Raise your hand if you’re grossly overpaid
2024-02-11
Dear friend,
I have really smart and caring constituents.
Often you send me emails that make me go "Hmmmm....." as much as C+C Music Factory.
Here's one I got the other day from a constituent in Wilmington:
Good day, hope this finds you well.
I just came from my first jury selection at the Windham County Criminal Court in Brattleboro. I was chosen to serve on a jury trial next week.
It was offered to seek payment from the court for your services if your employer doesn’t pay you for the day. I’m lucky that my employer offers my regular pay for such service.
There were a number of potential jurors that requested the meager amount of $30 for the day, a state statute in effect from the 1970’s.
I see that the minimum wage in Vermont is $13.67 x 8 hour day = $109.36.
Would you agree that a Windham County resident’s time for being compelled to jury service is worth at least that? If so, it’s time to update that state statute to at the very least compensate those individuals for their time served with a daily stipend.
The email made me remember my one jury duty experience to date. I was called and sat on two criminal cases in Brattleboro -- two assault cases, one of them domestic. I vaguely recalled that a meager sum was offered by the court. I was fortunate that my employer at the time agreed to pay for my time.
To learn more, I looked up jury duty on the Vermont Judiciary website. It states:
Your employer is not required by law to compensate you while you are on jury duty. But your employer must give you the time off to serve. You cannot be fired from your job because of jury service.
Vermont law permits payment for jury duty if you request it. The court will provide you with the forms to request pay on your first day of jury duty. You will not receive pay if your employer is already compensating you for that day of service. (Please check with your personnel department on your company's policy on jury duty.)
Eligible jurors will receive $15 for up to four hours or $30 for more than four hours for each day of service. The court will provide you with the forms to complete on your first day of jury duty.
As I wrote back to this resident, I appreciated the email. Although I had experienced this situation as a citizen, I had not considered it as a legislator.
Let's chew on this idea! - Beavers as seen on the headwaters of the Green River in Halifax
My first thought about it as a legislator was that when you have a captive audience that is bound to serve and you're grossly underpaying them, that's a bad idea.
If this is true, the Vermont Judiciary's payment and selection mechanisms are giving us skewed juries, with fewer jurors who are younger and working hourly jobs.
Indeed, I thought back to my jury service and recalled that the pool of jurors skewed toward folks who were retired or were mid-thirties and up with more white-collar salaried jobs (that was my situation).
This was confirmed by 21stCenturyJanes, who posted in r/vermont:
I've been called for jury duty many times (I don't know why they like me so much) and you can absolutely claim financial hardship when they ask if there's any reason you can't/shouldn't sit on the jury. It's up to the judge but I've seen people get off for work-related income issues like that. If they are short on jurors it may not be enough but it's certainly worth a try.
Meanwhile, Vermont's criminally-accused population skews heavily toward 18- to 29-year-old jobless, homeless, and opiate-addicted folk.
You have to have a mailing address and some semblance of a permanent location to be called for jury duty.
Aren't Americans guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to a speedy trial by a juror of one's peers?
It seems to me that a case could be made that the State is vulnerable to the argument it's not providing that right.
However, I looked it up and it's not as clear-cut as I imagined. The Sixth Amendment does not mention "peers," only referring obliquely to "citizens." The Vermont Constitution refers to "judgment of the person’s peers," but again, the connection from that phrase to "jury" is not exact.
It seems to me that the State has a leg to stand on to say, "We're doing our best to provide a representational cross-section of citizens from the district the accused resides in. Approaching someone experiencing homelessness on the sidewalk and offering them minimum wage for sitting on a jury would have all sorts of practical issues and might not be what your constituents actually want."
What do Vermonters want from their government? At this press conference in January on the Capitol steps, residents of Barre and Montpelier were asking for flood relief.
I imagine that an originalist would say about the Constitution, "Given the framers' focus on landed citizens as having rights, it's not likely what they envisioned."
As a legislator, I wonder what tax you want me to raise, or what program you want me to cut, to pay for a 365% pay increase for jurors? How much would that cost from Vermont's General Fund?
