— The Senate unanimously advanced a “skinny” budget bill that will fund state government for the first quarter of the upcoming fiscal year (which begins on July 1).
The Senate made very few changes to the spending package that the House passed earlier this month. The legislation gives most agencies and departments the authority to spend one quarter of their current year budgets between July and September.
Lawmakers will return in August and September to craft a budget for the entirety of next year. That budget is expected to come with spending reductions and cuts to offset revenue losses caused by the pandemic. – Xander Landen
— As the Friday deadline looms for the Senate to move police reform legislation, Xusana Davis, the Scott administration’s executive director of racial equity, and Etan Nasreddin-Longo, who chairs the Racial Disparities in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Advisory Panel, told the judiciary committee Wednesday that it may be prudent to slow down.
“If more time allows us more opportunity for community feedback and input, if more time allows us to come up with a scheme to resource it properly,” Davis said, “then I am for more time with the bold-faced caveat that it is not to defer, but rather to perfect.”
These comments come after Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, last week told his colleagues why he believes it is necessary to take swift action on police use-of-force reform.
“I do believe that the time to act on some of these issues is now, even if it requires some creativity in the manner in which it occurs,” Ashe said. – Kit Norton
— The Senate judiciary bill, S.219, currently mandates body cameras, prohibits chokeholds, would make restraints that result in death or serious bodily injury a crime and contains sections on race data collection and more general use of force policy.
During the committee discussion, Chair Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, took Mark Anderson, the Windham County Sheriff representing the Vermont Sheriffs’ Association, to task for opposing legislation making it a crime if police officers use a restraint that results in death or serious bodily injury.
“I’m sorry but, you know people that work in group homes around the country have been arrested, charged with murder for improper restraint. I don’t think this is a new idea,” Sears said. “I don’t know why we should treat law enforcement any different. They’re supposed to be trained in proper restraint methods.”
Anderson responded that he was not sure how those individuals were trained but that law enforcement is the “only government entity that is empowered to take away a person’s ability to physically move” and that “there’s a different level of need.”
“What if an attempted and trained technique, a proper technique, were effective but then effectively done improperly?” he said. “What happens if we try to do something and it goes wrong?” he added. “That does happen.” – Kit Norton
— As Vermont’s prison population begins to tick upward again, Interim Corrections Commissioner James Bake is hoping to institute a new program that would keep those on furlough from reoffending and returning to jail.
The program would rely on a concept called “focused deterrence” and will center on high-risk domestic violence offenders. As Baker explained to House Corrections lawmakers, the program would provide “wrap around” services — through community members and organizations — to those at risk of reoffending.
“The more people that are wrapped around the individual, the more eyes that are on them, the higher the expectation on the individual is — not from probation or parole, not from the state — but from the community, that they’re going to work at being a better citizen,” Baker said.
His goal is to use some of the Coronavirus Relief Fund money the state received to prop up the program, which he said would reduce the state’s prison populations, and lessen the risk of spreading Covid-19 among inmates. – Grace Elletson
