Friday, July 24, 2020
Wearing masks in public will be mandatory in Vermont under a new order Gov. Phil Scott announced Friday. Though he'd long resisted issuing such a mandate, the governor described the move as a bid to keep the state’s infection rates the lowest in the nation as COVID-19 cases soar in other states.
Noting that those cases are “inching closer to our borders,” Scott said the time had come to require what is now a mere recommendation — that people wear masks in public settings where social distancing is not possible, effective August 1.
“Looking at the situation in the South and West and knowing we’ll have more people coming to Vermont, and more Vermonters inside as the weather gets colder, we need to be sure we’re protecting the gains we’ve made,” Scott said.
The order, which Scott has resisted for weeks in favor of education and encouragement, will require anyone over 2 years old to wear a mask in public — indoors or outdoors — where they cannot maintain six feet of distance from one another.
Tags: COVID-19 , mask , mandate , Phil Scott , governor , Vermont , coronavirus , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
On Monday, Gov. Phil Scott signed into law H.716, which grants free and permanent hunting and fishing licenses to the approximately 6,000 members of Vermont's four officially recognized Native American tribes. Introduced in February, the bill passed both legislative houses with broad support from across the political spectrum, and with an endorsement from Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan.
“This bill is very significant,” Stevens wrote in an email to Seven Days. “It finally recognizes the agreements our Abenaki ancestors retained in our 1796 land grants and other treaties to always reserve the rights to hunt and fish in our territories. This helps our people continue to have access to our natural food sources, and removes the financial barriers that may have prevented some of our citizens from that access.”
As Stevens noted during a February 5 press conference when the bill was introduced, the Abenaki weren’t seeking preferential treatment or looking to deprive others of their property rights. The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department already issues free hunting and fishing licenses to seniors, veterans and people with disabilities. This legislation simply adds a new category of hunters and fishermen who are exempt from state fees. Abenaki sportsmen must still abide by all fish and wildlife regulations and seasons. The new law takes effect on January 1, 2021.
Tags: Don Stevens , Abenaki , hunting , fishing , license , Web Only , Image
Saturday, June 27, 2020
Throughout the day and into the evening, the House and Senate took turns finalizing an array of policy and spending bills in one Zoom room after another. Just after 9 p.m., lawmakers wrapped up a session that had already gone nearly two months longer than usual. Even then, they made plans to return on August 25 to finalize next year's state budget.
"It's farewell, not goodbye, for this session," Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) said just moments before the quasi-adjournment. "No rest for the weary."
The focus of the day was wrapping up a trio of bills appropriating nearly $577 million of the $1.25 billion in federal Coronavirus Relief Fund money Vermont received as part of the CARES Act. The legislature had previously agreed to another three bills with a combined $249 million in aid. And Gov. Phil Scott, working with the legislature's Joint Fiscal Committee, had spent or obligated an additional $177 million.
"Together, we got over a billion dollars out the door for Vermonters," House Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero) told her members late Friday.
Tags: coronavirus , Mitzi Johnson , Tim Ashe , Jane Kitchel , Kitty Toll , Michael Marcotte , Topper McFaun , Phil Scott , Becca Balint , Web Only , Image
Friday, June 26, 2020
The bill, S.219, also commits lawmakers to consider further reform measures in the years ahead in recognition of the societal awakening that has occurred since the death last month of George Floyd.
The Senate unanimously approved the bill last week and — after some last-minute jockeying with the House before adjourning for two months — concurred with the lower chamber's version late Friday night. The bill now heads to Gov. Phil Scott, who has signaled his support for police reforms.
"We're living in tumultuous times, and we all know there have been sweeping calls to drastically change law enforcement," said Rep. Nader Hashim (D-Dummerston), a former state trooper, as he virtually presented the bill on the floor.
Tags: police reforms , Statehouse , lawmakers , S.219 , Web Only , Image
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
"This is like the taxpayers and press being locked out of City Hall for a public meeting," wrote Loomis, who is also editor and co-owner of Waitsfield's Valley Reporter.
The next day, it happened again.
Now, Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) is promising that the Senate will adopt a policy established a month ago by the House barring committees from conducting business when they encounter technical difficulties. "If the streaming isn't working, we'll stop," he pledged. "I'll be telling all the chairs that if it happens again, they should stop officially meeting."
Tags: Lisa Loomis , Tim Ashe , Mitzi Johnson , Chris Bray , Peter Sterling , Kevin Moore , Web Only , Image
Monday, June 22, 2020
Other senators told Seven Days that they viewed Rodgers' words as sexist or homophobic — and certainly intolerant. Members of the Senate's Committee on Committees, meanwhile, said they expected to meet in the coming days to determine whether Rodgers should be sanctioned for his actions — first reported by VTDigger.org — though it appeared unlikely that they would strip him of his committee assignments.
The Senate drama began last week when Rodgers and fellow Northeast Kingdom Sen. Bobby Starr (D-Essex/Orleans) criticized the leaders of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee for working to reform Act 250, the state's landmark land-use law, while legislating remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic. Rodgers, a member of the committee, said his professional obligations and spotty internet service had made it difficult to take part in the deliberations — and alleged that the committee's leadership and Statehouse lobbyists had "largely worked behind the veil in crafting" the legislation.
"It's not transparent. It's not friendly to the public or people who want to participate," Rodgers told his colleagues last Wednesday during an all-Senate caucus meeting. "I'm extremely frustrated."
