Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Good afternoon, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. This Friday, 05/15/2026 at p at 02:20 02:37 in the afternoon, we're finished from the floor and we're back to have a little bit of committee discussion on S-seventy one. So, committee, I think we're at a point where we need to make a decision. I have found no way that a seventy one three point three will get through the total process. I don't believe that we can get this I think we can maybe get it through this body, maybe. I don't think we'll get it through the Senate and I'm sure the government. That's the reality that we're at. So we have two choices to make. I think that we can say we're done and we'll have data privacy again here, or we can utilize Connecticut 2025, make some moderate changes to that, working with groups that are on the table, that we can prove something that will give us a basis for data privacy for now, And that's something we can build on over the years to come. So that's I think that's where we are. That's my evaluation. I don't know if I see it different, but open it up to committee discussion and which way you think we should go.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: So I think we should pass something.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: That's been obviously where I've been, that's probably it. Obviously, I feel that's a good.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I agree. I strongly support that direction.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I would say I'm not

[Unidentified Committee Member]: exactly pleased about it. I think that this is one of those fast moving subject areas where, because of our legislative councils are scheduled, because of enactment dates, and because of other states' same things, we are always going to be braiding our legislation together. I think we had an opportunity to actually help craft and make sure that the regional landscape with Connecticut was going to live up to the fast moving changes that are coming in this industry. So even with the twenty twenty five changes, I know they haven't been enacted, but there still is more work that needed to get done there. It's also not the world's worst thing, so I will, to your point, Chair, I think it's important that we get something going and have something that we can continue to craft and work on over time. I will support

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: it. So,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I concur with that approach. I think there's a lot of stuff in 3.3 that really is good stuff. At the same time, I very much want to try to see a bill, and frankly, Connecticut twenty twenty five, think is a pretty good bill. Course, Of would be better than they are, but it's a good bill and it would be a strong bill. We continue, are a few sort of tweaks kind of thing, and I hope we can think about those that wouldn't really disturb the basis for moving forward with Connecticut two twenty five. Because I yeah. So I support that dragon.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Devils in the detail. I

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I know. It was a minor change to one person. Might not be to another, and I accept that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Well, I don't think that, at least not for me, the the the need to pass a bill isn't just to say we passed the bill. I think there are some real protections in anything I've seen so far because we have none right now. So I think that's a good thing. I'm curious to know in whatever discussions you may have had, mister chairman, with chair of the senate or perhaps the governor's office, how much room do we have to fold in Connecticut 2025? Because that does meet one of my stated goals of of regional compatibility and making sure that everything is in lockstep with things in our

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: in our

[Unidentified Committee Member]: neighborhood, so to speak.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I think there's the so like I think like I said yesterday or the day before, these are all we need to learn now. But when we look at model law, especially for us, have model law in insurance and it's designed to try to make sure that the insurance companies can apply all the laws of the same throughout the country. But there are areas where we can deviate from model law because it can be Vermont centric things that we need to do. And I don't see this as any different. We want to take a regional approach, but we also need to think about Vermonters too. How do we, we can still craft within that Connecticut 2025, continue to work with people that are around the table, on the outside of the table, to work on those issues. I don't think that we can get all of the Gibbs Code's definitions in there, but there's certainly pieces of that that we can't biometric data. Some of that stuff. So I think we can see what develops and how much work we can go that's outside of Connecticut. Because not all of it, I don't know if all of it is going to fit or not. I want everybody to understand too that our timeframe is getting really short and for us to be able to deep dive Connecticut 2025 is probably not possible. So we need to there's gonna have to be some factors of trust here too.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: John? I I think that this for me is a helpful reset or understanding that we can go beyond, you know, knowing that you're seeing updates, that, you know, the horse is out of the barn and some of this stuff, and we will be playing catch up this industry in some ways. But we create this basis, and I think we can find what are the things we wanna add to that. And, you know, I think it's been important for us to consider aspects of data privacy in light of some things that I would term as abuses at a federal level that have taken place in our state. And I think that there is my sense of what we're learning so far is that we give a way to protect Vermonters to limit the extent that we can elements of this committee's jurisdiction that feed into other areas of life while still providing people with convenience and providing our commercial entities with access to Vermonters, those that that wanna support their support our our local businesses.

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: And my sense that that we're looking with some pretty good legislation, have a lot of people that have really engaged with people that have created that legislation outside of the state, and I'm excited about what we can do between now and probably next week to bring something that that's used palatable to all the coequal branches. Glad for this.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: Is there any way we can use as past as the base?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Well, that is, Michael, it's Connecticut.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: No, I know. Well, I'm just saying like the language as the base. Didn't know if Okay. Okay. No, no, that's fine.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: In order to get Connecticut 2025, gotta utilize Connecticut 2022 or '23.

