Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Of the parole updates to the parole. Aye. Okay. Welcome back, folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions. We are running late. We're supposed to meet at one. It's my fault. This will be just a walk through of the bill, just to legally have a legal walk through of the bill in terms of what the legal language in the bill is saying. So, Hillary, if you could introduce yourself for the record, and then Great.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Just go on here.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And we do have Mary Mary Jane on, Zoom just in case we have some questions that pertain directly to the parole board or she wants to weigh in. So feel free.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Alright. For the record, Hillary Chittenden for the Office of Legislative Counsel. So I know the committee has already heard much about the parole board and talked a little bit about the bill, but I will walk through the details a little bit more. Just to set the stage, we're entitled 28 in chapter seven, which is all about parole.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And folks, you should have your bill in front

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: of you.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Where is it?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I don't know. I'm not responsible for you. Oh.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Oh, it already was printed. I'm sorry.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thought age five fifty nine. She's gonna walk us through the language of the bill. So you have to have the bill in front of you to know what she's saying.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It will make it easier to follow. I'll say that. Unless you have it memorized.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Our attachment. I'm sorry. For online page

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: and go to bills in or bills out. It's a commit it's a bill.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: 559. It's a bill.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: 559.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I know that. But what?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's rudimentary, folks. Can't work on a bill unless you have it in front of you. How long does it take ride? Break your pants. No.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: It's just electronically. It's misattached. If you hit the 559 tab, 549 comes up.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The link goes to 549. What was that?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Uh-oh. Well, we'll bring tape.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Well, I'm blaming anybody. I've been saying that it needs to be taped by now to fix it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Not a bad thing that might have happened in the system. So some folks get the paper copy. I don't involve them.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I'll just go to the home paper. There's a way around that. Welcome

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: to the world.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Just about four minutes four minutes from 01:30.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Our next

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Which has been one of your bills, Troy.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: When our next testifies

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: It's about IDs.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Well, why else? Admirable.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Okay. I'm happy to be with you all.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: It's great. Yeah.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: We'll tell you. Better to do, not with me.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Oh, sorry.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I Correct. Okay, folks. Who needs a copy of the bill?

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I'm just searching it on the home site, and the code will come up.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You know how to get to the home site?

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I do. I just usually work up electronically. Okay. I'm right here. I just usually get up. I'm sorry.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No. It's all yours, Hillary.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. So 559. We're in Title 28, Chapter seven, which is all about parole. There are kind of four main parts in Chapter seven. There are general definitions. There is the parole board. There is eligibility for parole and there is revocation. This bill is really talking about the parole board only. It's not talking about parole eligibility or parole revocation. So three main pieces of the changes that the bill proposes to make. First are changes to the composition of the board. So the bill would take the board from five members and two alternates to seven regular members. The bill would also impose a term limit of not more than two terms in a row. And the bill would update the language describing the kinds of knowledge and experience requirements that rural board members should have. So it's kind of the first bucket of changes, changes to the composition of the board.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So for folks, that's on page two?

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. We'll jump in on I'm just doing a little overview, and then we'll dig into the specific language. Never. You should always jump in to correct an ad. Save

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: our flags, though, correct? Because we already had a couple.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. Save our flags till we get to the language. Poor John, we're running a little late. You can come in here for refuge.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Look at the beautiful covered table.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, it's That's

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: why we get our snacks now, John.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That is table for the staff. Alright,

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: second big set of changes are providing training to board members. So there's a requirement, a new requirement, that role board members attend trainings. And there are some other changes charging the DIC commissioner and the director with providing those trainings. So that's the second bucket of changes. And the third and final bucket of changes are specifying some responsibilities at the role board director. So just keep those three things in mind, and we'll walk through the specific language. So starting on page one, lines fourteen and fifteen, you'll see we're amending the powers and responsibilities of the commissioner regarding the role in the bill.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Commissioner is the commissioner of corrections. Yep. So it's under title 28. Okay. So

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: on page two, lines one through five, we have the new added language. The bill would add subdivision six to charge the DOC commissioner to provide regular training for the parole board, at least annually, in collaboration with the parole board director on topics related to making determinations of parole, criminogenic behavior, mental health disorders, substance use treatment, trauma informed work with victims of crime, and serious crime rehabilitation. So starts to specify some of the topics for the training that we'll see shortly the parole board members will be required to take. So that's the change that's being made on the top of page two, charging the DOC commissioner with the responsibility to provide these regular trainings.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Now, a big question here, folks. He says, parole board is not under the department per se, though it's funded with a line item under DOC. But they don't answer to commissioner. It's the commissioner that's going to be set up to provide the training.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So commissioner in collaboration with the parole board director. So we'll see in a little bit that there are kind of three changes in the bill that go hand in hand. This is one of them. So we can skip ahead to this part. On page three, lines 15 through 16, this is now making a change in the section about the parole board, and it is adding a training requirement. So subsection d, a new subsection d, at least annually, each member of the parole board shall attend trainings designated by the parole board director. So new thing in the bill requiring parole board members to undergo training at least annually, And that's as designated by the parole board director.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: Mhmm.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That goes hand in hand with the change we just talked about at the top of page two saying we're going to require that parole board members attend training. We need to make sure that someone is charged with providing the training. So there's this change to included in the DOC commissioner's responsibilities since the Parole Board is at least under the umbrella of DOC, but it is in collaboration with the Parole Board Director who is really the one, at least as far as the bills changes go, who would be developing and providing the training. So the third change, I'm sorry to skip around, but these are the three training related provisions. And then we will go back to page two. But on page four, this is line seven through 10. This is the section that is discussing the parole board director. And section e, the bill would add a new section e, providing that the director shall be responsible for the overall function of the parole board, ensuring legal compliance, developing and implementing all policies and procedures of the board, and developing and providing training to the board in collaboration with the commissioner. So in response to Chair Emmons' question or prompt, those three sections are kind of working together to require the training and say who is in charge of it. And that is under the umbrella of the DOC commissioner. But really, the point person in the bill is the parole board director who would be developing those trainings. Any questions about the kind of training related changes in the bill?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think we have questions, but not to you. I think it's gonna be Excellent. For the committee members, it will be more towards the parole board folks. So make a note of that, Mary Jane, as well as DOC votes for this. And also, think one thing that we have to really focus on, if we wanna have, and this is a conversation with Trevor that I hope you two will have at some point, is do we really want to push having a separate line item of funding for the parole board in the state budget, not under DOC? And if we do that, how does that implicate this language? So just to put that in the back of your mind, folks. And

[Unidentified Committee Member]: it's probably I'm not seeing the language. Is this the total list of training or is this just examples of the type of training you want to make sure that they receive?

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The way it's drafted, they're examples of the kind. So related to it's trying to get some substance to the training that it's calling.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes, related to. Because that's not limited to, but related to. Got it. Thank you. It's dicey when you start limiting because you don't

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. What are you looking to limit?

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I do a clarifying question as well. Page three, line 15. Are you suggesting or saying that each board member only has to do training once annually?

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The way it is drafted is that required training would be at least once a year. So it could be more, but as currently drafted, it anticipates at least once yearly training.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: So we don't have to do this now, but I might want to play with that sentence a little bit. Because at least annually implies one day, And then it suggests multiple trainings, trainings plural. So we're almost setting them up for this day long, smorgasbord of various training. I would almost rather go with training as being necessary by the

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: anyway.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yep, so

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: if the committee has other ideas about what that training would look like and how frequent it should be, we can certainly discuss language that would capture that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Joe?

