Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: Okay, well.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Alright, welcome back. We are changing topics back to, well, H632, but also updates on the River Corridor. Anyway, we're welcoming Rebecca Pfeiffer back. Welcome back.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Thank you. Thank you, Chair Sheldon. As the Chair said, my name is Rebecca Pfeiffer, for the record, from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. I also have with me today, if there's any questions or anything, Rob Evans, who's our Rivers Program Manager who joined me today. So I wanted to thank you for having me back. We got cut short a little bit. So we were towards the end of the slides that I was just presenting and talking about the Flood Safety Act, Act 121, and some of the work that we've been doing. We talked a little bit about some of the work and where we're at. And I wanted to just quickly kind of as a refresher, talk a little bit about the floodplain regulations, the state minimum floodplain standards, as well as the legislative committee for the state's role in the NFIP. So how we might help to support towns from a permitting standpoint with floodplain regulations. That was one of the pieces of Act 121. I backed up a slide or two just to then talk about the river corridor work that is also part of Act 121 for our program around river corridors. So one of the key pieces before going into rulemaking is amending our river corridor map with infill maps. So identifying areas in downtowns where we have more developed places, where we don't have the likelihood of the river re achieving equilibrium and movement. And so we're basically creating areas that are kind of like a permitting exemption is is likely how it'd be set up. It's similar to how we function now under Act two fifty and in communities that may have local river corridor regulations where we look at these infill areas. So areas with denser development, the big key in those places is trying not to get closer to the river to avoid erosion hazards. The other piece from so with the infill mapping, I had mentioned that right now we're prepping for our, large master contract to to kinda do all the technical aspects of the Flood Safety Act, one of them being the infill mapping. Internally, we've been doing I think I had mentioned we've been kind of keying up a lot of our base map. Because once this becomes a live state regulatory layer, we would imagine somewhat similar to the FEMA maps, if there's a question, am I in the river corridor? Am I not in the river corridor? Do the regulations apply to me? We're gonna have people who are gonna look for some sort of appeal process or a process to make a determination. So we're looking at our some of our base layers that will then go into informing the infill mapping.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: So if you could just help walk the committee through that map a little bit. Sure. When are we using infill mapping versus there's no eligibility for infill?

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: That's a really good question. Right now, I think that you had heard testimony from Lauren Oates from The Nature Conservancy previously about some of the infill mapping pilot project that they had launched as the Flood Safety Act was being discussed to kind of give a head start to us to look at some of the downsides, what are the hurdles that we might face, how might that work? So from that, what we looked at as if in that pilot study, what was looked at were three, four, five communities at how would infill mapping work. When we've done it before within our own program, we've looked at designated downtowns. So village centers, like better tied to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development designations. Or we've looked at areas when we've worked with an individual community who wants to have river porter maps, we've worked with them to look at densely settled areas and worked on an infill map. From this statewide process, we will likely be starting with some of the communities, probably not a statewide infill map, but probably looking at communities possibly tying together some of the tier 1A, tier 1B mapping that's also happening kind of concurrently with Act two fifty. I'm assuming that we would probably start in some of those locations because those are the areas where we have some of the dentists in fill. And so with the mapping master contract, I think that's where we would identify how many, where, what's the process. The picture that's up on the screen is from the TNC pilot program. This is the Johnson map. And they gave an example of like how they would overlay wetland areas, how they would also then overlay and look at parcel outlines. And again, looking at places where you wouldn't want to be closer to the river. So in this proposal, you know, those areas in orange are basically a green lit area for infill. And part of what we've had the discussion about internally is, you know, what is it Greenlit for? Is it no permit? Is it only of a certain type of development? And I think that's what we would probably be looking at in the conversations in the public is like, what does the infill area mean and what kind of development can or would not occur in those areas? One of the ways that we've looked at the River Corridor at this point is basically an intensity of use type of approach. So it's a parking lot now. It's a paved parking lot. It's a dirt parking lot, gravel parking lot. That's not as much of a concern. It's more that we don't wanna now put housing on top of a parking lot and say that's infill. Yeah. Because you're intensifying the potential for risk. Because even though these are areas that may not become areas that the rivers may occupy because they're in these denser downtown areas, we're also thinking of risk. So we don't wanna have a 40 unit apartment building on the top of the river just because it had previously been a parking lot because we're now putting people who might be, like, you know, 40 units of housing, you have 40 people that 40 families that you may need to, evacuate during a flood event. A lot of times with fluvial erosion, events, they happen quickly because it means it's tied more to the erosion or movement of the stream and river. So I think we're probably going to have a proposal as we're doing a lot of our outreach of, you know, how do we define this intensity of use? Do we say in certain areas that it is far enough from the river on the edges of the river corridor, and there's a lot of other infill? Or are we going to look at kind of a subset of what happens? Again, like thinking of that intensity of use. So If it's commercial property, try not to convert it to a residential property. If it's parking lot, we're trying not to convert it to buildings. Keeping a similar land use. The other thing I just wanted to mention again too is that we've been doing a lot of what's been called for in Act 121 is the education and outreach work to speak to a variety of different user groups essentially, or just constituents on their impressions, understanding around river corridors and better understanding what challenges they may face, what their thoughts are on it. The other thing that I spoke about, so right now we have been working TNC and Lake Champlain Sea Grant has been organizing outreach and education webinars all around the state, and we've been partnering with them in helping to get the word out. We have usually been attending them, not every single one. They're doing the presentations, but we've been there in attendance with them as they've been trying to get the word out. We also had done we had contracted with Two Rivers Out of Beachy Regional Commission. So under Act 154 from the 2022 session, we had the environmental justice law was passed, in Vermont. And so part of what we're tasked with and what we take very seriously is understanding the impacts of this legislation on environmental justice focused populations. Because there's a benefit if we're not having an increasing risk in floodplains and river corridors, obviously, but there's also a downside. You know, we talked I spoke a little bit. I think commissioner, came in has, in the morning before I spoke before, had talked a little bit about the magnitude of this bill in relation to the three acre stormwater bill and the 2014 Shoreland Protection Act. You know, what we see in most river quarters and floodplains is it disproportionately tends to be people who have who have less means and ability to recover after flooding. That also means if you have a regulatory program that might impose new regulations, there may be some sort of cost to that or an impact that may be negative. In the contracts that we do with Two Rivers out of Quechee, we specifically had done they had subcontracted out to look in Southern Vermont and Central Vermont at just kind of listening and bringing up what are some of the impacts of floods and flooding, what are the perspectives that you have to start to jumpstart a lot of that education and outreach and information around environmental justice focused populations. So, is where I left off. Check. Okay. So I don't want to run out of time.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: We can go over also a little. I think Bennington

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Okay. Is

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: But if you have him, I

[Rep. Rob North]: think he needs a half of it.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: So

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: some of the testimony I think that you had also had is like, this is already established. We already have a flood hazard area in Riverport, our FARC rule. I think legislative council, Michael Grady, had spoken about our existing FARC rule in some of the rundowns you had done. And so we do have a rule. It was required by Act 138 in 2012. And so we do have a statewide permit of FARCRA. So it looks at floodplain development, and it looks at development in river corridors. But it's very focused on three very key, you know, sectors that towns aren't allowed to regulate. This was meant to be almost like a stop gap measure. Local zoning laws in Vermont only allow towns to regulate certain things. And so things that towns can't regulate in floodplains, the state has to take over in lieu of the towns doing that work. So our so that's what this rule was created for to fill that gap. And so it's focused on power generation and power transmission. So solar dams dams that aren't regulated by federal emergency Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. I'm like, FERC, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: It's little too close to your acronym. I know. I'm like, which one is it?

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: We talked about that. We're like, oh, we should probably change that acronym. So power transmission, like large transmission lines. And we're looking at agriculture, agricultural and silvicultural practices. So we're already working with, agency of ag and other agricultural sector partners, in regulating activities on farms that occur in floodplains and river corridors. And there's also the, state facilities. So any state owned and operated facilities, we regulate to the park. So it's a very, very specific subset that we're regulating that doesn't kind of broadly translate into what we're talking about here. So, I think part of what our consideration and thought of, we have kind of, I think probably most similar to what our statewide rule would be, would be our work through Act two fifty. So under Act two fifty, we comment under Criterion 1D to a district commission about meeting the standards of Act one of Criterion 1D for the floodplain and river quarter standards. But as I'm sure probably a lot of you recognize, that's gonna be a handful of projects here and there across the state. And typically those are projects that we're doing a lot of one on one project development, project review, lots of technical assistance with applicants to develop a project that avoids floodplain or river porter impacts, Oregon tries to minimize it to the best ability, Something that we would find would meet our procedure, kind of what we've already have established. So just kind of going down in closing, I just wanted this is not meant to read the actual Gantt chart that's up here, because that would be a little overwhelming, but just trying to show kind of all the different pieces of the Act that are part of what the Rivers program is tasked with and everything that's highlighted in green. Again, we can provide this if you wanted to see it, but just looking at kind of all of the different things and all the things that we've at least begun and initiated work on.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: I think it would be helpful to get that so we could read it.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Sure. We can provide that for you. I almost didn't put the slide in here, but could offer it because the natural tendency is like, what does that say? So we can provide

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: We're being asked to change timelines. Having this would

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: really be helpful. That's no problem to provide that. Okay. So now I'm making a little bit of a hard turn. So I can pause here if you want to talk a little bit more about the Flood Safety Act and timelines. But I had heard conversation in the committee over a couple of different witnesses different on different days about flood insurance questions about flood insurance. My role in ANR is the state floodplain manager. So we have funding from FEMA to our office to support positions. So I wanted to provide some information about flood insurance, but I could hold this if you wanted to talk more specifically about Flood Safety Act. I would like to

