Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Good morning, everyone. It is Friday. Happy Friday, everyone. 01/23/2026, and this is the committee on general and housing. Today, what we're doing is, this morning, we are hearing from Big Hartman, who's the Executive Director and General Counsel of the Vermont Human Rights Commission, and then we will have a walkthrough of an act relating to a mediator position in the office of the Vermont Labor Relations. After lunch, we are going to begin what will be a number of days of hearings on manufactured housing, known to some as mobile homes, although we will not refer to them as mobile homes. We refer to them by their property and housing because they aren't mobile. So we're starting this morning with Big Heart Big. Welcome. You. Identify yourself for the record and take it away.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Hi. My name is Big Hartman. I use theythem pronouns. I'm the executive director and general counsel at the State of Vermont Human Rights Commission. There we go. That seat was for somebody with very long legs. Thank you so much for having me today. It's nice to see you all again. Hope you all are hanging in there so far this January. So there's a lot of things I could talk with you about today, but I'm going to try to stay focused on the primary reason I was invited to speak here was to talk about what's been happening with HUD, I believe, and our Fair Housing Cooperative Agreement.

[Speaker 0]: Your thoughts on what the implications for you and your budget and your personnel are. Absolutely, great.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Yeah, so as you all probably know or recall, the Vermont Human Rights Commission is an independent state commission. We are state employees who are tasked with enforcing primarily Vermont's Fair Housing and Public Accommodations Act. Our Fair Housing protections are enforcing those protections. It's more than half of the function of our office. It's more than half of our total complaints each year. Primarily, fair housing complaints tend to involve individuals with disabilities filing complaints of discrimination involving often reasonable accommodation requests and other forms of housing discrimination. But we also do a fair amount of fair housing complaint investigations based on other legally protected categories, including increasing color, receipt of public assistance, and a variety of additional legally protected categories. As you probably recall, just last year, we added immigration status and citizenship as legally protected categories in housing. So from what seems to be from the beginning of the Human Rights Commission, there's been a cooperating agreement with HUD. So HUD is tasked with enforcing the federal Fair Housing Act. And the federal Fair Housing Act sets kind of the bar of what the minimum fair housing protections need to be. And many states have additional legally protected categories. We have our own state version of a Fair Housing Act, and then we can add additional legally protected categories that we've done many times over the years here in Vermont. And so under our cooperating agreement with HUD, we get paid each year for the fair housing cases that we closed in that year that were dual filed. And we dual file any case that implicates both federal and state law. And HUD will also initiate some fair housing complaints, and those they refer to us to do all of the investigations for, they're dual filed with our office as well.

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: So go ahead, Joe. Just while it's fresh here. I'm guessing HUD won't help fund housing discriminate cases discrimination cases that are for protected statuses that aren't in there. Like we've added to immigration status and things like that, they're not going to pay for when you get one of those cases.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Correct. We don't dual file cases that are not under federal law as well. So there are some fair housing cases that are just under state law. Most often that's gonna be receipt of public assistance is not protected under federal law. Gender identity and sexual orientation, they have historically accepted as under the umbrella of sex discrimination. In the past year, they've stopped accepting payment or allowing payment for cases that are primarily based on gender identity. But if there's some other, often claims will include more than one protection category. And so if we have one that is under federal jurisdiction, we will dual file it. And that has historically never been an issue. Ashley? What percentage would you say of your cases are dual filed? The vast majority. Okay. The only real common type of case that we see that isn't under federal law is the Proceed of Public Assistance. And I think in the last year, we had three of those new complaints that we initiated. So other than that, all of our other complaints, we did dual file. They did advise in the ones that involve gender identity, they did advise that they would not be issuing payments on those. They were initially accepted, but then the Trump administration came in and flagged those. One of them, I can say, ended up closing this year, and it was primarily based in a trans person having a disability based claim. But because the word gender identity appeared in the complaint, the AI at HUD caught it and flagged it, they did end up paying us on that case because it really wasn't about gender identity discrimination. It just had the word gender identity in the complaint. This question for you. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, so you said most are dual filed because they're protected both by the federal and the state statute. You also said HUD sometimes actually refers cases to you. What are those? How does that happen and how many are there and do they still?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: It's pretty common because, you know, someone who thinks they've been discriminated against in housing is going to Google fair housing discrimination, and a HUD website is often gonna come up and be a phone number that they call. So HUD has historically done intake on those cases. They accept the complaint first, and then we get it from them and do the investigation for HUD. That is fairly common. And I would say probably at least 30% of our housing cases have originated with HUD Because they implicate federal law and we, under state law, have all of those federal categories listed, they're always going to be automatically accepted for investigation at our office. I would say I have not seen a HUD referred complaint in several months now, and that is very out of the ordinary. All of the HUD employees were eliminated, their positions were eliminated during the shutdown, then some of them have been brought back, but we really don't know who, and we really don't know what they're doing because we're not hearing anything at all from them. So it's kind of bleak.

