It has been a busy few weeks at the start of the 2024 legislative session. The second year of the biennium is often quicker to get rolling and there have been many deep and substantive discussions.

In Senate Judiciary we are discussing creating a pre-trial system of services, supports, and accountability to help ensure that people on pretrial release can and are meeting their conditions of release. Vermont is one of few states with no system of pretrial services to hold those released before their trials accountable to their conditions of release and ensure that they are getting the support and services needed to ensure they can meet these conditions. We have not yet decided what that system will look like as we are still waiting to hear from experts on pretrial best practices.

In Senate Government Operations we have spent much of the first weeks discussing the many floods in 2023 and the Government's successes and failures in responding to these natural disasters. We are looking to build better systems of response and resiliency as we know there will be more natural disasters in the future that we need to be able to prepare for and respond to nimbly. We have also discussed a variety of municipal issues, and the idea of county governance, and voted out the first Constitutional Amendment, Proposition 1, which would allow for requirements for county constitutional officers to be set in statute.

Vermont has one of the most robust processes for amending the state constitution of any state in the nation. This biennium is the only time that constitutional proposals can be offered until 2027. Once a proposal is introduced it is sent to the committee of jurisdiction where it will have hearings, be amended and a final version is voted out of committee to the Senate floor (all constitutional amendments begin in the Senate). The proposition must be voted out of the Senate with a ⅔ majority then will go to the House for a vote, where it must pass with a simple majority. The proposal cannot be changed once it has left the Senate. If the proposal makes it through the process of this biennium it will go on to the next step which is to follow the same process of passing both the House and Senate in the next biennium with a simple majority. If it passes through these votes it will be placed on the ballot for all of the voters of Vermont to vote on and if it passes the voter referendum it will be delivered to the Governor to officially place it in the constitution. We do not take amendments to the constitution lightly and this is reflected both in the process established and in the lengthy hearings with extensive testimony taken from a variety of witnesses and constitutional experts.

As always if you have questions, or concerns, or need help navigating our systems please reach out to me at tvyhovsky@leg.state.vt.us.

Please also join Senator Gulick and me at Vivid Coffee on Cherry Street in Burlington for a constituent coffee on Saturday the 3rd of February at 10:00 am to hear more updates, ask questions, and share your priorities.

Be Well,
Senator Tanya Vyhovsky, LICSW
tvyhovsky@leg.state.vt.us

May 9, 2024, 3:30 to 4:30 PM

May 11, 7 PM to 9:30 PM, May 12, 2024

May 11, 2024, 7:30 to 9:30 PM