Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good afternoon, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Wednesday, 02/18/2026 at 01:05 in the afternoon. So we're back to discuss our budget, f y '27 budget. So we didn't get to commissioner Pelham last week, so we've invited her back. And commissioner Jetson is back also to to chat about grants. So I think we'll start with commissioner Pelham. Heather, good afternoon. Thanks for joining us.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Thank you very much. For the record, Commissioner Heather Pelham, Department of Tourism and Marketing, and I do apologize for not being there in person today, but I am under the weather and don't want to pass that around.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Thank you Sorry, So for I

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: have to have you come in and you're not feeling well.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Oh, well, I'm happy for the time. So I'm glad to have the remote option, I will say. Did you want me to pull up the slide deck that we had last time we presented or do you folks have that? Can't actually see you, so I wasn't sure if people already have that up or if I need to I share

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: think if you want to share your screen and go through it, that'd be great.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Okay, let me just give me one second then. I guess I'll need access to share the screen.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: I said it should pop up in just a second.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Sorry. It's still giving me a a it's not saying that I have access to share. No. Okay. Let's see. Okay, how's that?

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Good.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Okay, great.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Let's start right here, think I might have skipped one slide, Department of Tourism Marketing, we do have a staff of 12, but really top line, this is what tourism in Vermont and the visitor economy is all about. So this is based on the last economic impact analysis that we were able to do in 2024, where we're able to show that 16,000,000 people actually come to Vermont each year, and that's driving 4,200,000,000 in visitor spending. I also want to note that I'm using the most conservative figures here, this is just direct spending that is over all sorts of different categories, certainly is concentrated in lodging, dining, retail, and so forth. Within the bigger budget packet that you have, there's all sorts of additional information on all the slides that I'm going to present if you want to get more into the details, but top line number $4,200,000,000 which is pretty amazing. And as I've said before, maybe you've heard me say it that our visitors also do pay taxes, so I affectionately refer to them as temporary taxpayers, almost $300,000,000 in direct taxes paid by visitors in 2024. So when we think about what some call the affordability crisis in Vermont, the visitor economy and our guests are really helping to reduce that burden on our Vermont households. That $300,000,000 is over $1,000 per Vermont household that is being paid for by visitors that we'd have to raise elsewhere if we did not have that visitor activity. Also supports over 30,000 jobs in Vermont. These jobs and this economic impact, one of the things that's really kind of unique about the visitor economy is that it is distributed all over the state, and that's about 10% of our workforce. I will also note that these numbers together, that 4,200,000,000.0 adds up to 9% of our state GDP. The average for most states of GDP coming from tourism and visitation activity is 3%, so it just shows how much more we rely on our visitor economy than other states do. And I will note, I can't actually see where I'm just sharing my screen if folks do have questions, please just interrupt me. If with these, again, I mentioned this is just direct spending, if we were to include indirect spending, so supply chain purchases or induced spending based on wages that folks receive from working in tourism and hospitality, then the economic impact would rise to almost 7,000,000,006.95. So this is what we're talking about. And then in terms of, you know, what our role is, so there's, I have just have four slides here, top level in terms of what it is that we do, and maybe I'll just take the take the opportunity, not those two words together, to say that we do not have a funding ask this year. As everything we're going to say, we, you, I think many know how important the visitor economy is to the state, but we also recognize that we are in a very difficult budget year and there are priorities to do with education reform and other housing and so forth, know, that touch so many things that we understand that the visitor economy is not something we can take for granted, but perhaps this is a year that we're going have to keep doing what we're doing, and part of what I want to talk about here is I think we're actually doing it really quite well. So destination marketing is the bread and butter of what we do, you know we're telling Vermont's story through as many different types of tactics of ways we can can get that message out as possible, but we also understand that like we have to prove that return on investment. So I just have two bullet points here about recent studies that we've been able to do to be able to quantify that effectiveness of our advertising campaigns. Again, there's much more detail in the full budget report that you have, but just as an example, we had a campaign in New York City market this summer that included transit advertising on the Metro North And Long Island Railroad, as well as street level digital kiosks in Brooklyn and Manhattan. We had over 160 screens that were showing our ads. When we were able to do a brand impact study, we found that not only did 50% of the people who were exposed to the ads remember them, but for those who remembered seeing the ads, we were able to achieve a 30% jump in brand consideration and brand opinion. So asked, would you consider coming to Vermont? There's a 30% jump from people who remembered seeing our ads and that exceeds the benchmark for travel and tourism ads, which is at 18%. So just one example of how we understand how important it is to quantify the effectiveness of the work that we do. Another taking a slightly different approach, that first one, like I said, was from our summer campaign. The second was for the winter campaign we ran last year. This was where we looked at the entire campaign, so all the households that were exposed to our ads, and then really trying to dial in on what is the travel increment. So understanding that yes, people are going to come to Vermont anyway, we understand that, but what's the difference between the people who would have come and the people who came specifically because of our advertising. There's complicated formula about how we go about doing this, we look at the total amount of households that we were able to reach, then we look about the households there who had awareness of our ads, then we look at the average spending for those people, what they had, and those who actually showed up. So for the winter campaign, this return investment is based on 145,000 visitors who we know specifically came. And this was from a 5 and $30,000 ad campaign. So that's where based on the average trip spending, we're able to get this return of $5.05 $74 per visitor based, you know, per each $1 we spent in ad media and $43 in tax revenue. Happy to go through the math, but there's a lot of math there. So I just wanted to kind of just make the point that we do take very seriously our ability to talk about return on ad spend. And I also wanted to, I thought this was an interesting place to just make the point that you know that 145,000 people that we know came last winter specifically because of our ads, clearly that's a fraction of the total, but we were able to achieve a 3.6% travel increment. That's pretty close to the amount of people who came for the solar eclipse. So you know 2025 has not been what 2024 was, 2024, you know, we had the benefit of that bump in visitation because of the eclipse, which was amazing. We didn't have to spend a dime promoting it, know, we just took it as an opportunity to educate people that Vermont was a great place to see that event, but this shows that you know, we can bring that level of visitation, maybe not all one day, but we can bring that level of visitation to the state in other times of year with our ad programs. Just since I mentioned '24 versus '25, there is a delay in data which can be frustrating to see exactly where we're at. We won't get, you know '25 data until pretty much this summer, which is why we have to go back a bit, but we all know that 2025 was definitely challenging for us with the situation with Canadian visitation. You know we're still seeing huge year over year declines in travel from Canadian visitors. We have done our best to make sure to continue to put our best foot forward in terms of how we promote and talk about the state. But we, again, this is something a topic I can go into much more detail if needed, but we understand there are some very real constraints to bringing for Canadians to feel comfortable coming to The United States. Our approach has been we've worked with you know local retailers, anyone who might want to offer a discount to Canadian visitors to have that available on a landing page on our site that also includes some travel trips and so forth. And we did, we've just been monitoring the situation over the summer it was really hot, so to speak, lots concern. But when things died down a little bit in the fall, did run a digital campaign in Canada that was what we called our numbers campaign. So our ads were we took one stat about the state like two fifty two welcoming communities and then paired that with 100% love for Canada. And so we've really tried to make sure that you know when we are showing up in the marketplace that our Canadian visitors know that we care, but we respect that this may not be the time for them to visit, but we certainly would love to welcome them back when they feel so comfortable to do so.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Heather, that campaign were you able to understand if it drew any Canadians down?

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: We have some stats you know like in terms of visitation of people who looked at those deals and so forth. I don't have the level of you know economic impact that we could do on a bigger study. You know, it's really we're in the long game here when it comes to travel sentiment, which we definitely do keep an eye on. But you know, we're facing the fact that, know, over the average for the past couple of years, about 24, 25% of Canadians normally would travel to The US in a current year, we're down to 15% who would even consider it. So I guess I just don't want to, underestimate the challenge that we have.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I think a good idea to at least keep our name there.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Oh, absolutely. I completely agree, we have not one stopped our advertising to the Canadian market, we are still there this winter and so forth. We understand that we want to be seen as, I mean the friendly neighbor that we are, that's not hard, but you know with a very sort of soft sell approach to just respect the feelings. So just going on just because I know that you know you don't have too much time this afternoon, another huge bucket of the work we do I would put in the category of destination development, so this is really supporting the tourism industry at large. A lot of the projects that are listed here in bullet points, we were able to accomplish through the federal funding that we received coming out of the pandemic. One of the ones that I'm most excited about is the very first one we were able to complete a destination management strategic plan. And this is something that we did a ton of public engagement on last winter. We did listening sessions all around the state to really kind of dive into you know what is going to help the tourism industry in Vermont be sustainable and effective going forward. We are just about to make that plan public and we will take it on a roadshow of sorts, excuse me, around the state so that people understand how that impacts their work. It really lays out a foundation for us in terms of where we can focus our efforts as well as where we can, you know, there may be projects that we're not able to take the lead on, but you know, like I said, partners can take the lead on as well. So again, any of these I could go into a lot more detail on, but just in general, the committee understands, we've also been able to invest in additional research, so we finished up a visitation study where we had, we were able to do intercept surveys, I think with 66 locations around the state and at 27 events to understand who comes here, where do they come from, what are they interested in doing and so forth. So we have a lot of more information on that now. We're also able to do a brand perception study, so really try to deep dive into like what does the Vermont brand mean to people. This was really helpful because we have not been able to do this type of brand research in over ten years, and I'll be honest that you know some of the results are a little sobering, mean not things that we didn't know, but you know they do state that you know Vermont's problem or Vermont's issue I should say is not active rejection, it's just we're just overlooked, we're just not top of mind compared to other destinations. There was one stat that sticks with me that they did a just an open ended question of you know where would you like to go in the next three years, and only 14.8% of people said Vermont, which put us below Maine, us below Massachusetts, some of our other neighbors. And you know the follow-up question was just they just don't know, Vermont's just not on the radar, just not top of mind. So I just mentioned that so that folks understand that we are in a very competitive environment, we really can't take for granted that everyone knows how wonderful we are, we will continue to do our best to tell that story, but we do have again headwinds in that as well. We were able to do, we were able to hire a firm for us to dive into what a BIPOC specific visitation strategy looks like. So we have some new campaign creatives that we are going be launching this summer around that, that is specifically to make sure that we're telling our story in a way that is attractive to visitors of color. That's very exciting for us. Additional economic impact analysis, like I already talked about. And then we did run a grant program, which again, I can provide more details on. We were able to do some workforce development activities through partnerships both with UVM, where they have now a new hospitality management certificate program, and with VOBA on some outdoor recreation workshops for bike mechanics, trail builders, and ski techs. And then you may have heard about this already, but we were also able to fund the development of the Vermont Core Toolkit, which is really a toolkit for communities to articulate and really do the data collection and figure out what does investments in outdoor recreation, what will the return be for their communities? That's also going be launching in the next couple of weeks. So another exciting kind of crossover between outdoor recreation, community, economic development, and visitation. Then my third slide here is another big part of our work is, you know, it's not just visitation that we're thinking about, we're thinking about relocation, you know, we know that there is a continuum between, you know, some folks who visit here and then they decide to they want to move here, but really the reasons why people move here are all over the map, and through the sort of history of trying to figure out where we can be most effective in helping people relocate to the state, we've really realized that it's our local partners who really have the most, they're they're having the conversations that we need to be having. And so we stood up the GROW program, Grants for Relocation Outreach Work, two years ago thanks to funding that we received from the legislature, so thank you for that. I would say it has been amazingly successful in the sense that now we have these regional partners so that when we're doing our marketing on you know that top of the funnel approach and getting people to think about Vermont, we have now a lead management system so that folks when folks come to Think Vermont, we encourage them to fill out our Connect with a Vermonter form, which just asks some very basic questions about where they might be interested in moving to the state. If they don't know, that's fine. And then we can connect them with one of our 15 partners on the ground that really can have those one on one conversations, which is where the kind of the magic happens because everybody's a little bit different, whether they have questions about finding a job or housing or childcare or whatever it else is they need, those on the ground partners really are the ones who are able to make that relocation a reality. So we do now have, we did our first two years of the grant program, we were able to document that we brought in 97 family units to the states, so that's 195 Vermonters, came as you can see from 32 different states around the country as well as international. We're always going to undercount, it's just impossible not to because it's not as if people like checking when they move here, but it is really encouraging and we do now have partners that cover the entire state, and we also do have partnership agreements, grant agreements with Vermont Professions of Color Network, as well as out in the open, so we're able to support both BIPOC and LGBTQ plus folks who specifically ask for assistance or having a conversation around those issues. I will say that the other, there's a really another major part of this is not just about relocation, but it's about retention. So when we're talking about outreach, we're really looking to our grantees to create events or other opportunities where new Vermonters, Vermonters who already live here are able to interact together and so that those new Vermonters really do feel welcome in their communities and can make those connections. So hopefully they feel comfortable and very excited about staying here. And then the last slide I have, and then I'll stop sharing and happy to answer any other questions is just to note that the chief marketing office, there are two positions on our team that make up the chief marketing office. Those two positions are now co located with the chief communications office in the agency administration. Rebecca Kelly holds that role right now, which has just been a really nice way for us to make sure that those teams are really supporting each other, especially when they are prioritized right now on assisting other state agencies and departments with Universal Digital Accessibility Initiative. You folks may have heard a bit about that from other folks, but really making sure that the state can live up to its obligations under the ADA to bring digital communications in line with a new standard by the April deadline. So that team has really been working very hard to make sure that, like I said, that communications and other folks around the state enterprise are able to make sure that all communications, specifically websites and PDFs on our websites and so forth, are accessible to anybody and everybody. So I'm going to stop sharing

