Scott vetoed the bill, S.103, on Monday due to his concerns that the legislation would make the state less business-friendly without substantially improving public health. He specifically objected to a section of the bill that would give the commissioner of the Department of Health — a gubernatorial appointee — expanded power to require labeling or even ban the sale of products determined likely to expose children to harmful toxins.
There was no floor debate. In a statement after the vote, Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) said the law would allow the state to respond quickly to public health threats.
“Current law is bureaucratically cumbersome and the Legislature believes the Commissioner [of health] should be allowed to act quickly to protect our children from exposure to harmful chemicals,” Ashe said.
The vote closely followed party lines. Senators Joe Benning (R-Caledonia), Carolyn Branagan (R-Franklin), Randy Brock (R-Franklin), Brian Collamore (R-Rutland), Peg Flory (R-Rutland), Dick Mazza (D-Grand Isle), David Soucy (R-Rutland) and Richard Westman (R-Lamoille) voted against the bill.
The other senators voted in favor, clearing the two-thirds threshold required to override a governor’s veto.
The Vermont Public Interest Research Group applauded the Senate vote. “By standing up to the chemical companies and industry lobbyists hell-bent on killing this bill, they’ve taken a giant step toward making Vermont a safer place to raise a family,” VPIRG executive director Paul Burns said in a statement.
In the House, the bill needs the support of two-thirds of the representatives present to pass. Otherwise, the veto will be sustained and the bill will not become law.
Disclosure: Tim Ashe is the domestic partner of Seven Days publisher and coeditor Paula Routly. Find our conflict-of-interest policy here: sevendaysvt.com/disclosure.
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Does anyone expect Don Turner and his mob not to uphold the Governors veto? You keep hearing how Vermont Republicans are different than those of the national party but thats a myth. There isnt a Republican alive that would put the life and health of others ahead of a corporations ability to make a buck. Republicans are motivated mostly by greed and hate.
Despite the contention by “Roy” that we Republicans are “motivated mostly by greed and hate,” there was perfectly good reason for us to vote against this bill. First, at present a Commissioner is vested with authority to designate a chemical as “dangerous” with certain provisos. The chemical must be found “on the basis of credible, scientific evidence” to be a threat. This bill dillutes that by simply calling for “independent, peer-reviewed scientific research.” (I can find an “independent, peer-reviewed scientific research” paper arguing that vaccines cause autism easily on the internet.) We’ve gone from credible evidence to suspicious opinion, hardly a wise move when considering Commissioners are creatures of political winds. Secondly, regulating sale of a product now requires a finding by a legislatively created working group of experts that a given child’s product contains a chemical of high concern. They determine that a child “will” be exposed to that chemical. They then must find a probability that exposure could cause or contribute to an adverse health impact. But the bill eliminates need for the working group’s approval. Then it destroys the chemical/exposure/harm nexus by permitting regulation only if it “may” cause harm. This is regulation by opinion, not demonstrable evidence that children will be harmed. There is no evidence that any Vermont child has been harmed with current practice. No other state has gone this far and manufacturers and retailers cannot rely upon political winds. Personally, this isn’t about party politics or greed; it’s about smart legislating.
Thank you Joe for your explanations of the shortcomings of this bill.
The immediate knee jerk political opinions as expressed by Roy, instead of actually looking into the facts, is a disturbing trend in the world today.
If Paul Burns likes this bill can it be all bad? Ah, YES.
Id like Senator Benning to cite an “independent, peer-reviewed scientific research” paper arguing that vaccines cause autism, since he claims it would be easy to find one. Admittedly, I didnt spend a lot of time looking, but the peer-reviewed studies I found all say precisely the opposite; perhaps the senator can do what he claims, but I for one did not find it easy.
The core question here is whether regulators should be guided only by high standards of proof, in which case well need to wait until some children ARE harmed or whether its preferable to regulate according to the precautionary principle of what, in Bennings words, “may” cause harm.
The implications of the former are clear enough: the only way to obtain evidence that a child “will” be exposed to [a] chemical and a probability that exposure could cause or contribute to an adverse health impact is for the chemical to have already caused such harm. How else would you be able to measure and assess those probabilities?
Following this principle, companies can continue to profit from exposing kids to chemicals UNTIL actual harm is proven. Given that most health impacts from environmental causes are statistical rather than directly causal, measuring them requires large populations and sorting out a VAST number of potentially confounding factors. This is no small undertaking.
On the flip side, if we follow the precautionary principle, we protect those who would have been exposed, even though SOME PORTION of them would have suffered no harm. In other words, SOME of the chemicals we prohibit turn out NOT to cause harm. And SOME companies will choose NOT to make products from them rather than risk bearing the liability they MIGHT incur.
There are downsides to either choice, but policy-making is often a matter of choices like these. In this case, the Republicans (and Senator Mazza) are saying that theyd rather see SOME innocent people harmed than potentially lose business which may have been perfectly innocent, while Democrats (other than Mazza) are saying the opposite: better to hold innocent people harmless at the risk of losing some innocent business than expose the population as a whole to potential harm.
