Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good morning, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Friday, 01/30/2026 at 09:05 in the morning. So on our Fridays, we use our half an hour before the floor to to hear from our legislative interns from UVM and from Norwich. Who would like to go first? K. Morning, Bailey. Morning.

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern)]: My name is Bailey Davis. I'm an Orange intern for the committee. My testimony won't take about a minute here. My task was to look into or to contact Annie Gianni. She works with the education education commission of the states, which is a group that does nonpartisan research into education policies within all 50 states. She's currently on vacation, so, you know, the the CTE saga is gonna, you know, have a third installment next week. But this is, you know, pretty much in our, you know, our, you know, ballpark when it comes to, like, these policies. It's kind of exactly what we want in a, you know, a nonpartisan study. So I I prepared a series of questions for her, and, next week we'll get that back. And, I mean, it really just you know, it's perfect for what I was looking into. So are there any questions? Or actually, I was gonna open it up actually and ask if you guys wanted me to forward her any questions that you guys may have because I think, you know, obviously, she's a good resource. She used to work in the education committee here in the state house. So

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Anything? Do the questions include issues around certification, teachers, that kind of thing?

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern)]: I can, yeah. I, stuff like that, but also I focused on how we produce more CTE educators. Because I'm sure Vermont, I know for a fact Vermont isn't the only state dealing with this problem.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah, I remember last week you talked about different states taking different approaches. I can actually read

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern)]: some of the questions if you like. I just asked stuff basically based on CT, how we get more in the state, how we judge policy to alleviate that bottleneck.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Looking forward.

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

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you, Caleb. Good morning.

[Cabot Sales (UVM Intern)]: Good morning. For the record, Cabot Sales, UVM intern. Once again, I'll be discussing what the Senate Committee on Economic Development Housing General Affairs has been discussing this week. Starting on Tuesday, they discussed the governor's budget implications, and then they discussed, excuse me, their big housing bill. So some key takeaways from that is that VHIP funding will be moved into the base budget. They discussed VITA now moving into lending for multiunit housing. There's a density bonus that they proposed for housing developments that use union labor. And they also discussed an off-site construction proposal and the fact that that's missing funds. So those were the key takeaways there. There's some more information on that on my report. So if you want to dig a little bit deeper, you can take a look at that, or I could answer any questions there. They also discussed Act two fifty as well, things like streamlining the efforts, streamlining approvals there. Moving on to Wednesday, they discussed S88, which is an act relating to creating enhanced growth incentives for employee owned businesses. So that would be through Veggie. There are currently two enhanced incentives through Veggie. One of them is for market or labor market areas with above average unemployment, and the other one is for environmental technology businesses. This would add employee owned businesses as eligible for an enhanced incentive through Veggie. Then they discussed their large economic development bills. The purpose is to strengthen support for Vermont businesses at all stages of development. Some of the key takeaways there, most of this is allocation. So increasing the cap on tax credits for the Vermont Downtown Village Center Tax Credit Program from 3,000,000 to $5,000,000 $300.00 for the Vermont Small Business Law Center. An additional 300,000 above the governor's allocation for the small business development center. They would give 594,000 to the office of economic opportunity for micro businesses, 200,000 for Vorec, 150,000 for the International Business Office, and 3,000,000 for Brownfields. They also discussed task force, a business development task force to map the resources that are available to businesses at all stages of development in the state. There was some debate about whether that is necessary or not, but they are considering a task force for that, as well as increasing the amount of times the Convention Center Task Force will be meeting from six to fourteen. Moving on to Thursday, they discussed S313, which is an act relating to transforming Vermont's CTE system. A lot of the same discussion we've been having here about incentives for CTE instructors, getting more CTE instructors working in CTE rather than working in their field. And really a lot of support from the committee around making CTE a prominent and more respected pathway for secondary education rather than trying to push everybody down the higher education path. And finally, they discussed S277, which is an act relating to prohibiting mandatory overtime for nurses, specifically twelve hour shifts that have had negative effects on nurses and supposed negative effects on patient care. And that would be restricting mandatory twelve hour shifts for nurses. And if they do have a twelve hour shift, they would need at least ten hours of rest after that. And that's the overview. Are there any questions?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I just like the way you laid out the scuffing report there. Yeah. I like the the organization kind of. Thank you. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: In consideration of the downtown tax credit cap lift being lifted, was the discussion of whether the every year that they bump up against the existing cap?

