Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: I missed the beginning.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: We are live. We are back in the sad tradition on April 22. We have the Defender General talking about age six forty two. Okay.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Is there anything particular you have questions about? What are

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: your thoughts? Do you have recommendations? And then we may have questions.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I've seen this with the raising the insurance past. It was passed a number of years ago. Pushing it down a little bit. Under, on page three, the top of page C, there continued that consideration in youthful offender is that but as to whether to allow youthful offender for some of youths, whether there's sufficient services in the juvenile court system and the Department of Children and Family Environment practice to meet the youth's treatment and rehabilitation needs. I'm concerned that the state's willful failure to provide services would have a negative impact on state has decided we are to respond to this, then a mutual offender ends up being effectively abutting. And I think that we've seen that that's happened regarding when we raised the age. I think there are times that we've been able to do this with some of the more difficult clients in the criminal arena and where defense has basically set up services to be provided by the state. And don't currently work out Medicaid and treatment options that the state doesn't provide because we don't have, for example, treatment facility that's just co occurring disorders. We don't have any residential treatment facilities that didn't go out to deal with that. So we've arranged services for people around the state, particularly in the Tampa Bay, and with excellent results. What I wouldn't want to say, I don't like the idea of the state being able to say, well, we just don't have those services. And so now the person is kind of stuck in the I don't know where they're stuck in because this says that DCF and the Department of Corrections, so I don't know where you go if you're in the top line. Matt, that was one

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: of my initial concerns when I first saw this, but it's also my understanding that that's already something that has to be taken into consideration at the initial determination hearing?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Right. However, this seems to suggest, I mean, it's underlined, so it's new law that made this bill. And I do think it's an ongoing issue. Has been there are times, and I can tell you a cup is sort of worse. It's not exactly the same, but I'll give you an example. What I would like to establish, oh, it depends on this. Maybe the door keeps changing with the contractor disappears, and I've gotta find rental space. And I asked BGS to find they're supposed to find us rental space. And they come back to me three, six months later and say, we can't find any for us. We're both there. Meanwhile, I have three contractors who are bidding for a contract, and each of them have two spaces that they're proposing for me. So I got six spaces that they could find at places that there'd be no place that ATS was buying. I don't always trust, but I guess that's the nature of the defense council. The government is going to do the things that it's supposed to do. And we saw the same thing with some of our work, seem to challenge people that we're dealing with. And I have a couple of my kids in Chittenden County that were kids for to get inpatient people's social distancing. It's an ongoing And since you asked me to talk about it, I'm talking about it. The other section that is kind of added is on page four. And it is so two. There is obvious being from my structure. You know, and this is quite good. It's not good hearing. We consider, youthful vendor status, be approaching the I'm sorry. Sorry about that. I'm trying to find where I am. Just the bottom line is, this requires that the court consider the victim's statement of ordering that it's permission regarding the full time statute of status. And as of when this was first developed, and I I remain skeptical of the value of a victim providing any competent testimony about the amenability of a person for youthful offender status. Clearly the victim could offer their opinion about what they would like to see happen. But as to the appropriateness of the useful offender status or diagnosis, I don't think they're competent to debate that unless they're a psychologist or psychiatrist or somebody who is able to give an opinion from a treatment point of view. Know, they'd be interested in giving the doctor advice on how to treat cancer. I can tell you what I'd like to see happen, but I can't tell you how it should be treated and what you're trying to deal with this. I understand the victim's desire to express themselves. I just don't know that they can provide any sort of relevant, appropriate evidence. And I raise this again, as it's now, the insertion of the motion of considering the full of the federal status is being inserted in this paragraph, and it requires that it says the court shall consider the statement of holder in disposition. No, I don't know if shall means I considered it and I ignored it. Or, you know, I would suggest that actually that shall, in the context of youthful offender, this is taking in more than just a youthful offender. This is this is pulled out of another portion of of the law, you know, may consider it a statement in ordering this position with the relative to youthful offender. But, you know, I understand what it has to do with restitution. I understand what it has to do with sentencing in cases, that sort of thing. But as to youthful offender status, don't know that a victim has any relevant evidence that they can offer. They can offer an opinion as to what they'd like to see. But it's different in restitution, different than what you'd like to see in a sense. So that is the concern.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Yeah, I think you know, one of the issues, I mean, had raised the point earlier when it was testifying and when Judge Bellion was testifying regarding a victim testifying, not necessarily as to the appropriateness of the useful offender status, but testifying as to the public safety concerns for what they experienced with the defendant and having that be taken into consideration when they're trying to make that public safety determination rather than a general appropriateness of useful offender status. I mean, my initial thought is to keep the line that starts on lines 10 to 11, saying that they can be present to attempt a hearing on the motion to consider non OI O status, but removing the line on 13 to 14 that says, And the appropriateness of you for better status it's ultimately that's, whether it's appropriate, it's up to the judge.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: That would do it.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: Understood,

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: final determination, it's up to the judgement. It's the victim's views of the evokedness.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: They could have an opinion, right? They could have an opinion. They just this is one of those things where you talked about relevant, competent evidence. Yeah. And usually only experts would have the ability to testify about, to give their opinion as to kind of the final decision that is really a psychological medical opinion. I think the victim should be able to say what they want to say and express themselves. There's a time, however, where the competent evidence that a court should consider regarding particular issues and appropriateness of people under status, being one of them. Like I said, I can't about all kinds of things that I'm not confident to do. But the court wouldn't allow you to give them. The court wouldn't consider this, even if I didn't give them. I understand the need for it, they just suppress themselves, but it really doesn't bear on what the company is.

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: Have your question, Matt, and I apologize that you addressed this. That's okay. I was out of the room, but just on page one, last sentence. Debit is made, subject jurisdictional relief, the obvious one second with the bank to the extent necessary to maintain the jurisdiction. It was telling us about this blue ball if you want to put that that way. What is your take on this extension on the positive side?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: That doesn't bother me. This is akin to, you know, what you see when you have, like, in the permanent probation so that you can finish your treatment. Now it's going to be dealt with context. Don't think that some of the magic that over the years we've put in particular ages, what they're good to do when you're 18, when you're 16, you're 21, all those kind of things. To me, that is not really artificial ages are not really the best determining factor when you kind of figure out what somebody needs to do, make sure they're successful. And so that doesn't bother me. Some practitioners disagree with me, but you asked me, and I'm here. Don't know. Well, don't really have much else. Didn't mean

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: committing any Well, I'd say generally when I first heard about this bill, Tim had said, it was a lot longer. It's been trimmed down quite a bit, sounds like, from what the House did. I think there's a reasonable possibility we could get this done before the May 8 closure of the Marching Committees. So there is that one change that I'd recommend regarding the appropriateness of youthful matter status. I know we're technically not fired up, but is there any opposition or should we be taking further testimony? One of the end, I'm sorry. It was regarding the witness or the victim testifying at the hearing on the motion to consider youthful offender status, keeping that in line, but then removing the line that says any appropriateness of youthful offender status. That's ultimately what the judge determines. The other Alright, so let me make that small change. Oh, yeah. And you can

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: set up the corrections of the judge, the judge

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: on page one? Yeah, that one too. Then I'll If you were gonna make that change, you might there'd be some conforming changes on page five, subsection two, that deals with the same consent about the victim offering there. Right. Staying within the court being required to take into account at the Well, well this medicine panel. So if you were gonna do, you might want to be conforming. Okay. Alright. So we'll get we'll see if there needs to be any other pneumonia, and then we'll pre bond this next week or the week after. Good morning. Thank you that. And we kind of think there's a few weapons. Yeah. On 03/29. Oh, my notes here.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: But I think Mr. Chair is working on the bill to

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: be going right or the proposed amendment?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: The proposed amendment is where I had 20 six-one 100 and The bad ones, yeah.

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: Draft 1.1 S-three 29, one of 19. Yes. Yes.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: That's the, the liquid methlanger that we talked about. And I think the anecdotal question that I had starts off the page two. So looking at page two, those lines I just mentioned, I'm looking at the bottom of the page, and I guess the underlying question is, can a hearing be combined to determine whether or not a third party is appropriate rather than having that initial hearing and then another hearing later on to determine whether or not that third party, whether or not the firearm could be delinquent to that third party.

