Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Good afternoon and welcome to the House Environment Committee. We are with our legislative council to talk about S-three 28, an act related to housing common interest communities, which we do not have in our committee, but it has a few sections that we are contemplating. I think we're going to talk about them with our Legis Council right now, walk through them, and then bring them into three twenty five if we want to.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Hey. Ellen Chittenden asked the Office of Legislative Counsel. So S320 is passed by the Senate. It came out of the Senate Economic Development Committee and is now in House General and Housing. And I worked on three of the sections, the rest of the bill Cameron and my office drafted because the rest of the bill is more specific to housing. But there are three land use related sections. It starts at the bottom of page seven into page eight. So we're gonna be talking about section seven, eight and nine. So section seven is related to municipal zoning provisions that have been worked on in prior sessions. So, it's amending 24 VSA 4,412, the required provisions and prohibited effects for municipal zoning. And so the start of the

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: amendment Recently revisited when talking with the Ag Committee.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Yes, this is the same statute that was part of the discussion around municipal regulation of farming. But 4,412 is a pretty long statute because it addresses a lot of the specific provisions that municipalities have to include in their zoning and how they treat specific land uses. And so there are multiple provisions related to housing, as well as some other land use types. So the first change that's being proposed to 4,412 is on page eight, and it's amending subdivision 1B, which is related to mobile homes. Okay. So the first section, actually, this subsection B on page eight, starting with line six should look familiar because it is nearly identical to language that the House General Committee passed as part of their other bill earlier this session. I think it was H775, whatever their housing bill it was. They included this language about being clear that bylaws cannot have the effect of excluding mobile homes, modular housing or prefabricated housing from any district that allows year round residential development in the municipality, except to the same terms as applies to conventional housing. So hold on. I'm gonna keep I just explained this section. So that language was already passed by the house. The Senate has been considering as well. The other amendment that they changed was adding reference to manufactured housing because they didn't they wanted to be clear that manufactured housing is different than mobile homes and is potentially different than modular housing or prefabricated housing. I'm not an expert in the technical terms of manufactured housing. Cameron works on that more, but they wanted to make sure that it covered all these types of housing that were sort of in the prefabricated category and saying that a municipality has to treat them the same as they treat conventional housing. So, if a municipality in their zoning has requirements for design specificity, design review, that would apply to manufactured housing. And if that manufactured housing can meet those standards, they have to be allowed in the same way that single family homes are allowed. Did I answer your question?

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: I mean, I think I've been kind of trained now that it's more kind of politically correct to say manufactured housing instead of multiple homes. It just seems like this would be confusing because I feel like there's another category, like manufactured housing is a different category than mobile homes. But that's just maybe, I don't know. It's just interesting to me.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I do think the new technology is emerging that manufactured housing may not take the form of mobile. Oh, right. And so Yeah. And I think that would have traditionally been under the category of prefabricated, but the Senate Economic Development Committee wanted to make sure that it manufactured housing was clearly part of this. Yeah.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: That makes sense.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Thank you. Yeah.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Alright. So still on page eight, so that's Subdivision B. Then there are a series of changes farther down in Subdivision D. So Subdivision D is the section that has required that there be duplexes and up to quadplexes in certain areas of municipalities. And so, a couple of small changes are being made to this provision that was adopted a couple of years ago. So, bottom of page eight, line 17, Bylaws shall designate appropriate districts and reasonable regulations for multiunit or multifamily dwellings. No bylaw shall have the effect of excluding these multiunit or multifamily dwellings from the municipality. In any district that allows year round residential development, duplexes shall be a permitted use or permitted use with the dimensional standards that are not more restrictive than is required for a single unit dwelling, including no additional land or lot area that would be required for a single unit dwelling. So I'll stop there. Currently, the statute says that duplexes shall be an allowed use. This is changing it to a permitted use. And the difference here is that in zoning, allowed uses can go through conditional use review, whereas permitted traditionally go to the minimal to no review at the municipal level.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: So this would

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: prohibit towns from doing conditional use review on duplexes if that is not what is required for single unit dwellings. And your committee did work on this two or three years ago, this duplex language. And I my recollection is that there were back and forth there was, I would say, multiple parties that testified about whether it should be allowed versus permitted. So

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I mean, I remember this being a separate language for duplexes and four plexes, and that we were it was a permitted use for four.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, I didn't get there yet. That's at the top of page nine. Yeah. So I was going to do them separately because this is just for the duplex part. The four plex part is next.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Where does it say duplex?

