Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Unidentified committee member]: This is a lot of butter.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Alright. We are live. Alright, everyone. Good morning. It is 10:30 on February. First order of business this morning is page 67, an act related to legislative operations and government accountability. And we have a new proposal of language to review, and we are gonna start off with counsel. Mister Devlin, good morning, sir. How are you?

[Tim Devlin (Legislative Counsel)]: Good morning. Doing well. Thank you very much for having me, committee members. For the record, my name is Tim Devlin, legislative counsel. And you have before you draft 2.2 of a committee bill from this committee, which will be in the format of a strike all. And, again, this is the strike all amendment to the house bill number 67, an act relating to legislative operations, government accountability. So this amendment really, just establishes a pilot government accountability committee, similar to the longevity of, the Summer Government Accountability Committee or Summer GACH only kind of lives twice as long. It does jettison other, kind of elements of the previous bill having to do with auditor accounts, periodic reporting, and let's see what else. And some language about the chief performance officer's annual report as well. So I'll just, go through this, top to bottom. It's too long, but I will because of its property, I figure we go into some of the details about the powers and duties if that's okay with the committee. Okay. So first we have the purpose and finding sections which really actually will be just purpose or remove in findings for next draft because our findings. So the purpose of this act is to advance the principle of government accountability by examining how evidence is used to inform policy, how state laws are implemented, and how legislation may be structured to achieve its intended outcomes. This act seeks to support consistent and transparent accountability practices through simple, clear, independent, objective, fast fact based processes. You should note that, this also removes, two pseudo definitions, from the prior bill that had defined what government accountability meant as well as what government oversight meant. Moving on to establishing the pilot government accountability committee. So section two, we have a, and I should just note this is session law, due to its, ephemeral nature. So we will create, sorry, not we, the bill and as amended will create the pilot government accountability committee to examine government practices and make recommendations on improving those practices and develop effective tools for evaluating government accountability. Membership, now we turn to page two, subsection b. This committee shall be composed of the following five, members. See, and then I should just say we have five plus three. So we break it up into two different categories of members. We have five voting members and then additionally, three nonvoting members putting the total at eight. Of the five voting members, two current members should will come from the house of representatives, not all from the same political party, who shall be appointed by the speaker of the house, then two from the senate, again, not from the same political party, all from the same political party to point it from by the committee on committees and one member who previously served but no longer is a member of the general assembly to be appointed by the governor. Now moving on to the three nonvoting members. Let's see. We have the chief performance officer or designee, the auditor of accounts or designee, and one member related who shall have relevant experience and knowledge in the matters being considered by the committee, to be approved, to be appointed by the governor. And rereading that now, and I think, either inadvertently left out a word or that should probably be misogyny in some way. So just the one member related to what. So we'll take a closer look at that in the next. So then we have, moving on to what the committee will be considering. This is under subsection c, titled selection of issues for committee. The chair of each standing committee in the house of representatives shall submit one recommendation to the chair of the house committee on government operations and military affairs, and the chair of each standing committee in the Senate shall submit one recommendation to the chair of the Senate Committee on Government Operations as to what singular issue should be considered by the pilot government accountability committee. House Committee on the Government Operations and Military Affairs, and the Senate Committee on Government Operations. So each select three from the received recommendations and refer those to the Pilot Government Accountability Committee on or for February. So just to kind of put that in more lay terms, we have a kind of election effort or almost, you know, crowdsourcing of ideas from all the committee chairs in both chambers. They send them to the house and senate gov ops committees, then narrow it down to three in each and will present a total of six to the pilot government accountability committee, and they will pick from there out the one issue that they'll be concentrating for the duration of this committee's existence. We then move on to powers and duties under subsection d here. The committee shall have duties as described in the section. One, the examination of issues selected by committee. The committee shall be empowered to examine, investigate, and otherwise analyze the issues that it selects pursuant to subsection c of this section. And I should state there, I misstated, something previously. It's not necessarily limited to one. This language clearly, contemplates, enables them to select more than wanted. Two, review program performance. The committee shall examine whether state programs initiatives are advancing policy goals and established in statute, sorry, that are established in statute, including consideration of outcome data, implementation, progress, and operational challenges. Three, consideration of evidence and evaluation. The committee shall review available research, independent evaluations, audits, and performance measures relevant to state programs and policies and encourage the use of reliable data and evaluation methods in legislative decision making. Four, identification of effective practices and improvement opportunities. The committee shall highlight approaches that demonstrate positive outcomes, identify barriers to effective implementation, and recommend reasonable opportunities for improvement, coordination, and replication, where appropriate. Five, support for alignment of policy, funding, and outcomes. The committee shall provide information and recommendations that assist the general assembly in aligning appropriations, statutory intent, and measurable results. Sixth, monitoring or follow-up actions. The committee shall, when issuing recommendations, request updates from relevant agencies regarding actions taken or progress made as appropriate. Seven, coordination with existing oversight entities. Committees shall work in consultation with legislative committees of jurisdiction, the state auditor, chief performance officer, and other related entities to avoid duplication to support efficient use of state resources. Eight, surveying of data and data impact. The committee shall survey available state data and documented impacts to better understand implementation, outcomes, and opportunities for improvements. Nine, communication of outcomes. The committee shall consider how and when program outcomes and performance information are communicated, including the audiences receiving such information and the clarity, timeliness, and usefulness of communication for supporting transparency, public understanding, and informed decision making. The tenth, final item, development of evaluation tools. The committee may consider the development or use of appropriate tools and methods to assess program outcomes and performance, including measures that support consistent evaluation, transparency, and informed legislation and administrative decision making. I know those are a lot. I'll just kind of pause there for a second. Susan's saying questions, comments of that nature. Okay.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Seeing no hands.

