Dear Editor,
The Vermont Legislature is two weeks away from crossover, and the pressure is on to get the priority bills out of their committees of jurisdiction and on their paths to the other body. All bills have to be passed by both bodies – the House and the Senate – and crossover is that time period (roughly halfway through the session) where, in my case, our work gets passed out of the Senate and over to the House for further consideration.
In the committee I chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs, my expectation is that we will pass out: (1) a housing bill, S.328, which aims to increase housing through many measures, from creating an off-site construction accelerator pilot, including housing targets in our town plans, creating more service-supported housing for people with special needs, to increasing housing loan and down payment opportunities, enabling more housing and EV charging in common interest communities; (2) an economic development bill, S.327, which further supports resources essential to the success of our small businesses and other provisions designed to encourage economic development; (3) a miscellaneous labor bill, S.230; (4) a consumer protection bill, S.198, putting in place measures to reduce teenage vaping, which is increasing at an alarming rate and proving addictive and unhealthy; and (5) a cannabis bill, S.278, which aims to make our craft cannabis businesses more competitive regionally and prepare for federal decertification.
Last week we passed out another labor bill, S.173, which streamlines the vocational rehabilitation system in workers compensation, and charges the Department of Labor to convene a task force to improve this system. Our objective in this bill is to get people who have been seriously injured in the workplace back to work or retrained for another type of work, as soon as possible. Each of these bills are available to review on the legislative website. Needless to say, they will change as they make their way through the legislative process.
In my afternoon Senate Government Operations Committee (SGO), we have passed out two bills – one which lingered from last year, S.23. It aims to reduce deceptive AI-generated political advertising leading up to an election. People felt this issue needed to be addressed in the wake of the very concerning fake Joe Biden AI-generated robocalls in New Hampshire, in 2024. That bill has now been sent to the governor to be signed into law. In addition, SGO passed out S.255, a bill which creates a regional policing pilot in Windham County. For a number of years, SGO has considered efforts to regionalize public safety to improve equity and access. We have a dearth of volunteers in EMS and firefighting, and law enforcement is a patchwork of towns which either have their own police departments, or which rely on the state police responding from distant barracks, or on the sheriff’s contracted coverage. This bill sets up a five-year pilot, which enables towns in Windham County to join voluntarily, and efficiently and transparently share law enforcement costs. It offers professional law enforcement services at an affordable cost through an innovative county funding mechanism, and would be overseen and accountable to the Windham County Law Enforcement Governance Council.
The Senate floor activity is ramping up. Last week we passed a bill several Senate committees have been working on for a year, S. 218, which is designed to reduce road salt runoff and contamination of our public waters and drinking wells. Increasingly, road salt is damaging our waters, harming both flora and fauna (trees and fish in particular), and our public transportation infrastructure, corroding bridges, roads, and culverts, at a high cost to taxpayers. Vermont is behind our neighboring states, which have addressed this issue for a number of years.
I appreciate hearing from you. I can be reached by email at aclarkson@leg.state.vt.us; or by phone at the statehouse, Tuesday-Friday, at 802-828-2228; or at home, Saturday-Monday, at 802-457-4627. To get more information on the Vermont Legislature, and the bills which have been proposed and passed, visit the legislative website, legislature.vermont.gov.
Sincerely,
Sen. Alison Clarkson
Windsor District