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: take a Flood Safety Act moment here. And I guess I need you to help me understand. Our river corridors, how many of them are you considering mapped? Back when I was doing this, I thought we'd mapped an awful lot of them. And now we're hearing we need to remap them. And so help me understand that.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: It's not so much that we're remapping them. What we have so the legislation we have in the state mapped all river corridors down to a quarter square mile watershed, so like an area of land drain to a quarter square mile. Those are available right now in the Vermont ANR Atlas for people to view. I like to parallel it to FEMA maps because some people may have seen FEMA maps, but there's different qualities of floodplain mapping that FEMA provides. There's Zone As where they're kind of approximate areas that tend to be in smaller populations or places where you don't have a large population. So the data that goes into mapping them is not as refined and is not as detailed. And then you have studied reaches on big rivers like Downtown Montpelier. Lots of like flood heights, lots of information that goes into the modeling and engineering behind that. And our river corridors, think of it in somewhat of a similar way. The Flood Safety Act looks at river corridors that are two square mile watershed drainages or greater. And we have a variety of quality of data that's gone into them over the years. So we have some river corridor background data that was generated in the early 2000s, and we have some that have been more recently updated with field assessed data. Over the years, we also created kind of like filling in where we didn't have that field data to provide some sort of map on the front end. As we became more involved in Act two fifty reviews and we had towns adopting river corridor maps, we had, like, field assessed data, and then we had areas where we had nothing. So we created, like, the mid like, I think it was post I read, the mid twenty teens where we created a statewide river corridor map. So we created something along the lines of almost, like, more approximate river corridors where we didn't have field assessed data to be able to provide some predictability on the front end for active 50 projects or for towns looking to regulate river corridors. So part of what we're trying to do is go back to revisit some of the base layers that went into that. So we talked a little bit about valley walls. Like, the river typically is not gonna go uphill, you know, into mountains. And so with our base layers, we're trying to use LiDAR to help to refine some of those areas. And we're also looking at kind of revisiting where some of those river porters are drawn. So it's almost like a QAQC that we typically do when we have an active 50 project come up. We do that as the project comes up. Does the River Quarter layer data that we have make sense given what we see on the site? And we do that for all of our active 50 projects. Or if we're helping a town review a project in the River Quarter, we're going to pretty much every single site that there is a proposal for to field verify our River Corridor data. And so what we're anticipating is with a statewide program, the ability for us to engage as deeply in QAQC and those on the ground, we're still going to likely be doing that. But I think we're trying to update the data with the best available data we have now, which is using LiDAR to verify those valley walls to help make sure where we don't have field assessed data, it's kind of the best representation of the river corridor ahead of time so that it should hopefully lead to less back end refining of the map for the site. Can you tell me what percent of the river corridors that would be regulated under

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: the Flood Safety Act we have field verified data for?

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: I can't off the top of my head. I would turn to you

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: to see if Yeah. To Rob.

[Rob Evans, Rivers Program Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Rob Evans for the record, Rivers program manager. Of the 5,600 miles, this is rough numbers. I can get a finer number for you. I I think about 3,000 miles of those 5,600 are they've been refined based on our detailed phase two data, data like you used to collect, chair Sheldon, field based valley walls. So there's approximately, you know, 2,000, 2,500 miles where, it's not based on LiDAR. It was based on thirty thirty meter digital elevation models to define that kind of toe of the Slope Valley wall. And so we think we owe it to the regulated community and property owners to have as accurate a map as we can. We're doing statewide regulation. Right now, we give any project proponent the benefit of the doubt. They propose something. They say, oh, what I wanna do is in a river corridor. We send out a staff scientist to make sure our map is right. When we're doing this statewide, we're not gonna have the staff to do that for every project proposal. So we feel like we owe it to to the regulated community to have a more accurate map. And then, of course, we'll have to update our procedure when people wanna challenge that.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Yeah. I guess where I'm headed here is, of course, we want, folks to have accurate mapping, but we have accurate mapping for a lot of the state. And we also have a lot of pressure to build housing in this moment. We have a lot of newly exempted areas from Act two fifty. I'm hearing mostly your projects are getting triggered under that umbrella. Correct me if I'm wrong. And I have a lot of concern about new investments in vulnerable places, in particular because we know, as you mentioned, this is an environmental justice issue. We've seen these projects popping up. And as we extend the deadlines on this legislation, I just want to make sure we're sort of abiding by first do no harm here and not adding more investments in places we know are going to be vulnerable to erosion hazards. And I know the statute gives flexibility to roll it out with the areas that are mapped well. We can start with those. So help me understand the date extension requests.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: I share your concern. Like I said at the first meeting, I've been doing this for my whole career. And so this is something our program has worked for. I think my concern is kind of staggering and stair stepping some of it. So one year in this grand process, this big, huge process is a lot. It is a lot. But I'm also concerned that if we roll it out and it is not well thought out, if we don't have the language around, like, how do you appeal our maps? Do we have the staff capacity to look and verify all these river quarters before a project is reviewed? And our answer is we don't have staff to do that, or we don't have the ability to send out people to all these different sites being proposed. Or the other piece of it is that people don't know enough about it and so are continuing to build. And then we're on the other side of it where we're doing enforcement cases because those take a lot of time. And I'm not trying to downplay that, but I'm also concerned, me personally, I'm concerned with the way that that will draw my staff away from doing the permitting work to then doing enforcement, because it is a really time consuming piece to do it. And it takes years to play out versus trying to have the word out on the street ahead of time so people know this is coming and what to expect, having some of that information on the front end. So I think that's the perspective that I personally bring to it. I can't speak for everyone else in the program, but I think that is at the discretion of the committee, at the legislature as to the timelines. I think we've learned from the rollout of the Shoreline Protection Act. We've learned from the rollout of the three year stormwater rule of like having upfront notice for people to know the regulations are changing because we're going from a program that has no, you know, like, we enact 50 and in a handful of municipalities that they have the river quarter, regulations to now all of sudden a statewide program. And so that knowledge, and I think the understanding of that is not insignificant. We talked about 45,000 parcels that this would now cover. And so it's I guess it's all a balance. It's all a balance.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Well, it's a maybe. I mean, I guess I we have these exempt areas in our downtown right now, for better or worse. And I'm thinking here we are methodically mapping the infills. That's great. I totally support that. But if we're taking in particular public dollars, but any dollars, because we know when our neighbors get flooded out, we tend to pass the hat and try and help them out. So I guess I'd like some assurances that we're not doing a lot of infill, particularly dense infill in the places we know are gonna flood in this in this time frame. And I guess the comparison to the other two programs, I understand from the administrator's point of view maybe, but this is a public safety issue that is very different from cutting trees on the shoreland or even retroactively dealing with stormwater. So this it is pretty different.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: It is. It is. I think it's more about the scale and the outreach efforts of what that took, more meant to be the comparison more so than the programs themselves. I don't disagree with you. I mean, I think, like I said, we looked at projects across the state all the time. I always say it's like, once you see it, you can't unsee it. Everywhere you drive, you see it.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Yes. And so I see it since I was doing Center for me. Yes.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Yep, it is. And think, again, that's the discretion of the legislature of the committee in your conversation and in your consideration. I think part of it for me is trying to have these pieces inform. And I'm thinking of that legislative committee as being a piece that's informing what that level of the state regulation of floodplain areas may be or other players who might be in that place instead of town. So thinking of it as this larger like, I'm not just thinking of river corridor legislation. I'm thinking of as much bigger FAR permit, flood hazard area and river corridor permits. So thinking of how one rolls into the other. And I think that is part of what informs the other. If there's a change to those priorities of the legislation or of the work items, that is something that, you know, that's something the committee can consider or can discuss. But we've seen part of the conversation in 2024 during the testimony, especially in the Senate, in Senate Natural Resources, was around kind of like the initial conversation was just giving the state all of the NFIP regulation in addition to the river border regulation. And we were kind of like, it's a lot bigger than what people think it is. And so to change the rule kind of in between, and then go back and change the rule again, it's something that we can do, but I think it's probably from a, I think Mike had, Mr. Brady had talked a little bit about the time it takes to go through rulemaking and trying to have that as like a whole package to bring forward. Having that river corridor piece, but also having the flood hazard recommendations to provide to the legislature to consider so that when we're doing the rule making for the FAR permit, it's all being considered as one.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Representative Chapin.