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: If there's advanced notice and we have the opportunity to let everyone know that the court's going to consider both matters at the same time. We don't know why we didn't hear which sort of thing is advanced, if you will, hearing. We certainly don't want to have people have to come back to court several times and we certainly don't want to schedule two hearings if we can get something done at once. It doesn't seem to indicate in the statute that proposed that there is a requirement for a seventh hearing. In fact, it talks about that you're not to continue hearing, shall not be continued solely for the purpose of the approval. And so that would indicate that it does contemplate the potential for a single hearing.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: And

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: And then the second question I had was making the determination as to whether or not somebody would be a prohibited person. And I don't know what extent a judge on the stand is able to look at a person's background in whatever system the judge has used, but what our judge is able to check to determine whether or not a third party is or isn't a part of

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: the jury.

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: The judge should not be checking anything other than the information that's provided by the parties to the case. Judges should not be engaged in independent research. It's important for the record of the parties to understand here's the evidence coming in, here's the evidence the court is considering and has admitted, and here is the determination under the law based on that evidence. So judges should not be sitting on the computer on their own without saying anything. Now, if you're in a case and a party says, well, judge, the defendant had this record and X, Y, or Z, and they have a pending charge in some other county. And the judge looks up and says, well, I can check to see what the status is. Does anybody object to that? That's different. But judges should not be doing independent research. It should be the information we receive, which is why I would suspect the bill has a provision for the NCIC check that has to come. And it says that it has to be provided to the court. So that shows that someone else is bringing it to us.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Yeah, so what I'm just trying to get at is the potential to avoid having a person go to an FFL to get a background check and then have that information forwarded to the court. But also I know that the state does provide the 29C triple I documents. They can set that as evidence. So.

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: The statute provides for the national incident criminal background check. It does not provide for the state provided issue. In fact, I had gone through this section of the bill and one of my questions was who does the background check and where do they go for it? So that's a question which an individual certainly have.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: I'm just trying to figure out how to make this the most efficient. So I guess we have

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: to figure out who would the background check issue.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Any other questions for Doctor. Soni? Excellent. Actually a comment? Yes If

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: you go to page seven. Page seven has, if law enforcement is going to store firearm at a federally licensed firearms dealer, on lines five on what it talks about is a notice that law enforcement has to give on line 11. The notice shall include the following information. And it says what the notice has to have. Absent from there is the name and address and contact information, I think, for the firearms dealer. I might be missing that, but it did not appear that it actually said that they had to tell them who the firearms dealer was.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: This notice is being sent to the community. This is

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: the notice provided by the law enforcement agent, late agent officer, to the person whose firearms were blind. On page eight, From line 16 to 21, what this section does is it says that essentially the federal firearms license dealers cannot be used for temporary orders. It says unless the defendant chooses to have the dealer hold the firearms. The question that I would have is what, how is that done? Is the defendant, when we say chooses, how is that choice done? When they show up at the, and they're serving temporary orders by telling the officer, I choose as a federal firearms deal. In other words, may wish to add a regular mirror about how the defendant makes that known so that it eliminates any questions about did they or didn't they. Unless the defendant, if you want to say consents, that might even be better than chooses. Or defendant signs a document, agreeing, something like that to make it clear, because what you would like to avoid, I trust, is having a situation where someone says, I never said that, but I never did that. So the better system is one that I think that it's clear. In the betting, I didn't do that on the record if they come to court. But generally if they come to court, what's going to be happening is we're going be having the final hearing. We're moving back to the official final ordering. Thank you.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: So, committee, we heard two more or less technical recommendations. The first being back on page seven, which is that the notice from law enforcement of the defendant should have some information about who and where the FFL is. Is there any opposition to that change? Just others. And then the second change, line 18, sorry, line nineteen fifty eight, let people were choosing the board to consent. Do I have a consent of writing? We're worried about body cams.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: If the officer is wearing a body cam and they can

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: send Right. If they're executing a temporary

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: There is a record. Yeah. Right.

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: So maybe you don't need

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: it in writing. It doesn't make sense. You want to allow for that possibility.

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: There was just a couple other comments I had

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: that I think are not,

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: if you will, single real quick ones. But on page 10, there are procedures here for the firearms dealer keeping the firearms, selling them, keeping the proceeds. And they talk about notices. What's absent is what happens if there's a defect in the notice? What's the remedy? It does say, it does talk about certain communities on page 11. Federal fire license dealer on line nine, service firearms shall be immune from civil or criminal liability for the sale of firearms provided a notice that you provided that inquired. You're saying that they're protected if they provide the notice. So as I read this, is the intent of the legislature that if they don't provide the notice, the only remedy is that the agreed party has to file a separate civil suit. That's what it would appear, that you remove the immunity and that they can be sued. So you're not building any type of process. For instance, if there's an innocent owner who steps up and goes, Wait a minute, that was my firearm. There's no process anywhere to recognize that. And that would be unrelated to this statute. It would be a separate civil suit based upon violations of the statute. That's how I agree to that. That's the intent. That's where it appears.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Any

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: other?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Actually I did have one last question. In the event that firearms are relinquished with third party and the defendant disappears, never seen again, five, ten years passes, at what point is that property, the firearms, at what point are they considered abandoned? And at what point could the third party either relinquish them at no charge to an NFL or a law enforcement agency, or can they sell them? Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: I would imagine that at some point that party would come to one of the local legislators and say, you know in that a million past one hundred years ago on relinquishment you gave federal firearms dealers ninety days and then they got to keep them? You might want to spell it out clearly as to what our rights are because otherwise I would not be able to tell you. It would be a legal issue that's going to come up and we have to try to look at laws about abandon and property, things like that. So that is something that whether you do it now or in the future, you can add clarity by doing it.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: I think one just for us to think about too, and I had a conversation about it yesterday that somebody brought up that was kind of interesting is what happens in the event that that third party

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: is no longer able to store those, so they've had some work. Or

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Medic crime where they can't have fire. Something like that. What happens in the event that the third party can no longer beat

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: the third party? This

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: is why this has gone unlegislative.

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: You can certainly add a procedure that says for any event that that's what were to happen, you go back to the situation where it has to go to the federal firearms dealer. Absence, again, start all over again, shoots the letters, and they're back to the beginning. Goes here, unless.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. That might be it.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: But I'm thinking like, you know, somebody is this third party, they pass away, firearms are in a safe,

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: the family comes and they're going, Well, I don't know, any of the races. And they don't wanna, they can hurt you, they can do something in the rules.

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: Yeah. Again, that answered your question, the passage statutes we have to determine improvises.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Thank

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: you. Any other questions?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Great. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you. Good And so I think so we're switching gears at h five seventy eight piano builds film, and we had gone over have we gone over all of the changes proposed by Lisa?

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. We put pins in some of them, but she covered all of them.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: I'd like to So we'll keep the pins pinned. I want to start with Senator Williams' post amendment and then there was another post amendment regarding Wood's jurisdiction.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: It is not in graph 132. So this is language that is in S-one 182. And the idea here is, as you've heard from witnesses, there's a challenge in figuring out how to pay shelters and organizations for the costs that are occurring after animals are seized. One way that H578, the only way current in H578 that tries to get at that issue is by requiring defense to pay security, to pay it pretty early, and that goes towards cost of care. The suggestion from Senator Williams in S-one hundred eighty two is to add another way to collect money that will go towards paying cost of care for these organizations and would be adding a $50 surcharge to any violation of the animal cruelty provisions. So there are surcharges in other parts of Title 13 and for other crimes or in other instances. And give a full example or if the committee's interested in

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: hearing more about that, happy to to look further.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: But I'll at least pull up to start the two changes that this would proposed to be made to flexibly. Alright. So the first would add at the end of '13 VSA three fifty three this additional penalty, essentially. So a person convicted of violating a provision of this chapter shall be assessed a surcharge of $50 in addition to any finer surcharge already imposed by the court. So the court has a schedule of those surcharges and fines. This would be an additional one. I believe that, at least in my life, last week, that the intent here is a $50 surcharge per animal. So it's not per defendant in an instance. It's per violation by each animal. So there's it wouldn't just be $50 necessarily if there are multiple animals involved and multiple violations of the chapter for each animal. Home. Question then? Yes.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: I agree with this generally as an idea. We're wondering if there could be confusion or issues in which somebody is, let's say they have three pets that they're charged with abusing, they go through the negotiations and they will bring it down to one charge, even though there were three pets involved, but they're only being convicted and sentenced for one charge, would they get a $50 surcharge or $150

