Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: I had to go to the bank this morning. No. It's the money in the top. Oh, okay. Yeah. They take out a you know, we take it out of media. Oh, do they? See. Find out there. Yeah. Will the senate please come to order? Our devotional exercises will be conducted by the reverend Lee Alison Crawford of Saint Mary's Episcopal Church of Northfield. Welcome.

[Rev. Lee Alison Crawford]: Nine days ago on Monday the sixth, I spent the afternoon, evening, and night watching the livestream of Artemis two cruise lunar flyby. And maybe some of you got to drop in on the livestream in the course of that afternoon, and then I also watched the splashdown on the tenth. Doubtless, you've seen the photograph of the Earth that they sent back to us here, the first photo taken by humans of the planet in over fifty years. Perhaps the words of the seventeenth century philosopher, Blaise Pascal, can convey our wonder. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. The lunar flyby and the crew's work and words provide the inspiration for today's devotional. To hear the crew's descriptions of the moonscape, their supportive work about how their work together makes them more human, and even how they asked mission control if they could name one of the craters after Reed Weisman's late wife Carol made me weep. But more so, it was their words of wonder. Christina Cook said, everything we need, the world provides, and that really is something of a miracle. Her words reminded me of Carl Sagan's book, A Pale Blue Dot, in which he writes, look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On every on it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines. Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. So here we are on this pale blue dot in the eternal silence of infinite spaces. Here we are in the brave little state of Vermont. How do we make the best of it? How do we work for the common good of everyone? How do we keep in mind that what we do here in Vermont will send ripples into the universe? Victor Glover, just before the loss of signal with Earth, said, in all this emptiness, this is a whole bunch of nothing. This thing we call the universe. You have this oasis Earth, this beautiful place that we get to exist together. I think this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing, and then we got to get through this together. And then he spoke about love, and he said, we're still able to seal feel your love from Earth. And to all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you from the moon. And from Christina Cook who, when the signal was reestablished, said, we will inspire. We will always choose earth. We will always choose each other. And then after Splashdown, she spoke about what it meant to be a crew, How they all work together, how they sacrifice silently for each other, and how that gives them grace and holds them accountable. And she added, when we saw tiny Earth, people asked our crew what impressions we had. And, honestly, what struck me wasn't necessarily just Earth. It was all the blackness around it. The complete darkness surrounding Cook that we reminded her that we're all living on a lifeboat hanging undisturbedly in the universe. She said, I know I haven't learned everything that this journey has yet to teach me, but there's one thing I now know, and that is planet Earth. You are a crew. So as you go through your work today, remember that we are all in this together. Remember love. Always always choose each other. I remember that we are a crew on planet Earth.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Are there any announcements? Seeing none, we have a bill for introduction. S three twenty nine, an act relating to criminal procedures involving firearms introduced on 04/15/2026 by senator Baruth. Listen to the first reading of the bill.

[Senate Secretary (Clerk)]: S three twenty nine, an act relating to criminal procedures involving firearms.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Now you've heard the bill's first reading. It's referred to the committee on judiciary. Orders of the day. We have h six twenty six for third reading. Are there any amendments prior to third reading? Seeing none, listen to the third reading of the bill.

[Senate Secretary (Clerk)]: H six two six, an act relating to sexual extortion, voyeurism, and disclosure of sexually explicit images without consent.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: The question is, shall the bill pass in concurrence with proposal of amendment? Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. The ayes have it. And we have passed in concurrence with proposal of amendment h six twenty six. We now have h seven forty four. Are there any amendments prior to third reading? Seeing none, listen to the third reading of the bill.

[Senate Secretary (Clerk)]: Page seven forty four, that relating to procedures for arrest, adult, or

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: The question is, shall the bill pass in concurrence? Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. The ayes have it, and we have passed h seven forty four in concurrence. We now have h eight forty nine. Are there any amendments prior to third reading? Listen to the third reading of the bill.

