Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And I think it might be a good idea if we just let you testify, we'll hold our questions, and then once we're through, before we transition speakers, we can see if there's any questions. Sure. All right, so yeah, let's hear from you.

[Olivia Schero]: Okay, thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Olivia Schero. I'm the executive director of Vermont's Free and Referral Clinics, Vermont's statewide free clinic association. For this testimony, I am here to represent VFRC as the new fiscal sponsor to the Bridges to Health program. We will assume this role on 07/01/2026. And can everyone hear me? I'm a quiet talker. Can you hear me the back?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. Yeah.

[Olivia Schero]: I'm here to ask the committee to please consider the budget, request for fiscal year twenty twenty seven of $500,000 for Bridges to Health. This funding, which will cover a portion of their annual operating budget, would act as a critical stabilizing funding source and would bolster this essential program. Bridges to Health is a uniquely effective health outreach and care coordination program, serving immigrants and migrant workers and their families across Vermont. These members of our communities are frequently excluded from or otherwise unable to access traditional health and social service systems. At the core of their program is the belief that everyone, regardless of country of origin, the language they speak, or their race or ethnicity deserves access to the health services that they need. This is a value that we, with Vermont's Framed Referral Clinics, share. We understand that these people struggle to get the basic care that many of us take for granted, that they are important members of our communities and workers on who employers and our economy rely. Similar to our work, Bridges to Health serves patients who in many cases would be unable to access care outside of the emergency room. Because of this, I know that Bridges to Health saves our health care system money by helping patients access and navigate non emergency health care delivery settings, such as urgent care and primary care. It saves hospitals and clinics time and money by supporting patients who have language and service needs that they currently cannot meet. But beyond the economic considerations, we have stepped into the role of fiscal sponsor, despite the changes that it brings to our organization because we believe that now more than ever, there is a moral imperative to act to preserve these critical services for a population, people who are our neighbors that are increasingly under pressure. I thank you for the opportunity to be here, and I ask again that you support that you please consider supporting the request for $500,000 for Bridges to Health for fiscal year '27.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you, Olivia. Before we let you go

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Sure.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: If you've got any questions. So there was a question about whether this funding is in the, whether it would be base funding or one time funding, also whether it's in the governor's budget proposal. I don't know if you have the answer for that.

[Olivia Schero]: Amy, do you? It's not in the governor's budget. Correct?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Not in the not in the budget. Okay.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Representative O'Brien. So just in former years, do we know at UBM, did it was state funding flowing through UVM to bridges?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, I don't think so. I think this is new. Yeah, okay. Do

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: you want me to answer that?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: If you wouldn't mind just saying your name for the record and then you may, yes.

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: Naomi Will Greer and Mccausman Health. There were two one time allocations from the state budget, not last year, but two years prior to that.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Do we know how much those were?

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: One, I believe, was worth $3.50 and another for 82,000.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Can you say a little bit about how you feel that this is a good use of the resources of the organization that you're with? Sure.

[Olivia Schero]: It's a good use of the resources because of how critical the services are. There's also tremendous overlap in terms of what the free clinics who are members of my organization do in terms of health system navigation and helping support patients accessing insurance and primary care. There's overlap between what we do and what Bridges to Health also does. So when we learned that Bridges to Health would no longer be a part of UVM, we started talking about, does it make sense for them to become a member? Is there another model that we should be looking at? This is clearly critical work, not only do the patients that they serve rely on this, the farmers with whom they work, but also members of my organization also work with community health workers at their clinics. So this is a really we really understand the critical importance of this. To be a member of our organization, you have to be a registered nonprofit. Because of the the time, line that we were operating under, it was about eight months from when we started talking originally. There just wasn't time for them to, get set up as an independent organization and be a member. So it really felt like it made sense to come under our umbrella, keep the services going, and then after a little bit of time try to understand, does it make sense for them to become a separate entity? What makes sense from here?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Does that answer question? The clinics are located across the state. Is there one in each county?

[Olivia Schero]: No. Unfortunately, there's not. They're located across the state, but really it's the lower two thirds of the state. The furthest north is Berry, and the director of the Berry Clinic is here. He's also the chair of my board of directors.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: But there's not one in Chittenden County?

[Olivia Schero]: No. Historically, there's a prescription access program that's part of UVM. It's called the Health Assistance Program. Not sure if anyone has heard of it. They were members for many years. And so that was sort of Chittenden County. That was our Chittenden County location, and they left the association in 2024. Barrie on the East Side and Middlebury is the furthest north on the West Side.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I don't want to get too much into your structure of the organization, are the services being offered? Are there comparable organizations in the Northern counties?

