Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good morning, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Friday, 04/24/2026 at 09:02 in the morning. Are here with our, almost the last time we daily legislative interns, hear their reports daily if you'd like to join us.

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern, Norwich University)]: Morning everybody. For the record, my name is Bailey Davis, a committee intern from Norwich University. So this week I primarily looked once again at the House Environment Committee, primarily their testimony on S-three 25. And so I guess going right into it, one of the first witnesses this week was Paul Costello, he's the former executive director of the Vermont Council of Rural Development. His testimony primarily was based around the community outreach and making sure there's clarity surrounding the new changes. As we know, the Land and Abuse Review Board conducts public meetings, and basically his focus was making sure that when these changes are implemented, not only do people know about them, but also they're structured in a way where it seems like it's not a top down encroachment on land use restrictions, more so a community based thing where you're preserving your own. For example, for historic areas, which I'll get into a little bit later, you're preserving your own downtown, you're preserving your own town center, as opposed to the state coming down and saying, This is what you're going do. He also emphasized the use of data, particularly cluster analysis, which is basically aggregate data like machine learning, which will identify common trends because it creates those clusters that where you see, basically data that's just obviously numbers at first, and you can basically visualize it and say, 'Okay, there's a cluster here, so there's obviously some sort of common thing going up in there.' And so basically making this a very data forward thing. And then the next day, the twenty second, one of the big testimony days, you had a few different people here. You had Ben Doyle, who's the Preservation Trust of Vermont. I think he's the president. Thomas Weiss, who's a Montpelier based civil engineer. And then you had Peter Tucker, who's the, I think he does outreach and he's also a public policy person over at the Vermont Agency, or Association, excuse me, of Realtors. Then you had Matt Bohlen, I think it's pronounced Bohlen, Bohlenier, something like that. But it's French. He's the Wilson Planning Director. And so first going to Bennington's testimony, he was the one really focused on those historic downtowns. As we know, even though it's the House Environment Committee, there are multiple different stakeholders. It's not just people who say, hey, we ought to protect the environment when it comes to especially tier three language, or people focused on environmental concerns. It's also people focused on preserving the character of their small town, the historic character. And so he promoted the idea that we've to have a more trust but fair price approach, to where you can give municipalities more power, which is something that S-three 25 can do, giving municipalities a little bit more power from the Land Use Review Board, but also having the Land Use Review Board also verifying that they're doing the things that they're supposed to be doing, actually following the regulations on the books. So moving on to Thomas Weiss, who's a civil engineer based at the Frisier, he's based here in Montpelier. He raised concerns about transferring some of that power. He, to Bennington, advocated the Land Use Review Board to maintain more oversight with the municipalities to make sure that they're actually following the regulations in the books. So while allowing the municipalities to have some more greater control than they've had in the past, also making sure that, know, I mean it's very simple, trust but verify. I mean that's like the best term I would say to really sum that up. Then going on to Peter Tucker, Vermont Association of Rutgers, he applauded the committee's decision to repeal the road rule and tier three language, and that's obviously a lot due to the rural community, road rule being related on driveways. I think it's 100 feet for new roads and 2,000 feet for new driveways, which given, say, a farmer wants to build a new road on his family's land, that would be quite a hurdle to get over. Then obviously tier three would just restrict a farmer who wants to build once again on that family there'd be more hoops to go over it. That was of course the divide between people who are more character focused. Like I said, those stakeholders, the environmentalists, the people who want to maintain the rural character in their towns, and then of course the landowners in some of those rural areas. That's kind of the divide that we've been seeing regarding this. And finally, I'm not going to butcher his name again, but Matt is the Williston Planning Director. He, of course, being more interested in zoning areas. He was more focused on the idea put forward in S-three 25 that you basically have by right exemptions from Act 181 regulation if you're served by municipal water and sewer wastewater. But of course, he also made the point that there needs to be, similarly to the testimony the day before, there needs to be more clarity. I think that's really a true line in all of this. Think there are definitely some divides, but I think one of the true lines, especially in his testimony, is that there needs to be more clarity, especially when it comes to businesses like Burlington, for example, looking at developers who want big developments. If they want to put their money forward, they need more certainty and more clarity when it comes whether or not their project is going get approved or regarding obviously its regulations, especially because part of S-three 25 was delegating more authority to the municipalities, which while that could be good in some places, it also means that there's going be more differences between municipalities. Some municipalities are going to implement things different than others. And that was again one of the concerns when it came to clarity when it comes to delegation. So with that being said, are there any questions?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Could you tell if the committee was in agreement on what they were hearing? Would there be detail?

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern, Norwich University)]: I could definitely get back to you in terms of what was specifically being said. I know there some disagreement, but generally speaking, I think there's general consensus on, especially the popular stuff, like repeal of the local courts and repeal of tier Stuff like that is generally consensus on. What I would say more controversial is the actual implementation of changing the authority from the Lands Review Board to local municipalities. I would say that's more of the convention.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Really, I'm curious, were they talking about who would do the work that they

[Unidentified Committee Member]: were describing in terms of public outreach? Would that be municipalities?