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: As drafted, and I think the only way to impose a surcharge, although if you have judge zoning back in on this bill, I'm sure you could provide further permission on how surrogate this happened. I think it would have to be just $50. It's one violation. We don't I think you'd have to use a different mechanism than a surcharge that looks kinda more like a security and would raise issues if it's in a criminal context, not forfeiture. Yep. That's by charge. Right? It's not proven yet this person is innocent until proven guilty. And the only thing the state proves, whether through negotiation or not, is one violation as to a wanting animal, and the surcharge would

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: be $50 or something. Sandra,

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: in the sentence after the one you read, so this is slide five, the court shall collect the present surcharge assessed under the subsection to be credited to the unlawful of the fund. I'm wondering if you eliminated the words to be credited, would it still do what it's trying to do or is there an additional thing to be credited as therapy? So it seems like they collect it and transfer it to the animal welfare.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: I agree with you that it's possible that certain disease. I didn't draft this, so I can't confirm whether this is modeled off something else, and that could be a good question for Judge Stephanie, but if there would be any confusion if

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: that

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, would limit

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: I'm trying to think of what additional, it sounds like they're just collecting transferring to this place. What crediting does there? I don't understand.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: I'm not familiar but I'm happy to check what are other statutes so this is not a traditional way of describing this function.

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: Even if it is traditional.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: And if there's a good reason for it So or Yeah. I think Carrie Person or Judge Sunny would be able to speak to whether there would be confusion if that language were not there. Okay. But, yes, moving forward to the rest of the language, the court would collect it or generally collect surcharges, have the mechanism for doing that, transfers it to be credited or just transfers to the animal welfare fund. And the last sentence is, again, a collection procedures described in section fifty two forty, which is general emergency procedures would be utilized in collecting the surcharge. And if you have further questions on what happened in the surcharge collection, that would be a question for witnesses other than me. The second change so this subsection d would be added in whatever modified form to h five seventy eight. If you look at the new draft 1.2, this would be adding a new subsection e. It's there are other changes that happened in five seventy eight to that that revision at the end of '13 BSI three fifty three, so it's page 14 after line eight. You can see where that would happen. So it's it's the same location that is proposed in s one eighty two, but because of the changes in May, it would be subsection e instead of the d fifty one seventy eight. Second change that or language change to kind of effectuate this additional surcharge is on page 57. Alright. So this is, an existing statutory section, according to GSA thirty two zero three about the annual welfare fund. And as we just saw in the language about the surcharge, it gets transferred to the animal welfare fund. This section, section thirty two zero three, describes the sources of the funds sources of the money to the animal welfare fund. So if you're having a surcharge, the corresponding change would be to add language like this to describe that some of the funds in the fund, I need a better way to describe that. Some of the money that comprises the fund will be these surcharge fees. So that change would happen in May on page 27, minus 10 through 15 would involve adding some other source of funds. Any other questions about the proposing?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Senator Lawrence? I

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: object to any of this, but the fact of the matter is it was pretty difficult when the funds come through here. Some of the bills I work at, I can't afford to pay this or just an initial thing. And it's just it could be something that could be used to advance donations or something from the general fund, but general something, this is not gonna take care of our

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: area of the province and service at all. Department of Justice. Yeah,

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: man. I know we have surcharges on all sorts of different offenses. I don't want to give wrong information, I know we have surcharges in other areas that are meant to provide some small amount of funds to different funds. But the frequency in which these offenses happen is not a lot. Mean, hear about them, but they're not like DUIs where they're unfortunately happening every other day. So, yeah, I don't wanna go with that one, but Senator Hoskey?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: I thought, and I I don't generally have any issue with this, but I'm not sort of generally we were moving away from this type of surcharge as a funding mechanism. I feel like and I can't feel like it was in the context of sort of discussing the shortfalls in the domestic and sexual violence special fund that had sort of a broader conversation, and I can't remember at all who was at the table about sort of moving away from these types of surcharges. So it just shouldn't her choice to speak. Right?

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: I think I think just part

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: is. Of But I just I feel like and I I wish I could remember who it was. Maybe it was judge Sonay. I don't know who sort of named that. This wasn't really the direction. Was it Charlie Glisserman? Both

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: of them now were Charlie Glisserman along with the tribal government services. We're saying that the jail would have set up virtually. Great thing, Now we're getting away from writing a lot of tickets and so on and so forth and not having the marriage license and not really astronomically putting a whole lot of money into this fund. There needs to be a funding mechanism and this

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: is I assume it's been

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: a quarter since it was part of the because none of us would check our BTC. That's just

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: No. This is Quarter. As part of I it would be as part of the sentence judgment court order to resolve that court would say, here's the money you owe with surcharges. There's already I don't have the exact amounts, but it's in the court schedule. There's already a surcharge anytime you're convicted of a crime or civil fenced, civil penalty. To the point, I think other witnesses could speak to kind of the Vermont direction and other areas about surcharges, but I think there are certainly policy questions around the costs imposed on criminal defendants.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Yeah, was just thinking off of what Senator Norris said about how, what's the interplay there? Up above in the bill, somebody says financial hardship, how does that land in the surcharge later on? Like, is it still there? So with the surcharges so you you go to your sentencing to get your packet under the agreement, and it'll say total fines and surcharges, dollars 1,000. And then in all the boxes above, with all the different charges, you'll see what the fine might be. But then there will also be the surcharge underneath that, typically $47. So that's second cover. But then, you know, that chunk of that crime also has a fine up to $500. There could be a fine of $100 then there's the $47 that gets added to it, and then you can have a couple of different charges. At the end of the day, you'll have your total lives and surcharges. Say it's $1,000 You've got, we'll leave it sixty days to pay it, Otherwise, and then it'll go to collections. And that's Okay. So it has no bearing on what happens prior to that claim of financial hardship when they're the dogs are in no custody.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: So it is separate municipal forfeiture security. So in the separate forfeiture proceeding, there is a way to request reduction or full waiver of the spirit payment based on financial hardship, but that's just in the context of how Okay. That wouldn't apply to a surcharge on a pension.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: I guess I'd like to see that. Surgery, address that, whatever the core client is, the first 10% of that goes to the animal welfare fund. The animal welfare fund is direct. The first 10% of the volume fund is to go to the animal welfare fund. There's $500 and $50 and $100 surcharge. I mean,

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: I think that could get tricky because, I mean, one, clients may not get paid, but also, I mean, surcharges may not also get paid.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: They're gonna be paid. The

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: fine amount is often something that's negotiated a lot and you could get, it's not uncommon to see just the surcharges, so you get three times 47 and that's the total fees that somebody's paying because they're just paying the surcharges but not paying the fine and then they're agreeing to probation or something like that.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: Well, So I'm not opposed to the starting point. It's not going to take care of the fund that he did.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Well, that's a program to have to stay. I can look at

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: whether there are other law that direct portions of fines that way. I'm not aware of them, but I can look. And I also think that that's a really good question for athletes of zoning or

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: Yeah. I sort of like the elegance of senator Norris' proposal that just a percentage of the fine goes to the fund. But it raises the question for me of where do all the other fines go?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: Like, so you pay a fine. Where does that go?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: General fund. General fund. It just

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: goes into the general fund?

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: I don't know. I should, but you not in fact know,

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: so I

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: would love this opportunity. So would be. Great. Yes. Was.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: I sent the attorneys, the state's attorneys in court saying okay if we're guilty we're gonna let this go and give a $200 donation to talk to someone. It's part of the plea agreement, 200 donation to Tuxoma. It's something that can be done.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Now if you go down the road of a portion of the fine, would that make the prosecuting side try to always seek the maximum fine because that would divert most amount of money to the fine?

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: That's always a possibility. But and and thinking about this also, that would just create a a problem with bookkeeping efforts of the courts. Just said, okay. What is the 10% software work? Yeah. Something would have to work out. Like I said, our whole objective is to work in that money.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: So

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: I can look into kind of general practice of what happens, and I also think that to the extent there's an interest in doing something creative or different, that which is something would be useful.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Through that research, would you also be able to check if the phrasing that Senator Baruth brought up the to be credited. Thank you. All right. So I guess that amendment's more complicated than we thought. So we can move on to the next case, which was the jurisdiction.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. So I'm gonna go ahead and stop sharing into my screen. This is how, we have an in.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: So

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: On page 20, lines three through six. This is talking about the forfeiture proceeding, specifically the forfeiture hearing, and where it will occur. So in existing law, which is in some of the provisions stricken on pages 16 through 17, the civil forfeiture proceeding happens in the criminal division of Superior Court. So that's currently, that's where forfeiture proceedings happen in the criminal division superior court, even though they are civil proceedings that happen in the criminal division. A tries to be a stop by the house. This is back to page 20, lines three through six. States that the hearing shall be held in the civil division of the superior court where the offense is alleged to

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: have occurred. You're on line five. Right?

