Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Good. All set.

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for having me. Steve Collier from the Agency of Agriculture. I have draft 1.1. Is that the right version, Bradley? I guess it's Yes. Yes. Okay. So I don't know if you all have that. I have copies if anybody wants a paper copy of it, but I can only look at screens so often, and that's most of the time. Well, try not to too many, but

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And it's also if you if you don't want to look at the

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: paper, it's on higher cost. So there are basically three there are three different proposals that are included in in these, and I I think they're they're pretty straightforward. I will go pretty high level and dig in as much as all of you want to on the unit and the last one, the unit pricing and retail pricing. I'm not close to an expert on that. We have people who enforce it, who draft, who worked on us to to I know why we want to do it, and I can explain why we want to do it. But if you really want to dig into that, there are some people in our agency who are much better equipped than I am to to dig into the details. But I do know why we want to, and I I think it'll that that's pretty straightforward too. But the first section is about water quality training, section one, and the substantive language is on starts on page two of the draft. What we are trying to do here is right now there is a there's mandatory training for all farms who are either a certified small farm, a medium farm or a large farm. And they have to complete four hours of training every five years about water quality, which is not a lot. And we're not suggesting that it is a lot. However, it's administratively burdensome, both for the farmers and for us. And we don't think it's necessary anymore. This training requirement was put into place after act 64 was adopted in 2015. So everyone knows, I think, in this room that act 64 was the big change in water quality. It significantly ramped up the requirements on farms and what they have to do. And there was a desire rightfully so to make sure that farmers knew what would be newly required of them. So part of that package was to have the agency by rulemaking adopt minimum requirements for all farmers, all certified small farms, medium farms and large farms to know what those requirements were. And that's the, I think you all know the agency of agriculture always likes to lead with education. So that's, you know, right in our, that's our preference too. Voluntary compliance is always the best outcome if you can get it. So that all made back, made sense back in 2015. The RAPs were first adopted in 2016 and then significantly amended in 2018. So we've done this training for about nine years or so now, eight or nine years. And we've done, I believe we've hosted, we've had more than a thousand events overall that we have either conducted ourselves or we've contracted with people to do. We've had over 32,000 attendees. A lot of these are obviously repeat people coming to the training. We just don't think that education on what the RAPs are is necessary anymore. We believe farms, at least farms in these categories, know what they are, know what's expected of them. And so rather than continuing it ten years later, what we're asking to do is take out the mandatory requirement, but leave in the flexibility to we still want to offer training, we just would rather offer it towards more innovative practices, better practices, not just the bare minimum and we also would like the authority to direct people who are not complying to get training. So rather than requiring every farmer, even if they're doing everything perfectly to get these four hours of training every five years, just continue to offer training to help people improve and then also be able to direct a farmer who's not following the rules to attend some training so they have a better understanding of why it's important. So that's the overall gist and if you look at the language, you can see we strike the first line because that that no longer applies. And then down to line 11, we change from shall to may, you know, the training. And then if you go to the next page to page three, you'll see on line three and four, we add the best management practices and other techniques for improving farm practices or water quality. The other subjects that we could train on were more the compulsory mandatory requirements. We'd like to expand that to practices that are exceed the minimum, but are also advantageous both for water quality and the farm. And then on the next line, line five, again, it's a change from shall to may. And then on line seven, eight, nine, that's that's that language I talked about where we would have the authority to require an individual farmer to participate as necessary. And then the next part is stricken because that's that's about the mandatory training that we're asking to to not have anymore. And the rest of it is all just trying to do the same thing, make it not compulsory. And then on page four, line three, there's a request to repeal what's in the rule right now, because right now the rule has that four hours every five years requirement. So if we don't want to repeal that to make it clear that would no longer apply. This kind of touches on the conversation we've been having about zoning, about whether to directly amend the rule or whether to do something in statute. This is another way to do it. This would be instead of asking to amend the RAPs, just making it clear in statute that that provision is repealed. So I don't know if anybody wants to talk more about that or not.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, any questions or like intent, so we can get when we have Bradley come up, we can dig more into, like, language. So the idea is

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the farmers who already have had

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: maybe more than one training on just what the wraps are, don't need to have that training every year or how often it is. But

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: some people might need it, might want it. What about new farmers, someone who's never had the training before?

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So you're unfortunately probably not going to have any in the class of farmers that were required to be trained because that's certified small farm. So effectively, means you have at least 50 dairy cows or bigger. And so it's very unlikely somebody starts new and that and at that scale, not impossible. If that happened, we would know of that farm though because they have to be licensed through our dairy section and we would certainly educate them about what the RAPs are. We have had some people move in from other states and buy some land and start farming here so that you know that can happen. So we would educate them about it, but it wouldn't compulsory, you know, and really the four hours in five years, it's just it's kind of an arbitrary requirement, which was ensuring that we're doing something and that people are learning, but keeping track of that with, you know, with this number of firms and figuring out somebody went to one training for two hours and one, you know, three years ago and now they've got two more hours to do it. It just is it's really a lot from our perspective, a lot more burden than it's worth and so and we think that farms are quite fluent in the RAPs, but why we want to keep training is because there's always better, there's new practices, better development, we still want to keep working on that, and we do want to be able to say to someone if they're not complying, like you've got to go to this training because you don't know what you're doing, and without this change we wouldn't necessarily, we can always enforce, but we not might not be able to require farmers to actually participate in education. I don't think that would be common, but there are some circumstances where it could be pretty helpful.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Every year, on a large farm every year, on a medium farm, once every three years, and on a small farm, what's the inspections?

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Seven, every seven, at least every seven. Yeah.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Yeah. So but every time you have an inspection, you're getting a course in your RAPs. Absolutely. You're with that inspector, you're turning your front arm, and you're going over everything. And you're getting a a referral course in your RAPs or every year.

