Senate Government Operations committee advances S.59 to amend Vermont open meetings law

The Senate Committee on Government Operations on Thursday voted to report out committee amendment 1.1 to S.59, a bill that would revise Vermont’s open meetings law to remove an exemption for representative town meetings, require more detailed meeting agendas, add narrow exceptions for site inspections and field visits, and change several executive-session and recording rules.

The committee’s amendment (draft 1.1) would remove language that previously exempted representative town meetings from the statute’s definition of a “public body,” require agendas to contain “sufficient details concerning the specific matters to be discussed,” and add an exception to the bill’s hybrid-meeting requirement for gatherings that are site inspections or field visits, according to Tucker…