Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Hello, Chris Roop is here. Good morning. This is the House Appropriations Committee. It's Friday, 02/27/2026. It's 10:15 a. M. We are continuing our romp through bills that have come to our committee. And we are going to hear the Sister State Program, age six seventy four, and there's an amendment. And I see there's money, which I didn't think there was. So, not sure that we're gonna vote on this today, if there's money, but we will hear about the bill. And we have a representative from Commerce here. Is that right? Yes. Okay. Great. Welcome. All right, Rick, take it away.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Good morning. Rick Siegel with the Office of Legislative Counsel. And I was trying to remember, I don't think I was here last year either, which is kind of crazy. Well, I think you maybe have a, I'm on a blacklist maybe,

[Speaker 0]: I don't know. It's all who sends us bills. We get to see a lot of you. But if you haven't been here, we have this biennium, then we will introduce ourselves. It's always good practice.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay. That's Pleased to meet you.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: I'm David Yacovone from Lawrenceville. I represent the Memorial Washington District. Good morning.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: I represent 10 pounds of the Essex Caledonia District. Mike Nigro, Bennington and Powell. I'm Steven from Warren Bury representing the Washington Chittenden District.

[Rep. Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Marty Feltus from Caledonia three to five towns.

[Speaker 0]: Robin Scheu from Middlebury. Tiffany Bluemle from Bernalfield.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Trevor Squirrell, Andre Hill and Jericho. Wayne Laroche, Highgate, Franklin, Berkshire, and Ridgewood.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Hi, Mike Mrowicki, Windham Ford District, Putney and Dunleston.

[Rep. Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson]: Hi, I'm Lynn Dickinson, I represent St. August Town.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Very good. So my portfolio is commerce, which is why I haven't been in here. So commerce, IT, AI, privacy. I'm in house commerce all the time as rep Bootin can tell you. Sometimes my bills go into business organizations, those kind of things.

[Speaker 0]: You did my genetic data privacy.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Privacy, the word privacy and then probably immigration is also some way to my portfolio. So I'm wildcard.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Yeah. Okay.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So good to be here. So H six seventy four, as the chair mentioned, there is also an amendment from reps Mark Cotton Granny who may be here by the time I get to it, but maybe start with the bill that came out of commerce. So this is the Vermont Sister State Program. And a bit of a background before I talk about the bill. Last year, Health Commerce also reported out a sister state working group. And the working group's purpose was to formulate a report that would eventually create a sister state program, which this bill is. So this bill is the culmination of the work of that group, and when I get to the committee that makes up this sister state program, it's very similar to the working group. There's a lot of the same entities that are involved in this committee that were involved in the working group. So that's a bit of background for why we're here today. There is no trade really in statute specific program like this in Vermont. So this would be first of its kind establishing this kind of sister state committee to review proposed agreements with not just countries, but also towns within countries. If you're looking at just a specific city or state in a country, that could also be part of the program. Okay. So it is created within the agency of commerce and community development that is subsection a. You see the purpose of it, it's pretty obvious it's to advance international relationships and promote economic development, educational cooperation, and diplomatic cooperation. The program is overseen by a sister state committee, which is composed of nine people, the secretary of commerce or designee, two members of the legislature, the chair of the Board of Trustees of the Vermont Council on World Affairs, the Vermont Adjutant General or designee, the chair of the Board of Trustees of the Vermont Arts Council or designee, and then three people appointed by either the governor, the committee on committees, and the speaker with either cultural experience or higher ed experience.

[Speaker 0]: One person from each of those three, not three from

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. Yes.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Yes. Correct.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So yeah, nine total. Members will serve two year terms on the committee. There will be initially three terms on a few of the members to establish those staggered terms to ensure there's a little bit of carryover after those first two terms are over. On page three, you'll see the standard language about electing a chair and a vice chair from the committee and a quorum is a majority of the membership. The meetings shall be called by the chair, but if there's no chair, for example, when it first gets started, there would be no chair. So the secretaries of commerce would call the first meeting, then they would hopefully elect to chair that first meeting. Subdivision two, they shall meet at least quarterly. And there's a few reasons why they would meet. It would be to evaluate current program agreements, to propose new agreements, to prepare its annual report or discuss in any other matter that they deem relevant to their work. They would also need to review and score an eligible program application not later than thirty days after they receive an application from the agency. So subsection D at the bottom of page three, this is kind of a chronological timeline is how I'm gonna word it of how this thing actually works. So if you follow with me, it'll make sense and you kind of think of it as a, this must happen,

[Speaker 0]: then that must happen, then that must happen.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So at the very beginning the agency is charged with developing this process, the application process. They will develop how that looks, how it works, is it a web page, is it a form you have to download, is it some kind of online form? That's all the agencies prerogative how they want to design that. They will also develop on page four a confidential internal review procedure that is used by the agency to review applicants for sensitive things, political, legal, ethical and strategic factors. They'll develop minimum eligibility requirements to be considered for the program. A fixed scoring system to be applied uniformly across all applicants. And a memorandum of understanding to be used and signed by the state and an approved program partner. So that's the first thing that's gonna happen in this whole process as the agency develops this application process. Okay, two, when a program application has been received by the agency, they shall before the committee even meets on it, verify that the application meets the program's minimum eligibility requirements, which have already developed at this point. And they will conduct this confidential internal review of the applicant. At least not later than ten days after they complete that review on the next page, page five, the agency shall send the committee a copy of the application along with a summary of the agency's analysis. So that confidential part is not going to be subject to public inspection. And that was recommended by the working group because there could be some sensitive things discussed during that process where you don't want that necessarily public reviewing a country or a state's application. Three, at this point, the committee has received the application. They shall meet to review the application not later than thirty days after receipt. If the committee recommends that an application reviewed be approved, the committee shall submit its recommendation to the governor along with a copy of the application thirty days after completing within thirty days of women's review. Four, governor's review. The governor shall have the sole authority to issue final approval or disapproval of a sister state program application that the committee recommended be approved. The governor shall not review it or approve a program application of the committee recommended be disapproved. So here you have a situation where the committee determines that this application is not worthy of approval, so the governor never even receives it.

[Speaker 0]: No. Yes.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The governor shall send written notice of the governor's decision to the agency not later than ten days after the governor's decision.

[Speaker 0]: So why would why would somebody wanna do this, and then why would it get disapproved? I mean, I yeah. I guess if some foreign governor wanted to set up cryptocurrency banks or something in Vermont, maybe. I'm trying to imagine what this is really about. It sort of seems like the Voterie Club is having its It sends people over for It's about goodwill. I guess there's some economic there could be some economic exchanges as well. Representative, do you want to introduce yourself and answer my Michael Mrowicki,

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you want me ask? I'm looking

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki]: at the amendment, and I'm not sure.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, some of this is not

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki]: Either that or change things.

[Speaker 0]: I'm just trying to get a sense of what's in it for people to participate or countries or you know, And Charles is to say, I want to have a relationship with Vermont.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Think of all the countries that are out there. Maybe someone submits it for the committee agrees to it, but the governor looks at it and says, hey, we probably shouldn't have that with that particular country. I think that's what I was thinking when we had that checks and balance because there are countries that we may not want to align ourselves with. Let's say there's somebody that's positive for

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Russia. Hopefully,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: that wouldn't happen, but that would be a check and balance.

[Speaker 0]: Well, I would think that the ACCD would be the first place that would say, not our favorite.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: You would think, but you never know.

[Speaker 0]: But why would a country want to participate or a municipality? Maybe it's Manchester, England, that municipality wants to do it or whatever instead of the whole country. Why would they want to do this in the first place?

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Would you like to answer that? That's right. Not probably my expertise here. Why would a city want to join as a sister state? Is that the question? I think if they believe there's some beneficial either economically tourism thing that they would benefit. We already have these unofficial agreements. I think Tokyo is one, If I remember correctly. Taiwan is kind of a partner. So we have these agreements that are not really in statute. The governor has approved them, right? This would formalize.