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: At the bottom of page eight, line 21.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Duplexes shall be I see. Yes. Got it. It's a question. You may.

[Rep. Michael Hoyt (Member)]: Yeah. Just the term permitted usually means, like, the application for a permit and a permit. Or is it just the traditional permitted use of the word here? What does it actually mean?

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. So this is Yes. This is an issue. So prior to the Home Act, Chapter 117 in Title 24 establishes what towns are allowed to put in their zoning. And it was pretty high level, but within the planning community, allowed and permitted have their jargon that has different meaning and context than what has already been established in this chapter. And so permitted here is the zoning phrase as opposed to the general understanding of the definition. And so the House General Committee was actually just discussing if these terms should be defined because they are not defined. But if you look at zoning and you may want to hear from town planners, you work on this, a zoning district will often identify what are permitted uses and what are allowed uses. Allowed uses generally have more review or can be subject to more review.

[Michael Graham (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Interesting,

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: because I have heard that this has had unintended consequences in certain communities. We're getting an awful lot of ADUs that are turning into Airbnbs when we were having the intended the intention was housing for Vermonters, And that's from a community that feels like they have enough Airbnbs. So yeah. Okay.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The other change to the subdivision is at the top of page nine. So, line two into line three. In any district that is served by municipal sewer and water infrastructure that allows residential development, municipal, multi unit dwellings with four or fewer units shall be a permitted use on the same size lot as a single family as a single unit dwelling. And it's striking this additional language that's been part of the statute that says, unless that district specifically requires multi unit structures to have more than four dwellings. So, this created a system where if there's if it's an area served by sewer and water, the town has to allow multi unit dwellings with up to four units in that district, unless they specifically require sort of the opposite, which is that multi unit dwellings have to be four units or larger. So, this provision in the status quo currently allows town to say, in our sewer and water districts, you have to have more than four units in order to build here. And so it has, there have been, I think some, there's been some testimony that that has prevented the smaller number of units from being built in those areas.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I think I need to explain that again.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the first part of this sentence is saying that in these areas, the town has to allow for multi units up to four. So either a duplex, triplex or quadplex, unless they do the opposite, which is say in this area, only structures greater than four units can be built, not duplexes, triplexes or quadplexes. And by striking this? It leaves it at, in these areas, a town has to allow up to four units in those areas. They can do more, sure. They can allow for greater density.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: What does striking this do?

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Hypothetically, if area is served by sewer and water is in the municipality, the municipality can say only structures there can be built with more than four units. If a developer is seeking to just convert a home into a duplex, that wouldn't necessarily be allowed.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Mandating a house that was really only big enough for two units to have four?

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, requiring more than that, not allowing for smaller unit development.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Questions, Sarita? I just was gonna ask about septic capacity. How does this figure in? Because it's not just that they have septic. They're about municipal water. It's septic capacity. So if you keep adding in, you're trying to figure out if the capacity is going to be enough for four as opposed to two or one. How is that figure done?

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So there are multiple provisions requiring density in areas that have sewer and water infrastructure. The municipality is still allowed to deny connections if they don't actually have the capacity. In that case, a developer attempting to construct these multi unit dwellings would need to add septic themselves. We

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: have a request to start over on this explaining this. It doesn't make any sense why they're striking this. Is the what is the intention of the change? To increase, like, mandatory density?

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Allow allow for the smaller, in developed dwelling units.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: It does that the way it is, doesn't it? I think

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that what this change is doing is allowing for towns A town could use the existing provision to say, in these areas, we do not allow duplexes, triplexes or quadplexes. We only allow multi unit dwellings with more than four units of housing in it.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Did this happen in St. Orleans? Is that what this is addressing? Yes, I believe so. Where someone was forced to have more units than they had wanted to on their property. I believe so. Yes. Representative Logan.

[Rep. Kate Logan (Member)]: So Saint Albans up zoned.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Kate Logan (Member)]: And then that prevents this from being a permitted use? Yes. Okay, okay. So, we're striking it out because we want to be able to say that you can't zone out duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes in the up sewn area.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, by saying that this building would need

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: to have at least 10 units or 20 units. So someone came to the we won't pick on one town, but let's just say that you have this situation. It would be that I built a town there, and I want to put in three units. And the town turns you down because they want you to put six? Yes. And you can't afford to do six? Yes. And that's the way this had been written. Okey doke. Other questions on this section? Did you have a question, representative Hoyt?