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Let me just just speak in general now. So page three, line five, which speaks to the three members of the board should constitute a quorum for the committee. But I think that's in in our first time, just looking at some currency basis, that was intended for when there was a five member board, but now it's a seven member board. Two members. So would that not need to be four? No. It could still

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: be three? We talked about that the other day. You can designate a different number. It's usually the majority, but it doesn't need to be the majority.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Doesn't need to be. Okay.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. So there are default rules in other statutes for what constitutes a quorum and how many people in a multi member body it takes to make decisions. The way this is drafted, it sets aside those default rules. So as drafted, it can say a quorum is three. If there are concerns about a quorum of a seven member board constituting three people or the ability of two members at a full board hearing, majority of members present, being able to make decisions, then we could discuss what changes in the

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: department as drafted.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: No problem. And then secondly and lastly, page two, line 12, the term limits. I know we discussed a little bit in there. And the question was, was posed, were there Are there impediments to qualified people getting on currently because there are individuals serving a lot of consecutive terms? And I think the answer was no. So I don't know that that's in the setting term limits that serves the public good here.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We'll discuss that when we get deeper into testimony. Some folks I remember Mary Jane's testimony that the current chair of the parole board was not supportive term limits. And there was some debate going back and forth about term limits that might help with the turnover of the board or getting new focus, new vision. So I flag that because that's an issue. We really have to talk with board members, the board, and see what we come down on. So I flagged that as an issue.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Great. That leads us right into our next set of changes. So we'll go back to page two and keep walking through the other changes in the bill. So this set of changes all affect the composition of the board. So on page two, lines eight through 10, that language is changing the board from five regular members and two alternate members to seven regular members. Next, as mentioned on page two, line 12, the bill would impose a term limit. So not an absolute term limit, but a number of terms in a row. No member shall serve more than two consecutive terms. So any member who served served two terms would have to take a break before they could keep serving. And the last substantive change in this section is on page two, line 16 through 18. And that is changing the language around the knowledge and experience of the board members to language a little bit more in keeping with language that we use now. So instead of knowledge of and experience in correctional treatment, crime prevention or human relations. The bill would provide that the board members must have knowledge of or experience in criminogenic behavior, mental health treatment, substance use disorder, or serious crime rehabilitation. The last set of changes on page three lines Can

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I just ask about that? Yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Who's going to determine that they have sufficient knowledge?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: As far as the advice,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the Senate shall appoint. It's the governor. When you go through, you've to go to the top page, line eight and nine. It's the governor that appoints. So there would be a screening that the administration does. That's what they do for most appointments. They have to meet certain qualifications or certain criteria.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: There's no particular certification. It's just that he believes he's got the proper knowledge.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: As drafted. Yep. And that's on me. I cut short that sentence when I was reading it out. On page three, lines two through four, this is the last change we haven't discussed yet. And this is a change consistent with the first one we talked about in this section, which is if we're going from five regular members into alternates to a board of seven regular members, we don't want to leave anything else in the statute that refers to alternate members because with the change to seven regular members, there are no longer any alternate members. So on page three, lines two through four, the bill is removing this reference to how alternate serve on the board. So removing the language that the chair or the executive director may assign alternates to serve on the board such and alternates shall have all the powers and majority of a regular member when so assigned.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So if you look at the current law, current law has five members. It's a five member board. And a quorum of that five member board is three. Okay? What this proposes is to do away with the alternates. And then you have a seven member board automatically. Do we still want three as a form of a seven member board?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Because

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the way it currently is, it's five members. Okay? The five member board And there's two alternates. Those alternates are there in case a member of the five can't show up. And a quorum of the five is through. So we're changing that to expand the number of the board from five to seven and no alternates. But we're keeping it right now that a quorum is three. So that's a policy thing that we'll have to make as we take testimony.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Did you follow?

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Yep. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because that is a big shift. Yeah. K? I'm not saying we make the decision now, folks. It is a policy decision, but we'll be taking more testimony and figure this out.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Any

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: other questions for Hillary here?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Well, I don't know if Hillary can answer this or not. Uh-oh. She might be able to.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Might be

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a question for me or might be for someone else.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I think

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it might be for Mary Jane.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But the other day, not yet not earlier today, but the other day when Mary Jane was with us, we talked about the the turbulence. And my understanding, I might be wrong, was that she didn't wanna get box us in, but maybe I'm wrong to the two consecutive terms.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the next process we're gonna do, folks. This is just the walk through with our legal counsel to let us know the structure of the bill Mhmm. And what the proposed changes are. Flag those issues that are important to you folks. That's a flag.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: K.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Who would we like to set up some testimony in the future about this next week?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Mary Jane.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Should we have the chair of the board? Yes.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think so.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: That'd be it. Mhmm.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you. This is Dean George. Do we want DOC? We can't be part of it. Who else do we want?

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Well, I'd be interested in just a board member. You know, the chair is one person. The chair is also getting paid $20,000 whereas the others aren't getting paid anything. So I kind of like to hear that perspective.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Anything else? I'm sitting here thinking if it's necessary or not about somebody with lived experience having to deal with the parole board. But I don't know. Maybe Mary A. King could help us find somebody. But I don't I don't know if that's relevant to this to this bill. That's that's what I'm trying to

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Why don't we park that?

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Wonder about it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we'll set up some testimony maybe next week to work on these. But the way to do it is when you're looking through the bill, and just like Shawn mentioned, flag it. I flagged the executive terms. I flagged really looking at the training. So flag those issues that are in play. Troy, you brought up about just the language about annually.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If we decide to do a line item and push for that, that may change some of the structure because then it's not the commissioner that's gonna have any say over anything. So then we really get into the statute itself. Yes. There is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate that also concerns the parole board, and I think has some language that might relate to some of the topics that you're talking about. Let me check. Senate two thirty seven.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Senate 37? Do you know, is that in Senate judiciary or Senate

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It has been referred to Senate judiciary. Yep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Are they working on it? Do you know?

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I do not have that.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Doesn't look like it.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Read first time on January 13.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. But just for the committee's awareness that there has been some language drafted that may touch on some of these topics.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's a 13 page.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: We already talked about what prompted this bill. Are there particular problems we're trying to address? Or is this Mary Jane's suggestion that we do this because of her experience? What's prompted this?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What it is is really there's two folks from the parole board who have been there a long time. They're not sure They're not continue. They've said they don't wanna continue. The chair of the parole board is finishing up, moving on. And they've been talking about this for a while. And Mary Jane, I don't know if you're available, but it came to me as a request from the attorney general's office and saying that they had worked with Mary Jane and tried to figure out how to update the parole board to really start responding to current practice and current issues that they're struggling with. That's where it came from. Is that fair, Mary Jane?

[Mary Jane Ainsworth (Director, Vermont Parole Board)]: Good afternoon. This is Mary Jane Ainsworth, the director of the parole board for the record. That is fair. Also, it's just a mission to modernize and bring the statutes more up to today's time. It's been a while. I know I've been in this role for almost seven years and just trying to go through and now that I've got my feet under me more, just really looking at how can we modernize the board and also have the board recognized for the work that it does and the highly, like I said this morning, just the nature of the the high nature, in high stakes that is at in the board's decision making.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Well, now when I was skiing

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: No.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we'll schedule more testimony on this. So however you folks file it, make sure you file it in a way that you can get back to the bill.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Alright. Thank you all. The teacher has spoken.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Thank We're gonna make it forty five minutes of your time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. We'll wait till we get to age 50. I hope John has a copy of the Senate. Thank you, Hillary. I appreciate it. You'll be there.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: I

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: don't remember credit on Torah, but it was one.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Pretty selfish politicians.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Through August. I'm not prepared for

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: this. I

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: can give a genesis of it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Remember the Who was the reporter of the bill?

