Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good morning, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Wednesday, 01/21/2026 at 10:17 in the in the morning. We're back to continue our walk throughs of members' bills. And so we have representative with us this morning. Welcome, representative.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: We're looking at age six fifty and act relating to educational technology products. It's co sponsored by Vice Chair of England.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Hi, everyone. You. Angela Arsenault, representative from Williston, for the record. Yeah, I'm here to talk about H-six 50, and it's sort of a continuation of, I think, last year around this same time, I was here to talk about H-three 65, which is a bill that's still on your wall that is also co sponsored by myself and Representative Graning. If you recall that, and if you don't, that's okay, the goal of that bill is to create a registry for social media and AI products. And over the session and summer and fall, Edye and I were talking and Representative Graning and I were talking and really felt that it was important to expand that idea to include education technology products or what is are commonly referred to as EdTech. So this would cover things like. I can't think of a name that every that a lot

[Unidentified Committee Member]: of people don't know, but I'll tell

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: you that schools are filled with products that are digital or online, you know, Internet based products that are being used as educational tools or so they're sold to be. But these products, for the most part, have never been vetted by non industry vetting standards. So everything that comes into schools under the guise of EdTech, of course, there's a proprietor saying, this is going to help kids. This is going to help kids in this way. This is going to improve literacy skills. This is going to increase fact fluency in mathematics or something like that. But for the most part, these products, there's no standard and there's no requirement that they are proven to be legal, safe, or effective. So the idea behind the registry, as we share as we shared last year, is that similar to our data broker registry, companies that own these products, create these products, sell these products, offer them for free. And as we know, nothing is actually ever free. So I'll back up one step. These products, and you are all more aware of the data privacy issues than most people in the country. I won't even just say in this building. These products that have infiltrated schools on a massive scale are like data vacuums. They are just sucking up student data and selling it, using it to and if they're not selling it, oftentimes, they're using student data to establish patterns, you know, about each individual student and using those patterns to surveil students and eventually market directly to students in some cases. Some of the products include advertisements. So all of this is to say this is a wildly unregulated market. And what's worse, these products are not improving educational outcomes. In fact, the data shows that the opposite is happening. So in 2016 in Vermont, we reached a kind of nexus or crossover point where that was the year that, for the first time, there were more computers in schools for student use than there were students in schools in Vermont. So it's just been this flood of tech products into schools. Failure of the Chromebook on the open market turned out to be a really great thing for Google because someone said, uh-huh. Let's just shove them into schools. We will offer them for very low price. We'll give one to each student. Everyone will have their own Chromebook, which schools took as like, wow, amazing. And even I, as an iUth parent, was like, sat down with my kid at their ninth grade meeting before they, you know, started the school year, and they hand them a box with a fresh Chromebook and say, this is yours. It should have been my first indication that something wasn't quite right. So they're essentially becoming Google customers against their will at a very young age. And Google can follow them from that very young age and do all kinds of things with the information that they're able to glean. So the registry is a way for us to say, in order to do business in Vermont, and in this case, in Vermont schools, you, company that makes these products, have to attest. You have to register and attest annually to meeting the following criteria. And the criteria is laid out in the bill. For example, to be certified. We've asked the secretary of state to set up this registry because we spoke with the secretary of state's office this fall. You know, they hold the data broker registry, And they said they would have the ability, that certainly the technical capabilities, to establish and manage such a registry. Personnel may become an issue. FTE may become an issue with all the things that we are asking the attorney general's office and the secretary of state's office to do related to data and tech regulation. That's probably part of a bigger conversation. But Just as an example, some of the things that the Secretary of State shall consider when developing the certification standards for educational technology products, it would be things like the products compliance with state curriculum standards. Advantages of using the product compared with non digital methods, whether the product was explicitly designed for educational use. And then we've incorporated some of the aspects of kids code and data privacy bills. So design features of the product, geolocation tracking, use of AI, targeted ads, personalized recommendation systems, access to adults unknown to a student. All of these sorts of things we've directed the Secretary of State to consider when formulating the standards for these products. Then there's actually a bunch more. The Secretary of State holds that registry, administers, you know, the deals handles with handles the fee and you can all set we put in a fee of $100 to register. You can, course, do what you will with any of this, but I'd like to see it a little bit higher, probably. The attorney general's office handles enforcement. And one of the main goals of this particular registry would be for it to serve as a place for school leaders, administrators, teachers, parents to go to look and see if the products that their kids are encountering or if the products that they're deciding to bring into their classrooms have been vetted and are safe for students. The bill does say that schools may not use products that are not on the registry, but we also built in a transition window. So schools would still be allowed to use products they're using now that may not make the registry through I think it's June '20 06/30/2027. So we built in some time. The problem of EdTech, as I said, you all are so familiar with many of the problems baked into these types of products. Obviously not a creation of schools and teachers and administrators. Some other states are trying to handle the problem of EdTech by placing that burden on schools. And expecting that schools and teachers can vet these products, and they simply can't. They're changing super fast, and it requires a level of, as you all know now, a level of understanding and expertise, technical knowledge that I just I don't think it's reasonable for us to expect teachers to acquire that level of knowledge. So we wanted to come up with something that takes that that burden off off of schools. And with the registry, it becomes a state held endeavor that resource really for schools and parents.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'll pass

