Meetings
Transcript: Select text below to play or share a clip
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Alright. We are live. Alright. Welcome back, everyone. We are picking up continued work on h six eighty six, an act relating to expanding identification of certain wanting advertisements. And we are gonna walk through some new language,
[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: based on witness testimony from previous days. And then where you have, one witness to hear from
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Mr. Devlin runs us through the words. Mr. Devlin.
[Tim Devlin (Legislative Counsel)]: Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you very much for having me, committee members. For the record, my name is Tim Devlin, legislative council. You have before you draft 1.1 of a committee amendment coming from this committee to amend House Bill number six eighty six, an act relating to expanding identification of certain lobbying advertisements. There are two changes. All the updated text has been highlighted for reference, and so we have some strikeouts and some additional text here. Just notably, sections one, let's see, sorry, section two a or where we find two sixty four c a that's the original meat of the bill and so we kind of build on either side of that. So starting with section one which will now amend two VSA section two sixty one titled definitions, particular subsection nine lobbying or sorry. The definition of lobby or lobbying. And here it did state that that term means, a, to communicate orally or in writing with any legislator or administrative official for the purpose of influencing legislative or administrative action, etcetera, etcetera. If struck through orally or in writing, and just to leave it broadly to communicate. Then similarly, so we have 9d breaking across the page from one to two. We had another reference to communicate goes only orally. That's been removed, so therefore it would just be generally communicate in every common sense iteration of that term. Now turning to section two, which will amend two VSA two sixty four. Again, we have the underlying bill here in subsection A. Then subsection C, curiously, we have a definition, an additional definition section that's particular only to the statutory section, where we have the terms advertisement and advertising campaign. We'll only be mending, advertisement here, and it will read, see advertisement means a notice or communication, so concerning an additional almost synonymous term, there, and one notably that will kind of make, more uniform, similar terminology in various sections after here. That is by use of the common term communicate. And what had been here before was a advertisement would, be anything that appears in any of the following public media and then it listed certain types, radio, television, newspapers, periodicals, and web websites. And it's important to know that it was limiting the dose. And so what this accomplishes by striking out of the following and then inserting including makes it, those forms of public media will now be included, but it's not limited to. It's not exhaustive for a living. And similarly, we have b where we had, some offered kind of other examples here, which were mass mailings, robotic phone calls, and paid internet communications. But because those weren't necessarily forms of public media, they've been granted their own kind of subcategory here, is essentially a communication, notice of communication, is widely disseminated to the public, including again, so maybe not limited to mass mailings, robotic phone calls, and paid internet communications. So again, we have advertisement means notice of communication that appears in any of the public in any public media including radio, television, newspaper, and or other and other periodicals or websites or something that is widely disseminated to the public including mass mailings, robotic phone calls, and paid internet communications. So it's important to remember that some new category of either public media or some item that is widely disseminated can occur in the future, and it may very well fall under as amended definition.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Any questions? Any questions from the committee? No. So some of this was a result of previous testimony from the next witness we're gonna hear from. They brought some suggestions in, so that's kind of where the refinement came from. There was another component that was a brief discussion with house judiciary, but that didn't wind up really evolving into this piece. So this is sort of the streamline component of the amended language and god. I'm hitting such a big thing right now. We sent a draft of this to the Secretary of State's office to the elections director, And we are either gonna hear directly from him by tomorrow in person or written testimony. So with that, I wanna shift over, unless we have anything for Mr. Devil?
[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: That's the portion. Cool. We're going to shift over to Mr. Walsh.
[Ben Hedgerly Walsh (VPIRG)]: Again, for the record, Ben Hedgerly Walsh with the Vermont Public Interest Research Group. Appreciate you hearing from us a second time and taking into consideration our recommendations. Also just note, we have been working closely with Vermont Conservation Voters, Vermont Natural Resources Council, Lauren Hurl of Vermont Natural Resources Council is out of town right now, so I wasn't able to be here today. Generally speaking, these amendments look great. I'll say, I mean, the edits at the top, or in writing and orally being struck, just to make a communication broadly, is obviously what we were requesting, to be all inclusive and to make sure that it's capturing communication that we might not be thinking about. Ten years ago, we weren't necessarily thinking about video messages. The second piece here, the definitions. I will admit that when we put together our proposed edits, including things like mass mailings in a sentence that started with the phrase public media, felt a little bit clunky. So I actually really like this construct because obviously things that are widely disseminated to the public can fall under the category of advertising. You get mailers all the time asking to buy stuff and that I think would reasonably be considered an advertisement and this much more artfully deals with that. I also think the addition of including makes all the sense in the world. The one thing that I would raise, and I think this is what the chair may have been alluding to a minute ago, is the proposal that we had brought adding and this language is not actually in this draft of the bill, it sort of skips over to VSA two sixty four C. B. It just goes from it's A to C, but that is the reporting that's required as a part of this. If you're doing an advertisement that is a thousand dollars or over And basically the point that we made there before, and I won't belabor it because you were all here when I made the point, is that the phrase right now in law is that it needs to include a brief description And oftentimes the brief description that is included is so vague as to not really allow someone looking at the report to have any idea what is actually being advertised or who is being advertised to or what it's on or what's position of the advertisement or lobbying firm putting it out there is. Our intent with the language that we brought forward, which I can re review if that's helpful, was to provide just a little bit more color. If we had the idea of including bills or issues it's focused on, and then just whether the advertising campaign express advertisement or advertising campaign expresses support of opposition or neutrality on the bills or issues. All that could be done in one sentence. Our hope was that could be done with essentially no edits to the reporting system the Secretary of State's office uses other than maybe a brief edit to the description in the form. I'd also add just two other things and then that's all I have to say about this. One, in looking at lobbying reporting on advertising in other states, there were, I think it was, I reviewed Massachusetts, California, and I would say Washington state, far, far more onerous detailed descriptions and information required in other places. And so our feeling was, and I am not an attorney, but our feeling was if there was a concern about forced speech under the First Amendment that likely would not be triggered by this because of the precedent of many other places doing something much more stringent than this. Yeah, and then the second point is just what I said, that we're trying to make this something that doesn't cost any money for the Secretary of State's office. So I really appreciate you taking into account our feedback on this, and think the bill is better for these edits made to it with or without the addition that I just mentioned.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Any questions for Ben? All right,
[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: thank you for
[Ben Hedgerly Walsh (VPIRG)]: your time, sir. Thank you.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yeah. And so this hard copy is not gonna work. Yes, we do have this up tomorrow morning at eleven for another discussion possible vote, and then have feedback from the elections directed by then. So if any folks have any other questions in and around this one, there is that birth of time till tomorrow morning. Anything else right now? We'll take a break or we'll be coming back for at 03:00.
[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: Yes. When do you when would you like to talk about the Technical Rescue Micro grant program?
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Oh, yeah. I'm sorry.
[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: Yeah, that's okay. I just want to complete my list before I forget it.
[Ben Hedgerly Walsh (VPIRG)]: That was
[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: for inclusion in the bigger bill? Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: And so, yeah, we left that one open ended, or open for for a little while. Didn't folks have time to read that one. I read up on that again. Okay. So I'll do a quick strap hold on that one for inclusion. Alright. I'm seeing what appears to be a plurality of thumbs. Yeah. Rep Morgan? Rep Hooper of Burlington? Yep. Technical assistance? Okay. Wonderful. Alright, folks. Let's take ten until three when we'll come back, and I think we are trying to line up some conversation for 05:19. Thank you very much. We are doing a lot of work.
[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: Yeah, we are. So,
[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: good job, team. Nick, take us off.