SmartTranscript of House Government Operations-2025-03-11-3:05PM

[Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: We're live. Okay. Thank you. Alright, folks. I think we figured out the glitch. [Chair Matthew Birong]: You can hear us, mister Burnham? [Witness Douglas Farnham]: Yes. I can, mister chair. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Wonderful. We can hear you crystal me, so thank you for that patience again. Alright, Betty. We are we wanted to hear from mister Farnham. There was based on conversations leading up to break week, council has offered a revised draft that is the Or or no. No. No. Excuse me. I'm looking at the wrong draft. I apologize. We have, h three ninety seven as introduced in Infarhus right now. And we've had a couple of conversations with mister Farnham, so I just asked him to come in and offer feedback on, provisions with the other bill. So they will do it, sir. [Witness Douglas Farnham]: Thank you, mister chair. So for the record, Douglas Farnham, chief recovery officer for the state of Vermont. I'll start with section one, the emergency management division duties and budget. And one note I have there is that this modification to title twenty, section three a is actually redundant with title twenty, section forty one. The state emergency management plan is is created in in section forty one for this exact same purpose. Now the reference in current statute is much higher level. So but it does the emergency management plan is the the all hazard repairness response and recovery framework. And, again, that section could maybe be built on to right now, it it charges the division with coordinating among state, local, private volunteer entities, and that could maybe be spelled out a little bit more explicitly about who they will collaborate with. It also says shall create and republish as needed, but not less than every five years. And that timeline could be, you know, reconsidered to be more specific. But I do think that that this section one is primarily duplicative of of that. And the the elements that are built in number four here, I think those are are, you know, rather detail level elements that the s three ten of last year established the a report out from the director of Vermont emergency management. Now that that after action review is being conducted through June thirtieth, and then the report out is on December fifteenth of this year. And I think some of these elements and would be part and parcel of that same after action review process that is still being conducted. And so I think if the legislature wanted to build on what was done in s three ten of last year and build on the current statutory structure of the state emergency management plan, then, a task force or other working group could be created to work with the director of emergency management and, also the the emergency management director at the Agency of Human Services who, works on the individual side of of recovery and and response, in order to update make all of those updates and tweaks to the state emergency management plan. But I do think that's the most appropriate vehicle for the content that is being sought after in section one. K. Section two. This one piece of context I'd like to offer the committee is that we currently, the state of Vermont being the we here, currently bond for approximately fifty million dollars a year for our capital construction needs. So the entire capital bill that a lot of attention gets put onto is about fifty million dollars, that we borrow for every year. And I'm refining my review of municipal debt related to disasters over the last two years, but there has been an estimate of over three hundred million dollars of municipal damage over the last two years, and we are somewhere in the realm of sixty five million or so reimbursed by FEMA. Now some of that three hundred million and one reason I have to do the analysis is some of that's for work that hasn't been completed yet. It's damaged. It's not money that's been spent by municipalities. So we are doing a cash flow analysis to see how much debt municipalities are carrying right now, but it is extremely significant. And, for context, I would say that the the debt that municipalities are carrying right now is roughly on the same order of magnitude or exceeding the entire capital bill for the state of Vermont. So this section, to establish the, you know, the ability to to lend to municipalities in the expectation of interest free loans, etcetera, would have an extremely high price tag attached to it in in the in the event of a statewide major disaster declaration. I do also think that, the financial assistance the Vermont Emergency Management makes sense to administer and pass through FEMA grants to the towns, but it doesn't necessarily it isn't necessarily the most logical choice for financial assistance. And I think the expertise in that realm lies more with the treasurer's office and with the Vermont Bond Bank. So those are the major elements of of section two that I wanted to point out. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Thank you for that. Does anybody have any questions for mister Barton with this? Representative Waters Evans. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Thank you. It so you're saying that that that there's in the previous section you were discussing, there was a redundancy. Then you were saying that that there's going to be high price on this and and all these other things. So do you have, like, recommended actions, or are you saying you just think it's better to eliminate these things for the bill altogether? Are you making a recommendation at this point, or are you just pointing stuff out? [Witness Douglas Farnham]: So my recommendation for the first section would be that it could be approached two ways. If the committee strongly feels that additional detail is needed below the state in the in the section for the state emergency management plan, then I would recommend pulling up that section and considering edits or additions, clarifications in that section. But I do think because Vermont Emergency Management is doing an after action review and will be reporting back in December, the formation of a task force to work with the emergency management director could could be beneficial to inform more specific recommendations next year. So I do think that this section could be pulled or replaced with a task force. But if it were at least aligned with the existing statutory structure, then it it would reduce the risk of of confusion. And, because it is right now, I think a near complete overlap with what the state emergency management plan does. For section two, I don't think I I would recommend removal because of the large price tag and the fact that, you know, in order to do something like this, it would be in at least in the double digits of millions of dollars, and that's not contemplated in the budget. And it would have to, I would think, accompany something from house appropriations to identify the funds for it. There's a lot of overlap here with the work that the treasurer's office is doing on the resilience implementation strategy, and I think that work is is underway, a partnership with the agency of natural resources and the and the treasurer's office. So, yes, I guess those are my recommendations for the first two sections. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Alright. That moves us on to section three. [Witness Douglas Farnham]: Section three, that is currently structured as an additional section. So section it'd be twenty VSA fifty one. And from a from a statutory perspective, the community resilience and disaster mitigation grant program is is section forty eight of title twenty. And this buyout program currently exists at Vermont Emergency Management underneath the community the community resilience and disaster mitigation program. And, more specifically, if you go into section forty eight and the types of grant awards VM is authorized to give, projects that implement disaster mitigation measures, adaptation, or repair, including watershed restoration, similar activities that directly reduce risks to communities, lives, public collections of historic value, and property. And so that's a higher level kind of catchall language. I do think the danger whenever, you have so a buyout program is authorized in law and is currently funded with one time, general funds. And I think that this more specific, buyout program wouldn't necessarily change anything other than pulling in the agency of commerce and community development. So I do think this section is is is redundant. Now one thing that could be done instead of section adding a section fifty one is there could be a clarification added to section forty eight of title twenty to explicitly say buyouts of personal property. Now reading the current statutory language, I am very confident that buyouts are incorporated in in that broader language. But if it was just an additive clarification that didn't constrict the program or constrain it, then I don't think there'd be any harm in clarifying that buyouts are part of that program. The current version of the community resilience and disaster mitigation program, You know, it's established within the Department of Public Safety, and their primary coordination is right now written as with Department of Environmental Conservation. I think that just represents a different perspective of having them coordinate with DEC instead of ACCD. But I would say if we if we force the department to coordinate with too many agencies in in the design of the program, it can get it can get bogged down. So I think when when that program was created last year, DEC, environmental conservation was identified as the primary partner in a buyout situation. ACCD is much more involved in how you compensate for and how you react after a buyout. Right? How you replace that housing, how you replace that grand list value, not necessarily whether or not a buyout should go forward in the first place. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Any questions there? Thank you. [Witness Douglas Farnham]: So section four, mister chair. Due to the high level of uncertainty at the federal level, we are doing our best to work within our existing means, and we do anticipate identifying areas where we will need to address issues that come up over the course of the next year. So one thing I would say with this section is I don't think the administration can support the creation of additional positions. And I think it's likely that it'll be very challenging over the next year to maintain current operations and current levels of service, and that will probably take a significant investment of resources by itself. So I don't think the the administration can support this section, but it is clear. It is not redundant, and I don't have any other, you know, alternative suggestions to what what's being drafted here. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay. Understood. Anything for that section from the table or whoever it is? [Representative Waters Evans]: Maybe. How many how many is too many agencies in terms of bogging down coordination? [Witness Douglas Farnham]: On the I can see my colleague director Foran is in the room, so I might be speaking for him a bit too much here. Good. I don't I don't think adding ACCD to the existing structure of who VM collaborates with in the creation of the program would be a deal breaker. I I do think creating a separate section for flood flood buyouts outside of the community disaster or community resilience and disaster mitigation grant program. That would be confusing just from a a statutory construction point of view. So, I mean, we do coordinate between between the agencies. I do think ACCD has less of a role in a buyout situation. And when you look at it, the the primary considerations there's the reality of of the decisions towns make, but the priority considerations for a buyout should be, will this have floodplain mitigation benefit? And is there a risk to life and safety at this property? And so that's DEC and public safety. If you start to get into the the agency of commerce and community development, their policy areas are like thoughtful community design, grand list, you know, growth. And I think there's a bit of a contradiction there. So you could bring them in knowing, hey. They're gonna represent a different point of view, and they're gonna ask for certain things to be incorporated in the program design. But I do think the the opinions of emergency management and environmental conservation should matter more in a buyout scenario than the opinions of of an agency dedicated to developing the community and and growing the economy, etcetera. I think life safety is the highest priority for me. [Speaker 4 ]: Understood. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Any other questions for mister Cardo before we move on to section five? Alright. Let's do it. [Witness Douglas Farnham]: Alright. So section five, mister chair, it's my understanding that much of this section is is already addressed through the VT alert section session. So I would recommend here I'll defer to director for end that I do think much of this is already established, and it might be more a matter of municipal adopt municipal adoption of that system or education on what the system can do. And I think there's a great deal of value in a statewide system as opposed to each community customizing their own you know, to their own wants and desires. You can't have a fully customized system at a state level. Right? It needs to it won't be as fine tuned as as communities are going to want it. But I think if you're talking about standardized information and and ability to respond in a in a statewide disaster, b t alerts is extremely important. So I would recommend that if this I think that this section could be adapted to recognize that VT alerts exists, that VM is moving forward with it. I I will be honest, mister chair. I do not know if VT Alerts is referenced in statute at this point. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay. [Witness Douglas Farnham]: So that might be that might be an opportunity and maybe to strengthen the ability of municipalities to buy into the system. But, again, director Foran would definitely have much more information on that than I would. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Wonderful. Yes. We'll definitely chat with him once we wrap this up with you, sir. [Witness Douglas Farnham]: And then on section six, I don't have any significant comments here. I think section six is reasonable. And how much if if there are things that are removed from the rest of the bill, then, I think if a task force or a working group is created, the needs assessment might seem redundant, but it would still be part of that task task force effort. So I don't have any changes to recommend at this time with section six. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay. Thank you. And then seven, it also kind of falls into this more of this ANR conversation. But Yes, [Witness Douglas Farnham]: mister chair. [Chair Matthew Birong]: And just committing on those two sections is I didn't like having conversations with people in and around that. These a and r pieces are very, very deeply engaged in something that's more subject matter outside of our committee's purview. So right now, knowing that, you know, we're back to the clock conversation, I personally think that that this is something that is a conversation worthy to be had, but worthy to be had later. Just that's what we're looking to get this this is settled on some of these right now. Yeah. So that's that's just my perspective. New along that. We'll discuss [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: more here. [Chair Matthew Birong]: That's a seven, eight, nine? Seven. That was the that was a six and seven conversation. Six. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Six. Six. Six. [Witness Douglas Farnham]: Gotcha. Apologies. When I Right. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Seven. Can we But yeah. [Speaker 5 ]: No. No. No. Sorry. [Chair Matthew Birong]: I got over my speed there. Retract previous statement. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Which one? [Chair Matthew Birong]: On the sixth. Okay. [Speaker 6 ]: So just just [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: just seven. Yeah. [Chair Matthew Birong]: I had a margin note that was old. I'll let him off. Very, very marked up. I'm here. And I've been at my afternoon coffee. Alright. Please continue, mister Barr. [Witness Douglas Farnham]: And I apologize. My when I was speaking to section six, I was speaking to the needs assessment. I was going off of the the newer draft, so I may created some confusion there. In the version I was looking at, the only section left is the appropriations, [Chair Matthew Birong]: which I'm [Witness Douglas Farnham]: are not part of the current budget construct. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Understood. So that section of the The assessment. Would you copy that we have in front of us to be able to let it chat as well as we're going to [Witness Douglas Farnham]: Yes. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Okay. [Chair Matthew Birong]: So that's [Legal Counsel Eric Foran]: the Yeah. I think I have the wrong copy also. [Chair Matthew Birong]: And so the division of emergency management, state stakeholders needs assessment report is the part that we're we're putting this on now. Correct? [Witness Douglas Farnham]: I think that, mister chair, that could be retained as it is, or it could be expanded to address that task force concept where we have membership, not just from the state, but from the regional planning commissions, long term recovery groups, the League of Cities and Towns, Vermont Community Foundation potentially in order to allow that group to also consider, what the director of emergency management learns from the after action review process. [Witness Eric Foran]: Okay. [Chair Matthew Birong]: You know, we had a there has been some conversations with stakeholders there. We've been working on some edits, and so [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: we wanted to have more of a, like, a total [Chair Matthew Birong]: like, well, full conversation with the original language so that everybody in the community have a good understanding where we started, how we're evolving just because this bill is a big lift. We have not had possessions built for very long, like, for any significant period of time. So that's sort of the, overarching purpose behind this exercise. We go through an order anyway and get a better understanding. And we did have some emails about suggestions going around. So if I could view some folks, I apologize for crossing the screens. So that part is understood, mister Farnham. And does that do we have any questions for him right now? I would like to bring Eric up to discuss a little bit. No. Alright. Thank you, Doug. [Witness Douglas Farnham]: Thank you, mister chair. I will stay on Zoom while director Foran testifies, if that's okay. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Oh, that would be wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate the time. [Witness Eric Foran]: I am also working off the draft with eleven sections on it, but [Chair Matthew Birong]: I think that's a perfect thing to do. [Witness Eric Foran]: And I did submit written testimony maybe this morning. I think it's all looped together. But so I won't read verbatim everything that I have. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: But That's good. [Witness Eric Foran]: You can go back and take a look if there's any specific questions. [Chair Matthew Birong]: That. [Witness Eric Foran]: So for the record, Eric Foran. I'm the director of Vermont Emergency Management. Thanks for letting me take the opportunity to testify today. So starting with section one go with that one. For section one, parenthesis three. So it's basically talking about having a framework for flood response. So what we do at VM is we don't necessarily look at one individual event response plans. We look at all hazards. You basically respond to the same thing in the same capacity as with slight Nuance differences. So we currently have a state emergency management plan. We've had one since two thousand fourteen called the SAMH, state emergency management plan. It also has a response plan underneath it and a recovery plan underneath it. And then underneath those are every partner in the SEOC as a panics. So it defines what each partner does in the emergency operations center. The recovery plan talks about the recovery task forces, which come out right after the banks talks about about the recovery long term recovery groups and starts to define the the recovery response, which goes beyond the EM necessarily for the bigger responses into into Doug and the chief recovery officer. So we have that framework. It's done every five years. So we actually postponed last year because of the double flood, and we submitted it in this December. So it's on the governor's desk. So it has been updated and reflected after actions. So for every event that we have, we do an after action. So every flooding event, anytime the emergency operation center opens, plus any exercise we have. And we have several exercises every year to to basically ensure our plans work correctly. So we incorporated seven after action reviews into this five year update. I don't want to make it sound like we only do it once every five years. In the past, that was kind of the way we did it since I came in two years ago. The idea is we get it at five years. That's when the governor signs off on it, but it's a living document. So each year so this December twenty five, we'll look at it again and see if there's anything from an AAR in the last twelve months that we need to incorporate into that plan to make sure that we're responding as efficiently as possible. So it's not that it's only every five years we look at it because it would it's honestly outdated on day one because new things come up. For example, wildfires are a new topic on our horizon, so we're working those in there. We relooked at our threats and hazards to make sure they were aligned with what it is now. And if you looked back five years ago, pandemics weren't on there. So, obviously, we added things like that. So it's a living, breathing document that always gets updated. We're constantly exercising it to make sure that it's accurate and reflective of our actual response, and then, we make updates to it. So my recommendation is that this this section be removed because it's redundant. They did put it in act one forty nine last year to say that the state shall have the state emergency management plan. It's already in statute. It's in title twenty, you know, chapter one emergency management, state emergency management plan, section forty one. So it is in there already. What I have worries about sometimes is specificity. If you put everything in there, that means you're always gonna miss something. If you put in all hazards, then we are consistently always looking at all hazards to make sure everything's incorporated, make sure, yes, a flood response is different from a wildfire response, but the coordinating effort that we have and we established is the same framework. Let me just make sure we have the resources necessary for each. So if we put in specific things that the state emergency management plan shall have this, well, there's about seven hundred other things that all of a sudden aren't in there. And then you're you're worried about, well, does that mean you don't need them because it's not defining them? So the the umbrella that they put in last year in one forty nine made a lot of sense. We were already doing it. We already have the structure. We already have the framework. We already have the AARs. It's a consistent thing we've done forever. The state emergency management plan for two thousand eighteen is out on the website. You can go take a look at it, the response plan and recovery plan. We will be posting a new one as soon as the governor promulgates it, and then we are working on the state partner annexes to to update those as well. But, again, they're they're all living, breathing documents. So recommendation of this section, is it necessary? I'm going down to section one four a, emergency parking plans. So, again, there's specific things that are outlined, in the, and one of them in twenty VSA actually, number six is talking about local emergency management organizations. So each town has a local emergency management director by statute. I know, to be honest, some are good, some are bad, some have experienced, some don't, some are the fire chief, police chief, dog, catcher, mailman, all of the above so they don't have the capacity, and that's something that always comes up in this room because we lean on them a lot. You know? We try to have local events solved locally, then it goes to the states, then it goes to the federal through us. And there's some talk about county level in there, but we'll leave that for a different day. So the idea is we have these local emergency management organizations, and one of the things they are dictated to do by mandate is the local emergency management plan. So every year after after election day, they have to go in and update their local emergency management plan, and every town has one. Well, I think we're at ninety seven point eight percent. So we've got almost all of them, but we constantly push it. And last year when the senate and the house gave medium two three additional regional coordinators, They are going out and working through those plans now because we went from three to six, so they had from a hundred towns to sixty towns, so they have capacity now to go in and individually meet with each town, go through that local emergency management plan, make sure that it's accurate. And things that come up in there are talks about emergency management plan. So this is something that we remove we suggest removing because it's because of the specificity. Right? Because the town should have a emergency management response plan for an all hazards event, and part of that should be an emergency parking plan if necessary. So that's worked through the local just a little bit. [Chair Matthew Birong]: I've got a hand here. Do we have [Representative Waters Evans]: a list of all the local emergency directors for each town? Yes. And is that the public? [Chair Matthew Birong]: The Can [Witness Eric Foran]: I ask them? Emergency management. Yeah. It's on our website. Alright. So we can [Representative Waters Evans]: Thank you. [Witness Eric Foran]: We've asked them what they want to make public for communications channels, and some have it, some don't come, but we have communications with them and their two backups. It's in the local emergency management plans. So in that situation, that's a very specific thing to put into the local emergency management plan. It would be better to just we can talk to the towns and say, hey. This might be something you should think about, as opposed to defining every single thing that's in there. For example, there's already vulnerable populations. There's already parts on shelters. There's already parts on where you you get resources from. So it's it's an outline that they're supposed to take off the shelf and kinda walk them through, the exercise of a disaster so we can talk to them about emergency, plans. And then the next one is emergency shelter plans. So, again, we propose this one, gets removed because it's already a section in the that specifically defines every town. And to be clear, we don't have the authority to say they shall have a parking plan. They shall have a shelter. We have the ability to say, it's a good idea to do it, and this is why. And that's why we have those regional coordinators to be there in person to explain the necessity of it. But we already have a a section on shelter. So what is your local shelter? How do you plan to staff it? How do you plan to get food to it? You know? Where is it located? How can you get to it? Is it an upland blame that you need a backup to your backup? All those things are already in our plan, and we already talked to them about it. So the section one four b, emergency plans, isn't really necessary to to go into another thing. Section one four c talks about vulnerable populations and the ability to communicate with them. So the state has what's called a CARE program, c a r e, community access response for emergencies, I believe it is. But, basically, as a vulnerable person, if you were in a wheelchair and you used a medical device, you were on oxygen, you can call into this program and get you get put on a list for your town. I'm so and so. I live here. This is my issue. And then it it goes into the e nine one one board, and they hold that information. It is confidential, but if the EMD for a town is looking for their vulnerable population, they can call the emergency operation center. We're twenty four seven, three sixty five. We contact e nine one one. They provide a list for the town. They send it over to us in an encrypted form. We send it to the town with a password, and so there is already a way for vulnerable populations to for towns to understand what their vulnerable population is. Now, again, we don't have the authority to say, you shall go check on your vulnerable population. We can only give them the tools and the foresight to do it and recommend it. But if an EMD or the local fire chief doesn't think it's necessary, that's that's up to them. You know, we we push it and explain how important it is, and we give them the ability to have those names. This is where we get into what I call a root cause analysis. So as a training and exercise administrator, when we ran exercises, you would come back and something would be wrong. Let's say someone didn't answer that phone in that room, and you'd have to say, well, what's the root cause of why that is is so for one, is there a phone there? If there's no phone, then it's a resources. You can get on the phone. Okay. Well, that's we solved that. And if okay. There's a phone, but they don't know how to use it, then it's training. If it's they weren't in the room to answer it, then it's a procedure thing where they need to be manning that phone. So digging down for this one, the idea of being able to contact vulnerable populations, and you'll see it again later when we talk about the emergency notifications. System. We have those. So it may be that if you wanna address it in a way, it's about education. Right? The system's already out there, but the towns don't know how to use it or they don't know they don't have the capacity to use it. Those are more the root cause issues than the actual structure itself of having the system. So that goes into one four d, which is the emergency notification system, and that's what Doug talked about. So we have the Vermon Alert system. It's a very robust system. You can sign up. Any anyone can sign up for as a as a individual, you can go in and get an account, and it has a long checklist. I wanna know about traffic issues in my area. I wanna know about weather events. You'll see that later in this. I I wanna know about, you know, water main breaks. I wanna know about wildfires. So it's a it's a system we call passive because the people want the information, so we call them subscribers. So I get a probably, I get everyone that goes out in the state, and we probably send out, you