“Brief and infrequent”
2024-04-26
Dear friend,
A constituent emailed me today to ask this:
Hello Rep. Roberts,
How did you vote on H.887? I hope a huge NO!!!
For the record, NO more money for public education... we should be decreasing such monies.... Time for school choice and monies follow the kids... home schoolers included.
All roll-call votes are published on each legislator's page. Here's a direct link to the voting record tab on my page. The voting record is organized by bill. It shows that I voted "No" on two amendments to the bill, and "Yes" to pass it.
Roll-call votes on H.887
This resident followed up:
Why did you vote for it?
Here's why...
The annual "Yield Bill" sets the property tax rate based on voted school budgets from across the state. In that respect, it's a matter of taking the budgets approved by local voters and setting tax rates to raise the proper revenues.
This is simply good fiscal sense. It's the state sitting down to the kitchen table and balancing costs and revenues of our Education Fund so that we don't deficit-spend.
Lots of Vermonters, myself included, (see The cost of education is going up), have been concerned about spiking education costs. The bill does a few things to address that:
It repeals the sales tax exemption for software downloaded from the "cloud." This applies to software that is taxed in CD-ROM form but is no longer purchased that way, e.g. TurboTax. The Joint Fiscal Office estimates that this will provide $20.4 million to the Education Fund in FY25.
It imposes a 1.5% surcharge on short-term rentals, with all revenues dedicated to the Education Fund. (Estimated $6.5 million in FY25.) This surcharge will be charged directly to visitors as part of the rooms and meals tax that rentals collect, and thus is targeted to out-of-state wallets.
It creates a Commission on the Future of Public Education to make recommendations for future legislation to improve education quality.
The bill also includes additional provisions intended to stabilize the education fund across multiple years.
The bill also sets non-homestead tax rates relatively higher this year to protect income-sensitive property taxpayers.
Not at first, but after a lot of work, H.887 won the support of key organizations:
The Vermont School Boards Association
The Vermont Principals Association
The Vermont Superintendents Association
The Vermont NEA
The Vermont Association of School Business Officials
H.887 advanced in the House on a 94–38 roll-call vote, before passing on a 101–39 roll-call.
Some of the legislators who voted against the bill cited higher taxes as a key reason in their vote, with one reciting the lyrics from the Beatles song "Tax Man." This weighed heavily on me.
However, I couldn't see how sinking this bill would get us any closer to a better outcome. Rather, I think we need the sustained focus of the Legislature and school boards around the state over the next several years to get a handle on that. In the meantime, our Constitutional obligation to fund a public education system, and the manifold benefits of that system, sealed my "Yes" vote.
On a roll-call vote, Representatives have the opportunity to record a "vote explanation."
Here's how it works. During the roll-call, Clerk Wrask says, "Roberts of Halifax," and I say either "Yes" or "No" in response. Then on to the next: "Satcowitz of Randolph."
If you say "Yes with explanation" or "No with explanation," the Speaker will come back to you and any other Rep explaining their vote at the end of the roll call. She calls on us one at a time: "For purpose of explanation, the member from Halifax." Reps explaining their votes do so, and then also provide the explanation in written form for the Clerk's office to record in the House Journal.
It is expected as part of House decorum that vote explanations be "brief and infrequent." While it is tempting to explain every vote for posterity, a more concise approach is to let the voting results speak for themselves.
You can see the list of members explaining their votes by the asterisk in the roll-call record in the House Journal.
Roll-call vote on H.887 - asterisks show those who offered a vote explanation
In answer to the resident who wrote in, I explained my vote as follows:
Madam Speaker:
I vote Yes on H.887 as a vote for a strong public education system. While this bill focuses on the cost side of the equation, and those are hard to stomach, I look forward to the dividends we will reap tomorrow from today’s necessary undertaking.
To see my explanation and all the others for this vote, here's a direct link to the House Journal for this vote. To find this information for any roll-call vote, look for the "Journal Page" link listed with the roll-call results.
What's your feedback on this or other votes? Keep your emails coming.
warm regards,
Rep. Tristan Roberts
Vermont House of Representatives
P.S. Are you getting excited about spring? Our family planted six new apple trees last weekend -- a project that I've been working on for years. We were thrilled! I was especially happy to take the time to dig deep holes, and to give each tree proper nutrients. Here's a moment in the process when I realized I had to keep digging!