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah. We try to mean, it's always the better people understand, the the better they're and and and understanding not only what's required, but how it's helpful, what how it works. I mean, the more people can understand, the easier it is to embrace.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: The other thing is the nature of agriculture and the nature of innovation and new new technologies coming forward. You know, farmers pretty much stay on top of it through industries And that there there's new stuff coming all the time. I mean, you think about when this was started, how many people were draglining in 2015? Not many. Not many people were injecting that's Right. Gain all the time.

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah, absolutely, and those new practices are, think the training is often better geared toward learning about those new practices, rather than just saying, you you must have a 25 foot buffer, sort of going through more of the rote requirements.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: John? Steve, how, you know, if

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: you had like the Nelson farm has 40 employees, how did they identify a designee or did a certain amount of the employees, the farmers have to take the training?

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: That's a great question. Certainly the farmer, I think it's only the farmer that was required, but I feel certain that employees would have been welcome also to these trainings. And I assume that I wasn't involved directly in the training, but I think everybody who works on a farm was welcome to participate. I think the requirement was for the farmer, you know, the person who's responsible for running the farm. Got

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: it's he said it's it could be an agency employee or it might be that he's been contracted to run the training.

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I know we work with the conservation districts a lot to do the training and we pay for it, but they do a lot of the training also UVM Extension does a lot of the training. Believe we've contracted with some others too, but I'm not certain. We've also held our own trainings.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Technical service providers do a lot of training.

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yep, yep, they do.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Any other questions about this part? All right, why don't we move on to the second?

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Sure, great. So this next part is a little bit complicated, and I'll just tell you from the beginning, this language that we propose is not quite right yet. So we're because we're talking with ANR about how to get it exactly right, we sort of found out kind of close to the beginning of the session that we would be able to propose this, and we're still working on making sure we're not stepping on anyone's toes. But the gist is simple, is that there's, especially with universal recycling in Vermont and the fact that a lot of things cannot go to landfill, there's more and more organic materials that are being spread on farms. And we have to make sure that farms are complying with their nutrient management plan. So we already have authority in this non sewage waste program that if a farm say is getting food residuals and they're having them deposited in their manure pit or their digester, that's the current language, then we can regulate that to make sure that it will comply with the nutrient management plan and will protect water quality. However, that doesn't currently extend to things that are being spread on farm fields. So we have waste as a huge issue. What do you do with waste? And we have people out there who are happy to pay farms to dump their waste on the farm because that way they can get rid of it. And so it could include food residuals, could include depackaging, you know, are some plants that smash up food waste that's expired. And then you can make a slurry out of that and you can spread instead of putting in the landfill, which there's the reasons to do that. You're putting it potentially on farmland, but it may be riddled with microplastics, may be riddled with PFAS, may be riddled with all kinds of contaminants that aren't necessarily going to be doing very well for a farm when it's bioaccumulating after constantly getting dumped on the soil, and suddenly your farm field might turn into a garbage pit. So it's complicated. ANR already regulates some of this material, which is why the language they have something called an indirect discharge permit, which they regulate some of it. They also regulate biosolids, exceptional quality biosolids. So we are not trying to duplicate what they do. But we what we want to do is fill the gap. If there's something that ANR is not regulating, it might be dumped on a farm field. We'd like the authority to request testing of it, so if nothing else, what we could regulate it as needed, but also so the farmer might have better information about what they're taking and if it is going to damage their soil or the fields, maybe they won't want to take it. So that's the request is just to expand our current program to allow us to also have the authority to regulate those same materials that might be going on to a farm field instead of in a manure pit. But we don't we want to make sure that we're with ANR that we're in synchronicity and not doing something that is interfering with their existing programs. So we're going to come back. We've started those conversations. We're having them. They're going well. We're going to come back with a bit more refined language.

[Bradley Showman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thanks.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: So this doesn't include sludge?

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: No, not sewage at all. That's the whole it's non sewage, so it's nothing to do with human waste. It's all many other types of organic materials, but not not human waste.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: When we walk through the language, we'll see this is existing language for managing not sewage waste, this would be expanding on that to incorporate things that aren't currently covered.

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Things dumped in the fields instead of dumped in the pit or the digester. Yep, yep. That's the only intent is just right now, if ANR doesn't regulate it and you're putting it on a field instead of in a pit, we don't have the authority to regulate it. And mostly we want to make sure that what's happening is not going to, I mean, you probably have read about the farms in Maine and Michigan, I believe, and New Mexico who were getting, were spreading things on their farms and it turned out to be some of it from Maine, I think was a lot of paper sludge and had a lot of PFOA on it. And then it kind of wiped those farms out where they couldn't use the farmland anymore. We're not aware of a specific substance of PFAS like that in the state that's likely to have that kind of impact, but when you take all a bunch of garbage and smash it up and strain it out the other end, you're still getting some substances in there, which may or may not be deleterious, but we feel like there's a gap in understanding and what's in that material. It's even knowing what's there, it doesn't solve the riddle because there's no current thresholds for a lot of those materials. But we just want to try to get ahead of a problem before it becomes really tragic.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Did boiler ash fall into this and those types of things?

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I don't know.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: The big waste that that come from They have they have a paperweights. They have. I'm not

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I'm not certain. It's it's something that I'm not aware of that going to farms right now, but look Laura De Petro from water quality or the ANR equivalent would have a much better understanding of who does exactly what right now, but there are some gaps potentially.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Yeah, and one makes something waste too, that's a, you know, one of them is waste as another is, you know, compost, I guess, either like leaves or leaves considered waste or they?

