MONTPELIER — A discussion about whether online-only public meetings should continue is heating up under the Golden Dome, as a pandemic-era state policy that allowed them will expire this summer.

Both the House and Senate government operations committees have discussed bills that would impact the landscape of public meetings. Specifically, the proposals consider whether public bodies should be allowed to continue to meet in an entirely digital milieu, as many came to do because of the social distancing required by the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether a state commission tasked with studying the impacts of historical discrimination should be able to limit public access because of safety concerns. 

In the Senate, the current draft of S.55 would require public bodies to provide both an option for online meeting participation and an in-person physical meeting location.

The latest draft, which the Senate Committee on Government Operations discussed on Thursday, is a response to pushback from the Vermont Secretary of State’s office to an earlier version of the bill that would have allowed public bodies to jettison physical meeting locations going forward. 

The latest version of the bill “is essentially saying that for these bodies you have to have some sort of electronic access in addition to your physical meeting,” said Tucker Anderson, a lawyer with the Vermont Office of Legislative Counsel. 

The draft cites exceptions to this hybrid requirement during a state of emergency or “local incident.” 

It also exempts any public body that is advisory in nature. A public body is considered advisory if it “does not have supervision, control or jurisdiction over legislative, quasi-judicial, tax, or budgetary matters.” 

One example of the latter discussed were cemetery commissions. (The bill also includes a requirement that the advisory body make “reasonable accommodation” for either physical or virtual participation for a member of the public upon request.)

“Advisory bodies could meet fully remotely or fully in person or hybrid. It would be up to them to decide,” said Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison. “And they could also do some meetings fully remote and some meetings fully in person. That would be up to them, as long as they warn it correctly.” 

States of emergency are well defined because they’re declared by the governor. But lawmakers discussed who would determine when the regular meeting location is in an area “affected by a hazard or local incident” and how. 

“It can’t just be, like, oh well, the weather’s not too great, we’re going to hold a remote-only meeting or an in-person only meeting, or whatever. There needs to be guardrails,” Hardy said. 

She pointed to powerful windstorms earlier this month that left thousands of homes and businesses in the dark.

“There are parts of the state that were without power or internet for days and we want public bodies to continue to meet, and they can do it old school,” she said.

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Jan. 11, Deputy Secretary of State Lauren Hibbert had expressed her office’s opposition to remote-only meetings — such as those that are accessible only by phone — because of the challenges associated with following whose speaking and the “tenor and tone” of the debate.  

But on Friday, Ted Brady, the executive director of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, urged lawmakers in testimony to continue to allow fully remote meetings under all circumstances, arguing they are “easier to run, more accessible to the most people and less complicated” than hybrid remote and in-person options.

The draft bill asks the Secretary of State, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and the Vermont School Boards Association to adopt and publish “be practice guidelines” for electronic, hybrid and in-person meetings of public bodies. 

To help offset the cost of acquiring the necessary equipment and training to “host effective electronic and hybrid meetings under Open Meeting Law, the bill also would establish an Open Meeting Grant Program” with $250,000 appropriated for fiscal year 2025.

‘Material threats to health and safety’

As S.55 was discussed last week, the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs debated a different bill, H.649, that also has implications for access to meetings, this one specifically about those held by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 

The commission is tasked with studying how racism, discrimination and eugenics have affected Vermont’s laws and suggesting ways the state government could repair those harms. Its work is focused on impacts to Indigenous, French-Canadian and Black people; people of color; and people who have one or more disabilities.

The House committee weighed whether to grant the commission authority to limit the public’s ability to attend and participate in the commission’s meetings if there appeared to be “material threats to health and safety” of commissioners, their staff or invited witnesses. 

Members of the commission have received death threats, according to Michele Olvera, the commission’s general legal counsel, who testified earlier this week. 

“If you invite people to the table who have threatened to kill you, that just seems unwise. I don’t know what else to say about that,” Olvera said.

Her testimony followed that of press representatives, who were adamant about the importance of keeping meetings open.

“To assert some vague and undefined threat as a reason for holding a closed hearing is disingenuous and a dangerous precedent for very real abuse,” said Lisa Loomis, president of the Vermont Press Association and editor/co-owner of The Valley Reporter. 

On Thursday, the House committee voted on a new draft of the bill, with nine Democrats in favor and three Republicans opposed. The new version would allow members of the media and “other persons whose presence the Commission determines is needed at the meeting” to attend meetings in a physical space even if the attendance is otherwise restricted by the commission. 

In addition to new Open Meeting Law exemptions, the bill would add a mechanism to appoint a new commissioner. The commission has been waiting for legislative action to be able to fill the vacancy created when Patrick Standen stepped down in November. 

The bill also would establish the commission’s ability to organize and support “affinity groups,” defined as mutual support groups for individuals who have experienced “institutional, structural or systemic discrimination.” It would also include members of communities that have a “duty of confidentiality” for group participants. 

Finally, it would appropriate $1.1 million from the state General Fund for fiscal year 2025 for the work of the commission.

The bill is scheduled to hit the House floor this week, but may not see a vote until it is reviewed by the Appropriations Committee.