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: It was

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I thought it was you.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Joe, I think No. Wasn't. No. Wasn't. Was it you? No. It's you.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You were

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: the I

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: didn't do that one. I did

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: get the bill.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You did. I did it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okey dokey. So the bill, pull out your bill, age 50

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Got it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: From last year. I'm 16.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's gonna be eight.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Five zero. I have the version that passed the house. Towards the end of the session, the senate changed it. And it came in a little we had some concerns, and I don't remember exactly which part was changed. But we had some concerns about it. It was too late in the session. So we brought the bill back to the committee so we could continue working on it this year for that. We know the genesis.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: I mean, I've got some other information that's relevant to it, if we could talk about it real quick.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Chuck, you have the Senate version.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Correct? I do. And I can share it on the screen. I have a few copies.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. That would be helpful. I'll

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: close it later. Lisa, our page today, judge.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And you were

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: the reporter, so I'm gonna put you on the exit. Could you go over and talk to the Senate at all on this? They were Here? Yeah, when they were looking at us?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. They never called.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They never called. Oh, okay. They added state lease. And there's another. Yeah. The added stick lease in statutory purpose. You wanna share this now or you wanna do it after John?

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: I mean, I just want to say, express a little bit of frustration and then I'll get off there. But if you looked at the original purpose of the bill, and this was looking at a city like Montpelier, where we are a very small postage stamp of land. We don't have any city property, but we've got a huge housing need like everybody else does here. So if there's no sacred cows anymore, the thought was, okay, if we've got a bunch of state land, we should look at ideas that we could convert some of it, land. The buildings, less likely the buildings, more likely the land that we could possibly develop and build housing in the places we need it most, which is in our downtown population centers. So H50's purpose was this bill proposes to test the Department of BGS with identifying state real properties suitable for the conversion into affordable housing. It's a one line bill. And it said that every year on or before January 15, every biennium, the administration would study and submit to the general assembly a report that examines whether any of the state's real property, including underutilized lots and population centers would be suitable for affordable housing. I don't think the administration opposed it and I'm not blaming BGS because this is 5th Floor stuff. But there was definitely a chilling factor in that, that the various reasons administration would not be able to come back to us with a list of viable housing options, as the bill specified. And this got watered down into an inventory of state buildings. Because right now we get that's not the space book.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, it includes the inventory of state buildings. Space book.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah. So the space book, right?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The new one. The new one.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: I don't have that copy yet.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, it just came out.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: It's good. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I just got it two days ago.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: And that's valuable because we didn't know what A and R land there was or A. O. T. Land. So having an all in one place that's easily digestible makes sense because we know our districts better than anybody else. And if we can look in our districts for opportunities like this, that could result in action. So the executive order comes out and section four state utilization of land. By 12/01/2025, each state agency and department owning real property shall submit to BGS and the Department of Housing and Community Development complete inventory of un and underutilized properties suitable for multifamily housing development, housing infill, mobile park, shelter construction, rehabilitation as defined by the Secretary of Commerce. They'll assess the multifamily housing and development feasibility and infrastructure capacity. And they'll recommend for disposal, which would be in the capital bill, for disposal or long term lease agreements to support meeting the state's housing unit generation goals. So my frustration, right? This is almost verbatim what that bill said initially.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's the idea.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: And okay, yeah, it's flattering. But we spent hours of testimony on this. It went to both chambers and passed. I would have been happy as Larry if we put that exact language in front and said, let's pass it out tomorrow. So I just like We're either working together or we're not here. And it's not about who gets the credit, but this is important stuff, I think. And we just gotta be honest going into it. And again, I know BGS gets the orders from up top there. But I think we need to So now it makes me question, what's the purpose of this bill? Which is an inventory, which is way watered down from the original intent?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Let's find out.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Okay. Thank you for tolerating me, everybody. Totally understand.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Welcome, John. You. I didn't feel it for the committee.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Juices flowing.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I was

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: asleep, now I'm not. John May, Office of Legislative Counsel. I'm gonna screen share this bill that looks very different from what was just described. Page 50, act relating to identifying underutilized state buildings and land, current title. Just a few additions that the Senate proposed in their amendment, but just to orient before I jump into the differences proposed by the Senate, this is just touching Commissioner PGS's inventorying process. They regularly collect information from agencies on the buildings that are out there and whether those are properly utilized. And this is just updating that statute and then tasking at the end a report to you guys so you have information on those vacant or underutilized spaces. So if we think about what passed out of the House, we can just strike out the highlighted language here. So as passed out of the House, the update to the statute was commissioners shall maintain an inventory of all state owned buildings and land and biannually compile and update that information under subsection G. And that will be considered when making spacing allocations and designated uses. The update you see here is to add four state leased buildings. I I don't know exactly what the thinking from the Senate Committee is because in part, if you think about what the information you're collecting under subsection G, which is what the subsection links to, is about getting inventories from the agencies as to the properties that they're running. So I think my guess is the addition of or state leased is really tied to, and I'm just gonna jump around, subsection J on page two, and I'm starting on line six. Because this was previously just a section in statute about the inventory in practice, but now you've added a subsection to get these legislative reports to you guys, the committees of jurisdiction, I'm guessing that the thinking here, adding the state lease, was just we want as much information as we can get as a legislative committee. So you're shifting a little bit the orientation of the section is the way that I would describe it. It's not necessarily anything wrong, it's just how is it predicated on subsection G, and it could be useful information to have. But if this is about identifying underutilized state properties, state leased not those up when the state has had to go out, rather, other properties. Just noting that in subsection E, the expansion that the Senate has proposed is maintaining an inventory of all state owned or state leased buildings and lands. So we would get a broader inventory. But if you think of the purpose of this as ensuring that space allocations are done efficiently for existing state property, that other information, whether the state is leasing land, would be information that the commissioner already has. That's decisions that they're making. And I think one thing that came to mind, and maybe

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: this is right or wrong, just the term state leased. Does that mean state property that we're leasing out? Or does that mean that the state is leasing a private property?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You would already be getting the former through the state owned piece, because if you were leasing out, that would be state owned. So I take it to This is referencing non state owned. The state needs this land because they have insufficient lands or buildings and they've had to go out and access a building because they didn't have. And that's kind of the point I was trying to make is that the inventory, the section is currently enacted, it's about gathering, are we efficiently using the state spaces that we have? If you are and then you need extra space, you have to go out and lease lands, that's information that would already be right. So that's the first piece.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Wait a minute, I'm not clear on this.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Go for it. Because,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: you remember me, I'm thinking we do need to know state leased that we own and that we don't own, so we get a full picture. Is that full picture going to come? Yes.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, you're getting state owned. State owned is what is in statute. If you have state owned and you're leasing it out, you are already getting that under this. The addition here is non state owned lands if the state is going out and needing to lease buildings or lands.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Like the new building at Waterbury.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. You would get access to that information.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: As

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: well. As well. As well. You would get both. This is adding information that you receive.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That's all I'm trying yeah. Okay. Thank you.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: So like in terms of the national life leases.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We wanna know that. We don't own that building.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I don't care. I wanna know that we're

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: out, but we lease it.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: But we would then get access to that to the the the lease terms.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. I think that the sorry. I don't wanna cut off that line. Sorry.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Inventory.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I I think that the

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: terms of the inventory.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The conceptual point I wanted to make, which may mean nothing to you guys, unless you just may not care, is there's a logic to the way that the section is organized as in law, which is about inventorying for the Department of Buildings and General Services purposes, inventorying so that they can allocate spaces. Now, and you can do this, it's a slight shift to what the section does. It's an information gathering process for the legislature in addition to for BTS, is the way I'm trying to describe it. That may not matter to you. I'm just saying that there's a different logic to the way the section works now. And you may find that information useful.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: We should be able to resolve

[Unidentified Committee Member]: while we're

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So I just wanna bring up to speed what the next step is for this. Reporter of the bill will have to bring to the floor what our decision is on age 50. It is still in play. It passed the House. It passed the Senate. So the next step is, do we concur with the Senate proposals of amendment? Do we not concur with the Senate proposal of amendment and ask for a conference committee? Do we concur with the proposal of amendment with further amendment? That's what's before us. So if you remember, we had to do this for the capital bill last year. So this is the same process here. Okay. And it's James that will carry this because he was the reporter of the bill on the floor. Troy?

