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Senate advances bill to escalate penalties for repeat retail theft after committee report
Summary
The Senate adopted the judiciary committee report on H534, endorsing an escalating-penalty approach that preserves misdemeanors for early offenses and raises repeat offenses to felony-level punishment; the bill was ordered for third reading.
The Vermont Senate on the floor advanced H534, a bill that revises the state's retail theft statute to impose escalating penalties for repeat offenses and to respond to testimony that the current $900 threshold has been exploited by repeat offenders.
Senator from Chittenden Central, reporting for the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the committee adopted a graduated scale: a first offense would remain a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $500 or up to 30 days in jail, a second…
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