Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good morning, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Economics and Economic Development. It is Friday, 02/06/2026, at 09:04 in the morning. We'll use this half hour before the floor to have reports back from our legislative interns. We have one from UVM, one from Norwich. And then if there's time to hear committee members, their liaisons to the other committees, hear what might be going on in those other stuff. Cabot, Bailey, good morning. Know, Bailey, you have an extensive report for us this morning, I heard.

[Bailey Davis (Intern, Norwich University)]: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's kind of like another situation from, last week where, I don't have contact with the person yet, but I do have some, stuff I'd like to give you guys. Okay. CT policy from other states. So

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: k. Did you want to okay. Why don't you go ahead, Bailey?

[Bailey Davis (Intern, Norwich University)]: Good morning. Sorry. One second. Good morning. My name is Bailey Davis. I'm a committee intern from Norwich. So my task for this week is similar to last week. I was asked to reach out to Annie Gianni, who is a policy analyst for the Education Commission of the States. I followed up with her. I still haven't received anything back yet, so hopefully next week, I'll be looking to you guys that. But what I did look into for you guys is a lot of CTE policy, that are currently in state legislators, state legislatures, in other states, other than Vermont. So the main one I looked into is Massachusetts, which it what they're currently looking at is possibly reclassifying CTE educators, as opposed to being teachers, into a special category, which would allow them to have higher salary increases. So, obviously, like I mean, I mentioned that, I guess, in a more broad view, about two or three weeks ago, that idea of bringing, the salaries up a little bit. So it's, like, the main thing that's going on right now in some of the other state, legislators because, like, this is kind of an issue that isn't just unique to Vermont even though, of course, we have unique, geography and unique circumstances in regards to demographics. It's overall, you know, fairly, you know, broad problem, even in states like Massachusetts where, you know, that you have the demographics, you have the the large amount of, you know, the higher populace, in the higher, like, you know, population centers, it is it's a problem everywhere. So I think, it's definitely something I'm gonna ask. It is something I asked, Annie over at, the Education Commission of the States, because, again, that's kind of her her wheelhouse is working directly with those state legislators to amend issues such as this. So thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Questions for Bill?

[Unknown Committee Member]: I appreciate you checking into Massachusetts. I think, you know, what we're seeing here in Vermont is a nationwide issue and understanding that other states are looking at solutions also is really helpful. Thank you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Of course. K. Cabot.

[Cabot Sales (Intern, University of Vermont)]: Morning, everyone. For the record, Cabot Sales, intern from UVM. Once again, I will be giving you my report on senate economic development housing and general affairs. This week, you all did spend some time with them, so I will not go over that. Starting with Tuesday, they discussed S three twenty eight, which is an act related to housing and common interest communities. So this is gonna be their big housing bill. Major discussion was around increasing housing density, increasing the ease of permitting for duplexes and small multi unit dwellings. For HOAs, they're extending protections to HOA residents for care and homes, installation of electric vehicle charging is another issue there. And as well as excuse me, supporting mobile home projects by limiting rent increases on mobile home units. And moving on to Wednesday, they discussed s three twenty seven, which is their large economic development bill. They talked about a lot of stuff we've discussed previously. So summary was there was interest again in increasing the tax credits for the downtown village and center tax credit program. There was discussion about making veggie permanent and also increasing veggie enhancements for employee owned businesses. They also discussed browns field brownfields and specifically talking about soil contamination preventing projects there. And there was overall a lot of committee support for everything here. And moving on to Thursday, they discussed an act related to flexible working arrangements again. And this proposed, once again, that employees must grant flexible working arrangement requests or employers must grant that for employees. There was more sentiment this week about whether or not this is something that's necessary, and Vermont is already a leading state in allowing flexible working arrangements, so they're wondering if more legislation there is necessary. They also discussed s one seventy three, which is an act relating to workers' compensation, And that specifically is discussing the barriers to vocational rehabilitation services, of which the process for getting screened and approved for vocational rehab services is very inefficient, and they're looking at reducing that. They also heard testimony from someone on behalf of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association who was arguing that getting rid of these screening requirements would increase costs substantially for the insurance companies. So they're going to be continuing to look at that

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: bill in particular.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Would you be able to share that a link to that testimony with us?

[Cabot Sales (Intern, University of Vermont)]: Yes. I can share that. And there is a summary of the bill and some information about that in my report as well, which should be posted. Yes. Yeah. So brief question about the going back to the veggie discussion. Yeah. So you you mentioned the the employee ownership enhancements. Yeah.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Is that for would that be for businesses that are converting to that model or just for businesses that exist in that model, they would receive enhancement because of their status as an ESOP?

[Cabot Sales (Intern, University of Vermont)]: I don't believe that they were intending to incentivize more companies to move towards that model. I think it was intended from what I heard to, you know, support the companies that are already set up like that. But I don't

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: think they would be opposed to more. Thank you. Yeah. Questions? Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe Warren, do you know why here's an explanation on why property and casualty insurance would be

[Cabot Sales (Intern, University of Vermont)]: Oh, they are the ones who pay for vocational rehabilitation services at the moment. Or not them specifically, but the insurance companies. So employers and the insurance company workers' comp, is it? No. Or yes, it is. It's workers' comp. Workers'

[Unknown Committee Member]: comp. Yes. That's what it says. Right?

