Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Welcome everybody to the House Committee on General Housing, and today is Wednesday, 04/08/2026. We are going to be continuing our discussions relating to Senate Bills S-three 28, S-two 30, are going to occupy much of our day until lunch at the House Floor. Our first witness today is on three twenty eight, which is, by the way, just for the audience, it's the kind of omnibus housing bill that came from Senate and Economic Development in general. Our first witness is Chris Donnelly. Chris, you want to come up? Chris promised me that today would be the most glorning testimony to you. That's a high

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: bar, Or a low bar. Chris Bartley with the Champlain Housing Trust, thanks for having me in, and it's good to see you all again. I was asked to come in to talk about two sections of S-three 28. The first section, if you have the bill, is on the bottom of section four, so on the

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: bottom of Are you on draft, what draft of three twenty eight are you on? I am as passed by the Senate. Okay, alright.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: Which is what I'm hoping you're all talking about.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, there's another partial draft, there's another draft coming, but we, this passed by the center was good.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: So section four, which is on the bottom of page three, accommodates community. What this language does is that it instructs the legislative council to do some research when you are all away and come back to you with some more information about Common common interest communities, just to ground you, are homeowner association, condo association, groups of people that live in housing that share common interests. When this originally came through, when it was originally introduced in the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs, it added a number of other provisions, actually some changes to the Common Interest Committee law that would have caused a series of problems with our home ownership program as well as others, and so those issues were flagged, the committee downstairs decided to take a step back and say, let's just collect more information and bring that full text to you in case we want to make some changes. Motivation, if I can claim what someone else's motivation is, it's not negative, it's just trying to allow for more opportunity for people to

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We did have testimony, grits, from the bank there saying what their concerns were. We have covenants on some

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: of the shared equity homes that we have that would have been made illegitimate through the original first strategy. So we have the solution to that. So I'm glad that it's being cited, I've offered to the Legis Council to assist him, or whoever has decided to obtain it or and Elaine goes through that process next month. So that's the first part.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I promised it wouldn't be too exciting. Are you moving on from that section? I was going to. I want to just let you know a couple of suggested language changes, just if you happen to have any interaction. Right now it says that they're going to study, outline any legal issues related to, see at the top of page four.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: Yep.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So what I think we're going to do is add some sort of reference to legal, financial, lending, and grant compliance. I'll check that. Alright.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: The second piece I wanted to talk to you about, and we have another expert in the room, our major from BHCB, who could also refer to this, but I was asked to come in and talk about the farmworker housing report that's on page 13, section 9A.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Subheading housing report, farmworker housing report.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: Just to give some background, back in 2020, this committee has been a lot of work, or a lot of testimony, on the challenges of farm workers living in substandard property farms and the challenges of farmers to actually improve those properties. A study was done, a report was done, HCB commissioned that it was 65 pages long, it provided the committee assistance with it, so it's up on your website, you may have been given this before, that outlined the need for investment in 600 dwellings that would support 2,000 farm workers and improve their health. The HCB, with that report and with encouragement and funding from the legislature, created an RFP, Request for Victims' Proposals, asked for programme design to be submitted to Champlain Housing Trust. Respondents to that RFP were selected and have been receiving funding over the past four years. We have invested in close to 90 different dwellings that are serving three sixty different farm workers, so the program is up and operating. We have spent $4,300,000 in the program to do so. The language that is suggested here asks PHCB to go back and do another housing needs assessment, which is what was done in 2021, which created this program. That's a significant amount of work, and the program hasn't scratched the surface, but it hasn't really kind of gotten to a point where we feel like there's a new need for a needs assessment for this group of people. What we would like to do, and we are always willing to do, is to come back with a program evaluation and say, here's what we've done, here's how they've spent the money, here's some of the barriers we may be facing in trying to implement this program, maybe some other ideas we can pursue, and to give you that so you have a better sense of how the program is running, as opposed to going back out and saying five years after needs assessment was done, we'll hold broadly in these assessments. So I've given, also on your website, I've given new language to replace this. It's been vetted and supported by DHCV, I can hand around art copies if people want it.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: But It wouldn't hurt me. Now is this guess what I'm going to do, Polly, could you introduce yourself?

