Vermont Judiciary Committee weighs single-track sealing system in S.12, lawmakers seek guardrails for law-enforcement access

The Senate Judiciary Committee on S.12 heard testimony from state repository managers and prosecutors on whether Vermont should replace its two-track sealing/expungement system with a single-track approach and how to limit access to sealed records.

Jeff Walling, director of the Vermont Crime Information Center, told the committee that VCIC maintains criminal-history cycles (arrest, arraignment, disposition) and currently marks a record’s disposition as “sealed,” which prevents public and licensing queries from returning the sealed disposition but still shows the arrest and arraignment to authorized criminal-justice users. “An expungement is not an expungement depending on what state you're in or locality,” Walling said. “In Vermont right now, an expungement... it's as if it never happened. We delete all record of it. Sealing... it may only be used for specific notices, and it's not available to the public.”

The distinction matters operationally: Walling said VCIC processed about 65,000 sealing and expungement orders in the last five years and roughly 9,000 fingerprint-supported record checks over the…