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Sure, it could be. I mean, and the distinction here, the existing distinction is between sewage and non sewage, and it gets a lot more broken down from there, but it could be a lot of different organic. It's organic. It is defined, but it's organic materials. It's not tires. You know, is things that can be beneficial to soil.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Crop, is that considered waste once it's turned over?

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: No, I mean, arguably if you were exporting it and dumping it somewhere else, but that's not what's happening, so yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Let's go into the third one.

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

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Got about a half hour total. Third, you had Brad say left.

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Okay. Oh, sure. I I can be as quick as as you want. So this this so the idea here is simply to modernize our retail pricing and unit pricing. So unit pricing is when you identify a certain item by its unit. So as an example for beverages by the ounce. So if you, when you, and the idea is really it's consumer protection so that somebody can have a super tall bottle, sleepily packaged, it looks like it's enormous and there's only six ounces in it and sell it for, you know, much less than somebody who's offering 25 ounces of something in a much smaller bottle. And the idea is that consumers can look at the total price, but also look at the unit price and determine which is a better deal. So it's very helpful and probably all of you have used it in the supermarket. If you're trying to figure out what's even when something's on sale, it still may be far more expensive than something that's not on sale. So it's just a helpful way to protect consumers to determine what they're buying and what's actually a better price. So it's something that exists currently in the law, but the statute that we're trying to amend was adopted in 1971. I think it was last amended in 2003. It's just outdated, and a lot of it was gave the authority to the agency to delegate what should be subject to unit pricing, and it's just kind of an old list that's very hard to follow. So if you look at the unit pricing law, you look at the regulation and you try to compare it to the national standards, complicated. And whenever we have things across state boundaries, we like to be as uniform as possible to make it as easy as possible for retailers, make it as easy as possible for consumers to be using the same standards. So at its base, what we're trying to do is update this so it's more in line with national standards and also to make sure that we're protecting consumers. So this is primarily an update, but there's another piece of it, which in the retail pricing world, there's something called dynamic pricing, which you may have heard about now, where retailers can change prices on the fly. And that's particularly possible to do with electronic shelf labels. So now instead of manually putting the tags up on the shelf, some retailers are starting to adopt electronic labels so that they're automatically, when you update the system, it's automatically updated on the shelf. That can be great because a lot of the errors between the shelf and the register are because the timing or they're downloading the system in the central computer data bank, but they haven't done the shelves yet. The electronic shelf pricing can be great for getting better compliance, but it also enables a store to change prices on the fly. You could, and that we don't, we're not aware that anyone wants to do this, but you could jack up all your prices during lunch hour because it's busier if you want, if you wanted to, We're not regulating what people charge. That's our charge. We regulate to make sure that they actually charge what they say they're going to charge. But we want people to be changing the price in the store while the store is open because a customer can go to the shelf, take something off the shelf, think they're paying a dollar for it, get to the register and it's 150 because the price has been updated during the store. So we just want to make sure that's not happening. We don't have a reason to believe people will, but gotten a lot of national attention. People are concerned about it. So our ask in the language is that you can electronic shelf labels are great, but you can't change the price of an item while the store is open unless there's an error. And if there is an error, need to tell people in the store, you're changing the price because you found an error. So those are really the, I know we don't have a lot of time and Bradley's here too, but that's the reason for this language. And we have a team of people that you know do unit pricing and do retail pricing and check this you know all the laser scans in the stores. Regularly go into stores and check and make sure that they're charging the right amounts and if they're above a 2% error rate then that's something that we enforce upon. Again, we lead with education, but some stores are not as great as complying as others. So do you want me to go into the language or do want to let Brad?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Bradley, while you're coming up to the table, I'll just say aloud that we were down at the lab a couple weeks ago, and one of the things we hear a lot about was gas pumps and how the team went out and checked those and I became part of what they're maybe wondered, hearing this, whether there's existing regulations on when a gas station can change its price, whether it has to be after they've closed at the end of the day, or whether they can come out in the middle of the morning after they get a delivery and change the price. This might address that. Don't know if it's just food or if it's anything retail, but-

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: That's a good question. I don't know for sure, but I think they can change them anytime, but the pump would have to the price would be on the pump where the consumer is looking at the

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Different than from the aisle to the register. Right. Right.

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

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

[Bradley Showman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Good afternoon. Bradley Showman, Office of Legislative Counsel. We'll walk you through the language. We just heard Steve discuss to clear off these pop ups. It gets on top of the bill. So this miscellaneous agriculture bill does tackle the three topics that we heard from Steve. And so we'll start with the water quality training. As Steve said, this water quality training piece moves water quality training from required to Not required. Optional. Optional. There we go. There's the word for farmers. And this is how that bill would accomplish that. So changing the secretary of agriculture food markets from shall to may adopt requirements for training for small, medium, and large farms. And these are the topics of the training that's not being changed. So, discharges, stormwater runoffs, we're changing required, taking that out entirely, shall we may. And more things for the training to address, existing statutory regulatory requirements, management practices, land application for manure, nutrients, methods, techniques, and standards required for nutrient management. And then adding, and Steve spoke to this a little bit, best management practices and other techniques for improving farm practices and water quality. Again, in this section here, we're going from Michelle to May, and this section does permit the secretary to require training, gives the secretary discretion, for to require training as part of a certification, and and may require that when the secretary determines that additional water quality training is appropriate. So kind of gives the secretary some leeway and some discretion to determine if a farm is out of compliance with required agricultural practices, water rules, they will require that training. And, some sections about, again, language making the requirement optional and permissive instead of mandatory. And more language for that. And we're adding the slash the proposals to add this last section here is that 07/01/2026 mandatory water quality training requirements and the required agricultural practices rule are repealed. And the secretary may prospectively determine appropriate training requirements as described in this section. So required agricultural practices itself, does require as part of the rule, mandatory training. And so this piece as a matter of law would amend the required agricultural practices to take that piece out. One thing for the committee to consider is that there are potentially different or new requirements for point solution discharge for confined animal feeding operations that may require additional training or additional resources. That doesn't necessarily mean that those trainings or resources have to be mandatory. But as the relationship between the Agency of National Resources and Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets is kind of jostling that relationship in terms of what how to manage the state's water quality. Change in requirements about training might affect that. And so, that's just one thing for the committee to consider. I don't have any more information about what that would look like or and certainly no policy recommendations or anything of that sort. It's just something to consider as the state is grappling with how to manage confined animal feeding operations and water discharges into the waters for that piece. Any questions on this section?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: No. Sewage waste.

