Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Member)]: Welcome.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: You know all of us Graham?

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: I believe so, this is the first time I've seen Representative Bartholomew in a fitness committee.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm back.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Excellent.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Go ahead. Floor is yours. Thank you, Graham Muniz, Policy Director at Rural Vermont. I think it's the first time I've been in since November, which was a strange time to be here. I'm going be going over our course of action with you. I know Caroline did speak a little bit. I didn't watch that. So please just, like, you can you're welcome to wave me off of something if feel like got a lot of information off or raise your hand and ask a question if slow me down. I'm happy to go with the pay sweetie too. I just wanna say, first of all, that we are just really concerned about what's happening federally right now, certainly for farmers, but certainly for all people in our communities. What we're seeing happening in Minnesota right now and around the country, going out of international treaties. These are all things like agriculture depends on human rights. It depends on democracy. And we're seeing a quick sliding away from these things in our country. And from a preeminent perspective, our farmers need those things to keep farming. Our farmers need those things to be able to keep working too, and the consumers clearly as well. So I appreciate everything you all are doing to protect our democracy as well. Clearly, you all are very familiar with S60. I do not think I probably need to spend much time on S60 with you all, but that's the farm emergency and farmer and forestry emergency relief. Security blah blah blah. You pass the thank you so much. So if you have any other questions with that, feel free to ask them, but we're moving on that. The second one is our work with the Vermont Cannabis Equity Coalition, includes NOPA Vermont, Vermont Growers Association, Vermont Greenmount Patients Alliance, and Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. We can be happy to bring testimony to you all on our priorities. From our perspective, these people are producers. They are farmers. If they cannot legally be considered such, you've taken testimony in the past. I understand there are jurisdictional issues. With which committees, especially on the House side, will be taking testimony on this. If it's possible, our coalition would love to come in. There's also some stuff around hemp right now, which might be helpful to educate you on. We were in Senate Ag this morning to talk about hemp as well. And Jeff Wipizutillo of the Monroe Growers Association can speak a lot to that. And Jesse Lendolen, who's a longtime nurse and a member of the Green Mountain Patients Alliance, can speak to some of those different compounds and why there's a debate around them right now from a phytochemical and human health perspective as well. One of the primary things from an agricultural perspective we're focused on there is direct sales of producers. We've seen that based on national studies that about 30% of cannabis sales are happening in the regulated space in each state, which means 70% of the sales are happening in the underground space. From our perspective, that's just a deficit. Regulatory structure is creating the problems you don't want to see. And direct sales will go a long way to bringing a lot of those sales into excise tax revenue for the state and into regulated sales for producers and supporting people actually being in a more fair market for producers in particular. I'm happy to speak to more of that if you want to take time in giving. Representative or Brian?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Member)]: Graham, also the tax rate decision was certainly connected to cannabis. Tax rate. Tax rate.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Yeah, in Essex. The exemption. Yes. And so

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: if rural Vermont had thoughts on that too, did that happen because of our current strange position on anything that

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: goes on? I can just say, I emailed people at the Agency of Agriculture and Farm to Plate and other folks the September before that decision happened, saying that this lawsuit was happening, it was being challenging on the Supreme Court. It wasn't just about cannabis, was about agriculture. The email I got back from the Agency of Ag and from me in front of plate was like, There's no way this is going be overturned. This is clearly understood law. This is just a wild attempt. My perspective was cannabis is sort of canary in the coal mine for a lot of agriculture. And it's treated in a particular way because there's a taboo around it. But I think we've seen the result. Think we got to the decision the State House hasn't made a policy decision. From our perspective as a coalition, I'm happy to speak more to the exemption itself, but this is longstanding legislative intent and precedent that farming is supposed to be exempt from municipal zoning. It's not just from the REPs. It's not as recent as 2016 when the REPs are created. It goes back decades. So we're very surprised at the Supreme Court decision in some respects because it doesn't seem to look at that precedent. It rather looks very square like the language of the REPs. So we're very excited to see how the legislature take action and really clearly define what its intention is around not only farming and zoning, but producing food and zoning, which is where our coalition is really trying to bring this.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Thank you. I agree with you about growing food, whether it's livestock, corn dry rolls, livestock and vegetables and whatnot. Cannabis is not food in my mind. And if I'm wrong, y'all can we can debate that later, politely. I'll throw some stuff at it. But if you know, but you know? And so what hill are we willing to die on on this if we have to go to battle with the Mawlites' cities and towns? You know, they say vegetable gardens, fruits are fine, and having a farm stand so a farmer can support himself is fine, and, you know, where appropriate, having some cows or livestock, it it you know, chickens, whatnot, is fine. Guinea hens, well, they're they're allowed, as Michelle pointed out. But do we are we willing to die on the hill for cannabis in a village center.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: I'm just saying from our coalition, cannabis is not part of the purview of our exemption language or our coalition just because it's not an agricultural product federally or in the state of Vermont. So our work around the municipal exemption doesn't have anything to do with cannabis other than non adult use cannabis. So hemp would fall into those categories, just as other agricultural products that aren't being eaten like pops or medicines or things that go towards homebrew or alcohol sales or something. But we will not be talking about cannabis in the context of the municipal exemption, just in the context of cannabis law.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you for clarifying that. Absolutely.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Burtt. Sure. Whether or cannabis, do you happen to know many states that have crossed any bridge between agricultural