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. The the specific edit sorry. It's describing the lines for the whole sentence. Yeah. The specific edit would be line five. Just the word civil would be swapped out for criminal. So I think the suggestion from Department of State attorneys and sheriffs is there are reasons why it happens in the criminal division. States attorneys, the deputy states attorneys are the ones who can file these forfeiture proceedings, asking them to do this in civil court would slow this down. It's not generally where they're doing their work. I think on the house end, there was a suggestion that if the hearings have happened in thirty days, maybe that could happen more regularly or be sure to happen if it happened in the civil division. But I think there are different opinions about whether that's actually true across the state. My understanding is that Lisa, my life, does not have any objection to moving this back to criminal, but that would be the change. But on page 20, line five, the word civil would be stricken. It would say criminal division instead, which would essentially be a no change from existing law under current law. Actually what's happening from the admissions.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Thank you. Yes. I I got that so so I I got that message from Kim this morning and also from Lisa. I don't wanna speak too much more than what it does appear like they would prefer it to be to stay in the criminal division. And if I'm wrong, I'm

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: sure they will let me know.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: But I I can forward the email to the committee. So are there any any questions or comments of just keeping this as current law and switching to worry civil to criminal? Okay. So let me do that, please.

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: I'm working down on line 17. You have a version of that same sentence without it to your credit.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Correct. Further support for seeking perhaps to be credited is not necessary. So I think the remaining items I have related to this are any other suggestions from Lisa Mylot that the committee wanted to revisit, that a pin was in. Any other changes the committee is interested in making? And then one thing I I mentioned in the email to the chair, but one thing that how the house judiciary committee did not resolve, but will need some resolution is about the security amount until the rules are approved. So the amount of security will be set by rules by the director of animal welfare, but those rules won't be able to be approved until next year. So there are two options. Have some session law that says, here's some placeholder for what the security will be until rules are approved, or say nothing, in which case, no security will be collected until the rules are. So those are kind of the two options. I'm happy to work with Lisa Milot on what the session language might look like for an kind of interim security. I just wanted to flag with the committee that that is one issue that we'll see.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: So, it's about door one and door two. Which

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: is which?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: No, I don't. Option one, which is creating session language. Then option two, is saying nothing and there would be no entry fee. So the

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: next version will have at least starting language proposed by Lisa for what script will be in the current. Could

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: we go with option one? Is that for those At the middle of this is the fee until rulemaking meets the following year.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: So maybe I want to raise it

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: as well. I don't know, but just

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Exactly. It end, this would just the language would be clear that it is in effect only until the rules are approved.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: We have

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: some of the facts. Exactly.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: It would allow for collection of some security while rules are being drafted.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: Look. Are we done doing the leucomyelitis stuff? Is now the time to bring forward our own changes we might want to see?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: No, I think we are about to start the leucomyelitis test.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Turn back to the other things. Let's begin. I feel a little slow at this, because the page numbers have been asking me a little bit from these suggestions. So apologies, Brandy. One of the versions that there was a pin in, this is pages fourteen and fifteen. There are these three ways that law enforcement might consult the secretary or bring vets in these actions. In subsection B, this is sorry. This is speak page 15. It does have to be this is about the humane officer seizing an animal. For voluntary surrender, so human officer can accept an animal voluntarily surrender by the owner at any time. The suggestion from Lisa was to add at the end of this subdivision the same kind of language that was added at the end of Subdivision B 2 and Subdivision A, that failure to have the animal assessed within seventy two hours is not grounds for dismissal of the enforcement action or exclusion of evidence. So one of the thoughts in this section is that if any of these subdivisions looks different than the others, the court is going to imply an intentional choice from that. And and if there is a reason to treat voluntary surrender differently, then that might be a reason not to include the language. So I think the committee had wanted to think more about whether that might be the case, whether this requirement of having a surrendered animal examined and assessed within seventy two hours might actually be grounds for dismissal of the enforcement action or exclusion of evidence. Existing cases have not concluded that. So there's a St. Peter decision that found that failure to, I think the humane officer had the vet look at the animals after seventy two hours had elapsed. And the court said that's not a reason to throw out the case or throw out the evidence. The jury can assume that whatever the vet said about the condition of the animal after seventy two hours was true out of mind that the overseen seen.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Yeah, I think I remember now the note, the concern that I had was, you know, talking about voluntary surrender, and you're surrendering a perfectly healthy animal and it doesn't get examined. And then you get to the hearing and while this animal has been surrendered, they declined dramatically. And then they started using evidence of this animal that is unhealthy and declined, but it's and it, you know, didn't get examined. That's the concern in that area that I have. And so, yeah, I guess that's just a comment. Any questions or Senator North and Senator Frohovsky?

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: Yes, would like that to stay in our office just for protection of the humane officer, obviously, so people came to the accusations as to me or not happen. My second question is, or as soon as possible, about who's funding come for this? Who's paying for this? If a veterinarian looks at an animal there's gonna be a cost that doesn't need more.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: That would be a list of my hot questions. After five years of working on this, I will know the answer for it but I don't yet.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: So is your sense that that sort of requirement of kind of a baseline evaluation of the animal's health should stay?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Yeah, think it should stay, but I guess, well, Hillary, I think you were getting at this and maybe it went over my head for a second, but if we were to add that language that failure to conduct the consultation will be grounds for the dismissal, It's just the failure to have that examination, a defendant could still say, I drop up, I surrender to a perfectly healthy animal, And here's the evidence that however many days later it's now unhealthy after having been surrendered. They can still present that evidence, right?

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: That's my understanding. And I think to the extent that that is the specific concern, you could have patent language that allows for that kind of argument. Right? So saying like, it's not a slam dunk to chuck the case out. If main officer doesn't do this in two hours, you're not off. But the defendant can introduce evidence of the patient of the animal at the time of the seizure, for example. So you could add language that would kind of include what these amounts proposed, but also protect the circumstance you're thinking of. I think the the question here is, is this voluntary surrender requirement, the animal be assessed, is that for the health of the animal? Or is it and or I guess could also be, is it really gathering evidence about the condition of the animal for purposes of the investigation? The court decision that, I think, drawing from it, proposed in this edit, said this is really our the court's read of the legislative intent is that this provision was to protect the animal. And so if it was not as necessary or they couldn't get a vet in time, they should do their best to protect the animal and assess the health, but it wasn't a reason to throw out the case or exclude the evidence. But I think that there's an intent to say, for evidentiary purposes, you want to be really clear that untimely assessment evidence might not be useful or might might be problematic in a in a

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: certain

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: scenario, then that would be a reason to kind of modify this proposal. I think to the extent that you're thinking further about this language, it might be helpful to hear from Lisa about how long hair stranders probably happen or what the emotions of the animal might be. It's a little limited.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Any thoughts? Is there a preference of staying silent on line seven and not including the lines of failure to be accompanied and so on? Or do you want to add that language with another caveat saying that if the evidence of the animal's health can still be used in subsequent in a later hearing. But then I don't know if that's getting too specific. Sometimes when you get too specific, it's gonna be problematic. Guess I'd like to hear, maybe from Lisa, kind of like the process, what just happened, because I would envision an animal control officer or whatever having video evidence of what the animal is, the condition of the animal at the time. That way you actually have a baseline until the veterinarian can see the animal if it's over seventy two hours. Because I know, like, in the case of a dog, if they're unsure of their surroundings, they can kinda, like, shut down, not eat, not drink. You know, it's five, six days or whatever, they

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: can actually, like, have to get back on

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: on their health. So I'd imagine what the process is in the field of these surrendered animals if the animal control officer takes a video where who's ever gonna be? Any

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: other thoughts?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: I