[Cabot Sales (UVM Intern)]: Yes. So they've been discussing that for a couple of weeks now. And part of the reason they chose to up it or they're thinking about upping is because every single year, they've hit it. And certain years, they've gotten closer to not hitting it, and and it's it's fluctuated. So the actual cap has fluctuated. A lot of them were talking about just getting rid of it altogether, but they decided on upping it. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: you, Thank you. So committee, where are we? Anybody noticing anything in the other committees?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Has a workforce bill on dental that we probably should touch base with. Not OPRs that we've been talking about. By dentists? Or I don't the detail on it. I just saw information

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: about that. Do you have a number?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I spoke looking at the digital infrastructure

[Unidentified Committee Member]: about the whole consolidated thing. They said this is one

[Unidentified Committee Member]: of the issues is making sure that, because I remember we had mentioned there was a concern about that last mile of people all they have is copper and

[Unidentified Committee Member]: this is actually one of the points of contention in this entire bill. Right now what they're going to do is they're going to get to anyone that's got DSL and copper, they're going to start with them and they're to offer an alternate package. Right now they're not so sure about how they're going to deal with these, you know, these outliers, but that's definitely something that the committee is very concerned about. They're also focusing a lot on notification. Right now, there's only three people that three organizations that are notified. They want to see these these individual people even notified when there's all this kind of stuff going on. And I asked them a little bit about the cloud, some of the cloud bill which Monique here, I would I would defer to her.

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: She knows

[Unidentified Committee Member]: knows more about it probably than they do.

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: Yeah. That's I'm introducing this morning at 10:30. It's basically, like, that all of our our infrastructure is regulated except for we have a heavily reliance both personally and business wise and government wise on things like AWS and Google and things like that that store literally all of our data, even our own emails and our government for OneDrive and stuff like that. And it's basically like, should those be regulated? Then tries to address a starting point of what that might look like. First question, can it Exactly. No, totally. Totally. So it's basically proposed to be adjusted on the Public Utility Commission.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Healthcare, they're again taking up H583, mostly about private equity acquisition of hospitals and practices. But they also have a non compete provision that I think you folks have been talking to The chair other bill that they have spent a bit of time this week that I think is an administration bill, age five eighty five, trying to direct it, seems to be directed at business ability to get insurance for their employees. They're drying up a few old chestnuts, I would call them, in terms of MIWAS and association plans. But there's some

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: other things that are kind

[Unidentified Committee Member]: of interesting. Anyway, I just wanted to share because it looks like the bill is primarily focused on, so how how can we help businesses with their premium costs? Not not saying that those specific ways to do so, not not operating the comment.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Right. We're on the floor at 09:30. Excuse me. We have we're reading 06:48. We're back in here after the floor to take more testimony. On 02:11. You'll have you'll hear from the attorney general's office, and then we'll hear from the secretary of state's office. And then at 01:00, we have a hearing with house general and housing, one to three on h 775. Any questions? Okay. We can go offline. We'll be back on after Oh, can I mention something?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm gonna make an announcement. There are a bunch of kids and students and community members from various parts of rural Vermont, and they're gonna be setting up in Room 11 to share, you know, what they do, and they're gonna listen in on how things work. So if you have a chance, you know, go down and talk to them. I'm sure they'll be able to talk to you. And I'll try it, provided they get here in the cold weather, I do a little recognition on the football.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Anything else? Good.