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Vermont Legislature
Follow VPR's statehouse coverage, featuring Pete Hirschfeld and Bob Kinzel in our Statehouse Bureau in Montpelier.

2014 Legislative Wrap-Up: What Passed, What Didn't

The House chamber of the Vermont Legislature
Angela Evancie
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VPR/file
The 2014 legislative session adjourned on Saturday, May 10.

The last two years have been busy ones in Montpelier. Lawmakers introduced 894 separate bills in the House, and another 317 pieces of legislation in the Senate. Some garnered only cursory review by committees of jurisdiction. Other spawned public hearings, heated debates, and close votes on the House and Senate floor.

As is the case in any legislative biennium, only a fraction of the bills that were introduced have passed into law. But the ones that did will soon affect public safety, economic development, health care, education funding and, yes, even the number of “sampler” beers patrons can enjoy at any one time in their local establishments.

The following is a list of some of the more significant pieces of legislation to pass both chambers of the Legislature this year or, conversely, to fall by the wayside.

Credit Angela Evancie / VPR
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VPR
Vermont is the first state in the nation to require food producers label products containing genetically modified organisms.

The Bill: An Act Relating To The Labeling Of Food Produced With Genetic Engineering (H.112)

Who It Affects: Producers of food made with genetically modified organisms, and the people that buy them.

What It Does: Requires producers of food that contains genetically modified organisms to affix labels alerting consumers to the presence of GMOs.

It’s been more than a decade since a Progressive House lawmaker introduced the first GMO labeling bill in the Legislature. But it wasn’t until this session that legislators finally decided to take the plunge into untested legal waters.

The bill passed through the House easily. And strong support from advocates, along with a well-funded lobbying effort, convinced some reluctant Senate lawmakers to go along with the proposal.

The legislation ended up winning overwhelming bipartisan support in both chambers of the Legislature, and when Gov. Peter Shumlin signed the bill into law, Vermont became the first state in the nation to require food producers label products containing genetically modified organisms. The law does not apply to meat or dairy products.

Food producers and biotechnology firms are expected to file a legal challenge of the new statute soon. Vermont has established a legal defense fund, called the Food Fight Fund, for people who want to help underwrite the court costs.

On Vermont Edition, April 23, 2014: What We Talk About When We Talk About GMOs

Credit Angela Evancie / VPR
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VPR
Under a new ban on using handheld devices while driving, drivers caught infracting will be fined, but won't get points on their license.

The Bill: An Act Relating to Prohibiting The Handheld Use Of A Portable Electronic Device While Driving (H.62)

Who It Affects: Anyone driving on Vermont’s roads.

What It Does: Makes it illegal for anyone to talk on their cell phone while driving; the use of hands-free devices will still be allowed.

In 2010, Vermont lawmakers approved a ban on texting while driving. But there was a major problem when it came to enforcement, according to police, who said they had no way of telling whether a motorist was texting – which is illegal – or simply dialing up a phone number, which remained permissible under Vermont law. The fix, public safety officials said, was to ban the use of handheld devices outright.

That police testimony had the effect of dislodging some of the longstanding opposition that had blocked previous efforts to ban talking on a cell phone while driving. And it changed the views of two people in particular – the chairmen of the House and Senate transportation committees.

The House gave overwhelming approval to the cell phone ban early in the session. However opponents, including Gov. Peter Shumlin, helped block its movement through the Senate. The bill looked doomed to fail yet again, until a late-session compromise cleared the way for a bill that Shumlin said he will not veto.

The bill creates civil fines for people caught driving while using on a handheld device. But it won’t add points to the licenses of people cited for committing the infraction.

On Vermont Edition, Feb. 25, 2014: Hanging Up On The Hand Helds

The Bill: An Act Relating To Raising The Minimum Wage (H.552)

Who It Affects: The approximately 50,000 Vermont workers earning less than $10 per hour, as well as their employers.

What It Does: Ratchets up the minimum wage to $10.50 per hour by Jan. 1 of 2018.

The big fight over worker rights this year was originally focused squarely on an effort to ensure paid sick days for all employees. But when President Barack Obama stepped up his push to lift the federal minimum wage to $10.10 by 2017, it had serious political implications for Vermont.

Gov. Peter Shumlin suddenly made the issue his own, and said Vermont would lead by example by raising the wage here. While lawmakers were generally receptive to the concept, however, many felt the governor’s plan didn’t go far enough.

