The camera and streaming technology adopted by the Vermont Legislature during the Covid-19 pandemic continues to have a lasting impact on how lawmakers interact with the public and each other, such as during a joint meeting of the House and Senate education committees at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Thursday, March 13. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerMONTPELIER — Five years ago this month, the Vermont Legislature decided to adjourn — for at least a week — as lawmakers’ concerns about the spread of Covid-19 began to mount.“We’ll see what happens,” then-House Speaker Mitzi Johnson said, as Statehouse staff started preparing to close off the building. “A week or two from now, I can’t imagine where we’ll be.”It would be far longer than that, of course, before lawmakers got back to business as usual. Reported cases of Covid-19 soon exploded across the state, and by May, when the House and Senate would have adjourned for the year under normal circumstances, the virus was sending dozens of people at a time to the hospital and had killed at least 55, according to state data.Legislators conducted most of their business from home in 2020 and 2021, with staff scrambling to stand up meetings on Zoom and livestreams of those proceedings on YouTube. Lawmakers planned to return to the building in 2022, but then backtracked over concerns about Covid-19’s highly transmissible Omicron variant. It wasn’t until January 2023 that lawmakers gaveled in for a legislative session that would, ultimately, take place entirely within the Statehouse walls.If an immediate impact of the pandemic was to push legislative work out of Montpelier, though,  one lasting impact, five years on, has been the way it jolted a deeply analog institution into the digital world — and, in many ways, made lawmakers’ process more accessible to the public.After coming back into the Statehouse for good, lawmakers opted to continue streaming video of their work, prompting a need for new cameras and screens throughout the building. “When the Legislature returned to some version of in-person operations, it was immediately clear to both legislators and staff that this type of technology, this type of access to the legislative process, was invaluable — and would never go away,” said Kevin Moore, director of the state’s Office of Legislative Information Technology, who helped lead that process.More people are testifying in committees than before the pandemic — no doubt because they can do so from their homes and offices, sometimes avoiding a long drive from far corners of the state, Statehouse leaders agreed in recent interviews. There are also likely more eyes on each committee’s work, they said, with each hearing streamed and archived on YouTube.Previously, committee work was relatively difficult for the general public to access. Hearings were audio recorded, but the sound quality was often spotty and tapes hard to come by. Only floor proceedings — again, in audio form — were livestreamed, thanks to Vermont Public.Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden-Central, who has served in the chamber since 2011, called the changes “one of the real silver linings of the pandemic.”“I think what we have is a more robust process all the way around, with many more people participating,” he said. “So, it’s an ironic legacy of the pandemic — which was ‘don’t get together’ — that we now have many more people involved in the government process.”Frustration and flexibilityRemote legislating wasn’t without its hiccups, Baruth said. Some meetings faced technical problems that prevented the public from viewing the proceedings live online, and lawmakers did not always halt their work in the meantime. At least one hearing, meanwhile, was hacked.First-time lawmakers, especially, were frustrated by the challenges of learning the ropes of the job from home, missing out on the informal conversations with colleagues that are key to political work.Others, including those legislators who work other jobs during the session, found the remote life offered a newfound degree of flexibility. In the years since lawmakers returned to the building, and concerns over the spread of Covid-19 subsided, they’ve kept some form of rules allowing one another to attend or participate in committee hearings or floor proceedings remotely.In January, for instance, the House approved updated guidelines allowing its members to cast up to three votes remotely in committees, for any reason, for the rest of the calendar year.House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, said changes to allow remote participation also make it easier for legislators who have young children, or are taking care of elderly parents, to serve in Montpelier — which she’s seen as a step forward. “I think there’s a recognition, that we didn’t have before, that flexibility is really important,” said Krowinski, who’s been in the House since 2012. “I think that is something that’s good, and that we’ve made progress on. And I’m not sure that would have happened if it wasn’t for Covid.”Easily-accessible video recordings have also changed the way some lawmakers approach their work in committee hearings, according to John Bloomer, the secretary of the Senate. Bloomer said some, in his view, seem less inclined to speak candidly than they were in the past. “I don’t think you get the exact same debate you used to,” said Bloomer, himself a former senator who’s had his job as the chamber’s top rule-keeper and counselor since 2011.Before the cameras were in use, “being around a good committee was like being around a kitchen table in a Vermont family. When you discussed things, sometimes you’d say really stupid things, and sometimes you (didn’t),” he continued in an interview. “I think people are a little more hesitant, given all the broadcasting, to actually discuss in front of the live cameras.”Back in the buildingThe flip side, Bloomer acknowledged, is that the technology makes it easier for the public to hold lawmakers accountable for what they say. A common scene in the Statehouse includes reporters, as well as lobbyists, hunched over laptop screens watching YouTube recordings of live or past proceedings — sometimes while others are taking place in front of them.Rebecca Ramos, a lobbyist with the Montpelier-based Necrason Group, called the remote access “amazing” — though said it sometimes discourages advocates from attending hearings in person, where it’s easiest to impress on lawmakers and pick up on their many reactions. Ramos encourages her clients to come into the Statehouse whenever they can.After years of Zoom work, “we basically had to retrain our clients,” she said. “Like, no, you don’t get to stay home on Zoom. If you want this change to happen, you have to be in the building.”The return of in-person legislating brought its own challenges, too. Vermont’s Statehouse is notoriously short on space, with cramped committee rooms that were prone to spreading disease even before considerations over airflow and ventilation were commonplace.(Officials have been in the process of overhauling the building’s HVAC system in recent years, though those plans predate the pandemic.)In late 2021, lawmakers ordered the Statehouse’s sergeant-at-arms to impose room capacity limits ahead of their planned return to the building. But those limits later sparked criticism from leaders of news organizations across the state when several reporters were turned away from covering committee hearings in-person, because the rooms had reached their limits.Legislative leaders increased some committee room limits shortly after in response. Concerns over disease-spreading also prompted lawmakers to shuffle some committees around the building to rooms that offered more space — including two large rooms on the building’s first floor, Nos. 10 and 11, that were previously used for many public meetings.Covid-19 also renewed conversations about longstanding proposals to expand the footprint of the Statehouse and create new committee rooms and other public spaces. Progress toward an expansion has been slow, with a legislative panel last fall sending one proposal back to the drawing board over concerns its roughly $11.5 million cost was too high, WCAX reported.It wasn’t until this year that House committees moved out of rooms 10 and 11, after two new committee rooms were built out on the building’s mezzanine level. Baruth, the pro tem, said he thought that returning those rooms to public use also brought back a sense of normalcy.“To me, that’s really the bookend of the COVID era — is those rooms coming back,” he said.Read the story on VTDigger here: 5 years ago, Covid-19 shuttered the Vermont Statehouse. Then, it opened up the building in new ways. ...read more read less