Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Good morning. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Thursday, 03/19/2026. It's just after 11:15, and we are taking up a section of age seven seventy two, otherwise known as the landlord tenant bill. This is the judiciary section. And we have Chair Gil Laliberdes from House Judiciary, who was having meetings and talking to people, but then it come back to us with amendment that he's wanting to propose. And so welcome, and you're fresh off of hearing, and glad to see you.

[Martin LaLonde]: Yeah. One one thing after another. I have legislative counsel Cameron Wood with me as well, and and we can we can decide how much detail you wanna go into, as far as I I would have him do the walk through, but I I wanna tell you conceptually. Yes. What what this amendment does. So really what we looked at in the in the judiciary committee was was frankly not to balance what the landlords were getting versus the tenants were getting. That's kind of how it that's a landlord tenant law. There's different interests there. And and that was not our focus. Our focus was on will this court process work? And I will mention a couple places where there's changes because the court process wouldn't really work. And can the court actually do this given the resources that it has and the other challenges it has? And really, understand that based on the bill that passed out of House General, there was a pretty big, well, was a choice that had to be made. Either we're going to allow the other 80% of the civil docket take secondary priority and fall further behind, or we had to pump a lot of additional resources into the court to be able to handle this. So I was looking at a way of how can we make this work given the resources we have right now for the court. So those are the things I've balanced.

[Speaker 0]: So

[Martin LaLonde]: I'll just I'll point out a few places where and and I don't know that you have the draft number 4.1 of which was the draft out of house general via the amendment, would have now as draft number 5.1. But just kind of running through some of these, and and again, Cameron can go a little bit more in-depth. There was an issue as far as the type of service and posting of service that frankly just doesn't work, that's our first amendment. It's the amendment the first on page one, and it actually strikes some language that was in the House General that really went beyond how service and process can be effectuated. So that was one of those of, this is something that doesn't work. The other, we did some changes to deadlines, specifically there was an area, and I'm not going to be able to find it right in front of me right now, but again, Cameron can go over this more in-depth, where there was a change in the House General to a fourteen day answer period, decided that that should really be twenty one, a little less so for court processing, although it does give them a little more time, but more so that this would be like one exception to all other kinds of answers, and we don't wanna start going down the road of making exceptions here and there as far as particular kind of case gets to have a shorter answer period. But we've changed another deadline for from sixty days to ninety days for the purpose of taking a little stress off the court. And we also had a number of places in the house general's bill draft where they had an actual number of days by which the court had to issue rulings. We changed that to promptly, that one's actually

[Speaker 0]: The number of days the word is promptly. The word is promptly.

[Martin LaLonde]: We really actually have to do that, so a little beyond just the court having to have time to process things. We would be getting into court functions in the court if we start telling them when they have to rule on things. Would, there's a separation of powers issue that we wanted to stay away. So there was also, there are two other things that I'll mention. There was a show cause process that was set up in House General, and for multiple reasons, I really felt that that would work. It just was not a workable process, and what we did was we borrowed from another provision in another process that we have in law for, what's the terminology? Unlawful occupant. Unlawful occupant. There's an expedited process to evict an unlawful occupant. We use that structure for instead of the show cause, it's still expedited, but there's more process there, and it's something the court can do and has done. That's for individuals who have their tenancy terminated because of a risk to health and safety. So that's another component that we put in there. The court was more comfortable with being able to actually accomplish that, but that still has that expedited timeframe, as long as there's a showing that there's, in fact, an ongoing threat to health and safety. Not just that there may have been in the past damage or anything like that, there has to actually be an ongoing threat. So the other major change, and it's possible that I missed some minor changes, but I think I've caught them all, Cameron will cover me, is that there was a process to have ejectment hearings and the records of ejectment hearings confidential during the course of the case, and could become unconfidential for various reasons, including if the case concludes and it is found against the tenant. The way that that was set up was, I suppose, workable by the court with significant additional resources, and actually logistically very difficult to implement how it was laid out in the house general's bill. So I tried to replace that with something that would seal the records after a case concluded and there was a writ of possession. We had some additional testimony on that. That is a promising approach, I think. It doesn't go all the way that we would want. But the bottom line is we couldn't get this right in the times allowed, just the couple days that we had. So our recommendation, or my recommendation at this point in this amendment, is striking the confidentiality, and we'll continue to work, it'll have to be a next biennium thing, to get the ceiling component done right. From the testimony I had, I didn't feel that the tenants, the folks that were representing tenants like legal aid, they they were I don't think this is a do or die thing for them. It's definitely something we wanna get right. I don't think that's where their main concerns are with this with this bill. And and they didn't think that my ceiling idea the way that I had set up really did that much, and and it just I think from all parties, I think it needs some more work. So so we just struck that, which also significantly helped with the issue with the court. So with these changes as far as some of the due dates and saying promptly, and a couple other things that we did, and getting rid of that confidentiality, the testimony from Judge Zonay is I don't think they're going to be asking for, from what I understood, additional resources to be able to implement this. And it is prioritizing these, but I don't think it's going to cause us to fall significantly any further behind with the rest of the dockets and such. It's what I was understanding from the courts. So I think we did what we needed to do, and I would say that some of the things we did are, if I look at it in a different way, are in favor of it makes it less bad for tenants and less good for landlords, and some have the opposite effect as far as with as far as what is here.

