Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Robin Scheu]: Morning, this is the House Appropriations Committee. It is Wednesday, June 14, It's twenty twenty 11:45, and we're going have a brief presentation by our head of the Office of Legislative Counsel, Brynn Hare, and a member of the Joint Legislative Management Committee, Karen Dolan, with some information that needs to go they're being proposed that we put this in the Budget Adjustment Act. So introduce yourselves, please, and take

[Brynn Hare]: it away. Thank you. Karen Dolan, representative from Essex Junction and a member of the Joint Legislative Management Committee. And I'm happy to answer questions, but I'm happy to defer everything to Britt. All right. For the record, Brynn here, director and chief counsel of legislative counsel. Thank you for having me. Touch us. I'm going kick us off. So I'm here to discuss about 10 pages of language that is being proposed to be absorbed into the Budget Adjustment Act. And this is directly from a meeting of the Joint Legislative Management Committee that happened in December, in which the staff directors presented a recommendation about the reorganization of the Office of Legislative Operations. The Joint Legislative Management Committee took a vote, and that vote included the recommendation that language to effectuate their decision went into Budget Adjustment Act. So that's where this is coming from. And now let me back up and set the table a little bit about what I'm talking about. And I'm gonna go back in time just about six years, and then I'm gonna make it real brief. So about six years ago, the way that your staff looked was that there were five offices of staff. There were your house clerk and your senate secretary, your sergeant in arms, and then there was legislative counsel and joint fiscal. And legislative counsel had control over IT services, committee services, legal services, and operations services. The whole collective was under legislative counsel. In about 2000, you undertook a restructuring effort. Sorry? Yeah, twenty, because not twenty six years ago. So that restructuring effort led to the separation of IT services into its own office with its own director, and it also consolidated operations services and committee services into one office called the Office of Legislative Operations. And a new position was created, which was a director that oversaw that work, the work of committee services and operations work. So that was six years ago. Then I'm going to back up just one year to the 2025, the beginning of this biennium. Right at the beginning of the biennium, you might remember Mike Ferrant was the director of legislative operations, and he departed right at the beginning of the session for another position. Given the timing of that departure, the staff directors came together and decided it was impractical to conduct a search to replace that position at the time. And instead, we transferred the supervision of the operations staff temporarily to Scott Moore within the Joint Fiscal Office. That gave us a little bit of time to think about how to more permanently restructure the Office of Legislative Operations. We undertook that work over the summer. And it was the decision, the joint collective decision of all of your legislative staff directors to absorb the work of the Office of Legislative Operations into legislative council again. So this is sort of a going back a little bit, back in time. And also the Joint Fiscal Office. So specifically, Legislative Council now oversees committee services and sort of the administrative services that are provided to legislative staff. The Joint Fiscal Office is responsible for the sort of fiscal administrative functions.

[Robin Scheu]: So when we do our expenses, that's joint fiscal, and the committee assistance, which we don't get because ours is full time with joint fiscal, we don't notice that.

[Brynn Hare]: But for everybody else, the committee assistants are now working through your office. That's right. Yes. So the policy standing committee and off session committee assistance are within the Office of Legislative Council now. So that change has been operational and functional for almost not quite a year, probably about nine months we made that change. That has been the way things have been working for half of the last session and all of the interim and to this day. That is how things are functioning. So the directors collectively came to the joint legislative management committee, who are the committee responsible for hearing requests for new staff, also for approving the reallocation of any existing staff. They heard this recommendation from the staff directors to reorganize the Office of Legislative Operations in this way, And the committee voted to approve that recommendation. And they directed the staff directors to effectuate that change within the statutes. There are a number of places in the statutes that refer to the Office of Legislative Operations and ask that it be included in the budget adjustment.

[Robin Scheu]: So to be clear, the Joint Legislative Management Committee, JLMC, has the authority to do this. So there's not a bill requesting permission from the general assembly. They are given the authority to make the decision, which they did in December. And so now what we have to do is change language and statutes to reflect what has been approved.

[Brynn Hare]: The technical change. If I may add, it's also the piece of this has already been happening. So ideally, we would have changed this nine months ago, and so now we're catching up.

[Robin Scheu]: Okay, so Tom.

[Thomas Stevens]: And before you get into details, this sounds like a merger. When there are mergers, there's sometimes turf wars, And so I'm just curious to know throughout, and I know that this conversation going at least six years previous, there were turf wars, and so I'm just curious to know what the tone or the ability you know some I mean sometimes people come and say yes we need to do this. I'm just curious to know from your experience how did you guys work, how did the committees work that out this time?

[Brynn Hare]: Sure. So I would describe the tone among the director staff as being quite collegial and professional as we were discussing this merger, as you put it. And once again, it was a unanimous recommendation from all of the existing staff directors to reallocate the work in this way. So there was not over the over the summer or fall as we were discussing this, there were no sort of ing parties among legislative staff about this restructuring.

[Thomas Stevens]: With people holding on to, but this is us.

[Brynn Hare]: I would say largely no. It has been a relatively smooth process. And do know that there has been some history there, but this time things seem to be going pretty smoothly with the transition. Thank you.

[Robin Scheu]: So, all right. So remember, we have six minutes. We have to end because we all have meetings to go to. So I don't know if you need a question now or while she's talking. You want to do it now? Well, I

[Unidentified Committee Member]: just want to say there's the morale tone issue, but there's also the cost issue. Is this going to make life more expensive or less expensive for us when we look at what the cost is as appropriations? And second of all, does this help relieve some of the work burden that I know has been increasing exponentially on the Legg Council?

