The fate of two landmark data privacy proposals appeared uncertain late Thursday as Vermont lawmakers barrelled toward a self-imposed Friday deadline to adjourn the state’s 2024 legislative session.
In recent days, the Vermont House and Senate have gone back and forth over two bills aimed at the nation’s largest social media companies, as well as businesses that buy and sell consumer data. And though adjournment seemed in sight, the two chambers remained miles apart on the matter, exchanging sweeping strike-all amendments to one another’s bills.
“What came over from the Senate demonstrates politics over policy, and a complete disregard for the issues at hand,” Rep. Monique Priestley, D-Bradford, said on the House floor Thursday.
What began as two separate bills — H.121, a data privacy bill, and S.289, a bill aimed at protecting children using social media — have since merged into one mega-bill, in H.121. It has since ping-ponged from the Senate to the House and now back to the Senate, which is expected to take action on it Friday.
Priestley sits on the House Commerce Committee, which penned H.121. On Thursday, the committee met to draft a last-minute rewrite of the bill, after the Senate passed its own version Wednesday night.
What came from the Senate, Priestley told VTDigger, was “significantly watered down” from what the House initially passed. Last month, Priestley and her committee colleagues told VTDigger that they suspected Big Tech lobbyists were behind the effort.
With the latest rewrite, the committee attempted to strike a balance with the Senate and with small-to-midsize Vermont businesses that expressed fear the bill went too far. The House committee significantly whittled down the bill’s private right of action, a legal mechanism that would allow Vermonters to sue businesses in violation of the law.
The bill also includes measures originally included in S.289 seeking to compel large social media companies to alter their codes and algorithms to make social media sites safer for children under 18 years of age. The bill — nicknamed “Kids Code” — has been a priority for the Senate.
“I want to say in no uncertain terms: These platforms don’t give a shit about your kids,” Rep. Jim Carroll, D-Bennington, said on the House floor Thursday, speaking in support of the bill.
Support for the House’s latest iteration of the bill was strong on Thursday, with members voting 139-3 to advance the latest rewrite. Now, the bill heads to the Senate for its approval — or counter-proposal.
Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D/P-Chittenden Southeast, was the lead sponsor of S.289 and has played a leading role in the debate as chair of the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs. Shortly after the House’s vote Thursday, she told VTDigger she hadn’t seen the latest rewrite but said she thought both chambers could agree on the “kids code” portion of the bill.
Despite the stark divide between the two chambers, lawmakers did not appoint a conference committee to hash out their differences together — a common practice at the Statehouse when the House and Senate are far apart on a given bill.
It’s a dynamic evident not only in the data privacy legislation. As of Thursday, dramatic differences between the House and Senate — despite Democratic supermajorities in both chambers — threatened the fate of other high-priority bills.
In those cases, lawmakers also opted to swap amendments back and forth between the chambers, rather than meet in the middle in a conference committee.
As of Thursday, H.687, a bill that seeks to overhaul Vermont’s 50-year-old land use law, hangs in the balance. That’s despite lawmakers declaring since the session’s early days that reforming Act 250 was one of their top priorities of the year.
Also up in the air Thursday evening was the Legislature’s annual yield bill, which sets property tax rates to fund the state’s education system. It’s a must-pass bill, but with just one day left before scheduled adjournment Friday, it appeared that the two chambers remained worlds apart on that bill’s language.
Correction: Monique Priestley’s name was misspelled in the caption of a photo that in an earlier version of this story.