It was good to see so many of you at Town Meeting. I was honored to again serve as moderator for the Underhill ID Annual meeting. Thank you to all who filled out the Senator Doyle Annual Town Meeting survey. I have tabulated the results for our towns and have posted the results on my web site www.RepBillFrank.com. When the statewide totals are available I will post them as well. The Legislature takes the week of Town Meeting off so all legislatures can be at their Town Meetings. Coming back we had a busy week to finish up work on bills before the "crossover" date. Crossover is the date agreed on by the Speaker of the House and the Senate Pro Tempore. Bills have to be voted out of committee in order to be taken up by the other chamber during this session.

     My Human Services committee has worked long hours in order to meet the crossover deadline for three bills, all dealing with the protection of children. H.635 "Reports of Child Abuse or Neglect" will establish a differential response system for reports of child abuse and neglect and establish a tiered system for the Child Abuse and Neglect Registry. One suggestion I made was to rename the registry "Child Protection Registry". H.615 "Juvenile Judicial Proceeding reorganizes the laws that address court procedures for delinquent, abused and neglected children to provide a more user-friendly and clearer statutes for both the legal practitioner and lay parties to use. The body of juvenile case law has been developed over the last 30 years and is preserved in the bill. The bill incorporates some current Vermont practices that are not in statute, as well as national best practices. These two bills both will be presented to the full House next week.

     I wrote about H.352 "Protecting Children from Lead Hazards" in the March 6th issue of the Mt. Gazette. That article and all of the articles written by myself and Rep. Symington for the Mt. Gazette are on my web site.

     I enjoy hearing from you, contact me at Rep.BillFrank@verizon.net, 899-3136 or
19 Pokerhill Rd, Underhill 05489.