Ann Manwaring represented Halifax, Whitingham, and Wilmington in the Vermont House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017.
WILMINGTON-For six of the ten years I served in the Legislature, I was on the Appropriations Committee. We spent a good deal of our time in that committee listening to state agency administrators present their financial needs for the ensuing fiscal year, which would begin the next July 1.
By the end of the budget process, when the governor would finally sign the Big Bill, as it is affectionately known, every state agency would know how much money it would have to do its work for the following year. The same process would begin again, with the opportunity for the Appropriations Committee to hold the agencies accountable for the outcomes of the prior year's spending.
It is important that capable women step up if we are ever going to change the miasma of our present political culture. (1)From the four years we served together on the House Appropriations Committee I know firsthand how capable Kitty Toll is. Not only is she adept at adding...
When the voters of Wilmington and Whitingham voted to create the Twin Valley Joint Contract schools, they had no inkling that 15 years later the budget that supports those schools at the town meetings just completed would require enormous property-tax-rate increases, even though total spending was decreased by more...
I support Shap Smith for lieutenant governor. I do so because of my respect for his leadership as speaker of the House of Representatives for eight of the 10 years that I served in the House. You might or might not agree with some of the legislative initiatives that emerged under Shap's tenure in that office, but the business of making laws was productive and was handled with grace and respect in very large part due to his guidance, even...
Let's take a moment to talk about freedom. We live in a country where we are told we have the freedom to live our lives the way we want. But how much freedom do you and I really have, as members of the 99 percent of our economy, to live the American Dream? To hope that our children get a really good education and go on to school beyond high school, to become productive members of our American community? How...
The newly enacted Education Governance Reform law has set in place a process designed to lead to larger school districts - a process that, if not achieved by a certain time, will result in action by the state if local actions do not result in the desired reforms. This bill is the culmination of several years of work by the Legislature and the administration, borne of the belief that larger school districts will be more efficient and can lead to...
This session of the Vermont Legislature has for me a flavor distinctly different from others that I have been part of. Maybe it is just because we are still in the early days and issues haven't had a chance to settle into focused solution yet. Maybe it is because we are once again jamming all our work into a compact session to adjourn by a certain date, which we do primarily for economic reasons. It costs about a quarter of...
We taxpayers reach into several different pockets to pay our various taxes. We extract money from the economic activities of our daily lives, and that money makes up the revenue streams that make possible the civic life from which we all benefit. When our money arrives in Montpelier, it lands in one of several buckets, called funds, the two largest of which are the general fund and the education fund. Our public discourse is generally about spending and, therefore, taxes...