Meetings
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[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: All right, welcome. This is a committee of conference of the two institutions, committees of the House and of the Senate, and it's 03/10/2026, And we are here to discuss age 50. The Senate has some changes to it and we received it back from the House with additional changes and we're here to discuss those changes together. And I just want to say to the staff who is here, I'll just give you an opportunity if you want to say something, but if you do have something to say, raise your hand if you don't mind. Okay. All right, let's introduce ourselves. Wendy Harrison, I represent the Wyndham District.
[Rep. James Gregoire (Franklin-6), Vice Chair]: John Vincent, the Orange District and Rockland, the District. James Gregoire, Franklin Six. How are
[Rep. Conor Casey]: you folks, Conor Casey, here in my third.
[Rep. James Gregoire (Franklin-6), Vice Chair]: And Shawn Sweeney, Shelburne and St. George.
[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: All lovely places. We are all of our students that live in Vermont.
[Rep. James Gregoire (Franklin-6), Vice Chair]: Yes we are.
[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: So let us start with the house explaining the changes that you made, please.
[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: Alright, we'll do the best we can. So, our first change, we believe, is on line 13 of the new bill. You guys, the Senate had state owned or state leased buildings and land. We took out for state leased. The reason we did that, two fold. One, we weren't really sure what you meant by state leased. And if it means what we think it means, which is that we lease it, we don't have any control over turning it into a house or a property, right? So if we don't own it, we can't convert it, right? Because we're just leasing the space. The second thing we did was change biannually to annually. And that was in conjunction with conversations with the administration and what is current practice. So then we moved down to line like nineteen and twenty. We changed when requested by the commissioner back to annually for the same same reason, just to make it in practice with what the administration already does, whether it's VGS or, now with the, Department of Housing and Community Development. So then on the opposite page, in our page number two, we looked at your language of which is on page excuse me, line five through seven, but on your bill. I don't know because don't line numbers in your bill, but we changed it from commissioner whether any building is vacant or whether any land is statutory is necessary for the statutory purpose of the agency. We took out for the statutory purpose and made it for just unnecessary for state purposes. And the reason we did that is talking with Legis Council, if I remember correctly, that not all state agencies have a clearly delineated statutory purpose that might fit this. So we made it more vague intentionally to better help the agencies comply. So then we have the effective dates, which were pretty, they're the same, of each new biennium, which you guys had,
[Rep. James Gregoire (Franklin-6), Vice Chair]: but that was all the same.
[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: And then we added section two, which is the reason we added section two, which is its language that is, mirrors basically the governor's executive order, what they plan on doing, right now. And we had discussed this with the commissioner Fair, and he felt that they were amenable to that and
[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: that it worked for them.
[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: So we try to make everything as mirrors mostly to what the administration has done and is doing and plans to do, but making it rather than a one year executive order, making it a five year thing so that we can have some tracking mechanism, if you will, for these properties and then we can relook at it at a different type of future date. Didn't want it to go into opportunity or and just have it be another report to disappear. We felt if we looked at it for like a five year period until 2030, it would give us an idea of what's out there. That's basically why we did it and of course the reason we asked for our conference committees and felt that it would be a lot easier for three on three to talk rather than having the whole house versus the whole senate to be done on the bills.
[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: I think you're right. That's our story. Good, good. We're not far off, which is good. So, I'll just go down the list. So, the state owned buildings and land, I think I had suggested that to at least be in there just so that we could know what resources the state required to do the operations of the state. That was the intent of that. Looking at the buildings as an expense and leasing is just a different type of expense. So that was why that was in there.
[Rep. Conor Casey]: Can I ask you a question? Yeah, sure. Yeah, sorry Senator. So was the intent, we were under this, that the inventory of of office space that the state would be leasing with a private entity or was it more state owned offices that were being leased to The somebody first one.
[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: Okay. Because right, because if we lease it, then it's a state owned building. So, right, Vermont Life, where there's a couple of buildings in Barrie, because I just have concerns about how we use our space. I wanna make sure we're using our space well before we lease, because that can be more So
[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: like a comparison of when we were releasing all this space but we're trying to get rid of the space we own, would it make more sense to move them into something
[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: Exactly. Right. So that was the point there. Next one, we did, we also talked about the statutory purpose of the agency and talked about it quite a bit with Wanda. I were fine with leaving that the way that you changed it. Because it's, I mean, the intent is still very clear. And then on the inventory, which talks about section two. Senator Bennington has some suggestions about other items that we might want to include, not necessarily in this document, but that we want to at least bring to your attention because we think they're important.
[Zach Brown (Retired Civil Engineer)]: So just like Zach Brown, retired civil engineer, so I spent fifty years doing projects throughout New England and Vermont. As I looked at this bill and I said, What is our objective? And if our objective really is to identify lands or buildings that could be converted into housing and done fairly quickly, this bill leaves a lot of pieces out that we would need to And so as we talk, it's not something that we can necessarily change in this bill, but looking forward, you know, if we look at a companion bill in the next session or that may charge to say, what do we really need to know? And should we be trying to focus on maybe a half a dozen pieces of property that could be brought forward to both bodies that vote on to say, yeah, this has got the right zoning, it's got water there, it's got proper lands, it's not all wetland and so forth, we need ANR to weigh in a little bit, and so that there's a real desktop analysis done of the properties so that we could then bring forward and say to both of our respective bodies here's five properties that we believe and they're not necessarily in a place that doesn't need any housing. So there'd be a companion bill so to speak that really started to dive into the detail to get properties out of there and that a developer would really be interested in purchasing from the state and converting to housing. So that was just something I wanted to bring out as as maybe a next step because this kind of creates a list But who knows whether any of these properties really are conducive to. We had that exact same conversations with
[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: literally somebody saying, you know, can we get to I don't know if it's you or not. When talking about getting the top 10 or something properties and then doing a deeper dive into them. So the intent of this bill was to get a list even start from and then they can go to what you're talking about. So it's interesting to say, yeah. It's great.
[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: Alright. Well, that's good. So what do you think about the lease language that that's the only topic? Yeah.
[Rep. James Gregoire (Franklin-6), Vice Chair]: I don't really give it I I like the intention.
[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. It makes sense when So we're off from that
[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: So maybe it needs to be described better.
[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: No. We we know what it means. We just we we maybe we should've just asked
[Rep. James Gregoire (Franklin-6), Vice Chair]: you. I
[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: don't think we're allowed to do that. Okay, so then we could vote. Can you help me work on the language of this? Because I believe it would be that we vote with one edition of
[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: Yeah, could just make the edition. Right. And then you'd have something to vote on.
[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: Oh, so what rights we have to have it on there
[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: Probably helpful. Alright. Also, John Gray, legislative council. My question to you is can
[Rep. James Gregoire (Franklin-6), Vice Chair]: you do it now or do we have
[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: the proper meeting to come back and do this? I can probably do it now if you let me run from the room briefly and
[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: for us, it's mean, we'll be here tomorrow too. Mean, I hate to make everybody
[John Gray, Legislative Counsel]: I do lots of running. Just fine. Okay.
[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Windham District)]: Yeah. If you don't mind, that would be great.