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: Thanks for walking us all through this and for all the work your team has been doing. I guess I'm sitting here wishing that we were looking at options A, B and C. This is the option with the current staff capacity and the current hiring environment and no additional funds, no contractors, or maybe not no contractors, maybe you're using contractors somewhere in here, but I guess I would love to see plan B where you ask us for the resources to get this done as soon as possible, ideally like in the original timeframe, but we need to bring in a certain number of limited service positions or contractors to help us move more quickly. I know it's not easy to hire, nor even you can't predict when people might leave and you have to refill positions. But I guess I just, as a legislator, I'm agreeing with the chair that this is you know, like, you know, my communities flooded twice in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four. I, you know, this is a public safety issue and the people who tend to build homes, particularly non commercial properties in floodplains tend to be lower income, not have the same resources, options, access to land. And so I'm glad that you're working on the environmental justice piece. I hope that that's going to raise some of those issues, but we already know that that's an issue and that this is an equity issue and a public safety issue. So I would I'm so curious about a plan B that would actually be able to do this work on a tighter timeframe. I think we can develop something like that.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: I think from as an initial reaction, I think that we know, I mean, we've known I started and you're standing on the side of a riverbank with someone who has no options, because even if we did a full buyout of their property, they cannot go anywhere else to spend that money to buy another home or have safe housing. So we've known this as an issue for a very long time. I think what we're trying to really be thoughtful about because it's so much bigger than floodplains and river corridors. It is a whole societal response about how do we have safe housing for people or places for people to go to if they're choosing or not able to stay in their home where it is now? I think we're trying to have a thoughtful, like, how do we look at this permitting program in a way that can consider, like, if we're gonna say you've been substantially damaged, it's a technical FEMA term, you incur a lot of damage after a flood. And I can define it more specifically, but you're substantially damaged. You're required to mitigate your homes. And we have folks like we've been working with caseworkers from all areas of the state where there are outside non state caseworking entities, long term recovery groups. And it's so much bigger than this. Because it's like trying to choose what they're going to repair and what they're not going to repair, where are they going to find funds. And if they make this one change, does that now create a situation where they're substantially damaged, but they're also trying to improve their heating and efficiency or whatever it might be? It's a really complex thing. And I'm not trying to pass this. I think we're trying to think about how does the work that we're doing affect folks when we're saying you need to, you know, mitigate your home, maybe two feet above the FEMA flood elevation, right now you're three feet below it, that's like lifting your home in the air. How does that happen? How do you have access to funds? Who do we need to talk to and how we bring that to this situation? How do we preferentially work with VEM to look at hazard mitigation funding for people who may have to do this because of this rule? And from a recorder standpoint, you know, from a flood inundation where the water gets high and comes back down, you have some options potentially to stay in your home. The river quarters, I think to Chair Sheldon's point, the concern is that the river is moving and it's erosion. And a lot of times you don't really have options to shore up your home. It's a matter of do we have a buyout here or not? But every home in the River Quarter is not permitted equal. We have places in really densely developed downtown areas. We may have homes that are in river corridors that are further to the edge, and they have other development between them and the river. And so every home that's in a river corridor has some risk associated with it. The river corridor, though, is not predicting where the river may move. It's the area that the river needs to help to manage the balance, the river, water, the sediment, and the debris that's coming down during the flood. And so I guess part of me is, I mean, we could come up with different scenarios and alternative timelines, but I don't know how much some of those may provide relief because of the timing. We're just starting to get to the point where we're getting relief from a staffing standpoint. We've hired four of our five positions. We have had them on board. We're just about coming up to a year with those first hired folks in the next couple of months. So we're starting to get that staff capacity. And if we had a new, let's just say, I'm not saying this, but let's just say we had 20 positions, the time it would take to hire them, train them and bring them on is not necessarily going to save us more time. And we do have contractual funding that was provided in 2024, and that's what's gonna be funding those master contracts that we have under we actually have a meeting tomorrow that was scheduled a while ago to talk about what is the breakdown of funding for different aspects of those master contracts. So we have one that we're gonna be looking at. It's kinda think of the technical contract that might look at infill mapping, updating our river porter procedure in preparation for the rulemaking changes. And then we have one that's more focused on outreach and like getting the word out, listening, understanding, hearing, and really trying to promote and have that wider public awareness of this is coming. You will need a permit, and you are mapped in the river corridor. What we're also anticipating, I think, Rob, had testified in 2024 about is, like, similar to FEMA maps, once this becomes a regular regulatory layer, there is now that consideration of does someone need to appeal this designation? You know, I need a permit for what I wanna do. I don't think I'm in a river corridor. And so what is that process? How do we look at those? And does that take as much or more time than, like, I was talking, we go on a town by town or a site by site review of the river course. So we're trying to think about what does that process mean and how does that scale up? And it might not be the type of workload that we're anticipating, but I'm thinking about when people are potentially going to be selling or buying homes or businesses, they're going say, Wait, I don't want to I'm in a river corridor. What does that mean for when I sell this home? What does that mean? And right now we don't necessarily have an answer for that of like, how do we Like now we ad hoc kind of change the map. So go to the site, take a look, look at the base information, change the map. Or we have a letter kind of like waiving that river corridor requirement if it's changed on the site. How does this work going forward? If we're gonna have tens of them, or we're gonna have hundreds of them. So I think from other different scenarios to get the work done, I think we're kind of at the precipice of having capacity to do more of this work and have our senior staff being able to focus on it. There may be other alternatives. Obviously, I'm just kind of responding to this as you mentioned it. But I don't think it's something that would be difficult to at least put together some other alternatives to see if there are things that are workable or other considerations of how the legislation moves forward.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Just

[Rob Evans, Rivers Program Manager (Vermont ANR)]: to jump in here, I just want to assure the committee that asking for the delay is not us putting it on the side burner for a year. Every hour and minute that we have available to work on it, we're working on it. I hope when you can digest this, we actually have a copy that's readable. You'll see that we've initiated on most of the tasks on work, and we're spending as much time as we can. You know? It's we have a lot of competing priorities. We we have a meeting on Thursday that we just got pulled into. We're still dealing with flood recovery funding for the wastewater treatment facilities for three communities, and VEM needs our technical assistance. That's not discretionary work where we say, sorry, VEM and Ludlow and Johnson and Hartwick. We have to focus on the float safety act. So we're trying to balance our core work, with building this out, but we want to do this work. We're committed to do this work. But we just as as we testified in '24, we didn't think three and a half years was enough time then. Quite frankly, I think I said you have to maybe go back to the record. I think I said in '24, that session, if we get another flood, it could add another year. We did get another flood. We're still largely on track. The eighteen months to hire, train new staff, program the contractual funding, we're pretty close. We're couple months delay, but not six months delay. So I think we're, all things considered, in a good place. If we cannot have a big flood this summer, we're gonna make a lot of headway this year. Include a lot of headway this year.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Owe those infill maps this

[Rob Evans, Rivers Program Manager (Vermont ANR)]: month, next year, basically.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: I would say. Yeah. Well, it's I you know, back to you.

[Rob Evans, Rivers Program Manager (Vermont ANR)]: I think of your question about various scenarios or plans, it's a great one. But to me, there's the x factor, which is between now and 2028, are we lucky enough to not have any major floods and we can really focus on this, or do we get redirected? So when a big flood hits, it's all hands on deck for six months, and then the steady drip of work. But, anyway, we're committed to this work. We realize how important it is in the public safety, life safe safety components associated.

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: Understood and grateful for what you guys did. Thanks.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Yeah. I appreciate that, and we know that. And I guess I'm wondering about are there would there be some temporary things we could do to prevent the scenario that I'm talking about, which is like a giant affordable housing project in a an inappropriate now act two fifty exempt area? Like, just and I know people think, Who would want to do that? Well, I think there are people out there who want to do that. And I think we need to not make towns have to litigate. Stop something like that or whoever. And maybe that's something we should be looking at. And I want to be aware of that. I want you to get through your last few slides. We have other folks here waiting.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Question about flood insurance. I mean, what flood insurance determine where places could be built?

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: I think that's a good segue, because the next few slides are flood insurance. It's like, you

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: can simplify it up. For flood insurance

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Rob, representative North. I'm sorry.

[Rep. Rob North]: Thank you, chair. Just one brief question on on the same topic, because I agree that it's very challenging to consider putting these dates out there for all the danger. But, Rob, when you were here earlier, you had mentioned that the the half square mile change for the stream headwaters could free up some resources. So are we assume that that's gonna go through. How much does resources that free up to help pull this up?

[Rob Evans, Rivers Program Manager (Vermont ANR)]: That actually doesn't translate just because the that's a different section in my program that does a completely different body of work than this. They just need their current core work to be more manageable. So that that doesn't free them up to pivot and work on this, unfortunately. But any of them No.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Because there are engineers looking at particular projects.

[Rep. Rob North]: Yeah. That's what I

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: was No.

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: It's a

[Rob Evans, Rivers Program Manager (Vermont ANR)]: fair question.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Yeah. It is a fair question. Okay. If

[Rep. Rob North]: you can combine them and do a full at the same time.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Well, yeah, we have had conversations through the years, not in earnest because they kind of overlap, but in so many different ways. It's a good question because especially when we had the FARC rule, are there ways that the engineers might be able to approve or issue FARC permits instead of us in certain situations? It's just kinda all over the because they have certain jurisdictions. They don't actually issue permits when they're working with VTrans. Issue consultations. Most of our work ends up being with VTrans for state facilities. Became too kinda too messy to try to figure out how we could gain some of that efficiency of having different regulators in the program. Flood insurance questions. So to your question, Representative Morris, for flood insurance, Sorry. Austin. I was looking at your name plaque right there.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: I know you, miss.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: I know. Know. I'm like, I'm sorry. It was one of those like Anyway, so I was like, anyway, whether or not flood insurance can change, whether or not people can develop in certain areas, and how does that work? Flood insurance can be purchased by any person who lives in a community that is part of the National Flood Insurance Program. Earlier in the slides, when I was here before, I had a map that shows all the towns that are in or not. Flood insurance is available to anyone in those communities. So it's not an off limits type of thing. And it runs differently than most other insurances because many policies, but not all, are issued through the National Flood Insurance Program or through a write your own company that's writing on behalf of the NFIP. About a decade ago, there was major changes in how the flood insurance portion of the program was run. So there is private flood insurance that is now part of the larger world of insurance. So actually my second slide on flood insurance speaks a little bit of that. I can go back to the previous slide. But this Division of Financial Regulation, we don't get information as a state on how many private flood insurance policies are written. We only understand it through the NFIP because that's a public program. So, DFR after the twenty twenty three flood event, their folks had called all the different carriers who offer insurance in the state to ask how many private flood insurance policies they were. So this was just post 2023. A little more than half of the policies were written through the NFIP, about a little less than half were private flood. Anecdotally, and I don't know what the numbers are now. I don't know if they've done kind of like a survey since then. I've heard about how people are no longer being able to renew through private flood and are having to go back to the NFIP because they have huge parametric models that look at how they spread their risk in different places and two or three floods in a couple of years makes them not really happy to offer flood insurance. So there's been a lot of private flood insurance policies that I think haven't been renewed or not made available. We don't know what those numbers are. But anyone can get a policy. The way that flood insurance policies are now written is no longer In the end, it used Or about a decade ago, used to be like, are you in the FEMA mapped floodplain or are you not? Your policy is X per $100 of coverage. Your policy So it was like a yes or no, or like one rate versus another. Now it's a more continuum. They have a whole bunch of different factors that they look at it when they're rating a flood insurance policy. It's much more complex. Even the folks at FEMA, I think, don't know exactly how those different factors interact. There is an online rating page. I don't think I included it in my slides, but I can provide it. It's floodsmart.gov. They have an individual rating page where you can put in your address and they will give you a rate right there. And so I have more information about rating in my hidden slides at the end. So can always come back or talk more about that or provide some of that now. But it doesn't prevent someone from getting a policy. Prior claims, if it's an NFIP policy, may not have much effect, if at any at all, on the policy itself, on the rating. One of the things, this is the first flood insurance slide that I put in here. There was a question of like, how much does a flood? I think someone on the committee had asked the question, how much is a flood insurance policy? And so the average in Vermont, this was through kind of the 2025, the average cost of an insurance policy, flood insurance policy through the NFIP was $2,700, about $2,700. But if you were in a FEMA mapped flood zone, your average policy was almost $4,000 $3,800 A year? A year. So there is that aspect of it. And we've also seen a steady decline of NFIP policies, I'm sure as probably some of those costs have gone up, where the affordability issue of it has become more pressing than maybe it had been in the past. So when we look at the other one, the 94% uninsured, those are structures in a FEMA floodplain with NFIP policies. But again, we don't know what the private flood insurance portion may be covering some of that. But I think the bigger message is that there's a lot of people in floodplains who are uninsured. And that usually is the trigger for the purchase of flood insurance comes from any sort of a federally backed loan or mortgage, and your house is being part of that loan. So you're purchasing a new house and you're using a mortgage for it, you're going be flagged for potentially needing NFIP flood insurance or some sort of flood insurance coverage. But if it is a cash sale, which we've had a lot of, it's my understanding in the past several years, if it's a kind of through the family kind of a sale, then that is not getting flagged for flood insurance.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: So just a question back to the additional staff. Are these folks going to be assisting with the same responsibilities of the eight that you presently have? I mean, are they gonna be, or is this a whole separate program?