[Tim Devlin (Legislative Counsel)]: So, moving on to Subsection E, Assistance, and just for reference, we're halfway through page five. The committee shall have the administrative, technical and legal assistance of the Office of Legislative Counsel, Joint Fiscal Office. I should just note here that what was legislative operations has been folded into the Office of Legislative Counsel. F, do the report. Now there are two reports here, essentially one interim and then the one final to be delivered by this committee. On or before 11/15/2027, and then again on or before 11/15/2028. The committee shall present and submit a written report to the house committee on government operations and military affairs, and the senate sister committee that includes any findings on issues examined and detailed description of how the committee fulfilled its duties and any recommendations for legislative action. So essentially this will run its course over two years. At the halfway mark, there shall be a report and second report. Meetings of the committees that are subsection g. Legislative council shall call the first meeting of the committees to occur on or before 03/01/2027. The committee shall select a chair from among its members at its first meeting, and the majority of the voting members shall constitute quorum. And just wanna point out that's of the voting members and it's not necessarily of those present. H, compensation reimbursement. This does contemplate, not only, legislators to be on it, but, other individuals who, one, certainly has to not be a legislator, but who certainly was one prior, but for the public essential. Anyways, attendance during the meeting, it will be compensated pursuant to our regular, mechanism, which is in two BSA section 23, and it's budget for not more than 10 meetings. And also I should include that that says, essentially state employees who are drawing a salary, are compensated beyond what the regular position is. So that would apply to the chief performance officer on their accounts. And then other members of the committee who are members, legislative members that is will be compensated regular scheme, which is under 32 BSA section ten ten, again, 10 meetings. And there's an appropriation of $2,000 in inbate release. And then finally, we have the perspective repeal or sunset of the committee, which states that it will cease to exist on 06/30/2029. So they'll provide that final report 11/15/2028. Roughly six months later they will formally cease to exist. Finally, this effective date actually will take effect on passage. Is everything?

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Okay. Yeah. That's a notable revamp. I just wanna say first and foremost, thank you to reporters Evans and rep Boyden and the other folks that they've been working on or working with, excuse me, for for putting a lot of, like, time and energy and effort into revamping this. First off, thank you for that. Any questions for councilor at all? Alright. And then wanted to afford time to two representatives who worked on this to run through this from their perspective with the changes. Yes. Yeah.

[Tim Devlin (Legislative Counsel)]: Would you like me to stay here?

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Sure. Okay. Yes, please. If you don't mind. We So we've been working on this with Garifano as well, and we have been talking to a lot of different people. So last, if you remember, sort of refresher, last second, we had a different iteration of this. And we had one the biennium before. They were similar. They were similar. So the concerns that we heard from people as we were going and talking to them and the folks in appropriations committee, they were concerned about the fact that there has been a gap, GACCUS Government Accountability Committee. I'm just going to float this slogan out there. The GAC is back. What do you think? I ran it by Rutland already. She seemed amenable.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Remarketing.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. Yeah, or like a tattoo or something. We're just the GAC is back. So we're going to do a song. I don't know. So what we tried to do is address the concerns that people had and the concerns that that folks were having. Heard with them is that we. Don't want to recreate this thing they had before it was eight years, was it that that committee and no disrespect or offense meant to the people who were on it, but I feel like they struggled to actually make it work and not much came out of that. Is that it?

