It seemed a little quieter than usual yesterday at the statehouse, no doubt due to the icy roads in the early morning. I know some committees canceled their hearings and others shut down early. But the Senate Judiciary Committee kept to its schedule, closing in on finalizing S. 203, the child support enforcement bill. There is still some work to be done and I expect it will be completed next Friday when the chair hopes to vote the final bill out of committee. They also had time to interview newly appointed Judges Alison Arms and Marty Maley. Although I was in another meeting for most of those conversations I was assured that both did well and confirmation by the full Senate should be no problem. Two weeks earlier Justice Robinson went through a similar interview and next Friday E-Court Judge Tom Walsh will be in. The Senate Judiciary Committee is moving through these confirmations quickly this year. There are also two judges that are standing for retention this year: Judges Carroll and Pearson; so far no hearings have been scheduled to move those.
On the House side, the House Judiciary Committee completed its work on H. 403 the foreclosure bill! I’ve already been asked for a copy of the final version but I do not have a clean copy. It will be found on the house notice calendar on Tuesday of next week assuming that it was delivered to the clerk’s office. It will be a “strike all”, meaning that instead of trying to weave small changes and amendments to the bill as introduced, the committee started over and wrote an entire new bill. But, most of the bill remains unchanged; it’s just much easier to read and understand a clean copy. The committee is still trying to wrap up a few issues with the Uniform Principal and Income Act and I hope that’s done and out be the end of next week.
I spent a bit of time in the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee this week testifying in support of H. 565, the amendment to the licensed lender act. As I’ve written before, either here or to the Property Law Section list serve, the bill replaces “act” as a lender or mortgage loan originator with “engage in the business of”, evidenced by “habitualness and repetition”. It also expands the definition of family members and clarifies transfers between former spouses. Everyone hopes H. 565 will go a long way to solving the issues you’ve had with the SAFE Act since the 2009 amendments. In short the bill takes us back to 2008, or as one witness said “back to the future”. These changes comply with the HUD regulations. Commerce may be ready to vote the bill out next Tuesday; if so it could be off to the Senate by the end of the week. I recommended that the law become effective on passage, meaning, the day the bill is signed by the governor. I’ll keep you posted as to its progress.
House Commerce will also tackle the private roads maintenance bill, H. 272, next Wednesday, setting aside the entire morning to do so. Property Law Section Chair Hall Miller will be our witness.
I reported last time on the conservation easement bill as presented to House Judiciary. That’s not returned to the committee’s calendar. In House Natural Resources, a second hearing on the energy disclosure bill was canceled yesterday due to driving conditions; it will be rescheduled but the future of the bill remains unclear.
I along with Chris D’Elia, President of the Vermont Bankers’ Association spent some time with Sue Minter, the new Irene Recovery Officer. She read and was interested in learning more about out Post Irene Property Law Task Force report. Chris and I continue to see interest in our report and gratitude for both of our association’s contributions to Vermont recovery efforts. They appreciate our collaborative approach to Irene and to the other projects we’ve worked on together and those we’re still working on together. For example, H. 403 is the result of an ad hoc committee that began working on the rewrite, I think, in 2008.
Earlier this week I wrote about the meeting we had on extending foreclosure mediation to all cases. H. 600 was introduced but still needs a great deal of work. That’s a case where there was no cooperative effort outside the statehouse to bring the different stakeholders to the table to find an acceptable approach. Legislators have commented to me how different and how difficult it is to resolve these positions if the parties have not talked. We do have some time to work things out as the crossover deadline this year is the Friday before the Town Meeting recess, March 2nd.
I will be out of state next week attending the ABA Mid Year Meeting so I will not be reporting until February 7th at the earliest. As always, contact me with questions and suggestions.
Thanks for reading.
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