Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: You overstepping. No boundary. Good morning, everyone. Welcome back from the weekend. I hope everybody had a good weekend. It is Tuesday, March 17, a little after 09:30. Our first order of business this morning is we are gonna hear an amendment proposal of amendment, from rep Bartholomew on, h eight four one, an act relating to miscellaneous animal welfare procedures. Representative, good morning. Good morning.

[Representative John Bartholomew]: I am representative John Bartholomew for the record. And, as you said, I have an amendment to age eight forty one. I'm I'm sponsoring this along with representative Nelson. And, we need to be very careful when we consider changes to how we manage rabies vaccination in animals. So this amendment is really focusing on the development of a certified rabies vaccinated program. As a veterinarian myself, I generally support the bill, and I feel that any program that results in a higher rate of effective vaccination of our pets must be a good thing. However, after listening to the bill presentation on Friday, representative Nelson and I were concerned that there might not be enough veterinary input mandated in the bill for the development of this program. Veterinarians generally are the individuals who oversee our animal vaccination efforts, both in domestic animals and wildlife. And veterinarians receive significant training in public health and epidemiology, often more than medical doctors do. I was also very pleased though that this bill had a section on training. So, I mean, obviously training is really important. Properly administering, storing, and recording vaccination is critically important. The bill, as we passed it though on Friday, it it says that the director of animal welfare shall consult with Vermont veterinarians, and we felt that that wasn't specific enough. I met yesterday with the director of animal welfare, Lisa Mylot, and the executive director of the Vermont Veterinary Medical Association. We all met together to talk about this, and we all agreed on some language that we think will make this better. So if you look at the actual amendment, do you have

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: the amendment? We do, it is on our It's

[Representative John Bartholomew]: a strike all of section two, but it really only makes changes under A and C. And this is a section that directs the division of animal welfare to adopt rules to implement the program. So basically what it does under C, you'll see that the wording now is the program, I mean under A, the program shall work collaboratively with the Vermont Veterinary Medical Association for purposes of developing the rules and administering a program. So rather than simply saying shall consult with Vermont veterinarians, it's more a formal role collaborating the VBMA. And then similarly under C, the program shall authorize the division of animal welfare in collaboration with the Vermont Veterinary Medical Association to establish a program to train humane officers as certified rabies vaccinators. The Vermont Veterinary Medical Association is a logical logical choice here because they can identify veterinarians, they have identified veterinarians who are willing to work with a director of animal welfare to develop the program. The VVMA has been around since 1898 and has three sixty member veterinarians, and their goal is to promote animal well-being, public health, through advocacy, education, and outreach. So they're well suited to do this and represent a lot of veterinarians. So it's not an involved bill. I'm going to stop short of saying it's simple. That's basically it. Okay.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Questions for the member? Yes, Representative Waters.

[Representative Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: I just wanted to add that. This is totally great and anything I think that makes. These programs moving forward and helps the director of animal welfare get some clear direction on what's expected of her is fantastic. I'm fully supportive of it.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Okay. As this is on the floor this morning for third reading, and we do have seven of us here. I would like to take a position on this now. So barring any further questions and or commentary, I will call for favorable thumbs. Representative Hooper of Randolph. I'm, like, trying to put my thumb up on the screen. I'm, like, I'm Can I get a digital thumb, sir?

[Unidentified committee member]: It's kind of redundant. Verbal.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Verbal thumb?

[Representative Kathleen James]: Just say yes.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Say yes, Jack. Clock's ticking. I can't see that. You

[Representative Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Jay, we need you to come back with your thumb. There you are.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Just say yes.

[Representative John Bartholomew]: Yes.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Thank you. Alright. That is a favorable thumb of 703. Yep. Go ahead. Thank you, sir. I appreciate your time.

[Representative Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. Thank you.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: You'll be presenting the amendment? Thank you. No problem. Yeah. I assume that with you sitting there, but I was like, I'm just asking all the clarifying questions tonight. Sure. It's all so severe. Alright. Next up, Chair James, how are you?

[Representative Kathleen James]: Good. Thank you for having me.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: It's been a delight we've had you in here, your physical presence. What's on the record, what's off now. In a short period of time, I miss our talks. How are you? Good. Cool. So, yes, we have the amendment on our committee page. For the record, just introduce yourself. And tell us what your proposal is attempting to do.

[Representative Kathleen James]: Great. Yeah. So, I'm representative Kathleen James from Manchester. And, I am proposing an amendment to your, technical corrections bill nine twenty seven. As it turns out, coincidentally, our committee had been talking quite a bit about the Joint Carbon Emissions Reduction Committee over the past couple weeks. We didn't know it existed. And we're surprised to find out that it's around and has statute underlying it. And so we were talking about maybe trying to amend the underlying statute in a slightly more comprehensive way than what your committee is taking a look at. We were going to tinker with the number of meetings and what committees are represented and maybe even think about session law. Like, what do we want this committee to do over the summer and fall? Should they have a report due to the legislature in December? And we just didn't get it across the finish line before crossover. And lo and behold, to our surprise, and it's actually great, there you are with this on the first page of H927. And you did one of the things that we were hoping to do, which was obviously add us as one of the important policy committees. But one of the things that our committee had talked about doing that we would have included if we had advanced a bill was to request that not all members or not all appointees be from the same party on both the house and senate side. I think that was important to a lot of members on my committee, and that is my amendment.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Okay. So just the addition in these two instances of not all from the same political party.

[Representative Kathleen James]: So right now, there's five on House, five on Senate. And it would just put down in writing what often happens in practice. But just to be sure that, you know, not every not all 10 members are from the same party. So there would be one house member and one senate member who are.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Okay. I mean, I find this to be a clear proposal. So any questions from the committee for Chair James?

[VL Coffin IV (Member)]: No, I think it's So

[Unidentified committee member]: you consider this kind of something that was would have been done anyway and just is a natural course of this type of a committee, and that's why it makes sense?

[Representative Kathleen James]: Yeah. I mean, we had a conversation on our committee about how, for all intents and purposes, it would have been really unlikely for the speaker in the pro tem to appoint all Democrats on both sides. I mean, it usually doesn't play out that way, but I think we had some folks that wanted to see it writing, and that's fine by me.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Standard practice may not necessarily be standard practice in the future.

[Representative Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Right.

[VL Coffin IV (Member)]: Rep Coffin. No, I like it because it actually lines up with the way we do other committees. They're not all from the same party, and this just makes it clear in statute. I like it.

[Representative Kathleen James]: I think it's honestly you know, I'm not gonna go into a bunch of details on the floor, but I think it can be particularly important around policy areas that tend to become partisan and polarized, and, you know, climate policy is unfortunately one of those. So let's make sure that we've got more voices as we see.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Heard and understood, Madam Chair.

[Representative Kathleen James]: All righty.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: With that committee, barring any other further questions and or commentary from the table, I will call for favorable thumbs on the amendment.

[Representative John Bartholomew]: Yes.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Thank you, representative. Alright. That is seven zero three favorable. Rep Coffin, please make a note. You will have to speak to that.

[VL Coffin IV (Member)]: Okay. I will walk you through I thought you were gonna introduce it.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: No. She's so we'll run the play. I'll explain the process once we go offline.

[Representative Kathleen James]: I'll stick around for that.

[Matthew Birong (Chair)]: Okay. Madam chair, thank you for your time. Anything else, committee? We got nine minutes to the floor. That was a very, very effective block of time.

[Representative Kathleen James]: Bad. That's all I've been doing.