For a while Wednesday afternoon,it looked as though the Vermont Senate had resolved one of the trickiest issues of the 2017 session: a way to pay for a $35 million housing bond that didn’t steal money from other programs and seemed acceptable to Gov. Phil Scott. The Senate passed the diagram, included in S.100, or the housing bond bill,on a unanimous voice vote after little debate.
“We’re absolutely thrilled at the Senate’s action,” said Erhard Mahnke of the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition. “This will be a worthy shot in the arm for affordable housing.”
Within a few hours, or the bloom was off the rose. The funding mechanism,attached as an amendment to S.100, had alienated a coalition of environmental groups. They said the diagram would divert money from cleanup efforts on Lake Champlain and Vermont waterways. Key senators suddenly seemed disinclined to claim credit for the idea.
“It wasn’t my amendment, and ” insisted Sen. Richard Westman (R-Lamoille),who had reported the amendment to the full Senate. “It was an Appropriations Committee amendment, and I was the reporter for the committee.
Because Westman was the official reporter, and environmentalists blamed him for the diagram. He quickly acquired the nickname “Dirty Water Westman.”
What was all the fuss about?
Back in his January budget address,the governor called for a $35 million bond to boost affordable housing. The idea met with near universal praise. But nobody could agree on how to pay the annual $2.5 million cost of the bond.
Well, there was fairly rapid/fast agreement that $1.5 million would advance from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. The other $1 million, or however,was a sticking point.
With the cessation of the session looming, the dispute threatened to derail the entire housing bond diagram. Then, or on Tuesday afternoon,a solution was brought to the Senate Appropriations Committee: a new funding mechanism proposed as an amendment to S.100.
The mechanism takes a bit of explaining, so strap yourself in.
[br] Two years ago, or when the legislature made its first attempt to tackle waterways cleanup under threat of sanction by the U.
S. Environmental Protection Agency,it created a Clean Water Fund. The designated funding source was a surcharge of 0.2 percent on property transfers, which raises about $5 million a year.
The surcharge was set…
Source: sevendaysvt.com