Senate concurs with House changes to open-meetings bill; narrows disorderly-conduct standard

The Vermont Senate on May 20, 2025, voted to concur in the House's amended version of S.59, a bill that revises provisions of the state's open meeting law and narrows when authorities may cite disorderly conduct at public meetings.

S.59 originally amended several open-meeting requirements; the House added a set of additional changes the Senate agreed to, a senator speaking for the bill said. The amendments specify that the bill applies "exclusively to state public bodies," permit municipalities to satisfy the bill's recording requirement by allowing a third party (for example, a TV station) to record meetings, and allow municipalities to post notices of special meetings in neighboring municipalities where a central posting place does not exist.

The House amendments also require that when a public body lists a proposed executive session on an agenda it must indicate the nature of that session, and expand the list of people required to receive open-meeting-law training to include members of certain state advisory bodies unless those members are already government officers or employees subject to training. The amendments expressly authorize executive sessions to discuss cybersecurity matters.

The bill amends the state disorderly conduct statute to reflect the Vermont Supreme Court's decision in State v. Colby (Feb. 2009), a change the sponsor said was intended to narrow an overbroad statute. Under the amended language described on the floor, a person commits disorderly conduct if, with intent to cause public inconvenience or annoyance or recklessly creating a risk thereof, the person "disturbs any lawful assembly or meeting of persons." The bill defines "disturbs" to mean conduct that "substantially impairs the effective conduct of an assembly or meeting" and requires two trigger points before a citation may issue: that the conduct either causes the assembly or meeting to terminate prematurely or consists of "numerous and sustained efforts to disrupt an assembly or meeting after being asked to desist." The provision also clarifies that "meeting" includes public bodies as those terms are defined elsewhere in Title 1.

Explaining the change, the senator who presented the bill said the Supreme Court had found the prior statute to be "a bit of an overreach" and that the amendments "carefully tailor a carve out" for meetings that are forced to end prematurely or that are repeatedly and sustainedly disrupted after a request to stop.

Senator from Windham, urging support, read from the Colby opinion and said the court found the prior statute "as worded, impermissibly sanctions a substantial amount of protected speech even when considered in relation to its legitimate scope." The senator said the committee understood the bill as placing the court's reasoning into statute to address overbreadth and vagueness concerns.

The Senate Government Operations Committee had voted 5'0 to concur in the House amendments. On the floor the Senate agreed to the House proposal of amendment by voice vote. The presiding officer announced, "The ayes have it and we have concurred in the house proposal of amendment on H 59." The bill was then messaged back to the House.

What the bill changes in practice: municipal bodies may rely on third-party recordings to meet the bill's recording requirement; executive-session agenda entries must state the nature of the session; cybersecurity may be discussed in executive session; and the disorderly-conduct standard for public meetings is narrowed to require either a premature termination or sustained disruption after an admonition before enforcement.

The Senate's action was procedural: the body concurred in the House amendments and sent the measure back to the House for final processing.