Don Turner, Milton, VT Town Representative
Friday, June 5th, 2009
The Governor called for a special session of the legislature this week for only the twenty seventh time in Vermont history. On Tuesday, every legislator showed up for what would become a historical day. The Governor vetoed the legislative budget after many hours of negotiation between his staff and legislative leadership. As I understand, most of the disagreement centered on how much in new taxes would need to be raised to balance the budget. The Governor had also proposed more cuts than the legislative leadership was willing to accept. These negotiations had been ongoing well before we adjourned on May 9th and continued everyday right up to the inking of the veto on Monday June 1st.I voted to sustain the Governors veto in order to get the sides back to the bargaining table. I was very disappointed that we had to go back to Montpelier for a special session. The breakdown of the negotiations between legislative leadership and the Governor set up this show down. A show down that I believe was politically motivated and definitely not in the best interests of our taxpayers. I feel that the breakdown was bad for Vermonters and especially bad for Vermont in general.
I feel that the budget could have been substantially improved if both parties would have stayed at the table and negotiated in good faith. Compromise is the foundation of our Government and is absolutely essential to its continued viability. Too much or too little power undermines the effectiveness of negotiation and generally leads to a bad deal.
This is the case with this budget that was overwhelmingly approved by the super majority legislature and subsequently vetoed by the Governor. The legislature has so much power that it can do almost anything it wants without the necessity to compromise. The result, the Governor vetoed the budget and than subsequently had his veto overridden by the legislature. This is the very first time that this has ever happen in Vermont history.
The most frustrating part of this entire process is that two additional bills were also introduced and passed in the two days we were in Montpelier. These bills sole purpose were to make modifications, corrections and alterations to the budget. It turns out that most of these changes were purposed by the Governor in a good faith effort to improve the legislative budget bill. If legislative leadership would have accepted these changes earlier we might not have had to go back for this special session which costs you the taxpayers approximately $60,000 per day. These bills did offer some improvement to the budget and did pass but, I did not support either bill. I could not support minor improvements to an overall bad bill.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions, comments or concerns.
I can be reached here at the Statehouse by calling 1-800-322-5616 or by my cell 373-5960; My website address is www.donturnerjr.com or e-mail me at dturner@leg.state.vt.us. Thank you and have a great week.