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I don't necessarily have any issues with the changes that the Senate made. They don't make they don't it doesn't matter to what we're trying to do with this bill. It doesn't hurt. Doesn't hurt. Right.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And they did this Facebook was just delivered, and they did include the inventory of state owned and state leased.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Okay. Right. So that's I could concur, and it wouldn't matter. I'm just in alliance with my colleague for Montpelier here. I'd be interested in bringing that language from the executive order into an amendment, and let's get it back into the statute.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So this was going to be a follow-up question that I was gonna ask our legal counsel. That language that Conor read is part of an executive order. How long is that executive order in place? And what's the legislative role when there's an executive order that's been issued?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I would need to look at the executive order. I hadn't seen this prior to today, but something I could look into and just see. Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And what is the legislative role when there's an executive order that has been promulgated? Can we weigh in on it? Can we change it? Can we do something in a bill that changes the executive order?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You can propose to. I think it will be helpful if I come back having read the executive order, and I can give you better information.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: And send it to you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I mean, we could I mean, one thing I was thinking, Troy, I was thinking it and I just didn't voice it because I wanted for each to know what the steps were for the next four H fifty. If we choose to, it would basically almost be a strike call.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And go back to your line, to the language that's in the executive order.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah. I mean, like, the one thing the executive order is missing is a report will be delivered December 1, but there's no mention of the general assembly of this. So getting whatever information is received from the department and the agency back to us on an annual or every other year basis would be helpful. That was the original intent.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There would be nothing conflicting about that, right? That's nothing conflicting.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: It's information that's already been collected.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: This is how it would play out. If we amend it, it would be there's some sim there's scenarios here we could do. We could say we disagree with this and go into conference committee. Okay? What is negotiated in conference committee is only the difference between the House and Senate version. You could not bring in the language that's in the executive. Okay? But you can only negotiate between the two bodies what's currently in each version of the bill. We have a version, the Senate has version. So then you would concur with further proposal of amendment, which would then put in the language of what was in the executive order and place it on here. So that can take two tracks. It could take a track where Senate institutions, we try to work with them to understand where we are to see if they would accept our proposed amendment, which is educating five members of the Or we can have a conversation with the chair of senate institutions and say, we're interested in doing this. Maybe the best way to resolve this is we concur with a further further proposal of amendment. We pass the house floor. It comes over to the senate. They disagree and ask for a conference committee. And then you can discuss it with three members from this committee and three members from institutions committee. And personally, I would weigh in on that side. Yeah. Because then you're gonna have a better conversation.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's yep.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Would y'all like to hear the remainder of the bill?

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Some of might be helpful.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You're way ahead of you, John.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Like, the next week naturally occur after the bill.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, some of us jump in, Ned.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's great. For it. Ask the movement. I appreciate that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Go for it.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: On page two, this line, you'll recall, the head of each agency, this is part of that inventory process that each agency is providing to the firm. The head of each agency shall additionally indicate in its inventory in a format prescribed by the commissioner whether any building is vacant and whether any land is unnecessary for the statutory purpose of the agency. This is a narrowing of what passed out of the House. The House was for state purposes. So you can imagine that the determination that the head of each agency would have to make is a pretty broad one. Is this land unnecessary for state purposes? That could conceivably extend beyond their knowledge of what the agency pursues, which I think animated the Senate's proposed change here, which is I think it came from a place of how fair is it to ask the heads of these agencies to make that broad determination. Wouldn't it be fair to ask them, is it unnecessary for the purposes of your agency essentially? And so that's what this switch is. The one complication I would note for this is I don't know that every agency has a statutory purpose. So you may agree in concept perhaps with the Senate's proposal and maybe it's fine, but just note that if your agency didn't have a statutory purpose, then all you would need to report is whether any building is vacant. And I think you would just note we don't have a statutory purpose, and maybe you could make some determination that it doesn't put and there's ways to address this. Just don't say statutory purpose. Say purpose.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Right. Statutory.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So clarifying question.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Isn't there a statute somewhere for every agency that it has created the agency of the purpose of?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We have creations for each of them. I'm just not sure how prescriptive or useful the creation language is, and they've been created across various times. I just wanted to call out the utility of this link to statutory purpose may not be as obvious as it sounds. When you hear it, you think, Oh, that makes all kinds of sense. This is the kind of thing that they would know about themselves, what the purpose of the agency is, and they could pretty easily declare whether the land is unnecessary for it. But having not inventoried all of the agency's purposes, which I can just look if you want me to see the language for the agencies. Wouldn't be that one, could you?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, I don't want you to do some work to do that in case

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If you are rejecting the whole concept.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. I want you to do

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: some work. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: where are we as a committee must be thinking? I laid out the different directions. What's the thinking? Are people clear on the different directions? Mhmm. Conference. Conference. But you gotta get an amendment on the board first. But you can't go to a if you go to a conference disagreeing right now with what the senate's done, you can't bring in what Conor wants to bring in because it's new.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Just to add complexity to that already complex situation, you could bring it in, but then if the conference committee votes it out and the chamber would have the opportunity to reject the conference committee report on the basis that they strayed from the balance of the text, basically. So you technically can do it. It's just whether or not someone will reject. And

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: we don't

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: know if they would.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what would the committee like to do here?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Mean, I think that's the right Conor,

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: do you want to draft up the amendment?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: No, it'd be John. It's John. I would also like to have a little bit of basis in terms when there's an executive order. I know in the past, in the old days, there was an executive order, those standing committees that were connected to it took review of it and weighed in on it. I remember that. That was way back when all of you were many of you were young or not born. 23 year old. And now, you know, we haven't seen too many executive orders over the years. So I just don't know

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: what Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Common practices anymore. So if we're gonna pull up language from the executive order and keep the maybe the report back

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Mhmm. We're we're adding

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the report to the general census.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We have that, don't we?

