S.9 has been passed down the hall to Senate Appropriations, and will likely head to the Senate floor by the end of this week or early next week.
The legislation emerged from a committee that met through last summer to look into the state’s child protection system after the deaths of two toddlers who had been involved with the Department for Children and Families.
Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said after the vote that through the revisions, the core issues the bill addresses have not been changed.
“I’m amazed at the work that’s been put into this bill … I’ve lived this bill for nine months,” Sears said. “My hope is it will make a real difference.”
The bill would shift the judicial standard for deciding on removing a child from the home or returning a child to a parent’s custody away from the current emphasis on reunification of parents and children. Instead, the standard would be the best interest of the child.
S.9 was introduced at the beginning of the session, and has been the subject of extensive testimony in the Health and Welfare Committee as well, with some sections of the bill drawing significant controversy.
Senate Health and Welfare, which had not been referred the bill and therefore did not need to pass it out of committee, made recommendations on parts of the bill, and the Judiciary Committee included those in their final draft.
The ACLU, the Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence and others came out to air concerns about the scope and intent of language that would make the failure to protect a child a crime.
The language has been substantially revised in the version that passed out of committee today, narrowing the focus of the failure to protect statute. Instead of creating a new law, the bill revises an existing crime, V.S.A. 1304.
The new draft of the bill scraps another controversial proposal in the bill that would have classified “exposure to the unlawful possession, use, manufacture, cultivation or sale” to drugs as harm to a child.
In its stead, the bill imposes a steep penalty of 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine if a child is present where methamphetamine is being made.
Citing improvements to the definition of harm and the creation of an oversight committee, DCF Commissioner Ken Schatz said the department is appreciative of the work the Senate committees did.
“We look forward to continuing to work on the proposal for the new crime, but generally speaking we feel the bill contains some significant improvements to the child protection system,” Schatz said.
Language in the bill that listed illness under risk of harm has attracted considerable public outcry from people concerned that parents who chose not to vaccinate their children.
The Sergeant-at -Arms office, which takes messages for legislators, reports having received dozens of calls on Wednesday specifically about S.9.
The bill was also stripped of a proposal to create a child protection advocate that would work in an oversight capacity on the child protection system. The position came with an estimated price tag of $240,000 — a difficult sum to come by in a tough budget year — so the committee removed it from the bill.
However, S.9 also includes a provision to set up a legislative oversight committee on the state’s child protection system, which will require a small appropriation.
Senate Appropriations is expected to vote on the bill Thursday.
