Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Welcome to House Education on Tuesday, March 17. This is 09:30 in the morning, we are hearing this morning before we go to the floor of amendment to h five forty two put there by representative Donahue from Northfield. We're gonna walk through the language first with our legislative council and then hear from the sponsor of the amendment.

[Mike O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Morning. This is Mike O'Grady with legislative council. You will see in front of you the draft number 3.1 with the 03:13 date, 04:42PM time stamp. The first section of the amendment replaces the first section of h five forty two as recommended by your committee. Remember that first section in your bill is effectively the meat of the section. It's really of the bill, there's only really one section of substance. So this would replace that section with an amendment to the testing requirement that was initially enacted in 2021, action results number 74, amended twice since then. It would change that testing date for all approved and recognized public schools and approved and recognized independent schools to July 2029. And then in that interim, there would be a new section added, section one a, that would require the Department of Health, page two, after consultation with ANR to report to the general assembly assessment of the health effects of discontinuing the testing of your air for PCBs in public schools and approved recognized independent schools. And then the report will include a summary of the health effects of exposures to PCBs, assessment of the degree of potential health effects, and students and staff. Testing is, in these schools were in those schools that were not tested, is discontinued. A risk assessment analysis of the cost of the state to continue testing versus the cost of the state and its residents of allowing PCB exposure, recommendation of whether PCB testing of indoor air in public schools and recognized in the and then a summary of the options that can be implemented to mitigate exposure of students or staff to PCBs in schools that have not been tested and schools that have been tested.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Any color on the details of the amendment?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: It's basically just pushing back the date that the testing needs to be finished and asking for a study to say what would happen if

[Mike O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: That's correct. The question I would think is money. And what do you do, if at any time?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'd say there's a number of questions with money which we can pose to the sponsor, but not only is there no money to appropriate it to meet the deadline, but I assume that we don't know what the cost of this level of study and risk assessment would be. Great, thank you, Mike. You have the floor?

[Mike O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Should I leave it up on the screen?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Oh, that'd be great, yeah, thank you. Good morning.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: Good morning, Representative Ann Donahue. Thank you for hearing me this morning. When I think of cost benefit decisions, which is every decision we make in the legislature that has costs, you can figure out just various scenarios if it's going to have a huge positive impact for Vermonters and a really low cost, that's a really easy one. If it's going to have a low impact but a very low cost, okay,

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: that's all right.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: If it's going to have a really high cost and very little benefit, that's pretty easy too. You don't do it. But if it's going to be a really high cost and a really high benefit, you have to really think it through in terms of what is the cost and what is the benefit. And given that balancing, how do we balance that cost against other cost pressures and what we would lose if we focus on this one. And I think the problem with the bill as presented, we do know the cost is staggering and we don't have more money to put into it right now, or at least we don't have more unless we took it from somewhere else. But the problem is that we don't know the impact of the decision either. That five years ago, the impact was perceived as being so huge that we had a school torn down, high school torn down because of the risk involved. And we put this in motion. And when this bill first came up on the floor, and I knew we had not gotten through all the testing, I knew we had run out of money. And I thought, well, this is pretty logical. There's no more money to put into it. And obviously, must have in the interim also realized maybe the risk is not the degree we thought it. But then when the bill was presented and the reference was made, this is about not having the money, there's no difference in what the safety study said. And I thought, what? You mean we have to make this decision and we don't know the impact on health? We don't have newer or better information? I mean, you could hypothesize and maybe these are bad numbers, but if over the course of the next twenty years, one kid per year was going to have their life expectancy go back from 80 to 70, well, that's not a good thing, but it's pretty minimal impact. Probably you don't want to take millions and millions of dollars away from something of greater value. But if we found out 10 kids a year, we're going to lose from age 60 to age 40 in life expectancy, you might say, woah, we can't do that. In a way, it's never about money. It's about the cost benefit. We would find the money somewhere else. If it meant eliminating school lunches to get 25,000,000 a year, say, well, better that we scrape together on what kids can do, what they did before we had school lunches, because this is something that's about lives and critical health issues. And I feel like that's a missing piece. By deferring the deadline and not adding money, not doing additional testing in interim, just sort of the status quo of being out of money and having it on hold in order next year to have something more concrete, a report back from the health department with ANR input, and be able to really understand, okay, here's the impact if we stop spending money. And now we can make an informed decision. And that decision might be the same. Nothing will have changed in the interim. We won't have spent more money, but we will have better information. And I think about things like parents being worried about the schools and worrying about what's happening to my kids, what impact is it going to have. And then the legislature says, well, we changed our mind, we can't afford it. Well, it's very different if we say we can't afford it and it's not as severe a health risk as we might have assumed. So we think it's reasonable to stop and we're not suddenly putting your kids in terrible jeopardy. Then we have a rational basis for saying it really wasn't affordable. But without that, I just think that it's a premature decision to be able to make without knowing if our original estimates of the severity are not relooked at. So that's

