State law regarding delinquent landlords and the water rights of their tenants will remain unchanged for another year. S.41 — a bill that would have allowed tenants to pay the water bill when their landlord doesn’t — landed in legislative purgatory today.
The Senate passed the bill in March, but the House Committee on Government Operations voted 5-6 against it Monday.
The chair of Government Operations, Rep. Donna Sweaney, D-Windsor, said it’s “quite possible” her committee will return to the issue when the Legislature reconvenes in January. Sweaney, who supports the legislation, said she would like to see it expanded beyond water to encompass delinquent electricity bills, too.
“This is a broader issue that should probably have a total package,” Sweaney said.
S.41 was set in motion by a lawsuit last year that was brought by Vermont Legal Aid on behalf of two Barre tenants who lost their water due to their landlord’s delinquency.
The court ruled that tenants in this situation have a constitutional right to appeal a municipality’s decision to shut off their water and Barre’s three-day notice window didn’t give renters enough time to exercise this right.
Seven Days, which wrote about the ruling, reported that Brenda Brown, one of the two tenants in the lawsuit, was on crutches when her water service was terminated, forcing her to haul water up a set of stairs for two weeks. See Seven Days article.
The judge also ruled, however, that the Barre tenants didn’t have a constitutional right to take over the water account and pay it themselves, but she suggested that situation could be remedied through legislation.
At the start of the session, several state senators — Bill Doyle, Sally Fox, Ann Cummings and Anthony Pollina — drafted a legislative fix, and on March 27, the Senate passed S.41.
The bill says tenants have the right to pay for their water and sewer service if the municipality decides to disconnect the service “due to the delinquency of the ratepayer.” Tenants can then deduct that amount from their rent.
Chris Curtis, an attorney with Vermont Legal Aid, said he was disappointed that Government Operations rejected what could have been a “simple remedy” for tenants and municipalities alike.
“This is a really common sense simple piece of legislation that’s designed to address a very serious problem. Frankly I’m confused why there wasn’t more unanimity about protecting the health and safety of tenants,” Curtis said.
Sweaney said her committee also heard from the association of Vermont landlords, which supported the bill.
But others say S.41 could make things nightmarishly complex for some municipalities.
Rep. Ronald Hubert, R-Milton, who voted against the bill today, said S.41 could bungle the bill-paying process for larger municipalities. Hubert said for landlords that manage multiunit complexes, where sewer and water bills are paid in tandem, it could be a huge hassle to extricate individual water charges.
“There are only a few problems with this throughout the whole state, and making municipalities jump through these hoops is the wrong approach,” Hubert said.
Rather than tampering with municipal law, Hubert says it makes more sense codify the right to water in the section of law that deals with landlord and tenant rights.
Curtis disagrees. “It’s appropriate to address it under municipal law because this bill is about what happens when the municipality is going to shut off the water. While there may be landlord-tenant issues that need to be resolved, this is a health and safety issue.”
Curtis says that in scenarios like the one Hubert described, S.41 puts the onus on tenants to jointly come up with the cash — if they don’t, the municipality has free rein to discontinue the service. The municipality can set up individual accounts with tenants if it chooses, but it isn’t required to do this.
Karen Horn, director of public policy and advocacy for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, said the bill could make it harder for municipalities to recoup their utility costs, by making landlords less inclined to pay their bills.
“If you don’t have the threat of disconnection, some people will decide they don’t need to pay their bill,” she said.
Since tenants come and go, allowing them to take over the bill could also complicate bill collection, Horn said.
“How do you collect the back rents that are due, and what do you do when the new person who is paying decides not to pay again, then you’re sort of back to the beginning of the process,” she said.
Horn also contends that these occurrences are rare, and when they happen, current law can take of them just fine.
“The statute addresses the whole procedure for disconnects. … All that is spelled out in the statute, so when it gets to the really pretty infrequent situation where the pink notice goes on the door, that’s when people come into pay.”
Municipalities can’t disconnect a utility service if it would pose an “immediate and serious hazard to the health” of residents. But proving that requires a physician’s certificate.
