SmartTranscript of House Agriculture – 2025-02-18 – 2:20PM

[Representative Charlie Kimball]: Thank you for the record, Representative Charlie Kimball from Windsor five. So thank you very much for the opportunity to introduce this bill H-one hundred and thirty four. I have not appeared before this committee before, so I, welcome the opportunity. So for first a disclaimer, I am not an expert in current use. It's an extensive chapter in title thirty two of Vermont statutes and with many nuances and definitions. There have been many initiatives over the last thirty years to revise current use. H one hundred and thirty four makes two suggestions, suggested changes. So, first is to make it easier to calculate the land use change tax for property that is withdrawn from current use to make it easier to understand and easier to develop this, to determine the value, determine the tax. The second is to exempt withdrawals of land from current use for the development of affordable housing, provided the land is close to a developed area and does not contribute to forest fragmentation. So a constituent of mine reached out to me a few months ago, actually before I was elected, to withdraw eleven acres of his land from current use because he had to sell his land for financial reasons and because he could no longer physically work the land anymore. He had been doing it for thirty years now in the seventies, he just couldn't do it anymore. And when he was preliminarily calculating the land use change tax, he was appalled and it was well over twenty thousand dollars turns out it's over thirty thousand dollars And he asked me if I could do something about it, because we often get asked as legislators to solve problems that we have absolutely no control over. But here we are in digging in deeper, I discovered what many of you already know, the process of determining the value of the parcel being withdrawn is complex, sometimes takes too long and causes delays in real estate transactions and adds to confusion. Withdrawing land from current use can sometimes impose a penalty that sometimes exceeds the savings and property taxes realized by the owner during the time that he or she has a land and car use. There have been proposals from the Vermont Department of Tax as recently as two years ago, and also from a working group of organizations back in two thousand and nine, to simplify that the process. So this is not new. Well, I believe that we [Chair David Durfee]: had some testimony from the tax department two years ago on changing it, and it was a complicated conversation. [Representative Charlie Kimball]: Very complicated. I've learned a lot more than I thought I needed to know, and, I'm glad for the people to give me the education in that process. While I believe that the primary purpose of current use was to relieve the financial pressure of high property taxes on farmers and foresters, agriculture and silviculture, I did not fully appreciate the dual charge of the use value appraisal system. So in statute, the purpose of use value appraisal, thirty two VSA three thousand seven hundred and fifty for those following at home, the statutory purpose of the Vermont Use Value Appraisal Program in chapter one hundred and twenty four of this chapter is to preserve the working landscape, preserve the rural character of Vermont, protect the natural ecological systems and natural resources of the forest land of Vermont. So it's kinda like the federal reserve trying to maintain full employment while low interest rates. So it's really difficult to do both at the same time. And I didn't understand how the land use change tax was so complicated and that it is intended in part to discourage withdrawals from current use to the preservation in service to the preservation of the natural ecological systems and natural resources in Vermont. So after introducing H one hundred and thirty four with my cosponsors, I was contacted by a local vintner who has been maintaining a vineyard on a thirteen acre parcel of land, which he had leased from the owner. When he purchased the property from the owner, maintained his vineyard, it was considered to be developed. And he was assessed a land use change tax because it was not a minimum of twenty five acres. Same land, same use, new tax. So it is cases like these that can fall through the cracks and cause undue burden on the seller or the farmer. H one hundred and thirty five one hundred and thirty four does not address that issue in particular, but it is something that your committee may wanna consider if you take up the bill. The second section of the bill is to encourage development of affordable housing in areas close to growth centers, village centers or neighborhood development areas. We continue to have a housing shortage, no surprise to anyone here, and it is common sense that where parcels are well situated on a public road, close to town where development won't lead to force fragmentation, that we encourage the development of housing there. Removing the land use change tax on the portion of a parcel that is withdrawn for that use removes another barrier from development. So question is what is fragmentation? Well, the hardest part may be to develop, to determine how to administer of, administer a policy of developed housing that doesn't contribute to fragmentation of land that is enrolled