Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Welcome back everyone to the House Committee on General Housing, and it is now, it's still the April 24, Friday, and we just have one item that we're going to handle today, three twenty eight, S-three 28, which is a bill that relates to housing. And it's kind of an omnibus bill, there's a lot in it, has like eight or nine, I guess 11 or 12 sections, but we have been operating off of draft 2.1 and now our esteemed counsel is with us with his latest masterpiece, which he is going to present, and that's what we're going to do. Counsel, you want to take it away? Sure.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: For the record, Cameron Wood, Office of Legislative Counsel,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I would never take ownership. It is your masterpiece, my masterpiece. Oh my god, we have to stop this, it's Friday. Okay so go on.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay so what we have is draft 3.1, there are some minor tweaks from 2.1. The first one being in section one, this is the section you're adding in to title three to require the Secretary of State to provide information about common interest communities to the public. So slight alteration to the language shall provide on its website or otherwise distribute to the public information about Vermont's common interest communities. I have not shared this with the Secretary of State's office. I'd be happy to.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: I do not feel a need for you to do that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Can ask you a silly question? Otherwise distribute? What does that mean, like an email list? They asked for that because they said that the technology could change. But

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: in fact, in their language it didn't say website. But our council, who believes that this is, that the language that they gave is sufficiently illusory that it might be meaningless, could not resist inserting the word website and I think that's great myself. Okay, what else?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's the first change. The second change is actually a deletion. You have in section two the Service Supported Housing Advisory Council, and if you all recall right after this section there was a 2A, because we've added in here that part of the annual report of this council has to include recommendations for future legislative action and funding sources. So you're wanting them to their extent that they're able, if they can identify funding to develop service supported housing, for them to put that information in their report. There was a section here 2A which required them to look at a per parcel fee on secondary homes that are in the current use program, and that section has been removed.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Remember, we discussed this, I think I told the committee that I was intrigued by the idea of funding this way, but I learned that it is not only a complicated idea, but even trying to provide a study was one that provoked a lot of comment, to the point where I thought, we shouldn't do this now. And it's to their

[Unidentified Committee Member]: annual report, right? We don't have to legislate when we get that or who It else is gonna get

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: is by November 15 annually, and it comes to this committee and human services and then the Senate committees on economic development and health and welfare.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Thank you. All right.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay, next change is on page five. This is something that I found and I did discuss this with the treasurer's office. So this is the, we're in the section related to the credit facilities. And when you look at the language in this section in sub D, it says the treasurer shall submit a report annually, but it's limited to subsection C. The treasurer submits a report detailing activities financing accounting of any credit facilities created pursuant to subsection C. Well subsection C is the credit facilities related to renewable energy, excuse me, climate infrastructure resilience projects. So I'm just striking subsegments, so I think they annually report as it is, this gives us a little cleanup. Yeah, it's cleanup. Great. The last thing is going to be all the way down to page 10. We're going to move into the section related to VHIP, and if you recall in VHIP you are authorizing the department to provide the funding upfront in advance of the project as opposed to reimbursement, that's what the amendment was. Well I noticed that last year you all remember you created this annual report from because you wanted them to give you information about the units that are developed and whether or not after the restrictive covenant time period passes whether people remain in the units, they're taken offline.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: That was and I thought that went, did that drop out of S-one

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: hundred twenty seven? You all did it last year, It was in Act 69, but what I noticed this year as I was reviewing the language again was I failed to include a date of when that report needs to be submitted. So that's all this amendment does. You can see the

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: underlying language right there online. As I remember, recall from the chatter, the internet chatter, you have checked with them as to whether they're okay with November 15, and they are.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, sir.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So this is just

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: the It's all in yellow, but it's just the line.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's just that annual report from the

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's only the underlying In other words, the section is already was

[Unidentified Committee Member]: last year, but it's already in line with Who's reporting about what? So I've scrolled back to page nine to see. Got it, thank you.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And that's it, those are the amendments in this version.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: So this is a truly Bless us. Excuse me. So at this point, I mean this has got thirteen secondtions. What it is, really, I'm just going to summarize for the committee, and that is interested in watching. This is pretty much the stuff we it's it's what came over from the senate, had in it that we've never done was just looking through it had language that was almost identical, but not necessarily identical to what we had done with the treasurer's credit facility in 12.5%. Ours' language is a little better, so it reflects our language. It had the off-site accelerator. Ours we've put in our language. It had the VIDA provisions. We've made a tiny change in the VIDA provisions that you just heard. It has that oh, excuse me, VIDA, that VIDA could fund, and now it just has the language, better language, the language that really reflects the intent of the parties. It has VIDA can advance funds rather than just reimburse them, that's in there as it was in our bill, we were almost identical there, it has special assessment bonds, again, identical for both parties, It has municipal Can you remind me about the special

