Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: So we haven't had a lot of requests. The only thing for the BAA that we've really looked at or were asked to consider was that funding for Bridges to Health that we talked about last week. And I think partly that's because collectively, the organizations that we often hear from recognize that we are in a tighter budget situation, that there's less money, and that there are other, the the issues, obviously, taxes. So a question for the committee is having heard a little more testimony on the Vermontrix feeding the mantras program, whether we want to send a letter to the Appropriations Committee as we've done in the past saying, you know, we support this and encourage them to include it in the BAA. It doesn't mean that our recommendation in and of itself won't be enough to do that. But without a recommendation, I think it's unlikely that they would consider it. Anyway, I welcome any reaction to your thoughts people might have.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Amy might know this, but in the governor's recommend for the BAA, there's nothing for this, monitoring the monitors.

[Speaker 0]: I believe that's correct. Okay.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Go ahead, Michelle.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: I guess I would just say, I wish that we had fully funded it in the first place. Appropriations felt they couldn't do it. I think it's worth trying again. And if we put in a request for 1,500,000.0 and appropriations feels like they can't do all of it, maybe they'll give some of it. If we don't put forward something, we know that none of the funds are going to go to farmers and none of the funds are going to go to people looking for food in this in this way. And so it feels to me like it's worth a try for us to send a letter and say, we think this is a valuable program that has a double benefit to people that we represent in our committee. And we hope you can you can fund it. That's my meeting.

[Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Chair, are you looking for motion or just consensus? I think we

[Speaker 0]: can do this by a straw poll. And, Jed, if you if you want to

[Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Yeah. Alright. That's fine. I will record that. Okay. Just for the record, the modest clerk, but I support Rep Bos-Lun's proposal and I would certainly support that of that early 1.5.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: You cannot receive if you do not ask.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, any other thoughts? So would somebody like to formally move then that we recommend to the House Appropriations Committee 1 and a half million dollars in the budget adjustment?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: You want me to say all that, just exactly what he said? That's fine.

[Speaker 0]: I I was so moved. I think Jed's there. And I'll amend that to say and that we ask ledge counsel to help us draft that form of that in there, but I'll say that because I am gonna ask Bradley. Okay, so thank you. Any other discussion?

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: You've got a second?

[Speaker 0]: I think our rules expert Metropolis. Yep, so we don't need a second. That's it's because we use Mason's rules. Mason's, that's right,

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: not Robert's. Yeah, you're right.

[Speaker 0]: So Mason was less of a

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: The basis of that is to have the man has the right to have their position considered regardless of whether anyone else agrees.

[Speaker 0]: So that's why you need a second just so we

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: can alright.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: If we're ready for this Let's

[Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: go ahead then. 01/20/2026. Security forty six sends a letter of support for $1,500,000 request for Vermonters feeding Vermonters to for the budget adjustment consideration to the appropriations committee. It's really a straw poll for a letter. It's not a a bill or amendment. So if that's clear to everyone, John L. Bartholomew, we vote. Yes. Michelle Bos-one. Yes. Gregory Greg Burtt. Yes. Jed Lipsky. Yes. Richard Nelson, yes. John O'Brien, yes. Casey Toof, Chairman David Durfee, yes. With Casey Toof no longer in the bottom, he a one or a zero?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. I think I think you can well, we'll thank representative Toof for his time in legislature, and then take him off the list. So So

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: now we just count as seven.

[Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: So the vote tally is seven. Yes. Zero. No. Zero.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: John? I just had a question in general, just with Greg Burtt and for a program that potentially pays Burtt's purchase.

[Speaker 0]: So I think that good question. I think that we've heard in our training, and we could have Legis Council speak to this too, that short of program that is Vermonters feeding Greg Burtt, think that it's a

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Is it Greg Burtt feeding the modern?

[Speaker 0]: There isn't an issue. But there is, Greg, you can talk to I'm sorry, shouldn't be addressing this.