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: it on to you now. Thanks. Representative Graning.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Representative Graning, representative of public. Jericho, just to add two pieces of information. A lot of the EdTech companies say that engagement is the goal. Student engagement is the goal. And that's not educating. We need them to be educating, not simply engaging students. And so that's really important. And that's not listed here, but they list that as one of their main criteria. The other thing is we're talking a lot about cost to property taxes and cost for schools. And right now, schools are spending significant dollars to middle parties to vet their education technology. So you have these middle parties that are getting a lot of money from lots of different schools to do the exact same work over and over. So they're not doing any extra work. They're just raking in money or tax dollars to vet these products that aren't actually teaching kids. So this would hit some of the problems that we have in our state in a lot of different ways.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: And I think a lot of those middle parties, the vetors, have industry ties. A lot of the I can't remember the acronym now, but the group that is often quoted as sort of putting their stamp of it this is I'll have to come up with it. No, no, it's like ISTA approved or something.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: The Housekeeping Seal.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yes. And they are, you know, funded by Google and Microsoft and Amazon. And there's just very little independence in this field. And really doesn't mean a lot

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: of the reports look at this type of technology?

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: That's a good question that I'm aware of. It's a good question.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: One, disappointed you didn't come to me on this one because I would sign on in

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: a heartbeat. We didn't come to anyone.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah, I know. You're like, let's get in there. Get into committing. That

[Unidentified Committee Member]: being said, could we throw in there a requirement to prove a study that require a study to be done on the product that it doesn't cause cognitive delay, which we know screen time does. This is great. Protecting our children and from companies that may mean well, not realizing that or maybe they do realize that it causes cognitive delay, including the Chromebooks, which I hate in our schools.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I love it.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I don't know if that's clear. But the real question for you is, because you know how hard it was for cell phones, You would have to work just as hard, if not harder. Because I think the pushback on this would be significantly worse than the cell phones.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, I think that's an interesting perspective. I think we can talk more about that. To take a burden off of schools and require the company to show that they are actually benefiting students and have a place in our curriculum, I think is something that schools would appreciate. And a place to actually have families be able to respond to these organizations because they are using the data and they are getting the emails and the students are I mean, there's a lot more going on behind the scenes. So I hope that that's not the case.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just think of a lot of the agencies that fought against it. I just just think that there will be some significant, but I know you work with them, and that would be amazing to get this open finish line.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yeah, I think have another bill that hasn't been introduced yet that is an opt out bill, which I will say opt out bill meaning that it creates a law that says that anyone, caregivers or parents, students who want to opt out of EdTech must be allowed to do so and still provided a full education. That actually still that would still be on schools, where teachers have to be designed to potentially designed to lesson plans. In this case, we really are taking it off of schools. Granted, there'd be some work to do if some of the products they've been using aren't actually eligible for the registry. But there's a transition period, and there would be notice. And there'd be very good reason for those products to not be on the registry. It would mean they're not safe for kids. So they shouldn't have a lot of the phone free schools some of the phone free schools' testimony ups in downstairs in education. I remember representative Brady, who is a high school teacher saying, it's so frustrating that tech has been forced on us. We've been encouraged to go in this direction, and now we're having to deal with dialing it back. And I think this bill actually acknowledges that because we're not asking teachers and administrators themselves to do the dialing back necessarily. We're saying this needs to be done at a state level. It needs to be transparently done. And hopefully, we're helping schools, not creating an additional burden. And I'll also say, The Digital Delusion, an incredible book if you all haven't heard of it. But it goes into depth with tons of studies and data about how these products have actually harmed kids' educational outcome and their cognitive development. So

