In what was almost certainly not the first time that sex workers accompanied state legislators in Montpelier, lawmakers, state’s attorneys and advocates on Thursday called on Vermont to become the first state to decriminalize sex work.
Sen. Becca White, D-Hartford, and Rep. Taylor Small, P/D-Winooski, are leading the legislative effort in their respective bodies, though White conceded at a Statehouse press conference that the bill (S.125 in the Senate and H.372 in the House) has a snowball’s chance in hell of meeting a Friday deadline for committee approval in order to advance this year. She and Small are starting the conversation now, hoping the bill has a shot next year, White said.
Though sex work is criminalized, White argued on Thursday that the act itself is not inherently dangerous when it is consensual.
“Our laws should protect people, not push them further toward the margins of our society,” White said. “When we no longer push people to the margins and punish them for being there, we end up having better outcomes.”
Joining White was Henri Bynx, a sex worker and cofounder of the Ishtar Collective, a Vermont-based group that advocates for consensual adult sex workers and survivors of human trafficking. Bynx said that she knows from her own experiences and those of her colleagues that sex workers are “treated as second-class citizens because of how we choose to support ourselves.”
When you actively work in a criminalized industry or have in the past, Bynx said, you’re more likely to be discriminated against when applying for jobs or housing, and you’re afraid to turn to law enforcement when you yourself are a victim of a crime, for fear of arrest.
If Vermont were to decriminalize sex work, Bynx said, “Me and my friends could come out of the shadows and be more honest about who we are, and people who are in a lot more danger than I am can come forward, too.”
No other states have decriminalized sex work, but the bill has garnered significant support in the Statehouse: Including White, the Senate version has 10 sponsors, making up one-third of the upper chamber. Five state’s attorneys — from Chittenden, Essex, Rutland, Washington and Windsor counties — also back the bill, and supporters at Thursday’s press conference affirmed, “Sex work is work.”
White pointed to data from Rhode Island, which inadvertently decriminalized sex work for a number of years (yes, really). In those years, White noted, instances of reported rape and transmission of sexually transmitted diseases went down. “So let’s make laws that are rooted in reality, that are rooted in data, instead of past morality claims or ideology,” she concluded.
And in a world in which sex workers are particularly vulnerable to violence, sexual and otherwise, Bynx said she sees the bill as a chance for her and her colleagues to feel safer.
“I want to get old. I want to see my friends get old. I want us to live and I want us to thrive, not under scrutiny, but in mutual respect and real community care,” Bynx said. “I want to retire from sex work one day with openness and pride for all of the incredible things that I’ve learned and all the incredible people that I know and now call my family.”
— Sarah Mearhoff
IN THE KNOW
It wouldn’t be crossover week if someone wasn’t cutting it close. In this case, this reporter (who has been known to push a deadline or two [Editor’s note: this is true]) is still waiting on the Senate Health and Welfare Committee to take action on S.56, this session’s big child care bill.
It has already been decided that full-day pre-kindergarten will not be part of the committee’s package and that a slimmed-down parental leave benefit will be. But as to the central question at the heart of child care reform — how much should Vermont invest? — the panel’s answer is still subject to revision.
As recently as Wednesday, for example, the committee was looking at a construct that would make families making up to 575% of the federal poverty level eligible for subsidies (for a family of four, that’s $172,500 a year), but new language expected Friday should bump that up to 600% of the poverty line.
A fiscal note won’t be ready Friday, when the committee is scheduled to vote, although the Joint Fiscal Committee hopes it’ll have big-picture appropriation figures to append to the bill.
— Lola Duffort
Following a flood of public concern about plans to apply a pesticide to address milfoil — a widespread invasive weed — on Lake Bomoseen, lawmakers have introduced a bill to ban most chemicals that control aquatic nuisances for one year while a new committee conducts a study.
As introduced, the bill, H.31, contains two parts. The first would establish a moratorium on any new permits from the state’s Agency of Natural Resources that would allow “the use or application of pesticides, chemicals other than pesticides, or biological controls.” It also would ban the use of any pesticides already allowed by the state under existing permits, with a few exceptions for urgent situations.
Its second part would establish an Aquatic Nuisance Control Study Committee, which would assess the environmental and health impacts from using pesticides, other chemicals and biological controls. The committee would compare those impacts to the usefulness of the treatment.
But certain elements of the proposed legislation are not likely to pass out of committee in its current form, according to Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-Dover, vice chair of the House Environment and Energy Committee, which is currently reviewing the bill.
“I’d say there’s a fair amount of contention around whether or not a moratorium is needed, and to what scale,” Sibilia said, “and probably more consensus around (the) study, although we’re hearing from a number of folks that the rulemaking process should be allowed to play out.”
— Emma Cotton
For weeks, lawmakers in the Senate Committee on Education have been working on legislation intended to make Vermont schools safer.
Most of the language in the committee bill, which originated with the state Agency of Education and includes provisions about locking doors during school hours and safety drills, appears to be uncontroversial.
But on Thursday, a coalition of equity organizations expressed alarm over a provision that would require schools to create “threat assessment teams” — which would require the presence of law enforcement officials.
“This feels like a step backwards,” Amanda Garcés, the director of policy, education and outreach at the Vermont Human Rights Commission, told lawmakers Thursday. “Not forward.”
