Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Alright. Welcome back everybody to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure. It is Friday, February 6. And we are going to be taking a little bit more testimony on H-seven 18, an act relating to building energy efficiency. I'm representative Kathleen James from Manchester.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: And Scott Campbell from St. Johnsbury.

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: Richard Bailey from Lamoille too. Chris Morrow, Windham, Windsor Bennington. Michael Southworth, Caledonia to Christopher Howland, Rutland four.

[Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Dara Torre, Washington two.

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: Andrew Brewer on behalf of the architects, and you're about to hear from. Great. Hey. Carl. Carl Martin,

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Chamber of Commerce. Great. Thank you.

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: Dean of the Bram Kleppner.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Got everybody? Super. Alright. For the record.

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: I'm Tom Bursey. I am an architect, and I'm the immediate past president of the American of Architects Vermont Chapter. Gave up my presidency in January, which is good. But I am representing architects in Vermont. And as I begin, one of the things that I want to point out to this committee in particular is when I was asked to be part of the Building Energy Code Working Group, one of the reasons that I was excited about it was because of representative Campbell and knowing that he would steer the ship. So all of the work that you have done over the last many years on this particular push has been noticed, and we thank you for it. Excellent work. Appreciate you so much. Appreciate that. Absolutely. I also wanna I was watching the testimony from from DFS, from executive director Mike Dara Torre. And one of the things that I think is important to say is that the Department of Fire Safety, I have had a lot of interaction with over the years. I've been practicing in Vermont for probably a couple of decades, quite a while, and I've had a lot of interaction with DFS. I will say almost unequivocally that they are excellent at what they do, and what they do is administer codes. When I heard him say he would like more time, he would like more funding, I think what architects will say is, They have a proven track record. Give them the resources and the time to do it their way, which is to say, to do it right. I believe if we transfer any new codes that we introduce, they should be introduced under the authority of the Department of the Fire Safety. I say that because they have the positive track record. I also say that because my opinion of governance has to do with authority and accountability, and the mixture of those two. In my experience, DFS does both. They take accountability, and they are bare in their ability. Where it comes up, I think the DFS should be the ones to administer the code, whether it's the building energy codes, whether it's the residential building codes, whether it's the codes that they administer now, which there are hundreds of codes that they administer, and they do a great job at it. Those two things being said,

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: I'm gonna

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: jump into this bill, seven eighteen. AIA Vermont also supports seven seventeen, thinks that that's a good road map for where we want to be in the future. This is sort of its sister bill, and it it deals with some of the same things. Put my glasses off now. We need to you to

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: hold my

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: hand. AIA Vermont supports the direction of h seven eighteen because it strengthens the infrastructure Vermont needs to deliver safe, more durable, and more energy efficient housing. The bill recognizes its core issue. Vermont energy standards operate as a subset of construction codes, but the state does not yet have a residential building code framework that supports consistent implementation and enforcement. Establishing a residential building code based on the International Residential Code administered through the Division of Fire Safety creates a clear statewide standard of care and more coherent system for builders, designers, homeowners, insurers, and ports. We also appreciate the creation of the residential contractor registration task force, including representation from AIA Vermont. On RealProjects, the ability for consumers and project teams to identify quality contractors by specialty and competency matters. Improving the registry and enabling credible voluntary certification, including energy code and high performance building basics, can help the market reward quality work. I'm going to go off script here. I did hear what you said, and I read the testimony of OPR. One of the things that I heard in testimony was that may be that Well, one of the things I heard was that sometimes it's very contentious about getting a sequel to table, and that in the contracted registry, it may be that there is a need for more building voices, voices of builders. So I'm not wondering if AIA is willing to give up its seat in place of a builder that could represent builders' competition, if that's helpful to be grouped in the committee. The Contractor Registry is something that AIU Vermont has supported, but also kind of hands off. It's not really as Mike already said. It's not our lease house necessarily. We do have a few implementation recommendations. First, the bill authorizes municipalities to administer and enforce the residential and commercial building energy standards, and we support providing that authority where communities choose it, but we encourage the community to ensure strong statewide consistency, standardized guidance, training, and tools so compliance is predictable across jurisdictions. Quote Teddy Roosevelt, who said, When you're given a choice, the best decision is to do the right thing, the next best decision is to do the wrong thing, and the worst decision is to do nothing. I fall a little bit more on the Hippocratic oath, which is first do no harm. Somewhere in the balance there is, I think, what we want to get at. And in this case, the municipal energy codes I'm sorry. The building energy codes are not administered very well at present. The fact that the municipalities are willing to step up and do that administration, I think, is phenomenal. But I do think there is precedent, and I think there is a direct pathway for that to happen cleanly. The precedent is the building codes are also administered by many municipalities, and that is direct pass throughs through DFS. So there is a statewide entity that controls what is being what is being enforced, and that's a pass through. I think in this case, that's an exact model of what this should be. There should be a statewide entity, again, think it should be DFS, that administers the energy code statewide so that there's uniform What we don't want is we don't want South Burlington to be something different than to be something different than Williston, to be something different than Arpelier, to be something different than all the other states that doesn't have any enforcement at all. What we would like to see is a single entity that is responsible, has the authority, and has the accountability for it, and under that administers municipalities who have the money and the willingness to do the work, but they should have some uniformity. That's and if there are questions, I'm happy to answer them as we go or at the end.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just wanna clarify your so the phrase pasture. You're just you're just saying that the municipal criteria is the same as the the state criteria. Is that what you meant by that?