Tags: John Rodgers , Tim Ashe , Brian Campion , Chris Bray , Debbie Ingram , Becca Balint , Bobby Starr , Web Only , Image
The procedural snag is the latest act in a long legislative drama over how Vermont should modernize Act 250, the 50-year-old landmark environmental law.
Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, acting as president of the Senate, on Friday and again Monday agreed with objections that the environmental amendments were not “germane” to the underlying affordable housing bill.
That parliamentary maneuver prompted Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) to pull the bill from consideration — for now.
The setback was disappointing but not fatal to the effort to update the law, said Sen. Chris Bray (D-Addison), chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee.
Tags: Act 250 , Chris Bray , David Zuckerman , John Rodgers , Web Only , Image
Friday, June 19, 2020
The dual tracks reflect the pressure lawmakers feel to act both quickly and deliberately as they participate in the painful debate about racism and police brutality that has convulsed the nation since the death of George Floyd.
Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed last month in Minneapolis when a white police officer pressed his knee on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
After taking testimony for two weeks, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday divided a police reform bill into two parts in an effort to ensure the reforms in S. 219 — including assurances that police collect and report race data — can be passed by both chambers of the General Assembly by the end of this month.
The committee moved provisions dealing with police use of deadly force into a separate bill, S. 119, because House members wanted more time to take up the complex measure after the August break, Sen. Dick Sears (D-Bennington) told his colleagues Friday.
Both bills passed out of the Judiciary Committee on Friday, which Sears noted was “appropriate” given the Juneteenth holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the U.S.
“Hopefully they will make a difference,” Sears said of the two bills.
The first bill simply requires that in order for law enforcement organizations to receive state grants, they must show that they have complied with existing laws requiring the collection of race data in police interactions with the public.
Police agencies already must gather information on the age, race and gender of drivers, as well as the reason for and outcome of traffic stops. The bill would require additional reporting of whether police threatened or used physical force, whether any injury resulted, and whether a "prohibited restraint" was used.
“The goal of this section is a ban on chokeholds,” Sears said Friday.
The bill defines such restraints as “any maneuver on a person that applies pressure to the neck, throat, windpipe, or carotid artery that may prevent or hinder breathing, reduce intake of air, or impede the flow of blood or oxygen to the brain.”
The committee removed references in the draft to “spine” and “torso” after Minority Leader Joe Benning (R-Caledonia) said there might be times when an officer legitimately needs to sit on a suspect who is “flipping out” and endangering others.
The bill also defines an officer's failure to intervene when another officer uses excessive force as unprofessional conduct.
The bill would require the Department of Public Safety to ensure that all state police have body cameras, and to submit a budget for such purchases to lawmakers by August. The bill would go into effect August 1.
The sections regarding the use of deadly force were moved to a separate bill that would go into effect October 1. S.119 deals with “law enforcement training on appropriate use of force, de-escalation tactics, and cross-cultural awareness.”
The bill would establish a statewide policy that clarifies that the use of physical force “is a serious responsibility that shall be exercised judiciously and with respect for human rights and dignity and for the sanctity of every human life.”
Officers can use deadly force “only when necessary in defense of human life,” and “shall be evaluated” by others “based on the totality of the circumstances known to or perceived by the officer at the time.” The bill stresses that officers could use “proportional force if necessary to effect the arrest, to prevent escape, or to overcome resistance” of a suspect.
On this point, Sears invoked Floyd's killing. “We had a person who is alleged to have passed a $20 bill in a store in Minneapolis and the whole arrest, restraint, everything results in that man’s death," Sears said. "Is that proportional to the crime?”
The full Senate is expected to take the bills up next week.
Tags: use of force , police , black lives matter , Web Only , Image
"Today, Madame Speaker, you have allowed this body to sink to a new low," Rep. Bob Bancroft (R-Westford) told House Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero). Bancroft said that, while he had not voted for Trump and frequently disagreed with the president, he was "ashamed" of the House for adopting a "divisive and politically inflammatory" resolution.
"I'm embarrassed that this body has descended into a political gutter," Bancroft said.
The resolution, authored by Rep. Kevin "Coach" Christie (D-Hartford) and cosponsored by a majority of his colleagues, pays homage to Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when slaves in the Confederate state of Texas were finally declared free. It also describes the recent death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by Minneapolis police, and names six other people of color who died in similar circumstances. It declares that Vermonters of color have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic and are "subject to disparate law enforcement treatment."
Christie, who is Black, said he offered the resolution "with mixed emotions, celebration and sadness" and called it critical to remember that systemic racism continues to plague the state and the country.
Tags: Juneteenth , Kevin Christie , Bob Bancroft , Bob Helm , Pattie McCoy , Marianna Gamache , Larry Cupoli , Hal Colston , Web Only , Image
Thursday, June 18, 2020
The Senate sidestepped the acrimony that flared a day earlier when two senators blasted the process that shaped the bill.
Sen. John Rodgers (D- Essex/Orleans) took issue on Wednesday with the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee's work, noting that neither he nor Sen. Corey Parent (R-Franklin), both members of the committee, had been able to vote on an amendment earlier this week due to telecommunications difficulties.
The residents of his rural district are frustrated about their inability to participate in online legislative hearings, especially on bills of such consequence, Rodgers said.
Tags: act 250 , development , affordable housing , Web Only , Image