Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Good afternoon,

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: welcome to the House Environment Committee. This afternoon, we are going to be really learning about, I guess, permit modernization. Is that the right name for your task? It's a work group, I think, Great. From ACCD. Welcome.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: Thank you. For the record, I'm Lindsay Corelli. I'm the secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. Thank you for inviting us here today. Will share this is my first time testifying in this committee, so I'm really happy to be here and and join all of you. I wanted to, as chair Sheldon mentioned, wanted to talk a little bit about the permit modernization aspect of the executive order, governor Scott's executive order to to spur housing, grow develop adding units online. Sorry. But I wanted to start by sort of grounding everybody in a little bit of history. There's I know some of you have been around a long time and know this, but for others who haven't, I just thought I would set the table a little bit. But permit modernization is not something this administration just discovered. If we go back to about 2010 and nationwide, we were grappling with how permitting systems were becoming more complex and more fragmented and harder to navigate for applicants and regulators. Between 2017 and 2019, our state made some real progress, particularly around digitization and early streamlining efforts. And that work laid important groundwork for what we've been doing recently. During the last administration, the Shumlin administration, Vermont adopted lean process improvement across state government to improve customer service and streamline workflows. And then understandably, our attention shifted in 2020. COVID demanded immediate response. And more recently, the catastrophic flooding has required agencies to focus on the emergency response and recovery. Each modernization reform and efficiency effort that our state is engaged in has addressed part of the problem, and it's been incremental. Now, as you know, we're reengaging in permit process modernization throughout state government, and we're bringing strands from past work together, but with housing as the organizing priority. What's different today is not the concept, but it's the urgency and the focus. And I know you all understand this. I don't have to underscore this, but Vermont's housing shortage has become a binding constraint on our economy, our workforce, our communities. And that reality demands that we bring renewed discipline and coordination to permitting, and specifically through the lens of housing concerns. And I want to just put a really fine point on this, that permit modernization is not deregulation. It's predictable timelines, it's consolidated reviews, and it's parallel, not sequential approval. Executive Order six-two five is how the Governor asked us to reengage in this effort with intention and accountability and from the lens of the user experience. So often we think about things from state government experience. So we really wanna look at it from the user experience. The purpose of the EO is very clear, to promote housing construction and rehabilitation by improving the permitting processes, coordination and efficiency across state government. ACCD, or the Agency of Commerce and Community Development's role has been to help bring everybody together. The Agency of Digital Services and the Vermont Agency of Transportation, who are with me today in the room, have been leading the systems analysis, stakeholder workshops, and it's their work that really underpins this effort. So in a few moments, you're gonna hear from Stacy Andre, who's to my left, who co chairs the mobile home task team, which was has been a cross agency approach to purchasing and placing mobile homes on empty mobile home lots after the twenty twenty four floods. In her role, she worked with towns and various agencies on obtaining the need for permits for the placement of the homes. So with her experience in this area, she has been a great asset to the multidisciplinary team. She's accompanied by Josiah Rasch from the Agency of Digital Services, and Josiah is the Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Director at the agency and has been really instrumental in the systems analysis portion of this work. So again, this is not about I mean, this is about delivering faster, being more predictable so that Vermonters can plan with confidence. And so with that, I want to turn it over to Stacy and get some updates.

