Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Welcome everybody to the House Committee on General and Housing. It is Wednesday, 03/11/2026, and we have a busy day. We're going to start with what's called a flyby, which means it's a bill that is in the agriculture committee, H. Four zero three, which is an act relating to fair labor standards and housing standards for agriculture workers. It's in the agriculture committee, they have possession of the bill. In the House, only one committee at a time has possession of the bill. However, you have a process by which another committee, in this case general and housing, can give input to, and for rescues, have input, lots, and that's what we're going to do today. We have with us David Derpy, who's a representative and chair of the Agriculture Committee in Sovi's DATNY. So Sophie, David, identify yourself for the record. Good

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: morning, David Derpy, representative David Derpy, Chatt Berry Chair

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: of the House Agriculture Food Resilience

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: in the Fourth View Committee.

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: And so if you should add, we can adopt this another state of past. Alright.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Tell us about the bill, tell us what you think the issues are, etcetera. I know some members of the committee have questions and all that. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't speakable until 09:30.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: So

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: this bill may look familiar because it was on your wall until a month or so ago, and I spoke in a chair

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: and- It's we're very familiar with everything on our wall.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: Yeah, our wall doesn't look quite as plastered as that. So this

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: was

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: a bill that came out of its study group that I think I came and spoke to you a year or so ago on it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And Ashley Bartley, our vice chair, was on that Right, study

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: yes, yep. And we had met in, pursuant to legislation that had passed two years ago that directed a group to form and look at the implications of allowing farm workers, agriculture workers, bargain collectively to unionize. The Vermont statute, federal statute and Vermont statute both explicitly exclude agriculture workers from the ability to unionize. And we were also charged at the time with looking at not just those labor laws, but also at other employment laws. So minimum wage over time, things that, and again, in Vermont statute where agricultural workers are excluded. So farm workers today do not qualify for the state minimum wage. They do get, they are qualified for the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 I think. So we're almost, our minimum wage is almost twice that. So the study group ultimately produced a report, and again, I mentioned it, I think a year or so ago when I came in, that recommended that the legislature focus on these employment laws rather than on unionizing, rather than labor law, that it would be, there'd be more immediate impact, that it would be possible to actually make something happen more quickly. This bill then that we have before us moves or proposes to move ahead with a couple of items, one of which was explicitly recommended by the study group. It was to remove the exemption for minimum wage for agriculture workers. There were eight of us on that committee, that study committee. All four House members, including Representative Bartley, signed on to that recommendation that we move the minimum wage exemption. The bill goes beyond that. It also has an overtime provision, which did not have as broad support coming out of the study group. And it also proposes to look at, to do a survey of health conditions for farm workers. I will tell you, I'll just give you a sneak preview when I go back upstairs, five minutes into our committee room. We're going to look at an amendment that strips this down basically to the minimum wage portion to the piece that the study group had recommended. And maybe I'll pause there because I'm not sure what to say next, but just to stop and see if anybody has questions about what I've said so far.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Go ahead. In that study group, the work that you were doing, to kind of find the balance between like, yeah, they're not required to

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: do the minimum wage, but

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: on the ground, what's the reality?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: What's the reality? Yeah. We heard, I would say, conflicting testimony. And we heard a lot of testimony from employers and farmers and from employees, and the employees were largely dairy farm workers. So working on larger farms, and in that particular sector, the dairy farming sector, they surveyed their members, it's just micro justice, the organization, they surveyed farm workers and come back with some fairly large number, more than 50% I believe, saying that they weren't making minimum wage. We heard from the Farm Bureau a couple of weeks ago, they also surveyed their much broader membership. They are not limited to dairy farms. The Farm Bureau covers all farms, anybody who wants to be a member who's a farmer. And they found that there were some of their members who were reporting that they weren't paying, they were paying below the minimum wage for a month, which I think it was 20% in their survey reported that. So that would be all farmers. And again, those things could be consistent actually if those 20% could be the same farmers who who operate dairy farms. We did invite the Dairy Producers Alliance, which represents the dairy farmers, to come in and testify. They didn't wanna come in and testify. They did send us written testimony and they addressed specifically the overtime concern. They had a concern about that housing issue in the bill, and they felt there were some problems with the way that was worded. They did not address, did not express a problem with the minimum wage piece. And we hear anecdotally, anecdotally from dairy farmers that they can't find people to work, as we know, there's a lot of immigrant labor, and that they need to pay more, that they are paying more than minimum wage fees, they can't get people to work otherwise. So we, that's what we've heard. I admit, but there's also, I just want to go back and say that there's a moral issue here, argument that I think is also part of the conversation that we are explicitly excluding one group of workers, and they are the people who are growing our food and feeding us, and let's not lose sight of that.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You know what I'm going to do is because we have such a short time, I'm just going to open it up. So rather than a walkthrough of the bill at this point in five minutes, I think what's important is that David gets a sense of what people are concerned about and can leave here with that sense. You know, we're having missing some members. I don't see the point of a straw poll. I want him to know what you're worried about. Tom and then Leonora.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: So I am a 100% in favor of paying the ball. I have no problems with it. My questions are around how the value of the housing is arrived at when you're calculating it. My first question is in these surveys, did they did they have data that could show who was getting housing and