[Speaker 0]: Did you has this been run by House General at this point as well? Are you doing that at some point?

[Martin LaLonde]: It has not been yet. Okay. So we we just really finalized language this morning. Okay. For an hour.

[Speaker 0]: But is the plan to chat with them

[Martin LaLonde]: at some point? I've kept Chair Mihaly in the loop on that. And I do believe that we have the Landlord's Association at least neutral on it. A previous version that I had, the landlord association was opposed to that, but we did some adjustments on this latest and hopefully last version. So I don't know if I, are two things that I did miss, and I just remembered. One was in the House General, it would require, if somebody wanted to You know what, I'm to let Cameron explain cheering and what was in the House General and what was taken out. That's one thing, and then there's also a place where for an escrow that the court can only order a full payment, we slightly changed that to allow parties to either agree to a lower payment, or if there was money that was needed for for hearing or habitability, that could it could still be a partial payment, but that that was slightly changed. I'll let you talk

[Speaker 0]: about the hearing Welcome, Cameron.

[Cameron Wood]: For the record, Cameron Wood, legislative counsel, are you Okay if I just walk through the amendment Yeah. At this I will share. And what I have up is, as was mentioned, it's draft 5.1 of an amendment from the chair for h seven seventy two. So I'll walk through each of these amendments. And I do have draft 4.1 of the House General Committee up. If if you wanna go back and look at what the language was, I can I can kind of reference back to to where we were or where where the language was when I did my initial walk through? The first amendment here is in section two of the bill striking out some language or striking out a section and then inserting some alternate language. One of the changes that came out of the House General Committee was in regards to you know, tack orders or alternate service of process. So one thing that the recommendation from the House General Committee would be to add language in, where if an alternate service of process was issued by the judge in any civil action, the alternate service would then last for the remainder of that case. So currently, if you're not able to serve necessary documents on a party to a case, You can go into court and you can ask for certain alternate service where you could potentially tack the orders onto the physical location of where that party lives. The House general was changing or adding a section to state that when that alternate service is made for a particular service, that would apply then throughout the remainder of the case. Currently, have to go in every time. If you need alternate service, you would have to make that request every time, and the court would look at it on an individual case by case basis. And so there was a lot of concern because not only would that take away the court's ability to look at those on a case by case basis to determine if it was necessary, but it would also apply to any civil case, not just an objectment action. And so this proposal would remove that ability. So what you have is when a motion for alternate service is filed, this is based on the recommendation, it would just be when the motion for alternate service is filed, the court shall rule on the motion promptly. The house general committee had ruling on the motion within three days, and so that's the primary change. It removes the fact that the alternate service would apply throughout the remainder of the proceeding that's no longer there. So the parties would still have to come in every time they wanted to do an alternate service and request it from the court. And this is just adding in language to say that you have the court needs to rule on that motion promptly. So it changes it from three days to promptly. The next section, second amendment that's being proposed here, would strike out all of the language that was being proposed by House General regarding the changes to the ejectment chapter entitled 12. If you all recall from our walk through, there's currently a process for ejectment. The House General Committee was recommending a new process for a limited subset of eviction types for eviction based on a nonpayment of rent or an eviction based on an individual's failure to comply with material terms of the rental agreement or with the obligations imposed. If you all remember, they were adding in the ability to terminate a rental agreement for repeated non payment of rent or failure to allow access to the dwelling units. And then there were some additional changes in the subdivision that allows for termination when there's certain activity that is threatening other individuals. So for those evictions, the house general committee was creating a new ejectment subchapter, and it was intended to have more shorter time frames on when the court was required to hold hearings or issue orders, etcetera. So most of that is being slightly altered or tweaked based on this amendment, but that's why the amendment is striking that entire section and then re you know, replacing it with this language here, and I'll walk through what those changes are. First off here on the bottom of page two and the top of page three, As the chair was mentioning, one of the changes from the House General Committee was under the current law, a plaintiff can go in and ask that rent be paid into court. And the court has the ability to require that either full payment of rent or partial payment of rent be made into court during the process of the ejectment action. The House General Committee was recommending right here on lines 15 on the bottom of page two. And then the House General language was technically striking this subsection g here because they were recommending that the ability to award partial payment be removed from the court's authority. So in that point, if the landlord was requesting that rent be paid into court during the ejectment action, the court could only be able to award or require full payments. And so the judiciary committee was working through that issue. And the changes here are on page three. So the amendment that you have here would unstrike the sub g. So up above, it would still require the court to initially issue full payment of rent into court. It removes the ability for the partial there under sub d, subsection d, but it would keep the subsection g on the top of three. So it would allow a tenant to still request that that amount be reduced. And then it's adding in language to say that the court may reduce the amount ordered upon a finding that the landlord is failing to comply with the landlord's obligations for habitability or other requirements imposed by chapter 137. So it's allowing the tenant to then request a reduction, but the reduction would only be able to be ordered if it's because there is a habitability issue or the landlord's not complying with other requirements that the landlord's obligated to comply with.

