MONTPELIER — A bill that would make a host of changes to the state’s election laws, including an expansion of who must file campaign finance disclosures, appeared to be facing dim prospects Friday — even though the House approved the legislation in March.
The reason the bill, H.474, hadn’t yet advanced in the Senate, on what could be the final day of this year’s legislative session?
“He’s right there,” Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas told VTDigger at the Statehouse Friday afternoon, pointing at Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, as he walked by in a hallway.
According to the secretary, Baruth told Rutland Republican Sen. Brian Collamore, chair of the Senate Government Operations Committee, which has been reviewing the elections bill, not to advance it to the floor unless the House Government Operations Committee advanced another, unrelated bill — a Burlington charter change proposal on which Baruth is the primary sponsor.
Rep. Matt Birong, D-Vergennes, said the House panel he chairs didn’t have the votes to pass out the Burlington bill, S.131, which would ban guns from bars and other venues that serve alcohol in the city. The Senate passed the measure last month, though Gov. Phil Scott has signaled he does not support it.
“We were told that the (elections) bill would not move until the Burlington charter” advanced in the House, Birong said in an interview Friday on the House floor.
Baruth also lives in Burlington and represents the city in the Senate.
Asked about Copeland Hanzas and Birong’s comments Friday evening, Baruth said, “I wouldn’t repeat private conversations” and contended that he “wouldn’t link” the charter change with the elections bill.
Baruth said the elections bill wasn’t moving forward in the Senate because lawmakers ran out of time to take it up amid other competing proposals. Legislative leaders had been planning to adjourn for the year late Friday, though it wasn’t certain they would.
“Burlington has waited 12 years for that charter — and it’s crazy that it’s being held up in the House,” the pro tem added. The city also attempted to get a ban on guns in bars approved by the Legislature in 2014, but wasn’t successful.
Copeland Hanzas and Deputy Secretary of State Lauren Hibbert were both at the Statehouse Friday pushing to get the election bill over the finish line, Copeland Hanzas said. As it passed the House, the bill also includes a slate of measures she said would improve how municipal clerks can run local elections.
Copeland Hanzas accused Baruth of playing “political gamesmanship.”
“The important reforms that are in that elections bill are going to benefit every single municipal clerk across the state, and benefit our office and make it easier for us to ensure that we have fair, secure and error-free elections,” she said. “And so for one person to stand in the way of it is, really, unacceptable.”
Copeland Hanzas added that it’s possible the bill would not advance in a similar form during next year’s session, in 2026, because legislators typically try to avoid making many changes to election laws in a year when they, themselves, would be on the ballot.
Collamore, the Senate Government Operations Committee chair, said Friday that he believed his committee would have passed out the election bill with four of its five members in support. He declined to say whether Baruth, the pro tem, had influenced the bill’s fate.
“I won’t comment on that,” he said in an interview Friday evening.
Birong said some Democrats on his House committee were concerned the charter change would be confusing if guns were prohibited in bars in one city, but nowhere else in the state.
Gov. Phil Scott had expressed similar concerns with the bill and told reporters last week at a press conference he would veto it if it reached his desk. Legislators would be unlikely to succeed on a vote to override any potential veto this year.
Birong had strong words for the pro tem, as well.
“I find it very discouraging that, especially in this day and age where we’re trying to do everything we can to maintain the sanctity of our elections, that a charter request from the pro tem’s district would jeopardize such an essential piece of legislation,” he said.
