Week 1 - January 3rd to January 5th

State House just before the Bomb Cyclone

What a start !

For those who want a quick synopsis of the week, here's what happened:

• Wednesday - Marijuana build up
• On the way to Montpelier I met with Laura Subin from the Vermont Coalition to Regulate Marijuana and also a member of the Taxation and Regulation subcommittee of the governor's  Marijuana Commission to hear her side of the marijuana legalization issue
• The Judiciary Committee took up amendments to the Marijuana Legalization bill
• Corrections & Institutions Committee started going over possible Capital Budget adjustments
• Thursday - Marijuana amendment, debate and passage
• House floor at 9:30 to begin amendments to Marijuana Legalization
• Governor's Address at 1:00
• House floor for Marijuana amendments and debate
• 6:15 pm passed marijuana legalization - The bill will legalize the possession of one ounce of marijuana and the cultivation of 6 plants. I voted against it. Details of the bill can be found on the Outreach - Marijuana page of my website (CT4VT.com). If passed by the Senate (expected) and signed by the governor (also expected), it will go into effect July 1st of 2018.
• Friday - Committee Work
• Corrections
• Buildings and General Services
• Left early due to weather

The Details - Marijuana

History of the bill - 2017
The marijuana legalization bill (H.511) has a long and tainted history. It started in the House Transportation Committee and was first introduced in March of 2017 (this is called the First Reading even though the bill is not actually read aloud). That committee is chaired by Colchester Representative Pat Brennan. The official subject of the bill reads as follows:

Subject: Motor vehicles; driving under the influence; open container; learner’s permits; seatbelts; incident clearance; liability

The only mention of marijuana in the bill was to provide a penalty for consuming marijuana while driving or for having an open container of marijuana in a car. The same goes for any passenger. H.511 was sent to the Appropriations committee by Rule 35(a) which says that if a bill affects the revenues of the state (in this case fines and enforcement costs) it must go to the Appropriations Committee for consideration and a committee vote.

By the end of March it was out of Appropriations with a recommendation for approval and back on the House floor. That was the Second Reading. By the end of March it had passed its Third and final reading with only small changes and was handed over to the Senate. This was not a controversial bill. All the votes on the House floor were voice votes and hardly noticed.

The last day in March the senate read it for the first time and sent it to their Committee on the Judiciary. And there it sat . . . . until the end of June! It's not that it had suddenly become controversial. The committee was not engaged in continuous heated debate about whether or not a person should be able to have an open container of marijuana in the back seat while driving. It was just never considered. Too many other things to do . . . until the end of June.

The fact that no action was taken before June is not surprising. In general, for a bill to make it through both the House and Senate during the first year of a biennium it must get passed over to the Senate by about Town Meeting day in early March. That date is called the cross-over date. H.511 had not made the cross-over date so was likely not to be considered in the Senate until the second year, 2018.

The surprise here is that it burst to life in June of 2017 when, just past midnight on Friday the 19th of May, the House and Senate had passed the budget and ended the 2017 session. We had all gone home in hopes of staying home until 2018.

But the Governor vetoed that budget, and we were back in session for a very short veto-session near the end of June. We needed to figure out what to do about the vetoes. The Great State of Vermont cannot function without a budget and the spending of that budget was slated to begin July 1st.

H.511 was suddenly up for consideration in the Senate. Generally a bill progresses fairly slowly along its twisted path from introduction to signing by the Governor, but near the end of session and during this veto session things happen fast. Rules requiring a bill to sit for a day between readings can be suspended (if three-fourths of the members present agree). The Senate quickly amended the bill and sent it back to the House. A bill can be sent back and forth several times, but cannot get to the governor until both bodies have voted to accept it.

Had smoking marijuana in a vehicle suddenly become a make-or-break issue? No. There was more going on here.  The reason H.511 was back on the agenda was because one of the vetoed bills was S.22 which legalized marijuana.

The history of S.22 is another long story that need not be detailed here. Suffice it to say that it had become a bill to legalize the possession and of a small amount of marijuana and the cultivation of a half-dozen plants. Sound familiar? It should. That's what the current H.511 does. Because S.22 was vetoed it would need a two-thirds vote to override the veto and become law. Everyone knew that wouldn't happen. So the Senate grabbed H.511 out of Committee and turned a highway safety bill into a marijuana legalization bill that would only require a majority vote to be passed by the House and sent to the Governor. The rumor was that the governor might approve it this time.

The Senate journal from that day in June reads as follows regarding H.511: "the Senate propose to the House to amend the bill by striking out all after the enacting clause and inserting in lieu thereof the following." And what followed is the guts of S.22. H.511 had become S.22. All Representative Bennan and his committee's hard work was written over with marijuana legalization.

Now, in order for the House to consider the revised H.511 the bill had to follow the rules that slow down the legislative process, including the need to sit for 24 hours. To avoid this delay a motion was made to suspend House rules and take up the bill immediately.

