Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Kidding. Oh, Judy. It looks like a crisis. Yeah. Thank you very much. Welcome back to house government operations and military affairs. It is shortly after 1PM on Friday, January 23. We are joined with representative Kimball for two bill introductions. We have h seven zero seven, enact relating to certified public accountant licensure, And then we're gonna take a poke at h six six five, enact relating to recording, indexing, and the duties of town clerks. With that, sir, I guess sort of just give us your ads to why on both bills, and then we'll slide over to counsel.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: Great. Thank you, mister chair. My name is Charlie Kimball. I'm a representative from Woodstock, representing Woodstock, Reading, Plymouth. Representative Mike Markhod will be joining me for the second bill to introduce. I'd like to start with 8,707, which is about licensure for accountants. Does that sound all right? Yes, sir. Okay. So this came to our attention in ways and means brought to us by the Vermont Society of Certified Public Accountants because they are experiencing difficulty in actually hiring accountants for the many needed offices throughout the state. So this is a workforce development bill, if you really will. So it's really trying to adjust the licensure on three different fronts. One is to create a pathway for people to become certified public accounts. It is a little different than it is now. And that is to gain, using a mix of experience and also education. So one is if you have a post baccalaureate degree, and then one year of experience, and you can sit for the CPA exam. The other is if you have a baccalaureate degree and have two years of experience, then you can also sit for the CPA exam. So what that recognizes is that somebody could get into the profession and earn their way to becoming a licensed CPA. The other way is if somebody is a licensed CPA in a different state, with the idea that they would have that mobility to operate in Vermont as long as they had the same requirements or the same qualifications. So anecdotally, I'll tell you I'll share with you that my own accountant, who I use down in Woodstock, has sold her practice because she couldn't find someone to come in and take her practice over. And this is not unique across the state. And that other businesses, even in the captive insurance industry, which is very important in the state of Vermont, have not been able to find accountants to hire. So they've decided they have to be elsewhere. So it is a problem for us. And so that's why I agreed to be a sponsor on this bill. My co sponsor is Carolyn Brannigan, who is married to an accountant with Chittenden, Brannigan, and Sergeant up in Saint Albans. And so that's the bill. Okay.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: I get what you're saying as far as the the the, like, dearth in qualified CPAs right now. I the the kind I use for my business is just a little bit further downstream of the secession planning, but finding younger people in this realm in Vermont to, like, you know, maintain these existing businesses and their client base is definitely a challenge. Yep. I understand where you're coming from on this, so thank you.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: Yep. Accounting used to be boring. So it's just debits and credits. It really isn't. I mean, it's an exciting profession where you get to experience all different kinds of businesses and see what they're doing and try to problem solve, really. There's a lot of consulting that goes on with clients. It could be an exciting profession, there's just not enough people getting into it. So

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: what we'll do is we'll go to any questions for representative Kimball? Sorry, Robert Hooper.

[Rep. Robert Hooper]: You say this is similar to being able to take the bar exam if you haven't gone to law school as long as you like, do the certain classes and like, are there? That's what came to mind. But are there other industries where we do this as well already?

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: It's similar. It's similar because we even have someone in our ranks who studied as a clerk or

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: in

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: a law office in order to get the required time and then for the law exam. So yes, it's similar to that.

[Rep. Robert Hooper]: Yeah. Thinking about where else we can do this, if it becomes something that we do. They

[Unidentified Committee Member]: do match, I believe, licensures for electricians from

[Unidentified Committee Member]: different states. Where we look

[Unidentified Committee Member]: at we already look at that and say, okay, they're safe enough to work here. This is just on a different level of of it, I think, where you're saying an accountant who can do math in Vermont or can do math in New Hampshire should be able to do math. Yeah. I'm being No. No. No. I got it down to the points,

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: but Yeah. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm pretty sure math doesn't change from state to state.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: But the tax laws do, but you're right.

