The Legislature faced technical difficulties with Zoom on Wednesday. The snafu knocked a number of committees offline and delayed the House floor session.
Most panels that realized they were no longer being livestreamed on YouTube ceased discussion and halted testimony until the issue could be resolved.
The Senate Committee on Health and Welfare, however, opted to continue discussing a buprenorphine legalization bill even after its members became aware of the issue, according to Carolyn Wesley, chief of staff to Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, D-Windham.
In an email to VTDigger, Wesley said the committee kept conducting business until it heard from the pro tem that doing so violated Senate policy.
“I believe this was an oversight on the committee’s part, as the Senate had a different policy last session,” Wesley wrote. “Their discussion was recorded and can be made available to any members of VTDigger staff following that issue.”
In March, members of the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs chose to go offline while discussing Senate and House negotiations over a Covid-19 relief bill. In that instance, there was no technology glitch — and there were ample mea culpas over the likely violation of the state’s open meeting law.
On Wednesday, Kevin Moore, the Legislature’s information technology director, blamed the technological problem on “degraded performance on Zoom’s livestreaming capabilities.” Zoom detected the issue at 11:30 a.m. and did not fully resolve the problem until 2:50 p.m., according to the company’s support portal.
Moore said that, overall, the virtual Statehouse has been lucky to have avoided a plethora of technical issues this year — even as lawmakers plod ahead on a bill to help expand broadband access in Vermont.
“We’ve been incredibly fortunate with the quality of livestreaming that we’ve had this session, certainly when you compare it to our novice attempts last year,” Moore said.
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