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: definition on campus? Jeffrey Pizzatillo, the director of the Market Growers Association, would be the best person to talk about this because he meets with national alliance of groups around the country who work state by state. I think Oregon might have some agricultural type designation, but it'd be worth looking at because clearly this has to do with the federal schedule one nature of cannabis federally. It's just a barrier to states making that choice. But there are states that are making more and more progressive options. When it comes to our direct sales, Maine, I believe, has a direct sales component of its medical program such that medical patients can get direct sale deliveries from producers. New York is going be moving forward with direct sales language this year. Virginia has put direct sales language in there for producers. Jeff, where you can speak to him, he talks often with the folks in New York where they also have public consumption and have tried the farmer's market ideas. Basically, the person there said is that nothing we tried has moved the needle for producers. And

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: that's why they're

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: going to direct sales producers. They're going to try to see what happens. But I don't know, on the ag side as a whole, it really has to do with federal law. We recognize there are certain things you all can't do here as it relates to cannabis or adult use cannabis, I should say. One of the next, we're part of a coalition called the Fair Share for Vermont Coalition. This may or may not make it to this committee, but they always mess up their name because the Living Assets Institute, I believe that's what they're called, here outside of Montpelier. They're a really fantastic entity, and they put together tax they're assessment and analysis entity, and they look at other options. Are behind a lot of stuff working on child tax credits in Vermont over time. And they have a coalition called the Fair Share Coalition, which is a large group of organizations saying we could have a 3% tax on people making more $500,000 in a year. And talking about that, grossing more than $70,000,000 a year in Vermont. And they put together a number of other progressive proposals which could get us over $400,000,000 a year through different proposals. Royal Vermont is a member of this coalition. We are not the best voice for it at this time in terms of meeting when I answer all your questions. But I would love, if you have interest, if you're going be looking at these issues in any other committees, we don't think it's appropriate for farmers to be paying a greater percentage of their income and taxes than people who are more well positioned to do so, or for general working class Vermonters to be in that position. And that's the current situation in Vermont as we understand it. And we're dealing with a massive federal deficit and also a federal tax bill, which is giving on average, I think, dollars 56,000 to $58,000 back to those people in those higher income earning groups while we're decreasing programs available to working class folks. So that's a coalition I'd like to get you more information about, the programs. If you're interested, please reach out and we can connect you with those folks. Carolyn maybe spoke to Pete Bass. Did she speak to Forever Chemicals a little bit? Well, we did

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: hear a little bit about it. We'd be happy to hear more, I think, it's of interest. I think it's the place

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: that Caroline's the best. We co manage issues, that's when she's led on. She traveled to Maine a couple of years ago conference with Maine farmers. Think you had some Maine farmers maybe in committee here. And right now, it sounds like there is a ban, but there's not a ban. There's a bill that's being developed. But there's this big conversation, as it is in other states, is if we're going to have a ban on any expansion of land application of sewage sludge or testing of farming, then we really need to have a fund in place to ensure that people don't lose their shirts if and when they find out their land is contaminated. Because they already are going be losing a lot of their health probably if they find out in that situation. And we've seen those impacts happen in Maine to that farming community really severely. So Carolyn can speak to more of that in development. And I just spoke with Andrea Salazo with the American Farmland Trust. It sounds like that's also a really big issue for them regionally. They work in at least seven New England states, if I remember correctly, and they're looking at legislation as well, thinking about all these dynamics. So there are a few groups, especially outside, really trying to look at this and think about it from both a perspective of how do we discontinue the spread of these environments, and how do we protect people on the ground whose land might be contaminated?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Member)]: Are microplastics part of that same discussion? I