[Speaker 0]: Are you talking about the local Where is the HUD office that you usually deal with?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: There has been a HUD office in Burlington that was shut down earlier this year. So we work with, we're within Region 1 of HUD, which is like a lot of New England states. My point of contact has always been based out of Connecticut. I'm not sure what his role is anymore, but he has not been able to, he has not conducted all of his normal functions. I usually would have a quarterly report. Due to him every three months, I would have monthly meetings with HUD about how our case processing is going. No one's asked to meet with me in months. I have not been given a new cooperating agreement for this fiscal year to sign without explanation. And we have not received our payment for all the cases that we closed in fiscal year 'twenty five. So that's one of the big things that has come down is that we went through the normal process. The way the normal process works is that their performance year with HUD aligns with our fiscal year. So at the end of the fiscal year, we tally up all the cases that we worked on for HUD that are dual filed. And depending on how the case went, you get a different payment amount. So we tally up all the cases that we're entitled to payment for, we tally up the amount, each one earned us, and then there's a total at the bottom. You get an additional figure for your administrative costs. It's like maybe around 12,000 historically. And then you get a little bit for training funds for your team so that they can get their housing training. So we did all that. We had budgeted to receive around 92,000 in fiscal year twenty six for the work we had done in fiscal year twenty five, because the payment comes after all that totaling and all the paperwork is done. It happens, usually we get the voucher for payment in August or September. Now it's January, I've not been sent the voucher for payment. What's the amount again? That's how much we had budgeted. Yeah, we had budgeted 92, but as you all know, I've been trying to grow our budget ever since I became director. And one of the ways I saw I could do that was we could up our fair housing cases because we get paid per case. So we close more cases with HUD, we'll get more money. That's great. And there is no shortage of fair housing complaints to investigate. So it was very easy for us to do that. And because we streamlined some of our processes, we really did double down on our fair housing enforcement in fiscal year 'twenty five. We actually were told by my HUD contact in Connecticut that we were entitled to $187,000 So that was amazing. They got really excited about all of the fair housing work we were gonna get to do. We were gonna do testing, we're going do outreach and education. We're going to have all this extra money. Amazing. We haven't gotten a dollar. And am in social relationship with other directors of other HRCs in New England. We meet monthly. No one's gotten payments. No one's gotten an offer of payment. We all keep asking our respective HUD contacts, Hey, how about that payment? I'd really like to keep my staff employed. And they are like, We don't know. We don't know. We're waiting for headquarters.

[Speaker 0]: We don't. Does anyone consider litigation?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: So, of course, various attorneys, generals are considering that, but HUD hasn't come out and said, No, we're not paying you. They're just kind of stringing us along month by month. And what they did tell us was the day before the shutdown went into effect, back in October, they had all the directors, so Fair Housing Assistance Program is what it's called that we get this money for. And they had all the FAP directors attend this mandatory online meeting with HUD. And at that meeting, they informed us that there was gonna be a different voucher process this time around. They didn't give us any more detail than that. Historically, it's just been this formality. You get this form, it's already signed by HUD, you sign it, then you can do your job.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Bless you, patron.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Told us, all they said about it was that you'll sign it first, then we'll review it. But they haven't even sent it. They also, in that meeting, discussed this new FAP guidance documents that they've said are going to be in effect for this year, that we're all still dual filing cases, even though we don't have a cooperating agreement. They did send us some cases over the summer. We're kind of just proceeding. There's still a cooperating agreement in place, hoping that there might be some payment to come down the line. But I haven't been offered a cooperating agreement to sign, which usually happens in the beginning of the performance year, around the same time that we get the voucher in August, And new guidance memo that came out in October indicates that they're going to do a new review across the country of every FAP agency to see if we are still going to be deemed substantially equivalent. So if, and there's new standards for whether your statute is substantially equivalent. And if you have legally protected categories beyond what's expressly protected under the Federal Fair Housing Act, you're gonna get deemed not substantially equivalent and cut from the program, as if I have the power to go and change our state statute to maintain compliance. Just gonna ask a question. So as you had mentioned, sexual orientation has kind of fallen under the basis of sex. Yeah. But as I'm looking at it, it's kind of a parentheses. It doesn't look like it's explicit. Whereas in our state statute, we explicitly say, like, this is its own thing. Is there a concern that something like that, that's gray? Like, in the gray, that could make us ineligible? A couple of things I can say. First, I think we're going to be deemed ineligible because we have explicit legal protections that aren't covered under federal law. But it really hasn't been a gray area for a long time in terms of whether sex discrimination, the broad umbrella of sex discrimination, includes sexual orientation and gender identity. That's been laid out very clearly by the Supreme Court over many years, including Trump's Supreme Court has said in 2020 that nonconformance with sex stereotypes will constitute sex based discrimination, gender identity discrimination is sex discrimination. Obviously, they're pulling back on going along with the Supreme Court's interpretation of sex based discrimination. That was in an employment context, but we're always borrowing from Title VII and other discrimination case law when we're looking at fair housing and public accommodations case law.

