Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Ben (unidentified staff/host)]: This is Ben.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: This is

[Unidentified Committee Member]: a Valentine's Day.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Live. Alright, team. We are picking up our last order of business of the day. We are taking a run through amended language on h six seven, our government accountability bill. I don't even know why I have an agenda in front of me anymore. Get papers. We are now, with counsel to review the newest version of this proposed legislation. Counsel. Thank you

[Tim Devlin (Legislative Counsel)]: very much for having me, committee members. For the record, my name is Tim Devlin, legislative counsel. Before you, you have draft 3.2 of a committee amendment coming from this, committee to amend house bill six seven, an act of length of legislative operations and accountability. The I would describe this as an overhaul, and, it's made trademarks or where we had a highly government accountability committee. That is kind of being replaced with, no longer a committee, but fully refashioned as a project to be assigned to the Joint Fiscal Committee. So taking an existing committee and rather than creating a second new committee, we're going to be signing some work to the existing committee already. So the highlighted text here, and there's a lot of it, but you'll notice that it really kind of just pertains to transferring that committee into a project or transforming it, and then keeping what were the kind of duties and power section, kind of reconfiguring them as charges, to be completed by the, our fiscal committee. Those will remain unhighlighted and unchanged from the last time we've done this. And then we have some changes to reporting and then noticeably, consultantemployment and appropriation section at the bottom of the three. So starting from the top, we have, let's see, in two b section two, pilot government accountability project assignment, subsection a, the joint fiscal committee shall, in addition to its other duties described in law and rules, duct a pilot government accountability project to examine governmental practices, make recommendations on improving those practices, and develop effective tools for evaluating government accountability. I should state that second half of that sentence is not moving. Moving on to selection of project issues before the committee. Before, we had a mechanism where it was kind of ideas were shopped around by various committee chairs and brought to house gov ops and senate gov ops and then kind of picked amongst those. This changes it so that the chief fiscal officer, joint fiscal office, in consultation with the speaker of the house, president pro tem, and the leaders of the major political parties in both house and the senate will select issues for the committee's consideration and refer those to the joint fiscal committee on or before 08/01/2026. So really be the Joint Fiscal Officer, putting forward the recommended topics. So then we move on to just change the header of the duties and powers to charge and the charge of the committee. So the committee is charged with completing to the extent feasible project elements as described in this section. And then we have the trying to language previously reviewed. Would the committee like me to go through that or skip over it? Well,

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: I would I was gonna hit the, hold on a second button there to just see if anybody had questions about the new words that were highlighted. And I guess that would my question would then intersect into council's question. Repairs now.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just want to make sure that we're at three point one. Correct?

[Tim Devlin (Legislative Counsel)]: Three point two.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: It refreshed. It's in the dust.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Sounds like the date's wrong. Thank

[Rep. Robert Hooper (Burlington)]: you.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Okay. So, Rob Hooper.

[Rep. Robert Hooper (Burlington)]: Major political parties has a meeting.

[Tim Devlin (Legislative Counsel)]: Does. It's, defined in, title 17 for election law. It would be currently the Republican, Democratic, and Progressive parties. So let's see, let's skip down to the reports, and now we're on top of page four. So we've changed some dates here, on or before 12/15/2026, so this year. And then again on or before 11/15/2027, the committee shall present and submit a written report to this committee and sister committee of the senate, includes any findings on issues examined and recommendations for legislative action. And so just kind of revisiting the timeline, we have JFO will provide the committee with ideas for topics, on or before August 1 year. Then the committee will issue a first report on December 15 year, then a final report on November 15 of the following year. And then we move on to joint fiscal, office consultants and appropriation. And really, I should say it's not exactly, we this will provide JFO the option of either hiring consultants or contracting sorry, contracting, with a consultant before creating a new exempt temporary service position both for two year terms, but it gives them the flexibility and freedom to choose which one would work better. And that, person would be hired or obtained, by JFO to really for the purpose of conducting research and analysis and to provide other supports necessary for the pilot government accountability project. Joint fiscal Joint Fiscal Committee. The appropriation, we see in B, is, let's see, come from the general fund of fiscal year seven for the sum of $150,000 for that project personnel.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: That's it. I

[Tim Devlin (Legislative Counsel)]: have a hand from my bank.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So I don't know if I asked this yesterday or not. I can't remember what draft we saw or where in front of council. Maybe this is more a joint fiscal question, but whether this money live in the budget, seeing as we already submitted our budget letter to appropriations?