[Rep. Michael Hoyt (Member)]: No. It was cleared up.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So that that's the end of the zoning provisions in this bill. Section eight is on a related topic, though. It is about the definition of areas served by municipal sewer and water infrastructure. So as part of the that initially created these zoning provisions that require additional density in certain areas of the municipality, this concept was created that there would be required density such as up to four units of multiunit dwellings in an area served by municipal water and sewer. And so, this definition for what those areas are was created. It is an option or how there are two options for how the town goes about identifying what these areas are. So the definition has two options. The first one at the bottom of page nine. So it means an area where residential connections and expansions are available to municipal water and direct and indirect discharge wastewater systems and not provided by identified capacity constraints or municipally adopted service and capacity agreements. So, the Senate here is striking that the area under this first prong of the definition, they're striking reference that the area could not carve out areas prohibited by state regulations or permits. The second half of this definition, which I'll talk about more, is a town actually adopts in their bylaws what the defined areas are, and they're allowed to consider a number of criteria. A town could also use this method, or this is the default method if the town has not adopted in their bylaws what the area is. And so, look at the area is, is it a place where residential connections and expansions are available to the system and are not prohibited by capacity constraints or capacity agreements. So otherwise, it's striking state regulation or permits. I'm not sure entirely what the universe of that was. I suspect it was wetlands related. So the area couldn't previously include areas that were prohibited under state regulation or permits. This is kind of a complicated area of law.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Other place to build in moons.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't know that's the only type. I think that that is identified as an example of why they would be striking it here, but you may wanna hear more about if there are other examples.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Did the Senate take testimony on other Like, what are the reasons?

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This was actually one of the floor amendments. Originally, the Senate had discussed, they had a number of planners testify about how this works. And so towns have a lot of different ways that they structure their sewer and water areas. And so, this bill is attempting to capture a lot of the different situations that may occur. But this definition has proved, I think, to be tricky for towns to implement. And so, there was a suggestion to actually include distance. So to identify how large these areas served by municipal water and sewer are. And so the Senate initially passed out a 2,000 foot radius of the area.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: And who would pay for those 2,000 feet?

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So this is defining it was defining how large an area would be. And so it wouldn't necessarily still would not require the municipality to approve a hookup, but what these areas are where the additional density is required would be. So they heard questions about if I'm near the wastewater systems, how near is near enough to be considered part of that area?

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I would think a 2,000 foot extension would be a very expensive extension.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Planners initially had proposed something significantly smaller than that as of somewhere between 200, 300, maybe 500.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Still, though mean yeah. Okay. So this is this is being advocated for for increased density in further just bigger areas of dense development. Yes. And we just took testimony today about the need for agricultural lands to be adjacent to our developed areas so that we could have food production in them as well. This sort of march towards densities doesn't stop.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So there's another change in this section to the other part of the definition. So on page 10, as I already mentioned, the other option for this definition is, on line three, an area established by the municipality by ordinance or bylaw where residential connections and expansions are available to municipal water

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: and me,

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to municipal water and direct and indirect discharge wastewater systems or a fire district. It then goes on to, include the factors or the areas that they are allowed to exclude under this definition. And I can read through that if you'd like, but they did add this reference to that. It can either be a municipal system or a fire district.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: We're still in the definition of an area served by water and sewer.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so I did just wanna flag this reference to fire district was added to this half of the definition. As I mentioned, the initial version of the definition had a a 2,000 foot radius, but it also had struck entirely the first option of the definition. And so you may want to consider then there was this floor amendment. And so

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Is this part of the floor amendment, the fire district?

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. That was part of the an underlying discussion was adding fire districts. So It's really a way

