Dear Constituents –

Time is ticking as the Legislative session moves into the last week before Town Meeting Break.  Committees continue to work on bill introductions and testimony, as well as preparing budget memos to the Appropriations Committee. In the House Government Operations & Military Affairs Committee, we continued our work on DR 25-0244 (professions and occupations regulated by the Office of Professional Regulation); DR 25-0242 (miscellaneous changes to election law); DR 25-0351 (miscellaneous cannabis amendments); and we resumed our discussion on H.1 draft 1.3 (accepting and referring complaints by the State Ethics Commission).  We heard bill introductions on H.240 (authorizing drawdown of dams during emergency flood events); H.232 (creating the VT Municipal Response and Recovery Special Fund); and H.145 (disruption of proceedings governed by Vermont’s Open Meeting Laws). We voted out affirmatively a committee bill DR 25-0914 (repealing the sunset on to-go cocktails), which will come to the House Floor next week.

Our committee held our weekly joint meeting with Senate Government Operations, and we  were joined this week by Senate Education, to learn more about the process for redistricting and elections with respect to education reform.  There has been conflicting guidance as to which committees will be working on drawing the district maps, and we are finding that the process is rolling out extremely slowly, but we do know that Government Operations will be tasked with the elections piece of the statewide transformation plan.

The House Floor was very quiet this past week. More bills were read a first time and referred to committee – we have been told that again this year, there may be a record number of bills submitted by legislators wanting to have their concerns taken up. The House voted affirmatively on H.13 (Medicaid payment rates for home- and community-based service providers); H.41 (miscellaneous amendments to laws governing impaired driving); H.98 (confirmatory adoptions); and H.154 (designating November as VT Month of the Veteran), which was passed out of my committee with great pride.

The Rural Caucus held a Public Forum in person and via Zoom on Wednesday evening, listening to rural folks from around the State pitch their concerns in two-minute intervals. This is a particularly enlightening exercise, giving us the ability to reach many people in a very short time, and we will add those concerns to our list of legislative priorities.

Please reach out to me at [email protected] and look forward to a Town Meeting Day update at the end of next week.

Stay well, Rep Lisa Hango, Franklin-5