Gov. Phil Scott used his weekly press conference to spotlight the benefits of the state’s voluntary paid family and medical leave program, which recently opened up participation to include individuals and small businesses with just one employee.
While more than 10,000 Vermonters are participating almost three years into its phased launch, the insurance program is primarily covering state employees, and officials hope more businesses and individuals will consider joining. According to The Hartford insurance company, which manages the program for the state, about 1,800 current participants work for private businesses, and fewer than 100 are individually insured.
Kim Rudeen, head of absence management at the Connecticut-based insurance company, acknowledged that Vermont’s program is in its infancy, but said that uptake in the state mirrored that of programs elsewhere.
Launched in 2022, the state’s partnership with The Hartford first rolled out for state employees before expanding to private businesses in 2024 and individuals this year. The Vermont Family and Medical Leave Insurance program offers plans for people who need to take time off work to care for a child or family member, recover from illness or for leave related to a family member’s military service.
“These are not unusual circumstances,” Kendal Smith, interim commissioner of the Vermont Department of Labor, said at the press conference Wednesday. “This is part of being human.”
Plans on offer range from six to 26 weeks of paid leave per year and pay 60% or more of an employee’s standard wages. Businesses can choose the structure of the plan for their employees and how much to contribute.
For years, Scott and Democrats in the Legislature butted heads about how to enact paid leave in Vermont.
Democrats and advocates have long argued a mandatory program is necessary to ensure a sufficiently large risk pool — one capable of providing robust benefits to the workers that need them the most. But Scott, a Republican, balked at the payroll tax that Democrats pitched to make a universal paid leave plan work, vetoing bills in 2018 and 2020 that would have created a mandatory initiative.
While he called the voluntary program progress, a universal program would lower costs for individuals and help small businesses compete for workers, according to Emmett Avery, manager of the Vermont Paid Leave Coalition. He pointed to data indicating almost 80% of Vermonters support a state paid leave program.
Thirteen states and Washington DC now offer a mandatory paid family and medical leave program, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, while New Hampshire has also implemented a voluntary program.
On Wednesday, Scott said his voluntary program was a great way to “test drive” how the leave insurance works for Vermonters, and he didn’t rule out the possibility that the program could evolve. As of last year, the program costs the state about $2 million annually.