in current use. I mean, by definition, it will fragment the parcel or the block of land if separated from the major parcel in the Oxford dictionary. The process of, fragmentation means the process or state of breaking or being broken into small or separate parts. So by definition, it is fragmentation. However, act one eighteen of two thousand fourteen commissioned a report assessing the current and projected effects of fragmentation on Vermont's forest lands and providing recommendations including regulatory and non regulatory mechanisms and legislation, if appropriate, for how to best protect the integrity of Vermont's forest lands to preserve large blocks of contiguous forest land. So the ensuing report in twenty fifteen is a Vermont forest fragmentation report, said, Force fragmentation is the breaking of large contiguous forested areas into smaller pieces of forest, typically by roads, agriculture, utility corridors, subdivisions, or other human development. That's really talking about just forest fragmentation. We're not talking about agricultural land fragmentation, but they have to consider both in this sense. So what is forest fragmentation? Well, Acts one hundred and seventy one of twenty sixteen, not one thousand sixteen, which I submitted in my testimony because that would precede the Vermont legislature. Is, force fragmentation means the division or conversion of a force block by land development other than via recreational trail or use exempt from regulation under subsection four four one three of this title. So perhaps it is better to consider putting limits on the degree to which the parcel is fragmented that isn't in the bill. So an early construct of the bill applied only to the land that was adjacent to growth centers, village centers, NDAs, designated downtowns, and new town centers. But it turns out that only three of the designated areas have current use and rolled adjacent parcels. And that there were only one hundred and ninety parcels across the state that were adjacent. Now, one could creatively interpret adjacent to mean nearby, but really means a budding. So it increased the number of parcels to consider. We changed the boundary to three miles from those centers. Well, it's a little much. Fourteen point seven thousand parcels out of nineteen thousand in the state that are currently enrolled in current use. That's too much. That is what is currently in the bill. And I'm confident that in your good committee process, you'll come to a distance that is more acceptable. I suggest half a mile, the same as what was contained in Act one hundred and eighty one of twenty twenty four when defining tier 1A and 1B development areas for the development of priority housing projects that would be exempt from Act two fifty. So that's the substance of H134. I've spoken with folks at the agency of natural resources, the department of taxes, the Vermont Natural Resources Council. And there seems to be agreement that the process of determining the land use change tax needs to be simplified. And both the Department of Tax and VNRC have some ideas around that if the current proposal is not acceptable. So I wanna thank you for your consideration. I'd be happy to answer any questions and engage in discussion about the the bill. Thank you. [Chair David Durfee]: So any questions before we move to actually looking at the bill? [Member Richard Nelson]: Chairman Murphy, thank you. Charlie, thank you. This has come up in my community where we have an unusual chunk of public water and public sewer that runs north side of the village up to some mountain resort. Long, let's call the mountain road. Mhmm. Not one way. Use this uniquely long access to public water and public sewer. And there are is conserved or prime ag land that is adjacent to, say, highway adjacent to public water sewer. Then there are discussions about forest land. Small cornfield, basically. But with that, given the crisis nature of affordable or entry level of workforce housing, it may that would be an ideal site. Or you you talk about the forest block, but you do talk about Primag as untouchable. It's in this unique situation. It's a fairly small block. It's away from a river and flood plain. Can you is that a value that you recommend is protecting in this case or that that might give consideration? That's Given that it's absolutely flooding. [Member Jed Lipsky]: It's a [Representative Charlie Kimball]: big it's a big question. I think when representative Nelson and I first met and we discussed the idea of trying to creatively look at how to develop affordable housing in some more rural communities and where land is currently enrolled in current use and where it made sense, to take a parcel of land and devote it towards affordable housing, with the idea that it would be in more rural towns and and characters then would be a Stow or would be a Woodstock necessarily. So I can't speak to that specific thing in question, but, you know, the there's a lot of things in current in current use legislation and the statute about force fragmentation. There's not as much that I have found anyway, and I could be schooled in that around fragmenting agricultural land. I mean, there was protection of prime ag soils, but I don't know from that perspective if it wouldn't apply to that. I don't know. Others would know better. [Member Jed Lipsky]: The