Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Hello, Barbara Smith. Hi. I'm for you. I'm just frustrated. Unwall injections. Oh, we're live. Alright. Welcome back to the House of the Chair's Committee. Before we turn to S-nine, we're going to pick up the amendment to S-one 179 that is Representative Goodnow's amendment. I think it's on the House calendar if people want to see it there. What can you tell us about this amendment that you're reporting tomorrow?

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: S 179, as you all will recall, is the Uniform Disclaimer of Property Interest Act. I don't know if you guys It's all around when you inherit stuff and you want to disclaim it and not have the tax implications? The idea is we're trying to update the law to reflect the reality on the ground right now and also get in line with other states that have uniform acts like this. The amendment that has been proposed would modify section four zero one five, after the word minor, insert the word child, and this just clarifies what we're talking about.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Do you expect us to support that? I

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: believe that, if I can bring up the

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: bill itself, I believe that that is in the section around talking about how you handle disclaiming inheritance of things when you have a minor child who is inheriting something, so you have control over it. And so it's just clarifying that language by including the word child in.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Good job spotting that. You could bring that to the attention.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Yeah. Just kind of do my due diligence as the bill reports.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: I'm curious, but how did it come to be?

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Just the magic of the legislative process.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: There's more story than I have.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Actually, don't know. Someone else got

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: it. Okay. Could be on record.

[Philip Schilling (ACLU of Vermont)]: For the record, I didn't make it. It was not.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So that's it. Any questions about this for Ian? I think we should find it favorable. I take a motion to find it's So moved. That's favorable. Definitely a no.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Can you be the one that

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: want to That's good.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: It's okay.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: All of them. Fine. That principle, like, having to agree with them. Well, that would be something. So all those in favor of finding a favor, please raise your hand.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: You had to think about it.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Coach, are you going to weigh in on this one on a straw poll? All right, ten-one. Ten's nothing. Don't talk to me. Sorry about that. Yes. Yes. Okay. Eleven zero zero.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: 1100.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I think my vote will. Thank

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: you very much.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Alright. Well

[Kevin "Coach" Christie (Ranking Member)]: Seeing seeing it was Ian and all.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So I guess we can just start without Rick and if he gets here because we'll vote. All right. So we're going to pass out the amendment. This is good.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sorry.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I'm gonna pester beans real quick before I spend that.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: What was that one, Richard?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yes. Or something money. Cyclone payments.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: K. Yeah.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Sir?

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Thank you.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Are we live? Yes. We are live.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: Never mind.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: In Louisville walkthrough, I can just mention that by your other not actually language change. Think it's kind of significant changes. I'll just walk through real quickly. And if we have questions, and Rick will get here, we can ask them. So as we discussed when we were discussing this last week, that there was concern about the travel to returning from a number of these locations that really kind of left things really pretty open ended. So this draft has that language only attached to court proceedings where it's per law and then adds schools or educational institutions for the traveling to or returning from. For the rest, it has and this is on page two on line seven. It changes to on the premises of the various locations that we already have in the bill, but then it also adds two additional provisions, which are multiple locations. I can't say it's just one location. One is a building controlled in all or in part by the state or political subdivision of the state in which governmental services are provided to the public. And the second is public library as the term is defined in DSA section 101. Those were added for our consideration and to take testimony on those. Well, we've already had testimony on public library. We haven't had to leave testimony except for some individuals. I think migrant justice, for instance, would talk about some state buildings, specifically DNVs, which would be encompassed in this as a building for which that's protection they would want.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: Yeah, Tom. Traveling to and returning from or staying in?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Just for court proceeding and an educational institution. The rest is on the premises of But do know the Yes. So since the state rents from National Life, this would include all of National Life building, right? Is is it governmental services being provided to the public from National Life?

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Yeah. We've got education is up there.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I think Fish and Wildlife is up there. ANR is up there. Yeah, I mean, Let's was a whole ask Rick what the definition of governmental services being provided.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: He's coming now, by

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: the way. Okay. Yes. Yeah, we can ask for the emergency. Then the other change it makes is to clarify that in line seventeen and eighteen that this is not talking about grocery stores, it's talking about food pantries. I think that's it. And you're sure. I did part of your job by just walking through, but there was a question already. If you could join us.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: Sorry about that.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: You know what?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Appropriations, you

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: need ask questions. Well, you know, the money people, just stick with them.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Good afternoon. Rick Sabol, office of Roeso Council. That's 209. Happy to answer questions or clarify any language.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So I think one question is, Kenneth, why don't you go ahead, Henry? So we rent

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: office space from National Life. Wouldn't this include that basically, whole complex up there because I believe they also own own the other building where Fish and Wildlife is in there and something else is in there too. But I mean, you've got education up there, you got ANR up there, and I think you had a couple other entities up there. And now that I'll go one step further even in the very complex. It's not Park Place, but it's the same thing there. There's different businesses in there.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So we're talking about the building controlled in part by the state, that exceptions?

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: So the

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: way I read it, on the premises of a building controlled in whole or in part by the state or a political subdivision. So yes, I think national life would be an example of a building that's controlled in part by the state. I don't know to what extent that if it's being leased or if it's some other arrangement, but to me, that building would be exempt from civil arrests. Would be exempt? Yes. Meaning it meet this definition, that that building would meet this definition. It's really not.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So what is the definition in which governmental services are provided to the public?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's not defined, So we It's kind of subject to interpretation a little bit. And if we're talking about a building with multiple governments, you mentioned ANR,

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: I'm not sure who's over there, but

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: can the public go in there and meet with a government worker to have something done? Can they go there to pay a bill? Can they go there to talk to somebody about an issue? To me, all those are services the government provides. So, you can be more specific there if you want

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: to clarify.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But it's a pretty broad exemption. In the Senate, when this language was used, the salt shed would come up. And that's one example where government services are not being provided,

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: or like a public bathroom.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That would be an example to me. That's, while it's controlled by the state or a subdivision, a bathroom to me is not a government service being provided. So those are two

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: examples of what this definition would not cover, in my opinion. It can be a follow-up. Don't have follow-up. I just

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: I'll just wait. I mean, it's just controlling too much area.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Karen, Zachary Harvey. Yeah. So I heard what the political subdivision of the state is.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So county, town, municipality, schools, any any entity that is a governmental subdivision, so a creation of of the state. Okay. Yeah.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: At the meeting,

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: where did the language come from, Ryan?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This language specifically, there was a senate bill that had similar language that included bill that I think is introduced. It had similar language, but I'll leave that to the chair to discuss the I just I

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: mean, looking at

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: S two zero nine as it came over from the senate, I just don't recall language, specifically the political subdivision of the state being included. Because it's just a very strange phrasing. So I mean, you said yourself, it's so extraordinarily broad that it just is interesting to me that I just would like to know where the terminology came from because I've never heard it before.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You never heard?