[Olivia Schero]: That's a good question. There are community health centers in the Northern counties that have sliding fee scales for folks who are below a certain income threshold. I think it's 200 or 250% of the federal poverty level, so pretty low income. So in that sense, the folks who have low incomes can access free services, primary preventative care. But there is not an organization that looks just like ours, where services are free, they're free all the time, no payment plans, no insurance billed, whether you have insurance or not, and that really provide these sort of wraparound. I call them health system navigation services. We call them referral services internally. But health system navigation is helping people navigate the system, navigate the insurance system, access primary care, access preventative care, access free prescriptions. There really isn't anything that looks like this outside of Bridges to Health, which is working with a specific population in the northern part of the state, but does a similar sort of wraparound navigation services with their community health workers.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Does free and referral clinics get any state assistance at Presbyter?

[Olivia Schero]: Yes, we do. Separate from Bridges. We our own. We have a legislative appropriation. It comes to us through the Department of Health as a grant. And that flows through Vermont's free and referral clinics and funds all of our member clinics.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Are there Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements somewhere?

[Olivia Schero]: No, there are no insurance reimbursements. The way that our services are classified, they're called Medicaid administrative services. So technically, a portion of the funding that flows through the Department of Health is federal Medicaid money, but it's not reimbursement for services. It is actually explicitly not reimbursing for clinical care. We can use it for overhead costs. But as free clinics, both to be a member of VFRC, you can't bill patients, you can't bill their insurance, but also to have a federal designation as a free clinic, you're also barred from billing insurance. So none of it is actual Medicare commercial insurance reimbursement.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: What's the budget, your annual budget?

[Olivia Schero]: Budget is about $100,000 Our legislative appropriation is just under $1,600,000 So a very small portion of it comes to my budget, not my full budget. We also have a couple of service specific Department of Health grants that fund my budget, and then the vast majority goes to the clinics.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Right, thank you. Should we have Naomi come over?

