Meetings
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[Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay, folks. Welcome back. We're a little bit before 02:30, and this is gonna be our final order of the day for committee work. We have joining us for a bill introduction on h five zero two, an act relating to charging for actual cost under Vermont Public Records Act, one representative Jed Lipstein, sponsor of the bill. Representative,
[Representative Jed Lipsky]: welcome. Thank you.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: Alright. So just to give you a little update, we just spent the last, like, hour or so speaking with both the League of Cities and Towns and and CSL on this subject matter. So they're very warmed up on the concept, but
[Representative Jed Lipsky]: we would love to hear what you're thinking. Thank you, mister chairman, madam vice chair, and ranking member, chair, committee. For the record, my name is Jed Lipsky. I represent from the Lamoille 1 District. I also serve on the agriculture, food resiliency, and forestry committee. But this bill before you is the briefest bill ever present. And I I wanted to tell you because it has to do with public records act and access to public records. The spirit of my bill is, one, as a, I will say, a fiscally responsible fiduciary of the state and of the citizenry. And by that, I mean, this request is to mitigate what's emerged as a problem for Some agencies were confronted with requests for documents. It has zero to deal with concealing records. It has to do primarily with when for agencies are asked to request if they can get a photocopy of a document and it's one or two pages or 10 pages, they often do that fine, and they may charge per copy. But there is a tactic that one agency that brought this issue to me has faces rather than pay 10¢ or a dollar per copy. They say they would like to photograph it. So they asked for 200 pages. They have to pull that out of the record, put one page at a time down, follow the requestee or requestor lines their camera up or their telephone and copies it, and then the hours click by and there's still 380 pages to go. We have a staffing problem in many agencies that have a lot of responsibilities to the public, to Vermonters, to perform their duties, not a responsibility. And as you know, most agencies have been asked to level fund or cut staffing. So by this request would allow reasonable charge of actual costs under Vermont's public records act. That if they have to dedicate personnel that may spend hours with someone giving them one page at a time, and there are and even thousands of requests that they'd be able to charge a certain appropriate cost for providing this service. So that was the intent. It it was all about trying to recover some cost for staff and nothing more. Are there any questions?
[Chair Matthew Birong]: Hands from the table, representative Morgan. I was just gonna pass on to Rutland. The word of the day is vexatious. It really hasn't been like bouncing around in Annoying requests.
[Representative Jed Lipsky]: I think I understand the concept. Yeah. Yeah. Morgan.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: No. And this conversation has been floating around for some time, at a couple of levels. So, since we were taking testimony earlier today from both the league and from NCSL, we felt it would be good to bring you in as well since this is a very relevant bill to this conversation.
[Representative Jed Lipsky]: I'll ask a question of the committee.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: I would love nothing more representative.
[Representative Jed Lipsky]: The league of cities and towns you said was in here recently. Oh, there I know. Okay. Do they understand the concept of of this bill? Yes. And again, I just wanna underscore it. I am a believer of open meeting law and would enforce it to the end of time and access to public records. But that's there are and I won't if I categorize some of folks as maybe activists or work very hard to disrupt productive, responsible time from public staff intentionally. And I I think that's not a respectful way to interfere with productive administration. No. I think that is a
[Chair Matthew Birong]: great way of framing the problem. Thank you. So, yeah, I thank you for coming down short notice too. So this is something that, you know, we're going to give attention to in the coming months. So just wanted to see your face first and foremost.
[Representative Jed Lipsky]: Still there.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: You know I love and respect our talks.
[Representative Jed Lipsky]: We know. Thank you, mister Churn. Thank you, committee. There's a
[Chair Matthew Birong]: lot of Thank
[Representative Jed Lipsky]: you. Yes.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: Thank you so much.
[Representative Jed Lipsky]: To you.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: Alright. And with that, I think that is the final order of the day. Unless there's anything else from the committee for the moment, we will take got twenty five minutes.