Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee Staff (Unidentified)]: We have Steve. Live. Yes. Yes. Hi, Ryan. Great.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Welcome everybody to the house committee on general and housing. Today is Tuesday, March. And what we're doing today is two major pieces of work for today. One is we're continuing our discussion of s two thirty, which is a sort of a compendium bill that comes from the senate with a number of labor pieces attached to it, And one of the ones that isn't in it, but we have been considering is a bill that's also been on our wall and it's been through several drafts, which relates to extreme temperatures. And we have a couple of witnesses on that. And then at 01:30, or pretty much the rest of the afternoon, we're gonna hear a senate bill that's come over to us from the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs, which is an act relating to housing and common interest communities. It's also a kind of a compendium bill with a lot of things in it, just for members of the committee, a lot of things that we have put in bills ourselves, but some that we haven't. It's a mixture of things we've done that we might wanna refine and things that we haven't done. So, let's start with S230 and the extreme temperature. We have two witnesses, Steve Collier, who's General Counsel from the Agency of Agriculture, and Nancy, is it Weiss or Wise? Weiss. Weiss. Thank you. Who's the director of the Windham Regional Career Center. So let's start. I think, Steve, you're on.

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: Great. Thank you so much.

[Committee Staff (Unidentified)]: Good

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: afternoon. Steve, you've been here before,

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: haven't you? Just recently. But your hesitancy makes me wonder how memorable I am. No.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I remember any of what it is.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's not.

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: I'm kidding.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I'm not the the I remember faces.

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: My wife knows that she I'm not introducing her somewhere. It's not because I'm rude. It's because I've forgotten.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Take it away, Steve.

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: Yeah, so thank you very much. And as stated, Steve Collier from the agency of agriculture. This is all pretty new to us from our review. We got it last week. We started looking at it. We've talked to some state partners. So what I'm planning on doing is just talking a little bit about the bill. We have not taken a position on the bill yet, but we do have some concerns that we'd like to share with the committee. So I was planning on just talking a little bit about the objectives, how we think that, how those apply, any concerns that we have, sort of a list of requirements that appear to be there, and then just some broader thoughts about how this may work for agriculture specifically. That seem like an okay Please. Okay. Take it away. So the objectives are obviously sound. I think that's always important to state up front. No one wants anybody subjected to deprivations based on anything, that includes heat and cold. So there's no question that people should not be compelled to work in conditions that are, that will harm. I think that's a, it maybe is obvious, but should be clear to make it and should be acknowledged by us. I think the, and by everyone, but the question is, how do you reach those objectives? Those are those two things from our perspective, they're not always aligned. And so I think from I just wanted to go through what I think this bill would do first, and and the way that I read it is that any employer who's subject to the law would have to do a pretty long litany of things to comply with it. First, every employer would have to have to purchase and maintain a wet bulb globe thermometer for every outdoor location, every indoor location, and every vehicle that they use for work. They would also have to have a written plan. That written plan sounds like it would have to be pretty extensive. It would have to have worksite specific information. So for every worksite they have, presumably, would have to detail factors that can that discussing what can increase the likelihood of injury or illness and performing work activities. The plan would also have to include actions that have been taken to reduce the likelihood of injury or illness. The plan would also need to include policies and procedures necessary to comply with requirements and the plan would need information on education, training and also emergency response procedures and contact information. So that's the plan that would be required for employers. It would also, when the temperature exceeds 80 degrees or the wet bulb globe temperature requirement, it would require that every employee have an effective means of communication so they could contact their supervisor. It would also require access to potable water just to make sure everyone has it. Everyone working can access to that. It would also require an area where employees can take breaks with appropriate accommodations based on the conditions. It would also require work vehicles with functioning air conditioning heating. I think that heating is probably an error because this only applies when it's above 80 degrees, so probably should just be air conditioning, but in the proposed language, says you need working heat if it's above 80 degrees and I think that's just an error. And then separately in the statute, it would also be a requirement that you have a place to warm up when you're working outdoors in the cold. So each of those things, you know, in and of itself is reasonable if you look at them in a vacuum and you look about and you talk about, does it make sense to have these things? I think the question from our perspective is whether or not you legislate them and whether or not you can legislate them in a broad based law compared to in a work specific environment. So just for farming and agriculture, what I was going to focus on, please just talk about some of the issues that come to mind when we think of each one of these requirements. First with the wet bulb globe thermometer, it's the make the cost. So you're suddenly having to cost for to purchase for every outdoor and indoor location, every vehicle a different thermometer. And I don't know what that means, like if every farm worker who's out producing produce needs their own individual globe that they carry with them, if it means you have one on a farm, farm may have people working in a barn, woods, fields, like do you need one at every single location? I think that's presumably what you need and then even if you figure out who needs one, who's maintaining it? Is that the employer, is the farmer supposed to be maintaining it at every site or is it each individual employee and not just who's maintaining it, but who's keeping track of it and do you need to have a written log to record what the temperature is? Because if you just have a thermometer with you and you don't record what it is, it's kind of useless honestly, at least approved whether there was anything that happened that was wrong at this point. If an individual employee had it with them, presumably then they could take action, but if you're reading it, you're if having every single worker have one of these bold that the cost increases exponentially, they get dropped or broken, they get lost and you just have this ongoing cumulative expense. Another big issue is for this requirement is it requires this for every vehicle on a farm, does that include tractors? Does that include open air vehicles? Does that include a 1972 pickup truck that doesn't have air conditioning, never had air conditioning and the cost of putting in air conditioning would cost more than the truck itself is worth? There's just a lot of unknowns I think about those sort of cost requirements and also how would you maintain it. As for the written plan, to me, all of these things about a written plan work very well when you're a big employer with the HR department and you have people whose job is specifically to do this, but the idea of a farmer writing a comprehensive plan like this is taking it in a barn, even if the farmer did that, it's hard to believe it would be very useful, and I wonder if a conversation between the farm worker and the farmer is a more effective way to deal with it's too hot right now, than having a written plan in a barn that probably never gets updated, and then if you have a plan in the barn that's to be work specific, site specific, sorry, you also have one on the sugarwolves when they're tapping in the spring, you also have one in the fields when you're either planting or harvesting, it's just having a plan that would address every part of a farm and the different conditions that arise during the year, maybe it's an

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: order for a plushie.