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Okay. All right. For the record, my name is Stacy Andre. I'm with the Agency of Transportation, the admin services director, and I'm also on a special project for the last couple of years doing the mobile home infill program, and I'm the co chair of that program. All right, so let's hop in. So the multidisciplinary task team. The Agency of Digital Services assembled a team of process improvement experts where we held a series of intensive workshops to kickstart the permit reform effort through this modernization. The participating agencies and departments dedicated one or several team members providing subject matter experts that understood housing and permitting processes. ADS provided the project management, using these developing workshops to focus on a path forward to addressing the executive order permitting reform specific to Vermont housing. We focused efforts on three items, goal alignment, process and timeline review, and data and process optimization. First, we work together on goal alignment, understanding the who and how, not yet, the that pain points or constraints and the joint understanding of the problem, again, concentrating on permitting processes for housing across all agencies and departments. From there, we dove into the process and timeline review. The MDT team focused on high level current state processes and timelines for housing projects, reviewing the permitting processes across all agencies and departments, as well as reviewing baseline metrics. Finally, we touched on data and process optimization and the desired ability to improve data flow and shared tools. Currently, we are emphasizing the people part of the equation and finding the commonalities and opportunities to work together with data and technology coming later. Our vision. When diving into the permitting reform documents for how housing is approved, we found the system we are currently using is cumbersome and difficult for the applicant to use, resulting in low quality applications, causing additional time, effort and resources to each permit request. Housing permitting processes are spread across various agencies and departments, causing applicants to duplicate entry requirements, systems or processes. And without any formal lines of communication, we realized there was limited coordination across the permits. The unpredictable timelines and approval permitting processes are expensive for everyone involved. And we are hoping that by aligning our requirements and processes, we can provide a faster way to approve housing permits and ultimately build more homes in Vermont. Next slide. This is a great slide. You can't read it right close, but if you look at the different things, it is a journey, it starts from the left to the right, hopefully. And it really is. Modernization is a journey. All states somewhere on this spectrum. Vermont's agencies and departments are really in various places on this spectrum, but many still on the less advanced side of the diagram. When we first revisited modernizing the housing permitting processes, it is easy to jump directly to new technologies as an immediate solution, and I think we all try to. But first though, we need to understand the constraints, the opportunities, and the requirements. Why we focused on the relationship and the lines of communication, and why we focused on the users of the system itself. To understand and find the human solutions that could be enhanced by new technical capabilities. Historically, departments looked at efficiency within their own processes, and that's fantastic. And we still encourage that. But that's just not how the case is to the outside the state. Vermonters looking at us are seeking housing permits. They see us as a single entity and not as a series of functions of different agencies and departments and places to go and get those pieces and parts. If we take the same lens by zooming out and looking at a customer and community view, we can find efficiencies across the entire permitting program. Looking at it as a program means there are many possibilities way beyond the simple act of providing a housing permit that can be tapped in to improve overall outcomes and provide a clear pathway for Vermonters, communities and builders. And, Charlie, our preliminary recommendations, Based off of our initial workshops, which were quite intensive, we developed four preliminary recommendations. They are shared data and intake, active project assessment, process review and prioritization, and cross agency coordination. For the first one, the shared data and intake, we're looking to create an intake form with shared data and available to all agencies and departments. This way we can consolidate the single entry point. Then the next thing, and I won't read the whole slides for you, but the active project assessment. Clearly, we want to categorize the in pipeline projects to assist with housing project types and the ability to understand the level of lift required to get permit approval. A basic complex and anything in between, we really didn't have a prioritization standard process, and so the workshops came up with this idea that they wanted to do for each project. And then next, process review and prioritization. Really track the bottlenecks, prioritize housing targets, and examine the fee structures and how that works. And then finally, cross agency coordination. Establish a pre application meetings and develop applicant fact sheets. While some of the agencies are really ahead of the game and are providing pre application meetings such as the fire and safety and fact sheets, ANR, Agency of Natural Resources have lovely fact sheets and all sorts of help and a navigator, not everyone is on that same page. And it's hard to find, and so we're hoping to align that all together. And by concentrating on alignment and educating the applicant, we are hopefully, we'll be able to significantly increase successful approved housing permits. And I just wanted to, we talked about this and we wanted to put this in here to show you the hard work that everyone across the agency and departments did over these workshop series. And this is a look right here, and I know it's lots of boxes and things, but this is our proposed housing market intake model. So this is our first real steps of trying to come together for a common intake form. And this was mapped out by the workshop participants. So we really had a lot of buy in all the way across all agencies. And of course, while there is improvement, as you can see, there are many moving parts to obtain an approved housing permit.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Thank you. Cool. I'm, for the record, Josiah Resh. I'm the Chief Data and AI Officer for the state, and you may wonder why the nerd is here to talk about housing permits. But it's really because underneath a lot of the challenges that applicants face right now are data issues. Either low quality applications that come in, where there's not enough information for the people who are supposed to approve the permit to actually make a make the decision that they need to make in a timely way. There's multiple back and forth with the applicant to get additional information. Or on the flip side of that, the applicants are providing the same information over and over again to different entities around the state. So they may provide, just think about that basic, what is the thing you're trying to accomplish? How many times you might say that for the five, ten, 15 different permits you may be applying for throughout the life cycle of a large project? So those are data issues, which are which are my jam. So I'll talk a little bit about some of the foundational work that ADS has been doing that will will help this. But I wanted to highlight as coming out of the multidisciplinary task force meetings, we really thought about a three phase roadmap. So the first one is really establishing a level of predictability and coordination. And that's what this was about. When we first had conversations about what's your intake process look like, each department we talked to said, We have an intake process. Things come in, we do them as efficiently as possible, and then they're done. Which is great, but there's no coordination among them. Everybody was focused on making their own processes as efficient as possible. And that's great, that is a thing we should do. But aligning everyone's work, and having these are all the things you need to do before you start breaking ground on the property. These are all the things that you then do between breaking ground and when there's occupancy. And then here's your final steps. That's kind of what this model starts to lay out. It's like, here's a coordinated way to do that, and the list of all the permits you might need in between, so that when you have that permitting support meeting upfront, you can very effectively say, These are the ones we're likely to need. You might pick up one or two more as the nuances of the project become available, but you're providing the information just once, and it's being effectively shared across all the programs. So that's that foundational alignment work. So, we want to take a pilot approach to this. So, working with small groups of developers and builders to bring them through the new process, and then see what we learned, see how it works, and then expand to larger groups. So, we were initially targeting just four to 10 housing units, like that size project. So, that's a very narrow window looking at how can we make the process more effective in that area. And then see about making that broader as we learn. Then the next phase is the design phase. So, taking what we learned, building continuous improvement into really leveraging what's already there, but building it into each individual process, and then evolving that shared intake. Eventually, we'd love to see single permit portal where you really come in and it's one spot to see all the interactions for a project with the state and be able to see their status. And really shifting to more of a project profile approach. So there's a shared view of what's this project trying to accomplish, things like that that are shared across many different permit permitting programs. And then finally, implementation phase where we actually roll that out broadly. Questions to this point? I know I just talked really fast.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Super soft questions. I'll represent a Chapin and Rob.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: This is really great to hear. I guess my first and most related to what you were just talking about question is really about that single, like the ultimate goal of single portal and everything streamlined. I guess I'm just curious and I've been involved in, like, trying to get state programs to that kind of a place, so I I know there's also trade offs. And I guess I'm just wondering if you're looking at other states that you think other models that do this really well and or are you just sort of in it? That's always a question. It's like, are there places that do this well? Are you looking at those examples? What are the trade offs? And in particular, weave my other question in for this, which is really more overarching for the agency of Congress and Community Development is how does this affect How are you making sure this process that's focused on housing isn't negatively impacting other sectors, of course, like small Is that what particularly comes to mind? So I guess I'm just curious about all of that.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: I'll take the first piece, which is are we looking at other states? Yes. We've surveyed the landscape that's out there. And one of the things that Stacy and I were talking about yesterday as we were putting this together was the states that are doing this well, it's not very flashy. It's like Mhmm. Kinda really boring when you're doing it well. Like, it's a it's a really boring intake form. But the point is, who has that information? How does it get shared? And then what's the process afterwards? Mhmm. So we're looking at Pennsylvania. We looked at Colorado and Utah. Ohio. Ohio. I I can't remember all of them, but there were a bunch of them that we looked at and reviewed how they do this.

