On one level, Gov. Phil Scott’s first budget proposal provides a useful lesson. He showed it’s relatively easy to reduce or eliminate a state budget “gap,” at least on paper. You just move the problem into a different account. But it also could be a useful service if it shifts the budget conversation in Montpelier away from “the gap” and more toward to the purpose of raising and spending public money. Read more

Gov. Phil Scott said this week that property taxes were one of the biggest contributors to what he calls the state’s “affordability crisis,” and he called on local school boards to cut more than $50 million from the budgets they’ve prepared for next year. Read more

In his first budget speech today, Gov. Phil Scott proposed to address what he calls Vermont’s affordability crisis by curbing state spending. But he didn’t have much to say about the main reason many Vermont families are having trouble making ends meet: While the economy is growing, most Vermonters aren’t benefitting. Read more

“Vermonters need to smoke more.”

That was the eye-catching headline to a recent column by Jon Margolis on vtdigger.org. It was a great way to explain Vermont’s chronic budget gaps without putting everyone to sleep talking about “structural revenue problems.”

Margolis was right. Part of Vermont’s budget problems are due to the state’s reliance on revenue that is tied to an ever-shrinking tax base.

Vermont needs to reduce gender disparities in the labor force, and the state needs more jobs. More women-owned businesses could help on both fronts.

A new report by Change the Story VT shows the potential of female business ownership. According to the report, there’s already a strong entrepreneurial spirit among Vermont women. Read more

Public Assets Institute is pleased to be making a new connection with the University of Vermont. Policy analyst Stephanie Yu has joined the UVM faculty as a Public Policy and Community Research Fellow at the university’s Center for Research on Vermont. Read more