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The Senate is coming back. The Vermont Senate will reconvene Tuesday to take action on a number of COVID-19 emergency response measures, including legislation to expand unemployment benefits and aid health care providers.
Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Burlington, told his Senate colleagues Friday morning that the upper chamber would return briefly to send the legislation to the House, which will also reconvene next week.
The Legislature adjourned last week, over concerns about the spreading pandemic.
Ashe said Friday that only 16 of the 30 senators should need to return for the vote next week. He said that requiring everyone to return and vote is “not the safest approach.”
“I think if we have a small crowd we can space out in the Senate chamber and time our presence in the chamber such that it’s the lowest risk possible,” Ashe said.
He said that for the plan to work, senators would need to reach a “prearranged agreement” on the legislation in the coming days, and ensure that the measures have nearly unanimous, bipartisan support.
Throughout the week, the Senate panel on economic development has been working to expand eligibility for unemployment benefits during the state of emergency.
“My goal is to make it easier for people — who feel they very likely are impacted by this virus, cannot be forced into situations where they feel they are taking their lives into their hands or others’ in their hands — if they want to get unemployment,” Committee Chair Michael Sirotkin, D-Chittenden, said Thursday.
Sirotkin has said he wants to make sure people who leave their jobs to care for children are covered as well as seeing if the maximum weekly benefit to employees, now $513, could be increased.
Sirotkin plans to finalize his legislation Friday before working with the House to make sure both chambers agree.
The Senate has also been reviewing a wide-ranging emergency COVID-19 package that had been sent over by the House last week.
Ashe said that parts of the legislation would require Senate action next week, including measures to expand telemedicine and loosen regulations so that hospitals can assemble temporary facilities in the event they need additional surge capacity.
Lawmakers have determined that the governor already has the authority to carry out many of the other provisions in the legislation, including the ability to give hospitals a reprieve from paying provider taxes as they weather financial hardship.
The Senate also plans to pass emergency election protocols and a change to the state’s open meeting statute, that, for the duration of the COVID-19 state of emergency, would allow local government bodies to meet by electronic means, without a place in the municipality for citizens to congregate, as long as members of the public were provided some sort of access to meetings.
In the wake of the coronavirus shutdown and the mandate of social distancing, Ashe told senators Friday that each lawmaker must make the individual decision about whether they would like to return to the Statehouse or not.
“I wanted to make it clear, I do plan to come here on Tuesday,” said Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, who is 76 years old. “Unless you are saying ‘wow you’re too old.”’