the idea, I guess, is perhaps a Kimball bringing up is A lot of firms next to village centers within, you know, of course, the services could have a piece of land that's not paramount to the operation of their farm, be it Primack or not. Could be a small field, kinda like you're describing. And it was so we could have growth in our communities without help. Our communities have enjoyed having this agricultural land, a lot of them for a generation, but there's nowhere for the community to develop and grow. So it's removing the penalty for, you know, entry level workforce type house and not not so somebody can buy the backside of the field and build a five thousand square foot model at back there and call it Shangeland. K. You know, I've got mine. So we can have and, again, maybe even higher density type housing. That's the premise behind this. It's the create opportunities for our neighbors back home. We were I was having breakfast with a bunch of guys Sunday morning, and behind the gas station on the other side of the road, it's an eight eight acre six acre field Right along with water. Sure. And no. I don't. And it's [Chair David Durfee]: a six [Member Jed Lipsky]: acre field on beautiful soils. It's a small field. There could be four, five, six, you know, thousand, twelve hundred square foot homes built on that. A nice little community right there for people that it's right off the interstate, right downtown, right across from Boeing range, big facility, close to the high school, junior high school, a great close to the hospital, great place for people to start a family or start life. So that's the idea behind it. [Chair David Durfee]: I could that's some good context. Why don't we have Kirby come on up? Thank you. Representative Campbell, please stay if you would like. [Representative Charlie Kimball]: Before I go, I mean, that's what Richard was speak what representative Nelson was speaking to specifically there is when we were talking about trying to minimize the impact of the development of a property being withdrawn from current use on the rest of the forest block, if it's a forest block, where the the wildlife corridors difficult to define and in terms of how you do that responsibly. But that's what we're reaching for. That's what we wanted to do. [Chair David Durfee]: Thank you. Kirby, I think this is your first time in our committee in a while? That's right. Never. Yeah. [Kirby Keaton]: I think I I popped in for one thing last session. So I've heard the Keaton legislative council. I have sold the tax portfolio for our office. So the tax side of current use. I'm sure you're familiar with micro gravy handles from more of the policy side of of current use. So you don't see me as often. Usually, it's because land use change tax comes up. Yeah. So would you like me to share our screen and walk through the video that way? [Chair David Durfee]: He would bring it up. [Kirby Keaton]: I think I'm waiting to connect to Zoom. Right. [22 seconds of silence] [Member Richard Nelson]: Right. So we have [Kirby Keaton]: h one thirty four, And there are two sections. The bill that we can wait for things to get done. [Member Jed Lipsky]: Sorry. [Chair David Durfee]: If it's too dim, we can turn the light up. Yeah. No. No. Lights on open. [Kirby Keaton]: I know that everyone can see it. Okay. So the the first section makes the change to the calculation when a portion of a parcel is removed from the program. Under current law, PBR calculates land exchange tax based off of well, working with the listeners, of course, calculates land exchange tax based on if that portion of a parcel were to be valued as its own separate parcel, which requires some work on the applicable lister to go in and and figure that out. So in the normal course of things, the value for the entire parcel that's enrolled would be on the grand list already. And because there's the current use hold harmless payment, that's something that that we make sure is is kept up and accurate. So we know the value of the entire parcel, but when there's a portion that needs to be valued, that requires extra work and PVR work with the listers to try to get that right. I will leave it to the department to describe the whole problem created by doing it this way. But I understand that it's it's inefficient, and it causes big delays, I think, is is what's been told about about the outcome of of doing it this way. So what the bill does is it reverts this calculation based back to being based on what it used to be. I think I don't know. Maybe, you know, in the last ten years, I think this change was made. So it used to be that when a portion of a parcel was removed, that the value would be based on prorated based on based on acreage that was being removed. So you would take that value that's on the grand list that we know, and you proportionally you proportionally figure out the value based on if if fifty percent's removed, then fifty percent of the value is what you would use for the loan use change tax calculation. So much easier, something that could, in theory, at least be done right away on paper because the granularist value is already known. So that that's my understanding about about why this was preferable and why PBR has said that this causes problems in the real world, having the proration done the way it is under current law. Are there any questions