[Speaker 0]: Formalize this process that we have informally.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And can answer your first question. You do wanna have a procedure, you're right, likely not gonna happen where the agency says no, and the governor doesn't like it. I think typically you do want a process in place just in case you have some, I'm gonna say rogue country or nation that maybe something happens in between the application process where they do something that's untowards the country's interests or the state's interests. And then maybe you want the governor to say, actually, we don't approve those. I

[Speaker 0]: saw Wayne and then Tom and then Marty.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: So, again, my thinking is what rival would these when we had Obviously, the federal government controls international trade. Right? Will we run afoul in any way? Is it possible to run afoul of the federal government?

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The question of international trade, I wouldn't say that's just totally the federal government's prerogative. Vermont can certainly have agreements with Canada as far as trade agreements either formally or informally, right. So, the tariff issue is one thing, but then when you're talking about just trade and partnerships, education partnerships, sitting students abroad, basing their students here, I think those things are clearly in the state's interests and you can legislate how you want, if you want to formalize those differently.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: So, the federal government says that we have, we're not doing business with a certain country like China or whatever, Russia or whatever. And we put something in place that we're gonna deal with them. Again, federal law would supersede this by some point.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It depends what the So if it's a law, right? That would be one thing. If it's just be an executive order or something that the president says or that they just issue a decree that this is something we believe in, then I think that's different.

[Speaker 0]: If there's So nobody just do an art show over here or brings the musicians over, which is different than

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: I'm just thinking out of the box in terms of something that could go wrong. Sure. You know, we're dealing with I like the IT issues and Yes. AI issues and things like that. Wouldn't want to bleed into some territory that we don't want to go.

[Speaker 0]: Right. Okay, Tom and then Marty.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Taking representative Lamoille Ruche's question a step further, where does Vermont have a right to have diplomatic collaborations as a state with foreign countries? I think we already do. Pull them out. Mean, I'm not saying like setting up a diplomat. Mean, that to me strikes me as think your criticism taking your question a step further. I mean, your earlier point about, well, the governor can say no because if it's a country that is for it's like if this committee can't decide whose persona non grata, I have a question especially with the adjutant general involved or his office who does can without asking a question I can make an assumption why the adjutant general is on this committee because they have a history of developing sister country relationships. That's through a military operation that is, you know, if the United States government didn't approve of it, they wouldn't be in the countries that they're in. So I'm just curious, what was the thinking about adding the phrase diplomatic I mean, strikes me as being potentially anti what the federal government is setting down in terms of who's an enemy and who's an ally or who we can work with and who we can't.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the question that that word diplomatic in the purpose statement that's the

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: The diplomatic, the concept of Vermont having its own diplomatic as opposed to the trade. You explain the trade part of it very well but having having a diplomatic collaboration would be the governor of Vermont can talk to the leaders of a particular country directly and have some form of official recognition that may be antithetical to where The United States diplomatic I mean, and let's leave behind the state of our diplomatic relations with other countries. This seems to be this allows for a certain circumvention of what The U. S. Diplomatic collaborations could be with those countries.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Is that am I over reading it?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: No response. I mean, we could get to conversation about the constitution,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: what my feeling of state control and but that's not what we're here for, so I

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: will let you take it from here.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'll give you my legal opinion, and I'm not obviously a policy decision here. Think I the word is open to interpretation and certainly the chief diplomat is the president of The United States. And that's something that I think this bill does not interfere with, but if that is a concern, it's in the purpose statement, but again, to consider if that word is too strong of a word.

[Speaker 0]: Well, it has different interpretations. Assume it's also just mean like we're going to be friendly. We're going to be used tapped in diplomacy. We're not going to an embassy over there. Marty, Lynn, I have your hand after Marty.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I do think the best way to look at this is candidate, right? Like we have a very good relationship with them. We have a very good diplomatic relationship with them.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: To my point, The United States currently does not have a good relationship with Canada. And so a lot of our trade relations with Canada, we're going to consider continuing to fund the Canadian trade program, but we're barking into the wind because the Canadian and American relationship is is very negative right now. And so I'm just I'm very wary of using diplomatic collaboration because to me it strikes me as going as much as I would like to have a much better relationship with Canada, not only as a Vermont but as an American, we don't. And so if we have some kind of byway into besides trade, which seems to be relatively acceptable and based on how people want to work with each other. This strikes me as being overreached and perhaps I'm just really, really wary of using that phrase to build a state relationship with a country because it implies something else different than trade to me.

[Rep. Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Okay, we're going to continue Marty and then I'm just confused back here on the governor's review section four. The sentence that says the governor shall not review or approve the program that the committee had disapproved. It's not going to go to the governor anyway, it disapproves it. It's the concern that the governor might reach back in and say, oh, I think this is a good one and we want to talk about that

[Speaker 0]: or we want to.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, just clarifying that the governor, I think it is actually quite clear that the governor does not get an application that the agency has not approved but just to make clear that the governor cannot overstep the committee and grab the application correct.

[Speaker 0]: So, would put that up above under committee review and recommendation. It feels like the sentence is in the wrong place. And that if the committee recommends an application, then it goes to the governor. The committee, C, if the committee doesn't recommend, it doesn't go to the governor. Right? I know it's in the wrong place is what I'm arguing.

[Rep. Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Well, I think they're trying to foresee that there might be a situation in which the governor, even though they disapproved it, he thought it was a good idea until he'd go in and pull it back out again and say, want to But look at I presume that's what that means.

[Speaker 0]: Was just Okay. Lynn?

[Rep. Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson]: Yeah, I think we've already had a lot of these kinds of relationships already. All the Northern New England governors meet with the Canadian premiers that are neighbors, primarily Quebec, maybe Ontario. The point of it is that those are meetings that involve all sorts of things, probably including some political, intergovernmental relations that most of us are not really concerned about, but they're there, and not controversial. We've had a relationship and delegations from House of Representatives. They've gone to Taiwan many times. They've gone to Israel many times, and we just had this whole kerfuffle this summer over that because there's a war going on. That may be an example of one where you say, Well, maybe we don't want to be a sister city with Tel Aviv or something because of what's going on over there. You've done stuff with Turkey. People have gone over to Turkey. Again, that's something that may now be considered sensitive and would not be. But we've had, Burlington has had sister cities in the Soviet Union for years. And maybe now that would be something like, well, we don't really want to do that because they just invaded Ukraine. I mean, there's all kinds of reasons that may sound a good idea. And then maybe six months later or a year later, it's like, well, we really should that over.

[Speaker 0]: Well maybe we should hear the rest of this then because maybe there's something about what happens if we take that.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I'm at the top of page six. Subdivision B, this is the governor's review. If the governor disapproves the program application, the governor's notice shall include a written explanation of why the governor did not follow the recommendation of the committee. So again, the governor can get an application that the committee approves, but the governor has a door to say no. So, the governor can disagree with the committee. See, upon the agency's receipt of the governor's decision, the agency shall notify the applicant of the governor's decision not living in thirty days after the agency receives the notice of the governor's decision. And D, if it is approved the application by the governor, the agency shall finalize a memorandum of understanding between the state and the sister state program applicant. Subsection E the reporting paragraph, the committee shall submit an annual report not later than January 15 of each year to house commerce and senate economic developments, including the following an executive summary of the key developments and outcomes of the program, a description of committee activities, including a summary of attendance and decisions at its meetings, updates on the program, including an evaluation of sister state applications, new partners, significant developments, metrics of success and challenges. A description of stakeholder engagement with program, a financial overview, including a summary of funding sources and expenditures. And six, an outlook for the program, which I'll include strategic objectives, potential new agreements and growth opportunities for the next year.

[Rep. Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson]: Is there a spot in

[Speaker 0]: here to remove somebody, a process for removing somebody from the sister state program as one country invades another, for example? Oh, remove a partner. We approved it, Everything's going alongside, and then they go and invade another country, and now we don't really want to be French with anyone. There's not. Think I want one of those.

[Rep. Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson]: You might want to do that too. Said.

[Speaker 0]: So we think you wanna provide that option. We wanna have escape clause if the global situation changes. And I'm sure there's some tactful and diplomatic way to write that, but I think we ought to have a review process so that that can be rescinded or whatever the word is.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right,

[Speaker 0]: are we, are people okay if we do something like that?

[Rep. Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Is the approval process for a particular term? Is it like we're going to be friends for three years?