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: of saying a water service area because someone will see their water. Yes.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so I was just gonna say you may wanna consider if it also should be in the first half of the definition also. That was not contemplated initially. So the last section, section nine, unless you want me to read more from the definition of area surface or water. No other changes were made to that section. So on page 11, section nine is amending 24 VSA 5,803 and S three twenty five also amends this section. So this is amending the benefit steps for downtowns and village centers. So this is part of the new community investment program that's transitioning from the designated area program to the community investment program. And it is about, I think, an issue you have already heard about, which is the need for an area to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. So, page 12, the designated areas for downtown and village centers also have steps within them, they can be a designated center and also have step one, step two or step three. The higher on the steps you go, the more incentives and benefits are available to those towns. And so, step two, which is on page 12. So it is established to create a mid level designation for villages throughout the state to increase planning and implementation capacity for community scale projects. A center reaches Step two if, and so it's amending one of the criteria. At the bottom, page 12, if a portion of the center is listed or eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places unless recognized by the program as a pre existing designated Newtown Center. And so, I think when I walked through S-three 25 View, I flagged this under the prior system. Downtowns and village centers were separate categories, and then there was also this category of new town center, which are inherently younger centers that don't necessarily have historic buildings in them because they're too young. And so, as this program is beginning to be unveiled and gone through, the department has identified that the new town centers won't qualify for this because they don't have buildings that qualify for the National Register. So, this would be adding that they can if they have a pre existing new town center, they don't have to meet this criteria.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: And then the same is being added on page 13 for step three. The We go back. Pre existing new town center's one that was approved under the previous program that we've now kind of rolled into regional planning. Yes. Oh, jeez. K. And did they take testimony as to whether there was capacity to provide this mid level service to those places? I know.

[Unidentified Member]: I don't know. Sorry.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, that's okay. So then step three is also adding this language. So on page 13, Step three is an advanced designation for downtowns to create mixed use centers and join the downtown the Vermont Downtown Program. A center reaches Step three if the Department finds that it meets the following requirements, and it says a portion of the center is eligible is listed or eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places unless recognized by the program as pre existing designated Newtown Centre. So the other change here is that that language on line eight, which is that it was not clear. I guess there was a concern that it wasn't clear that the whole center didn't have to be eligible for registering, but a portion of it is listed or eligible for listing.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So do we under do you have Chris Cochran on this to understand what this does? Or, like, is it Department of Housing Community Development? Okay. So I guess I feel like there's capacity issues here.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so, just so you know, in S-three 25 secondtion 17 is amending this same section, The language in 03/20/5328 does not conflict. So technically, they can pass separately and not conflict with each other, but it maybe it is always advisable if you're amending the same section to have it in one bill just so that conflicts don't happen.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: And so the part that's in already in three twenty five is just this part with this designation program.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It is not about yeah. But it's not about the steps. It's amending the other part of the language in this statute. It's amending subdivision A, and this is amending subdivision F.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Oh, I see. Got it. Yeah. Right. And it's okay. And those are the sections that you worked on in this bill? Yes. And I understood working on an amendment to those sections, which I'm very confused about, but would you be able to tell us what that amendment would is doing?

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. So on Friday, the house general committee heard testimony from, the Broad League of Cities and Towns and made a couple of specific language change requests. And yesterday in house general, I presented an amendment for them that draft that captured those or attempted to capture. And I think we had a little bit of a game of telephone because I'm not sure that I actually captured VLCT's intended suggestion. But the proposal they were making is they were proposing Sorry. The House committees asked for some of the language from VLCT and then something else. They asked for a definition of permitted or permitted just to define what that is so that it isn't confused with allowed. There isn't a definition currently in Vermont law, so I just came up with a definition because they didn't really have a proposal. So, could hear, I think some town zoning has identified a definition for permitted versus allowed. You could hear testimony on that. And then VLCT had two other suggestions. They, proposed language that was discussed last year about allowing required bylaw amendments to not have any required hearings at the town level. And so, in the last few years, as the legislature has put more requirements into the zoning, towns then have to update their zoning to reflect that. VLCT asked that towns not be required to hold public hearings on these changes because they are required changes. I believe your committee worked on this last year, and it's that provision wasn't was in a bill and then was taken out of a bill. I think there are some concerns about how that would play out if you made that change. So I can talk more about that if you'd like. It was in a

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: bill last year, and it was taken out an Do you remember where or why?

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It would have been, I think, Senate House General's housing bill last year. And why is because while the statutory amendments are required to be adopted as part of town zoning, often these statutory provisions are vague or require discretion on the town to identify what areas they actually are going to apply to. So having them be sort of automatically adopted provisions,

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I think concern was raised about that. So and the league is just saying they don't wanna burden towns with having to do public process, letting folks know that the zoning is changing on their land. Yeah.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And then the other provision that VLCT was proposing is that the definition of area served by sewer and water infrastructure, their position is that it should be used in the Act two fifty changes related to Tier 1B and interim housing exemptions, because for those exemptions, do require that there be public sewer and water infrastructure, which is not the same as area served by municipal water and sewer.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: How is it different?

