Late Thursday, the fate of two landmark data privacy proposals remains uncertain as the Vermont Legislature hurtles towards a self-imposed Friday deadline to close the 2024 Legislature. It looked like.
In recent days, the Vermont House and Senate have been debating two bills targeting the nation's largest social media companies and companies that buy and sell consumer data. And even with an adjournment in sight, the two chambers remain divided on the issue, exchanging sweeping strike amendments to each other's bills.
“What's coming out of the Senate shows politics over policy and a complete disregard for the issues at hand,” Rep. Monique Priestley (D-Bradford) said Thursday on the House floor. Ta.
What started as two separate bills, H.121, a data privacy bill, and S.289, a bill aimed at protecting children using social media, has since become one giant bill, H.121. has been integrated into. Since then, it has ping-ponged from the Senate to the House and is now back in the Senate, where action is expected on Friday.
Mr. Priestley serves on the House Commerce Committee, which developed H.121. The committee met Thursday to draft a last-minute rewrite of the bill after the Senate passed its own version Wednesday night.
Priestley told VTDigger that the version introduced in the Senate is “significantly watered down” than what the House originally passed. Last month, Priestley and his committee colleagues told VTDigger they suspected Big Tech lobbyists were behind the effort.
With the latest rewrite, the committee sought to strike a balance with the Senate and with Vermont's small and medium-sized businesses, which expressed concerns that the bill went too far. A House committee significantly curtailed the bill's private right of action, a legal mechanism that allows Vermonters to sue companies for violating the law.
The bill included a bill aimed at forcing major social media companies to make code and algorithm changes to make social media sites safer for children under 18, originally included in S.289. It also includes measures. The bill, known as the “Kids Code,” is a priority in the Senate.
“I can say it loud and clear: These platforms don't care about our kids,” Rep. Jim Carroll (D-Bennington) said Thursday in support of the bill on the House floor.
Support for the House's latest bill was strong Thursday, with lawmakers voting 139-3 to advance the latest amendments. The bill now goes to the Senate for approval or a counterproposal.
Sen. Kesha Lamb Hinsdale (D-Chittenden Southeast) is the lead sponsor of S.289 and has played a leading role in the debate as chair of the Senate Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs Committee. . Shortly after her House vote on Thursday, she told VTDigger that although she had not seen the latest rewrite, she thought the two chambers could agree on the “kids code” portion of the bill.
Despite the stark divide between the two chambers, lawmakers did not appoint a conference committee to iron out the differences. This is a common practice in state legislatures when the House and Senate differ widely on a particular bill.
This trend extends beyond data privacy laws. As of Thursday, dramatic differences between the House and Senate threaten the fate of other high-priority bills, even though Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers.
In these cases, lawmakers also chose to pass amendments back and forth between the two chambers, rather than meeting in the middle of a conference committee.
As of Thursday, H.687, a bill that seeks to overhaul Vermont's 50-year-old land-use law, is under consideration. This is despite lawmakers declaring early in the session that amending Act 250 would be one of their top priorities this year.
Thursday evening also surfaced the Legislature's annual yield bill, which would set property tax rates to fund the state's education system. It is a must-pass bill, but with one day left before the scheduled adjournment on Friday, the two chambers remained divided over the bill's language.