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: who was not getting housing? Did they have that detail? Yeah, so the Farm Bureau survey, which we just heard about a couple weeks ago, that did not. I mean, was, we didn't even have anything in writing, and I asked Farm Bureau when they sent me their testimony last night, but no, it does not break that out. The dairy farmers, generally, larger dairy farms do provide housing. And to your point, and thank you for bringing it up, under state law, any employer is allowed to deduct a certain dollar amount per week if they are providing housing. And Lunch Council can speak more to this. We were having a conversation yesterday, last night, about this. And it is not a generous dollar amount. I think anybody would say that.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: So I'm looking at meals and lodging accounts increases.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: Don't know if I'm reading

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: this correctly or not, but it says that nightly lodging, $5.41 daily, is that deducted from their daily pay or is that?

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: Right, but you cannot go below the minimum wage. So in other words, if you take a housing deduction or a meals deduction, the worker still has to be paid at least minimum wage.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: After the deduction. Right. Okay. The larger farms often do this anyways, they have the housing. The housing, we're looking at how expensive it is to provide housing because it's

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: no cheaper for a farm

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: to provide it than it is anyone else. And I'm looking at the criteria for the employee housing inspection, which is comprehensive. Think it probably be very consistent with what our recommendation would need to comply with. The medium sized farms, make sure the next ones are jeopardy. What I am questioning is whether or not they can afford to go up to minimum wage plus house. I don't say how they're gonna create housing if they don't have it already. And if they do have it and they can't meet this standard, they're going to eliminate it. They're have to because it's gonna have. And then we're gonna have people who are in minimum wage working for housing, which we don't have or unimportant. So, that I think expresses my concern is there is such a slim margin in the dairy industry to begin with, that a couple dollars here, a dollar there, the balancing act between providing, and I'll tell you, I was clergy in my housing, was included in my job, I paid self employment tax on the fair market value of the housing. That's not $5.41 daily. It has somebody making minimum wage that has housing included is much better off than somebody making minimum wage who does not have their housing included. So what I'm what I'm concerned about are the number of people that might find themselves without housing, making a a dollar or 2 more. They they may lose more if they if it makes it impossible for the mid sized farms to provide housing. It's gonna be a much bigger problem for the workers. It's gonna be hard to find them, but I I I'm I'm worried about an effect that we're not wanting to have, which is driving dairies under, but there's also farm workers not having a, housing on the farm, or b, enough money to find it in the market we find ourselves in right now.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: You know, I'm gonna rather than ask you to reply, I wanna call Leonora to to say what she wants

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: to say. Sorry. Yeah. No.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Was just looking at the time and I realized that we're yeah. No. I realized that. That's why I so I know that housing housing housing, quality of the housing, so called housing, is almost like warehousing of just labor in a lot of cases, and that this would not be market rate, marketable beds or lodgings in many cases, not in all. But if you are getting this as a recommendation from the committee, I think that we can't just It's not like this recommendation came out of nowhere and the farmers had input into it, where you're already shaving down, taking out, checking whether this housing is actually safe or not. I think that we should, at the very least, make sure that there's a minimum wage. I think that there are so many myths that the migrant workers face and regular workers. I believe that the study, the surveys also showed that migrant workers are generally paid maybe just over $11 an hour as opposed to some of the other workers that might be doing the mechanics and those kinds of jobs. And so, it is a really de facto discriminatory practice that, you know, we're taking advantage of something, of the fact that there's no recourse, maybe there's no, right, like we don't have in statute and in practice. So, that would be my voice for supporting, at the very least, the minimum wage.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: What I'm hearing, I just want to reflect back now, because you've got to go. One, One issue is, what's the quality of the housing? And what this bill has in it right now is it's got a meet fire code.

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: The farm housing is still covered by the same residential requirements as all other rental properties.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Right, but it's a complaints based.

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: It's a complaints based system.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: This would have inspections.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: This would have inspections.

