Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Welcome back to the House Judiciary Committee this Wednesday afternoon, March eleventh. We are now turning our attention to H-seven 72. And just a really quick background before I have Cameron walk through it. What we have, it is an amendment, a proposed amendment at this point by me. And I worked with Cameron and also read this by Jeff Sonny and Eric Fitzpatrick, and it tried to address some of the issues that were brought up by one of our main witnesses, main stakeholders in this particular issue because we're changing our own court process. But I work with the court and this is what we have and hopefully it gets closer to at least being okay with the court. Don't know where the tenants and landlords will be with it, but we'll hear from them So on over to you, Cameron, with that. For

[Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel]: the record, office of legislative counsel, Cameron Wood, is going to walk through an amendment. As Mr. Chair, you mentioned, this is currently drafted from the chair. Share my screen, and we'll get going.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Okay.

[Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Draft amendment, what I've done here is I've tried to highlight areas where this is going to be slightly different than the proposed language that came out of the House General and Housing Committee. So all of these changes are related to the ejectment process, the court process for ejectments, the trespass provisions, or the confidential nature of the ejectment records. So if you remember from our walk through prior to your break, you have all that language initially around residential rental agreements and the changes that are being made there and the changes regarding termination notice, etcetera. There's no amendments to that language. So the first amendment is going to be in this section two for BSA six sixty three. This is new section, new language. So before I walk through this amendment, I'm going bring you back to the proposal from the House General Committee. So this was the proposal coming out of House General, was allowing if you remember, this was allowing the TAC orders. And if the court orders alternate service of process, then that would last throughout the entire court proceeding. So it was also not just limited to ejectment cases. This was for all civil proceedings. And there were some concerns that was raised about whether or not that was appropriate to allow that alternate service once and then to then subsequently allow it throughout every service that's required a case. So the amendment here strikes that first subsection A. So it's not going to authorize that alternate service throughout a case. An individual could still request an alternate service of process at any point in a case. So it's just it's not making that in statute where if it is authorized, it didn't exist throughout. The language that is here, though, the proposed amendment keeps what was a subsection B. And it says, when a motion for alternate service of process is filed in an action brought under 10 BSA 153, 11 Chapter 14, or 12 BSA Chapter 169. So those are the different ejectment that can be brought depending on the housing circumstance. The 10 VSA Chapter 153 would be an ejectment for a manufactured home and a manufactured home park. 11 Chapter 14 would be ejectment when there is a cooperative housing organization. You need to eject a member of a cooperative housing organization. And then the 12 BSA chapter 169 is the ejectment that we've been walking through and is in the bill, ejectment for a tenant in a residential rental agreement. The change here is that it would apply to just those, so that's why I added ejectment here in the section heading. And then it says rule on the motion promptly. And if you will recall, the proposal from the House General Committee was three days after that was filed. And there was concern, testimony from the judiciary about that turnaround. And so the recommendation here is just to go with rule on the motion properly. That's the First Amendment. The Second Amendment here is a strikethrough of the ejectment section. So section three, which was dealing with that new ejectment process that's being proposed by the House General Committee. So it's just striking out that entire section. And we're adding a lot of the language back in with some tweaks. I'm not going to walk through every single provision here because we walked through it last time. But I will highlight the changes that you have. This section is about asking when payment of rent into court. So the landlord has brought the ejectment action against the tenant, and they're asking that while the ejectment action is ongoing, that the tenant be paying rent into court. And if you all recall, the proposal from the House General Committee here on Subdivision D is to remove the ability to offer partial payment of rent into court. So it would require full payment of rent. The removal of subsection G is corresponding to that, takes away the tenant's ability to apply via motion to reduce the amount. So that's all kept. But there is this new subsection I, which states that if the parties come to an agreement, then the parties can apply by motion to the court to have that amount reduced. So going with the proposal from House General to default to full payment of Brennan to court, but authorizing the parties to come to a separate agreement and request a motion for that. Now we're moving into this new subchapter four. So I'm on page four, moving to page five of this proposed amendments. So again, all this language is keeping what was proposed by the House General Committee. The only changes are highlighted yellow. And that begins here, where we get to the mode in service of process. This is where the rental agreement and the notice to terminate has to be included as part of the complaint. And if you recall, way back in the residential rental agreement language, it requires a notice to terminate based on the breach of the rental agreement. It requires there to be an affidavit with particular facts that's given to the tenant. Judge Zone had pointed out that it wasn't clear that that affidavit going with the termination notice had to be part of the complaint. So line seven and eight here is really just fixing that to ensure that that information is also coming along. Then we get into lines twelve, four thousand eight hundred and sixty three. There was an initial sub A that required the answer to be provided within a specific time frame. I believe it was fourteen days, I think, as coming out of the House General Committee. And we discussed that that is different in your rules of civil procedure, which an ejectment action is a civil case. So it would be applying a different timeline there. So this proposal would remove that. So the tenant or the defendant in this situation would have twenty one days to file an answer as the individual would in any other civil case. That's the first change there is just striking that requirement of the fourteen days. And then when we get to page six, there's this new there's this B1 which exists, was about the cure. And it states that the party, the defendant, has the right to cure but loses that right as a matter of law if it's not done by the answer date. And there was concern about if that language were there, would that somehow prohibit the parties from coming to some sort of agreement after that period? So there's just some language that's being added on the top of six saying, notwithstanding that sub one, the parties can at any time prior to the issuance of the writ come to an agreement secured. So wanting to make sure you're not precluding those settlement negotiations ongoing during the case. Now we get to default. And there was some language that was proposed by the House General Committee that just appeared to be in somewhat conflict with the current rules related to when the default there's a rule that governs this. And so the first two instances of amendment on lines ten, eleven, and 12 are just stating that if the defendant fails to file the answer in the time prescribed in the rule, the plaintiff can file a motion for a default judgment as the plaintiff is authorized in Rule 55. So again, the amendment here is really just wanting to keep consistent with what your rules of civil procedure authorize in other civil actions. And then the other changes there on line 13, the court shall rule on the motion promptly. And I could look it up. I don't remember off the top of my head exactly when it was in the underlying bill. You said

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: it's only five days, three or five days.

[Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. Yes, sir. So again, just going back to the recommendation from the judiciary about getting away from those specific dates and time and going promptly here. This next section, 4,865, if you remember, there was this language about having a show cause hearing if there was an objectment brought under the subdivision 4004 And 67 for breach of rental agreement, and if it was for threatening behavior, you could have this no cause hearing where it would have to be within a specific time frame and you could offer affidavit evidence. And then if the judge felt that there was live testimony necessary, you would then have another hearing. All of that has been removed. And what you have here is, under the current ejectment subchapter that exists, there is an expedited hearing process when there is an unlawful occupant of the premises. And so this is really just mirroring all of that language that currently exists in statute. So instead of creating this new show pause hearing process, it's just saying, if you're bringing an objectment under, right there on line 16, the 4,460 seven(two) because the defendant is doing some action that is threatening the health or safety of other individuals, then there's going to be this expedited hearing that is based off an expedited hearing that currently exists, and we're going to follow that process instead. One change that I would comment is in the sub B on page seven, starting with line three. Trying to keep some of the time frame that was built out in that show cause hearing, it does state that a hearing on the motion for this expedited ejectment shall be held promptly at any time after ten days notice to the parties, but not later than twenty one days after the motion is filed, absent good cause. So there is a little bit of a deadline in there for the courts, recognizing the nature of this termination is due to some sort of accusation of threatening behavior, so wanting to have an expedited process here or a more expedited process here. I'm not gonna walk through each section here because it is mirroring what is currently there, but this just sets up the expedited process, allows the defendant to oppose the motion. The sub D here is if the defendant fails to appear or file the affidavit, then the plaintiff is entitled to judgment by default and immediate possession. And then the sub two is if the court finds the defendant is a threat to the health and safety of others before it grants the plaintiff motion to issue judgment in favor of the plaintiff for immediate possession. And then you have in the sub E is just when there is that issuance, it has to go to the sheriff and the sheriff has to serve it. And then not sooner than five days after the writ is served, put the plaintiff into possession. And that all, again, mirrors the current statutory framework for unlawful occupant. But what's the unlawful occupant citation? Let me grab it for you as soon as I

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: stop here. That's fine. Yeah. Okay.

[Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So moving forward with the remainder of this, it keeps everything else that was proposed in this new subchapter from the House General Committee for the new ejectment language. So now we get to the third instance of amendment here on line six, page nine. If you recall, there was some new language in the trespass section under Title 13, And it would allow the landlord to issue a no trespass order to an invitee under certain circumstances. If the tenant consents, I don't want this individual on the property either. I'm consenting to you issuing the no trespass to the individual. If the invitee is violating terms of the lease agreement or if they're violating state of federal law, then the landlord can issue the no trespass. There was an appeal in there. And if you remember, it was going to small claims. And there was discussion here in committee about whether it should go to judicial bureau. And so what this amendment would do is just strike that appeal section entirely. The underlying trespass section doesn't have an appeal rights to it. So currently, if you issue an individual an order against trespass, it doesn't come with appeal rights. It's the individual's property that you're telling. You're not authorized to come onto my property. So the appeal seemed to just be a slightly alteration of the current way that the trespass section works. So this proposal would just remove that appeal. And then you don't have to worry about whether it goes to small claims, judicial bureau, etcetera. And then the last instance of Amendment IV here is about the confidentiality of ejectment records. And there was some conversation about the language. If you remember it, when the ejectment action is initiated, the case becomes confidential. But then it loses its confidential status if it was due to nonpayment of rent or breach of rental terms, but it would maintain its confidential status for any other rejectments. And you all had some discussion before break about the language is a bit quirky in the sense that it says that the tenant didn't have to notify someone that there was

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: an ejectment as if it

[Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel]: didn't happen, but it had happened. And there was leans in in nature under some circumstances, but not all if a writ of possession was issued. So the proposal here was just to clean this up a little bit. And so it's if the court if there's a writ of possession issued in favor of the plaintiff so if the plaintiff wins the case, gets the writ of possession such that the individual is going to be ejected from the premises at that point in time, it would lose its confidential status. So there's no distinction between, well, which type of ejectment did you bring? And then the amendment on line 15 is just clarifying that the court removes the confidentiality of the objectment thirty days after issuing the writ. I believe the language that came out of House General was just it loses it after thirty days, and it wasn't clear at what point in time do you begin counting the thirty days. And so this is just clarifying. It's after the RIB is issued thirty days after that date, it would lose its confidential status. Those are the proposals of amendments. Excellent. And I have a few minutes if there's any questions. Yeah, yeah, any questions?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: No, thank you very much. It was very straightforward. I no longer owe my first count too long. Chair of Board, please. I assure you, sir, I am not worth that. Oh, come on. You haven't seen my first. I

