Opiate abuse bill moved to Senate floor

by Alicia Freese, VTDigger.org - The Senate voted late last night to give final approval to an omnibus drug abuse bill. They had to suspend legislative rules in order to expedite this vote.
On May 2, the bill won sweeping approval in the Senate. The following day, it was expected to receive final approval before moving to the governors desk. On Tuesday, Senator Richard Sears, D-Bennington, who as chair of the Judiciary Committee had helped bring the bill to the floor, ordered the measure to lie.
He reversed that stance later in the day and said he would ask that the bill be brought to the Senate floor Wednesday, indicating that whatever reservations he might have had were resolved.
The initial holdup Tuesday traced back to at least one unrelated bill introduced by Sears thats currently in the House. S.20 seeks to increase the statute of limitations for certain sex offenses committed against children. It landed in the House Judiciary Committee on March 26, after passing in the Senate.
Sears said S.20 was one of a couple of bills that hadnt been taken up yet in the House, which prompted him to temporarily halt the discussion on the drug abuse bill.
I was just looking forward to some bills moving, Sears said, in explanation of his decision to put the drug bill on hold.
Representative William Lippert, D-Hinesburg, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said he did not deliberately put S.20 low on his committees to-do list. In recent weeks, his committee has spent a substantial amount of time on several large and contentious pieces of legislation, including the GMO labeling bill, the end-of-life bill, and a marijuana decriminalization bill.
House Judiciary did discuss S.20 today, Lippert said, and he expects committee members to vote unanimously in favor of it Wednesday morning.
I certainly had no intention to not do it (take up S.20) for any particular reason, Lippert said.
Other than a meeting between the two Judiciary chairs last month, Lippert said he hasnt communicated about specific bills with Sears.
He (Sears) and I met about a month ago and went over all the bills that were in both committees and, apart from that, I believe Ive met the commitments I made, and that bill (S.20), I think there was maybe some misunderstanding on my part on the nature of the bill.
Sears now plans to ask the Senate to resume discussion on the drug abuse bill Wednesday. It was probably a miscommunication. â ¦ We are moving forward.
Lippert said he is confident the drug abuse bill is in safe hands in the Senate.
I think Vermonters are expecting us to continue to complete our work on the epidemic on opiates and methamphetamine abuse, and I trust the Senate will complete their work, Lippert said.
Among other initiatives, the opiate abuse bill, H.522, seeks to expand usage of a prescription monitoring database that notifies doctors when people are doctor-shopping for opiates; it creates a monitoring system for methamphetamine precursor drugs that can be purchased at pharmacies; and the legislation sets up a pilot program for wider distribution of an antidote drug for opioid overdoses.
House Speaker Shap Smth, D-Morrisville, said last week that passing the drug abuse bill was a priority for this session.
Another bill, H.65, is also part of the legislative effort this year to combat problems stemming from drug abuse in the state. The bill, a product of the House Judiciary Committee, provides limited immunity to people who report drug overdoses. It passed in the House and has been sitting in Sears committee since March 27.
Sears said his committee supports the bill, but it hasnt made it to the floor because he has been waiting for legislative counsel to draft an amendment that would also grant some legal immunity to volunteer school coaches. He expects H.65 to come up for a vote in the Senate before the end of the week.