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: Right. Okay,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But the major issue that you're facing, I gather, is how are we gonna have both the housing and the minimum wage in such a marginal economy, that the allowance is inadequate, and it's on top of the minimum wage, and you're wrestling with that now, right? Is that fair that you're wrestling with that?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: Yeah, and I think just to provide a little more context here, there are H-2A holders, don't know if that's something everyone's familiar with, seasonal, they through federal, these are visas, obviously federal visas that set a contract with housing, part of that, the deduction for housing that is, again, this is not state law, this is federal, those employees are paid well over our Vermont minimum wage before and after deducting the housing. So the other ag sector that's provided housing tends to be the dairy workers, and those tend to be immigrant dairy workers. And the calculation there is based on a state number, which is this number you were just looking at.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: What is your timing?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: Oh, wow, we've got all week. Forever, right? Yes, yeah. So we could do it

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: in a straw poll.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think that, yeah, let us know if we can help, and also if you want more input from us.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: Okay, I have one

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: more question, or actually comment, and as someone who has been up in the agriculture committee and familiar with the there are a lot of folks in your committee who have lived experience like, I really trust the members of your committee, like, to produce a bill about this, because you have several people who live that life and work, so

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Right. Like, bill sponsor. Well, she's not there, but

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: there are several other members who have that experience, so I really trust the committee's work on this. I know that you're

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: busy too, and that this week is finite for all of us, but I think to the extent that there are questions and work that could be done that would be helpful, maybe in this committee at some point, would be to examine the numbers that you just alluded to, see those need to be updated. That Those

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: was my exact question I was asked.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: When they were like,

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: what's the history of those, are those

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: like tied, were they tied to?

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: They're updated and based, they're based

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: to Yeah. 2026 numbers.

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. And I think what representative Charlton has has the calculation at the twelfth of that page.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: That's 26.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: So $5 a day.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But that only applies to people under the visa?

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: No. No. That's just people's federal. And this is the state number. They definitely are

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: getting housing as a benefit of your job. That's what they can

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: That's the amount the employer can can deduct.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah. But it's only but they can't go below the minimum wage.

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: Right. They can't deduct it and then And then below the minimum wage.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Mind you, that's 49¢ an hour because it's a day.

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: I have to listen to the end.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Oh, okay, thank you. No, I think you're think they've

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: heard just both because we have a bare farm, and because this is a work in progress, I wanted them to hear what we're worried about. Rather than say, Oh, yes, no, whatever.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Yeah, no, and they have a lot of folks that own and operate farms on their committee.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Yeah, some of them are big. Very big.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: Oh, they're big. The small farms don't have time to lobby and follow legislation.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: That's true, right. To make

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: themselves, you have to go find them.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Yeah, that's a good point.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: They're busy coming to

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: find Right,

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: yeah, you're right, every farmer that I knew.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: Are no It's

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: too busy to be here.

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: As a labor question, I don't know how overtime would work in the context of farming because if you have one day, you've got mail to get through the doors and the next day if it's raining, you just sit there and look at it.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Well, that's why had this of bill a lot in our committee over the years about the union. That's why they kicked it to a study committee because when we've done on Stewie's here and Mary, like, we've had the union, like, just isn't the same. Because, like, if people go on strike, I mean, the animals, the you Yeah,

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: for the same reason farmers are not allowed to work. Right, right. Some odd years.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Right. So that's why they kicked it to a study. And I guess that's here's the results.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: that would be because if you

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: do the farmworker housing, if you make $16 an hour, but you now you can only deduct the gets 3. Down to Well, about $3. Yeah. Farmers are gonna

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: say it's cheaper for me to pay $16 an hour. Right.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: And they can't choose? I'll find it. And they can't in this bill, can they choose? No different. They can't

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: find it. In other words, under current law, under current law dates Well, does current law Current law exempts farm workers from minimum wage, right? Yes.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Right, they can get But they have to at least get the federal one.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: $7 an yeah. Right. The problem is, I'm just not sure what the solution is. The problem is there's not enough money in small farming or dairy farming given the international price of milk. What you're saying is you're worried that the big farms could afford to provide housing and maybe provide housing in minimum wage or already do.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: You're right, they might already.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But medium sized and small farms, if you make them pay minimum wage, they might be driven to the point of saying, well, I can't provide housing. But minimum wage, the the housing has got to be quality housing.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Right. I that part I like

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: They've got to be able to manage the cost of providing housing somewhere in their business plan. And that's not cheap.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: No. But I do like the part where you there's inspect, because there have been issues over the years with very low quality. I've seen it, right? So, I do like that part, that there's an accountability in the housing they're providing.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think that and then there's the question of the adequacy of the number, right? What is the number now under the state? $5.41

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: a day. A day? I don't mind. That's 150 How bucks a

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: much do we get a day here?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That covers my health.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: How Marc. How much do we get here a day?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: A $150 a day a month. A night? No,

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: I'm sorry. Anyway, I'm salary.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: So,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I don't think that, I'm just not sure what the solution is. I know the committee is struggling.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Oh, they are?