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: I mean, I've heard I I not I'm not I've heard the term before, but I've never seen

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: it in legislation before.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: And so I'm curious, I would like to know where the language came from. Political subdivision. So I don't know who has that answer, but I'd that answer. Yeah.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: My understanding is political subdivision of the state gets at municipalities.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: I understand the intent, but where did it come from?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I think that's just what that language means if we're trying to get because we didn't see this in earlier versions. No, no, no, it's not. And as I discussed last week, I was going to float this language as far as state and municipal buildings, so this is for our consideration.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Your language?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: You can Yeah, call it my language. Working with legislative council, I wouldn't know how to define municipalities, and this is how we define it.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: So you use this a lot, this terminology?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We use a lot. It's used in exemptions, like if you want to exempt state government from something like data privacy, for example. Sometimes that phrase is used to exempt state, local, political subdivision. It's one of those phrases that comes up.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: But you say in regular course of business, you use the term political self. Because it's pretty nuanced. Like you said, it's a very broad application of the term.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't yeah. I don't know how answer that question. I don't know what

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Yes or no? Could we just use municipal buildings? Sure.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: Is that would that make it

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Whatever the committee wants. It's just Open

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: to Yeah. I guess, Scott, the thing that I keep coming back to is, like, it just seems like, if I were to bring this back to the constituents of Cat or the people of Castleton, and they were to read this, they wouldn't I think they, along with many people in the statement, interpret it as almost like a catch 22. Like, it means something, but we're not quite sure, and it seems like someone's trying to take advantage of the law in a roundabout way for a broader application than than should be allowed. And so that's I just I don't like that language. It really is jarring to me. Right. So so if we we can make it state, county, or municipal buildings, we don't really have Something

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: that people can understand.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So if you want to keep it broad, yeah, I think you could say municipal, town, county. Are, it's not as much.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: State attorney's office? Can I add one thing?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Part of my job is to make legal leads easy to read, right? And that's if it's not easy to read, that's one thing. It also needs to be concise and needs to be accurate. So, So if you're all telling me that you want to cover cities, municipalities, counties, well, then the answer is this. That's what you should use. But if you want to be super specific and super not enough exclusive to the word, then you would write out all these specific things that you want to include just in case something that you don't intend to include in the bill is included. And I can come back with what this does include,

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: a list

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of entities, facilities that this type of language would include, if that would be helpful.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Yeah, I I think that'd be Again, you know where I stand on it, but I think for The reality is this is the first time the majority of the room is seeing language. And so it's just helpful to have maybe broader language and how this term can be applied come into the

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: room and then all of

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: us, I mean, it's fine, but I think just assuming that we're all on board with this and that it's capturing the motive or the intent of all 11 of us is not accurate because only I don't know how many people in the committee were consulted on

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: the language, maybe one or two, but it's their legislative intent, not the 11. Well, it's a proposal for the whole committee to move the conversation along. It's legislation at all at this point until we all are public It's draft legislation. Right.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Yeah. Consideration. So if this gets passed, it's legislation that we're considering on the floor. That's legislation.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And I think, and just looking up, I think it's well understood that political subdivision of the state can include city, county, town. But you're right. Think we want to make clear that we're only talking about municipal buildings or state buildings. We don't wanna talk about city buildings or town. I think that this is all inclusive for any kind of subdivision of the state.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: I understand that there's a working definition of what political subdivision might mean. But what I'm saying is that when we bring this back to our constituents around the state, is, I think, it's a very hard term to explain to people in layman's way of, this is what the legislative intent of this bill is looking to accomplish and what it applies to. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I think

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: it is pretty straightforward, but I think we I disagree with you. Yeah, well, it's fine. Ian and then Tom and then Angela.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: So two questions. One, the state office I work in is in an apartment building. So, will rent one floor and then two floors above it, and I think actually a floor below. It's a different business, then the floors above are apartments. Does that mean that it would capture the whole building because part of the building is being used to serve? And I'm assuming that my office would be considered serving public.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, my read of it. Would be all of

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: it, yes. Okay.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: And then my other question was, because we now added the on the premises language, would it make sense to move that language into A as well to maybe remove remaining out and say on the premises of? So, travel to, entering on the premises of Or returning from?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's current language. I would leave that to the committee to, you know, dictate what you wanna do. I don't see I don't see a legal issue with that. Would it be more clear if you put it on the premises of? Something to consider.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Yeah.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Reading it now, now that we have this new language, I'm asking myself, Okay, so on the premises of isn't an A, so what is the difference between on the premises of and any of the items that are in A? And I guess it's really the remaining which is the same as on the premises of. And yeah, that was my only

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: Tom Langelo.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: How about there's all kinds of services out here. I don't understand that, but permission to post office.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Well,

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: federal federal property. Oh.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Don't How about court?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Federal court? Well, court proceeding. Court proceeding, but

[Philip Schilling (ACLU of Vermont)]: You want me

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: answer I'm in a post office. I think I would be using just as much as any other.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You could put it in the statute, but I would warn the committee that this would likely be not enforceable because it's federal property.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I think you do that. I agree. Well, that's cool. Yeah. Well, can

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: I just help on that?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Okay, go ahead. Yeah. Because a lot

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: of post offices are not on federal property. They're rented individual buildings. That's not going to follow.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So if it's a federal post office owned by a private entity Yeah. Is that the situation? Yep. So they would not meet an exception in this current list anyway, I guess. If they're they're not owned by the state, right, or a total subdivision, they're not a social services establishment, they're not educational institution. So I think that would not affect this law.

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: I won't overstep right now, but I'll just say this. Lawyers are gonna have fun with that one, or the core system will be overloaded with that one.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Angela? So I was just going back to the question of the language of political subdivision of the state. I'm just looking up. FEMA uses it. Legal Information Institute at Cornell uses it. I think it seems to be a pretty established term, not something that's just unique to Vermont statute or this particular view.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Is that fair to say?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, to the committee to determine. I mean, really, it's y'all's bill, and if it's not clear, let's make it clear.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Right. So if it's I'm just thinking if it's not if we were I would be in favor of keeping the language as is just because it's a it's a We encounter words that we don't know until we encounter them all the time, and then we learn them and we can explain them. So I don't think changing something to try to say what those two words say makes a lot of sense. And if we are going to do that, then we need to have Obviously, we need to have a discussion about naming exactly what we want to have included and not included. So that's just an important part of that conversation.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So that language is intentionally very broad, that's why we wanted to also testimony on whether that makes sense. And that's why I reached out to VGS and AHS and the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. AHS has said they are not gonna testify and suggested VGS, Laura Minoli, not available, has written testimony which is posted. And I'm gonna read that onto the record while we're done with Rick, and then we're gonna hear about consent, May I think, for the Vermont League of Susan Collins. So, yeah, Karen.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Just a comment on it, because I feel like it's also worth talking about the process of this. And I just want to say for me, this is the process that I'm very comfortable with, and I feel like is a normal part of it, is that we have we designate some people as drafts, like, to put some new language in and that we respond to. And so I don't take any, like, intention of what somebody was trying to do with it. I see it as something to respond to, and I personally appreciate having something to react to than us as a group starting from scratch. So I just don't attach any, like, what was the hidden meaning to it? But I do think it is an opportunity for us too, if we question something, yeah, that's where we should call it out and say, I think that this word could work better or whatever. That's for us to work out. But I just wanna put out there that I appreciate when we do it because I feel like it's a very efficient process.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah. And we had a discussion last week to determine what should be put into this draft. This is a result of it. Any other questions for me? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what Kenny said. I didn't totally understand your answer, but a rented post office would be considered government or

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Not under this bill, government. So in this bill, it's state government or political subdivision, which filters down from the state. So it doesn't go up. It just filters down. So federal a federal post office on private property doesn't meet any of these exemptions for civil arrest. Okay, and

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I don't know, just food for thought. Some, you know, I'll use the, what's the building up on the hill? National life. National life, do a blanket. It seems like we should have some language in there that separates out government offices from private business somehow, just to encompass, well, perfect example, another example is where Ian's offices are, where they happen to have one floor, but So what if you got a 20 story apartment building and there's one office in there that's a government office, so the other 20 stories and under whatever apartments are covered on you, that just doesn't seem right to

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: me.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: It just seems like the offices that are rented out or leased out government entities should be the only ones covered in the building. Karen Dolan?