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: hopefully,

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: so that now I can see everybody again. So thank you for that opportunity. I hope we didn't go through that either too fast or too slowly, depending on what you're thinking.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: No. It was fine. Thank you, Heather. Jonathan? Thank you.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Hi, Heather. My question pertains to you know, I know last year, as you mentioned, you heard a lot about the eclipse and sort of sometimes the opportunities land in the boat. With America two fifty happening this year, you know, I've sort of observed that I Love New York has a whole series of events for the noble train of artillery. Do you know if any of Vermont's revolutionary history is factoring into any efforts on your parts with respect to America Too FISH?

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Yeah, great question, thank you. Well, for one, I can say that it's a big year. This year, Vermont also had a lot of events in 1776, so we'll be doing more events as it comes into 2027. We have decided that this is gonna be a showpiece of our inspiration guide this year, so we have a specific multi page spread in our annual inspiration guide that is distributed to anyone who asks for additional information for the states that talks about Amera, Vermont 250 and the things that are going on. I think the thing that's a little bit challenging, which I'll be very honest with, that we're all in when it comes to promoting whatever it is that is happening in the state, but we don't do product development, quote unquote. We're not the ones creating the events or creating the experiences, And so I know that the Vermont Humanities Council and other folks have been able to provide some grants to local organizations who are putting on Vermont two fifty events and so forth, but that's not a role we undertake to actually create those events. But we have a filter on our events calendar to make sure that people can find out about all the things that are happening around the state. And like I said, we've already devised a couple different ways to make sure that we're getting attention to those events.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: What is the Vermont inspiration guide?

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: That is our printed piece, is our fulfillment piece. If somebody, believe it or not people still call one-eight hundred Vermont, I don't know if you folks know that we actually still have a phone number. If they ask for more information or they send us a request for email, it's a printed, I forget how many pages it is, 50 pages that talks about all the different regions of Vermont, different places, ideas for itineraries, places to go and to stay. So it basically is like, hey I'm interested in coming to Vermont, what have you got? We send them this guide. It's also in all the welcome centers and it is distributed elsewhere throughout New England.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: So it's not something that would be touching the whole of the sort of individuals that you were making contact with who were expressing interest, it's sort of a niche for the catalogue trended?

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: There is a digital version, so yes, friendly, people who want to flip through it, we do make it available to them, but it is also any guides or other brochures that we have for specific, like the fishing guide or the hunting guide and so forth, we also have those digitally available on our website. So it's available in both places. But I think there's 200,000 of them that are distributed each year, so it has a wide distribution. Thanks.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Yeah. So thanks very much. I appreciate that you're not in the business of hosting events and things like that, but I'm thinking about America two fifty, and I'm familiar with communities my neck of the woods. They're really, really doing a lot of work around that, mainly through the, I think, the state historical society. And, you know you know, maybe some of it's local, but I could imagine it might be something that people coming from out of state, tourists and stuff, would be interested in knowing that kind of information to know when they're stopping, you know, with wherever they are. Because it's kind of a challenge for communities to try

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: to get out the word. You know what mean?

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: I absolutely understand that. And so that's, I look at it as a partnership. So even though it's maybe not our role to actually do the event planning, we are more than happy and that's like I said, that's why we've put it in the inspiration guide, that's why we have this special filter on our website to make sure that anyone who comes in quote unquote the front door that we're in charge of, that we make sure that we tell them about this. And there will continue to be more opportunities as we go through the summer and you know more of these events are happening you know around you know July 4 and so forth for us to be doing you know our email blasts you know we have our you know our own media, our way to continue to talk to people who are interested. So it's definitely a focus for us. It's a unique offering for this year. We're happy to make the most of it.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Hi,

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Heather. Thank you very much for all of your information. I was curious, you said that you worked with a consultant to look at BIPOC tourism and trying to get more folks into Vermont. I was wondering if there was kind of continued conversation about just cultural sensitivity and making sure that our businesses are able to accommodate folks.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I will say that I only talked very briefly about our destination management plan, but one, there's a couple of different objectives within that and I'm happy to send the committee a copy of that as soon as it's public. One is about just diversifying our visitor base as one of our objectives and the other is about making sure that we enhance the Vermont visitor experience. And within that is, you know, what can be our role to make sure that we are uplifting DEI initiatives for our tourism properties to whether that's, you know, ambassador training and make sure that there is that cultural sensitivity that's part of what it means to be a frontline hospitality worker, or even if it's just making sure that we're elevating these considerations to leadership folks within the tourism hospitality space. So within, so it was we worked with a company called Proverb out of Boston to do this through that, through our partnership with them we did develop a training outline that you know once we can identify some funding that we could make available to folks within the tourism hospitality space. We also work with Travel Unity, which is another kind of travel organization to make sure that we're let folks know when there's training opportunities available. And I know that training is only one part of it, but we just we do see that it is part of our role to make sure that we are helping to educate folks as to what it means to have a welcoming experience. It's certainly the best as we can as to what we can control.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Thank you. Are you partnered with BT P and C or like unlike the writers or any other other BIPOC organizations in Vermont on network?

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Yeah, we do we work with Broad Professions of Color Network through our Grow program, they're one of our grantees, and so within that they do both relocation work as well as retention work, so we work with that team quite a bit. We have worked with Unlikely Riders, and one of the, you know, within the, I referenced the bigger budget book, we do have a section on our DIA initiatives just to kind of list the different ways we're trying to think about how we can advance those priorities. One particular tactic that we've focused in on is, you know, we do work with paid content creators, so influencers. The only ones that we work with, you know, we've decided that we're gonna do that specifically to work with folks that are, you know, either persons of color or LGBTQ plus identifying and so forth, so that we're able to focus those efforts to make sure that we're telling our story through their eyes and their experiences here in Vermont. So it's just one of the ways where we try to make sure that we're telling those stories, guess is the best way I can say it, if that's helpful in terms of partnerships.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: I appreciate it, thank you.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Sorry. This is a question about the ups and downs slide there. And the, I think, $4,007,872 federal grant. I think that was EDA state tourism grant. Am I seeing it correctly that was was that just for one year or is that something that you expect? Is there another application in? I'm just wanting to know how is that impacting operations? What did it impact? And will you be feeling the lack of it in your operations this year?

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Yes, I wish there was an opportunity to reapply for it, but no, it was a one time coming out of the pandemic, basically a block grant to the states. The amount that we received was proportional to the loss in travel and tourism due to the pandemic that Vermont experienced. That 4,200,000 is just what we had spent down in the past fiscal year, that money has now been fully expended. We don't expect to have any going forward, so excuse me, really what we knowing that that was a one time funds, we prioritized projects that we knew we could kind of benefit from going forward. So whether that was asset creation to have new videos that we can put in the market next summer, this work with Proverb, have this new BIPOC campaign, the sum of the research. We did do a grant program as we were able, but we can't do that going forward. So going forward, we will try to continue doing some of the research that we started because we think it's really important to inform our work, some of the we can't run grant programs like we've done before, we can't do the level of research we've done in the past, we certainly can't do the level of marketing we've done in the past, but we did think very carefully about how we spent that money so that we could basically stretch the effects out over time best we could.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: And so if it were some of the takeaways from these previous slides about destination marketing or destination development, there's takeaways there, maybe some that you shared with us that you can use as sort of as data points to help drive decision making in the future?

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Exactly.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Okay.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: I mean, we went into this knowing that this a bit of a windfall, I'll be honest, and it was amazing that we were able to do things like the destination management plan, like the visitor research, like the brand research that we just never had the ability to do with our budget in the past. And you know, just in terms of you know, like I said, as a creation, just we were able to do photography contracts with you know, photographers and videographers across the state to just build up our image library, to make sure that it reflects Vermont of today, that it reflects all the people that we want to come to the state, things like that. It takes money, and so we wanted to make sure that we were using those resources when we had them to be able to utilize and benefit from in the future.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: That makes sense. Thank you very much.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Sure.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: So Heather, every time I had a question, your next sentence answered it. I appreciate that.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: It

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: doesn't normally happen that way. Just looking through the budget detail, it looks like you're fully staffed, which is great. How's your staffing level compared to pre pandemic? Do you know off the top of your head?