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Quite a few.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: And and like Stacy said, everybody is on this term. Nobody is knocking it out of the park yet, from what I can see. But I think it's something that we can do better, and that's why we're taking the pilot approach. So by really targeting for that four to 10 unit size upfront, we can make assumptions that this isn't somebody who's building one unit. If you're building four, you have a level of technical expertise. We can make that assumption. And if you're building less than 10 units, you're also probably not wildly resourced to go, like, bring in experts for everything. So we can target the system to something that'll work for them and then take the lessons learned and expand out. I'll toss the other question.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: Yeah. Mean, representative, I no. I was a former small business owner, so I really appreciate your question. And I think this is the importance of the multidisciplinary team, is that there are checks and balances along the way to try to make sure we don't break something unintentionally. And permitting should be steering wheel and not a parking brake. Right? And so what we're finding is, like, really well intended processes are impeding the desire that we wanna see for people to jump into the game and bring housing units online. So we have to do everything we can to remove those barriers. But to your point, we're also continuing to check back and check with each Like I said, we have quite a broad coverage of representatives on this team to make sure that we don't unintentionally harm the very people who are the backbone of our economy. So that's the best answer I can give you to that right now.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Just in terms of prioritization part around housing, I guess in particular, how do you make sure that doesn't just cause longer wait times for someone Yeah, in other

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: I mean, that's a great point. And I think that kind of comes down to the triaging piece a little bit, of sort of trying to recognize what is in which bucket and making sure the right people with the right expertise are laying eyes on that. I spend a lot of my time, to be honest with you, working with businesses of all sizes who are trying to navigate our regulatory or our permitting process. So again, we are constantly thinking about everybody. It's not like an either or at this point. It's an all. You know, we need our economy to grow from the the businesses that are here that are bringing the jobs, but we need the houses because those same businesses are saying to us, we've we we risk and we lose people every day who are here already, and we struggle to bring people here because there are not enough options for them to live in. So right now, we need 7,000 to 8,000 units every year for the next five years. So again, we have to do everything we can to try to make sure both of those things are happening at the same time.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Representative North.

[Rob North (Member)]: Thank you, Madam Chair, for remembering my name. I know it's distracting. Thank you folks for coming in and sharing this with us. A couple of questions. Here's my first one. Stacy, in your presentation, I think you mentioned one of the things you're trying to do is achieve more successful approved housing permits. Think that was the phrase. I hope I copied that correctly. Yes. So what are the current permit approval statistics? Last I saw, and in fact, we've been assured by the CEE and the LERB that approval statistics are great. We're doing a

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: great job. We're doing a super job.

[Rob North (Member)]: That was true, that's specific to Act two fifty. So what metrics are you looking at and what are

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: you shooting to improve and what numbers are trying to achieve?

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, that's a great question. I'll start with the successful approved housing permits. Really, we're trying at this point in time is to reduce or eliminate the rejections. Right now, applications come in and they are rejected over and over and over again, and that's not included into the approved time and how long it takes for a permit to go through the state process. And so what we want to make sure is that when the applicant goes to get a housing permit, they can be as successful as possible the first time around. And so that's really what the genesis is of making it so that they can get an approval towards the end of what they've done and not have a lot of rework because it's frustrating. It's frustrating for the applicant and it's frustrating for the state not having the appropriate information to be able to make those decisions that they need to make. So that's where we're trying to head. Second question, second half?

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Of Yeah, the thing I'd just add to that, when we talked to all the departments, one of the things they mentioned was they get a lot of low quality applications, and so they're spending a lot of time helping. And great that they're helping, and that's reflected in the statistics. But helping time is not directly time that goes into approving things. And so all of that handling time adds up. Now it doesn't like, that's good customer service. Like, there's lots of good things about that that we wanna highlight. But our goal is to be able to support applicants to be more effective the first time. So that is one of the core KPIs. It's like, can people navigate this process confidently the very first time? And I think there will be We actually just started identifying KPIs at the individual program level. So we can continue to work on that and talk more about that later in the session. But we're working with each program on kind of aligning their KPIs and aligning standard ways of tracking things. Because sometimes things like success rate may not be tracked exactly the same at DEC and at historic conservation. Right? Like, There's nuances to how those things are tracked. And so we wanna make sure that we are accurately capturing that, and then also taking into account seasonality. Because there are things that historic conservation can't do this time of year because it's snowy. So there are a lot of activities like that that would address that impact timelines in place.

