The general exhaustion of the Douglas administration and the 2009-10 edition of the Vermont Legislature was reflected in the way that three important bills were treated by both sides.
Gov. James Douglas declined to sign or veto S.88, a multipart health care bill passed on the last day of the 2010 session on May 11. Thus, a bill that commits Vermont to the path of universal access to health care was allowed to become law.
Douglas said he had no problem with some of S.88's provisions, such as capping annual hospital budget increases and expanding the Blueprint for Health program, the chronic-care management initiative begun by his administration.
Douglas did object to creating a commission to come up with a new health-care system, something that would cost up to $250,000. He also objected to a provision requiring the disclosure of free drug samples given to doctors by pharmaceutical companies, which Douglas believes is burdensome requirement for the state's doctors.
In the end, Douglas decided a flawed bill was better than nothing, particularly if a health program that he has touted around the nation as a model gets more funding.
That same reasoning applied to H.66, a bill that encourages school districts to merge by offering incentives to reduce property taxes and grants to help with the transition process.
Douglas said he thought the bill didn't go far enough to reduce education costs. The approach that Douglas and others apparently prefer is having the state mandate the merger of small school districts and supervisory unions, setting a requirement for higher teacher-to-pupil ratios and reducing state aid to small schools.
But even Douglas realizes that it is nearly impossible to convince most Vermonters to accept forced school consolidation or mandated staff cuts. That's why he was willing to accept H.66. Most towns in the state have demonstrated that they can hold down education costs without state interference.
It wasn't much of a surprise that House Speaker Shap Smith and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin chose not to convene a veto session to override Douglas' rejection of a bill that would have made changes to the state's current use program.
Under current use, anyone with 25 acres or more of farm or forest land that is in active production and management can pay property taxes on the value of the land as it is being used rather than on its development value. It has helped preserve Vermont's working landscape, but the tax breaks given to landowners cost the state about $49 million annually.
The bill that Douglas vetoed called for a one-time $128 fee to be paid by the 15,000 land owners in the current use program to make up for a $1.6 million budget cut. Douglas objected to the fee as being a new tax. He also objected to increasing the penalties for landowners pulling their property out of current use.
While the veto leaves a $1.6 million hole in the budget, Smith and Shumlin decided it wasn't worth trying to override the veto - not because they weren't sure whether they had the votes, but rather, because this issue wasn't urgent enough to spend $50,000 to bring lawmakers back to Montpelier.
On all three issues - health care, education and current use - neither Douglas nor lawmakers seemed to want a fight. It's now campaign season. Douglas has one foot out the door, and five Democrats and Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie are going all out to succeed him.
There will be a new governor and quite a few new lawmakers in Montpelier in 2011. That's why this year in the Legislature seemed like a holding pattern, with little substantial movement on the big issues.
We're going to have to wait until after November to identify the people tasked with making the decisions that the Douglas administration and the 2009-10 Legislature chose not to make.