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: For a farm to do, and it's not the same as the state's HR department. We have, the state of Vermont has a large HR department that deals with many, many, many, many issues and still can't keep up, but for an individual farmer, it's possible that individual conversations with the employees is more effective than a written plan. The other thing, and this is another, I mean, makes perfect sense that one of the requirements would be you have to have a means for the employee to communicate, but again, that's pretty easy when you're working in a building. If you're out tapping trees in January to get ready for the maple season and you're in a rural area with no cell connection, how do you do that? It's also a cost, does everyone need to have their own cell phone every significant cost, maybe folks already do, ideally sure, of course it'd be great if every employer and every farmer has provided itself, but that costs a lot of money. And so, and if you buy it and it doesn't even work where the conditions are, then it's really a waste of money. And then if you're talking about two way radios, and again, it's not only the cost of buying those things, it's how you maintain them, how do you keep them operating, how do you ensure that they're working properly, and there's plenty of places, Vermont's much more accessible than it used to be for cell communications, but there's still plenty of places in Vermont where you lose service, and that goes for driving too. I mean, to this, you'd also need it in your vehicle, but there's still a lot of places in Vermont where drive, we know this, our employees are out, they lose service, there's lots of places they go to, including farms, where they can't connect with us, which is a safety concern that we don't love, but it's not something we can legislate our way out The one, the access to potable water when it's over 80 by the wet boat load temperature, absolutely of course, that to me, I don't know that that needs to be in law, but I can't think of a good reason to object to it being a requirement. I think it's also common sense, everybody when it's really hot out should have water, it's not that hard to have a big thermos, a five gallon container if you need to, if you're going off to have water. I don't want anyone to dehydrate. I would suggest from our perspective that if there's requirements that you all believe it's necessary to walk, things like this, that everybody can do ought to be, that should be required. If you're working in extreme heat, you ought to have access to water. If there's something else, access to shade, maybe that makes sense, but that might be a standard trees on a farm and not an indoor building. And part of this is just keeping in mind that nobody wants anyone subjected to extreme heat or cold, but no matter what the temperature is, cows have to be milked, crops have to be harvested when you can harvest them, things have to be planted, so it's not about whether or not you're doing those things, it's whether or not your employees are being treated appropriately while you're doing those things. And that could absolutely entail water breaks and shade breaks. But the question is whether or not you need to legislate that for everyone or whether you need to make sure that employers and employees are working together to make sure no employees are harmed by the conditions. Like a farm is not something where you can easily provide indoor location with air conditioning.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Can you tell me if I know, and this might be a labor question too, but it's about farming. But in jobs, there are requirements for x amount of Let's say you're on the kitchen staff or something, there's x amount of time, you take breaks. For farm employees, do they have those same or is that determined by the employer?

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: I am not labor is not my specialty. I'm not aware of any sort of requirement for breaks that applies to all employers. There are certainly many collective bargaining agreements that have specific requirements about breaks. State of Vermont has a break policy. I couldn't cite it to you because never comes up. But I'm not aware of anything that says every employee in the state of Vermont is entitled to XM breaks. It's very common in workplaces for employees that have breaks. I would say it's standard for, depending on the type of work. And there may even be a legal requirement.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Yeah, for some reason I thought like my friends that have worked like in kitchens and stuff, like at like X fifteen minute and then one hour or like something like that. But so as far as you know, for farm employees, there's no set requirement for breaks for them.

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: Not that I'm aware of. Okay.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Yep. Sure. We were kind of a little scrunched on time. Is there anything else that you wanted to tell us? Sure.

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: If if if if I can just quickly, I'm sorry about take take too long, but it does it from my perspective, and I and I used to work in in a in a little more of the labor realm, but this proposal seemed I don't know where it's coming from, I don't know who generated it, what it's trying to do, but it seems to me more like it's a collective bargaining proposal that's written for a specific employer, a specific job site, where may very well make sense. But there's a lot of general applicability to try to cover this with everyone, and it seems very challenging. Also, I I think well, there's there's some cost benefit analysis. I think they say done whenever you're doing this and from what I haven't listened to all the testimony, but I did talk to our state partners and I'm aware of the complaints. This could have some pretty significant costs and I'm not aware of a problem on the farms. Now there may be, I'm not saying that isn't, but we're not aware of this being a problem. I mean, clearly if employees were subjected to terrible conditions, that would be a problem, but I don't have evidence suggesting that that's the case conversation between, and I also think it's important to remember farms and farmers, just like every good employer and employee, they're in a mutually dependent relationship. So if you think of the employer as somebody who doesn't care about employees, and there are some, there are some employers like that, but in general, I think, you know, on farms, they're pretty small, they don't have a lot of employees, they need each other, the farmers are there working with their employees for the most part, so they, what we think is necessary is good communication, understanding the conditions and taking smart cautions when the conditions are severe, but to impose this litany of costs could be something that's just not warranted based on what we know. And I did hear that there were, I think seventeen thirty two complaints from the to the Vermont Department of Labor from 2020 through 2026, and only one point I think it was all 29. 29 out of those complaints. Right. And only nine of those were investigated. So if you take nine that the Department of Labor thought warranted investigation, that's half a percent of the overall complaints. So that seems like an awfully small issue to be legislated so comprehensively. Water? Absolutely. Do you need shade and terrible heat? Sure. But do you put that in law or do you continue to educate and make sure that employees are aware of rest? That's a policy question. Thank you, Tom.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Are agricultural workers covered under workers' comp like others?

[Committee Staff (Unidentified)]: Yep.

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: Okay, they have to pay into it.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That is an incentive for an employer to not have a workers' comp. Right. Any other questions of Steve? Steve, thank you very much for coming.

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: Thanks for having me, really appreciate

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I appreciate your testimony,

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: was very clear. No, thank you and if you ever need more, we're happy to come back, so

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: thank you. Nice. Nancy, welcome to the committee. Why don't you go ahead and identify yourself and take it away?

[Nancy Weiss (Director, Windham Regional Career Center)]: Sure. I'm Nancy Weiss, and I am the director of the Windham Regional Career Center in Brattleboro, Vermont. And I'm here today as a representative also of VACTED, which is the Vermont CTE Directors Organization, Career and Technical Education

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Directors.

[Nancy Weiss (Director, Windham Regional Career Center)]: And I think I was asked to testify because or I think we were asked to testify because we do send students out to work sites. The reality is we tend to follow the Vermont Principals Association's guidelines for athletics, because when our students are outside, they're doing physical work. And those guidelines are very comprehensive around student needs. And we tend to, because we are responsible to students and to parents, we tend to on the side of caution. It used to be in Vermont that we had a number of cold days that fell below, but not so many hot days during the school year. That's changing somewhat. We follow the policies extremely carefully, although we do not use usually a wet bulb globe temperature measuring device. We use the table instead. And that's mostly because we have found that carrying the device in a vehicle or wherever, we tend not to have it working when we need it to be working. And so we tend to go with the easier of the two, which for us is the table.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: What is the table?