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: will be back. I'm gonna get

[Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel]: a little raise a mint, but I will actually. So

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: thank you. All right, so we're going go to Teri Carzon's text. Mary, thank you for being here.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Thank you for letting me go a little bit out of the border. Judge zoning was scheduled, and he was appearing remotely. I think because he had already addressed the version last before break, he kindly offered to let me go first so that I could address basically two aspects of the proposed bill. I will speak to the most current version that we received last evening. Thank you for the chance, Terry Rutland, State Court Administrator. And I would like to address basically two aspects of the bill in general. One of which is the confidentiality aspect.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, on that one, folks probably wanna grab the draft number 4.1 that you have, because that's where you'll see most of the language. The amendment only changes one little part.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: In section six, And right, of that there was one slight amendment, as Cameron mentioned, regarding that section in the most recent version. But I was going to address the confidentiality aspect of the bill in general, as well as the ramifications of not just the confidentiality aspect, but other aspects of the bill in general on port operations, in particular with respect to scheduling and significant impacts on scheduling capabilities because of the proposals. We do very much appreciate the modifications that have been made. I, in large part, do address many of the issues that were brought to light by Judge Zonnay and others. But in terms of the confidentiality aspect of it, I just wanted to emphasize that a confidential docket would be highly unusual in our state court system. Currently, there are only two dockets that are confidential. That's the juvenile docket and the mental health docket. And those dockets have been confidential since day one for the sensitive nature of the subject matter and the privacy concerns for juvenile dockets and mental health audits. So to isolate a separate docket as confidential would be very unusual and very contrary to the normal public access and transparency and open hearings that we have in our state court system. So I just wanted to highlight that in case that was something that people might not be aware of. We usually

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: If you can finish your thoughts, then I just had a question about that. That's fine. So you mentioned hearings, but my understanding this would only be the records, so hearings wouldn't be closed.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: The closed hearings was in an earlier version, but not in the present version.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Right, right. I see it only applying to records not being in, I think-

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: It was specified that hearings would be open to the public in earlier versions, and that's not in the current version. And because it describes all the court records, we assumed that the hearings would be confidential as well because there's nothing that states to the contrary.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, I guess I had read it differently because it just said records. And we can clarify, but it seems more problematic certainly to have the hearings closed a little less so than for some period of time having records essentially flagged on the system as not accessible. I do have a couple of questions about that.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Okay, well, there was, if I remember in the early version, at least when we testified before general housing, they indicated that the hearings would be open to the public. And we did actually testify to issues that would be involved with that because if it's people calling to inquire about a hearing, on the one hand, it's confidential, in which case we would say there is no case. On the other hand, oh, well, for the case that doesn't exist, the hearings of Tuesday at three So there were definitely issues with it being open to the public, but there were also issues with it being closed to the public. And since that's my understanding of the present posture, I was gonna address the issues with that.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, and I guess it was just ambiguous to me. And I thought the way I read it is that the hearings were not closed, but it sounds like there's problems either way.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Yes, and I think it all stems from, again, this docket, which normally, and I don't know if it's confidential in the other board of the union, but it would just be very unusual. The problems with it being the hearings being closed to the public as well from a scheduling perspective is we would, in essence, need to treat these cases similar to how we treat juvenile cases and mental health cases. And that is that we have separate courtrooms. We basically have to have a separate courtroom if the case is confidential to prevent people who shouldn't have access to the courtroom from accessing that courtroom. It also presents problems with flexibility and scheduling. Right now, landlord tenant cases are part of the general civil docket. They're scheduled along with the other civil division cases. So you could have a merits hearing and then you could have a foreclosure hearing or breach of contract hearing all in the same day. With this, you'd have to separate it out because you couldn't have a case that's confidential, lock the courtroom and then schedule something. It just would be very inconvenient and problematic. So it would require a separate courtroom in our view, similar to a juvenile separate courtroom or mental health one, which means a separate courtroom operator, which would also mean a separate person, either a judicial assistant or a security officer to control who has access to the courtroom and who does not. That's what we do in the juvenile hearings and the mental health hearings. You'd have that aspect of it that would be, again, very unusual and very resource impactful additional personnel and courtroom space, if you will. Also, in the smaller courtrooms, the civil division judge also hears critical division, also hears family division. So they're set aside for this one courtroom and not hearing anything else, whatever the schedule block is for that day.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Well, can I explore just a little further the concept of if it was open and what the issue is, that the issue is that somebody could contact the court and say, hey, I wanna go to such and so hearings, and presumably you wouldn't be able to say anything? If this was narrower in some manner that essentially the documents that are filed, not the existence of the name of the case or the plaintiff and defendant, but the files themselves are essentially sealed for the duration unless they're unsealed at the end. I'll call them sealed instead of confidential, but same thing. Is that still I mean, is that good?

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Well, I thought the purpose of making it confidential is that landlords wouldn't be able to ascertain if there's a hearing or landlord tenant. I'm sorry, an eviction case involving a potential tenant. So if you're saying just the documents are confidential, but their case name and its appearance on the hearing schedule isn't, it would just be very, I think, complicated and difficult for court staff trying to field and offer information for this kind of

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: hybrid approach. I guess I'm just saying, I'm just trying to understand the actual logistics of this as far as if a case is filed electronically, isn't there essentially a, call it a switch, something that you can hit that this document's now sealed?

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Well, not sealed if you can't, So for example, it wouldn't be accessible on

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: the public portal. Right. That's what I guess. Okay. But

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: I guess if we're talking about if the hearings were open to the public, we'd have that issue about, okay, how do you provide information that's confidential and not otherwise accessible? If it is open to the public, it's more of, I guess, logistical problems in terms of necessity of a separate courtroom then and to deny access to people who weren't a party, an attorney or a witness in that particular case. And even among several eviction cases, you wouldn't be able to mix and mingle the separate cases because each would be confidential in and of themselves.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And I guess I'm trying to find maybe a path that's not there. But it's like, the court hearings public, the actual case name is public, but the complaint, the answer, the pleadings are flagged as confidential until the end of the case. My question for you right now is just, does that take care? I mean, yes, it's some logistical issue still. I will ask other witnesses if that gets at what they want at all. That's just not even sufficient. But I'm just trying to get the logistical part.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Yeah. Guess, so if the documents are confidential, but the case name is not, you're saying would that solve the problem? Yeah. I guess part would be to ask the others, well, how does that address their need to have this not

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: Right, right.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: That's the thing. Otherwise,

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Does that help

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: the situation? Maybe it would in terms of being able to I don't know. I'd have to kind of think that's true to imagine. It just to me would be a very kind of unusual and complicated scenario for a court staff and trying to address the usual questions that you get at the counter over the phone regarding cases that are on the schedule or in the docket. I

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: trying to find this piece of finding a way to have it work because I think it is. Like, there's both sides of it. But I didn't know if it could be wasn't me just putting out an idea of, Wednesday mornings are landlord tenant things. And so, like, you know that it's going to be that those types of hearings, but there's not a listing of the cases. But folks would know, come Wednesday morning, that's when we're going to

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: have these types of cases. Right. But if you're an eviction case A and there's an eviction case B, they're supposed to be confidential. Oh, no. We're saying if

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: But they're open to the public.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Oh. Oh, yeah. Okay. So go

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: back The hearings are public, but the documents are not.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Okay. To have the documents confidential, but the name of the case not confidential? And then that's Because

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: they would hear it in the hearing.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Right. And then post it. Just Because

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: just is that a rule that has to be posted? If you're having a hearing, you have to

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: post It's public hearing.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Okay.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Yeah. And also on the public portal, there would be information about that on the public portal. But how do you do that if everything's otherwise sealed or confidential? I just think it would be very unusual, I think, complicated. I mean, whatever ultimately results from this, we will work with. I'm just wanting to point out that it's a departure from how we've always done things other than juvenile mental health, which have the very, I think, unique and specific sensitive information. So for the confidential, I know there was a change also in terms of that unless if they've written possession issues, then the confidentiality would cease unless it's talked about the court orders continued confidentiality. And I guess one consequence of that is what the standard would be. And we removed that

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: in the amendment though. Is it now?

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: No, it's in there unless the court orders continued confidentiality, but it would be a matter of of under what circumstances would continued confidentiality occur. And I assume that would trigger, for example, a hearing. And one thing that I was going to mention in addition to just, again, the unusual nature of the confidentiality approach and the complications that I think will ensue in terms of scheduling is the impact on scheduling resources right now. There are a variety of additional hearing opportunities that are presented through this. And right now in the civil division scheduling, there's x number of hours to work with. So I wanted the committee to be aware of the fact that this will absolutely and necessarily then result in non eviction civil division cases taking a backseat and getting further here when we're working so hard to make progress on backlogs and to get cases of all sorts heard. This will render those other cases into a backseat because this says this shall be scheduled. And there's a number of examples of that. I appreciate that you did make the two modifications in terms of motions for alternative service having to be rolled upon within three days, motions for the depart judgments having to be rolled on within five days. It's been changed promptly. You don't have But in our minds, okay, those are priority. They need to be handled ahead of time. The fact that you need to schedule any eviction case within sixty days, within two months is a very expedited matter in general. You've got the answer period for twenty one days to answer. So you're going have a merits hearing within five weeks after that. In addition, the expedited hearing for that category cases, whether there's damage to the dwelling unit, if there's health and safety concerns, if there's, I think, violence, that category case has to be heard within ten to twenty one days. In addition, you have the rent escrow that's done after fourteen days. So it's a lot of hearing options that right now don't exist that we have to schedule. There's only so many hours. So again, just to be aware, that means that everything else that would have normally been scheduled during that time is going be pushed off. So unless there are additional resources, unless additional judges, program operators, personnel, you're going to see a backslide just because of the requirements that are now built in for these additional gearing options. And then I was going to just recognize when Karen said, so there's a little bit of a deadline. Forty one days is a very short deadline, especially if you have the other shortened time fines. And it makes mention of the jury trial being afforded. I'm sorry, but there would absolutely no way possible that you could have a jury trial within sixty days unless you had a separate jury panel and a separate jury draw. And even then, it would be unfair whether that could even all possibly be accommodated. And I thought I'd also just mention what the current scheduling is, if that can just give some idea. Now, when you have an eviction case that's filed, you would have typically one merits hearing scheduled versus this variety of other potential hearing dates. Or if it's a rent escrow case, which is roughly about 50%. 50% of eviction cases typically include a rent escrow motion, which means that a hearing would be scheduled after fourteen days notice. And in terms of surveying the state, every unit has a rate escrow block, if you will. And it varies depending upon the number of cases. For example, Chittenden has rent escrow days three Thursdays a month. So three times a month, you're going have your rent escrow when it comes in. It'll get scheduled for the next available scheduling block. And in Rutland and Bennington, it's two to three times a month. In Windham, Washington, Caledonia, Orleans, and Franklin, twice a month. And in the smaller counties, at least once a month. So you get your rent escrow hearing typically in short order. And many times at the rent escrow stages when you have settlement, when you have cases either settle I mean, it might even be here, we'll forgive your pet back rent if you agree to a writ of possession, for example. Or they might work out an agreement with whatever rental arrangement it is. But roughly 50% of the cases now have a rent escrow order, rent escrow motion, and you have that kind of time for addressing them. Otherwise, have the merits hearing. The disposition rate right now is one hundred and eighty days, six months. And 80% of cases other than the men escrow do meet within that six months. And I think testimony came out when we had the hearing on landlord tenant cases in general, that many times if it's more than that, it's because the landlords have requested it or the lawyers have requested an extension. There are different circumstances that might necessitate that. Actually, many times in the case involved with criminal action, they were waiting for the criminal case end they felt they had to prove it. And there was testimony to that effect as to why they might request continuances. And when I say 80% of the cases scheduled are disposed within the six months, a number of them are disposed within two months, within three months. It doesn't mean that they went the full six months. So I just wanted to paint a picture that that's kind of what the situation is now for scheduling. And with these proposals, you're going to be injecting again these options for additional hearings that are going to again be, just as a practical matter, to the detriment of the scheduling of other matters that are in the civil docket. And memo tenants comprise about 20% of the civil docket. So also to just give you that information. So again, we're not saying that we disagree with any of the policy considerations at play. We're just saying this is what the ramifications will be for your own information and awareness for both the confidentiality aspect of it and then adding these other hearing and scheduling mandates. So I know that you did put a figure on that with appropriations based on the House General. Does this change that? Yeah, this was in this Is