[Tim Dublin, Legislative Counsel]: I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I should say.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yes. That's a, senator Pearson quote from some years ago, Senate Finance.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I was making it sound simple, but I wonder

[Rep. Robert Hooper]: why some professions need a compact and some don't.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: I think that'd be a good question for counsel.

[Rep. Robert Hooper]: Okay, great.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: Yeah. That's beyond my understanding of.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Okay. With that, I guess we'll bring straight up to the review. Okay. Once over on this. And there are there are representatives from the Vermont CPA society that can answer other industry questions. Wonderful. And, we'll do this now and wait for, chair mark. The other bills? Cool. Council, how are we?

[Tim Dublin, Legislative Counsel]: I'm doing pretty well. Thank you very much for having me, committee members. For the record, my name is Tim Dublin, legislative council. For you, you have let's see. Act relating to certified public accountant licensure. And in essence, this basically, expands through various combinations additional combinations of education and or time experience in both sides of the or sorry, two avenues through licensure. One being by examination and the other one being by endorsement Here, and I'll just note initially that we're gonna change the through this bill, if opposes to change some of the terminology that kinda fits under the, by endorsement umbrella there. So the first few changes we'll get through, and if, I'll just kind of run through it section by section here. That's okay? Yes, please. We're going to essentially make some kind of describe as relatively cosmetic changes to the terminology throughout this. So we start off in section one, the definitions. And so we have principal place of business. We remove the term substantial equivalency and replace it with mobility. And just a quick note, we'll get to a whole section on mobility later on. So turning to page two, we have that first umbrella or bucket, licensor by examination. And for references, it's 26 VSA section 71. And so here we have the first modification with qualifications. Really that one of the avenues, to license, sorry, obtaining that license. So here we have just, 71 a reads a license that has a sorry. Excuse me. A license as a certified public accountant shall be granted by the board to any person who, one, is of good character, two, who completes and hears or receives new language, any of the following requirements for education and experience. So they're all gonna be a mixture of those two. A, a post baccalaureate degree from a college or university recognized by the board with a concentration in accounting or an equivalent of one year of experience in public accounting meeting the requirements prescribed by the board rule. P, one hundred and fifty or more semester hours of college credit at a college university recognized by the board, etcetera, etcetera. And this is mostly the same language. However, removing that last sentence there running from line 16 to 18 having to do with other experiences support essentially decides. C, a baccalaureate degree from a college or university recognized by the board with a concentration in accounting or the equivalent of two years experience in public accounting, meeting the requirements prescribed by the board rule. So we have now not one, essentially, a kind of, combination of, education and experience with really three for past. Moving on to the next section, three, and this is kinda towards the bottom of page three. We go into that second bucket and that is the licensure by endorsement here. Now it's good to know that sections three and four having to do with 26 VSA sections, 72 b and 74 c respectively, kind of work together. Essentially, the first just lays out what is a licensure by endorsement, we change again that term substantial equal to comparable. That first section really kind of references, the second one, and that's where we see the meat of the changes there. So this should just be read in tandem there. So section four is going to be retitled from substantial equivalency, because we've struck that throughout the chapter here, that term, and replaced with the term mobility. And this is all just kind of part and parcel of the essentially what is buy endorsement equivalent for licensure. So a, and this is on page four, line eight reads an individual whose principal place of business is not in the state, is not in the state shall, skipping some language, have the privileges and licensure of that state without the need to obtain a license under 72 b, that is examination. If the individual, one, holds a valid license as a certified public account from any state, that's option one. Two, will be combination of passing the exam and that is, has passed the uniform CPA examination and has met any of the sorry. Any one of the following requirements for education, experience, accordance with rules adopted by the board. And here is what they have to combine with that past exam. Successful completion of examination. A, a post baccalaureate degree from a college university with concentration in accounting or equivalent of one year of experience in public accounting. B, one hundred and fifty or more semester hours of college credit at a college university, including a baccalaureate degree and a minimum of forty two semester hours of accounting auditing and related subjects in one year experience in public accounting, or c, baccalaureate degree from a college or university with a concentration in accounting with equivalent in a two year of experience in public accounting. So this will, essentially mirror what we have in '71 a there. And then going on to subsection g here of 74 c, the bottom page five now, we have essentially, provisions that address what we can describe as legacy licensees. So an individual whose principal place of business is not whose principal place of business is not in the state, who holds a valid active license as a certified public account from any state, and who, as of 12/31/2024, has a practice, had practice privileges in the state under the section shall continue to have all the privileges of license in the state, not the need to obtain a license under section 71. This title pursuant to all of the requirements of this chapter. That is meaning the the last bit. They're still subjected to misconduct and everything like that so they can have their licenses stripped away if it's an appropriate time. Disciplinary Yes. Reasons apply. And I should just note, that because this is, essentially a transitionary provision, it could be inserted into session law, but then it's really kind of a matter of where do we think people notice that and rely on it. And so there's an argument to be made, kinda either way, keeping it in statute or moving to session law. It's we're pretty agnostic about that. Understood. Now moving on to just a quick, update of terminology in the renewal provisions in section five. This has to do with section 75. And again, we'll see down here under subdivision c two substituting comparable with a term substantially equivalent. Moving on to the last section, six, effective date on page seven, this act shall take effect on passage. That's it.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Okay. I mean, I guess as far as CPAs go, it's not very dense. So, do we have had to? Any questions for counsel on this first run through? Nope.