If the Democrats and VPIRG were truly interested in protecting public health, they would be doing everything possible to support VTANG in getting a different mission besides the F-35 fighter jet.
Instead, they have lined up behind Senator Leahy’s F-35 military Keynesianism to destroy health and home values for thousands and thousands of constituents in Winooski and South Burlington. The newly expanded “not suitable for residential use” zone includes 2 elementary schools; child cares; places of worship; not to mention the homes of thousands of people. Licensed physicians have testified to Burlington City Council about the health consequences.
Democrats Peter Shumlin and Miro Weinberger accepted an all-expenses paid junket to Florida on Ernie Pomerleau arranged private jet to listen to F-35 take off. While wearing enormous noise-cancelling ear muffs to protect his hearing & a G.W. Bush-inspired “Mission Accomplished” flight suit, Shumlin then declared the F-35 quiet as could be, regardless of the Air Force’s own Environmental Impact Statement to the contrary. Shumlin & Shap Smith then suppressed the proposed legislation by now retired Winooski State Representative George Cross to examine the impacts of the F-35.
Why do Mitzi Johnson, Becca Balint and the new legislative leaders remain deafeningly silent on this issue? Why does VPIRG tacitly endorse this? Whose public interest is Paul Burns working for? Is Patrick Leahy’s real estate developer relative & Democratic Party campaign donor Ernie Pomerleau the only person who represents the “public interest”?
Former supporters of the Democratic Party see this toxics legislation for what it is. Politically savvy, token legislation to box in the governor. However, when there are real people and real children suffering real public health consequences thanks to reconfiguration of F-16’s fuel tanks & the F-35 fighter jet basing, the Democrats & VPIRG are no where to be seen.
@ Greenberg: Wasn’t there in fact a study published in a peer-reviewed medical journal in England saying that vaccines caused autism? And didn’t it take many, many years for that study to be found out to be bad science?
@ Greenberg: You say we should follow the so-called pre-cautionary principle. There’s no generally accepted definition of that term. I’ve heard at least Vermont elected official completely misconstrue the term. It means exactly this in layperson’s terms: If we don’t know with 100% certainty that a chemical is not harmful, we shouldn’t allow it. So . . . I’m afraid of a chemical called hydrogen dioxide. It sounds like it could be dangerous. We don’t know if it could be harmful. Therefore, I invoke the “precautionary principle” and we should not allow hydrogen dioxide in children’s products.
But hydrogen dioxide = water.
KnowYourAssumptions: “Wasn’t there in fact a study published in a peer-reviewed medical journal in England saying that vaccines caused autism?” If there was, you should have no difficulty producing a link to it. Please do.
“You say we should follow the so-called pre-cautionary principle.” Actually, I didn’t say that. I tried — in 300 words — to delineate 2 choices and the implications of each. I did describe one as “according to the precautionary principle of what, in Benning’s words, “may” cause harm.,” thus explicitly referring back to what the senator had written so as not to have to repeat it..
For the rest, it’s easy enough to set up a straw man and then knock it down. Senator Benning outlined several conditions — all of which you simply ignore — for what constitutes a chemical which “may” cause harm, one of which is “independent, peer-reviewed scientific research.” Please produce your paper on the dangers of water.
By the way, water IS dangerous. You can drown in it. Indeed, that would be a good place to start your search for a peer-reviewed study on the dangers of hydrogen dioxide (which, by the way, would be di-hydrogen oxide).
Greenberg, I assumed that you — like everybody else in the world — was well aware of the (in)famous study published in The Lancet — England’s premier peer-reviewed medical journal — connecting vaccines with autism. The study was published in 1998 and was on the books for 12 years before it was found out to be fraudulent and retracted by The Lancet. For 12 years internet vaccine conspiracy theorists cited the study as proof of their whackjob beliefs. Anti-vaxxers still cite the study and proclaim that the retraction was part of the pro-vaccine conspiracy. Sen. Benning’s rhetorical point was essentially valid: one can go on the internet and find “science” to support virtually any whackjob belief.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/a…
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lancet
And your meaningless vacillations about whether you really did or did not urge that we follow the so-called “pre-cautionary principle” in avoiding chemicals is just silly. You did.
KnowYourAssumptions: Yes, I am aware of a study retracted years ago. With all due respect, I don’t think that’s what the authors of the legislation we’re discussing had in mind, and I’m quite sure Senator Benning knows that. If the language of the bill needs improvement, so be it. I havent read the bill; I dont have time or interest to do so.
As to what I intended, I am the arbiter of that, not you.
Your ridiculous straw version of the principle does not merit further discussion in any case.
“If the language of the bill needs improvement, so be it. I havent read the bill; I dont have time or interest to do so.”
But you choose to argue over whether Sen. Benning — who clearly has read the bill, as have I — is right or wrong about it?
Now THAT’s ridiculous.
No, I chose to argue with Senator Benning’s comments in a newspaper., not that it’s any of your business what i choose to comment on.
“No, I chose to argue with Senator Benning’s comments in a newspaper”
. . . about whether he’s right or wrong on the meaning and impact of a bill THAT YOU’VE NEVER READ.
Good on ya.