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: No. Not in the executive order.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. I'm not It's

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: in bill.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: It's in the Oh, it's already in the bill.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You don't know if you follow?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm not following all this. You knew.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So Conor had an executive order

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I know that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Of housing that incorporated language based

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Not on all of the way. You're being incorporated.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Well, took language from the original h 50, basically that Conor had. They were fighting us, not fighting us, but they were saying that wouldn't work. They wanted to soften it a little bit, have it more malleable. And that's what we did in our version when we passed eight fifty. We did a strike And now the bill got changed a little bit in the senate and came over, and it came in at the end of the session last May. We had concerns about the term state lease. We said, let's bring it back into committee. That's how you get it off the calendar. Bring it back into committee. Now we're reevaluating because the governor has issued an executive order for housing that basically uses the language of Conor's original bill that we basically did a strike call based on testimony from the administration. So they've gone one

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So how does this like, then how do those two things stand separately, the executive order and then age 50?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I had not read the executive order, but executive order's out there. You guys are in the process of developing a bill. If you wanted to go back to something like the original, I think maybe part of the confusion here is what's in front of you is not the section that you would be amending if you did something like the EO. What you have in front of you is the inventorying process, and the previous, the bill is introduced was updating the directives, the actual duties of the commissioner of BGS. So it's in kind of a authorizing statute for BGS and setting out a set of tasks that the commissioner has to follow. So that would likely be the place that you would go back and put this. But once I look at the executive order, I can also see if there's a better place that it belongs, but it may not be going in this It may, but it may not be going in this inventory section. Thank you, John. Helps. Sounds like we need

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Had you

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: sent that

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: to you, Thutra? Right.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we're gonna have to take more testimony from John, Mhmm. And we're also gonna have to have BGS here. Maybe we could get somebody from the 5th Floor here. Because they must

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: that happened to us.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: So they must must

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: have reached out to see Maybe they did, but we'll have to take some because we have to stand by what we do here, folks. We can't just willy nilly do it. We need to take some testimony to for backup and to see if it is workable. But what I'm hearing is we do the language. It's in the executive order. We concur with further proposal of amendment. Vote it out of committee, comes up to the floor, I need to have a conversation with the chair of institutions to let her know what's happening.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Personally,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I wouldn't say to her, it might be better to ask for a conference committee on her end because this will be hard for five members of another committee, you know, just to come to speed with everything. It'd be better to talk it through. Because when you go into conference committee, you would have the new version as well as the old version in front of you, basically. It's complicated.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: Yeah. Well, thanks for explaining that, because

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I was a little lost on it.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: There's a path where this doesn't go to conference committee as well. If we do an amendment, a further amendment, they accept it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They would have to spend a

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: lot of time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It might be better. I think it's

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I gotcha. Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And it might be better for folks to experience a conference committee, because it's a different world. And it will give an opportunity for members of this committee to, three members of this committee to be on a conference committee that wouldn't normally be on a conference committee, which I think is important for folks. Because you get it's a whole different environment on a conference committee as John has experienced. Right?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Indeed. But you were on the conference committee, guess, once it's That's

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: a capital bill. This is not capital. This is a separate bill.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Gotcha.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Which gives an opportunity for members to sit on a conference committee. Right. And you start learning what the process is, and you start learning what's the view of the other body. And you build relationships. You start understanding how legislation comes together. So it could be a good exercise for that, because we don't have that many bills that you can get into conference.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: It's fun to watch chair in action in a conference committee. For me?

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Never feisty at all.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm fine.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There's some interesting stuff. The

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: conference committee you staff

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: or us?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Both of them.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Memorable. Memorable. Memorable.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What's that?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Good. I recall an accession of the Let's

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: do a break. Agatha, how long is it going to take?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: We can do it in as long or short

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: as

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you'd like.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Get out of chair.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: John, look at the executive order. Conor, we've sent him the language, then we'll go from there. And we'll schedule a time for you next week.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sounds good.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And so if you would like to take or when you're available

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Sure.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: To do this next week, I will have a conversation with Senator Harrison Yep. In the meantime.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: May have heard me yelling in the hall. Yeah. Very cool.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Thanks, Thanks, Shawn. Do

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: folks want a quick break?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Form function. Better roll. Mary, no, keep going.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Okay, sweet and warm.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Take a personal break. Take a personal break.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: John, are you available? You're not available now, are you?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right now? Yeah. I've to go to a meeting. What's going on?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Statehouse expansion, statehouse work, statehouse safety access that might end up in the capital bill. Might be in the governor's thing, might not be the governor's thing.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sounds good. I'll be by tomorrow morning also for our thing.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: For our thing at 08:30.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And then I'll be back in for BGS' testimony in the morning.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Because this piece with some arms may percolate will be percolating through. It's good. So play it the best you can. That

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: sounds wonderful. Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We have no audition or not. We don't know yet.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If I get more out of it, then I will listen intently. Thank

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you. Okay, Agatha, come on up.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Okay, the state curator joins me.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Sure. Okay.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Can just have a little chair? No, I'm not sure if he'll do that.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Okay.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: He's around.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: He's going to air quality check outside right now.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. So where are we? There has been conversations, really since the world of COVID, about a space in the statehouse. And for folks who were here two years ago, we talked a little bit about this. We did a tour of what were the possibilities. The Joint Legislative Management Committee has been working on this with Sergeant Arm's office, the curator's office with BGS. And it's really being more discussed in terms of single point of entry, possibly, in life safety issues, security, life safety, ADA access, just flow of the public coming into the building in a more strategic manner, basically. We don't know if anything's going be put in the governor's capital bill or not. But Agatha reached out to me to see if they could give us an overview of what the conversations have been, of what the thinking is, and explain the dollar. I'll those to yours, and

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: then we have our curator with us, Debbie Chittenden. And we did send over a PowerPoint. We do have some things to show you. Okay. And Representative Emmons, when would you like us to wrap up by? You're on the Floor 3?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We'll be on the Floor 3. Okay. Whatever works. Perfect. And you submitted this electronically?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes. And I apologize, Tate, that it came in late.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So copy's

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: all the way. Okay. Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: There a way for her to share? Or Yes. Or would it work, take could you just move the pages along?

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. I can get it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Would that work better? And I could That'd

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: be great.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. If you could just work the pages along. It's up on our screen and there are pages.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Because there's actually some pictures to see of what this edition looked like, century would look like. Very exciting.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sneaky

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: things. Yes. You'll be the first standing committee to see such a thing. We're

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: very important.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes. Yeah. That's why we're here. So kind of to start, and Dave and I, we're going to co present. You could think of it as a duet almost.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: How's that?

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Is that harmony?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Because we both are very invested in this project. Myself, from a security standpoint, and visitor services. David, from a visitor services, this building, he restored this building. It's important for him to be a part of a project like this. And so essentially, what this is would be to create an entryway for the State House. We have lots of entrances, five public entrances, five public doors, but we do not have an entryway. And this is not a wish list, like wouldn't it be nice to have an entryway? There's actually a lot of very important components to an entryway and what it does and what it offers to a building like the State House, which is the number one most visited building for school groups. This is where the laws are made. This is an exceptionally important building. You would probably say it's the most important building in the state.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: Hands down.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Yes. And

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: don't have an entryway. And so what it does, and thank you so much, Kate.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Troy Headrick.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Okay. Is it creates obviously climate control. You have the best of you all. You can control the climate. Moisture and climate in this building is an ongoing issue, as you know, with our HVAC project, which will improve it. But we will constantly be fighting moisture and air in this building. What an entryway does is create wayfinding so that people who are coming into the building, they know where to go. Immediately they'll know how to locate the elevators, the stairs, the restrooms, the lactation room, the Capitol Police Office. Right now, when people come into the building, it's like they've been dropped off in the middle of the land of Oz. They don't know where to go. They don't know who to ask questions. They might find someone with a gold tag, But it's a very, I would say, unwelcoming way of coming into the building and a very intimidating way of coming into the building. And oftentimes, are coming to the State House or coming here already nervous. And then they come in and they have no idea where to go, where to ask for help. David, would you like to talk about visitor services?

