One idea for conducting business safely in the Statehouse: requiring proof of Covid-19 vaccination to enter the building.
That idea came up Tuesday as legislators began to discuss in earnest what a return to Montpelier will look like in January, after a 2021 session conducted virtually.
Senate Majority Leader Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor, said her assumption is that requiring people to be fully vaccinated to enter the Golden Dome could cut down on the amount of work needed to retrofit the Statehouse with better air flow and larger meeting rooms.
“One of the things we need to talk about are the assumptions we want to build in, in terms of vaccination,” Clarkson said during the first meeting of the Legislative Advisory Committee on the Statehouse. If people are required to be fully vaccinated to be in the Statehouse, “that would enable you to be in the current spaces,” she said.
Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, who chairs the advisory committee, said requiring proof of vaccination may cause problems, as it would force the Statehouse sergeant-at-arms to determine whether a person had been vaccinated, and could put committee chairs in a situation of potentially barring someone from a room in the Statehouse.
“Those are some dicey sticky wickets,” she said.
Clarkson floated the idea of a digital vaccine passport to gain entry to the Statehouse — setting up scanners at the building’s entrances to read QR codes on smartphones that would be connected to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Vermont Department of Health.
Clarkson said this would be akin to the heat imaging machines reminiscent of HAL 9000 of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which populated designated Covid-19 entry points to the Statehouse during the winter.
That technology is a NMS imaging system called the “scanitizer.” It has a camera that uses heat imaging to read the human body’s temperature. If the body heat reads as normal, the machine would say “pass,” and an individual could enter the building.
“There are ways that we could do that also very easily and very cheaply,” Clarkson said.
Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, said she believes the advisory committee — whose report is due by Aug. 15 — has to “say something about vaccinations.”
Hardy said that could involve strongly encouraging people to be vaccinated, potentially asking unvaccinated people to testify via Zoom instead of entering the building and discouraging school groups that include unvaccinated children from visiting the Statehouse.
“There has to be something about vaccinations, and we just have to be clear about what that is,” Hardy said.
In the waning days of the 2021 legislative session, lawmakers began discussing how best to return to the Statehouse this summer and in 2022. Now, the Legislative Advisory Committee on the Statehouse has just over two months to recommend how it should be done.
Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, said Tuesday it is imperative to keep a narrow focus on the task and to work quickly to ensure the work is completed in the allotted time.
“We have to make a decision and come up with a report by Aug. 15 as to what we are going to do,” Benning said. “I know nobody wants to think about this, but we have to seriously think about going back into the building the way we left it — with certain modifications that we can handle in the short term.”
These modification options could include using the larger conference rooms (rooms 10 and 11) on the first floor of the Statehouse, the legislative lounge (which has been off limits to all but lawmakers) and the coat room (room 9) as full-time committee spaces.
While the advisory panel is working on its proposal for 2022, the Statehouse will reopen this summer.
Janet Miller, the Statehouse sergeant-at-arms, told the committee Tuesday that she proposes to open the Statehouse July 6, with lawmakers starting to return to the building for summer committee meetings July 15.
The Legislature has long viewed the summer committee meetings in the Statehouse as a test run for a full return to in-person legislating in 2022.
After just one meeting, nothing has been decided. Emmons told her committee to expect to meet at least once a week for the foreseeable future.
“I think there’s going to be a need for a lot of meetings here between now and the middle of August,” Emmons said.
