Appropriations committee advances impaired-driving technical fixes, adds sheriffs to task force

The House Appropriations Committee on Feb. 13 advanced H.44, an omnibus bill that makes technical corrections to Vermont's impaired-driving laws, creates a task force to study implied consent and law-enforcement processing, and requires that court decisions affecting licenses be reported to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The bill, which originated in another committee and was presented in Appropriations by Office of Legislative Council attorney Ben Dobrowski, “makes a lot of technical corrections to the impaired driving laws,” Dobrowski said, including aligning the statutory blood‑alcohol threshold language so the criminal standard and the civil‑suspension language read consistently as “0.08 and above.”

The measure also creates an impaired‑driving processing task force charged with examining the constitutional and statutory requirements of implied consent — Vermont’s statutory scheme that makes use of the State’s roads conditional on drivers consenting to breath, blood or saliva testing — and “with the objective of trying…