Phil Scott and Vermont legislators found at least some common ground on crime bills this year

In a session that was marked by contentiousness between Republican Gov. Phil Scott and the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature, there was one area, at least, where Vermont leaders seemed to find some common ground: crime policy.

“I think that’s one of the bright spots of this session,” Scott said at a press conference last week, noting that lawmakers passed many, though not all, of his proposals.

In his annual budget address in January, the governor urged the Legislature to toughen existing drug penalties and, in some cases, create new ones. He called for a delay to an initiative meant to keep more teenagers out of criminal court, and for adding to the list of serious crimes that allow a juvenile’s case to start in adult courts.

Scott also called for repealing a past change to the state’s bail laws and for “increasing accountability” for those who violate conditions of pretrial release, he said in the address.

Across several different bills, lawmakers tackled all of those issues this year. In doing so, leaders in the House and Senate have said in recent weeks, they responded to a widespread perception that Vermont is less safe than it has been in the past.

Crime data compiled by the FBI from Vermont law enforcement agencies shows that property crime, such as retail and vehicle theft, has increased over the past several years but remains less frequent than it was a decade ago. Meanwhile, that data — which is the most updated available, through 2022 — shows that violent crime, which has also ticked up in recent years, is more prevalent than it was 10 years ago.

Both categories of crime still fall below the national average, the data shows.

Should Scott sign off on bills that lawmakers passed, “we will have accomplished a great deal in terms of public safety,” said Sen. Dick Sears, a Bennington Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, on the Senate floor earlier this month.

At the time, he was speaking in support of S.58 , which became a vehicle for proposals impacting how teenagers interact with the criminal justice system and creates new drug penalties; S.195 , which creates a new supervision program for people released from state custody while awaiting trial; and H.534 , which creates new retail theft crimes.

In almost the same breath, though, Sears acknowledged that the bills lawmakers passed were controversial. “I will tell you that each of those bills contain elements that somebody likes, and somebody dislikes,” he told his colleagues.

Those bills have faced criticism this year from outside advocacy groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, and from certain offices in state government, such as those supporting racial equity as well as children, youth and families.

“When it came to criminal justice, legislators this year passed some really bad policy,” said James Lyall, executive director of the state’s ACLU branch, in an interview. “And these bills really set us back from the progress that we had been making … to create a smarter justice system and to create safer, more resilient communities.”

It remains to be seen, too, whether the resources teed up for the judicial system in next year’s state budget will have the impact that lawmakers intended to address a key hurdle: Vermont’s stubborn backlog of thousands of unresolved court cases. Officials have said that the backlog delays accountability for many offenders, harming public safety.

Scott signed the state budget into law on Thursday. It includes funding for new superior court judges, judicial assistants, county prosecutors and court technology workers, among other positions — almost none of which were included in the governor’s original recommended budget.

Legislative leaders also said that they passed bills beyond the scope of Scott’s proposals, drawing a distinction between their work and what they’ve called the administration’s “tough on crime” approach. That includes a bill aimed at expanding access to restorative justice programs statewide, H.645 , and another, H.72 , to fund the state’s first overdose prevention center, in Burlington.

“I think we went into it with a more balanced approach,” said Rep. Martin LaLonde, D-South Burlington, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, in an interview, labeling his colleagues’ thinking “sensible on crime.”

What did the Legislature pass?

In both chambers this year, lawmakers spent significant time debating and tacking additional proposals onto S.58.

The sweeping bill, which Sears sponsored, creates new drug penalties for illegally dispensing or selling xylazine, a sedative originally developed for use in animals, and makes it harder for offenders to claim they didn’t know that certain products they sold contained a deadly substance.

S.58 also requires that a person who’s charged with selling or dispensing an illicit drug at someone else’s home be arraigned in court the following business day. It also allows judges to prevent the person from returning to that home if they’re released from state custody before their trial.

Lawmakers said these measures were a response to the realities of illicit drug use today — including in large housing communities, such as Decker Towers in Burlington — and would help curb opioid overdoses.

The bill goes on to add three new crimes, including drug trafficking, to the list of those deemed serious enough to warrant charging an offender in adult court even if they are young enough to enter the juvenile system for most other offenses. And it delays, for the third time, imposing the next stage of a law to increase the age at which offenders are referred to family court instead of criminal court for nonviolent offenses.

Vermont was slated to “raise the age” of juvenile jurisdiction to include 19-year-olds in July — but S.58 pushes that change back to April 2025. (The first stage of the law, which included raising the age to include 18-year-olds, went into effect in 2020.)

Leaders of the state’s Department of Children and Families — including Chris Winters, its commissioner — testified repeatedly that the department did not have enough resources to bring additional youthful offenders into its programs. But the delay nevertheless proved unpopular with lawmakers in both chambers, especially after they received a report showing that the first stage of the initiative had positive impacts on the state’s criminal justice system.