[Nancy Weiss (Director, Windham Regional Career Center)]: The table is a conversion chart for the wind and temperature, and then you the convert those two numbers into a wet globe, what would be a wet globe reading. And there is a table included in the VPA guidelines, which I did send to the committee. I think it's for us, I guess when I spoke to my forestry person who spends the vast majority of his days outside, he said he felt like it was common sense. You don't take kids out when it's extremely cold or extremely hot, and put them in forestry gear, especially when it's extremely hot. And I tend to be a common sense kind of gal. I was raised in Vermont, and I think you never ask somebody to do something that you wouldn't want to do yourself. And so I would never send a kid out in 80 or 90 degree weather and have them put on all their forest ry gear and expect them to work. It just doesn't make sense. We do something else for the day. And I hate to say that my testimony is informal here, but I know it is. And I will just say that I agree with your last person. It's going to be an expensive bill. I will end up, if it passes, I will need to write a plan for every work site that our students go to throughout the school year. And I have to say that between my forestry teacher and I, we were left trying to comprehend how we would possibly write all those plans. And so I think from my perspective, it's great in theory. I'd like to think that if an employer was treating employees as badly as they would be if they were not following the logic of temperature guidelines, they wouldn't last long in this world as an employer, that their employees would not want to work for them any longer. So, I guess what I would say is I think that the time that it's going to take to write plans is going to become prohibitive for us as career centers, even if we use a general overview of sites, or we use our most general sites and write plans for those, and we stop going to specialized sites, we would end up reducing the amount of education that our students get in order to manage plans.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Questions for Nancy? Nancy, thank you so much for your testimony.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Thank you for taking the time out of your day to visit with Yeah.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: No. Those are too informal. Wait. I do have a

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: have a question.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you. Hi. This question, do do so the different work sites that the students go to, are the tools or whatever they need at the site, or do they carry them with them?

[Nancy Weiss (Director, Windham Regional Career Center)]: It depends on the site. So we have a site that is owned by the town of Brattleboro, and we do a lot of our logging activities on that. We also have been doing a project for several years at the Brattleboro Country Club. We have a job trailer that we haul to the site at the beginning of work, and we tend to leave it there locked during the process. But you do end up carrying your equipment from wherever the trailer is parked to wherever you're doing the work.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Nancy, thank you so much.

[Nancy Weiss (Director, Windham Regional Career Center)]: Thank you. I hope you guys have a great day. Don't envy any of you, your task. Great,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: take care. Thank you. So what, Miriam, where are we with senator Clarkson and Cameron, etcetera? Well, we're gonna stay live.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: We're three minutes early, so

[Committee Staff (Unidentified)]: Yep.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So, we'll stay live. We're waiting just for those of you who are online. We're waiting for Senator Clarkson, our legislative councils as well, and we'll just wait until they arrive. You can take us off the audio feed. For the committee's benefit, since I know everybody's probably thinking the same thing, which I won't say what it is, but on two thirty and extreme temperature, Miriam has scheduled for us a committee discussion tomorrow in the afternoon. We've heard a lot of testimony and we can sort of see where we're at. And also for the committee, there are sort of several big what's happening now is that senate bills are coming over, and they're being referred to committee. Senate Bill three twenty eight is, as I said, sort of a compendium of housing related issues, some of which we already worked on and some of which are new. They're not they were put on the senate, but they're not with us. Senate Bill three twenty five is a land use bill having to do with Act two fifty and Act one eighty one, and we had Anne Watson in here just for our own information since that bill is not coming to that bill will go to House Environment when it comes over. So we just use it as an opportunity to learn a little. So that's that's the status of where we are, and we're waiting on three twenty eight. Cameron, a significant part of the bill is yours, three twenty eight, and a significant part is Ellen's, right? Yes, sir. Do you know what the situation, Mary E. Howard, is is that right?

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: She could be in transit.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: She's going for House Commerce. Did you mean she's not in house coverage right now?

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: I'm going go look, but in

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a spy way where she can't see.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: If she has testifying now it is Thomas. Just tell them all. You know what we could do is we could begin the process of an alleged counsel led walk through and then whenever she comes, we could

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Wrapping up.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Oh, she's wrapping up? Okay. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna have senator Clarkson introduce it and have a walk through of the bill by two of our legislative council. And because this bill is part, as is not atypical, part housing and part land use, that's why we have housing council and our land use council. And then we're gonna actually take some testimony after a break.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's just me.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So she's still testifying?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: When I did my spy check, it was thank you and I hope

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: to support the bill, that sounds kinda like a wrap up.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Unless they have to push. Oh, true.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Go and get her. Go go over to senate Clarkson. Really? Pinch her by the ear and pull her in here.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, I wanna watch.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: What if they had a livestream through the Yeah. The hall and then into the next tunnel?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: One of the things committee members should think about, three twenty eight is kind of, like I said, a compendium bill, a little bit of everything. If you think there are things on our wall that are related to it, you should definitely talk to me and we can consider them in committee. What? I'm gonna speak for short period. It's not like she has a very long trip. You're so you were literally carrying the water. You

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: literally came and just got me. Thought You told me to buy about it. Don't have to do any census. You have directions for your witness?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Senators and Clarksons and committees.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Hi, it's so good to meet her. I feel like I woke up with Ashley Bartley's husband on radio, because he worked in the airport.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes, the head of He's head of government relations, but it has innovation in the title.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Yes. He does. It does. Yeah.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Anyway Welcome. Welcome the committee. We're we're delighted you're here.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: And Hi. I just sort of have to shift gears yes and I do want to let Keisha know that we're starting early because she was expecting to come up f 01/1945 but by the time we get to her sections it may be one hundred forty five so I'm just going to let it be no

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Sorry, did I?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: It's good to be here. Yeah. Let me just find where I am and

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: good afternoon. Are already live? We're live. This entire conversation

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: is going live. Oh, it's okay. The real world can see what the real world's like.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay. So we're talking 328, was just referred to us, and I think you should not assume that we are yet that familiar with it. I have as formed a committee, Alison, that some of the things that are in here are versions of what we've already worked on. Some of the things that are in here are brand new, and take it away. Right. Tell us, we've got, of course, Cameron and Ellen, who are gonna, they've walked away for a minute, but they'll be here.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, okay. Hi, Ron. Good to see you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Well, afternoon. I'm Allison Clarkson. I'm the chair of Senate and Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs. And it is a joy to be here in one of my favorite rooms. And a favorite committee, of course. But this is I love this room. Know you

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: say that to all the boys, but anyway