[Bradley Showman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Non sewage waste. Another straightforward We are on page four, line nine, and I'm gonna flip there in my notes. Another fairly straightforward section. And as Steve mentioned that the agency is working with ANR to come up with some new language or some different language. And so perhaps this section is to be determined based on the results of that, but I'll go over as written. This section defines non sewage waste and sewage waste. So this concerns management of non sewage waste that's brought to farms. And a piece that, is changing is that the secretary may require a person generating, transporting, arranging for the transport of non sewage waste to a farm for any use to obtain approval from the secretary prior to transporting the non sewage waste. So generating the waste is a change. And so that interaction between the Agency of Natural Resources, which regulates solid waste requirements and the relationship between that and the secretary, might be worth examining. Again, sounds like Steve is already working with the agency of natural resources to perhaps discuss some issues related to what happens when someone is generating waste for disposal on a farm. The piece that Steve mentioned earlier is that current law says you have to deposit the waste into a manure pit or into a methane digester. And that's not practicable in some situations or useful in other situations. So the statute changes from that specific use to any use as long as you obtain approval from the secretary. Moving on to the next page. And just some clarifications to the language that don't substantively change the requirements here. And some just a couple word train changes to asking for and and getting a permit for that process. So this section sounds like it will change in the near future. Any questions on it is as written?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Questions? Okay. Let's have a at the harder ones. The shorter one for later.

[Bradley Showman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. The retail pricing standards. Okay. So this one is a much more in-depth section and it changes our unit pricing and we'll go over the language here a little bit. It changes our unit pricing to be more a more holistic retail pricing scenario. I kinda conferred with our colleagues who do consumer protection, and And it does make sense to keep this piece in Title VI. But I know that there was a question of whether to have this in Title VI or to move it into Title IX, where most of our consumer protection issues are. And moving it to Title IX might be difficult to do that. Keeping it in title VI makes a little bit of sense here. But perhaps the committee might be interested in hearing from the individuals from the agency who were more involved in drafting this after their questions when I go over the language. We start off with the purpose section. It's to promote accuracy, protect consumers, and encourage constructive and useful competition when pricing commodities and prohibit misleading information, and to promote a level playing field for retail businesses by providing clear rules for businesses to follow. We start our first big change here is in the definition section, section six eighty one, and we are on page six, right in the middle of the page. We're making a change from consumer commodity, from defining as a food, drug, device, or cosmetic, or other article, to being any product or commodity of any kind or class except for drugs sold by prescription or food sold at a restaurant are made to order. And then it includes, and going on to a list of items here, Items retail establishment customarily sell to individuals for consumption or use for personal care for services that are often rendered in or around the household. Items that are consumed or expended during consumption or use, so like one unit, one single use items. And we're moving on to the definition of unit price. The unit price means a total selling price of a consumer commodity by the price per standard unit of weight measure or counts. And this definition does appear to be meant to conform to national standards, and we cite what those national standards are right here in the statute. I took a look at these standards, there is a level of complexity to those standards that were challenging for me to kind of understand and relate to. Perhaps that is something that people who are more in the business of using the retail using these uniform standards, weights and measures, and things of that sort might be better equipped to do. I would just flag that this does add a level of complexity to identifying the unit price for something, but it might be something that people are doing anyway. But that is a change that we are conforming how we determine what our unit price to certain standards. We're defining electronic shelf label. As Steve said, there's electronic shelf labels that are very convenient, Don't require printing of new labels every day, but could be changed at certain times. So we're defining what electronic shelf label. We're defining what individuals are. It could be people, partnerships, or companies, or corporations. So just to make sure to take that ambiguity out of the statute. Limited time items and then made to order foods. And so made to order foods is a term that is oddly not as well defined as you would think in national and other state laws, which I found curious. So here, we're defining it as made to order means food prepared at the time of order or sold from retail cases displaying product in bulk or in servings prepared in the premises. Made to order foods may be sold by weight measure count, including piece, portion or serving. Made to order food does not include ready to eat foods that are prepackaged for individuals to select.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So this is equal up to the counter and say, can you give me a pen to that salad?

[Bradley Showman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That would be exactly right.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. But if it's in a potato already parceled it out into four ounce portions and put a label on it, it's not made to order. That's exactly right. And so a prepackaged sandwich that you can grab,

[Bradley Showman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: but if you order the sandwich and have them make it, that's made

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: to order. So we'll see shortly why that might be important.

[Bradley Showman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Real time dynamic pricing discusses kind of the issue that we're trying to solve or prevent, which is changing prices while you're in the store. And so price strategy that allows prices to change immediately based on evolving market trends and demands. Retail establishment more clearly defines what a store is, a store that sells consumer commodities, That's individuals who are physically present to present and inspect and purchase the products. Retail space means the space that, a retail establishment operates or controls, and then the total selling price means the price assigned to a consumer commodity at which the consumer commodity is to be and is sold to an individual.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Good to hear. Yeah. Council, what does this do for protection of spray scourge? Winter blizzard or whatever they call it to hit down the Massachusetts area. Door shelves were they were ready for dusting. They were they were stripped. The police have protection, so if something happens here, like, had to plug in events, I'm not aware of any price gouging, does this have protection for the consumer, for a realizing something's happening and they're gonna come in and clean up the store, I'm gonna make an extra 30%.

