A month after announcing a 2 percent cut to the current year’s budget, the Shumlin Administration is signaling its intention to make additional cuts of as much as 5 percent and possibly more next year (fiscal 2016). For an already anemic state government that is suffering from staffing shortages and struggling to meet its obligations to residents, the administration’s directive cannot be good for Vermonters or for state employee morale. Read more

You’re invited to Pies & Charts!

The Public Assets team will be traveling around the state this fall, with tasty pies and enlightening charts. Please join us, enjoy the food, and take home some tools to help you talk with policymakers about economic issues in Vermont. Read more

Will Vermonters be better off or worse off if this year’s state budget is reduced by $36 million? That question wasn’t addressed in the documents presented by the Shumlin administration Monday when it unveiled a plan to cut the fiscal 2015 budget. Read more

There are humanitarian reasons for Gov. Peter Shumlin to answer President Obama’s call for help with the Central American refugees who have flocked to the U.S. in recent months. But taking in school-age children, especially on a long-term basis, also could help him with one of the perceived problems with Vermont’s education system. Read more

Employer-sponsored health insurance is a misnomer. Money that an employer putatively “contributes” to a company health insurance plan is simply employee compensation in another form.

The point is driven home in a recent column in the American Prospect by Paul Waldman about the U.S. Read more

July 1 marks the beginning of Vermont’s fiscal year, and our FY2015 Vermont State Budget Chartbook shows the milestones in the development of the budget for the new fiscal year. The final $5.59 billion appropriations bill for this year represents a 4.1 percent increase ($222 million) over adjusted spending for fiscal 2014. Read more

Readers of vtdigger, Vermont’s online news organization, were probably surprised to read over the weekend that the Legislature “forced nearly $100 million in new property taxes on Vermonters” to pay for education next year. Unfortunately, the editors were not surprised. If they had been, they might have done some fact checking to make sure the data in the commentary published last Saturday were accurate.  Read more

If the Legislature is serious about efficient governance, it might want to look closer to home before trying to streamline and consolidate Vermont’s school system. Vermont has a lot of legislators for such a small state. Perhaps the House and Senate would be more cost effective if they were more like the rest of the country. Read more

The Vermont Legislature is getting—and taking—credit for raising the state minimum wage this session. It’s true that over the next four years, the rate will gradually rise to $10.50 an hour, $1 an hour more than the rate was projected to rise if the Legislature had done nothing. Read more

As with the governor’s proposed budget, the fiscal 2015 appropriations bill approved by the Vermont House concentrates nearly all spending increases in the Agency of Human Services, education, and the state’s transportation system. The House voted for appropriations totaling $5.59 billion for next year. Read more