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: Let me just state my name again in the back. So my name is Naomi Willkommakosland. I lead Bridges to Health. As Olivia mentioned, we'll be transitioning from UVM Extension to VFRC as of July 1. And I want to tell you a little bit more. I know you were here in the fall when I came in. I thought it would be helpful to start with how Bridges to Health came to be. 2010, I was working on it at my parents' dairy farm in Franklin County, doing some part time shifts. My dad was done with the cows. My mom wanted to continue, so I was kind of filling that role while at the same time I was doing outreach on farms that hired migrant workers. I had transitioned to a from an outreach position to a labor management cross cultural labor management project, working specifically in Franklin and Grand Isle County with farm owners and farm workers. And at the beginning of that project, I started writing down why people were contacting me. After the first year, I realized that 50% of the contacts were about health care access. Farm owners reached out asking about where to access care on behalf of their employees. Farm workers were reaching out to get help interpreting between the farm owners and themselves about work injuries. And there were just a ton of questions about the cost of care and where to go and how to get there and the paperwork. And at the beginning, I really didn't have a lot of information about how to navigate the health care system, especially from the standpoint of an immigrant worker. They were reaching out to me really because I was a trusted person. I was a known person to them, both the farm owners and farm workers. And over time, kind of case by case, I learned how to navigate the system. While I was navigating the system, it was very obvious what barriers existed at the time in 2010, and now sixteen years later, many of those same barriers continue to exist. And without meaning to, I kind of became a community health worker, right? I was a trusted person who was able to understand the local context, the farming context, the farm worker culture, and their lived experiences. And this allowed me to be able to navigate the services that they needed to be healthy, productive members of our communities. That experience really was the foundation of Bridges to Health. We started in Northwestern Vermont. We then became a statewide program, initially focused on dairy workers. And then during COVID, we expanded to work with seasonal workers who were having challenges navigating the health care system. And more recently, we've started working with service industry and building trades workers and their family members who face similar barriers to care. So we're sixteen years later from when we first started doing this work more informally, and trust is really at the heart of the community health worker role. And I believe that now more than ever, that trust is needed to begin to really continue supporting people and accessing the needed services. We, over the past three years, have supported over 1,000 farm workers in accessing needed services on 170 farms across all counties of the state. So we have a pretty broad reach. And we've helped people based on what their unique needs are, based on where they live, whether they're close to a free clinic, whether there's a community health center, whether it's an urgent care. We have eight bilingual regional staff members. Each person has their own geographic region, and they work with individuals, with families, with households to really understand what their needs are, what their priorities are, and what are the barriers that exist for them. In the past year, because of the trust that we have with the community, we were able to support over 1,000 appointments for both farm workers and members of their family. We did outreach clinics focused on an immunization campaign. I mentioned this in my testimony in the fall. We reached 63 farms across 10 different counties. We are working with community based food access groups to get food boxes delivered to households that have challenges getting the food that they need. We support each year 25 to 30 households in growing their own kitchen gardens so that they have autonomy and being able to access the food they want during our relatively short growing season. And we also support families both on farm and off farm and accessing WIC and other food access programs. So all of that in my mind is because of the trust that we've built over time, particularly with the farm worker community. I just wanted to look at the time because I wanted to share about a few people that we've worked with. Terence was a Jamaican worker that we worked with in the past, and there was a new worker who came onto the farm. He'd run out of blood pressure medications, and so Terence was like, Call Bridges to help. We tried to get him into a local community health center. They weren't going be able to see him for four months. He already didn't have blood pressure meds. And so we worked with our volunteer provider. He was able to prescribe blood pressure medications. We helped him get a GoodRx coupon, which reduced the cost of those medications. And then we set him up with a home blood pressure cuff and a tracking sheet so he can manage his blood pressure for the duration of the growing season. Another person that we worked with very recently, Yolanda, was a farm worker who has a young kid. She got, I think it was 15 pages in English from Vermont Health Connect and said, What do I do with this? It was a renewal application. So we helped her fill out that application. We helped her do a retroactive coverage form because we knew there was gonna be a gap in coverage. She got another letter from Vermont Health Connect saying that they weren't going to Oh, and we'd actually submitted the application with an income letter that we had helped her get from her employer. Vermont Health Connect sent a letter saying, We're not gonna process the application without income documentation. We knew we'd submitted the application correctly, so helped her call. They processed it, and then she got a bill from the pediatrician. So we helped her call the pediatrician, asked them to run the insurance again, and she was able to then continue seeing the pediatrician and not worry about the cost of care because she was enrolled. Another worker that we recently worked with is someone that we helped with a work injury last year. She recently reached out and said she thought she was pregnant and she didn't know what to do. We helped her figure out what her options were to get a pregnancy test. She was going to the store every two weeks getting a ride, so we figured out what pregnancy test was available at that store. When she let us know she was pregnant, we sat down and talked, Well, what are your resources? Where is their prenatal care? How can you navigate services to make sure there's a healthy start for your baby? We helped her set up a prenatal visit that worked around her milking schedule because her plan is to continue milking for as long as possible on the dairy farm where she works. We connected her to volunteers that worked with us for transportation. We helped her figure out what prenatal vitamins she could take, helped her apply for health insurance and set her up for WIC. So really understanding in her context what she needed for her health. And then the last story I wanted to share was about a farm owner that had heard from a neighbor that he could reach out to us because he had just started hiring seasonal workers also from Jamaica. And one of his employees was rationing his medication. He had brought a bunch of stuff from Jamaica. It wasn't gonna last the season. And the farm owner was understandably concerned about the health implications In of not taking your medication this case, we were able to get him connected to primary care because they were accepting new patients relatively quickly. We helped him fill out a sliding fee scale. And now when he comes back every year, he should be able to go back to that same clinic. I want to just state again, and I know you're the Ag Committee, so you know this, but across all sizes of farms, dairy farms, crop, any farms producing crops, there's an increased reliance on migrant and immigrant workers. We're seeing that now that we have people out in the woods doing sugaring. We didn't see that a few years ago. So we know there's this reliance. We know that they're working sixty to seventy five hours a week. They are in jobs that require a lot of their bodies. They're exposed to occupational health and safety concerns, and that puts them at higher risk for poor health. We also know that similar to farm owners and even people in my own family, their tendency is to not go to their doctor until they can't work anymore. We see this over and over. So part of our role is helping them get a little closer to timely access to care. And so they play a really important role in our economy. And our role really within Bridges to Health is trying to understand how do we support them to be as healthy as possible so that they can be productive workers. We think there's a benefit to the employers and that they don't. They aren't having to address absenteeism or turnover because of health issues. And we also know by working with families that families are more likely to stay and particularly stay on the farm where they are at if they can access health care services, educational services, social services for their families. I know you want to ask questions, and I don't want to put us over time. So I'll maybe leave before I open it up to questions with something that a farm owner wrote to me when I asked if he could speak to the work of Bridges South. He wrote, The level of outreach, education, understanding and access Bridges South community health workers have brought to our farm to help us and our employees has been integral in being able to operate a fair, healthy and productive work environment for all, whether it be intricate navigation of a complex health system for the underserved, helping to organize and communicate care to hosting on farm vaccine clinics that surely went above and beyond protecting all in Vermont, this group has grown into an essential and trusted resource for our farm family and employees. I mentioned briefly the importance of this work for the ag economy and a stable workforce. I think it's really important to reinforce something that Olivia said, which is that when people access care in a timely manner, it is less costly to the system. We know that without our team who's helping hundreds of people access health insurance and financial assistance, those relationships with primary care providers and obstetricians for pregnant women mean less preventative visits, which means more emergency room visits. And we also know because a lot of the farm workers that we are in contact with are accessing the health care system for the first time. They don't necessarily have the understanding of how to navigate the system independently. And so if we're not in the position to be able to guide them to access appropriate levels of care, they're also going to end up at the emergency department. So I think there's both the economic side for the ag community, but then just generally trying to help everyone in Vermont utilize the resources at the appropriate levels of care whenever possible. So I appreciate your time, and I hope there's a few questions that I can answer before we scoot across the hall.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. You have