[Speaker 0]: If your predicted outcome occurs and we're cut from the program, do you imagine we would lose the budgeted, when you think going forward about the amount of money you won't have, are you thinking the budgeted $92,000 or are

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: you thinking

[Speaker 0]: the proactive approach 187,000 How are you thinking about what you would have to do to your budget?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: So I am proposing a fiscal year 'twenty six budget with zero federal dollars because it is deeply unwise to have any reason to believe that we're getting any federal money next year. I do think that under the contract we had in place for last year, that we're entitled to receive the payment that we budgeted to receive this year. We are in the Budget Adjustment Act governors recommend for the shortfall in our projected expenses for fiscal year 'twenty five. It's not the ninety two thousand that we had budgeted for, it's less because we're frugal, we're not trying to do anything, and there was a little bit of a carrot.

[Speaker 0]: In the BAA?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: For the BAA, we're listed to receive 25,000, which is a very conservative estimate based on our projections of what we will need to do the bare minimum, maintain salaries, benefits, and keep the lights on. 25,000 budgeted to have received from FUD? No, 25,000 additional general fund dollars because we're anticipating zero federal dollars. For? For fiscal year '25. '26. Fiscal year '20. '25. So it's the BAA.

[Speaker 0]: The BAA.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Oh, yeah. '26. Is the current year. But it's so confusing because we it's for the fiscal year '25. So for fiscal year the current fiscal year, you are assuming you assuming Does

[Speaker 0]: the BAA assume that the federal government will not make good on the payment for '25? Correct.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: And all we need to do the bare minimum sustaining ourselves is another $25,000 So we were happy that the governor went along with that recommendation. It doesn't enable us to do the things we had hoped to do with the additional funds, and it's still very, very tight. We will probably still need Pay Act, but I think we'll be okay with that. Then for fiscal year 'twenty seven, we are saying we should continue to plan on there being zero dollars from the federal government. From And what I've been told, the governor's recommend for fiscal year twenty seven is not accounting enough for that $0 If I'm being asked at this time to anticipate a $65,000 vacancy savings for a staff of nine, which would basically be on an employee's salary.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: You would be able

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: reach a nine to eight. That would be if the governor's recommended is accepted. Or I could furlough everybody for two or three weeks. Is what impact the post are. I'm just curious on the impact of what that would look like. Just balancing out, if you had to furlough folks, how does the work maintain and what kind of setback would that leave you with? Yeah, if we actually have to build in a $65,000 if we actually have to achieve that type of savings, if no one leaves a position in fiscal year 'twenty seven, and if I leave a position open, let's say I have four investigators now. If an investigator leaves, I could leave that position open. Their caseload would not be managed. We would probably reduce the number of cases we accept because of that shortfall, and we would have to wait several months to fill the position in order to achieve that type of savings. So it feels like it kind of goes against one. I think the goal was with fiscal year 'twenty six, which was to increase our capacity. As you probably recall, we were given two new positions in fiscal year 'twenty six. Those positions have been filled. Those employees have very high caseloads right now. And it is very hard to imagine what would happen if I actually had to achieve that vacancy turnover savings. The other option, if I don't have someone voluntarily leave the position and then I leave it open, the other option would be sometime at the end of the fiscal year, I hope, be the best case scenario would be we furlough staff, where I stop taking a salary for however long is needed to achieve that $65,000 savings. And that would mean everything comes to a grinding halt until we're back online.

[Speaker 0]: Joe, go ahead. Nope, if you're going along, keep going. Give us context. What's your total budget in the fiscal year 'twenty six? The current budget, do you know the total?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: I believe it's right around 1.2, but I don't have it

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: right And in front of

[Speaker 0]: fiscal twenty seven is less?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: We're not allowed to budget for more than a 3% increase. So that's the target. And in order to achieve that governor's target, it's a $65,000 vacancy savings. So it is an increase in the general fund allocation for our office, but it's not enough to keep everyone employed and the lights on all year long.

[Speaker 0]: Because of increases

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: in pay. And because of the loss of federal funds. So all of our staff are exempt employees, and usually PAY Act is where those increases are, the payment for those are achieved. You, sorry, can you elaborate Pay Act? What do you mean by that? That's just what we have to increase. Pay Act is something that happens at the end of the year of the legislative session, and it's like the collective bargaining agreement, pay increases are in that separate pay act, and the exempt employees are often in that. I guess there have been maybe one or two years in history that were not included in that. When I look at my line items for my budget, there's the base funding, then there's a carryover line if we have carryover, and then there's a pay act line that doesn't, you don't know what it is until the end of the year. So it's dicey when you have such a small team and your budget is so tight.