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: Or The the pass through actually is that the each municipality that want in the case of the building codes, each municipality that wants to administer their own building codes goes to the Department of Fire Safety, gets on the list essentially of municipalities that will do that, and the Division of Fire Safety sort of gives them the authority, but it's through the Division of Fire Safety. And so the municipalities each

[Unidentified Committee Member]: The the municipality is issuing the permit based on the

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: Yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Common criteria.

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: Where there is that agreement, and I think there are 18 communities that have a model. So they have that. I was aware of it.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And that that's

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: a model, I think, that would work really well in this case. Mhmm. Because if the municipalities are willing to do it, excellent. This is a case of it it's not a yes or no on our part. It is if if the municipalities are able to do it on their own and create these disparate communities of enforcement, that will be difficult to step back from when we do get a statewide. Right. So if we set it up right now, first time, then it will all work out smoothly as we progress further with increased state oversight. That's my take. Yeah. Thank you.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Hey. Tom, I was just a a couple of comments on that. One is that in the case of building codes, the Division of Fire Safety has formal agreements with municipalities in order to don't think of the right term, but that basically passed down the building code authority and enforcement to the municipalities that they have in this agreement. Service department currently is the office over energy bills, they have no enforcement capability or even authority as far as they're concerned. So it'd be And difficult to set up a parallel kind of system there. Although PFT has indicated they would be at least likely to know what municipalities are enforcing energy codes. I completely agree that the ultimate solution here is transferring authority over energy codes to the authority that already has jurisdiction over all the other building codes, that is Division of Fire Safety, is the solution, is where we should be going. Fortunately, I don't think that's where we can go this year. So that's kind of I just wanted to sort of clarify that for the committee that this this is this is not a possible solution at this moment, which is why I introduced about what it is. And I already have a of changes to it. Will be getting another draft too. So, it's we're threading a needle here about what's possible and what's desirable. And certainly recognize the argument that you've made and others have made that setting up a system, sort of a parallel system at public service, that office of professional regulation, that ultimately really should be a DFS, if not ideal, and there may be a certain amount of bureaucratic inertia associated with that. But that's what's in the realm of the possible right now. That's why I proposed what I did.

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: Yeah. And I should also note that the Building Energy Code Working Group was a diverse group of people with a lot of diverse interests. I'm sure you all know that there's only a couple of letters that you can take to build and consensus build. I think you've said you thread the needle, and I think you did exactly that, Bill, which is to try to bring together all of these ideas that sometimes pull pretty hard in the direction. So, yes, we certainly support this bill as it is. Hopefully, message is clear.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. I just had a quick question. I think it's for you, Scott. What did the statute say, if anything, about municipalities?

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Because you've added this. Question. I can get a testimony next week. From lawyer attorney with city's and towns. There is in the municipality, there's a municipal title, title 24, a section that appears to say municipalities have authority to regulate buildings and enforce standards. What that really means is not exactly clear. That's the reason I put something in this bill about giving municipalities, explicit authority, of course, to RVs and CVs. I think that it would probably make sense to have and that's a type of authority within the public service title. But I think it would make sense to have some linkage with type 24, which is the infeasible type O. We'll be hearing, as I said, from the LCTs. Great.

