By Sam Douglass

On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Economic Development gave final approval to a heavily slimmed down landlord-tenant bill. The bill passed out of the committee 3-2 with the Democratic committee chair siding with the committee’s two Republicans against members of her own party. The bill now moves to the floor for a vote of the full Senate. 

If approved, the bill is likely to go to a conference committee, where many of the removed elements of the House bill are likely to be considered for the final draft to be returned to both House and Senate for consideration.

Since its introduction in the House, H.772 has been at the center of this biennium’s fight between the property rights of landlords and the need for safe stable housing for tenants. The bill came into the possession of the Economic Development committee in early May after it spent multiple weeks in the Senate Judiciary committee. 

As previously reported by Vermont Daily Chronicle, the bill was an attempt to balance landlord rights and tenant protections. Introduced earlier this year by House General & Housing Committee Chair Rep. Marc Mihaly (D-Washington 6), the bill was a compromise between these two conflicting policy positions that are often viewed as contradictory.

“The theory behind the bill is pretty simple, rather brutally simple, which is to give each side what it most wants, regardless of the fact that the other side really doesn’t want what the other side wants. It really focuses on giving each side what it wants,” said Mihaly at the time. 

As passed by the House, H.772 contains provisions benefiting both landlords and tenants, however, it drew criticism from tenant advocates for being lopsided in favor of landlords. It protected tenants from frequent rent increases and it gave landlords more flexibility to evict tenants, including for multiple late payments.

When the bill went to the Senate, there was an understanding that the two separate committees would have the opportunity to work on it. The Senate Judiciary committee worked largely on issues of domestic violence and their impact on rental leases, whereas the Economic Development committee spent its time on disability policy and refining the controversial bill into a passable form.

On Wednesday, due to a lack of consensus among the members of the committee, the bill was slimmed down heavily which eliminated much of the work from the House and the Senate Judiciary committee. If approved by the Senate, it will likely move to a committee of conference between members of both chambers to reconcile a final version from previous drafts for both chambers to vote on.

Sen. Thomas Chittenden (D-Chittenden Southeast) was vocal prior to the vote on the process of the bill and his view of the bill’s unequal treatment of tenants across the different sections of the bill.

“I don’t support this bill, and I think it was just the wrong step when the attempt was tried to make right or do something right with these tenants over here by doing something wrong with those tenants over there,” said Chittenden. “I just don’t think there’s a moral potency. So I think it was a flawed approach from the beginning, and I think each change to all our laws should be weighed on its own merits, and there is some sort of balance or trade off between kicking people’s stuff to the curb and ejecting them after five days. But that’s okay. So we’re gonna give ninety days for what the landlord sells in the building. There’s no equivalency there for me.”