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Yeah, I was just

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: going say, I don't know who it be, maybe it is BGS that would have that, but I feel like that's going to be standard language that we must have when we contract or negotiate with entities to rent their space or use their space, of like, you need to meet these certain terms. We'll meet these terms. So I feel like that's something that's probably already baked into how we do it and so we could hear whoever that is of how do you how does the state rent space from people? And I'm guessing this would just be another line in the contract. If you want us to use your space, you need to follow this.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Could be. Yeah. Ask Karen. So

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: just for starters, I'm looking at somewhere, doesn't it say building? Doesn't this the majority of this bill say in a in a in a building, not just like on page two, line eight, building controlled in whole or part by the state or a political subdivision of the state which government services are provided. So again, that national life and whatever it is in Barrie, but I'm gonna go one step further. It's also the apartments and the other buildings, like we have that,

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: all those buildings that are under control by

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: that is government subsidized or government downstreet, like down street, all those places for housing. The apartment building in Bay Area, can't think I can't think of that name either. But I think here's two of them. You've got the place right across from the old Sears building on the very Montpelier Road, right at the bottom of the hospital, what I call Hospital Hill. You've got the new Fox Run apartments, where there's all kinds of problems already there. I assume that some of the hotels that are still being used, we're we're having all kinds of of of issues with with with people that are there. You can't do anything there, which is a very dangerous area. I had another place that that just escaped escaped my mind. I mean, there's a whole pile of them. I mean

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Perfect. Oh,

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Well, any low income subsidized private housing, you couldn't do anything with that?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I think the way so BI is what we're on Line 8 building, which I think were determined that could be problematic, controlled in full or part by the state or a political subdivision of the state, and then in which government services are provided to the public. That I think may limit that exception to housing that is either government subsidized or government provided. Is there a service being provided to the public in those buildings? Whether they're houses, whether they're apartments, whether they're commercial spaces. I don't think that would be that definition. Not necessarily, but Happy to hear from witnesses, yes. Or in the field, who now?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: The service could be that it's housing. So there's some ambiguity there as well. Zachary Harvey, Coach.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: He's almost a slightly dead horse. There are several post offices on state land. State owned land.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah. This doesn't go to state owned land. Or properties. I mean, it's a small town sharing. That would be a governmental entity. Right? It wouldn't quote It wouldn't under that one?

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: I think it only I'm sorry. I think the only place where it could get weird would be if you were in a building where there were state entities providing services to the public and federal entities providing services.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't know. So if it's a federal post office in a state owned building, it doesn't say state government services. It just says government services.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: No. So if it was a building where you had a post office on one floor, but then also the DMV,

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: the

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: state DMV was on the same floor. Assume that might get

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: But a town hall does state services too.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: It's like a

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: post office Licenses,

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: kind of stuff like that.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: So a town hall that also has They do registrations. It also has a post office in it? Yep.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: You comment on that or

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's just gonna be helpful to know what the committee wants to do. Like, if you tell me

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: what you wanna do, I I

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: know word it. That's where we'd probably

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: need some witnesses, but go ahead. Yeah. That would be So

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: I I think my concern is also on just the building ownership component of all of this. And so I have a slightly different scenario where it's so I guess let me take a step back. In the last time that we took a a testimony on this bill, we had heard from witnesses that this bill could create the provisions or the situations where people could seek asylum or sanctuary within some of these facilities. There was no time limit. And that was one of the questions I'd asked about, I think it was a pastor or a reverend or somebody, a nondenominational pastor or reverend, that was saying that, like in the Catholic faith, where you have devotionals that can last between twelve hours, twenty four hours, forty eight hours. That's fairly common stance. So my question for them was looking at the length of somebody being in your facility, on whether it's a parish or an office building, should that have a timeline? And their statement was, Some people see this island for up to two years and they don't leave the building at all. So I come back to, if there is a building, and I'm sure there is in the state of Vermont, where a state office is renting from a private landowner or and again, going back to the post office example, if there's offices or rental space above that post office, wouldn't they if people were staying in that facility or office or whatever it might be for an undetermined amount of time, wouldn't they have to have the consent of the landowner or the property owner to allow that? Because I can I can personally think, and I'll just I'll give you a second to to think about that where I can process it, but I can think of a number of landowners and property owners in the state of Vermont that would say, I really don't wanna have they don't wanna have anything to do with this? Like, you can come in for your services, but you're not staying here for an undetermined amount of time. This we're not providing sanctuary. This is not a sanctuary bill. So consent

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to do what? I guess

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: if I For individuals seeking sanctuary or asylum in these buildings to stay there for an indeterminate amount of time.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the bill doesn't give a person the right just to come into a building and stay there. Right? But it doesn't Places close. Hours of operation close. So someone just go into a building and basically I don't know the phrase for this, but Seeking asylum? No. Like, I'm thinking of, basically, you are someone trespassing because you've been asked to leave and you don't. Right? So now you have this this this does not protect trespassing or give someone a right to just camp in a place and never leave.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: But here's the thing. So let me jump in for a second. So I think I agree with you. It does not provide that protection, but there I think there is a distinction between the tenant and what their goals might be and the landowner themselves, the property owner themselves. So that's what I'm questioning, is if there's a divergence between what the tenant wants so for example, if I'm services XYZ, and I'm allowing people to stay in my facility, we are twenty fourseven, three sixty five. But the landowner, the property owner is saying, no. That's not what the intent of this is, and we're not gonna allow it. So what happens in that divergence?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So a landowner of one of these things,

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: I Let me say this. Let's go back to the post office example.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Right?

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Or or a state the state office. State employees are saying, you know what? We're gonna stay here until the cows come home 247365. You have every right to stay in this building. The landowner, which owns the building where the state office is is rendering services, says, absolutely not. That's not what that that's not what we signed up for here. So I think there needs to be a consent provision in this bill to say if land owner or the property owner does not consent to the practices of the tenant themselves, they have some kind of recourse.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Probably outside the scope of my knowledge, but

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: I I But it's not unreasonable to think that. Because I I can tell you I know a lot of people I know are in the real estate business in the state, and I can tell you a lot of them would have real reservations about this and saying, This is not what I signed up for. And it's one thing. If you're a standalone library or if one of these educational institutions, and I think even a school, we're probably stretching the limits here because I can't imagine there's gonna be faculty staying 20 fourseven in a school to protect people or to shelter them. But I think, again, this goes back to the scope and how broad this legislation has been crafted. I have a lot of concerns. Coach, let me.

[Kevin "Coach" Christie (Ranking Member)]: We have a situation in Hartford with the Briggs Hotel where the state's attorney's office rents an entire floor of the hotel. You know, I I forget. Ian, do you recall how many office spaces maybe 12,

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: know, if not

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: more. Don't read there anymore, coach.

[Kevin "Coach" Christie (Ranking Member)]: No. No. No. I mean, they used to. Okay? And during that time, you know, they're an example of a building that's not owned by the state, but leased by the state to provide the service. So let's let's say someone else, you know, a different office, you know, went in. You know, let's say natural resources, you know, because of the PCB work that's being done, decides to regionalize and move, you know, into Windsor County and need space. That's a possibility because they, you know, they're a long standing you know, customer of the state of Vermont, you know. So I could see where they would be interested in, you know, doing business with them. You know, the quest when when we when we spoke about when we spoke about this, you know, before, you know, we had, you know, we had some similar discussions around, you know, like, you know, how broad, you know, some of these statements are, you know, unless we detail, you know, there was the definition. Did Alice give us any input on this? No.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Just just food. Just food for thought. Ian, will they care?