[Speaker 0]: So I want to just reflect this back to make sure I've got it. For fiscal year twenty seven, if you simply did a 3% increase and you had the federal funds, you'd have a quantity x. And whatever that quantity x is, the amount actually recommended in the Governor's budget is $65,000 short of that.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Yes. Okay. And

[Speaker 0]: one other question and then I think others might have questions. Do you expect an increase in the number of inquiries or applications or whatever because HUD is no longer performing its function.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Yes. And it's more time consuming when it's a cold call to our office, versus HUD has sent us a complaint that's already been signed by somebody. We usually will just copy and paste that and create a UHRC complaint. So it's not just an increase in the number of people contacting us, it's an increase in the workload to process those initial inquiries. We are also experiencing that with the cuts that have happened with Vermont Legal Aid because there are fewer staff available to do intake there. We would very frequently get referrals from Vermont Legal Aid. Someone would contact them with a fair housing discrimination complaint. They would do the intake. They would draft up the person's allegations and send them to us. It would be kind of ready to go in a complaint for us. That's happening less and less because they did have a number of cuts this year as they're waiting for HUD money as well. And that has just led to more people contacting us directly. So thank goodness we all were wise enough to create that intake coordinator position last year. That's one of the two new positions. When that individual started in the role, thankfully he had already worked at HRC before, and so he knew what to do. I could hand him on his first day 100 files of open inquiries, people that were waiting for an intake meeting or a complaint to be drafted. It's a very overwhelming role, and it used to be shared among several people in which it was also overwhelming. But we do feel that we're having an increase this year in the number of new inquiries coming into our office already. I also want to mention the other bad news from HUD. I expect based on their I mentioned earlier that in October they gave new guidance memorials for the fab directors about how to meet the performance standards for the cooperating agreements, which they haven't sent us yet. But they did send us the standards and expectations. We always get these every year and they're like, We want you to process cases in this certain way. We want you to go to the database and do the data entry this way. And we wanna see cases closed within two hundred days, and all this other stuff. This year, there is a new section called mandatory provisions, and the mandatory provisions are a lot of the things you're probably hearing about with other of these strings attached to receiving federal funds. And they really definitely, some of them are extremely problematic for us to be able to fulfill our mission and our statutory role, because they want us to promise that we will comply with the executive order regarding gender ideology, refuse to recognize trans and queer and non binary people, and that we will not do any DEI training, which is like 100 of our prevention, our discrimination prevention work, and also promise that we won't do any disparate impact theories of findings. So there's a laundry list of additional things, but those are the big three that really would thwart and frustrate the mission of our organization, and it's hard for me to envision a world in which I can certify that I will comply with those mandatory provisions while doing my job effectively and fulfilling the state law functions that we are supposed to be serving. So for that reason, even if I do get a voucher this year, I expect that the voucher will say your receipt of these funds is contingent upon your agreeing to these mandatory provisions. And I just don't know how ethically I can sign that and still do my job enforcing state law that conflicts with this personally offensive ideology.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Hello, I have a question, and then I

[Speaker 0]: Who has questions? Elizabeth, who's next, after Elizabeth? Mary. Jo, did you? I'll get that. Elizabeth.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Can we just stay with the disparate impact

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: for just a second?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Can you explain to our committee what that is and what the implication is? And also noting that the comment period for usually, when there's a new rule put into place, there's there's a sixty to ninety day comment period. And for this comment, it was foreshortened by half.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: This was not rulemaking. This is their contract, their FAP program.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I was referring to just in general what the disparate impact is so that they can understand what it is and what they're proposing.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Sure, like your day to day discrimination case is disparate treatment. We've got two general buckets of types of claims. One is disparate treatment. I think I was treated differently than you because of my legally protected characteristic. So it's individual claim. Disparate impact is when you have a facially neutral policy or practice that ends up having a disparate impact on members of protected classes. This is how we got to addressing redlining and segregation. Is really foundational. This is how we got to equal pay provisions and a lot of the fundamental case law and progress in civil rights work. Ironically, the Department of Justice has been the agency that we all look to for guidance on disparate impact and how to apply it in different cases. And yet, the federal government is the one trying to tell us not to use disparate impact findings of any kind. It's not like you can't use federal dollars for disparate impact investigations. It is like your agency will not issue any disparate impact findings. So it is very much an attempt to dismantle decades of civil rights progress and really thwart our functions. And so

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: acknowledging that we have more protective laws than the federal government, and acknowledging that you just said that you didn't feel you could ethically comply with new guidelines.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Mandatory provisions. Mandatory provisions.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: So what does that mean for both you and your operals and for

