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Committee keeps landlord‑certificate rules, narrows public disclosure and designates data confidential
Summary
The committee agreed to retain landlord‑certificate requirements and a related municipal data extract but debated and largely removed public access to tenant names; the tax department will provide aggregate data to housing agencies while individual records remain confidential.
The Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs Committee reviewed the landlord‑certificate language and a related municipal ‘‘camera’’ (mass appraisal) data extract and agreed to keep the landlord‑certificate provisions while tightening public access to tenant information.
Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel, walked members through the side‑by‑side and noted the committee’s senate language would reinstate changes to the landlord certificate while preserving certain confidentiality protections. Committee members raised privacy concerns; former Representative Michelle Cooper Smith expressed worry about landlords being required to list tenants’ names. The committee discussed how the tax department currently handles the data and how it is shared.
Committee staff said participation in the landlord‑certificate process is high — “about 90%” — and emphasized that the information would be handled as confidential tax information and used for aggregate reporting. Members agreed to strike language that would have required the tax department to make a database available to a member of the public and to instead require the tax department to provide aggregate reports to the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) and Vermont Housing Finance Agency (VHFA) for policy and data‑collection purposes. The committee conditioned its sign‑off on confirming those information‑sharing arrangements and the confidentiality protections with the tax department.
The committee also kept a provision tying the landlord‑certificate requirement to other housing‑policy tools (for example, rental rebate verification and property‑tax incentives for repurposing blighted properties). Several members asked staff to provide the statutory citation from last year that clarifies confidentiality and to bring tax‑department witnesses back for any final questions before report language is finalized.
No formal vote was recorded; the committee agreed to ‘‘check off’’ the landlord‑certificate sections conditioned on confirming the data‑handling language with agency staff.