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: So I think on Zach's question, the one thing I just wanted to make sure I understand is that this is all around a prohibition for civil arrests without a judicial warrant. And so, the moment someone gets a judicial warrant, none of these protections are in place. Correct. And so, someone could be there for a period of hours in one of these protected places. They could be there for a period of hours when someone does not have the judicial warrant. They could go get the judicial warrant, then they could return to the place, and then they could enter and proceed with the civil arrest. It wouldn't be a civil arrest, though. I'm sorry. It it would be I don't know

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: what the right Criminal arrest. Yeah.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: It wouldn't be it. Depends what the warrant is for.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: We don't have any civil violation to which we get for a

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: criminal violation. That's why I said probably be a criminal. It would be a warrant for a trespassing. It would be some type of

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: It would be

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: a federal civil

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: If

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: an immigration, they already have the administrative law, right, which are civil warrants. If it's a person that is otherwise violating law, then you would get a criminal judicial warrant.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Okay. That was my So either way, basically, someone wants to get them. They don't have a warrant. They're protected under this. The moment they go and they get a judicial warrant, they can now enter. And I guess my other

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: question

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: was, are we able to sort of skin the grape on B1 to just sort of narrow it to say a portion of a building where these services are? Could it be as easy as that? So that you're basically just saying, yeah, it's an apartment building. Has, like Coach's example, it's got offices in one part of the building. If you're in that part of the building, then this protection is effective and not the rest.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Not to sound like a broken record, but whatever you tell me to do, I I will I will advise you that this is maybe not legally sound or not. Okay. Yeah. If that's what you wanna do, then, yeah, of course.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Okay. And

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: mine's related to this. It's on Tom, Zach. I'm just wondering, like, we can go out on all these different possibilities, which I think is important for us to do, but I also want to hear from witnesses on this. So I don't know if, for that sake, we just focus on, like, state owned buildings and just think about that as our population for right now to hear. But I feel like we do have to explore all of those, but we could do all those what ifs for days. Mhmm. So if we just think about state owned buildings for right now, then we can hear from folks, so that could be helpful.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: I'm just trying to go back to

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: the marketing for one second.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: I'm a little bit confused. You have a federal immigration civil warrant or a warrant for a civil offense, how did how do you get a criminal warrant for a civil offense? Confused.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: So you did another behavior by trespassing.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, that was my point, that if you are, the question from my good now was that if you are pulled up into place and not leaving, at some point

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: you may be violating another

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: law in Vermont that would allow for a. It's

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: not gonna be the local police looking for that. It would be the federal government. They're not gonna be having the authority to arrest somebody for a local or state violation. I'm not following.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: But if you call the police, be like, this person is trespassing.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: How did they get a warrant for the gentleman on Dorsham Street? There was no other violation there in which the federal government went up.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So there are there are there are federal immigration criminal laws.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: Right. I understand. Remaining is a civil violation crossing the illegals, criminal violation. So if they're arresting people on a civil violation, on a warrant, there must be a warrant for a civil violation. They went and got a warrant for a civil violation. Vermont has warrants for civil violations, but we don't arrest solely on the civil violation. We only do it with a warrant or an order.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I guess, again, Brett Goodnow's example is, let's say someone is holed up in

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: a place where they have protection from civil arrest,

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and at some point, the person not leaving. So now, at this point, they are trespassing, subject to arrest by Vermont police. Mhmm. So the landowner can call the Vermont police like, hey. This person's not leaving. Please remove them. And they get a warrant for the arrest of the person at the address. Vermont police? Vermont police. Right.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: But I can't cooperate with federal.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's right. I don't know. Outside the scope of this this example.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: I think the whole point is to be able to let them do their thing. We're not involved in it at all. We can't cooperate.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I I I guess Well, so the person would be we're

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: forcing them to stay, and then they get arrested by the Vermont police, which is kind of contrary. The person's gonna get arrested.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Just to I wasn't I I kinda I wasn't really seeking to clarify between state and federal. It was just more that in the federal immigration situation too, that individuals in a place that is protected under this, the federal immigration officers could go and get a judicial warrant. I don't actually yes. I don't know if it's I'm assuming it's civil because it's That

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: would be helpful to know.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Well, in this my this just example that I'm trying to understand, it doesn't really matter. I'm just saying

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: that But I mean,

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Burditt or Thomas Oliver)]: it would be helpful for this group collectively to Sure.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: I I don't I don't

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: think it matters. It's a or criminal warrant. Either way, it's a judicial warrant. They go in, they

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: get the warrant, and then

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: they can go into the place and get the person. That's kinda what I

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: was just seeking to clarify. Could could you look into whether there's a such a thing as a civil judicial warrant that that could be obtained in those scenarios?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: By federal

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: By a federal official. Yeah.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Oh, you had a couple witnesses here too that may know about this, but I I think it's very fact specific as to what's going on in this person's case, whether or not

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: they can get the type of warrant.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Because the INA mostly is administrative.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Right. So, Notch.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Zach. So Rick, going back to one of the points that you made about being our collective attorney and advising on the legality of the legislation or the draft legislation, since they just called out for that related draft legislation. I'm curious if you had any legal concerns about the language that we have in front of us. Did you present any legal concerns to those that you worked with on the drafting of this?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's confidential. But I can

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Well, no. I'm asking now. Like, where are all your clients in this room?

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: So I'm asking right now, do

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: you have any legal concerns about this language? Like in general? I mean, Rick, I always feel like you're maybe being a little bit antagonistic with me. I'm just asking blanche I'm just asking for on all six pages

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: of this. Just one second. He's not being antagonistic, so please don't suggest that of legislative council. They're trying to understand what we're trying to get done here. So please treat our legislative council over the past.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: I always do, Chair. That is not true. I expect you're not gonna cast aspersions against me in front of a room. That's just not called for. That's inappropriate.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I do not want you

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: to be But don't cast aspersions that I don't treat Legis Council with respect. I'm just asking a question.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I just

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Maybe we're gonna phone it in, but I don't appreciate you passing judgment on my character in front of a room full of people. I just find that really unprofessional.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Well, I'm glad that you do. That's funny. Well, you answered question.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: I think that's really rude. Ask your questions in in Mike. Or in the mail, please.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Is it one person's beget attack? This is

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: I'm trying to implement your a question, please.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: I'm trying so all I'm asking is on any of the six pages in front of us, Rick, do you have any legal concerns that you would advise us?