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: I think from the standpoint of visitors in particular, they are the people, especially, who feel they're in the land box. In other words, anyone who knows the statehouse to any extent, at least knows how to navigate. But during the pandemic, we discovered as people started to come back only in the rear, that coming into the building from the rear, which is our only AVA access, then where? And it becomes very labyrinthine to find your way to the main lobby, which is where some explanation at least might happen. So I think we're looking at this, of course, from the session, but we're also looking at this for the rest of the year when the State House is among the top tourist attractions in the state. And there, we may have not necessarily single point of entry continuing to use the front as a means of access. But everything has to work together properly. And in particular, during the session, we get our greatest numbers of people, because it's not just visitors, it's people who are here to actively do the business of Vermont and the the business that you're part of. So we've gotta make sure they know where to go, where to dispense with things, how to make sure it's safe. But the biggest thing is for this building to be fully accessible to every Vermonter who wants to cross its threshold. That has to happen. And for this to not have that kind of access is ridiculous at this point.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: And that's where ADA kind of kicks in. So our building is compliant. We have many waivers in the building. This building was built in 1859, did I get that right? And it was probably never contemplated for it to operate as it's operating now with monitors on the screen and with sprinkler systems and suppression device and plumbing. It's a miracle, honestly, that this building looks beautiful as it does and is as modern as it is. So we're compliant. But I would say we're not courteous. If you are someone with mobility issues and you're trying to park and get into this building, you need to talk to a lot of people to be able to do that. You cannot easily self navigate into the building. And our loading dock is our accessible entrance, and it's a loading dock. It's also where the 40 foot trucks pull up to deliver our Coca Cola. At the same time, perhaps someone has been getting dropped off in their wheelchair. At the same time that massive icicles are forming at the top of the eaves and dropping into that area, ice removal icicles in that area in the last five years have become hazardous to the point where BGS multiple times a year goes out there with a lift to remove them. So we have funneled our And then on a day that we have single point of entry, like today, which leads me to my biggest priority in this project is security. On a day when we have single point of entry, we are funneling everybody into that vortex of the loading dock, where the icicles are falling and the trucks are backing in, and it's the handicap accessible entrance, and it is not welcoming. People wait in line for ten, fifteen minutes in the snow, in the rain. So what the entryway does, if you wouldn't mind going to the next slide, this is Femoral, please. Sorry, thank you. The entryway provides a space for security screening. And that is, right now and forevermore, the best way that we can protect the building and the occupants of the building is with security screening. We are one of only a few state houses that do not have screening. Hampshire is one of them. And it is now just the expectation that there will be screening done. We have a large demand for it. And when we come in, I think next week or the week after the New Year's security training, we'll talk about what would happen if there was an active threat situation in the House chamber. And if we have screening, you really don't have to worry about that situation. So I'll leave it at that. I don't want turn this into a security briefing. But what the entryway does is allow for proper safety screening. And so this is just a three-dimensional image of what that entryway would look like. And do you want to maybe talk for a minute about the shape of it?

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: This is where the loading dock currently is. So it projects a bit beyond the current facade. This is the 1886 edition that we're in right now, with the fire escape still here. At some future time, by the way, the architects have looked at the possibility of doing things later on that are not part of this project that might eventually get rid of the fire escape. And there'd be

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you're working with Freeman French Freeman?

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: Freeman French Freeman. Correct. And the curve is they chose the curve and started showing this shape to us, is inspired by the dome. So the curve comes directly bought out for that, but what's nice about it from an historic preservation point of view is you want to be able to clearly define what are the historic parts of the building and what is this new thing. Because the new thing needs to read as a new thing. It also needs to project, of course, because visitors have to see where they're going. So this is the single point of entry. You need to be able to identify it quickly as the place to go.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Are they looking at parking?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Parking is one of the things we still need to figure out, because this would take over that lot. I believe it's the sea lot, the lot that's right in front where the cruiser is and some legislators park there. So that is one of the things that still needs to be figured out.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Shipping and receding, too.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Maybe we'll go to No, I'm here.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We're So going be blasting with this. There'd be I

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: think the one that if there is minimal, and also, David and I are here to give the overview when there's the deeper questions we should bring in Freeman Fiji's they're the project managers, and Freeman French Freeman.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So is the Capital Complex Commission going to have to get involved? Does this go out?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes, we have a lot of stakeholder engagement to do.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the Capital Complex Commission is made up of folks within the city of Montpelier and some folks. So when there's an addition or changes to the State House that visually looks different, they become involved. Does anything on the National Historic get involved? Because this is a

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: So this is a National Historic Landmark, which is the highest category of preservation in the nation. And Laura Trishman, the State Historic Preservation Officer, has been with us every step of the development of this. She's ready to work with the team to get it through that process as well.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: So we can go to the next slide, please, Tate. And just I'll breeze through this one, but this just shows the state house and the different components of it and when they were built. And I love this piece because it shows that this is the original State House in the purple, but we've added onto it over the years. It's been almost fifty years since we've done an add on. And I like it because it shows that it's okay to add onto the State House. It's expected to add onto the State House. And we're ready for a new color on there. And also, this project did not drop out of thin air. There have been multiple space studies done on the State House. And the findings are that the access is inadequate, getting into the building is inadequate, the number of people who trip and fall on the east and west entrance on their way safety and security programs are inadequate, that there is no unutilized space. We have two people sharing one desk right now. There's no underutilized space in the building. We've examined every inch of this building to try to maximize its use. And there's no more underutilized space. And fundamentally, occupants feel overcrowded. This project would not create new space for committee rooms. It would not create new space for legislators. So you're still gonna feel crammed in this room, although there's other ideas. This project is all about the public and their access to the building. This is a project for the public. And that's important because sometimes legislators can think this is a project for them, and they don't want to spend money on themselves. This is not a project for the legislators. This is a project for the public. So just some of those studies are listed down there. So the next slide is where we can One more little piece of background is, and then we'll look at some more pictures. So there was a special committee that was established in 2023 to work on this project. It's the joint legislative management committee plus the chairs of House Corrections and Institutions to represent an Emmons has been a part of the special committee. So they approved the project in December 2023. They approved the design in 2024, the initial design, the schematic design, and it's to build that entryway here. So the entryway will be right here and then it'll create a corridor all the way down between the two buildings and people will enter the building by the Lincoln Hallway now after this is built.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, wow.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: And legislators, staff will still have the cut through by the copy room. So all the existing hallways will still be there, but now there'll be this new entrance through Lincoln Door.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And is this I'm

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: sorry. We

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: got a question

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: to orient

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: him. The peach part.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes, I'm sorry.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: What is the peach part?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: So this stands the loading dock. This, to the left, is the co

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: op No, I mean down below.

[Hillary Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, this peach.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Is where the copy room and Capitol Police are.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It is, okay. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry about

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. No problem.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: So then we we saw from the west,

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: and I could recog into that

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: First slide. I don't know if you've

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: got a a view from the east coming up as well.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: We do. Is this one story across? It'll be one one story.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Tall, but very tall.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: But it'll be tall. Yes. Okay. We contemplated a 2nd Floor that would create more space for committee rooms, but it was it's too expensive.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Can you help me visualize then as you're walking down that corridor west to east, like, is that turret protected, the stairwell going up to the speakers?

