Municipal officials ask Legislature to clarify law to remove disruptive attendees from public meetings

Montpelier — Municipal officials from Fairhaven and Albert told the House Government Operations & Military Affairs Committee on May 13 that repeated disruptive attendees are preventing town business and asked lawmakers to add a disorderly-conduct standard to S.59 so law enforcement and prosecutors have clearer grounds to remove or cite people who substantially impair meetings.

The request grew from municipal testimony that disruptive attendees repeatedly interrupt meetings, distribute paperwork, post video and social-media material and threaten litigation. Those behaviors, officials said, are deterring residents from participating and consuming staff time and legal resources. "These disruptions ... are not rooted in disagreement. This isn't about policy," Fairhaven Town Manager Joe Gunter told the committee.

Fairhaven Select Board Chair Glenn Travers described recurring, organized disruptions, saying the board sometimes has had to recess meetings to remove attendees. "I had to recess the meeting in order to have the person disrupted removed," Travers said, noting Fairhaven now assigns police to most meetings and has shortened and moved public comment to the end of the agenda.

Representatives from Albert recounted a separate pattern of voluminous public-records requests and repeated in-person interruptions. Albert assistant judge and selectboard member Jim Uptemberg read a statement describing incidents in December 2023 and January 2024 and said staff had received "over 34 emails requesting various records" in 11 days, a burden on a small office.

Municipal officials described other responses: tightening public-participation rules, changing public-comment timing from the start to the end of meetings, shortening comment time from five minutes to two, and having town attorneys and insurers (VLCT) respond to repeated complaints. Gunter estimated the cumulative legal and insurance costs facing some municipalities at "easily upwards of a million dollars," while cautioning that figure spans many years and claims.

Legislative counsel Tucker Anderson told the committee the problem is not entirely new to statute: 13 V.S.A. §1026 (disorderly conduct) already contains a provision about disturbing a lawful assembly, but the Vermont Supreme Court’s state v. Colby has constrained how that statute may be applied. "The intent is to take the standard that the Supreme Court has given us, add it to the statute, and expressly tie it to meetings of public bodies," Anderson said, summarizing the approach in Representative Harrison’s H.145 language under consideration.

Committee members discussed adopting the narrower line from H.145 that would add the phrase substantially impairs the effective conduct of a meeting of a public body to the disorderly-conduct statute. Proponents said that addition would give law enforcement and prosecutors clearer guidance tied to case law; opponents and some members raised concerns about constitutional limits, differences among municipalities’ access to law enforcement, and the risk of follow-on litigation.

The committee agreed to consider inserting that line into S.59 and to take up the draft for discussion and a possible vote at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, May 15. Tucker Anderson cautioned the revised language could still face constitutional challenge and said it would only clarify enforcement standards rather than eliminate litigation.

If enacted, the change would be procedural: it would not itself alter public bodies’ established duty to hold open meetings but would signal legislative intent and give law enforcement and prosecutors a statutory standard tied to the Supreme Court’s guidance. Municipal officials asked lawmakers for model rules and clearer statutory backing to reduce repeated interruptions, limit in-person attendance when warranted, and reduce the legal and staffing burdens that ongoing disruptions create.