[Speaker 0]: I'll ask a question.

[Michael Nigro]: Does this what is rent in this case? Is it the full rent or if I am if I have a voucher that the landlord receives, is the full amount of rent required on page two the 30%, or is it the 100%?

[Cameron Wood]: It's not defined rent in this chapter here, but presumably it is the entire rent amount that is owed under the rental agreement. But when you begin to bring in federal programs, the court in that case, the landlord in that case are going to have to comply with the federal program requirements that exist. I would need to go look at that to determine how that would potentially impact or alter here. So for example, there are different timelines for termination of rental agreement when you are receiving a voucher. And so in that case, the timelines that exist in state statute would be controlled, the federal regulations would control. But in this case, if an individual has a voucher and they're being ejected and the case is being taken into court, I would need to go review the the federal regulations regarding that.

[Michael Nigro]: So so the two changes that are in these two these these two sections, one made by the the health general in this edition. This is this is changing it so that the tenant by rule or by automatic rule is required to pay full amount of rent into escrow during the process, as opposed to allowing the court procedure to reduce that, which I'm assuming is coming from a procedure that where the tenant has asked for a reduction period and this line before 37 is saying that the only way that the landlord that the tenant would ask for a reduction would ask for a reduction is to prove in some way that the landlord is failing to comply with the landlord's obligations for habitability or other requirements. So if I withhold rent because there's no hot water or heat or something like that, in the previous version of this I can go to the court and say there's no hot water or heat, so this is why I'm not paying rent. The court would say, okay, well then just pay this amount. But now I have to go in and show, this would just change it so that any reason isn't good enough to reduce the rent poverty, inability to pay, and it has to be about habitability or other failures of the landlord to buy a livable place.

[Cameron Wood]: The conclusion there yes, sir, I would agree with that statement. The way it works now is the landlord can file a motion to request that rent be paid into court, and the defendant can file an answer to that. And then the court has the ability to set either full payment or partial payments based on the information provided to the court at that time. It could be because the individual is unable to pay the full amount. The defendant can make any case at that point as to why the individual shouldn't be required to pay the full amount into court. Imagine the two primary reasons are probably the tenant's inability to pay that amount at that point lost their job, some circumstance that is prohibiting them or keeping them from being able to pay the full amount. Or there is some other counterclaim for damages or habitability issue of justifying why the tenant is not paying rent, as you mentioned. And that is a statutory remedy for the tenant. The tenant is not obligated to pay rent if there are certain habitability issues that the landlord is not taking reasonable steps to correct. And what this change is gonna do is the court initially would only be able to require full rent. Then if the tenant applies by a motion, either after the full rent is required or presumably before, the tenant would be able to file a motion saying that partial rent should be required. This language there on lines four through seven would limit the court's authority to issue partial payment or approve the request for partial payment to only those circumstances where there's habitability issue.