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I want to understand the flow and I think this is how I'm reading it is that a secretary of state would publish standards. They would publish this. And then the company would self certify checkbox, whatever. They would register with the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State would hold the data. And then if there's an identified problem, like, we don't think that your self certification is We disagree. The Attorney General could bring an action with the company. Is that correct? And then the schools could look at the registry to determine, okay, this product is on the registry so we can use it. And then if they see, oh gosh, this is problematic. We don't see an educational benefit. The recourse would be to ask the attorney general to get involved. Is that right? Kind of how I read it? Great. That makes sense to me, in that it doesn't stand up a whole new program. It just creates a way to know what is being used and to very transparently be able to apply analysis. You. That makes a lot of sense to me as a way to approach it. So

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I'll just add one thing. The secretary of state isn't gonna do an evaluation.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Right. They just they just hold the data. No. I understand. They publish the standards, but then they just hold the they just

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: because I And it's up to the company to show the standards. And

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And it's up to the attorney general. The secretary of state also is not going analyze any of that, but the attorney general could bring an action. And

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: as we said with the social media and AI registry, it really it identifies the universe of products that may need regulated. To Do you

[Unidentified Committee Member]: have any sense of how many products are being used?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yes.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Yesterday or today.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yeah. And we didn't I we were specific about In the definitions, you'll see that we're not talking about, sadly, probably in this case, we're not necessarily talking about something like PowerSchool, which is a student management system, which we do need to talk about. But in and you could add it. But like here, we're talking about the way it's defined so far is that they are products that are student facing. Why do I try to read without my glasses? Any student facing software application or platform that may collect, process or transmit student data and that is used for teaching and learning purposes in a school? So

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: I'm hugely, hugely skeptical around using this type of technology in the schools. You know, a lot of specific, but just generally in terms of distraction about what's really going on in the teaching as well as, you know, proxy issues and things like that. You have the secretary of state developing standards for certification. Frankly, I was reading the bill to have a more active role by the secretary of state in deciding that it was certified in that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: They hold data, they don't. Yeah.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Might need to be clarified. I'm just wondering, no offense to Secretary of did you think of any other agencies that might maybe have a little more expertise about this kind of stuff, I mean, in terms of education, in terms of

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. That's a sort of it's

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: it's There's probably a role for the agency of education to develop a

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: platform. Yeah.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: And so probably they could develop it together.

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

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yeah, I think certainly in consultation with when we're talking about developing this

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I'll switch to the

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: language about

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: the Yeah, but

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: we really wanted to having the Secretary of State as the holder of the registry, in our mind, puts it on par with the data broker registry, in a sense, even though I know you all are doing work on improving the data broker registry. In our meeting with the Secretary of State's office, they pointed out, it's not like Vermonters are checking out the data broker registry. Sure, but our vision for this registry in particular would be that it would be quite it would be accessed by Vermonters and used. It's a great resource. Could be a great resource.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: I totally get the registry issue. I just wanna make sure that that certification process is handled. Right?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yes. Absolutely. It's well done.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yep. And we and we think of the attestation, you know, and the registry as, as I said, as a user agreement with the state of Vermont. Flipping the script on the, you know, the typical user agreements were that we all accept without an option to not accept, and without really understanding what we're agreeing to. Jonathan?

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Thank you. I do have I sort of had the same I think a similar reading to representative Olson about what appeared to me like sort of judgment calls of the secretary of state about how we compare digital versus non digital methods. And will will the secretary of state need to rely on the same middle parties or similar middle parties that are currently occupying that space. I'm guessing now, and this is the question I have, who is currently vetting these? Is it school boards, the supervisory unions? Whom would this be taking, this decision making authority?