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the rationale. Thank you. Have you spoken with the Department of Health and the agency of Natural Resources as to whether they could even do these analysis, number one, and two, what the cost of doing them would be? So I actually did not, but they contacted Joint Fiscal. And so I have

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: a memo that Joint Fiscal passed on to me, which I can just read in the record. This amendment would keep the school testing requirements in place while extending the deadline from testing from 07/01/2027 to 07/01/2029. If the testing requirements are kept in place, the Department of Health would need one FTE to support those requirements. So they looked at it, they've considered it. They didn't come back and say, well, we couldn't do this kind of analysis without

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm sorry. I think what I heard you just say was that they didn't want FTE to continue with the testing.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: Yes, exactly.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm asking about doing all of this risk analysis.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: I know. I'm trying to get to that. I'm sorry. I apologize. They looked at it. They saw what it was requiring, and they reached out to say, We'd need one FTE to continue the testing. In other words, they didn't say, We looked at this, we saw it, and this is what we would need to do the analysis. They see the cost being continuing the testing, which this amendment is not suggesting that we do. We're leaving it kind of frozen where it is. But given the fact that they looked at it and wrote in, I would assume, maybe assume it's a bad thing, but because they specifically looked and sent a message, it doesn't appear that they think that that would be not sustainable with their existing staff.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think I'm not quite clear. Their response to what this potentially would cost, this amendment, was an FTE to continue the testing, which we don't have any money to pay for. Could you help me sort of close that circle? They don't have the money to pay for the testing. Why would they need an FTE? What would that

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: They said if the testing is then continued based on this, then we would need an FTE. But I'm not proposing that the testing continue. Don't have the money. I'm not proposing we put the money in. I'm just proposing we take the time to look. And that decision can be made next year, not waiting till 2029.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So they did not weigh in on whether this analysis was doable or what it would cost to do or anything like that?

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: That's correct. But because they looked at it and weighed in on the piece that did concern them, it doesn't appear to be that they had a huge concern about being asked to do that.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I guess I would say, I'm not sure we actually heard that from you.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: We don't. No, no. I said it's an assumption. It may not be an accurate assumption. That's, yeah. Leanne?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Well, you're kind of saying what I was gonna say was that if someone is doing this analysis and this testing, it means they're not doing something else, which means that there is more labor required to complete this test. Sorry, I don't mean testing, I mean study. But there is someone required to do the study that's not doing something else. So it must cost something.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: To do the analysis?

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: To do the study.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, I think that we just don't have an answer to what Or that would we don't even have an answer as to whether this level of analysis could even be done based on the lack of information that we have.

[Unknown Committee Member (House Education)]: And I'm not sure who this question is for, but if I remember correctly, that 4,500,000.0 that's remaining, basically ANR has allocated that to remediation in the ones that have tested and have a serious problem fixed.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's right.

[Unknown Committee Member (House Education)]: So if any of that 4,500,000.0 is used for testing purposes, then it's not available for the remediation in those schools. I understand that, correct?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, think, so there's a very good question there for legislative council. This is an amendment to our bill. It doesn't, I guess it doesn't, it's not a strike all. So in other words, the language that we have that says any current existing money earmarked will be spent only on those rules that have been affected. It doesn't change that.