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: community health workers. I'm not sure if that's you probably do they go physically to meet with clients on the farm or how does that work?

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: So it depends on a lot of things. It depends on how many calls they've received in the past few days and kind of their schedule and how efficient they can be. It depends on if somebody needs Do we need a signature on a health care application, in which case we have to see the person? Does that individual have transportation? Can they come to us? Do we have to go to them? So we've really created the program to be responsive to individual needs and to work schedules and do. We always like to say we meet people where they're at, and that's kind of metaphorically and physically, again, depending on what those needs are.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And it sounds like the organization started out, or the program started out working with farm workers specifically.

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: On dairy farm, yeah, year round

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: dairy And it's grown and expanded to other parts of the sector. Is it exclusively agriculture workers, or do you work with migrant immigrant workers and other things?

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: Yeah, so we certainly have a focus on a lot of, I would say we work more, I would say, we have more depth of support that we provide to farm workers, but over half of who we serve is no longer in agriculture. They may have been prior or they may not have experience with agriculture. They work in service, the service industry and building trades. So we do, you know, we kind of apply our knowledge to any of the different workforce groups that don't have other support of organizations. So we kind of say, is there another organization that you're working with? Can they help you? No? Okay, we'll try and help you. So we kind of see ourselves a little bit as a catchall. I don't want to say a program of last resort because we do want people to be accessing care in a timely manner. But we try to be careful about helping people understand what are their resources that they have and what are those gaps that we can help fill?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Are many

[Rep. Greg Burtt (Member)]: people involved in the program.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Also, kind of volunteers or

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: Yeah, thank you. That's a great question. So it's a team of 10. There's eight community health workers, a CHW program coordinator, and myself. And then we have around 70 volunteers that are based around the state that have applied to be volunteers with us. They provide transportation to health appointments. They help deliver the food boxes I mentioned. They sometimes are picking up prescriptions if the pharmacy hours are outside of work hours for people, so they fill a variety of roles. We have a handful of volunteer physicians I mentioned in one of my stories utilizing that knowledge and resource to help people access medication. So yes, team of 10 plus many volunteers that help us.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Presenter O'Brien, you mentioned WIC, you could

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: help them get into the WIC program?

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: Yes, so for pregnant individuals and children under five who are income eligible, We help them connect to WIC. Sometimes it's just helping them understand that that even exists and helping them make an appointment. Sometimes it's helping them get to that appointment. Sometimes it's helping them understand how to use the WIC card, because if you've had testimony on that, it can be sometimes challenging. Can't buy eight ounces, you got to buy 10 ounces. So there's some nuances there.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Same with snack and Three Square Mods?

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: Same thing. So if they are eligible, we can help them navigate those services.

[Rep. Greg Burtt (Member)]: The $500,000 that would be mostly going toward paying for the 10 people that Yeah. I was just curious if it's more for that or for

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: actually paying for their health care costs.

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: Nope. So it is the primary Our biggest budget line is staff time. It's our most valuable resource. It's the time, the knowledge, expertise of the team. And so yes, it would be for existing, I guess, as program. And it's a portion of the overall budget.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Yeah, just have a comment. I think I mentioned when you were here before, I was a case manager in the past. And both times I worked with entirely native English speakers and help them navigate a lot of the same paperwork that you're talking about. And some one of one of my jobs was with teenagers, the other one was with adults. And they had a

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: really hard time with the paperwork, even as native English speakers. So the idea that these folks that are working on our farms would be able to figure that stuff out without support is pretty baffling to me because it just it's complicated even for people who who aren't trying to navigate it through a second language. They appreciate that. And certainly, we work with a lot of Jamaican workers. Their native language is English, And it is really challenging. They're coming from a country that has a public health care system that I'm sure they have difference of opinions of how well it works or not, but they can access it much easier. When they're here, they do often rely on us to understand what are those 10 forms that you

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: have to fill out. The budget request, 500,000, does that cover your entire operating budget or will you have other funding sources?