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: monitors? So I think what it means for us is it's part of a broader federal policy shift and deprioritization of civil rights enforcement that's happening nationwide. My counterparts in other states, we are all really doing everything we can to maintain the same level, at least the same level, of enforcement that we've done historically. But we all feel the need to step it up, to fill in the void that's being left by federal civil rights enforcement backing away. And we, I know for monitors, need to know that our agency is not slowing down, that we are not going to pull back. We are not deprioritizing this work. And that's why I'm going to be going around to all the committees I can this year and saying, Hey, last year we talked about expanding our positions. I'm not done talking about that. This year in the new base initiatives, I did ask for three additional positions. As you may recall, we had a bill introduced here last year where we were asking for eight new positions. We got two, that's amazing. Those positions are being fully utilized. This year, I'm making a more conservative request for three positions. An additional staff attorney investigator, a paralegal, which is absolutely a position that exists in every other civil rights agency like ours across the country, and a full time policy director, because this year, I am the only person doing policy work at our office. And there's a real high demand for more leadership on civil rights policy. There's a need for us to be involved with more working groups and study committees and things to be guiding agencies, state leaders, you all, and local coalitions about how we can strengthen civil rights across the state. And so those are the conservative requests that I'm making. And I know it's a tough year. I know it is. And it's a tough year for civil rights in general as this country,

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: as we all know, reading the news.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: Well, you just contextualize fair housing among the other civil rights that undergird everything that we do at the State House, everything we do as legislators. Can you describe in your work what the pattern is of civil rights that are being either undermined or abandoned,

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: if they are? At the federal level? Yeah. Sure. So first of all, they're just cutting a lot of employees. So HUD operations have been decimated this year, especially the Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Division of HUD. We're also seeing experience a lot of cuts, which is the We're Title VII enforcement entity or employment discrimination under federal law. And then we're also seeing the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights be pretty much obliterated across the country, centralized into one headquarters office that is now starting to turn civil rights on its head and try to use that office as a place to assert discrimination against cis white Christian people, which is generally not what the foundational reason for these civil rights are. So we're just seeing a general decline in their enforcement capacity. And then where they do have capacity left, it's kind of being used for the opposite purpose of its original intention.

[Speaker 0]: So who else, Leonora, did you, or Mary? I

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: really appreciate the questions that see Nate asked. This has to do with legal aid, I have a constituent and if you want to talk about this offline, I have a constituent who lives in a housing development and she's been given an eviction notice. She called legal aid and they said they'd get back to her, they didn't, and then finally they got back to her and said, oh, we can't take your case. And then she called them again, and, no, they called her and said, we are going to look at your case again. And then they got back to her and said, no, we can't take it. And they never ever gave her a reason. I don't know if it's income, I don't I don't know. They told her to find a lawyer. She is very upset, and I don't know all the little details, but would she then,

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: or should she then call your office? So, great question. This, I think, is not uncommon. And it's definitely been an issue for Vermont Legal Aid for a long time to be able to keep pace with the demand for legal services and legal representation for especially folks facing eviction after the eviction moratorium was lifted.

[Speaker 0]: We

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: don't worry about that. Okay. But so we can potentially address an eviction if the person believes that it's based on a discriminatory motive. But a lot of times evictions fall more broadly under like landlord tenant disputes, which are not related necessarily to discrimination. So we would often get calls from someone who's like, My landlord isn't keeping the heat on. This place is disgusting. And we would be like, Okay, do you think that this is because of your race, gender, know, fill in the blank. If they can't articulate whether they think it's discriminatory, we would say you should call either tenants rights at CBOEO or Vermont Legal Aid, because they would historically try to represent as many folks who are facing eviction in their eviction proceedings as possible. But I think it's become harder and harder for them to do that, as they have often been very reliant on federal dollars that are drying up quickly. And so we're seeing a decline in their ability to represent folks who have cases with us, as well as just provide general legal services in the way that they need to, really to be able to help all these folks across the state dealing with housing crises. Lose your housing right now, there's not a lot of housing to find. So people are definitely desperate to get support in those situations, and there's not a lot of pro bono attorneys with capacity to assist. Somebody

[Speaker 0]: else had a question, yes?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: I just want

[Unidentified Committee Member]: to go back to the payment, I just have some questions.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: So, is there

[Unidentified Committee Member]: was

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: there contractually a a a a time frame in which y'all should receive payment, like stated? Is that in statute? Is that in the contract? Is that in written anywhere, a timeframe? I don't believe so. It's just kind of been always the practice that they pay us within the first couple months of the next performance year. And you have, you haven't received anything at all, state, federal, no funding at all? No federal funding. No federal funding. Yeah, and I continue to ask my point of contact at HUD, and he just says, I'm waiting for HQ, I don't know when the money's coming. Our office is fortunate because we have under $100,000 that we've relied on. In Massachusetts, they rely on a million dollars and there's like 20 employees that includes their jobs and all of that Fair Housing enforcement will not be there in Massachusetts. So in some ways, we're fortunate that we haven't historically received very much from that source. And we budgeted conservatively this year, whereas I could have said, I know we're gonna get more, I'm gonna budget more federal funds and less general funds. I didn't do that because you just never know. And thankfully we don't have the entire shortfall of the 92,000 that we had budgeted for. We have less that we need for this year,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: but we don't need more next

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: And can you just say the number of cases one more time for me that you all supported, the humans that you supported last year in that timeframe? Under the HUD contract, how many cases we closed? I believe the number is about 32. 32. That's closed cases. 32 cases that had a closed investigation. Yes.