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: would imagine from the ag regulation side, this falls under the purview of the Ag Innovation Board, where plastics and toxic and pesticides, we think that policy and regulation is tasked. But to my knowledge, they're mostly linked through what Caroline has talked to you about over time, these depackaging plants and how we are implementing the universal recycling law and the source separation policy. Because when you have them going through these massive depackaging plants where they feed water through to separate stuff, you get a lot of plastic contamination in the product that comes out, which is then potentially land applied And whatever chemicals is the point of that, I am not the person to speak to the relationship between plastics and PFAS in the environment or how they're related are treated as separate subjects. Sorry, can't answer that question, Martin. Hold on to that thought, John. Can

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: would love know about it and we can find somebody.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: I will say there was a really interesting Ag Plastics Working Group that I attended a meeting of a number of years ago when Kerry Gaguerre was still at the agency and he was working without Casella and otherwise. I know the agency does look at Ag Plastics and there's recycling programs for bale wrap and there's other things going on, but it's very challenging too to wrap wash on those bales and get them to the right place and add other things on farmers' backs. I don't know what the success rates of the program are or where that material is actually ending up. Know there's speculation that sometimes some of that material is just going to other countries and then being landfilled or oceaned. I guess that's not a word, but I'm

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: just I think you just coined a word. It's quite accurate.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: It was a concern being brought up by that working group at the time. The next topic is the municipal exempt. Well, I'll skip over that because Ellen might have more conversation, it sounds like. Healthcare has been a huge issue. You've heard us come and talk about it in November. To some extent, I know you all have limitations given what we're expecting federally and what our resources are locally. Specifically for the time being, you've heard from Bridges to Health, I believe, Naomi, Wilcox McCausland and other folks. And we are also supporting their ask for $167,700 to be included in the FY 'twenty six Budget Adjustment Act to aid in transitioning Bridges to Health from their current home at UVM to a fiscal sponsorship with Vermont's free referral clinics. And I'm sure you all know about them, but it's a health outreach and care coordination program for migrant and immigrant workers and families across Vermont who aren't otherwise served. We did agree to support that as well. Thank you all so much. But from a greater healthcare perspective, this is again a place where we're looking at revenue generation opportunity as opposed to the austerity end. That's a place where we could think of growing revenue, health care is a place we might want to think about putting in and or implementing the universal care law that the legislature passed more than ten years ago, which our organization 100% supports. And in the Vermont Food Strategic Agricultural Plan, there's a brief on health care, which we were the lead authors of. And one of the number one recommendations is implement a universal publicly funded health care system in Vermont. In In terms of state policy implementation, we're monitoring and participating in the neonicotinoid phase out. The BMPs were just released, and you all may have had some testimony on that from I'm not sure you have yet. I haven't been monitoring your schedule that long. Sorry, my daughter broke up this week.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We are not taking testimony on that and are not planning to at the moment.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Okay, it's just the updates, I think, on how the Ag Innovation Board is moving in that process right now. It might come before legislature in terms of approving the BMPs at some point. I'm not sure if you know more representative Nelson. I should be in touch with those folks. Caroline spoke to you all about regional planning a lot, I think. And just thinking about if we know regionally we really need to grow the amount of land in agriculture and grow the number of farmers to even meet 30% of our regional food security. We don't have any plans in Vermont for protecting or growing our ag. And we largely have voluntary programs and easements and programs that are planning for housing and planning for conservation, the ag land is the negative space between us just being carved away. And even when we do talk about preserving ag land, we don't talk about how are we going to actually make it affordable for people to get on it, have houses on it, and farm it.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Yeah, it should be. In Ohio over the last five years, they've lost 500,000 acres of land. Farmland? Farmland, yeah, in Ohio. You know, when you think about that, and you know what kind of soil that is in Ohio. I don't know if they have any clay in Ohio. Maybe they do. Ruth Hardy has a bill up on the wall that I'm from the signed on to about not a site in solar projects on our good ag soils. And there's rumors about a bill, if not this year, year, about really going in and protecting our prime ag soils. There's no secret that developments happen on our best soils.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: You see a strength?