[Polly (Policy Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: Director Polly Mejzer, Policy Director with GHTV.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Is this different than the language that you gave us a week ago?

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: No.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. Okay, and this is the language that is currently the Agriculture Committee? It's the

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: end of this morning we will be looking at this language and I believe the chair is on your schedule to come in tomorrow, there may be, after they have a composition, may have some ideas for some language, but really the overarching concept is let's not do a whole sixty, seventy page report, spend the time doing that, we'd rather spend the time and effort actually doing the housing, and we'll back to you on how long we're there. We'll always do that, but we want to report back on how well we're doing, what barriers we face, and maybe two. That's the genesis of the response to that section.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Do you have more, or is that where those are two of Those are the

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: two things that I was asking.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Do the members of the committee have questions for Chris?

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: I'm trying to read what the difference in the language is.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Chris, a couple of questions. First of all, just by way of background for me, so CHC responded to the EACV RFP, and you were selected, are you doing statewide, all of the farmworker housing? Correct. We are working with UVM Extension. So we've managed to house three sixty, or it's a little more than in 90 dwelling units when the report called for housing for 2,000 workers. It would call for about 600 dwellings. Yeah, we did, we've done 90. Do you have any impressions as to, I mean obviously this would, in any formal sense, have to await the results of the study you're proposing, but do

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: you have any thoughts on that progress and program? We have, so we've been allocated something like $5,600,000 We've closed on $4,300,000 with the lease loans, the or gloves. We have 1.3 and we have another million of requests. So we think that we could actually spend another million this year into next year. So we have an ongoing need, a pipeline farms coming to

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So you have 1,300,000.0 left in funding, and you have about a million of requests. No, we have about 2,300,000

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: requests. So, will be an oversubscribed program without more funding. In this current funding environment, it's unclear whether this is going to be something that gains proof of, for continued funding or if we just have to wait.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I get clearly the idea. Debbie, did you have I a just wanted to clarify something.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: You spent 4,300,000.0 to do 90 units or 90 buildings? Building. Yes. So you have 600 buildings to do? The 600, some of them are just apartments within a building, so there's a variety of different So it could be units or buildings? Yeah, but it's serving three sixty overall farm workers. Those three sixty workers. In those dwellings, buildings. Some are shady while the farmhouse has been relatively done, there's a program that we have for replacement that we can put a new home on a property, replace an old one, that may have about six people living in it, so it's a real variety. And if

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: you want to dive really deep into this program, we can have other people come in, but this is really to make sure that we get you the right information. I get that you, the idea is no, let's not start all over again and do a new assessment. What's involved in assessment, does that involve fieldwork and data collect, new data collect? Yes.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: Then, probably better information about how to commission the study. The original study. Probably,

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: did the original study involve actually going out into the field and determining how many farm workers there were and what to housing them? Did people visit a lot of farms, what happened?

[Polly (Policy Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: So the original study actually pulled together a series of studies that are ongoing organizations like UVM that has a professor that routinely studies farm worker housing from organizations like migrant justice and bridges to health. So they had all done their own work and this study synthesized that work. In addition, it went further and did a survey that went out to farmers and alters collected data from farmers. I do not know if they wrote out to all the farmers who scored what form that survey took. I wasn't actually the PHC at the time, I'm sorry about that. But I think what I would say is that there continues to be research happening in the state on this issue and there's folks like Professor Dan Baker at EBM who can speak to that, who's testifying from the ag committee today as well. So without a new needs assessment, there is still ongoing assessment of the C.

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: P. Right.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: Do

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: you need until January 15 to give us this much smaller report feedback, or is this?