[Senate Secretary (Clerk)]: H eight forty nine, an act relating action for damages for deprivation of federal constitutional rights by any government official.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: The question is, shall the bill pass in concurrence? Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed nay. The ayes appear to have it. The ayes do have it, and we have passed h four eight forty nine in concurrence. Yeah. We have on the calendar for action h five forty nine. It was introduced on 01/06/2026. It was referred to the committee on institutions which reports it is considered the bill and recommends that it ought to pass in concurrence. Listen to the second reading of the bill.

[Senate Secretary (Clerk)]: H five forty nine, an act relating to eligibility of sentence or detained individuals to obtain a state issued non driver identification card, replacement operator's license, or replacement learner's permit.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Recognize the senator from Bennington, senator Plunkett for the report of the committee on institutions.

[Senator Robert Plunkett]: Thank you, mister president. This has happened before, and right now it will happen again.

[Unidentified Senator from Rutland County]: We may

[Senator Robert Plunkett]: remember S326 from a few weeks ago and everyone was kind of gassed by the many trucks in that bill but we also dealt with drivers licenses and non driver identification cards in that bill. H549 is exactly what we passed in our bill but for two words and just to remind everyone what this does is right now if someone is sentenced to six months or more while they're incarcerated they can apply for a non driver's identification card for their release and what this bill does is it expands that to include replacement operators licenses and replacement learners permits and it also expands it to a whole other cohort of those that are incarcerated. Those that are detained for six months or more will also be eligible to apply for, the non driver's identification operator license and, learners permit. And I'll bring everyone's attention to what the two words are that are different. So if we look to page three, line 16, it reads required for non real ID or real ID identification card, etc. The two words are identification and car. Your committee on institutions did not discuss the necessity for having the words identification card following the acronym that stands for identification documents, but this is what we got from the House. We did hear from legislative council regarding this when we had discussed it before regarding S-three 26. Also had heard from the operations director of DMV. We heard from indirectly from DOC and the House did speak to the operations director for DOC and your institutions committee on a vote of four zero one, recommends that this bill, be passed.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: I recognize the senator from Chittenden, senator Chittenden for the report of the committee on finance.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden]: Mr. President, your senate finance committee looked at this and recognized that there could be a revenue loss from these individuals no longer paying the above mentioned fee, but given the fact that a large portion of eligible individuals are already receiving non driver IDs for free and a small number of new applicable individuals, the small number of new applicable individuals. The JFO estimates this bill of a de minimis fiscal impact, and so your committee on finance voted seven zero zero in support in in favor of this bill and encourages this senate to concur.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: So the question is, shall the bill be read a third time? Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. The ayes have it. And you have ordered third reading of h five forty nine. We have on the calendar for action h nine seventeen, introduced on 02/26/2026 was referred to the committee on government operations which reports considered the bill and recommends that it ought to pass in concurrence. Listen to the second reading of the bill.