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: Will require other funding sources. We've always kind of pieced together philanthropy and grants for the operating budget. So it's a little over half of what a year operating budget is.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Senator O'Brien. There are separate circuits going in next door. Yes. And I promised to release them at 01:30, so I guess we should do that. Will you be in the building any later than 02:00?

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: I can be, if

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: want to stop back in. If there's any other questions, we could cover them next few.

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: Yeah, I'd be happy to

[Rep. Greg Burtt (Member)]: hop back in.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay, all right, thank you. Any chance? Thank you. He still representative Nelson on this call? I'm sure he's still there. Oh, wanted to just say a couple of things. We're, it's a budget related. We've been asked to let the Appropriations Committee know by the end of next week, I think I have that right, the twentieth, what our recommendations are. So we'll be working on that. It'll be about putting a letter together. Before we can do that, we need to have some kind of understanding about what we want to recommend and what we're prioritizing. So we should be thinking about that. Also, both the agencies that came in wondered if we had any, if we needed more information. So if you think back to the presentations we had last week from the PR and then from the Ag agency, was there anything that you thought at the time or that you thought since you would like to dig into a little bit more? Also the working lands folks, they were quite interested in making sure that if we wanted to see specific data, we talked about return on investment there. They're more than happy to share what they have anyway. And also perhaps later would be interested in getting more feedback from us on future data points that they could be collecting that maybe they're not necessarily or at least pulling together right now. So we didn't really have a chance to, I think, have a discussion after the departments presented their budgets. And we can talk about that a little bit now. We've got some time. Our next testimony is at 02:15. And I also want to just talk about other bills and where we're gonna be using our time. Greg?

[Rep. Greg Burtt (Member)]: Yeah, I think for me, I'd like to know, we were talking about briefly, just using 2019 as sort of a baseline for understanding what budgets used to look like anyway. And maybe the COVID bubble saying where should we be now. So I guess my question is, what were your full time equivalents 2019 versus now? And are there any other new statutory obligations that they have to, or what your obligations that are justifying having potentially more full time staff on?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. I did some of my own research on

[Rep. Greg Burtt (Member)]: using AI, which seemed pretty accurate. I like the agency of Ag has stayed pretty much the same level of full time equivalents, but the forests and parks have increased by about 12 positions. Okay. And as a referee now, ANR has increased by about 20 in the same amount of time. Uh-huh. Sure. So.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I have a question about. Yeah, Richard.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, thank you chair. The working lands, believe I they came in probably with a request for a million dollars and that's all in the ag budget the agent agriculture agency budget and 40% of it goes to forestry which which is great. I would love to see if we could find a way to get 500,000 from forestry or ANR that to the million in agriculture to bolster that working lands grant because that's just been a wonderful program and I'm not opposed to asking for matches from the grant recipients you know not be looking to fund things so much at a 100% but fundament 60 or 75% or 50% or whatever to help spread those dollars and get those grants out to more people.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We have I'm not sure what the date is, but we've got testimony scheduled sometime, Patricia, we can sort this out later, from Working Lands Coalition. Right. That sounds good. Yeah. Which, unlike the agency, can be explicit with their request or funding. And they they could also be sounding board, I think, on that suggestion, both of those suggestions, it should be up. John, did you want to

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: That was, I was like, did we have testimony from

[Rep. Greg Burtt (Member)]: Greg mentioned increased staffing levels in Forest Parks and Recreation. Do you remember was that, is it they had the full time versus the part time summer staff, which I don't. I just looked at, yeah, when they're full time with one of just 130 staff currently and that give or take I can look back on them, but there was 12 employees less in 2018. Yeah, I don't know. Think full time equivalent is taking all the part time staff and adding them together. So I think that incorporates all the summer staff. A bunch of their staff is summer part time. Exactly. So I could see why during COVID there were a lot. And then I ended up just staying up. Yeah, of course now hopefully things bounce back with our Canadian visitors.

