Senators Want Do-Over On Rx Bill
Frustrated the House isn’t giving in on warrantless access to prescription drug information in the state’s drug database, Senate members of the conference committee negotiating differences over H. 745...
View ArticleRx Bill Still Hanging, But Warrantless Access Seems Unlikely
The prescription drug monitoring bill, H. 745, continued to lie on a conference committee table as the Legislature ground toward adjournment. Approval of a plan to allow police warrantless access to...
View ArticleRx Access — Only With A Warrant
The effort by the Shumlin administration and the state Senate to allow police warrantless access to Vermonters’ prescription drug information from a state database came to an end Saturday when the...
View ArticleMed Marijuana Dispensaries: Location Public?
Disagreement over access to records containing the location of proposed medical marijuana dispensaries spilled over at a legislative Public Records Study Committee meeting into a larger discussion of...
View ArticleGovernor Backs Changes To Police Records Law
Gov. Peter Shumlin has endorsed replacement of the current police records exemption to the state’s public records law with the federal FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) standard. The hope is the change...
View ArticleTake Responsibility: Regulate Taser Use
For the last eight months since Macadam Mason died after being shot with a Taser by a Vermont state trooper, we as a state have been faced with one essential question. What are we going to do to make...
View ArticlePolice Records Bill Gets Initial OK In Senate
A bill making major changes to public access to police investigation records has been given preliminary approval in the Vermont Senate. S. 148, which uses federal FOIA (Freedom of Information Act)...
View ArticleSenate Passes Police Records Bill
The Vermont Senate on Tuesday gave final approval to S. 148, which changes the 1 VSA 317 (c)(5) public records exemption for criminal investigation records. Approval came on a 29-0 roll-call vote. Sen....
View ArticlePatent Trolls Occupy Facebook And Propane Bills
You need some background to understand this post: S. 7 started out as a bill to protect job applicants from being forced by a prospective employer to turn over Facebook and other social media site...
View ArticleWindow Opens On Police Activities
For the first time since the state’s public records law was written 35 years ago, the window on police criminal investigations will open a little wider thanks to passage of S. 148 on Tuesday, the last...
View ArticleEver Meet A DRE? You Could Soon
There are 35 “drug recognition experts” in Vermont. If you’re suspected of “drugged” driving, you could be handcuffed and driven to the home barracks or station of one of these police officers. There,...
View Article2014 Legislative Wrap-Up
Significant strides were made this year in the legislature around a number of civil liberties issues. Check out our quick rundown of the high points (as well as some disappointments). Details for each...
View ArticleIs This A ‘Kabuki’ Session At The Statehouse?
Frustration has been expressed about the slow pace of this year’s legislative session. Nothing seems to be happening. One waggish commenter on an online news site said, “It is really sad to see this...
View ArticleEnd-of-Session Legislative Review
This year’s legislative session started on a down note (a gubernatorial election decided by legislators, budget cuts, and abandonment of plans for a health care overhaul), rolled through emotional...
View ArticleEd Spending Caps One Big Scrum At Statehouse
Up until minutes before deciding whether to amend, repeal, or leave intact Act 46’s education spending caps, the House Education Committee was still struggling to untangle language in last year’s bill....
View ArticleAnother Attorney General Speaks For Marijuana Regulation
A second former state attorney general, M. Jerome Diamond, has come out in favor of the marijuana legalization bill passed by the Vermont Senate and now under consideration in the House. “I do want to...
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