A state legislative committee is set to meet Tuesday to consider allowing the state’s 246 municipalities to replace March 2022 town meetings with Covid-safe voting or warm-weather gatherings.
The Senate Government Operations Committee is scheduled to review a bill introduced by its chair, Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, to give cities and towns flexibility in how to conduct proceedings traditionally held on or around the first Tuesday in March.
Some 80% of communities used a similar temporary state law last year to replace shoulder-to-shoulder decision-making with mailable secret ballots. Most of the rest tapped the same legislation to reschedule proceedings until meeting attendees could open their town hall windows or move outdoors in the spring.
Municipalities had hoped to return to business as usual this winter, only to see Vermont’s coronavirus cases hit record highs with the arrival of the highly transmissible Omicron variant. As a result, White hopes her latest bill of electoral options will be the first to win passage by the Legislature this month.
“We’d like to have it on the governor’s desk for his signature by the end of the second week” of the legislative session, White said. “I haven’t heard any opposition. It’s the same thing we did last year, and there wasn’t any real opposition then either.”
White’s bill would allow municipalities to replace 2022 annual meetings with Australian balloting or reschedule them “to a potentially safer date later in the year.”
“The citizens of Vermont should be able to protect their health, safety and welfare,” the draft bill states, “while also continuing to exercise their right to participate in annual municipal meetings.”
The bill would permit online public information hearings but mostly prohibit official town meetings on video conferencing platforms — the latter out of concern that organizers don’t have the ability to open participation to all locals, yet close it to outsiders who aren’t eligible to vote.
Brattleboro is the only locality the state has allowed to debate and make decisions electronically, as its one-of-a-kind meeting of elected representatives is the sole one that can limit Zoom participation to official members and let everyone else watch on public access television.
The proposed 2022 changes aren’t expected to affect Vermont’s 28 cities and towns with 5,000 or more people, as they annually vote for local leaders, spending and special articles using Australian ballots.
But most of the 218 communities with smaller populations traditionally hold some sort of town meeting, which must be warned at least 30 days in advance — which would be Jan. 30 for those seeking to take municipal action on Tuesday, March 1.
This past winter, a majority of towns and villages heeded a state recommendation that “meetings are strongly discouraged” and traded sugaring-season debate for mailable ballots or outdoor gatherings in April, May and June.
Only five communities — Addison, Kirby, Norton, Stratton and Woodford — held in-person meetings, with each having little on the agenda or being gaveled in for the sole purpose of adjourning to a later date.
Lawmakers have drafted the latest bill with the help of the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office and the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, a municipal support organization.
“We’ve gotten a lot of inquiries from our members,” said Karen Horn, the league’s director of public policy and advocacy. “Boards start putting together all the pieces for town meeting after Thanksgiving, so they’re in the planning stages now.”