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, it's on statute, right? So, that would be the agency could also develop procedures for that but if you want and I'm thinking that's a good idea as well legally that you'd want to have some kind of procedure and statute that says this is how this should work That either a majority of the committee or the agency provides this mechanism for removal or that agreement shall be reviewed every three years, four years, whatever the committee thinks is the right amount of time.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Yes. I would suggest that, I mean, yes, that's an important piece. There is an amendment to this from the committee chair.

[Speaker 0]: So Okay, so let's get to that. When we get to that, we'll see if that's in there.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: I just say it can be added there.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. No, not a separate amendment. Exactly. We have an amendment, and the question is whether it wants to they want to do it on the floor or whether it wants to come whether we want it to come from us. And then if we do it, then we can add that to their amendment. So anyway I think we want that in there somewhere and and even if there's a time limit like we review it every three years you know eleven months after you know we said okay they aren't going to wait two more years and so okay all right. So I would

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: say typically memorandums for understanding are not legally binding so they could always as written currently they could get out of it either in the sister state or Vermont. It's not a binding contract, but I think language clarifying that process would be helpful.

[Speaker 0]: Yes, I think so. It's the world we live in now.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sure, reporting on page seven, we're done with reporting compensation and reimbursements. Page seven, this is your standard per diem language that it is paid for up to eight meetings per year. So a legislative member is entitled to p per diem compensation and reimbursement for non board and aid meetings. Other members of the committee also per diem compensation reimbursement, aid meetings per year. Payments made to the committee shall be made for monies appropriated to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development.

[Speaker 0]: None from the General Assembly for the for the representatives? None for the Usually, General Assembly picks up the per diems for representatives and senators.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So that can be added? The current language is just from ACCD.

[Speaker 0]: Right. No. It's just that we'll get we get per diem compensation, but usually, it's there's another sentence that says that will be absorbed by the general assembly.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, members serving should be reimbursed by.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Okay. Why don't you go through the oh, did you already do the repeal? Then let's the amendment after that,

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: and then we'll talk to

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Chris. Okay, so section two, the last page of the bill from commerce repeals the Vermont Island Trade Commission, is addressed in the amendment from Rep. Mark Todd and Branning. The Vermont Island Trade Commission was passed into law last year, but the effective date is July 1. There was a one year waiting period for that submission to take effect. Okay, shall I talk about the amendment which addresses the Ireland trade. So, this is the amendment from Reps Markot and Branning. This only looks at the Ireland Trade Commission. So, there's nothing in this amendment that would affect the sister state language, which of course that can be changed if you all want to include your amendment in this one or if you want to do it separately. This amendment would bring back, would repeal the Commerce's report to repeal it. It keeps the Vermont Ireland Trade Commission alive. It does place some more restrictions and some more public bookkeeping requirements on the Ireland Trade Commission with the state treasurer's office. On page one, it adds two members to the commission from seven to nine. It adds the commissioner of economic development or designee and the president of UVM or designee. On page two, subsection c, this is mostly grammatical or clarifying language. There's nothing really new in subsection c. When I had the opportunity to clean it up, so I cleaned up the language to have it make more sense, especially with more members being added to the to the commission. Subsection f, the commission shall in coordination with the state treasurer's office, and that's added because you'll see on the next page, the state treasurer has much more of an obligation in the accounting of this commission. Submit a written report and the next page, no changes there. Subdivision one, the current language remains disclosure listing any in kind contributions received by specific members of the commission through their work in the commission. And then two is new, detailed accounting from the state treasurer's office, which is where this is housed, of the administrative expenses that have been paid with funds raised by the commission, and then funds raised and donations grant bequest received through the commission, including the name, country of residence, and amount donated of each contributor. Subsection G is the paragraph where they are permitted to raise funds either through solicitation, fundraising, these kinds of things. The last sentence of that first paragraph is removed to really limit what these expenses are and what could be considered administrative expenses, is defined here in a little bit. Subdivision two, mostly clarifying language here. You'll see carry out purposes is marked out again to clarify that just administrative expenses can be defrayed using money they raise. On the next page, page four. These expenses shall be itemized and tracked for reporting purposes by the state treasurer's office. Interest earned shall remain in the bank account. The state treasurer shall include the balance of the account in the annual reporting required pursuant to subsection F of the section. So for purposes of this section, administrative expenses does not include any a, expenses related to campaign or election activity or food or beverages provided at official commission meetings. Does not include any other expense that is not specific to the administrative functions of the commission. So again, the intent here is to really narrow any funds the commission raises through whatever procedure amounts, those funds can only be used to defray administrative expenses of the commission. And those are limited here and the amendment to as narrow as you can get. Happy to talk about what that is, but

[Speaker 0]: Subsection

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: H, members shall not receive any, just clarify there cannot be any compensation or be entitled to reimbursement of expenses from Vermont or from the fund that is managed by the state treasurer that's created in subsection G. 2A, section 2A at the bottom of page four is a report taking a step back. The Ireland Trade Commission is already set to appeal on 07/01/2030.

[Speaker 0]: It is, yes. And that stays.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That starts. That was passed into law last year. So this report is due the December before that and it shall summarize the accomplishments of the commission since inception, a detailed analysis on how the commission had served legislative purposes, and an accounting on funds raised and details on gifts received since the commission's inception. And that should give the general assembly

[Speaker 0]: a road map as

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to what to do about the repeals after that following year.

[Rep. Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson]: Wait. Wait. This is exclusively amendment regarding the Vermont Ireland Trade Commission and its responsibilities. It's almost like an MOU of what we're supposed to do. Is this the template that we're going to use for any other sister city, state, country, or why are we just doing this after all of the other stuff? I mean, this gets into more specifics. Yeah,

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: probably a policy question, this is not, so these, they seem similar, the Vermont Ireland Trade Commission is kind of a one off trade commission, the sister state is a, it's even a separate title, it's a separate way of doing things, and that's if you want to know the

[Speaker 0]: Well, we set up the Ireland Trade Commission into law and we decided that a sister state approach is a is a better approach, which is actually well, apparently less confusing and more state that's what most states use is the sister state way of doing things. So is that what This was special to Ireland. In the attempt to repeal it, it was decided that it would just continue, but with much more restriction and reporting back until it expires. And also They drop it and become part of the sister state program. Yeah, was gonna say, why isn't it a part of the other I would imagine they will be encouraged to apply to be in the sister state program. But in the meantime, we're gonna have to drop this at the moment. Did that proposed thing. Yeah.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: And just pointing out this is set up under the treasurer's and there's two key differences right now. This was set up under the treasurer's not being pulled into ACCD, is the other one, and this one the committee members, commission members do not dictate for their service whoever is on it.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's right.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: And we're proposing that all everybody gets per diem at the very least.

[Speaker 0]: On the other

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: hand, other hand, the Right.

[Speaker 0]: That's right. Different program, different approach. Same goals. Okay. Wayne?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: State clause. Putting into language that the governor of China obviously if they don't send anything to the governor, then the governor's got no way of knowing that something exists. So why doesn't it just stop? It should just stop it. If the committee or whatever the group votes to agree, then they send it to the governor for approval. To have to say that the governor shall not look at what they decided not to do is Well, governor, they could choose to

[Speaker 0]: do it. I think it's just a little extra clarity that the governor does not have the authority to over read and take something. Just keep poking people

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: in the eye when it's unnecessary.

[Speaker 0]: Well, it's any governor now or in the future.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Although I was going to add, there are about 20 states with these Vermont Ireland Trade Commissions, so it's fairly common. It's a newer thing, last five or so years they've been going around states trying to get these agreements made. The sister state thing is also a newer thing where states are creating these committees to try to build relationships. So, they can coexist legally, they can coexist. It's up to you all policy wise, right, to determine how that all shakes out.

[Speaker 0]: Right, which is why the Committee on Commerce had the amendment. What were the votes on both the bill and then the amendment in the committee?

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The bill was eleven-zero-zero. The amendment has not been brought to the committee yet. Oh, it hasn't? It's currently written as an individual amendment.

[Speaker 0]: But it hasn't been reviewed by your

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: committee? No.

[Speaker 0]: But you know about it? I do.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Is a surprise?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah, I mean, we were told that this was coming. I mean, I can tell you how I'm going to vote, but I can't tell you how anybody else is.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, well, we're not voting on this today, but All we

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: right, so Can I get some clarifications on what you Yes? Diplomatic from Rep Stevens, the diplomatic collaboration, is that a committee decision to strike that in an amendment or reward it?