[Unknown Committee Member (House Education)]: It does. Does. So he's up to That

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: could be back in if it's important for allocating the rest. I assumed it was already sort of allocated. If it needs to be in, that's not an issue from my end. We could put that language in. I was more concerned about not adding money for further work until we knew better what the impact of ending the program was.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: In the original bill, think the words right now, isn't there a look back, and

[Unknown Committee Member (House Education)]: we had to turn it again, and you had mentioned it on the floor, you'd say, but in a year or two,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: there is this, this, this, this still in place.

[Unknown Committee Member (House Education)]: A check back, some sort of

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: What we have is, there's a section that asks ANR to present to the legislature next year a plan Right. To continue the program, you know, analysis of what it would take to to continue the program and test all the schools. Okay. I'm

[Unknown Committee Member (House Education)]: trying to get my head around the two year extension, because you've said several times that your intention is to not continue the testing, but yet the language says all schools subject to the subsection shall test for PCBs on or before 07/01/2029. So that doesn't actually mean that they won't continue the test. I mean, there may be a school tomorrow that says that we really feel it's important to test because we're considering closing the school or renovating the school and they're going to test. And so that would impact. It doesn't stop the testing, I guess, is what I'm saying. You're implying that by delaying it for two years, it would give them time to not test. And I'm concerned about that doesn't actually

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think if I'm going to do a little bit of summing up here, this maintains the requirement to test. And as we just also determined, there's $4,500,000 there. So any school or it doesn't stop ANR from continuing down its list, which could use up that $4,500,000 that's left for Green Mountain in high school first Berkeley.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: Yeah, it's helpful to understand that more clearly, which leads to I mean, that's pretty easy to address by asserting that what happens to the remaining money back in. But in terms of the date, all I was hearing on the floor was we have to end it now because otherwise they're under this 2027 mandate. So it was like, well, then we just push the mandate in. There's still no money if it's all allocated. If they feel the risk is enough, they want to spend their own money, they can, but they know that we're getting this report back next January. They certainly can wait and know then. We could leave the 2027, but then that puts the legislature in one of those time crunches that gets more pressure because that will be 2027. So I just said, well, put it back two years. Give time to this.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: This concerns me for many reasons, but one is just sending out confusing information where we say the deadline to test continues. It is in statute that the state will pay for it. Sometimes that's all people hear, and maybe they move forward, not knowing that, in fact, there is no money available to do it. To me, as we have said in the last two times we tried to pause this program, is to say, let's remove the deadline until there is a financial plan to do it. The fact of the matter is the testing is already on hiatus because there isn't any money for it. So I would say, we're gonna, rather than sort of fuzzying around the edges of keeping the deadline, but not having any money, but having got a test, can't test because there's no money, they're saying we're gonna get stopped. And when ANR has a full plan in place to do it and to fund it, that's when we move forward again. I don't think it requires all the infrastructure is in place to do this.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: But you said a hiatus. The bill as presented on the floor terminates the program, right? They would have to restart. They'd have to be a

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: decision But making all the infrastructure to restart, it is basically a stop right now due to lack of money. Any other questions? Yep. Will end the program. Any school can, any school board can, if they want to, test absolutely, go ahead on their own without any aid from testing. And if they have the money, they can do whatever they want to do in that respect.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: But we paid for half of them. That's pretty inequitable, I think, down the line.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think that would be it. So I take up with the administration, yes. So

[Unknown Committee Member (House Education)]: in lieu of extending, did you put any consideration into pausing until the study was done? So you take off the table that anybody still has to do it just for the reason Peter and others are concerned with?