[Bradley Shoman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I just want to flag it.

[Christian (farm labor study witness)]: No, yeah, no, I totally understand.

[Speaker 0]: Michael Grady has in the past, I think, spoken of this, and it's the way that that particular rule or section or whatever it is is written. Maybe, John, you have more insight into this too, but I think it's not an issue in this case.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. If it as you said, if it was promote you know, Greg Burtt was getting all the money, he'd have to accuse himself. But because it goes out to many places.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Belongs to the class of participants.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Exactly. Like I can vote on issues that affect primers as a whole, even if it Benefits you. Benefits me.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Yeah.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Then I could vote against it if it affects me, but affects farmers as a whole. But I could see if

[Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: it was only going to three farmers,

[Christian (farm labor study witness)]: you know, then we have to be in I don't know where someone would decide that the pool is too small, so no.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, that's a good point. I think the day I came and saw your farm and visited, the gleaners were there that day of fall, cleaning up. Was maybe the day or two after you had closed for the season. Yes. All right. Good, thank you, everybody. Think glad to have had that conversation.

[Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: By the way, your apple pie had Greg Burtt's apple, so I'm aware of for the record.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: So how soon can we send a letter down? From what I recall, it was super time sensitive.

[Speaker 0]: So we're gonna have Bradley working on that and we'll do it ASAP.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Okay. All right, awesome. Because from

[Speaker 0]: what I gather, they're ready there. Yeah, they're not.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Today would be, apparently, I've heard very recently that today

[Speaker 0]: would not be good. But in the meantime, if anybody wouldn't mind joining us to refresh our memories a little bit on the municipal regulation of agriculture. And I had asked, do you have a Zoom connection? I do. Yes. Okay. I'd asked Ledge Council to just give us some very simple straightforward language that if we were not to do anything else, to have as a baseline for restoring us to the world we lived in prior to the Supreme Court decision, the TAP Road. TAP Street? Street. TAP Street. So we have this on our webpage, and we'll also pull it up on the screen and just have Bradley then walk through the language and give us something to think about, help anchor us for tomorrow when we're taking this up again with tomorrow, it'll be the league of cities and counties coming in. Thanks.

[Bradley Shoman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I'm Bradley Shoman, office of legislative council. And up on the screen, I have drafted some language here that would revert to the pre Taft Street status quo, Taft Street being the supreme court decision we've been talking about the last few weeks. And, so the holding of that decision, said that the statute that we're looking at here on screen, only said that bylaws under this chapter shall not regulate the required agricultural practices. And it was the notion prior to this decision that the regulation scheme was much broader. And what we thought before Tap Street was that farming that meets the minimum threshold criteria in the required agricultural practices rule and is subject to regulation under required agricultural practices cannot be regulated by municipal by law. So, basically, what this does is it just expands required agricultural practices and says that anything subject essentially subject to regulation under the required agricultural practices cannot be regulated by municipal bylaw. And in this section, I also just separate out construction of farm, construction of a farm structure as authorized under under the required agricultural practices rule. And then the rest of this stays the same. I just changed the numbering here in the definition section. I just broke out farming from the subsection of farm structure. It's all squished together, and we wanted to make it clear, that farming has the same meet meaning as in statute to capture as much activity as we can. Now if this language were placed in a a committee bill, for instance, we would want an intent section in the very beginning to explain what the reason this, reason this body is passing the law is, what it's in response to, and, how the court should interpret the the law, to mean that farming activity subject to the required agricultural practices shall not be regulated by bylaw.

[Speaker 0]: Pretty straightforward. Representative O'Brien? Probably a discussion for another day, but

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: where does housing for farm workers fall in titles? Because farm structures are mentioned, but then it specifically pulls out for human dwelling. I don't know if you got into that in your farm labor study, Christian.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Go ahead, Chris.

