Saturday January 7, 2012

Well the first week of the session went by without my having the time to sit and pen a blog entry; so here goes. I’m sure you’ve followed news reports about what’s happened thus far in the session but I want to point out a few things of special interest to our members. You may recall that, back in October, I was asked to chair a special task force to review Irene’s impact on real property and our law’s ability to respond. So I organized what became known as the Post Irene Property Law Task Force. After numerous meetings involving nineteen different state agencies and associations our Final Report was delivered to the House and Senate Judiciary Committee this week. A copy is available on the VBA website.
Because the issues raised in the report cross the jurisdiction of almost every legislative committee, the President Pro Tem has asked that I and Co-Chair Chris D’Elia, President of the Vermont Bankers Association deliver and explain the report to the entire Senate. So, a “Committee of the Whole” will meet on the senate floor on Tuesday, January 17th. This will be the first time that process will be used in about thirty years! Extraordinary events call for extraordinary response.
Although Irene may have dominated my first week much more was going on. For example, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony on the report of a special committee that studied strategies to improve child support collection.
Read the report here: http://www.leg.state.vt.us/reports/2012ExternalReports/274263.pdf
Judiciary will return to look at specific bill language next Friday. I will post a link to the bill when it is drafted and introduced. I don’t plan to be there then as I will be at the YLD Thaw in Montreal.
I spent a good portion of Wednesday morning in the Senate Committee on Natural Resources when it was considering a report on Improving Vermont’s Environmental Protection Process. That report can be read at the Natural Resources Board website:
http://www.state.vt.us/nrb/docs/Final%20Report%20121611.pdf
After hearing the testimony of ANR Secretary Deb Markowitz and NRB Chair Ron Shems, I put two questions out to the VBA’s Environmental Law Section list serve at the request of Committee Chair Senator Ginny Lyons. They are: should the present Environmental Division of the Superior Court be replaced by a “professional board”; and, should appeals (to the Court if it is retained) be “on the record” or “de novo”. That generated quite a bit of discussion on the list and I am beginning to compile some witnesses to testify when the committee returns to this issue. I’m not sure exactly when that will be but I will continue to cover it in this blog as it moves forward.
I noticed this morning the upcoming introduction of H.513 next Tuesday; look at the purpose statement of the bill:
Statement of purpose: This bill proposes to replace the natural resources board with an environmental review board that would hear the appeals and enforcement cases related to state environmental permits that currently are heard by the environmental division of the superior court. The new board would have the administrative oversight and rulemaking authority for the Act 250 program presently assigned to the natural resource board’s land use panel. The rulemaking authority of the natural resources board’s water resources panel would be transferred to the secretary of natural resources. The environmental division of the superior court would continue to hear appeals and enforcement cases related to local land use bylaws, except that an appeal of a local land use decision would be to the environmental review board if the underlying project is also subject to state environmental permit requirements. Read the bill here: http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/2012/Bills/Intro/H-513.pdf
I have not yet gotten to see the report of the Building Energy Disclosure Committee that worked on that issue over the recess between sessions. You may recall that H. 57 is the bill that would require disclosure at the time of sale. That bill seems to been replaced by H. 497 which was just introduced; here it is: http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/2012/bills/Intro/H-497.pdfhave
I expect hearings to begin on this soon although the committee of jurisdiction (House General, Housing and Military Affairs) does not have it on its calendar for next week. Instead they will be looking at unfair housing practices and mobile homes.
Here are a couple bills of interest introduced during the first week.
S. 115 would prohibit malpractice claims against public defenders unless the plaintiff first prevailed in a PCR proceeding based on ineffective assistance of counsel.
S.123 would require court clerks to allow attorneys of record to get a copy of jury questionnaires or to view them on a secure website.
S. 162 would provide that a general power of attorney may grant powers not expressly stated if the facts show that the principal intended the agent to have that authority.
S. 166 would provide for “on the record” appeals from Act 250 district commissions to the E-Court.
These are just a few that I thought worthy of mention. Remember that introduction does not indicate that any of them will even get a hearing after they are referred to the committee of jurisdiction. There were over 200 bills introduced this week, which of course got added to the hundreds from last year.
Next week, even though it’s a short one for many of us going to the Thaw, will be a busy one. On Monday, there’ll be a meeting at the VBA of the ad hoc committee that drafted what is now H. 403, the bill to reorganize our foreclosure statutes. We’re planning to do a final read through of some amendments and then present it to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning. In the afternoon, Grace Pazdan of Vermont Legal Aid and Elliott Burg of the AG’s Office will ask the committee to extend the foreclosure mediation program, developed for HAMP loans, to all mortgage foreclosure actions.
Also next week Mark Langan, Co-Chair of the VBA’s Probate and Trust Section will make two appearances at the statehouse. He will testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee on a probate study committee he participated in this summer; and then go to the House Judiciary Committee to testify on the Uniform Principal and Income Act.
Also, the speaker has asked lawyers, bankers, realtors, and town clerks to work together to resolve the issue of public availability of property tax bills. There is a growing call for overruling the Supreme Court’s decision in HS-122. I’ll report on this after a meeting scheduled for late next week.
I hope this overdue update on the happenings in Montpelier helps. As always let me know what more I can or should be reporting on to keep you informed. And, as always, thanks for reading.