If the Legislature were to contemplate a bill to make this change, it would have to get a fiscal estimate from our Joint Fiscal Office (JFO). JFO is a nonpartisan service that provides the Legislature with research and data of all kinds.
The staff there are one of the unsung treasures of Vermont. Since they already have a full plate and I want to stay on their good side, let's play this one out in our imaginations before I bother emailing them. Let's imagine that this bill comes in at costing taxpayers $4 million/year.
At that point, an advocate for this pay raise would have to make the case that this investment is solving a problem. Is there a cost savings that would be realized somewhere else that would offset the added spending?
As I imagine talking this through with legislators, someone's going to say, "Jury duty is a duty. The mistake here is to pay anything. Keep money out of it and you keep the State neutral."
Someone else is going to say, "If we raise pay for jurors, is that going to go into the pocket of low-income Vermonters, or are we just going to pay more to the same people? Is that worth raising taxes to do? Or if we're going to spend $4 million, spend it in building housing, or recovery services."
And I think that in order to move this bill forward, I would have to have good answers to those questions.
As you know, I'm a tree farmer, not a lawyer, so some of my analysis here could be pretty off-base. There's likely a whole side of this issue I haven't even thought of.
I'll strike up some conversations on this in Montpelier this week and report back. In the meantime, what are your thoughts?
***
Here's another humdinger from a constituent.
Good morning Tristan!
I hope you are well.
I am writing you today about Health Insurance in the State of VT. I have been using BCBS of VT for many years now. Every year my premium goes up $100 per month. $1200/year.
I am now paying $2,397.72 per month for insurance for my family of 3. We have 2 options in VT. Only 2. There are over 1,096 health insurance providers nation wide as of 2019.
The Green Mountain Care Board is uncharge of approving annual health insurance rates and rate hikes. To the best of my knowledge they also approve what companies can sell their products in VT. The salary of the board chair, Thomas A. Dees, is $182,499.20. He is also the CEO of Southwestern VT Medical Center. A non-profit organization that pays him over $500,000.00 annually. This to me seems like a conflict of interest.
The Green Mountain Care Board is tasked with keeping the medical system in VT fair, affordable, and transparent amongst many other things. They are a board that is selected by a committee of state reps that is then approved by the Governor. Vermonters cannot afford these rates. How can this board in good conscience approve these rates and only 2 options for Insurance?
Thanks for listening.
"Interesting," I wrote back.
While I was generally familiar with GMCB's role in Vermont, I was not familiar with the pay structure for the very-influential-to-our-healthcare GBCB board members. Here's what Green Mountain Care Board website states:
Per 18 V.S.A. § 9374 (a)(1), the Board Chair’s annual salary is equal to that of a Superior judge (currently $182,499.20) and Board members are 0.8 FTE (32 hours) employees with an annual salary that is two thirds of the Chair’s salary (currently $121,680.00). Board members, including the Chair, may have outside work, although all members must comply with conflict of interest and recusal requirements noted below. The Chair and board members serve for a term of 6 years and are entitled to standard benefits provided to exempt state employees.
The requirement below states:
Candidates will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
5. Impartiality and the ability to remain free from undue influence by a personal, business, or professional relationship with any person subject to supervision or regulation by the Board.
Hmmmm.....
With healthcare premiums going up 16% for many people this year, and with the cascading effect of those costs on the quality of life and the cost of everything in Vermont, including our taxes, the Green Mountain Care Board has enormous influence and even power.
Should I take a closer look at whether the interests of GMCB's board is aligned with the public? And if those tax dollars are being well-spent?
I'd love your feedback, and keep those questions coming.
Many of you have written to me about bills. A big one coming up for a vote is S.18. Please rest assured that I have received and read all of your emails, and I apologize for not getting responses back on this one yet. I've been looking at it from all sides and will be reporting back on it soon.
warm regards,
Rep. Tristan Roberts
Vermont House of Representatives
P.S. Who's your Doug Root? Who are you a Doug to? please share in the comments section: https://tristanroberts.org/blog/what-doug-root-did