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: I can tell you right

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: now that they're ticked at us. Having just been to Canada, I would say 75 to 80% of the people that I had a conversation with, which was probably like 30 people, said, I'm not coming to The US until things are different. And then a few people would say, know, people are people, you know, I'm not gonna hold the government against it or whatever. But most of them, they are holding the government against us.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think it's certainly fair to ask whether they could give us that analysis, those numbers from 2019, and then share your what's, how is the work different, and see what their thoughts are in

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: that, in both cases. We got a printout of last year, a couple of years of both what we've sent to approach as far as base things we improved up and one time we improved up, so we could start there. I can't necessarily remember them

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: all right at the top

[Rep. Greg Burtt (Member)]: Yeah, of my

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: we can look back and see I can't remember them either but things like NOFA grant and the Farm to School grant.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Oh, food

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: bank, right? Food bank, yeah.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: There are about seven or eight things maybe, besides the base type.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, and I don't think anything that we have done in the past, even the things that are in the base, I think we're going be hearing about the panel. I think that nobody's going to let us Right. Yeah, let that slide.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. Jed? I have a question, Jed. Representative Burtt talked about the increases in FPR, for instance, and I think we could get some detail, maybe despite the loss of Canadian visitors, which was serious in last year, but whether that how large the increase in visitorship. Clearly, they're not in the woods putting paint on trees, so that people work on other kind of projects.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And

[Unidentified Committee Member]: so we can get that. But also with ANR, they went up by 40. I'd like to know where what those personnel are doing because I won't make anything derogatory. So it just they're everywhere. And I think constituents, we all have who have complained about very dogmatic borderline overreach on stopping or interfering or any cause

[Rep. Greg Burtt (Member)]: all over the state. I think

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think we can certainly ask the division of ANR, the department of ANR that we have jurisdiction over to explain. And I don't know if this is what you were also suggesting, but we've had a concern about, in at least one part of that department, whether there's enough staffing to do the work that we've asked them to do with managing state lands, for example, making sure that current use plans are up to date. It'd be an interesting conversation to hear if we've added staff, what are they doing? I

[Unidentified Committee Member]: think that would be important dialogue.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Some

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: things, like even if we don't have jurisdiction, like it's DEC that does essentially the water quality work on farms, so there's Yeah,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: so it's fine. It's yeah, yeah.

[Rep. Greg Burtt (Member)]: Think either way it'd be helpful to have that information.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, yeah. Patricia, maybe we could ask you to invite both ANR, Forest Parks and Recreation, and then the Ag agency too. If they can just share their we wanna we'd like to see a comparison of, you know, current year or the proposed budget and 2019 in terms of staffing levels and programming, and I think dollars too, certainly, since it's budget. And I can talk to you more just to make sure that it's all clear. Frank. And then I forgot what we did last year

[Rep. Greg Burtt (Member)]: before voting on budgets, or what we would send to appropriations. Do put together a document of all the different asks? I can't remember. Yeah. So typically,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: will come to some sort of a decision, the committee, and then that would be the document that will go into the document and then send it to appropriations. They would like that by next Friday, which will suddenly sneak up on us. Ideally, we'll have heard from everybody by by the end of this week. And I don't know if there's anybody who hasn't had a chance to come in or at least is scheduled. We may have scheduled some for next week if they weren't able to get in this week. I think we probably anticipate what most of them are, but I think we still want to be asking those questions and be able to justify why this particular program is the right one. And recognizing that it's not necessarily the case that everything that we have had in the past has been like a one time request, will be able to be a one time request this year, just because of the constraints, the fraud constraints. There may be some new things too.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: What happens to, I'm just throwing out something like UVM Extension, which is so important to our agricultural world and forestry too. We never get involved in those budget. Yes.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Actually, interestingly, a little later this afternoon, we're going to hear from UVM Extension. So that's a good opportunity to find out how are they funded and what are their services.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: They haven't asked, right? Yeah, that goes to education or to approach.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, yep. The federal piece of it there too. Okay, any other questions about budgeting or other things that you wanna ask for? Then let's take a minute just to talk about the bill. There was, I suggest everybody give me your top three, and there's quite a few up there, even though it feels like we get as many bills to other committees, we don't, but there's still quite a few. So there's a big spread over the course of the responses. The one that rose to the top, and I will say several of these are short form bills. And if we wanna actually do a short term bill, we have to formally vote as a committee to do that. That's one of our house rules. I think that that'd be unanimous. Guess we would just need to have four people Does