[Brynn Hare]: So to answer your first question first, think JFO is most appropriate to answer that. But I will say that for FY27, we budgeted a fraction of the salary for the director position of the director of legislative operations with the understanding that we still had to effectuate the change. So I think I can safely say that the financial impact will be a net positive since there is a director position that is no longer going to be filled. And with respect to your second question

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm looking at the work burden of the life counsel, the lawyers, and all the things. I mean, it seems like it's just almost out of control. They're just working all the time. It's just a very difficult thing to get the work done in a timely way sometimes because we're just asking too much of them. The legislators are asking too much of them.

[Brynn Hare]: Well, I will say that this year, the session, 2026 session, is the first time in a while that I think we've been fully staffed with all the attorney positions that we have the authorization for. We hired two additional attorney positions within the last couple of months. So we are fully staffed. We're heading into the session in a really good position. So you're absolutely right. I would say right now is a time of year that is heavy duty for legislative council, but I also feel confident that with our staffing we're going to be able to meet the members' requests. Thank you.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Just very quickly, obviously you have flexibility before you're able to solve problems or move things around with that flexibility. Will this make it more rigid and you lose flexibility in this way?

[Brynn Hare]: That's an interesting question. I think that this provides and when you say lose flexibility, meaning sort of with the reconsolidation of some of the other services within the office of those there?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I think somebody left and you were able to move things around and accommodate that in a flexible manner. Are you throwing that away with codified angels and statute?

[Brynn Hare]: I see what you're saying. I think that the directors all agree that this is sort of the best way for us to undertake this work. It puts the fiscal administrative work within JFO, which is an appropriate place for it. And it puts the administrative and committee services work back within legislative council, which used to house that work for quite a number of years prior to the restructuring. So I think it feels natural for folks. I don't think it's going to impede our flexibility to get our work done. And if I may add, I feel like that's also a role of joint legislative management committee, is that for us to work with those departments to check, is it working? Is it not? Do we need to make other changes? And that we can always revisit statute as well.

[Robin Scheu]: No more quicklies after this.

[Brynn Hare]: We're going to get to it.

[Thomas Stevens]: Yeah. So I'm sorry. I was just gonna say there's a typo on page eight, but And I'm interested for your information, Madam Chair, I mean, I've talked to Scott, Scott reached out to me, he's in my portfolio, so we'll talk to him when the budget's done. Yeah. He had mentioned that there will be an increase, but it'll be reflected in

[Robin Scheu]: the budget. Right, typical budget.

[Thomas Stevens]: Little bit higher than typical because of health insurance, but that's all I see right now.

[Brynn Hare]: Okay.

[Robin Scheu]: Yeah, the people I've talked to in staff seem to be just fine with this change. So let's do a really quick walk through. We don't need to do every little one because I think a lot of them are the same. Tell us what you're trying to

[Brynn Hare]: do here. Absolutely. So I can just quickly run through the sections to just orient you to where the legislative operations was formerly staffing and which that staffing will now happen either with the legislative council or JFO. The first section, Creation of Committee, this is the Joint Legislative Management Committee. They are directed currently in statute to coordinate the operations of the work of the Office of Legislative Operations. So we're just getting rid of that because now that work is, I discussed, being managed by legislative council and JFO. Section two. This is the Joint Carbon Emissions Reduction Committee. They, by statute, are to be staffed by the Office of Legislative Operations. Struct that. Also struck the word professional. It is not clear what professional services means, but all of the services previously provided to this committee will be provided by the Office of Legislative Council. Section three, Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee. Again, same thing, just striking the support from Office of Legislative Operations. Section four, Legislative Advisory Committee on the State House. Same thing. Section five, this is the Health Reform Oversight Committee. Same thing. Section six, this is the Joint Justice Oversight Committee. Same thing there. Section six, this is the Joint Public Pension Oversight Committee. Same thing there. Section seven is the Commission on International Trade. Same thing there. Section eight is the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules. So LCAR was formerly getting the support from the Office of Legislative Operations. Now we have the same boat. Continuity with service. Moving on to sections nine, and I think ten and eleven also, now we're in the title governing the judicial branch. So section nine governs justices on the Supreme Court, their appointment, how vacancies are filled, the retention process, etcetera. So we are just removing office of legislative operations from who receives those declarations from the justices that they are seeking the retention process. Section 10, exact same thing here. This is just governing the superior court judges as opposed to the Supreme Court justices. And section 11, it's the same thing. This is for magistrate judges. So all of the retention process for all those different judges is now going to be managed by legislative council. Section 12, this is the Joint Committee on Judicial Retention. So this committee was formerly staffed by Office of Legislative Operations. Now it's just legislative council. And that, by the way, is the committee that reviews candidates for judicial retention and then presents their recommendations to you, to the whole General Assembly for a vote. I'm moving on now to Section 14, Joint Transportation Oversight Committee. Same thing, just striking the Office of Legislative Operations from the list of folks that are supporting them. And then page eight, we've got this is the section that governs expense reimbursement for the members. So there's a little bit more language in here. So we're removing the Office of Legislative Operations and just directing that work to the Joint Fiscal Office instead. As I mentioned, JFO is going to be assuming the financial support responsibilities that were formerly housed within the Office of Legislative Operations. So same changes made on pages nine and ten, just effectuating that there is no longer an Office of Legislative Operations and that work will instead be managed by the Joint Fiscal Office. And then the last section repeals to VSA Chapter 16, which is the chapter within Title II that created the Office of Legislative Operations.

[Robin Scheu]: A lot of statute in there. If you go find, you get out, so I appreciate it. I think it's all pretty clear. Everybody's good. So that will we'll put that into the budget adjustment, unless I hear from somebody that that's a really bad idea, that it seems like a good idea to me. So thank you both for your time. Appreciate you coming in quickly for us so we can get this done.