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't. This is

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: a great room for me.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Good mojo. Yeah, right. It does have good mojo. So I don't need to tell you that we're in a serious housing crisis. You all know that. And that we have a charge of building 7,500 new housing units a year. And at the moment, our best year ever, we build about 3,000. So we invested a huge amount of money over the last six years in housing. And sadly, as inflation hits us, as those projects are coming online to be built, we're able to build fewer and fewer than we've anticipated as a result, sadly, headwinds of inflation, tariffs, an aging workforce, aging out our construction workforce, which continue to be frustrating. And this bill doesn't really address those pieces, but it does continue to address reducing barriers to developing housing, which is what we need to do. I have a revenue bill for housing, which my committee wasn't really willing to take up. But in addition to all the work we do here and all the work we do that is not necessarily financial, we do need to invest money in housing, and we need to figure out how to do that. Really need to establish a revenue source for housing that is exclusive to housing. We have some money in this bill, but it is not as much as we need. So anyway, as you know, the Senate worked on two housing bills, one in Senate Economic Development and one in Senate Natural Resources. That is more zoning and appeals and Act 181 updates and timelines. And ours really deals with more planning and financing. So let me just dive into it. This bill really blends a lot of the administration priorities, some of our priorities at both House and Senate, and includes measures which embed our new housing targets into our town plans and expands on our housing financing options and extends our down payment assistance programs. You have read, you know most of these pieces. So I'm just going to dive into section one. Section one takes the housing targets that have been developed over the last year with our regional planners and embeds them in a natural and organic way into each one of our town plans. So we work with VLCT and the planners to get this better, to get this right. And it requires that the housing plan include an analysis of the regulatory and physical constraints preventing the town from meeting their targets, and a description of the actions a town can take to accommodate its projected housing needs, and that the town plan document the progress made towards its housing targets, so that what we're really trying to do is hold towns accountable for the housing targets they set and really help them figure out how to meet those targets. Section two, various straightforward, extends the Vermont Housing Finance Agency's very successful down payment assistance program up to 2031. You may have already done this in one of your bills.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: No one actually You know what? We may as well exchange preliminarily the situation because we're gonna be working on it. Section one we did, it's in July, it's somewhat altered. We altered it in the end so that the constraints part is in the form of a report to ANR, I mean, excuse me To us. Department of Housing Community Health. Yeah. But section two is new.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Okay. Great. So this extends a program that we all have come to love and many people who work with us in this building have come to appreciate, which is the down payment assistance program for first time home buyers. And it extends it through 2,031, and it increases it from $250,000 a year in tax credits to $350,000 a year. This program has already served over 2,100 Vermonters and has generated, this is what's really gobsmacking, over 137,000,000 in wealth for each person who has taken advantage of it. And that is really exciting. As we all know, owning a mom helps build your wealth. And for them, this is thanks to very modest investments of 5 to $10,000 in interest free loans that they receive when they buy their first home. And these are for people, I think, with incomes of $140,000 or less. And for every dollar that's borrowed in state funding, is fully repaid, it's a revolving loan, fully repaid to the state, homeowners have earned roughly $15 a bag of equity valuation in their home. One, sorry, I didn't get right. Let's just clarify. Section- You Yeah. Might want

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: to identify yourself and go on up there because I got a question about this.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That doesn't seem to be on my copy of

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: your- Yeah, it's not on our copies. What's going on?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Really? Yeah. Oh, because you have the wrong bill and you have what got passed out of the Senate, not what we passed out of our committee. So I should have brought you what I brought to House Commerce. I brought the bill we passed and not the bill that was gutted by Senate appropriations. Should have done the same thing to you. I apologize. But that's interesting.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay. That's okay because we can always put it back in.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: I will get you. And I bet Miriam could quickly get copies of S-three 28 as it was passed out on an economic development.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Definitely need one later. But Miriam, I think this is most interesting. You realize everybody, if there's some brilliant idea that came out of not that they aren't all playing in the court.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, they're not all brilliant.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: One of the many brilliant ideas that came out of committee, if it was taken out, doesn't mean that we couldn't put it back in.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Right. And the reason they took things out was really not a value judgment. It was just money. So anything our Senate appropriations just strips anything that has money in it is stripped.

[Nancy Weiss (Director, Windham Regional Career Center)]: They don't just strip So the $315,000,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: they just strip the whole damn section. Oh, sorry. But they do. That's what they do.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: They didn't just strip it. They didn't oh, but that doesn't mean it isn't in the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: It doesn't mean they're not considering it now that the budget has come to the seventh. Right. Okay. It just means it's up on the wall.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But do they This is something I'm confused about. Here, as a matter of convention, all the appropriations in all of our bills are stripped out of the bills or put in language if money is available or something like that so that all of the money goes into the budget. All the decisions are centralized in the budget. Is that true

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: in the Senate? We have the disadvantage of going second. So it's all pulled out and you get this gutted bill that you just have. Uh-huh. And so it doesn't say any of that, but that's the intention. I will say that the whole gutting that occurred of all our medicines. That's the intention is that they will weigh all of our requests And we've had to prioritize them just like you have. So our chair of Senate appropriations, that's our, well, hopefully, has some of our priorities within that. Okay, I apologize. I'm working from the bill that I actually

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That's alright.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We're about to get copies.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: But that's okay. I'm aware this is a whiz.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: This is just our first presentation. So go ahead and just signal test when we won't see it yet.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So can I just ask a question about that last So does that mirror the request that we had gotten last session that did not pass? Was

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: From VHFA?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, that was for the first gen?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Was first And then they have a bunch of programs for first time homeowners and buyers. One is for just plain old first time home buyers. And all that, the eligibility is just their income. They then have created another program for first

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: time, First First in the family to buy a home.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: And I There is a

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: black chair. I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: believe they still have some, can't remember, do you remember what the first generation, if there's anybody left in first gen? Yes. So that's why they're not asking for more of it

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: this year.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Okay. Go ahead, Allison.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The amendment you just spoke about, just so that I have to maybe everyone's got this totally clear to their minds, I'm the only one who was just busily looking for it and not finding So if you could just remind us

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: the, your proposal was to do? Our proposal is to continue the down payment assistance program. Okay. Because they end this year, they want to extend it to 2031 and to take the tax credits from $2.50 a year up to $3.50 a year.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. I feel like Maura showed us the chart with and if we do this now, it kind of rolls into eternity because then the loans that are paid back get fed back into the fund and it will then become And settled for

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: the challenge That's not first generation.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, that's just general down payment assistance.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: So the plus of it isn't revolving fund, the minus is given our housing market, the cost of housing, and there's almost no churn. So they're not having any revolving money. And they still want to be able to alter up to $10,000 for each first time home buyer.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Hey, I want you to identify yourself just so

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: you can both talk. Sure. Senator K. Ramelunsdale, economic development, positive.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Great. Okay, go ahead. Keep walking.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I know, right? We're coming back to life. It is. There's signs of life in the housing market. So

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: our section three, so we're giving them the bill that we actually passed out to the committee and not the bill, but passed out at the Senate because it

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: got so judged. Oh, well, we

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: have two amendments that are important that passed on the floor.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That's true. You're going to take us through all