[Rob North (Member)]: KPIs are key process indicators, right?

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Correct, yes.

[Rob North (Member)]: And I would heavily suggest that based on what you just

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: said about a lot of the

[Rob North (Member)]: current rejection not being included in what's currently being measured, that you make sure that your KPIs are comprehensive, that they include from the first time the person knocks

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: on the door, I think I'm going

[Rob North (Member)]: to build something, what do I need? Start the clock there. Not reject, reject, reject, reject, reject, finally get a decent flu and then measure from there.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Make sure the whole time got

[Rob North (Member)]: covered, because right now, as I said, I think we're, we keep being assured that, oh, the approval rate is fine, we're all doing well, at least within the EC, which

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: is the primary area this committee looks at. Let's make sure that it's all included. I don't want to speak to the nuance of their KPIs. I know that that is something that they take into account, but I don't know exactly how they account for it.

[Rob North (Member)]: Sir, can I ask you a second question?

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I'm not sure that'll be a second question, but you may ask another question.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Another question. So,

[Rob North (Member)]: in the first part of the presentation, you talked about all these things we're trying to do to streamline the permitting process to increase housing. Trying to get aligned, predictable, transparent, streamlined, parallel, time reduction, all that.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Nowhere in any of that. I hear the mention of cost reduction for the applicant and the homeowner.

[Rob North (Member)]: We just saw the recent Vermont economic report that showed Vermont at the bottom of the list, with this housing permitting thing being one of the key problems, EDM Homeworks, $600,000.170

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: of that is for permitting What and

[Rob North (Member)]: are we doing to reduce that $170,000

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: So

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: I'm glad you raised that. And again, from the seat I sit in, I think about that every day. So again, that is the challenge, crux of the problem, one of the big crux of the problems here is, have to pencil out, but at the same time, when the process creates roadblocks, it drives costs up. Same with you brought up fees, for example. So let's say and again, this is a little separate area of the executive order, but, you know, we're reviewing this idea of the timing of when we're collecting fees. So for example, if somebody who is aiming to develop a property has to pay a prime ag soil fee, it could be $250,000 Let's just say, I'm just picking a number. This is like a condition of the permit. So before they even get the permit, they have to go borrow money. But when they borrow money at seven or 8%, guess where it's going to go? It's going to go into the cost of building the housing, and it's gonna go back to the person trying to enter that unit or enter that home. So this is an enormous lens and aligned goal that we're all working on. It's like, we need to bring on more housing at every single entry point. Pardon me for using this, like juice the system. If we're gonna juice the system and get more people engaged because we need public, private partnerships, developments, we need people rehabilitating, we need all in. And so we have to bring that cost down. And so this is an enormous part, and I'm sorry that we didn't make that really clear out of the gate. I'm glad you gave us the opportunity to put a fine point on that.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: And if Logan.

[Kate Logan (Member)]: Thanks so much for this. I work in the social services, so I can tell you that non streamlined application processes waste a lot of money. So I'm curious, we've spent a lot of time talking about Act two fifty permitting. Folks need all of these permits that you're referring to in place before they can have a successful Act two fifty permit process. Then there are a number of municipal permits that somebody might need for a project as well. I'm curious if you're including the Act two fifty permitting process and municipal permitting processes in the workflow that you're considering.

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: That's a great question, and thank you for your support so far and understanding our dilemma here. The Act two fifty, the LERB representatives were at the table within the stakeholder group and very active in the discussion, which was great because most of the other agencies and departments need to provide something to the Act two fifty Board to be able to get that approval process. What we found is because there's no clear lines of communication, if you know someone you can call them and ask for it. Otherwise, they send the applicant back to one of those respective agencies or departments, get in line, submit your application, and then wait till your number comes up so you can be reviewed and approved. And then once that's done, you get to go back to Act two fifty to finish your application process. So all that takes time, energy and effort. And those are the things that we wanna align and do concurrently. When we said, hey, what about a formal line of communication? Or maybe a pre meeting and you're here telling us what we need. It was an moment in the room and they're like, yeah, but we're already doing it. I'm like, what about formally? What if we made sure it was part of this process? And yes, so that's part of those kinds of coming together to streamline it. And that realizes the cost savings as well. Like, can we do it all together at once? Anything to add on that?