The House passed legislation that would move the minimum wage to $10.10 beginning in 2015, drawing the ire of business groups in the process. The Senate, meanwhile, decided that $10.50 by 2018 – with lower increases in the 2015 and 2016 – was the more appropriate number.

The debate in the end came down to a late-session battle on the House floor, where Republicans, who preferred the more modest increases in the early years, banded together with Progressives, who favored the higher wages in the out years. The House passed the Senate version. Shumlin has said he will sign the bill.

On Vermont Edition, March 20, 2014: Can Vermont Afford A Higher Minimum Wage?

Solar panels in a field
Credit Wilson Ring / AP
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Associated Press File
A solar array is pictured in Duxbury in 2013. The net metering bill raises caps on the amount of renewable energy that homes and businesses can produce and feed back onto the grid.

The Bill: An Act Relating To Self-Generation And Net Metering (H.702)

Who It Affects: Vermonters who wish to install a renewable energy system at home or work.

What It Does: Raises the amount of renewably produced electricity that qualifies for “net metering” programs.

Now known as Act 99, the net metering bill was signed into law in April by Shumlin, raising caps on the amount of renewable energy homes and businesses can produce and feed back onto the grid.

Individual customers or a group of customers can participate in the state's net metering program, launched in 1998, by obtaining a certificate of public good from the Public Service Board. Eligible renewable sources of power include solar, wind, anaerobic digestion of agricultural products, biomass and fuel cells.

The program had a cap on energy generated through net metering: 4 percent of peak demand for each utility in the state. But with more than 3,600 projects online, most Vermont utilities were either at or approaching the 4 percent cap, preventing new projects in those service areas. The new law raised the cap to 15 percent.

The new law also lowered the net metering credit for larger projects, saving ratepayers money. It also raised the capacity size of projects eligible for fast-track, 10-day permitting process from 10 kilowatts to 15 kilowatts, and allows utilities and municipalities to pursue 5-megawatt projects on capped landfills.

With federal tax credits expiring in 2017, the law created a framework for the Public Service Board to redesign the program in 2017 to ensure it continues.

On Vermont Edition, April 3, 2014: Expanding Net Metering

The Bill: An Act Relating To Involuntary Treatment And Medication (S.287)

Who It Affects: Severely mentally ill patients, as well as hospitals and other health care providers.

What It Does: Accelerates the process for treating patients with mental illness against their will.

Few issues this year were as emotionally charged as the effort to expedite the legal process hospitals must follow in order to medicate patients against their will. Hospital administrators said time-consuming judicial reviews have delayed their ability to treat mentally ill patients. They said the problem was leading to longer stays in hospitals, and making worse an already dangerous shortage of secure psychiatric beds in the state.

Opponents of the bill, meanwhile, said the push to rewrite involuntary treatment protocols undermined the due-process rights of vulnerable patients, and that “forced” medication, as they call it, was more likely to exacerbate patient trauma than to relieve it.

Lawmakers in the end agreed on a compromise that allows clinicians to seek involuntary treatment orders more quickly than they have in the past. However, it limits the new protocols only to patients who pose a significant risk of physical harm to themselves or others.   

Credit Angela Evancie / VPR
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VPR/file
A new bill requires developers to receive a permit from the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) if they wish to build next to one of the state’s lakes or ponds, with exceptions for privately owned ponds.

The Bill: An Act Relating To The Establishment Of Lake Shoreland Protection Standards (H.526)

Who It Affects: Landowners and developers who are looking to build on lake-front parcels.

What It Does: Vermont has a host of regulatory programs to protect water quality in the state, from wastewater and stormwater discharge to agricultural runoff. Added to those regulations this Legislative session is one that governs construction along the state’s lake shores.

The bill requires developers to receive a permit from the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) if they wish to build next to one of the state’s lakes or ponds, with exceptions for privately owned ponds, including those found on golf courses or built for fire suppression.

The bill creates a 100-foot “protection zone.” Within this zone, developers cannot on a slope greater than 20 percent. Developers are also prohibited from clearing more than 40 percent of the vegetation on the parcel.

Lastly, the parcel can contain no more than 20 percent of “impervious surfaces,” defined as when the ground won’t absorb water from runoff.

The bill gives the ANR the ability to expand these permit requirements. The bill also allows for municipalities that have their own shoreland protection laws to enforce them, as long as the regulations are comparable to those outlined in the bill.