[Rep. Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault]: We

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: do have guests here. I'd like to afford them the opportunity to speak. If you'd like to join us at the table for a couple of minutes, just give us your perspective, not to put you on the spot.

[Sadie Fischasser, Executive Director, Vermont Society of CPAs]: No, that's fine. Thank you. I'm Sadie Fischasser from Vermont Society of CPAs, the executive director. We appreciate this bill being considered. It does really recognize that it removes a financial barrier that exists right now for people to sit for the CPA exam and then get their license with that additional bachelor's plus essentially thirty additional hours. So what we'd really like to do is replace that with the opportunity for people to get recognition for their work experience. So we see it as a way to open up the profession to more people, perhaps get them more work based experience that might actually help them be better CPAs in the end, and also helps keep us competitive with states in the region and across the country that are adopting similar guidelines. We would not want Vermont to be at a disadvantage in that way, or for our work force and our potential workforce to be at a disadvantage.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Thank you. We're working on a relevant larger piece right now with OPR as well. So that is a vehicle where this, if we continue to work on it, could theoretically find a home. Any questions for our guest? Alright. Thank you. Alright. That puts us slightly ahead of schedule, which is always nice. And I know rep Marcotte's coming down to I'm gonna interrupt Kimball. I'm going next. Mister chair, I texted him. He has not responded, so he may have

[Tucker Andersen, Legislative Counsel]: he may be waylaid. Okay.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Shall we? Yes. Okay. Let's do it. I think our random Friday waylaid.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: Yes. It no. You never know. So, again, for the record, my name is Charlie Kimball. I'm a representative from Woodstock, Vermont representing Woodstock, Reading, and Plymouth. Before you, mister chair, is a bill h six six five. It is regarding the land records, reporting in land records. It is across 11 different titles within Vermont law. It is a technical corrections bill that is a continuum of bills that we've had over the past, say, seven years, eight years, and trying to bring the land record areas into modernity, if you will. So the the biggest things that are in this bill are changing a lot of the words that are sometimes used in different ways from filing, which sometimes is what you do with the Secretary of State's office, to actually say recording a document instead in the town land records. And then also to lodge in the records, instead to use the word recording in the land records. There's also references to index you will find and also into the general index of the land records. So it's really all about conforming language that's in the land records that this bill intends to do. Much of it was suggested by Tanya Marshall at the Vermont State Archives. And she has been kind of

