April 2016 Issue #6
VT Lawmakers Consider Swath of Progressive Bills Legalized Cannabis Uncertain, Speaker Smith Doubts Readiness In this Spring of 2016, more Vermonters than usual are finding themselves riveted to politics, and rightly so. The increasingly successful candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders has stirred the consciousness of the working class to memorable effect. However, we the editors of this publication, wish to turn your attention a little closer to
home. Many of the laws that come to affect the families and communities of this country are passed not at the national level but at the State level by Senators and Representatives from our own hills and valleys. In this issue of The Heretic, we seek to empower our readers with an understanding of the key issues Vermont lawmakers are considering during this important legislative session of 2016. From the ongoing battle of legalizing pot, to privacy and freedom in the digital age, to mass incarceration and the inevitable ties to the War on Drugs, to the working class victory of Paid Sick Leave; this session is critical to our evolving understanding of the ideas we find integral to the culture and philosophy of a just and equitable life in the Green Mountain State: human rights, economic justice, and civil liberties. Power to the people.
Paid Sick Leave Vermont is now the fifth state in the country to mandate employees eighteen and older receive paid sick leave from employers. We have joined California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Oregon who have similar legislation: Vermont House Bill 187 will affect roughly 60,000 workers across the Green Mountain State will benefit. Following a contested journey
through the legislature (including a heated debate around exemptions for the small businesses that make up the vast majority of Vermont’s localized economies), the new law will take effect on New Year’s Day, 2017. Primarily impacting low-wage workers in the service industry, the final signing of this bill in the House Chamber on March 9th was the product of a decade long fight by progressive voices across the state spearheaded by the Vermont Paid Sick Days Coalition, a group of grassroots organizations comprised of Voices for Vermont’s Children, Main Street Alliance, Rights and Democracy, Early Childhood Alliance, Vermont Commission on Women, VT-NEA, United Professions/AFT, the Vermont Workers’ Center, and the Peace & Justice Center among many others.
Throughout their ultimately successful campaign, the Coalition frequently spoke and wrote of the severe consequences for working class children and families when faced with the difficult decision of missing work to tend to a sick child, leaving them at home alone, or sending them to school or childcare centers while ill. “The overall consequences for these families are felt in their overall health and well-being and can result in serious financial hardship. Guaranteeing the right to earn paid sick days benefits everybody. Paid time off for health care is good for workers and their families, good for employers, and critical to public health and safety,” the coalition wrote. The passage of H. 187 has also garnered praise from local and national political elites: “This is consistent with Vermonters’ values, and it poses a significant public
health improvement,” said Governor Peter Shumlin upon signing the bill into law. In Washington, President Obama took a moment to acknowledge the important role of the Green Mountain State. “I’m once again calling on Congress to help us catch up with other advanced nations and provide this basic security to all Americans. Until Congress acts, I urge other states to follow Vermont’s lead,” the President said.
Marijuana Legalization By far the most talked about and most controversial legislation of the year has been S. 241, the legalization and state regulation of recreational marijuana. Already passed in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, as well as the District of Columbia, the legalization of pot in Vermont appears to be more of a question of “when” rather than “if.” Vermont’s version of
legalization narrowly passed the State Senate on February 24, but isn’t expected to be heard by the House until April at the earliest due to the raft of budget and tax bills on the docket. The big question now is, will that delay work toward the adoption or rejection of the legalization bill offered by the Senate? As of this writing, S. 241 is expected to have a difficult road ahead despite support from Speaker Shap Smith and Governor Shumlin. Vermont presidential candidate Bernie Sanders also supports legalization and has long been in favor of dropping the federal classification of cannabis as a Schedule 1 narcotic, a classification that controversially places marijuana in the same category as heroin, LSD, and methamphetamine. Following a total of eight public forums and
countless testimonies for and against the bill it current allows for Vermonter residents aged 21 and up to possess up to one ounce of cannabis (with non-residents being limited to one quarter ounce) and imposes a 25% sales tax. Taking into account data showing that about 80,000 Vermonters use marijuana on a monthly basis, this sales tax looks to generate between $20 and $225 million annually. The sales tax estimate varies wildly due to speculation of the currently unregulated or "dark" market. The revenue will be allocated to drug abuse prevention and treatment programs across the state. Opponents of the bill point to Vermont’s growing addiction to opiates and say that the legalization of one drug while fighting the increasing usage of another doesn’t make sense. During a recent conversation on VPR’s Vermont Edition, Speaker Smith,
despite mostly supporting the bill, said there are enough unanswered questions around home cultivation and regulation of retail outlets to make him wonder if the bill was “ready for prime time.” Perhaps embodying both support and the opposition to legalization is Bennington Senator Dick Sears. Sears, who was long seen as one of the primary opponents of S. 241, spoke in support of the bill at the end of an hour long debate in the Senate chamber. After questioning the legitimacy and effectiveness of prohibition of marijuana, Sears concluded, “I believe S.241 is a rational approach to the failed policy of today.”