A lake or pond with a surface area greater than 10 acres is located within 184 of the state’s 251 municipalities. As of the writing of the bill, only 48 of those municipalities had shoreland zoning laws that address vegetative cover.

The Bill: An Act Relating To The Regulation Of Toxic Substances (S.239)

Who It Affects: Manufacturers of children’s products who make or sell goods in Vermont.

What It Does: Gives state Health Department new authority to review and possibly ban certain chemicals.

The Legislature has traditionally had the authority to regulate or ban chemicals contained in household products. But a first-of-its-kind bill passed by the Senate earlier this year handed that power to the Vermont Department of Health.

The Senate bill gave the Department of Health the ability to regulate or ban chemicals used in a wide range of products, and it didn’t require there to be any imminent public health threat in order to do so. When the legislation passed over to the House, it became the focus of an intense lobbying effort by powerful industry groups, from both inside and outside Vermont. The House narrowed the scope of the bill considerably, to only products made for children. But House lawmakers resisted calls to strip the new powers the Senate had accorded to the Department of Health; Vermont is now one of only three states in which commissioners of health can unilaterally bar the use of chemicals in certain products.

The push for state-level control comes after years of inaction on regulatory reforms at the federal level. Supporters of the original Senate bill said they were disappointed the House didn’t concur with the stronger version, but said that the legislation is a good “first step.”

The bill additionally requires makers of children’s products to disclose to the Department of Health whether their products contain any of 66 chemicals on a “watch list.”

On Vermont Edition, April 22, 2014: Toxic Labeling: Who Should Decide?

A deer tick, which can spread Lyme disease.
Credit Victoria Arocho / AP
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AP

The Bill: An Act Related to Lyme Disease And Other Tick-Borne Illnesses (H.123)

Who It Affects: Doctors who prescribe antibiotics to treat Lyme disease.

What It Does: Provides immunity from charges of unprofessional conduct for any doctor who prescribes long-term courses of antibiotics to treat patients with Lyme disease.

Lyme Disease – named after Lyme, Conn., where it was first discovered – is an illness that will sap a patient’s energy and can lead to neurological impairment. The disease is transmitted through the bite of a tick, and if diagnosed early, can be treated with short-term course of antibiotics.

However, because the symptoms are varied – fatigue, fever and headache – the disease often goes undiagnosed until it has hold in a person’s system, making treatment more difficult.
 
The medical community is divided on what is the best course of treatment. While the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society recommends long-term courses of antibiotics in some cases, the federal Center for Disease Control and Protection advises against such treatment, both because of the negative side effects on the patient and the potential to create an antibiotic-resistant strain of the bacteria.

At the state level, the bill was opposed by Dr. Harry Chen, commissioner for the Department of Health.

The bill provides immunity from charges of unprofessional conduct for any doctor who prescribes long-term courses of antibiotics. It also requires a doctor to obtain a patient’s informed consent in writing before prescribing long-term courses of antibiotics.

On Vermont Edition, April 15, 2014: Update: Deer Ticks In Vermont

The Bill: An Act Related To Pretrial Services, Risk Assessments, And Criminal Justice Programs (S.295)

Who It Affects: Defendants accused of low-level crimes who may need treatment for addiction.

What It Does: Gives courts and prosecutors tools to assess whether defendants would benefit from treatment programs in lieu of criminal prosecution.

Gov. Peter Shumlin launched the legislative session by devoting his entire State of the State address to a "full-blown heroin crisis" gripping the state. He called for treating addiction as a public health issue rather than continue to try to combat it through the criminal  justice system. Shumlin called for a new system to provide needs and risk assessments for offenders to determine who may be better suited for treatment programs. 

The Legislature responded by passing a bill that provides assessment tools to courts and prosecutors. It calls for county prosecutors to offer both pretrial screening and treatment programs to suspects before they are arraigned, when they are considered most likely to be willing to address their addiction.

Additional risk assessment tools are intended to help judges and prosecutors gather more information about each defendant when trying to determine if bail is warranted. The law includes $760,000 to hire personnel to monitor offenders' compliance with the program.

The law also creates stronger penalties for those charged with trafficking more than 1 gram of heroin into the state for the purpose of selling it. And burglary with a weapon or threatening a home occupant will not be considered an aggravating factor, allowing judges to impose stiffer sentences.