[Rep. Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault]: a

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: proponent with bringing along some of the town clerk practices and recording documents also and the electronic recording of documents. She's been instrumental in that process. I've been interested in this particular because when I was on the Commerce Committee during the COVID experience when a lot of the town offices were closed, there was no access to town land records, and it really kind of shut down the real estate industry and a lot of different businesses. So it was a matter of commerce at that point.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: This is really trying to just bring everything in line so it would facilitate commerce and consistency across different offices. We actually just had her in yesterday on a different bill. Terrific. And kinda touched on this, work that they're doing to, digitize, get us out of the straight paper world. Yeah. And it

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: was a conscious decision a couple of years ago to use a carrot instead of a stick, and trying to bring along a lot of the different practices of town clerk's offices to use a consistent set of software applications instead of saying, you will use this one. So there were others that would say, no, we want one system to be used, and that was gonna be really hard to do across the entire state. And every town clerk is its own entity. So elected by or appointed by the, representatives or the voters or the town select board. It's

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: you can't force that. No. Definitely cannot. Any feedback, madam clerk?

[Rep. Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault]: No. There's still several perks that I have not done the big digitizing and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it makes sense doing all this changing, because if you don't file it, you record it.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Continuity of language. Do need to shift into a modern interface?

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: It is not earth shaking, earth shattering. It is really just trying to use conforming language. And also there's language in here you'll see where instead of referring to he and her, it refers to the actual position used and that kind of thing in there to make it more conforming to our modern language we're using.

[Tucker Andersen, Legislative Counsel]: Okay. All right. Questions for us, Kimball?

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Seeing no hands. Bridge. Stop. Back to the 4th Floor. You go.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: So you don't wanna talk about any of the bells?

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Back to the 4th Floor. Go.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: Thank you so much.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: A handful more you'd like to discuss.

[Tucker Andersen, Legislative Counsel]: For that

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: one too. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Alright.

[Tim Dublin, Legislative Counsel]: I mean,

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: if you wanna hang out, hang out. If you don't wanna go back to the

[Rep. Robert Hooper]: My shirt is

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Abacus. Counsel. Yes, please.

[Tucker Andersen, Legislative Counsel]: Good afternoon, everyone. Tucker Andersen, legislative counsel. You should have in front of you h six sixty five. I always feel like when I do a walk through of a bill that touches on real property and real property issues like this, that I should be dressed in some sort of, like, eighteenth or seventeenth century garb because so much of Vermont's statutes and just the common law in this area harkens back to hundreds of years ago and a period of time when every single transaction was done in person and reduced to physical paper. In my entire tenure with legislative counsel from the time I was a law clerk to this very moment, there have been consistent efforts within Vermont's statutes and primarily representative Marcotte to address some of the issues that persist in Vermont's statutes related to recording in the municipal land records. H six sixty five within its four corners is very simple to explain. And with your permission, I'll give you an overview and some recommendations for how you might tackle the contents of the bill moving forward. The bill, at its base, attempts to ensure consistent use of terms throughout Vermont statutes wherever there is an instrument that is submitted for recording in the land records or indexing in the general index. The issues that have been identified by stakeholders and representative Kimball mentioned the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration and the state archivist Tanya Marshall. It is my understanding that this was a much broader effort that involved other stakeholders, including the Vermont Bar Association and, town clerks. What was identified is that there was not, in fact, consistent use of language throughout the Vermont statutes. This is one bite of what, I have seen to be potentially six or seven big bites that have to take place in order to ensure not just language consistency, but procedural consistency and potentially in the future modernization in Vermont statutes. That's the high level overview. As representative Kimball pointed out, there's also technical corrections throughout this. That's because the other attorney who worked on this, Cameron Wood and myself, split up all of the sections and then looked at the sub chapters that they were in because while this picking up for consistency sake was taking place, we also wanted to make sure that we wouldn't have too much statutory revision to do over the summer. So anywhere where there were necessary technical corrections in surrounding sections, we made those necessary technical corrections based on the drafting manual and also the directives that legislative council has for statutory revision. As you work do some work with this particular bill, I would suggest that you break it up by subject area, take a look at the instruments that are being recorded, and potentially hear from stakeholders that would be impacted. And the reason that I make those particular recommendations is that if the point is consistency, legislative council is going to make sure that consistent terms are used and that we try to best align those terms with the actual practices in the statute. But we may be missing some real world impact that it has on the, players here. And they may have something to share with you all, about how this will impact their work or the legal rights of property owners, or the duties of the municipal officers that are involved. And also timing of recordings and discoverability of records are crucial to practitioners in this area. And if the technical corrections contained within this bill could have an impact on either one of those for the practitioners in this space, that has outstated downstream impacts, economic impacts, legal impacts for those that are working in space.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: So, yes, focus, diligence, feedback,