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: it become a committee bill at that point?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: No. Or it could still be involved? Yeah, still, yeah. But then we, in order to bring it to the floor, we would have to have something, yeah, flushed out. So eight sixty eight, which hasn't even been introduced yet. It's tomorrow. Yeah, it's on the agenda for tomorrow. That seemed to be a lot of people we're interested in, and that's the older process foods. So we'll hear from Michelle tomorrow about what that's about, and then we can decide going forward if there's support for what you're envisioning. And Led Castle will be to They'll be here too. There won't be much to say, but we'll have that conversation. And then the Paraquat bill also had, I guess, brought rises to the top, also a short form bill. And then Richard and John, you both were interested in $4.75? Oh, the tiered system. Yeah. So that was introduced last year. Know that the situation for producers has gotten even more dire. And I don't know at at the same time, we know that consumers are stressed about, you know, prices that they're paying for all their groceries. I'm gonna suggest that if this is something that two of you, since you both checked it off, feel like we could pull something together. And I'll work with you, but not quite exactly sure what it looks like. But happy to spend some time on that. I know there are experts out there who might have something very specific in mind, I'm thinking of. Right. Yeah. So maybe something we could look at there. And then, yeah, so those are the ones that had, and then there were several lots that had, you know, somebody thought it would be worth taking up. We also have Now we got a bill this morning that was one we looked at last year briefly. It was in the housing committee on minimum wage for ag workers. That's we might look at that again too. Think in addition to all of that, we are gonna have a bill, a committee bill on the municipal regulation bag something, if we all if we all have that. We're gonna also look start looking at a bill for the good products manufacturers. We've heard that testimony, taking at least those two recommendations. And then I imagine there'll be more. We have the miscellaneous technical bill that we're gonna hear about tomorrow. So there should be quite a bit that we're gonna be focusing on bill wise.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: I mean, the right to grow food was somewhat involved in our municipal ones, so whether the committee has interest in as a standalone.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, right. So question about whether that stays in or whether that's something standalone. And we've also got the homeowners association right to the garden, which is

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Right. Are those two different things?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Well, they're two different things. One is I mean, that's just the homeowners association. And the idea that's been attached to the municipal regulation piece is something that we want. More expansional. Yeah. I will say, mentioned this this morning when we had our party caucus downstairs. The League of Cities and Towns had indicated that they would have some language for us, actual language, to clarify the conversations that we're having. And I don't know whether they have that yet. I haven't seen it. I don't think they've sent it to me. But I'm looking forward to seeing that and then figuring out if we get to look forward. And as time allows today, we can talk more about that too, if you've got a chance to ruminate on that over the weekend. We have a hand up. Michelle?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Yeah. I guess I'm just wondering when all the things that you talk about when I think about things that I've been thinking about, the only thing that's missing is rodenticides. And maybe nobody else wants rodenticides, but I don't know about you guys. I got like 30 emails this And like, I haven't got that many emails on a single topic since there were beaver trappings in the pond in my near my house. And that was my hot issue, my first year of being in the legislature. Now it was rodenticides, which is actually something that I would be happy to take more testimony on, but I don't know

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: how other people are feeling about it. You're the only one who actually had checked that off on the survey. And then, yeah, as you noted, I think everybody got, I think it was actually a lot more than 30 emails.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Okay. I didn't count. It felt like a lot.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, I mean, kudos to whoever was

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Yeah, don't know who was sending, I don't know who it was, but there were a lot of messages.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yep, yep. Have to open your device to be aware.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So, I mean, that's, we had quite a bit of testimony before it became a long form bill last And if there's interest in that, we can add that to the list too.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Paraguat was another one that

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, yeah, that one got From them. Yeah. I've also, well, you know that we're hearing more testimony on soils this week, and then somebody from the solar industry wanted to testify. I'm gonna be reaching out to the PUC to ask them to testify. I don't know that we're gonna take the bill up, but I feel like it's important for us to understand the concern and the issue that is being raised there.

[Rep. Greg Burtt (Member)]: Richard Nelson, you're

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. But as I I probably told you all earlier, I wouldn't die on the hill for paraquat. I don't like to ban anything. I worry about someday something ruining its ugly head that paraquat could work on maybe if we rode in it you know with the expressed you know ban paraquat but if the secretary of agriculture deemed it necessary to use to control noxious invasive species that it could be used in that one incidence and John has told me that you know maybe he could relinquish support of neonics if we ban baroquot not really but that's what I'm working on. Sarcasm cheering

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: my heart. Feel better here, too. Still richer. And you notice he didn't say rich job. All

[Unidentified Committee Member]: in one was smiling.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: I don't know if there's any community interest in it, but I keep hearing, we've already sort of touched on Act 181 because that keeps coming up all the tiers in that, but also the conversation this morning with Vermont Law in graduate school, 30 by 30, whatever that's called, keeps coming up in their boat. It's totally important to farming, and that farming agriculture was somewhat neglected, I think, in the deliberation. I don't know if that's something we could have a discussion on as The far as an amendment