A marijuana plant.
Credit Brennan Linsley / AP
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Associated Press File
A bill passed by the Legislature this season allows more people to obtain cannabis at medical marijuana dispensaries.

The Bill: An Act Relating To The Regulation Of Marijuana For Symptom Relief And Dispensaries (S.247)

Who It Affects: Vermonters who have a medical marijuana card issued by the state.

What It Does: Allows more people to obtain cannabis at medical marijuana dispensaries and sets up a study of marijuana legalization.

The bill that cleared the Legislature will allow more Vermonters to access pot from state-approved dispensaries. It removes the current 1,000 patient cap in place for each of the four dispensaries located in Burlington, Montpelier, Brattleboro and Brandon. Lawmakers lifted the cap because they said some patients were forced to purchase marijuana illegally for their ailments.

The Senate had hoped to expand the number of dispensaries to six, but the House removed that provision and it was not included in a final compromise bill. 

The legislation included requirement that the Shumlin Administration study how much new revenue the state could net if marijuana is legalized in Vermont. The study will review policies in the states of Washington and Colorado, which have already legalized the drug and enacted taxes to raise revenue.

Another study will look at post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and whether the state should consider it as one of the ailments that is eligible for medical marijuana. Lawmakers debated adding post traumatic stress disorder to the list but opted to seek more information first.

On Vermont Edition, April 8, 2014: Bill Would Expand Vt. Medical Marijuana Dispensaries

The Bill: An Act Relating To Financing For Green Mountain Care (S.252)

Who It Affects: The Shumlin administration, Green Mountain Care Board, and other entities involved in creating a single-payer health care system.

What It Does: The legislation was stripped of most of its single-payer financing mandates, but now includes mandates on some for-profit medical businesses.

Three years after passing the law that set Vermont on a course toward single-payer health care, Gov. Peter Shumlin said the 2014 session would see the arrival of “concepts” for a public financing plan. But not long into the session, Shumlin said he’d moved back the deadline. And in the face of inaction from the administration, lawmakers began to take matters into their own hands.

The bill at various stages in its progression included new timelines for establishing a third-party administrator for single-payer, as well as a new deadline – Feb. 3 of 2015 – for the administration to deliver a financing proposal. Those mandates fell by the wayside, however, replaced largely by calls for new studies and reports about how the new system will work.

The legislation also has some policy items, including one that aims to bring transparency to aspects of the pharmaceutical sales industry. The provision will require “Pharmacy Benefits Managers” – they function as a sort of middleman between insurance carriers and pharmacies – to disclose how much money they make by facilitating those transactions.

The bill also prohibits private, for profit “urgent care” clinics from turning away patients for lack of insurance. The clinics can continue to refuse care if the patient doesn’t have money to pay for services.

The Bill: An Act Relating To Operating A Motor Vehicle Under The Influence Of Alcohol Or Drugs (H.501)

Who It Affects: Police and prosecutors, and anyone driving on Vermont's roads.

What It Does: Sets new standards for "drugged driving."

Lawmakers reached an agreement to update the state's definition of drugged driving just hours before the legislative biennium ended. The effort was spurred by requests from law enforcement officials who said the current standard was too difficult to prove driving under the influence of drugs, making convictions nearly possible to obtain.

Existing law says a driver is under the influence of drugs if the person is impacted "to a degree which renders the person incapable of driving safely." Department of Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn asked for a lesser standard.

The House and Senate passed differing version of the bill. The House version, favored by Flynn and those in law enforcement, aligned drugged driving with existing law for being under the influence of alcohol. For alcohol, being under the influence requires that "a person's full mental or physical abilities are diminished or impaired to the slightest degree."

But the Senate saw that language as providing zero tolerance. The Senate version considered a driver to be under the influence of a drug if the drug "interferes with a person's safe operation of a vehicle." In the end, the two chambers compromised and created an entirely new standard. Once signed by Shumlin, the state's new standard for drugged driving will require a driver to be "diminished or impaired to the slightest degree."

The legislation also calls for a report on drug recognition experts, or DREs. The Legislature is looking for information on the effectiveness of the 25 law enforcement experts specially trained to detect when someone is under the influence of drugs.

Credit Angela Evancie / VPR
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VPR
With a rally at the Statehouse on the opening day of the 2014 session, the push for paid sick leave had enormous momentum. But as business interests lined up in opposition to the bill, support in the Democratically controlled House began to wane.