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: It is, it's a great question. So just going back to the slide of the different folks. So in hiring within the River Corridor flood print in my program, we've hired Rose Watts, Alexis Nevins, you see them highlighted there. So Rose, Alexis, and Jess was another vacant position. Those positions are basically taking over as regional floodplain manager. So, that's a job that I was doing while also being the state NFIP coordinator and doing state floodplain stuff. So, it's basically taking one of those jobs off my plate. And we had Ned Swamberg from our shop who was a regional floodplain manager, but also managing the map updates from FEMA and also doing the outreach. So it's basically helping to concentrate the roles is maybe a better way. So we have more of like a regulatory team who most of all they're doing is reviewing projects and assisting towns. So reviewing the FRAC two fifty, issuing the state permits, or a majority of our work is actually helping provide technical assistance to communities. And so those positions will just be focusing on that. And now that frees up other staff who are doing that and this job and this job and this job to focus more on the other work.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: So it's trying to spread out the present workload you have to make those folks more specific to the things.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Exactly. On

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: the workload you had, which I think, on your first presentation, those folks, I think you said 1,800 phone calls a year that you handle and 200 and something per minutes and 70

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: I think

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: that was wetlands.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: Oh, that was wetlands?

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Okay.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: But it is a lot. Part of our program is funded as a cooperative agreement with FEMA. I didn't really talk about this in the slide. It funds about one to two FTEs of our position of our program, excuse me, positions in our program. And a lot of the workload through that has become a lot more administratively heavy over the past several years. And so what we've found is, like that workload has been building. We have all of those types of numbers if you're interested in like how many So we do development reviews for communities. How many permits do we issue? How many general technical assistance is? I mean, on average, our yearly general technical assistance that kind of across our program, it's 1,800 of them, 1,500 of them a year. For permits, we're usually doing around 90, I think I looked it up around 90 municipal reviews across the state on average. Obviously, after 'twenty three floods, kind of like '3 and into 'twenty four, it was a lot higher.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: Could you send me that information? Could

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: you

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: send Yeah. Us think when you send the spreadsheet, that would be great to get that.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Yeah. I I have I'll try to make it in more, readable format, but we have all those numbers that we report to FEMA because there's kind of like the FEMA Cooperative Agreement pays for a portion of our work, but our program actually overmatches that work because there's a greater state investment in our program. And so we probably provide compared to other states, because we provide so much on the ground technical assistance to towns, we don't really have other states in the country that have a similar type of program. I think Montana may be the closest to that, where they're helping towns to actually review projects. But we have a very formal statute that has towns submitting them to us for our review and and assistance to make sure they're they're reviewing them correctly. Things aren't being permitted in the wrong way.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: Thank you. Sorry for getting my agencies crossed. I think the other folks had eight employees too. Right?

[Rep. Rob North]: Yeah.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: We are bumping up past time. Thank you so much for coming back.

[Rep. Rob North]: Probably have more questions for you.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: I'm like, can you come back anytime? Great. Talk about this stuff whenever you would like to.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Thank you.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: I was going to offer, if you're interested, but you may not be, the reports that we do have from Two Rivers out of Phoebe, if you're interested in seeing them, we could always provide those as well.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: We might have that interest.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Okay. I was gonna send them to, Kat earlier to him. Like, we'll see if the committee actually wants to see them or not.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: And we'll invite you back to quiz us to make sure we've read them. Much have you been really good at talking you? Might be a little bit less good

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: at reading all the reports, but we do our I understand that. I know we're transitioning here, but I didn't want to undersell the chaos of our FEMA grant over the past year. We've had a lot of changes in that grant, a lot of increase in the administration of that, stop work orders, change the contracts that we already had on the ground. So that's also been get

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: this work done faster, I bet.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Well, we've had a few of those conversations about, like, what is what is the cost of the free money from FEMA.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Yeah, fair enough.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Thank you very much

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: for your work and for coming back.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Thank you all. Thank you for your time.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: K. Sounds here.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: See if it works. Thank

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: you. I don't know. Let's see if it works for us.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Love that you're doing the IT support over there, Sarita.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: I know. I think I was the notification offender, and I don't know how to do it. So,

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: my volume kept going up. It's probably my desk pushing out.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Okay, you did well. We've had

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: some really stunning reverberation sounds, so that was nothing compared to the sound.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Uh-oh. Guess that didn't work.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: I shut the sound off.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: You'd have to

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: go to bed.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Are you sure

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: it's from the

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: right hand

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: of the patient?

[Rep. Rob North]: That's what we just At

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: any rate, how how about if you all introduce yourself?

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Madam Chair, Vice Chair, members of the committee, my name is Bill Smith. I'm a contract lobbyist in the building and an attorney with an office in Northwood. I've been practicing law for a little over thirty years and lobbying for about twenty five of that. Before the twenty five, I worked in the clerk's office, and it's one of the assistant clerks of late '90s. It was a bit ago. I'm working for the Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association. With us today is, Steve Duke from Vermont Fire Equipment in Barrie, but statewide service to commercial, properties that require fire extinguishers through the fire code. And also this is Jeff Terry from Rasky Partners. Jeff, for the last twenty three years or so, has worked for Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association. I'm trying not to use the word FEMA, the acronym FEMA. I know it's taken already, but this one actually predates that, 1930. There you go. So just with us and also online, we've got Duane Garris, who is the owner fire market for the state of Georgia and is also a contractual expert for the association. So between Jeff and Dwayne, you've got kind of this national perspective on this issue and Steve and myself, you've got your in state perspective on it. So let me just back up, and if I could, I'd like to hand it over to Steve and to Duane to talk about the nitty gritty of what we're looking for. The big picture is, three years ago, we passed Act 58, which as part of it had in it requirements for manufacturers of covered products to take care of end of life management consumer education. There's gonna be fees for that that the manufacturers that are out of state would be paying. And one of the concerns that was raised at that time that meant you included, generally speaking, fire extinguishers in the bill was that there were fire extinguishers showing up at our at our solid waste districts for recycling, to going into this waste stream here. This group, last summer, as we went towards implementation of this through Angel Natural Resources, was going into the implementation of this process for the manufacturer funding of these programs was that they came to me through Jeff to say, hey, what can we do about the Vermont? These companies are different than sort of your residential household fire extinguisher. These are the manufacturers of the one that you have in the corner over there that keeps you safe quietly over there without you even knowing about it. It's made by one of our members, Amarex, and serviced by Impact Fire, one of our distributors based out of Williston. Steve's company is a distributor like Impact is for again, they have very broad service service districts that he can get into on that. So last spring, I came there was some legislation going. In fact, you had h three nineteen came out of this committee, right? That this would have been maybe a good amendment for that bill. It could be a good proposal to put into that bill. Not aware of that moving on. I wasn't hired yet either. I mean, we talked about this in late May at the end of session. So I did talk to the chair of Senate Natural Resources and said, what can we do? Can this be added to H319 or what? And she said, well, lots of three nineteen is going into another bill, the miscellaneous ag bill, rail, rail, rail section, if you may recall that. But I want you to go to the age of natural resources and solid waste districts, talk to them and find out is this something you can deal with separate from this or if you need to come back to legislature and ask for a solution to the decision. That's what happened. We did go to ANR in the fall. Spoke to the solid waste folks about this around the Christmas time scenario, Christmas time time frame. And, we haven't really come up with anything yet. So it does seem like a legislative solution is something we're gonna be requesting of you. And it seemed like, first of I'd say, this committee, when you decided to crank out a bill, you move. I, you know, so I also knew that when I when I saw that H six thirty two was introduced a couple of weeks ago, it wouldn't be here too long. So that's why I approached the chair last week to see if we could get some committee time to talk about perhaps adding the stage six thirty two. So that's kind of the procedural status where we're at. We got here, Kat, can I share my screen here? It hasn't come up on the bottom of it allowing me to do it. It's not you could go to that's my screen. What do you need to do? It came back up. Should get us to

[Rep. Rob North]: Let me

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: go to the We did

[Rep. Rob North]: the hour 03:00 hash today in your kitchen. There we go. Thank you,