[Bradley Showman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That that's a great question. And and so what this would limit is a retailer being able to change their price that day. It does not specifically limit a retailer from, examining market trends and and changing it overnight. And that said, I am familiar with executive actions that the governor has taken to prevent price gouging during emergency like the floods. And so the governor might take action to limit price increases to 10% in a state of emergency or something of the sort. For me, the governor has taken executive action to prevent price gouging more broadly. So what that would do or what that did was prevent people from jacking up the price of toilet paper, like what happened during COVID in a lot of places. And I'm not familiar with a different law or statute that would prevent that same behavior. And so that is something that I can look into because that is not contemplated by this bill, but it is related. And I'm not familiar with a law or statute that would do that. I just know that the governor has taken executive action to prevent price gouging and emergencies in the past.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Like road salt right now might be something that

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: I got two bags of my garage.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: It's on the downgrade shelf.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So not in this bill.

[Bradley Showman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Not in this bill. This bill is more narrowly tailored to a retail establishment having prices on their shelves and being able to price that based on the unit weight. So to prevent retail stores from selling six ounces of Coke in giant bottle or changing the price when you're in the store as you get to the cash register. And so another big change that this bill does, it does, as mentioned earlier, it does define consumer commodities to be a broader category. That category was fairly broad, but it was enumerated before, as you can see in the cross sell language. So the definition of of what this applies to is any consumer commodity. Gas is a good question because as I skimmed through this, I I did not see the gas in the gas question answered and how that is priced, and I imagine that is priced differently from these commodities. But that is something I can take a look at. I'm curious about that too, because sometimes gas stations don't close. So that's curious.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Yeah. John? I just wonder how this works with online retailers because now there's so much information that retailer, let's say, on Amazon could collect on Jed Lipsky and is buying habits and knows when he's shopping on Amazon that it could potentially So

[Bradley Showman (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: this bill, this bill oh, I'm sorry. This bill contemplates retail space and retail stores. Physical spaces. Physical spaces, right. It does not contemplate online stores or does not extend jurisdictions to those online stores. And the means of disclosure. Okay. And so what has changed is some language has crossed out about how to place the price tag, how to fix the tag to a label, and it is being replaced with by adopting some national standards and then some other standards here added to the bill. And so, every retail establishment shall disclose the total selling price and unit price in compliance with the standards adopted by the national standards that are listed here. And so essentially, this is incorporating by reference these national standards. Like I said earlier, these standards have some kind of complexity to them. And and this bill attempts to adopt those standards and provide some language here about where, the unit price or the unit price shall be displayed, adjacent or the words unit price shall be display displayed adjacent to the actual unit price. And the total selling price and unit price information shall include description of the commodity and size and be physically located on the commodity or as close to practical as close as practicable to being able to identify the commodity. So essentially, the price of the thing has to be close to the thing. Requiring certain And requirements about what the price, how it should look, how it should be displayed, and some more requirements here in terms of excluding any deposit as part of the price, but shall indicate that a deposit is required when a deposit is required. And this whole selling price shall be simultaneously displayed to individuals at each checkout location as consumer commodities are processed at the point of sale to allow consumers an opportunity to assess the prices. So essentially, it's like when you go to the store, you're checking out, you see the price on like a little screen. So you can verify that the price that you are being charged is the accurate price. Many stores do that, and this bill will require that as a matter of law. And the use of electronic shelf labels to increase prices or otherwise use real time dynamic pricing. So this is what Steve talked about a little bit earlier. To increase prices when a retail establishment is open to the public is prohibited. So this is the section that would prohibit that action. It would retail establishments may only increase prices on electronic shelf labels during business hours to correct genuine and documented pricing errors and shall inform individuals present in the store of the price correction. And, and then, required compliance and enforcement. And so retail establishments are, responsible for furnishing accurate price information and are subject to enforcement of any violations to this chapter, including the, the resource by reference that this this chapter, incorporates. Section talks a little bit about the secretary's powers. So we're changing the sec or this bill proposes to change the secretary, some of the secretary's, powers here. And we're going into, that the secretary may exempt classes of retail establishments from all or any requirements of this chapter if the secretary determines that the sale of that consumer commodity class of retail establishments business excuse me, of class of retail establishments business or that compliance of this chap chapter is unreasonable and unnecessarily to adequately protect individuals. So, essentially, it gives the secretary of agriculture some some discretion to exempt certain classes of retail establishments from from this law and gives the secretary powers to adopt rules as necessary to effectuate the provisions of this chapter. And it looks like we're running a little bit out of time, so I'll just kind of try to get through this as quickly as we can. So we're going down to some exemptions here. And unit price requirements in this chapter shall not apply to commodity sales as follows, and then it lists some exemptions. And so some of the things that are changing here, we're going from a a retail store with less than 7,000 square feet of floor space dedicated to the sale consumer commodities, and we're moving that to a retail establishment that has two or fewer stores with less than 6,000 square feet of retail space. So we're looking at exempting certain retail establishments, and certain sizes, that this bill will not apply to. And when different brands or products are commingled and more respectable, for a limited time, priced sale, commodities that are individually marked with a clear clearance or sales tag. So we're talking about exempting, certain products from these pricing requirements, and we're looking at, things that might be in, you know, a sale bin or something of that sort, which would be hard to individually price based on its unit size. It's just kind of more of a grab bag for $1 or whatever it is that it's being sold as. Also exempting certain things from sales. Clearance of limited time items are exempted. The unit price distinctions between the unit price and the total selling price. We'll not have to display the unit price if it's identical to the total selling price. And then other categories such as seasonal decorations, alcoholic beverages, and, total selling price requirements. So this chapter shall not apply when all items establishment have the same total selling price. They'll add some penalties, and we have an effective date. So, I think to summarize that this, section in this bill, does take a much broader swath of items could be brought into retail pricing guidelines that are already in Title VI. It increases what could be subject to those retail pricing guidelines. It changes how those items are subject to those retail pricing guidelines and adopts national standards to determine those things. It brought us a definition of what retail establishments are included and are required to comply. And then it sets some penalties for not complying. And of course, as kind of like the hallmark of this piece is to prevent that dynamic pricing, preventing pricing from changing while you're in the store, and then restricting a store owner's abilities from changing those prices. So this section actually does quite a bit and does deserve some more time to kind of go over the nitty gritty, but that's the overview.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, and which we won't do now because we've got Eric on the sidelines to go over yet another bill. And Eric, I don't know if I want to make sure that if you're planning to share your screen, that you're prepared to do that as soon as you sit down in the seat. Coordinate with Patricia if you need to. Okay. Thank you. I wanna just acknowledge that this is more than a technical change. So when I introduced this bill, I said this is a annual housekeeping bill with a few things to There's clean some policy changes here, which go, I think, beyond the idea even of you can't change prices on the fly while the consumer is walking to the register. That's a policy change, but there may be some other policy changes here too. So we'll dig into all of this. Greg, do have a quick question?