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: I thought of it in terms of it being a pause. Again, if it made more sense to just say, well, leave it twenty twenty seven because there'll be a report back. So that becomes a pause and people, I don't know that people are starting testing now without checking if there's money, but if they are, then we wouldn't want that. And so if making it more formally a pause by saying, I don't know if it's January or July 2027 that was the current deadline.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: July 27.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: July 1. So there wouldn't be a actually need change the date. It could just remain as it is, identify where the money is. But to me, the critical part is getting information to make the decision. The rest was sort of I wanted to be faithful to getting things on the calendar because it was weekend, but getting it done Friday. And that seemed logical in the moment. Put off the date and come back. I think there's good logic between by saying actually we don't have to change the date and we certainly would want to put what we want happening to the four and a half million, not doing more testing when remediation hasn't been done. But to me, the critical part is a mechanism of actually having the health impact report, not just a spending plan for main AR, but how do we make the cost benefit analysis to stop or to continue without getting a clear picture of where things stand health wise? We've heard nobody else has done it in the meantime. So maybe it's okay to stop it. That's okay once we have the information.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think we share the goal of having the administration come back with information about what would it take to continue with this program. I have grave concerns about leaving a deadline out there, how that will be interpreted. I have strong doubts that this analysis is even possible to do because you're sort of testing against something that we don't even really understand yet, or you're analyzing against something that is, I would say speculative. I don't really want to get into the science of this, but to date, there has been no person in the world that they have clearly determined has suffered a health problem due to exposure to airborne PCBs in school buildings. Sort of given that fact, I'm not quite sure how that analysis gets done. But more importantly, I think it should be a really extensive analysis and we don't have a fiscal note on it.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: Well, do you think the committee would be interested in just leaving your bill as is because I've talked about putting the expenditures back in and the timing not be to change, but to add just that we get an update of the health impact knowledge to this date as opposed to what we knew or thought we knew five years ago. Not the risk analysis things, but just the health impact.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: First of all, I'm not sure this is the right committee to ask that question, but maybe it is. But I think that the Department of Health studies have already been clear about what they believe is the health impact if it is shown that it is at a certain level. This is all of course subject to lots of lawsuits going on right now. Again, I don't know how this assessment would ever be done or how much it would cost. And I think that asking for that in the future is fine, But without at a minimum, the administration saying, we continue to believe in our own science. We believe this program is important and here's an appropriation to continue it. I think absent of that, I don't think I would want to do more than what we've already proposed in our bill.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: Except that we have that health response. We think the risk is the same even before we make that decision as a legislature. I mean, that's what's bothering me tremendously. Yes. But even what you've asked for ANR to come back and say, how much would it cost? But you're not asking for is there any update or change in the health assessment? Is there a difference in what we think the risks are? Or now that five years has gone down and there's been no further evidence, even just that would be knowing something.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, think if there is what I would call realistic information, further information we could ask for, I suspect you might not have any issue with that so long as it wouldn't, in my mind, have to come with a significant fiscal notice to what that might cost to have. I think asking them to come back with information that just says, here's an update on our opinion of the science.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: I would be really happy to do a new amendment that changes nothing in the current bill, but adds to ANR coming back, adds to and the health department coming back with an update on whether there's any change or whatever the best wording would be. So that was clearly not intended to be some mega time consuming expensive study. Because to me, that's what it's all about. And may not have been framed well in terms of cost and so forth, that's what I think is really critical.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: From just a floor logistics point of view, think unless you're going to tell us right now you're going to hold this in favor of that, we'll vote on it. And then I think that what you're proposing, depending on what it says, we could probably handle in a quick huddle on the house floor, from home. But I I'm saying that without checking with the committee.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: Well, I'm saying, and then you continue to, based on everything I've heard in the conversation, which has been very helpful and not something you can do on Friday afternoons,

[Leanne Harple (Member)]: Will you meet with me?

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: That would be my intent. That would be my intent, is to not offer this and instead offer and maybe even a little bit of wording help from the chair or somebody else what would be the right way to word it, say, and next year ANR comes back and then that same part of the bill, the Department of Health comes back and gives us any updates they have on the potential health risks of not making a change, not testing the schools or making changes as a result.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, I would have trouble with assessing a risk of not doing something.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: No, I didn't mean it. I mean, that's for us to think. Just the assessment of, are there any changes in the belief that this is really important?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, see. Yeah, we say in the science recommendations. Maybe you, one of the three of us gather quickly after a really great year and we'll try to figure out some language. Any other committee members that wanna participate, certainly welcome this course. Oh,

[Unknown Committee Member (House Education)]: yeah. And it's I think I

[Unknown Committee Member (House Education)]: we don't hear a bell down here.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: Right. Oh, okay. We don't hear it.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We don't get a bell.

[Rep. Ann Donahue (Northfield) (Sponsor)]: Don't see it. Okay.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Is everybody feeling comfortable with all of that?

[Unknown Committee Member (House Education)]: I feel comfortable with that idea.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Any other thoughts or opinions or anything else? All right, we will adjourn for the floor and we'll be back here