[Speaker 0]: I don't know whether it is yet. Maybe we could hear what some alternatives would be or perhaps, ref Stevens, you could talk to a congress and see if there's other

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: I'll check-in

[Speaker 0]: Let's with have it as a flag. We're not voting on it now. I definitely would like an escape clause.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, I have that.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: I concur with Professor Stevens.

[Speaker 0]: On the diplomatic relations? Okay, well, we'll see if we can find something that is a statute.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You want removal and time limit or just the removal of an agreement?

[Speaker 0]: Well, think that they should decide on the time limit. Does it say that there should be a time limit or a review? Okay.

[Rep. Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson]: So let's just go back

[Rep. Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: and look at that.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Are we

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: voting on when we vote on this, then does it go to the floor after that?

[Speaker 0]: Yes. Well, yes. And it will

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: be on our It will be on

[Speaker 0]: our wall. Yeah, you're good. Let's see. An application, review, minimum eligibility requirements, a fixed scoring, memorandum of understanding. And maybe we can have an F, which is some sort of a review process, which may also include the escape clause, but also, what were you saying, like a term limit or a time to

[Rep. Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: review Yeah, have to be addressed the Memorandum Understanding the ballot for three years and then

[Speaker 0]: it gets reviewed. Or some period of time that it needs to be reviewed on some sort of regular basis.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: There's a

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: line about a year old report so maybe some we had it within that line,

[Speaker 0]: I don't know. Well, would probably be part of some new report, but I think the application process needs, the MOU needs to have some kind of agreement that there'll be a review of that. In final review, like it should be, will be reviewed. They can decide how many years, maybe they want one year, maybe they want three years, but they can figure that out.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So that kind of more in the agency's prerogative, but you definitely want an escape clause and statute that says Yes. Gotcha.

[Speaker 0]: And I'm gonna check with Chair Marckotte about them doing a straw poll on their amendment because we should hear what the committee thinks about this, about the amendment before we decide on it. Okay, so we covered all the things that we want to be sure to address before we can vote on this. Okay, and we need to get Chris Reup up here. So, Rev. Lewton, I'm going to move you back to the side and bring Chris Reup up to talk about the fiscal Stick around.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Morning, everyone. It's Chris Sveep from

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: the Joint Fiscal Office. Buckle up. This is a really complicated fiscal note. The per diems for this the sister state program committee, based on our estimates that we use at JFO and our methodology, you know, if we assume that all eight meetings were to occur, then the per diem cost would run about $9,500. The one thing I wanted to mention to you all is I just reviewed the amendment text that you all just talked about. Depending on what happens with that, some verbiage would change with respect to the Ireland Trade Commission, but it's not going to change the fiscal impact. I did just want to put a pin in the fact that since you all were talking about an amendment and things you want to look at on the current text does say on the per diems and expenses that the costs for all members would be paid by HCCD. So if this committee wanted to differentiate for the two legislative members to have those costs come out of the legislative budget, I would just suggest that you add a sentence at the end of that one paragraph that just says money is shall come from the appropriations to

[Speaker 0]: the judge. I'd like to do that. And then how does that reduce the 95

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's the same amount of money. It's just paid out a different

[Speaker 0]: Absorb it in the budget. And what I wanna know is what we'd have to appropriate to ACCD versus what would be absorbed in the generalist Right.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: We could we could ask ACCD that question. You know, it's it's not a substantial amount of money.

[Speaker 0]: You can do the math on two people, eight meetings that are legislated.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. We have we have that.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: We have that. It won't reduce the aggregate total of the bill. It will just reduce it will change who bears the cost.

[Speaker 0]: Right. But we don't have to appropriate it to the general assembly. So if we can say

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: As long as we can absorb it. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: It's probably a couple thousand bucks. I don't know. But that's what I wanna know because every dollar is counting on us. Absolutely. So if we can knock that down a couple thousand bucks if we go for this, then I'd like to do

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: We can also check and see with ACCD whether they have the capacity in their budget bill corpus because the bill does not have an appropriation in it. It just references a cost to the department.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. If that could be confirmed too, I'd appreciate that. But then just the breakout of how the 9,500 would break out between I would think they could absorb it.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. And I would think the legislative branch would likely be able to absorb it too, because compensation would be for legislators who attend meetings that occur when the legislature is not in session. So, the bill stipulates it should be a meeting once every quarter but up to eight. So, it's a bit of a squishy target in terms of exactly how many meetings they would have. We on the side of assume the most meetings.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. Right. And maybe two of them are while we're in session.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Six things

[Speaker 0]: that they have to absorb in the Up to. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you can break the stat up

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: a bit. Talk these,

[Speaker 0]: you do. Okay. So we're obviously not gonna vote on this. I'll check with Chair Markov about them doing a straw poll on the amendment. Diplomatic solution, escape clause, MOU with some sort of sure there's time limit. Else anybody has on this? Okay. So once we have all that, will do a quick review again with all the information and then we can vote on

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it. Many breakers? Pardon me? How many breakers? Yes. Wanted to make sure.

[Speaker 0]: Unless anybody really wants to I don't think so. Oh, I don't think so. Thank you very much, all of you.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Thank you. Appreciate it. You're welcome.

[Speaker 0]: Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Yep. Okay. So I see Michael here. So, Dam Safety. Come to the table, Mike. That was Huntsville. Dam Safety Must Be Trevor, is that you?

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Okay.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Should I begin?