[Michael Nigro]: That turn it into an evidentiary type hearing? It could.

[Cameron Wood]: I don't think it would be required. I think if there's no question about the material facts for the request, then the court could order it on their own and based on the motion that's filed with the information that's provided.

[Michael Nigro]: So is it the landlord's word versus the tenant's word? And then it's up to the court without an evidentiary hearing or without part of the process that court has to decide based on what two people happen to say. I would say

[Cameron Wood]: that there's nothing in this language that's changing the process that the court is going to go through to rule on these motions. It's just limiting to say that the court is only authorized to reduce the payment if there is a habitability issue. So the tenant in this instance, the defendant who's filing the motion for the reduction is going to need to provide that information to the court to demonstrate that there's a habitability issue to justify the reduction in rent. The landlord would have the opportunity to respond. And if the landlord is not providing any objection to the information that's being provided by the defendant, then I don't see any reason why the court wouldn't be able to make its determination at that point in time without needing some sort of evidentiary hearing. But it could be if the defendant is claiming that there's a habitability issue and the landlord is filing response answer saying there isn't a habitability issue, or it could be the habitability issue is due to the cause of the defendant, so there's facts that are in dispute between the parties at that point in time, then I imagine the court could order a hearing to make a determination.

[Speaker 0]: Anything else I have to know?

[Cameron Wood]: Well, that's the change in g, and then there's an addition of the subdivision I here in this section to clarify that the parties may come to an agreement at any time on their own for a reduction of the amount to be paid into court. So wanting to put into statute that even though there is the limitation above in sub g, the parties can make an agreement on their own and request the court at that point to reduce the amount paid. The