[Senate Secretary (Clerk)]: H nine seventeen, an act relating to military affairs.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: I recognize the senator from Windsor, senator White, for the report of the committee on government operations.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Mister president, I think this bill is perhaps one of the best examples of a unified approach to properly address the service that is offered to us by those who serve in the military for our country. I direct your attention to h nine seventeen, which is an accolade to military affairs. The big picture and why I believe that you should vote for this bill and support it as did senate government operations is because it proposes to do three important things to support the military and those who serve in it from Vermont. The first is it corrects the title of the Adjutant General of the National Guard to remove reference to the inspector general, kind of an irrelevant piece, and I'll get into those sections more clearly. The second is that it creates a preference for hiring military spouses into employment in state government, and it also provides free parking for disabled veterans. The bill is a omnibus approach and pulled in three different house bills related to these topics, and I'll just go briefly through the sections. Sections one through 39 include the bill amends, that's that section around Adjutant and Inspector General and it changes any reference to that in the first 39 secondtions to instead of Adjutant and Inspector General to Adjutant General. That's in titles two, sixteen and twenty and all the statutory references to the Adjutant and Inspector General. This change is also being made to more accurately reflect that role and historically the role of Adjutant and Inspector General were combined, but these roles have since been separated and the Inspector General is a separate position within the Vermont National Guard and whose officers report to the Adjutant General. In sections one through 39, we also have gender neutral conforming language changes, and we also correct in section five, some cross references, to make sure that we're accurately referring to the right cross references, and that will enable those interested in the Attigent General election to more easily locate the information. As you may remember, we are very unique in the way that we elect our Attigent General as a state. In the bill, sections forty and forty one were deleted in that as house passed version, we made no changes to that. And then entering into section 42 of the bill as passed by the house, we begin to see the hiring preferences for military spouses and state government employment. I'm not sure I need to explain why that's important, but as you can imagine if your spouse is in the military and you're moved to a new location and perhaps there's a state position that's available to you that you have qualified skills to apply for. If you're new to the area, we do think it's important to see some preferential, some hiring preference. So section 42 adds language to the statutory section on the classification of state personnel to provide a hiring preference for those military spouses. And it's after the requirements of collective bargaining agreements, all of those have to have been satisfied and that a diligent effort was made to recruit an employee within the classified service to fill a vacancy. Then the state shall make a diligent effort to recruit, interview, and hire the spouses of personnel currently serving in the US Armed Forces. In addition, military spouses, along with veterans who apply for and meet requirements for any competitive recruitment that is conducted using a point based examination, there's a few of those, and who receive a passing score, they shall have five points added to their competitive examination rating. Currently, only applicants for sworn law enforcement positions, only sworn law enforcement positions are required to take a written examination. So this is a very specific group of people. If you are a sworn law enforcement officer and you're a military spouse on that exam, you get those five additional points for being a military spouse. Now the last section of the bill that is not the effective dates, is section 43. And this is I think why I was assigned the bill, because we are talking about making parking for disabled veterans free. Transportation hat and senate Gubbuff's hat altogether at once. So section 43 adds language to list the enumerated powers of towns, cities, and incorporated villages to add that municipalities have the power to regulate parking lots and parking meters on public property to include a vehicle with a disabled veteran plates with vehicle disabled veteran plates issued by any state shall be permitted to park at a parking meter without fee. I can go into more detail about who accesses disability plates, who accesses disabled veteran plates, and anything in those terms if people have questions, but I think the bottom line is we're making it free to park if you're a disabled veteran, and I think that's the least we could do to support that community. Section 44 is the effective dates, which will take place on 07/01/2026. Your committee voted five zero zero out of senate gov ops and we heard from the lead sponsor of the bill legislative council. We heard from the joint fiscal office and we and the joint fiscal office. Thank you.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: The question is, shall the bill be read a third time? Are you ready for the question? Senator from Rutland.

[Unidentified Senator from Rutland County]: Thank you, mister president. May I interrogate the reporter?

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: The reporter's interrogated.

[Unidentified Senator from Rutland County]: So, mister president, I appreciate the all the good work in the bill. I'm just curious on one aspect only, and that is, does Vermont have a disabled veteran license plate?

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: No.

[Unidentified Senator from Rutland County]: And with with that in mind, mister president, I thank the report. How almost like, one more one more question if I could. Oh. But I do thank the the report. How Thank you.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Just no sit down.

[Unidentified Senator from Rutland County]: How would a municipality determine if that vehicle is owned by a disabled veteran if Vermont doesn't have disabled veteran licenses?