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Ms. Morgan. Much appreciated. I like people with skills that I don't have. So this is a one pager and a proposed amendment here. You look at it, we'll go through these issues here, but these are the highlights we'll talk about today. And then here's the proposal to add to H-six 32, if you see fit to do that. Key thing there are taking the extinguishers out of the gas cylinder definition, and we'll talk about why it is. And then making clear that covered household hazardous product does not include affordable fire extinguishers if their souls are installed, inspected, maintained pursuant to the fire code or otherwise sold for industrial or commercial purposes. In other words, they're going to be in the programs that Steve's company and Impact Fire service for them so that they can ensure that there's gonna be safe fire suppression in these older buildings we have in Vermont, whether they're an office building or a state house or a residential apartment block in Downtown North. Having said that, Jeff, I guess, look to you to kinda give a perspective on this or just

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Yeah, thank you. And thank you guys very much for the opportunity to talk today. Really appreciate it. So, Steve, if you can jump in. Really, I think what we want to hear about is kind of the life cycle of a commercial industrial extinguisher, how they're designed to really be used, reused, serviced, maintained, ultimately recycled for years and years and years, as opposed to your residential extinguisher that you might buy at Home Depot that you use once and try to dispose of or whatnot. So, Steve, you can kinda talk through your business, what you do, and how it works.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Sure. My name is Steve Dupay. I'm from Vermont Fire Extinguisher. We cover all of Vermont, part of New Hampshire, and a little bit of New York. Every day dealing with these things. A fire extinguisher has a six year life before its first test. Okay? In six years, you tear it apart, make sure it's good. You put it back together, it goes back on the shelf. In twelve years, you do the same thing, and it that continues for its whole lifetime. The only thing that would take it out of service would be if the label is unreadable and or damaged. The cylinder has a severe damage or fails one of those tests. These things are designed to live a long time. The ones that come out of service now are pre 1984. April 1984 is when the NFPA changed their standard, and it was due to excuse Joe. There's guys. A u a UL rate. K? A UL listed rating. Alright? The rating is 711299. If you find that on the back of an extinguisher, it can be reused and reworked and put back into service as long as everything is fine. As far as these guys talking about the Central Vermont solid waste, I have a deal with those guys. They bring me the ones that that can't be worked on, and we recycle it. We take the powder out of them. We remove the pressure so that they're no longer a hazard and then recycle them,

[Rep. Rob North]: you know, like a bulldogs or that type of thing.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: You recycle them where?

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Bulldogs, the metal portion of it would go there. The powder portion I save, for an example.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Can you just give us a sense of the chemicals that are involved?

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Yeah, ammonium phosphate, fertilizer, straight fertilizer. So it's not a hazardous material. If you'd like your lawn to

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: be really green, you could

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: spray one of them on your lawn and it will actually turn super green.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: And the gas that they're pressurized with that's used to expel material, nitrogen.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Yeah, you can use nitrogen or you can use air. You can use straight air, but it has to be dry because of the powder, obviously. If you can, you know, introduce any moisture into that, then it's probably not gonna work real good for you. So nitrogen is how they're pressurized. They're pressurized under a 195 PSI for ones like that one on the wall.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: So we've I guess I want to understand, you're taking any of them back if Chittenden or anybody in Solid Waste District calls?

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Just Central Vermont for now.

[Rep. Rob North]: Okay.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: So Central Vermont.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Yeah. I mean, there's other companies in that area. They should be doing their part to do that as well.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: I mean, these were these included because they are a hazard, for the collectors of a danger of exploding.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: A physical hazard, correct? Yes. Because of the pressure. They're not a chemical hazard.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Well, I'm not sure. You tell me the range of chemicals in any collection of fire extinguishers? Like, I think Well,

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: if some are hazardous.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Well, if you if a halon comes in, which is the same stuff that protects your building here with your with your computer systems, This place has an old halon system. It's probably put in in the mid eighties.

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Would would you have been able would you see a household hazardous would this be household?

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Yeah. Absolutely not.

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Conditioner would be halon or No.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: If if it if halon and that type of stuff is all completely industrial. There's no reason for a homeowner to have all halon, FM 200, all these other they're called clean agents. K? They're clean because they don't make a mess. So, like, if your computer room has a fire, you can do that. Won't burn your computer up. You dust that thing off in your computer room, that has conductive properties, it would ruin every last bit of your computer. That's all the industrial. And anything like that, it comes in and gets recycled through a company out of Ohio. AGAS is the name

[Rep. Rob North]: of that company. Do a

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: very big recycling project with that. But the stuff we find that comes from Central Vermont solid waste would be your typical. It's like a two and a half pound extinguisher you'd find in your kitchen or in your boat or you know what I mean? It just that can't be can't be reworked, can't be recycled. You cannot redo them and rebuild them. We sell only ones that are rebuildable and guaranteed, you know, for six years.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: But you're taking those household ones?

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Yes, I will take them.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: You said six years, and then you have to retire yours? Nope, six years, and then you rework it.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Retest it. It's a six year cycle, so it's 06/12, 1824. Can live on as long as Like that extinguisher there, man, it lives in this environment. It's very I mean, this is a pretty nice environment. Right? It's not going anywhere. It's not getting beat up by weather. It's going to rust. It's not going to do anything.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Gets testimony fatigue.

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Yeah. Well, I bet it does.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: We better get a new one

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: then. Yeah. I'll give it to that. Representative Tagliavia. Just just so we understand clearly, you said the the fire extinguishers that you get from chitin and solid waste that are mostly the household, they are. The material that's inside is still usable. You disable them, take them apart. The metal products would go into a metal recycler, but you are able to still use the product that's inside. Well, right. What a lot of that product that's inside, you you will probably not reuse. You may have a manufacturer check it and rework it to bake it up to cold. You're not going to just go take stuff out of one thing and put it in another. The industry doesn't allow that. But what it does do is all of those let's say I take their two and a half pounds. They're 50 pound bucket. Do the math, you can do a file in a 50 pound bucket. Well, during this time of year, October, November, all our fire departments ask me for that powder. So I don't skip it. What they do with it is they will take sandwich bags and fill it full of that powder. You have a chimney fire. They'll climb to the top of each chimney, throw that sandwich bag down through. The sandwich bag melts, the powder releases, the draft pulls powder up through, puts it out. They don't put any water on your chimney, ruin your fluid, cause you a whole bunch of money. Old school firefighting is a lot, but you know what? Like I said, I do a lot of that. I donate a lot of that to those type of people. You know, that I was asked.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Members have further questions?

[Rep. Rob North]: All right. Representative Simple question. Thank you, Chair. The recommended changes that you've provided here at the bottom of that, how vetted are those through the folks on your end? How confident are you that the right changes in your mind?

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Sorry, Duane Garris, if you want to jump in and talk about the changes. But yeah, these changes have been worked on by the general counsels of all the association members. Duane, if you can take just a second about why we're not a gas cylinder, number one, and then just a little bit also, again, on the commercial and industrial level, all of these extinguishers, they're required by the Vermont Fire Code to be in. So, people can't say, okay, if price of this product is going to increase because there's a new fee on it, I'm not going to use it. No, they're still going to have to have it, per the amount of fire

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: code. Duane?

[Dwayne Garris, Retired Georgia State Fire Marshal (FEMA Association consultant)]: Alright, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. My name is Dwayne Garris. I'm the retired state fire marshal of Georgia. I have about thirty three and a half years experience in the fire service side of it, and then have been doing, code consulting for the Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association for the past five years. Just to let you know a little bit about me, I have a a certification in as a fire extinguisher technician, a certification of pre engineered kitchen industrial kitchen system, and the pre engineered industrial system. So a little bit on that side of it. Just to give you some information, if you think about the gas cylinders that I believe we're talking about here, you can look, you know, if you see, I don't know if you can see that, but those are usually large containers that contain either, natural get liquefied natural gas, propane, argon, acetylene. They do contain nitrogen and oxygen that,

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: you know I

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: need a big

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Sorry. We just I needed to make you bigger. So if you were showing

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: us Good. We could see it.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Oh,

[Dwayne Garris, Retired Georgia State Fire Marshal (FEMA Association consultant)]: okay. I was just showing you a little cylinder

[Rep. Rob North]: sort of like it's a

[Dwayne Garris, Retired Georgia State Fire Marshal (FEMA Association consultant)]: a a mini of a gigantic cylinder. But if you think of the things that are on back of, like, welding trucks, construction trucks, those those are the gas cylinders, I believe, that they're talking about. And the way you can sort of identify those, they usually have, things, such as, well, one they're constructed out of steel aluminum. They have protection valves. They have relief valves. They have a neck ring usually to protect the valve themselves. They usually have a foot ring because the foot itself is rounded, because it's a high pressure cylinder. Those cylinders are usually tested anywhere from two fifty to 1,800 pound, PSI. And so, so you're basically taking a gas and compressing it to a liquid. And that's why it makes it a rounded cylinder, because a round circle is the strongest component. Also have a degree in architecture. With a portable extinguisher, the commercial grade, portable extinguisher that we're talking about, those are pressurized either with, cartridges, that have a compressed gas that release them inside the container itself or that has the gas in the container. But those pressures are usually no more than about 200 and I think two forty pounds at most. So there's a big difference between 1,800 pounds of pressure pushing a gas into a liquid stage and then letting it expand back into a gas when it's being utilized versus a pressure to push out powder out of the extinguisher itself. So that's a little bit of the difference between the portable extinguishers. Like I say, they're pressurized usually between one hundred and one hundred and ninety five, where the LP gas and acetylene and other gases for actual use of hazardous materials are pressurized from two forty to 1,800 pounds per square inch. And those are usually regulated by FMSI. FMSI is the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, FEMSA, excuse me, is usually under the, Federal Register 49, parts 171 through 180 is usually where they're regulated under. So hopefully that tells you and explains a little bit difference between a gas type cylinder and a portable extinguisher. Again, with the fire codes and standards that are developed for portable extinguishers and the placement of those in a building, they're designed for, basically the circular economy. And the reason being is if, if you just had to replace them every time you used them, you're talking about anywhere from doubling to three times the expense, you know, probably going up to $900 a a unit each time you use that that unit where the codes and standards are developed to, allow them to be recycled. The parts you can, as as, the gentleman there told you you can recoup the chemical that's inside the dry powder. If you have hoppers, which a lot of companies have, they can discharge, that type extinguisher back into the same type hopper and then reuse that chemical. If it is a mixed chemical or something that somebody, may have serviced and put in the wrong chemical, It certainly can be utilized for training purposes. Also utilize, as you said, in bags that can be dropped down chimneys and stuff with the fire department and things. The key thing I believe that we're trying to deal with is the commercial grade extinguishers are utilized to create layered fire protection starting at the incipient stages of fire. So we don't have to rely hopefully on sprinklers. I mean, it takes a while to get a room up to 165, 170 degrees before sprinkler would activate. And this gives you an immediate protection for recipient stage fires. So we, as well as the National Fire Marshals Association, I think, actually, the Vermont Mike Tagliavia is actually still the president of the National Fire Marshals Association, and we believe in layered fire protection and dealing with that. So, at this point, I'll stop, see if you have any questions. If you need any further information, explanation, I'll be glad to do that. But again, I think that the idea of these cylinders for the extinguishers is they're recycled each time they're used and they're tested, they're broke down every six years. They're looked at, they're inspected internally and externally. The decay that would occur would be, as you said, with environmental factors, either, you know, if you're on the coast, you have salt spray stuff, sometimes comes in on buildings and stuff, and that is corrosive to metal. And so that's one reason why either they're stainless steel extinguishers or they're painted, steel extinguishers, to help with that situation. But then, you know, you got sunlight on the on the hoses and stuff, and those are what inspecting the damages.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: I gotta just interrupt a little bit. We have a next witness waiting, and I wanna make sure we get to clarity on your ask, and then we're gonna need to dive into it a little bit with other folks. So I guess what I'm seeing in the language that might be a little concerning is that all single use, you've you've decided don't shouldn't come under this household hazardous waste. And what you're representing, your product is not single use, and I guess I need you to speak to that.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: So that change, that's removing the single use that's removing all extinguishers from the definition of gas cylinder, because they're not considered a gas they're not a gas cylinder under federal DOT standards and a PA standards, which is what the Vermont State Fire Code is based on. There's a definition of gas cylinder.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Single use would still be covered under our