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Municipalities not currently in scope? No. Not currently in scope.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Austin.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: It's just interesting, I was having a conversation with a representative. We met up at the abundance conference in Washington DC. And so, you know, we really we're very impressed with some of the lens that they're now looking through. And it sounds like and just just at lunch today, we were just saying, you know, there's a caucus starting on Friday called the economic Caucus, but it really could be the abundance caucus, because use name bottleneck, they use the word bottleneck. We were talking about regulations and how can we understand what regulations are redundant, federal and state, how to streamline and how expensive not streamlining this process? And I'm just wondering in terms of, I just wrote it down. Anyway, so I said, well, there must be people that know this, that know how to do this, that know looking at permitting, they'll know how to streamline it. And it's just interesting that now I'm hearing this testimony. And I'm wondering, is that accurate to say this is like within the lens of abundance, the way abundance is looking at cutting costs, you know, making it so people aren't waiting and cost for lumber going up, you know, and also looking at regulation, you know, in terms of consolidating regulations. So nothing's, you know, goes astray, but it's just much more intentional and much more fast tracked.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: I think tech land, we have similar conversations ongoing about process streamlining and how to apply a lot of process improvement techniques that have been developed over many years into our tech systems more effectively, and then how to do process engineering to make sure that we are The I talk about with my team a lot is, are we thoughtfully designing friction points? So there's gonna be Thoughtfully designing. Designing our friction points. Friction points. In the past, every process has friction in it. But what tended to be the case in the past is it was dictated by the tech. What's the tech good at? What's the tech not good at? Whatever the tech is not good at is the friction points, and that's how we end up with the human services systems. And so the way that I talked about this with my team is there's still gonna be a point where there's the most friction. But can we put that in a place where it actually serves the system as a whole, where it serves the outcomes of the system, and thoughtfully engineer in where the bottleneck is to the point where we actually want the bad ideas to get stopped at that bottleneck. And just put some thought into how we design the systems from there. So I'm I'm talking mostly from a tech lens. I know, you know, secretary Kerley and and all the folks over at transportation are thinking about this through their own ways too and stuff like the abundance approach.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: It's very encouraging to hear, people that can actually actualize some of those, the vision of that and save people money and save people time and get housing built.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Based on my construction management and project management background, really it's an iterative process. We want to make sure that we're going through this and finding where those stops or blockers

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: When you

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: say that, is that roadblocks? Would that be the same

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: That would be roadblocks, yeah. Anything that slows or pushes the system back. So really you would like ideal situation is what's the least amount of steps to get to point A to point B? What's the smoothest route? And so how do you look at that? And there's a couple different ways you can do that. Having these continuous improvement projects like this is being able to look at mapping out an existing or current state and saying, okay, well, how do we do it today? And then saying, well, how do we want it to look like? What's our end results? And try and figure out what are extra steps, duplicative steps, could we cross those out, and really lean it down. And ideally lean it down enough that you have to add that steps back in. And then you go, okay, we're right sized now. And taking our past experiences right now, all of us have these past experiences, and use them as lessons learned. Like, what did we learn from those? What do we wanna avoid? What's the best way that we found to work through that system or process? And engage in that. And then make incremental adjustments as we go. And so really try and keep that cycle of improvement continuing. This isn't a one and done. It's

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: not

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: a static thing, this is a live environment and permitting changes when regulations change or get modified or something happens that we need to New technologies come on board. They are Perfectly, heard about AI. Then we can make some more incremental changes to that. So that's really how we hope to fulfill this. You. Very exciting. Thank you. I agree.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Are there any other questions?

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Did did you get through your whole presentation?

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Oh, yeah. We did. I have a couple more things I Please. Want talk

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Morris. Thank

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: you, madam chair. Does the EO conflict with the proposed current legislation that we have for our tier locations? In other words, where we have infrastructure, if it's a 1A, 1D, where we want housing, and eliminates tier three where we don't want housing. How does this coordinate with those efforts? Does it supersede it? Circumvent it? And that's one question. I'll stop there.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: It's not intended to circumvent processes. That being said, as Josiah said, there's always going to be tensions. And so there are tensions around where people think the housing should be. When you think about what's being proposed for 1A, I think you'd largely find people would be in agreement about. That's where we want to direct this. So I'm going to kind of bring this back to permitting. So if you look at the permitting, we generally apply permitting because I talked about earlier, this should be a steering wheel, not a parking brake. We want to steer people to where we want something. And so the EO, this part of it, really to make sure we could steer people where we've all agreed we're having something. The other work you're talking about is happening at the same time, and there are folks that could probably answer your question very articulately. I would have to take a few minutes to think about how to really convey that to you, but I would be happy to either come back or bring the housing team back from my agency soon, whenever, or have a side conversation. But I think we can answer your question. I'm just not prepared to answer it at this moment.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Nope. Okay.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: Oh, we're not just so you know, this is not intended to circumvent. Okay. So

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: I'll take that advice, ma'am.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: Okay.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: So when you talk about current Act two fifty or Tier two and local DRBs, there are opportunity for locals to have input onto the permitting process. And with that said, I'm understanding this is a pilot from four to 10 units. Is that what I heard?

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: That's where we focused our current process on.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: Yeah. So when I be doing four to 10, why wasn't one to three considered

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: from some smaller units? We did talk about that, and I'll take a swing. So what we found when we looked at data is that a lot of the one to three unit stuff has actually The buy right conversations have largely been successful. So those are actually going much smoother now. There is still work to be done there, yes. But that wasn't the part that we were running into the biggest set of challenges. It was really that kind of still on the small end, but that four to 10 range was where we needed to target after looking at the data.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: So some larger project, more or less?

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Larger projects tend to be well resourced and they tend to be they're complicated, but they just tend to be complicated. And trying to figure out how to improve outcomes for all those at the beginning, we felt like we would get bogged down in the the details and all the like because there's not that many of them. Like, you can look at each one, and each one is different. Whereas the four to tens, you can start to build some patterns and start to streamline things.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: And my last, just a follow-up. Thank you, madam chair. Financial incentives. Are there proposed any to be attached to this, like chip program or others?