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Those closed investigations could be anything from would a finding of there's nothing really nothing there. Would that be a closed investigation?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Okay.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: A settlement is another closed investigation. Occasionally, folks will withdraw because they just can't deal with it or the problem kind of got worked out. We had, I want to say, around 11 reasonable grounds determinations in our housing cases in this fiscal year. And then we have another good

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: So you might get less money for really no stand like, couldn't find anything or is it less money? And then when it goes up to the found standing and guilty of something, that case gets a higher

[Speaker 0]: No. Return? Okay. So If

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: you do the investigation all the way to writing an investigative report, getting a determination, it's $3,400 If you settle the case, it's $3,200 before a determination. If you find reasonable grounds and then you file a lawsuit, that's $8,000 addition to the 34. And we do have a large caseload of fair housing enforcement cases. Our contract requires that we file those lawsuits, so it's not optional. And so that is a big additional source where we were able to accumulate more in getting to that total of 185.

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: What do you consider a high case look for? You said that the the new people you brought on have very high fees.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Yeah. So well, the inquiries caseload is over 100 people. It's there's new ones coming in every day. It's very intense for the intake side of things. And we filter those down and we don't accept many of those complaints requests because my investigative team is very full. They all have around 20 cases. Sorry, the Between fifteen and twenty, each investigator. So, and there are four? There are four. And they're usually able to close out, with the exception of a brand new investigator who got a bunch of old cases that all need to get picked up daily. But experienced investigators be able to close between one and two cases a month because we write very thorough investigative reports and we ensure that our investigations are really comprehensive, giving both sides the full opportunity to share whatever they have with us about why they think the allegations are established misguided.

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Thanks. Lastly would be, I see other states have the HUD agreement, but they also have a Equal Employment Opportunity Commission agreement. Yes. Do we have that?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: So Vermont has it. The Attorney General's Office Civil Rights Unit holds that contract with EEOC. And we're self recipient because we have just a small segment of employment cases, which are the ones that the AG's office can't handle because they're against the state.

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: That's mostly the AG's office.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Yeah, they have the bulk of the employment cases. I think they have around 80 per year and it's not very much. It's less than the HUD contract. They don't get very much for it. We closed out five state employment cases last year.

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Are you having that same payment issues with them?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: There is It doesn't sound like it's too bad. It doesn't sound like it's as bleak. They've gotten some portion. Some of the states have gotten some payments, not maybe the whole year. They've gotten some. It seems like a little bit different way that they're attacking that issue. But HUD definitely has a target on its back, and I think all the whole states are going to be the first ones that get deemed not substantially equivalent for the staff program. Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Any other questions of Big? Big, thank you so much, this has been exactly

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: I have one final final final final, that's super important. Do you do a report to kind of an annual that you share? Yes, it occurred to me while walking over here that I could have brought copies of this for all of you. I can come back and drop some off for you, but I'd be also happy to come another time and go through this with you, since it's a lot of data about how things looked year to year and how we looked in the last year. I also have a mid year report that covers the first six months of fiscal year 'twenty six that we're in right now. And then I have a policy report that I submitted as my materials I was hoping to get to today. But I want you all to know we're going to do a press conference next Friday here at the Cedar Creek Room with the community partners who are really the subject matter experts on those recommendations that are in that policy report. And I'll hope to come into some more committees just to talk about those recommendations, depending on which areas are under your jurisdiction. So I'll look forward to another time to come back, and I can also talk to you about fiscal year 'twenty

[Unidentified Committee Member]: seven, if you want to know.

[Speaker 0]: So would you drop by, please, copies of the fiscal year 'twenty five report and the report on the '6?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Absolutely. Would you like that today?

[Speaker 0]: It doesn't have to happen today, but it should happen today. And you're

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: going to leave that with us? And you guys are a committee that lets the paper documents, aren't you? Everybody does. Here, I have a few. I have a few of these I can leave with you, but they're not the one tape. Oh yeah, there's those. I have a few, and then I'll bring another little stack back here for you. Thank you. And what I shared with you about HUD is also summarized, again, in that memo that I submitted to this committee materials for today.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you so much.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Thanks everyone. Thank you for your wonderful, really appreciate your time. Our

[Speaker 0]: next item is H548, which is an act relating to adding a mediator position to the office of the Vermont Labor Relations Board. And what we're going to do today, we're not seeking evidence. The bill has been introduced by the author. But today, our counsel, Sophie Zlattney, will do a walk through of the bill.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Sophie Zlattney for the Office of Legislattney Council. I just wanted to check if

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: I was on your time.

[Speaker 0]: We have. Okay. Yeah, it's hard

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: to cut. So I won't put it up on the screen.