[Speaker 0]: Wait. You are. Welcome to begin.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: This is Michael Grady with legislative council. Before I get into the substance of the bill, I wanna give you background because there's a lot of acronyms and relevant, information that you might wanna know. So you're gonna hear potentially people say that there's about 2,000 dams in the state. But DEC has gone through, and they've identified that they regulate a 100 1,005 dams. The PUC regulates 29. FERC, the federal regulator, regulates 91, and the US Army Corps of Engineer and the US Forest Service regulate 21. Now the state has a system for regulating or assessing the hazard of dams, and it's high, significant, and low. High hazard dam means that if there's a failure of the dam, there's a probable loss of life. A significant one is where there's no loss of life, but there's a probable environmental damage or damage to structures and other property. And low is no loss of life, likely low environmental or damage or damage to structures. There are 74 high hazard dams in the state. 50 are regulated by DEC or regulated by PUC and 13 by FERC, seven by US Army Corps of Engineers. Some of those high hazard dams that DEC regulates are privately owned. Some are publicly including by DEC. And then there are all the dams out there that nobody has actually registered. And you may have a dam on your property that you don't even know about. So what do you do when you have a dam? There are requirements for effectively planning and safety for your dam. The dam owner is required to complete something called the emergency action plan, that identifies the areas that likely would be inundated by failure of the dam, and that that EAP EAP is provided to the regulator and the municipality in which the dam is located. After the EAP is done, there's an emergency operations plan that is developed, and that's developed by the municipalities in the inundation zone. And that's developed to identify evacuation routes, critical response, leadership, sites for shelter, etcetera. And that's what we're talking about today. Because when there was the flooding a few summers ago, there were several dams that were at risk of failure. And in discussing those potential failures with the municipalities that were in the inundation zones, some of your colleagues identified that a lot of the responsibility for a dam's safety is on those municipalities, and they may not have the capacity or the resources or the general ability to effectively respond to a dam failure and or to create this emergency operations plan. So there was a study committee last year that looked at different ways for how the state could address emergency operations plan. One of the alternatives in that study committee was to do a pilot project to look at how to do emergency operations plans, how to fund them, and how to prioritize and plan for going forward with them into the future. That's generally what this bill does, creates that pilot project for two state owned dams. But now going into the substance of the bill, section one is not a pilot project. Section one, in discussing with the stakeholders about dam safety, there were some interested parties who were arguing that the governor and the director of emergency management didn't have stand alone authority to order the evacuation of a municipality due to dam failure. And it's because of this section 20 VSA section 10, which says before there's an all hazards event declared that the local municipal officer has to be able to consent to that. Well, there's other authority and statute that allows the governor to declare an emergency and to declare response that's necessary. And so this is just clarifying page one, line 14 through 18, that this authority, this language about municipal consent to all hazard does not prevent the governor or the director of emergency management from declaring and requiring evacuation of an area subject to a dam inundation. And then on page two, you get to the pilot project, the division of emergency management, which I'm gonna refer to as VEM, Vermont Emergency Management. They, in coordination with DEC, are going to conduct this pilot project. They're going to develop a set of emergency operations plans because you do an emergency operations plan for every municipality in the inundation zone. So it's not just one, it's a plan for each municipality. So a set for those municipalities. And it's for two state owned dams that have been classified as high hazard potential. One of remember, if they fail, it will cause loss of life. One of those is going to have a person at risk or population at risk rank of 1,000 or more persons would be at probable loss of life. And the other is going to be a population at risk of between 101,000 persons who lose their life. So you get two different scopes or scale of dams, and that will allow the EM to go out and kind of select what they think the best two examples would be for the pilot project. In preparing the EOP, they have to consult with all the stakeholders. You're now on page two, lines 12 through 21. Page three, they may hire contractor, including a regional planning commission, to complete the EOPs and comply with all of the requirements of the section. The bill lays out everything that needs to be done in the EOP. I can go through that in detail, or we could just kind of 10,000 foot overview that they're they have to coordinate with the emergency action plan. Remember what the dam owner completes. They have to identify evacuation routes. They have to address vulnerable populations. They have to identify where people are going to evacuate to or shelter. They have to engage those vulnerable populations, such as schools, in the development of the plan. They have to plan for mutual aid with municipalities working together in response to the inundation or the emergency. Page four, they have to address how to use pre event communication, including early warning systems or the Vermont alert system, and they have to include anything additional that DEM thinks is necessary for the development of the EOP. On a report 07/01/2028, they submit to you the general assembly the results of the pilot project. You're gonna get copies of the EOPs for the two dams, so there's gonna potentially be a lot of EOPs in the building. And a summary program. A summary of the process for development of the EOPs, including whether they contracted with with an entity to do EOPs, a summary of how they coordinated with all the stakeholders, the cost of the EOPs, a summary of early warning recommendations, a scope and budget for how to do a EOP template. Because this is only about, you know, those populations at risk of two it's only about two dams and state owned dams. And remember, there's 74 high hazard dams. And so there's many municipalities that would be subject to or required to do an EOP. It's like, what what is a template that DEM could roll out that municipalities could use to develop these EOPs? And as part of the report, they're gonna address a few other things such as whether the EOPs should be completed by the state. Whether you can complete an EOP, a state can require a state entity to do an EOP for a federal dam because there are preemption clauses in federal statute about safety and regulation of safety of federally regulated dams. How to prioritize completion of the EOPs, whether, the EOPs for all high hazard dams before with a population of at risk of a 100 or more could be completed by 2035 by the state or state contractor, whether the division of I already talked about how whether or not the project can can do an EOP for federal dams. Page six, what

[Speaker 0]: it

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: would cost for a VEM to complete the EOPs for dams with a population at risk of a 100 or more, Whether and recommend how EOPs should be completed for those high hazard dams with populations of risk at risk of less than 100. Recommend potential funding sources for the state or municipalities that have to complete EOPs. Recommend, you know, what structures need to be identified, how to identify them, whether to geotag them, whether to include them in Vermont Alert System. And so that type of information is part of a pilot project. I am here today. You are here today on this bill because of of section three, the appropriation section. BEM estimates that they would need $250,000 to fund the pilot project, and DEC is asking for a $125,000 for their role in completing the pilot project.

[Speaker 0]: Any questions or clarifications about this, Dave?

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Can you tell me how many of those 74 dams are at risk of failure?

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: That's a different rating system, and I I don't have that. There is actually an ongoing process at DEC to come up with rules for safety repair and maintenance of dams. That's been ongoing. It's a difficult process. I can I can can get you that?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Can you? Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Sorry to bother you. No worries.

[Speaker 0]: What was the vote out of committee on this? Honestly,

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: it was a couple of days ago.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Andy, you have a question while I'm seeing you? No, a comment or a question actually. Think this is Okay. Something that really needs to be done. After all, responsible, somebody has to be responsible. If we don't do something like this then go through the ducting carpet that's getting mobs or I think we have to do this.

[Speaker 0]: It seems important. There's so many things that seem important. Mike, you're welcome to stay there, and Chris seems to be your line for fiscal notes. Do you want to come up on this one? Is this a little more? Can probably recite this in the time I've taken a lot of care okay well the fiscal note is really just referencing those two appropriations death total $375,000

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: total from the general fund

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: dollars 3 and 50,000 to Vermont Emergency Management, and 125,000

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: to the team for their roles supporting the county.

[Speaker 0]: Any questions on the I'm just wondering, is this not something that would be in the regular duties at ANR? Or this is mean,

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: that It's would have not in ANR's regular duties to do emergency operations plans. In fact, in emergency safety chapter title 20, there's a requirement that all municipalities have all hazard event plans. And this is supposed to be part of that. But it doesn't contemplate things like, renewing your equipment every few years so that it is effective having early warning systems because a lot of municipalities, if not most, don't have early warning systems. How to use the technology that's available for both pre event communication and event communication. VEM is an excellent resource, but they haven't identified everything that potentially could be an issue in an emergency operations plan. And it also this pilot asks the question of whether that responsibility should be on municipalities or if it should be on the state.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: You think there shouldn't be would there be some we have a lot of damage that happens when something like this happens. Having these in place, would that give us some leverage for insurance, you know, better for for property insurance pricing, that sort of thing so that we we reduce our our reliability?

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: It it it's something that FEMA looks at in their assessment of blood damage what they will compensate for. I don't know if it would drive down FEMA's NFIP premiums. I don't think so because NFIP is largely based on meeting the NFIP regs and also what your history of damage or events is. So I don't think it necessarily would. I do think your insurance may be more tied to the status of your dam. And that question is who would be liable in that situation is something you tried to address a couple of years ago and could not reach consensus. You're going to have strict liability on the dam owner for failure. But as I just explained, there are state owned dams. Are municipal owned dams. There are private owned dams. And that raised a lot of concern among dam owners.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: It'll definitely mitigate against our risk, just the maintenance being done in the form of the point.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Which is what DEC is doing in developing the dam safety rules and updating and modernizing them with engineers and engineers. They're a little behind schedule, but it's also difficult.

[Speaker 0]: Vin? Yeah, that has been

[Rep. Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson]: recently some articles I've read about dams in some of these rivers, some that were put in that were supposed to stop, would be barriers to flooding that ended up looking through these. They're examining these. I guess out here in Montpelier, there's a dam that's they're looking to take them out

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: to

[Rep. Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson]: try to improve

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: the

[Rep. Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson]: way the flooding can be managed. Is this part of what DEC is doing now? Is I mean, for instance, if the rights go down, which was apparently at high risk at one point during the 'twenty three floods, if that had flooded over, I would suspect that would be considered pretty more than just damage, that would be

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: It's a high hazard dam, there would have been loss of life. Yes, among all the other things we had here.

[Rep. Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson]: But is that the kind of thing that is that the maintenance, safety, creating the

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: No, that's like the actual maintenance of the dam. That's underneath these dam safety rules that DEC is doing. They have rules already, but they are modernizing and updating them. That's how you repair, how you replace equipment, how you test all your equipment. Because one of the things that happens is when there's a flood, they go to do the mitigation measures, and they can't get the gears to so things like making sure that what you have for mitigation safety actually works and it's updated and modernized, that's the DEC safety rules. This is about what happens when there's failure and how to the municipalities, how to emergency responders, how do people respond and where to go. Is your normal shelter area not going to be accessible because of the inundation zone of the dam failure? And so do you need to have a secondary or even a tertiary evacuation zone? And what routes will emergency responders know to use? And how do you practice for

[Speaker 0]: all of this? I mean, when we had that flood in 'twenty three, was it the Wrightville Dam that was like the callus they were like right there it could have been

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: same thing with water. Well they're both the same dams right they're both they're both urban dams near the top and right once you cut the dirt once the water cuts the dirt it just all walks away right so the Water Very Dam back in the late 1990s when there was the first major renovation or restoration and there's one on selling where there's one about to be. It's all federally funded but it was a state dam guy who lived in Waterbury at the time. Worked at the department at the time.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Basically lived at the Waterbury Dam when it was at risk of failure.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Yeah. And so he his response was on the select board at the time because they were improving it. But his comment was if the Waterbury Dam failed, and again, slipped in Wrightsville Dam as well, I live in Downtown Waterbury I would have had forty five minutes to evacuate and I would have had gone up above where the school is which is a lot higher than any of the tropical storm I've seen or 1927 floods hit. So you're taught having we have or some of us have the very mental picture of what a population at risk of 100 or more or up to a thousand might be because you know the water would just come barreling down and it would hit Duxbury and spread out. That's a lot of water the right zone. Having the right zone down was also very close. That would get hot failure. And Watervain eventually.