[Unidentified Committee Member]: assessment bonds page Right,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: and I'm happy to just type up this list and send it right on too, but the special assessment bonds, remember, it pointed out that a certain kind of bond, which is called a revenue bond, when a revenue bond is issued, you can't look to the full faith and credit of the account to pay it. If it's a general obligation bond you issue, you can say a general obligation, you create an assessment district to help one development, and it's got 30 houses in it, they have to pay a special assessment, but if for some reason that's not enough, with a special assessment bond, excuse me, a general obligation bond, or GO bond, as it's called, which we used to do a lot of mostly here, if somehow that assessment isn't good enough, the whole town is responsible for it. So that meant when you issue, and it's still true, issue a GO bond, it requires a vote of the town. Points out these special assessment bonds where it's about one development and everybody gets assessed, that's it. They're usually a little more expensive because it's theoretically a little riskier, but the advantage of the town is off the hook completely from the start. So for those, no there's no need for a vote. Remember the municipal housing targets, that municipal plants have We to take the housing heard that their language was actually preferred, so we left it that way. The non discrimination against modular manufactured housing is in there. That's pretty much the same as ours. The common interest report by legislative council, we added because it came in, it was Emilie's work that came in later, we refined it. The VHCb farm worker housing report is somewhat modified, we hope, realistic in terms of what VHCb can do. The private equity report on private equity was our way of taking six zero seven? Yes. 06/2007, which again was Emilie's work, and turning it into a report, and DHCD, for some bizarre reason, is actually willing to do it, and so without money, so they're doing that. And then we have BHCB, this revision of the budget for 2024 to allow BHCB to repurpose a couple of million dollars for disability housing. The one thing that was really new was the Service Supported Housing Advisory Council was in the Senate, but not us. So, as you can see, that long wordy way of saying it, most of what's in here is either identical to what we already did, and the senate did it too, or close, or a few new things on our part, and a few new things on it. So, I don't know whether three twenty eight will become the vehicle or what, but we'll see. It could well be. At the moment, we're sitting on it, we're holding it, and one of the major reasons we're holding it is we don't know yet whether we want to include in it anything that has to do with universal design slash visitability, adaptability, etcetera. Yes. Hi. I

[Unidentified Committee Member]: have a question about process. If there are things in the bill that we added to this one that aren't in the other one, is there does that maybe happen, like, in conference, or how can we make sure that yeah.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Well, ideally, what would happen ideally, what would happen, and I think it could well happen with this bill Mhmm. Is that it's so close to what they did. It has to go back to the senate. If this bill let's say we've reported it out next week. Let's say it goes through ways and means quickly because they've seen it all. It goes through approves because they've seen it all. Goes to the floor. We pass it out. It goes back to the senate. Yeah. The senate has a choice. They can either concur or request a conference.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But I just wanna make sure well okay. Yeah. Because

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: They could actually do one more thing. They could add something else and send it back to us. But I think given the timing, it would probably be concurrence or a conference.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay. I hope so. I just there's some things that there's some things that we added that I can that are important.

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: Yes. I hope so too. And so we'll see where we are next week with this. Any last questions about this draft of counsel? Any last questions about how we're all going to enjoy the weekend? And look on your you know, take a look on Sunday or Monday on your the website, but right now, our rough draft agenda has on Tuesday, next Tuesday, before we're not meeting before the floor as much as I really want you all here by 07:00 in the morning, not gonna happen just because of you. Sorry. And we're not meeting before the 10AM house floor. We're we're going to we're going to yes. We do. We're going to continue at 01:00 with some more interesting testimony on universal design. I'm using universal design as a term to embrace all of this. Thought the testimony today was really interesting, and then at 2PM, we have some witnesses from youth homelessness awareness day, and then we come back to 03:28. So so think of your absolute must be here for the house floor. That's just or earlier if you wanna get a parking place. So is there any last statement by anyone before we do the a word?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just want to appreciate all of the openness, I know that when it was very nebulous, shall we say, of what the universal design concepts were and what exactly were we talking about. I really appreciate that you've opened up the space and invited all the folks to come and talk about it, because

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: It's been really

[Unidentified Committee Member]: interesting. It's been really interesting, and it really does hit our housing and equity focus in a really important way. And I really feel strongly that at first I was thinking, well,

[Marc Mihaly (Chair)]: what if people just don't want to amend three twenty eight? Do we really want to do this? But I've come to the conclusion that knowledge is really important for us as a team, and that if there's ever a place where this issue needs to be fully grasped, it's where the expertise should lie, it's this committee. Where else is it gonna lie? You helped develop our expertise. So, and we'll keep doing it. Alright, so we are, Gayle, everybody, I hope you get well, Emilie, that you stay well. Mary, don't get sick. Ever it's too much of it going around. And, we'll reconvene on Tuesday. We are adjourned. Have a good weekend.