Montpelier’s policy wonks so often say the best legislation is data driven. But who decides what numbers matter, and what statistics exist at all?
“I see some major data problems in Vermont, but I have for many, many years,” Lael Chester, director of the Emerging Adult Justice Project at Columbia University’s Justice Lab, told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday morning. “The thing that does concern me is that this year, there was less publicly available data than last year.”
At issue: Vermont’s first-in-the-nation “Raise the Age” initiative, the brainchild of the late Sen. Dick Sears, whose life working with youth entangled in the legal system spurred him to consider how young adults could avoid a lifetime marred by a criminal record.
So beginning almost five years ago, 18-year-olds charged with misdemeanors and lower level felonies had their cases heard in family court, rather than criminal court. Nineteen year-olds, the legislation ordered, would soon follow suit.
Except for years, at the behest of the Department for Children and Families, that next step has been delayed and delayed again. This year is no different, and another delay looks likely.
DCF leaders have argued they have the data to back their position. But Chester, the academic, is skeptical.
Her numbers, she argued, show success. Juvenile cases filed in family court haven’t spiked since Raise the Age first went into effect. Neither have the number of youth on probation. And in a decade-long trend, fewer young people are winding up in DCF custody as a result of juvenile offenses.
But DCF’s graphs show a different story, pointing to an increase in their juvenile caseload. In the department’s data, however, other categories of young people assigned to DCF caseworkers are commingled with youth who are assigned due to the first step of Raise the Age.
“This mixing of apples and oranges makes it impossible to track the (Raise the Age) cases and analyze the impact of RtA,” Chester argued in written testimony, noting also an absence in some data from the most recent years. “Vermont has failed to provide updates for even the most basic caseload data and the data that has been shared is unhelpful and/or confusing.”
And there’s a deadline approaching.
Rarely does policy depend upon legislative inaction, but such is the precarious state of Raise the Age. In less than two weeks, should lawmakers do nothing, most 19-year-olds will wind up under the jurisdiction of family court. If the Senate backs H.2, a two year delay will become law. Whether that makes sense — it depends on the numbers.
—Ethan Weinstein
In the know
Amid an increasingly heated debate over Vermont’s motel voucher program, Gov. Phil Scott’s administration has rejected a compromise proposal on a midyear spending bill presented by Democratic legislative leaders late Tuesday.
In a terse letter addressed to a key House budget panel on Wednesday, Secretary of Administration Sarah Clark blasted legislators for making their proposal public yesterday “instead of continuing good faith negotiations” with the Scott administration.
Administration officials have continued to push back forcefully against a three-month extension – backed by Democrats – for all unhoused people living in state-sponsored motel rooms, when the emergency housing program’s winter rules expire April 1.
Read more about the administration’s response to the Legislature on the emergency housing program here.
— Carly Berlin
On what appeared to be a largely party line voice vote, the Vermont Senate sounded its disapproval of Gov. Phil Scott’s Jan. 15 executive order that would have reorganized the Department of Public Safety as the Agency of Public Safety. The governor cited the change as a priority of his administration because of the department’s increased workload and broadening responsibilities.
The order directing the reorganization would have gone into effect April 16, but Vermont law allows such an order to be blocked by the disapproval of either chamber. S.R. 10 does just that.
Explaining the Senate Resolution on Wednesday, Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central, emphasized that the vote did not mean senators would not themselves consider a bill to elevate the department.
“What this resolution is is a disagreement that governmental restructuring should be done by executive order without the full process of our legislative bodies,” she said.
A bill creating a public safety agency was approved by the Senate in 2022 but was never taken up by the House.
— Kristen Fountain
On the move
The Senate voted on Wednesday to approve an update to the state’s “right to farm” law, which would make it harder for neighbors to sue farmers over impacts the farm may have on their properties.
The idea behind the bill, S.45, is to protect farmers from neighbors who are bothered by nearby farming activity. Under current law, neighboring property owners can file lawsuits against farmers, alleging that odors coming from the farm, truck traffic and other business-as-usual farming practices prevent them from enjoying their properties.
Though uncommon, such lawsuits have the potential to tie up already-strapped farmers in court for years at their own expense, Sen. Samuel Douglass, R-Orleans, the bill’s lead sponsor, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month.
“Right now in Vermont, we have a lot of issues with people moving in, and that’s great, but they move in and then will complain about the smell of the farm that’s next door, that they moved in next to,” he said. “A lot of those farmers are worried about getting sued.”
Read more about the bill here.
— Emma Cotton
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Read the story on VTDigger here: Final Reading: Court data suggests Vermont’s ‘Raise the Age’ initiative is working. DCF has different numbers..