[Christian (farm labor study witness)]: The H2A and H2B programs are federally regulated. So I don't know about like you can technically have a camper for your H2A employees during summer months.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: You built a dormitory for your agency workers. Is that structure or was that a human building?

[Christian (farm labor study witness)]: Yeah, I just know that there are parts of that that are federally regulated. They don't know about the placement on the land of the structure. Actually it does have to be away from, There is language about how far it is away from area of wetland even and things like that. So it's partially federally regulated, it's all I

[Bradley Shoman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And just to be clear here, the definition of farm structure excludes dwellings meant for human habitation. So this subsection does not prohibit a bylaw from regulating a dwelling for human habitation on farm. And so that would be that could still that always has been, it could still be subject to municipal bylaw regulation.

[Speaker 0]: I just noted that the language on line seven that's crossed out there in the existing statute, as those practices are defined by the secretary, that we're no longer saying that in the new language. And whether there's any reason to think that we should, whether it's extraneous, or whether by rewriting it, we've made it not necessary.

[Bradley Shoman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Took that out because it's not necessary when the language we use to replace it is construction of a farm structure as authorized under the required agricultural practices rule, which is a rule that is issued and shepherded by the Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets. So this ties it more toward what we thought the practice was prior to Taft Street, which is if the regulation if the construction of a farm structure is authorized pursuant to the required agricultural practices rule, then it will be exempt from municipal bylaw.

[Speaker 0]: I was actually thinking of it more connected with part A and the practice of, again, in the existing language that we're proposing to strike out as those practices were, as those farming practices were then required agricultural practices were defined.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: But

[Bradley Shoman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I see your question, and I think the same logic applies in the situation. So we're tying it to the required agricultural practices, which was our thought and practice prior to the Taft Street decision. And having the language in there as defined by the Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets is not needed in the situation where it's more clearly tailored to statute to saying farming that meets the minimum threshold requirements excuse me, threshold criteria in the required agricultural practices rule and is subject to regulation under the required agricultural practices rule. We're trying to make it as clear as we can to say that anything that is subject to regulation under these rules is exempt from municipal bylaw. One thing, that this does not do is it doesn't, change or or address anything with relation to cannabis. Tap Street did concern a cannabis farmer, and this doesn't touch, any cannabis rules or anything of that sort. And cannabis is regulated differently than other kinds of agriculture, or agriculture period. And but I just wanna point out that this does not address any anything related to cannabis. And then so anything that tax rate would have changed relative to cannabis would still be in place.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: What about accessory on farm structures that we we heard about last year? Is there some place to tackle those now or is that something that I think it hangs down in senate ag anyway, but

[Speaker 0]: The right. And I think that Or is this separate? No. I don't think it does. A different title of statute. So that's in the Actuary 50 title, which might be title 10, I forget the numbers. But we will be having an opportunity to look at that later. Okay, thank you. John? Yeah, go ahead.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. On top of page two, farming has the same meaning as in 10 B. A. C. What is that meaning, briefly?

[Christian (farm labor study witness)]: Yes, I can pull that.

[Bradley Shoman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Gonna change my sharing so I can come up on screen. I'm gonna unshare and then reshare screen. Okay. And, so I'm I'm showing the definition of farming under statute, which is broader than in the required agricultural practices. So the, the statute that we've drafted does limit it, does define farming this way, but it exempts regulation, municipal regulation, by bylaw, for farming practices that are subject to the required agricultural practices. And so this is the broadest definition of farming. But a somewhat more narrow definition of farming exists in the acquired agricultural practices, or excuse me, a somewhat, more narrow scope of farming is subject to the required agricultural practices because as as we learned last week, from Steve's Steve Collier's presentation, to be subject to the required agriculture practices, you might have to, have a certain number of livestock. You might have to have a certain amount of gross receipts. You might have to have a certain amount of acreage. And so if you are subject to the required agricultural practices, you would be exempt from municipal agriculture, even if you were raising livestock, poultry, fish or beets.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: So the definition that I just asked about is broader than the required agriculture. The limiting factor here in terms of municipal oversight would be the required agricultural practices. That is correct. Farmers would have to follow those.