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: this something that you're gonna get an updated figure back Yeah, in

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Representative LaLonde is referring to, we requested information for a fiscal note. And so we did talk about the fact that, again, unless you are comfortable with relegating the rest of the civil docket to a backseat if we wanted to be able to keep abreast of things. We had speculated that we would need an additional one to two judges. And in half of the state, in half of the units

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: That's if will we be able to keep up with the other docket if we gave you two more judges to deal with just this kind of thing? Well,

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: time there's judges, you need court personnel to be

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: able to support those judges. Well, judges had personnel.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: If we gave you those resources, we wouldn't have to worry about worsening the backlog and the other parts of the docket. Right.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: But it wasn't two judges and two court personnel. It was two court personnel in the larger counties, one for additional court personnel in the smaller counties. Again, trying to project how many additional hearings would result. I mean, we had to say this is our kind of just best guess at that. There would be that, and that came to about $700,000 when we added all that up in terms of if you want to be able to try to have additional resources to fake up for the fact that you were having additional stressors on the current schedule in the calendars. Don't honestly, I'd have to go back to see because you'd still have, I mean, you're substituting the one expedited hearing for the show pause hearing, for example. So it doesn't really change that. And if you have the confidentiality, I feel like you would definitely need to have a separate courtroom just because otherwise it would be kind of impossible to keep track of blocking the access. Similar to what there's a juvenile day, that courtroom is just for juveniles so that people can enter it who aren't supposed to enter it. Although, I guess you were saying, what if the hearings are public? So I'd have to kind of look at that to see that.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Right. Right.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So the threatening behavior expedited hearing, I mean, many, you said 50% of cases go into an escrow?

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: In escrow.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: How big of an issue or how many cases can one predict would involve those scenarios?

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: If we're focusing on threatening behavior in that expedited Right. Yeah, we were able to run a report on the motions for runesco because we have a data point where it puts a motion for runesco hearing, for example. But there isn't like a motion for it. It would be embedded in the complaint, what the reason was and whether it was for health and safety reasons. So that would involve reading through each complaint, figuring out, you know, Okay, this is a complaint that would be in that category. I'd be happy to kind of canvas court staff to say who work in the landlord tenant docket. What percentage would you say anecdotally would be? That's kind of my only best way to try to gauge that. I don't honestly have a good feel for. Would have been able to, when I worked in the courts, give you an answer, but I don't know today, sitting here right now, what a good answer would be for that. And I'm disagreeing that. I think it sounded like, at least from the other testimony that was given, that that's an issue. Being able to, the idea was to have those cases addressed more quickly. But it sounded like they weren't for a variety of reasons. And this would be one way for them to be addressed more quickly, sir.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And so you are still working for a fiscal note regarding the impact, and perhaps it can also have the impact of what this change would do.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Right. Although I think he had said that Thursday is when the the fiscal note was due tomorrow. So and I did say my vote, which is based on at that time, the version and that these amendments were feasible. But I can certainly try to do my best to see whether that's I don't know that it would be drastically modified just because, again, not disagreeing with policy reasons for it, but just that it would result in more here and time than right now is afforded these cases. Okay.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Any other questions for Carrie or did you have anything else?

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: No, I really appreciate the opportunity to comment. And we also very much appreciate the efforts to address the issues that have been raised with previous drafts.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I appreciate it. We'll keep on.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: And Judge Zone, I think

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, Judge Zone, if you wanna join us, if you wanted to weigh in as well on the latest, the amendment, guess, is we can focus We're unmuted.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: I should be okay. Do you hear me?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I know.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Tom Zone, Chief Superior Judge. Nate, can I share my screen for a moment? Or Nate's not here? We'll try.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Clearly you

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: can't because he has disappeared.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: That works then. So I will I'll follow-up on what Terry said with your discussion about the question about are the hearings open to the public or are they not? Under section 4,872, and this is in the version 4.1 on page 25, lines six through nine. It says, All records of a newly filed ejectment complaint shall be confidential. It then goes on to explain that they are designated as confidential upon filing and remain confidential except pursuant to section 4,873, and that's that new section that's part of the amendment today for opening them. So that's the section that says all records are confidential. If you go one page earlier on page 24, it's the definitions section. If you look on lines nine through 11, it defines ejectment record as any recorded information pertaining to an ejectment case that is in the possession, custody, or control of a court or was in the possession of a court. And then below that, it defines record to mean any recorded information made or received pursuant to law or in connection with the transaction of any official business by a court, including all relevant including all evidence received by the court in a case. Testimony is evidence received by a court in a case. So the idea that Terry is putting forth that this is an open proceeding, this language does not lend itself to that type of reading. This talks about all evidence received. If a court is receiving oral testimony, becomes part of the recorded record. And so if the intent of the legislature is that the hearing is open, there needs to be changes to the language and there needs to be clear legislative guidance for that, because this does not indicate that. This indicates the opposite.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So that part, I was mistaken? That's correct.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: The

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: other part that I understand trying to find a path forward there. The problem that I think you run into is if you say the records are confidential, but the case is not, you have to provide guidance and I'll say a lifeline for the clerks to be able to know what they can and cannot say. If one of you, for instance, walked into the courthouse and said, is there an ejectment case with person A, B, and C today in the courtroom? Can the clerk tell you? Or does the clerk have to look at you and say that's confidential? The clerks would need some guidance as to what they can release and what the courts can put up. So I just wanted to point that out as a dilemma, I think that you have to take a close look at. As far as the amendment, just a few quick points. I wanna make it very clear, I think I've made it clear before hopefully, that we address everything promptly to our best efforts to address cases promptly. When the legislature puts in language of specific dates, it is our intention to meet them. I know that there are exceptions here for good cause that things can be continued, but it is not our desire to honor your legislative enactments in the breach. It is our desire to honor the legislative enactments. If you say we want something within sixty days, we're gonna deliver it within sixty days. Now, again, if there's good cause, that's fine. But we don't want the exceptions to lead, if you will. We have to try to meet what you're setting forth. And I would agree with Terry that the policy being set forth through this bill is that this takes precedence over other cases. And so when a judge is sitting there and they've got two motions they gotta look at, and one fits under promptly with landlord tenant and another is a corporation that is trying to get a rid of attachment or something, well, you're telling us you want this dealt with sooner. In other words, there's a prioritization that this sends a message of, and that's also with scheduling from the clerks. So we are going to do our best to deliver. There is a couple of things jumped out at me after, and I, as chair LaLonde, as you indicated, we had talked about this. On page three of the amendment, line six through 10, there has been an added language that allows the parties to reach an agreement for a partial, to reduce the amount to be paid into court under the payment of rent into court. The second sentence says, the motion for reduction shall be accompanied by affidavit setting forth particular facts in its support. I don't know that it's necessary for counsel or anyone to prepare an affidavit, and take the time and effort to do that because the only way the court can grant it is if the parties make a motion and stipulate to it. So the affidavit and the basis for it doesn't really have any impact on the judge because the judge can't say it's okay or no, it's either they agree to it or they don't. So that might save the parties a little time.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yep, all right, thank you. Yep, makes sense.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: And the only other comment I would make is on page five, and as I was reading it today, for some reason it jumped out on me, lines eight through 10. It says, If the complaint is based on a termination under nine BSA 4,467 A, the complaint shall include a copy of the rent ledger. And I wondered, do landlords all keep rent ledgers? What if they don't? Are they not allowed to go forward? So those were the questions I had. I'm happy to answer any questions.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Yeah, period.

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: Yeah, thank you, Judge Jone. As we were going through the amendment, I was also looking at all the notes that I had made the Friday before break when you testified. And

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: so I feel like the amendment addresses a lot of them.

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: However, there are some that notes I made that the amendment didn't address. And so I just wanted to circle back with you to see if you're okay or if things changed or more clarification is needed on that because I don't wanna leave any gaps. And so I think for me, I'm back to the version 4.1, and it's specifically on page eight, and it's also on 19, where it's using the term particular facts. And I think you had said, what are the facts needed? That it's not clear. And so I don't know. Do you believe more is done or more is needed for that? Or we can work with that and just try to get your thoughts.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: I'm gonna choose the category of I think we can work with that.

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: Okay, in both of those circumstances.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: Right, it actually, it mimics 12 BSA forty eight fifty three B, which is the unlawful occupant section, And so it's not something that we use a lot, but it's been used in that section. A few years ago it was codified. And so I'm comfortable that we can make that work.