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: It's the same that we did so the 12 positions that we have for FY twenty seven is down two positions from FY twenty six because we did have two limited service positions due to this EDA funding, but those we had one of them has already ended and one of them will end at the end of this fiscal year. We're back to where we were pre pandemic, guess I would say. We had a slight bump because of the EDA to limited service positions. Now we're back to our traditional staffing level. And yes, we are fully staffed. If that answers your question. Sorry.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, that does. I worry when I hear that we have an opportunity to spend $1 and make $500 or somewhere along those lines, and we're not doing it. And I understand we're making choices all across the budget to do different things and to protect people in lots of different ways. And so just, I don't really have a question. I'm just putting that.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: I agree that you know, our visitor economy, we are on the revenue side of the equation, right? We would love nothing more than to grow the pie for all of us to take care of all of our priorities.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Any other questions for Heather?

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: I may have missed it, but in terms of your overall budget, is there a reduction from the previous years or in how much?

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: There's another reduction we were able to take advantage of the 3% budget increase target that we were given.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Okay, so it's increasing overall?

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Federal billions.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Exactly, exactly. So it doesn't feel like it, but

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: We're back to normal again.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: We're back to normal.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Yeah, I just didn't know if you were caught in this sort of priority squeeze. Guess not. Thank you.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Thank you. Well, you for the time today. And again, I apologize for not being there in person.

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

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: But happy to follow-up if there are other questions at any time.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thanks, Heather.

[Commissioner Heather Pelham (Department of Tourism & Marketing)]: Feel better. Thank you. Thank you.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: Thank you for having us back. Coming back. And specifically, would ask, what would you like to hear at this point from us?

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I think it'd be helpful. One of the questions, and I know it's posted to our web page, the Canadian, you know, how how well has that been working for us, having a Canadian office gal. And I think that's been posted to our web page. I think there

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: are copies coming around right now, if you would like a hard copy. And Tim was really the master of ceremonies when it comes to the site app organization, has been working for five years now. Is that right?

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Most of it.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: So I may not be able to answer your questions as well as Tim. So if you that would be great.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: We have

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: provided you with some information around I think we really wanna know what's the return on the investment of these funds. And I think we need to recognize that it is a maybe painstakingly patient process, but one that we need to continue to do year over year. Tim can talk to you about the companies that are on the list that are in front of you. This, again, is over a period of time. The report was sent to you, the most recent report from CIDAP. You'll see a lot of companies on there, and then you'll see a lot of companies that haven't had an interest. If we can get a couple companies a year, that's a home run because those companies then are staying year over year. That's what we wanna build because we wanna build, year over year. If you're a baseball fan, singles score runs. And so we wanna be able to score runs every year. So I don't know, Tim, if you or if you would like Tim to walk through this just to kinda talk a little bit more bit more about how we got into our relationship with CIDEP and the importance of that relationship.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You know, I think when we started this number of years ago, recently, it wasn't gonna turn around anything overnight, but I think we're starting to see things starting to happen are happening now with all Canadian companies coming down with Vermont.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: And I would credit Tim with that. He recently had another group of folks coming from Canada. You do that quite frequently, actually.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: It was your first week.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: It was my first week, and I learned a little French along the way. Although I knew a little French because I lived lived up in Newport, but not enough. So maybe you wanna kinda walk through the process. Yeah. I mean, well, I believe it came

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: out of this committee years ago to actually hire an end market representative in Canada. And I tell people, it only took one hundred years for us to get an end market representative in Canada. But we did hire CEDAP. And believe their operations is where they put letters out and contacts out to all these companies that they believe are poised and ready for the market. And then they look back on the contacts. And then that's when they bring myself in to go meet them. And then with that interest, if they pick a particular area, that's when I actually bring in our other Vermont ecosystem partners, like the regional development corporations or a mayor or someone that's involved, realtors a lot of times, too, commercial realtors that you can bring into the fold because it depends on what they're looking for. And I would say, obviously, there are some companies in that funnel, so to speak, that are still in the funnel. They're returning. Some people are just looking at the market. They're looking at what the prospects are. And then they're slowly in their business, Hey, now is the right time for us to now truly look again. So we get a lot of that lately, too. I would say that over time, a lot of these folks, obviously what's happened in the past year has affected a little bit as far as how they look at the American market or the uncertainty has left them not jumping into this as But I think the newest one here, we had a building in St. Johnsbury Industrial Park, which three companies jumped on right away. We brought this up before. Sometimes our facilities tend to be our Achilles' heel sometimes, but a Canadian company jumped in there quickly, and it looks like they are moving in. So that's a great metal fabrication company moving into an empty building, an industrial park. Yeah, I can walk you through some of these companies. They're here. Some of them aren't that very big, but they're growing. One is up in Newport, and I'm looking at Chair Marcotte. There's one person who runs an interior design company. He's moved here to The US. He's got a warehouse, and it's just growing. His business is growing. He's hired more people, and now he's looking to expand. And that's exactly it's only been three years and already him coming into The US, and he's getting these accounts in Southern New England. But he has this warehouse in the center up in Newport so he can go home to Quebec and come back. He loves it. I mean, it just shows like it's small, they can come here and grow. They've got support from Dave up the RDC up there and ourselves, and that slowly we can start working on. So now we're trying to work on how do we expand this facility.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: So I don't know if I answered the tariffs question correctly last time I was here. Let's do a fact check. What are we hearing tariff wise from businesses, Canadian businesses in particular?

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: It depends on what sector they're in. I think that's the key. And right now, I know that there's talk about lowering the tariffs on steel and aluminum. So I think a lot of times we're hearing companies that were, I wanna say, the yellow equipment, the heavy equipment sector, folks that things were going across the border several times, like snowplows and big excavators and loaders. They were the ones contacting us because high tariffs were definitely affecting them. We actually have a snow blower company that moved. They actually have a company in Barrie that actually assembles and puts these things together for them. So we get a lot of that, too. They're expanding here, but they're actually retaining or utilizing or growing jobs in these other companies. This company in Berry, they need to make their own machinery, but now they're assembling for them. It's And allowed them to grow a few more employees to help out on other things in there. So it's always those kinds of situations as well. I would say that's the biggest one, is that they were looking across. The other folks, it's the uncertainty. They just don't know what's happening tomorrow or do they come here? There's also they're they're really afraid of the border. And we've heard that a lot of times. They're afraid to even cross. They'll go look out buildings because they don't know what's gonna happen at the border. I mean, a lot of it, I think, is news from their media, maybe blowing things out of proportion. But regardless, it's a true fear that they have coming into The US.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: And so what we have going for us, quite frankly, is our relationship building, and that's what this organization helps us with. We don't have a lot of and you'll see the lost prospects at the bottom of the last page. There are probably more lost prospects than that. We don't have all of the benefits that some other states are providing, but we do have relationship building, and that's what we need to focus on.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: And I was gonna say and and those I've we put in there because those are the ones that we spent so much time with. They were, you know, eleventh hour. We thought they were coming here. They were, one on one meetings with you guys and the governor, and they're coming. But at the end of the day, it was the incentives or a building or things that we just can't offer here. The the thin down was the one that kind of broke my heart. But in the day, New York gave them a building and gave them more funding to go to Messina. And even though I say, Why Messina? I don't know. But it's all right. But that's the reality of how some of

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: these folks work. I think we thought we were going to have it in Fair Haven. That's where Right.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: Looked at Fair Haven and

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: a lot of other places.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: Overall, it's been I and I've said this before, I mean, we can't catch fish unless we put the hook in the water. And that's what this is about. I mean, any kind of international promotion that we're doing. But obviously, that is our main fishing ground. We know that. And I see that I think we're going to be seeing more. I think that we're still their market. Right? And they still need to to come here. And a lot of them have US contracts, it's almost worth their while to come here. And sometimes it is just having that ready facility sometimes seems to be our factor, too. I don't know if you're aware, up in Quebec, they have its thing. It's Invest Quebec. Has anyone heard of this? Where the Quebec government has a lot of money set aside to help grow businesses and provide buildings. If you've to Sherbrooke, you go to Industrial Park, it's all brand new buildings, and it's all from Invest Quebec. So I think when they come here and they see our stock of buildings, it's a whole different. They're 1972 or earlier. So those are kind of things that we see as a little bit of impediment sometimes. It's just our building stock and available buildings. Or if an available building is there, they now have three or four smaller companies have gone and moved into them, we don't have that building anymore. That's a good problem, too, but it's an issue. I think your RIDDIT program, that's one thing that I think we need to push more is to see if we can get some of these spec buildings put up. I know we can fill them. But I think it's very hard for some of our RDCs to take that chance of putting up a building. But I think we're getting close to them.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: So I saw in, I think, looking in the economic developments, ups and downs, $150,000

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: for, say, the

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: fiscal analysis, financial analysis for CHIP. Is the contract here with CDEP, is

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: it in that ballpark? It is. It's actually two years. It's 150,000 It's pretty low comparatively. I think they like Vermont. Mean, it's kind of one of those things that we know like this is So it's 75 a year we've been doing.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: And assessing, it seems to me like it's good to see the results of that, both in what you get and then who you miss out on and why. Do you have for your assessment of that contract's value to the agency or to the department, is it mostly sort of a look back like this? Or are you looking for, okay, here's this many jobs, do you have an internal metric? Or is it kind of, you know, there's a lot of variation year to year in what you can expect to see or hope for?

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: I'm just wondering. Well, there's definitely a lot of variation. And I mean, the variety of companies. And one thing that's happened lately, I think they did the Montreal, was the first Metropolitan Montreal is where original, almost all of our leads came from. Lately, we kind of stress, we want to look at Sheerbrooke a little more. And we're actually getting, I think, more high quality leads out of Sheer Brooke. Because in Montreal, we're also in competition with Plattsburgh. And New York State has a little more people than we do, little more funding opportunities, and they're active. That's a really hard thing to compete with sometimes. Mean, to answer your question, I would say that for that money, for what we're paying them and the leads that they're generating, and it's a variety of leads, it's sometimes companies that they're looking for me to put them in contact with customers or to say that's not my role. But they're out there just reaching out to the whole community. And then the best thing is they know the culture, they know the ecosystem, they know the language. And it makes a big difference when I'm talking and they find out, Oh, you're in Montreal? They love the fact that our CEDARP rep is a Vermont rep that's in Montreal. They love it. I did

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: two other clarifying questions. One was, are any of these entities, have they purchased the buildings? Or are they all, to your knowledge, just

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: It's both. Both leasing and it depends on the building. It depends on what the situation is or the right fit is the key. You mentioned

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: industrial developments. Yeah, Ridham. Has there been any appetite for do you think uptake would go up if it forgivable?

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: This is my opinion. I'm not gonna talk for our commissioner and our department. That if it was a larger share, and there's a twentyeighty, I think it's been the anchor in this program a little bit. It has not been I think we would have saw more risk being taken more buildings, but if it was a higher match I think you know this. Mean, right? Yeah.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: Okay. Yeah. But, Jonathan, there's currently a conversation about just that and how to get the money out in a more expeditious way. Great. Yeah. And going back to CEDIP semiconductor conferences coming up, how are they helping us with that?