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, I can answer that a little bit from my school board seat. It's not school boards. It's either teachers, mostly it's teachers. In some districts, they have IT that has taken over and has a list for teachers to be able to use. In other districts, it's not. So it's variable. There is no clear way to ensure right now that what is happening in our schools is that products that our students are using are not harmful to students or are not taking advantage of our student data.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Variability seems like it's rife for all the confusion that's sort of setting in that you're describing. So that makes sense to me. I'm sorry, Representative Benning. I didn't mean to cut you off, please.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: No, no, no. I mean, you know, there are some federal protections for student data, but it's pretty limited and it's been a lot looser than we would like to believe. I will say that just in the last couple of years, many districts have had to backtrack on their technology agreements.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: All have to fill out beginning of every year. Every caregiver has to fill out forms saying that you grant well, you didn't actually have to grant permission before for your student to use a number of products. Very recently, a lawsuit because of a lawsuit, many districts had to backtrack and send out an additional notification to families saying, oops, we didn't realize you actually have to affirmatively consent to your student using Google additional services. So those are things like YouTube, Google Earth, Google Translate. So they had to backtrack and gain this additional consent. And I have kids who go to a home high school and then two different technical centers. So I have filled out three different districts forms in PowerSchool, and every district does it differently. The language for every district that I've encountered is different. Burlington School District said, don't even worry about YouTube. Don't you don't have to grant access to that because we are disabling it on all school issued devices, K through 12. And then Essex School District said, if you don't let your kid use this, that's okay as long as you know that you might be impairing your child's education. So really, it runs the gamut, and it just depends on maybe the person in the tech department or the Who knows? But it's the Wild West.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you. Last question, Emily.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Okay.

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Actually, don't worry about it. I think it was mostly answered. And I will talk to

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: you after if I need to.

[Rep. Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: I have so many questions, but the one I'm going to choose is So in 2020, the legislature passed the students online personal information protection act, which already put the privacy act. Like, I had one vendor who his actually, like, they passed, I mean, they they, like, passed the strict standards, but they were in, like, five schools before a school gave them the vendor agreement that they're required to sign by Vermont law. So I'm just, like, I'm curious if you see this as, like, this inventory being able to have somebody enforce the fact that we already have state law barring a lot of the stuff that you're outlining in this thing.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, have a really short answer. A registry allows the attorney general to actually make sure that these laws are being enforced. Registry, we don't even know because we have so many different schools and so many different districts and so many different classrooms with it. Right. We can't even track that right now. So this would give us the tools that we need to make sure that our kids Yeah.

[Rep. Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: Because probably schools, from everything you said, are already violating the state law

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Without even from 2020.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yeah. Violating so many laws Yeah. Without knowing it.

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

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yeah. And definitely not intentionally.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Yeah. Okay.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Yeah. I see I see it as buttressing that. That's it.

[Unidentified Participant]: Hey, real quick. No. I I know somebody who notes somebody, but need to follow-up on my question.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: K. I don't know that we'll take this up. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of interest in it.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: You're being sarcastic.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So,

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Angel, thank you. Thank you for your push last year on getting rid of cell phones.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Thanks, Michael.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I'm hearing a lot and the kingdom, my area, teachers are pretty pleased with it. School board members are pretty pleased. I think it's gonna make a whole lot of difference to our kids.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Thank you. I think that this committee's interest in that bill was a real injection of energy at a crucial time last session that really helped get that bill over the finish line. So thank you all.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: morning. Morning. Thank

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Tell us a little bit about Page six sixty eight.

[Rep. Greg Burt (Cabot, Danville, and Peacham)]: Yes. For the record, Greg Burt, representatives for Cabot, Danville, and Peachin. Just pull up my screen here for

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: you, Bill.

