To Zoom or not to Zoom, that is the question.
Vermont’s Senate Committee on Government Operations has been grappling for weeks with what to do next as time runs out on pandemic-era state policies expiring this summer. Would, should or must public bodies continue to meet virtually?
Specifically, the committee is tearing into S.55, which currently states that certain public bodies are not just allowed, but would be required to provide both in-person and virtual options for citizens to speak their piece.
This week, municipalities got their say. The verdict? Decidedly mixed. The most common refrain was that one size does not fit all, so please let us choose for ourselves.
“The question the Committee needs to ask itself is, are we mandating hybrid meetings or are we mandating successful hybrid meetings’,” one select board member, Gary Briggs, advised the committee Friday afternoon.
“In Lunenburg, we offer a very basic Zoom meeting option. Over the last 10 months, the average number of attendees via Zoom is one,” Briggs added.
Town board chairs said that hybrid meetings are actually hard to pull off well. From Isle La Motte and Plainfield, they warned of disruptions from ‘Zoom bombers.’ Others feared they would forget to click ‘record’ or not have the staff to facilitate communicating online comments to those there in person. And what about the internet!
“Please understand that the Town of Benson does not have fiber internet. Our internet is very, very poor,” Benson selectboard chair Linda Peltier wrote in. “Please, please be considerate of the towns that have such limited options.”
The committee has been trying to tip-toe the line between accessibility and feasibility. Now some committee members appeared ready to head away from a hybrid mandate.
“The towns that I believe are able to do it are doing it now and to mandate it would create poor quality meetings,” Sen. Becca White, D-Windsor, said, adding. ”I don’t think that is in service of the goal that we have in this bill,”
But greater accessibility to public meetings is still important, she said, and Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central, agreed.
“The system as it is is not working and to put the burden on people who are already shut out of these spaces to (have to) continue to ask to be allowed into these spaces just doesn’t seem right to me,” Vyhovsky said.
“It’s 2024. We need to support our towns to modernize their practice and make democracy more accessible,” she said.
— Babette Stolk
In the know
This week, the House and Senate chose members to represent their chambers in a conference committee set to hammer out their differences on H.839, this year’s Budget Adjustment Bill.
On the Senate side: Sens. Jane Kitchel, D-Caledonia, Andrew Perchlik, D/P-Washington and Rich Westman, R-Lamoille.
And the House: Reps. Diane Lanpher, D-Vergennes, Robin Scheu, D-Middlebury and Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury.
Of top priority for the conference committee is to mind-meld on how to continue the state’s emergency motel housing program, plus how to distribute state recovery dollars to municipalities flooded over the summer. Another hotly debated component of the bill: eligibility for new after-school program funding delivered by cannabis sales.
Once the conference committee reconciles the House and Senate versions, the bill can once again head back to the floors for votes, then off to the governor’s desk for his signature or veto.
Catch up on last week’s BAA coverage here.
— Sarah Mearhoff
The Senate Judiciary Committee is removing some much debated language on Vermont’s Raise the Age statute in its latest iteration of S.209, and instead moving forward with a “clean” bill with a focus solely on the bill’s original intent, to regulate so-called ghost guns.
Ghost guns, by the committee’s definition, are self-manufactured, unserialized firearms — often produced either by 3D printing or assembling a full weapon with separately sourced gun parts. While legal under federal law, these self-built guns have no serial numbers, unless one is added. They are largely untraceable, unlike guns purchased through a federally licensed gun dealer. In the eyes of some, that’s a problem.
Previously tacked onto the bill was a directive related to Vermont’s Raise the Age statute, a 2018-era piece of legislation which aimed to gradually increase the age at which suspects of nonviolent crimes are referred to family court, rather than criminal.
The law already applies to suspects up until their 19th birthday, but the Scott Administration has once again requested that lawmakers push off enacting the second part of the bill — which would increase the age through a suspect’s 20th birthday, saying the Department of Children and Families cannot handle any heavier of a case load.
What has resulted is a fierce debate between senators and Administration officials — one that, if left in S.209, could jeopardize its path into law. On Friday, Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Sears, D-Bennington, made the call to divorce Raise the Age and ghost guns. Then, Sears told VTDigger Friday, the bill can be judged on its own merits.
