Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good morning, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Friday, January at 09:02 in the morning. So we generally spend this half hour before the floor to hear from our legislative interns and to go around the committee members and see if they've seen anything on the committees that they shadow. If there's anything that we should know about the committee that might have our interest going on in a bill that's another committee. With that, Monique, do you like to join us? Alright. Get everything's on the line. Okay. Excellent. Jonathan, will this join?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: No. He's he texted.

[Cabot (Legislative Intern)]: Okay. Alright. Should I go ahead? Yes, sir. Okay. I'm Cabot. I'm your legislative intern QVM. So I wanna say too that if I'm giving you way too much information or not enough or something totally unhelpful, I would really appreciate the feedback. Because as I was doing this and I was shadowing the Senate Committee on Economic Development Housing and General Affairs, sometimes I felt like I was doing it more for me, so I want to be able to help you. So I'm just going to start by saying that. How I'm gonna break this down is I chatted on Wednesday and Thursday, and I'm just gonna talk about the major topics that they talked about. So starting with Wednesday, January 7, the major topics were housing, economic development, starting with hearing from the agency of commerce and community development for regarding housing that was emphasized as the number one issue for Vermont businesses when considering business development, expansion, and relocation. Businesses have reported to the ACCD that jobs are available, but workforce expansion is primarily constrained by a lack of housing. So that was a big focus there. And the committee during that discussion was very optimistic about the potential outcomes of CHIP, which you will be hearing more about later today. They also talked about state marketing. They've been focused on marketing Vermont as a year round tourism destination, highlighting issues with Canadian tourism, the lack thereof, and adopting marketing strategies for regionally tailored parts of Vermont rather than a one blanket marketing strategy. They also discussed uncertainty with various programs that receive federal funding and just being aware about that. And a reoccurring theme throughout the week was data dash dashboard. So the committee expressed a desire for cross departmental data for the purpose of tracking ACCD related initiatives. And the Agency of Commerce Community Development expressed that they are working on creating these data dashboards now. Next, spoke with or they heard from the Agency of Economic Development, where they mostly highlighted successful programs that have been going on, such as TIF, tax increment financing. They've highlighted that's been very successful. They cited in Killington and Rut specifically. Small business grants of around $25,000. They've gotten great feedback from that from businesses being able to get over the hump, and they wanna keep that going. The NBRC, Northern Borders Regional Commission, again, they said it was very successful. They cited the Rutland Airport Industrial Park. That is a program they expressed some concern over federal cuts for. Brownfield's revitalization, another thing everyone was very excited about. They've invested 48,000,000 to date, and they were urging for continued funding in this program, which the senate committee responded very positively to. Can Yeah.

[David "Dave" Bosch (Member)]: I have a question. Please. The concerns about federal cuts for the industrial park down by

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah.

[David "Dave" Bosch (Member)]: In my district. Was that related to the development of phase two or ongoing operations, or didn't they specify?

[Cabot (Legislative Intern)]: They didn't specify. A lot of what I heard was very broad because they were just talking about general priorities. So they they didn't specify, but

[David "Dave" Bosch (Member)]: that is something I can look into as well. By the way, I'm Dave Bosch from. So it's in my district.

[Cabot (Legislative Intern)]: Alright. Great. And then the last program they discussed was the state trade expansion program, which invested 700,000 to help business exports in Vermont, and they reported a 14 to one return on investment there. So they were happy about that. And lastly, they discussed the significance of captive insurance and continuing to focus on that and just the importance of that. And a few people as well were using beta as an example for highlighting the need for housing and transportation and just general infrastructure to support workforce expansion. Next, I talked to Alex Farrell, the commissioner for the Department of Housing and Community Development. The there he talked about a few initiatives related to housing, Vermont Housing Improvement Program, manufactured home repair program for mobile homes. The one that I thought might be more relevant is the Homes For All initiative, which has some workforce development potential. The Homes For All initiative has three parts. The first is a toolkit to help small scale developers develop homes, and they are going to implement a developer training program starting in February to teach people how to become small scale developers and as well as have the eight zero two homes catalog, which is a catalog of 10 preapproved home designs to expedite the permitting process. And then they got oh, yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So that's that's

[Unidentified Committee Member]: up and running, and they're using it right now. That's Okay.

