Rep. Zak Harvey: Concerns "fallen on deaf ears on the Democratic side" - Press Conference 3/18/25

afternoon and I am I'm also going to keep my remarks very brief but I'm going to be discussing uh the public safety uh package and the inaction that we've seen uh by House Democrats the Democ Democratic Party more broadly i think one of the things in that we've heard in common from both my colleagues here thus far is that our constituents our communities and Vermoners are begging and uh really are demanding change of all of us here in Montielar and it has fallen on deaf ears on the Democratic side of the house and I think that is one of the most concerning things because time truly is of the essence when you look at House Bill H411 which is the governor's proposed omnibus to address some of the public safety concerns that we're seeing in our community it has like other bills that you just heard has remained on the wall there's been complete disarray on the Democratic side and what they've done is they've selectively taken out pieces of the bill uh and are addressing those in peace meals so what we've seen in the committee is you know we recently saw H49 which is a bail revocation bill which simply certainly doesn't go far enough and we've seen concerns um uh both within the committee but of course here uh with the caucus and I think we are going to come up with some very creative solutions to make sure that the Democrats uh really will be required to act on this and to really start addressing the concerns that we're hearing from Vermoners additionally we saw a bill come out on recidivism the definition thereof house Judiciary the chair punched this over to House Corrections and they most likely aren't going to be taking it up at all and most notably you saw H2 last week where Republicans uh my colleague Representative Maguire offered a really compelling amendment to the to H2 uh to really address the age which is one of the biggest concerns that we hear uh in our communities both big and small across the state and really what this did it you know the Democrats would love to characterize this as a repeal uh of raise the age legis legislation but if you look at step one that was implemented you know just a number of years ago what we were really looking to do is simply sunset step two uh and maintain the status quo i think that was a really principled and I think was a very common sense solution that the Republican caucus presented and you saw that it was voted unanimously upon by our caucus and even had Democratic support so I think the question that we have for Democratic leadership is when will the party start acting when will we start providing solutions to verers that are desperate for some kind of change here in the state and the simple answer is that we cannot wait until 2026 and further elections for for change to happen here in the state uh and lastly you know I would just say that the things that I'm hearing you know during town meeting week and when I go back to my home district and speak to my constituents is I'm hearing that people are frustrated they are exhausted and they are ready for their legislators that have been duly elected to affect change on their behalf and I'm obviously happy to take questions at the very end