[Rep. Greg Burt (Cabot, Danville, and Peacham)]: Yeah. I had lodge counsel draft up this bill, Cameron Wood, based on concerns that I had personally with with subscriptions online specifically and then hearing about some lawsuits that had gone in against Amazon. And I'm sure there are other companies out there that do similar things. But I'm just I was just wanting to see if our state could provide another level of protection to our citizens regarding online subscriptions. And so I, Cameron, would wrap this up, and it basically took language that was in statute and tried to tailor it a little bit more toward it just needs some updates really to be tailored to the current systems that are in place with online subscriptions. And I think there's a little bit more work that needs to be done on the language myself to maybe make it more of a even more tailored to the current system. It basically took, near the beginning of the bill, it takes language that was speaking of contracts that were year long and then changes that to that word year to month. And then, likewise, down through its look, it's changing it from year long subscriptions to month long. And then but the basic, but most important language that I wanted to make sure was in there that it's however however easy it is to subscribe to a monthly subscription, that it's just as easy to get out. And that's the hook that I saw happening in my own interaction with these subscriptions was I I literally could not find a way to get out of the subscription with Amazon. Right. And my wife eventually did, and I don't know how long it took her to do it. But, I mean, I consider myself to be fairly tech savvy. I can't imagine my dad trying to do the same thing. And so I just wanna make sure consumers are protected. And, you know, obviously, would take, I'm assuming a lot of work from someone like Charity Clark to to make sure that, you know, our consumers were were protected to the level of somebody like Amazon in our you know, kinda, you know, affecting our our people, but but that's the basic idea. You know, I just you know, I'd love to see this this bill go some places because it's it's a it's a small win for for our for our state, I think, if we could if we could do it, but I'm not this isn't in my wheelhouse, so I'm sure there's some some work that needs to be done on it to make it to craft it the

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: right way. I'd love to if

[Rep. Greg Burt (Cabot, Danville, and Peacham)]: you have any interest in that, to see that happen. So But that's it, basically.

[Rep. Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: I just wanna support this. I actually ran into the Amazon situation. I had, like I guess I somehow had signed up for Prime even though I thought I had, you know, got disconnected Prime. And then I saw a post on LinkedIn about somebody posting about how it seemed like the patterns that have been happening lately should be violations of consumer protection. And I was like, wait a second. Do I did I I should probably check if my account somehow was opted in and I didn't realize. And it was. And then, yeah, it was like five steps to figure out how to and I'm very tech savvy. So to find the little links to find it was ridiculous. And it was about to renew. I didn't even have any idea. So yeah. I support this. Yeah.

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Go. I just Thank you for bringing this to us with this. Also, yes. Very annoying. And it also reminds me of trying to unsubscribe from an email as well. Let's do that, see. 30 steps to try to do that. But I was looking at saying, remember that there had been a click to cancel at the federal level, but it also looks like that rule has been It's got reintroduced. It has been reintroduced. I guess it got taken away. It got reintroduced. So I just wanted to express my appreciation because I think at the very least, having something at the state level would be very helpful, particularly if things start vacillating at the federal level, too.

[Rep. Greg Burt (Cabot, Danville, and Peacham)]: And like I said, feel free to take this and run with it, you know, as you would anyway. But I mean, I just like I said, it's not my wheelhouse. Cameron got it started, but I I feel that even there's one part about, you know, because it was originally designed for a year long contract, there are there is some language here that I think needs to be worked on in terms of there's some language that mentioned sixty days. Well, it's when it's a one month contract, it's just there's, you know, you might need to take that down to, you know, thirty days or fifteen days or whatever. Anyway, I think it does need some work and it needs some tailoring, but I think the idea is here and just wanna see our

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: consumers protect it. Yeah. So thanks for bringing this up. The two core concepts, I think reducing the the year long years a long time, you know, terms of fees, you know, monthly expenses and stuff, and making it a little easier to unsubscribe to. So she's really. I'm not always tech savvy. I try to do some of this stuff and it's hard. It just falls

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: over to the next year.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I love the idea and I think you know, I think you

[Rep. Greg Burt (Cabot, Danville, and Peacham)]: can go even further. And one of

[Unidentified Committee Member]: the things that's always bothered me about this is coercion, in that you go, you subscribe to something and like, well, you need to call this 800 number to cancel, and then you call and then they say, well, what if we drop the price? No, well, what if we drop it even more? No, well, what if we give it to you for another month free? That needs to stop. That, you know, so

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I'm totally

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Would this also apply to things like gym memberships? Ethan?

[Rep. Greg Burt (Cabot, Danville, and Peacham)]: Well, I think in here it's pretty generalized, so it could be one month long subscription or contract.

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Yeah. I guess my question is, like, is it just just online, or are we talking about physical?