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So and the reason I yes. And the reason I asked you the question is because I need to have a little bit of a narrow focus because it's a fairly complex bill as far as what's going on. I didn't know if you were referring to something specific that you wanted me to get into. All of it. I cannot get into competent communications with other clients. However, I have told this committee that this would be the first in the country to have this broad of a civil arrest exemption. You have New York, which has most states do have courthouses now. Not most states, a few states do have courthouse civil arrest protections, which is also commonly common law protected. New York has their courtrooms and their state facilities are protected from civil arrest, but there's not been this test of whether a state can protect other buildings, facilities, churches, schools, from a similar civil arrest. So not that it's necessarily problematic, but it's new. And it is a test of a state's ability to regulate the federal government. And it's not limitless. There are limits to what the state government can do. However, you do have the tenth amendment, which gives the state the reserve powers, police powers. So that's my main concern with the bill. I had concerns with the Senate Committee about the DOC. The DOC is a state building. So people that are detained at DOC, I saw that as problematic. Can you expand on that? Why? Sure. Because the bill would limit the ability of civil arrest at a building controlled by the state. And my testimony was if someone is detained, let's say you you arrest somebody civilly and they're held temporarily even at a Department of Correction facility, is that problematic? But the DOC Council came in and told the Senate that she did not think it was problematic. But I still have reservations about that. So those are my main concerns. It's really the interplay between the state government authority to regulate the federal government's actions of the state.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Thank you. That's all I was up to. Simple. Any other questions for Rick?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: All right, so I'm gonna change the order just a little bit. I'd like to hear from Samantha next. You prepared to Sure. Because of getting right into the buildings question, and I want you to wait. Oh, before Rick. Rick, it was kind of brought up, and I don't know if anything was decided on potentially getting some language to split an apartment building, so to speak, into language that only the government offices could be included in that. Yeah, this language definitely has the problems. And Ian trying to cross that and I was going to bring it up anyway. And then Karen brought up just state buildings, which when this first started coming around, that's what I heard. I heard state buildings. And in my mind, state buildings did not go into the whole National Life building or in a building like that where the state partially leases or rents. And I am going to guess most people when they heard state building, they thought of a place like this that is 100% a state building. I appreciated what Karen brought up. You know, potentially just including state buildings and this and not that, not as broad as what the language is right now. And I realize this is all up for discussion, know, that it's put in there for discussion at this point, but my discussion part. Yeah, no, appreciate that. All right, Smith.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: Thank you.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Thank you for being here.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Seems like really tall people have been sitting here. Hi. For the record, my name is Samantha Sheehan. I'm the municipal policy and advocacy specialist for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. And I'm happy to talk today about this proposed amendment. I guess maybe where I'd like to begin is that VLCT does not have a position on the core intent of the bill relating to civil arrests in public places. That's not in our municipal policies adopted for 2025 and 2026. We have some experience in discussing legislation and other policies related to sensitive spaces that include municipal buildings and lands, in part because the LCT does have an insulcet of policy priorities for this session, support for a ban on firearms in municipal buildings. And so for that reason, hopefully, we could help answer some of the questions you were just discussing and maybe present sort of potential other concerns. So I guess when we assess the bill and the amendment, our top concern is that in the delivery of municipal government, unfortunately, there are sometimes instances where a person, including a constituent of that municipality, conducts threatening or harassing behavior or behavior that is vexing or interrupts the ability of local government to proceed and to function. And when this happens, the opportunity for a municipality to have recourse or resolution is pretty narrow because state government, have to follow Public Records Act and have to follow open meeting law. And because these are spaces that are created, intended, and managed for the public, these are public buildings that exist for the public's use. And so when a person is behaving in these ways, it can be complex to understand how to approach and resolve that. So two of the ways that that can be managed is through trespass order And also through some changes that we were successful in advocating for last year and were made by the legislature and signed by the governor in Act 51, that it made changes to the definition of disorderly conduct to include behaviors that could happen at a meeting of a public body, including that are repetitive in nature or cause the meeting to be concluded early before business is conducted. So we looked at those, discussed that, and are able to say that this bill and this amendment language would not get in the way of those two really important tools that municipal government uses to keep public spaces and public meetings accessible to everyone who needs to use them. So those are criminal, and this only would be relating to civil. And so we were able to sort that out. I guess I'll stop there if there's I'll pause for a second. It seems like there's no questions. Okay. Guess then we'll get into what's a building and what's a service. And actually, what's a municipality? Maybe we'll start there. So as for the language political subdivision of the state, we do commonly use that language. It does exist in other areas of Title 24, Title 24 being the part of the Green Book that municipalities derive most of their authorities' obligations and exemptions and preemptions in. A reason to use it as opposed to another way to describe municipalities is because in Vermont law, a municipality is a city, town, or village. It is also other things, schools, municipal union districts. So that includes some or all of the solid waste districts, the communication union districts. So like EC Fiber is mine that services my house. EC Fiber is a municipality. So for something like this where your intent may be more narrow in like So let's say the intent of this bill is to make sure that if someone's going to pay their property tax bill, they can without being subject to civil arrest and they pay their property tax bill in their town office. But if you just say a municipal building, that would also include dozens of transfer stations legally.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I mean, would an office for a supervisory union be considered municipality?

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: I don't know if a supervisory union is a municipality. I know the school districts are. I'm really not trying to be rude. I know this because in our work on the tort liability claim and the municipal monetary cap, that would extend to all schools. So all school buildings, because all school districts are municipality. And it's a really common concern that we share with the districts. Supervisory unions, that's just not my area of expertise.

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And the reason I asked, I look at the

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: front one. And the supervisory union rents a space in the small plaza that's in town.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Yeah.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So if that was included, that would mean the whole plaza with this language would

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: be I mean, many school district business offices do. Many municipalities, even if by municipality so I'll just say city, like the city of Burlington, the city of Rutland, they own lots of things. They could own brownfields. They own police stations. They own parks and playgrounds and skate parks. They own waterfronts. The list of public facilities goes on and on. They could own a sugar shack in a working municipal forest. Municipalities in Vermont own so much stuff that is largely available to the public, but also could be used for many different other uses. So my town is very small. The municipality only owns two buildings. But in those buildings, that is where food distribution happens for the food shelf. It's also where dance classes happen. It's where social groups rent and control. There could be a kid's birthday party in there. There could also be, last week we made a rabies vaccination clinic. It is a place that the municipality owns that is used for all sorts of things every day. And even our town offices are also the library. It's one building. It's one front door. It's one wheelchair ramp. It's one parking lot. So I guess to get to a solution, not just to make it sound really complicated, it is really complicated. But I think for your purposes, what I would consider to narrow that scope is and, and, and. So the municipality or whatever, the unit of government that you decide, state, local, whatever, And it's a building, and it's a place where government services is provided. And if all three are met, and then maybe even you say and controlled and whole. Because there are also, of course, you've identified some. Many post offices are in buildings owned by the municipality. Many. There's a long, proud history of partnership between the little towns and our big federal delegation to get those to happen. But if you're saying and, and, and, so if it's a municipally owned building and it's a place where municipal services are provided and it is controlled in full, then you're narrowing that scope. This is for you to work through and to listen to legislative counsel. But I I guess I'll just point out, or I could even maybe try to come up with examples. Because of the complexity of using municipality of what you mean is a city or town or using municipality of what you mean is a communication union district or a school district, you could just do something like, is defined in this sub I have to check that every day when someone's like, is this a bill you wanna testify on? Or is this a change we can support? Whatever. It's as defined in this subsection, and then it'll say city, town, village.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Yeah. Angela, I'm gonna mute. So I think just to make sure I understand what you're saying. So essentially, we're just needing include a proxy reference to somewhere in statute where this is already where it's already limited to whatever we're going limit to, but

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: these cities, towns. I guess what I'm saying is it's important to do that. Because if you just say municipal, it's a whole bunch of stuff that you might not need to loop in. And I guess from the league's perspective, when we discuss rules that apply to sensitive spaces, acknowledging that municipal buildings, such as town halls, town clerks, treasurer offices, polling places are a sensitive space, that it be specific to the building because it just gets much more difficult to explain to the public, interpret as a municipal volunteer, which is mostly who runs municipal government in Vermont. If we're talking about my town, the town of Hancock, the library and the clerk's office are in one building. That's where most public meetings are held. It's where marriages happen and records are filed and dog license fees are paid for. But there's a parking lot and there's a playground and there's a field and there's a wetland and you can get to the river. And so if I'm a member of the public, where am I going to or going from that I'm on the municipal property? And it's quite big. It's something like 13 acres. It's more clear if you specify it to the building where the service is rendered. So that's the clerk's office in the building. Yes. Would it satisfy

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: the suggestion you're making, page eight I'm sorry, line eight, page two, where it says, on the premises of a building, so it's at the building controlled in whole if we

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: took out foreign art would say so.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: By the state or a political subdivision of the state in which governmental services are provided. So that that those three lines contain all it would require all three of those things. Mhmm. Is that how you read it as well?