[Cabot (Legislative Intern)]: The toolkit is up and running. The training program is gonna be starting in February. I think the catalog's up there as well.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. So did they say the timeline for the catalog of homes?

[Cabot (Legislative Intern)]: I believe it's up. Yeah. Yeah. I can look into that as well. I did they didn't talk about a timeline.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: We've been hearing about it for

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: a little while, so I'm just Oh, yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Just like that's a status thing. Like, when is it yeah. Went up and running.

[Cabot (Legislative Intern)]: Yeah. I think it's it's going. Great. Thank Yeah. And then they heard from Chip. I'm not gonna go into details on that because you'll receive that, but they just talked about the general guidelines that have been set for the program and that the program is ready to go, and they were not requesting any further legislative action at this time. And then on Thursday, the primary focus was on labor, housing, and data. So they heard from the Office of Workforce Strategy and Development and the State Workforce Development Board. So they just got some background on the office and board. And there were questions from the committee regarding broader representation on the Workforce Development Board, specifically the lack of representation from labor organizations and more emphasis on education. The board goals overview were to increase the supply of workers in key sectors, support adult reengagement and activity in the workforce, support business expansion and relocation to Vermont, and increase post secondary graduate retention. The committee also expressed a desire for increased performance metrics and data collection regarding workforce development progress. This was a general theme for everything. They want more data, more transparency there. And there were some questions from the committee regarding that clarity on strategies for implementation versus just broad goals. And then they heard from the Department of Labor, and these are just some 2026 priorities. As we all know, housing, education transformation, specifically regarding CTE, adult ed, and after school and summer programs. They seeing increasing opportunities for workforce development and expansion in service to career pathways. So people who come to Vermont to do some type of service and then transition into a career. Career development workshops, will be starting adult CTE grants. They were asking for money for that. Apprenticeship program expansion and sector specific workforce development and construction health care and public sector roles specifically. And they were also navigating uncertainty regarding federal funding, specifically SNAP and Medicaid work requirement changes. And they're planning to follow-up soon on that. And lastly was the data trust report. So the broad question for the data trust report was, what would it take to create a central repository, which is the data trust for all state data? Because it seems like when you're looking for data, it's very siloed, and it's hard to find things. So they wanted to find a way to put that all together. And the report concluded that a standalone data center built by the state would not be feasible at the moment, be very expensive, but they did recommend joining multistate data collaboratives, which would be minimal cost. And the examples they gave there were post secondary employment outcomes coalition. So that would involve Vermont higher education institutions sharing data with this coalition, and that would be a way to to kind of centralize data. They also gave the Cool Ridge Initiative, which is a cross state data linking system and the BLS wage records program, which would allow states to securely aggregate wage data. Just as a few examples of a multistate data collaborative to see what that would look like before investing significantly in a data repository. And the committee was very supportive of this idea. There's also no legislative action requested at that time. And that concludes our report for this week. Thanks. Excellent. Thank you. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I think that was helpful.

[Cabot (Legislative Intern)]: Good. Any questions? All right. Thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: And if you would, if you have a copy of that, could you send that to Anne and Grace so we can put it on our documents. Like I said, every time, if you guys could do that. I don't know if I mentioned that, but I just thought. Thank you. Morning, Bailey.

