The bill would codify the practice of pre-charge referrals so the process is the same regardless of county.

By Norah White

Two jobs legislators want created as part of a bill to standardize restorative justice referrals may not be guaranteed — which could make the rollout of the bill harder.

Lawmakers since January have been tinkering with H.645, which would codify the practice of pre-charge referrals so the process is the same regardless of county. The bill also aims to create a standard for funding the state’s restorative justice centers, which sponsors say is inconsistent and disorganized. The bill passed the House mid-March and is now in the Senate judiciary committee.

Legislators added provisions to the bill to create two positions to help remedy that: a director of policy within the Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs and a diversion program coordinator for the Office of the Attorney General. The two positions combined would cost $277,000, according to the Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office, and under legislators’ original revision, that money would come from general fund appropriations for next fiscal year.

But when the bill went to the House appropriations committee, it came back with amendments that would create those two positions only “to the extent funds are available.”

“It’s a way to allow the bill to move forward even though we aren’t certain that the positions are going to be established and fully funded,” said sponsor Rep. Karen Dolan, D-Essex Junction, who works for the Essex Community Justice Center.

“The positions got scaled back because there is great concern about how much money it would total to fund all the requests for FY 25, between the budget and bills that have funding requests in them,” another sponsor, Rep. Barbara Rachelson, D-Burlington, said in an email.

Without those positions guaranteed, “it will likely just be a much slower starting process than if they had the positions to get things moving,” Dolan said.

The diversion program coordinator would manage the new pre-charge referral system established in the bill.

Under the bill, restorative justice centers in each county would be required to have a policy on how they handle pre-charge referrals before cases can be diverted to them. The Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs policy director position would help implement those policies to get the new referral process up and running.

“It probably wouldn’t progress at the same speed as if we’d had the positions in place,” Dolan said.

Senate judiciary committee members are scheduled to discuss the bill during their March 29 meeting.

Restorative justice center leaders say the bill would help clear backlogged referrals — when a prosecutor sends a case to a rehabilitation program rather than filing charges in court. That process already exists in Vermont, but there’s no standard for how it’s done.

“It’s not necessarily doing anything to reinvent restorative justice or restorative approaches; it is making it so it is more streamlined access across the state,” Dolan said in a past interview with Community News Service. “This is trying to get some consistency and also respect the uniqueness of each county.”

For supporters, the goal is to define expectations so state’s attorneys and law enforcement feel confident their referrals will be processed the same way no matter which county they are in.

The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.