Electronic Communications Privacy Act While Paid Sick Leave and Marijuana Legalization dominate the headlines, there is
one other bill that is slowly making its way through committees in the House having been passed unanimously by the Senate earlier this session. S.155, also known as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), seeks to put concrete restrictions on the use, gathering, and dissemination of electronic records in four key areas. For privacy and civil liberties advocates, the most relevant of these are the new restrictions regarding the use and retention of information gathered by means of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or what we commonly refer to as “drones.� Coming in the midst of a growing national debate on the use of drones abroad (not to mention the recent Pentagon report justifying the use of military spy drones over American soil), the bill would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before using a drone to conduct
surveillance for investigative purposes and dictates that any information gathered during surveillance without a warrant would be inadmissible as evidence in court. The ECPA would also require mandatory reporting procedures regarding any deployment of drones by law enforcement, any data gathered by these deployments, and mandatory disclosures of funding that enabled the use of a drone by the deploying agency. Despite these new requirements and restrictions on the use of drones, Allen Gilbert of the VT-ACLU remains concerned about a new philosophy of “guilty until proven innocent” that may result from the increasing use of the remote aircraft by law enforcement. “Basically the electronic privacy bill codifies what current practice is,” said Gilbert in a statement to Vermont Digger founder Anne Galloway. “The one
thing that has come out of all this is that everyone should be concerned about much greater surveillance in the future,� he said. It is also worth pointing out that the use of automated systems by law enforcement to monitor the civilian population does not end with police use of flying robots. Another key provision of Vermont’s ECPA is new restrictions on the retention and use of data gathered from Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), the tiny scanners now commonly seen on police vehicles across Vermont. Capable of scanning thousands of plates an hour, these seemingly innocuous black boxes conducted 8 million scans of vehicles across the state last year and (in the process) recorded time-date-location information on countless Vermonters. Commenting on the difficulty of keeping up with the pace of
emerging surveillance capabilities, ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley told USA Today, “Sometimes, new technology changes so rapidly that existing law no longer fits what people think is appropriate."
Mass Incarceration Vermont is also hoping to take a step forward in the national movement to reform or abolish the mass incarceration system and the Prison Industrial Complex. Leading
the way locally is Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform (VCJR), a relatively young grass-roots organization led by former State Representative Suzi Wizowaty from Burlington. Wizowaty and VCJR are pinning their hopes for this legislative on three bills recently passed out of their respective committees. First among these is H.261, otherwise known as the "Ban the Box" bill that would prohibit employers from asking if applicants have a criminal record upon their initial application for a job. A significant economic barrier for those hoping to re-enter the workforce following their incarceration, this challenge has been embraced by a nationwide movement to "ban the box" and would make Vermont the fourteenth state to pass a law to this effect, joining California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Jersey among others.
Another bill being pushed by VCJR is H.743, a bill that, according to Wizowaty, would require the Criminal Justice Training Council "to develop a model policy in fair and impartial policing, that police must have training in the policies, and that traffic stop data (already mandated to be collected) must be posted online in a form the public can analyze." Police reform and racial justice advocates have levelled pointed criticism at law enforcement agencies across the state for what many have claimed to be biased and unfair policing policies that lead to inordinate traffic stops and arrests of people of color. If passed, H.743 would pave the way for public access to records of these stops and arrests, a goal many believe would lead to greater accountability for law enforcement agencies in a predominantly white state. Last on VCJR's slate is H.623, otherwise
known as "If the risk is low, let them go" bill that allows for older inmates who haven't reached their minimum sentence to be eligible for parole. Given that the risk of recidivism dramatically decreases with age, inmates aged 55-64 who have served ten years, and inmates 65 and older who have served five years would be eligible once they've created a parole plan (including an approved residence among other conditions).