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: No. But we'd love to hear what you're thinking.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: This is

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: interesting. We've been really

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: just focused on process and creating alignment. That was the answer to the question about cost as well. All of that, we think, is coming, but was not the direct work of the team.

[Kristi Morris (Member)]: Okay, that's fair.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Okay. Representative Logan. Thank you.

[Kate Logan (Member)]: I have a couple of questions. One of the reasons I asked about the municipal process is because once tier 1A goes into effect, then there will be delegation down to the local level for comprehensive permitting review along the lines of Act two fifty. So I'm just curious what that's gonna look like vis a vis state permitting processes. But it sounds to me like Is that conversation going to happen as part of design process?

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: I think that this is evolving. And this is, again, when I went through the history, it was a reminder that things change. And if we don't change with the change, then we've created that roadblock that we talk about. So, without putting people on the spot here, would say, think in our minds that's absolutely going to happen. And while that wasn't the specific part of the scope right now, it is challenging because we have this other work happening at the same time. But I think what we are trying to convey here is we have the ability to evolve, and to pivot and to meet the moment. And so we want to continue doing that. So if we can tackle some of the things that we already know exist in the current process, I think that part becomes, I hate to say it, an easy get for all of us. That's great.

[Kate Logan (Member)]: Second question is, would it be possible to share sort of a case study with us? I think there are a lot of assumptions being made about the permitting process and statements being made about the permitting process, about how long it takes, how much it costs. I think there's conflation with Act two fifty as the permitting process, which it isn't because we're talking about a range of permits here that you're trying to coordinate permitting processes across a range of permits. It's related to Act two fifty because, like you said, the permits have to be in place in order for the act two fifty permit to be awarded. So streamlining that piece is really but, anyway, I think it would be really helpful for all of us, especially me, not a housing developer, to see sort of what a permitting process looks like for a project of the size that you're piloting, since we all don't really know what it's like. Very

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: valid. Yeah. You just made me think of something. I know what it was. It's interesting you say that. The perception is very different for the people who know the process very well, and they tee themselves up for success. So when the permits come in, the information is complete, they know who they have to go to and when. So if you talk to one of those developers, they will say, Sure, we'd like to pay out less in fees, or We'd like whatever. There's always a wish list. But they will say, No, the process They know the process, so they're like, process is what it is. But the reality is those are the small percentage who have done this so much. And again, it's not that they love everything. I'm just saying it's predictable to those who have navigated it a lot. For those of us that don't navigate it as part of our daily life, it's no surprise that it is so frustrating to people because, do you go to your municipality first? Do you go to the state first? Who do I call? Right? And like Stacy said, if you know somebody in state government that you happen to know works in permanent, you might pick up the phone and say, Where do I begin? But yes, to your answer, we can certainly provide a case study. But I really do appreciate you acknowledging that we need to do these improvements. And I'm not stating we don't, but that the perception is heightened, I believe, because it's the wild, wild west for so many of the people that enter into rehabilitating or developing.

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I can give you a little survey results. And this was back when we had done a, this was prior to me. They had a continuous improvement project back in 2018 and the results that came in and these could change over time, but there were five fifty submissions. And of those submissions only 20 were able to complete the permit without outside help. So that really tells you that four sixteen of them were permittees, 58 were co permittees, 15 of them were contractors, 29 of them were consultants, and 37 of them were others. So, we have which probably are lawyers, in my guesstimation. So that's what we're looking at, is really trying to increase that number. Could we get more people to be able to go through our processes, to be able to be successful with minimal or outside help, because right now that's just not that's not the reality.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: That begs the question of what type of outside help. Many, many single family residences require a septic design or the help of a well driller. And I would count as outside help, I imagine

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: No, that it trimmed it out. Those were trimmed out. So basically it was, and I agree with you, because most of the time anyone that's trying to get a permit through Agency of Natural Resources or some sort of housing building permit needs some sort of infrastructure improvement. But I want to put a pin on this because it was an interesting result. I was surprised that consultants and contractors all needed outside help as well. So it wasn't like it was only on the permittees that were saying they didn't need help. So that was an interesting example.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I don't think we need to debate this, but I do think it's important that our data be really clear and accurate. And if you're an architect, you're going to hire an engineer. That's outside help. I think that we have to be careful when we're talking about it. I guess I want to go back a little bit to your process and where you are at it and how you've engaged the public. You mentioned not to try to be internal and just talk amongst yourselves. How has the public been involved? How many meetings have you had? Where are you at in your process?

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: So far, we've been using each individual department's engagement with their constituents to inform our work. What we're kind of next step is to say, hey, take a subset of the people who have something in progress and engage with them and look at what the process looks like and how we could make those ones that are currently in the pipeline do better. So as far as, like, outside public engagement, haven't done a lot yet. That's what's coming next.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: And where are you at in your process? Like, how often do you meet? I mean, seems like you're potentially using a lot of resources to

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: do this work.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: In the beginning, was heavy.

