Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: We are live. Hi. Welcome to the House Judiciary Committee this Friday morning, January sixteenth. We only have a couple items this morning. Some of some of the things are are now off that were originally scheduled. We're not gonna have additional testimony on the animal cruelty bill from the state's attorney from Windham County. We're gonna reschedule that for later. Some conflict came up where he can't make it this morning. And also, not going to take up H5. That's going be hanging on the wall. It's not dead, really not ready for votes. Folks need some more time to ponder that one. So I do want to have a straw poll on H five forty five on the one section that we dealt with. And then I want to talk just a little bit about the next revised version that we did have some conversation the other day, but wanted to hit on a couple additional items on what we're going to actually ask Eric to work on for the next version of that bill, of the Animal Culture Bill. But starting with H five forty five, we have fairly narrow jurisdiction or fairly narrow question before us. And it really has to do with I'm looking at the bill and I'm looking at draft number 2.1 and specifically section two, which is 18 BSA 11 section eleven thirty a, and in particular sub section C in that. And it has to do with immunity. The reason I kept on messing up is it's immunity for immunization. So it's an immunity section for the health care professionals who prescribe, dispense, or administer immunization according to the recommendations that are in subsection A of this provision. And it's the immunity is that as long as they are following those recommendations, they're not going to be liable unless there's gross negligence, recklessness, or intentional misconduct. It does not This doesn't deal with any kind of liability that the state may have as far as making the recommendations. That's not before us. It doesn't have anything to do with liability of pharmaceutical manufacturers, which under current law is there's a federal law that preempts us from doing anything in that space. If that changes, maybe we'll see another bill sometime down the road, but that's not part of this. Also, as I understand from the testimony that we had yesterday, that this is really about clinical recommendations for immunizations. It's not where there's any kind of mandates or anything like that. It's just what are clinically recommended by the evidence and the science as our state reads it. So with that, I'll go ahead and take a motion and then we can have further discussion. But I guess the motion would be that we don't object or that we are fine. I mean, doesn't sound very formal, does it? Yeah, we're fine with I should have thought over exactly what the motion sounds like. Recommend finding it favorable? Yeah, we recommend well, no, we don't recommend finding the whole thing favorable, because all we are looking at is that the committee has no further comment and agrees with subsection C. Subsection Subsection Subsection Subsection Any further discussion? Anybody?

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, go ahead. I don't have a problem with what we're doing. I mean, we've passed legislation in the past that protected our healthcare workers around, to me, controversial topics. And I just think it's important to protect our health care community because it's like all industries or all jobs or whatever, not just Vermont, but a lot of different places, number of people that are doing it is shrinking, and I just don't think we can afford to lose any more healthcare professionals or plumbers or electricians or anything. I'm

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: fully

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: in support of supporting

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: them. Okay, any other discussion? Alright, seeing none, all those in favor of finding Subsection C favorable, I guess that's all good, raise your hand. All those opposed. So that is eight twenty one.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Eight twenty one.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And I will, if we have to report or do anything on the floor, which not necessarily that we will, I'll go ahead and do it. All right, that's all we have on that. So if folks can kind of stick with me for just a few minutes to look at the animal cruelty, and I had one particular

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Do you have any

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: of your count by adults? As a no. Was that a no?

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I was just leg raising.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Oh, okay. So it was nine-one-one. All right, fine. Sorry. Gotta be quick around here. Yes. So the committee went over kind of a number of things that were gonna change in for at least the next revision for everybody's consideration. One place that we didn't really land on what we thought we should at least consider and again, this is just to move this along, and we will have further discussion about these changes once we have it. But I just wanted to I've been giving some more thought about this, and I have a proposal that I want to put in language. We can discuss that now, or we can discuss it when we see the language. And specifically with the May Shell, and a number of us had some problems, as we also heard from Judge Zonay with having the Shell language. And this is on page eight. I'm looking at the bill on page eight. Yeah, bill was introduced. And the issue is that with the there's a couple of issues. With the Shell language, it takes away the ability for defense counsel prosecutors to negotiate agreements to resolve these cases, the plea agreements, and thus a lot more cases may go to trial, which is certainly something we would rather avoid given the backlog and such. So it also doesn't reflect the individual situations and the individual offenses. I mean, to point out one that seems unlikely that it will be prosecuted, The selling or displaying a living baby chick duckling or fowl that's been dyed, colored or otherwise, that's actually an offense. That's a misdemeanor animal cruelty offense. Now? That's right now. I'm not sure where they came from, but forgetting that one, but there could be individual situations where there should be some flexibility. So what I'm going to propose that we have for the next version is that for a first offense misdemeanor, there can be up to five years of a ban on possession. And it would be May. It would essentially be May for first for first time. And also, it would be essentially May for everything that the court can impose, but we would add that you can go up to five years. If it's a second or subsequent, it would then become a shell that you shell forfeit the right to your animal, and you shell be prohibited from having an animal for a minimum of five years. It could be longer. That would be what I'm proposing that we take a

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: look at, at least for this demeanor. So the second offense, obviously stiffer, but there would still be the chance to redeem yourself. Well, mean after five years Right. Or there's

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: the other well, I'll get to the other possibility and then what's second as far as whether we wanna have this other language. But let me just finish on the felony. I was thinking essentially the same thing. First, fence up to ten years, lose your animals for up to ten years. You may forfeit your animal. If it's a second felony, it's a mandatory minimum essentially of losing your animals for a minimum of ten years. So the additional part that I would maybe suggest that we take a look at and have it drafted and consider it is an opportunity for an individual who has a long ban on possession that they can move the court. Like they can say, I've taken animal cruelty. I've gotten help. I know what you mean, yeah. Yeah, and can actually move the court to get rid of the prohibition. So I think there's some draft language in another state that I'll ask Eric to just have out there for us to consider. Again, we'll have the testimony and we'll decide whether we wanna go with it. But I thought at least for this next draft, we should do that. So that's the main one that we hadn't really landed on anything for the next version. And I guess there's, anybody want to comment on that?