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: Yeah. So CEDIP also not only represents us through lead generation, they also represent us certain trade shows, they're also a conduit for us to go make contacts or make connections. So even though the Northeast Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp or something the state's done, contacting companies on the Quebec side, working with the American Chamber of Commerce in Quebec. They're working with the Federation of Chambers of Commerce of Quebec, which is very large, 148 chambers of commerce alone in Quebec. So they represent us in there, they help us recruit, get the word out, get the right connections to hold that. Because this year, we're holding the Northeast Semiconductor Manufacturing Corridor Summit. It will be in Vermont. We haven't picked a date yet, but we're working on that as well. So that's a big deal. And it also leads to all our I think it's almost a segue to what we're doing international promotion. I mean, our largest private employer does semiconductor manufacturing. We are in the middle of this. We are the center. We are the belt buckle on this belt of semiconductor manufacturers, and we need to attract people to that. And we're doing that. We just had a rep that was in Singapore and Malaysia, where there's a lot of supply chain companies in that sector. And they were just there two weeks ago, we're already having two meetings with folks looking at Vermont as a place to to to invest in. So

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: We're looking at dovetailing the semiconductor conference with the Eastern Canadian Premiers and New England Governors Conference sometime this fall.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: When we can find a time that Quebecers are not on vacation.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: I think that's the that's the case. Well I'm curious about how this all benefits into the larger conversation about the sister state state program and how you're envisioning international trade linking into that. Or not. So international trade going into? Into that program. I'm trying to understand more clearly what the fine dividing lines are between something like this where the state is paying out to do recruiting versus something like the Sister State program, which is definitely more fairly regional, but also that's not necessarily on the state to pay. I'm just confused about where all of it is. Sure.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: Well, mean, you can divide it. I didn't think my job is divided. One thing is imports and exports, Right? That's one thing that we do, which is trade, bilateral trade with whatever country. Right? We're we're either taking the commodities, having you go to another country, which brings in income into our state. And then imports, which people bring into our state, but they make money selling it, and therefore, it brings more money to state. Then there's the investment, outside foreign investment into our state by either starting a company, expanding their company, or buying an existing Vermont company. So I guess that's, like, the three the three legs of the school I work with. And all of it, I guess, is is really trade, so to speak. But and I never know if I'm answering your question.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Could you

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: could you mention a couple of the the places you have gone most recently and how important that is?

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: Well, most recently, mean so one thing is we're identifying places. One place is like Iceland. And we actually have a person here. And she's the reason that we're in Iceland. She's right behind here. It's because we have a person who's so She knows every single person in Iceland. And Well, it's very similar to Vermont. But knowing that here's a country that, the last ten years, realized that they need to go outside their island to bring money back into their island. And they also identify with us because of our size. And they, just like us, they punch above their weight and that their technology is one of the places where they're growing. Outside of fisheries, we do not have a fisheries connection in Vermont, but we do have a tech connection. And we and which I've and I know that she believes as well. I think we are the softest landing place that you can get into anywhere in our country. Like, you're The US market, but now you've landed in a supportive environment. Vermont is very supportive in so many different ways. And I always make no one's here originally from New Jersey, but I'm gonna say New Jersey. If you go to Northern New Jersey, you're gonna be a highly competitive environment where people do not wanna maybe see you succeed. They might look at you as competitive, they're going to do everything you can to make sure you don't. I think here it's the opposite. Again, that was a generalization. But here, we have such a supportive environment and realize that we have access to New York, Boston, Southern New England. We have great transportation. But the most important thing

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: is we have

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: accessible government. You people are our key to so many factors in business, because it doesn't happen in other states. You can't just show up and then go sit in the house commerce and start talking to somebody and actually having you affect your business. It's very unique to Vermont. And I think would probably agree with that as well. So that's one place that we're looking at. And it's something we didn't look at before, but now I think we have a key strong person that can help us. And like I said, she knows everybody there. And we're in connection with Business Iceland. We've had a webinar. We've had some companies. And now we're looking at either trade potential or investment potential. That makes sense.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: It does, but this might answer my question.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: I know. I never do.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I don't think ever do.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Well, I guess I'm I'm trying to understand. We we've worked on the sister state. I think that seems like an interesting bucket on how we're getting our relationships with other countries, other regions, other municipalities. I think what I'm trying to understand is how exactly If that is the goal to create a uniform structure in that, how are we also going about How does that apply to trade? How is

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: Oh, I see. So it's a sister state question, I think, more than anything, right?

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: I mean, it's a little bit of both. I guess I'm having a hard time parsing out the goals of each Well,

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: the one I was talking about before, that is about us bringing in that investment into Vermont, which is needed a lot of times. Think every state's out there looking for investment to come in, bringing that outside money in. It's like, But with the sister state, I think it's on so many different levels. Like, the trade is an aspect of creating a sister state, but it might not be the main tenet of the reason we created that partnership. But there's always, at the end of the day, that will open the doors for trade. I think that's maybe the best way to explain it. It's going start culturally,

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: and it may end up with trade.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Right, exactly. And I think that that makes total sense. I guess I'm wondering about the foreign function that he has with the Irish trade. They're interested in having a relationship with us. I think there are also other countries that are interested in having relationships with us. So I'm just trying to get clarity on, that go through Sister State? What is the vision that we're trying to create with our

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: I can tell you what we do right now. We actually are officer of my little international division that does the state trade expansion program, where we get money from the Small Business Administration to help Vermont companies export, find new markets, compliance, market reports to attend trade shows and meet distributors in foreign countries. We have monies, hopefully, again, to do that. So that comes through us. And so every company is different. I think one of my fine examples is Anyone familiar with the Ann Clark's cookie cutters?

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: We talked about that last time, I think.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: Okay. But what they did in England, and we helped out with that market study about and they started making the food dye, and they've been made it of the colors of all the different soccer teams, and they it's blown up. It's brilliant. Genius. Right? But but, I mean, I think that that the timing, as far as international trade, I think it's just kind of becomes through our office. It's economic development. And as is foreign direct investment is kinda gone through us to be, like, at least that initial contact until we can get them out to the local regions or the commercial realtors. And they don't need to come to us, but it tends to be on a statewide basis we can help them navigate. I never answer your

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: question. Before

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: we move on to talk about grants, So, thought, you know, we had the Taiwan delegation that's here last week, the director general from Boston, and we had a discussion with them and they were asking about us possibly having an office in Taipei. And just wondering what your thoughts are if we started looking into replicating what we had now in Montreal, having an office maybe in Southeast Asia, you know, doing the same type hiring a company that would go out there and do the same. Because I think as said, we know that we're becoming now this tech hub with global foundries and with UVM. I think it would be a big advantage for us to try to connect with the Asian market as well.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: I think it is agreed. Look at other states that are similar to us, like say Idaho. Idaho has nine foreign trade representatives around the world, and they're just a little bit more people than we have here. They understand that importance of those connections. But the Pacific Rim in Asia is obviously we can go out and with that, if there's extra funds, we can hire a rep just like CDEP to represent us. Then we pick the trade shows or we pick them. We can make that scope of work what we want it to be as far as making introductions or whether it's just foreign direct investment only or is it connecting Vermont companies to Asian companies? That's another thing we can put in there. So I mean,

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: I think it only makes sense, right? The cost of an office, I think, might not be the most beneficial, but the opportunity to hire people in The Pacific Asian Pacific Rim would certainly be something that would benefit the economy here. Yeah.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: Much easier to have a rep than a brick and mortar office.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. Let's just maybe keep We like that. When we started talking about the budget letter going to the probes.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: I just went to Austria, and there are so many states. I was the only person there from The US. They were all European reps representing states. And I think they look at it like they they know the market. They know the people. They speak German or but they yeah. So the

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: So if I brief clarification. We're looking at a $150,000 over a period of two years for our Canadian site up organization. The STEP program is a federal program that we can hope for we're gonna get money for that will send businesses overseas so that they can do external trade. Separate silos of money. And I'm gonna give you one other thing here that we put together. It may raise questions later on. But last year, we were provided with $150,000 to do very specific things in addition to the office that we have in Canada. These are some of the things that you're hearing Tim talk about right now that this fund allowed us to do, like work with Iceland, go to Austria, do some very specific targeted marketing and international trade work. And you'll see we've spent 40,000 of $150,000. And you're gonna say, well, what are gonna do with the rest of that? We have it earmarked. And you'll see at the end here where we have opportunities coming up that we will be spending that money in very positive ways. So, again, a separate silo of money, but we want you to, again, be reminded of everything you've done for us, and thank you very much. And moving forward, Vermont's opportunity is reaching out. We have to do that. You heard Heather talking about that. We're not growing enough people to support our businesses here. We need to go out and get more people and bring them here. And so that's an important part of the GROW program that Heather's working on right now. And I saw the results of that as an RDC director in Rutland because we got a GROW grant, got it two years, four years in a row. And that interpersonal work is really what brings people here. And it's the same thing with companies. It's the interpersonal work.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: And I and I was gonna mention on this, you'll see a SelectUSA. SelectUSA is a program run by our US Commercial Service, where they actually are going out and they are vetting and recruiting companies in their countries that they work in or their cities. So that we go through that program. We're not just randomly going over there looking, hey, I'm sandwich board, come to Vermont. We're going to these programs, and they're looking at people that are poised and ready to enter The US market. So that's just using that as a partner program. And it tends to be very affordable as well-to-do that.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: And it's not being done on millions of dollars, as you you can It is targeted, and it's making a splash.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Christian, on that, two things. One, I'm assuming that a lot of the earmark and I will be going to that corridor summit that seems like will that be, like, a four day thing? I mean, it's a morning to the town thing for that and stuff. Vermont priority sectors for the French technology and investment mission. Technology, could you Sure. What are the priority sectors?

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: So well, the the first answer, that's a it's a two day summit. Two day. Yeah. And it's and last year, was it was held in Quebec two years ago in New York City last year. And now it's our tournament with border. And pretty high. I go to those. I have no idea what they're talking about. I just attend

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: and swear. And

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: the second one is that we actually had a company that actually they have an incubator in Montreal. It's called Resoille. They're a French company that has recruited French companies to move to Montreal. And they've figured, by the way, a lot of those companies now are looking on The US market, they're going, we want to be just direct from France to The US. And it's obviously it's tech sector, which could be anything. It's green tech, clean tech, biotech, med tech, you name it. They're getting those companies coming over. They usually vet it. These people are, again, poised and ready. They're already making income. It's not startup. They're looking like, you're ready because we are the market. So we're going to use that company to actually help us recruit. They bring them over here. We're going to show them our ecosystem. When it comes to the tech world, it really is Chittenden County. We take them to Hula. We take them to UVM. We take them to the different colleges in the area. And they're looking tends to be where we use that for our recruiting tool when it comes to technology. So because that's where the hub is.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: One thing that's real important is the person sitting next to me because they like to see the same person in the same seat doing the same work. That's very important to our partners. Don't go anywhere.

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: Or on the person why they're why we're losing. No, obviously, that relationship is a big deal. And it's keeping that steady relationship with consistency and

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: keeping the partnership open. Answer your question. Yeah.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: One day, I'm gonna answer Anthony's question.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Talk about her hands. And I know they will now agree that if you get out of the three d I think there. Oh,

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: yeah. Yep. I need the chair. It is warm.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You can find this committee. It's on my web page, and it's under Dan's budget book in the middle page. Is it?