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: That's how I read it as well. I'm totally shooting off the cuff. You might want to say or office.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Building or office?

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Yeah. Because I'm thinking of Cherry Street, state owned building in Burlington, where a number of government services are applied by more than one type of agency or political subdivision in the state, as well as other. I mean, it's it's it's like, what are you going for? But from the municipal perspective, like I said, like, we own parking lots. We own brownfields. We own gravel pits. We own salt sheds. Like, does this are you trying to get salt shed in here? Because a municipal building is a salt shed. Not

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: necessarily providing government service. Services to the public.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: That's the

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Or could anybody go get salt through the salt shed? Sure it is. Yeah, full chance.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: They paid for it.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: How's the Great thing, yes.

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: But salt's going to the public. I mean, it's been used for public good. Mean, you can skirt all around that too. Mean

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: We leave a pile right outside for people to come and get

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: it. Exactly.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: All ideas. Yeah, I think that that is very helpful that maybe the services are provided to the public is too broad and we need to narrow it some. Is that kind of good? Because I think I read it like basically the public is interfacing with this office or this building, and that's what sort of satisfies it. And so a water treatment center would not be a building that would qualify under this. But I guess if you read it more like Kenny reads it, which is fair, it does provide a service to the public because it's treating water for the municipality. So maybe it needs to be somehow clarified the type of service that it's providing to the public.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Or direct

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: to I'm

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: trying to get at what you're I guess

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Municipalities define this. So if we go to trespass, I have a right to vote. That right exists in state law. And I exercise that right by going to my polling location, which is my town office, I'm not allowed to show up there at 2AM and access the building and cast my vote. And that's because there are noticed hours of operation that are open to the public. There are activities that I am allowed to do and not do. Those are all dictated by ordinance or by state law, depends on what we're talking about. And if I'm following those rules, whether I'm going to pay my dog license or boat, execute a public records act. I also have a right to access public records in that building, but not just when I want. It's when the town makes the space available to the public. So I think that's really what you're we're not really talking about the service. We're talking about the ability of the public to access it.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Other questions?

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Then if they're trespassed, they're not allowed to access it.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: See a question. Did you have any questions I'm that you wanted to sorry. Coach, coach. Go ahead, coach.

[Kevin "Coach" Christie (Ranking Member)]: Here we go. You know, we went through this discussion when we were dealing with oh, broadband, with school districts being municipalities. And so I think we just need to be very clear, you know, about our definitions, you know, as as we move forward, you know, because, you know, they're they're defined in statute, and they are clear. So we just need to make sure that we bring them, you know, into, you know, this, you know, particular, you know, bill, you know, so that there's no question, you know, about what we mean. You know, when we say a specific thing.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Right. Just a thought. Yeah. Yeah. We obviously, the language all over the place of the sub the big thing is wrong. So It

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: is it is interesting that it's ad for office, building for office, and then got

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: rid of the impart. Maybe that

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: That narrows it a lot.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Maybe just regular business hours.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Yeah, and then maybe the

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Or during the hours where the services are being provided. Because so many municipal buildings just are a different thing at a different time of day. They could be a knitting group or there could be a bridge tournament or whatever, and the municipality is not in control of that space during that time.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Do you think that adding the building or office satisfies the hypothetical of the municipal office that's inside of a bigger building with other stuff in it?

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Probably. I think that's a contract law question. Who's controlling the space? What is it according to? Is it lease agreement? Is it temporary? Are the hours and access posted or not posted? But I think so.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Okay.

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: I'd like to ask a question of Do want my name? Representative Goodnow over there. When you're in court when you're in court, how does that word hypothetical come out for you? You you can't. Hypothetically in court means nothing. Am I wrong? You can't use a hypothetical question because that's not a fact. That's a that could be whatever in there, interpretated whatever way anybody wants. Right? So it's it it wouldn't be you're a poison you're opposing lawyer would throw that right out, it would be whatever judge would follow, correct?

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: I don't fully understand the question, but I think to better- You

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: can't use a hypothetical situation.

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: Yeah, and I said hypothetical. I think you can totally use hypotheticals, especially when we're talking about stuff like this. But I was just trying not to talk about myself too much. So if I didn't want me to use hypothetical, could just use Mine is a state building, not municipal building. Say what? My example is that mine is a state government office, not municipal government office.

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Right. But I'm talking I wanna focus on this goes the way this is written, and we're gonna tear it all apart, I hope. Right? Like we already. We are. I wanna tear it apart even more. In fact, I wanna rip it off. But the point of the matter is is when this goes to court, Ian, I'm trying to go and say, well, hypothetically this or hypothetically that, and that maybe that's not the term you use, but the court system and the lawyers and the judges are gonna rip it apart themselves. We really gotta fine tune this, baby, and I don't know if that's at all possible because it's so far reaching, if that makes any sense at all to anybody.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, that made a lot

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: of sense. That makes a lot of sense to

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: me, and I think it would be helpful when we're talking to witnesses to not just talk about hypotheticals, but to get some real world examples. I would be interested to know if there's any municipal buildings that are not actually owned by the municipality, but they rent. And that would be actually kind of the perfect example of what I'm trying to think about in Brattleboro. In Brattleboro, for example, we rent half of the American Legion to do voting. Our voting station is one half of the American Legion. But unfortunately, that falls into a different category, to a polling place. So I don't really have a good example in my mind.

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: And I get that, and I'm not And believe it or not, I was paying you a kind of a This is hard for me to admit. Yeah. Can't even say

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: it. Sorry. But

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Thomas Oliver or Alicia Malay)]: I got the implication.

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: The thing is, your time in that environment, right, you're gonna use that even I mean, that's your job. See how I think I would run that?

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: So I do have an example. So in the city of Burlington, there are two situations where a department of the city of Burlington is in a leased office space in a multiuse building. One of those buildings is owned by for profit, whatever landlord, and one is owned by a nonprofit that is non governmental. There are also conversely situations where the city of Arlington owns quite a large building, where there are department offices and public programs, including youth programming, childcare, library programming, things like that. And whole other spaces are leased. So a different entity has a key and can lock the door, they have their own hours that are posted, they're providing their own services to the public or to paying customers that are not city services. So the city is both a lessee and a lessor, right?

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: They own the building.

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: Yes.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Interesting.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Actually, there's many examples of that in Burlington now that I really think about it. Even in the arts buildings, there could be a singular artist who leases a certain space that they have control over. What's far more common across Vermont is you have one or two municipally owned buildings that the town owns and controls, and that serves virtually every public function. It's where the sheriff parks and meets for people to speed. It's where funeral luncheons are held. It's where everything is happening every day. It's the polling location. It's the public notice that is warned on every public meeting. That's a much more common scenario where it's a public building that is serving as a nonpublic resource.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: I think that's all. Thank you.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: You for being available.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Of

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: course. So we'll go to Falco next if you could join us at the club. Have

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you for the opportunity. Yes,