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Yeah, no secret. There'll be Williston, those are just wonderful soils, and other places as well.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: I'd the agency and Ryan Patch also did a great job presenting on this sometimes, like Ryan cites a lot of that data on farmland loss, Those critical resource areas that they're identifying in Act 181 where housing can't go, shallow to bedrock or river corridors, future wetlands. Ryan points out very rightly so that that's also some of the land that's not going be that appropriate for ag over time. So we're losing potentially ag land, we're losing housing land. And it just means that all the more focus is coming on to make better ag land for housing. It's harder and harder for farmers to stay in business and keep it in farming. We need that land. We need, in fact, hundreds of thousands, probably more acres of that land than people farming.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: 30 by 30?

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Well, we don't support 30 by 30. We would like to see a better

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: I'm talking 30 by 30. New England feed New England 30% by 2020.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Yes, I'm sorry, that 30 by 30. Yes. We like that analysis. You're you're good. Yeah.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Thank you for the clarification. I wanna be

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: able to come up with a different.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Yeah. We would love like a holistic planning process. Could would it would make sense for all the ag stakeholders, my housing, my health care, all these things. How How could we make a layered approach where we look at what are the essential needs of Vermont over the next hundred years, and how can we plan this together? Because it feels like it's really sector based, people fighting for their peace, and the land's just disappearing. That's part of our perspective. We'd be happy to talk more. That's another place where I think these big, diverse coalitions of ag groups are going to come together. We've talked about coming together to talk about agricultural land planning, but right now we feel like we really have to save this exemption and focus on that right now. But there's a lot of places where I think you'll see a lot of diversity and ag groups coming together and forming coalitions with a lot of common cause in the next couple of years around issues like this. Do we want to go back to the municipal exemption and chat about that for a minute? It sounded like, Chair, you might have some questions.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, I think that's the big issue that is right in front of us, and we're going to hear more testimony next week. And I think probably put together some sort of a committee bill once we've heard the different perspectives. So anything else you want to say about that? I would just

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: say that I didn't get to watch was Amber and Caroline in here on Wednesday? They were. Testified together. I didn't get to watch that yet. But I am sorry that's a little confusing for you all because I know you did get Stephen Collier giving his language. We did. Yes. We were waiting for that to present on our language because we'd like to contrast it with the agencies. So you haven't heard our language yet. It's a little like I don't want to be the one sharing with you because our coalition would like to come in and do that at a prearrange time, I'm happy to answer questions. I think if you saw Steven Collier presenting, one of the main questions might be is why does our coalition not want to open up the RAPs? We think that this can all be solved simply under Title 24, which is the municipal zoning code. It can very easily just be clarified in there. We do not support any changes to the income requirements, the Schedule F, to any of that. This whole thing can just be solved through Title 24 is our perspective. And we would like to, one, just clarify in there that municipalities do not have any zoning authority over farms. And beyond that, we're trying to put in a right to grow food such municipalities cannot put roadblocks between anybody growing food, that they have very limited control over that. And we would like to see the agency, given their agricultural expertise, be the ones who are called in for those below farm scale as well. And we understand that might take some more resources for them. If that's the case, we're happy to give them more resources, but we really think there's a lot of concern with municipalities do not have agricultural expertise and are often biased is the determinant to be making decisions about people's businesses or abilities to feed themselves in their communities.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Carolyn did speak to that. So while we didn't get language on a piece of paper, she did discuss that would be part of the recommendation coming from the coalition.

[Jed Lipsky (Committee Clerk)]: Could you share what title 24 references?

