Committee reviews H.566 to switch post‑charge diversion expungement to sealing, debates adding municipal offenses
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Summary
Legislative counsel and witnesses briefed the Judiciary Committee on H.566, which would change automatic expungement of post‑charge diversion records to automatic sealing and would extend the process to qualifying criminal municipal ordinances; members expressed concerns about prosecutorial discretion and the municipal addition.
Legislative counsel Michelle Child told the Judiciary Committee on Jan. 3 that H.566 would change the statutory treatment of post‑charge diversion records from automatic expungement to automatic sealing while leaving eligibility criteria and the two-year timeline intact. "So you'll see everywhere that it says expungement, it's just switching it to seal," Child said as she walked the panel through drafting changes.
Child said the bill does not affect precharge diversion deletion rules and that indexing and limited-access rules would remain; she flagged one subsection removed because it referred to retroactive expungements no longer needed under the proposed approach. The bill includes an automatic-sealing trigger only for diversions completed on or after July 1, 2026.
Committee members and witnesses debated what "sealing" means in practice. Child acknowledged that sealing preserves records for limited criminal-justice purposes and suggested adding cross-references so a lay reader could find who has access. "Expunging a record means it's gone," she said; sealing, by contrast, retains records accessible under defined circumstances.
Witnesses from the Attorney General's Office and the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs expressed support for sealing on data grounds. Kim McMillan of the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs said sealing preserves longitudinal information useful to determine whether diversion decisions (for example, sending repeat DLS cases to diversion) are effective. "We do not have any longitudinal information, to see when we send that DLS to diversion, like, is that helpful?" McMillan said, and offered support for H.566 with a drafting correction.
A remaining point of contention was a provision to include some criminal municipal ordinance violations within the adult diversion program's scope, prompted by Burlington's City Circle pilot. Members questioned whether adding municipal offenses would create uneven outcomes depending on whether a case is prosecuted by a state's attorney or a city/town attorney, and whether sealing versus expungement would vary with prosecutorial path. Several members suggested consulting municipal attorneys or the League of Cities and Towns before advancing the municipal-ordinance language.
No formal vote was taken; the committee asked legislative counsel to review drafting cross-references and to return with clarifications about access rules and the municipal-ordinance provision before any motion to advance the bill.