[Speaker 0]: He'd have been more time with Wrightsville than he would have been here again. Totally. It's pretty frightening. Mean we all were here when those floats happened and it was Okay. Well, that's a cheerful thing to think about, but it's important thing to think about. Any other questions? Anything else you want to say?

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Do you want any amendments or anything?

[Speaker 0]: I am not hearing any at this point. We're not voting. So yes, we may do something. We may also decide we're gonna do this if we can find the money somewhere else. I'm getting a sense from people that this is kind of important. And maybe we have some ideas as to where we can find that money. Time. I'm

[Rep. David Yacovone]: sorry, is it one time?

[Speaker 0]: Yes, it would be one time.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: File it one time.

[Speaker 0]: Thanks. Yes, go ahead. Yes, you can answer your question.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: So when we talk about this,

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: is the pilot program limited to state owned dams? You mentioned that there's hundreds of other dams and you know I could understand if somebody had a dam on their property that's a porta book or something like that or you know whatever if people were concerned that these would be concerned with the expense but how do we is this pilot can you just reframe everything that you just told me and say this pilot is kind of set up you set a template so that people who are at lower levels of of population not greater but of what

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we have control over Yep.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: They can pick up that template and do their own. Yeah.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: It's yes. I mean, if the the municipalities with the under the dams with a population of risk of under 100, they they this requires them to get a template or or a recommended way to do a template. Now the the those who are on private property, those dams, even at risk of failure I I mean, there's somebody in this building that bought a house and went out into the woods and was like, oh, I I own a dam. I didn't know I own a dam. What do I do about my dam? And, you you know, it's like, if it's not of a certain threshold, it doesn't it doesn't really trigger that need for this type of planning. You would still be liable if there was significant damage caused by that dam failure. But if they're not impounding more they're not impounding more than, like, an Olympic sized swimming pool, which is kind of the threshold, then then you're not you're not really concerned. Your insurer might come out and say, oh, you now have a dam while your insurance is coming out.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We have a division

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: that would go, take it down. Take it down.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yes. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: So everybody's going to go walk their property while we're on break. You've been hitting dams that you didn't know about. What do we do

[Rep. Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: about the beaver stuff? We'll go out

[Speaker 0]: there. Then you have to check one off. I don't think beaver dams are included in EOPs. Beaver dams are not part of the EOPs.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Beaver dams are natural phenomena. They're not regulated.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. So, committee, we have people who are working on this. I sense the interest in this. And Trevor and others may be on it to see if we can find some money to talk about this before it rains again. Thank you very much. Chris, you're welcome to us today.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: That'd be great.

[Speaker 0]: You too, if you get one, I hope you get one. I love that. Okay, now James is going to talk and talk to us about some of our homework for a while. We're gone. We are not quite at the place we were. We're still way ahead of schedule, so we don't have the full spreadsheet. We'll get that when we come back from break, but this will get you started and give you a few other things to think about. James even has copies for me to also call. It isn't everything. Yeah, so remember it's not the end. It'll tell us what's in and what isn't in here so far. But I think everybody have a photocopy for this. Here, are you catching up things too? It was off this stuff. Thank you. Jamie emailed that. Emailed it? Yes. Thank you. We're not posting it, so you all have your email.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Thank you so much.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. So tell us what you have.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It's James Duffy, Joint Fiscal. So going into town meeting week, sending you all home with a table of our general fund requests above gov rec. We have three components here. These are not all the components that you all will be voting on when we return from town meeting week, and you go through that same voting exercise that you all did last year where you prioritize the general fund appropriations above gov rec. When you vote, you will have requests from the departments and agencies. You will have advocate requests, and you will have requests from your fellow members. You will also have committee letters to consider and the bills that are all still in the process of coming to you, of which you have not yet seen them all. So this for those reasons, this is still preliminary because I believe we still have more committee testimony to take regarding the budget letters from the standing committees. I don't

[Speaker 0]: You may. I'm not sure whether we will, but that'll be one of the requests I'll ask of folks to look at their committee letters for And

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: we certainly have more bills to hear from that will be in the funding mix that will be added to this as well. But what you have in front of you are the finalized inputs here. We've heard from all and agencies at this point. We've had our public hearings and so have heard from most of our advocates. Although, I suspect we may be receiving some more emails and letters from folks as we approach I got crossover. So there may be some more trickling in that will be added to this as we hear from them. And then, of course, you heard from your colleagues earlier this week with requests from fellow legislators. So this represents the inputs that have been either finalized or semifinalized for your final voting exercise. You'll notice also this is timestamped at the top because we will have multiple iterations of this coming to you as you all continue to hear things. However, on the left hand side of the page, we have our requests from the departments and agencies above gov rec. These are ordered in the order of the budget to help you all with your assignments. Yeah. And so I'll just, I don't know, Madam Chair, if you'd like to go through any of these one by one or kind of let folks peruse and highlight questions that they may have as we walk through this.

[Speaker 0]: The one thing I would say is on line 16, and thank you for putting line numbers there, at least on the left. Secretary of State backed up federal grant. We should confirm with them because I talked to the Secretary of State last week who said that they were asking for $6.50 for a particular part. And she told me that they were getting enough fees in that they weren't going to need that part of it. So I don't know if they don't need the whole thing or whether they just don't need part of it.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's right. Because there's actually two components of that secretary of state items. So there's a $650,000 backfill of the federal grant. I'm also now seeing this should be a separate item. There's a $450,000 request of state general funds.

[Speaker 0]: That's ban.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Separate from BAN, actually. So there are two election administration requests from the secretary of state totaling $1,100,000 Okay.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: $6.50 that

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: would be used for election security and administration. So that's what that $1,100,000 represents.

[Speaker 0]: I think the number has changed, it's lowered. But I don't know what it's lowered to. I think at the end, they said, we need $1.1 but we're only going to ask for $650,000

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's right. They had lost about $700,000 in change in federal funds. They were only asking to partially backfill representing $6.50. And then there is, which I should break out separately, there's an additional $450,000 election state general fund appropriation for elections administration that will be included separately. You'll see that 1.1 broken out. And then you will also notice there's an additional $450,000 request from the secretary of state below that. That is not for elections administration. That is for Vermont access network funding above Right. The gov rack. So there are two the yeah. There will be two four fifty requests from secretary of state.

[Speaker 0]: So just confirm what line 16 should be with them if

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: you could Sure. Yeah. I'll reach out about those fees receipts. And I'll I'll also add as you're going through these, this is for the sake of brevity and fitting things on a page. Right? These descriptions are very abbreviated. I have a more detailed kind of compendium of these. So I would ask that as you all go over this table, Overtown Meeting Week or at any point, feel free to reach out about individual items that you may need more detail on, and I can get them to you pretty quickly. I've I'm thinking more So lengthy version of this.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. And pretty much, we just have yeah. It should be enough to say, oh, yeah. I remember what that is. That's that's sort of what we're doing with this. But, yes, James has chapter and verse on everything.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And I also know there was some discussion about the labor relations board earlier today and a request that they had made, which you won't see on here. I had revisited their written and and verbal testimony to the committee, and I I don't know what the, like, channel of the request has been, but there wasn't actually a request that I had heard delivered in committee. So I I think that's outstanding, but not reflected on this

[Speaker 0]: table. Bill.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. And so you'll that you'll you'll notice that once the bills begin to be populated here.

[Speaker 0]: Had a question or comment?