[Tucker Andersen, Legislative Counsel]: usability. And, I was not originally booked to do the walkthrough on this. So advanced notice that this particular project or bill is coming up would be useful just because this does cover 11 different titles, lots of different types of reporting, and I would love to be able to adequately advise you on what is happening within each of these sections because they're buttressed, supported, and surrounded by many different areas of law. 11 titles. Yes.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Heard understood. How are you, sir? Oh, he just left you want to offer some words? We're doing a nice separate. Can you give me a definition, please? I would love a definition to work from, please. We have a lot more issues going on. We're going through the executive order of the president. Okay. Godspeed, sir. Yeah.

[Rep. Charlie Kimball]: More info to come.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Chair Marcotte has nothing further to offer. Yes. Represent Pinsonault.

[Rep. Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault]: Been meeting this for some technical changes, his or her was it five years ago or something else, and that bug changed to his or her when all that his, her, he, she, and now we're going back to?

[Tucker Andersen, Legislative Counsel]: Right. So there have been a couple of different standards that have come into play. Originally, most of the statutes used just the pronoun his.

[Rep. Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault]: Oh, okay. Then we had a target.

[Tucker Andersen, Legislative Counsel]: Or him. And then gender neutrality, the directive that our office had was to add or her. And now the modern standards that have come into play over just the last, let's say, two years, gender neutrality under the directive that we have, it's best interpreted as truly neutral, naming the officer and not a gendered pronoun. It's also much clearer if you use the officer's title instead of a pronoun. And I do have a technical correction to flag for the committee in the future using the pronoun it and just how legally impactful a pronoun error can be when you're not specific with nouns and titles?

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: It's a detailed driven committee. Yes. Our prime work for the day. No. And and I totally understand what you're saying about the, like, broad impacts on 11 different titles here. So should we take this up for further consideration, we will definitely be very aware of that with ample time for preparation.

[Tucker Andersen, Legislative Counsel]: And I can send for the committee and the folks at home that are following this bill avidly, a copy of the bill that Cameron and I have highlighted different colors for the types of technical corrections that happen. So there's a color that shows you where the standardization of language is coming into play using recorded and land records or indexing in the general index, or where there are statutory revision technical corrections. And then we've even highlighted a few things where, it's unclear what the correct term should be and further input is necessary in order to understand the context of the use of those terms within the statute. And if and when you want a more comprehensive walkthrough, I'll flag one section of the bill, where the standardization of the language was actually not put in place because it was so ambiguous that we were not certain what is legally appropriate, and it reflected more of a policy decision that was hunted to you all.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: I mean, do love a good color coding.

[Rep. Sandra "Sandy" Pinsonault]: I

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: mean, I grew up with a 32 pack of crayons. They skinnied it down. Mine was 64. They're getting too opaque.

[Tim Dublin, Legislative Counsel]: Redundant colors. Redundant With the sharpener. That

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: was the haves and the have nots.

[Tucker Andersen, Legislative Counsel]: That was awesome. I just had a charcoal break.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Getting into the cast is fun for hard ones. Happy Friday. Anything else for counsel? No? As always, sir, your time. Thank you. Thank you. Very much. It's traveling time. It's greatly appreciated.

[Tucker Andersen, Legislative Counsel]: So that wraps up the week.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Madam ranking, let's stick behind for a moment after we go offline and dial in a agenda finalized agenda for posting. Yep. And then, the rest of folks, have a good weekend. And that's a wrap for the week.

[Rep. Robert Hooper]: Nice work.