about So that's [Chair David Durfee]: simple change it from taking out that one bit of language and then putting in the prorated language. Yep. And that's Basically, that they only change in section one. [Kirby Keaton]: That's right. And and those words you see there are what the old law used to say verbatim, so there's no confusion about what to do. [Chair David Durfee]: Ripping the new brand? So it's [Speaker 5 ]: once you're gonna withdraw it, it's based on the fair market value of of the entire parcel? [Kirby Keaton]: So the what listeners and assessors are supposed to do under the law is to is determine the fair market value of the parcel. And and so the grand list value is the fair market value except for few exceptional cases. So when we say fair market value, yes, pretty much the same thing as the grand list value in practice. Under current law, the grand list value is known for the entire parcel, but they have to do extra work to figure out what would it be if it's some parcel. [Chair David Durfee]: Could you go back actually maybe to the previous the bottom of the previous page? Maybe and just walk us just walk us through because I I think that well, the change itself is pretty straightforward. We we not all of us anyway are fairly familiar with existing law. So just I mean, I think it might be helpful just to read that. Yeah. [Kirby Keaton]: Okay. Obviously, this year. So some background about about energy change? [Chair David Durfee]: Either background or just reading yeah. Just give us a chance, sir. You could read it aloud and we could follow along and then ask questions if [Kirby Keaton]: we have them. Sure. Would you prefer that I read it or just or just explain the background? [Chair David Durfee]: Yeah. Explaining it would be Okay. That's fine too. Yeah. [Kirby Keaton]: So when you change taxes, the tax of ten percent of the fair market value of changed land. So it's it's quite high. That's probably gonna be years worth of of the equivalent of property taxes. So if a parcel is is developed or if it's unenrolled, then land use change tax can apply. There's some there's some other details about there's some exemptions, and there's some some other details about about places where where ways it won't apply. The fair market value, as we said, is the grand list value. That's what that means when it says that. And then the, you know, the assessing official is going to to decide that value. When it comes to unenroll having a portion of the parcel unenrolled, there has to be a distinct valuation that's done that's not already on the grand list. It's on the books. And one other detail to know about this is that PVR will put a lien on the land when land use change tax is owed. So there's a permanent lien that's reported to ensure that the land use change tax gets gets paid, and that doesn't get removed until until it's either paid or shown to be exempt or or something else. So that's that's the general overview of of how the exchange tax works. [Chair David Durfee]: So it doesn't really matter [Speaker 5 ]: as far as the acreage whether it was being being taxed at, say, the forested acre per acre amount or the ag land per acre amount. [Kirby Keaton]: Those that doesn't come into that equation at all. Correct. Okay. [Chair David Durfee]: That represents [Member Jed Lipsky]: Thank you. So if you took five acres of land off a field and you were gonna sell it for ease of figuring ten thousand dollars an acre to be developed. The tax of that would be ten percent of that ten thousand dollars per acre? [Kirby Keaton]: It doesn't matter what you're selling it for. It matters what how the town would value it. [Member Jed Lipsky]: It did. So if you sold it for ten, but the town figured it was worth twenty, then you're gonna pay ten percent of the twenty five. And [Kirby Keaton]: it the one reason why this was changed in the first place is that when you take two acres out of a hundred acres, it's gonna be probably more valuable than just two percent of the whole parcel because that lot starts to increase in value because it could be, you know, developed. And it that's just what happens. Like, the smaller the parcel generally, the, like, more it's worth per acreage. So this results tends to result in higher land use change tax owed. [Member Richard Nelson]: But [Kirby Keaton]: the calculation to get there according to PVR and other folks in the field has caused a lot of inefficiencies and a lot of delays. [Member Jed Lipsky]: Well, that's one of the problems with the whole process. We have a parcel of land, and they figured it was worth they got messed up with current use. I think they had the value of it about ninety thousand dollars an acre. That big big crazy number. Really caused us consternation. And and it's a big track of land, and I almost said, well, if you want vintage worth that, just write the check, and [Member Richard Nelson]: you can own it. Yeah. It's half of that. [Member Jed Lipsky]: We'll we'll we'll we'll pay we'll pay ten percent on it. [Chair David Durfee]: Okay. Representative O'Brien. [Speaker 5 ]: So is there a difference from the PVR point of view if, say, representative Nelson, you know, is gonna split off his ten acres of a hundred and he had development in mind because it it worked for, you know, being near a village or whatever as opposed to just taking it out. Like, do