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: of it. Right, well, we're certainly going to try. So section three is, I believe, a piece that you have already worked on, which is taking the 10 of the local investment money of the treasurers and taking it up to 12.5%, adding 2.5%. Believe you passed that already in your rural financing bill. Yep. Okay, great. So I don't need to chat with you about that. That is what we propose in our, what was section three. We're thrilled that we would have another $30,000,000 to loan in below payment loans for housing, which assume that most of that will be used for housing. Section four is of the bill that we passed out, is we had originally hoped to deal with home ownership associations and common interest communities. And Cam can speak to you about this. We had a very specific proposal to enable holding based family childcare businesses HOAs or condos. But it became clear, and we also had a proposal to enable EV chargers in condos.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: And not limit long term rentals. Think that's the most complicated in terms of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: us realizing we don't understand common interest law. Right, and then the fourth one was building ADUs in HOAs. So it became very clear, particularly when we had this lawyer who's actually her expertise is in common interest communities, it became very clear we weren't ready to pass any bill yet. And so Pam, our alleged counsel, has taken on really diving into some of the legal challenges around common interest rates. So he is going to come back to us with some proposals on how we can But for the moment, it's a report. Yes. From Ledge Council. From Ledge Council.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right. And you should know, just for your information, we share your interest. We had a bill from a ranking member which was saying, hey, let's take a look, it's a year ago already, let's take a look at fund and interest subdivisions, it's time to do it. And we did succeed in a, including, in the report, no, excuse me.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I thought it was just getting sort of some sort

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: of Getting a

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: page on the website. A link to the laws.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We did a thing where secretary of state is supposed to you say it.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you want they wanna hear about it?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah. Just one sentence.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Well, Jam is definitely gonna hear about it

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: because he is health center. He's gotta be doing this.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: I two years ago now, I think. I don't remember. I as someone who's lived in an HOA for twenty one years, I and represents a community of mostly HOA condos, I felt that over my time in the legislature that there was a real lack of understanding and information about HOAs and especially as citizens who are on the board, that they really don't have any accurate information to help them as chairing boards and other folks who are involved, where the most recent laws are, just a place or a place to go for any information in state government. And so I worked on a bill with, CAM last year about having, I called it an HOA resource center, but that name might be changing if something happens. But basically, it's an information center within the office of the Secretary of State's office that has information about so that there's transparency if we do change things and others, just a place where people can go to learn more about what the rules are at HOAs. And then it was also I introduced it so it could be a vehicle for more HOA legislation after we learned.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Amazing. So it would be great to, for angels sake, connect again with CAMP, because it became clear that every HOA have their own rules and rules bylaws. And so we want, I mean, just even starting a business, running a business out of an HOA becomes an issue. I mean, you allowed to do Mary Kay or have a party?

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Right. I watched your testimony. No, it's a topic that's really important for all reasons. Now we have a bill, which I believe went to you about the right to garden.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Yes. Right. I heard about it.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Right. So it's a real It's worm can, I guess, but something that I think there's appetite for in both committees?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Did

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: the private equity in senior housing bill come out of this committee?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We're talking about private equity. It's not just in senior housing.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: It's single family.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: We have a bill in here about

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: single family homes, but there's also healthcare ones. Okay, because there is a continuum between cooperative housing and HOAs where governance issues come up that has stopped us from having more mobile home park co ops, etcetera. And a lot of my constituents that we share who live in large senior housing projects are looking for ways that they might be able to buy their senior housing facility because these are getting sold and resold. They don't know who owns them. They don't have a way to talk So to two years ago, we passed legislation that I offered to get right of first refusal to places like Cathedral Square, etcetera. But I'm hoping that can also be, we have right of first refusal in the mobile home parks for residents. So can we start to look at alternatives to private equity because we can't stop private equity if nobody else has equity? We need to help build those tools, those financing tools for residents themselves.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: So keep marching through. So section five, very simply, just amends the definition of eligible projects for deed of the Non Economic Development Authority. Have you done the same thing? Okay, correct. Section six, this builds on our work from last year, which tasked in Act 69. This is new. This is addressing how we can build more service supported housing for intellectually developmentally disabled. We have a significant population of people whose parents are aging out being able to care.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We heard testimony on this issue, but we didn't, it's not in any of our bills.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: So it's in this one. It ends up we have Because we could not figure We worked a bit with Poly and VHCb. They serve on this advisory council that we create. But what we do instead is basically create a really strong advocate council embedded in the agency of human services in the Department of Aging and Independent Living to advocate for this work. And we're still trying to figure out some money for it because we need money. We started a pilot with VHCb to build service supported housing for our IDD community. And we think we have about 600 of responders at the moment who need house. My guess is it may be more, and we're slowly, I mean, I think the pilot produced 37 new units of housing. We need 600. It's becoming fair, it's a bit of a crisis. I mean, it's a slowly building crisis. And so that is section six and you have, it sounds like you're already up to speed on it. And now I'm going to suggest, because Keisha represented these two sections on the floor and there were amendments in these two sections, section seven and eight. Great.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: So I think most people have this background at this point, but this section is cleaned up from the Home Act of 2023. And while I'm here, I'll also say since we just had a very productive ACT 181 listening session, that there was never a grand bargain within any rural or urban construct in our housing bills. But what there was, was a commitment when we passed the Home Act and asked municipalities to change what they do to also pass a bill to get Act two fifty out of the way in a lot of areas where that is not serving current land use vision in communities. So that we weren't just saying, hey, municipalities, you're the problem. You have a patchwork of land use and housing regulations, but we're asking you to do your part and we will do our part. Separate conversation now happening with Act 181 that you are hopefully about to be a part of with S-three 25. We saw S-three 25 and S-three 28 as related bills that our committees now have joint hearings and try to share that jurisdiction because so much of land use policy affects the cost of housing and the ability to have a business. This goes back to one of our original provisions of the Home Act, which in its broadest term by ending single family zoning said, you can have duplexing anywhere in the state, cannot stop someone from duplexing their homes within the same footprint, etcetera. You can have setbacks and other zoning, but you cannot zone out duplexes. And then we said where we have water and sewer in the state, which is about 41 square miles of the state, you have to allow quadplexes. I highly recommend a recent article in the Washington Post about how Portland, Oregon has really made a dent in their housing crisis almost entirely with quadplexes and two to four unit apartments and backyards because they're bungalow style. So that's section eight, do section seven first, which is the manufactured housing by right.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: okay. Your section seven is identical to ours.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Okay. Oh, great. So, right. Okay, great. So then let's just continue with section eight. Sure. Sure. And I mean, because I just go on whatever order

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I feel like, sorry, but what's related about those two is we have been using the language in our committee for the last three years by right. You can do this by right. And we thought that meant something. And I encourage you to have the environmental court judges in or chew on this more, but we are hearing that by right doesn't necessarily mean that they can't put significant conditions and have appeals. And so essentially I asked, when we said quad flexing by right or manufactured housing by right, how come it's not by right? Well, what does that mean? That became a legal question as these all do. So we continue to go back and try to do cleanup and make sure what we have heard is the language, the term of art right now should be permitted use. So

