Legislative Update 5-2-09

This next week is supposed to be the last for the Legislature. Indeed, bills are moving at a rapid pace, with things popping out of committees, rules suspended to expedite passage, and last-minute provisions tacked onto bills as amendments or added in conference committees.

Another Sex Offender Bill

The House Judiciary Committee has spent the last two weeks working on a second sex offender bill, S. 125, which has already passed the Senate. This bill follows on the heels of S. 13, a massive overhaul of many provisions of sex offender laws that was passed earlier in the session. S. 125 cleans up some problems left over from S. 13, as well as adding some new provisions:

• Under S. 125, the Internet sex offender registry will be expanded so that nearly all sex offenders -- with name, crime, and town of residence -- will be posted online. Currently, information for about 10 percent of offenders is posted online.
• The expanded online registry will include the street addresses of offenders if they are judged to be at high risk to re-offend, are “noncompliant” with sex offender treatment, or there is an outstanding warrant for their arrest.
• A new crime covering “sexting” has been created, making it illegal for minors (under 18) to use electronic devices to send an “indecent visual depiction” of themselves to others. The Senate version of the bill had done exactly the opposite -- it stated such actions were not to be considered crimes. Suffice it to say that the judiciary committees have had difficulty figuring out what to do about this apparently somewhat pervasive adolescent practice. The core issue is really whether to criminalize stupid behavior. There are already child pornography laws on the books for serious offenses where coercion or exploitation is involved.

We have fought Vermont’s Internet sex offender registry since it was launched in 2004. There is no evidence that registries work, and they may actually lessen public safety by creating a false sense of security. Registries stigmatize offenders, and by association their families. Registries also invite vigilante violence. In 2006 a Canadian man used the online Maine registry to target offenders who had done their time and were living in their communities. He traveled to the homes of two and murdered them. Computer records show he also looked at Vermont’s registry. Fortunately, the Vermont registry did not then list offenders’ residential addresses. S. 125 would change that, providing the precise home locations of some offenders.  

In short: S. 125 will do little to improve public safety or rehabilitate offenders.

Drivers’ Licenses and Selective Service Registration

Another bill that will pop onto the House floor next week is S. 67. This is a general motor vehicles bill that came over from the Senate. The House Transportation Committee wants to amend the bill to include a provision linking drivers’ licenses applications and Selective Service registration.

We, along with the American Friends Service Committee, have opposed any such linkage. There is no rational connection between driving and Selective Service registration.

The Transportation Committee has, fortunately, removed a previous sanction that you couldn’t get a license if you didn’t agree to automatic Selective Service registration. But we don’t think this new “opt-out” option is good enough. At the very least, the option should be “opt-in,” and we still maintain that the state has no business linking driving with draft registration.

In short: Driving and the draft have nothing to do with each other. An important action like registering for the draft should not be merely an afterthought when a young person is focused on getting his first driver’s license.

Prison co-pays

An idea that the Legislature rejected a year ago has cropped up again in this year’s “fee bill,” one of the big “money bills” the Legislature has to deal with annually.

The Department of Corrections wants to charge prisoners a co-pay every time they see a prison doctor. The charge ($5 per visit was proposed last year) doesn’t sound like a big deal -- until you realize that prisoners earn only 25 cents an hour making license plates or chairs for Correctional Industries of Vermont. So $5 represents 20 hours of work for an inmate -- half a week’s wages. It’s a very step co-pay.

Besides the punitive nature of the charge, co-pays are self-defeating when it comes to health care. You may remember back in the fall of 2007 when the Springfield prison was locked down because of an outbreak of MRSA. How much worse would the spread of such an infectious disease be if prisoners avoided the doctor because they didn't have $5 for a visit? And now with the swine flu situation; well, this just isn’t a good idea, even with the budget pressures (little new revenue would actually be raised through co-pays).

A final indication that this provision is a bad idea: Inserting language authorizing prison co-pays into the fee bill is an end-run that avoids testimony in the committees where the legislators who best understand prison conditions and health concerns can weigh in.

Prison co-pays will be taken up by members of the fee bill conference committee. Those members are Sens. Susan Bartlett (Lamoille), Dick Sears (Bennington), and Diane Snelling (Chittenden); and Reps. Martha Heath (Westford), Mark Larson (Burlington), and John Morley (Orleans). 

In short: Co-pays are punitive, they will raise an inconsequential amount of money for the state budget, and they’re bad health policy.

Tasers in Barre

What appears to be the largest purchase of Taser stun guns by a local police department has been approved in Barre -- 21 of the weapons that shoot 50,000 volts of electricity to incapacitate someone police find “noncompliant.” We’ve opposed Tasers because they haven’t been proved “safe.” Many instances of serious injuries and even deaths have resulted from their use. The state has declined to regulate Taser use, and there are no consistent standards for their utilization. There have been at least three successful lawsuits in Vermont over Taser use.

We’ve developed background information on Tasers and posted it on our Web site -- http://www.acluvt.org/pubs/focus_tasers.pdf.

• The full text of any bill or resolution can be found at http://www.leg.state.vt.us/
• Contact information for legislators can be found at the Legislative Directory on the Legislature’s home page http://www.leg.state.vt.us/.