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: It was heavy. Yeah, so that's a great question. We had six workshops twice a week and we're done. So we basically have put our report together, our recommendations together, and submitted those to the Governor's office. And that's where we're at for right now.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: Yeah, I mean, and these are just, again, we're still studying. We're still researching. So the timeline, I'll have to get back to you on that. But we've been meeting our our deadlines within the EO, and so we're just continuing to work on that. We can come back mean, again, I don't think well, there could be like let's say we decide on some big technology changers not big. But, you know, more AI in the process or whatever. In my mind, this is going to continue to evolve to meet the moment because there are a lot of things happening. Talk about

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: I think this is actually where it be helpful for me to continue with the presentation because that will actually help answer the question of what we're working on now. Can

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I though just ask, if this is in the next part, let me know? But we deal mostly with the agency of natural resources permitting, and I actually asked Secretary Moore, who I should have talked about this, and she recommended you. I'm a little surprised that ANR is not part of a leadership team here. Can you give me a sense of the percent of permits? Like, is ANR the most permits that a person needs to consider, or who else is issuing these housing permits? Give give us a sense of the broader universe, please.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: Well, if we need to get back to them again. Yeah. I mean, because to your point, there's historic preservation. There's DEC. There is I mean, I'm not even

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: We had nine departments involved.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: Yeah. Nine.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: So ANR by count had the largest number. By percentage, it really depends on the project. Mhmm. Most projects were touching more than one department.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So Oh, yeah. Yeah. More than one department. I guess I'm just curious among the departments, who has the most permits that they're

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: By account, it'd be it'd be Yeah. It'd be probably. DDC. Mhmm. But which ones are like, if you take any particular project that had four permits, would more than half of them be DEC? It depends on the project. That's what I was getting at. That make sense?

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: And I'm sure Secretary Moore can come in and talk more specifically. I think that the understanding was that you wanted to talk about the modernization process that was taking place, and that for that reason, she suggested myself.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Oh yeah, yeah, thank you for coming. I think you're the right people to be here. Thank you. No. I didn't mean to imply that. I guess I just thought since DC and ANR might have many of these permit processes Yes. Why they weren't kind of at the leadership end of this.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: They were a 100% at the table, and we talk regularly on this stuff.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Okay. Why don't you

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: So one of the things that I highlighted earlier was, you know, really, it's a lot of a lot of the improvements can be made simply by sharing data more effectively between the various departments involved in the permits. So what I wanted to talk a little bit about was the foundational tech that my team has been working on implementing that we expect to be kind of the the underpinning to really move a lot of this forward. So in December, I guess it was, I guess, three weeks ago now, we completed our next generation data and analytics platform. So we talked about this in two pieces. And the reason that I'm talking about it here is because I want you to know that this is available, because I think it will inform what types of things you ask us to work on in data land, and what types of KPIs and metrics and monitoring you all are requesting, knowing that this is available. So we have two pieces. There's a data lake, which is kind of allows you to bring data in quickly and store at low cost. And then there's a warehouse, which lets you do integration complex analytics. And I didn't make up this term. This is the industry standard term. It's called a lake house. So it's a data lake house Cool. That combines both the ability to bring things in quickly and store a lot of data cheaply and be able to do complex analytics and prediction.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So who made that term?

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: It is an industry standard term. I don't know who invented it. It has been around for six or seven years, though, in the

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Data industries term?

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Yep. The Data Lake House. Sounds like a great place for a vacation. I'm

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: gonna make some video.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: So the other thing that we've been doing a lot of work on is data governance. And data governance can be scary and academic, but really our focus is on maximizing the value of what we collect on one hand, and then protecting the privacy and security of the data on the other. So we wanna make sure that we are providing data appropriately, sharing it appropriately, while protecting the privacy of the people whose data it is. So we are currently working governance pilots. There's a big one over in the social services space going on right now. I'm working on some with doing on CareBoard. And then this project will be another one of the early pilots as we start building out the data infrastructure and sharing it. So I just wanna make you aware that this is work that's going on, and when you have questions about things like how many permits went through DEC and then through historic preservation, we will be able to answer those kinds of things soon, but we can't today. And one of the challenges we ran into in this project is there's no unique identifier across projects, across permits. And so a project comes in and we have no real good way to tie especially if there was a subdivision involved, so the address changed, things like that, there's no good way to tie across all the different people who've issued the permit. So, when we were trying to pull together the case studies, we were like, oh, we'll do all of the ones that have come through this year. And then quickly realized that's not actually going to be feasible, because there's no way to tie them all together. So we have a few, and that's kinda where we're at there. So that is that would fall under data governance and maximizing the value of what we and I just wanted to bring it back to this vision, which we we talked about before. Right? That we have alignment on priority. We have alignment of requirements. This is another thing that came up. It's sometimes historic preservation will say, you have to do this kind of mitigation, and DEC will say, you have to do this kind of mitigation, and you can't do both. So then you gotta go back to one or the other and get an update and, like, that kind of thing happens. So getting alignment there, improving predictability, improving transparency, and then streamlining everything. So really talking about making our program more effective. That gets to the end of the slides. So now we'll come back to board discussion.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Further questions? Representative Austin? Just then, how do you, like, measure it and, you know, the timeline measure it and then accountability? How who's, like, following that it is moving at the speed that you hope it will move?

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: That's one of the challenges, because right now each department measures the speed that it takes to get through their stuff. Mhmm. And because we can't track permits across different departments, like, can't answer that today. And that was one of the very first things that was identified by the task forces. We need to work on that. We need to build some sort of We need to build visibility so that we can answer that question to you, and also so that we can track, are we winning? Is this working? Are we making it better?

