Senate Concurred With House Amendments to H55, Advancing Omnibus Unemployment and Labor Measures

The Vermont Senate voted to concur with the House proposal of amendment to H55, an omnibus measure addressing unemployment insurance and related labor issues, after suspending its rules to take the bill up for immediate consideration. Senator from Chittenden Central moved the suspension and the Senate approved the motion by voice vote.

Senator from Windsor, the reporter for H55, summarized the bill on the floor. She said the bill “sets up the baby bond trust” (statutory framework only), extends employer experience-rating relief after natural disasters from four weeks to 10 weeks, continues data collection on firefighter cancer, and subsidizes early detection cancer screening for firefighters with $1,000,000 that was passed previously in the budget. She also said the House removed a section that would have increased penalties for unemployment insurance fraud and deleted another section addressed elsewhere (H10). “As passed from this committee, this bill marries six of the bills that we have cared quite a bit about,” she said.

Senator from Franklin said he had “very mixed feelings” about H55. He praised provisions he called important—particularly the firefighter cancer measures and expanded workers’ compensation coverage for some state employees with PTSD—but objected to the baby-bond language as drafted. He said the program as described would rely on abandoned or unrecovered funds that otherwise go to the general fund and would target benefits by income in ways he described as discriminatory. He also raised the removal of unemployment-fraud penalties in the House amendment, saying a 10-year review showed about $55,000,000 in improper UI payments and warning that without penalties “you’re still free to steal from the unemployment fund, without penalty.”

The presiding officer put the concurrence question to a voice vote; although at least one senator (Senator from Franklin) voiced opposition, the presiding officer announced the ayes carried and the Senate concurred with the House proposal of amendment on H55. Following that action, Senator from Chittenden Central moved and the Senate approved suspending rules to message the action to the House forthwith.

The floor action did not record a roll-call tally or identify a second for the motions; votes were taken by voice. The Senate then recessed until noon.

What H55 does and why it matters: supporters framed the bill as a package of labor and public-safety measures—establishing statutory authority for a baby bond trust (the statute does not appropriate funding), widening disaster-related protections so employers’ UI experience ratings are less likely to be penalized after extended recovery, advancing firefighter health initiatives with previously budgeted screening funds, and making technical statutory corrections to unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation law. Opponents raised equity and fiscal concerns about how baby-bond funding would be sourced and criticized the removal of added fraud penalties in the House amendment.

Next steps: The Senate messaged its concurrence to the House; further legislative or budgetary steps to implement provisions such as the baby bond trust or expanded benefits were not resolved on the floor during this session.

(Quotes and attributions in this article are taken from the Senate floor transcript.)