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: So it it approaches the turret, and there will be doors probably going into a vestibule where the porte cochere next to the turret is located. And that porte cochere will be enclosed, and that will be the east entrance. So there will be a way for people such as yourselves with badges to enter that, but the public always has had to come to the west entrance for obvious reasons. It's just too complicated on the east side of the State House.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So Brian, Mary, Troy, and I can still come in that east Yes,

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: you can.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: And we do have some more pictures that will give you a visual

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: of that. And then the doors to the Lincoln Hallway would be left open. That's great. So that would be open to this new area in the rear.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Would you have to spin Abraham around to face people, or would

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: you have them come?

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: You are you're way ahead of everybody else here. You only you and I have thought about where Abraham Lincoln was You

[Unidentified Committee Member]: do not have to answer.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: Have no answer yet.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And the bigger part of the box thought about it.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: So the design team, just to let you know, because there's a lot of people working on this. Although the group needs to get bigger, it's buildings and general services. They are the project managers, and they have a very talented team working on it, HVAC, project managers, a whole team of people, historic preservation. Freeman French Freeman are the architects. They've done a lot of work in the building. They understand this building. They're the same architects that are doing the HVAC project. Architectural restoration consulting is Tricia Harper, who has worked on many projects in this building. She's the architect consultant for the Sergeant at Arms office and then my office. And I forgot to say in BGS that the state curator is also part of the project. The next slide shows you I don't want to confuse things, but I want to Because of schematic design, there's still decisions that need to be made. So we're gonna show you two versions of the same thing. This first is what we'll call baseline, and it's $18,600,000. So that's the baseline cost of this project. And it creates the entryway over here. So the orange is the front of the State House. So it creates the entryway here. See how it would dip into where that parking lot is? Mhmm. And people would enter here and go through screening and then they'd move through this with all the main doors that glass stair tower would go away. That's where

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you put Lincoln.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Lincoln's here. And then it would be a clear shot all the way across.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We could still come in.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: You can still come here and here. You could still go up the stairs here. So you still have ways that you can maneuver without going down to go see Lincoln.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: If you come in the east side, you could take a right and still go up those back stairs and the whole nine yards.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Absolutely. But I'm actually gonna ask you if you would mind going to the next slide, because it contemplates some different uses for existing space. So yes, we're building an entryway, but we are now turning what is the coat room and our old drafting offices into the main hallway of the safe house. So we want to contemplate the programming in that area. This would add 1,000,000 to $3,000,000 So what this does is when you come through, it opens up this whole lobby area. Right now, to give you a visual, if you took a left right here, you'd be entering through the glass door that brings you to the service elevator where the single use The restroom restroom is, yes. It is a very unattractive part of the stage house. And it is very hard to make it less unattractive to beautify it. So the least we can do is actually just open it up a little bit. Take the restroom out, take the lactation room out and open that space up.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Put the restroom in about four years.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes, then demolishing it will cost the same as installing it, approximately. But it would create a much That will be the main elevator now for people to use, potentially. They'll be taking a left and using that elevator. And so to have them take a left and then squeeze where there's also a restroom door opening into them, It's very unwelcoming. So, we can open that lobby up. And then where the coat room is, we can open up, it'd still be the coat room, but there's potential to add more doorways into it. So you can take the windows that are there that are now facing the outside and turn those into doorways because now they're gonna be opening up into interior space. Windows look out to the courtyard. That's what you're thinking. With the project, it won't be a courtyard anymore, it'll be a hallway, a corridor. And we would be working closely with Laura Treesman to make sure that we're not disturbing historic material. We can have a student orientation room is what we call it. But right now the tours, they spill into the building and we love them coming, the school groups, but it's exceptionally loud. They're all funneling into the lobby. I don't want to criticize it. I want to be careful not to criticize it. We don't have a great plan for how they enter and exit the building. We don't have a plan for where to put their backpacks or their

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: we have a plan.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: It's just not a great plan. Their backpacks, their coats, so this we could give them a space in the building. And then here, this is old drafting ops. And we actually could do this independent from the project, but move the copy room here where old drafting ops was and where the copy room used to be, we can build more restrooms because the state house is actually short on facilities. So we could build two restrooms right where the coffee room used to be, single use restrooms. I think I covered most of the major features.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: So you

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: gain one restroom over what we have right now?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes, exactly.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Just I think that's the purple or deep blue or whatever is is IT. Yes. Okay. What's different from that? What IT is that? Or is that additional?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: It would basically IT right now is here where student orientation is.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So it just pop it pop just moves them over.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: It's just moving them over.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Thank you.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: Yeah. From a prime location for visitors.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes. Are we gonna take

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: care of any of the water issues in that corner? Because we were gonna put a summer boiler in there.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes. And I'm glad you asked, and we should absolutely invite BGS in to to talk about it. But that side of that building is built into the ledge and there is a decades old water issue over there. As part of this project, Freeman French Not as part of this project, but as part of this conversation, French Freeman, I think there will be a recommendation that the water issue be dealt with, with or without this project. Because the carpet actually gets wet in that area. There's water that just comes down the hillside into where the coat room is now. And then the question on deliveries. So the deliveries would still have to come on the West Side. We spent a lot of time talking about how we could use the East Side a little bit more, but we just can't. It's too narrow. Where the three branches of government come together. So from a security perspective, it's not a great space to be using as a loading dock. And so they would still come in on the West Side, but we would have a separate entrance for them. Right now, everyone is using that same little door. We're all trying to use that same little door for access and delivery. So they would at least have their own separate door and their own separate hallway. This would give us an opportunity also to screen deliveries that are coming into the building.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So if you're going to do screening, you can have a machine there, but you've to have personnel. So is that increasing our Capitol Police staff?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Not the Capitol Police. If we do it, a proposal would include having security guards. So it would increase the number of employees, but it would not be police officers.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They wouldn't be under the Capitol Police, but they'd

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: be under the sergeant at arms? We haven't gotten that far in the conversation. They would be part of sergeant at arms, but what their chain of command would look like they haven't gotten there yet. And the training that would be needed. Yes, but best practices is to have unarmed security guards at a screening station. Unarmed. Yes. So we have a few more slides. If you wouldn't mind advancing,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: so this is what it

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: would look like from the street. And what this does, the objective is you want to be able to see it. The whole point is you want be able to see it. People from the street, from the sidewalk, need to be able to look at the State House and say, Ah, that's how I get in. Right now, unless you work in the building, you don't know how to get into the building. The amount of people who knock on the front door of the steakhouse to say, Hello, can I come in?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So during the op session, do you have those doors open?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Those are open in the op session, yes. And I don't blame them because they don't know how to get into the building. So that's how it would look. David, anything you'd add to this?

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: No, except that with single point of entry just today, the west doors were damaged by someone attempting to open them when they were locked.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Are you serious?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So that was early in the morning, though.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: Yes. Very early But it just kind of shows how our habits of going through the principal entrances at the front and ignoring any signage that points you in this direction

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is this door here?