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: 83.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Page 83.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: I'm sorry. What?

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Better be. Good

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: afternoon, committee. Dan Dickerson, director of administrative services for agency of commerce and community development. And you wanna talk specifically DD grants? Yes. Okay. Yep. So the page that you're that you're looking at, this is this is one of those generic reports that's put out by our new budget system, Adaptive. For each department within ACCD, we do an inventory of grants that we intend to send out the door assuming that the legislature authorizes the funding. And so here, we've itemized basically the same grants at the same funding level as the prior year. One thing that I do and so you see them all there, and and I guess maybe before I call out the one item that I want to call out, you know, are there any questions that you're specifically looking to have answered as far as funding or or programmatic details?

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Nothing. Not a specific program. Think I think we won't understand, like, how you how you got the grants, how you look at performance, make sure that the grantees are performing in the way that they're supposed to, return on investment, that type of thing.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: We need to know what grants we're specifically thinking about.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Well, I think we already heard about the training program. Right. So

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: it's big enough. Do you think that is big enough? Or Almost.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Let's take the RDC block grants. You know, how how how are they how are how's the money divided? Is it you know, is it evenly divided? Great question. RDCs. If it's not, then what who stands out? Who's not? Are are there are there RDCs that are performing better than others, and how do we help the ones that aren't performing as well get up to that caliber, that type of thing?

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: So each RDC does receive the same amount of money. It's about a 132 to a $134,000. That does not fully fund any of their offices, but it it supports their offices. Each is required to write up I don't think you can tell us all about it. Write up what they plan to do for the year, but we have specific items that we are looking for, which are workshops around finance for, small businesses. Visits to businesses, at a certain number and a level, having targeted goals so they may, in their region, may be looking specifically around a sector that they want to keep focusing on. We want them to have lists of commercial properties so that when someone is interested in a warehouse at 10,000 square feet with three phase power, do they have that in their region? Because Tim might be sitting here saying, hey. I've got somebody that needs a 100,000 square feet. He'll then put out an email to the RDC director saying, do you have something at a 100,000 square feet with overhead doors and three phase power, twenty twenty foot ceilings, and so forth? So there are very specific items that we are looking for within their contract. They provide us with an update four times a year on how all that is going. We review those narratives. Are some doing the the better than others, it's hard to say because of the regions in the state. It's gonna be much different than the North Northeast Kingdom that it is going to be in Chittenden County. So we can look through those reports, and we can make suggestions. But we are looking for particular outcomes, particularly around business visits. Are they connecting businesses with the Vermont training program? Are they connecting them with the small business development center? So there are certain things we're looking for, and they provide us a spreadsheet, quite frankly, all their visits, who they're connecting people with so we can then see who's doing a better job than someone else. But it also depends on the sector and the and the region. Am I accurately describing that? So you go through that. But yeah.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Happy to testify. Sorry.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: I can't ask questions. The Vermont Training Program, we did provide some information, in your packet about the number of jobs that have, received funding. We have a whole list of who they are. I think I provided you with the final report for the Vermont Training Program. It shows the size of the businesses, the locations around the state of Vermont. And so I I think that all that information is is there. I don't know if you have specific questions about that. With the Vermont training program, we do do follow ups to make sure that the companies are paying what they said they were gonna pay once they go through the program. So there definitely is follow-up with each one of the companies.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: We did hear from state auditor, I think after Randall was in. Doug asked to come in. We chatted with him somewhere. I think one critique is that a lot of these big companies already have training dollars set aside because they know they're gonna have to train people. And I guess he's wondering how we

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: or giving them training dollars when they already have a budget for training? Great question. So there is a question on the application indicating is this a recurring type of training or We're not gonna do the recurring training. It and we're not going to supplant the money that they should be training their people with anyway. Is it difficult call sometimes? Yes. K? Because they can certainly make an argument. We wanna hire 20 more people. Would you help us hire more 20 more people? We're far more inclined to help them with that than if it's a routine type of training that they go through every year. So will there be places that the auditor might say, I don't know about this one? Absolutely. Because sometimes it's a bit of a judgment call.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: I see Vorick listed here. I'm just curious Again,

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

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Vorick? I'm just curious. I thought that was in the Forest and Parks budget.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: It is in the Forest and Parks realm. That money flows through our MBRC program. Some of it, I guess. Some of it, but not all of it. K. And it is tied to business development. And so Jackie, who is the program director there, she comes to our meetings. We work with her around how are we supporting that sector of the economy. She does a great job, by the way. She's very connected.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: So some of these are small. Are you doing $5,000 grants? Or are you doing larger grants to one business company organization? It's hard for us to even I'll back it up. I'm trying to understand. We're funding them exactly the same year on year, these grants. Some of them, I think that you believe are quite effective. Some you're figuring out how effective they are or they're adequately effective. That's what we're trying to understand is how are you deciding? Gonna keep funding this at exactly the same amount, and is that just What's the process to get there?

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: Right, if your question is, Lyle, would you like more money for those programs?

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Which how would you run it?

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: We are in a difficult budget year. You haven't heard this from anybody else, I'm sure. I think that and I I will say the mantra, which is right now, we are spending a lot of money in public education, and that is being carefully looked at right now. If we were not spending that money in public education and could have some of that going to different places, would we like more Brownfields money? Absolutely. We have determined by the number of, umbrella applications that are out there that there's $17,000,000 worth of unmet need in Brownfields revitalization. We can't ask for that money right now. We don't have that money right now. And so would we like that in the future or some of that? Absolutely. But we need to realign, in my opinion and maybe the opinion of the governor, realign how we're spending our funds and needs before we can ask for more. So some of these grants, yes, Vermont training program can be as low as $2,500 to a business because they only have two employees and they're doing something specific. It could be a $150,000 if it's something different, and that would be the contract that they would write with Randall Tsar. And I can run through through these if you'd like.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Go back to the brownfields for second. So we heard today that there's been a change in limits of lead and arsenic in soils, and that that could have could be detrimental to our housing programs that we're trying to stand up because now we might need to remediate, especially these properties are probably more downtowns and and closer to village centers, downtown centers. And are you hearing that that may be a problem? You're not the right one. It might be Alex that we should be asking that question.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: You've heard the information that I'm unaware of as far as what you just brought up, but we do know that housing starts with the dirt. And I think I probably said that when I was here last time, that if if it's not clean soil, it's not gonna happen. And so and it's expensive. Maybe when I was here last time, I talked about the hotel in Rutland, but they had several years ago, they thought it was gonna take $500,000 to clean up the the what they affectionately call the pit. It's now gonna be $5,000,000 to clean up the pit. So prices are not going down on that. We had a similar situation in Milton. Yep. Same thing. Project was quite literally no longer feasible because of the extra soil conditioning that needed to be done. And why they need to dig dirt to Michigan to burn it, I don't know. But that's apparently what needs to happen in this project. What we're trying to I guess what we're trying to understand from just what we heard today was that this has just

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: been, these levels have just been changed. And it seems like, almost like a PCB discussion that we had a couple of years ago, and the problems that that's created now with our schools. And we're lowering these standards. I guess we want to know what the science is behind it because we've been operating under a certain standard and now we're And I don't know where it came from. I don't know if it was done by rule, the Department of Health. We're trying to find out now. But I think this could have a real chilling effect on the CHIP program, on CHIP program, and any other developments that we're trying to, housing developments that we're trying to do.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: I'm not a health and safety person. It would be interesting to know, are they meeting the EPA standards or higher? And how do we compare with other states in that regard? Those would be questions that I'm sure you're already asking.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I think we want to find out. From our understanding, it's the state levels that have changed. And I don't remember us making any changes legislatively, so we're wondering if it was done by rule or not. I'm not sure. So we want to investigate that more, but that could be a big problem for us.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: It doesn't sound like it will decrease the cost in any way.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Means the grant funds that aren't increasing aren't gonna go as far, again, right, as you're looking at the block grants and things like that. We

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: are hoping for federal brownfields money, but we we don't know where that's gonna land. So yeah. Similar with NBRC funding, we do believe that we will be getting more NBRC funding, Northern Borders Regional Commission money that seems to be solid at this point. STEP grant, we believe will come through from the federal government. We heard that the other day. We have not been spending that down from this year because we didn't have the money. But when the money comes in, we certainly will begin to do that. Looking at other things on the list here, we talked about the RDC block grant. Any particular questions?

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Ahead, Alisa.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Yeah. You had mentioned a bit ago about spending money on education, and I was just is that education, like marketing education for the public for these programs, or is that something else?

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: Cost of public education right now, you will the

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: cost of public education. Whether it was talking about the education that the government's doing. Just the cost of things.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: And and in my RDT days, I would say, we've got this pie that's this big, and this is the tax money. And what we're doing right now is we're reslicing that same pie. And what we need to do is either grow that pie or change how much we're spending within that pie. It's a difficult conversation that you deal with every single day.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Absolutely. Thank you.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: So pertaining to the I'm sorry. The small business development center business support item, is that a What percentage of a given small business development centers is accurately to the individual centers themselves? And is that how much of their activities are federally funded through small business SBA versus what what how much of the pie does that make up? And is is that like a requirement on the state's part to have a skin in the game

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: to have the small business development centers?

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: So Dan will correct me if I'm wrong, but that's a flow through to the SBDC. Is that correct? Yes. And there may be in another committee a request to increase that funding to the small business development center.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: And that's federal dollars that you're flowing through? I'm sorry. I'm just

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: General fund. General fund.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Do you I mean, is that statutory required in order to be qualifying for the SPDC services? That's sort of what I'm trying to understand is

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: how

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: we arrive at that number. Is that

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: Yeah. I can get back to you because I'm not deep into the programmatic weeds on that, but I'm sure between Commissioner Martin and I, we can can find the right person and get back to you and

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: and how that works out.