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: Thank you. Thank you for that. The other one that I have is, this is on page 27, again, the 4.1 version, and it's line three. Any person with a valid court order authorizing access. I had that there were no standards for that. But again, is that seeing that our goal is we're trying to create a new system. We're not going to get everything perfect. Is this another one of those examples where it's like, Okay, we can work with this?

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: That one's a little different. The reality is it's gonna have to play out. If someone comes to the court and says, I want access to this ejectment record, the answer is going to be no. For instance, if there's no provision that allows you access, it's there. Now, what that could, a valid court order authorizing access, it could be an order from a federal court saying that as part of a federal criminal investigation they want a copy. So there are categories where I could foresee a valid court order, but or other areas of the state of Vermont where a judge might find something that is appropriate, and on the balance of the factors the court and the facts the court has to look at, the court decides that yes, the judge is gonna order access to something, but there's no categories. So we're gonna have to have it play out to see what really are the ways that people can have access to it under valid court orders because there's no specific categories of what that looks like.

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: Okay, great. And then my last one is, I think it's already been addressed by Terry as well, is on page 25, with this piece of unless the court orders continued confidentiality, had you said there's no standards for that. So it sounds like confidential is the thing that we're gonna have to figure out and have more discussion about, but that you would agree that there are any standards for that and that we're gonna keep that, we're gonna need to be clear.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: That's correct. It would be helpful if you were clear. Are you looking at the standards from the public access to court records rules for when we seal something or when something might be unsealed? Some guidance there would be helpful because right now we have no guidance to know what are the factors that we look at.

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: Great, thank you for that, I appreciate it.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: If this is a little complicated, trying to get this right, the confidentiality component, can we wreck the court to consider with the public access to court records committee, the advisory committee for that, that they would be able to look at how this could be workable?

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: That's a very, very policy driven way to go forward. So the short answer is could the public access look at it and talk about how to deal with it? Yes. I would then go to the should because this is a very policy driven question. Transparency is what they really focus on and looking at that. This is public policy, a lot of this, why? So

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Sure, sure I guess it could be we want these records to be as confidential as logistically possible. Or we want these records to be confidential period. But it's really, there's a lot to that and how it could actually be implemented. And it would probably be this advisory committee that would have had the skills and knowledge to do that.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: I would suspect that there may be very different views on the appropriateness of confidentiality and who should have access to them for what reasons, such that it's probably better left to the legislature to tell us what your policy is and your intent as to what takes precedence. Previously there were some categories that were added here that people could get access to here. Is it the intent that if someone's doing a data analysis for a law school that they should get access to it? Is it for an organization that represents landlord or tenant rights if they want access to it to be able to prepare things to better represent their clients?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So yeah, those would be as the policy decisions on that. And I'm just saying the actual logistics for accomplishing whatever the policy is rather than us saying, yeah, do this. We could say, yeah, do this in two years or year and a half or whatever would be appropriate for those logistics to be worked out by the Public Access Court. It's kind of like what we're doing for access to the criminal records. I mean, that's a reverse, that's allowing more access. Here we're talking about less access. It's just something to maybe think about. But I understand that, yeah, the policy decisions are. All right, any other questions for Judge Zellen? Or did you want to weigh in, Karen?

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: I had a question for you about people if that's okay. But if somebody else had questions for Jeddittenden?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Anybody else from Jeddittenden? No.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: In terms of the fiscal note and trying to project the number of cases that might be involved, it appears to me that the amended version for the threatening behavior provision is broader than the current provision that talks about termination based on criminal activity, illegal drug activity, or acts of violence, any of which threaten the health or safety of other residents.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Right, that is true.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Because it's talking about a certainly damaged dwelling unit. I think that's potentially a very large addition. And then activity that threatens health or safety of is broader than what's in the current. So I feel like I'd be hard pressed to try to imagine what numbers, how many additional cases might, but I'm gonna guess it could be quite a few. So I apologize.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: No, no, that's not. That's completely fine. Just to get me to kind of understand where we're looking, I don't to No, please. It's not in the amendment.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: No, but It

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: would be in that

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: 447B2, that is the present one that talks about criminal activity, etcetera?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, and that's on page eight of the graph number 4.1.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Okay, just copied the statute itself. And then page six on the new Oh, I'm sorry. It's on page six, actually. On page six of the new version. Oh, sorry. You know what? 40467 B2 is referenced, but then I looked back at the actual statute just to see. Actually, let me see what page that was on, the revised 40,467 B2. Right.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Right, and that revised version is on page eight. You're

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: right. Okay.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Something else to look at? No, no,

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: that's And again, not stating a disagreement with the policy reasons behind the amendment, But it would, I think, increase the number potential.

[Hon. Thomas Zonay, Chief Superior Judge]: I can touch on that very quickly. And that is, I think that trying to look at historical data, even though we don't keep that data point, I've asked judges about how many of these cases do we have where it's selling drugs, things like that, for illegal conduct, and trying to have evictions based upon that. I think the difficulty that you run into is that even though you had some cases that are brought like that, the absence of a statute that provides an expedited process may have contributed to some of those some cases where someone otherwise would have wanted to go forward with it not going forward. In other words, a plaintiff, a landlord may have decided, I don't want to go through that because I've got to prove it, it's going to take a while, I'm just going to do something different. And if we accept the testimony that we hear that there are issues with this and the legislature crafts a statute that has a specific protocol, procedures, and an expedited procedure, I think that naturally we will expect to see more of those claims filed because we're providing a very clear avenue to have an expedited process.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Right.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Okay.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Oh yeah, I'm sorry. This is one for you. Crafts over Friday.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Do we have enough time to fix everything we're talking about before that?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: That is such a good question.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Wow, so we need to hear from This is sounding more and more complicated all the time and talking about study committees, lack of a different term to it, that type of thing, not that overall it's a bad bill, are we gonna have to rush through what we need to fix to get this to the floor by Friday?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I would hope not. The only thing is that this one wouldn't be going to the floor by Friday. We would actually possibly have more time next week because it's in appropriations. Oh, okay. And this is a floor amendment. Alright. That is not to say I disagree with what you're saying at all because it does seem to be a lot and some pretty significant issues still. Mean, a

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: shame, but if that's

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: what needs to be done to do it right, then we're bring it back next by end.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Right, right. So we have just a

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: little bit more leeway on

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So this I want to at least get Give it

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: a shot.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Well with the other witnesses to get a sense of where we are with this. So that's kind of, yeah, I'm with you on that as well. It's got a ways to go in a very short time. I was gonna say a long walk on a short pier, but that would have been long at this point. So thank you very much. Thank you. And we'll go to Gene Murray as well.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: Dreadfully afraid to not have my computer plugged in Yep. Because it's old, And I don't know how the battery don't need to be on the screen or anything.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Thank you for being here, Jean. Appreciate some time to fit you in whenever it was that you took this up last week. Was that before break? Yeah, right before break. Appreciate you being able to come back.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: Hello, I'm Jean Murray. I'm an attorney at Vermont Legal Aid for twenty eight years in Vermont. I've been practicing landlord tenant law, seven years before that in Massachusetts. So I've been doing this for about thirty five years, landlord tenant law, in two different states, mostly in Vermont. And what I'd like to try to do is convince this committee that this committee needs to take more time to look at the aspects of this bill that pertain to due process, court procedure, And the court capacity, you've heard from Terry that the court this bill eviction cases are 20% of the civil docket, court processes proposed in this bill would shift how the courts deal with these. And so trying to figure that out, I think, takes more time. I guess one of the things that I want to talk about is there's a lot of detail and intent in this bill that is not really very well worked out. It's going to take time from people who understand how the court process works. I'm a practitioner. Last week when I the well, the week before last, when I joined the committee, that week I filed two motions in court to try to prevent families from being evicted because of behavioral things that had to do with their disabilities. The devil is in the details, and there's a lot of problems with how this thing could work. At the same time, one of the things I wanted to say is when we had pandemic money, meaning Vermont Legal Aid and a lot of the community action programs had pandemic money, we were able to offer more services and do what we could to promote housing stability. We don't have that money anymore, and fewer and fewer tenants are going to be represented by council. And so when we had pandemic money, only 12% of tenants got lawyers, and now we've lost funding. So to the extent that any of these court processes depends on defendants themselves being able to advance their case, it's really not, as a practical matter, going to happen. So the objective of this whole bill is to reduce expenses for landlords by saying, if somebody is not paying the rent, let's get them out fast. If somebody has violated something, let's get them out fast. If somebody is causing harm to others, let's get them out fast and not have a prolonged, expensive court process or have a more predictable one. But the problem with it is tenants are 30% of Vermont's household. That's 80,000 people in Vermont, and these processes will all apply to all of them. There are programs in Vermont to help tenants catch up and pay the rent. There's a lot of things about this bill that would just take that process away, including this idea of being able to pay and stay, to pay up all your rent and keep your tenancy. Right now, the current law for that is that a tenant can pay all their rent due, the court costs and the sheriff costs. If they do that up to the time of the execution of a writ, can