know, fifty a day for various things. So and when we say go out, it's not us pushing it out. It's whatever that entity is. So say Barry, you can send out a snow ban issue. It has to be somewhat emergency service public health public safety related. You can't say there's a park barbecue, but the the system is already there. So one side of it is it's actually three sided. One one side is you as a citizen signing up to get that information. So you'll see later that they talk about having the ability to receive weather alerts. So you can sign up for this, and I get a weather alert. Yesterday was all a wind device. So it comes right to my phone. It could come to my email. It could come to my landline. But the second part of that is a town can be an administrator. So we have maybe seventy towns that have signed up to do it. So the town of Berry has decided they wanna do it. They have an administrator. They have a water main break on South Street. They can send out an alert just to the subscribers of Berry. For example, you'll see we sent one to Hinesburg at a water main break. We sent it to everyone that asked for public notifications in Hinesburg, went to about eleven thousand people. It was all of them asking for data. So it it's what we call subscribers. They subscribed to to Hinesburg, and you'll notice that there's more. There's probably not eleven thousand people in Hinesburg. What it is is other people that work in Hinesburg or travel through Hinesburg, they also ask for it because they wanna know what's going on there. So so the system is there to already receive messages. There's the system is there for towns to push messaging. And then the third one is the state can go in and say, look. This is important, and I'm gonna push it to you whether you want it or not. So we have EAS systems, the emergency alert systems, and we have the WEA system, the wireless emergency, information system. So we can push out like, you'll see across the bottom of your television when it beeps there, that's us pushing that out. Part of that is from the federal government, but we have the capacity to do it. But also a wireless emergency alert means that we can put a circle around an area, and we can ring every cell phone that's in that area off that tower, whether you ask for it or not, because it's something that's dangerous to life and then we wanna make sure that everyone has it. So we call that more of a push where you didn't ask for it, but we're gonna give it to you because your life's in danger. You'll see that for snow squalls a lot. The weather service can do it as well. But that all runs through us, and it all runs through VTL. So, again, looking at the root cause here, the the system is out there, but we only have, I think, eighty thousand subscribers for Vermont. So, like, last year, we were hoping for some assistance in marketing of it. We push it to you know, we push it at local fires and craft shows and stuff, but not every citizen knows about it. We're also trying to get the towns all on board, but they have capacity issues where we get them trained up and then, you know, they don't do it for a while, then they get nervous. We do have the ability to do that in house. We have a twenty four seven watch officer. So, for example, the one that went out for Heinzberg came out from us, not from Heinzberg, but we got the messaging from Heinzberg. So, really, it's more about education for towns to know that they can do it and citizens that know what they can do. We'd love to have two hundred fifty two towns and six hundred and fifty thousand folks on it. But regardless, even if they don't subscribe, we can push it to them. So, again, the root cause there is that the system is in place. People just don't know about it. [Speaker 4 ]: Oh, I see. I just scrolled up. [Witness Eric Foran]: Stop for a second. Any questions? [Representative Waters Evans]: Representative Cooper? This might be a lot of data to ask for, but do you have a preparedness index of any kind ranking towns from prepared to not so? Yes. [Witness Eric Foran]: No. And and we lay the same assumption on all EMDs that your responsibility is this. So one thing we did do over the last couple of years is and comes to the next one, section one four e, training for staff, town staff. We recommend this be removed because we have the training. It's more of a capacity issue when you get to to the root cause. So an EMD is appointed by the town select board. By default, they have to have one. They have a defined job responsibility, so they know what it is. But we've also provided multiple facets of training. So you can do an EMD two hour seminar to kinda get your feet wet, kind of understand what's going on. You can do an EMD course, which is an eight hour day course. And then we provide an EM certification. So you're taking both of those plus another probably sixty hours worth of courses to give you a very large picture, holistic view of what we expect you to do as EMDs. And then we reach out to them, like our regional coordinators, meet with them all the time [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Okay. As they're [Witness Eric Foran]: in in accordance with updating our length, but also any trainings. You know, our idea is that we would love every town to exercise at least once a year. We would want them the idea is that every town has their own emergency operation center. Again, it's a resource issue. So we push that when we have state level exercises at the emergency operation center. We ask if towns wanna open theirs and have communications with us so they can test their abilities [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: on, you know, like a bit [Representative Waters Evans]: How many regional coordinators? Six. Is that enough? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: No. I [Witness Eric Foran]: mean, it's better. [Representative Waters Evans]: We had three. Ideal. [Witness Eric Foran]: Fourteen? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one per county would be nice. Yeah. But six is way better than three, so they're down to, like, sixty towns each. So Mhmm. It's just gonna be directly correlated to the amount of time that we need to spend in each town. And that that's the issue that consistently comes up here when you look at root cause is the towns don't have capacity. Right? I can teach them a remodeler. I can provide them a quarterly training class that they can go to. They'll try to remind them about a remodeler, but then they don't touch it for two months. And then something happens, and they're they're nervous about using it. So it's it's really about capacity at the local level. It's not about the functionality of them having training available, but can the EMD spend eighty hours getting the course? We have a significant amount to do, but we also have a significant amount of debts. So we make it available to them, but I'm gonna say they're volunteers. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Right? [Witness Eric Foran]: They're they're appointed, but they don't get paid. They, you know, there's no structure. We we don't say you're the owner you're the EMD, and that's it. Usually, it's multiple paths that they're wearing. So Yeah. That's really [Representative Waters Evans]: And you can probably have directors for more than one town. Right? Same person? [Witness Eric Foran]: We've talked about that. Mhmm. Like a floating director or at this point, the statute says each town shall have a director. K. And then what we have is we set up two years ago regional emergency management committees. So each county has a Mhmm. Basically a working group where all those EMDs get together, hash out what's going on. Basically, you have a an ability to say, well, if I'm in a bad spot and I need a dump truck, you have three dump trucks, and you have four escalators, or you have five fire trucks. Like, it's a way for them in what we call blue sky days when it's not raining out to be looking to solve issues going forward. So when dark sky days come, they don't have to be like, who's a dump truck? Who has an escalator? So Mhmm. We work with them during this REMCs, which are run by the acronyms, the regional planning commissions, the RPCs [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Yes. [Witness Eric Foran]: Run those for us with our regional coordinators, our RCs, attending. So it's a way for them in their area to kinda have that mutually type regional response because a lot of towns don't have the capabilities to do it all themselves. And we've had discussions lately about, does it make sense for every town to have an emergency operation center or maybe five towns? Like, I live in Bristol, which is surrounded by New Haven, Monkton. So does it make more sense for one emergency operations center to be able to cover those and that you're pulling resources? It's kind of that, you know, regionalization question that's going on everywhere. Everywhere. Fire department levels, regional police, regional, you know. So we're looking into that. We're also looking into, again, at the capacity level, and this is off topic a little bit, but we're looking into, can we form what we call incident management assistance team, the IMAD teams, where Barton has never had an incident before, doesn't really know what to do. We have some people that are trained, and we can send them BART. They wouldn't take over Barton. It's a it's a very similar concept to what the HAZMAT team does, and I'm a local firefighter. [Speaker 4 ]: So Yeah. [Witness Eric Foran]: When the HAZMAT team shows up, they don't take over my fire scene. They they work with me. They're in the incident command post with me. So we don't we don't wanna push people out, but we wanna go and give them assistance. So we've tried a couple different ways that what we've seen is liability issues. Right? If we bring in retired people that aren't on city contracts, how how does it so lots of bumps in the road there, but we're we're still trying to work some options about how we can maybe when we talk about USAR being a Swiss army tool, they have some people that are highly skilled in planning, and maybe we could send them there. But we also have we have teamed in a new sent we call them state emergency operations center liaisons. So we send these people it's usually the regional coordinator, but when the operations center opens, we send them we sent someone to Plainfield and sat down there for a week to help them out. It's a it's a two way street. It helps Plainfield, but it also helps State Emergency Operations Center get information about what's going on because information flow is consistently a problem for us. [Representative Waters Evans]: And how does that that training crew, if you will, how do they get [Chair Matthew Birong]: compensated? Is that That's one of the [Witness Eric Foran]: hiccups right now. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Some of [Witness Eric Foran]: the things? Yeah. [Representative Waters Evans]: But it all plugs into the incident command [Witness Eric Foran]: Yeah. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Paradigm? Yeah. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: In [Witness Eric Foran]: that case, it would be the the state emergency operation center is the coordinating effort entity for the state. So they would be coordinated through the state emergency efforts. I would say, team b, we need you, and Brattleboro team c, you're going to Randolph. They would coordinate through us, you know, if they need to switch out people. So it's a work in progress that we haven't got to. Obviously, the liability and the compensation is one of those. [Representative Waters Evans]: And what's do you have a timeline for the governor's promulgation of the [Witness Eric Foran]: Anytime. Anytime. Yeah. So that was section one forty. Sorry. We went off track there, but I could talk emergency management all day. Question? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Yeah. Town capacity is an issue, and we know that there are inequities with municipality town, you know, capacity to do this. Do you have a solution for addressing that dynamic that's not the state? [Chair Matthew Birong]: I'm sorry. Could you read the part that I didn't hear the whole question? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: I'm saying that they're inequities regarding town capacity. And if that's an issue, then what is the potential solution if it's not, like, state led? I don't know if you had if you had a different idea of the state. [Witness Eric Foran]: I think that's the the slippery slope that we've been working on for two years. How much does the state do? How much does the town do? Sometimes they have more capacity to do less. So we brought on those three additional coordinators specifically to try to make it a little bit more equitable. So we understand that some towns, we have to teach to fish. Some already know how to fish. They just needed a little help. You know, we do the same with exercises. Alright. Town b, you've exercised three times with our assistants now. You're on your own because I had to focus on town c who's never run an exercise. So, you know, we don't have enough capacity to do everything we want, so we have to triage a little bit and try to make sure that those that need a little bit more help, as opposed to those that we've gotten. And then we'll be the same triage with exercises, like, towns and then, you know, local more regional groups, and then there's certain private equity or private entities that wanna do, I think, regional airports. So we really have to tree up what we're doing to make sure that we're helping people that. I'm talking about people that need most of financial assistance. So this one, I same kind of rationale that Doug had. There's other entities other than VEM that would work best in this capacity. One bank into the treasurer's office. You're also talking about AHS and AOT needing to be involved. So just having some clarity in there would help us out. But that's not you know, what we do is there's a disaster, and it's a reimbursement from FEMA. So the town fixes something, then FEMA pays them back for it. Obviously, there's issues about funding gaps and the ability to to do it and then get reimbursed, but that's how the process works fundamentally. So I know Doug and his team will be working on seeing what what we can fill for gaps there, but that's not really in the end where it's on Real House. [Chair Matthew Birong]: So just I'm just saying, like, we're at the [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: clock right now. We do have OPR. I've never been at four o'clock. [Witness Eric Foran]: And so So speed up. I got [Chair Matthew Birong]: Good. Good. It was about this written slight nudge. I'll [Witness Eric Foran]: try not to go off-site tracking about EM. So financial assistance, this one, specifically section two b, it's basically, it says always cover the the gap. So when FEMA reimburses, they reimburse the seventy five percent if it's a a big disaster and ninety percent if it's a huge disaster. So there's always a gap that the town has to pay. And for twenty three, we covered that gap. This is talking about covering it always and forever, and that's a that's a huge lift, one. But, two, we have a in place what's called ERAP, emergency relief and assistance funding. So, basically, it says if you do this, which should reduce your damage during a flood, we'll give you a little bit more. And if you do this, we'll give you a little bit more. And if you do this so it's a way to kinda put the onus on the town where if we just said, every time you get destroyed, we're gonna pay a hundred percent of it. They would have no reason to build back better. They would have no reason to to mitigate any issues. They would just build the building back, and it would get washed away again and then get a hundred percent back. So we wanna recommend that we keep this E RAS system in place. Buyout programs, Doug talked a little bit about this. You know, we have we have the flood resilient communities fund, which is not in statute, but we've used it over the last several years to do a significant amount of buyouts, but also to give us some latitude where FEMA has a very specific buyout program. You shall be a, b, and c. So FEMA will buy you out if you're those, but sometimes there's d and e. So we started to plug resilient communities fund a couple years ago to fill that gap, Done a multitude of files by through it. Then last year, the legislation came up with a community disaster recovery fund. Put about two million dollars in it. That had three million dollars has gone all to elevation projects in specific towns. So both of them are basically, all the money is obligated out of them. So the root cause there is just they're out of money. But the mechanism is there to do these things, and I agree with Doug. You don't necessarily wanna be too specific. Both of them very clearly will do buyouts. You know? Between Irene and two thousand twenty three, we did two hundred bios. Between twenty three and twenty four, we did two hundred bios. So in one year, we did as many as we've done before through these two funds. So the the capacity is there. It's just the the obligation, but the money is not there. Homeowner assistance program, it's the same thing. Some of that funding is already available through the RDM app. Section eight talks about two VM positions. It's Doug's point, but, you know, the governor doesn't necessarily wanna increase staffing. But if you do wanna increase staffing, I would recommend that this currently is on as described here, is really a function of regional planning commissions because they're in the area with the town. So when the regional planning commission in Aspen County goes to talk to the person in Bristol, they're talking about mitigation grants, but they're also talking about road grants and education. Like, they're they have a multitude of things in their portfolio to talk about. Where if you brought a GM person that was only gonna talk about municipal grants, it's a very finite, very specific thing. So I would recommend that this become a position if you decided to fund it, that the they cover grants for the state. So BEM is about ninety percent grant funding. So we have a lot of work just to keep the grants coming in, to keep them coordinated. So if this person could coordinate that effort and make sure that Vermont is getting the grants that it needs, so then we can do need a pass through because we not only use a lot of grants, but we pass through a lot of grants. So that position might be better for that. And the flood technician is another very specific position that would be better incorporated into one of our mitigation, individuals that already do that in some capacity. So our grants management people, they they work through the buyouts and work with the the towns to make sure that that's all working. Section nine eighty osp one, the monitoring devices for flooding. Again, we don't have the, I guess, the subject matter expertise to to build these and to to buy them. The towns can already go and install commercial commercial monitoring devices, so we recommend that's just removing the town to take care of that. Weather alerts, like I said, we each particular can already do that, so I recommend that being removed. Nine b one, weather modeling, National Weather Service and NOAA both do that. I've already talked to NOAA three times today about the flooding on this weekend. So they're very deep in there. They have a seat in our emergency operations center, and they have the direct line to the scrub water program manager and myself, and they call this during multiple events. So us having an in house prediction service doesn't wouldn't be effective or efficient. Nine b two is warnings. Again, talks about BT alert is the system that can do that. And then section eleven is what we can't do, and I will leave that until we find out what's actually in. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. That's good. [Chair Matthew Birong]: I and, yeah, we we crisscrossed on the graph there. It sounded like a policy. [Witness Eric Foran]: I'm sorry. It took up a little bit of time there. But thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that. [Chair Matthew Birong]: No. It was all important because we're, like, kinda just understanding what you have for coming. So what would be a redundancy in these various proposals. [Witness Eric Foran]: Yeah. I think you did mention the AR for the twenty three flood is forthcoming. It's almost done. And then the twenty four flood is almost done too, but we've already incorporated most of the feedback into the new step update. But we do we do take an after action for everything, and we have an improvement plan tracker that tracks make sure that we are tasking everything that we think is should be an improvement and get it done. So that system is in place. [Chair Matthew Birong]: No. And we do that with his bill coming in the Wednesday before we wrote that it was gonna be very compressed with timeline of moving with language. So we're gonna get all these suggestions honed in to a cleaner copy for us as well. [Witness Eric Foran]: Yeah. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help. I appreciate your time. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Thank you for your time. Doug, thank you for your time. [Witness Douglas Farnham]: Thank you, mister chair. [Speaker 4 ]: Alright. [Chair Matthew Birong]: On time. Oh my god. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: How are you? I didn't pay for [Chair Matthew Birong]: maybe in the morning. Just a Tuesday. Okay. So we're shifting gears now to take a look at the [Representative Waters Evans]: OPR bill. [Chair Matthew Birong]: We have a deputy secretary here and OPR counsel, And you can find this copy Mhmm. On our community page. That is down on under Anderson draft two point four. And I asked the deputy secretary, would come in to just start to run through this with us so we understand the fresh words on the page. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: I'm pulling it out as we see. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Cool. Take [Chair Matthew Birong]: that. Take it done. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Wow. I know. I was very Mike says sorry. This cannot be reached out. Yeah. [Speaker 5 ]: Funny. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: I laugh because our last witness, then we talked to Noah today about the flood. [Witness Eric Foran]: Yeah. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Noah laughed except me. To Noah. To Noah. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: Noah's not What? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: He said he talked to [Chair Matthew Birong]: Noah today about the [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: flood. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: To Noah. To Noah. Noah's heart. To Noah. She knows that. Noah. It's like No. I know. Three times [Speaker 5 ]: today about the [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: And then it an official policy request to go to Arcs. [Speaker 6 ]: We don't have money for her. It's like I have money here on her rim. Yeah. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: There wasn't one for dime so [Legal Counsel Eric Foran]: it was last night. She just makes sure it's small. [Speaker 5 ]: If history rate beats itself, I am so getting one of [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: the Is it a deal? [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: How do [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: we abbreviate Adjut? [Speaker 5 ]: What? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: How do you abbreviate the Adjut Adjut channels? AG. AG. AG. Just a list. [Speaker 4 ]: Yep. [25 seconds of silence] [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: Thank you, mister chair, for that time. For the record, Lauren Hibbert, Deputy Secretary of State, [Legal Counsel Eric Foran]: and Jennifer Cohen, General Counsel for Pure. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: We are looking at draft two point four, and Tucker, keep me honest here on where the changes are because I hadn't looked at this new draft prior to walking in the room. So the first change that I'm seeing from what we talked about previously, I'm on page six, page seven. Doctor, where is the first change? Is it in yellow on this copy? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: I'm sorry? Or underline? [Legal Counsel Jennifer Cohen]: So I, I didn't give you a highlighted copy because of some of the challenges with the highlighted copy last time. So, I believe that the first change from the last draft that the committee reviewed is the, act the removal of the sections governing the use of the title social worker. So the first change is actually an absence from the draft. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: And, as I testified before the break, we do support not doing title protection for social workers. I'm happy to talk about the rationale again if this committee would desire, but we just do not have a way to enforce those protections and we don't understand fully the impact of that prohibition. So if the committee were to include it, we would recommend hearing certainly from the hospital system at a minimum. Tucker, can I ask if there's any other changes? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: There's just one. You? Yes. Okay. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Oh, please. Yes. Yes. [Legal Counsel Jennifer Cohen]: There there's just one, and that is on page eleven right at the top of that page, the new section thirteen, which is an OPR report, concerning the regulation of massage therapy establishments. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: So, we are asking for this language, to be added, because we have been working with stakeholders on, ways to work on human trafficking. We do have a human trafficking problem in the state of Vermont, with OPR having jurisdiction over, touch professionals including massage therapists. That is one space where human trafficking occurs. It's not the only space, but it is one space. And since we've had, we did a Sunrise report on massage therapy, and found that this profession would be most appropriately regulated through registration, not certification or licensure. And we chose at that time to not pursue, registration of businesses. Well, now we have two years of experience of registration under our belt. We now, have enforcement data. We are receiving complaints about human trafficking. Our team sees human trafficking occurring throughout the state, And we do think that, you know, it's good to say you're wrong when you're wrong, and we were wrong. We should, register, massage establishments. We just were not ready to propose legislation this session. We wanna look at it, make sure that we're, setting it up the right way, and but we fully anticipate that we will have that, together, for next legislative session. Yeah. So this language requires us to write a Jen Cohen is pointing out to me. It's a written report concerning proposed legislation just so that just so this committee is aware, we probably will be we will put it in report form, but it's probably just gonna be draft language to you. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay. Would you, like, assume the vendors to reflect that? I mean, [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: I don't wanna hold it up here. We could do it on the senate side if you want, but we will report we shall submit to house government operations and military affairs and senate committee on government operations proposed legislation is what we would do. Okay. But it will be I mean, it will be [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Mhmm. A [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: report. We just wouldn't file it on the legislative reports page if that language was not there. [Chair Matthew Birong]: So it just essentially, like, using the using this as a vehicle to just provide us with Yeah. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: It's a it's a way to indicate to the public that we are gonna work on this issue. We're committed to working on this issue. We don't actually need this language here. We are committed to doing it even if this language is not here, but, it's important as part of the stakeholders to understand that we're taking action on this. So we do appreciate the language being added. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Representative from whoever else. [Speaker 4 ]: So are you specifically talking about removing forward registrations of businesses or everybody in the field [Chair Matthew Birong]: We already turnover? [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: We already do regulate all of the people in this field. Regular? Questions? We register them. We oversee them, and we have enforcement full enforcement authority over them. And so we received complaints I think we've received upwards of, you know, twenty five or thirty massage complaints, for a wide variety of topics. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Mhmm. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: But many of them are about human trafficking. [Speaker 4 ]: What's the functional difference between registration and licensing? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Oh, that's [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: You wanna send that, Jen? Sure. [Speaker 4 ]: That's why I'm probably Well [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: The money is not that different. [Legal Counsel Eric Foran]: No. Registration is a mandatory application that everybody practicing in the profession has to do, and it doesn't require qualifications. So folks who are registered massage therapists, they went to massage school. They literally file an application with our office. They pay a fee and they're registered. And then we have enforcement authority over them so that if they're engaging for example, we've had numerous cases about sexual misconduct in massage. So if a massage therapist engages in sexual conduct with the client, we have enforcement authority over them. Licensure requires is also mandatory for everybody in the profession, but it requires qualification. So education, examination, that sort of thing. And massage right [Chair Matthew Birong]: now, we don't require that. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: And then there's this mid level certification. [Legal Counsel Eric Foran]: And certification is a voluntary [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: a [Legal Counsel Eric Foran]: voluntary application. So if you wanna call yourself a certified dietitian, for example, you can choose to go through the certification process with OPR. You have to show that you're qualified, but it's not mandatory for everybody who's providing diet diet advice. Anybody can give you that advice, but if you wanna if you wanna stand out in the profession and call yourself state certified, then you choose to [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: go through that process with OPR. [Speaker 4 ]: So if I might share, we got a little broad there. They're all it's all of that conversation also including massage therapist, or have you gone [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: We had that wise. We had that conversation when we did the Sunrise report, and we recommended to this body that this field be the form of registration, the least restrictive form of registration that would protect the public, which is our finding in that we needed to protect the public, but the least restrictive form was registration, the lowest level. And so that was passed two years ago, and we've been implementing that program. And we've learned things in that program, and as we've been implementing it. And one is that we think we would have more powerful tools in conjunction with law enforcement, both in house and external, to help curtail massage the massage industry being exploited by human trafficking. And, obviously, the people who are in human traffic, they are really the exploited people. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Yeah. Can [Chair Matthew Birong]: you hear that by hand? And so, I mean, there is there are more stops even before this goes to the senate as well to other wages. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Yes. [Chair Matthew Birong]: And yeah. So discussing that section, you know, I'm hoping to have that conversation with those committees and so on. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: Okay. Yeah. And as long as this committee is okay if we take out those words, written report at some point when it comes back over. Yeah. If you really don't have to do a lot. That would be lovely. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Well, I have Castle's hand [Speaker 4 ]: up behind you. Is everybody doing? [Legal Counsel Jennifer Cohen]: Yes. Yes. So based on your conversation, I just sent an updated draft two point five of the bill with the OPR request to remove the requirement for a written report and corrected a typo that the excellent and hardworking Autumn identified in that section. [Chair Matthew Birong]: The package meeting was Earl. [Legal Counsel Jennifer Cohen]: So I've made those changes and sent an updated copy to the committee Pearl. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Right. [Representative Waters Evans]: So that Autumn can post it, [Legal Counsel Jennifer Cohen]: and you can vote on draft two point five if you'd like to. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Thank you. Yes, Autumn. It is in East Coast? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Yeah. Just got it. Cool. We have updates. Boiled water in here. Okay. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: And spend most of it. It might just be a ventil be open in the. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Daniel, we're gonna have to discuss your page. Thank you, Autumn. Okay. It's there. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Excellent. Two point five. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Mhmm. There it is. [Chair Matthew Birong]: And what was the typo? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Where was the typo? [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: There it says senate committee, poly government author. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Oh, [Chair Matthew Birong]: paralyzed. I snag. [Representative Waters Evans]: Pluralism. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Alright. Yeah. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: I'm just going to that language in there then. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Alright. Section thirteen, revised language. [Witness Eric Foran]: Those those words [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: need to we like those words. [Witness Eric Foran]: To do? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Yes. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: Beautiful. Thank you so much. [Chair Matthew Birong]: It's always a ride. So alright. Any questions for secretary of state's office while we have them in front [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: of us before we open it [Chair Matthew Birong]: up to a community discussion? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Thank you. Thank you. Everywhere there was social for Scotland. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Yes. And all of there was all of that language we have to list. And then the only other notable change was that section thirteen. Will we just fine tune that? Like, is that what's proposed or not? [Speaker 5 ]: Mhmm. [Chair Matthew Birong]: You represent water levels. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Are we discussing right now? Yes. I feel fine about that. I feel like I'm glad we clarified and cemented some progress from massage therapy in a parking situation. And everything else, the social worker section seems and facing it, not like necessary, so I think it's clean and that it's not in the right and a red roof. It's a good one. [Speaker 5 ]: Anyone else? Yeah. I just I still have a problem with it, and I understand the reasoning for them, but I can't see in the current climate, everything in the financials of I already I don't believe we recommended the new position in our in our budget letter. Correct. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Yep. [Speaker 5 ]: And the added fees, it's just getting by another year or two without adding more fees to people or adding new fees. Is that actually necessary? Do we have to have the nickel and dime people? [Chair Matthew Birong]: So I understand where you're coming from. So once we got back into the conversations after the budget letter Mhmm. There at least for me, there was a deeper some of these were, like, disciplinary and punitive for people who were who were in the process of, like, adjudication or violations. That one other piece was the a request of the result of two laws that this general assembly had passed over the course of a couple of my items. So yeah. So that's if there's anything, like, specific that you would like to ask within those, feel free if you have the folks in the in the gallery who can answer those questions for a gringer. Like Sure. But broadly speaking with these, like, the other one with the subscription fee, that's a choice of buying an institutionary business to participate in that, [Speaker 5 ]: The peer support recovery fee increase? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Which one is that? I On page four. Four. [Speaker 5 ]: Page four, line seven eight v, the peer support providers, peer recovery support specialist going from fifty to seventy five dollars [Chair Matthew Birong]: Fifty percent. Yes, please. Yeah. Yeah. No. Let's let's let's make sure you're ready [Witness Eric Foran]: to ship that. [Speaker 5 ]: Should be. Affordable. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: So that fee, I you may remember that Oh, you're in your mind? My garage. [Speaker 6 ]: The Yeah. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: So I'm sorry. So that legislation passed not last year, but the year before. Mhmm. And when we were in that legislative process, the increase, to seventy five got dropped in the legislative process. So, it was always the intent that the renewal would be seventy five dollars starting in twenty twenty seven, and that language now reflects what was the legislative intent at the time. Mhmm. And we intentionally always set the application fee to be lower than the renewal fee because we wanna make sure that the barrier to entry for someone who's new to the profession is as low as possible. But once you're working in the profession, we wanna make sure that the renewal fee covers the work of our office, which we think seventy five dollars, frankly, for peer support probably does not cover the work of the office, but we think it's appropriate given the work that they do and the population that they [Witness Eric Foran]: come from. Yeah. And [Speaker 5 ]: on page three, the apprenticeship application, the new fifty dollar fee for an apprentice. Yeah. If somebody's trying to get into a profession and they're learning the skill [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: So the important piece to remember about the apprenticeship path is it is something that, an individual is choosing instead of going to school. So the apprenticeship path is a lot cheaper than going and the apprenticeship path is really in, certain professions. Classic one is barber and cosmetology. So instead of spending, going to the Aveda Institute in Burlington, which I think is around fifteen thousand dollars right now, Obviously, you can get student loans for that. But instead of going and doing that, you are working one on one with somebody and being trained in their shop. And it takes more time for our office to review those applications because we have to review the number of hours, what was covered, and read the, supervisor's certification. So it's not as much it's not as easy for our office as it is for the person who goes to the Aveda Institute because the O'Brien's Aveda Institute, because we just get their, you know, the transcript from them and the exam results, and it's just a different process for us. It's more complicated. [Speaker 5 ]: Right. No. I remember the conversation. I just I'm still opposed to [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: That right. I [Speaker 5 ]: bringing up raising fees right now. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: I can understand that. But if you want to know why we're asking, that is why [Speaker 5 ]: I'm asking. I remember the conversation. I wrote a lot of it down, actually. [Witness Eric Foran]: But I no. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: It's it's repeat myself. [Speaker 5 ]: No. No. It's it's perfectly fine for you to explain it again. People will hear it again. I just I was voicing my opinion on the fee increases. That's all. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Alright. Is is there a hand up before? Yeah. [Speaker 6 ]: So this is not for debate, but I just wanted to express that I'm really appreciative of a lot of this bill, like, ninety percent of this bill. But I, like representative Coffin, can't go for the new fees or the increased fees. I'm on board with the the more punitive ones. Mhmm. The data fee issue, I understand what representative Byron, how he is justifying it. But for me, an organization like one that you've cited over and over again, UVM Medical Center. They can't do without this. It's like a a must have for them. So to not know what we would be charging them because it's dependent on their usage. At this time, when health care is so fragile, when our health care systems are so fragile, I can't I cannot vote to put that on them. So, unfortunately, this was gonna be the first OPR bill that I would ever support, but I probably can't because of the money pieces. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: But thank you. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: I have to understand that, and thank you for hearing us out and hearing the reasons why we brought these proposals Thank you. To this table. You, [Speaker 6 ]: definitely explained yourself really well and your position, and I really wish I could vote for it. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: Well, I'm just gonna have to bring you a bill that you can vote for. Challenge accepted. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: We kept them working towards the thank you. [Speaker 5 ]: No. Thank you. And I wasn't trying to be it's No. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: I know. No. I understand. I misunderstood what you want. So [Speaker 5 ]: No. That's okay. I apologize. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Sure. Representative Dujens. [Representative Kate Nugent]: Lauren, are you saying, like, back to the apprenticeship fee that somebody who wants to get into a new profession, like, for hairstyling, for example, their only option would be either pay fifteen thousand dollars to go to the school or it's seventy five It's fifty dollars. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: Fifty now for the [Representative Kate Nugent]: to learn with somebody and then actually not have to be in debt. Yes. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: And that That is correct. [Representative Kate Nugent]: Getting all the extra paperwork on your side. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: And and it is additional paperwork on our side, and we really are committed to providing apprenticeship paths. We got a federal grant, in two thousand eighteen, and we looked at all the professions that we have within ODR and tried to find apprenticeship pathways to as many as possible. Mhmm. And we've been building those into those professions as consistently as we can, including funeral directors. So, we really have been really pushing the apprenticeship path as much [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: as possible. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Mary Catherine, VL, then Hoover of Georgia. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Could you also speak to perhaps, like, does the apprenticeship path also help with the rural nature of our state? Just because a lot of these schools, I'm guessing, would be in more urban centers compared to somebody [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: who wants to study cosmetology and is in island pond. Yes. Absolutely. It helps with when we do have an institution in state. You know, most of them are in the Burlington area. Cosmetology, the only one in the state is in the Burlington area. Oh, wow. That's the only school. And it's not a residential school. So it's one where someone would have to move to Burlington. But we funeral is a great example because there is not a funeral program in the state of Vermont. There is no way to become a funeral director in the formal education pathway in the state of Vermont. You would have to move to Boston, which is one of the reasons why we created an apprenticeship pathway. You do have to do some education outside of the state, but, the majority of the education in that pathway is, with an established funeral director in our state. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: We got a big round robin there. Alright. [Chair Matthew Birong]: So BL, you're up next. Alright. [Speaker 5 ]: On the apprenticeship application fee, fifty dollars. Without that fee there, is there still an apple is there still an apprenticeship halfway? [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: Yes. [Speaker 5 ]: Okay. So we don't that's [Witness Eric Foran]: what I was [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: This is a [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: fee this is a fee for work that we're currently doing for play. So what happened is we looked at what fees are what are what are we currently doing that we don't charge any money for understanding that our fund is running at a deficit. And we knew that there would not be an appetite for a fee bill for all of our professionals where we were realistic on that. That was our other option. We knew that was gonna be a no go. So we looked at fees for things that are currently a choice of the person or results of the person's actions, like the disciplinary fee. Mhmm. And saw that again, this will not solve our deficit problem, but it's a step forward. And then we're studying our financials. We're doing that positive reporting study, and we're gonna have another report for this body in two years where I think we will have recommendations on what we should do on an ongoing basis with the financial, components of OPR. Meaning, should all of the fees be siloed? Should OPR be solely, a special fund? There's a lot of options out there. They're they're big, and we weren't ready to do that this year. [Speaker 5 ]: Okay. So just for clarification that without that fifty dollar fee, the apprenticeship could still happen [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Yes. [Speaker 5 ]: Or the fifteen thousand dollars. So it's [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: Correct. [Speaker 5 ]: So If you they're not losing an apprenticeship. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: No. This is not a vote on on Okay. We will not stop apprenticeships. This is something that is very good public policy. We're very committed to it. I personally worked on this issue, like, countless hours. I love this policy. Mhmm. We just think that there should be some compensation for the work because it it it requires the establishment of a policy and rulemaking and forms and Mhmm. Review, it it takes additional work for [Witness Eric Foran]: us. Okay. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Representative Hoover then representative Diswell. [Speaker 4 ]: I guess a comment and then a question. So we're basically rebalancing here. These get the personnel cost in your office. So the money's gonna come from somewhere. If you're gonna have staff, they'll give them stuff in a timely fashion. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: We yes. I mean, we're not it's not that we're going to terminate anyone on our staff, but it just means that [Speaker 4 ]: You're running slower. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: We're we're running slower and also we're running without full compensation for [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: the work that we're doing. [Speaker 4 ]: So my question is because Kate asked if those two options were the only ones. Are we currently making barbers out of barbers that come in female? We [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: are. Yeah. [Speaker 4 ]: Outside this process? Yes. Okay. [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: The military is an improvement. Yep. Yeah. And that was part of the federal grant as well, just so everyone knows, we looked at all of the military programs, and one of the barbers was one and also medic to LPM and art was another Okay. Which is really important. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Representative Hessel? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: So my question was these, creative element centers that have high school students going through the Barber and the, cosmetology schools, they are That [Deputy Secretary Lauren Hibbert]: is an approved cosmetology school. Oh, it is. If you are a high school student who's graduating from a PTE and you've done a cosmetology program, you're eligible for a license. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: It's not a, apprenticeship. That's correct. That was my question. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Any other further discussion for deputy secretary? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Run quick. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Well animated. Well animated. Alright. No. We we've had a lot of conversation around the world where all of the components in this, you know, the inclusion and exclusion of a couple of concepts as well. Yeah. There's I keep saying this this week. There's more stops on the train as these things move. No. This is not the end of the conversation. It is just the stage of the conversation. Mhmm. So representative Waters Evans. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: I would like to make a motion that be in print. Draft request twenty five dash zero two four four draft two one four. I second it. [Speaker 4 ]: Two [Chair Matthew Birong]: point five. [Speaker 5 ]: Two point five. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Sorry. Sure. Is there another one? [Chair Matthew Birong]: That was the refresh that we [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: just sent. Okay. That Tucker's got it. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Two point five? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: I apologize, Tucker. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay. Just the. Would you like three frames? [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Yes. Well, I would like to make a motion to pay for job three point two point five. [Chair Matthew Birong]: And do we still have a second for the [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Yes. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Alright. When the clerk is ready, please proceed. So [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Representative Boyan. Yes. Representative Pinstell? Yes. Representative Morgan? Yes. Representative Cooper of Burlington? [Speaker 4 ]: Yes. [Assistant Autumn Crabtree]: Representative Coffin? No. Representative Stone? Yes. Representative Hooper Randolph? Yes. Representative Nugent? Yes. Representative Morris Evans? Yes. Representative Byron? Yes. Representative Mago? No. Eight two one. [Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay. So I will email drafting Yep. Before and representative, you know, the reporter of the bill. And thank you all. That was a blistering day that started earlier than usual for Tuesday and ended later than Tuesday. We got more bills out.

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