[Martin LaLonde]: next change from

[Cameron Wood]: the House General Committee report. So a lot of this language that's included in the pages that I'm moving through, I'm going go all the way down to page five. All of this language that I'm skipping over is keeping the language that was being proposed by the House General Committee. I'd be happy to walk through that again if you all would find that helpful, just in the instance of time. I'm going to move to page five. So these sections here are related to the new project process that is being added by the House General Committee. There is a technical amendment here on lines eleven and twelve. This is where the landlord files the complaint into court. And if you recall from my walk through way back, if the landlord is terminating the rental agreement because the tenant is failing to comply with the material terms or their obligations imposed, the landlord has to provide an affidavit to the tenant at that time with facts outlining the justification behind the termination. And so this technical change right here on lines eleven and twelve is requiring that as part of the complaint, a copy of the rental agreement has to be provided, the notice to terminate has to be provided, and it needs to include the affidavit that is given to the tenant as to why the landlord is justifying terminating the rental agreement because the landlord's claiming that the tenant is doing something that's threatening the health or safety of other individuals. So it requires the landlord to provide that affidavit to the court as well. So more of a technical amendment there. I get into the next section related to answer. So the landlord files the complaint, serves that onto the defendant. And then the defendant, under the rules of civil procedure, has a certain time frame in which to respond with an answer to that complaint. The report from the General and Housing Committee had the answer required to be provided within fourteen days, which is different from the rules of civil procedure, which apply to all civil actions where the answer is required to be filed with 21. So it will be shortening that timeframe by a week for an individual to file in an ejectment action. And this proposal would strike that. So it would keep this consistent for all other civil actions where the individual would have twenty one days to respond. The next change is going to be on page six. And there's some language that's not here. There was in the house general recommendation, there was some language being put in this section, which will give the tenant, the defendant, the ability to cure the complaint up to the date that the defendant filed their answer. And there was some concern about the time frame there being relatively short for the individual to come up with being ejected because you're not paying rent and you may be a few months behind, the language would put a hard stop for the defendant to be able to cure that action at the day they file their answer. And it may be difficult for an individual to be able to come up with all of that money to be able cure the action by that point in time. And there was some concern about whether or not that cure period would restrict the party's abilities to settle throughout the case, saying all that to say that that section was removed. And so it's just not here at this point. So the parties could continue to negotiate at any point during the case. And if the parties came to some sort of agreement to dismiss the case, they would be able to do that at any point. There was also some conflict with another statutory section that was brought up by legal aid. And so the recommendation here is to, because of that, just simply remove that language so there's no problem. So now I move to the next change, which is going to be here in the subdivision B, where if the landlord is bringing the case, plaintiff's bringing the case because it's either nonpayment of rent, which is 4,004 and 67 or because of one of the other reasons in 4004 And 67, the court shall set a final hearing date not later than ninety days after the filing of the complaint absent good cause. And that is slightly different than what was proposed by the House General Committee, which was sixty days from service of the complaint. This would be ninety days from filing of the complaint. There was some back and forth. This language changed a little bit from sixty to sixty days after service of the answer. And then this proposal is going backwards just a little bit to what House General had. It'll be ninety days after filing of the complaint. The next change is this subdivision two. So again, we have kind of an expedited process here. The court has testified or the judiciary has testified that they try to get through these cases within one hundred and eighty days. And so this is putting the final hearing within ninety. So there's quite a shortening of the time frame. So the court asked for this language in Subdivision 2 to be added to state that in the event that the landlord or the plaintiff is in possession of the property when they're bringing the objectment action or when the landlord has already received the writ of possession, then you don't need this ninety day shortened hearing time frame because the landlord already has possession of the property. The landlord may still have additional claims for damages or back rent. There may still be other issues needing to be resolved in the action. But if you already have possession of the property, then the court doesn't need to go through this expedited hearing date. So that's what the sub two addition is for. The next change is this section on default where, again, you'll see promptly if the defendant fails to file the answer or isn't participating, etcetera, the House General Committee had five days. The court shall rule on a default a motion for a default judgment within five days. And this just says prompted. The next change is here on this section 4,865. And this is a pretty significant change. As the chair was mentioning, the version that came out of House General had this show cause hearing built into it where if the landlord was bringing the ejectments based on the termination under subdivision 4467 B 2. So these are only evictions when the tenant has done some action or damaged the unit that threatens the health or safety of other individuals, so just that subset of termination. There was a show cause hearing that had to be done within a certain time frame. And it could be the show cause hearing could only look at not that it could only, but the parties could rely on affidavit evidence, so not live testimony. And then if the court felt that there was live testimony needed, the court could set a final hearing date and there were time frames built in for both of those. And there was a lot of concern from the court, from the parties, etcetera, about relying on affidavit evidence to prove that some sort of violent activity occurred was problematic, the time frames were problematic, etcetera. So what this will do is for this new language here, it would allow for an expedited hearing in the event that the eviction is being brought due to and the key language is gonna be here on line sixteen and seventeen. The plaintiff is entitled to immediate possession due to the defendant's continued occupation of the lands or tenements, so the unit or house, the the place of individuals renting, is threatening the health or safety of other residents. That's a distinction between what's in the language regarding the termination of the rental agreement. And forgive me, I'm going to be a little specific here. The termination of the rental agreement allows the landlord to terminate the rental agreement if there are any actions or damage that have threatened the neighbors, other residents, landlord, landlord's agents, etcetera. So the landlord could move forward with an objectment based on one act that a tenant did that threatened other people. The landlord can move forward with that termination. And if the individual stays, the landlord can move forward with that ejectment. The landlord could only request this expedited hearing under this section if the landlord is asking for immediate possession because the defendant's continued occupation of the dwelling unit is threatening other individuals. So there needs to be kind of an ongoing threat based on the defendant continuing to remain in that location. So it's just slightly different. In the event that the landlord wants to make that argument, they could file for this motion and include their information as to why that is the case to the court. And then the court would move forward onto whether to have an expedited hearing based on the information provided. So there's a tweak narrowing based on the amendment that you have here, a narrowing of the circumstances that would lead to an expedited hearing. And then the language in this section follows and mirrors the expedited hearing that currently exists in statute. So we don't have the show cause hearing anymore That's just relying on affidavit evidence, etcetera. It's an expedited hearing based on current statutory language that would only be available if the defendant's continued occupation is threatening the health or safety of other people. The other change, I would say, is on sub B on page seven, which would require that a hearing on the motion be held not later than twenty one days after the motion is filed. Now that doesn't mean that the court rules on it within twenty one days. That means that the court needs to hold the hearing on it within twenty one days to make the determination of whether or not the landlord should be entitled to immediate possession. I'm not gonna walk through all of the language on that section. It does mirror what currently exists in statute, but I did just kinda wanna walk through those primary changes on based on what was there.

[Michael Nigro]: So just first, the whole first section of this amendment deals with evictions related to non Right? Is that accurate for the most part?

[Cameron Wood]: What we were walking through earlier, the Eight

[Michael Nigro]: one three six.