The Failed Bill: An Act Relating To Absence From Work For Health Care And Safety (H.208)

Who It Would Have Affected: The approximately 60,000 Vermont workers who don’t currently get paid sick time, as well as their employers.

What It Would Have Done: Required employers to provide workers with paid sick leave.

The push for “earned” sick time, as supporters called it, had enormous momentum heading into the 2014 session. A coalition of fiscally liberal lawmakers and advocacy organizations, including the Vermont Workers Center, Voices for Vermont’s Children and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, made the bill the keystone of the progressive legislative agenda.

But as business interests lined up in opposition to the bill, support in the Democratically controlled House began to wane. And many of the 76 legislators who vowed support at the outset of the session – enough to win a "yes" vote on the House floor – said they could no longer get behind the bill.

House Speaker Shap Smith attributed the loss of support for paid sick time to political concerns heading into an election year, especially given that Democrats were already taking heat for rising property tax rates and the glitch-filled rollout of the new online health insurance exchange.

The bill originally would have required employers to grant seven days of paid sick time to fulltime workers. Supporters have said they’ll renew the push for the legislation in 2015.

On Vermont Edition, February 7, 2014: Should Paid Sick Leave Be The Law?

Credit Comstock / Thinkstock
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Thinkstock
A controversial school district consolidation bill died on the floor of the House on the final day of the session.

The Failed Bills: An Act Related To Prekindergarten-Grade 12 Education Districts (H.883); An Act Related To Making Miscellaneous And Technical Corrections to Education Laws (H.876)

Who They Would Have Affected: School board members, superintendents and anyone else with a vested interest in education.

What They Would Have Done: The House Education Committee spent hundreds of hours taking testimony and deliberating on H.883, which proposed an ambitious, six-year plan that would have consolidated the state’s nearly 300 school districts into 45-55 “education districts” that would have offered pre-K-12 education and access to one of the state’s 17 career technical centers.

The bill would have created a single tax rate for multiple towns within the education district, as well as a single, district-wide budget for multiple schools.

The bill faced a fair amount of vocal opposition on two fronts: First, it would have eliminated the state’s approximately 300 school boards, in favor of one board for each district. This proposal led many to fear the bill would have resulted in a loss of control at the local level.

Another contentious facet of the plan was the creation of a state-appointed “design team,” which would have created a consolidation plan for those districts that did not consolidate voluntarily within the first three years.

The bill narrowly passed out of the House on April 30, but lingered in the Senate Rules Committee for the remainder of the session.

In the waning days of the Legislative session, the Senate Education Committee took up a last-minute amendment to a miscellaneous education bill that would have increased the financial incentives for districts to consolidate voluntarily, while doing away with the involuntary consolidation component of the other bill.

Lacking the votes to take up the bill as amended by the Senate, the bill died on the floor of the House on the final day of the session.

The Failed Bill: An Act Relating To Use Value Appraisals (H.329)

Who It Would Have Affected: Some of the approximately 12,000 landowners enrolled in Current Use.

What It Would Have Done: Increased penalties for withdrawing land from the current use program.

Since it was enacted in the late 1970s, Vermont’s Current Use law has ensured dramatically reduced tax bills for farm and forest land. The program is credited with helping conserve more than 2 million acres that might have otherwise been sold off for commercial development. But even diehard supporters of the program say meager penalties for withdrawing land make Current Use ripe for abuse. And they say developers who enroll land for short-term tax benefits, with no intention of long-term conservation, are giving the program a bad name.

Legislation introduced in the House this year sought to remedy the problem by ramping up withdrawal penalties, especially for land pulled within 10 years of its enrollment. But the issue of higher penalties has been a sensitive one in the Senate, where key members say they worry about the effect on cash-poor landowners who need to sell off parcels in order to pay bills.

It’s the third time in five years legislation of this sort has failed. And backers of reform say that if the Legislature doesn’t move soon to address the program’s problems, then flagging public support will make Current Use vulnerable to more Draconian cuts in the future.

This post was edited on 5/15/14 at 7:03 p.m., to correct an error in the GMO labeling law summary

The Vermont Statehouse is often called the people’s house. I am your eyes and ears there. I keep a close eye on how legislation could affect your life; I also regularly speak to the people who write that legislation.
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