[Cabot Sales (Intern, University of Vermont)]: Yes. Yes. Workers' comp. Okay. It was a

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: little bit p and c is a little it's like your house insurance character. Right. Right. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Sorry about that. No. That's okay. We just wanna make sure we hit.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Yes.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. Cabot, thank you. And Bailey, thank you as well. Thank you, Liz. Bailey, just wanna let you know if you run into trouble when we give you when we ask you to check-in with some people and they don't get back to you, let Kirk know and we'll get on it too. Sometimes they don't understand that we have legislative we have interns that work with us, and so they may be reluctant to reach out to you. So we can make that connection, help you make the connections too.

[Bailey Davis (Intern, Norwich University)]: Yeah. Yeah. I followed up and I I guess I clarified a little bit kind of my role. So

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay.

[Bailey Davis (Intern, Norwich University)]: We'll see we'll see, you know, where that

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: hopefully next week, I'll Yeah. If you have problems, you know, midweek, let Kirk know, and we'll we'll reach out too.

[Bailey Davis (Intern, Norwich University)]: Okay. Perfect. Yeah. Hopefully, next week, I'll have a have a nice report for you.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. Great. Thank you. Committee reports from other committees. What are we seeing?

[Unknown Committee Member]: Nothing. Neither of my two committees are

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: talking about economic development stuff. Okay. Nothing that I haven't reported already.

[Unknown Committee Member]: ACC demos and transportation looking at the electric vehicle charging station program. Because of the federal. I feel like that's a running theme in that company. With the federal drawdown, it's harder to execute it, but they are continuing to work on the program.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Briefly, agriculture, they got a report on the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative and the Working Lands Enterprise Board, which was created back in 2012, to invest in, as it says, working lands. Apparently, we are continuing to leverage money, putting money in and getting more money to work on it. That is going well. And they are continuing to discuss municipal regulation of agriculture, and they're working on a bill that would prohibit municipal regulation of agriculture for activities that are already subject to the required ag practices. I do not know what that all entails. And they also, you know, we had people in yesterday talking about, who did, 3 Squares, Vermont, and the ag people are taking testimony now on the benefit of sister requests that they let us be made aware of. But that's a budget request for money to facilitate those programs, and they are working on

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: that as a budget request.

[Unknown Committee Member]: And that's what I got.

[Unknown Committee Member]: A short form bill was introduced at the start of the session. Had a minute in the committee general in housing yesterday about bringing the state mediator within the office of the Vermont Labor Relations Board. I thought I'd mentioned that because of our conversations around non competes. I think that would be I don't think we've addressed mediation as a potential avenue, but I think that there there might be some relevance to how we think about those minimums for that employee that's not in an executive role, the sort of disagreements that may exist between, well, earn $75,000 so you qualify for this non compete clause. I just figured there might be some labor mediation labor relations might be relevant player in some of how what we're considering might play out. I thought I just mentioned that. You don't seem persuaded. Well, no.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yes. I mean, we don't deal with the Labor Relations Board, the House General does. So I don't know. Heard my In

[Unknown Committee Member]: the testimony we've taken, I think we even heard from employment law people. And don't know if in talking about non compete clauses, if we're now in the realm of employment law. And I am well over my skis at the end of this sentence. So I just thought I'd make mention of it.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Talked to the chair, house general, and just it might be good for them to take a look at once we had the bill ready, they're trying to take a drive by of it. Maybe those are the type of things that they can look at. Okay, thank you. Other questions? Okay. Next week, we're gonna begin the budget process. So Tuesday at two, we're gonna have a CCD in. Wednesday, Thursday, we had DFR in in the morning at ten. And then at two, we have DOL. So the we've asked them, we've sent them the same cover letter that that appropriations sent them. Also, you have the sheets that we received from appropriations on some how to kind of look at and and the questions you might wanna be thinking about asking. I'll send you the budget this today. Have Lindsey I or Yara or Megan send that out to the commission. If you can look what Edye and I have received from appropriations. So take time to look at it over this weekend and see where, you know, there's some, there's, look at the reversions. There's some reversions that are going back. I think we've all asked some questions on why some things are being reverted back to and then getting repurposed in this new budget. We wanna know about staff. Are there staff reductions? And then what are those reductions mean if there are? The reductions coming from attrition or are they some attrition and some that we're letting people go? Those are the types of things. Any of the programs that we always fight for, we need to make sure that, you know, how are they working, are they working the right way, You know, you're spending money the right way. That's kind of the theme to everything. And then we'll hear from them, but I'm sure, you know, we need to get VZAC in here to talk about what's going on there. We'll hear from UBM and the state colleges as well. They're our big ones, and we also have serve, learn, earn. We always have a good discussion with them, And there's others that would be asking us to weigh in on their budget requests. So, again, it's a tight budget. So all those are identified in the document, Mogad?

