Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good afternoon, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Tuesday, 02/24/2026 at 03:51 in the afternoon. And so we're here to mark up and possibly vote on H512. This is the event ticket bill that we've been working on for the last couple of weeks. And we have our legislative council with us, Cameron Wood. So Cameron, if you'd like to walk us through this latest version of the last one.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, sir. I'd be happy to. For the record, Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel. Share my screen, we'll walk through draft 3.1 of the strike all amendment for H512. Really just some minor changes based on the conversation we had last time. For starters here, we've added a definition of price. If you recall, you know, the restriction on the resale of the ticket is capped at a 110% of the original price of the ticket, and we included the reference to including taxes and fees multiple times in that subdivision. And the section just kinda got really wordy. So I wanted to try to clean it up a little bit just to make it easier to read. So I've added the definition of price, means the total amount paid or to be paid for a ticket, including all taxes, fees, and charges. Price does not include actual shipping costs. So the next change is gonna be moving down here to the bottom of page two. This is where you have those notice requirements that you all put in, and one of them here at the bottom, the sub two, was about the information that is being provided on the availability of tickets on a given exchange. And, madam vice chair wanted a little bit of a cleanup just to ensure that the goal here is so that the information isn't misleading customers. And so we've removed a little bit of the language. So right now, it is if a secondary ticket exchange provides information about the number or percent of available tickets for a given event, the information shall not mislead customers about the avail the availability of tickets on that platform or on other platforms. So we just removed a little bit to ensure that the goal is not misleading individuals.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Keep going. See people want maybe pause. Okay.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the subsea, I just changed this kind of section heading to ensure that it's a it's a price cap on the resale of tickets. Think originally it was like I said, cap on secondary ticket exchange or something like that, but it's a price cap on all resale. So just clarification there. And then we get to the top of page three and here's where we kind of cleaned up this subdivision one. So it's a ticket reseller shall not sell or offer for sale a ticket at a price greater than 110 percent of the price of original ticket. So because we added that definition at the top, we don't need to have all that kind of superfluous language about everything including taxes and fees, etcetera. So it just really cleaned it up. Same thing on the sub two. Secondary ticket exchange shall not authorize for resale on the exchange a ticket price at greater than a 110% of the price of the original ticket. I believe that is it. Everything else remains the same as from how we reviewed it last.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You were able to make the small tweak that PAG offers?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I did not, but I would be happy to if you want. It would take me probably sixty to a hundred and twenty seconds if you want me to get you a draft 3.2, and I will just sit here while I do it if that's okay.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. Yep. Thank you.

[Michael Boutin]: Who's doing that? Do we wanna talk about the percentage? Because I know that was a topic.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Oh, 10 wait. There should be 10%. You're on the couch, Rob? What would you like to think about it?

[Michael Boutin]: It adds. I'm wondering

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: It's not showing up on our website.

[Michael Boutin]: It's better to see.

[Herb Olson]: Oh. Where is it?

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: He's fixing 50. That

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: would be a new one, I think.

[Michael Boutin]: Go ahead. I mean, I wouldn't have a problem going to a 120%. I don't know if it makes that much of a difference. I know there was some indigestion over the percentage. I think to strike a balance, 120 is is not outrageous. Charging $600 for a $100 ticket, that's outrageous. But an extra $20 on a $100 ticket, I don't know if that's too I don't think it's that bad. And you know what? We may find out it is too bad and we can always change it next year. Of course, the same could be said about the 110%. Talk yourself out

[Kirk White (Ranking Member)]: of equation. If

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: you aren't, really.

[Michael Boutin]: No, no. I'm not gonna talk to myself. I think that 120% would be a nice balance between the people that don't want a percentage at all. And not that there's anything wrong with not wanting a percentage, it's just I can understand the virtue of that and I can also understand the virtue of capping it.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus]: don't think there should be any price cap at all. I believe that with proper legislation, a price cap is not necessary, and I believe this is proper legislation. One of the things I find interesting is that we tend to want to make laws that go against natural laws. It'd be foolish for any of us to make a law against gravity, but yet we seem to think that something like this, which goes against the law of economics, be perfectly workable. Will it work in the short term? Most likely, maybe, for a little while. But what I see happening is these reputable companies that are doing this, this is not a cost effective business model. If I, for example, wanted to do just a local site that dealt with all the Vermont events, I wouldn't even bother now. There'd be no money in it. There'd be no profit. How would I even advertise? And what I think is going to eventually happen is these people, you're going to start seeing ads from non reputable companies that say, get more money for your tickets by listing with us, or they're going to go on Facebook Marketplace, and all these other different things. That said, the one saving grace, and why this is a yes vote for me, is because we have a clause in there where you under you can you can don't have the the cap if there's, a contractual agreement between the ticket seller and the and and a distributor.

[Abbey Duke]: I'm not sure if can see my hand is up. I was to a higher cap as well. That had been on my mind. But when we asked about what some suggestions might be, I didn't think we got much good testimony at all in sharing a perspective on what a good alternative to 10% would be. All And we can do is ask. The answers that we got weren't things that helped me feel stronger about moving that number from 110 to something above that.