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: And the applicant.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: And the applicant would like to know

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: some things. Yeah, going back to what lens we really, really wanna look at this through is that applicant, they should be able to go in at some point and say, where am I in the process? Not where am I in historic preservation's process, where am I in the whole process? It's goes the transparency and predictability. And, again, reducing the cost because

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Accountability. Yeah. Accountability. A 100%.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Why isn't it moving

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: along as anticipated? Yeah. Yeah. So we get a call and somebody says something's stuck in historic preservation. Well, that's my agency. I can walk over and say, what's going on with this? But if it's stuck somewhere else and I don't have a lens in that again, I pick up the phone and call somebody. But Mhmm. In modern technology

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Shouldn't have.

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: Success. Right. I mean, again, we get it. Everything has a cost, but people should be able to look in there and say, where am I?

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative.

[Kate Logan (Member)]: I'm curious how this project was funded. I mean, this seems like within the scope of sort of, like, your general the scope of your work in ADS. But is there gonna be a specific budget line for this project?

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: Well, I can't answer you yet because the budget is still being worked on. More to come on Tuesday. But what I can tell you is the work that has been done to date has been completely within the scope of the work that we all do. Just because we were having these extra meetings or whatnot, that's just part of our directive, our job. So, so far, no special budget for this. What may need to come and again, as you can tell, there's still work to be done here. Like I said, there's inevitably, depending on what everybody decides to do, there could be a cost, and we'll deal deal with that when it comes. But I can't tell you today. We don't we're not there yet. Thank you, though.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Other questions? I'm curious if your title changed recently, the AI division. Is that a new division of government?

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: Yeah. Great question. So the AI division was created in '22, and I took the role of AI director late in '22. I've since become the chief data and AI officer. We merged the data and AI offices because we found that

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: The leak house.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: It started

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: leak house. Exactly.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: We found that, we we did a bunch of AI stuff, and then we got to the point where we're like, do any more of these? We need data. Like, we need to get better at data governance so that we can actually share things safely. We need to get better at how we manage data. And so we merged the two offices, and I took the data and AI officer role, and I've brought in a new AI director. His name is Miles. So if you ever wanna talk about AI, he's he's great. He's great.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Can you give us a

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: couple of sentences on what he does? Because I'm just Yeah.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: So he is he he has a statutory remit to, like, make sure that AI is used responsibly in state government. So part of his role is overseeing and making sure nothing exciting in the wrong way is happening with AI in Vermont. The other part of what he does, though, is enabling good AI usage. It's kind of the same conversation about how do we steer development to where we want it. We're doing the same thing with AI. Our overall approach to AI in ADS is we see AI as a power tool to help knowledge workers be more effective. And the analogy I like to use is like, you're putting trim on a door or something. If you're like me and not that handy, you're thinking about not hitting your thumb when you're swinging a hammer. You're not thinking about pulling the corner together tight. A good power tool lets you go, oh, hold the corner together, chunk, chunk, chunk. And now I focused on outcomes. Building a robotic nail gun and telling you to put the trim on your window is going to end up with a broken window. So there is an appropriate way to think about AI as a power tool that is operated by a human who is skilled in operating it, and it's to meet certain outcomes. The other thing I'd say is battery operated drill. If you use it to pound nails, you're going light things on fire. So, we want to make sure the operators know what they're doing, the tool is fit for the purpose, and it's being used to drive the outcomes that we expect. I can talk about AI at a lot of length.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Next witness actually canceled, so if you're

[Kate Logan (Member)]: That's exciting. Thank

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: you all for coming in. Any last questions? Representative Austin? Yep.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: So I'm just wondering from the AI. I I know nothing, but it's just very exciting to me. It's also very concerning, but it's also very exciting. And I'm just wondering, could you get to the point where you look at the end product and then back up into what permits need to be done, you know, just the different agencies and just be able to kind of follow it in terms of local, state, and federal permitting and the intersectionality of permitting. I mean, to really streamline it. So I'm imagining that AI could do that.

[Josiah Resh (Chief Data and AI Officer, Agency of Digital Services)]: It can help. I don't think it will so one of the other pieces we talked about, to your accountability question, is having people who can really shepherd through the process, right, shepherd a portfolio of permits through the process. That wasn't one of our direct recommendations because that's still something we're discussing about. There's downsides to that. There's cost implications to that. So we're still thinking through that. But I think AI can help with things like your building here, your project description says you're not going to impact the stream that's on the bottom of the property. Right? Like, a bunch of things like that, and could say, here's what I think the package of permits is. And then during that permit intake meeting, the experts can look at in more detail and say, Yep, oh, and also this one. Or, Actually, you don't need that one. And that's how we want to use AI, is making recommendations and helping people to kind of zoom out and think about outcomes. I will try not to be more long winded than that, but I'm happy to answer any follow ups.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Well, was great. Thank you for joining us.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Thank you, thanks

[Lindsay Kurrle (Secretary, Agency of Commerce and Community Development)]: for having us. We know we have a few things to get back to

[Kate Logan (Member)]: you on, and we'll do that. We'll follow-up.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Great.

[Stacy Andre (Administrative Services Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Thank you. Thank you.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Alright, members. Well, we did I I thought we had a seed coming in this afternoon that they have asked him in later in the week, so we are don't have any more witnesses for this afternoon. Members have anything they want to mention before we go off?

[Kate Logan (Member)]: We'll be able to have them back.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: And I think they're already scheduled for later in the week if they scheduled for later.