 Back to how she's very committee and let's see we're going to start committee discussion on s265 from a friend that I know that our roach council had had a comment regarding s254 applied immunity. Yeah I just wanted to correct the record on the case that the name I butchered it's library sent the Aldrich and it's from 1987 and that's one of the landmark cases really outlining qualified immunity and references some historical cases over the 100 years before that helped evolve it but that was really sort of the the first case that really outlined what it was and who it applied to. In Vermont. Excellent thank you. Okay so let's go back to s265 and that's really expanding criminal threatening includes two persons and joining us is draft 1.2 and the members of committee discussion and I have some thoughts. Yeah thank you Madam Chair. I just wanted to take some time and committee discussion not away from our witnesses to kind of parse out some of my feelings on the bill and some of the the interesting emails and interactions that I've had regarding it so kind of on the record thinking through some things out loud that's right but I think there's a misaligned perception that this bill is creating special circumstance where legislators alone are more important or deserve more protection than other people and but a number of emails with comments that I think ourselves highly and create our own rules but I think in in a large part this bill addresses something that's not often seen with public office and that is the really intense scrutiny that's allowed in the public discourse that's allowed and especially as of the last several election cycles there is a lot of vitriol and there's a lot of people that are incredibly qualified and talented and brilliant and deserve to be a part of this legislative process that will not step into that light because of some of the things we face in the sign of work I don't care if somebody wants to tell me about it but I do care if they're waiting for me at my porch when I get home I don't care if you want to disagree with me and and vote against me or run against me or anything like that this this bill doesn't create protections for my feelings or to legislative member body feelings but there's no good way currently to deal with harassment it's targeted at a person specifically because of the job that they do when it's involved in government like this and especially when I look around at the average age of the legislature the gender parity of the legislature I had heard more than once talking to people I would love to see till these seats that for the sake of their families for the sake of their children for the sake of of their own safety because they might not have a support system they don't feel comfortable doing that and that's not because they're weak people or they can't stand up to criticism it's because they're very real threats that not everybody in this legislature faces but I have faced and other members have faced and it objectively is a problem that needs to be addressed and so when dealing with a moment of public perception of designating ourselves as a class above others I want to reframe that on the record as we do a job different than others and we should be able to do that job safely I don't care if anybody within the realm of appropriate behavior wants to engage in any level of political discourse or disagreement but I don't think people should be afraid for themselves or their families to do this work and not have a course of three dress that is specific I think we could patch together a bunch of different statues that could create kind of a number of of protection but that's complicated and it's hard to prosecute and it's not clear and if it's not clear action is taken so I've had two minds about this bill but I'm going to end up supporting it not just for the safety that I think the members currently in these seats deserve but for the fact that the people that I want to see in these seats and I don't thank you I appreciate that and I want to make sure the committee knows that the that the network submitted written testimony today fair Robinson submitted testimony and supported this bill and one of the things that that she says here is regarding you know the threats in Vermont they do occur and a representative of a global problem according to a 2016 global study by the international parliamentary union 44 percent of female legislators surveyed threats of death rape beatings and abduction and without specific regarding sexual assault threats and sexual assaults may not be applicable under the statute because sexual assault is not always results in serious bodily injury um so you're speaking more to that addition but this was as you said it's 2016 um study I imagine that 44 percent is much much higher and and I have I have heard the same thing that that the number one um when when women who are thinking of running for office and the number one reason that they don't are thinking not to this because of their safety and we've got colleagues of them isn't it it has happened to our colleagues and it's happened yeah I for sake of not wanting to deal with the politics of it I nearly didn't report when my house was shot up I haven't reported people that will wait for me to come back from Montpelier on my porch to harass me about any number of things they disagree with and when I say harass I use it word very specifically but I don't feel comfortable for that because there's no easy way to deal with that there's no easy way for that to be handled and I am grateful that I have a sport system that I I have ways to feel safe there are people who do not have that and do not have a clear avenue free dress and there is this problem and so if we are looking simply as does this bill solve a problem that is currently affecting not just the legislature but public employees and school board members and other people get involved in our public process it solves a problem and I think that's the fundamental purpose of legislation yep um I really appreciate everything that representative Laughlin and others just said and I would just also know um with regards to the bill I mean it still has to meet the very high bar of our definition of criminal threatening which is which is not um that's not in its significant bar to me and as we've noted um many times in our discussion on this bill and I think also just worth noting that in current law um you know we already have some additional carve outs um for criminal threatening about folks who try to interrupt the work of the Department of Children and Families and this is really it's about buying protection for individual folks but the additional language here is much broader than legislators and it really is about making sure that the work of state government of