those kind of decisions influence the listers at all, or they're just looking at the parcel and saying, oh, it's worth this much to the town? [Kirby Keaton]: Their market value is decided based on the highest and best use. They will not take a specific use that is into into mind. They're not supposed to do that. K. It's supposed to be based on what's the highest and best use. It's supposed to be systematic across the town. They have land schedules for their town that are that have the value of acreage based on different, you know, qualities. So it's it's it's more formulaic. It's not gonna be, oh, it's it's being sold to a department store. That's gonna probably be worth a lot. Let's take that in account. No. They don't do that. Even though they might know who the the potential buyer is, whether that's a developer or whether it's Yeah. Because gonna be If they did that, then we'd have real problems in being able to rely on our brand list if it was anecdotal like that, if it was taking, like, a specific sale into account. That's like, we have the equalization study and we have, like, CLAs. We have all this stuff to ensure that it's actually systematic across the board and that they're not doing that. They're not chasing sales. That's a term that they use. [Chair David Durfee]: Right. Yeah. [Member Richard Nelson]: I've got two questions. What is PVR, Stan? [Kirby Keaton]: I'm sorry. It's the, division of property evaluation and review. It's part of the Department of Taxes that oversees property valuation, current use. I think they've done some they used to be a couple other things. I think they've moved into the department, but but it's, you know, it's the the property tax side of the department. Are they [Member Richard Nelson]: a state entity? Or [Kirby Keaton]: Absolutely. They're they're part of this the Vermont Department of Taxes. [Member Richard Nelson]: My second point is continually get referred referred to the grand list. Mhmm. And, like, I'll give a community I'm very familiar with that I live in. They had just did a entire new reappraise on the grand list went from two point one billion to five point five billion. So that's over a period of eleven and a half or twelve years. [Chair David Durfee]: Mhmm. [Member Richard Nelson]: It's a town that had the way with with all to do what was asked of them. But let's say if the two hundred and fifty one in the in Vermont, most of them have not even begun or have the the in house infrastructure or way with all that do that. So some talents are going with numbers. It might be eighteen years old or fifteen years. So there's no equity there per se. Should they take a common level of Yes. Land, like in the end? [Kirby Keaton]: That's that's what the CLA does is that it it makes up for those differences and yep. [Speaker 6 ]: So the number that would be used to say you have a hundred acres, you carve out two, you would take and do whatever that hundred acres is worth at the time according to the numbers that the tax department has to work with, or do they have to go get another evaluation done on the whole property? [Kirby Keaton]: Current law is you gotta do extra work, value those two acres, and if they were their own part if the it's one parcel. What this bill changes is instead of that, you would say two acres out of a hundred acre parcel, that's two percent. What's two percent of the value of the hundred acre parcel? [Speaker 6 ]: That they currently have for a [Kirby Keaton]: That they that's that's yeah. Cool. I mean, that could I'm not saying that PVR couldn't look at whether that's accurate or not and make some adjustments. But but, yeah, that's that's the gist of it. Thanks. Yep. [Chair David Durfee]: Right. Well, should we one just another question? Yeah. Just one more more [Speaker 5 ]: quick one. So at at this level, there's nothing to do with soil types like Primax, so that would all be in a, like, an act two fifty trigger. Right? Or with the listers, do they assess at all based on soil quality? Land schedules [Kirby Keaton]: might be getting outside of my expertise because I'm not a lister. Lance guest Lance schedules might take that sort of thing in account for value. I'm not sure. I know that they do make a lot of little adjustments up and down. In preparing for this, I was I was looking over some of PGR's documents. I saw that for a right of way, that's considered development if you're giving a right of way, and and you will lend exchange tax if if you have a if you're giving, like, say, power line right away through through your farm. In that case, they'll take that land value, but then then they'll discount it a lot for that right of way because it's not worth as much now that there's power lines sitting there. So they multiply it by something like point one. So this so it's it's valued. It's basically as if it lost ninety percent of its value. And then and that's how they would calculate the exchange tax for the value there. [Speaker 5 ]: But, like, contiguous to, say, municipal power and sewer, would that increase its value then once it is fair market? [Kirby Keaton]: It might make it a different land type, but that that's that's getting out of my wheelhouse a little bit where I'm not sure what the specific things are. I just but I do know that there's a lot of them that can adjust it up and down in value based on factors that