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern, Norwich University)]: Precipitation Trust The Land Use Review Board, what they were talking about in this was specifically the Land Use Review Board's meetings, so having those public to discuss ongoing projects in each of those. I forget how many regions there are districts, but it's broken up into that, so they'll have meetings on different projects in there. So that's more so what they were talking about. But again, like I said before, the through line is mainly the overall regulation, the overall regulation that would be changed and having clarity over that. That way people know exactly what they'd have to do to meet certain requirements for the different tiers and whatnot.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Other questions for Bailey? Bailey, thank you. Thank you.

[Abbott Sales (Legislative Intern)]: Good morning, everyone. Abbott Sales, legislative and PM. We're talking about the bills again in Senate Economic Development, starting by page two eleven, activating the data brokers and personal information. There were lots of people asking for exemptions this week. The National Student Clearing House requested to be exempt as they're regulated under FERPA. And they were arguing that deletion requests might interfere with services that they provide to students. And there was pretty broad community support for that. There's also the consumer data industry who are arguing for an exemption. The rest were arguing for an exemption if they're already regulated by the FRCA, CLBA, and TPPA. There are some questions about that, but there is likely to be some type of exemption based on the reaction from the committee there. There was also some discussion about the feasibility of creating a centralized deletion mechanism, which is probably not gonna happen. They're making a study. And private right to action, there was some discussion around that. That's something that's likely gonna stay, see. And then definitely urgency, as we all know, to move ahead or click. Moving on to H512, event ticketing. There was some new language there, defining a reseller as an entity whose primary business is sale or resale of tickets or an individual who engages in the resale of more than five tickets in a twelve month period. Now, that might just change back to the person, professional AG's office, who said it's very difficult to enforce five tickets if you're an individual in a twelve month period. The main pushback there was from Senator Chittenden, who wants to protect individual resellers, and that's why they're looking at that definition.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Did they hear from the representative or lobbyists for step up on that? They did a few weeks back. But as far as

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern, Norwich University)]: the individual,

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: my understanding, they weren't crazy about that, but would make it difficult for them to apply that.

[Abbott Sales (Legislative Intern)]: Right. Right. Yeah. Senator Chittenden has been very strong on making that distinction that they they did hear from them. There's also the specification that tickets must be for an event in the state of Vermont, and there's been a lot of discussion around the price cap too, but I think they've landed on 110% and probably what it's going to be. And that 110% price cap shall not apply if there's a written contract between the reseller and the venue. Well, as well as adding face value disclosure for all tickets that are resold, as well as sunset 07/01/2028. And broad support for all this overall, the biggest discussion is around the definition of a reseller.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: On a sunset, did they ask for a report back? Yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And that that is all I have for this one.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. Who's the report back? Was creating a. Probably the idea, but k.

[Abbott Sales (Legislative Intern)]: I'll just say too, this is probably my last time here, so I just wanted to thank you all. It's been

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: an exciting experience, probably on behalf of Bailey as well. We want to thank all of you. Since we started doing this, I don't know how many years ago, I think we're the only committee that actually has legislative interns for the committee. There's a lot of individuals, but we found it very helpful for our process and better understanding of what's going on. Research that we actually do is some of our stronger, heavier bills that we have. Extremely helpful, so thank you to both very much and we're most successful to both of you. Thank

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern, Norwich University)]: Yeah,

[Abbott Sales (Legislative Intern)]: we're grateful, and I know Liz is grateful that you host interns for the committee, because that's

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: what she wants to be. We've trying to talk to committee chairs about the benefits of having a committee. Don't know. Someday it was a good job. All

[Abbott Sales (Legislative Intern)]: we can do is

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: set an example. That's exactly right. He's cheers. That's so easy.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: We shall take You guys have

[Unidentified Committee Member]: been great. Yeah. Really super. There are two sort of aspects, you know, being sort of eyes and ears and places we can't be. That that's that's really and and some of the research has been super new, you know, really in-depth stuff, CTE certification, you know, that kind of thing, finding kind of things. Really, really good. Very in-depth. Very, very, very professional.

[Bailey Davis (Legislative Intern, Norwich University)]: So we kinda do.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: It's great that, you we have another school that's, you know, now we have Norwich along with UBM. It's really, I think it's opened the field up more students to come in here and learn. That feels like

[Unidentified Committee Member]: that's the vision. And I just want to

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: say, while it's on the

[Unidentified Committee Member]: record, that you guys were great to work with. You responded quickly, you responded well, did the jobs, had questions about what we meant, because sometimes we're talking in a foreign language. You asked questions, got the clarity, so thank you for your acceptance. This has been a great being a supervisor that made it really easy. I know it's not the case for every person.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Anything else? Good. So we're back in here after the floor or 10:30, whichever comes first, and then we'll start our journey on s 71. So I think we can go off live.