elections um can continue unimpeded and again it about really only comes into play when someone has met that very high bar of truth like a a true threat um as required in our in our underlying statute on what constitutes yeah I mean I agree with everything that's been said but also just want to point out that schools are suffering from having these kind of threats as well and this also has an enhancement when when a threat is targeting the school uh and I think that's really critical at this time as well so I mean it it's it's broader and it hits on some of those areas where we are seeing real threats uh and and having the enhancement for public servants uh when the threats are against somebody uh to keep them from following the law uh and and schools I think those are all very important enhancements uh for the DEL so I think yeah I think it's good yeah I mean for me this isn't something that uh you know this is this is more than just a hypothetical for me as well I mean the last two years ago when um Broughton High School uh was uh in the process of changing its mascot and my wife was president of the school board um after a vote to to retire the old mascot um she started to receive threats that were just I couldn't I can't repeat them here they're just so vulgar and vile and quite frankly misogynistic and it was really telling that my wife in her role is is board president she didn't vote she didn't argue in favor one way or the other she runs the meeting the the the man who made the motion to change the mascot never received any threats never received any correspondence about it the woman who was in charge of the meeting was threatened and harassed the point where my family had to buy a home security system and it really affects someone's ability to do their job as a public official um you know uh my wife is trying to to work on various various issues various ways to move Broughton City Public Schools forward but if she gets a request for uh interview with a reporter she's got to make certain she has someone there in case it's a setup um she has to think about where she parks we had someone just a couple weeks ago in the early morning hours uh shouting for vanity outside our house um you know my wife's an adult she can handle criticism people are more than entitled to disagree with her opinions um same with me in my role here but we shouldn't have to think about our votes and we shouldn't have to think about our public policy um and what the repercussions are every time our 10 year old daughter goes outside the play and this is really and for me it was really driven home watching the the harassment of my wife this isn't just about discontent this is about people who are unhappy that an entire segment of the population is has the ability to hold power this is someone who looked at my wife and said she does not belong there and through the harassment it sends a message that others like her do not belong there as well and will be treated the same and I know for a fact that when we were looking for candidates for a local office in the in the last in the past year there are people who are thoughtful who would have looked at issues fairly would have approached um local issues and and serving in a very diligent thoughtful manner and they just couldn't do it because of the threats because they felt unsafe because they thought it wouldn't be fair to their families so what we're doing here is something that's very specific um it to some degree it's not as though we are saying uh public officials deserve some some exalted status um but what we're saying is people should not be able to use the threat of violence to push entire categories of people who they do not like out of consideration for public office that that's what this bill protects that's the sort of thing that we need to achieve to make certain that anyone who has a desire to serve in Vermont feels comfortable to put themselves forward at any level and is this going to solve the problem to a T no of course not because these people are still out there and they're still going to be threatening but you start to hold people accountable and things begin to change I strongly support this bill thank you thank you yes so um I know we took testimony on it one day but I put in H203 which is basically a bill to um make criminal threatening a crime against state employees or or legislators and so I felt strongly about this I have watched a great colleague have to feel like she had no choice to keep herself in her family safe and not be in politics and it bothers me regularly that the society let that happen um the speaker has had horrible threats the mayor of Burlington has had horrible threats people in the secretary and state's office when I worked um in human services I we regularly had our staff who worked at dcf offices have to leave the offices because of bomb threats and other threats it's so rampant that um I'm proud that we are on the cost of passing this and I feel really strongly that um it's an important bill do you mind say one more thing I really appreciate these kinds that have made and I just kind of wanted to say one more thing this isn't this isn't going to solve I think the the non-criminal level verbal harassment that happens it's not going to solve a misogyny it's not going to solve other barriers to people running I don't want this to be seen as it fixing all of those issues but I think it fixes the most egregious of those issues with a high standard for what reaches that level I'm not saying you yell at me you're going to be charged as a criminal I'm saying if you reach the level of threatening that is in this statute that point I or my or anybody else that's that specified in this bill has an avenue redress I think there's a lot of really problematic things that are targeted towards certain groups that choose to try and run for office or participate in our local process more than others um and we could be here until December parsing those out um but I would rather not be but it solves the worst of the problems with a high standard and I think the rest is not something that has an immediate legislative solution yeah just really quickly I'm I'm really grateful for the work that went into this bill and I just see it as as a commitment to to strengthening preserving our social fabric and representative democracy honestly um so I'm excited to vote in favor of this yes we have to go so I would entertain a motion to find draft one point two of uh 265 favorable second I think you would leave up to the clerk who's talking that's color oh cobert yes donnelly yes oh slant no lalaun yes buffler yes ours no no yes rajelson yes christy yes madame chair yes um let's have it open for um and I think it's just store or something and we'll be in a quarter thanks great oh thanks yeah thank you