we were talking about. But I just don't know exactly what they are, though. [Chair David Durfee]: Right. Why don't we yeah. I just wanna be sure we have time to go through the rest of the bill. Okay. But then we'll Yeah. [Kirby Keaton]: So so what we have next is, so there's there's a few exemptions that exist for land use change tax, in current law. Most of the existing exemptions have to do with land that's being withdrawn for public use, like it's being donated to the US Forest Service, it's being donated to state of Vermont for parks, something like that, or or conservation, like, there's an exemption for certain types of conservation easements or restrictions for conservation. Those tend to be the kinds of exemptions that land use change tax has. This adds a new exemption that's a little different because this one is for housing located near municipalities. So we've got land so this is an exemption. Land withdrawn from municipality appraisal is exempt from the levy of land use change tax under this section provided, and then we have a number of requirements, all of which have to be met. First requirement, the withdrawn land fronts an existing public road. That's pretty easy to verify. Number two, the land is withdrawn to develop affordable housing. And then the definition here is affordable housing under the municipal planning chapter of title twenty four. The the definition is based off of housing that will be that's that where the cost of living there, whether it's rental or owner occupied, meets is low enough that certain income thresholds can pay for it. That is how that's determined. One thing to flag here is in practice, if someone's going to use this exemption, the question comes up would PVR we know we all know PVR is the one administering this and and making these calls. Would PVR allow the exemption without proof and require maybe an attestation or something they could go and audit later? Or would PVR choose to, require that the person trying to claim the exemption prove right now somehow that this is going to be used for affordable housing? Since you're talking about an exemption for something that's going to happen in the future based on it based on a use, if that's an open question with the language here, it's there's an open question of how PVR might interpret this. One would be more broad, where it will be allowable, and then it could be audited later. The other would be a lot harder to prove. You pretty much have to have your development lined up and be able to show some evidence that, yes, there's a developer here ready. This is their project plan or, you know, give some details about how this will definitely be affordable housing. So that's a question with this, and it's something that could be tightened up if we want to make sure that the the PVR administers this in a particular way. So then moving on, the third requirement is the withdrawn land is part of or no more than three miles from the boundary of a state designated downtown or village center, planned growth area, or designated neighborhood. And the definition is under a chapter one thirty nine of title twenty four. Representative Kimball mentioned this before. He had done his own research and found that that three miles incorporates quite a lot of current use parcels and mentioned that half mile might work for him as well. This is something I would say just from an administration standpoint, my own analysis. So is at least this is something that you can verify. It's something that if you're going to claim the exemption, someone can check yes or no. Are you are you within that, distance? And then the fourth requirement is that the withdrawal does not result in fragmentation of an existing parcel. The way I read this as it's written would require the whole parcel to be enrolled. [Member Richard Nelson]: New role. [Kirby Keaton]: Yeah. That that I'm reading I would read that to mean the fragmentation of the parcel. You can't subdivide the parcels the way that I would read that. I don't think that that was the intent. And I think that as representative Kimball mentioned, there's a lot of discussion to take place about, well, what how do you wanna define this? How do you want to get at this? So I would flag this as one of the biggest things in the bill for the committee to consider and to try to develop a process or a system that gets out at what your policy goals are. And, you know, what does fragmentation mean? Is it ag? Is it wildlife? Things to be figured out. [Member Jed Lipsky]: And Lipsky. Yeah. Counselor, [Member Richard Nelson]: in the World Caucus in the last couple of years, we've had a lot of concern for rural Vermont farm families as summer going out, summer new generation coming, but there's a need for some transition of some of that, farm's land to the next generation, children or grandchildren for their own housing. And we had advocated that some of that transition generational transition to keep them in Vermont, raising families in Vermont, working land needed to be some exemption or some vehicle. And I think this bill, h one thirty four, has potential to address that challenge. But this category four, as the language reads to me seems to be a serious hurdle that the the farm the family doing this subdivision has a very clear intent. It's not to take the land out of. Just maybe the adequate portion or