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that was

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: a very important language change, even though it doesn't look like very much, to try and make sure that these five right housing projects cannot be appealed simply on the basis of, is this meeting the various conditions that we set forth?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We've got to get clear as to where we're at here.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Okay, we're now in, this was section seven, the manufactured housing, a permitted manufactured housing. Section seven. Section seven, that's what's Just changes, includes manufactured housing. Right, but it also changes the word to a permitted So line three on page 11

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: is instead of an allowed, it

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: says Let's hope that word does a lot of work for And I am not sure, and I hope you all ask your communities and help us follow this, because I want us to not put additional new barriers in the way of quadplexes. That was our original intent, and I've got a

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: bag and forth underscoring our intent. There has been expensive pre litigation work in a lot of communities, both on the aspect of what is permitted by right and what do we mean by along water and sewer? So that's section eight, Kecia had already started on, which is the 41 square miles. Don't have a lot of roads and areas that have both water and sewer, and we're wanting to take more advantage of being able to develop, particularly quadruplexes, but all housing within a certain area around

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: those roads. Right, because I've had the interesting debate that I've been thrown into where I don't want to try and convey all of legislative intent that when we said by right, meant if it's, sorry, when we said along water and sewer, we meant if it's in the road, you're along the water and the sewer.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You don't have to be right.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: You already

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: have the connection on your property.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: So this is not amended, but it was, we initially said, by 2,000 feet.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Let me ask you if we could just go back to permit

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: it. Yeah, just want

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: to get clear what I think you mean. Yes. Okay. I'm used to thinking of two kinds of uses, let's use a single family neighborhood as a typical situation. I'm talking about around the country. In a single family neighborhood, a single family house is a permitted use, which means you walk into the building apartment and pull a building permit. Okay, period. Yes. Absent a standard which tells you that there's discretionary review to look at building colors or other things, that's it. That's it. As opposed to a discretionary permit, like a gas station or a convenience store or a halfway house or all kinds of other uses, a school, which everybody would agree some of them are appropriate in a single family residential district, but not everywhere has a right just where they're permitted discretionarily by the zoning administrator or by somebody. What you're saying here, as I understand it, is that where a district is a residential district of some sort Mhmm. Whatever the standards are for a single family house, those are the standards for the duplex or flat flex. That's right. Nothing more.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: That's right. Am I right? Yes, and manufactured housing. And for manufactured housing.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Right, I'm looking at Ellen because that was our intent three years ago, That's what I hope this achieves. We shall see. But as long as we're clear, yes, we should get clear about our intent. I thought that mattered in the world of litigation. It really doesn't. It

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: does. Having consent is very helpful in every

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Could court counsel identify herself?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: I'll check out Kathy's website.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: What? Yes. Is permitted defined in the code? No. We'll work on that.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So let's keep working

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: on It's in your hands now. Judge zoning, have some of the folks, I can give you a short but meaningful hopefully witness list. And so between housing and natural resources, they never had possession of the bill, but they amended this section to take out the number of feet.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, I should tell you, okay, now we're onto that. I should tell you probably, this is sort of a two thirds of a housing, in here, two thirds of housing, one third of an environment committee kind of bill, and we'll work that out. I just don't know how we're gonna work it out, but

[Committee Staff (Unidentified)]: we'll work.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Bless you.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay. Right. Go on.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Because she did also three twenty five does have a piece in appeals for you.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah. I know, but we will work that out too. Three twenty five will go to

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: That's the land use.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Environment. Yeah. Okay. So you're on section eight. So the amendment. Which is the definition.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Right. So we had we've talked about the potplexing permitted

[Committee Staff (Unidentified)]: as a

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: permitted use along water and sewer.

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: Right.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: And I had started with kind of spitballing a certain number of feet that we went between.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Once we did a quarter of a mile.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I did a quarter of a mile because that matches the ring around the village center for other proposed developments. And then the planners came in and had different proposals for what happens like a lot in our community that doesn't feel like enough in our community. So I said 2,000 feet because it matches the current road rule. So the underlying intent was to not ask municipalities to change their regulations in one place and still be limiting in our act 181 or S-three 25 changes to say, oh, well, we're making you do that at the municipal level, but we still have different conflicting goals at the state level. So that was the underlying intent and what Natural Resources did, I believe met that intent, but essentially took out the number of feet and underscored the express intent that where you are going to permit a single family home, you have to permit two to four unit building with the same, as you said, Mr. Chair, the same conditions, setbacks, etcetera, that you might have for a single family home, but no more. And the hopeful value of that, the goal would be that you cannot be denied a water sewer connection based on the density of your project. And that can't be appealed. And when I say that, have people in my community who said, okay, but they have three single family plots. So you're saying they can have 12 units. That's what I'm saying. That is what the intent of this is. This will probably apply to a lot of less than acre parcels where they might be able to get one, two or more units in a backyard, do the sort of ADU housing that we know is going to get us most of the way there for access to affordable housing. But I am saying we're not discriminating against multifamily housing anymore, where you would have three large single family homes, you can have 12 units in three quad places. So that's what we're trying to

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: do in Section eight, that really try and take full advantage of areas where we have water and sewer. Right, you

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: just help us. We know your intent and I see, you will see members of

[Committee Staff (Unidentified)]: the

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: committee that Section eight in the version passed by the Senate looked rather different. That's why we had a little more complicated than the Section eight that passed out of Senate Economic Development. But now we know what you're after.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: But that's what we're after, and we've had VLCT as a thought partner and others to try and help us get what we're after, because I'd like to stop. I I don't know if you've experienced this, Mr. Chair, but it can become complicated when you're a living, breathing person who wrote the housing bills and they're in pre litigation and you're asked to go before the planning commission or the select board and say, well, what did you mean by that? And all I can say over and over again, because this is the intent we've all agreed to, is that you cannot discriminate against multifamily housing. You can't need to no longer have single family zoning in the state. So you cannot let your pearls at more units than exist in a single family spot.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Do I remember correctly, I see it's not in here, I guess it must be in 03/25, which members of the committee 03/25 hasn't come over yet. It should. It should. It's It's coming today. I think I think It's a message. Probably tomorrow, it will be referred to the environment committee. Yeah. And it's act two fifty, act one eighty one, etcetera. But it does have something that relates to this. Am I right? It's a study committee on how to develop by right housing.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Elizabeth, that's her hand.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: I don't recall that. That would be an arc. Yes?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Okay. Yes, Elizabeth, you have questions?

