The breakthrough came after House members agreed to significantly expand the scale of the proposed Community and Housing Infrastructure Program.
They initially wanted a five-year program capped at $40 million per year. They ultimately agreed to a 10-year-program with a $200 million cap per year in the amount of tax revenue that could be dedicated to new housing infrastructure projects.
The final deal passed the House and Senate but must earn the governor’s signature.
Sen. Alison Clarkson (D-Windsor), who participated remotely on Friday due to her son’s impending wedding, blew kisses to her House colleagues and thanked them for their willingness to accept the Senate’s final offer.
“Thank you for this step, for really creating a new tool for housing creation,” Clarkson said.
Rep. Marc Mihaly (D-Marshfield) was less exuberant.
“Our work is not finished,” he said of creating housing in Vermont. “This is a hydra-headed problem.”
Let’s Build Homes, a coalition of groups supporting more housing, applauded the bill as a “major legislative victory that will remove one of the most significant barriers to housing construction.” The influential Vermont League of Cities and Towns also praised the bill’s passage after months of advocating for it.
The program lawmakers struggled with for days was a key part of S.127, this session’s signature housing bill. The bill would let housing developers, with municipal approval, take advantage of tax increment financing, a tool cities and town have used for years to fight blight.
Lawmakers Debate Competing Needs for Housing, School Funding
Lawmakers Debate Competing Needs for Housing, School Funding
By Kevin McCallum
Politics
Three senators and three representatives negotiated for days to find ways to bridge the significant policy and philosophical gaps between the Senate and the House, which passed very different versions of the same bill.
Senators wanted the program to be big, bold and simple enough that it would be used by communities across the state. The House urged caution and sought to limit the number of projects that could tap TIF funding, hoping to prioritize low-income and moderate-income housing and protect the flow of tax dollars into the education fund.
The two sides were pretty far apart on the bill when they started trying to hammer out a deal on Wednesday. They exchanged a flurry of proposals and counterproposals in an effort to find common ground as the end of the legislative session approached.
Concern about possible impacts to the education fund faded somewhat after legislative analysts shared information indicating the CHIP program, if fully utilized, could boost the ed fund by up to $38 million per year.
House members also realized the financial cap was not the limiting factor for more infrastructure or housing. Instead, it’s the lack of workers and other market forces, Mihaly said.
“I don’t think any of us really believed that the cap was the problem,” he told Seven Days after the agreement was struck.
During the negotiations, Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (D-Chittenden Southeast) led the questioning for the Senate team, at times drawing exasperated responses from her colleagues.
Rep. Mike Marcotte (R-Coventry) was the first to push back. Ram Hinsdale was grilling Rep. Charlie Kimbell (D-Woodstock) about a provision in the House bill that sought to establish guidelines to help prioritize projects should several applications come in at the same time.
In such an instance, Kimbell explained, it seemed wise to give priority to projects that provided affordable housing, redeveloped dilapidated buildings or vacant parcels and were in areas with few other CHIP-funded projects.
Ram started rattling off a list of other program requirements to make the point that the House was gumming up a financing program with so many restrictions that it might become useless.
“Look,” Marcotte said, raising his hands in the air. “We’re taking it in. We’re absorbing it. We’re going to come back with something that hopefully we can agree on. But continually throwing stuff back in our faces isn’t helpful.”
On Thursday, Ram Hinsdale expressed exasperation and confusion at the language the House had included in its bill. During a back and forth about an estimate of new housing units needed in the state, Ram Hinsdale suggested Kimbell hadn’t been paying attention.
“Do you not remember that?” she inquired.
“You don’t need to excoriate me for that,” Kimbell shot back.
Later, during a discussion about the proposed annual cap on the program, Kimbell was trying to explain that there was a direct, if imprecise, connection between the amount of infrastructure investment made annually and the number of homes that that infrastructure would support.
Ram Hindale implied Kimbell was confusing two issues, though he said he wasn’t.
“We’re asking it to support the infrastructure. Can you follow?” Ram Hinsdale said while making hand motions toward Kimbell and chuckling.
“I understand that,” Kimbell replied.
“The infrastructure can support a range of numbers of units,” Ram Hinsdale continued.
“We know that,” Kimbell said.
She said it didn’t seem like he did.
“That’s fascinating. I’m done,” Kimbell said and leaned back in his chair and disengaged from the debate for a time.
Some housing advocates felt Ram Hinsdale was right to push back forcefully to make sure the House moved away from a pointless limit on a program that could be transformative for the state.
Austin Davis, lobbyist for the Lake Champlain Chamber, noted that over 10 years, the program could result in $2 billion invested in housing infrastructure. That would make a major dent in the housing the state desperately needs, he said. “This is something that every legislator and advocate should be proud to have been a part of,” Davis said.
Ram Hinsdale said at the end of the meeting she was glad the negotiations ultimately bore fruit.
“There were many moments anyone could have walked away from the table,” she said. “Staying at the table really was a benefit to Vermonters.”
Asked about the heated negotiations, she cited other instances of House members being rude.
“I just helped lead the passage of a $2 billion infrastructure program, and you’re asking solely me why I’m being mean?” she said.
“It was rough,” he acknowledged.
He also admitted that he made comments he regretted when he asked an advocate in the audience to stop shaking her head while he spoke. He said he later apologized to the person.