[Rep. Greg Burt (Cabot, Danville, and Peacham)]: Yeah. I think any Any This

[Unidentified Committee Member]: is pretty generic. It's any contract of one month. Sounds like if you subscribe online, you bike to a gym, they can't make you come in in person.

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: You have to be able to

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's what I'm saying.

[Rep. Greg Burt (Cabot, Danville, and Peacham)]: And technically, this I don't think would be even based on doing so online. It might be another form of if you went into a gym and filled out something by paper and handed it to him, then it went online. Think it's, as far as I know, the language in here makes it pretty broad.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: I appreciate the necessity to continue modernizing our laws. Mean, I'm looking at this and maybe the length of time specification should be eliminated completely, and it's any auto renewing membership, because who knows what the next iteration of that will be. And we'll have to talk to legislative council and all of that. But I think it's, again, we've all talked about it, how hard it is to sign out and how many, every single one of us has tried to cancel a contract and it's taken hours. And like,

[Rep. Greg Burt (Cabot, Danville, and Peacham)]: can have your deodorant come at certain intervals, right? That's basically a subscription, and I don't know if that interval could be weekly, you know, so yeah, getting rid of the language about timeframe. Yeah, that's a great idea.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: To give you a little history, help write that righteous bill, to write this statue, what happened to me was it was a company, a laundry company that would come to my store. I was contracted with them to provide rides and pipettes and stuff for the store, and had to sign a contract. And the contract was a ten year contract, auto renewed, and you had to let them know six months in advance if you're gonna cancel your auto loan. Wow. So, was a nexus with auto reserve and wire people. And so it was more paper contracts, and so I think it's time for us to take another look at it. You know, we were looking at contracts, you know, least a year or more, just anything that auto renewed. The person that was chairing the Senate side of economic development was that monthly renewals. That's all you can have with monthly renewals, no more anything longer than a month. So that's what we wound up with. I think it's time for us to probably revisit and upgrade the statute so that it's more in line with with the world the way it is now. You for bringing it to us. I appreciate it. It was time for us to look at it again. But, you know, with the I what it I think what it did was, obviously, it cost as long as some dollars too, because, you know, you can get a year subscription on Paramount or anything, you can't improvise. Has to be monthly, and you save money by taking a year subscription.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Really? Didn't realize that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: It varies.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: There's benefits of taking a longer subscription if that's what you want, but it's definitely up to the customer what they want. We shouldn't be dictating the length of time that they can purchase on.

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: One thing is about the deceptive practices that they engage in with the cancellations, things like broken pages or broken links and making it impossible to actually go and do the thing. I

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: think what I'd like to do is bring Chris Curtis in. We haven't talked to him this year about the consumer. Is it a consumer agency, consumer advocacy program at UBM? Find out how many food consumer systems were there, thank you, to see how many people have complained about those issues. I don't know if anybody even thinks about calling a tax agency that would take you a year and a day to get out of a thirty day contract, right? Good. Thank you, Rutland. It. Yeah.

[Rep. Greg Burt (Cabot, Danville, and Peacham)]: Appreciate you giving me some time. Thanks.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Dalton, you wanna come up? What do you wanna work on this one?

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: If we have time, I mean, we're stacking up a lot of stuff.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I think, you know, some of these fixes would pretty

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: quick.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: You know mean? I think we should do it. Absolutely.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: I mean, there's a lot of these bills I've been friends

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: with Talk with talk with camera. Yeah. Maybe what first thing you do is bring him in and just have that conversation with him about how do we or you can talk to him, how do we update this now so it's relevant to the Internet as well as paper contracts.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Emily, I'll connect

[Unidentified Committee Member]: you with some consumer protection folks too to help with that.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Hello?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Please. No. That's okay. It's not the worst thing I've done.

[Rep. Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: This is a final reading moment for sure. Please take your moment to shine.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: You haven't looked at my campaign page and all the wonderful

[Unidentified Committee Member]: videos I've posted.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I don't remember where. You are a lot.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: But like I said Now we checked. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Perfectly fine with what I say.

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: Shame over here. No shame.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: No shame whatsoever. We had some time

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: when we were waiting for people to join, and I asked if anybody

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: could sing, and one of the people there started singing, and they're professionally trained. It's like

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: this lovely That's the way

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: to start it.

