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[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Committee this Tuesday afternoon, January sixth. We're taking up some other unfinished business from last year, age 28, relating that related to including an affirmation option under both requirements entitled work 10 because well, I'll have Jen explain why we need the amendment, but we have an amendment to that. And I wanted also if you could bring us back up to speed of what this largely technical bill does.
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Good afternoon. Jennifer Carberry from the Office of Legislative Counsel. Nice to see you all back. We are looking at age 28, which is an act relating to including an affirmation option in oath requirements in titles one through 10 of the Vermont Statutes Annotated. So you may remember we looked at this briefly last year. There is a provision you can see in section one of the bill in title one existing law. There are a couple of provisions saying that oath includes affirmation. It's a little strangely worded. It says oath shall include affirmation whereby law an affirmation may be substituted, which as far as on lawyers, all cases. And it says in like cases, sworn shall include affirmed. So this would just specify that oath shall include affirmation in all cases, sworn shall include affirmed. And then it uses similar language in section two. But then it goes through and starts actually adding affirmation throughout the first 10 titles of the VSA, which was just a fairly round number and draws to 66 pages, which seemed like enough for one year as opposed to trying to do all 33 titles at the same time. And so this would specify everywhere in the statutes in those titles where it talks about somebody swearing an oath that there there's the affirmation option available as well. The reason that you have an amendment before you is because this bill was introduced in 2025 and amends a bunch of different sections and titles one through 10. A few of those sections, actually only four of them were amended in other ways by legislation last year. And so I've just updated those statutes to reflect as underlying law the changes that were made last year and then made the same affirmation language change that we were making in the underlying bill. But we wanna make sure we're not resetting They're all insurance laws. We don't wanna reset the insurance law back unless you intend to by overwriting it with an older version of law.
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Don't worry about that. You get in trouble with common speech. Yes. Okay, questions? I don't have a question,
[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: but I don't have a problem adding affirmation on here. And it and I found out that even though our language in the building doesn't have being affirmed in it now, that people have been affirming for years in the building. They've been taking, you know, whatever oath it is, scratching things out. And and I got this from and I just got this from somebody who used to work in the clerk's office. And the example that was used was in I remember very specifically that in o nine, we had a a legislative member that was a quaker. And because of their I don't know, religious beliefs, their lifestyle, you know, or what it is, that because of, you know, of of the life that they've led, they couldn't swear to, they had to affirm. So on the paperwork, they crossed out the, you know, whatever they needed to cross out and put I affirm.
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So it is already I mean, it's in the Vermont constitution talking about an oath of oath or affirmation of allegiance. Your oath of office says you do solemnly swear parentheses or affirm in the Vermont constitution. So it may have been that their paperwork did not match what the stat what the constitution provided for. So what's this?
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Is it more or less just codifying the constitution then? So the cons I
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: mean, that is very specific to the oaths, the oath that you take or oath or affirmation of office that I'm talking about. There there is language in title one that already says you can affirm anytime you can swear an oath. Okay. This is there had been interest from the member who introduced the bill in specifying throughout the statutes wherever it says oath that affirmation is permissible and wherever it says swear that affirm is permissible. So substantively, it's not really changing the law. I think it's clarifying a little bit in the Title I provision, but the Title I provision already says, already means that anywhere in the statutes that the word oath or swear is used, affirmation is permissible.
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: But you would have to know about that type
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of You would have to know about that.
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: In a separate section where it just says, okay, swear or or sworn. And this puts it wherever we see that language.
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And there had been some questions when I was in here last year about what's allowed under federal law. It's actually so I looked into that some it is actually one USC section one talks about oaths and affirmations. The first bill that the US House of Representatives ever introduced and that George Washington signed as president was actually about taking the oath or affirmation of office. So the idea of of taking an affirmation
[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: It was a very serious to an oath
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: has been around in this country for a very long time and is is largely tied to our first amendment freedom of religion that nobody can be required to swear, know, so help me God if they do not believe in a higher power like that.
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Questions?
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. So why wasn't this done a long time ago? And now we're we're I mean, it seems so mundane to take up now, but I guess we have to, but we've got a lot more serious business to take care of if you ask me, but.
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I don't know why it wasn't done before. There are certain places in the statutes that already use the the phrase oath or affirmation or swear or affirm and others that don't. So it's sort of inconsistent because of that blanket title one provision. I think the the ability to affirm already exists, but there had been interest as the chair said, not everyone knows to go look at title one to see how to read a provision in title 13. And so there was interest in the original sponsor from the original sponsor of the bill in having that language be used consistently throughout. Alright.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: If I'm not mistaken, I think
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I I already deal with this when I'm when I'm dealing with when I'm acting as justice of the peace. Correct?
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Not as familiar with the scope of I know notaries deal with this with affirmations.
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Herniteteer too.
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So I'm not I'm not sure what's involved in the role of justice of the peace, but, yes, probably.
[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: It's better late than never. So swearing stays in, right?
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Swearing stays in. Yeah, the language starts sparing. Right, we're not replacing it, it's just adding explicitly the
[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: All the other languages are the I mean, people who wanted to swear to a higher power or whatever their god is, is going to stay in there, all we're doing is, in a sense, being more inclusive in a sense, but we're already inclusive. It's just that we didn't know it. Right. To
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: be more overtly inclusive.
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. So it's not taking away the oath or swearing language. Is adding specifically the affirmation option everywhere that both horsewearing appears. And this is titles one through 10. So presumably, if somebody makes a similar request, I would be back next year with titles 11 through 20 or something like that.
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: It gets you back into the committee then.
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's very clear. So
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: we had some testimony last year that I don't know that we need, I'm not sure who else we would call on this, fairly straightforward, but what do think, Tom?
[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I can't think of anybody else.
[Karen Dolan (Member)]: So, Karen? I was just looking back at my other version of it, and it was saying that the secretary of state said it might be helpful to push back a bit on the timeline so forms and websites can be updated. But I just don't know if we've checked in with them, if there's any timing for them. I think that's the only thing I have.
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I do think, again, with the Title I provision, perhaps they should have been allowing the affirmation option on the forms all along?
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I think also if we pass this out here, I know they won't take it up till crossover, but I don't think that's going be an issue. And they will see this, and they will have until July.
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But I will double check to make sure that this is And I do need to update the effective date. Thank you. I was reminded by a committee member that while I updated the statutes, didn't update the 07/01/2025 effective date, which doesn't do us much good now. So I will need to update that to 07/01/2026 or a different date if the committee performs a different date.
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Anything else? Any other questions?
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Are we gonna be voting on this?
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, tomorrow morning. Have an answer. If we need to change the effective date, because I'll have them email me something, so we'll have it for the record on whether
[Jennifer Carberry (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: or Yes, will amend the amendment to do an amendment to get that
[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: answer from them right away? I don't think they suggested it was going be a problem. Okay, that is it for today. And tomorrow, H5 is a big portion of what we're gonna have a couple fewer witnesses than originally thought. When is the governor's address? So I don't have anything scheduled for the afternoon tomorrow. We can hobnob with all the