News from Montpelier 2021 Session week 5

It was appropriate that on February 2nd, Ground Hog Day the House had a do over on one of last week’s actions. The selection of members to the Judicial Nominating Committee requires a vote by the Representatives as stated in Title 4 of Vermont Statute. The neglected vote was taken and the prior announced members were elected. The Speaker went on to announce the appointments of members to fill seats in eight management and oversight committees. Two bills were passed out of the House to the Senate; H.151 an act relating to vital records, mausoleums and columbaria, and emergency health orders and H.18 an act relating to sexual exploitation of children. https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2022/Docs/RESOLUTN/HR0007/HR0007%20As%20Introduced.pdf H.R. 7 house resolution disapproving Executive Order 01-21 was introduced by the Committee on Government Operations and adopted on a Roll Call vote of 108 yeas to 40 nays. Floor debate and vote explanations included concerns that the Executive Order was not given sufficient consideration by the Committee on Government Operations and that the order made changes whose affects needed to be examined through the legislative process where each change can be considered independently of the whole. In responding to an Executive Order the Legislature must vote the whole up or down, there is no ability to edit. The full text of the Governors Executive Order 01-21 is available at this link: https://governor.vermont.gov/sites/scott/files/documents/EXECUTIVE%20ORDER%20NO.%2001-21.pdf Bill introductions for the week brought the total to date to 204 with 24 committed to General, Housing and Military Affairs. The committee did not hear from any new bill sponsors this week. A good deal of committee time was dedicated to the discussion and mark up of H. 81 an act relating to statewide public school employee health benefits, with the unmet goal of voting it out on Friday afternoon. That is now scheduled for Tuesday afternoon after edits and adjustments can be made. General G. C. Knight, Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard gave an overview of the guard’s structure and mission. Vermont is unique in its election of the Adjutant General by the Legislature, no other state does so. At least one bill has already been assigned to the committee to make amendments to the relevant statutes. The committee listened to testimony and presentations throughout the week that covered Mental Health Advocacy, Housing Safety and Housing is Health. The latter included testimony from Dr. Megan Sandel, MD, a pediatrician and Co-Lead Principal Investigator, Children’s Health Watch. The common agreement from all the witnesses was the fact that providing housing security is the least expensive solution for society at large in answering the crisis of homelessness.
Representative Barbara S Murphy bmurphy@leg.state.vt.us 802-849-6545