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: It could still be covered under the household hazardous waste. The household hazardous waste removing in Section A, that's removing really the premium product, which is the commercial industrial product. These are expensive products, and they're expensive products for a reason, because they are designed to be used for years and years, decades and decades.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Okay, thank you.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: And they're already part of this circular economy.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Do folks have questions? Need clarifications? Alright. Thanks. Just I knew the fire guy wouldn't

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: have to say something. I

[Rep. Kristi Morris]: I fully appreciate the testimony and what you're

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: trying to accomplish, and and I and I do concur with it.

[Rep. Kristi Morris]: But I'm looking at four b says covered household hazardous product does not need any of the following. In Roman numeral 12, portable fire extinguishers sold inspected or maintained. Are we looking to eliminate these from the household hazardous waste coverage? Would that exempt them from being Would that exclude these from? That is solid waste districts.

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Yes. For the the ones that fall under 12. Yes.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Yes.

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: If you're not. I mean, know, sold is not inspected or maintained pursuant to the Fire and Building Safety Code or sold for industrial commercial purposes and therefore are in these programs that Vermont fire equipment.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: That the fire equipment companies are canceling.

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: They service it. If you're not within those programs, you would still be, your focus would not be. Okay. And we just wanna correct the technical language of what is a gas cylinder is quite important to this industry because of their understanding of these pressurized vessels that we have, whether it's helium gas or gas for welding versus these extinguishers.

[Rep. Kristi Morris]: Right. I fully understand that.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

[Rep. Kristi Morris]: I'm I'm trying to determine if a solid waste was receive these that they would not have to turn them over to a a company for a disposal. I don't want to in other words, are they exempt or are you still gonna include them? And you you spoke to that yourself or with your company. How you Yeah.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: I mean, it it makes sense. I mean, wouldn't want somebody that has no knowledge of pressure and how things work playing with stuff.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Right? Mhmm. Just bring

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: it to us. We're the professionals. We'll hand it. We'll take care it. Care it safe. And like I said, with the like, a lot of the ones we're talking about are the two and a half pound.

[Rep. Kristi Morris]: Yeah. So

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: once you buy them at Home Depot at $39.95, whatever they come in, the gauge is all crooked and just gets manufactured. But I'll get a pile of those in. But you know what else we do

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: with those too? Just so that you guys are aware of

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: kids camps. We'll do fire trainings. Yeah. Go you know what I mean? I we'll go down to Lake Fairley where all the kids camps. They get a fire going,

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: like, hey. Look at this. Let's put

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: it out and show them how to use it. So it's either it's educational right along the way.

[Rob Evans, Rivers Program Manager (Vermont ANR)]: So I do have room for some of that stuff.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: You know what I mean? Sure. We appreciate that.

[Rep. Kristi Morris]: Yeah. But how does that how does that request get out to other solid waste districts so that

[Rep. Rob North]: they know that they can receive them, but

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: they can also dispose of fire service company.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: We we we do know this that there are some other, distributors in Vermont who do have a similar relationship. So yeah. I do

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: think, representative Morris, you get to an important point, which is if I mean, these should be these will be covered under the household hazardous waste, but, the yeah. I don't know. The sort of ad hoc nature of your relationship. I don't know. We need to explore that a little more. But we don't have time. We're going to shift gears. Thanks for bringing this in.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Thanks for what you do. Well, thank you very much. Thanks,

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Morgan, for your help with treat.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: It's all warmed up for you.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: No

[Rep. Rob North]: extra charge. No. No.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: Got to eat the same day here.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Kate's still in the Zoom Room? I see Mike is in the room.

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: Kate's in.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Yeah, Okay, great. So Kate and Mike, they're with us. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Thank you. For the record, James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office. I spent some time watching this committee last year, but I think this is my first time testifying in front of you all. So very glad to meet you all and to be here today. I'm here on behalf of Joint Fiscal Office as well as the House Appropriations Committee. So I joined Joint Fiscal Office in 2024. I spent my first year, last session on the revenue side of the JFO shop. This year, I'm over on the budget side of things, staffing the House Appropriations Committee. And happy to be here today, Chair Sheldon. I know my understanding was that you hope to hear a bit from JFO and from HACC on the 2027 budget process and sort of the expectations and hopes from the House Appropriations Committee on what they're all hoping to achieve from the committee here and perhaps also some timeline information on the '27 budget. Does that sound right and correct to you?

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: It does. Thanks.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Okay. Well, that being said, I will just flag for the committee that posted on the committee website today is a copy of a memorandum that was shared from House Appropriations Committee with chairs and vice chairs. You may have seen this already depending on where it's been posted elsewhere, but this was a memo shared from house appropriations to standing policy committees to help guide all of your questions and testimony that you'll be hearing from departments and agencies for the FY twenty seven budget cycle. I do have a couple of hard copies here, if anybody in the room would prefer a hard copy to a digital copy.

[Rep. Rob North]: I think I should have enough for everybody.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: I I have one more news. So

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: One here. Oh, great. Mike, she works here today with He likes Firefox.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah. Keep the shift in

[Rep. Rob North]: my record. It's not easy here. Oh, okay.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: So I just wanted to share with you all my intention, unless I'm sure you prefer otherwise, is not to run through that memo line by line today. But I did want to make sure that all members of the committee have it. I think it's useful in help guiding the committee and and members' thinking about questions and structure for testimony going forward. There are a couple of things I did want to flag from the memo. And before I do that, I think the top line takeaway that I'd like to leave the committee with for today is the complementary role of the policy committees and the appropriations committee. So house appropriators, appropriators in general, are in general operating at a 30,000 foot level when it comes to the state budget. They're looking at how to appropriate finite resources across all of state government. And for that reason, they really rely heavily on the policy committees, that's all of you and your policy expertise, to help guide the hard prioritization decisions that they have to make when compiling the state budget, right? Being an appropriator is a really brutal exercise in having to make hard decisions among many worthy priorities. And to the extent that the policy committees extract information from department and advocate testimonies throughout the budget cycle and provide the appropriations committee with prioritized recommendations, that is really helpful to the appropriations committee. So I think that would be my top line starting point for the conversation today. Looking at this memo a bit, I just wanted to flag some potential guiding principles for you all as you start hearing FY '27 testimony. Madam chair, I think I just walked in on maybe what might be one of your first FY '27 budget testimonies just from what I heard at the end. Is that right? Have you all started hearing FY '27?

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: No. That was not related to the budget.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Okay. Great.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Well, so the BAA is on the house floor this week, which means house appropriations has just this week really started in earnest moving on to FY '27. You all will be hearing from house appropriations, I would say likely in the next two weeks or so, with, you know, a formal solicitation of your all input on this committee's budget areas. And, typically, that input, I think last year, is requested from committees by the week before town meeting week, so the February. And, also, typically, I mean, policy committees are welcome to review the entire budget and to pass along recommendations, prioritizations on any part of the budget to house of appropriations. But, historically, I believe house appropriations kind of portion of control over the budget or input has been B700 to seven thirteen. That's roughly speaking, ANR's policy items within the budget. So as you hear about the Governor's recommended FY twenty seven proposal, part of your task will be to decide what you all agree with, what you disagree with, and what your priorities within your budget area are, both within the budget and from any bills, funding requests, advocate requests that you all might be hearing from throughout the budget cycle. I would just say, as you compile your committee letter to house appropriations, which, again, I think you'll anticipate sending by the February, The most useful way from the appropriations committee point of view to structure that letter is tiered recommendations or some kind of prioritized list. I think heading into FY 'twenty seven, there's a general awareness that this will be a much tighter budget year than some previous years, and so there will be harder decisions to make. And often, the input that the appropriation is going be received from the policy committees will be recommendations to fund certain items in the gov rec or from outside entities, but not necessarily saying, First, we prioritize this. If we can do that, then we move on to the second set of priorities. And if we can fully meet those, here's a third set of priorities. When the committee receives kind of an unprioritized, not kind of contingent organized list of recommendations, it's much harder for them to be in the room at 10:30 p. M. The week that the budget is getting finalized, weighing which items to fund and not fund. So to the extent that the committee is able to say, Our first priority is this or this bucket of appropriations, and our second priority is this bucket of appropriations, I think that would be really useful for the appropriations committee. And I I have examples of of prior committee letters that can help inform that if the committee would like to see those. Let me stop. I've been talking for a while. Yeah. I'm happy to take any questions.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Representative Austin?