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: I think the idea was that you're

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: in session then, we can come back with a report. Probably done equal or less than this way. That's an interesting question, because what we have in the past tried to do is get reports to us in November or December, so that we can look at redoing the legislature, yes? Correct, but it

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: will be a new legislator, nine of us might even be on this committee. And I'm not sure, the program is not in statute, so it wouldn't be asking for legislation to change statutes.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: More of just,

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: here's information about how we'd start the money and what we could do with additional funds.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Can I ask another question? Please. So I know that we talked also about just in general on farm housing, and I thought that that was supposed to be broader than just looking at the employees'

[Sophie (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: housing, but also just being able to build.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: My understanding is this is too specific to this legislation.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Right, but I think that in this report, we're asking them to identify barriers to improving and expanding on farm housing, which I thought we had talked about as being

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: It's either, I think it's in

[Rep. Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: the actual plan.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: The priority of the program that we have operating is for farm workers. Right. You wanted to have a broader assessment of what farmers mean, a different piece than what you're proposing.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Right, and that's why I'm just trying to, just looking at the language, I want to clarify what the committee is asking.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Let's clarify one thing, though. When you say on farm versus farm worker, You're, I guess, forgive my ignorance, you're saying that some of the need for farm workers isn't met on the farm, it's met in apartments or other places outside of the farm. In other words, is that what you are referring to?

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: I thought that at some point, whether I was here or online, I heard conversations about the challenges when we were talking about the minimum wage, that getting the minimum wage, or looking into what the quality of the housing was, or looking into paying for overtime. Part of what came up during that conversation was the fact that it's just hard to build on a farm generally, somebody else who was there. We're talking about two completely separate Exactly, but that's why my concern is that the language that we had talked about on farm housing is appearing in this request for the report.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Right, that's because I think that, Polly, would you address the decision?

[Polly (Policy Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: I can speak to that a little bit. When we originally had this conversation in the Senate, we asked to keep the report narrowed to the existing farm owner housing program and the valuation of that program. There was another amendment in the Senate that asked to broaden it to on farm housing. And so I want to respect the Senate's desire to at least acknowledge the challenges around on farm housing. Again, I don't think have the capacity right now to do that full blown study. I don't think the HCB is starting research entity to do that. But in the course of updating or

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: in

[Polly (Policy Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: the course of doing a programmatic analysis of farm worker housing, we will be talking to folks like the business consultants who work with VHCB's Farm Reports liability program, who also hear things about the challenges of addressing on farm housing for farmers or for workers. So since we're going to hear this anyway, I left that in there to say, we will have a section, a set law section of the report in a sense, here's what else we're hearing about on farm housing, and we can have a longer policy discussion next session on that. I just don't think we have kind of research capacity this year to do that full flow analysis.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Okay. As long as you're okay with it. No, fine work, Deborah doesn't have to do the supernurals.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I just need to

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Go

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: ahead, I'm sorry.

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I was just saying I'd be glad to share my notes about that discussion as it occurred last week.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So this program, as it exists now, is dealing with housing for farm workers, not farmers, farm workers. Does that housing have to be on the farm, or can it be anywhere? No, it's on the farm. So it's on farm, farm worker housing. Okay. Any other questions related to this issue by members of the committee? Thank you, Chris.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: We are members of the committee. As was mentioned, just to emphasize, we will be hearing back from the agriculture committees of this language, I guess tomorrow morning at 09:00.

[Rep. Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: Guess just to throw out, it wasn't a question for anyone, I won't say complexity, but the on the ground reality of it being that there's a nexus between the two, which is there are farms out there that when an adjoining property is for sale, they buy it because of the needs of their workers. Know, April 1, it is not on farm housing. It is a separate building owned by a separate person. And two weeks later, now it's on farm housing. Because it's been purchased. The farmer trying to get

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: the needs of the

[Rep. Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: people that work there. So we kind of get blended together. So

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: there's on farm and adjacent can bleed.

[Rep. Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: I mean, it's technically on the farm now. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Right. At the very least, it's farm worker housing.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Okay. Right. So now I don't wanna put it in. We're next looking at S30, and Sophie, you want to come up? It says potential vote, I don't know that we're really ready for a potential vote at this point, but we can update our graph here. S230, just to remind everybody and listener, is the omnibus, kind of an omnibus, labor bill. And the latest draft that we have is, I believe, is draft 2.1. And I think there were some additions, but I'm looking to you, madam.

[Sophie (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So if you start any more than that cohort,

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: just about to see if he's. Wait. Gonna press.

[Sophie (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, this is S two thirty, draft 2.1, and I was asked on Friday to add, so we go to the end here, add in his committee already passed out and House already passed out, this H556, which is currently in semi economic development. So you've seen this language before, you've only passed it out once, the House is passed it out, this is now adding it in. And this is the language that provides under the minimum wage law as an exclusion, elected and appointed municipal officers from the definition of employees. Essentially that means elected and appointed municipal officers are not entitled to minimum wage or overtime. So

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: this is graph 2.1.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I have a draft dated four-three. I see, so it's in there. Okay. So at this point, we've added in was the FlightCrew already in there?