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: go to a

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: court and say, I paid. Actually, they pay into the court and say, this eviction has to be dismissed. It's a policy favoring payment of rent, and it's a policy allowing tenants to keep their housing. But in order for tenants to do that frequently, they have to access the other programs that this legislature funds and supports. And when you shorten the time frames, they can't do that. So it's going to result in a lot more evictions. It's going to take up judicial resources. You may hear that other states have shorter eviction time frames. Other states have different circumstances when it comes to their housing courts. They have housing courts themselves, they have mediation programs, they have eviction diversion programs, They have different vacancy rates. Some states have required certificates of occupancy, so we're not talking about as big a problem as Vermont has about habitability, which is a reason for withholding rent. They have well funded rent assistance programs. We have rent assistance programs, but they typically run out of money before the beginning of the fiscal year. And we're now really battling about whether or not Vermont is going to have sufficient programs to shelter the homeless. So there's a lot of reasons to think, if you're going to do something about process, you need to take the time to do it right. So in my written testimony, I said, there is an intent in H. Seven seventy two to defeat the civil rule requirement that civil process be just, as well as speedy and inexpensive. So the rules of civil procedure, and I brought mine because I have to look at them all the time, every day, and the landlord lawyers do, too. Civil process, the rules favor decision of cases on the merits at a hearing, where the party who's asking for relief produces evidence throughout case law, throughout the civil rules, throughout statutes. That's how civil process is supposed to work. On the merits, at a hearing, after evidence. Another thing that civil rules favor is requiring all claims arising out of the same transaction or occurrence to be brought in the same case. Another thing is the civil rules favor amendment of the pleadings if something got left out the first time or something new happens while the case is pending. Allow the person to bring that into the case, allow parties to conduct discovery. And after adjudication, or a fairly produced agreement, the rules favor finality, so you don't have to keep coming back and back. I don't know of any rules that deny process to one party while making that same process available to another party. There are many aspects of H-seven 72 that do that, that truncate. For example, even in the amendment, which I didn't have a whole lot of time to look at and analyze, but the amendment to get an expedited hearing comes in and says, You need to do this on it. You have to have an affidavit accompanying your request for expedited hearing. But if the defendant wants to oppose it, the amendment now says that has to oppose it pursuant to civil rule seven b six. That rule says your opposition has to make a case that live evidence in court is needed. So the plaintiff doesn't have to make a case that live evidence in court is needed, but the defendant has to make a case that live evidence in court is needed. In that way, this is an uneven bill. Now, we have a process right now, a rent into court process, that also requires defendants to make that case. We had time to say you should repeal mention the court process, I would make that case. But that's not what we're doing here today, because that's a very unfair process. It only allows landlords to make that motion. It requires tenants to meet a much higher burden and doesn't allow them to change things. Well, H-seven 72 says tenants can't now try to change or mention the court order. The amendment takes out the suggestion of small claims court appeal, because small claims court does not have any kind of jurisdiction to order anybody to do anything. But that leaves in there landlord possibility to tell tenants who their guests can be and who they can't be with no appeal, which for me really says the flavor of this. Landlords it's landlord is such an awkward word. Right? We don't talk about people as lords anymore. But landlords now want to be able to dictate exactly what a tenant does and how they behave and who they can have over and things like that. And so and that makes tenants somehow second class citizens. I don't know. I want to talk about standards for emergency hearing. It's not as if the law never had a standard for emergency hearing. There are certain statutes that have standards for emergency hearings, but generally in the rules of civil procedure, the standards for emergency hearing are actually sort of ancient. In current law, a person who is aggrieved of something that someone is doing that is likely to cause irreparable harm, under Rule 65, they can come to court with an affidavit based on personal knowledge, and that affidavit has to make out a case that as time goes forward, there will be a reparable harm. And in which case, the judge can give them an order to serve on the other party saying, stop that. That's an ex parte temporary restraining order. The temporary restraining orders that we now embody in relief from abuse orders are based on that process. You can come in, make out a case that something bad is going to happen unless the court acts. The court reviews that and says, Yes, you've made that case. I'm going to give you a temporary order. And then in case of civil process, you can come back to court within twenty eight days and have a hearing to show that that temporary order that you asked for should be made permanent, because you can prove that there will be irreparable harm. This says, nope, there is no court review, even in the amendment. H seven seventy two says, if you file a case alleging one of the grounds in the reason for termination, nine BSA forty four sixty seven b two, if you allege one of those reasons, and the court just has to give you time in court ten days later, You miss the step of court review. Did you make out the case that you need emergency review? And why that's concerning to me is because when I look at $4,467.02, what is in there now and what is proposed to be in there under h seven seventy two, it says when the termination is based on acts of violence, damage to the dwelling unit or premises, or other activity, any of which threaten the health or safety of other residents, or other activity, I mean, I had a case where the tenants were at each other's throats because of parking when there was snow that had been pushed. One person couldn't get out of her apartment, and she needed her car right next to her apartment. So it did threaten her health and safety, because she was trapped in her apartment by the way the other person parked. So these are very broad terms, and I don't think anybody thought. That is all you have to do is write down something that fits one of those definitions. You require the person to they only get five days notice. Now the amendment now says they can have twenty one days to answer and a hearing in ten days, and you can get somebody out without court review about whether or not irreparable harm will result in the future if that behavior continues. And so a lot of people we represent, a lot of folks who have a hard time with behavior because they live close to their neighbors, those people have disabilities. So, for example, this would cover somebody who is being evicted because they have fallen on mental health bad times, and perhaps they have begun to hoard more things in their apartment just because they're not taking out their trash. So we had a case where that was the allegation, and with help, we were able to get a social worker, get a cleaner, the change to the physical premises, because it does say damage to premises. We got to change the physical premises and got that person support and retain the tenancy. But in that short timeframe, you would not be able to do that. And so I agree with Judge Zonnay and Terri Poisson that right now, you don't see very many of these kind of cases, but you would see a lot more cases, because somebody says, I don't like the way you have behaved, and I wanted to point out that's another problem with it, which is the thing that gets you into for the termination notice under 4,460 seven(two) talks about something that has happened. It doesn't talk about something that will happen. And so it's not very narrowly drawn. You could get somebody out in very short order for something they did without giving much of a chance to inquire or get help on whether or not that will still keep happening. And for cause evictions, that's really the essence of what this is. I have a case right now where there is one incident which would fit this statute, one incident, one day, and whether or not that was going to keep happening is not a part of it at all. So what else do I want to say about this?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So I will note on the amendment on page six, line 18, is that the defendant is threatening the health and safety. So it is based on forty four sixty seven(two), but it is looking forward that the threat is currently happening. It's So just tied to Form thousand b two. One of the

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: things I noticed is that that's the proposed 4,863 or five, or I can't remember which one it is. But anyway, it says you can file on forty four four hundred sixty sixty seven b two, and then it says it's threatening. So to me, that's unclear. If you can get in on anything that's in 4467 b two, which it seems like that's what it says, it doesn't say only if is threatening. So that is threatening or the page seven seventy two version of p two says, which threaten or threatens? And then the title 12 piece says it is threatening. I'm taking the word for it. Don't have it in front of me.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah. It does have a forward looking aspect of it

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: as well. But I guess the point is, it's not about whether or not you want to accomplish a goal of having a procedure for people that are threatening or predictably going to continue to cause something like irreparable harm. It's not whether or not you could have a procedure for that. I'm saying this, and even with the amendment, doesn't do it, and it's not crafted to do that. All those kinds of things are going to take more time to figure out how to do it without having too wide a net and bringing in people that need more help than being a victim.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I just have to do a time check, so we only have couple of additional witnesses.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: There's a lot of talk about the confidentiality piece and the public access to records. I've done some motions on those. There's an ability in public access to records, there's an exception where people can ask for certain things to be sealed after the fact. And even in cases of domestic violence, we haven't been able to be successful in getting things sealed because there's such a policy towards public access to court records. So again, I agree that this legislature could make a policy decision about sealing records. The whole point of sealing records is to take down a barrier to people who have lost housing and are now trying to get housing, to having an eviction record. One of the things about eviction records is, once your name is in the docket and discoverable in the docket, it doesn't matter whether you won, lost, settled, paid up. It's in the docket, and you have been subject to eviction, and therefore somebody can say, I'm not going to give you housing because you were subject to eviction. So the idea to have confidentiality or expungement or ceiling would be to remove a barrier for people who have been evicted in the past or had an eviction brought against them and now are trying to get other housing.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: On that, since I've heard a lot of problems with the approach that we have here right now, is it sufficient that if at the end of the case, the case is dismissed, the case is not found against the landlord, that at that time the document could be sealed, And including that you can't see it on the docket. I'd have to double check to make sure I understand that. But I think if they would say the record doesn't exist, is that gonna help if we do something like that? That's doable. That's, I think, We're doing that right now with a lot of criminal records.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: Yes. I think that was the objective in the first place. Legal aid advocated for a ceiling or expungement bill and ended up with this confidentiality placed to it.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: But

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: again, it's something that could be worked on so that the goal is accomplished of not having a permanent record of eviction that would be a barrier in the future for anybody trying to find an apartment.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I think that is imminently doable.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: Guess I've said this already, but I just have to emphasize it. The idea that somebody can be evicted in a short period of time, where there are blocks for the defendant to have to hear live testimony in court and have the court decide if the testimony and evidence meets a standard. To me, that is mind blowing. Even the motion process suggested allows an order to be made without live testimony. Right now, if you go to the court and the other side doesn't show up, the best way, if you're a plaintiff and you want to win your case, is you go ahead and put in the testimony even though the other side isn't there. Then the court has heard the testimony, says it meets the standards, and gives you a judgment. This idea of you don't show up and it goes to a default, that's really not a good idea at all. Karen, may

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: ask a question? I'm hearing that, and I'm trying to understand. Are there examples of it where it does exist? What?

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: Where that

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: would happen. I'm seeing it. Yeah. So that you would go to court and you don't show up and there is a judgment that's just made. So I hear that maybe it's not ideal, but it sounds like it's not a new idea.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: The reason the judgment is made if you don't show up at court is because the plaintiff puts in their evidence, and there's no contest to the evidence, and the judge doesn't have anything to detract. The plaintiff becomes more credible if the defendant doesn't show up. But the judge fears that it meets the standard and makes a decision. For example, let's say you weren't actually the owner, the plaintiff wasn't the owner, and the defendant didn't show up, shouldn't the judge ask, Okay, please explain to me that know, testify in court that you're the owner, and that you have a right to evict this person. That at least should be something that the court should hear, as opposed to they should have some evidence that the person's the owner and that they have the right to evict them, that they sent a termination notice. They should hear that. And I hear and I

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: guess I'm just trying to put it in a piece of that. It's not a brand new idea that's being put out there, that judges can make orders without all parties being present.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: Sure. Judges can make orders without all parties being present. But you don't call that a default. You call that a judge as a matter of fact, that would be maybe I don't wanna say that maybe that's better for the plaintiff. Because if so if it's a default, then somebody can make a motion to remove the default and and start over again and try to have a a hearing on it. If it's a judgment after evidence that you didn't show up for, then you're So it's terminology.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: I I do think that there's a lot of due process, civil procedure, work scheduling ideas that need to be worked out better if any of the aims of this bill should go forward. And I understand the policy parts aren't the jurisdiction of this committee, but there's a lot of policy parts that are really very, very slanted towards landlords and against tenants.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Appreciate that. I appreciate your testimony. We do have to move on to a couple more witnesses. Thank you. And thank you very much, team. We'll go to Angela, who I believe is appearing by is appearing by Zoom. And if you could identify yourself and proceed with your testimony.