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern)]: Good morning. For the record, my name is Bailey Davis, a committee intern from Norwich. So my task, this week was sitting in on the joint hearing between the House Committee on Environment, and as well as the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy. This hearing was primarily a testimony by the Land Use Review Board. The leadership of that board includes Janet Hurley, who's the chair Brooke Dingledeen, who's the board member, and then Peter Gill, the executive director. I'm sure as many of you know, in 2024, this board was created via Act 181, which replaced the old Natural Resources Board to administer the state's land use, and administer act two fifty, which, since '26 1970, was implemented as its land use policy. So I'm just gonna go over a general, background as given by the Land Use Review Board. I'm sure many of you already know, a lot about Act two fifty. So the Land Use Review Board, described Act two fifty as a comprehensive statewide permitting system, which applies to major developments and subdivision projects, which ensures its compliance, you know, regarding 32 statutory standards, which includes stuff like environmental protection, community impacts, protecting agriculture soils, as well as infrastructure and growth planning. So how the land use review board currently operates is it's divided into district commissions. Each commission is responsible for reviewing applications and then issuing those final, land use permits. The structure right now, it includes nine districts, but five district offices. In terms of annual activity, this past year, they've issued 350 to 400 permits, 5% of those, which are mainly the major construction projects, major developments, and are adhering. And so out of those 350 to 400 permits that are issued well, out of those, the permits that are, before the board, only 0.2% are denied. That's approximately, five to 10 permits. And then there's 270, jurisdictional opinions, which determines whether Act two fifty even applies to a project. So stuff like and I'm gonna talk about it a little bit later, but tier one a is, like, full exemption and tier one b, which includes, you know, possible partial exemptions. So in terms of recent recent operational updates from the board and improvements, the digitization of permit files, the executive director, Peter Gilles, was talking about how right now have around, like, 550 boxes of paper files, which obviously are completely inaccessible to the public for the most part. You know, realistically, not not many people, developers, people interested in those files are gonna really be able to access them regularly. So by digitizing them, it improves public access, but also increases, efficiency for the actual, staff themselves. They wanna hire two permit district coordinators, which are gonna expand the permitting capacity. And then in terms of ARPA funding, this year, there's been approximately a 100 permits issued via ARPA funds. 16 of those are directly related to housing, and then the remaining are focused on infrastructure projects that directly assist those housing projects. The board also, is trying to move on new application forms, which allowed the the application process to be more straightforward and user friendly for developers, and anyone who needs a, application for a permit.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thanks. Sorry?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: No questions.

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern)]: Oh, sorry. I thought you heard something. So the next topic is Act two fifty exemptions in the tier structure. I'm sure as many of you know, there's three tiers. Tier 1A is a complete exemption from Act two fifty. Tier 1B is a partial exemption and that's primarily focused on housing projects with 50 units or fewer located on 10 or fewer acres. And those are within designated areas, so designated growth areas. Those include, like, village centers, village areas, and then planned growth areas as well. So that's based on regional planning commission, future land use maps. And the benefit of those designations are streamlined permitting, reduced fees and priority access to infrastructure grants through stuff like ARPA. When it comes to policy, and their ongoing work, they, aim when it comes to wood product manufacturers, they're trying to improve, considerations, within act two fifty framework. So that includes different recommended statutory and rule changes, developing fact sheets and supplemental guidance, then adding a permit specialist role to someone who specializes in that industry. When it comes to tier two areas, so not necessarily tier one or tier three, either very pro development, easy access to permits or very restricted. When it comes to tier two areas, the Land Use Review Board wants the extension to 09/30/2026 regarding jurisdictional authority. And for land use protection goals, they also have goals to protect more agricultural soil and, of course, allow appropriate well planned development in a lot of those tier one areas and tier 1B areas. So in closing, the Land Review Board, at least in this committee hearing, primarily focused on, I guess, like their previous work as well as some of these future goals. Thank you. Open up to any questions.

[David "Dave" Bosch (Member)]: Yeah. Hi, Bailey. I'm Dave Bosch in Rutland too. And, I was curious when they were sharing the data about the the permits processed and all, was there any discussion or any reports on timelines, you know, what the average time to issue a permit was or anything of that sort?

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern)]: There was not. No. There was no necessarily timeline. It was mainly just focused on those numbers there.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay, you. Of course. Other questions?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So Bailey, when they were talking about setting up the new board versus what it had been in the past, did they talk about any bumps that they've had? Did they talk about what's working well, what's not working well, where their concerns are going forward?