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: I wouldn't want the whole thing to be thrown out because it takes seventy six hours of I would want someone's sort of due process ability if they have the evidence of, like, actually, the saleable time. I I I wanna find that balance. And furthermore, I want to believe it is sort of best practice to get an animal evaluated, but that's something I would that's not a question for legislative council, but probably for Lisa. I mean, because,

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: you know, to

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: senator, Mattos is poi. Like, it doesn't take that long for an animal to to decompensate. And sometimes when an animal is in a really stressful situation, they may be as if they are fine because that's sort of a survival mechanism. Right? Like, don't look injured or weak. And so I would want I would truly wanna believe that the best practice would be no matter what state the animal appears to be in when they come into custody, they would be evaluated quickly, but I don't know.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: So I think we still feel Yeah. I'm wondering if the answer Because if we don't put that language in, if we don't say that failure to be accompanied is not grounds for dismissal, then, but we have it in these other sections of court, I think, we interpret that us being silent as it could be grounds for dismissal, if we don't include this. So that's one issue. So I'm wondering if one potential solution, and we'll reach out to Lisa again, I'm wondering if one potential solution is just saying failure to be accompanied, or failure to have the examination and assessment within seventy two hours shall not be grounds for dismissal, but then not including the line that says, or exclusion of evidence. Because then somebody use the fact that the animal wasn't examined and assessed as almost like Fruits of a Poisonous Tree saying, you know, they weren't examined, but there's this other evidence that they were in poor health.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I don't

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: know if I'm overthinking it or if that's a possibility.

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: No, I like your suggestion. So if I had it right, you're saying the lines would stay the same except we get rid of exclusion of evidence on my Yeah. Well,

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: no, I'm saying we take similar language from seven years.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: It's for like seven.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Yes. And then, but we don't have the exclusive evidence piece. That's what I meant. Yeah.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: I think one challenge with doing that is it might be over inclusive to the concern. If a court is reading that, then if so again, say a human officer can't get a vet to look within seventy two hours, it happens at eighty hours. With the change that you've suggested, that's now not grounds to dismiss the action, but it could be grounds to throw out any evidence that the vet collects. So if that's the intention, that is fine. But I think it if I were a court reading that, and it's quite possible they would say, oh, but that means it's possible or you could exclude the evidence if it was collected outside of the seventy two hours. I can't predict. Is entirely possible or would not, but I think that's the potential danger in excluding and leaving out the exclusion of evidence piece entirely. But I think if the committee is interested in some consistency across the sections to avoid the court implying the opposite of what it sounds like the committee intends, but want to account for this possibility that a defendant be able to Exclusion. Be able to make arguments about excluding evidence, not for failure to comply with the seventy two hour requirement, but based on evidence about the condition of the animal. It's really not an exclusion of evidence. It's more of a defendant can make an argument and can present their own evidence. I can talk to Lisa and think a little bit more about what that language might look like and bring something specific back to the committee to consider.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: That sounds good. Thanks.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: The other pins from LISA language were in shortening a number of the court deadlines. I'm happy to go through each of those again if you would like. Think my own suggestion is I have nothing to say on them, and your other assessment is the other other than the court timelines, this will be on page 20 of draft 1.2. And this has to do with when failure to pay the security results in forfeiture of the animal. So did make a change the committee did make a change to this is on pages 22 to 23. The committee did make a change that if after the hearing an order of forfeiture is not entered, the person still has to pay the security for the time the animal was held. And the suggestion was to say if the person doesn't do that within fourteen days of the final order, then title to the animal should be forfeit shall be forfeited unless a financial hardship reduction or waiver request is pending or has been granted. So I think the testimony the committee heard was, you know, if someone is is not paying and does not otherwise have a financial hardship waiver in place, It's unclear what the shelter can do with the animal. They're just holding them. They can't put them out for adoption. So the idea of that in this kind of language was to provide some kind of finality so that the shelter organization could stop paying the costs themselves and potentially put an animal up for adoption. So the committee did make that change in this section for Canada security after the hearing. There is also, and now we are back to page 20, this section about before the hearing. So the person who has requested a orchard hearing, they're saying, Yes, I want to contest the seizure. And they have to make their first payment within fourteen days of the seizure or request a frankingale hardship waiver. As it reads now, there is no penalty for not paying the security amounts at that time. The suggestion from Lisa was to add that if someone does not make a payment and has not requested some kind of financial hardship waiver, that they would forfeit titles to the end. And the committee wanted to put a pin. As the committee remembers, there are some due process concerns throughout this. One of the ways to address that is to always account for the financial hardship waiver so someone is not unable to challenge a forfeiture in court because of the money they have or do not have. But the question of not paying the security and forfeiting the animal is a little bit less clear. That would introduce some risk to I think after

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: the

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: hearing is less risky. There is some more risk in doing it before the hearing because the person hasn't been heard yet. The judge hasn't a judge hasn't seen this yet. So that it's I think it's more defensible after a hearing. A judge has at least reviewed what's happening. There's a chance for the person to make arguments with the judge before a title is forfeited. A person who, against human order, is not entered, could say to the judge, look, the statute's gonna make me pay money, you know, pay the security to get my animal back. I shouldn't have to do that because I have this due process interest, whatever. After the hearing, requiring forfeiture of title for nonpayment raises fewer concerns, still raises some. But before the hearing, I think a challenge that should be a little bit riskier for that reason. But there is not a case clearly saying that this is permissible or not permissible. So this is kind of an unclear area we are we are moving through. That was a lot. No. I think that's fine.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Where where on page 20 specifically is the issue of the forfeiture prior to the hearing?

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: There was some discussion last time about where this should go. So it could go I think the suggestion from Lisa is to add it on line 14.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Well, that language isn't in it was a proposal that we

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Put a pen in it. So it's not reflected in version in draft 1.2. The language would look similar to we did decide to add it. On page 23, lines six through eight. Correct. And title to the animal job and forecredit unless a financial hardship reduction or waiver or asbestos amending or has been granted.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: And that's after the hearing, after the person's been

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: after they had an opportunity to be heard.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Exactly. An order a forfeiture has not been entered. So if the court orders forfeiture, have to pay the security. This is even if the court does not order forfeiture, but as long as they found that there was probable cause to seize the animal in the first place, then this would still require the security to be paid before the person could get the animal back. If the court says you have no basis to deceive this animal, the person does not pay the security test. Okay.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: My initial instincts for the question of whether we add this language to page 20 is at this point to just say no to that committee. There any other thoughts? Anybody agree or disagree with not adding?

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Yeah. I agree.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Alright. Unless the committee can't give anything else, those were to do with semi law suggested edits. I think those were the key things that the committee had to put a pin in, opposed to have decided one way or another. So

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: we've got rid of one pin on page 20. The other remaining pin is the voluntary surrender on page 15, piece of whether or not how to shape whatever language we're going to add. If a if the animal isn't assessed within seventy two hours of failure, the evidence, the evidence piece for that, would would you be able to reach out to Lisa to see if there's any way we can shape that language to get to our concerns and we can also have her in next week? Yes, I'll be into that. Thank you very much. Senator Vyhovsky, you had Yes, I have asked

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: Hillary to be ready to draft language if the committee agrees to it, but I would like

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: to go to the underlies a couple times now, and I'd just love the committee to sort of let me know where they fall on it. I don't wanna ask counsel to do work if they don't need to do work. Very fine. But that is the underlying law. I, again, understand it is current law, but the law that allows any sexual abuse of an animal to be a misdemeanor.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: I think very rarely do I sit in this committee

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: and and argue for stricter penalties, but I I really feel strongly that any sexual abuse of an animal should be

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: a penalty. It is they

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: can never consent. You know, to me, I almost look at them like a child in some ways. They can't consent and there's no place that I'm aware of as long, do correct me if I'm wrong, where we allow sexual abuse of a child to be a misdemeanor. So I think we should have to change the underlying law

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: and make sexual abuse no matter what of an animal or a felony. For context, so this is on page four, Subdivision 11 is engaged in sexual conduct with an animal. This describes the sexual conduct that, currently if a minor is not involved in any way, it's a misdemeanor. And that's a recurring law. In terms of the context elsewhere, this is really Michelle's area, so I talked with her. Generally, yes. Certainly any sexual conduct with a child is a bounty for child sexual abuse materials so that there is a parallel here for kind of depictions of sexual conduct with an animal. Double check. So it is sexual conduct of an animal. That is also a felony under parole law if it is in the child sexual exploitation context. If it's nonsexual conduct, genital or anus of a child, images of that, that is a misdemeanor. Okay. But I don't think there is a parallel here because the anomaly depiction is of sexual conflict. So if the parallel is whatever the context in current law for children that you would like that to also apply to an animal, it would all be balanced in the body.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: And that is what I would like them to seek is to see us move the current law where the things listed here that are misdemeanor to become a felony. I just I don't.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: So which specifically you point me to which lines do want to change?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: That would

