Committee reviews emergency-management draft 3.1, debates disability representation and adds $1 million grant appropriation

The Government Operations & Military Affairs Committee reviewed draft 3.1 of drafting request 26-0550 on the committee's emergency-management omnibus bill and discussed several edits aimed at clarity, accessibility, and governance. Legislative counsel Tucker Anderson walked members through the changes and the committee heard testimony from Brenda Seagull of End Homelessness Vermont about gaps in real-world emergency response.

Anderson told the committee the draft makes technical and naming fixes and clarifies eligible nonprofits: "This now says Vermont nonprofit organizations qualifying under 26 USC 501c3 so that it's clear we're not talking about only 26 of those organizations," he said, describing a non-substantive relocation of a citation. He also said the bill uses "division" instead of "Vermont Emergency Management" to match Title 20 language and that references to a previously termed "technical rescue microrant program" were standardized to "technical rescue grant program." The draft adds $1 million in subdivision 5 to the Department of Public Safety for a Ready Response Grant program administered by the Division of Emergency Management.

Why it matters: committee membership and accessibility provisions shape who advises local emergency planning and how alerts reach people with disabilities. Anderson noted previous language had required that non-voting seats include people from disability-led organizations, but draft 3.1 removes that mandate and preserves non-voting participation as voluntary. He read from the current statute (20 V.S.A. —6) to show voting members are typically local emergency management directors and one representative from each town or city, and asked the committee to consider whether to allow one of those town-appointed slots to be an individual with lived experience or to add an additional voting slot for that purpose.

Speaking during the public-comment portion, Brenda Seagull, executive director of the lived-experience-led nonprofit End Homelessness Vermont, recommended making a lived-experience representative a voting member. She described responding during the 2023 floods and said local 211 lines failed in Rutland; her group fielded calls and coordinated services for days. "I was begging I would say just quite honestly by the last day crying to FEMA asking for someone to please find the right person to to address this management need," Seagull testified, saying that failure left vulnerable people without clear routes to help. She urged the committee to ensure a backup contact path when local emergency managers are unavailable, to consider funding or supports so lived-experience appointees can participate, and to include protections against disability-based exclusion in shelters.

On alerting, the draft adds a feasibility clause for municipal all-hazard and weather alert systems: they "shall include communication channels that are accessible by individuals with disabilities" when feasible, acknowledging unequal connectivity and technology access across the state. Council recommended careful drafting because a strict "shall" without feasibility language could create compliance problems where technology or coverage does not exist.

Committee members debated the choice between keeping lived-experience participation voluntary as non-voting or elevating one seat to voting status. Concerns included compensating participants, feasibility for small towns and their appointed responders, and ensuring appointees could reliably attend meetings. The chair asked staff to check with the bill sponsor and to include any directions in draft 3.2, which counsel said would be circulated later in the day.

Next steps: committee counsel said a revised draft (3.2) will follow with additional statutory and budget language; members asked to confer with the bill sponsor about voting membership language. The committee recessed to await counsel's return for the next round of drafting.

Quotes used in this report come directly from the committee transcript and are attributed to Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel) and Brenda Seagull (Executive Director, End Homelessness Vermont).