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern)]: Yeah, so they didn't mean, obviously they didn't talk about too much of the bumps, but they did obviously state that, you know, clearly there needs to be modernization that needs to happen in, you know, like I said, streamlined process. So digitization is one of their, like, main focuses. So that way, developers have access to previous permits because, you know, obviously, that could be helpful. So if a developer wants, for example, let's say, a 50 unit, you know, development, they can see what has been approved in the past to give them sort of a guideline based on, you know, precedent.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you. Okay.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you, Bailey.

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern)]: Alright. Thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Kevin, again, you. Thank you both for your reports this week. Again, look forward to hearing back from you next week. And let us know if you run into run into any roadblocks in trying to get information. We can help help you unblock those roads. Thank you. Great. Have a good weekend. Anyone have anything to report on committees if you had time to take a gander at those or there's another committee? I have

[David "Dave" Bosch (Member)]: met with the new ranking member for agriculture and told him of my role and our needs, and we've got a pathway set up to do that. Right. Reviewed their agenda, and and it confirms what Richard told me, which was they really didn't do anything that would impact us. But I do have to call out the fact that they took testimony on a bill for the right to grow vegetable gardens, which I find to be a interesting thought. I wonder if some overzealous HOA has Yes, that's it is.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thought that

[David "Dave" Bosch (Member)]: was intriguing.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So I have two. I have human services, which did not focus on any economic development related things this week, and environment. So I need to dig into it a little more, but three things they were focusing on was bottle bill. I've got to dive into that to see how that may There's some reports. I'll read that stuff, so maybe I'll know more for next week. This Land Use Review Board, which got a little bit into the appeals, their proposal for appeal. And then the third thing is water quality issues. And so Part River Biomore Conservation was in there, and they were talking about the executive order and the wetlands issue with development. And also, DC is talking about implementing a new navigator system for their permitting. I got to understand that a little better, too. I've got some contacts on environment I'll talk to. But basically, they've got a system now that is an automated electronic system for navigating permits, and they're moving to more of a human oriented navigator system that maybe will have better Yeah, I know. I've got to dig into it. I read about it this morning, but I don't quite understand.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: It's all good.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Right. That was my reaction too, is I thought, but maybe the automated version has switches, and then people can't get help. I don't know. I'll dig into it so I can update you more next In

[Unidentified Committee Member]: terms of the healthcare committee, focusing on agencies they oversee in terms of healthcare programs, the Budget Adjustment Act,

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: big impacts there in terms of healthcare funding and federal stuff. There's a certain amount of buzz anticipating a certain primary care access bill that they're anticipating hearing at some point. It

[Unidentified Committee Member]: has a big workforce component to it,

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: so that might be something of interest to connect with. Keep an eye out too, there's a lot of AI bills that are going on, it was probably going to be sent to healthcare first. Oh, okay. Those be

[Cabot (Legislative Intern)]: I haven't seen it yet.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: But those will be I've got to talk to the chair, ex coordinate. Great. But I think they'll be sent there first, and then if there's things in there that we need, we'll get them out.

[Cabot (Legislative Intern)]: I'll keep an eye

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: on those as well as the primary care.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Transportation was looking at a lot of reviews. The new system that got implemented for titles and licenses

[Unidentified Committee Member]: seems

[Unidentified Committee Member]: to be, I think it was maybe off to a rocky start, but seems to have smoothed out and it's working really well. Today, they're going to be looking at the transportation fund and

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: seeing its status and what

[Unidentified Committee Member]: needs to be done.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Very good. So we're back in here after the floor. We'll be looking at H5 Cloud. It wasn't on that one. Well, I mean, is when's Susan gonna be here? Oh, okay. Since Did you change it on? Okay. Perfect. Fifteen minutes after the floor back in here. Okay. 05:00. After 01:00, between 11AM.