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: Yeah. I will continue. Second, on the contractor disclosure requirement, we support transparency and we recommend clarifying the scope so that it's a fair standardizing, clearly tied to consumer understanding. I think there was stuff thrown earlier that maybe there was a little bit of balance that was needed between between sort of the homeowner who's interested in understanding who they're hiring and the contractor who may need second choice, second chance. I think there is a balance there, and it is not our wheelhouse, but it deserves saying. We recognize that. Finally, we support the energy education modules and appreciate that the bill emphasizes building's integrated systems, energy airflow and moisture management, coordinated training across trades as one of the best ways to improve real world performance and avoid costly failures. Thank you. AIA looks forward to being constructive partner as you refine and implement h 17. Told you. I wish there was a block on that ball. Yeah.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: You're doing fine. Yeah. Alright. Yeah. But how come you didn't make the

[Unidentified Committee Member]: new president come here? No.

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: I have been involved with this for several years, so I probably am the one to I speak after the meeting. Yes. Try not to make the new president do it. That's simple word to me.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Are there any other questions? I just I'm wondering if there's any other questions. If not, I had a couple of points I wanted to go over. So, I think you sounded like you listened to OPR's testimony.

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: I read it. I actually read the transcript. They

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: had some specific points that they were interested in. What I did with it right now, but a couple of things that they thought would be better handled by the task force than directed to be in their wheelhouse, I guess, immediately. One was this this issue of the of the website and and and marketing or outreach. They prefer to form outreach to meet marketing, which is very true. That's I buy that one. They don't view themselves as being in the business of creating consumer oriented sites, which is another matter of it. And I I think it's on budget. Certainly, have a lot of other professions that they're regulating 53, I think, a number, and they're loath to have one of the professions that they regulate be handled differently from the others. One of the things that they suggested was that towards the end, I guess, last section before the effective date, where that says that we devote some funding to OPR to launch the website. They they suggested that they're actually being targeted at supporting the task force to figure out who's who's gonna who's going to support the website, who's gonna who's gonna create and launch the website and handle the average. I guess I wondered if you have any opinion about that.

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: My opinion, maybe it's not an opinion as much as just an observation, but I had the impression that the website would be something akin to what Efficiency Vermont has, which is contractors that have a certain marketing that's on their website that says, you know, here's a group. If you're looking for a contractor, these are the these are the groups that we stand behind. I don't think the state has necessarily wanted to get in a stand behind situation, but it might be helpful to have a website that is informative so that a homeowner could go on and look for it. If OPR is not willing to do that, which is have a website that is public facing and easy to use. And I think there is money involved with that. That might be the thing that the task force would probably deal with in the future. I think that the task force can solve those problems, but I don't think they've solved just yet.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: I mean, I'm a little reluctant to be we're sort of loading loading all of the difficult problems onto the task force, but but that might be how it had to go. Yeah. So I feel like there was something else that they mentioned that I and that I wanted to that I wanted to ask you about, but unless You can't remember right. Oh. Yeah. It was the professions that they regulate. So there's this issue about the energy module that appears in several places in statute for the different professions of trades. And for OPR professions, which includes architects, engineers, property inspectors, a lot of people involved in building, that's an OPR's wheelhouse jurisdiction. And there's part of this bill that asks whoever's in charge of this energy module to do a better job with it to make it more targeted at what those professions actually deal with in a building. Their suggestion would give that to the task force also because they thought actually that public service would be a better entity to handle that energy. Public service wasn't in the room. We always gave it to them because they weren't in the room. Rutland was ruled by those That's right. Get volunteered if you don't show up. But I guess I'm inclined actually to give it to the task force at this point, because we really want to get something through there. We've been working on this for a long time, and everybody's pretty sick of the issue, but we need to make some progress. So I guess, again, Oscar, you have any comment on that.

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: Well, I think that's the right move. I think I'm saying it to the task force so that it can be discussed and all of the inputs. I'm certainly in favor of building consensus. Yeah. Yeah.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Well, I guess I probably didn't pick up. Really appreciate your time again. Absolutely. Great. Alright. Thank Thank

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: you for being here. And we are now back to 01:45, so I think we can go offline.

[Tom Bursey (AIA Vermont, Immediate Past President)]: Thank you. Absolutely.