[Angela Zaikowski, Director, Vermont Landlords Association]: Sure. Certainly. Thank you very much for the opportunity today. My name is Angela Zykowski. I am the director of the Vermont Landlords Association. We're a statewide trade organization, here in Vermont, and also I am practicing attorney. I have a private law firm, where I represent housing providers, around Vermont in pretty much every civil court in the state, with eviction actions and other housing related matters. So I also come at it from a practitioner standpoint, understand these rules, how they work in practice, and sort of the impacts that they have sort of on both sides. So not only housing providers, but also every single other tenant in the building that has to live next to somebody that's causing problems in that building. And that's been sort of the ask and the impetus for a lot of these changes that are included in July, is that there is an issue with the amount of time that it takes to have somebody removed when they're causing a problem in a building. And it's time that impacts the landlord, but it's also time that impacts other residents in that building. So landlords spend a lot of time, dealing with complaints, and concerns of other residents, while these processes work their way through the system. So, while many times non payment or rent cases will move through the court system relatively fast, six months or less, That's not really fast if you're a landlord and the tenant's not paying the rent, but in terms of court process, that can be relatively quick. But if you have a tenant that's damaging building, having violent acts against other residents, dealing drugs out of the unit, threatening residents, threatening neighbors, threatening the landlord or property manager, and you start a case for those violations, those tend to be some of the longest cases to work their way through the system. It is not uncommon right now for a case related to behavior to take nine months, twelve months, and I actually had one that took two years. So it's an incredibly long process, for these types of violation issues for not only the landlord, for the tenant that's under eviction, but also for everybody else in that building. So part of this proposal is to ask to help speed up that process, to create less impact in the building, less impact for other residents, and to find a way to address these issues in a more expedited fashion. So I think looking specifically at the court process language that was presented for today, this does provide process. This provides a level of due process that we currently see with the rent escrow process, that we see with unlawful occupant process, and it requires the landlord or the plaintiff in the case to ask for this faster process by motion. So it's not required. It doesn't mean it's gonna happen in every single case, but it is permissive. So if a landlord chooses to use this expedited process, they can. And in order to do that, they have to file a motion with the court and they have to file an affidavit with the court that lays out their legal basis for their ask. Not dissimilar to what we see in rent escrow currently, not dissimilar to what we see in unlawful occupant currently. And then that request gets served on the tenant. So now they've been provided with notice for a second time, because remember, they've already gotten a termination notice from the landlord before they can even get into court. So they've already had some initial notice that there's a problem. Now we're in court, we get served with court papers that says here's this process again. And oh, by the way, here's a court hearing that is going to happen on this issue. So again, due process, right? We have a court hearing that gets scheduled. That's the ten days notice, but no later than twenty one days after the motion is filed sort of section of this bill. And at this point, the tenant has some options. They can show up for the hearing where the court will take evidence, or the parties will work out some sort of agreement, or they'll there'll be a court hearing of some sort. They can file a response, as outlined here, or they can do nothing. Those are all options that are available to them now for the unlawful occupant process and for the rent escrow process. But all of these roads lead to a court hearing, where a court will potentially being taken, taking evidence if both parties are there. If the defendant doesn't show up, then generally the plaintiff wins by what we call default in the legal world, which just means that the defendant has failed to appear. Some courts even now require some level of testimony to support or just an affirmation of what's in the affidavit that was previously supplied. But this sense that there is no due process or no opportunity for court review does not track with what the language in this bill is. So there's opportunities for tenants to state their case and to come in to convince a court that the behavior that is being described does not threaten the health or safety of other residents. Really, that's what we're talking about, right? Sort of egregious behavior that's threatening the health or safety of other residents, the landlord or the landlord's agent, neighbors. They're creating a safety risk in a building. And yes, some of the language does have a catchall, because there's a lot of situations where the behavior could threaten the health or safety of other residents. And so, you know, this piece, while it is happening much more quickly than a normal eviction case, of tracks with that unlawful occupant case, it tracks with the rent escrow process. And it is intended to deal with those very extreme behavior cases, that we're seeing. And I think from a policy standpoint, it seems very unfair to tell those other residents, well, you've got to live longer next to this person that's causing these problems in your building. Or you have to be subjected to that tenant that is threatening you with I'm going to blow up your car, or I'm going to stab you the next time I see you, or sometimes that actually does happen. And so what we're asking for is a faster process to deal with those issues through these changes. And have to commend the committee because I think the changes that were made from 4.1 to 2.1, I think this addresses a lot of the process problems that were raised, and I think it clarifies a lot of the issues that the court had. And from a practitioner standpoint, I read through this now and I'm like, okay, I understand what we're doing here. This looks familiar to these other processes that we already have in existence. And, you know, will there be some growing pains if something if this goes into effect? There always is, right? There's always the judiciary's got to figure out how we're ruling on cases, practitioners have to figure out how we're presenting cases and we managed to do that. But I think the framework is here, and it is in a format that we're used to seeing.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: So did you have more or

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: did you open for questions?

[Angela Zaikowski, Director, Vermont Landlords Association]: I have more, but I'm always happy to take questions if they're on top of mind because I know how quickly they come in and out.

[Rep. Thomas Oliver (Member)]: Yeah, go ahead.

[Angela Zaikowski, Director, Vermont Landlords Association]: Okay. I wanted to make a quick comment about the trespass order piece that's in here. This is a pretty significant problem that housing providers are running into, and this language has attempted to be tailored to deal with those situations where a housing provider has gone through a court eviction process. They have gotten a writ of possession from the court to have a person removed from their unit. And then that person is coming back onto the property and is continuing to cause problems at the property. This is what I refer to generally as the Decker Towers problem. So Decker Towers is a relatively well known building in Burlington. You can Google Decker Towers and there's a number of news articles that will come up about it. What was happening was, the owner of that building was evicting tenants for dealing drugs. Though that household would get evicted out of the building and then move into a unit another unit in the building and continue to do the same exact thing, deal drugs out of the unit. And because of the way our laws are currently written, the landlord would then have to evict that next household. And then that eviction would go through and those folks would move into another unit in the building. And so they were having to work their way through the building with evictions instead of just being able to exclude the first set of tenants who had already been legally evicted out of the building. So that's the ask for this for this particular change as it's related to no trespass orders. And then, finally, the piece related to confidentiality. This is a this is a very hard one for me, as a practitioner and as somebody who believes that we should have open records for our court system. And I understand that there are certain dockets that have been deemed to be confidential, that the public doesn't have access to, but an open judiciary and open records to what's happening in court is, I think, one of the fundamental basis of our democracy in this country, one of the tenants, that we sort of hold hold dear. And I think taking an entire case group of cases and making them confidential from the outset has runs the risk of creating more problems than we're intending.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: What

[Angela Zaikowski, Director, Vermont Landlords Association]: I don't necessarily have a problem with is, is there a set of standards that we could create that would allow somebody to ask to have their case sealed? Right? Are there certain categories where it would make sense for there to not be access to a specific case instead of a blanket coverage of an entire grouping of cases? And I think for a lot of the reasons that the judiciary laid out about the challenges with confidentiality, I would sort of express support for some of those concerns as well. Just taking a look through my couple of different versions of the bill here. I think I'm set with my direct form of testimony, but I am happy to answer questions. I'm sure there may be questions.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Questions, anybody? Actually, I don't think at this point we're just all kind of thinking. There's a lot of what to do about this. So, no, thank you very much, I didn't have it in front of you. Thank you very much. So we'll have Chris join us now.

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: Good afternoon. My name is Chris Donnelly. I'm with the Champion Housing Trust. We represent the three Northwest counties in The States. We steward roughly 3,000 apartments in our portfolio. So we're a pretty large landlord, maybe the largest property manager in the state. But I'm also here representing a wider network around the state of organizations like ours that cover every corner that oversee 8,300 apartments. So it's a pretty wide range of organizations. And this bill is one of our number one priorities for this. Christian, you represent Cornerstone? Yes. Yep. So if I could go through the organization. No, love

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: quarter Selfish, I'm happy with that one. So

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: our organizations collectively, we operate by some different rules. We won't move you out if you're paying your rent on time and your lease comes up. They automatically renew your lease. So we operate under what people think of as just cause policies. We have rent stabilization, so we don't raise the rents 10% every year or whatever. We just go regulated that way. And our organizations as regional nonprofits also are the organizations that the state looks to when there's a crisis, whether it's pandemic, flooding, financial crisis, moving people out of homelessness. We have been really laser focused on trying to get people out of the motels, so not spending money on the motels as much, and moving them into permanent housing. Whenever anybody runs into problems in any of our apartments, we respond with offers of assistance. We have social workers on staff. We all have all of our organizations have resident services, people that engage with our residents. So our first step is to offer help, connection to other programs, whether it's back rent, what have you. We try to cure any problem right there. I will say, though, that the situation right now with both back rent that's owed to us and then challenging, threatening and challenging behavior in our properties is destabilizing our whole debt in several different ways. I can talk more specifically about what's happening in our shop. Before the pandemic, we had roughly $250,000 in back rent owed to us kind of ongoing. That's just what we were working with each year. It got brought down to close to zero during the pandemic because of all the which is just awesome. It was great. Stabilization for our tenants, it's gone back up to 600,000. And so it's destabilizing for our financial capacity. That's happening in smaller versions around the state. We have increased our spending in security. We actually have hired a director of security. And we have spent about $750,000 a year just to install cameras and do stuff just to make sure our properties are secure. So that's money that we're not spending on other things. We've hired up to 20 resident service people that can engage with our tenants, and that's more than we used to. So these are resources that we're trying to bring to bear to kind of address the stability of people's housing and protect the rest of the tenants in our building. Angela talked a lot about the impact of some of the activity in apartment buildings on other tenants. That's really what keeps us up at night. So this is really destabilizing, not just financially, but we have reputational risk from this in our communities, we want to build new housing. We also are losing staff over some of the situations in properties. In our shop, we have a list of 60 apartments that kind of have a red flag on them saying, If we need to go in to make a repair or so forth, we should think twice about it. We have 12 that we won't go into in our shop. So it's a small number, but it's really significantly impacting our ability to address concerns. And that has a much broader impact on our residents. So we've been asked to do more the last several years. We've been asked to house more people moving out of homelessness. Right now, collectively in our portfolios, roughly a quarter of the people that we house had moved out of homelessness. That's a lot of extra work that we're doing to try to solve these issues. And those people are vulnerable. Those people need as much support as anybody. And so that's really what this bill for us does, is it really kind of protects those other tenants. If we feel like waiting longer, is just going to put more people at risk. And so we really encourage you to act. I do think there are other ways the courts can establish priority. I think this should be a priority. I think this is threatening the health and safety of folks. So I'm not a lawyer. I'm not going to go through the bill and talk to the court process. Yes, I've heard a lot of that. But I'm happy to answer questions.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: Thanks for being here. So I'm wondering if you can talk about how much you've been able to use. We heard from Terry, like, what the dates are and how frequent people can come in. So what's it like now when you try to go through an eviction process?