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: Yes. FlightCrew is in there.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: The alignment between I'm forgetting the names of these acts.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: The

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: employment FIFA and the requested language to align FIFA and the Vermont What's it called?

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: The

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That's in there now, right?

[Sophie (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This is what came over from the Senate. So section one is the language that, so airline flight crews were added last This adds in reference to full time teachers as defined by the code of federal regulations. Again, a disability understands it doesn't really change anything, it's just a reference to a Code of Federal Regulations which says examples like teachers who work outside of school hours, work at home and at the weekends, and just reinforcing that it is the employer's burden in the event the employer wants to challenge the eligibility of an employer taking federal family medical leave act. So it doesn't really provide any meaningful benefit. It's just adding in a code of perfect life relations, citation, it doesn't matter.

[Polly (Policy Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: It's just

[Sophie (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it was a request from the teachers to be included in, and so they're in here. And then this was also added, this also came across from the Senate. This is the language that adds the self attestation for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. It lists out what documentation they can show, but the key bit here is really the self attestation to those. And we took out You haven't done anything with this. This is the language that came over from the Senate, and it was language that was taken from the Parental and Family Leave Act that was added last year. This adds it into the Fair Employment Practices Act. What the Senate had done was they had added some additional language in there under self attestation to say that if the individual is doing self attestation, it's under penalty of perjury, and then this committee had asked to remove that additional language that

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: was So sent this 2.1 reflects the committee's decision to remove under penalty of perjury Right, so this and possibly chilling, okay.

[Sophie (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right, so this language is now the same language that's currently in the parental family move act. And then again, this was just section three is removing the outdated provision regarding mandatory retirement for tenured faculty because that's been illegal since 1994. And again, this was something the House had already passed that went over to the Senate, the Senate just cut and pasted and put it into two thirty, so these provisions have been coming back and forth all section. All right, and then the new bit that this committee added was section 3A, is asking the Commissioner of Labour to take a look at the current allowance for housing And that came about because the housing amounts don't correlate with fair market value and the reasons for that, but it was really asking the Commissioner of Labor in conjunction with the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Commerce and Community Development just to take a look at the lodging allowance. And then there were a series of questions. How are they set? Because again, the testimony has been is that no one really knows where the starting point was back in 2009 when the formula was put in place, whether the current methodology should be updated and whether the starting place should be updated, and then whether there should be a separate lodging rate for farm worker housing, given that really the majority of employees who live in an employer housing tend to be in the agricultural sector, not all of them, most of them. And then most recently on Friday, I was asked to add in this section, section 3B, which again was something this committee had already passed out in H556, and is currently, H556 is currently with Senate Economic Development, and I believe tomorrow we go in and talk to Senate Economic Development about H556.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: One thing, just as a general matter before anyone wants to discuss any of this particular. So I talked again to Allison Clarkson. We're just in an awkward period, and there's no way around it where she has the stuff we've given her, and we have this. And what we're doing is making sure that all of our stuff gets added into these S bills, and at the same time, they're working away on our bills. But eventually, we're going to have to decide. We don't want incompatible bills if we can. At the moment, it looks like Senator Clarkson has made their committee is really up against it in the sense that they have half the time we do, and they are concerned about getting through everything, including they have some of our large bills, seven seventy five, seven seventy two, well, partly seven seventy two and $7.57, which is the mobile home manufactured home bill. So anyway, one advantage of making sure that our bills get in here in 02/30 is that if they don't get to stuff, there it is, and then we just send it back to them, and hopefully, if the language is theirs, they'll just concur, and that would be the end of it. Having said that, is there any further discussion on S. 230? Things people want to bring up. We're holding this. We're not doing anything right now. And I think there's no question, and I'll just speak for myself. I think that next year, when we get the lodging deduction rate report, we're going to have some serious issues facing us, which are a combination of what is a reasonable minimum wage left, what are the tax treatments of this for the employee and the employer, and other issues that we're going to face. This is not the end of this by any means. Leonora, you raised, you Leonora and I were talking, and she raised an issue which I hope is addressed in this report, and which I think the language allows to be addressed, but there's a huge range of possible housing that's provided, and I don't think a one size fits all number is going to work. There's going to have to be some sort of range of deductions, I would think. But that's something that we're going to have to look at. Yeah?