[Herb Olson]: Yeah, 120% might be something. My concern is, I asked the witness, I think twice, know, so what are the elements of your costs? And, you know, because I know you gotta sort of attribute it to a particular ticket, but it seems to me you can allocate your costs and figure out, you know, what's the profit you're looking for. You know? People are tied up to a reasonable profit. And my concern is, you know, he he wasn't able to give us some of that information. So then I'm thinking, well, why didn't he give that information? I I don't know. It it I would going to a 120%, I just I don't know. I I would have preferred if they had said, you gotta go to a 120% because of these elements of of my costs and, you know, what I need for profit. But he didn't do that. I kind of feel that 110%, maybe that's okay, because he didn't say why that's unreasonable.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I don't know what other people think about that.

[Michael Boutin]: I think

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: you had Yeah. I just I think the venues would prefer zero. I think Vermont consumers would prefer zero. And and the 10% was intended to cover the cost. Just like you agree that I don't think they heard justification for higher than that. I do agree the contractual piece, if they want higher than that, get a contract and go as high as you want. There's no cap. So I think the purpose of us receiving this bill 110% meets that goal. Like I said, I don't think we heard justification otherwise.

[Kirk White (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, I generally agree. I was skeptical of the idea of a price cap. And I sort of, through reading and testimony and thinking, kind of came around that I think in this scenario, a price cap makes sense. 110, right? It just seems to be what has been posed. I will say that But I think the price cap is necessary to limit the harms that are being done. I think we primarily or entirely have very small venues here. This is not 10,000 person stadiums. I'll also say that I'm not too worried about whether or not the ticket resellers can make money or not because, of course, they can. It's just the person selling their ticket maybe has to sell it at a little bit of a loss. So if you bought a $100 ticket and there's a ticket reseller that is going to charge you $10 to resell it, or maybe they'll charge you $15 to resell it, and then fine, you just get $95 back. So I kind of came to there. I guess I don't think we have to set up a model in which ticket resellers it is a highly lucrative business. And the provision where a venue can have a contract with a ticket reseller so that they can have a trusted source who then maybe that is the opportunity then for bigger margins. So

[Michael Boutin]: those are my thoughts.

[Jonathan Cooper]: Yeah, I guess I

[Emily Carris Duncan]: would say I agree with pretty much everything that's been said. I think my thought about the price cap is that I think 110% is a good place to start. If we find that it's not working, we can always go back and we can adjust. I think that the arts sector, particularly the performing arts sector, has been so outpaced by this shift in the way that we are selling tickets and it's driving up the market and creating a pretty unstable market. So, I think that this would do at least a little something to help bring that stability back to the market and hopefully help our venues and our Vermont consumers.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Okay. I think Michael put a proposal on the table to go to 20%. Where is everybody? Everybody What would you like to do? Keep it at 10? Move to 20.

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: Not keep it at 10?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I would keep it at 10. That'd be different. So if everyone wants to keep

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus]: it at ten, I'm fine with that.

[Kirk White (Ranking Member)]: Could go with either as well.

[Herb Olson]: I'd prefer the 110 unless, I mean, we gotta make a decision here, but if someone can show that they're not making a reasonable profit and covering their expenses, that 110 might be obvious. But by now we haven't heard that, so 110.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Well, I think we have to remember too that the price cap is on the ticket holder. You're selling the ticket. You're selling the ticket. So if I bought, like Abbey said, I bought a ticket for $100, sell it for 110, and it's gonna cost me $15. Am I better off getting $95 and getting no dollars? Right. Yeah. So

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: I just want to say we're not capping the event ticket marketplace. We're not setting a cap for the events and we're not setting a cap for the artists. They are going to use our capitalist market to price their tickets. What we're saying is we don't want consumers to be taken advantage of by bots and by a secondary market that is buying up all these tickets so that the fans can't even have access to the artists that they want to support and see. And that's all that we're trying to do here. So that for me is why the 10% is totally fine in a place where I would not excited to trend at all. Yeah.

[Michael Boutin]: So just thinking about all the different stuff that's out there for businesses and think of DoorDash. DoorDash marks up their food. It's marked up and it's to help the person that's on the Doing the dashing? Yeah. Doing the dashing. And and do I and and that's my ideal bill would be you have to make it look like eBay, you know, and you have to disclose it all. I get

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: that, but DoorDash isn't going to the store and buying all the food and saying, you can only get food from me. That's the difference.

[Michael Boutin]: Well, I mean, that's the reason why I'm supportive, making it full disclosure. I think for me, the 120% would be a balance for me to get past the, we're regulating somebody's ability to sell something. And it sounds fine at first, but when we start applying that to industries across the spectrum, And I'm positive that people that are, they have their small businesses, whatever they have, don't want us as legislature to start capping that. That's all. For me, that's where the 120% was like And that's okay.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Coming over to my argument.

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: I mean, so you see a

[Michael Boutin]: consumer protection argument for it? So the consumer protection argument on my behalf is we need to have it disclosed. You can charge $600 if you're saying that you can go to the Flynn and get it for 50.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: But we can't But we can't.

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: We can't be called to do that. Yeah.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: We can't tell them to do that.

