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[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good afternoon, this is the House Appropriations Committee. It's Thursday, 03/19/2026. It's almost 02:45 p. M. We have members running up and down from the floor who is helping with bills, so we don't have a full house at the moment but we are going to talk about H2-eleven which passed out of Commerce and Ways and Means and it's the data broker's bill, personal information bill. Ledge So Council and the JFO, welcome both of you.
[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Council)]: Good afternoon, Rick Sable with the Office of Legislative Council.
[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Got more. So I'll begin,
[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Council)]: So 20,000 foot view, the bill regulates data brokers, which Vermont already does to some extent with a registered group. This bill adds on more requirements of data brokers and provides a 43 page bill that also adds more protection for consumers' personal information. It adds a data broker security notice act. We could skip ahead to the appropriation, which is why bill is here. I can go into more detail into the policy. In the committee, what you want to hear.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I don't really we don't think we need to go into great detail on it. You can just keep us at the 30,000 foot level about what the general life still exists kind of thing.
[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Council)]: Vermont was I believe the first state to require data brokers to register with the state. If you don't know much about data brokers, it's a very unique industry. These are typically companies you have heard of. One you may have heard of Lexnexus is one of the bigger ones, but these companies as defined in the bill, they buy and sell consumer personal information to third parties. So you as a consumer you interact with company X, That's a first party interaction. Company X then sells your data to company Y. Company Y, if they sell the information they would become a data broker. That's kind of the industry. We're talking address, your name, your email address, things that identify yourself as such. So this bill kind of expands the definition of what a data broker is to include more entities that maybe should be considered data brokers. It, like I said before, it adds security breach notice act. So if a data broker suffers some kind of data breach, they would have to notify consumers that, hey, your information was breached. And also the AG would be notified if there's a declaration. The I guess the most the biggest part of the bill is the registration at data brokers is changing. The Scott Moore will talk about it, the fee is going up from 100 to 900 annually. The fines are going up if the data broker does not register. Currently, it's is it 200? Did I get the number right?
[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It's $50 per day.
[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Council)]: Thanks, Scott. That would go up to $200 per day. There would be a fine of $1,000 per day if they file incorrect information or if they file materially incorrect information. So the regulation of that registry has been increased quite a bit. The appropriation in the bill is for the secretary of state to conduct a study, and let me take a step back. When the bill was introduced, it was going to require the secretary of state to provide what's called the deletion mechanism, where a consumer could go to a state of Vermont website and say, please delete my information, data brokers. And that mechanism would tell all the data brokers registered in the state that consumer X wants their information deleted. So the commerce committee decided not to
[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: do that because that's a
[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Council)]: pretty huge project. So instead, the secretary of state is going to study creating that type of mechanism and they requested a $50,000 appropriation to hire a consultant to help with that study. That's on the last page, the literal last page of the bill has that appropriation of $50,000 in fiscal year 2027. So that's the thirty thousandth of you. Happy to answer questions.
[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Great. I see what's this next EC's? I mean, it would be mainly targeted by this. You think or is there any testimony to the fact that this kind of restriction on LexisNexis might cause some other kind of harm to be incurred with banking or other types of harm.
[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Council)]: So the committee heard testimony. I'm not sure from Lexinexis, but there was a concern that fraud checks, identity checks, so those are exempt from the deletion mechanism. Specific use cases are exempted, including fraud, credit reporting. So there was a discussion about that in that committee. So yeah, are certain exceptions, yes.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Are there questions or clarifications for Rick at this point? We'll talk about the fiscal Any Rick state answer? She may appear.
[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Good afternoon, committee. Again, pretty much explained everything that's in the fiscal note. The bill does increase the penalties and fines, and it does increase the registration fee. Not that this committee is concerned necessarily about the revenue coming in, but the Secretary of State told me that there are two eighty three current registered data brokers, and if the registration fee increases from 100 to 900, it would be about a quarter million dollar revenue to the state of Vermont annually. And for the purposes of this committee, as Rick mentioned, the bill would create a study for the feasibility of the deletion mechanisms, and it would appropriate $50,000 to the Secretary of State to hire a consultant to work on the guide study. The Regulus of this is everything I just said, so
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So I do have a question. Yes. My first thought was that this would be a DFR, and it's with the Secretary of State. How did that get determined?
[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Council)]: So the original registry was back, are you talking about the data broker regulation part?
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Well, when I think of data brokers and I think of, I don't think of Secretary of State, so how
[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Council)]: So this, it passed back in 2018 was when the law first passed and I don't know how that got attacked to the secretary of state but it is a business registration. They're doing business as the status broker and it's not just financial information. It's consumer. It's usually just your name, your address, your social security number, email, other things that are tied to you. So DFR is involved in security breach notices, if they are the entity that would regulate that entity that has the breach. So if the bank has a breach, DFR would be involved in that aspect of the law.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Focusing on it from a business registration
[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: point of view as opposed to If you go to the Secretary of State's website, the Business Services Division, there's a whole section just on data broker registration, so you can look them up if you're curious to know who's registered or not.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: I assume that they heard testimony from data brokers, published it.
[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Council)]: I'm aware of a few, I think Lexus Nexus even today testified, so they had several. The ones that are more named brand would testify. A lot of data brokers work behind the scenes and aren't really known brands. Okay,
[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: did you hear any other testimony?
[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Council)]: I caught part of it today. Think There were questions about, I mentioned the exemptions. The committee wanted to make sure that they were exempting the good practices of that of brokers. There's apparently some bad actors in the field and that's what the bill is meant to regulate. And again, wouldn't been to hear the whole testimony, that's what they had them in for was to make sure that this bill is doing the work to keep good data brokers in regulation that the bad ones maybe will be not be able to comply.
[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So they weren't jumping up and down.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: We've come a long way. Think the whole data privacy thing and being able to opt out of these things becomes more and more important. It feels
[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: like another sort of consumer
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: protection bill, basically.
[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Just as a point of information, looking at other states and what they charge to gain a brokers, Oregon, I believe, charges 600 per annual fee. Texas does $300 and California does 6,600 Part of that California would be to help develop those toward the deletion programs, from what I remember from those days. 900 was not unheard of in terms of dollar
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Previously, just for the bill, I'm not sure if you actually have any questions. So we do have the report of the bill, not here if we have other questions about it. We have accounted for this in the budget. How do people feel, do you want to vote on this now, just moving along? I'm seeing some heads nod, are people good with that? Yep. All right, that's the case. Is there a motion to approve H2-eleven as amended by Congress and Economic Development and Ways and Means to not further amend it? No. Okay. I was worried about the Ways and Means trying to figure out how it was different from the other one. Yeah, they just get the fiscal note. Votes out of committees were? Nine-two-zero and ten-one. Okay, is there a motion to approve age two-eleven as amended? So moved. Lamoille? Do I have a second?
[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: It's a lamp.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Thank you. It's good, we're going to open two people out with any bells at the moment. So, not seeing any further discussion, Representative Greg, I'll hold up.
[Scott Moore (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Sam Duley is absent. Representative Dickinson? Yes. Shannon Feltus? Yes.
[Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Yes. Mike? Yes. Rep. Steven? Yes. Representative Yacovone? Yes. Rep. Sessions? I am George.
[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Okay, thank you. And the reporter is Brett Maricki, Secretary of State. 902. Thank you gentlemen, appreciate your patience and hanging out. All right, that's what we have for bills. We are going to go off live in a minute. I'm going to look at a draft updated for the third time as we got more information of what I sent you all this morning, and then we will go over that more publicly once we get the copies out for everybody.