Rep. Marc Mihaly: Gov. Phil Scott, help us make your priorities a reality instead of a mirage

This commentary is by Rep. Marc Mihaly, D-East Calais. He represents Marshfield, Plainfield and Calais in the Vermont House of Representatives.

In his State of the State speech in January , Gov. Phil Scott laid out two important goals for his administration — build more housing affordable to Vermonters and deal with rising crime. We all share these laudable goals.

The question is: Does the governor deliver? The answer lies in his proposed 2025 budget. That’s where the proverbial rubber hits the road.

What’s in the governor’s recommended budget isn’t pretty. His budget makes the state’s housing and criminal justice situations worse, much worse.

On housing that’s affordable to Vermonters, the governor’s budget cuts funding by 80% to 90% from last year. Under that budget, we’d never solve our housing problem.

What the governor says, as he chastises the Legislature, is that the housing “solution” is to reform Act 250. The Legislature is in fact in the process of reforming Act 250 (though the governor doesn’t like the bill because it balances both housing development and thoughtful long-term consideration of our natural and working lands).

But Act 250 updates won’t produce a single affordable home for a simple reason: High construction costs and high interest rates mean that without government assistance, the free market cannot produce housing most Vermonters can afford.

We could abolish Act 250 and every other state and local permit requirement, and all we’d end up with are a bunch of $700,000 mansions in places we don’t want them. Governor, if you want to provide housing affordable to Vermonters, you have to help pay for it.

Sadly, the same is true with public safety. Everyone agrees that what deters people from committing crimes is not longer sentences, but the reasonable certainty they will be punished quickly. Right now in Vermont, due to court backlogs the time from arrest to trial is two to three years. We need to reduce the backlog, which requires better funding for the judiciary, for state’s attorneys, for public defenders, victim’s advocates and support staff.

Instead, after announcing that crime is a problem (who could disagree?), what does the governor do in his budget? Again, it’s not pretty: He cuts the judiciary, and his budget would force the layoff of state’s attorneys and public defenders. Friends, that means that the problem will get worse — longer delays, more crime.

The governor insists that we don’t have the money and that we must live within our means. He says again and again he won’t raise taxes. Well, I wish he’d told us that in his State of the State (as in “Friends, housing and crime are important but I can’t spend any money to do anything about it.”)

The governor is wrong. We can do something about these key issues. We can raise the revenue we need to really address housing and crime, without raising taxes on middle-class or less-well-off Vermonters.

The Legislature is now considering bills to restore meaningful funding to do something about our housing needs and reduce crime. These bills will raise taxes on the wealthiest Vermonters, those earning over $500,000 per year, and the largest corporations. And we’re proposing to restructure the tax on real estate transfers to reduce the tax for properties under $750,000 and increase it for the high-end houses priced over that.

We’re not proposing to increase the tax burden on middle class Vermonters. These taxes on the very wealthy will recoup only a fraction of what they’ve gained from repeated federal tax cuts for the rich over the last three decades.

In other words, the Legislature takes the governor’s goals of affordable housing and improved public safety seriously. The Legislature, unlike the governor, is taking action on those priorities. If we want to move forward on top shared priorities — at a time when fiscal responsibility requires real leadership — we need to be willing to make tough decisions like this.

Governor, I hope you come on board and make your State of the State speech a reality instead of a mirage.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Rep. Marc Mihaly: Gov. Phil Scott, help us make your priorities a reality instead of a mirage .