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you miss anybody?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: I think for sure, but I'll be honest, you're gonna refer to it.

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's on the website. It's It's on the website.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Right, it's just if we start talking about specific lines, it's sometimes helpful to people. So if they don't have to look at our faces, they can look at what we're talking about.

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You might want to look at your faces.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: And when I say the public, sometimes I mean me. Well, that was helpful. Mhmm.

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So we did a walk through of this bill last week and at the time it was a short form bill and so the request from the committee was to do a Stricle Amendment and to come back with some language. The language that's in this Strycula amendment mimics what is currently in S-one 173, which is a bill in front of the Senate Economic Development. That S-one 173 has other things in it as well, but it includes this language. So this is to add a position of mediator in the office of the State Labor Relations Board. This language would end up in the State Employee Labor Relations Act, which is where the information around the BLRB is located. So it would again just add a position. This provides that again, nineeleven here, Secretary, this is just a cleaning up to be consistent with our drafting guidelines. But this provides the board may employ a mediator to provide free mediation services to public and private sector collective bargaining units and employers upon reaching impasse during collective bargaining. Then the section two, going on to page two, is the appropriations language. This would be creating a full time permanent tax regulator position in the VLRB and with an ask for fiscal year twenty seven of $115,000 that amount can obviously be changed, the amount is a sort of estimate of salary and benefits.

[Speaker 0]: Questions?

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Yes? Can you remind me whether

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the wording in this allows for contracting for jobs done, it's not, right? It's a full time investment. Right, the appropriation would be for a full time permanent classified employees position. My understanding is that, and again this is from what the executive director of the LRB testified in front of Senate Economic Development, was that what she would envision is if you had a conflict, which can happen, both scheduling wise, but also a conflict in terms of representation, that then they would contract out mediation services. But otherwise, the concept is to have a full time mediator in the office that could provide free neutral third party mediation services to parties whom they then pass in collective bargaining.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Just a follow-up, I guess I'm confused because there was talk of not having the person physically housed in a separate space, in space unto themselves, but rather have the person come in to be shared. Like there was discussion about sharing the Am I the only one who remembers this? That they would come in and use the office. Like that the office spaces would be Still larger. Yeah,

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so again, you may want to hear from Judith Dillon, I'm not sure if that's scheduled for next week on this, but she had indicated to Senate Economic Development that their quarters are quite tight, and so if they needed to have an additional personnel, they may need additional space, and so the amount that's in here, would be for salary and benefits, an additional amount to cover rent, a higher amount, because I understand that the VLOB has to pay BGS for the space that they use.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Okay. That was that one, right? I'm not Marc?

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: I didn't know if you could see my hand. Hello.

[Speaker 0]: No. Go ahead. It's good you should speak up because it's when there's a document up, you're very tiny.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: I I don't mind. Sophie, did the senate committee take up testimony at all on this? How far did they you you had just mentioned some remarks. Did did they have they discussed this this bill at all in their other bill yet? I can go look myself, but if you you know since you would be sitting there.

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So executive director Judith Dillon testified, and I think there were other folks. I I'm just looking

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: at JP. I don't know

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: if JP is in the room. I think there were some

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: other union folks there that may

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: have Okay.

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Weighed in a little bit, but I don't think they were they didn't do full testimony on the union side.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Okay. I'll go I'll go back and check that out. Thank you.

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: I'm just trying to remember back to other labor relations bills we've done. Have we been moving away from the labor relations board as a follow-up date?

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So there have been concerns around the capacity of the labor relations board to handle the full workload that they have. Historically, they had an executive director that was there for a very long time, Tim Noonan, I don't remember forty years, I don't long time. And then there was a transition to the new executive director who had came in, I think, right around COVID. So it's just been, you know, and then there were some changes to state law around bargaining in terms of moving towards card check, which again, is just a way that you can form a union. So I think the caseload went up. So there were concerns around backlogs and taking time to get to things. So there have been, I think some of the labor bills that you have in here may be reflective of if there's some ways we can lighten the road on the DLRB by having parties do binding arbitration or other other avenues so they would not be in front of the relations board?

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. I was gonna answer as a I'm also a sponsor of the bill. I think the intent as well was to do exactly that, was this would kind of we heard from folks that if you can get to mediation, and it it really lightens the load of of the full board.

[Speaker 0]: Yes, did you have more? Go ahead.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Sorry.

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Yeah, no worries, I'm just kind of on the fly trying to think of what was the language of bills from multiple years ago.

[Speaker 0]: We have bills on the wall, actually. No, this was, I think, two years ago.

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Who knows? We've been five. Where it was not using the LRB arbitrator, where it was moving to a third party.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Yep. So that's That's an arbitrator, not

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: a Or a mediator, sorry.

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: I was thinking about that.

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm not aware of it with mediators. So generally, have this multi step

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: That's what I'm conflating.