[Philip Schilling (ACLU of Vermont)]: It's been really helpful. So for the record, my name is Philip Schilling. I'm the advocacy director for the ACLU of Vermont. I previously testified in support of this bill a while ago, pre crossover when the committee was first looking at it. So we we still support this bill and definitely support the intention behind this amendment. One of the things we asked for in our original testimony was to expand coverage to to other government offices, in particular with an eye towards places where people would regularly be coming to conduct government business. You also heard from folks like migrant justice, where there are more specific concerns related around things like the DMV. I think also if you're talking about municipal offices where people are paying property taxes, things like that, and in particular, the State House where folks were being asked to come here and provide testimony, and they were hoping to have similar protections available to them. That said, I think I have heard a number of the concerns about the current language. I think proposals to narrow it somewhat to specifically buildings controlled in whole by state government or political subdivisions of the state or offices does seem like that gets us closer. I know that there's some more wordsmithing that might go into that, as well as defining where services are available to the public. I see the intent behind this, but I also see the possible broader reading that other folks had brought up and the ability to refine that somewhat. So I think very supportive of the intent and also would be open to seeing some more of those things. And I will say that I do think that these amendments in some ways strengthen the bill and its defensibility. Previously, all of the locations covered on this bill also had prohibitions on arrest for traveling to or traveling from, which was a bit broader and I think more difficult to enforce, where here you have courts and educational institutions where there's expected attendance from folks, and that is a core function of the state government. And just to kind of reground us in this, the state will be in the strongest ground where it's trying to protect the core functions of state government. And so the more closely we adhere to that, the stronger footing the state will be on. And I think this moves us closer in that direction in terms of trying to focus in on the government buildings, on the premises of also makes sense just because that put some limiting factors. I do think there would be a challenge. It would be difficult to figure out exactly who's traveling to or from what government office or anything like that. So that was something that we flagged in our original testimony. But I think beyond that, we're still supportive of the bill, have heard the discussion happening, and I think there's some good points raised about ways to refine the language. But the core intent is one that we're behind and be supportive of looking at this a little bit further and thinking about how to get at some of the concerns raised by the committee. So I think with that, I'll keep it pretty short and sweet because it's been a pretty thorough discussion. I wanna make sure that my colleague from the attorney general's office also gets it chance But to I'll leave it at that for now.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Questions for Fowler? No, just kidding. So we have some work to do on the Romanette one. Yeah. Okay. So I guess there's no questions right now. Thank you. So Julio, if you can join us in batting cleanup for us today at least. So you can just tell us how to fix that b moment at one if you want. You can just say, hey, do this and we'll be all set. No. I'm just kidding. Okay.

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: I do have I do have some points related to v one. It's unfortunate the entire committee isn't here because I think some of the more interested members aren't in the room. I I wanna first talk with the topic of political subdivision. It was suggested or maybe inquired as maybe the more accurate term about whether that's a unique or unusual term. While I was listening to the testimony I used, and this is largely for the people listening at home, the Vermont State Legislative website allows you to do a text search of all the Vermont statutes. While I was listening to testify, I identified two twelve Vermont statutes that use the phrase political subdivision. One that may be more familiar to you than others might be the Public Records Act, which defines public agency to include agencies under the control of the state or any other political subdivision. You know who would have been able to answer those questions about that? Joe Adriano. That's Joe. So it's not particularly unique. You mentioned it's used in federal and state law quite extensively in state law. I was heartened to hear that the number of my biggest cities and towns is very familiar with that, because indeed most of the laws that govern them use that phrase and do not use municipal, although sometimes it is used to say municipal. Related to that is the fact that I think 55 of the two twelve, if you want to drill down and include that term in their definitions sections, and some of the definitions sections give examples of political subdivisions and others do not.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Should we just have one in title one for all of them instead of 55 potentially different

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: definitions sections? There are,

[Ian Goodnow (Member)]: as you know better than I, the

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: state law covers a lot of ground. So political subdivisions include things like fire and water districts other than cities and towns. Certainly school districts would be understood to be political subdivisions. And it's particularly new or novel. The genesis of political subdivision, I think, historically is that chapter one, article one or chapter five, article one of the Vermont constitution says broadly that all of the authority in the bounds of the state of Vermont belongs to the state. Right? It doesn't it doesn't recognize municipalities as separate sovereigns in the way that the US constitution recognizes states as separate sovereigns. So every governmental entity in Vermont that is not the state of Vermont is necessarily a subdivision of the state of Vermont. That is the state of Vermont through its laws, statutes or constitution permits that thing to exist. It's by grant of authority from the legislature. So our office didn't have any discomfort with that. Think if you want to mention towns, schools, districts, the like, you can and council can provide you a laundry list from many of those two twelve statutes. I don't have particular suggestions today. But I think that the idea that that's some kind of problematic, new cutting edge term, I think is not accurate. I think some of the statutes that I pulled up are more than a century old. They date back again to the founding of Vermont, is that everything is part of the state as the state wishes to divide its territory. So I think that, if there are any brows that are raised or furrowed about that, would say, you can always be more specific, but I don't think there's anything mischievous going on there. And I don't think a state or federal court would be unfamiliar with laws that deal with subdivisions. In terms of looking at it from the federalism standpoint, whether it crosses lines going into federal law, there's quite a lot of strong case authority coming from the Supreme Court and also different parts of the countries that the states have very strong power as a proprietor of its own premises. So any property that the state can control, it has very, very high power to act as a proprietor, even so where you can govern who comes in and who does not come in on public property. The courts don't even view that as a sort of regulation of the federal government. They just view the government as a landowner or a lessor, whoever. Again, they use the term proprietor, and what that means, proprietary interest means you have the right to exclude or permit people to come on to whatever grounds you can control. Constitutionally, that's not limited to buildings. That could be limited to open spaces, courtyards, state, you know, public parks and the like. That doesn't mean you want to do that legislatively, but it is quite broad. And so when looking at B1 and considering how to view it, I think the principle, if you could distill it to a word or a few words, would be control. It would be that whenever you're testing what language you want, the ultimate question, or at least the strongest position for the state of Vermont is going to be, can the state of Vermont control what goes on when it's accessible to the public, who can come on, who can't come on, can they temporarily shut it down And the like, that's the operating principle that I think is consistent with the federal case law. When you think about things like rest stops, so drive along the interstate, Vermont only has a few, but they have a few. Those buildings are, I think, owned and operated by the state. I don't know if well, I should say they're operated and controlled by the state. I don't know that they're owned or leased. I think that's immaterial to the analysis. The question ultimately is the state of Vermont have legal control to shut down that work state, that rest stop. And we did see rest stops shut down during COVID, for example. Sometimes it's shut down for maintenance or even staffing issues. That's the operative principle that I think when you're working with legislature council should be the guiding light. We have local authority that was an allusion to the New York decision that came out last fall from the district court in Northern District Of New York, where they had an executive order. I think it's executive order 170.1 that prohibits civil arrests again on property that is leased or owned by, and I think they call it state affiliated entities. So they go beyond political subdivisions. They include things like public benefit corporations, which can include nonprofits that under public benefit corporations law, for those who aren't daily practitioners of nonprofit law, as I am not, would be entities where if they dissolve, assets go to a state or federal or local government and not the private persons. So it's really quite broad. And New York, at least right now, at the district court level has had that law or that executive order upheld by the district court precisely on the notion that you, the government control property, you can decide when it's open, when it's not. Relatedly, federal immigration law, if you want to focus on civil and arrests as a big feature of federal immigration law, the court says, and also remember that the tenth amendment doesn't require states to cooperate in immigration enforcement. So if a state chooses as New York did to say, we're not gonna make our property open to make it easier for them. That's not impermissible either because states always reserve the right not to participate in an exclusively federal program. In the same way that say a lot of states don't participate in nuclear facility regulation and safety checks. They leave that to the federal authorities by choice. And so I think that's kind of the guiding principle that I think will maybe help grease the skids in terms of trying to find more useful language. In terms of other language here, I'm not sure I have many comments. I will say that, and I think it's a little bit of a rehash of my testimony on two zero nine before, which is that the state's interest or its ability to defend that is going to be strongest when you have, when you're acting as a proprietor, a property owner, or rightful lessee. And once you enter into spaces where you're talking about private property run by non governmental entities, you no longer have that argument. And I think Legg Council was right that that really hasn't been tested before. The argument under the tenth Amendment under the US constitution is that states really are vested with primary authority for the welfare of people within their borders, not the federal government. The US constitution was enacted. There was really no such thing as a federal safety net. Anything that was provided for the poor, the needy, for the health of residents was all at the local level. And indeed those functions preceded the existence of the constitution. That's why the tenth amendment doesn't say, we're giving powers to the states. They're saying, states, you keep those powers, essentially, because you had those powers before we created this thing and signed off on it and had states ratify it. And so there are still strong arguments in terms of the effect of regulating people, regulating activities that may disrupt poor state functions. That is an item not to saying that promising that a court would or any assembly of more than one judge would agree with that. But I think those are the arguments to be made and there are plenty of cases to support it. Again, it is untested, but they're not, I mean, this is a far cry for example, from just saying that you won't have civil arrest at businesses, even though businesses contribute to the Vermont economy, right through income taxes and economic and payroll taxes for their employees. But that's a little bit attenuated from core state functions where you're talking about feeding housing, keeping people alive in those sort of entities. So it is going farther. And the way a court would likely approach this would be to, if there was a challenge to it, just the whole bill, the burden for the government would be pretty high. It's called a facial challenge. And the burden is to show that there's no and this gets back to hypotheticals. This one, sorry, not everyone was here. But there's no potential application of the law that would be permissible. Not one. That's what a facial challenge is to throw the whole statute out. And I think clearly there are some when you're talking, I think when you're talking about state controlled property premises that the state controls. And so it's possible that a court might say, these things that are not on state property that are controlled by private entities, even though they benefit the state are consistent with the state's health and overall mission, a court might say that those are not permissible. And under Vermont law, existing law statutes are severable. And so the parts that you can govern, and I think the courts would say if there are things that don't cross the line, then those would be the ones that remain intact. And that's not unusual for laws. For example, Vermont has many laws that, including in voting, we heard about that, that say you can't intimidate people. But courts always construe that to mean certain types of intimidation, usually force or threat of force or threat of or inciting people to unlawful conduct. It doesn't just mean insulting someone or making someone feel bad because you have your superior display of intellect, even though that might be intimidating to people. Courts will try to construe the statute in a way that's constitutional. And so I think in those individual cases, I think the courts will work out, what about the salt storage shed? There might be an Earth Day, for example, where that's open to the local elementary school and their parents.