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Conservation Board is putting out a report shortly, like before maybe March 1, and I spoke with them and asked if they would come and present on it. An amendment might be a challenge, I will say, but I think we need to know what's happening there anyway. At least the agricultural community isn't very happy at that moment, even with those two acts, I would say. Yeah, I think there are different perspectives within the agriculture community on it, But I think we should hear from them and say what actually is, what is happening, and then that'll help give us the context for understanding what the different groups of farmers appeal.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Yeah. I was just gonna say we haven't heard this one yet, but I saw coming tomorrow is five thirty six, which is being introduced by Mary Katherine and apparently

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: is about

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: toxic heavy metals in baby food, which seems like a reasonable thing for us to not want in our baby food. And so I haven't heard the details yet. I don't know if it's a short or long form bill, but honestly, that feels like something that would be worth us paying attention to.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. That's a long form build. So there's actual language there.

[Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland]: Okay.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Once we've had the introduction Yep. Thank you for mentioning. And then I I guess that's on the today's people didn't highlight that one.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: I haven't seen it yet. Is it out there?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. It is, yeah. It's like five, four, six. Oh, uh-oh, yeah, yeah,

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: I wasn't paying attention official to for

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We're have an introduction, yeah, tomorrow. Yeah, and I agree. At least on the surface, it sounds like that should be something we can get to find. And I think it's not a situation where Vermont is leading. There are other states that have done this. But beyond that, I don't.

[Rep. John O’Brien (Member)]: Yeah. Richard?

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I heard you explaining it earlier and perhaps I should have been listening closer. How does this work with our committee bill? Can we take some of these ideas that are on the wall and put in our committee bill or do you prefer not to do it that way?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. No, we can do that. I think that it may be committee bills, plural. So one for the municipal regulation itself, standalone. And then one for the technical corrections, the housekeeping bill that the agency is presenting tomorrow. It should be noncontroversial.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Well, you know, nobody else will wanna take it to their committee or anything like that. And then if we've got other things that are of interest, we could have yet another bill.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: You know, John John O' on the 30 by thirty and thirty by thirty, fifty by 50 in current use with that. And to me, that makes 100% common sense and then the tier tiers act 181 there are there are problems I foresee. I feel there's problems with the road rule and wildlife habitat corridors you know the taking over Greg Burtt's town and turning it into a park. And we had Kevin Chew last night in Newport speaking to us about housing and demographics and I brought up the act 181 and how tier 1a and 1b have a lot of goodness to them as far as reducing burdensome regulation and whatnot but there were questions on tier two and tier three and had pretty good consensus in a group at the high school last night with that. I don't know our jurisdiction or what we could do to try to get some jurisdiction on that but that's something I'm really interested in

[Unidentified Committee Member]: over.

[Rep. Greg Burtt (Member)]: Obviously with the municipality bylaws discussion, we're dipping into tier one language already.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, so That's in our view. Yeah, and the background there is that in the section of law that we're looking at, so leading out of tier one peers, the section of law we're looking at is Title 24, I think, which is, that would be GovOps's territory. House GovOps explicitly said, you can work on this and then we'd like to see it. Have, you're given that, that gophin it's only. Yeah, if it gets into tier one, two, three, then what that really means is, okay, well, maybe another committee will also feel like they ought to be reviewing it. I think in this case, if we get it to a point where we like it and we've got ops likes it, that may not need to visit anybody else, but we'll see.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Chairman, I just want to comment on representative Nelson's. I've heard Kevin Chu present the report.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Remind us, Kevin is the leader of

[Unidentified Committee Member]: the Vermont futures project. And and I wanna let rep Nelson know that act one eighty one is of grave concern in the World Caucus, which he is a member of, and we will be working to get some future amendments. But this year, we are pushing to have the timelines extended for an additional year, which we have as a caucus as well as a body and channel to add some new thinking and possible amendments, particularly the tier two and tier three jurisdictions. So thank you, Richard, for being involved in that issue because it is critical.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Why don't we break? We've got 02:15 testimony from Chris Callahan with the extension service, the new interim director. And then we're hearing from Vern Duesingen. Just I think you all heard my announcement this morning or if you didn't, 04:30 today, the producers are in the cafeteria. The agencies sponsoring that, always good event. It's more sturdy. And then possibly if they finish next door, the Bridges to Health folks will be out, and if you want to talk to them one on one