[Tim Devlin (Legislative Counsel)]: I would defer to chancellor on

[Katherine Bennington (General Counsel office)]: that question. Please, yes. Katherine Bennington from the General Counsel office. So, I believe the Appropriations Committee is collecting bills like this. And my understanding is they will be taking all the appropriations and putting them into the budget, and it will be a discussion for them about is this a priority for them on this kind of the funds they have? We could all be paid off. That would be very helpful. Is that what you're asking?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yes, thank you. So similarly to what they do with our requests, it's my understanding now that they will also consider these outlined requests that were not previously requested by a committee of jurisdiction. That's correct. And you're not alone. Some of you built it down.

[Katherine Bennington (General Counsel office)]: Okay. Thank

[Unidentified Committee Member]: you. So then I guess my other question is, since we ran into this with some other legislation that we passed a few years ago, maybe it's for the bill sponsors, but this will not create a problem down the line if appropriations doesn't find it. Because we've had other instances where a position is created, but there's no money for it in the appropriations process. And that led to, we can't do what we were charged to do. So, will this not be the same situation?

[Katherine Bennington (General Counsel office)]: My belief is that I have no control over what happens down there. I have had discussions that lead me to believe this is something that's a priority. And I guess we'll see how that plays out. But I've been My understanding is that this is a priority far as appropriations are concerned.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I guess I probably wasn't asking that correctly. Will this This individual would not be hired if there was no money. Correct. So, this work would not go forward. Mostly no money. Okay, thank you. That's all I need.

[Rep. Robert Hooper (Burlington)]: Is that a request for yes. Robert Hooper. Burlington. So, is that a 100% true? No contract position, your office would not do anything to comply with the request?

[Katherine Bennington (General Counsel office)]: That is correct. We have a full load this summer of other studies that we're doing.

[Rep. Robert Hooper (Burlington)]: Generally, having been around state government for a long time, and these studies pop up from here to here, I was not going to support the global aspect that could support this one, but it's $300,000 in these times that could be spent other places. We'll see what comes out of it.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Any other questions?

[Tim Devlin (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Thank you, counsel. Welcome.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: So, I know the committee had time to review this before we sat down, and we've been talking about this bill for

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Years. Yes. Years.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: And the concept for much longer. But given the amount of work that's gone into this, especially in the last two or three weeks, I'm grateful that we have something that's refined and very focused and seems manageable for the folks who have just helped support this work. Thank you to Jeff also for helping guide this process in a way that is an achievable. So, you have a comments?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: No.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Yeah,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I meet the motion that we find a draft number 3.2 of age 67 favorable.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Barring no further discussions. The clerk shall call the roll.

[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: Representative Boyden, yes. Representative Coffin,

[Rep. Robert Hooper (Burlington)]: yes.

[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: Representative Hooper of Randolph? Yes. Representative Hooper of Burlington?

[Rep. Robert Hooper (Burlington)]: Yes. Representative Morgan? Yes.

[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: Representative Nugent? Yes. Representative Pinsonault? Yes. Representative Stone?

[Rep. Mary-Katherine Stone]: Yes. Representative Waters Evans? Yes. Representative Birong?

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

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Eleven-zero-zero.

[Rep. Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Alright, everybody. All I'm going to say about this week is we kicked it off with a budget memo that was robust and extensive. And we I don't even know how many bills we passed. The bills that we bundled into omnibus bills. And I'm just really proud of what we managed to achieve because we do have a big back and we set a goal to get out of this room and we exceeded that. So, well done. Everybody enjoy your break. Do something fun and irresponsible for me with