[Emily Carris Duncan]: Yeah. That's the thing.

[Herb Olson]: I wouldn't have any problem with that either, Mike. It's just that we've been told that the way constitution laws evolved favor that evolution, but the way it's evolved is that you can't that would be imposing a restriction on the resale of his first amendment rights. And I would I wouldn't mind the type of disclosure, but in the absence of being able to use that avenue, I kinda fall back to, well, you know, let's say that a reasonable amount. And reasonable amount would have we would have been really helped if people would have told us, you know, what their costs and margins were.

[Michael Boutin]: Oh, I I get it. And and I I don't know if that's a constitutional issue with disclosures,

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: but It is. Yeah. It's literally a constitutional issue. I

[Herb Olson]: don't I don't I don't understand it either, but

[Michael Boutin]: I don't understand that.

[Herb Olson]: That's true. It's true. Way that it it works these days.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. I think our legal counsel and our former legal counsel can agree Yeah. Constitutional issue for some matter.

[Herb Olson]: Otherwise, we could just have a disclosure. You know, I could concern we could choose.

[Michael Boutin]: Well, that's the way it

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: should ultimate world. Yeah. That'd be great.

[Emily Carris Duncan]: No. I'm

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: not summit until

[Michael Boutin]: one to 02:20.

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: So so

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: everyone that's in favor of going to 01/23. I think we're staying at one time. Let's take a look at surface revised.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I have a new draft 4.1. I haven't highlighted anything, so I'm just gonna run through very quickly some very technical changes that were raised by the attorney general's office. Surprised they weren't in communication with our editors. When you get to subsection two, so this is the cap, secondary ticket exchange shall not authorize for resale on the exchange a ticket for a price at greater than a 110%. I had it at priced. Technically, the definition is price, so just rephrasing that slightly. And then in sub three, this is the subsection about the cap not being in place if there is a contract. The recommendation was to ensure that that was a written contract. So just added in that instead of contracting that it's a written contract. And then the only other piece was down here in sub d one and two. It said secondary ticketing exchange. And I think that may have just been, like, a holdover from the very beginning when we first introduced because the definition is a secondary ticket exchange. So just aligning those words up and removing the I n g. Okay. That's it. There was a there was a a comment or a potential recommendation of removing the word event here. It says price cap on the resale of event tickets because, technically, the definition is a ticket, not an event ticket. I'm a little more reluctant to do that because I think having event there and also having event in the title section of the subchapter in the section is really signaling to people a little bit more of what you're referring to as opposed to just using the word ticket. So my recommendation would probably keep that. I don't think it has any legal issue by leaving it there. So I think it just helps signal to the Vermonter, the public a little better, more of what you're referring to than normal layman's terms.

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus]: That makes sense. I mean,

[Michael Boutin]: there's plane tickets and parking tickets.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good luck if you can resell your parking ticket.

[Michael Boutin]: Do you want a motion?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. No. Any questions for Cameron? Cameron, thank you. You're welcome. My pleasure. Susan, anything else you want to weigh in on? I know it's a new redraft.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: Very happy with it and really appreciate all the thought and time and That's how

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I put it.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: For the record?

[Susan (unidentified stakeholder)]: For the record, I'm Susan before,

[Unidentified witness]: and I'm very happy with the meeting.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: I appreciate all the thought and time. That's kind of true.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Great. Any further discussion? Because I need k. I'd entertain a motion to report favorably on Oops. Eight by twelve Four point.

[Michael Boutin]: Or at four point one. I make the motion.

[Abbey Duke]: One second.

[Michael Boutin]: You said 4.1?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: It's okay. It's okay. So it's been motioned by representative Boutin. Seconded by the senate of Duke. Any discussion committee?

[Abbey Duke]: I'll just note that I'll abstain at having reached my limit of votes, or maybe I don't even abstain. What is the thing that I'm gonna do?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You are not allowed to vote. Yeah. I voted off the aisle. Oh, no. Finally.

[Michael Boutin]: Didn't have

[Emily Carris Duncan]: to how it is.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: K. So when the court's ready, we call the roll.

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: Representative Bosch? Yes. Representative Bootin? Yes. Representative Carris Duncan?

[Emily Carris Duncan]: Yes. Representative nope. Representative Duke? Yes. Representative Nicholas?

[Anthony "Tony" Micklus]: Yes.

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: Representative Olson? Yes. Representative Priestley? Yes. Representative White?

[Kirk White]: Yes. Representative Granting? Yes. Representative Markotte? Yes.

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: Oh, and Representative Cooper? Addison. Yeah.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Ten zero one. Who would like to read? Carris Duncan? Okay, great. Committee, thank you. Susan, thank you. Matt, thank you. Thank you. Do have an email, Keith? Yeah. So you get a, yeah, get a clean copy to whole I got got it. It here. Yeah.

[Edye Graning (Vice Chair)]: You like anything else?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: So committee, I think that's it for today. We're back here at nine tomorrow. Everybody have a good evening. We will be back live again at nine tomorrow morning. I think we're beginning with conversational CTE. CTE, and I think we have an amendment on H-two zero five, then we'll be looking at that