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: I was just gonna

[Steve Collier (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: say, first

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: of all, who stole Will Greer?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yes, I was gonna say that too.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm not sure he knows that. And then also, looks like farm stands exempt, so that's fine.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: There's all of that category, and every convenience store that I've ever been in under 6,000 feet. Okay, thank you very much, both of you, that. And Steve, if you want to stay for this next segment, feel free, we're going to look at the judiciary bill. This is 5 78? Yeah, coming up next. Okay, thanks. In case you want to stay. Okay, thank you. Just to transition into 5 78. This is a bill, come on up here. All right. Welcome. Thank you. This is a bill that's in House Judiciary Committee. They've been working on it for most of the year, I think. We were asked to take a look at a part of the bill that is specific to the seizure of livestock. So this is an animal cruelty bill. There are 32 pages, as you can see. Eric, I don't think we need to go through all of it unless you can show us the parts that are important to be aware of. And then I think the reason we were asked to look at it was to weigh in on that seizure of livestock piece.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Eric Fitzpatrick with the Office of Legislative Counsel, as the chair indicated. Here to speak with the committee about House Bill number five seventy eight, which is an actuating to penalties and procedures for animal cruelty offenses. As I think the committee probably knows, statutes in Vermont that address issues related to animals are spread out in a lot of different places in the Vermont statute, not only your jurisdiction and the agriculture statute, but there's things related to the division of animal welfare and Title 20, and there's another large provision related to animal cruelty that's in the criminal code, which is what the judiciary committee has been looking at. Just to give fifteen seconds of the big picture of what's going on in this bill. So, I think as the chair also said, there's probably a bunch of it that isn't necessarily what you wanna look at. So, I wanna focus you in where you might be interested. But to give you the big picture of what's going animal cruelty is a crime in Vermont right now, and it can be a misdemeanor crime, which means it's a potential crime in jail of less than two years, or it can be a felony, which more than two years. Generally speaking, the statute describes what kind of conduct is a misdemeanor. It's subject to a one year penalty right now. Or there's other kinds of conduct that could be a felony, which is a five year felony. This is existing law. It's not something that's being changed in the bill. So, all right. So what is the bill proposed to do? One of the types of conduct that is cruelty to animals is sexual conduct with a man, and that's described right now. So that definition is expanded somewhat in the bill to include conduct that involves minors. For example, it's not specified under current law. So that's one of the sort of big pieces of what's going on in age five seventy eight at the moment. They're expanding that definition of what constitutes the crime. A second piece, and this is gonna be relevant to what the committee wants to look at, is that if you get convicted of one of these animal cruelty crimes, as I just mentioned, you could be sent to jail, you could be there's criminal fines attached to it. But in this particular type of offense, the court, and this is also in existing law, has the authority to impose some other sanctions on you. The criminal sanctions, but some other types of things. And they are, for example, that you would have to forfeit the animal that was the subject of the cruelty. You might have to forfeit some of your ability to own in the future. Just in other words, the animal that was the victim of the cruelty offense, but your future ability to own animals. The court could also say that you have to undergo some animal abuse education or some counseling. They could also require you to submit to unannounced inspections going ahead. So you see, those things are are sanctions, but they're not criminal. And so there's this list of of sanctions that the court can impose. The reason that you folks might be interested in that is because you think about it, because the way the ability of someone to either to own animals in the future, for example, the way it's written out, the court can impose some restrictions on that, but there's exceptions for livestock and poultry. And I think, and I wasn't here when the statute was written many years ago, but what we think, and the judiciary committee, the reason for that is, for example, let's say it's a person who owns a farm who has a conviction for animal cruelty to a dog on the farm. Well, you don't want to prohibit that person from owning livestock and poultry in the future, because that wasn't necessarily related to whatever the animal cruelty was. Now, would say, well, you can't own any cows for the future. That was carved out, and it is carved out under existing law. So there's an exception there for that. So the bill you're looking at carries that forward. So it doesn't change that. It doesn't get rid of it. It tweaks it a little bit. And the way it tweaks it is to say, all right, well, you can't impose these limitations on somebody's future right to own an animal on the basis of a conviction, you can't do that with respect to livestock or poultry, unless the abuse was committed against the livestock or the poultry. You know what I mean? So that's the one way that it tweaks it a little, so that, yeah, if the animal cocoons to some other animal, then you still can't prohibit them from owning livestock or poultry in the future. But if that's the animal that was being abused, then the court has some authority still to do that. So that, I think, is one of the particular items that the judiciary committee was thinking, this committee, should be aware of, because obviously dealing with them is the commander of your jurisdiction. Forfeiture, there's a so that's sort of three big things going on. The first one I mentioned, the expanded definition of cruelty, including sexual conduct. Second The one are these other types of penalties that the court can oppose, like ability to own an animal in the future, you have to submit to random searches, that sort of thing, random inspections, should say. And the future ownership elements that I just mentioned. And there's this third piece that has to do, there's a separate forfeiture proceeding that's also in the law right now. So you get convicted, or actually, it doesn't even necessarily require a conviction. Law enforcement or a humane officer can, for example, if they see, and I'm sure folks have heard about examples of this happening, if they observe an animal being abused or being a victim of abuse, and there's a life threatening situation with the animal, that animal can be seized right away if it's a life threatening situation for the animal. And it doesn't have to be, but there's also a court procedure that can be filed to have the animal forfeited. That's separate from the criminal case, the forfeiture procedure. So the other big thing that's going on in this bill, as the chair mentioned earlier, it does affect any animal that could be abused, but it expedites these forfeiture proceedings. It moves them along more quickly. I think one of the concerns right now has been that those proceedings move very, very slowly. And if an animal has been forfeited, and it takes six months for this forfeiture proceeding to get to an end, and somebody is paying to house that animal for those six months. Its cost can be very significant, depending on type of animal, what kind of, often they would need significant veterinary care if they had been forfeited, or if they had been seized in a situation like that. So those expenses can be quite large. And so the idea, I think, is to try to expedite these proceedings so that those expenses don't accumulate, and also try to make the person, assuming that the court does find forfeiture of an animal, try and make the person who owned it and committed the abuse responsible for paying for those, what they call costs of care, is the phrase that's used for that period of time. So that's the other big picture thing that's going on in the bill. So having said that, from kind of 50,000 feet, I could point you to the language in particular, like the livestock piece, or we could skim through the whole thing, whatever whatever you think might be helpful. Maybe in

