Democratic leaders in the Legislature have not been shy about criticizing Gov. Phil Scott’s response to the pandemic since variants have sent the state’s case and hospitalization numbers skyrocketing.
And in the days and weeks leading up to the 2022 legislative session, they vowed to take action.
“I have been absolutely unequivocal in my call for the governor and Legislature to take every precaution possible to stop the spread of Covid-19,” Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint tweeted on Jan. 1. In late November, House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, called a town-by-town mask mandate bill passed during a special session “a small bridge” to what lawmakers might accomplish when they returned in the new year.
“It’s incredibly important that we take preventative measures and not wait until it’s too late,” Krowinski said at the time.
Yet one week into the session, no new public health proposals for mitigating the spread of the virus had yet to make it on to the agenda in key committees.
Some Covid-related matters have kept lawmakers busy of late. The first bill passed out of both chambers — just four days after reconvening — will allow municipalities to carry over their pandemic-era Town Meeting Day practices another year. And the House and Senate health committees are discussing how to expedite legislation that will extend a host of regulatory flexibilities adopted in March 2020 for providers and insurers.
But top Democrats have yet to articulate any clear alternatives to the governor’s approach when it comes to testing, masking, contact tracing and vaccination. And a bill establishing a statewide mask mandate — which Krowinski and Balint have been demanding for months — could even languish in committee.
The arrival of the Omicron variant has sent cases shooting exponentially upward, with the Vermont Health Department reporting well over 2,000 daily cases multiple times last week. December was the second-deadliest month thus far during the pandemic in Vermont, and daily hospitalizations are now approaching the records set during the Delta surge.
A House bill has been drafted that would require universal masking in public, indoor spaces when transmission is considered “high” or “substantial,” according to metrics set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But Rep. Ann Pugh, D-South Burlington, who chairs the House Human Services Committee, suggested in an interview Friday evening that the measure was not a particularly high priority. (Scott has also promised to veto it.)
“I don’t know when — or if — we will pick it up,” she said. “The fact that a bill gets introduced and gets sent to a committee does not guarantee that it will get taken up for full debate and discussion.”
The human services committee has been designated by House leadership to take the lead on legislation related to the public health response to Covid, and Pugh added she was eager to hear testimony on a bill this week establishing a “test to stay” program in child care facilities. Test-to-stay programs allow children to remain in school instead of quarantining at home when they are exposed to the virus if they test negative on a daily basis for a period of time.
But the creation of such a program had been announced by Gov. Phil Scott just hours before Pugh spoke to a reporter — a fact the lawmaker said she was unaware of.
“The governor didn’t send that announcement to me. And I’ve been busy, so I haven’t asked them what the governor’s announced,” she said. Pugh added that “whether or not it makes sense to have that be a legislative response as well” was “something to discuss.”
In the upper chamber, Senate Health and Welfare committee chair Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden, argued in an interview during the weekend that “there is a limit to what the Legislature can do.” The pandemic can change from week to week, she said, and legislation moves much more slowly.
“I think there’s a misconception that the Legislature is able to take public health information, establish standards and then pass a bill that’s going to go into effect and have a lasting effect. We don’t know that to be the case,” Lyons said.
She added that the education committees would soon be hearing from leaders at the health department and the Agency of Education about testing and contact tracing problems in schools. But Lyons suggested legislation need not necessarily come out of those hearings.
“We don’t need to pass a bill to ask for greater communication and greater access to those tests at the schools,” she said.
Asked for comment on Monday, legislative leaders insisted that committee chairs would indeed be scheduling hearings on mitigation measures this week. Senate Health and Welfare would take testimony Wednesday “about what a masking requirement could look like when tied to rates of infection,” Balint said.
“This is a critical public health tool that should be used during this surge,” she added. Pressed on whether Lyons was on board, Balint said yes.
“We have spoken and made this plan together this morning,” she said.
Krowinski, similarly, said the House Human Services committee would in fact be taking testimony this week from public health experts about potential mitigation strategies — spanning masking, contact tracing to vaccines to testing — “to find out if there is action that we should be taking.”
The committee’s website has since been updated to include testimony from Health Commissioner Mark Levine and Timothy Lahey, an infectious disease specialist from the University of Vermont Medical Center.
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