[Bradley Shoman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That is correct.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: That is correct.

[Bradley Shoman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And One other thing to point out, and I'm sharing my whole screen, so you'll see me jump around now. And this might be something to talk about with the league, but, you know, these are some of the requirements that are in the required agricultural practices that would make you subject to, the required agricultural practices rule. Right? So if you have 100 laying hens, you're subject to the required agricultural practices rule. If have 99, you're not. And that was kind of an issue that the court brought up in Taft Street. 14 goats, you're not subject to it. 15 goats, you are. And, there are other factors there too, like gross receipts, acreage, and things of that sort. But absent those, other criterion, an individual in a town could have a number of animals that could be exempt from municipal bylaw regulation under the rule that we have as drafted, and just pointing that out, that's, the kind of scope of what is being prevented from regulation here.

[Speaker 0]: So a 100 laying hen farms would be not subject to municipal regulation, but just 90 and even 99 would And that's Again, if you are selling $2,000 worth of eggs, then you are again. So if you had 99 hens, you're probably in the business, but I

[Christian (farm labor study witness)]: don't think

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: I could see where a dozen a dozen hens would get maybe not get you there too quite big. Like, what's a dozen?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, it adds up.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. It's up. Four hundred days, they've done hit 2,000 by a piece

[Christian (farm labor study witness)]: of water. Your hands can't it. 200,000. Yeah. When

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: the agency came in with some proposed language, they were suggesting changes to the required agriculture practices. Presumably, this will accomplish the goal of taking us back where we were without opening the wraps. Is that?

[Bradley Shoman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That is correct. This makes no changes to the wraps.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Nothing in the wraps that would need to change to accomplish. Don't think there is when I looked at them.

[Bradley Shoman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That is correct. There's nothing the wraps do not necessarily have to change in order to accomplish this specific goal, which would be to revert to the pre tax rate status quo.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. So this is this is just reverting back to the status quo and and yeah. And I would be very interested, if we move forward to this, of course, seeing what the legislative intent's language would actually say.

[Speaker 0]: Okay.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: That's a good addition. That isn't here. Okay, good. We can ask Bradley to work on that too. Greg? I guess what do

[Christian (farm labor study witness)]: you mean by the legislative intent language?

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Well, when Michael Grady was here, he talked about it, it's just to make it really clear to anyone, including the courts, what the legislative, because in my opinion, the legislative intent was clear and the court misinterpreted it. So I think it's really important that we state what the legislative intent was when we did this and what we did before decades ago. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: You have another question? All right. Good, so I don't know, I don't think that we have posted yet, because it's not on until tomorrow, the legal citizens counts document. Is that right?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Yes. It won't appear in the It

[Speaker 0]: won't appear, yeah. I think they did testify in the Senate, so if anybody is curious and wants to see what they had to say.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: I can circulate. There's nothing that stops us.

[Speaker 0]: So yeah, if you wouldn't mind, emailing to everybody. Just if you want to take a look at it before they're in tomorrow, have a heads up. And then will have heard, there's at least another group of farm organizations that wanted to come in and say something, but then I think we'll be ready to maybe dig in and figure out what we think we want to do.

[John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: They're coming in Thursday.

[Speaker 0]: Oh yeah, leak is coming in tomorrow, and then we'll have stakeholder testimony on Thursday, and then maybe more stakeholder testimony at some point.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Are they coming in the afternoon during the TBD?

[Speaker 0]: They're coming in Thursday morning. No.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: I mean, the league of city to town. I don't see them.

[Speaker 0]: The league is on ten 01:30. Yeah. Oh, oh, oh. Wednesday.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Oh, I see it now too.

[Speaker 0]: It's been a while. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Good night. We'll see you tomorrow.