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: the interest of time, and we've been asked to be on the floor in our seats on time today. We're always asked that. Sure, sure. I think maybe if we just jumped to the section that is

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: regarding the seizure, the changes that's absolutely. So let's go through, so it's sort of the second main piece, but this first one is the, as I mentioned, the expansion of the sexual conduct definition for the crime. Section two is the actual crime, they see cruelty to animals, that's existing law, that's the misdemeanor. Section three should be the felony, and that's list of conduct that constitutes misdemeanor animal cruelty right now under existing law. And you'll see the addition there, and G in the bill is to not only to engage in sexual conduct with an animal, but to possess films or obscene images of sexual conduct with an animal. So that's added to the misdemeanor offense. Section three is the aggravated, so that's the felony, five year felony. Again, expanding what constitutes, as I mentioned, if you look at line three, line six, line nine, it's all adding if a minor is participating. So you have a more severe criminal penalty, five year felony, if it involves a minor. And then we get to section four, and this is the piece I was mentioning. So this is, you'll see sentencing upon conviction. So person gets convicted of one of those offenses I just mentioned, well, what happens? And as I mentioned here, if it's the subdivision one there, one year misdemeanor for the misdemeanor offense, aggravated cruelty, that's line seven. That's a five year, see line eight, five year felony. So that's a more severe penalty for the aggravated conviction. And then if you look at, I think it's very bottom of this page, yes. So line 19 there, in addition to any other sentence the court may impose. So in other words, in addition to those criminal penalties I just mentioned, incarceration, criminal fine, etcetera. In addition to any of those, the court may require a defendant convicted of a violation under three fifty two or three fifty two. Three fifty two is the misdemeanor. Three fifty two is the felony. Under either one of those things, there's title two, and then you've got a list of, and this is what I mentioned, these other sanctions the court can impose under current law, in addition to those criminal penalties. So it's a little hard to follow because of all the underlining and strike through here. So there's been a lot of changes made, but conceptually, they're keeping the same concepts. So for example, you look at the first one, for a first violation, forfeit any rights to the animal subject to cruelty. So in that case, you're talking about the animal that was subject to the cruelty in that particular offense. So they have to forfeit any rights to it. In other words, they can take that in if it was subject to the abuse. And any other animal, own, possessed, residing, or domicile, that's had it, in the custody of the defendant. Now you'll see so, again, it keeps this. If you look at lines two and three, the structure language accepts livestock or poultry. So that's existing law, and they're not changing it. They're just moving it to the second sentence. To be clear, they're just moving it

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: out of there, because it was a little unclear the way