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: I just I what I'm I'm I must not

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: have maybe some some tweaks in there that incorporate some of our language as well.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Was just gonna weigh in on your original question. I mean, as I said before, I think, starting at 2025 and then harmonizing that as best we can with what we already have in our Vermont statutes is certainly progress. And while, of course, I would prefer that we had House Bill 121 from two years ago, I also recognize that there's a matter of realism. You have to get done what you can get done, and any progress is is progress as long as we don't inadvertently put Trojan horses into our bill. And so I feel like we always have to be looking out for unintended or unintended by our committee, things and bills that may make them less effective than they appear. And so but beyond that, I feel like we do need to get to a resolution somewhere. And so I think start 2023 and move forward, would be the bipartisan.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I

[Monique Priestley (Clerk)]: guess I respect where we're at. I would rather us not continue than to copying a weakened version of Connecticut 2025. Connecticut's ONG AG said that too many of its residents and majority of complaints are falling under exemptions that they have, and that they are continuing to see an increase in harms that they can't do anything about, and that their laws are behind well behind. Maroni James Maroni, when he was doing his twenty twenty six bill, which is a significant update, again, that just passed and is going to be signed. He was building off of us trying to move the needle on publicly available information in kids code. So he was using that to update his own because his own publicly available information definition was too weak to enforce. When it comes to, like we had made, I mean, I feel like we started again from a really strong place. And we have backtracked every single thing. And we kept on having all these negotiation points, we would meet every single one. And the goalpost kept moving. Not having strong data minimization, it just doesn't make sense to me with having AG enforcement. Companies will continue to do whatever they want as far as collecting data and using it. Not having any type of prohibition on the sale of sensitive data, especially when Connecticut just updated theirs this year to add it, in the very least, a prohibition on the sales of precise geolocation. New Hampshire is trying to add kids in geolocation. Maryland just did a hard ban. Virginia did a ban on geolocation. This is what the states are trying to do. I will say that I am pretty sure no advocacy groups, civil rights groups will support this, and they will probably come out against this. It's also states like Maine and Washington and New York and Massachusetts do not have a law yet because they haven't been willing to take step that we're going to do right now, because it doesn't provide meaningful protection and because we're giving Vermonters a false sense of security. For me, this feels really dangerous. And it also feels like we're blindly we're being bullied into blindly copying. And other states, we're just basically throwing out everything we've done to say, let's just copy a state and copy the thing. Let's forget all the testimony we just had. Let's forget all of the work we just did and give power to outside pressures on the work that we're doing in a way that makes us just scrap all this stuff. And I just, that feels dangerous as an elected official to say, you know what, we'll just listen to what we're being told to do. We'll just copy in other states. We're not going to take more testimony on, like we haven't taken testimony on Connecticut 2025 without all of the other adjustments. And so we haven't fully vetted what we're about to do. I understand that happens all the time. But again, that just that feels super dangerous. And yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Point of clarification. We say Connecticut 2025. Is that legislation in one of the drafts that we

[Unidentified Committee Member]: have? No.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: We've never reviewed.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay, so I was under the impression that Connecticut twenty twenty five was more protective of consumers' privacy rights than, say, the Senate passed it.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's true.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's good.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Poor Rick.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'd like to see the document. I mean, I'm still in agreement with that general approach, but because I haven't I tried to read the Connecticut Act,

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: it's very

[Unidentified Committee Member]: hard to read, online. So, if we I guess I can do it, like, it up over the weekend, and we'll have a talk. I know, but there's only so much we can do.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: We'll have a document. We can look

[Michael Boutin (Member)]: at

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Yeah. Both. If people I mean, this isn't we're not saying Yeah. That it's something that maybe something we don't want.

[Jonathan Cooper (Member)]: Yeah. I see. But Yeah.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: I I can just know that the direction we're going in I I I totally understand. Should not bear any fruit.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I I totally understand. So And one of the reasons why I I buy buy into that notion is my impression that Connecticut 2025 is actually pretty good, is a better piece of legislation than S-seventy one, which I was not in favor of that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: No, and that's a good clarification, I think. There's a lot in 2.3, whatever version we've been looking at, that I really like. And I really value the protections that come from a law that that would create. At the same time, understanding that it doesn't have a path forward to become law in Vermont is what's putting me in a position to say, what's the best protection that we can get for Vermonters so that Vermonters can have agency over their data. I bump into it every single time I'm online. It's one of these things that, personally is important to me. It's very important to my constituents.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: You bet.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So, yeah, I don't, I mean, we should, our residents should have at least the protections that the residents who visit us from Connecticut have, right? Because Connecticut plates are flooding our streets right now, as they do this time of year. I just think about that every time I look at those license plates. It's one of those reminders for me.

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: So Tuesday morning at nine will begin. Floor at ten. Next week, floor is at ten and one. So I plan on between times where we're off the floor, we're back in here going through seventy one. I don't know how we schedule you, but somehow we'll figure it out. Okay. Any other questions, Kennedy? Get out early today so that you can get wrapped up for next week because you're gonna need to hold up. It's gonna be a wild ride, I think, for the next couple of weeks.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Bring your goodie bags. Okay?

[Michael Marcotte (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you, everyone.