[Rep. Elizabeth Burrows (Member)]: It's not a question. It's a comment. Thank you very much for including this, Senator Ramhansdale. It was really a sticking point for me in Act 181. And I appreciate you making that right. Thank you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Yeah, well, yeah, we worked on it and also Senate natural resources have added

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: in on the section too. Okay, so that's section eight. What's section nine?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Section nine is a kind of a You can go if you want.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: So there is one more amendment.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Oh, right. There's a Benson amendment.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: There's one more amendment from the Natural Resources Committee that my intent was only known to me. So I'm looking at the HCB because they have been doing a lot of work on farm worker housing. And I am always, as you can probably tell, having a bigger argument in my mind about all housing. And so when the Natural Resources Committee asked for an update to the farm worker housing study, As I think about so much of what's going on in the world, but also our land use policies and how people are feeling confused currently about what part of Act 181 might apply to them as a farm, I was hoping, this is my offering to all, that we start talking about on farm housing and not just delineate some magical bright line between farmer housing and farm worker housing. Most people are trying to give the same standard of living and quality of life to their workers as they might have on the same property. They might be sharing the same house. Not to mention there are a lot of farmers who don't have workers. They just are trying to live in housing close to their farm. Just like we talk about on farm businesses, and I hope, and we've started to look at that as a shared conversation between agriculture, economic development and natural resources. I hope we will look at on farm housing with the same lens that it isn't just, it should continue to be about bringing up farm worker housing to habitable standards, but we shouldn't get any housing on farms in my mind stuck in a regulatory process that was not designed for that.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So the amendment from natural resources is what?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: So they asked for an update to the farm worker housing study and they agreed with our amendment to that, that we call, was, we started to call

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: it on farm housing. And

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: that they're gonna still be updating their actual farm worker housing report. Is that right? But that this is our first opportunity in the future and I was on the farm worker task force to start saying we have to allow for more on farm housing. Right.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We in one of our bills, which will be coming to you just so I know it's related only, I'm just letting you know, is a report that no. A report on employer provided housing. Unemployer provided housing and the amount that can be deducted and all of that to sort of update it and get its effects.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Yeah, we've had that discussion. I remember the deductions

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: for new. So I think what's interesting is we're all barking up the same tree.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: I think we are rowing in very similar directions. We'll get to Now, section nine? Section nine is a designated, this just extends the eligibility for certain designated areas. We, at the moment, require that designated downtowns and village centers have at least something that's eligible for the National Registry of Historic Places. And all we do in Section nine is add exception for new town centers, which obviously, because they're new town centers, don't have buildings that would qualify to be on the National Registry of Historic Places. So that just enables that. Sections ten and eleven are the appropriations, the first one being three positions in the Department of Housing and Community Development. They lost seven listed positions, not listed, seven limited service positions. And we add in three full time positions for that department. As you know, now that the budget comes out, once the budget's out, they can't formally ask for those. They ask for them before the budget's out, which is good. So we're clear on what they really need. And so they're losing seven and we're putting back three. And that's going to be an interesting challenge. We also have two additional appropriations. We have $250,000 for the municipal and regional planning resilience fund for municipal planning grants for municipalities seeking to meet their housing targets and working with enabling to do that. Well, after today's conversation, I'm a little discouraged. Well, exactly. And then the second one is $5,000,000 to further invest in VHIP, which you're all very with, our incredibly successful program that brings back.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Was that 5,000,000 in lieu of the 4,000,000 requested?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: This is a million addition. So it would be an additional million for VHIP. And halfway for the first time, the 4,000,000 of the governor included in base funding for VHIP, which we're very pleased with. And so, as you know, this is one of our biggest bang for our buck in developing new housing units. It costs roughly $39,000 for each new housing unit that's brought back up. Which is about the annual cost of a motel room. Yeah, okay. So we are, as you are, I think, a big fan of the BHIP and support. Think it's developed over, what do I have? It's developed and brought lots of housing for us so far. 500 units something? No, more than that, like over a thousand. That's great.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We sort of consider them one of our programs, and so we get updates from them. Let's see. What I think I'm going to do since we have a break at 02:30, I'm going to first of all, I'm gonna ask any questions of this wonderful pair.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: And you've got the two x He said wonderful pair, and

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I was waiting for you to do, like, a fan of white shirt because fuck your Fan of white. I

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: am showing that I no longer watch.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: We are good pair. We are good pair. But you also have a great pair here to take to

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So that's what I was gonna do is, could the two of you come up for just a few minutes?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Okay, and we will go back to our committees. Yes. Thank you very much for being time.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Didn't end up coming to you guys today about

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: We didn't get off the 4th Floor.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay, so we

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: we had the instead, we had the right for our vegetables. I see. Okay. Alright. We will have you back because we need you

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: to walk through a couple of And I'm coming back on Friday about seven seventy. Yes. About landlord time.

[Committee Staff (Unidentified)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Okay. But we're oh, I think you had also mentioned morning, and we're on for breakfast tomorrow at 07:30.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes. Alright. Great.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: We're gonna get

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: rid of all our social aphids here. Well, one

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: of the reasons why we have some

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: water days. Oh, yeah. Because they're gonna.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: Good. Thank you, guys. Good luck with passing the housing baton on to you. Ciao. Ciao. Ciao.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: What up, guys? So we're just gonna hear briefly. What I want to do, what I what I think is we don't need at this point, I don't think, a walk through of the bill. But why don't you sit down, both of you? What I'm suggesting is a question both to you and then to the committee. Question to you is, each of you, I think, should just select whatever you wanna talk about in light of what you heard, I mean, so you don't repeat it. You know, what are the issues that each of you has where you think a little clarification or a little addition would help? That's one thing. And then members of the committee, if you were uncertain or have questions, we have both our esteemed counsel here. This is your shot, not your only shot at birth. It's your first shot. So Cameron, what would you like to add?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: For the record, Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel, I will simply comment that for, I think, a significant majority of the bill, but in particular for my sections, they are a slight alteration to what you all passed. Some could argue some pieces significantly different, but for example, you passed the credit facility that the treasurer's office has, you upped it to 12.5%, that's in here, They did not include the additional 1% for the off-site.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: My impression is that they had less time and

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: more rushed. And so they took out the pilot program that goes with that, but the 12.5% is there. So whether you feel that's significant or more of a slight change. Same thing like with the municipal planning, the language there, they have, I'd say condensed down significantly what you all passed, but

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You're saying connected to the rural pilot program?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, ma'am. I'm talking about the in the municipal plan, the housing element of the municipal plan.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: The one that says they have to confront the housing element.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Because I have a question. Can we go back to the first part that you just talked about?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: within that 2.5% and the eight zero two homes and the bulk purchasing, we had language that spoke to sort of municipalities agreeing to go to streamline the permitting process, right? And so I'm just a little worried that our language, like how do we make sure that we don't fall into that same like by right doesn't mean anything, do our language reflect?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So their bill stripped all of that out. We can put it back in. Yeah, for the off construction pilot program.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: Which is

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: in July.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, so I'm just making, I'm just harkening back to, I'm just sort of making note that we've tried to create craft language in July to do something slightly similar. So I know that it's I just want to

[Steve Collier (General Counsel, VT Agency of Agriculture)]: make sure

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that if we make it

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I don't think we should assume that just because something isn't in their bill, we shouldn't assume that it was deliberate not in their bill because they just went through a different process. And we created seven seventy five, which is its own thing. Sure. And then, you know, there there and some of their stuff, it's just an earlier version that we were working with that we had time to change and they didn't. So, I think we can eventually, whether we end up with their bill with our stuff in it or our bill with their stuff, well, that's down the road. Yeah,