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: One thing that I did wanna flag here that impacts this and and also impacts at least spending authority that we're carrying in the DD budget is, you know, as we as was discussed before, there's the I want to make sure I say it right. The rural industrial program, we got a onetime appropriation of 5,000,000 several years ago. We're working to spend those down. There's a piece of the language that created that program essentially requiring that, you know, properties sold, the the grant funding or the the funding needs to come back to the state and possibly some additional above and beyond depending on the price of the sale. And so last year when we built the budget, the the previous commissioner came to me and said, hey. We'd like to if if any funds do come back, we'd like to know that we structure our budget in a way that we could basically push those funds back out the door. And so we we did some creative maneuvering and basically said, okay. We we will build the spending authority in the budgets. The dollars aren't there because we haven't no funds have come back. We're still focused on pushing them up the door. But at least then with the spending authority, if they do come back, we're in a position where we don't have to go to the Department of Finance Management and say, hey, we've got these unanticipated dollars and then go through like the bureaucracy of getting the authority to spend. So we've got this 2,500,000.0 parked

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: in

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: our budget. You can see it in this grants out inventory. I had a conversation, some back and forth with finance and management where they basically said, you know, the fund that this appropriation came from, which is it's this cash fund that was set up a few years ago, basically mostly for the capital bill, but also for like other targeted investments. Basically, the fund wasn't set up to revolve the way that we envisioned it with this piece of our budget. And so this is a long way of saying essentially this money is gonna have to come out of the budget because we can't the fund doesn't have the ability to revolve those dollars. And so I flagged this for the House Appropriations Committee. I wanted to flag it for you because obviously it's in your area jurisdiction. Like I said, I don't think This isn't detrimental that this is happening because we're still just focused on getting the dollars out the door, like the original appropriation out the door. We don't know of any funds that may be coming back. So we're not in a position right now where this would impact our ability to push funds back out the door. I would just say this has to come out in its current form. And if in a future year we do get money back, I think we would just sort of sit on it and then maybe come to the legislature and say, Hey, of this 5,000,000, we got 100,000 back. Here's what we would like to do it if possible and then go through that. So I hopefully, that makes sense. But it's more like a mechanical thing that Do you need the language, legislative language to make it work? That was something that I thought about. But I think with this separate conversation that's happening on the RIDIP, I think the goal would be to not have the requirement on the purchaser that if they sell the property down the road, the money has to come back to the state. I think I think we would wanna do away with it. Is is that Yeah.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: We're looking at having it via grant as opposed to a loan. And then reducing, if possible, going from the eighty twenty where somebody has to come in with 80% of the money, and this would only provide 20%. We'd like that to be fifty fifty, but we'll see where that ends in the course of the conversation. And if if the money we don't expect that money's gonna come back, quite frankly, the first amount Yeah. Because RDCs currently own and operate the buildings and the land with no expectation that they're going to sell that. And so that if they do sell it, then this piece would kinda kick in, but we don't expect that that will happen. And language change, that's in process for the other half.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Recalling this now.

[Dan Dickerson (Director of Administrative Services, ACCD)]: So if they become grants, I mean, the the sort of return language becomes moot because we there would be that expectation.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: There was a deed restriction. The deed restriction would go away. So there are things that would make it actually work for doing what it's supposed to do, which is create new commercial stock.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Are they currently forgivable loans or just standard loans?

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: Standard loan with even a percentage of return built in.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I went to the RDCs to help them build warehouses or whatever and industrial complexes within their industrial parks. Then if they turn around and sold them, then the original money would come back into the fund again so that it could be loaned out again.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: That was how it was written. The money's not going out the door as a result of that, the way it's written. Yeah.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: The RDCs aren't taking advantage of Correct.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: Because they need to put 80% of the money in at this point, which is beyond what they're capable of doing. Most of us. Yeah.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: So you're working on the other body to with the language? Yes. And we'll see it after Hans over, possibly. Okay. Understood. The topic of skill then for

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: that, when Andy was in here today, sort of auction testimony about the RDCs, one thing that don't think we got a good picture of is how much variation there is in the size of the staff of regional development corporations. I asked about this with respect to the regional planning commissions. RDCs seem like by and large, somewhat smaller entities. And thinking about how what it takes to build a new building, I was wondering, do most of the RDCs have a person or people that are engaged in that sort of development work as actively as what I would have thought would be the case for a program like that?

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: So Andy, who you talk to, is a one man shop. And then there are others that have 14 people. You go to Brattleboro, they they have more people, and they actually have a real estate person who is their specialist. They have benefited from having, property that they own, that they are leasing out, and they make money off. That's the perfect model. If this could become a grant where it would be easier to do, I think other RDCs would benefit from from the from this money and from the process. Interesting. It is an interesting question because every RDC is different, and they're set up differently. They have different boards. They have different committees. Perhaps a conversation for the future about how that could or should look. My goal coming into my role is to work far more closely with the RDCs. Not that we weren't doing it in the past, but they are the boots on the ground. They know where everything's buried. We need to rely on their help.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: And I think we were listening to some testimony last week. We're wondering about some dollars that some organizations are asking for that are kind of duplicating what the RDCs are there to do. They're your eyes and ears on the ground, right? And so that's that's what it kinda made us think about. So glad to hear. I mean, it's nice to have somebody that bring an RDC.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: Would say if an RDC and I'll just put this out there. For example, an RDC is doing small business plans, that's what the SVDC does. So let's let them do that. Let's us focus on commercial development or

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

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: Yeah. So implication is we live in Vermont. There's a problem. We create a committee. The committee goes and fixes the problem. The committee doesn't go away. And then we need to keep funding them. And then they go out sometimes and find other things so that they can continue. So it's it's I get it. And several nonprofits jump in too. This Right.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Yeah. To the my one of my most productive emails that I can write in my RDC or RTC work is a connection to our area business advisor with Small Business Development Center. And it's like, that's who you need to talk

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: to. Go.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Just making a point, do we know small business development centers are on good ground and good standing at the federal level? So

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: that would be a Linda Rossi question. I'm just It's a It's Rhetorable question. Got it. Yeah. They do good work.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: They do fantastic work, but not being well supported. So good. If

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: I have not adequately answered your questions, which I'm not sure I have, happy to come back at any time with more information that would be helpful to you.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: It's a bruise. It's a left one. Happy buyer, too.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: But I was in there.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: I'm sorry. Yeah. No. It's

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: We're working on getting five twelve on the website right now.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Spectacular. How are you?

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: That's a high bar.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Other than, for some reason, this space is so confined. No. No, What

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: do you mean? What do mean?

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: I cannot it's like, did we get it be a little

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: bit deeper? I don't know.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: I would just sit here thinking, that's my esteemed colleague Jonathan, now that he's here

[Tim Tierney (Director of International Trade & Business Recruitment, ACCD)]: in person. I have enough room. It's just because I'm used to sprawling around the corner a little bit.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: He's actually just sitting in your chair. Well,

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: classic. It's

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: a it's a smaller.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: John I didn't do it, do I?

[Susan Evans McClure (Executive Director, Vermont Arts Council)]: You carry your strings.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: Yeah. Yeah. I I have it up

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and ready to go when you are.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: K. Why don't we do that, and then Garrett can it set up so it's on the hosted.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Say go and I'll start. Ready to roll. Okay.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Still live.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The record, Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel. What I'm sharing here is draft 2.2 of an amendment to H512, an act relating to the regulation of the event ticketing market. So draft 2.2, the things that are new from the last time we met are going be highlighted beginning on the next page. So I'm going to walk through those and just articulate what's new in our last discussion. When you get to page two, the definitions are all the same. So I haven't made any changes there. What you have here on page two, subsection B, is the first edition, which is about a notice requirement. So what you have is a person operating a secondary ticket exchange. This is on line eight. And for reference, the secondary ticket exchange is defined as an electronic marketplace enabling the sale, purchase, and resale of tickets. So this is a person operating a secondary ticket exchange shall provide a statement in a clear and conspicuous manner informing any customer whether the customer is purchasing the ticket from a ticket issuer or a reseller, as the case may be. The reason I phrased it that way is because my understanding is some of these may have contracts with the ticket issuer to potentially sell the original ticket itself. But if that needs to be tweaked, it can be. My understanding is you all wanted the goal of ensuring that the customer knows that they're purchasing a ticket from a reseller in that event. So the secondary ticket exchange has to provide the statement that the customer is purchasing the ticket from a ticket issuer or reseller and that the resale price of the ticket is limited by subsection C of this section. I included that whether or not you all feel that that's necessary. What I was trying to accomplish was the concern about you have the reseller. And then my understanding from testimony you all received from some of these marketplaces, their comment would be, well, we're not the reseller. We're just the online marketplace. And

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: so

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: which does the cap apply to the reseller or the exchange, etcetera? Who needs to potentially provide that information? So when I started out drafting the notice, I drafted these two things as two separate pieces. Later on, I added some clarification language about the cap applying to both the reseller and the exchange. So maybe you don't need this be. And I know I'm getting a little bit in the weeds right off the bat here, but I'm commenting to you all. My understanding was you wanted the A. You wanted the notice that the customer is purchasing the ticket from a reseller, so you have that in A. Whether you think that it's also valuable to have the customer understand the cap or a statement that there is this cap in place. Up to you. It's easy to remove if you all would like it removed. Sub two here.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Want to go through the language? No, go ahead. Yeah. Well, maybe this is a sensitive question. Cool.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So the sub two is if a secondary ticket exchange provides information about the number or percentage of available tickets for a given event so that's the condition if they're going to provide that information, then the information shall be accurate as to the number or percentage of tickets available on that secondary ticket exchange and shall not mislead customers about the availability of tickets on other platforms. So I was trying my best here to accomplish the goal that you all stated of wanting to ensure that the customers aren't being misled by an exchange saying there's only four tickets left for this event or only 2% of tickets are left for this event and the person not understanding that maybe only four tickets on that particular platform's availability. And so that's what this was intended to try to capture. If you're going to provide that type of information, then it needs to be accurate as to the tickets that are available on your exchange. Madam Vice Chair, you

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: would like to have

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: We wanted it to cover, but let's keep going and we'll I I feel like this codifies current practice more than fixes the problem.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: To brainstorm. Okay, so bottom of page two, moving to the top of page three, we have a price cap on secondary ticket exchange. And as I was drafting this, and I didn't make this change, but I wanted to recommend it. It may be worth striking secondary ticket exchange. I think the price cap is intended to apply to others, and I think that was from the bill initially, but that may be just an editing fix you want to make. But when we get into the price cap here on page three, a ticket reseller shall not charge more than 110% added in the words including taxes and fees. Wanting to clarify that that 110% is the cap of the total cost. So the ticket reseller shall not charge more than 110%, including taxes and fees, of the total price of the original ticket, including original taxes and fees. This gets a little wordy. A solution is potentially to add a definition to indicate that the price, the overall price includes taxes and fees, you can clean it up a little bit. But at the end of the day, the only thing I added in here was including taxes and fees at a recommendation to try to make sure it was clear that the 110% cap has to include taxes and fees as well. You can't charge 110 percent and then layer on top of that taxes and fees. So then the sub two is new. So there was question about whether the ticket reseller in the subdivision one would capture this secondary ticket exchange market entity. And so I added this subdivision two here, which states that a secondary ticket exchange shall not authorize for sale on exchange a ticket valued at greater than 110%, same language. So an individual can resell the ticket. So I can't go to you and just resell you an original ticket at greater than 110. And then if I'm going to sell that ticket on some sort of marketplace, some sort of electronic exchange, I think you all heard from StubHub. We used them as the example because they testified. That exchange itself cannot allow individuals to sell tickets at greater than 110% on their exchange marketplace. Subdivision two is the new. Subdivision one was there. And then sub three is new as well. This subsection shall not apply to the resale of a ticket if the reseller has contracted with the ticket issuer for the resale of tickets at a price greater than 110% of the total price of the original ticket.