[Cameron Wood]: I just want to look.

[Michael Nigro]: The section title was for non payment or breach.

[Cameron Wood]: The section four eighty five-three here is related to payment of rent into court, that would be for a non payment of rent. Actually, could be for any termination that's brought. But

[Michael Nigro]: And so 4865 threatening behavior changes the conversation in this story in this bill because it's going specifically to situations where situations where there's a tenant, presumably someone with permission to live there with a lease or what have you. And this talks about if that if that tenant is causing these troubles that the that the plaintiff can ask for virtually immediate relief from this removal. How does this fit in with a reality where the tenant itself, the leaseholder itself isn't responsible for the damages, but there are other people who have made themselves not even tenant by rent, but people who are crashing. We've heard maybe not in this committee, but we've heard in the past about tenants or apartments that are being dwelled by people who are committing crimes that are selling drugs out of the apartment or are couch surfing or what have you and if they're the problem then in this case the tenant still is the one who gets ejected?

[Cameron Wood]: Possibly, yes, sir. The termination language, the language in Title IX under the residential rental agreement chapter, It requires tenants. So there's a a section about tenant obligations, and it states that the tenant shall conduct himself or herself in its legacy language there, but the tenant shall conduct themselves and require other persons on the premises with the tenant's consent to conduct themselves in a manner that will not disturb other tenants' peaceful enjoyment of the premises. And then you get to the termination language, and it states that the landlord can terminate the rental agreement based on threats, damage to the dwelling unit, or other activities that threaten the health or safety of other individuals. It's not defined to say that that activity has to be the tenant. If the tenant and there was some discussion, even I believe it was just yesterday, about circumstances where there could be a domestic violence situation or the individual tenant is being held hostage by some other person, the the language in the termination section doesn't require that the activity that's threatening other people be done by the tenant. So a landlord, based on the language, couldn't move forward with a termination if the tenants invitees, and that's just the legal term that's used, the invitees are the ones causing that threat. Now if the landlord wants to I I would argue this in the language. If the landlord is going to fix the individual, so they terminate the agreement because of threatening activity from someone else who they have allowed to be in the unit. And then that individual moves out. Let's say the tenant gets a restraining order against the person or a court order against the person, etcetera. And that person has been removed from the property. I think the landlord could probably still go forward with the ejectment action based on prior activity. But what I would argue is the landlord in that case, based on just those limited facts, wouldn't be able to argue that they should have an expedited hearing process if because the defendant's continued occupation isn't threatening other individuals at that time because the defendant wasn't the one causing the threatening activity to occur. So I would say that the landlord could probably move forward with an objectment, but it wouldn't fall under this expedited hearing process. That's my reading of the statute. It's going to obviously depend on the arguments that are being made in the court's interpretation of the facts on the ground.

[Michael Nigro]: Does that apply to the trespass order as well?

[Cameron Wood]: Trespass order, there is an so that brings me to the next amendment actually.

[Michael Nigro]: Just Leo, go ahead. I I just have one question for representative Laroche. Does this represent, in your experience, not specifically the landlord tenant law, but just the jurisdictional process, Does this represent these changes represent in terms of how the courts are interacting with the situation, a significant change from what exists today?

[Martin LaLonde]: So which part? You mean this exercise?

[Michael Nigro]: This interaction now, is the shortening of processes, the I mean, that's the main thing, right? It's shortening and then also removing certain rights and granting certain rights in ways that are obviously it's an amendment, so it's different than what exists today, but the changes are at least in my opinion pretty substantial. I'm just curious to know how your basic experience in dealing with this kind with with the with the judiciary system, are these kinds of changes significant?

[Martin LaLonde]: So the judiciary, there are other areas of law where they have deadlines that are even more strict than this. So as far as tightening deadlines, we look at that very carefully because we want to give the court some wiggle room if they can't quite make it. So that's often throughout this with good flaws, can extend the timelines. That's not unheard of, I mean, we've done that a lot. This expedited process, the fact that it is really mirroring this other language for unlawful occupant, Also, it's like, this isn't a huge change. The other thing was that this show cause thing was kind of new and actually had all sorts of problems. And but this is this is a process that they already do. So I would say, no, it really isn't that, I mean, it's, yeah, it's significant in this realm of tenant landlord, law. It's making a pretty big change. But as far as how the courts deal with different kinds of areas, no, I mean, it did before, like the confidentiality provisions, that was very difficult, very different. And that's why we're trying to do something different for that, which is gonna take a little longer. But no, overall, if I'm looking at it as far as big change for the courts on how they do business, no, I'm not commenting about landlord tenant law and how big the change it is for landlords or tenants.