Instead, Raise the Age language is now slated to be tacked onto S.58, a bill that, according to Sears, is shaping up to become a public safety omnibus bill. He said his committee will also look at adding language expanding the list of Vermont’s “Big 12” offenses.
S.209, the ghost gun bill, is set to receive a committee vote next week.
— Sarah Mearhoff
Gov. Phil Scott’s 2025 budget proposal would force the Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs to cut as many as nine prosecutor positions, department leaders said this week. It’s a move that Democratic lawmakers, and the department itself, said could hinder the state’s efforts to bolster accountability in the criminal justice system.
The possibility of layoffs — or of reductions in attorneys through attrition — also drew criticism from the leader of the state employees’ union. Steve Howard said he sees a disconnect between the possible impacts of Scott’s proposed budget and the governor’s calls for lawmakers to tackle pressing public safety challenges.
Among those challenges, officials have said, is the state’s persistent backlog of thousands of unresolved court cases, which has left some alleged offenders — and victims — waiting months or even years for a trial.
— Shaun Robinson
Gov. Phil Scott on Friday denied that his administration had improperly altered an advisory group’s recommendations, rebutting the Vermont ACLU’s accusation that the state’s top health official had acted illegally.
On Thursday, the Vermont ACLU said that Health Commissioner Mark Levine had unilaterally and unlawfully changed the final recommendations of the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee, a group discussing how to spend settlement funds from opioid manufacturers.
That change, the ACLU wrote in a letter, amounted to an “egregious” violation of Vermont’s Open Meeting Law and the statute that created the advisory group.
But in a Friday afternoon press release, the Scott administration defended Levine’s conduct, arguing that he had acted within the law and had been “inappropriately smeared.”
— Peter D’Auria
On the move
The Senate Committee on Finance approved unanimously by voice vote on Friday afternoon “a concurrence” with H.850, recently approved by the House.
The bill removes a 5% cap on the impact of education spending on property tax rates in current law. It also changes the mechanism for offsetting the new “pupil weighting” scheme over the next five years. And it gives school districts time to reopen their approved annual budgets giving them until April 15 to hold a vote.
But that doesn’t mean the committee is done with the bill. Chair Ann Cummings, D-Washington, promised there would be testimony next week about the change. If needed, the committee would make an amendment from the floor, she said.
— Kristen Fountain
Visit our 2024 Bill tracker for the latest updates on major legislation we are following.
Full circle
Rep. Matt Birong, D-Vergennes, took a not-so-subtle dig at the Senate yesterday during his floor report on S.154, a bill to update Vermont’s “State Plane Coordinate System.” As first reported in this very newsletter, rumor has it that the bill was mistakenly referred to the Senate Transportation Committee because it includes the word “plane” — despite having nothing actually to do with airplanes.
On the floor, Birong listed homonyms of the word “plane” that are “not relevant to the underlying bill,” including airplanes, wood planes, hydroplaning and “plain” bagels.
Today, the ribbing seemed to have come full circle.
Birong received not one, not two, but three bags of mini bagels, all plain. Two bags were left at his seat in House Gov Ops, he said, and the other was stuffed into his assigned House floor desk.
Birong told VTDigger this afternoon that he believes the glutinous antics came courtesy of the House Human Services Committee. Not long after, he found a note penned by none other than Rep. Dan Noyes, D-Wolcott, attached to one of the bags. Good guess!
Asked what he now plans to do with his three dozen bagels, Birong wasn’t quite sure.
“We’ll save that for next week,” he said.
— Shaun Robinson
String section
In yesterday’s newsletter on the Statehouse wedding of Rep. Mary-Katherine Stone, D/P-Burlington, omitted an important fact: The violin player who serenaded the evening’s festivities was, in fact, none other than Rep. Gabrielle Stebbins, D-Burlington. Apologies for the oversight!
— Sarah Mearhoff
What we’re reading
Ukrainian man pleads guilty in costly UVM Medical Center ransomware attack, VTDigger
Bracing for property tax hike, lawmakers drop bid to give themselves raises, Seven Days
‘Miles traveled’ fees for electric vehicles gets support from Vermont Agency of Transportation, Vermont Public
Correction: An earlier version of this story misrendered quotations.