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Well, yeah, James, I think you've got the state's attorneys duplicated on the front page and also on the second page. It's about eleven, twelve, 13, and

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So we do.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: The Okay. Judge of Kascenska left it in there. So

[Speaker 0]: we have 34 through 36.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: They don't need to Yeah.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Those are those are duplicated. And thank you to the committee for your forbearance too as we

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: continue to

[Speaker 0]: So three thirty six are the same as 11, probably 13 Yes. Yes, you can ask it. So David, I'm just wondering, there are some things that have come in as letters, but they didn't come through with public testimony, and they're not on here, right?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So they should all be so if you're referring to the testimony we took on the twelfth and the nineteenth, we did receive somewhere between forty and fifty letters that were not delivered as

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: oral testimony. They were posted to

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: the page.

[Speaker 0]: After if we haven't sent them to James or Auden and they duplicated, they've been like Okay. They've come into members of our committee. Anyway, will I'll make sure that

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: If you receive individual letters or correspondences from folks, please do pass them on to me, I'll update the table. What you see here should reflect all of the written testimony that was received and posted on the HACC website. Madam Chair, know you forwarded

[Rep. Eileen "Lynn" Dickinson]: I forwarded few already.

[Speaker 0]: I think we got one.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: You'll notice that one isn't on here, Madam Chair. You had forwarded one from the SCA that was either reflected in existing requests or didn't have a general fund impact. So you won't see that.

[Speaker 0]: That's fine. It's fun to give it to you.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: A couple other housekeeping notes, not housekeeping, but formatting notes. You'll notice this is mostly under the legislator general fund request, but there are some cells that are grayed out. Those represent duplicated requests that are reflected elsewhere in the table. And so for example, when you look at the bottom of any of these subtitles and you see total requests and unduplicated requests, the unduplicated requests don't include any of those grayed out cells because the old they're already reflected somewhere else in the spreadsheet.

[Speaker 0]: So, like, working lands came in elsewhere, and then the accessibility has said I support working lands. Exactly. You only did it once.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And I think that the duplicated there's ones that are marked as duplicates are really just I heard them second or third after already. It was chronological in terms of what I considered to be duplicate. That's what the grayed out cells mean. You'll also notice mostly under the advocate general fund requests, there are some yellow cells. Those represent requests that may have global commitment that we either know to have global commitment implications or may have global commitment implications, which will reflect the request amount. Because this is just general fund, the global commitment items that you'll see in this final table will just be the general fund impact, not global commitment. And so some of those yellow cells still working with Nolan and scrutinizing the testimonies to confirm what the general fund impact will be. Some of these are tricky. Testimony may not have provided the split for us or may refer to global commitment categories that don't quite match up to the ones that we use to determine global commitment rates. And so that's why those are still yellowed out and not finalized, still putting some digging there. You'll also notice that when I refer to rate increases for global commitment items, I'm not referring to specific percentages. So I'll just, for example, believe we received a request for 3.5% increases for home and community based service providers. Under HR1 slash the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, those are states are no longer allowed to direct percentage increases to some of these global commitment items. You can give them a certain amount. And however that shakes out to be a percentage increase is fine. But my understanding from Nolan is that states are no longer permitted to direct specific rate increases.

[Speaker 0]: State directed spending has been stopped at wherever it was when they stopped. So any new thing we have to do it differently. So that's why you're going to see it.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: But is that like saying, well, they received two seventy five, but we want to give them 3% more. So we just give them 300,000, but we don't say 3% more?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: More or less, yes. We would have to if the policy goal is to achieve a certain level of increase, we would do the math to see how what that amount works out to be. But the states are no longer permitted to one can give more detail. States can can refer to it as a 3.5 or a 1.5%.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: So the other question, do you have

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: access to

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: agencies that were like the secretary of states then perhaps there's some something else where federal funding, I'll use legal aid because it's up here as an example of where federal funding or human rights commission where funding was changed because of federal issues. So for instance, Rights Commission isn't receiving that amount of money from their 95 or 100 or whatever thousand for that would have been part of their budget and there I mean there's some finagling going on, but is there a list that's easily can be built up? What divisions lost cuts specifically since January 2025? So that we have because we're backfilling stuff and some of this is marked and some of it isn't, but we're picking up the slack of some of these agencies especially human service agencies. Just wouldn't know if that's because that's part of our thinking too. Mean we have to say well if they got cut a million dollars how much can

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: we

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: how much

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: are we

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: required to or want to fill in to

[Speaker 0]: make that bill work? And the other part of that which won't show up on here is for example there are increases at agencies like AHS because now the state share of administrative costs for SNAP has gone up and is costing us $8,000,000 that

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Right, so that's the kind

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: of stuff that is directly related to

[Speaker 0]: HR one and other bills.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Yeah just because it's it even if it's for us to be able to explain on the floor that we're increasing this budget because not because there's more but because we are losing the money that was once

[Speaker 0]: It's normally part of

[Rep. David Yacovone]: the budget.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, that's all reflected in testimony notes, and I could denote that on the table pretty easily. I imagine an asterisk denoting with the stems from a federal funding reduction or a separate table. I just think it's important just

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: like saying that we all got gypped out of $1,700 individually because of the tariffs. The states getting gypped out of x number of millions of dollars because of change in policies were self very focused on particular agencies.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: Great. Agree for a little bit different reasons.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, that's okay.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche]: We also have a propensity to oh, we got federal money, so let's put this thing in place. And then all of a sudden, keeps going and going, the federal money dries up. Then we feel obligated to keep going. So it gives us a time to reflect on what we're doing and make a decision on whether we Right.

[Speaker 0]: And some things are like they're just putting it to The States with SNAP, and so that's what it is. And other things, there may be that same question. So we can ask both sides of it. Glenn did you have something to note? Okay, we're

[Rep. Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: just pondering. I just want to point out maybe everybody all figured out that the Africa line is with the Africa board they're not attempting to line up with the budget area.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And I will be lining those up with the budget area, Madam Vice Chair. I think that would be helpful for you all. I apologize. I wasn't able to get that done for you all today. But when it comes-

[Rep. Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Sized lines and everything.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. But when it comes time to vote, everything will be in touched area for you all in the subsequent versions.

[Rep. Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: This is also referred to line 21, but we're talking about the deadline. Yes. Beautiful. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: Really wanted And James to work really hard on this to get and I promised him this is okay to send out as a draft because we want to see where we are and keep our thinking going and not just be suddenly shocked that it's $350,000,000 or whatever it is by next week from Wednesday. I'm making that number up, you know that. Don't know what it's going to be. It's a lot. People didn't really cut back from last year. I mean, is 200,000,000 here, and this is without a whole lot of stuff that hasn't come in yet from either the bills or the committee letters. So that's know Jason talking when we're done here. You know there'll be a new spreadsheet when we all come back but this at least gets you started to think about Helpful. Very nice.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I would say, you know, if I can offer the members any any direction about where you might go with this, it's you know, over town meeting, if you decide to start familiarizing yourself with any requests within your budget area, outside your budget area, need more detail, reach out to me by all means. I'll be available over town meeting week to start providing more detail on this. I I think that that's really it. Yeah. Just start familiarizing with your requests. Familiarizing yourself with the requests you are most interested in knowing more about, and we can we, JFO, can start doing some additional research for you all as we head into the busy week that will be week after town meeting.

[Speaker 0]: Dave?

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Can you tell me, James, where the visiting nurse association is? I couldn't find it.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Oh, you couldn't find that. Probably right in front

[Speaker 0]: of me.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Was that an advocate request representative?

[Speaker 0]: Committee committee letter. Aren't on here yet. Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize. Although some of them may be on here in Versing, they are called VNAs, may be on here as some people said designated special agencies, we have choices of care, area agencies on aging. So there's different things that may not be directly VNAs.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Understood.

[Speaker 0]: Go ahead,

[Rep. David Yacovone]: Is it possible, is it helpful to have a list similar to this of all the governor's recommended downs? Some of them might be here because somebody said I want to add X because it's been cut. I I could construct my own, but it would take a while.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, well, it can be a little tricky because we don't we'd have to go through, I guess, all the probably figure out them for each of our budgets. If you know them for your budgets, we can get a list from each of your budgets, and you could turn that into James. But James isn't going to look through every single piece of testimony that we've got from all the departments. But if you know Right, I would

[Rep. David Yacovone]: go to the ups and downs

[Speaker 0]: from Yeah, maybe in the budget book, it says we eliminated these programs. So if you want to go, that would be helpful, I think, if you want to go through your own budget portfolio and send James what you think has been cut. We can just have a separate list of that. But we're not going to check every budget document that we I need a truck to get all those out to my car if I were to get them. So we're not going to make James feel pretty good can

[Rep. David Yacovone]: sit here nicely.