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: So can you just repeat, you had two shells for the second offense. One was the Louisiana law.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, and the right to possess or own or work with Okay, decide not

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: anything with the jail time.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Not, right, this is all just the ban on possession of animals. And I wouldn't do a show for the repayment costs or the participating in available animal cruelty or permit periodic, that would all remain made throughout because that, I think you need a lot more flexibility on those. Sounds good. So, I mean, and we'll have testimony. Like I said, we'll have testimony and we'll have discussion on it. But I just wanted to flag that I thought that at least that'd be good for the next version. Any thoughts on that? Are we good with just trying that?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah, I support that and appreciate you doing the work to come up with some language. There are many options.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, think it strikes a good balance between the two. And just because it's shall, our main language, doesn't mean that in a circumstance they could impose just as strict of a consequence as the shall language during the the first.

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: I like the redemption part. I mean, even with the with the section of fence, even though they're, it's not so much gray area there, I guess, for me. But and and the thing that goes through my mind with redemption is there's people who have their children taken away. And if if they have another child, you know, they have the children taken away for probably gonna be much more serious offenses than this. And but if they have another child, they'll they'll be able to keep it. So that in a sense, that's kind of redemption, I guess you could say, I just think the redemption part is important.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: People present a chance. Sometimes they can't keep their subsequent child. Sometimes. Right. The riots and may not always happen, of course. Right. Yeah. It's an opportunity. So the last thing I just wanted to mention, one other thing for another bill, which is on a longer runway, which is the voter intimidation bill. I've talked to some people about this, but I wanted everybody to kinda know where where this is. So we found out alright. So we had testimony from the defendant general and the and the chief superior judge on a section of the bill, which wasn't the heart of the bill, frankly, for civil investigation. There's language about a civil investigation, that Valerio and Judge Zoning had multiple issues with it. Come find out, that same language is an s 23, which is in front of the gov ops committee in the senate. S 23 has gone to the house. We've amended it, and we've sent it back, and they're looking at our amendments, and yet, you know, the civil suspension stuff is there. And so I ran into Senator the chair of the committee, last night. He's like, oh, by the way, we had some testimony, I've had some concerns on that. But here's kind of where I suggested that we land on that. I think Senator Collamore agreed is that that same language is from another section in Title 17 that's been there at least since 2017. I didn't do the deep research to see if it's even older than that. And apparently it hasn't been a problem. The problem is that maybe it's just because it hasn't been litigated yet, but it was like, all right, just go ahead with S-twenty three, leaving that in there. We're going to take it out of our bill. And I'm putting in the bill drafting my first for 2027, if in fact South Burlington will have me back. That will do what we talked about in here, is consolidating all of Title 17 civil investigations into one place and addressing the concerns that we heard from the Defender General. That The other thing I'm planning on doing is taking kind of what we heard, and I'll talk, Ian and I will look at this, taking what we learned from the testimony and looking at our Title 13 and our language here and is there some additional, we're gonna try to do a new draft that addresses some of that. And I'm gonna reach out to President Smola to see if he can come in and testify on this maybe as early as next week. But I'm going to try to ask him if it's even worth or if it's so clear that we can't do what we're suggesting. So anyway, gonna reach out to him and maybe we can move that one along one way or another or kill it in the next week or so.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Yeah. Can we get the ACL anemia next week too? Dave,

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: yes. Okay. I reached out to Falco and he was going to be testifying yesterday. I'm glad that we postponed it because it would have been after Garvey's. That would have been tough. But also, I just said we're going to have a new draft and wait until we have a new draft. And so that's all I had. One last thing. I'm sorry. That's not all I had. That's all I had for those Next week, planning on taking up H627, which is victim's rights of notification and the like in forensic proceedings on Tuesday and Wednesday. I wasn't planning on taking that up earlier, but I learned that some of the witnesses that we would want, some victims are going to be in town at the State House on Wednesday for an afternoon public, I don't think I'd call it a hearing, but like a panel that the Lieutenant Governor is holding. And since they're coming up to be here and from other places, I figured that we would start on that bill because it's relevant, absolutely relevant to the concerns that are being expressed there. So we'll do that on Tuesday and Wednesday. And I think we're going to be getting to the voyeurism bill on Thursday and Friday. Is that six twenty seven,

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: you said? Six twenty seven. That's something you're planning on bringing up at some point this year anyway.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, and I think that was the plan was to look at it. Kelly, what was Kelly's last name? Who's been an advocate for this for a long time, has testified in here a couple of times. Going to have her in probably about a month Are we on

[Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: the test clinics?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: No, no, it's We work from Bradborough or Bennington. Oh, Bennington. Bennington. Oh, that's me. Okay. Hey, Kevin. That's what, if people want to look at that in advance, that's what we're going take up. Anything else? Alright, insurance, we're replacing all this good time that we could be working.