Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Alright. We're live. Alright, everyone. Thank you, and welcome back. So, final order of business before lunch, we're looking at h eight three excuse me, h three one, an act relating to requiring the secretary of state to include the year of passage in the number assigned to acts of the general assembly. Introductory walkthrough. This was something that representative Coffin put in, and others. So, yeah, please.

[VL Coffin IV (Member)]: Thank you. For the record, representative Coffin, Windsor 2, Gavin News, Rutland, Baltimore. What you have in front of you is page eight thirty one, short form bill. The purpose of it is to put the, include the year of passage with the number of the act so that it would be, say, act one twenty of 2026 or whatever it is going forward. This was brought to me by one of my constituents who was also a former representative, but there's a couple things I'd like to add to it. On bills that we write when they go when they're introduced, because this hit home this weekend, actually, when I had a constituent reach out to me in support of and I proper to say the bill number, in support of s two zero nine and asking me to support it. And then informed me that and I thought, okay. And then informed me that even gun owners are in favor of this and don't like unlawful firearms. And I was confused then as I was looking at s two zero nine of this year, and I was trying to find it. And then another email popped up. Sorry about that. I looked up 209, and then it was misinformation. This is the 209 I want. It was the wrong year. So they gave me testimony to support a bill that had already passed, which turned into act one twenty of 2024. So it creates confusion for people looking things up when, you know, if we're trying to be open with records and making it easier for the public to participate in this process, having the year even on a bill now if the if it was, say, 08/2026, they would know they were looking at the ROM. If they wanna talk to me about something next year, it would be on there 2000 of 2027, whatever it is, whatever the bill number is. So that's was my thought process on it.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Okay. No. And, you know, you and I have discussed it as well well as others. I mean, I signed on to the bill. And so, as a point of just cataloging things, I found it to be a very, very logical step, having run into those scenarios myself and people are trying to search the history of the work here. Mhmm. So Do we have any questions for representative Coffin on this?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I've been thinking about this, and I talked to representative Coffin earlier. To me, I'm not sure, do we need to have the four digit of the year? That would be my first question. To me, would make sense if it was the year dash, the number, for instance, H26 dash, and then you know what the bill number is versus H155 dash 2026. '26 would indicate the year by that you'd know exactly what year to go into first, instead of going through all the bill numbers. I don't know, that's just my librarian chronological theme of

[VL Coffin IV (Member)]: filing. I gave thought to that, if I may respond. And I expect this state to be in existence for the next five hundred years. So we would still run into duplication of numbers. I expect there to be people sitting in this seat in 2126, in 2226. For those of us who are old enough to recall, what was that scenario? Why toothpaste? Thank you.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yes. Well, that was a huge conversation. It's carrying dates over. That was more in a, yes, computer programming format. But, would be using more in favor of the four digit.

[VL Coffin IV (Member)]: Okay. Even when you fill out government forms right now, they want the four digit year.

[Robert Hooper (Member)]: Any

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: other questions for the Coffin? Seeing none? Okay.

[VL Coffin IV (Member)]: Thank you.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Although although

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: a short form, we have counsel on this. Good day, sir.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Good morning. House government operations. Tucker Anderson, Legislative Counsel. You should have in front of you a short form bill introduced by Representative Coffin, H eight thirty one. You heard an excellent introduction to what the bill proposes. So I'll touch on a couple legal pieces here and then answer any questions that you might have. To begin, the bill proposes to amend 3VSA Section 104, which is a statute that delegates authority to the Secretary of State to assign public law numbers to the acts passed by the General Assembly. Currently, that statute delegates to that authority without any mandate as to how numbers are designated for the acts of the General Assembly, so the proposal here is to be specific in the form and format for those public law numbers. Now, the law numbers that are attached to the acts and results of the General Assembly have taken many forms over the course of the state's history. Currently, the form that is taken is that there is a year attached followed by the act number, and if we are in the second year of the biennium, there is a parenthetical at the end that informs you that it is part of the adjourned part of the session, which is how you distinguish between biennial years under the current numbering system. That is not part of any constitutional mandate that I am aware of. That is just the current legal citation form that is used for the Act numbers. Under the formula that Representative Coffin is advancing here, starting in the 2027 and 2028 biennium, the acts would be numbered according to their year and then their sequential order of passage during the session. So you have heard how that would be numbered. That is something that the committee could tinker with. If you move forward with this, you could choose any form or order of the act numbering. Just the final legal note here is that this proposes to start this in the next biennium because we are currently numbering acts that are passing during this session based on what happened last session. And that is all.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: So it seems that the committee seems agreeable that this is a worthy thing to advance conversation on. So the question seems to be floating out there, like, how do we structure how it's laid out in itself. So we're agreeing on the merit, but we need to have a conversation on

[Robert Hooper (Member)]: want it to appear,

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: but search. And then I guess you said it would be moving forward, this would not do anything retroactively to reorganize or reshuffle. Correct? Correct. I I

[VL Coffin IV (Member)]: can't I can't see the time and cost to the secretary of state's office

[Robert Hooper (Member)]: Mhmm.

[VL Coffin IV (Member)]: To backdate everything. Mhmm. But to move forward where it would fix this, make it easier going forward would make more sense to me and add zero impact on cost.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: And for the people. Yes. I couldn't imagine the workload that that would put on the secretary of state's office trying to backdate everything through the years. No. Certainly. I I just wanted to, like, ask the question or speak to it now while we're in, the early phase of this just to get a clear understanding of the intent. And I agree with you. That sounds like a very ominous workload to go retroactively for statute and pre catalog everything. So with that, I guess we'll just say for now, would we like to ask counsel to draft something in a little bit more detail? Yes. Okay. Thank you, counsel. I see you nodding.

[Tucker Anderson (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, I can get that ready for the committee. The one other thing that I would note is that the committee also discussed the bill numbers that are assigned, and that is something that would like likely need coordination with the House Clerk and the Senate Secretary and your counterparts in the Senate because it is the parliamentary offices that number bills. Okay. Understood. Robert Hooper, I just wonder if there's

[Robert Hooper (Member)]: any standard that digital service might share about the date forward or after in terms of search engine kind of garbage that would work better or work worse.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: That's hard as, like, insight, are you saying?

[Robert Hooper (Member)]: Well, it's straightforward. Conformity. If search engines have a tendency to do number and then the year after, and then we group them differently, you'd end up with a group of act 20 and then listing a year behind if you did it one way, and if you did it the other way, you'd get the ear thing first. Yeah. I don't pull. I think it's all the same. Like you would have to know what the floor would fit what year were first in your search.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yeah. So, yeah, those are all questions we can, like, ask and refine. Yes. But for now, we'll we'll get some draft language, and we'll start building on it from there if that's seems to be the inevitable situation. Correct? Alright. Anything else on this for council for for the sponsor? Alright. Thank you, Alright, that wraps up the morning. And so we are gonna go offline. We'll be back after lunch. So we have some guests from the Vermont State Youth Council, and then we're gonna go into more work on the alcohol alcohol omnibus bill. And, we got a good slug of witnesses there. So everyone have a good in production of lunch break. May your beatings be brisk and impactful.