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Yes. Title 24 and I'm sorry. I'm not a lawyer either, so I'm I'm not as familiar with all these. But title 24 is the it's the municipal zoning title. It's for all the allowances for what municipalities can or can't zone is written out. So from our perspective, and ideally, I was part of the RIPE development committee in 2015 or 'sixteen with the agency and a number of other farmers. And Our impression is that we wanted the RIPs to be actually opened for a little bit because we have a number of things which belong in there that the agency hasn't written in yet. Well, the composting regulations. So we have a bunch of legacy composters who are set because they're already in place, but new composters don't have anything. They open up the IPs. Despite the fact that statute says things have changed, the IPs still don't because they haven't been amended for we need to get this changed maybe statutorily in 2021. There's no guidance because it's not in the IIPs from the agency, etcetera. So we see a reason to open the IIPs, not on this issue, not before the legislature. When you

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: say open the IIPs We would like to see

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: it go through a public rulemaking process again, where we could have the public come in and comment. The agency can take comments and questions from the public, etcetera. They draft their rules, and then they can come back before the legislature with draft rules. Are you talking about composting here? Talking about the RIPs in general, the required agricultural practices rule, and how we would like to see it amended if it was brought up. I'm sorry, I want to

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: just be sure that I'm not going away and repeat something that you didn't say. But let's leave the composting. We did hear about the composting rule too and how that hasn't happened, so want to put a pin in that. Even what Steve brings

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: up around the donations. We are very much in alignment with that. We think that people donating over a certain amount that makes sense to fit in there. But we do not feel to resolve the municipal zoning issue that we need to change the IPs and open them up right now in the legislature. We think it's a big risk. One, it's not necessary to resolve that issue. It's a big risk because there's a lot of fights people are waiting for to happen there.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So in other words, you don't think that there needs to be any rulemaking on this issue. It can all be done through legislation changing Title 24.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: For the exemption? Yes, to solve the Solving municipal exemption issue, we believe we don't have to open the RIPs in the lunch.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. Title 24, Jed, to your question, when the agency was in, they passed a grant to this, it's on our webpage, too. It's their proposed language, and there are two parts. The first part was what legislative language needed to be changed, and that's Title 24. And then the second part was the RAPs, which are in rural.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Okay, so

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: whenever the coalition is ready, you can pass this along. Have them send us the language that they're interested in seeing. I think it would be helpful for us to have. Yes, we have it ready.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Think they'd just like to come and testify. The reason they probably didn't do it online did you hear from Steven yesterday?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: It was yesterday. Okay. So they probably did.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: They just wanted to wait for VFM to show their language so we could put them side by side. I'll just let them know that you all are ready. Sorry for

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: the car before that. Then next week we have the league coming in, which may create a different proposal. That's right.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: The whole coalition has met with the league. We've met with the agency. In fact, we started meeting with the agency. And the only reason we stopped meeting directly with agencies because when we did, they originally said, well, we only get on the same page. And then they said, but we are going negotiate with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. We can't share that language with you yet. We're going negotiate with them. And we said, well, that doesn't work for us. We need to be able to see the language you want to propose to Vermont Legal Cities and Towns. When they went to do that, we said we're going to work on our own agriculture organizations develop our own language. When the AFM was ready to share the language that they and the Vermont Legal Cities and Towns feedback, they shared that with us, and we developed our alternative language. And we've been in contact with the agency and with VLCT, but I just wanted to give you a bit of the background of why the agency is coming on its own or how they got there and how it is that the rest of us are coming our own way. We would love for them to be on the same page as the rest of the agricultural stakeholders in the state, but right now they're not.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So we heard a little bit about where you don't necessarily align in your approach here, but within the framework of just changing statute then, I think both you and the agency are proposing that we do a little bit more than just clarify farms are exempt.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Yes, and we are saying more farms are exempt. And we agree with them that the right to grow food language they put around, around vegetables and trees and essentially plants, we've expanded that to include livestock, with particular language suggesting that there's a certain giving discretion to the secretary to make determinations about what is too much livestock on a given parcel at a certain scale. Richard, thank you. They put that language in when when