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So the parties work together to try to work on a collective bargaining agreement, and when they hit an impasse, then they typically would use a mediator to try and help get past the impasse. So maybe they can fully resolve the contract at that point, or maybe the mediator, there were 12 issues in dispute, can whittle it down to two issues. And then if they still can't get it resolved, then they would, and again, it's all slightly different depending on which statute you're under, but generally, then you would go to a neutral fact finder, so that's not binding. You would have a fact finder who would come out with a report, and then typically, this is primarily I'm talking about the State Employee Labor Relations Act, and then at that point, the parties can either agree with what the fact finders recommended, they can continue negotiating. If they still can't resolve it, then

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: they would either go to

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the Labor Relations Board or they would go to mandatory arbitration. I think that's where there was a push, was to push the parties to have it, I think, I can't remember if the default is you go to mandatory arbitration unless the parties agree to stay with the Labor Relations Board, and it varies on vote of institutions of public higher education. It's still you would go to the Labor Relations Board rather than mandatory arbitration, binding arbitration, I should say.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, that's what I was.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Marc, can I Yes? And I feel like we talk about these bills at the intro, and then sometimes we forget some of the I think I just want to highlight too that this request is coming because there used to be free federal mediation that has been eliminated essentially nationwide. And so the benefits and the cost savings and the speed to try to get to an agreement is a loss that everybody perceives, both on management and labor side. So this would be great. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead, Emilie. You could probably speak to this more in terms of why the bill request came up.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Oh, yeah. I think you articulated it very clearly. And I think this is again, if we'll continue with testimony, we'll hear that, you know, from I don't wanna call it I hate saying both sides, but that this would be helpful. And it's again, we are realistic though as we've heard from our previous testimony before Sophie. Tight tight money times. So when we regardless of of what we put forward, we'll see what happens when it goes downstairs. But this was a request that we think is a reasonable request and would help both and fill those gaps right now. And, you know, if I had my way, I would love to bolster this group up more, but this is a small but mighty step that could help in the mediation of of cases.

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Question for representative Krasnow, if you don't mind, as the sponsor.

[Big Hartman (Executive Director & General Counsel, Vermont Human Rights Commission)]: Sure. With

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: the back and forth nature of the world we live in, was it like, in deciding to do this, which

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: is the

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: position that's needed, was there any feeling that you had that it's possible these all got taken away and if states backfill that position, that federal government will say you're good to go and the states that don't will refill that position?

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Great question. I personally have not had that conversation. Maybe I I'm a sponsor with representative Casey, and I believe, who is all also is the three of us. Perhaps he

[Speaker 0]: has

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: had those conversations, but I personally have not. But that's a great point to raise.

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Yeah, just something I was

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: Oh, sure. Yeah. Thinking of is

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: sounds like just a way to push states on the funding more of your

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: No, I get that point.

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which is the federal agency that was cut, there have been court decisions that have stopped the total elimination of the service, and it is being rebuilt. The issue is that the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, by law, works with entities that are covered by the National Labor Relations Act, which is the private sector. So Vermont has had the benefit of using their FMCS mediators in the public sector as well. And again, who knows what's going to happen day to day at the moment, but it seems likely to me that even if the FMCS office in Albany, which is where the mediators came from, is built back up in strength, that it likely will only be limited to those entities that are covered by the National Labor Relations Act, not our state labor relations laws.

[Rep. Emilie Krasnow (Ranking Member)]: And maybe we could, Representative Parsons, we could, if we continue on this, we could check-in with some other states and see what they're doing as well, if that would be helpful.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, I can.

[Rep. Joseph Parsons (Member)]: Thank Question.

[Speaker 0]: What else is in the Senate bill?

[Sophie Zlattney (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's a vocational rehabilitation workers compensation issue that will presumably be going over to house commerce. Vocational rehabilitation. Yeah, it's a workers compensation piece. It wouldn't come here. Think those go

[Speaker 0]: to But Department of Economic it had this one provision in it. By the way, I think following on what Joe was saying, we do have at least one bill on the wall that was a reaction to the backlog at the Department of Labor. I think it's 174, which was an act that removed grievances from BLRB and made binding arbitration to end grievances. And as I remember it was because Labour felt that it was just taking too long because they were understaffed. Any other comments? Our intention here is to follow this with testimony sometime in the next few weeks when we can fit it in. And if members have any particular thoughts as to who would testify, they should let us know. Let me know. And then, with Miriam, we'll schedule those witnesses. Anything else, any other questions, thoughts before we adjourn? We are adjourning for lunch, and then at 01:00, Cameron Wood and John Gray will be here to kick off the whole testimony concerning manufactured housing. And I think John will probably go first just because he has to get out at 01:30, but then Cameron will do two things. He'll walk through the rest of the bill, but first he will give the committee kind of an overview of the law relating to manufactured housing. And we've asked them that because we all too often just see the change, but we don't know what the basic law is. So we thought it would be better for the committee to have that. So that's it, 01:00 sharp, manufactured homes. Anything else? Okay.