[Philip Schilling (ACLU of Vermont)]: And so you have a

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: picnic at the storage shed, right? Those the of case by case determinations you would expect to have an individual case where someone's being brought to court either privately or by the attorney general's office. And you would expect that at least our office, our office would be evaluating whether there's a constitutional enforcement that's possible because the application might We might Our office could conceivably say, in this particular case, we're not sure it is. So I was speaking fast, but I had no time to shoot it.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Angela, go ahead.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Can I just wanna pick up on that point, because that's actually really helpful to me? And again, I agree. Share your sentiment. I wish the members were still here. But what I just heard you say is that if this bill became law, it could be challenged on its face. There could be a facial challenge brought by

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: United States of America. Yeah,

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: that would

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: be the likely plaintiff's And facial

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: it sounds like there's a good chance that it would survive a facial challenge.

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: The question is how much of it, I think, they weren't, rather than really entirely.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Mean,

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: Right, part of the

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: and maybe some are thrown out, but other parts remain. And then a next step might be that someone who, to use your hypothetical, is visiting the salt shed on Earth Day with their third grader, and that person is arrested. A civil arrest is made without a warrant, and that person could then claim that that arrest was made in error, should not have been made.

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: Without a judicial warrant? Because there are civil warrants. Without

[Karen Dolan (Member)]: a warrant?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Right, wait. Not within a

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: judicial A judge approved a judicial warrant.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: You

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: said without a warrant, and that there are certain warrants, again, like to use DHS as the talking example, they can issue administrative warrants, the way it works is I work on the 2nd Floor, I'm an arresting officer. I go to the 3rd Floor, where my coworker goes up there and signs an administrative warrant. That's not a judge. That's a DHS employee. That's called an administrative warrant. And this law would not permit an administrative warrant arrest.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Right. So that administrative warrant is used to make that arrest, that assault shed. And then that person or defense attorney would say, this arrest was improperly made. And then the law is challenged again. And then the courts have to answer the questions that you're raising about applicability, and I suppose intent, and all of that, so that there are many multiple opportunities for the specifics of any law.

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: So I might use the word hypothetical against seeing people have entered up in the room. Hi. Julio Thompson, attorney general's office.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: You might have a quarrel on giving space.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Just for me to walk in to write it down.

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: It just says serendipity. Great words. I don't guess.

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: I said that one. Look. You might have quorum given case about whether the person was on the premises of the building or a parking lot, and they just walk across the street. That could be a factual dispute. And the defendant in that case, in a given case could litigate that, or they could even challenge the constitutionality based on how the statute defines premises.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: Right. And so all of that, those sorts of challenges happen with all kinds of laws.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: All the time.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: It's like why we have a court system And I just feel like we're getting so stuck. It's important to vet things as thoroughly as we can, but there's no way that we can account for every potential fact, bunch of facts. And it's okay to move forward even without being able to say, this thing's ironclad. We've got this. Because that doesn't happen.

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: In law, it doesn't happen, and there are plenty of laws where the legislature has been more specific about what counts as something and doesn't. But that's always been the truth. Equal protection is not defined in The US constitution. We have two hundred plus years and tens of thousands of decisions, unreasonable searches and seizures, that's the Fourth Amendment due process and the like. I do think that while you have kind of the bill on the table, it's always that and I think the judge counsel made the very good point, which is to tell me what you want, and then I'll try to do it. Because what happens in litigation is that there will be the judge or the court often will find itself trying to guess what it is that the legislature was trying to accomplish, and then deciding whether that's a permissible reason or not. And so I think it is a good exercise, but the idea that you're going to be able to imagine every scenario. I mean, a couple of years ago, the state passed, and I just mentioned this, I was thinking about this law the other day. There is a statute dealing with the use of drones or electronic scanners. And the statute that was enacted and signed by the governor says that you can't use it for X, Y, or Z, but you can use it for a quote legitimate law enforcement purpose. There's no definition of legitimate law enforcement purpose in the bill. My suspicion is that the legislature concluded there was no way you probably could fill all of the green books in discussing what the different legitimate law enforcement purposes are. And so basically that was a choice by the legislature to say, that's as specific as we want to be. We'll let the courts decide it on a case by case basis. So that someone's being followed by a drone and belongs to an officer who is off duty, they're going to adjudicate whether that's going to be a legitimate law enforcement purpose or not in that given case, because it's too fact specific. So I think that instinct is right.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah. I'm sure we're I'm gonna guess that we're probably not done working on this bill. Somebody just tells me that. And I'm gonna guess maybe we're gonna have Julio come back. My head is spinning right now with all this. And and maybe I'm the only one, but I'm gonna put it out there that we'd be done for today on this bill. Again, I'm gonna guess I'm probably not the only one on overload. I know we're

[Rick Sabol (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: gonna be done in a few minutes anyway.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Not to cut you off, then I'll Julio.

[Julio Thompson (Vermont Attorney General’s Office)]: I had one thing that would help rest people's minds a little bit, but we can wait if you'd like. Yes,

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: we have more time scheduled for this tomorrow and probably Thursday too. My mind unrests, so. I know. Exactly. Boy, right there. Suggest to people to read the Wander Manoli. It's online. It's some further input on the building's question. So if you could take a look at that. I was gonna read it And did I make a suggestion now? Read it tomorrow. No. That week, we'll offline. Yeah.