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: I'm quite a closer. You can get balloons and you can make us balloon animals.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: This is our show. How are you? Hi,

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Anton.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: You are.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Yeah. Did you want me to sit here?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you for waiting. You're Pardon me? We we we were just patiently waiting.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Oh, I had to get out of another meeting, so I have to switch my whole head around. But are we live?

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yep. We are. Okay. So we did the walk through yesterday.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Oh, you did? Okay.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: We wanted to have you come in and just kinda give us

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: your. Okay. Great. Good.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: So I'm Robin Shai. I'm from Addison 1 District in Middlebury, and I'm also the chair of the House Appropriations Committee. And I very rarely do bills on my own. I am not one of those people. So I did this bill because it was something important to me. And someday I'll tell you the shocking information I got when I did my DNA testing with Ancestry. It's like one of those stories you hear on the news. So I've been interested in this. And I also after I learned what I learned in Ancestry, I did twenty three and Me. And and so I was checking out information. And then, of course, we've been hearing all the information about twenty three and Me about to go bankrupt. And one of the things that we've also heard along the way, you know, in the last couple of years, they've used DNA from ancestry to to find murderers and to find, you know, to find criminals. You know that people have access to this. And when you sign up, you're told, sort of, if you can figure it out, you know, that, you know, your information will be kept private and all of that. And and but with the collapse of 23andMe and then the subsequent sale to they filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March. And then they had a significant data breach and then they were sold to a research institute. So the question is then what happens to everybody's genetic data in there? And in the wrong hands, bad things can happen to people. So this bill, which you heard from Lunch Council, great, know, the sort of high level, it limits data sharing. It allows consumers to access their own data. It provides very clear, complete, and easily accessible information to the people who use it, to those of us who have submitted our DNA, about what any genetic testing company's policies and procedures are for using and safeguarding the data, you know what's going on. It also requires genetic testing companies to obtain consumers consent for each of several items. So you have to agree to each thing, not a big blanket thing because maybe you like eight of the 10 things, but you don't like the other two. But this forces them to have you agree to each thing. So it's really this is a consumer protection bill. It also prohibits genetic testing companies from disclosing a consumer's data to insurance companies such as health, life, long term care, disability, or to another employer. So that's been, I think, a big fear that many of us have had all along. If you have a genetic issue, which obviously DNA testing can show up, certain genetic things can show up in there more than whether you have blue eyes or brown eyes or whatever. But things that might matter to an insurance company could really affect your ability to get insurance. So one thing to have a couple of genetic testing companies that we know about, but then when they start to fail and other people take them, then you worry about what's going to happen to your data. So really, was the prompting with this. I had talked to Todd in the AG's office about this. I'd sent emails to you, Chair Marcotte, and to Representative Priestley over the years because I know you've been dealing with data privacy issues, but the genetic one is kind of a specific one for specific reasons. And so that's why I felt it needed its own bill. So that's kind of what it's about.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Any questions for chair shot?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Did the walk through make sense and everything else?

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: God, I

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: wish I'd been here for the walk through.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We did get a walk through.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault (Williston)]: Good.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: And one of the things I think we noticed was the similarity between what what you're proposing. I mean, not exact and stuff, but Yeah. The other things that we're considering deal with the same subject that I had actually talked about, you know, today. Because Yeah. So it's interesting to see. We still need to parse out, you know, different Right.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Well, do you need does it need to be its own bill or combined with other but I I think as long as the data, you know, the information, the protections are there, that that, to me, is the big thing, is that we really need to have the protections for people in there. Yeah. So yeah. It was tripartisan. The cosponsors were from everywhere. So

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Questions? I know you don't have much to do. So

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Oh, me?

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You're more than welcome to hang out with us.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Well, I would love to hang out with you all, but I do have this budget adjustment.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That I need to go back

[Rep. Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: and forth.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: Oh, that.

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: You know? Get off.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: I didn't get it all the way through this year.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: For $5.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: We a place to spend it, so thank you. All right, thanks for having me

[Rep. Emily Carris Duncan (Member)]: in, and thanks for all

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair, House Appropriations Committee)]: the work you guys are doing too. It's all important. Take care.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Why don't we go offline until Representative Rutland makes her way here? She's doing 11:15, so people need to run to the restroom or get something to drink. We'll be back here by quarter after.