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: I was here yesterday, and when I went back to my office, I checked in with the property management folks because I've got a new draft to the and they had done two evictions yesterday. One was seven months. One was eleven months. Both dealing with drugs.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: Can you talk about why it took that long? Typically,

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: can go faster, and Angela did this, with down payment. It's just easier to prove. You didn't pay. Some of these other types of activities, it's just harder to prove. We had one tenant that set a fire to the building. That certainly threatened the health and safety of folks, and that took a little less. Why? So several reasons. So in that one, the sheriff showed up several times, the surge, and they wouldn't answer the door. So we go and get a tack order and do that. And it's assembling the evidence that's going through the process.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: So once you file the evidence, how long is the court taking?

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: It ranges, but I don't have a specific date. We have a list of all the evictions. I could probably compile that for you.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: I guess I'm just trying to figure out where the hang ups I don't know what's involved in compiling the evidence, if that's something you rely on the people to get you documents. Well, we have

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: put camera footage. We have a very hard time getting neighbors, tenants, to go on the record and state that their neighbor is causing this havoc. So that's a challenge. So we don't have that type of direct experience. So it's, yeah, it's a range of sense.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: I'm also wondering for the apartments that you've talked about that you won't go into repair, are you actively doing evictions on those right now? How much does it cost you to have an eviction and to have an apartment turnover?

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: We spend about 300 to $400,000 in legal fees. Per eviction? A year, A year. And that turnover is depending on what's happening. And that could be $15,000 $20,000

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: And have you been able to do anything different with screening? Are there other steps that kind of or services, like if it's Shelter Plus?

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: Yeah. No, we access every single program and service that are up there. A lot of it is really about the drug dealing and the violence. If it's a mental health thing, we'll just figure out a better place for people. And sometimes that means convincing people that they need to go

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: to the hospital or find some other location to live instead of where they can access better services. And I know Cheflain Housing Trust is very committed to housing people. And I guess I'm wondering what your thoughts are hearing the delayed testimony and what it might do to this system.

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: Sense, and others may have a different opinion on this, but my sense is moving evictions faster, just move for evictions faster, it wouldn't necessarily cause more evictions to happen. It just remove people through the process faster. If a landlord is collecting rent and everything's fine, there's no reason. It's just when there are issues. And those issues can be costly, but they also They're very disruptive. And that's what keeps us up at night, the disruptive behavior. Deal with the economic issues of it much easier than the dream. And that's why in this field, was a million dollars for background program. And we really think that these things need to go hand in hand. Questions for Chris?

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: So you're on the nonprofit side with the CEREC, and you go in all these apartments that you handle and stuff like this. What happens if it gets so out of control that there's no money to you know, a regular landlord has to pay their bills and stuff like that. What happens when you when your entity can't do that?

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: So I will say there are a few buildings in Burlington that we have boarded up and just said, we need to just stop this right now. And just like, it's it's costing so much money that we need to move everybody out, different place, get people away, and we're just going to board it up and we're going to wait for another use. And then we need to go borrow money and reinvest in that property. It hasn't happened to us because it's fine, but I have heard of stories in the upper well, Pacific Northwest that there are some nonprofits that are selling their properties because there's so much debt, so much rent arrears or debt.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: But you don't have any in Vermont that No. Is And you probably can't talk about the others that have just had enough and just boarded up their floor locked in.

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: Yeah. Know that there's another organization, and there's a letter on your page that is converting a building that was used for 100% people moving out of homelessness, permanent supportive housing. They're converting it to just more generic kind of affordable housing. I'm not saying that we to move away from that because of outside influence that's come in. So read that letter. It tells a story about what the things we are thinking about we need to do.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Yeah. I I mean, we built a our taxpayers certainly have built a new complex right around here, and immediately it became a problem. It continues to be a problem. We have the drugs in there. We have everything. We're annual apartments that I think was actually we put in use, I think, last few something like that. It continues to be a problem. Then, again, it's it's it's I don't know of a landlord out there that wants to get rid of a good tenant. Usually, there's a reason and and to get rid of them. And the other big thing is once that landlord can finally get into that part apartment, if there's any type of hoarding or if there's any type of, god knows, how much garbage they laid behind and and it runs down into the ceiling and everything has to be replaced and everything like that, you have no way of of knowing what it's gonna cost. How do

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: you guys handle that situation? These are, what you're describing is, it's rare. It's like one bad apple in a bunch, right? One bad apple in a barrel. It's just got probably just out of your shoes, right?

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: I don't know how big your barrel is. I know they're smaller barrels. And you try to get good tenants and

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: you go over everything, but- As most property owners have, you have cash reserves for both operating and you have for capital reserves. So you need to just start using your reserves, and then you need to build them back up. If it's really substantial, then you may need to use a program like VEIC, you know, Vermont Housing Improvement Program. So you figure out that when you get there.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Been there, done it. It's not fun.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Oh,

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: can I ask?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Oh, my god. Last question, make it

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: You it

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: strike me as someone who is in a somewhat unique position, I would just say, me, a helpful position, because you are both your organization, the people you work with are both you're helping, in many ways, helping some of the most vulnerable Vermonters who stand to benefit from protections for tenants. You serve the most vulnerable who are at risk to be the most negatively impacted by some of the policy choices in this bill. So I'm looking to you as someone who sits at that nexus to help me understand how I should think about this bill. Can you just offer some thoughts on the balance that

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: Yeah, I mean, bill has been, as it's moved through the process, has been an attempt for this balancing act. So for example, some of the sections that you're not talking about, it extends the notice period for people at the end of a lease. So right now in the current law, it's thirty or sixty days, depending on the situation. So when the lease is up, it extends out to ninety days if the property owner doesn't want to renew it. And then it offers an opportunity, because we know it's a market slate, to get some of your deposit back early. So you can use that for your next rent or secured deposit. So it offers some balance in here. I for us, I just can talk about for us. We don't move people along unless there's a real reason. We only move people along for pause. Then nonpayment is a simpler thing than to make things. And that's really, I've said this before, that's what keeps us up at night. It's just a threat and our other tenants.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Thank you. So this is a bill that, as we have a little more time, because can, as appropriations as voting is out until next week, and this would be a, This will be a floor amendment. So we have some more time, by way of telling you, Brenda, that we're going to have to bring you in next week if this bill is going to continue to be moving. And we have some things to think about. Now, confidentiality, moving to ceiling. There could be some more offline communications, I think, between chairs of this committee and other committees looking at this, so to see if the the way forward. So yeah. I just have a procedural question. Are we

[Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel]: gonna be taking more testimony on this?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: But it could pretend. It depends. We're definitely going to hear from Brenda because I

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: told her that we'd hear from her.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: If we have more changes, if we're going have some more changes, then we'll have people weigh in on changes. I mean, I think we've heard from the different sides that we need, but if there's particular people that you need, that you think I about feel like we've Yeah, if we're gonna make it all, we need them here. Yeah, yeah. But I did say I have one more person to testify, and But we'll have that I do want to get to this next bill to have a walk through of these so people can consider it that H-one 171 that Michelle is here to do a walk through. So there may be some changes, especially like the confidentiality part, since I hear that ceiling is a potential way to do this and avoid a lot of the issues that could partially be. But we have to think about it a little bit. So So anyway, so we're gonna move, second. I mean, if somebody else can be I think so. Right, so we're gonna move

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: to H-one Hundred 71.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Thank you, witnesses, for being here. This is another proposed amendment that, I don't know if I should say, I'm working with the Department of to try to continue to move the needle, so to speak, on officer involved shootings and the timing of investigations.

[Todd Daloz, Assistant Attorney General]: You know?

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: All right. Slowly. You'll smile all the way through the heat stroke.

[Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It's awful. No, not Karen. Karen Woodham. Oh, yeah.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Karen may try to call 911 maybe. Yeah. So So we're looking at H171, draft 1.1, committee amendment. This would complete it there. It's in our possession. And this is a follow-up for the testimony you had a couple weeks back on the off-site for shooting the history long investigations that are occurring and all the problems that that's bringing. As a next step, we kind of felt that we were also hearing that

[Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel]: there isn't really a protocol.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: We are live in this week.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Tap this on the doors, please?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I'm sorry. So we thought establishing appointments. One of the things we heard is that there's a protocol or a standard, someplace to look under the legislation statute to understand what's supposed to be happening, why are things taking so long, etcetera. So this is actually something to get at that. With that, I'll turn this over to

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Jill. So for the record, Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel. And as the chair mentioned, we're looking at an amendment to H-one 171. So replacing it's a strike all amendment, replacing the language with it's not a I didn't want to call it a bridge working group. Sometimes when you just have a little handful of folks who are your usual suspects in the room and who you work with, direct them to do a little work and come back to you with a proposal. So you would see creates a new section one on officer involved shooting protocol. And I want to mention, I don't know if you had mentioned to the committee earlier. So this was kind of a collaboration between the folks who are designated in subsection A around how to do this. And so it's the Attorney General's Office, DSAS, DPS, and the Vermont Association of Chiefs of Police sort of work collaboratively to identify a protocol and best practices for independent investigations of officer involved shootings. Subsection B identifies the things that they're supposed to take a look at. I

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: had a question on A. Let's go through the bill.

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Subsection B are the things that they are to address. First one is to define officer involved shooting. So remember our conversation when we had done the walkthrough of the bill as introduced. And what types of incidents trigger an investigation? Define conflict of interest. So as you're about a particular county, one of the reasons why it oftentimes goes to the attorney general's office or another county state's attorney's office is because they have close relationships with law enforcement in that county. So identify the appropriate steps to manage any conflicts for law enforcement and prosecutors. Delineate the process for informing the attorney general's office, DSAS, of an officer involved shooting, identify the general steps for law enforcement investigations into an OIS. I'm starting to pick up the name. Page two subdivision five describe the process for prosecutorial assessment of the investigative materials, including dual independent assessments. Number six is evaluate the process of investigation and prosecutorial review of That'll have the little acronym there. I just added that at the last minute. To ensure timely criminal charging determinations and identify and address existing barriers to timely criminal charging determinations. And then finally, outline the final outcome to an investigation and assessment of an OIS, such as clearing a law enforcement officer or filing criminal charges. Subsection C is just to say that when they're doing this work, they're to be looking at other jurisdictions to kind of see what their protocols are and see what we can learn from them. Subsection D is that on or before December 1, the entities shall submit one written report to the committees on judiciary detailing their work and agreed upon protocol for officer involved shootings and any legislative changes necessary, including appropriations to effectuate the protocol. And then I made it effective on passage, and I retitled it because the bill is introduced. It's quite different. And so it would be after passage, it would be an act relating to criminal justice agency protocols for an officer involved shooting.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: First of all, I like that nice small group.

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: I didn't even want to call it

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: a working group. What's that?