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Yeah. Are there any intersections with other committees in terms of that we would need to know about what other committees are asking for or that would influence what we were asking for? Or is it pretty siloed?

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: I suppose it would depend on the bill. Right? Certainly, if a bill I could see, know, there's often kind of shared jurisdiction between house environment and house agriculture. I can think of some examples of that from last year housing. So I would say it's it's case by case and up to kind of the discretion and judgment of the policy committees on on when it's appropriate to coordinate with other policy committees and and what information y'all gathering. But, yeah, I think joint testimony, joint hearings on areas of interest can often be an efficient way to get everybody in the room who needs to be hearing information. Right? Any other questions so far? I know that this this is rather general so far. So that being said, priorities. Okay. Great. So send a list of prioritized appropriation requests to house appropriations in your committee letter. How do you arrive at that list of priorities? You're about to get a lot of information from the administration, right, that you're gonna get base appropriation requests, one time appropriation requests. You're going to see ups and downs as part of the committees, as part of the departments and agencies' testimonies. So how do you make sense of all that information to condense that down into concise, responsive committee letter? That is what the memo I've passed out to you all hopes to kind of help elucidate for you. I would remember, first and foremost, that your time with the departments and agencies is precious. The budget cycle is very short and very condensed and there's a lot of information to take in. You're going to hear the administration's priorities, which are not always the legislature's priorities, right? And so you'll be hearing from the administration about their recommendations. You can take those, leave those, you can adjust them up or down, leave things on the table. I would say that when you hear from the agencies and departments, one thing that we've observed is that the agencies often jump straight to solutions, assuming that the committee is familiar with all of the relevant background for the problem. And that unstated background and context isn't always helpful to to the committee conversation. So I would advise you all to not hesitate to ask the committee wait or ask the the agency or department, hold up. What is the underlying problem here? What are we trying to address with this proposal? And what happens if we do nothing? We have finite resources to spread between many problems that we're trying to solve. And so even if you're leaning or inclined towards accepting a request from the administration, it's always helpful to ask the question, Well, devil's advocate, what happens if we do nothing? Who suffers? What needs go unmet? That sort of thing. And that kind of helps guide your prioritization exercise. I also think it's important for you all to consider when you're hearing from the administration what evidence exists about this problem. Like, what is the data available to you to define the problem that you're trying to solve? What is the evidence that this request is responsive to the problem you're identifying? Right? How did you come up with this particular funding number? Is it base or is it one time? If it's a one time appropriation, how, you know, how far into the future will that one time appropriation solve a problem that may be recurring over future years? Madam Chair, would it be helpful to talk at all about base versus one time appropriations?

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Sure would.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Okay. So these are phrases you all hear

[Rep. Rob North]: a lot over the course of

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: the budget cycle. Forgive me if any of you are familiar with this already, but a base appropriation essentially represents the foundation of a department or agency's budget that's carried over from a previous year. I'll revisit that in a moment, but one times are appropriations that are made for just one fiscal year. Meaning they're given carryforward authority by appropriators such that any of the unused spending authority from one fiscal year will carry over automatically into the next. But generally, a one time appropriation is a pot of money that an agency is getting for just one fiscal year. And then base is, again, that kind of foundation that's rolled over from one year to the next. The distinction between these two categories can get a little bit fuzzy. For example, a one time appropriation might be made again the next year and again the next year. And as expectations for a department or agency increase, right, as the expectations for them to solve a problem increase, you'll often find one times do eventually make their way into a base appropriation for a department or agency in a subsequent fiscal year due to those kind of creeping expectations on the department or agency. So that's worth considering when making or when considering one time appropriations. What kind of precedent is this going to set? Do we think this is going to truly be a one time appropriation? Is Is this something that should be considered as part of the department's base? The other thing that is I would flag about base, it can be hard to unwrap that onion, right? Like, the base budget of a department or agency has accreted over many years in many cases, and there are a lot of past policy decisions that have been made, oftentimes years or decades ago, that are reflected in that base budget as it's developed over years. It can be difficult to disentangle, but I would encourage you all, at your discretion as you have time, if an appropriation request seems to implicate a certain part of the department's base, go ahead and ask that question. How long has this program been in place? When was the last time it was revisited? Do we still need this program? Could these resources from this program be reallocated to a new request that you're making this year or a new need that's being identified? It can often Even for JFO, digging into department space can often be kind of an involved exercise. So feel free to ask GFO for assistance. Also, I would encourage you all to press the departments and agencies as needed to give you additional information on what's reflected in their base and the histories behind that. I'll also add, chair Shay from house corporations would definitely want me to reiterate. In the past, I think a lot of department and agency budget testimony has really revolved around this ups and downs conversation. You all might be familiar with this. You get a spreadsheet that represents all the various line items in an agency's base, and it might be 10 pages long, 15 pages long. And the other columns are just indicating whether that appropriation or that line item is going up or down and by how much and how that compares to previous years. I think that's part of a of a useful budget submission, but what House Appropriations is trying to convey to policy committees this year is, they've and been working with the agencies on this, don't accept just the ups and downs as part of a budget testimony. I think the agencies that you all will be hearing from have been working well to try and wrap their arms around this and meet this this request. Testimony, budget testimony, is a storytelling opportunity for agencies and departments. They should be going into detail on the history of each individual line item so that you all can consider ongoing prioritization instead of, well, we did this much last year, so let's increase it by 3% and call it a day. Right? There are more prioritization and and history stories to be told from departments and agencies than the mere ups and downs. So your instructions or requests from house appropriations is do not accept testimony that is just the ups and downs. I don't think that will be a problem here, but I'm conveying that to you from from house approves. I'll pause for any questions.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: Representative Pritchard, do any of these departments or agencies zero based budget?

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Any of them? I think the departments and agencies follow the, you know, instructions from the governor and then in the central offices of the administration. Right? That's kind how this all kicks off. They receive at the very beginning of the budget cycle, which, by the way, starts about nine months before you all even see a budget submission, you know, what their guidelines and constraints are from the administration that year. I think this year, we all heard from the governor in his budget address. I'll get the exact number wrong, but something like the goal is 3%, no more than 3% increase across agencies and departments. I think that was the guiding principle that's been there right here. I think they all take more or less take their marching orders from

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: folks in the administration. But that 3% was all organic. So to me, that meant there was no increase, essentially.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: In that, it was keeping up with with cost increases. Yeah. I'm afraid I to answer your question more succinctly, I don't know if, you know, that's been done in the past specifically. But the short answer is it's per the priorities of the administration from one to the next.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Representative North.

[Rep. Rob North]: Thank you, chair. Thank you for your participation. This is helpful since I'm on the little subcommittee here that's gonna be writing letter to you. That's great. Yeah. Thank you. One of the questions that I have when we go through this budget process, and I'm relatively new to this, but how do we get accountability information from agencies? And maybe maybe it's can get some from JFO. Like, what was actually spent? What was actually accomplished relative to what was planned based on what was spent the previous year? I mean, would they ask for a certain amount? Did they accomplish what they plan to do based based on what they spent? And how many dollars flow through the agency and go out to nongovernmental agencies or organizations? And how do we get accountability information from them? And how much they spent on actually helping Vermonters or how much went to their administration and overhead? How do we get all that accountability information?

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: I would say there are various ways of getting that information from departments and agencies. Depending on what specific part of the agency you're hoping to look at, oftentimes, are legislative reports that they've been required to file, which can be found on the general assembly web page. They're usually submitted, know, November, December, January. That might report on, you know, how a specific program priority is going. Beyond that I'm trying to think accountability and program metrics are a really broad kind of category. Right? You should be hearing from the agencies on how their budget has gone up or down from previous years. You should be hearing what they're proposing to do that's new. I would say as part of the committee members' preparation for committee for testimony from a department or agency, you know, look at their budget book from the previous fiscal year or maybe the fiscal year the budget book two or three years ago. Agency budget books are a great source of information and memorialization of what they proposed in a given fiscal year going back as far as you can find on the committee page. And I'd be happy to walk many members through where you can often find those budget book submissions. But those will help you get a sense of what the major requests and new proposals have been from agencies in recent fiscal years. That enables you to then come to a committee prepared to ask, well, I see, you know, five years ago, we authorized you to do this. We appropriated this much money. How is that going? Or maybe you can request that information in advance of testimony.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Is that a document that's been called a budget book?

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Different departments and agencies will call it different things. For example, the DIVA, Department of Vermont Health Access, budget book is DIVA budget book. When it comes to ANR, DEC, they may break that down into different individual submissions for different parts of the agency. I will look into that and kind of and get back to the committee on how they tend to package that information. It could be that DEC, forests and parks each do their own budget books from year to year. But I'll look into that and get back to the agency. Again, accountability and program metrics and spending metrics, really broad category. Would say pre preparation, preparation before committee into some of the more recent major initiatives and requests from agencies is a great place to start and get a sense of what they've been up to recently, what they've requested, and informed questions as to how those things are going.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Representative Chapin.