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: be beginning I think it going back Michael Brown's beginning off page four, line 11. So that will be I just want to direct

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: those are that's the description of the conduct. That is where it describes what constitutes engaging in sexual conduct with an animal. I don't think any of the changes would be made on page four.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: They would be

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: penalty provisioned. So oh, no. I take that back. It is page four. Lines four through 16. That would be moved to this is currently at section two of the bill, 13 PSA, section three fifty two. This is, like, simple cruelty to animals. These are the misdemeanor provisions. The felony provisions are in section three, thirteen PSA three fifty two a aggravated cruelty to animals. So it would include it as all moving. All, it sounds like, is

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: the proposal. I Well, wanna be I'm looking at page four line four, and that's knowingly sells offers for sale partners and displays link

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: to eat

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: chicks or dumplings. I actually don't think that should be upbony.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: I am looking at a it's senator Mattos hopefully pointed out, and I am looking at the app passed by the house. Got it, though. Okay. Let me revise my It was like, no.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: No. I don't actually think that bartering chicks

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: should be a validate. No. My apologies. In draft 1.2, still page four, but it'll be line 11 Mhmm. Through page five of line two. And it will involve moving those sections when they are they are currently identified as conduct that constitutes cruelty to animals, the misdemeanor or nonfelony version. So the proposed change would move those lines to section three, which is their TBSA 352A, the conduct described as aggravated guilty damages from a felony.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: So I'm not I'm not opposed to that. These are the times where I don't like being a lawyer, but I I do have another question, regarding lines one through two on page five. Are there any First Amendment questions there regarding insanity?

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: That is why it says obscene. So Right. Generally, a person who protects all speech, there are some carve outs for areas we can regulate, and obscenity is one of them. So if the images are obscene, you can penalize possession of sanity. That's right answer. When Eric and I had originally talked about this in drafting, the question was whether to include the word obscene because I don't think either of us could identify what visual images of sexual conduct would not necessarily be considered obscene, but the First Amendment protective way to draft it is to say materials that are obscene.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: And then that would

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: calculate those underlying elements. What extent of the insight that Exactly. It's going be

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: By using obscene, is incorporating the Novartis that wants some proofs or I could have told you

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: a month ago off the

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: top of my head, but not now.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Any committee, what are your thoughts on making everything from line moving everything from lines 11 on page four and then lines one to two on page five, Shuffle those over to the the penalty section on page seven. No.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: No. It will be into section three starting on page five. I'll talk to right now, any of that conduct that occurs in the presence of a minor or much a minor as a participant already in that section, the felony section, I'm not sure if the best way to draft will be to do some combination of those. Right? I don't know if it makes sense to have that exact whole list in this section followed by the list again with a minor. So there might be a more elegant and shorter way to do that. But the idea would be that instead of covering this conduct in the misdemeanor section, it would be covered in the felony section. So there would be language the language in it would be removed from section two from page pages four and five, and there would be language amended in section three on pages five and six to make sure that it covered sexual conflict with an animal, engaging a sexual conflict with an animal even if it did not include a blind eye. You know, we're not having so minor with that.

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: So, Ruth,

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: Without speaking necessarily to this specific about maybe all the missing years felonies, I would just ask us to look at what what we're doing with our time remaining. So landlord tenant bill is very complicated. We have a new proposal there that takes us in somewhat different direction. The relinquishment language, 19 new pages, that's very complicated. The gun bill. And on the visit list, I feel like we're working toward the end, but if we begin going to the underlying language and further to make those all felonies, I feel like in all these cases where instead of deferring things the next year or closing down on a scope or coming to each case, we'll make what we're looking at. Which maybe we can get it all done this time, but that's my

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: that's my

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: related question, which isn't necessarily dependent on the proposed change, but one thing that I didn't talk to Michelle about this, she had flagged was whether it's a pretty intensive requirement of registration with the sex offender registry. If there's a parallel treating it as other sex offenses against your child, children are treated, that's just a question. So does not need to be addressed, but is a related one in kind of thinking about the sessions.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: There

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: may not be time, but whatever the distraction, if there's interest in that, then Michelle would. Papers.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: My initial thoughts are that for the aggravated the felony sexual animal abuse charges as they currently were. We did not require that. Correct. And so moving this into the felony section, feel like to senator Horris' point that the larger question of should that then be entered onto the sex offender registry is perhaps a bigger conversation than

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: we have the time for. But I given that we already have the felony section that did not require that, I feel

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: like the sort of smaller step is to just make that shift without diving into the conversation about the sex offender registry, if that makes sense.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Currently, current law does address sexual conflict of an animal. It does not say anything about sex heterogeneity. So it is true that that would be not required to make the change. Right? Or it doesn't anything is proposed changes that may proceed with it. It doesn't require answering that question, it is a related one. If you can address that one. So

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: how does what is it made me wanna do with that? Ethnomenal development.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: I would just frame it

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: in terms of, would be more staying with current law except for the changes we had set out here. Expanding our focus to changing current law and adapt in a major way, I feel like would require more attention. Well

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: we are changing current law, right? If it may

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: have been a minor,

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: But so it would I feel like it's set up to aggravated coolant, enhanced cruelty and then the simple cruelty. But if everything is

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: a felony, we're really considering the basic architecture of one building. Would be just second oblivious. It's just 11. The bill currently just adds to the conduct described. We both have those.

[Sen. Philip Baruth (Member)]: The other thing is the other day, you look at the results graduated colleges.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: I think

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: the point I believe the chair made about getting rid of felonies was that felonies should apply to violent or sexually abusive behavior and not simply a violation, although I don't want to speak for it. I do believe that

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: was wrong. That is something I said.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: And I would argue that this is both violent and sexual behavior.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: You know, I'd be willing to

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: let him bear a prayer for

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: a minute when we come back and talk with Lisa as well about looping Lisa over because if it's already making changes, if it's with a minor present or a

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: participant, think the argument's moving at

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: all. Just that'll let.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: Yeah. Yes. And in this instance, when I think about the victim of the crime, the animal, they are equally victimized and harmed if a minor is present or not.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: Exactly. I I don't really have

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: I don't

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: know what I've heard from both parties here, I do want to stress, subject to subject to Ruth's is there's more other timeline here. There may have to be more discussion on this. But I'll unfold what Senator Hovsky wants to do, but I'm comfortable with the way that it is also.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: All right.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: So with that one, yes.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: I'm curious who we would need to hear from about whether or not this should remain a misdemeanor. I'm just trying to understand what is the discussion. Who needs to come in and tell us that this should continue to be a misdemeanor? Or that it should be a felony. The other piece for me too is the very strong correlation with this type of behavior and child sexual abuse.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Okay. So I think we can revisit the conversation and we can add it to the list of things that we want to discuss. Whether or not we are able to take a deeper dive into moving all of those into the felony section is another part but the two top priorities that we have to address are the that seventy two hours piece for the voluntary surrender that I think is number one. And then number two being how or if we can address the surcharge piece Senator Williams proposed it, whether or not we want to revisit that next session. Then third on the list is whether or not we're going to take the deeper dive into moving all of these, all of the contents into the balance section.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: One other item, the security and the interim for the rules are I

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: think we all agree to have Optimum, to have

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: the interim rules. Yes. Sorry. Just for purposes of things that will be in the next draft.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Yes. Yes.

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: Just before you. Perfect. But fair that that's not a PIN. That is a language.

[Judge Thomas A. Zonay (Chief Superior Judge)]: It's a dwarf. It's a dwarf. Dwarfosan. Anything

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: any other dare I ask, any other, none of the questions or Alright, thank you very much.

[Sen. Robert Norris (Vice Chair)]: Right.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Next up, we have Brenda. And we're switching gears to H 772 now. And the floor is all yours. Thank you. We do have a hard stop right as well.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: So folks know I am losing my eyesight, and so if I have to put sunglasses on the middle, I'm sorry. I'm not sorry, but I might have been in sore throat, For the record, I am Brenda Siegel, Executive Director of End Homelessness Reminds. I want to start by saying we cannot support E-seven 72. If the bill, as drafted, it does not create a balance, as many have said, and instead it creates a faster eviction process. And it's already an imbalanced landlord tenant system in Vermont.