[Cameron Wood]: I would just quickly echo some of what the chair was just saying. The amendment that you have here really does mirror what currently exists regarding objectment action for the expedited hearing. So I don't know that it's significantly altering how the court is going to go about its process. The two things I will say that are changing are the time frames and then the limitation on the partial rent into court. And so those are the two biggest changes here. I think the process is staying the same. It is just saying that the process is going to be significantly faster under certain subsets of termination. But I think the process is staying the same. That obviously is a policy decision for you all as a body as to whether it's appropriate to have those expedited time frames. I would say that's a significant change. I don't think the process is changing significantly based on the amendment here. Moving into trespass, though, the third instance of amendment here on lines six through eight removes the appeal language that was in the trespass section that came out of House General. And so I'm going to go to that language really quickly. If you recall, there was this new sub g going into the unlawful trespass section. And it authorizes a landlord, the owner of the property, to issue a no trespass order to an individual tenant's invitees or guests. So that's why I said invitee. It's a legal term. So the invitees or licensees from the tenant. The landlord can exclude those individuals and give them a no trespass order under a, b, or c. So if the tenant consents to it, if the invitee or licensee is violating the terms of the lease agreement, or the invitee or licensee is violating state or federal law. Under those three circumstances, the landlord can now exclude a tenant's, yes, if you will, or the individuals the tenant is inviting over the location. There was language here in sub two that allowed the individual who was receiving the trespass order to request an appeal, and the appeal could be brought in small claims. There was testimony in house judiciary from the judiciary about small claims is not really the jurisdiction that would cover something like this. So there was discussion about potentially giving it to the judicial bureau. Doesn't really fit under the judicial bureau either, because the judicial bureau hears claims of violations of law. And this really isn't about a violation of law. This is a private matter between parties. And so there was also review that there is no appeal rights to a notice of trespass currently. So if a property owner provides a trespass order against an individual now, there is no appeal rights to that, goes in line with the fact that the individual owner of that property has the right to determine who can and cannot come on said property. And so this amendment would remove the appeal for that notice. And then lastly, the fourth instance of amendment, as was mentioned by the chair, is removing the entire section related to confidentiality of records for an injectment action. So as the bill came out of House General, it said that the records would become confidential at the point of filing. And then later on, if the landlord received a writ of possession under a limited circumstance of termination, so if it was for nonpayment of rent or for breach of material terms, etcetera, then they would lose their confidential status at that point in time. There was then a change and a proposal to have the record sealed at the conclusion of the case, not at the beginning of the case. And then as the chair was walking through and mentioning, this amendment is simply removing the section entirely at this point. That is the last change.

[Speaker 0]: Great. Mike?

[Michael Nigro]: Just as we're going through the time frames, I just want to make sure I've got it right. I think in the original bill, we heard that the the goal was to take the eviction process down from like six months to closer to sixty to ninety days. The the time changes here. Is that adding about thirty days to that?

[Martin LaLonde]: Yes. Yeah. Mean, for for the non payment. Right.

[Michael Nigro]: Right. For non payment or or make a violations or breach. Yeah. Breach. Okay.

[Cameron Wood]: So and I would just say in response to that, there's keep in mind, there's the reduction in certain time frames in the termination section. Because, again, the landlord has to terminate the residential rental agreement first, And there is reductions in the House General's report for certain terminations. And then the new ejectment process is bringing the time frames down for termination due to nonpayment of rent or for breach of the terms of the rental agreement.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, any other questions from anybody? Thank you for all the extra work you've done to meet the people. Absolutely. This is not a tricky, it is a tricky issue, it's not an easy issue to deal with as we've known, and you all know better than me over the years. This has been ongoing. So thank you for your work. We are not voting on this today. If there's a vote, it will be tomorrow on the bill. So I'll just keep you posted. I'm waiting to hear what's happening. You may be talking forward to the other committees, and I don't know what's So going this was our part that I knew you had to do. So thanks very much. Thank you. Committee, we're going to be back here at one There's maybe some other things happening over lunch. So stay tuned, but we will go off live and come back at one unless I hear anything else from you. Just keep your phones at hand because things may be changing.