[Unknown Committee Member]: And I guess this may be an obvious question, but are we meant to be cutting from our standard ask, or is this a level funding situation?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. It's kind of like last year too, really didn't have Usually appropriations will give us kind of a bucket that we can Or a box that we're in and ask us to work within that box. Last year we didn't have a box and we don't have one this year either. There's going to be a lot of worthwhile things that are going on, that are happening now and others that are coming in to ask us to support that are looking for labor. It's going to be tough.

[Unknown Committee Member]: The only thing that I'm hearing is that there's not money to spend on all the things that need money. There isn't. So we have to be incredibly thoughtful and careful about what we're doing, because the asks for what is super impactful and helpful in the state, the programs are significantly higher than the money that's coming into this state. So we're to have to we're going to have to say no to things that we don't want to say no to.

[Unknown Committee Member]: My other question is, is it noted on the budget? Like, was ARPA funded and what wasn't?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: They'd be one time dollars, so being able to speak to us one times, we'll see who's in the budget, what programs they're in. You know, there's that are trying to get their programs in the budget so they're not one time anymore. Right. See how that all goes in the end. I know

[Unknown Committee Member]: this will be a conversation that we have at that time, but I wonder if the crisis that we're in is a good opportunity for us to consolidate those like programs and focus our energy on one that could probably do all of the four entities. I'm thinking of a comment that Edye made about an organization, four different organizations doing the same thing. It might be instead of us spreading out a certain amount rather just focusing it in and on one, and then they could work together to come together.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I think, know, have a hard decision for us. You know, there there is a organization out there that is doing just that serve learner. There are four different organizations under serve learner and umbrella, and, you helping different groups, but it's all workforce. So that's kind of the model that's out there. It'd be nice if others would do the same thing. Then under that, I think we appropriate the serve, learn, earn and then they give you up the dollars. And share some of services and Yeah. You know, I think that's a great model. You're right. There's a lot of things going on around the state that are duplicative. We've talked about that for a number of years that we really need to start consolidating payments. I just wanted to make a comment. One of the things that's going to

[Unknown Committee Member]: be a guiding principle for me is, I'm really looking at two things. One is return on investment. And I'm not necessarily talking about monetary return. I'm talking about quality of life, all that thing, all those things. But the other thing I think bears mentioning is, how many of these programs, if I'm not saying we would ever do this. We just took their funding away. How much money could they raise privately? I mean, how many of these organizations are coming to us because it's easy to get many money from us, but it's a it's an interest or something that if they direct it and went to some of the other, you know, private sector, how many of these, how many people would jump right on it? I mean, I think of a lot of different innovations that have happened over the decades. And as soon as the private sector gets in, a lot of times that just really boosts everything.

[Unknown Committee Member]: I think the other problem with that is that oftentimes the private sector, especially at certain higher levels, needs that government assurance. They need to know that those organizations

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: have each state.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Is It an interesting point about what the balance is of, when we took trips to Galveon, and it's like, what's your defense contract and what's your non defense? That balance of government and nongovernment. That's, I guess, any nonprofit organization or its obligation, you know, to ensure a healthy balance. A bit of both. Mhmm.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: But even with, you know, global foundries, I mean, we put some money there. But they, you know, assures them that the state is invested in them as well. There's a balance sometimes. So we're playing our song, So Yeah. I know. You better

[Unknown Committee Member]: Should we settle

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: If I can hear fifteen minutes after the floor, we're going to talk about 05:12 Uh-huh. In the afternoon.

[Unknown Committee Member]: 06:50.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: So, yeah, 06:50. Well, first, we'll twelve, and then we're also gonna talk with David Hall on 07:33, which franchise agreements. And then we'll talk about 06:50. So that's a walk through of that bill. We'll hear some testimony from quite a few people. That'll be a good way to end the week. Then next week, besides doing the budget stuff, we're gonna keep looking at two zero five. Remember Tuesday, we have director general from Taiwan, Austin, will be up here. They've invited us to lunch, and then he'll be here to speak with us and have a conversation on the record. Then we're gonna look continue on 05:12 to see if we can get that through. We have some people that want to talk to us about rural technical assistance. We will begin looking at CTE language next week. So we'll have St. James in with us and then we'll have the agency and Secretary Saunders and others to get that conversation. When we're gonna have a legislative language on the CTE stuff? They're working on it right now. There's a preliminary draft that's just been sent to AOE for comment. Beth has some questions. So they're working it out. I expect it'll be done by the time they come in. Hopefully, it's done before so we can pass it out. Exactly. And we may be all all looking at it for the first time together. So we'll see how that goes.

[Unknown Committee Member]: Then

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: we'll be looking at $7.75, which is in House General, which is the creative tools for housing production. We'll be talking about that. Private colleges will be talking about porous and debt on Friday. Hopefully we can move that bill out along We'll with kind of look at what's going on too. If there's some other bills that look like they're ready or are getting there, we might stay later in the day to take them up like $3.00 5 that we're getting there. Maybe Tuesday, we'll come back after caucuses to see if we can finish that.