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, I don't know. How is Ben specifically? I don't know. Well, so they're not the same defined term. And so I don't know the extent to which they actually overlap.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Members have questions for Ellen on this?

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Representative Austin? What's the rationale for the National Register of Historic Places that What's the rationale for that? I mean, I just imagine that there are some panels that don't have those buildings. That means that they can't take advantage of some of the incentives.

[Ellen Chittenden (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I think we started I think you could hear from other people about this, but I think initially the designated areas were the areas that were eligible for tax credits that are specific for historic structures, which I do think is tied to the same year as the National Historic Register. And so, I think that has always been one of the general requirements of the designated program, the designated area program. And then now that we're shifting to this new program, those have been carried through. I don't know if there's additional rationale you could hear from, but it was part of the original program, and it is in part to deal with the that is a requirement of the tax credits, which is one of the primary benefits of those areas.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yeah, that's how the whole program started, was historic structures, getting benefit of the tax to revitalize them, Helped a lot of our downtowns with investments in historic buildings like the Town Hall Theater in Middlebury, like the Bristol Block, and other counties too, not just Townsend County. I'm sure some of yours. Thank you, Ela. Okay. Michael. Whenever you're ready.

[Michael Graham (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. This is Michael Graham with legislative council. I'm gonna walk you through, a proposed committee amendment to s two two three that incorporates some of the feedback that, the chair informed me that you were receiving or wanted to see. And so there there's not a substantial amount of changes to the creation of the water quality lake classification and antidegradation study group. But there are some nuances that are added and specifically in the membership, which begins on page one at the bottom of page nine eighteen twenty and goes on page two. With regard to the legislators that are on the working group, they shall not all be from the same political party, for both the house and the senate. And then there was an additional member added on page two lines eighteen and nineteen of one person representing the Green Mountain Water Environment Association appointed by the speaker of the house. Otherwise, the language is as passed by the senate, and I don't have any other additional changes for you to this.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Agreed. Do members have questions about those changes or anything else for Michael?

[Rep. Michael Hoyt (Member)]: Just because my memory is not that great. The Green Mountain Water Environment Association, is that the group that we

[Michael Graham (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: heard from? To make sure.

[Unidentified Member]: It's sort of minor, but I know sometimes creating working groups or committees that have an even number can cause issues if there needs to be a quorum in this case.

[Michael Graham (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We do try to create odd number groups, but it's not unusual or unique to have even number groups, especially, you know, for political interest. I don't think you're gonna have a quorum issue here if the legislators show up, because the advocates will show up. And if the legislators show up, you're gonna have enough people right there.

[Unidentified Member]: This group isn't voting regularly or doing something where even members

[Michael Graham (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There's a provision in here that says, on majority of the study group shall constitute a quorum, so it will be one more than that even number, even half.

[Unidentified Member]: Thanks. I know it's not ideal, but I know it's also more important to have the right people on the committee. So just curious about how much that would affect it.

[Michael Graham (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Even if you didn't say majority, it's a quorum. There's a provision entitled one that says majority is quorum. That's otherwise specified. Yeah.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Rob, the other day you asked if we would have ANR in, and I guess I didn't ask you why you wanted to have them in. I'm curious.

[Rep. Michael Hoyt (Member)]: Just to see if they were in support of

[Michael Graham (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the bill in general and if

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: they had any specifics that they wanted to change.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Oh, I thought they already came in. It's part of it. Members have any further questions? Okay. Thanks, Michael. Alright. We have this bill looks really comfortable with this bill. Bet it is. 23? Yes. 3.

[Rep. Michael Hoyt (Member)]: I have. So I'm not quite ready to. I was hoping to have an offline conversation here.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Sounds good. We have the connection bill that has your amendment on it. Who else do we need to hear from? Anyone else we need to hear from on the hookups bill that we walked through yesterday with Michael, the Burlington amendment? So I'll move into clearing things out if we can. Ann Far? Am I right now? Ann Farn?

[Rep. Kate Logan (Member)]: They would just not speak to the amendment. Oh,

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: on the amendment. Great. Thank you. Yep. Great.

[Michael Graham (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Speak to me, though. Okay.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Right. And we still have a lot of folks. You guys have been sending witnesses on 03/2025. Still have people to hear from on that. I guess that's all the news for the day. With that, we will turn for the after