Globe gave you even less online!
"Legislators vote to hike minimum wage in Vermont; Part of flurry of action before session ends" Associated Press May 11, 2014
MONTPELIER — The Vermont House has agreed with the Senate to raise the state’s minimum wage to $10.50 by 2018, as lawmakers adjourned for the year.
The current state minimum wage is $8.73 per hour.
‘‘Any time we can put money in the hands of Vermonters who need it most, it’s a win,’’ said Representative Tom Stevens, a Waterbury Democrat, as he presented the bill to his colleagues Friday night. ‘‘Is it enough? It’s a start.’’
Governor Peter Shumlin issued a statement praising the bill. ‘‘I will be proud to sign it,’’ he said.
The State House was filled with frenetic activity Friday and Saturday, as conference committees met on budget and tax packages for fiscal 2015 and reached deals on several other bills, including one streamlining the process for medicating mentally ill patients against their will.
And I thought Vermont was a liberal state. If I remember correctly, they even had a doctor as governor once.
Majority Democrats in the House in March had passed a minimum wage increase to $10.10 an hour to take effect in January, but the Senate called for a slower approach. The House was ready to pass a compromise Thursday evening, but a printer’s error — the wrong bill on the matter had been placed in the legislative calendar — caused it to be delayed.
Can't get a software program that's decent, can't get a.... sigh, never mind.
The following was print that the web excised:
A strange alchemy of lawmakers' competing desires and strategy based in legislative rules usually comes to a boil in the final days of a legislative session, and this year was shaping up to be no different.
The fate of school governance reform is a case in point. The House passed a bill mandating that school districts consolidate with their neighbors within the next six years, cutting the number of districts from more than 270 to about 50. The Senate balked at the mandates, and as of early Friday evening, it was expected a conference committee would be appointed to try to work out the differences.
That always raises hackles with people. Say you are closing their school and consolidating farther away and they get angry.
But also at about 8 p.m., Minority Leader Don Turner told The Associated Press in an interview that it was unlikely House Republicans would agree to suspend the rules to pass the education bill.
On Saturday, the measure was killed.
In other action, the House and Senate concurred and sent to Shumlin a bill calling for speeded-up processes for courts to order a mentally ill patient committed to a psychiatric hospital and, if requested by mental health professionals, to force the person to be medicated.
That is scary. Giving authority control over your own autonomy always is.
After heated debate Friday, the Senate went along with a conference committee agreement on a measure addressing storage of firearms when a person accused of domestic abuse is required to give them up while the case is pending. Police in Vermont have complained for years about a lack of space to store weapons seized in such cases. Language in a bill on executive branch fees would allow a third party — a friend or family member of the accused — to hold the weapon, as long as it is kept secure.
Neither Globe nor print:
Also being sent to Shumlin is a bill calling for the state health commissioner to require labeling — or even ban — toxic chemicals in products designed for children. Chemicals of concern would be recommended by a special advisory group. Backers argued that the federal government was lagging in such regulation, and that Vermont should join the handful of states that have been stepping in.
Then the Feds turn around and declare you a recalcitrant dissenter for excising your Tenth Amendment rights.
--more--"
Related: Bill would raise cigarette tax 13 cents a pack
Also see:
Vermont commemorates 1864 Civil War battle
Nebraska man’s WWII medal found in Vermont
Vermont National Guard hopes F-35s can be flown quietly
Vt. National guard to train in Louisiana
I'm sensing a theme, how 'bout you?
11 arrested in Vermont drug sweep
Vermont warns about reptiles, amphibians in road
This post is road kill.