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: That's my understanding. Yeah, right. So it was like winding down as I came in, so I never did.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. And so what we're trying to do is, is learn from what they, where they kind of went, things went awry and make sure that we're not recreating something that already didn't work. But also when we were testifying last year and appropriations, they said, oh, we already tried this and it didn't work. And why would we do it again? So we really tried to construct something that is more. Forward looking, more collaborative with like, you know, the auditor's office, the chief performance officer who we heard from earlier, just in Kenny, like a couple of weeks ago. And for it really to be the legislature checking in on itself. And and trying to come to the point where we're working this accountability and oversight into our own legislation as we move forward, because as much as I think we'd like to think that everything that we do is great and it's going to work and it's going to be awesome that sometimes things don't work and that's okay. But then they tend to linger and we're wasting time and we're wasting money and we're wasting resources on these things. So we tried to wrap up and can talk about how we if you don't mind, talk about how we pared down the committee, maybe some questions that we have, a couple of things we've been trying to figure out and would love some input on just to make sure it's doing what we want it to do, which is hold ourselves accountable.

[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: I would note that the sunset on the committee is a accountability check-in. So we're kind of putting in a measure that we hope also translates to further legislation that gets proposed in the future as well. So that way it forces us to check-in on this committee, check-in on the legislation that we're passing in two years and see, is it doing what we hope it is doing? And do any modifications need to be made? And then maybe the committee ceases to exist or they continue. I hope they continue. But I think some things that we're looking to make adjustments to, or kind of like workshop, are adding definitions of government accountability and government oversight, just to provide the committee with a little more direction to their work. The membership of the committee, like Reporter Evans just mentioned, it should be truly an oversight of the legislature. So we're kind of wiggling on the governor's appointments there and maybe just have only House and Senate members like the past iterations of the bill had, current House and Senate members. I personally like the connection to the Chief Performance Office and the Auditor's Office to just use the resources that they have as well as existing resources that are a little underutilized. And also workshopping the selection of issues for the committee to decide on. Again, we want to provide them with direction, also allow them to figure out what will work best for them.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, and with some of the concerns. That we've heard people say is that they and it's really important to us into the concept, think, not us personally, but just to this as an idea is making sure that it's not political so that nobody thinks that it's going to be a situation because it really should never be a situation where someone's like, I don't like that one particular program and that one particular agency. And I'm going to have see if we can get the government accountability committee to go after and see what they can find out. That's definitely not the intent. So we are trying to make sure that the way the committees who makes up the committee, but also the selection process of how they pick which bills or programs or whatever they're looking at to make sure that it's collaborative and that people are. It would be great if people just volunteered things. Like if committees could choose something to submit to the Government Accountability Committee and say, this is something we'd like for you to look at. We just got a report on this or something like that. But we're if anyone has any ideas about how to make it really fair, impartial, and and covering lots of different aspects of of government, that would be great because we're we're just thinking it through, What I else was different that we did? There's no more subpoena power.

[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: Past generations had a subpoena power.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: There's no appropriation. It's just per diem for the committee.

[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: Yeah, so it's likely that this committee will mostly meet outside of the legislative session. So, that's where the per diem is. I think they have the power to meet during session, but because we're all in so busy, they'll likely just meet outside of session.

[Unidentified committee member]: Just have a question for you both. How are you thinking about the difference between looking at the agency of administration, which does have quite a few metrics that they look at and reports that they collect versus what the legislature is doing. So this is ultimately for the legislature as a communication tool to find out what's going on in state government, or is it trying to check on how we write legislation? I know that's part of what we're wrestling with or what you're wrestling with, too, but just wondering what your thoughts are about that.

[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: I would say it's kind of a combination of both, of looking at what we have put in place and how it is being implemented, kind of forward looking, to then future decisions.

[Unidentified committee member]: Like, how you're crafting legislation and how

[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: things have been successful and how that can further be implemented for future looking.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: It would be nice. So, we were talking about a good She doesn't know this. Yes. Let's be a fun surprise for the director in welfare. But, instance, that would be a good program to start with working some the language into it about what are we hoping to achieve with that program and what's going to happen in two years. We'll check back and say, have we we charged that division with doing X, Y and Z? And have they done it yet? And if they haven't, how can we get there? But like, put us to a point where we're working that into our legislation moving forward. So it's not that we don't want to be duplicative of anything else that's happening in any other department. That's why we have the auditor and the CPL involved, because we want to make sure we're not just doubling up on stuff for the sake of doubling up. And we want to make sure that JFO and Lynch Council don't have a ton of extra work to do on this. A lot of the information that this committee would want, I think it's stuff that JFO is kind of already equipped to provide if we asked for it, it's their job anyway. Does that answer your question? Yeah.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Anything else?

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: If anyone has any ideas or wants to talk about it, you know where to find this right here at this table all the day.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Tuesdays through Fridays. That's right. If I just send you to. Alright. No, I mean, really good work on owning this in this. This looks like it's getting close to being ready. Yeah. Are And you any other questions for the committee members and or council? My next order of business is at eleven, so I was just going to call a brief break until we hit that hour, if that's okay with everyone. Yes. Nick, you shall break until 11AM.