Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin will soon have the opportunity to sign into law the state’s first False Claims Act. The House voted Wednesday to approve the Senate version of H.120, which is modeled after the federal law.
This is an important step for taxpayers in Vermont who will finally have a vehicle with which to recover money that has been stolen from the state.
Once signed, Vermont will join 31 other states, the District of Columbia, and several cities and counties that already have False Claims Acts on the books.
In the fiscal year of 2014 alone, the U.S. government recovered close to $6 billion under only the federal law so Vermont has a lot to gain from having its own False Claims Act.
According to this article, from 2010 to 2014, Vermont’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, with help from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Justice, collected $23.5 million in settlements — an amount that would have been much greater had the state had its own version of the law.
We’ll monitor the progress and let you know when it’s official.