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I said

[Teri Corsones, State Court Administrator]: I didn't even wanna call it Right. When you

[Michelle Childs, Office of Legislative Counsel]: call the working group, everybody wants on.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: So I had five on my mind just just because, but there's four here. Now if and my question is around that. And and and I mean, I'm not, you know, married to any of the you know, anybody in here whether they should be in or out, but one that came to mind that I don't know if we would put them in as a fifth or maybe replace somebody else would be the fraternal order of police, and only because they were here testifying the other day. I guess that's kind of an open question more to the committee than to you. That's necessary or are we we're certainly covered with law enforcement. I mean, there's no no doubt about that.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Let's ask that of the witnesses as well.

[Rep. Thomas Oliver (Member)]: I think it would be handy to have just a blurb of legislative intent in there.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Okay.

[Rep. Thomas Oliver (Member)]: Yeah. So then we can find a resolution to resolve these in a timely fashion.

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: Yeah. No. That yeah.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Kind of take that from original one seventy five.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. What's that? Got it. So I think

[Rep. Ian Goodnow (Member)]: so not really going to walk through, I have a question on something that could be included in this, so

[Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I think it's more to you.

[Rep. Ian Goodnow (Member)]: So this, I think, is great, and it kind of captures a lot of what we heard. The one thing that's missing in here, and I don't know if it's appropriate or not, would be something looking into how we can treat officers who are involved in officer involved shootings during the investigation. I think that was something that was pretty powerful testimony that we heard. There's concern for their mental health and their account. Like, what happens to them during this long period? I understand that it's an investigation to a potential criminal charge, right? So it's a weird thing, but not touching that at all in this if it's a working group that's like in that We're trying to come up with the best policy for how to

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Especially if

[Rep. Ian Goodnow (Member)]: you're not charging me. Yeah, well, I don't really know what the right language is, but this is really great and it just touches on every other thing that we heard,

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: but it doesn't really touch on that issue. Right. So let's plan on adding those two, but also let's hear from some of the witnesses and we can also ask, since we have kind of a small working group already, they can help us form that language. I think they understand what we're getting through.

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Yes. We can talk to

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Ian to weigh in. Let's get it for who wants to go first Todd? Why don't we start the Q Todd since?

[Rep. Thomas Oliver (Member)]: Thank you, Michelle. Thanks, Michelle.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: To see

[Todd Daloz, Assistant Attorney General]: you all. Good afternoon. I'm glad it's 47 degrees cooler in here than it was ten minutes ago.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: Remarkable.

[Todd Daloz, Assistant Attorney General]: For the record, Todd Daylo is assistant attorney general. So we worked on this language. In fairness to state's attorneys, Kim got a look at the rough draft maybe in a half an hour ago, maybe not even that. So I think she'll speak to her thoughts on the language. Generally, this seems like a good path forward. We appreciate the opportunity to look it and provide a report that can at least dig into some of the issues that we touched on in the testimony two weeks ago. I'm happy to kind of you know, as far as talking about union representation on on this, I guess what I would say from a prosecutor's perspective, again, we're looking at potential criminal violations. And it's certainly the chiefs of police and the sheriffs and the state police make sense because they're doing some of the measures of the investigation into it. I'm not sure where the union's role in the process of investigating union members. It doesn't seem to make sense to me. The mental health piece is really Sorry.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: No. So Tom and Karen.

[Rep. Thomas Oliver (Member)]: Me? Yeah, Tom and Karen. So just one thing I learned through this process was that the department doesn't really have a huge responsibility to the officer typically. So I think somebody should whether it's you being or not or some sort of idea to represent them.

[Todd Daloz, Assistant Attorney General]: Yeah. I think that's Yeah. Don't disagree that certainly for me as just a person, that was a really powerful testimony, right, about the mental health supports that need to be there when folks' entire careers are on the line, for the most part, doing the hardest part of their job they'll ever have to do. That's completely heard. And I guess I would just suggest to the committee, if this group is working on the protocol for investigation, I'm not sure putting both together will make the most sense. There may be overlap, and I know it'll probably be more than five, but there could be value in We wouldn't necessarily have a role in that. I'm not sure well, I'm happy to hear other thoughts on it. But like our investigation, our analysis of the investigation and determination of charges isn't necessarily going to engage with law enforcement. Right? But the state police would certainly have thoughts on that, the sheriffs and the chiefs. And I only suggest, like, it's a little bit of the two are very clearly related, and I'm not sure the work streams are necessarily dovetailed. And and, again, I just wanna read my frame of reference for it, for what it's worth to the committee is this is a criminal investigation. Mhmm. And and that's how we are gonna look at what we're doing here. There's a timeliness issue that's well heard, and I think that's gonna be addressed in this work because we're taking people off the street potentially who should be getting back to work in this timely manner.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Karen, can

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: talk about it.

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: Yes. I know if you were dumb, but I have a question, so maybe it's just gonna be incorporated. I appreciate this. I feel like, yeah, put the people together, figure out a plan, and I appreciate the piece that this is a criminal investigation, but let's work on the timing and kind of make sure that all the players are being communicated. In that, I have concerns, and I haven't fully thought it out. Why have concerns? But we're victim voices in this. And I know that that would be a part of the attorney general and the Department of State's attorney, but there's victim advocates. But I feel like that's a voice that's missing of how are we making sure that this is timely and working for other players, but that the victim who is the result of this criminal investigation is also being considered.

[Todd Daloz, Assistant Attorney General]: Yeah. I really appreciate that. And I think I want to be thoughtful. I know that our process, and Kim can speak to the process for the state's attorneys, involves victim input and engagement with mean, I think some of the really powerful testimony you heard from the families in early February, no idea, but it was this year, was we were able to talk to them and sort of share our process. And that was, I think, helpful. That would be incorporated in this conversation. But again, we have that process for victim input in our general criminal investigations. And I want to make sure that I keep being clear. What is being asked of us is to create a protocol in one type of criminal investigation. We don't really have those protocols, and we don't have written protocols in all the other types of investigations. So I think we want to hew as closely as we can to the work that we do here with an understanding that there are other concerns that this committee has with how those investigations are looking forward.

[Rep. Karen Dolan (Member)]: So I'm hearing it's already baked into how you do the work. And I feel like I trust these current players, but I guess I just wanna make sure that whatever protocol is created is taking it taking into consideration that. So I don't Okay. Don't know if language is needed, but I'm just hearing that that's already baked into your protocol and process is helpful. I'm just flagging that. So,

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: Todd, I'm really glad you said what you did, because I certainly appreciated what Representative Burditt was saying. I was thinking about the perception that I've heard from families of victims who have said, oh, always find law enforcement not guilty, and question if it is going to be a truly non biased investigation. And anything that slants that, like, and we're worried about the mental health of officers, seems like that would perpetuate that myth. And the sooner that the infestation happened, the easier it will be on people's mental health. But I know that in trying to do my own research on why would these take a long time, they can be complicated with witnesses, etcetera. I like it being sort of single focused, trying to figure out how to best do the kind of investigation that needs to happen, and figuring out how to support victims and law enforcement in other avenues.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: There's a question there?

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (Member)]: I guess there wasn't, sorry.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: That's fine. I just want to make sure that you were done. Ian? Yeah, it's fine.

[Rep. Ian Goodnow (Member)]: I'm happy to I'll talk about it once

[Todd Daloz, Assistant Attorney General]: for now.

[Rep. Thomas Oliver (Member)]: So cut that out

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: as a video. I

[Rep. Thomas Oliver (Member)]: think the most important part is we find a way to do this timely, and that will be the healthiest thing they offer this far. And then it will be up to their agencies to help the officers out, although some smaller agencies aren't gonna have a clue for what's happened, what a disaster is gonna be for their employee. And maybe if there's just some input somehow or control or mandated follow-up. Ian, that's why I asked a question.

[Rep. Ian Goodnow (Member)]: I think basically, and I do agree with my question is, there's no protocol right now on this. We're trying to establish protocol. Let me finish. And part of the reality is the lack of clarity on how this works has an impact on officers who are involved in officer involved shootings. And so if we're creating a group of people to look at establishing clear protocol on how this works, I think it just makes sense that that as an element of one of the things to look at should be something that we look at, which is, like, how those officers are like, how are they treated and involved during process? Because it is a criminal investigation, but until they're charged, they're still state employees or local employees. Just feels like it would be a part of this that we're not looking at if we're building a group to look at this full process. Guess that's my question. Did you agree with that?

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: It's a compound question.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah. So

[Todd Daloz, Assistant Attorney General]: let me start with there is a protocol process. It is not distilled in the way that I think is sought here. And so that's understood, and that's something we're happy to work on. Again, I would just caution that I'm not aware of other instances in criminal investigations where a defendant in the prosecutor's line of sight is you are obviously thinking about somebody's health and well-being. And I'm not sure that's deeply considered. I would agree with Rev Oliver's statement that Speed is Speed will be certainly helpful. Probably a distillation of process will be helpful. And I but the third point of sort of and the agencies need to understand it. And and there may be a space for that. I I would just say from where we sit, we wanna be really careful about crossing that boundary because we want to be the whole point is for public trust, for the well-being of the victim's family, and for the, ultimately, a clear determination for the officer, which usually is getting them back to work.

[Rep. Thomas Oliver (Member)]: We do every day take into consideration defendant's on the front row to be happy. She doesn't want to be happy on them as your mother's father.

[Todd Daloz, Assistant Attorney General]: Yeah. And thank you for that. I would say I'm not sure it's in any kind of process management, but you would have

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: So kind of playing off what Representative Rachelson said,

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: there's been victims that have had concerns and, you know, sort of not the exact comment, but the cops always get off type thing. So considering the current AG, past AGs, or potentially future AGs or or, you know, thinking about state's attorneys, and I don't expect you to speak to the state's attorneys. But through an investigation, I gotta believe that if you come to the determination that a crime was committed, it's going to be prosecuted. Absolutely.

[Todd Daloz, Assistant Attorney General]: And I will say the AG herself, the current AG, reads all of these thirty, fifty, 80 page reports that she gets and makes that determination herself.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: Any other questions?

[Rep. Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Sorry,

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Ken. We forgot his name.

[Rep. Ian Goodnow (Member)]: I'm sure decision myself. Jump in too.

[Chris Donnelly, Champlain Housing Trust]: Oh, yeah. Right now.

[Rep. Thomas Burditt (Vice Chair)]: More to more on the cup.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: K. Thank you.

[Todd Daloz, Assistant Attorney General]: Thank you.

[Jean Murray, Vermont Legal Aid]: Thank you, my cookie.