Gov. Scott isn’t having a lot of luck reorganizing state government via executive order.
The House Committee on Government Operations plans to move a resolution Wednesday morning rejecting an order issued last month to create a new state agency for law enforcement.
Scott’s proposal would establish an Agency of Public Safety, which would include a Department of Fire Safety & Emergency Management and a Department of Law Enforcement.
Currently, the state police, emergency management and fire division all fall under the Department of Public Safety, with other law enforcement agencies spread across state government.
After taking testimony, the House committee decided Tuesday to move a rejection resolution and ask the Scott administration to put a bill forward with the recommendation.
Later on Wednesday, the full Senate is expected to block another Scott mandate aimed at streamlining the Act 250 permitting process.
The governor had put forward an executive order to create one centralized board to review land use permits, removing authority from the nine district Act 250 commissions across the state.
—Kit Norton
In the Senate Democratic caucus, Sen. Sears cautioned his colleagues about a possible court challenge to its rejection of the Act 250 executive order.
Sears’ concern around the legality of the Senate’s action stems from an argument put forward by Jaye Pershing Johnson, the governor’s general counsel.
Current law states that only one chamber needs to reject an executive order to prevent its enactment. Senate and House leaders have double-checked with the Office of Legislative Counsel and are comfortable with this legal framework.
But, in the text of Scott’s executive order, the governor states that it will go into effect automatically unless both the House and Senate reject it within 90 days of the date it was issued: Jan. 14.
Johnson has told lawmakers that it is the administration’s legal opinion that both chambers must vote to reject an executive order to kill it.
“All I’m going to say is I think you’re taking a very big chance here that the Vermont Supreme Court could rule that Jaye Johnson is correct,” Sears said Tuesday. —KN
Rep. Tom Burditt, R-West Rutland, said his son’s work in Seattle as a police detective investigating online sex crimes prompted him to push for a bill that would add the “simulation” of sexual activity to the state’s child exploitation law.
Burditt, vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said the updated language in the legislation addresses images depicting simulated sexual acts with children.
A similar measure was debated last session, but Burditt said the need to iron out constitutional questions about the language in the legislation resulted in it getting pushed to this year.
The bill, H.18, unanimously passed Tuesday out of the House Judiciary Committee and now heads to the House floor for consideration.
“I think everybody in the committee knows how near and dear to my heart this topic is,” Burditt said after the vote as he thanked his fellow panel members for their support of the legislation.
—Alan Keays
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