Due back in Montpelier in less than two weeks, Vermont lawmakers are reconsidering their plans to hold 2022’s legislative session in person amid surging Covid-19 cases and the rise of the Omicron variant.
Senators at a Tuesday Senate Rules Committee hearing decided that while leadership will not bar any senators from attending in person come Jan. 4, they will allow lawmakers to participate remotely online at least through the first week of the session.
The committee also voted unanimously for Senate Secretary John Bloomer to draft a resolution allowing senators to legislate remotely through the first week of March. Senators will vote on the resolution during the first week of the session.
The new consideration to go back online was a stark departure from last week’s plan, in which lawmakers from both the House and Senate in a joint committee hearing agreed to a set of Covid-19 protocols that could allow them to hold an in-person 2022 session with safety measures in place.
They included vaccine or weekly testing requirements for all legislators and staffers; non-mandatory but “strongly encouraged” rapid testing for all regular occupants of the Statehouse; and a universal mask mandate in all legislative spaces for lawmakers, staff, lobbyists, press and the public, regardless of an individual’s vaccination status.
Timothy Lahey, an infectious disease physician with the University of Vermont Medical Center, told lawmakers last week an in-person session would carry relatively low risk with the agreed-upon protocols in place.
But Omicron has changed the game, and senators’ wavering confidence over a safe in-person session mirrors the heightened anxiety felt around the country as cases skyrocket. According to National Public Radio, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said earlier this week that Omicron is now the dominant strain of the virus in the U.S., accounting for 73% of new cases.
The House’s rules are different from the Senate’s. While the Senate can kick off their session remotely, the House must come back in person on Jan. 4. Conor Kennedy, a spokesperson for House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, told VTDigger on Wednesday that House members can decide then whether to go remote or remain in person.
As of Wednesday, Kennedy said the House’s focus is on putting in place Covid policies and procedures to make an in-person session as safe as possible. And if the House reevaluates and thinks it’s better to go remote, he said, they know how to do that.
Having discussions in person is “much easier,” he said, “especially with two constitutional amendments and redistricting” proposals on the table.
“But health and safety is by far the focus,” he said. “That’s the No. 1 priority.”
Sen. Randy Brock, R-Franklin, who voted in favor of the proposed Senate resolution, in Tuesday’s hearing suggested a formal meeting at the end of each month until the beginning of March to reevaluate whether remote legislating is necessary.
“I think we should have the flexibility (to work remotely) so that we don’t have to scramble, as everyone is saying,” he said. “But at the same time, I think we should show a commitment to getting back in the chamber as quickly as we can get back in the chamber.”
Rep. Heidi Scheuermann, R-Stowe, on Wednesday balked at the idea of the Legislature conducting any work remotely for the third consecutive session, saying, “It’s time for us to go back to work.”
“Who do we think we are, really, as legislators?” she said to VTDigger in a Wednesday phone call. “You know, everybody else is back to work. Everybody else is doing what we need to do. We are all dealing with Covid.”
Scheuermann, who has been a House member since 2007, went on to say that “legislating via Zoom is bad.” Politics is a people business, she said, better and more productively conducted face-to-face. But when done behind screens from remote locations, she said she worries about government transparency to the public — and the message it sends to Vermonters who have been working in person for months.
“It says to them … we, because of the building, because of who we are, need to be treated differently than all of our children who are going to school and all of our teachers who continue to go to school … all of our retail and grocery and restaurant employees who have to work,” she said.
“We know the precautions we have to take. We know what we have to do. And we have precautions that they have put in place for going back to the Statehouse.”
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