Dear Constituents –

This was the week of the deadline for money bills to « cross over » to the other Chamber – we spent many long hours on the House floor hearing debate and voting on bills, as well as Committee meetings  scattered throughout our days to hear amendments from money committees to bills that previously passed out of Goverment Operations & Military Affairs.

As a reminder for the next section of this report, to find the text of a bill, one can type in the bill number on the General Assembly webpage and see several iterations of a bill – please click on the bill as passed by the House for the most up to date version ; if it is an S. bill at this time of year, click on as passed by the Senate.

Among the bills that passed throughout the House are the following, listed by bill number and title. Those that I voted in favor of include : H.55 unemployment insurance amendments ; H.110 extending the sunset on siting telecommunications towers ;H.171 adult protective services ; H.471 technical and administrative changes to VT tax law ; H.476 radiologist assistants ; H.178 commissioning Department of Corrections personnel as notaries public ; H.288 liability for the sale of alcoholic beverages ; H.476 miscellaneous changes to law enforcement officer training laws ; H.481 public health initiatives to address death by suicide.

Those that I did not support include : H.230 implementing mechanisms to reduce suicide, which the Defender General has testified is unconstitutional ; H.482 Vermont Criminal Justice Council recommendations for law enforcement officer training, which reflects changes that this appointed body has oversight of and makes no provision for how the transition in training practices will roll out ; H.126 community resilience and biodiversity protection, which requires that 30% of land will be conserved by 2030 and 50% will be conserved by 2050 by purported voluntary means ; H.66 paid family and medical leave, which has an estimated cost of $118 million/year and requires an employer-funded payroll tax ; H.270 miscellaneous amendments to the adult-use and medical cannabis programs, which passed through my committee with disregard to the recommendations of the Vermont Medical Society ; H.165 Universal School Meals which is another high cost program ($28-33M per year) to be paid out of the Education Fund that could be managed at a lesser cost by utilizing non-identifying swipe cards and a more detailed screening tool.

For a complete listing of bills passed this week, please see both the House and Senate Journals on the General Assembly website, which lists all action taken each day.

As always, it is an honor to represent you at the Statehouse, and I welcome your questions and concerns at [email protected]

Stay well,

Rep Lisa Hango, Franklin-5