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: counselor Collier presented to us. They talked about livestock and the secretary had it. And I agree with you 100%. I don't wanna open the air or impeach. It frankly causes me great concern to go into those battles again, seeing that we battled with KPO last year, and how much energy that took. So I don't wanna open the IREPs, and I'm excited to hear about this Title 24 thing, and I think you probably can get broad support across the industry. As far as composting goes, there are rules in the REPs for composting for us. I don't know if those don't work for y'all. I'd love to sometimes have coffee with you and just hear the differences or hear it in here. Composting is a valuable tool and you know you have to contain your effluent from it, And other than you know for us it has to be in our nutrient management plan if we're receiving, and it's such a low NPK value. The value of the compost is all the microbiomes and stuff that are in it, it's not so much the percentage of nitrogen, phosphorus, you know, big one, the big P, you know, that acid can be quite really good in it too. But there's not a lot of P in it. And I don't see what the hang up would be for anyone if you keep it neat and contained. I can just

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: quickly address that. Think Carolyn can can really speak specifically. I'm sure she'd love to just sit down with you and and have coffee or or tea or whatever and and chat about it. It's it's really specific to this must have happened. I don't know I don't know who was here when it happened or didn't, but it's around the on farm importation of food scraps as a means about whether that's waste management or whether it's farming, and whether it's protected as waste management or protected as farming when you're composting those on a farm and when they're using chickens as a part of the composting process.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Yeah. We have a gentleman that does it at home. It's wonderful.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Yes. There's a number of them around the state who've been doing it for a while, but essentially, there's there were new regulations drafted and they put in the statute, but they've three or four years that haven't been put in the IEP. So it's again, if we have, again, said that we don't think it's worth opening the IEP is to get that in from our legislature right now. We're in agreement, but we would still like to see them get in there.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Yeah. Or or figure it out through rule making over there, whatever, yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We're almost out of time here, John.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: One of the things we're gonna have to figure out is in addressing this issue is whether just going into Title 24 and making changes will be adequate because if you look at what the agencies recommended, there is some language that they're proposing, we look at the RAPs because it would be an easier process in going through the full rulemaking, and we as a committee are gonna have to figure out how much we want to change if we do that, but there is a phrase in there that is important and it says and are not subject to municipal zoning laws, talking about farms. That might be a really important phrase to have in the RAPs, and that's part of this.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think that'll be a

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: good debate to have. We've got

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: to figure out, if we just change Title 24 and not the arrow fix, is that enough?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, think that part of what I'm hearing is a political concern that if we open the RIPs, then we possibly expose ourselves to other people with different agendas wanting to do something. And I'd like to understand more about what that something might be and and whether that concern is something that we need to be concerned about. And also, if we handle this differently, is it gonna slow down the process? We wanna try and do something, I think, here. Yes.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Member)]: Just procedurally, wondered about can only the agency initiate the opening of the RIPs? I mean, can the legislature force them to Yes. Proposals. But we're doing it statutorily as opposed to what you were just talking about where it sounds like the agency doesn't even need, if they wanted to say, get open the wraps, they don't even need the legislature. Eventually, if they went through the wrap process or the rule process,

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: So

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Member)]: I'm wondering if they're parameters to be put on that. Did you just open the RFPs and deal with comp opening, for example? Can you narrow the focus or do the whole

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: think we process get can get

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Legis Council back getting here to I just wanted to say I have a commitment to meet with a mentee in the cafeteria, so I'm going have to slow down. I know there's a Act 73 tutorial if anybody who's lost in that.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: I agree. Think that's a question we'd have to have someone like, Councilor Steven or otherwise come in and speak to the processes around these. I will just say we are looking at representative Burtt's solar bills. I think we did sign on against the Shaftsbury project two years ago. Had concerns, one, about offset based credits, these renewable energy credits period in the state, is some way of pretending that it's lessening climate change. It's not that we don't support solar, but we do support protecting farmland and forests. And we do support people paying the same tax rates or paying their fair share of taxes when they're putting in big projects and making sure it's in the public goods, in the interest of the public and not just in the interest of the profits of a large corporation.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right, thank you for noting that. Thank And thank you for all of that testimony. So we'll be discussing, obviously, the municipal park quite a bit. And I don't want to lose sight of the accomplishing concern that you brought.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Yeah, Caroline will be the best one to talk to you about that because she really worked with that group for a long time and the agency and continues to write.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Yes, okay.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right, thank you all.

[Graham Muniz, Policy Director, Rural Vermont]: Happy to have more conversations over to the notes.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We are we are done for the day. So we don't have anything scheduled for the afternoon as it turns out. So thank you. See you all. We'll see everybody on Tuesday.