Final Reading: In scramble to pass anti-harassment bill, House panel removes key sticking point

Rep. Saudia LaMont, D-Morristown, listens during a meeting of the House General and Housing Committee at the Statehouse in Montpelier in February. The committee had added language that would have extended anti-harassment protections to Vermont students. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

In theory, S.103 seemed like it should have been uncontroversial.

Lawmakers have spent months on the legislation, which would prevent pay discrimination on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation, among others, and would make it easier for victims to pursue harassment claims.

Legislators and advocates described the bill as a key step toward ensuring that Vermont’s workplaces are free of discrimination and harassment.

But over the past weeks, lawmakers have been engaged in a late-session scramble after the Senate drafted language specifically excluding students from the bill’s protections.

The bill passed the Senate in late March and landed in the House General and Housing Committee. There, at the urging of advocates, lawmakers added language that would extend those same anti-harassment protections to Vermont students.

That provision drew opposition from a coalition of public school advocates: the state’s associations of superintendents, principals and school boards, as well as its teachers union. Despite those concerns, the committee approved the bill in late April.

From there, the legislation moved to the House Committee on Education, where its path forward became uncertain. Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, the committee’s chair, said in an interview that the bill presented complex legal issues with only days left in the session to hash them out.

“It’s complicated within the education sphere,” he said. “If you think about a workplace, if you’ve got a worker who’s offending another worker and it rises to that level (of harassment), you know, you can fire that worker. Well, you can’t fire a student, right?”

“As long as (that section) was in there, I don’t think the bill would have made it out,” Conlon said. He noted that his committee has drafted a short-form bill to add student protections, and “we are going to take it up with enthusiasm in January.”

But that led to a charged conversation in General and Housing Friday afternoon, where lawmakers — who had broadly supported S.103, student protections included — decided what to do.

Should the bill be left with House Education? That could push the education committee to amend the bill — or, in the words of General and Housing member Rep. Joseph Parsons, R-Newbury, “do your job.”

“Simple,” Parsons said. “They have the bill. They don’t want the language in it? Take it out.”

But other General and Housing members argued that leaving the proposed legislation in House Ed meant that lawmakers there could simply sit on it until the next session — something that Bor Yang, executive director of the Vermont Human Rights Commission, asked lawmakers to avoid.

In emotional testimony to the committee Friday, Yang urged lawmakers to ensure that as much of the bill as possible be passed this year.

“You’ve heard the opposition,” Yang said. “You’ve heard the proponents. And it’s time to move it.”

The committee ultimately decided to reclaim the bill from House Education.

On Monday, General and Housing members reversed themselves and voted again — for the second time in about two weeks — to advance the bill, this time without the school-related sections. The legislation is now awaiting a vote on the House floor.

Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury, the chair of the House General and Housing Committee, said in an interview that the strategy was “a cleaner way of dealing with it at this time, at this time of year.”

“It’s very important for us to get it across,” he said. “And hopefully this will be the week.”

— Peter D’Auria

IN THE KNOW

With the House and Senate still at loggerheads over how to pay for it, a push by Democrats to inject a historic infusion of cash into Vermont’s ailing child care system is at risk of collapsing.

Lawmakers have been negotiating behind the scenes for weeks over how to finance S.56, a bill that would pump about $120 million a year into the state’s child care subsidy program. But House and Senate negotiators appear no closer to a deal as Friday, their planned adjournment date, creeps ever closer.

“We have hit an impasse on funding,” Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, conceded Tuesday evening.

ON THE MOVE

The Vermont Senate has voted to override Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of S.5, a bill that would set up, but not implement, a clean heat standard.

The body needed a two-thirds majority to overcome Scott’s veto, and senators cleared that threshold with a 20-10 vote Tuesday morning. The measure now returns to the House, which is scheduled to hold its own override vote Thursday. If Democratic leaders of the House are also able to summon a two-thirds majority, the bill would become law over the Republican governor’s objections.

Conor Kennedy, chief of staff to House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, said he’s confident the House also has the votes to override Scott’s veto.

LET’S CLEAR SOMETHING UP

Several Statehouse rats have lightheartedly accused me of an egregious sin: chowing down on lunch in the House gallery Monday afternoon.

Here’s the thing: That wasn’t me. That was my treasured colleague Lola Duffort.

Now, dear readers, I know this will come as a shock to some of you, but two young brunette women can, in fact, be distinguishable from one another. Big news, I know!

To help you keep the two of us straight, here are a few pointers:

I am almost six inches taller than Lola.
My hair is about a foot longer than Lola’s.
My name is Sarah, whereas Lola’s is Lola.

Hope that helps.

— Sarah Mearhoff

ON THE PODIUM

They’re too modest to tell you this themselves but the Final Reading crew of 2022 — Sarah Mearhoff, Lola Duffort and former Digger scribe Riley Robinson — took home silver in the “Outstanding Newsletter” category at the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s annual convention on Saturday.

The association represents more than 450 news organizations throughout the six-state region.

Capturing all the drama under the golden dome is a hefty task, and we’re very proud of the team behind this always informative and occasionally eccentric newsletter.

If you happen upon Sarah or Lola in the Statehouse halls (or eating in illicit places), please tell them congrats!

— The editors