Meetings
Transcript: Select text below to play or share a clip
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you. You said that farm operational is borrowed from somewhere else, but it must have not had your grammatical tweaks in this game?
[Bradley (Legislative Counsel)]: No, it was in current law, so we just copied it over from current law. Because this is in the VITA sections, it's moving from its own chapter to a sub chapter of agricultural Because
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: it's such a big business now, does Maple syrup include people who just have trees for sap and then sell it?
[Bradley (Legislative Counsel)]: This would include just uses of land for the production of maple syrup. Right. Yeah.
[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: It's not a terrible one. Is it loading on other people's devices? Because when I hit it, it's
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: watch that one, right?
[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: What's that? I'm not into
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: it. Well, it's
[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: loading on my phone. It's right there, and it says, S-three 23 strike all amendment version 3.2 and I push it and there it is. See, I didn't equal back from that.
[Bradley (Legislative Counsel)]: That same thing has happened to me a number of times.
[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Like the way this is reworded. I need to break it up, but we get to maple syrup. Mhmm. Or a lot of maple products these days that are not just syrup.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay.
[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Wonder if we should I bet it should say maple products. I don't what the rest of you think, but maple sugar, maple candy.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I'm a little hesitant to change anything on the list. This is an existing list. I know. But he's already changed it. Well, yeah, but we've only changed it to make it grammatically. To make it grammatically readable. Right? I'm also a little hesitant to do anything that want to get it right. Want to get it right, so they're a little hesitant to make changes that aren't critical.
[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: I'm just noticing, I can live with it.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay, thank I may not be happy, but I I can I can see that?
[Bradley (Legislative Counsel)]: And I think while when I first started speaking, I might have been muted for online, so I just wanna reiterate that I made no changes to seed loss sections that since this morning. If there were any changes, it was just, like, a space or something, like, just technical.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: That section you talked about too. Yeah. We did we haven't yeah. Okay.
[Bradley (Legislative Counsel)]: And okay. So and the rest of this is unchanged. I'm just scrolling down to the changes.
[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: That's a question. So if this goes to Committee of Conference, can you put that last part of seeds back in then? Or you can't add stuff back? Yep.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So Committee of Conference is supposed to, I think, not bring in things that weren't in one of the two. But
[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: they had a much fuller version originally, so we would be restoring. Mean, that one piece actually does make sense to me to go back in.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: So the answer to your question is yes. If Okay. If there's language in the senate bill or in the house bill, then strictly speaking, it could be. Yeah. Okay.
[Bradley (Legislative Counsel)]: The we're on page 33, and so this is in the CAFO membership piece. And, we found the correct names for the Franklin Grand Isle Farmers Watershed Alliance and then the Connecticut River Watershed Farmers Alliance. So we have the correct names in
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: there. Good.
[Bradley (Legislative Counsel)]: And scrolling, we made the change from 03/01/2027. This is the CAFO inspector piece. So on or before 03/01/2027, the secretary of natural resources shall contract with third party consultant too, and then we just made some, formatting changes. And then this piece takes out the appropriation. So there's no more, $300,000 appropriation for that piece, but there is still the contingency funding section. Right? And so the duty to implement section 23, which is hiring a consultant, and then the consultant to carry out these activities, is contingent upon appropriation of funds in fiscal year 2027. So that means if there's something in the Budget Adjustment Act come January and there is funding, then the section 23 could become active again.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. And I'll I'll just explain here the So when we looked at it this morning, there was a dollar figure in there. And JFO just reached out to remind me that there wasn't money in the budget, which of course we knew. But it occurred to me then that by having that in there, we were going to require appropriations to amend the bill. That they would take it out. They wouldn't pass it. They would need to take it out. And that that was going to be just another bump in the road and seemed unnecessary. Agreed. If everyone is okay with it, just take it out here. Does it still have to go to appropriations because of that alliance? Yeah, because, Well, I think for other reasons.
[Bradley (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, it has to go in because of the contingency funding piece anyway, but then it also The study itself will trigger appropriations. Okay.
[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and even if the underlying senate bill had an appropriation and we took it out, it would still have to be.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. I think that's right. Then
[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: this okay. This language on the. I Yeah. Yes. I love it in the senate. Very good. Yeah. Okay.
[Bradley (Legislative Counsel)]: And this bill oh, this version takes out anything related to the PFAS and pesticides piece. So that is is out. And then there's the effective dates. So hemp is effective on passage. Do wanna reiterate that that doesn't mean that well, the Canvas control board will need to ramp up the regulations, not necessarily flipping a switch, but that was that was a request that's in here. And then all other sections take effect on July 1.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I will entertain a motion to amend the senate bill three twenty three with draft number 3.2. 3.2.