When the House voted to suspend rules and consider the new H.511, I was so disgusted with the process and sympathetic to Representative Brennan that I voted "No." The motion failed and H.511 was not considered. Marijuana legalization was dead for the 2017 session.

2018
But now it's 2018, the second year of the two-year biennium. Bills left over from the previous session are up for consideration. If they don't get through the House and Senate this year, they die.

Nothing had been done with H.511 when we ended that June veto session. It remained, waiting for action by the House. Something had to be done. When I asked House leadership why we were considering this issue during the first week of this session, that was the answer I received. We have to do something with it. Of course, we could have sent it to a committee, or, I suspect, delayed it by some other means but Leadership wanted to get it done.

The Majority Whip (Tristan Toleno) who is responsible for knowing how people intend to vote on any upcoming bill had asked me about my vote. I knew an informal vote count had been done and Leadership figured they had the votes to pass the bill. Otherwise they probably would not let it get to a floor vote.

House Judiciary about to consider H.511

On Wednesday of this week the House Judiciary committee debated the changes the Senate had made during the veto session as well as a couple additional amendments. They voted to support the changes when it would come up for a vote on Thursday.

Bomb dog

Thursday was busy. This was the day Governor Phil Scott would address a joint session of the House and Senate. As a result, there were uniformed security: state police, capitol police and a bomb-sniffing dog roaming the State House.

We convened on the House floor at 9:30 am and shortly after the devotional and announcements we took up H.511. Aside from the amendments considered the day before in committee, there was a host of additional amendments. There was an interesting twist to this in that rules dictate that if the House agrees to the amendments discussed in Committee, then no other amendments can be considered. This would have been a great opportunity to use a little trickery to keep any more amendments from being considered. Those wanting to get this bill into law wanted as few changes a possible because it still needed to go back to the Senate for approval of any changes and it must not be vetoed by the governor. But the Speaker (Mitzy Johnson) was careful to explain the process and assure that ALL amendments would be considered.

We had copies of each amendment and each was presented by it's author. There were maybe a dozen. Most of the amendments had also been presented to the Judiciary committee, which then took a vote as to whether it was considered favorable or unfavorable. Before each vote by the House, the vice-chair (Chip Conquest) of the Judiciary stated how the committee voted, and why. All this takes time. We debated and voted on amendments until about noon, when we turned the House chamber over to Security for a complete sweep for weapons or bombs.

The Governor's Speech

Governor Phil Scott Addressing the Joint House and Senate Assembly

In the picture above you see the Senators sitting along the back wall of the chamber. There is a degree of ritual involved in getting them and the Governor to their proper places. I won't go into this now, as this blog entry is already too long.

The speech explained, in broad strokes, what the governor hopes to accomplish during the session. The details of how that might be done will come when he presents his proposed budget near the end of January. The hope is to grow the economy, fight the opiate crisis, lower health care costs and much more without raising taxes or fees. I look forward to the budget presentation.

After the governor and all the senators left, we were back at work on H.511 with more amendments. Many of the amendments were roll-call votes requiring the recording of each member's vote. You can find my votes under Voting Record tab on this page. I will post the important ones to my website (CT4VT.com). In this case, I only voted "yes" on one; to limit the amount of home grown marijuana anyone can have at one time.

The Marijuana Legalization Vote
At 6:20 pm we finally had considered all amendments and came to the final vote on the bill. This was a roll-call vote. I voted "no." It passed with 81 in favor, 63 apposed and 5 absent. The Speaker quickly brought the day to a close. The bill has now been sent back to the Senate, which is expected to approve it without changes. It will then go to the governor, who is also expected to approve it. Assuming all that happens, it will go into effect on July 1st of this year,

Montpelier on a stormy night

 As the weather was turning foul, I spent the night at the Capitol Plaza.

Friday - Corrections and Institutions (C&I)
Action on the House floor began at 9:30. But with everyone wanting to get home before more bad weather and the weekend arrived we adjourned at 9:55. Work in my committee (C&I) began at 10:00.

During the two hours before lunch we took testimony from the Commission of Corrections (Lisa Menard) regarding the Department of Corrections' report on using the Windsor facility as a secure transitional housing and re-entry facility.

We also took testimony from the Commissioner of Buildings & General Services (BGS) regarding the status of various projects funded by the Capital Bill which is under C&I jurisdiction.

At 12:15 I attended a presentation by the Joint Fiscal Office (JFO) on taxes in Vermont. This is part of a series that will be presented each Friday for the next month or so.

And at about 2:00 I headed home to Colchester.

Other Issues In the Hopper

• A bill (H.564) submitted this week regarding the long term funding of the Clean Water Initiative
• Constituent concern about a statewide coyote hunting derby 
• Mobile home park rental increases in Colchester
• Prisoner complaints from the Camp Hill facility in Pennsylvania where about 250 of our inmates are housed.

It was a busy and interesting week, and I'm glad to be back at it. There is a lot that needs to be done this session.