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: I just wanna come back to two for a second. So how are they gonna verify? I mean, what's to stop me from going on StubHub? Maybe I paid $30 for a ticket. It's like, I paid a $150 for this ticket.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: What I've seen in other states, what's not here, is the original tickets are required to have the original ticket value printed on them. I don't know if that is a standard in the marketplace, but StubHub should be able to validate what the original ticket price was. But I think it's a question, and and they would need to answer. They would, based on this language, they would have to validate whomever that secondary ticket exchange is. But keep in mind, the reseller has to validate that as well. So a reseller, regardless of whether you're doing it through the marketplace or just doing it individual to individual, the ticket reseller would have to validate what the original price of the ticket was if they're going to resell. Then you have the subsection D here, which is the ban on deceptive URLs and improper use of intellectual property. All that I've changed is, if you recall, there was that question or confusion about whether or not you could use the venue's name or the artist's name in certain aspects of the URL or indications on the website. And there were some questions about, well, then how do you even inform the public what venue the place is at or what artist the place is at based on that prohibition? So I pulled up Maine's language last time, which I thought was much more simplistic, but still trying to accomplish the same goal and gave a little bit more flexibility for the AG's office, for example, if they wanted to engage with a reseller about their practices. So it's just that a reseller or a secondary ticket exchange cannot use deceptive website addresses or imply endorsement or ownership of any intellectual property or artist of the venue or artist without explicit written authorization. And then the rest of this is the same. The prohibition cannot sell speculative tickets. That applies to a reseller, not a secondary ticket exchange because of question that you were just raising, I think it would be significantly more challenging or difficult for an entity like StubHub to validate an individual isn't trying to sell a speculative ticket. You can add them, obviously, if you want them to insure and and be held to that. But just some I'm just giving you information, the distinction between the selling and the cap on the price, which the secondary ticket exchange could not authorize sale over that cap. Versus here, this piece only applies to the reseller as an individual or person themselves. And then what was removed was the registration requirement, the bond requirement, the educational requirement that was in a section by itself. Those pieces have been removed. And then the effective date became 2026. It was 2027 based on the fact of registration for all of those entities with the secretary of state, etcetera, try to give them a little bit more of a runway to get that registration process up. Here, moved it to 2026. Happy to move it back to 2027 if you all would prefer.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Questions for Kevin? Okay. Questions, sir?

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: I have a question about policy elements, but Susan?

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You're welcome.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: It's still spectacular.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: No question.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: I'm gonna join

[Susan Evans McClure (Executive Director, Vermont Arts Council)]: the Zoom and share a few slides, I think. Thanks for having me back again on this. I'm Susan Evans McClure, executive director of the Vermont Arts Council. I wanted to start with a few examples, which I will do on this Zoom.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: This is the

[Susan Evans McClure (Executive Director, Vermont Arts Council)]: Alright. Great. I pulled some more examples to share with all of you. Well, first of all, I'll say thank you again for addressing this important issue to Vermonters and to the arts community and to the arts organizations that are supporting our local economy. I'll I wanted to share just a few more examples with you, knowing in case any of us were thinking that maybe this issue has been fixed in all the time that we've been talking about it here. I pulled just a range of examples from nationally known artists to smaller, more niche opportunities that are happening in Vermont just to give you a sense of the scale of what we're dealing with this week. So this concert is from a nationally known band called Lake Street Dive. They're playing at Shelburne Museum this summer. Highly recommend. They're incredible. The Higher Ground is not that you came here for my music criticism, but Higher Ground is putting on the show. Tickets first are for sale and still available on the Higher Ground website for $79. On StemHub, those tickets are going for a $126 to $1,035. This was yesterday. So that's a nationally known band. There's also an event at the Paramount coming up, Dirty Dancing in Concert. Very different. Also sounds fun. Exactly. That's coming up. We were wondering if they were gonna do the lift in the halls of the theater, but so that's coming up on March 1. You can buy your tickets at the Paramount, $45 or $55 depending on where you wanna sit for full view of the screen. Those tickets are available on StuffHub right now from $94 to a $103. The Flynn is hosting an event called Let's Sing Together, a live band tribute to Taylor Swift on March 5. You can buy those tickets from 50 to $60, and tickets are for sale on Vivid Seats from 79 to $86 for that event right now. We talked, last week about the Noah Con tour that was just announced last week. Those tickets at Fenway are for the four shows that are happening at Fenway for Vermont's own Noah Con, those are all fully sold out. The website specifies, tickets for these shows are nontransferable. So that means that you cannot, just they're in your name. You can't just sell them to somebody else and give

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: them to somebody

[Susan Evans McClure (Executive Director, Vermont Arts Council)]: else. Going to StubHub this morning sorry. Yeah. StubHub this morning, those tickets are for sale from anywhere from 500 to well over $1,000 using phrases like only two left and amazing price. We actually emailed the Red Sox ticket office to ask how this would work because frankly, there are many Noel Conn fans among us who are just confused. If the tickets are not transferable, how is this gonna work? Red Sox ticket services replied to us in an email, and I'm just gonna read what they said. They said, tickets for the upcoming Noah Khan performances are designated as nontransferable. Because of this restriction, tickets cannot be transferred from one account to another. As a result, we are not able to confirm how third party sellers intend to deliver tickets to buyers when they are listed on resale marketplaces. Tickets acquired outside of authorized platforms, Boston Red Sox or Live Nation, are done so at the buyer's own risk. And we cannot guarantee their validity or provide assistance with delivery issues that may arise. So that was from the venue where it is taking place. I also wanted to so those are some examples of the resale issues that are happening. We also were able to, work with the folks you heard from last week at the National Independent Talent Organization. You heard from Nathaniel Morrow, who happens to be both their executive director and a Vermonter and a musician. He was able to access some information about a concert that happened in 2023 in Vermont. The band is called Billy Strings. They were playing at the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds. What he found is that 493 tickets with the information he could access, 493 tickets were resold. The average price of them were $55 The average resale price was $188 And that means that for these shows, Vermont fans were spending over $65,000 more than they should have, and that money is going to the resellers and not to the venue and not to the artists. And they're not keeping that money to spend in our local economies. The numbers that Nido has access to here cover about 60% of StubHub's data, so they don't actually take into account other sales on SeatGeek, Vivid Seats, and other platforms. So the numbers are most likely much higher than this. So I think it says something that every time And I'll take this off so you can Here we go. I think this says something that every time you've had me here in this seat, I've been able to find more and more and different examples of how this predatory resale practice is really hurting Vermonters and Vermont's economy. So we are fully in support of the changes proposed to H512. And while we, of course, believe that ending the deceptive practices online will have a meaningful impact, you've heard from me before, and I'll restate that really the price cap on resale is by far the most impactful piece of this legislation. Instituting price caps will put guardrails on an unregulated market that's hurting Vermont consumers. It'll put us in line with our colleagues in Maine and with many countries around the world, including Ireland and The UK. It will protect the small Vermont venues who are working hard every day to bring joy and connection through the arts to our towns across the state. It will protect consumers and their hard earned money. And the thoughtful and careful language that you've added into the bill here, ensures that Vermont consumers can still resell their tickets in transparent, safe online markets. So when you make it illegal to resell a ticket for a grossly inflated price, you remove the incentive for bad actors to scam Vermonters. And while no bill can end all of the bad practices of the Internet, we do know from colleagues in Maine and across the world that price caps really work in this market. Effective use of price caps means that our state government will be working at what I think is its highest and best use, protecting Vermonters, supporting our local economy, and creating a fair playing field for commerce to thrive for everyone. So thank you for your belief in the power of this important legislation that really will help drive our economy and bring our communities together and support the artists and venues who are at the lifeblood of Vermont's arts ecosystem. Happy to answer questions.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Questions for Susan?

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Thank you. Great. Thanks.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Afternoon. Good afternoon.

[Todd Daloz (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: From the attorney general's office. Not a lot to add to what Susan just said. We support the amendment as Legion Council just walked through. I think it's moving in an important direction and continue to support this legislative initiative.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Questions for Tom?

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Herb? Yeah. You know, so there was this discussion at one point about whether or not you could in the disclosure part of the bill, you could say, and here's how you could find out the price of the regional ticket. And there's some I heard some concerns about that. But I'm still interested in it because what its potential alternatives to price caps. But if it's not really an alternative because of legal problems, that would steer me towards the price book.

[Todd Daloz (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: Yeah. I and apologies that I didn't do a deeper dive since we spoke on this last, but I essentially, in the consumer protection space, consumer law, as it interacts with the First Amendment, largely focuses on the fact there is no First Amendment protection for deceptive speech. Right? We don't protect lies in the consumer marketplace, and that's why requiring disclosures, clear and conspicuous language tends to pass muster. Where greater challenges can occur is when we are asking businesses to affirmatively share information about their competitors. And that can be a much more challenging legal position to take because, essentially, you're mandating some degree, to put it grossly, of advertising of a competitor's site. Our position is we support what the arts council has put forward in terms of the price cap being the most protective and easiest measure for consumers, and we think the disclosure language that's now laid out mirrors other required disclosures and and will also help that consumer information piece. And, of course, the the piece that's no longer in the bill, but is very much part of the work is consent in is continued consumer education with the arts community, our consumer assistant project, really a program helping consumers understand when you go buy tickets, here are the things you wanna look for.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: So translating that for me, you know, trying to make a decision here. To me, that means that if you're concerned about predatory pricing, we got a competitive market, you know, let's go free market. But if you got competitor pricing kind of situations, probably not free market. Yeah. So but if you don't have an alternative to try to show the consumer what the original price is, you're sort of backed into, okay, a cap, fair cap, but a cap.

[Todd Daloz (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: And I think as as you've heard testimony in the past, this was the case across the country maybe twenty five, thirty years ago, there were price caps on this. So it is a practice that's existed here.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: We we cap prices or set prices in all sorts of situations where you might have happily or, you know, consumers don't really have good information about what their choices are. So there are lots of reasons why you might want to impose some sort of regulation of the price in order to protect consumers who otherwise aren't.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: And I'd say that one other area where we weighed in on were the Rent A Centers. Made significant changes to that law. And and we did put counts in there too.

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Todd, the court's testimony included unusual response from a major entity like the Boston Red Sox ticket office saying, we don't know. And it makes me wonder, well, what does Live Nation know about what a ticket is? And are we talking then about are we getting into a slippery area of what a resale is or what transferability is or who owns the thing? If and I'm just a little bit I'm wondering to what extent that may become a conversation that would be happening in some of our venues, but all

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: of them.

