House Judiciary reviews S.109 changes including firearm-surrender working group, victim notification and guardianship study

The House Judiciary Committee met to review proposed amendments to S.109, the annual miscellaneous judiciary procedure bill. Eric Fitzpatrick of the Office of Legislative Council summarized the draft changes and said “the proposal is to make a couple of changes and add a few new sections.” Committee members and witnesses discussed proposals ranging from a firearm-surrender compliance study to changes in victim notification, guardianship jurisdiction, and definitions for measuring recidivism.

The committee heard first about the Firearm Surrender Order Compliance Working Group. The draft trims the working group’s membership from 16 to eight members and creates a separate list of parties the group must consult rather than seat on the group itself. The working group was requested by the Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence; its charge is to develop a uniform process for enforcing court orders that require surrender and storage of firearms under existing Vermont law. Eric Fitzpatrick told the committee the change is meant to “streamline” membership and make the group more manageable. Committee members discussed whether to shift some organizations from the consult list onto the working group; the Vermont Federation of Sportsman’s Clubs appears on the consult list in the draft, and the Department of Public Safety requested removal from membership because it said it does not oversee firearms-storage programs.

Committee members and witnesses emphasized the working group would be studying process and coordination only, not changing the underlying legal authority for firearm seizure under relief-from-abuse orders, emergency protection orders or other statutes that permit law enforcement to take custody of weapons. The draft directs the working group to consult specified stakeholders and report back to the committee.

Lawyers and prosecutors also pressed for and received a clarification that prosecutors can bring an expedited appeal when a trial court denies a motion to revoke bail. Kim McManus of the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs told the committee that clarifying appeal rights for prosecutors was helpful and supported the addition. The addition makes explicit that when a prosecutor’s motion to revoke pretrial release is denied, the prosecutor may seek expedited review by a single justice of the Vermont Supreme Court.

On corrections and victims’ issues, the bill would add two related items requested by the Center for Crime Victim Services. First, the Department of Corrections would be required to provide victims who opt in with notice of earned-time reductions not less frequently than every 90 days; earned time is the statutory mechanism (formerly called “good time”) by which offenders can reduce their sentences—under the current description offenders earn seven days of credit for each 30-day period with no qualifying disciplinary violations. Second, the draft creates a victim-notification-system task force to review the state’s notice system, expand use of automated notification where appropriate, and develop trauma-informed notification practices. The task force draft identifies members (including the Commissioner of Corrections, the executive director of the Center for Crime Victim Services, state’s attorneys, sheriffs and two victims/survivors appointed by the Center) and limits the group to no more than six meetings in order to bound appropriation requests; the committee discussed the rationale for that cap and whether appropriations or the Joint Fiscal Office should be asked about per diem and expense oversight.

The committee also considered multiple statutory cleanups and policy reversions. One section would reinstate statutory language about factors a court may consider in termination-of-parental-rights proceedings that had been repealed in last year’s miscellaneous bill; attorneys who represent practitioners had asked the office to restore the language because certain financial-history factors (for example, payment of child support) can in some cases bear on whether a parent has exercised parental responsibility. Another section would repeal an uncommon criminal penalty that made it an offense for an adult child to fail to support a destitute parent; the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs said the statute appears rarely used and they take no position.

The draft also proposes to remove a scheduled sunset on a 2023 fee increase for marriage licenses. In 2023 the legislature raised the marriage-license fee from $60 to $80; of the $20 increase, $5 was retained by town clerks and $15 was earmarked to a domestic and sexual-violence special fund. The 2023 change was adopted with a sunset to expire July 1 of the current year; the S.109 draft would repeal that sunset so the $80 fee and the $15 transfer to the special fund would remain in place.

Judiciary and probate stakeholders asked the committee to create a working group to study whether adult guardianship jurisdiction should be consolidated into a single division of the Superior Court. Current law places some adult guardianship cases in the probate division and others in the family division (the transcript records this as a technical jurisdictional split). The working group would analyze whether consolidation would improve efficiency and access and would make a recommendation to the committee.

Committee members also discussed data and measurement. The Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs requested a technical change to the statutory measure currently labeled “standard measure of recidivism” in 28 V.S.A., suggesting the term and measurement be aligned with conviction-based measures rather than incarceration-based measures or, if the committee prefers not to change the definition now, that the statute be renamed to clarify it measures “standard measure of reincarceration.” Prosecutors said conviction-based recidivism better captures repeat offending that does not result in a term of incarceration and asked the committee to consider the change or to study the data-sharing mechanisms needed to support it.

The committee heard several procedural questions: staff were asked to flag any corresponding House bills to help members track duplicate language; members requested information from Appropriations and the Joint Fiscal Office about how per diem and meeting expense appropriations for task forces are tracked and audited; and members asked for witnesses on DOC’s automated notification system and testimony previously taken in House Corrections and Institutions on victim-notification problems.

The committee did not take formal votes during the hearing. Members said they will receive additional testimony from subject-matter witnesses, and staff will circulate draft changes and related bill cross-references for further consideration.