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: Just to further that line of questioning, what about actuals? I I understand we can go back and see budgets from previous years. I think one of the big black holes is what was actually spent year to year compared to the budget.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: And I think the answer to how you get the actuals information will depend on the form of disbursement of the money. Oftentimes, and we get this question a lot from members, somebody wants to know, this department had a contract with this provider. How much of that contract has been dispersed? And we'll usually have to do a little bit of digging and emailing back and forth with, yeah, budget manager and agency to figure out how much that money has been dispersed. Carryforward reports are something that JFO gets from the Department of Finance and Management every year periodically. That shows what appropriations have been carried forward from previous fiscal year appropriations. That is a source of information about what appropriations still have spending authority on the table that departments haven't used. So it's various sources of information. I would say if that's ever a question that you're interested in answering, feel free to reach out to Joint Fiscal or also, you know, contacts of the agency we're presenting before you all who can direct you to source that information. Because it will vary depending on kind of the avenue of disbursement for the money, I would say. Was it a direct appropriation to the agency or was it grants? Is is one perfect example of, like, a distinction that matters in terms of how you find that information. Is that is that responsive to your question? I I know it depends is a frustrating answer, but it does depend. And, again, I would encourage you, if it's fiscal related, feel free to reach out to joint fiscal as well as budget managers within the agencies.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Do you have another?

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: Yeah. I was gonna say what was I gonna say? What about adjustments for BAA every year? So when you go back and look at budget books thinking. Yeah. Do we see what what was in the end of the budget for the year after the BAA?

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: What was in the adjusted budget? Yeah. I mean, is a big part of our job at joint fiscal is is following that bread crumb trail. Like, what was the original appropriation? Often, I have to go into the BAA documents from trying to follow the path of a particular appropriation. It could be that an appropriation went unused. Right? Like, they're not unused, but maybe there was a balance left in an appropriation that was reverted by the Department of Finance and Management. So when an agency receives an appropriation, there's an outstanding balance on that appropriation. Department of Finance and Management often has broad authority to revert the remainder of that appropriation back to the general fund or to the fund of origin. So it could be that I'm looking through reversion reports from finance and management to see how much was reverted of a past appropriation. So again, frustratingly, answer is it depends. But joint fiscal and the budget folks at these agencies should be available to you to help trace those breadcrumbs. Because it really is breadcrumb frail sometimes. And it's not really It's not through any fault of the agencies per se. There are dozens, often, of one time appropriations that are made by you all, by the General Assembly from one year to the next. Some of them might carry forward authority indefinitely, carry forward authority just into one fiscal year in the future. All of that plays into kind of the time horizon of of, you know, when these appropriations might be reverted.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: No worries.

[Rep. Rob North]: Gonna try this one more time. You just said that we should ask you, JFO. Yes. I'm asking you now. Can can we get Last year, when I asked for detailed budget information from AR, I get these dozens of page document with line items like, We spent this much on staples, and we spent this much on copy paper. And it's like, I don't care about how much they spent on staples and copy paper. What I care about is because what they talk to us about is programs.

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Oh, the River Corridor program. At the program level,

[Rep. Rob North]: we intended to accomplish this. We and we asked for this much money. So, we gave you that much money. How much of that did you accomplish? How much of that money is still left? Oh, you only hired, you just barely hired five of the eight people that we gave you money to hire. 's the money for the other three people? Or did you hire some contractors? Maybe the money went there. Or maybe you went to NGOs. What did they do with it? How do I get that kind of money? That kind of accountability numbers. And I'm consider this me asking.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah. And I'll say and I'll say this. Oftentimes so if I were to receive that question from you, what I would likely do is pull up my Rolodex of, let's say, in this case, it's ANR, ANR contacts, and I would be the one doing that legwork instead of you and saying you know, through the budget information they send. And I agree. Getting how much money was spent on staples is probably not what you're looking for in a particular context. You are looking for higher order information about how much was spent on a program. And this is another frustrating it depends answer, but depending on what an appropriation was for, how the appropriation was constructed, it goes into the agency's kind of overall appropriations. But maybe it was assigned to a particular DEBT ID within the agency or a particular line within the agency that really only makes sense to budget managers who know the individual budget codes. And we at JFO are jacks of all trade, masters of none. We know just enough to be dangerous to, you know, sort through that information and say, okay. I think we need to look at, like, this budget code, that budget code, and that budget code to get a sense of how much of this appropriation was spent for this program. Just to pull up the hood a little bit about how that information is often found, it it involves sorting through, I would say, arcana of of financial documents and and, you know, kind of financial administration.

[Rep. Rob North]: So maybe GFO isn't the right I mean, should we make this request of Julie Moore? And just say, give give us the budget in that format. Not I don't care about staples or copy paper. I wanna know by program how much it's spent, what it's accomplished. I mean, is that is that a fair question? Or should I ask that question? I'm trying to understand. Are you are you the right organization for me to ask you, or do I go to the agency's secretary?

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: I think from your committee's point of view, there's both in general, setting expectations with the agency about what kind of information you'd like to receive and what format will set you up for success. And that is what the other document I meant to reference, which is also posted on your web page, is House Appropriations did send out updated guidance to departments and agencies this year to inform how they package their information to all of you and make it more responsive, anticipate your questions better. So communicating with the agency in advance of testimony or the beginning of a budget cycle or, you know, whatever the subject is will help them answer your questions. They also do have day jobs and are administering their programs, and so they may not always be able to compile all the bulk of the information that might want on the timetable you need it. But I would say set expectations according with the administration in advance of major testimony. If it comes to a specific program, right, that's when I or set of programs, that's when I would consider maybe reaching out directly to JFO. We work for you all. Right? Secretary Moore is wonderful, but, you know, she works within the executive branch, is very busy. JFO is also very busy, but we work for you all directly. And so if you have a specific question that we can help dig into, I would say reach out to us if it's about a specific program or preparation, and we'll dig in and kind of uncover the history for you. Because that that's our job, to support you all with your decision making information. You. Yeah.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Madamois?

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: How accurate is AI in meetings? I ask questions. Lastly, I ask AI a 100 questions, you know, but I keep asking questions, and this is public information. Right? So, you know, I'm hearing that it's 93% or 95% accurate. I'm just wondering, would that be one way to ask questions to get reliable information or to at least be able to begin to navigate?

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: I would be very cautious about using AI in the specific con I mean, it's useful in many, many cases. In the context of the state budget, specific departmental information, certain, you know, data just isn't publicly available. It's not scrapable by the by the AI. Right? AI is one giant scraping machine. Takes information off the Internet and repackages for you in ways that are not always accurate, and especially in this space where there are so many intricacies of the state budget process that are unique to Vermont. They differ from state to state. They're unique to each agency and department. And some of the agency lives on some of the information lives on a hard drive at the National Life Building, and is not online for the AI to scrape.

[Rebecca Pfeiffer, State Floodplain Manager (Vermont ANR)]: That's what I took this month around. Yeah. A few more years.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah. I be very cautious about relying on AI for policy summaries, budgetary information. Is

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: there any future where the actual budget statutory language we pass is actually in English and followable?

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Great

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: question. I'm hoping this this sort of change is gonna move us in that direction because I find it to be impenetrable.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: You are not the only one to feel that way. Yeah. And it's hard, right, because it's the juncture of two things. It's legalese and accounting and fiscal management, like, two famously inaccessible and kind of dry areas. I don't know if it will ever be totally readable and interpretable, said the lay audience. Not that you all are a lay audience. There's a certain amount of technical complexity that will always be there. I think

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: like, personnel services or whatever it's called. It's really like it's obfuscating what it's doing. It feels obfuscating to me.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Are you referring to the to the big bill itself? It's statutory text.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Yeah. I mean, it's gotten better with spreadsheets and the way we're doing it on the floor is a lot better. It's still very hard to follow the page we're on and the presentations, and it's a pretty big lift.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: And I would all I you know, as a somewhat new addition to the JFO myself, I can empathize, right, when you're hearing about direct applications and transfers and one time simphases, they can feel almost intentionally ob just obuscatory because so much is so specific. At least speaking on behalf of house appropriations, I can show you it's not share shy's yeah. No. I No.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: I

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: my quest I know she's trying to make it Right.

[Rep. Rob North]: But in

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: terms of the actual technical documents. Yeah. Right? I I

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: mean, if we just used English, we would understand it better in a lot of cases.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yeah. You'll I would take it up with the lawyers who write the actual bill. I will say JFO is available to help translate. I know that your committee does a lot of really good, important work. Interaction with JFO is limited to bills with direct fiscal impacts, those appropriations revenue raising mechanisms. But that being said, we do exist to assist all committees and all members of the legislature.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Will you have Will we have a JFO liaison?

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Yes. It varies based on subject area and bill. It would have been me last year as a member of the revenue team. This year, I would say, at Titterton or Ted Barnett would be the fiscal analysts who would be working on Actually, Ted Barnett will most likely be the fiscal analyst working on bills with you all. And I'll be assisting with our natural resource portfolio this year as well for fiscal notes and related support. The truth is, Ted Barnett, myself, good points of contact for bills that might come before you all, fiscal questions. Anybody at JFO, we're a small shop. We have about 18 people. You can reach out, and your request will will reach the right person. But I would encourage you all to start with, you know, Ted Barnett and myself if you have questions, and our our emails are on the JFO webpage on the contact information.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Thank you, Have you

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: One more flag. Just that we did host House of Appropriations hosted two budget workshops this year previously in January. The recordings are online on YouTube. The slides are posted online. Encourage you all to take a look if you weren't able to make those sessions.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Do you happen to go to that, Rob? I

[Rep. Rob North]: did. Oh, it was at the same time as

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Stream them during dinner

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: time. Yeah.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Yeah. I'm going to during dinner time.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: Representative Shy did those. Right? Yeah. I did

[Rep. Rob North]: go and get the big blue book she was handing out, the prize, which were those were the prizes she was talking about. Big, huge, full printout. Of the budget. Of the whole budget.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: And one more note on contacts. On the house appropriations committee representative, Squirrel is your kind of budget buddy, your liaison. So he's another resource to you for questions on maybe tracking house appropriations.

[Steve Dupay, Vermont Fire Extinguisher]: Great. Thank you.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Thank you.

[Bill Smith, Contract Lobbyist (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Thank you all.

[James Duffy, Joint Fiscal Office]: Thank you.

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: Yeah. Thanks.

[Jeff Terry, Rasky Partners (Fire Equipment Manufacturers Association)]: Thank you.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Thanks so much for joining us. With that, we are

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: a