a long hedge roadway within an access road. So I really like the intent of this bill on, but it it obvious. So this is a bunch of work. [Chair David Durfee]: But I say that Dutch counsel can't really comment on Some of the or or concur or agree with you on on on as far as the whether he likes the bill or the intent. Representative Nelson. [Member Jed Lipsky]: Would it be better to say the withdrawal does not result in undue undue hardship or ruination of the of the remaining parcel? So, you know, if you have a twenty five acre field and you don't wanna go and plop something into the middle of it or, you know, you work off the edges or the frontage to create can take the rest of it to be, you know, know, to Contiguous. Contiguous. I I keep wanting to contagious because that's what I call it at home. [Speaker 6 ]: Oh, yeah. You know, in [Member Jed Lipsky]: the back, you know, leaving leaving leaving the the intended identity of the agricultural land, but allowing [Kirby Keaton]: it. I would suggest that what you come up with that you try to make it as objective as possible. If it's if it's subjective, like, something like undue burden could be subjective. But if you if you're able to come up with an objective measurable ways, to administer this, then at least you'll know that it could be consistently applied. If the more subjectivity you have in something like this, the more you're leaving it up to staff in the executive branch to make judgment calls that maybe you would would or would not agree with. So I I would suggest that you try to make it objective and determine first what does fragmentation mean to you that you want to protect against, and how can you objectively put that into the law so that it can be applied equally. [Member Jed Lipsky]: No. The the other part of that when you spoke to, you know, when it comes out and you know, how do we know it's gonna be developed in the manner that we're intending? And, you know, you spoke to, you know, if someone does someone should someone be required to have the plans all laid out, you know, this is what we're doing. We're coming in with higher density, you know, eleven hundred square foot homes. We're not gonna go in and build a three thousand square foot home in the middle of it, call that affordable workforce housing. Is there [Chair David Durfee]: that ask about something we heard, I think, when when the tax department first came in a couple of weeks ago and was talking about current use, and that was that if you you can take land out of current use and not have to pay the penalty in some cases if you're not until it's developed. So you might decide to not enroll anymore, perhaps because you've gotten to a point where you physically can't continue to farm it, but you're not assessed the penalty until the time comes when you develop it. Mhmm. Wonder if there are an opportunity here to say, you know and and I'm not sure that I completely understand the nuance of the existing law around that point. But if here, if you were not assessed the penalty until you developed it, that you'd sort of be able to get around this problem. And then if you developed it as a McMansion, you assess the penalty. If it's affordable housing, then you're not. [Kirby Keaton]: Yeah. And we could we could try to specify that this exemption could be used in that case [Chair David Durfee]: So so after the fact. I wanna see if there's any other questions about what's currently here before we get too far into a bill that we are going to have to figure out how much more work we do on it. Any questions about what's in the bill? [Speaker 5 ]: Just one what you mentioned, Kirby, are are there other provisions for that sort of attestation, you know, like I aspire to this? Because there'd be no guarantee you could you could eventually get to with having to go through active fifty that that, you know, that you might be blocked with that, and so affordable housing might not even happen. [Kirby Keaton]: In the Vermont tax code, yes. There are instances where there's an attestation. A lot of our tax code is voluntary voluntary compliance more than me people probably realize, for sure, lying on people to be honest. That said, though, I don't know that the department loves having things like that because part of their job is tax compliance, and it makes it difficult for them to do that. So there is, you know, some tension there for you to decide how much honor system you want and how much verification on the front end you you would prefer instead. [Chair David Durfee]: Alright. Good. Well, thanks for walking us through. We've did we get to the end? I can actually Yes. Did. Okay. Effective date. The first. Okay. Alright. Good. Representative Kimball, did just before you leave, did you have anything else you wanted to say? [Representative Charlie Kimball]: No. I think there's some very good background information suggestions for the NRC, DVR, ANR. [Kirby Keaton]: So Yeah. [Chair David Durfee]: Good. K. Lots of resources. [Member Jed Lipsky]: Yeah. [Chair David Durfee]: Alright. We are thank thank you, Kirby. Let's just take four or five minutes if anybody needs a quick break, and then we'll be right back with Michael Grady.

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SmartTranscript of House Agriculture – 2025-02-18 – 2:20PM

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