At the same time, Matthew Bernstein — head of the Vermont Office of the Child, Youth and Family Advocate — criticized parts of S.58, telling lawmakers that the bill would harm young people by sending more of them to prison. He also pushed back on adding drug trafficking to the list of crimes that could start in criminal court for juveniles, saying that many young people who transport drugs are likely crime victims themselves.

In other testimony, Jay Greene — policy analyst for the state’s Office of Racial Equity — told legislators that the new drug penalties in the bill, among other measures, would exacerbate racial disparities across the board in the state’s prison system.

Lyall, of the ACLU, said that the Legislature focused disproportionately on creating and enforcing crimes this year. He said lawmakers missed chances to pass further reforms to law enforcement standards, questioning lawmakers’ appetite for such changes four years after the police murder of George Floyd sparked policy changes nationwide.

He pointed to the Senate’s decision to scrap a proposed constitutional amendment that would have set qualifications and accountability measures for county sheriffs. And he also highlighted S.285 , a bill that would have compelled Vermont police departments to adopt a policy preventing officers from using deception during many interrogations.

The latter passed the Senate but did not make it out of House Judiciary. Asked about the bill, LaLonde said his committee didn’t have enough time to take it up this year.

“We’re a few years after (when) ‘Black Lives Matter’ was painted on State Street in front of the state Legislature,” Lyall said, referring to the stretch of road in front of the capitol in Montpelier — “and that now seems like a very long time ago, indeed.”

LaLonde said that while advocates may have been unhappy with S.58, he thinks that lawmakers did incorporate their feedback into another major bill — S.195, which creates a new “pretrial supervision program” for certain alleged offenders in the state.

Proponents of the bill said the state is doing an inadequate job supervising many defendants. That means courts may not know if someone is committing additional crimes, they said, or if that person is getting important pretrial social services.

As it passed the Senate, the bill also called for an expansion of a state Department of Corrections program that monitors alleged offenders with electronic technology such as ankle bracelets. But both chambers settled on a House proposal that calls for the technology to be used when offenders pose significant public safety threats.

That was in response to concerns from the racial equity office, LaLonde said, that an increase in electronic monitoring would disproportionately impact Black and brown communities.

The bill also requires a judge to consider if a defendant has any existing violations of pretrial release conditions when determining whether to hold that person in custody in a subsequent case. And it states that the $200 cap on bail for certain minor crimes — a measure that was enacted in 2018 — will not apply if an offense was committed while a person was on pretrial release for another offense.

That’s one area where Scott and lawmakers have some daylight, according to Amanda Wheeler, a spokesperson for his office. Wheeler said in an email that Scott wanted the cap on bail to be lifted entirely, not just in certain circumstances.

Still, the governor is broadly supportive of S.195, he said at a press conference on Wednesday. He told reporters he expects to sign both that bill and S.58, the omnibus crime legislation.

Scott said his team still needs to review the full slate of criminal justice bills that lawmakers passed this year. That also includes H.534, which creates a new escalating structure of penalties for repeated retail thefts within a two-year window; and H.563 , which makes it a crime to “trespass” in someone else’s vehicle.

New judicial positions

One area of disagreement between lawmakers and the administration this year was over how much funding to allocate for the state’s judicial system. Scott’s camp had pushed for policy changes — what administration officials called additional “tools in the toolbox” — but said repeatedly that it didn’t support any major new investments.

In fact, Scott’s proposed 2025 budget would have forced the Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs to cut up to nine prosecutor positions — a possibility that drew heavy criticism from prosecutors and legislative leaders in both chambers.

Ultimately, the budget Scott signed includes funding for about 40 new positions across the judicial system — down from the roughly 70 that were included in an earlier version passed by the House. (The House had also proposed to fund the positions with higher corporate taxes and fees , a measure that did not pass this year.) Most of the roles are limited-service positions, which are generally expected to be funded for three years.

The approved budget includes three new superior court judges (a provision Scott did support) as well as 21 new judicial officers and assistants, seven new deputy state’s attorneys, one victim advocate and several new court technology specialists.

In an email, John Campbell, executive director of the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs, said his office was grateful for those positions — but suggested that the court system would continue to struggle under the weight of the case backlog.

“While we would have preferred permanent positions, we will do our best with the resources that we have been provided,” he said, adding that the department is “at more-than-full capacity, and without permanent staffing increases we cannot adequately address the court caseload backlog or provide any measure of work-life balance for our staff.”

LaLonde agreed that, in terms of positions, the House didn’t get everything it wanted.

But in terms of policy, the chair added, “I think we’ve accomplished most of what we really wanted to get done this session.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Phil Scott and Vermont legislators found at least some common ground on crime bills this year .