Gov. Phil Scott has vetoed a bill that proponents said would ensure people have equitable access to restorative justice programs across the state — with the governor arguing on Tuesday that the legislation lacked funding to support its proposals.
But Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, whose office would be among those most impacted by H.645 , fired back at the governor’s veto on Wednesday — saying that such resources weren’t necessary to get a start on the bill’s requirements this year.
The legislation would establish baseline standards for county prosecutors to follow when deciding whether someone who commits a relatively minor crime should be referred to a restorative justice program in their community, instead of being charged in court.
Proponents said H.645 would allow prosecutors or law enforcement officers to divert more offenders out of the criminal justice system. Restorative justice programs often involve conversations between offenders and victims aimed at repairing harm from a crime.
The bill would task the Vermont Attorney General’s Office with doling out funding to the municipalities and organizations that facilitate this “pre-charge diversion” work, as well as charge the office with collecting demographic data from those programs.
Currently, that work is overseen by the state Department of Corrections, and there is little data being collected, according to Rep. Karen Dolan, D-Essex Junction, the bill’s primary sponsor.
The bill does not, however, include new resources to support the attorney general’s work. H.645 states only that the office’s new pre-charge diversion work should operate “to the extent funds are appropriated” in future legislative sessions.
That was the crux of Scott’s concerns, he wrote in a letter explaining his veto to the Vermont House on Tuesday evening.
“While I understand the desire to help those, particularly youth, who need second, third and even fourth chances to get their lives on track, H.645 is not workable because it is not funded,” the Republican governor said. “There is no guarantee we will have the taxpayer money needed to fund it next year.”
But in a statement Wednesday, Clark, the Democratic attorney general, rebuffed the governor’s reasoning — saying that her office supports the bill and, notably, already has the bandwidth to start the process of taking on pre-charge oversight.
Clark said that her office would, in the long run, need funding for a new position to help expand and oversee pre-charge diversion services in the state. Her office would also need more funding to allocate to restorative justice providers to take on that work.
But she said that shouldn’t be a barrier to enacting the bill, since its effective date is still a year away, in July 2025.
“If the Legislature votes to override the Governor’s veto — and I hope it does — my office will work with (the corrections department) and the Legislature next session to sort out the appropriate approach to addressing the issue,” Clark said, later adding, “I have believed for years that my office is the most appropriate home for the pre-charge program.”
Dolan said in an interview Wednesday that the bill would also help the state chip away at its crushing backlog of pending court cases by, gradually, keeping more minor cases off of judges’ plates.
“The fact that he vetoed this, when he’s saying that public safety and the judiciary backlog are top priorities to address, is just counterintuitive. That doesn’t make sense to me,” said Dolan, who works for a community justice center in Essex Junction.
H.645 is the fifth bill Scott has vetoed this year. Legislators are set to return to Montpelier on June 17 for what’s known as a “veto session,” during which they will have a chance to override any of the governor’s vetoes. Doing so requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers.
Since taking office in 2017, Scott has now vetoed 49 bills, according to the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office. That’s more than a quarter of all gubernatorial vetoes issued since 1839, when the state veto records begin.
Timber fraud, pay transparency
As he rejected H.645, Scott also signed five other bills into law on Tuesday.
Those include H.614, which creates a new category of crime for timber theft called land improvement fraud — similar to home improvement fraud, which is already a crime. It also adds land improvement fraud to the existing home improvement fraud registry, which publishes the names of people who have been convicted of either forms of fraud, making it easier for a landowner to search for past cases before accepting a logger’s services.
Scott also signed a bill, H.661, that raises the bar that the state Department for Children and Families has to meet in order to prove that a child has been abused or neglected. The change is aimed at reducing the number of faulty abuse and neglect investigations.
And he signed H.704, which will require many employers to disclose a position’s salary, or salary range, in their job postings starting next July. Proponents of the bill have said it will aid job seekers in negotiating salaries and improve workplace transparency.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Phil Scott vetoes a restorative justice bill, drawing Attorney General Charity Clark’s rebuke.