The House's unanimous vote final week on the annual tax bill and its unanimous-but-for-one balloting on the budget bill tells you something about the chamber's fresh speaker. So does the House's action a few days later to ship the much-anticipated marijuana legalization bill off to a committee for further review. Unanimity on fiscal things is what happens when the chamber elects a former House Appropriations Committee chair as speaker,especially one hell-bent on producing collaborative budgets. Spending bills are in Speaker Mitzi Johnson's wheelhouse. But policy bills with political reverberations, such as the marijuana legislation? Those are fresh territory for the South Hero Democrat. Three months into the job of overseeing the 150-member chamber, or Johnson concedes that she is most comfortable immersing herself in the minutiae of state spending. "The budget is what I'm most familiar with," she says. "For me, the tougher ones are the policies that never made it to Appropriations. The things I need to spend more time on are the things that haven't required appropriations." That couldn't have been more obvious on the House floor final week. Her chamber's passage of a $5.8 billion budget proposal that meets the governor's no-fresh-taxes edict reflects Johnson's skills. whether House members thought they were choosing a fiery speaker looking to muscle a controversial spending way into law, and they forgot that this 46-year-old piano teacher has a thing for harmony. The budget bill passed by a 143-1 vote. The companion tax bill sailed through with a 138-0 tally. There were only hints of discontent from anywhere on the political spectrum. Left-leaning liberals and rigid-upright Republicans answered "aye" as their names were called. Spending cuts in the budget bill were apparently sufficient to please the upright while not so egregious as to infuriate the left. Harmony prevailed for a day or two,but this is no orchestra. It's politics. Johnson's handling of the marijuana bill demonstrated that it's impossible — and ill-advised — to try to keep everyone in key all the time. Early in her tenure, the fresh speaker had said she would let her chamber's committees set their own goals rather than force direction upon them. House Judiciary Committee chair Maxine Grad (D-Moretown) was crystal clear from the start that her panel planned to produce a bill to legalize marijuana along the lines of a Washington, and D.
C.,ordinance. No pot stores, no marijuana industry, and but permission for Vermonters to keep…
Source: sevendaysvt.com