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And they may, you know, given crossover, they may vote out something and say to us, we're gonna work on this with the Senate bill when it comes over and fix it, that through an amendment to the same thing, and then work it out at I Conference mean, that's gonna happen with bills here now. You're gonna see situations where, I don't know that we're facing it, but where committee passes out a bill that is not ideal with the very express idea that after crossover, we can work with the senate vehicle.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Which I don't think is the best way to legislate.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: The best way to legislate. But

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: No. I know. I just wanted to say I don't think it's, like I do. That's how it we should know.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, I do know I do know that David was literally on the phone with Sophie at 09:00 last night struggling to

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: This has been a bill for a while, folks who have been in this community. This has been a bill that they're trying to figure something out for quite some time.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right. It's like what was it that Andy was saying in the devotional yesterday?

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Oh my gosh. That was

[Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: the most germane devotional we've had in the entire Biasco.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Oh, I'll have to go listen.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, he just said what was it? The quote was from the Talmud. It was like, you won't accomplish it, but you're not allowed to put it aside.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Are we what's happening? We have

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Troy? So we have Troy, but not till 10:00. Alright. Let's take a break, and we're going reconvene. Why don't we reconvene? Please be in your seats at ten. We wanna move this along. And then we're gonna deal with eight we're coming back to eight eighty seven and a potential vote on that, which We is the prime

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: had the crime victim it's definitely not a tech.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right. And then we have, Saudi is introducing a bill.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Oh, that's back on there.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, and you know, I'm wondering if we can't move.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: We have some time here.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, but at times, if we couldn't move the vote on We can't do the disability one today. Because she's not here. She's not ready? Not ready. The redraft. The redraft. Right. I asked.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair, House Agriculture, Food Resilience, and Forestry Committee)]: Okay. Can I

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: ask a question about

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Yes, because this

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: is a policy question? Sorry,

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: if you don't mind.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Go ahead.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: About the housing, about our Lamo tenant bill. Seven seventy two. Yeah. So we just heard, we got the email from Elizabeth from HUD saying that federally funded programs are now, housing providers no longer have the federal requirements that they used to have, and that now their rules revert to whatever the state says. And so I'm very concerned that now, essentially, that stop gap we used to have through our affordable housing providers of, well, all of the other more stringent rules before evicting somebody are now the same rules that we have now for

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: a single landlord that has just one apartment. That's an issue. I think for the moment, I have to the person who could tell us more about that are people like Champlain Housing Trust, which operate under spoke federal law. To Chris,

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: and I was asking him.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, and I think it would be good. I think it's worth our pursuing this.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Yeah, I think we're

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I I don't think we can deal with it in July right now, but I think we have to look at it.

[Sophie (Legislative Counsel)]: I think

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: we need to make a carve out that says you follow the same rules that you did.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: We're gonna have the housing bill that's coming over from the Senate.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Yeah, so that's how, yeah, that's what I'm saying, is that I just want to make sure that we're on top of that, because I that's know. A really bad

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: As a practical matter, Champlain Housing Trust, for example, they're one of the bigger, and they have thousands of units. They do not, they follow the federal rules, and I suspect they will continue to follow the federal rules, I even if they're not required

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: suspect the same, but want to legislate it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But I don't, and I just don't know how that's going to play out. How that's going to play out? I don't know what the HUD rules really mean yet. We'd have to have a presentation on that. I don't know what the reaction of the nonprofit housing providers is.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Thank you, All right, well, I think before we get out of the building, it would be a really important thing to settle, because we're not going to be here for the next six months, and our new eviction processes will be happening, and there will be no

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, we do have Today, there's more hearings on the flyby that judiciary is doing, and I have looked at a rough draft of their proposed amendments. They're not all ideal, but they do leave pretty much our bill intact. In some ways, I think a few changes are pretty good. The one area that I think is up for grabs is the courts are asserting that the bill is gonna cost them money and are asking for money. And that's something that we're, but it's unclear how much because they were reacting to a prior draft that don't reflect the changes that the judiciary is thinking of doing, so it's all kind of swirling around and we'll just have to see. On our other major bills that we passed, both seven seventy five, the Rural Housing Finance Bill, which Tom is bird dogging, is in ways and means today, and the manufactured home bill, which Gayle is bird dogging, is in wanes and means today. So, we have three bills in other committees, either that they have possession or

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: And does the rural finance one and manufacture, do those both also have to go to appropriations or just ways of means? Gayle was telling me she thought works. Well You that one does. Right? That's what I figured.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But Yeah.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Just the manufacture she said she didn't think so.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Don't think so. Okay. Think this is the last stop. Okay. Got it.

[Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Because we're because we didn't include that, like, the liaison. Doesn't the liaison I

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: don't remember what happened.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I can't remember.

[Unidentified Member (committee)]: Anyway, just curious. So, it.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But if it does, it does. It's not going to be a time problem if they get an extra week, in fact, more, because the budget is even from the budget has more time, if necessary. Okay, great, we're offline.