Chairman McCarthy brought the ethics bill, H.875 up for discussion on Thursday morning in the House Government Operations Committee.  He commented that the Senate’s proposal of amendment did most of what the Committee wanted and for the most part is an improvement of the bill as passed out of the House. McCarthy reviewed the changes in general and asked if the Committee was ready to vote on whether they concurred with the Senate’s amendment or not.  The vote to concur was 9-1-2.

Campaign for Vermont has long supported government ethics reform in Vermont. We were the lead advocate in the passage of Act 79 in 2017, which created the Ethics Commission, and we supported the creation of a uniform state code of ethics in 2022. We recognize that applying a uniform code of ethics to municipalities that vary in size and complexity should not be taken lightly. There exist today a wide range of municipal ethics policies that guide the conduct of our local public officials and any complaints are ultimately referred back to the municipality for resolution. Some municipalities have a very strong process, with their own ethics policies and ethics commission, and others are non-existent. Vermonters deserve to have a baseline set of expectations around the conduct they can expect from their public officials – a statewide uniform code of ethics that applies to municipal officials affords this opportunity. 

A strike all of H.875 was presented to the Senate Government Operations Committee on Wednesday, which reflected some of the agreed upon discussions and clarifications. Legislative Counsel reviewed the bill.  There were two significant changes:

Chairwoman Hardy asked Legislative Council to do a walk thru of H.875, the Ethics Bill.  Her purpose was to make sure she had a complete list of outstanding items.

Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission) thanked Senate Government Operations Committee for their comments on bill. She continued on to propose changes to the current language, which addresses many issues of concern in numerous areas to include the sections on disclosure, voluntary compliance, assets from individual stockholdings, loans, conflicts known to applicant. Chairwoman Hardy was pleased that many of the changes are addressing concerns based on previous testimony. 

The Senate Government Operations Committee spent their committee time listening to twelve individuals who were slated to testify on H.875.  Chairwoman Hardy also noted the numerous written testimonies that were on their webpage with comments on the bill.

The Senate Government Operations Committee returned to the ethics bill, H.875 on Thursday afternoon. Chairwoman Hardy noted that they have been given an overview from Legislative Counsel and that Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Ethics Commission) would be the first individual testifying on the bill.  She introduced TJ Jones, an ethics expert consulting for the Commission. Sivret noted that it is a very long bill and provided several documents of written testimony, including highlights of areas of interest, quick summary of, and unfunded mandates.  She also provided a report from January on the proposed municipal ethics framework for Vermont.

The House Government Operations Committee heard from Representative Brennan on Tuesday who, on behalf of the Town of Colchester, proposed an amendment to H.875 (the municipal ethics bill) which would require towns who have established policies and procedures on Ethics to be exempt from the entirety of the Bill upon submitting a letter from the legislative body to the State Ethics Commission by December 31^st of each year certifying that the municipality has adopted an ethics policy and  framework that does not conflict with the state standards.

Chairman McCarthy noted that the House Government Operations Committee would be reviewing Draft 3.2 of the state ethics bill on Wednesday morning and asked Legislative Counsel to review the changes made to previous draft. 

The Vermont State Ethics Commission presented a $210,353 budget to the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday, plus its annual report for 2023. Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission) noted that the Commission received fifteen complaints (a 400% increase), twenty-nine complaint inquiries (a 163% increase), four advisory opinion requests (a 100% increase), and twenty-five guidance requests (a 19% increase) in 2023.