[Rep. Jack Brigham (Member)]: I'll move.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Alright. Thank you, representative Brigham. Now is there any additional discussion? I
[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: have a question. What is the date of draft three point
[Bradley (Legislative Counsel)]: date. Today's 05/07/5720. Yep. Yes, it is.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Other discussion? Where's municipal regulation on this? That's been spot. Sections one through three.
[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Yeah. So that's that's an h nine forty one, which
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: will
[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: be coming back.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We will need a bill reporter here. And I know we've got several bill reporters, but we'll need one official bill reporter who probably be could be the first person who I think is gonna be you, John. And we can figure that out, I think. Yeah. Alright. And it turns to the clerk today. Yeah. So we'll need
[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: to identify the reporter before we turn Yes. Her Yes. That will You want that to be decided before we call the roll.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: No. No. I think we can call the roll. Why don't why don't you be the last quarter? Do you have to necessarily It could be me. Yeah. But it doesn't have to be me.
[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Rabbits didn't get added as a special
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: There are no rabbits mentioned in here. We're gonna do that. We'll talk we rabbits might be talked about in another context in another day, but no rabbits here. Right. You have four amendments. It was the other bill. It was the other bill. Yeah.
[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: No. Nobody's doing four amendments. Awesome.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I think it for no other reason than to hear John say the word fluffable again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Talking about that. Seeing no other attempts at discussion, the clerk can go ahead and call the roll.
[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Calling the roll for miscellaneous ag subjects 3.2, draft 3.2. Bill number. Bill S323, draft number 3.2. John Bartolomew? Yes. Michelle Bos-Lun? Yes. Jack Brigham? Yes. Gregory Greg Burtt? Yes. Jed Lipsky? Yes. Richard Nelson? Yes.
[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: John O'Brien? Yes. Chair Durfee? Yes. The vote is eight, zero, zero.
[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: I will let you, chair, decide who's gonna be your reporter, or do you wanna decide how I'll write it on this record? So
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Richard, do you want to be the recording?
[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: It's Why don't we make
[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Miscellaneous me.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. You've got a lot here.
[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: He's got his handwriting on.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And then you you could do sort of the overview then yield to me for the first
[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: to you.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah. That works.
[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And we'll come up we'll make the Biden order next week.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yep. Patricia, then you can get to represent Nelson the list of witnesses, and then you can tack that at the end, I think. Okay. Bradley, we should probably get a clean copy. Oh, what's the vote for?
[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: The vote is eight zero zero. The ref should be zero. Thank you.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Brad, if we just get a clean copy without the yellow highlighting. I will send that out. And then we'll retreat to hang for a minute. We'll get that off to the third songs. All right. Thanks everybody. One more piece of business here, John.
[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Just wanted to update the committee. We had had some discussion about possibly adding compostable fruit labels to this bill, and obviously we didn't do that. But I did get some information returned from me from the National Conference of State Legislatures about this, and the person who signed this wrote back that he found two introduced bills that were directly affected, and one of those was our bill, Vermont. So nothing else, so no other state has done this. There was one state law that directly, you can read this, directly addresses produce sticker technologies, but it does not currently ban plastic stickers. In 2024, Washington enacted an organic, so it's an organic materials management law. Earlier versions of that bill would have prohibited plastic produce stickers beginning January, before enactment. Their final law instead required the Washington Department of Ecology in consultation with the Department of Agriculture to study produce sticker technologies, including options that do not contain plastic stickers or adhesives or that otherwise meet compostability standards. So that sounded great, and I thought, okay, well we can have Lamoille do something similar, But Bradley was able to find the actual language of the law and the report that those committees already did. It's like 79 pages long, it looks like it's extremely comprehensive about this. So I would hope that we could find some time to educate ourselves, maybe have someone take us through what that report says so that we understand. And again, I don't think we, as a state, would wanna be the first to outlaw them. We've talked about that in the past, but anyway, that's why I learned about snickers. John?
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: That's fascinating.
[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Flight to Washington, Dungeness crab, and learn about this.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Washington State produces the most apples in The US. Wonder if that can go. All right. Thank you, everybody. Good work. And we're on the floor tomorrow at 09:30.
[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: You go to the car.
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All set.
[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Okay. And after a short,
[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: we'll get together. We should yeah.