Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Committee were not adjourned until or because we had one more item that I had neglected and was reminded that we wanted to do. And that is a walk through of h five six six, the latest draft. As we talked about earlier, there will be one addition to this that we will take up after the Watson. Over to you, Michelle.

[Michelle Chao (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you for being here. Sure. So for the record, Michelle Chao is Office of Legislative Counsel. And we are taking up draft 2.1 of a strike all amendment to h five sixty six. I'll just let you know I did draft the same amendment substantively, but in an individual instance of amendment that has four instance of amendment that is two pages as opposed to nine, you can have your pick. But the chair asked me to do this, but I realize oftentimes it is so much easier to be explained to the body on the floor if you have a strike all as opposed to having them compare. So your choice. So I'm going to walk you through just the changes in here, and they are highlighted on your version. So the first instance of amendment is in section one, which is the juvenile diversion program. And what we're getting there is in subdivision F8. I the hard copy, so I'm trying to

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: go through

[Michelle Chao (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: my draft. Subdivision eight, which is the effect of right now, like, in the current law, it's the effect of expungement. And it's been changed to ceiling. And so what I've done there is I've just struck the language that is there, which is a little bit of a summary of where you see other places in law that talks about the effective ceiling. And I've just put in there the new language, the new sentence at the bottom of that subdivision, which is procedures for sealing, the effective sealing and access to sealed records shall be as provided in 13 BSA 7,607. So that's capturing all of that. So that subsection C of exceptions, so how law enforcement can access it and the other circumstances that people can access it, but that making it clear that for all other purposes, someone can say there is no record, that sort of stuff. Public facing piece of that is that it doesn't exist. The second instance of amendment is in section two on the adult diversion program. And I know y'all were talking about this this afternoon with some folks, and I know we'll have one more little amendment on there with regard to the pilot in Chittenden County. But you may recall that the bill is introduced, allowed for municipal ordinance violations to be going to adult diversion program. And so I just highlighted there to show you that it's now back to the original language. And so it would just be a violation of the criminal statute. Next change, also in section two. And this is in subdivision F6, and we're just getting rid of that. So that was the one where, I think, in the bill, it is introduced. I think when Ben had originally drafted it, it just did a kind of maybe a word replacement or something. But you don't need that subsection any longer because it's talking about expunging records that were previously sealed. So we're just repealing that subdivision. So that's out now. And then the last change, also in Section two, is striking subdivision F-eight. And this is the same language that appears on the effective ceiling. It's the same in current law in both the juvenile and the adult versions. And we're just striking the existing language and we're doing another pointer back to 13 BSA 7,607 on the procedures for sealing the effective sealant.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Any questions? So do you want to just work with Karen to come up with that language rather than us trying to patch it out with the whole community.

[Michelle Chao (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Got it.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Alright. So that was only five minutes, Ken. It wasn't ten minutes. Anything else I'm missing that we're supposed to do today?