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: I'm not saying that we should necessarily include this. I'm just bringing it up as a point, which is the that the federal poverty level officially is is, that housing is one third of a person's salary. And so I wonder whether it might be useful to add that into consideration. I personally don't feel that one third of a person's salary is actually attainable in most parts of the country at the moment. It's not. But but it

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: it it remains it remains

[Rep. Ashley Bartley (Vice Chair)]: the official benchmark. And so if we are setting it below one third, then or Above one third. Above one third. Yeah. That's why I

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: just think I'm I'm just

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: I'm fine with this language, I

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: think the study should happen. Just don't think that we Any number that comes back, it seems to me, is gonna be more than we can afford to deduct from somebody's salary. It's minimum wage, certainly.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Think that the nuance that I was pointing to and that you just said, well, that's to be expected, like if there's going to be a deduction, that it should be reflective of the quality of housing. And I do remember specifically asking whether that would be taken into account, they said, absolutely not, that's beyond our abilities. Who said that? The armed witnesses, the labor and ag people that said they would undertake this report.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I don't recall that, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: I mean, if the people that are doing the renovations of Ag worker housing and it's taken them four years and 4 and a half million dollars to do 15% of what full stage is needed, I would And they can't just give us a report off the cuff and they need months and months of research. If they have said on the record that they are not gonna look at a qualitative evaluation of the housing provided, And we are giving them the green light to just give a deduction rate. That seems like a really unhelpful way to address all of the issues of our

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I think that if the committee is very concerned about this, we have to have some of the witnesses back in because I don't recall that. What I recall David Durfee's telling us was that quality of the housing, that is enforcement of building codes, etcetera, was something that was beyond this, but I don't recall hearing we can't take into account that there is a range of housing provided. And if that's a problem, maybe we should have testimony on that. I don't know, what do people want to do, or do you want to leave it this way?

[Rep. Gayle Pezzo (Member)]: I agree with Leonora, because if you're setting a deduction for lodging, and you have a relatively new double life for a family that is different than a 60 year old bunkhouse. They don't have the same value. The deduction is too low. Am I following?

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Yeah. Think I think that we're standing right. You're Either we are going to recognize that there is a lot of If we are trying to help out This is a measure that came out of the ag committee from an effort to try to address the wage discrepancies that objectively we know undocumented that workers are getting paid below minimum wage. And the response to that was, well, it's because we're providing housing for them. And so this effort to say, well then how much should be allowed to be deducted without asking what kind of housing are you really It just feels really trying to get out of setting a minimum wage. We just talked about this yesterday with, or I watched the committee discuss this about construction work, right? And in that discussion, we stated that we don't want to have Vermonters put our economy to exploit people, very who few remedies available to them. And I think that this would be doing just that. Right now, somebody who's not being paid, if we were to at least set up a minimum wage, then you could then do a complaints based like, oh, well, they're deducting my housing, but look at my housing. Or I'm not getting paid a minimum wage and they're claiming that it's because this, that or whatever. Whereas if we just say, okay, you only have to pay a person $9 an hour because you've addressed housing, the person has nothing to stand on to say, yeah, but my housing is awful. It's not just a simple, you're at least getting paid this much. So I just have a problem with the way that it's It just says whether a separate lodging rate should be established. Yet again, just making, just entrenching this carve out that takes away all rights, instead of extending care to a vulnerable worker population, we are entrenching even further that they do not have any rights.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, what's the pleasure of the committee? I can certainly talk to David, find out who we could get in, and see whether we could I it's a question I don't want to go on a fool's errand here. If the problem is that the study's fine, but we want to make sure that it doesn't say a separate lodging rate, but says rate or rates depending on the type of housing provided, then we can get somebody in here to see whether they would agree to that. If the committee is simply opposed to the study because of its political implications, then I don't want to waste time. So where are we?

