Dear Constituents –
This week in the VT Statehouse, legislative business settled into a predictable pattern. Committees are taking up the hard work of digging into the issues before us. The Education and Finance Committees are working on school funding and related policy, and we are told that every other committee will have a piece of that puzzle to work on in the near future. In the meantime, we are all taking bill introductions from sponsors and hearing from agencies and organizations that we will work with throughout the biennium. Some committees, notably Government Operations and Health Care, have passed out bills that have been voted on by the House and sent to the Senate. Appropriations finalized the Budget Adjustment Act (BAA) on Friday, which will be presented to the House next week.
In Government Operations & Military Affairs, we heard presentations relating to our committee jurisdiction: VT Association of Broadcasters (relating to emergency management); Department of Liquor & Lottery (BAA request); VT Cannabis Equity Coalition; Department of Public Safety; VT Sheriffs’ Association; VT National Guard. We drafted our memo to Appropriations on the budget adjustment items that came before our Committee, and we continued to hear testimony on the Bennington-1 contested election.
On the House Floor, the following bills were passed: H.78 (use of Australian ballot in local elections); H.27 (Domestic Violence Fatality Review Commission); H.35 (permanently unmerge individual and small group health insurance markets); H.31 (claim edit standards and prior authorization requirements); HR5 (authorizing remote committee voting).
On Tuesday, the Governor made his annual Budget Address to the Joint Assembly. He spoke about the need for more Housing, better Public Safety, Education funding reform, and Affordability for all Vermonters, themes that were woven throughout his speech. We will learn more about those initiatives in the coming weeks.
The Rural Caucus met on Wednesday to hear more priority bill pitches from members who have policy concepts related to rural Vermont. In the next week, members will be ranking those priorities to learn which top five priorities we will focus on learning about as a Caucus.
For those following the military pension income tax exemption issue, H.43 was introduced on Friday to the House Ways & Means committee with moving testimony from both active and retired military members. Gov Scott also included this in his annual tax relief package.
To learn more about bills introduced or passed, please see the VT General Assembly website and type the bill number into the bill tracker. You will find the status of the bill, where it is located, and any action that has been taken on it. For questions or concerns, please reach out to me at [email protected] Stay well, Rep Lisa Hango
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