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it was written, what it meant. So we're making it a second sentence, it helps some clarity. But the concept was, alright, someone's convicted of animal cruelty. They have to forfeit any rights to animal subject to cruelty. I'm on line two now. And to any other animals. So in other words, maybe I've got three dogs. Naomi was convicted of being cruel to one of them. They could order me to forfeit the other two as well, or any other animal, and under existing law, that's line two still, except livestock or poultry. So that's the point that I mentioned. Under existing law, they don't wanna forfeit, order the person to forfeit livestock or poultry, particularly imagine farming situation when the animal that was subject to the abuse was a dog that had nothing to do with the agricultural practices on the farm. So that's existing law. This preserves that. Line four, just to be clear, livestock or poultry shall not be subject to forfeiture under the subdivision A, that's the same concept, doesn't change any meaning, unless the person was convicted of abusing livestock or poultry. And I think that there's a little bit of ambiguity in the existing language on line two, but we're pretty sure that that doesn't change the meaning, but it clarifies it. So there's not gonna be any ambiguity going forward. Because if you read that sentence on line two anyway, Seems to be saying, it can be any other animal, except livestock or poultry, generally can't be forfeited. But by implication, if the animal that was being abused was the livestock or poultry, then they can be forfeited. I think that's clear in the second sentence, 100% clear now. And I think probably that's what it meant in the first sentence as well, but that's an old sentence, we just wanted to be clear about that. So don't think it changes the meaning, but should at least make this committee aware of it. So that's the main, that thing you'll see, it goes through repeated multiple times in these two sections, because you've got a misdemeanor offense, and you've got a felony offense, and it's broken up even further by first time violations or second or subsequent violations. So really, that's four categories. Misdemeanor, felony, first time, second time. And each of those times, the same concept is repeated. All right, see it again, right there at the bottom of the same page, lines 19 to 21. Same idea. That's a first violation, first time violation of the misdemeanor offense. Talking about their future. Uh-oh, that's the other reason there's another category, because one group is about the animal that you own currently, and this part right here is about animals in the future, your future right to own animals. Different concepts, but carrying forward the same idea. The border can be that you forfeit your future right, but not for livestock or poultry, unless it was the livestock or poultry that was abused. Is that existing law, the future ownership? Yes, the future ownership is existing law. What's new is that what they've added is they've broken it up by first and second offenses. So under existing law, it's one penalty for misdemeanor and one penalty for felony. Here, they're saying, okay, for misdemeanor, we're gonna make up one penalty for the first time he did it. Second second subsequent offense, we're gonna add a more severe penalty. Same thing with the aggregate. So conceptually, both present and future exist, but they've enhanced the penalties for multiple offenses, as they just said. But you have to repeat the same language each time. That's why you have seen four times.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Do you wanna just quickly, Eric, Thank you. Largely a clarification about the other section that you talked about with this expediting the Expedited forfeiture. Yep.

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: These are all just the same penalties I mentioned, the additional penalties, counseling, that sort of thing. And there's the same thing you see. Second violation, same idea, livestock or poultry exception reprinted again. So here's where we get to section five is the forfeiture section. And again, existing law, but modified to try and have these proceedings happen in a more speedy fashion both for the benefit of the animal that's in custody, for the benefit of the animal care organizations that are accumulating costs, while the animal's in custody before the court issues a judgment on them. So the way the forbiture proceeding works is that you'll see right there, this is page 16, it's at the very top, this is existing law. A humane officer can get a search warrant if they've got, this is line two, probable cause to believe an animal is being subject to cruel treatment. So if they have probable cause to believe that, then they go to court, they get a warrant. However, you can also have seizure without a warrant, that's line 11, if the humane officer witnesses. In other words, they have to actually visibly see it. The humane officer witnesses a situation in which the humane officer determines that an animal's life is in jeopardy, and immediate action is required to protect the animal's health or safety, the officer may seize the animal without a warrant. So in that case, the humane officer sees it, they don't have to go to court and get the warrant. They can seize the animal right there. And that certainly has constitutional implications for somebody's property being seized without a warrant. This particular language fits within a constitutional exception for what's known as exigent circumstances, where you can go to court afterward rather than having to go beforehand, as long as you have a hearing soon afterward. And that's what this talks about. The hearing, here's where you can see that these are the existing procedures for that hearing, and here's where it tries to expedite things. It deletes a lot of language, there you see. And then here's your new proceedings right here. So the person who owns that animal that was seized has fourteen days, that's line 21, after the seizure to object to it and indicate that they want a hearing. They don't have to, but you've got fourteen days. And if you don't do it within that fourteen days, then you lose the end, then it gets forfeit. So you have to have notice, though. It's another constitutional provision. A person can't have their property taken by a court proceeding unless they've had some notice that they have an opportunity to go object. So two ways you can get notice. One is the enforcement officer is required to hand the person notice that this is what's happening. Here's your rights. You've got fourteen days to object. You can file. There's also a provision that you're required to pay. This goes to the point about trying to cover some of these costs of care. They have to pay security upfront unless they can show they're financially unaided. There's an opportunity to change. You don't have the money to pay the security. But within that fourteen day period, you either have to request a hearing to pay the security unless you can show you're not financially able. And if you don't, then it gets. That's the way it works. And this would be the case for any animal. Could be livestock, could be poultry, could be a dog, could be a cat, whatever it is. These procedures are going to apply in any situation. It could be a horse. The type of animal it is could be subject to this process, depending on whether there's cruelty that's an emergency situation that the humane officer sees. So that's how it gets started. As I mentioned, see there lines four to nine, they have to give notice by delivering a copy to the person who's there. This is one change that has been made, line seven and nine. Because you think about it, if the person's there and you hand a notice, that's fine. Then they've gotten the notice that the hearing is coming up, and they got fourteen days to object. The question is, what if there's nobody there? If the human officer sees some animals have been abused, there's nobody there? So the way the language is now, it's been amended in committee, I think that they're gonna be actually gonna be looking at it tomorrow morning. The proposal is to require postings. So rather than have the sheriff try and find the person, you post it right there where it sees, and that will be held up to the staff. Good,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think we better stop there. Eric, thank you. The agency is coming in tomorrow with the state veterinarian to give us their input on this. Be informed with our response to judiciary. Thank you. Patricia, I think we'll stop there. And we may be

[Eric Fitzpatrick (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: back