[Todd Daloz (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: Yeah. I mean, that's a it's a fascinating scenario. I don't think reflecting on it fairly briefly, and therefore, answer will be fairly superficial.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: That

[Todd Daloz (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: nontransferability piece could be considered deceptive practice if the entity that was selling the nontransferable item was aware that it was nontransferable and still selling it. But, generally, I think that becomes a matter for the individual consumer as they purchase it and not within the purview of five twelve. That that one specific piece, I think there is a question, you know, is raised sort of what is appropriate to determine the original value of a ticket. I think, you know, it's gonna be what is a reasonable what are the reasonable steps in the market place around that? And certainly from our enforcement perspective, we'll be looking at what's a reasonable you know, if somebody is out and outlying, it's not necessarily a case that we would take against the platform versus the individual who's fraudulently trying to inflate the original value of the ticket to inflate their you know, that's the bad actor in that scenario. But there still should be some reasonable checks by the platform to ensure they're not just allowing turning a

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: blind eye. And my secondary element or other question that I had had to do with that consumer education piece that you were describing. It seems like if we if there were a price cap in place in a state, then it's consumers would have a that seems too high. And once that is known, any sort of number above blah seems like that couldn't possibly be the case because of this price cap. And I'm wondering, for me, the nexus of the bill protecting venues was clearer at the outset, and it seems like it's less about that now and more about limiting how much a thing is worth. And I am wondering if that is we're the one is there still where do the venues go? And if we are they still where's the the counterfeit websites and stuff like that? Are they in this amendment or anything? Are they still protected, or is it all sort of is the only protective element that we have in this bill a price cap?

[Todd Daloz (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: I think so there's the language that Cameron laid out and simplified. I don't actually have it in front

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: of me. But It's a ban on deceptive URLs. Yeah.

[Todd Daloz (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: Right. So that that already exists. We already have authority. We would consider those deceptive practices independent of this law, but this law certainly provides a a much more directive statute to rely upon as opposed to the broader CPA, the broader consumer protection act. Then there's the language around, unlicensed use of intellectual property. That, I think, is is, meant to protect images of the Flynn on Flynn v ttics.cm or whatever whatever a fraudulent site might be. And, again, you know, if they were advertising the Noah Khan concert or what have you and they're not the authorized dealer, that again is a very straightforward, deceptive act. So I I think those all defend defend and protect both the venue and

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: the performer.

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: Just Thank you. Yeah.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: So I'm going back to that sentence, that paragraph that Cameron and I were talking about before about the secondary ticket So if we said instead, secondary ticket exchange provides information about the If, sorry, if the secondary ticket exchange provides information about the number or percentage of available tickets for a given event, the information shall not mislead customers about the availability of tickets on that platform or on other platforms. Is that defendable? I'm hoping this is not something that we will have an issue with because capping the price reduces the incentive hyping up a ticket that is a very high price to be sold quickly. And that's what these three tickets left, two percentage of the tickets available. That's what that does. It's hyping up somebody's desire to buy a ticket quickly. Part of me is like, you can strike a couple paragraph. And part of me is like, how do we clarify that so that it's?

[Todd Daloz (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: Yeah. I mean, I think how do you go after the generated sense of urgency that drives someone to make? Right. I mean, that's a scam. That's an immemorial scam technique. It's definitely deceptive. I think the language you as I heard it, and I'm not a great oral processor, but is broad enough to cover the waterfront here. I mean and I would leave it maybe for a conversation with Cameron, but it's you're either having this very focus, like, you cannot use number or percentage, which is the I would think I'm not as versed in this as maybe Susan is, like, what the sites are saying to kinda drive that urgency. More broad language about to see you know, we'll still act on that. But I think you could end up for this for the sector, it may be helpful to have this kind of additional clarity unless you feel like it's too narrow to measure up to. Yeah. I can't. I'm I'm just not thinking about it.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Oh, because as tickets sell, it's really hard to be accurate on what percentage of tickets are still available. So but not misleading, I think, is the

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So, well

[Todd Daloz (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: As I hear it, I wouldn't have a problem with that change

[Commissioner Lyle Jepson (Department of Economic Development, ACCD)]: from our perspective, from an enforcement perspective.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Questions for Tom? Thank you, Todd. David?

[David (StubHub representative)]: Hello, can you hear me?

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: We can. Good afternoon.

[David (StubHub representative)]: Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the time and seeing everyone again. Maybe touch base on a couple of things here. When I testified, what, ten days ago, we talked a lot about disclosures. I'll note that we have been looking at potential solutions to that internally since we've spoken. And part of that process is not just what we're going to do, but how would we comply both from our app and website and things of that nature, right, to address some of the concerns. So, I just say those are actively ongoing to see what we can do to address some of those concerns, Continue to be willing to work with the committee. I just saw the language for the first time. So I'm hesitant to kind of do a deep dive on that. I'd want to kind of digest it. But just wanted to note that on the front end. Couple things maybe on price caps. I don't want be repetitive and then maybe we can get to Noah Kahan as well. So that way we just address things that have been discussed and happy to take questions. On price caps, again, the concern in summary is you go from a regulated market to an unregulated market, right? You're not changing the market when you put those in. And so the consumer harm goes up. You know, I know there was just reference to Ireland. Interestingly enough, we use Ireland as the perfect example of the harm of price gaps. So that went in, in 2021. And there was a serious problem with ticket fraud, even going into 2024. The Irish police, the Bank of Ireland, Revolut, which is kind of like a Venmo, all issued kind of separate warnings about increased incidents of ticket scams leading up to large events because of the price gaps. And we've seen that not only in Ireland, but in other places as well, which is why, you know, there's so few states that have it. Again, as it relates to Maine, you know, the Maine bill, whether it is not necessarily a price cap. I mean, there's a lot of confusion around what that was and where the AG stands on it today as far as if it is or is that a price cap. The other thing I know that just came up and I heard the question, how do we validate? That's exactly the challenge with this, right? It is difficult compliance as well, because StubHub or any other platform doesn't have access to how much was paid for the ticket. So we'd essentially be looking to do one or two things, either check with the consumer or somehow talk about that open distribution that we discussed in the past so that we could go in there and validate it through technology. So those both the consumer harm and the lack of any enforcement challenges, think, are our opposition. As it relates to Noah Kahan, couple things there. I know there was reference to tickets being available on our website before the general on sale, and that those tickets didn't exist. This becomes the challenge with the industry and how the primary ticket works. One, I'd point to two studies federally with the Government Accountability Office. Secondly, the state of New York, that shows that anywhere between when you get to the general on sale, anywhere between 104550% of the tickets have already been sold. Right? So they are in the marketplace. Specifically with Noah Kahn, for example, the general on sale was on February 12. There was an artist pre sale on February 10, where 50,000 people were had access to to try to get tickets for that. Even before that, when you look at the concert that was set for Wrigley Field in Chicago, all season ticket holders for the Chicago Cubs had the ability to get up to six tickets on February 9. And so that's just one show, one example, that doesn't include the sponsors, the credit card holders, because they have the right credit card, all of that nature. And so there's a large number of tickets that are available in the market, so to speak, prior to on sale. And that is widely the case. So I just wanted to kind of note that. On transfer, the rules here can be confusing, no doubt. One, I just note that tickets purchased on our site, as I've mentioned, are backed by our Fam Protect Guarantee, right? So you'll get a valid ticket in time for the event or we'll make it right. A lot of times what we see with this is that tickets are non transferable at the start. And then the artist opens it up and they become transferable forty or seventy two hours before the event. So it's normal for delivery to happen, just closer to the event. That being said, you know, this is the challenge, right? We think that the consumer should have options, and should have choice, and shouldn't be forced into the Ticketmaster ecosystem. And who controls the artists, the promoters, the venues, the primary ticketing. And now wants to control the secondary market because that's where there's competition. And it's because of this attempt to restrict transfer, which is why more states have passed laws to open transfer than have tried to cap prices, right? That's the consumer benefit here more than capping prices. And so I think that addresses kind of a lot of what's been discussed. I know we've talked already at length. Happy to kind of take questions, but I thought that was some of the things that may be new or relevant since we last spoke.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, David. Edye? I'm just curious, what responsibility Is that word? StubHub have for tickets that are sold on your platform where there's no resale allowed, where the transfer is not allowed? So, is StubHub's responsibility?

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: What's the word I'm missing?

[David (StubHub representative)]: Yeah, what I'd say is we comply with all state and federal laws. Again, I'd go back to the fact that these

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: tickets Liability. That's the word I'm looking for. What's the liability that StubHub has selling a ticket on your website that is not transferable?

[David (StubHub representative)]: But again, I just note that a lot of these tickets do become transferable, Right? And and we we back it with our fan protect guarantee. Right? And so we get people through the door, and we do it legally. And, you know, we work with seller to do that.

[Rep. Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Okay, thanks.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Yeah, thanks for talking to us again. The last time we spoke, there was this issue around the price cap, not so much as a means to address predatory pricing, but rather the amount of the cap itself. And there was some there was some inquiries about so what what are the cost expense components, I think, of your price resale price? In other words, the expense items as opposed to say, you know, profit margin or something like that. And because that goes into whether or not the 10% cap is reasonable. Right?

[Rep. Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Right.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: I would just, you know, that would be information that I would try and help them, because it goes to whether or not that the level of the price cap is reasonable.

[David (StubHub representative)]: Yeah. I guess, again, as it was the price cap and and what the professor are you trying to address capping profits or crap capping revenue by that? Or because what we would say is the challenge with the price gap, again, going back to it, is the consumer harm first, because it leads to bigger fraud and the lack of enforceability and ability to validate.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: And I understand your position at the price camp. You know, any sort of entity that tries to get into some sort of regulatory setting, you know, utilities, you know, whatever, you know, some sort of regulatory agency where they're trying to figure out, because it's a non competitive situation or there's predatory kinds of issues, they always try to figure out, well, if you can regulate price, you gotta make sure it's reasonable, right? So they break it apart in terms of a reasonable profit and then the items of expense. So that's what I was hoping to get a little bit of a play from.

[David (StubHub representative)]: I have not seen anything like that that we've done. Again, price gaps aren't widely we don't have them generally as a general rule in The US. So it's not like we've had to comply, but let look more into that. But I haven't seen a itemization in that way for prices.

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: Yeah, I mean, I would think the expense items would be constant no matter if it's 10% over the original price or 300%

[Rep. Anthony "Tony" Micklus (Member)]: over

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: the Your expense components would be the same. It's just the amount of traffic, wouldn't it be?

[David (StubHub representative)]: The expense is overall, right? So I say that like our 20 fourseven customer service, our fan protect guarantee, those things are the cost of data security, right? Again, of credit card information being exchanged. The percent might be different on a ticket that's $6 versus $600 right? The costs are constant. It's not every ticket sold. 5% of it is expenses, right? It could be

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: think there are probably ways to reallocate,

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

[Rep. Herb Olson (Member)]: But that that's fine. I I think I get I I understand where you're coming from.

[Rep. Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: The questions? Okay. Too on the floor. I don't think we're gonna get to this to vote today. I think we will we may stay a little longer on Friday. We're at three eighty five to go through. Our budget letter, three eighty five, maybe at 03:00, we take this up and and finish it. So with that, thank you everyone. David, thank you for joining us again. Thank you. And so tomorrow morning committee, 09:00. We're we're on the floor all morning tomorrow. So 09:00 caucus of the whole state of the guard presentation. Trustees in the new item to the panel. We're back here at one on page two zero five. See if we can actually move that and then continue some discussions on the FY '25 budget with UVM. It will be when you call me, that will be in. We'll hear from Deepak and and the chance for the the month's state. And then when we finish the floor tomorrow, we're gonna try to see if we can move h 06:39 after the floor. So with that, we can go offline.