[Brenda Siegel (Executive Director, End Homelessness Vermont)]: I will include in my written testimony a chart with comments on the language of the bill. There's too many for me to get through in this time, so I'm just gonna go for high level and tell you a little bit about the systems and how they work. There are no disability protections in this bill, so a rapid process with no disability protections means that people will be unable to access it. And I want to share a little about our work so you understand where we're coming from on this. End Homelessness Vermont is a statewide lived experience led organization that works toward the goal of ending poverty disability discrimination through homelessness in Vermont. We provide a data driven safety net to the safety net that is trauma informed and rooted in compassion. We work primarily with people living with disabilities, health conditions, or complex needs or in a complex situation, both who are in housing and who are experiencing homelessness. And we work in an ongoing capacity with over 600 households. Again, some housed and some unhoused. And very hands on with around 300 households and statewide. We answered last year, we answered 3,000 calls in 2025, and we also worked helped 80 people access housing with only two returning to homelessness, and one has already been rehearsed. We have two departments, an Office of Housing Advocate, which is our direct service arm where we have four volunteer nurses and several case managers who all work with us around the state to try to support people who often are the ones who fall through the cracks, can't get through these type of processes or who are unable to work in the regular evictions systems. And we also have an Office of Research and Advocacy and I'll share a little bit of her research today because I think it's important to understand how many evictions happen and what the outcome is. So let me start by sharing a little bit of the research and Zoe, you already got to join the Zoom. She has to join the Zoom. Did you send it to her? Okay. I have a staff in the building with me

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: for one for the rest of week. So if

[Brenda Siegel (Executive Director, End Homelessness Vermont)]: she has some help with that, because I cannot run the slides myself. So we are in the middle of a longitudinal study that will have four or five total phases, and it is about homelessness in Vermont, but there's some important data for this particular issue. Just so you know, we conducted the survey from September 2023 to February 2024 for this second phase, and it was all volunteer participants. And we worked with people in 10 towns, in five counties, and so we had a really broad spectrum and that included Brattleboro and Rutland. And in this area it also included this area and Burlington area, but there was also a lot in between in the Northeast of them. I'm

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: going

[Brenda Siegel (Executive Director, End Homelessness Vermont)]: to move past who was interviewed, but just so you see, I'm going give you a quick snapshot so that you can see that we interviewed 200 total people for And the broad range of the huge number that was between the age of 30 and 59, the pandemic also 65. So that most people were not young adults experiencing homelessness that we interviewed. I want to get to the cause of loss of housing, which is next. So in our research, we found that 84 evictions, there were 84 evictions total out of the 200 people that were interviewed. Almost all were not caused by the tenant. The participants who reported losing their housing due to no cause evictions described the following experiences. Around 41 there were no cause evictions. An overwhelming number were not allowed to have their child or parent live there on the lease, and so several reported, and also several reported health and safety issues. One thing that we found really alarming was that in '47 of the cases where people lost their housing, regardless of how they left or why they left, they were living in a house with significant health or safety issues. Also, when you look at this data, when you see retaliatory eviction, may not mean that the eviction was found retaliatory. It might mean that the person reported health concerns and then were evicted immediately afterwards. When you look at non payment of rent versus could not afford rent, that means that the rent might have been increased on them suddenly. So they said they could not afford rent when they were not evicted, or they were evicted because they could not afford rent, but it wasn't for non payment of rent. So it might have still come up as a no cause in the end. And then non payment of rent, that means they were evicted for that. And if you look at remember this is right after 2023, so if you look at the flood or fire, that comes out in that as well. Condemned housing though, we also found that number kind of alarming. Ten percent of the people, twenty people lost their housing for that reason. And so I want to move past this and I want to give you a little snapshot. We're going move past where people come from and have that discussion in health and welfare. And I want to talk a little bit about the We're moving all the way Zoe too. By the way, this is Zoe, by the way, for the records. And she works for Animal Health Sustralia as well. The health of participants is what I'm going to do. And these slides are all here so you can look at more of our data. The full report is not out yet, so it's still being reviewed by a public health researcher. But this one part I was allowed to share already. So the health of participants is right here. And you can see that seventy six point four percent of people that we interviewed had a physical health condition and we did ask specifics about their physical health condition and ninety two point five percent of kids suffered mental illness. One thing though that's really important to understand that in some cases for mental illness, you see there's a high number of anxiety and depression. These are people experiencing homelessness who have with no housing in our state. So some of this is situational depression or situational anxiety. And in our next phase, we are going to ask people when they were diagnosed with this condition. Was it before or after they were homeless? What happened after they became housed?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: I'm looking at the largest number of joint problems. Is that what that says?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: Yeah, that's what that says.

[Brenda Siegel (Executive Director, End Homelessness Vermont)]: It was so many different kinds of joint problems that we, for this purpose, we put it into one area and it was a number of like knee replacement, severe arthritis, but all of these were significant enough. They weren't just minor health conditions in any cases. So you can see that there's a lot of people who have mobility issues as well in this category or are wheelchair bound, and those were two separate questions, several people who had cancer. And there are people in multiple categories here because there were lots of multiple health conditions. Now,

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: is the mental health box there? When the survey was done, like take anxiety, for example, was it the question, are you diagnosed with anxiety or is it do you feel anxious or?

[Brenda Siegel (Executive Director, End Homelessness Vermont)]: So we asked the question, by the advice of the public health researcher, we asked the question three different ways. We asked it, do you have any mental illness? We asked, do you feel anxiety or depression? And we ask, have you ever been diagnosed with? For anxiety and depression, people answer oftentimes yes in all three because again, they're in a situation. So anxiety and depression is part of living in poverty in a lot of ways, especially anxiety, because you're all in pain all the time. So that is something that's on the guidance. For other conditions, a good one is, there was a condition that we didn't put on there, was antisocial behavior, because what we discovered is that people misinterpreted that as don't want to be social. They didn't want be met. And so we were like, this is completely skewed data, so it doesn't belong in our data. If that made sense. So I can tell you more about this another time, you ever want me to go back, about this particular thing. And then I'm going to move to the next slide, which is learning disability history. So in the learning disability history, this is a very alarming thing that we found, and I was not expecting it when discovered. It Around nine point five percent of people reported not being able to or having trouble reading and writing. And that's going to be extremely important for eviction protections because when we speed up the processes, we're talking about a high percentage of people who can't read or write the notices that they're being given and now it's happening quickly so they can't get the help they need to be able to understand it. You ninety five percent is a high percent in that category. It was alarming. Most of these people are people who lived in Vermont their whole lives, which made me and they weren't all older, so it wasn't I was just shocked. And the other thing that's really important about that is that when we ask those folks about how they became homeless, it was more common for a participant to have been illegally evicted without proper notice or due process. They would explain the process and it would be clear that they had been legally affected. So that's just really important, and I want to make sure there's not another one that I want to so I can talk to you about Yeah, that's it for today. But the whole slide set is there. This was from a presentation I gave at UVM and public health. So that's what it's set up

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: for. Did

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: you send this to our Yeah.