In a Thursday morning press release, the Vermont Police Out of Schools Coalition — which includes the commission, the Rutland Area NAACP and the state ACLU, among others — urged lawmakers to remove that provision. It could imperil students’ privacy and due process, they said, and threatens to disproportionately target students of color and low-income students.
— Peter D’Auria
ON THE MOVE
In a preliminary vote on Thursday, the Vermont Senate advanced a sweeping bill that seeks to further strengthen the state’s existing protections to reproductive health care access, including abortion and gender-affirming care.
Senators approved the measure, S.37, on a voice vote and are expected to cast a final vote Friday, after which it would move to the House for consideration.
Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden Southeast, who spearheaded the bill, told her colleagues on the floor Thursday it is a direct response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision issued last summer, in which the court’s conservative majority struck down nationwide abortion access protections. Following the high court’s decision, the issue was put to individual states to decide, and dozens of states have outlawed or severely restricted access to abortion.
“For nearly 50 years, our state and other states have lived under Roe v. Wade, and it’s allowed … for health care professionals to provide reproductive care for both men and women,” Lyons said on the Senate floor. “The Dobbs decision last summer upended our national understanding of reproductive autonomy.”
— Sarah Mearhoff
Lawmakers advanced a bill Thursday morning that would give free breakfast and lunch to students across the state.
The House Committee on Ways and Means voted 9-3 to advance H.165, a bill that would create a state-funded universal school meals program.
As written, the bill would draw the funding for the program — an estimated $29 million — from the state’s education fund.
Lawmakers have not yet designated another funding stream for the program. Without language specifying another funding source, the bill’s cost would simply be tacked onto the education fund, meaning possible increases in property taxes.
The bill now heads to the House Committee on Appropriations.
— Peter D’Auria
The House Commerce and Economic Development Committee voted Thursday to advance a bill that would put new reporting requirements on the state’s corporate incentives program and create a task force to study further reforms to its operation.
H.10, which now moves to House Ways and Means, had been watered down significantly from its original version, which would have limited the program to times of high unemployment. But the bill would require the program to release previously confidential data on job creation, salaries and the amount recipients actually received from the state.
Lawmakers also made late changes to a provision requiring that the Vermont Economic Progress Council, which reviews company applications, record their executive sessions and make them available to a handful of oversight bodies. The Vermont League of Cities and Towns told the committee that mandated recordings could set a concerning precedent.
Instead, the bill would require the council to allow the legislative economist (currently Tom Kavet) to attend executive sessions — despite the objections of program executive director Abbie Sherman, who told lawmakers on Wednesday she was worried it would make him a de facto non-voting member of the council.
— Erin Petenko
The House on Thursday unanimously approved Vermont’s participation in three interstate professional licensing compacts: one for counseling, which includes mental health and family and marriage counselors, as well psychotherapists; one for physical therapy; and one for audiology and speech-language pathology.
All three compacts have at least two dozen states as current members already and create a reciprocal licensing agreement among all member states.
The goal is to increase the number of people in those professions eligible to practice in Vermont via telehealth and ease licensing requirements for those newly arrived. The bills would begin reciprocal licensing on July 1, 2024, in all three areas to give the Office of Professional Regulation time to implement the necessary procedures.
Also, the House Health Committee took testimony on a bill that would include Vermont in the Psychology Interjurisdictional Compact. That agreement would allow a doctoral-level psychologist licensed through a third-party organization to offer temporary in-person care and ongoing telehealth in any member state.
Marisa Coleman, a clinical psychologist at the University of Vermont Health Network, said membership in the compact is especially important to give people of color and non-English speakers in Vermont access to professionals who can provide “culturally humble care.”
Although Vermont is becoming increasingly diverse, psychologists of color can be counted on one hand, Coleman said. For people looking for support from someone who shares their identity, the options are few. “Weekly, I am at a loss of where to refer these patients,” she said.
— Kristen Fountain
ON THE HILL
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was in the hot seat Thursday, taking questions from the U.S. Senate’s Agriculture Committee. Among its members is Vermont’s own Sen. Peter Welch, who grilled the longtime (minus a Trump-induced break) secretary about his priorities for this year’s Farm Bill. The mammoth bill only comes once every five years, and on Senate Ag, Welch has a key role in shaping it.
Welch has a number of items on his Farm Bill wishlist, but perhaps at the top is for the feds to hurry up and lend a hand to Vermont’s struggling organic dairy farmers. There’s already money allocated — roughly $100 million — but Welch said it’s taking too long for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to get it out the door.
Welch recounted to Vilsack a recent visit to a southern Vermont dairy farm, where a farmer asked point blank: “Where’s the money?” Welch posed the same question to Vilsack on Thursday.
“The money is in the process,” Vilsack responded, saying that he expects it to reach farmers by this summer. Welch responded, “I don’t know that they have that much time. Seriously.”
Asked by VTDigger after Thursday’s hearing whether he was satisfied with Vilsack’s answer, Welch said no.
“I’m not, and I told him that. I said, ‘We don’t have that time to wait,’” Welch said. “Getting the money out too late, to me, it’s a failure. It’s got to be yesterday.”
— Sarah Mearhoff
WHAT WE’RE READING
VTDigger investigates motel housing program, reveals unsafe conditions, little protection for residents (Vermont Public)
Franklin County town elects 3 new selectboard members after residents raise ethics concerns (VTDigger)
An Innovative Drug-Treatment Program Encourages Sobriety With an Incentive: Cash (Seven Days)