[Rep. Thomas "Tom" Charlton (Member)]: Are you wanting to just get rid of the having a separate option there for the biomarker housing and have it be a study on the housing in general? What a because I what I remember hearing was, like, there's a billion variables. We can't we're not gonna nail it. Right? Like, when I pull into the parking lot, some people probably make out like a bandit with their fuel mileage reimbursement. I'd probably break even in my freaking truck. Right. Right? I I it sounded like they were just gonna kinda go for the happy medium. Like, you're gonna be on the other side of it, but this is kinda where you're should should be landing and not not on the farmworker out, just in this in that in general. Are you are you just wanting to get rid of the possibly having a separate option for farmworker housing?

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: I think my overall unease is that what we are asking for is, what's the history of this deduction? That's just a very easy research question. It doesn't seem like it should be a legislated measure. And it feels like when we have this as a legislative measure, it's because we want to take action depending on what the answer is, right? If the answer is that it's costing employers so much to build this housing, that that is going to give ammunition to just undermine workers' wages. The origin of this, just to

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: be clear, is, as you know, this is an agriculture committee decision in the sense that they were the one considering whether to do minimum wage or not, whether to do overtime for farm workers. They held hearings on it, they had extensive discussion, they failed to reach a compromise or reach a conclusion. David Derby came to me and said, One very small part of this has to do with the housing deduction, and trying to get more information on whether it should be updated, what it should be, etcetera. Would you be willing to try to do something or put it somewhere so that the work could be done over the summer so that when we get back to this, at least you know something? And that's the origin of this. So the question, I mean, there's a range of possibilities here. I'm just trying to bring this down to what we're gonna do.

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: I think I would be very, very much more at ease if there was something that addressed the quality of the housing has to has to be

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, we can put in well, first of all, I think we need to find out whether we can put in here language that says that whatever the results are, I have to look at the range of housing provided rather than one number. Although, and if what we get back is, well, that's not what we can do, well then we can react. We can take it out, say, well, fine, we're not going to do the study, or we can do whatever we want, but I can find out who that would be and get them in here. Should I do that?

[Rep. Leonora Dodge (Member)]: Yes, I think I need to know more. The wording isn't even guaranteeing a minimum wage with a deduction, it's This literally just a

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: is a very small part. It's not intended to get to the large issue of whether there's enough enforcement about building codes, whether the housing is adequate or not, whether there should be a minimum wage. None of that is implicated in this. This was just a request for one piece of information, but I am certainly willing to do the research to see if we can get someone in here to tell us whether they're willing to address the larger range of housing. I do think, I just Do people want me to do that? Yes. Yeah, fine. Okay. I will. I do think that whatever the answer to that is, we face policy issues that go beyond that. I mean, I cannot imagine that the number won't be large enough that it simply cannot be deducted from a minimum wage and leave people with enough to live on. But, you know, it's just a fact of life, and I'm not sure what we'll do about that. I mean, you know, if it's $10 an hour, what are you going to do? Ask someone to work for $5 an hour, $4 an hour? You can't do that. So, we're going to face policy. I will go ahead and get someone, find out who we have to talk to to make sure that can be done. If it can't be done, then I'll bring it back here, okay? Anything else on 02:30? For the most, other than this interesting wrinkle, it's pretty interesting. What? That's it. Sorry, excuse me. It's pretty straightforward. Okay, so, let's Kirsten is here at 10:45. Do you want to see if there's any chance she could be here sooner? She can. Okay. We are going to take a break. We're going to reconvene at 10:45. And any last thing to say before we adjourn until 10:45?

[Rep. Saudia LaMont (Member)]: Yes, Mary. I really appreciate Representative Dodge's concept of this. First of all, I don't think the minimum wage is enough for anyone.

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: Second of all,

[Rep. Saudia LaMont (Member)]: if we don't have these farm workers, then what does the owner of the farm do? And some of these places that they provide are not the best, so why isn't the health department looking at things like that? I agree. I personally don't feel there should be a deduction. I feel when you're hired to work on the farm, housing is part of the contract. So

[Chris Bartley (Champlain Housing Trust)]: once again, I do appreciate your comments. To be continued.

[Rep. Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So we'll adjourn until 10:45. Alrighty?