[Brenda Siegel (Executive Director, End Homelessness Vermont)]: Okay. Stop sharing? We did, right? Send it to

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: the 20 system? Okay. Yeah,

[Brenda Siegel (Executive Director, End Homelessness Vermont)]: thank you. Snowy, for your moment here. So in the I want to go a little bit over what the HOPS process is, I'll say what that is in a minute, because when we're talking about non payment of rent being included here, it's important to understand how people get back rent paid if they're in poverty, how they get support for that. When someone is not able to afford rent, they can apply for what's called a HOF grant, and if they have not, apply for one in the last twelve months. It might cover some, however the process is not quick and you have to have a plan to pay it back. So this might take several months. We have a client who's agreed to let us share his story. We worked with him for a little over a year and finally were able to find housing, and about six months after he entered into housing, he lost his job. He was curiously trying to get a new job but fell behind in rent. We worked with him and Sevka to make a plan, and also he had to have established a new job before the rent to be paid. We could get him support from the HOT funds. We were able to make a payment plan with Sevda and our client and the landlord, and he was able to catch up in full and still is safely housed today. That process though took three months until he finally got the payment plan. So ten days to cure or a rapid eviction process for non payment will not allow for that to really happen for several cases. Also, when you're living with a disability, we have a client who also had a friend of mine, a story shared, and he was evicted for damaging the apartment. That was what Libriere was told. The truth is, his apartment was not truly accessible, and so his wheelchair was running into walls. He had MS and ended up outside twice, unable to eat, bathe, use a bathroom, and almost freezing to death. We worked with him for we're still working with him now, so now almost four years. The landlord gave him a bad reference despite a quarrel that they were not supposed to. This also prevented him from getting approved for Section eight at first, though through an appeal with housing authority, were able to get him into low income housing and get that appeal overturned where he's safely today. This bill would have made his life more challenging, not less, and he had had little recourse to fix this for years and years until he had a huge team of people that could help him fix it. There's just not adequate visibility protection in the bill. And then for people in poverty, I wanted to just This one's a little closer to home. In my own life, I lost my housing and all of my belongings two times, and moved six times before my child was 11. And several times floated from temporary situation to temporary situation. When we finally got housed, one of the times it was with a slumlord, another slumlord, and we lived there for four years, and throughout that time the landlord came in and out without notice, without knocking. I was a young woman and along with a baby. And regularly I'd be stepping out of the shower and hear his faulty, his voice calling me from downstairs. If I complained about this, he would threaten to falsely accuse me of things to go to the housing authority so that I might lose my voucher. He knew that I did not have power to overcome this, and there's nothing in this bill that would fix that. I needed to keep a roof over my head and my son, Ajma's. This house had black molded it. There were rats in the kitchen. There was water coming in from the bathroom to the kitchen. And eventually, I'm with Elgren, which would still be allowed in this bill, but he still threatened to evict me. And though it says there's better protection for retaliatory eviction, there is not. And he did go to the housing authority. I luckily had a really great case manager who did not take him up on his offer to say that I had done anything bad. He used essentially an attestation, which is the language you'll see in this bill. And I was lucky. I was raised with privilege and lived a lifestyle where I understood my tenant rights. I got ahold of legal services, which took a long time. They helped me write a response, which took a while, and eventually I won in pre child negotiations and did not have to return the rent to the landlord and he had to give me $500 additionally, but I did have to leave. It was several months before I was able to be housed again after that. Once I finally found a stable setting with a decent landlord, I remained housed there until today. That's, I think, twelve years now that I've lived in the same house. Maybe longer, I don't know. Can't find time. So in this bill, I know you have to end really soon, I'm gonna go through some of the high levels of concerns, and I'll also again provide that chart. As I said, there's no disability protections. The homelessness response bill, H-nine 38, there are several very good disability protections. So I am happy to put some language together and send it to you with this chart where you could add protection in the bill. Even where you think it's important that the ADA should be followed, the ADA is rarely followed in any system. Even in this building when I ask for an accommodation, I am told no almost regularly because it's not our normal process, which means that people don't understand the ADA. Actual so it's important to put those protections directly in the bill. Also, with the federal government as it is right now, we can't guarantee that those protections will be there. In the definition section, an actual notice, including email means that if someone can't or does not check email, has a new email address, or can't afford access to a device, they may not receive the notice. The ability for the landlord to tap no matter what is essentially shaming in the public square. And in both instances, if you can't read or write, if you're blind or visually impaired, if you have a learning disability, you are not protected to be able to find help because the timeframe is not reasonable. Termination, in the termination section for threatening behavior, I have some examples, I'm not gonna go into them right now, of where somebody had significant disability, mental health disability or psychiatric disability, and did something threatening, and maybe even multiple times. And then we were able to get them the support that they needed because the landlord reached out to us and instead of evicting him, we were able to actually find him support and they were able to remain housed. We actually have several examples of this happening where it was successful in the end. Not all people who have

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: a threatening behavior are bad people that then need to

[Brenda Siegel (Executive Director, End Homelessness Vermont)]: be evicted. Many need better support and we need to better fund Pathways and homelessness Vermont and Sash so that those folks can help people. Termination section for late payment. Let's say you have a stroke, a heart attack, and you are keeping up with rent, but while you are recovering, there's no protection for catastrophic event, a disability, or a sudden medical condition. And in the judicial process, you may need help applying to those things. In both the section where the tenant has to file an answer at the time provided, or the tenant fails to appear, or if the defend fails to appear or file an affidavit statement or memorandum, it says the plaintiff shall be entitled to judgment by default or immediate possession of the premises. What if the person has just had that heart attack or a car accident? What if they can't read or write? This says shall. That means the landlord gets a default judgment regardless of the cause. That's a huge problem, and it's not what should be happening at all. This is not about, that ends up not being about health or safety anymore. That is about weighting a lot toward the person with more power, the person with more privilege, regardless. Payment of rent into court. To make it full payment unless the tenant filed a motion, again, puts the entire burden on the tenant, which is flipping the process. As someone who represents marginalized people as a non attorney advocate in front of the Human Services Board, I know that people need support to do these things, especially when they live with disabilities. Often the judge or hearing officer has to bring things up suis fante, meaning on their behalf, in order for them to even know that it's possible to do something. So saying that the tenant has a burden to do that is again putting more burden on the person who's more marginalized with less power. The property removal is a huge problem. I, as someone who's lost all my belongings twice, I will say that it took me years. It took me years to recover having Well, I didn't have a table in my home for several years, and Zoe, who's known me forever, when I first got chairs, said There's a picture on Facebook, she said, Oh my god, there's chairs in your house? That was how long it took me to recover after Tropical Storm I think. Many years. It was a notable event. And then I said threatening behavior, the lack of definition. One example I want to give as we're closing out is that we had a client in February who texted us, a 70 year old woman living with her adult disabled daughter. She said her landlord had texted her and said that someone had been visiting late at night, that she was dealing drugs, and that she had

[Hillary Rich (Legislative Counsel)]: to go.

[Brenda Siegel (Executive Director, End Homelessness Vermont)]: That would have been the landlord's affidavit. That's what her neighbor said. The truth was someone from the Montefiore Co op was delivering food to her family that they couldn't afford when their shift was over at night. That's what was really happening. A landlord attestation on a spill would have left this family with an adult disabled daughter homeless, And under current law, we were able to advise the landlord and the tenant that the tenant has protections, and we have had time to work with the landlord to address the issue. Her due process rights would have been basically void under this bill until another 70 year old, she was ready to leave on March 1. She wasn't even going to question this text message. She didn't know. And the other, when you look at the recommendations that we have, which again, will include, we think that there should be no sections on non payment of rent. We actually think that this entire bill should either not get through the committee or be made into a study to study the possibility of specialized housing board, a housing board or Pathway through Existing Human Services Board to appropriately address concerns for the housers, for the people who are nonprofit housers, of safety only within the current law. There are ways to move this more quickly within the current law, and I think that will include funding, which we know is tight right now, and that also includes a better process of support to ensure that all these things that could go wrong and will go wrong, that will apply to all people for the very small percentage of post safety risks, would not create more and more homelessness in our state. I have, in closing, I think I did a whole recap of my things, you didn't get it because that was a lot of information very quickly. Any landlord or tenant bill on the horizon should be rooted in equity and should be data driven. This is not data driven and it is not rooted in equity. The foundation of landlord tenant law has to consider both the landlord and the tenant, and H-seven 72 is really a landlord bill that essentially strips tenants of their rights and due process. A bill that is truly equitable does not create such much more effortless evictions. This bill would create more homelessness, and several of the bills before you will create more home Sorry, that was from a different thing. Leaving people in poverty with no hope. There's good data on why our current process can be strengthened to better protect both landlords in safety situations and tenants in situations where the landlord is not actively engaged this. I really urge the committee to either not move this bill forward or to turn it into a study so that we can make sure we have the right outcome in the end. So that the real serious and real concerns that you'll hear from nonprofit housers are things that we can address without harming people in poverty and people with disabilities. Thank you.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: Thank you.

[Brenda Siegel (Executive Director, End Homelessness Vermont)]: Sorry I didn't leave time for questions.

[Matthew Valerio (Defender General)]: No, that's

[Brenda Siegel (Executive Director, End Homelessness Vermont)]: fine. I'm happy to come back.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Chair)]: Appreciate it. Alright, tonight we

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Member)]: are