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: I appreciate that question. What we discussed in committee was some confusion about this exact question. I'm not sure exactly how a so other states have disabled veteran plates. So as any town that had a parking meter that had a meter made saw disabled veterans plate from Arizona, you know, whatever. That would be a pretty easy way for them to know that's free parking, not to charge them, not to ticket them. If you were someone who had a placard, which is the handicapped placard and a veteran's plate, this would also be in my understanding

[Senator Thomas Chittenden]: the visual way that you would know that that's a disabled veteran and therefore not ticket them if they had not paid the meter.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: You would not know unless those identifiers were there. There wasn't a process in our bill to create a disabled veterans plate, we do think that this bill helps move us potentially towards that conversation in the future.

[Unidentified Senator from Rutland County]: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, reporter. Just for the awareness of the chamber, veterans leave active duty. They're typically rated by the VA, the Veterans Administration, with a disability which can be no disability or it can be 0% to one hundred percent. Most veterans' disabilities are completely not visible and most veterans, I'd say a large proportion of veterans do leave with a small percentage of disability to reflect some things that they encountered during their service, but it doesn't rate a disabled placard. They may be a veteran. So just in summary, I sincerely appreciate that the committee made these extremely generous, gracious, changes to reflect, veteran services, but there is a bit of a potential, practicality to determine who's a disabled veteran and who is not. Maybe in future legislation we can find a solution to that but I do appreciate all the effort of the committee in the meantime. Thank you, Mr. President.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Are you ready for the question? Senator from Windsor.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Thank you. I just wanted to correct one thing which is that Vermont does have a veterans disability plate and it has the same criteria as non veterans with disabilities. So the point that the previous senator was making is that there are veterans who have a disability status that would not be reflected in that plate, they would have to have an ambulatory, or visual impairment essentially to get that. So I just want to clarify that piece. Thank you, legislative council.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Are you ready for the question? The question is shall the bill be read a third time? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. The ayes have it. You've ordered third reading of h nine seventeen. That completes the orders of the day. Senator from Windham.

[Unidentified Senator from Windham County]: Thank you, mister president. I move that senate judiciary is relieved of age three eighty five, an act related to coercive debt and the bill be committed to senate finance.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Windham has moved that the senate relieve the committee on judiciary and commit the bill to the committee on Finance. Finance. Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Ayes have it, and the motion carries. Now senator from Chittenden Central.

[Senator Robert Plunkett]: Thank you, mister president. Any announcements? I move that the senate stand in adjournment until 1PM, Thursday, 04/16/2026.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Are there any announcements? Seeing none. Senator from Washington.

[Senator Ann Cummings]: Thank you, mister president. Senate finance will meet at 01:30. Please be on time. We're already booked past 05:00.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Washington.

[Unidentified Senator from Washington County]: Thank you. Senate appropriations at 01:30.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Chittenden Southeast, did you rise once previously?

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Not for a committee time announcement, but folks may have seen the Friends of the State House in the card room and may have seen that they have an announcement about a very exciting event that will, those posters will remain up in the State House until that event takes place on May 5. Some of you have heard my announcements over the last couple of years about the first portrait of a black woman, the first portrait of a, the first woman of color to serve in the legislature being commissioned and then completed. The unveiling of that portrait, which will hang close to the lieutenant governor's office, will take place on May 5 from four to 6PM. I hope people will mark their calendars, and attend with the family. Louvenia Dorsey Bright has since passed away since her service in 1988, but her family, probably some young people, and other dignitaries will be present for that unveiling. Thank you.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Rutland.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden]: Thank you, mister president. Senate government operations will meet at 02:00.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Windham.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Thank you, mister president. Senate institutions will meet at 01:30.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Senator from Windsor. Thank

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: you, mister president. I would like to let you all know that for the senate, I will be selling tickets to Cabaret, which is next Thursday at 07:30. So I would encourage you all to come and see me about buying a ticket if you would like to. One of our treasured special events that we do as a legislative group. Thanks.

[Presiding Officer (President of the Senate)]: Are there any further announcements? Seeing none, the senator from Chittenden Central has moved that the senate stand in adjournment until 1PM on Thursday, 04/16/2026. Are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Ayes have it. The motion carries.