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: It's a matter of time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The one here, not the one on the loading dock.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: No. No. Yeah.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: The west. They just couldn't, I guess, accept that the doors were locked.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You had a sign out there. Yes.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: And there was signage.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I know I saw some people come up to the East side, and I saw the sign of a sidewalk there, but they were trying to open the east. Yes, sir. Shawn.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: What would you do with the three entrances then? How would they be addressed?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: They would be locked.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And and, like like, kind of, like, roped off on the outside so people knew this is not where you go?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes. We would have some signage to indicate that this is a locked

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: door.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And we couldn't use those either.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Well, no. But you could use them for exiting. So there will always be multiple means of egress. It's just the one way in for members of the public. Gotcha. Yes. Okay, I think the next slide shows us the east side view of Yes, there you go. So that's the arc way, which would be very aesthetically sealed with a glass wall and doors so that members and staff can still badge in from that area.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: What mechanicals would you need there? Because you got the mechanicals on top of the cafeteria roof. What mechanicals are you going to need? Do you know?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: HVAC, that we would have to let's bring in BGS for that. Where would we put it? It would be so I'm gonna try to answer your question, but the mechanical room that was built in the courtyard that we had as part of the HVAC project, that is still relevant and operational. The venting would have to Pull up. So there's a The outcrop that we do. If I'm wrong about that, I'll ask BGS to correct it. But I think that is the last photos I looked at, pictures I looked at doesn't change the brick and mortar, but it changes the vent. So that hallway that goes through the courtyard, you've got that outcrop. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: where the outcrop is there with the new mechanical from the HVAC system, is that going be the wall of the hallway? Exactly. And then does the hallway curve in?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes. Yes. Exactly. Okay. And then I think maybe one last slide is a three d there's two more slides, but this last image is a three d image of what that would look like from the east side.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's like we have snow.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yeah. Know. I don't know. It's like we're on another planet, but I like it.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Then

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's almost taking the

[Unidentified Committee Member]: hill down

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a little bit.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes. Way the parking. In terms of so this is schematic design. So we still have refinement to do, and we may learn more through stakeholder engagement about So the design will be tweaked. We need to make some decisions on copy room, the coat room, the restrooms, that extra $1 to $3,000,000 so where we are, do you mind going to the last slide on this, is to continue with stakeholder engagement. And the reason we're here is because even though we've been talking about this, we've worked on this project for two years. This year will be the first year that it's discussed here with the standing committees because there's an appropriation. All of the funding for this, I've been neglected to say this, all of the funding for this so far has been through a grant, through an ARPA grant, through ARPA funds. And this all started, believe it or not, because of COVID, because money was given to the state, or awarded to the state, to design an addition for health screening purposes, we that are in office health screening. So who was here during COVID in legislature?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: I was not, but I've heard the stories about it. Was disruptive to all of us, but exceptionally disruptive to legislative operations. And that is unacceptable to disrupt legislative operations. This actually started for health screening purposes. Now, five years later, it is so clear to us that we need this for ADA and security screening purposes. I feel very strongly that this project is the best way that we can get to security screening. Otherwise, we're really just kind of making It's like cooking dinner with what's in the pantry. You can put something out, but it's not organized or efficient or possibly crowd pleasing. So the timeline of this is if we keep on track, then we can finish design and pre construction by May 2027, so approximately a year from now. We can begin construction very soon thereafter, so 2027, which means that with a twenty one month construction cycle, and we have questions we have to answer, are we doing construction during session? Are we not? There's a lot of things that need to be answered, explored, but we could be completed with construction by the 2029, which would mean if all things go well, which you're a builder, the session of 2030 could be opening the doors.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So can you tell us how much money you've got in the bank? Because there is not the money in the bank of eighteen to twenty one million.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: So my understanding, and I say that because BGS is really the one to ask, is there's no money for construction. The money is all for design. So we can get all the way through this pre construction. We can get to May 2027. It was 500,000.0, but then there was BGS would have to answer this. It wasn't the full 1,500,000.0 that went into the design, but that was what was granted to us. Think there was some taken there that could

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: be used for some things. Yes. So we would have to find the money this year and next year to stay on this construction timeline.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes. And our request for the capital bill this year was for this project was $1,300,000 To get you to design and pre construction? Actually, to get us to construction. Point three would be Finish

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: your design documents to get to construction.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: We have money to get us all the way through design and construction documents. But if we finish in May 2027 of all that, we don't have any money to get us to the actual construction. You can't go out to bid. Yes. And so this session will be the session that we decide, are we doing this project or not? Because we can't move forward with speaking to contractors and getting all the things lined up until there's some reassurance that this project is going to happen. If you ask us, it's going to happen. But it's not up to us.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: My small No. No.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But I'm just saying, you need you do need to schedule that, like, really soon.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yes. Well, they need the money.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Do you envision sort of a more permanent type of x-ray machine in this section of the building along with the security guard?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: With this project? Yeah. Yes. It would be an appropriately spaced station. So station for people to come people to come through with strollers and wheelchairs, all kinds of things that will fit through. Yes.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: So there would be an expense with that as well? The

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: equipment itself is not the expensive part. It's the people. It's the staff. And so we still have to talk about this, but the idea would be that the security would be in place when the legislature is in session, and the security would not be in place when the legislature is not in session. So in the summertime, we would still open the front door. This is the plan. Plans can change, the world can change. But still open the front door. And so we wouldn't, in the summertime, need to have screening. People could walk in. But during session, when the legislature is in session, bottom line is legislative operations cannot be interrupted. That is my singular purpose of investing, is to make sure that legislative operations are not disrupted. And so that's when you make the investment in the screening. But in the fall, when everyone's coming and leaf keeping, we can open more of the doors.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Two eighty eight questions?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes.

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: One, and when you come in from the West through the New Single Point, you said, I think, that employees, whatever, can go to the left and take the elevator there. Is that open to the public then too?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: Yes, that would be open to the public.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: And then

[Rep. Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: the balcony over the chamber? Will that not be accessible too? What changes there, if anything?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: No changes there. Yes. Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. And no exit from the Senate chamber?

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: No. No. Yeah. This project started as, oh, boy, there was lots of fun stuff. There's a fire escape for the Senate chamber. There's a lot of fun stuff in this, but cost went through the roof. So we scaled it down to just the entryway.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So how do we justify? Do you send it personal or ledge?

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: Ledge. No. No. No. First.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: How do how do we justify spending this kind of money when folks are having a hard time finding old homes? We're trying to take care of that, and we're we're under a lot of budget constraints in general. So how can we justify finding 18 to 21,000,000 fruits? I just want to put that on the table because it's going to be an issue out there in the public.

[Agatha (Sergeant at Arms)]: It's a fair question. And not to discredit anyone else's cause, but as Sergeant Arms, I have to push for it because I'm responsible for the security of the building. It is the only way security screening is the best way to secure this building and its occupants. So that's how I see this in the security project.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: And ADA is the other thing. If this is truly the people's house, then we have an obligation to ensure that every person in Vermont has as much access to what's going on here as everybody else. So if not now, it's a very difficult time, no question. You've got very hard things to talk about.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: And I would contend there's probably few state houses around the country that don't have security in way we

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And I second Mary because it's gonna it's gonna sound like chump change if that ever happens because we don't need security.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: And that's the thing. I mean, I've always I

[Unidentified Committee Member]: don't like thinking like that, but

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I just

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: I always always set out there. Our doors were open.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: We're gonna wish Or

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: we live in very different times.

[John May (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep.

[David Schutz (State Curator)]: Conor, definitely.

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: But but just because Conor may wanna add his bail for him still.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I was gonna name the audition after me. Alice

[Rep. Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Alice M. Alice It's bathrooms.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The bathrooms. So for the committee, this this is the presentation that the sergeant Arms is laying laying the setting on the table. We don't know if there'll be anything in the governor's capital bill request or not. That's the next step just to see because they've been working with BTS. This is for the legislative branch. Is is the administration gonna put money in? It would be in section two, I'm assuming, being BGS's section if they did. I would assume because it's BGS would be leading this project along with the sergeant at arms. So we'll just have to wait and see Mhmm. Till next day. Thanks. Thank you.

[Rep. Conor Casey (Member)]: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: your help.

[Rep. Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: And great at work. It's beautiful.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So let's go off of YouTube.