House bill H.44 would close reporting gaps, clarify BAC language and add refusal offense for warrant‑refused blood draws

The House Judiciary Committee reviewed H.44 on Jan. 30, a bill that would make multiple changes to Vermont’s impaired‑driving statutes, including requiring family‑court adjudications related to impaired driving be reported to the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles, aligning civil and criminal language so a blood‑alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08 is treated as a violation, and making refusal to comply with a search warrant for a blood draw a criminal refusal under the DUI statutes.

Committee staff presented the bill and described it as a mixture of technical fixes and substantive changes meant to close gaps in reporting and to align language across Title 23 and Title 33. "This bill proposes to make several changes really across the board, some technical, some not," said Ben Novogrovsky of the Office of Legislative Council. Novogrovsky also summarized the bill’s central numeric threshold: "0.08 or more is the violation."

Why it matters: the measure connects adjudications that occur in family‑division (juvenile/young offender) proceedings to the motor‑vehicle licensing system, clarifies definitional language (for example, how "conviction" and "serious bodily injury" are used), and changes how evidence and refusal charges may be handled when law enforcement seeks a warrant for a blood draw. Committee members and outside witnesses framed the proposal as addressing three real‑world problems: (1) paperwork and reporting lapses that left the Department of Motor Vehicles without records of adjudications, (2)…