[Speaker 0]: No, I'm just teasing. But you can send it to James, and he can just have a list. We won't know that it's 100% accurate, but we'll have an idea. Does that work?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I think that sounds right, madam chair. Also, I'll note that, you know, Rev. Bluemle had made a suggestion, which is one of my former town meeting week to have a table that shows across departments and agencies, right, ups and downs, what what the proposed ups and downs are broken out, not by budget area, but also by specific departments and agencies as well. It's gonna be working on time. Again, it's not a line by line for every up and down, but it's a little bit more granularity for you all about what's happening within each department and agency.

[Speaker 0]: I have a general idea of what's

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: going on.

[Rep. David Yacovone]: If I were in the caucus being asked to vote on this, I'd wanna know what we're not doing. Right.

[Speaker 0]: And I hope that every committee knows what's not being done because that's part of what they

[Rep. Martha "Marty" Feltus (Vice Chair)]: were supposed to talk about, know,

[Speaker 0]: find out as agencies come into their committees. So if you're unclear, you can also go back to the committee jurisdiction and ask them if you missed anything or whatever. From home go ahead.

[Michael Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: And Sandy, I just want

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: to say they're also a policy committee and if they didn't do all this work, then they wouldn't have anything to do. If they don't ask for the money, then we know it's a solid no. Yeah. As opposed to a likely no. You know it's just it's really part of the issue of artwork. It's just they are they're not ignoring. I don't think they're ignoring Having having presented same amount of budgetary stuff before, we're not ignoring the stress. But I've already heard today this week about, well, if they didn't say something, does that disqualify them from having it discussed here and I just out of respect for their work I just want to make sure we're we know that we I know they know that we know that there's a lot.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Everybody knows that. And yet, here we are with 200,000,000 at the moment. And we can take bets on what we think the final number is.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: For all of your notation, thank you, representative, for pointing out those duplicate state attorney and sheriff's numbers. So our total unduplicated department and agency requests for removing those duplicates is now 21,796,440

[Speaker 0]: This one over there. Okay. So we're on the top of page two on the left.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. Thank you. We're looking at the I see it. The total for the pink table.

[Speaker 0]: It's on an age. 07/1940. Of twenty three eight. Okay.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. It's on the screen behind me too. It this will be 2179644O, and that is for our pink table department and agency general fund requests over the

[Speaker 0]: yellow line is different too. Is that the other one?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. Brand total. And this one has a little more squishiness in it just because it has some of those global commitment numbers from advocates that will likely change. But as of now, we're at for the total unduplicated general fund requests over gut rec just across these three categories. It's 194,000,295.

[Speaker 0]: This is from our committee letters. This is before the bills, and it's before any other emails that we've all And if you've got one, send it to James.

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So preliminary, this will absolutely change, but just for all of your notation's sake as you look at this over account meeting week.

[Speaker 0]: I think so too. I just have

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: a quick question.

[Speaker 0]: When there is a line item that would involve global commitment, have we just taken the general fund number?

[James Duffy (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Some of these are numbers where the advocate has provided a general fund number. So for example, I'll give you two examples. I believe on line 23 on page one, the elder care program request of 349763. If I'm remembering the testimony correctly, I believe that represents a general fund number from the advocate that we need to double check, but that would represent what they had proposed as the general fund number. On the other hand, an example of something that is gross between that's a total general fund and global commitment would be the rate increase on line 22, page one, five point eight million for designated specialized service agencies. I I I would assume that's perhaps gross, but we you know, that was a number given by the advocate that we need to look into soon. So it it varies. If you have a question on specific one, I'm happy to check the written testimony in my notes for you. A number of the Vermont Legal Aid requests are also implicated in global commitment because they have two contracts that receive partial global commitment dollars. Those numbers, as of now, are just the numbers that were provided by Vermont Legal Aid, We're working to disentangle the global commitment elements of those. So it's both, to answer your question or if you need to. Depends on the item.

[Speaker 0]: Thanks. So James, this is great. Thank you. Don't leave here there yet. So here's what I'm thinking about and I'm sure I've left something off and you can all tell me. But so obviously review this list, all our prep work, Check your budgets for eliminated programs and let James know as you go through that. Read all the committee letters, not just the ones in yours, because at the end of the day, we're all going to decide on all of it, not just your own budgets. So we can review all those. If there's a committee that we haven't heard from that you think should come in as you're meeting them, let me know and I can have Audra invite them to come in and present their committee letter. Some are pretty straightforward. You may find that there's some you want to know more. So that would be good. I'm going to go back to comb through carryforward. For any money, you have your carryforward reports. I was talking to Mike this morning and we may have found some more money that we can use for something else. So we'll do that. You can also review the bills. We're going to hear the rest of the bills that have come to us. We just got two more this morning and Autumn setting this up. So we are going to start Monday afternoon. We're going to try to get through all the bills so we can really focus on the budget and then we can vote the bills out as we know what's happening with that. Or if we find money to offset a specific thing in a bill that we're comfortable with, we can do that and send it on its way. Yeah, Dave? Do we have to meet a crossover deadline on the bills that have come to us? Yep, Has to be out by the city of the budget. We'll be voting on a bill with an appropriation without knowing what our big bill is. We have a few options. If we want to fund it and we want to fund it in that bill, we can do that. We can also take the money out and decide later, like the committee of conference or whatever, can decide things that we can take the money out and put the money in the budget. So we all are sort of agreeing the mediators an issue, for example, that's $125,000 If we find the money somewhere, we could just put it in, and then that comes down off our bottom line. I'm gonna be meeting with James and Emily after this. So there are ways we can do this. The other way would be to say, we can appropriate the money forward from a certain fund or from something. We can do that within the budget itself, but pass the bill. Although if it's just for a mediator position, we could also just put that in the budget. So it's sort of just gonna depend on what it is. We're not gonna vote out things that guarantee money until we're comfortable that that money is

[Rep. David Yacovone]: there to be guaranteed. But we have the deadline. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: The deadline will be the day that we vote out the straw poll of the budget,

[Rep. David Yacovone]: which is March 20. But not on these bills, right?

[Speaker 0]: Those bills have to be out by March 20 too. So we're gonna be factoring them into It's our crossover. They're able to get it to us every year. So we may be getting bills our last week that have come from policy committees, which is why I'm trying to get through all the bills we have now as soon as possible. So we don't end up with four different bills on our last week when we're trying to put in the budget balance. We've done a reform here. I mean, will, as we go along, we're going to have some late nights, probably not the first couple of nights, but by the second week, we'll have a sense as we go along. So, we're entering that plan a lot of be flexible because we just aren't gonna know what's gonna come our way and what fun or things or landmines we're gonna find as we go through everything. That's the time. So Just that they'll

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: be there.

[Speaker 0]: They'll be there and we'll be here and we'll figure it all out and we'll get a budget. We're going do a straw poll the night of the twentieth. Maybe it won't be too late. Last year was 11:15. If we can do it earlier, that would be great. But we don't know. It's too early to tell.

[Rep. Thomas Stevens]: Sounds like March Madness, Doctor. Chittenden.

[Speaker 0]: It's our version of March Madness. So is that all making sense? Are there questions that anybody has? Jamie is available. I will be available, know, successful, so we can be in touch with any questions or concerns or brainstorms you have. You find a pot of gold under your dam as you're walking, let us know. Otherwise, check the agenda. I think we're probably starting at 01:00 on Monday the ninth. We're gonna be hearing bills that day, try to get through those. And otherwise, try to find some time to rest and have time for yourself and practice a little self care and have some fun. Who might that be? And then we'll get through those two weeks and then we'll have time to have fun again. That's what I got. Well, people appear to be going places. We are meeting Monday at night. Yeah, but in the afternoon we are going be meeting night. Anything else from anybody? Have a great time? Yeah. Take care of yourself, be well, and we'll see you on March 9.