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so like I was saying, I think there are sections in there that are just slightly different. As I was saying, there are the municipal planning, the housing element of municipal plan, you all included a lot more detail about if the municipality can't meet its housing targets, they need to provide information to Department of Housing and Community Development, and here's all the information that has to be required. They don't have that. They just have directly in the housing element of the municipal plan, here's what has to be included. So very similar, just different in its scope of how it accomplishes what I think are the same goals. So I don't think there's a lot of direct conflict between this bill and some of the bills that you all pass. There are some provisions in here that are new. The adding in the new council to look at service supported housing, for example, that's totally new and it's not in your bill. So anyway, that's what I'll leave you with. I'm happy to come back and provide you with some side by side of the sections of what you passed in your respective bills versus once a year, if that would be helpful.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Supportive housing, we took a lot of testimony on that and we concluded that it was going go to human services, right?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We heard about it, yes. We didn't do anything about it.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But I thought that was why.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, and also, it's a budgetary matter. The question is where we're gonna find the money, but we didn't think to put in together a committee. They did.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The last thing I'll mention too.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And but I think but I I'm wondering whether you would I mean, question is how many committees are gonna lay their hands on this bill? As it is, it's at least three. It's gonna be this, us. It's gonna be natural resources with sections, particularly seven, eight, nine. You mean environment. Environment, And excuse then, because it has appropriations, it's going to go to appropriations. I don't know

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: if it goes to ways of me. Well, if we strip, well, I think with the credits, it'll have to, right?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It does not have those credits in there because they were stripped by

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: the state.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right, the final, yeah.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Which is interesting because the credits here would go to Ways and Means, wouldn't it?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Correct. The bill went to Senate Finance. Finance did not take them out. It went to

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Oh, okay. So it went through finance?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, if I misspoke there, my apologies. Went to Senate Finance. Senate Finance left everything in the bill, the credits for the down payment assistance program. And then it went to Senate appropriations. And then as you all know, it's typical I think in both bodies at this point, Senate appropriations stripped out all of the funding including the tax credits for the down payment assistance program. So that's one point I to do that. There are a few sections that in the bill that have to pass the Senate just say deleted. That's the sections that were removed by the Senate Appropriations Committee. And just on this topic quickly, because it was just going be an answer to Representative Dodd's question earlier, Your housing bill last year, at least as it was introduced on the House side, had both the extension of the down payment assistance program at the current level of $250,000 this bill would extend it and increase it to 350,000. But you also had additional extensions of the First Generation Home Buyer Program, the DHFA, I'll try to pull that language up, but you had both in your housing bill last year, both of which were stripped out ultimately along the way, and did not make them into the budget, if I recall correctly.

[Committee Staff (Unidentified)]: Great, thanks.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, that was a bummer.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, and I'm not sure what we can do about it now, because our budget is over in the Senate. Ellen, thoughts?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'll check out what's I do want to just clarify, section seven has one element that you included in your bill about manufacturing housing. But it has other things in there that they just sort of touched on, which is the difference between allowed versus permitted, and then also the language regarding quadplexes. I am not going to probably ever use the phrase by right.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Can understand why.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I never did on the original. I'm not going to. Our zoning is not phrased that way. Other states phrase it that way.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's a it's a colloquial I understand. Yeah. A political party. Policy talkers. Needs to be turned into something. That's why I confess, I mean, I don't think this is our committee's job. I think it's probably environment. But I think that if the intent is maintained, it would be worth defining permitted. Just because again, to me, I've taught this stuff, I've lived in California, I know what permitted versus discretionary means, but they're just sort of kind of common terms be worth defining.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I would say prior to the Home Act, the state level statutes on zoning were very high level,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: and

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: most of what you know as zoning does not appear in statute. And so now you have created some things that are very surgical changes that don't necessarily have defined terms. Related to that is section eight, which is adaptation of aerosurbed sewer and water. This is an amendment to the zoning statute. It's not an amendment to authority for towns to issue the connections within their power. It is just about defining these areas where the additional zoning requirements apply. And they've added fire districts as part of the areas that are part of these areas. On section nine, the community investment program update, if you want to describe that it's amending 24 BSA 5,803 and so is S-three 25. So they do not currently conflict but S-three 25 also amends those sections so you may want to consider that. But it is, as Senator Clarksons said, just recognizing that new town centers inherently don't qualify for the National Rider of Historic Places. So it's adding that so that they can qualify for the new designations that are being counted.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I'm a little confused. You're saying that both three twenty five and three twenty eight treat this issue?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Three twenty five is actually amending, I believe, subsection A of this section and this is amending subsection F. They're not dealing with the same issue, but it is the same statute. And so it's very important to be careful when you do that. It might be good if they were in the same bill. These bills are created at different times, however.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, so, we'll need guidance as we work our way through on this. Mean, think, anything else, guys?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Any questions by the committee for now? Just sorry, what's 5803A about generally that you said they will amend in 03/25? Okay. It's another kind of a small like how to become a designated, honestly I can't remember. I can look it

[Committee Staff (Unidentified)]: up for you, but it's not for you.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: The process that we're going to go through here, what we're gonna have to do is to walk through 03/28 and change it as we wish to either option one, just to conform to what we did, which is easy enough, and in fact, we don't have to do it here. When we have a markup, which will come next, we can just instruct counsel to do it, you know, to make a draft for us that reflects what we've done. Then there's new stuff and we can change it or just leave it as is, all in a markup. The

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: only

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: thing I think we need to do is avoid markup of sections that are just clearly within the jurisdiction of the environment committee because it just creates problems. And then the bill will leave us and either the environment committee will have a flyby with witnesses or take possession with witnesses, but it's gonna be the same in its effect. I mean, they're gonna focus on their sections. Any final questions? Yes?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I just wanted a small flag of 03/20/8325 had multiple floor amendments that were made substantive changes. And that's why it's good to wait to walk through them until they have fully passed from the other body. Right. Because if we had walked through last week.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yeah, know, the three twenty five, ended up

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And eight of this bill is now completely different

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair, Senate Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs)]: than as it was when

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it passed out of second economic development. Well,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: we saw. Yes, that we've seen. Yeah, and my apologies, I just was, all I wanted to do with three twenty five was just have this committee be familiar with it generally, and I really didn't pay much attention to where it was, what had happened and now I understand that it's, in case you don't know folks, they have form for us to hear a bill that hasn't made it over here yet. There is no rule to that effect, it's custom. But as you know, culture and customs are everything. So thank you so much. What we're gonna do now is take a break and at 02:45, we'll be back and we will hear testimony on 03/28 from VHCb and from Vida.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And that's it. Right? What?

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: And Christy,