Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: We're still in the good morning zone, and it is 10:21, Friday, February 6. We are continuing our work on regional assessment districts with Herbie Heaton, who's going to join us in the chair. Last Friday, everyone was going to take a look at the language and the report. We were going to start just diving in, bringing actionable suggestions. Think usually the term markup is when you're about to move a bill out and it's final touches. That's not what we're doing. I don't imagine that we're going to move this bill out until crossover time ish. Is like Process of envisioning is like markup. I don't want to use that term. Does that make sense? It does. We are collaboratively editing together with Kirby, who I'm sure is going to enjoy the ride.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: Do want to jump in

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: with us? And then Rebecca Sameroff from the Department of Taxes is informally joining us on the sidelines to offer helpful advice. Yes. Is too bad that Mark is not here, because he is really investing in skill. And what I'm imagining is once we have this version and the outstanding questions from this version, then we will have Vala and the league and other stakeholders to offer more suggestions for how we want

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: to move forward. Sound good?

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: Great.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: Good morning. Kirby Keen, Office of Legislative Council. What I prepared for you here is my attempt to take the RAD report from the department and kind of distill decision points for you out of that. So the document that's on your webpage and that we'll be going through is just a series of considerations for you that I pulled out of the department's report. It's wonderful that Rebecca's here because I am clearly just a middle interpreter of these things. So to get the official opinion, instead of me guessing like normal, we can have Rebecca chime in possibly. Okay, so with that, we can just walk through this outline. The way it's organized is the numbered lines are some major recommendations from the department, from the report. And then the bullets under that are either questions that the department further posed within the report or questions that occurred to me when looking at it for things for you to consider and to possibly resolve?

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: You can get a little bigger.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: I'll do my best. Cool.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you. Delateful.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: So first major decision point we have here is under Act 73, it's drafted so that the RADs align with county boundaries for the most part. The recommendation from the department and the report is that the RAD boundaries should align with school district boundaries. And it provides a lot of compelling reasons for that. That, municipalities that are lumped together for education funding, it makes sense that they're also assessed collectively. The questions that we have to sort through though, is where we are in the process. Very serendipitously, we had a map revealed yesterday Take a look at of 29 potential school districts. When I put together this outline, I didn't know that was gonna happen. So part of the question was like, are we gonna have? So you'll see what if what if the school districts are not decided? I do have an update though. I got some feedback from Abby Shepherd at the department who, you know, she she gave some suggestions for how we could conditionally possibly draft this. So if you want to, and I agree that we figure out a way to draft this where things align with the school districts if you want, even if it's unclear while we're drafting it, what that's going to be.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: What I would imagine for if we were gonna do a contingency, which I think makes the most sense, is to say if the district is more than x number of parcels, that district will be divided in half for a RAD. And if that district is less than X number, it would be combined with another district for the purposes just of RAD making, for any re thinging, not for any school based stuff, just for grad. What do other people Do folks sort of understand the problem that's trying to be solved before?

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: Could you state it out for us?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: The problem that's trying to be solved with the first point, whether RADS should align with school district boundaries?

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: So we need to say either yes or no, or one of these points here.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So I guess the first question is, the department's recommending that regional assessment districts should align with school district boundaries.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Because?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Because one, Rebecca, do

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: you want explain it? Sure, yeah. Rebecca sent out, under the record, commissioner of Vermont Department of Taxes. You don't have the recommendations in the report, well, this was actually an area where there's a consensus among stakeholders too, that there's a lot of opportunities gained from having grads either aligned one to one or sizes don't really make sense at least to have alignment of boundaries with grads and school districts, and especially in the new education system created by Act 73. There's just some great communication wins with being able to speak to a statewide education tax rate when everyone's facing at the same time. Ideally, if it's one RAD, everyone could share a CLA, which would seem like truly one rate for the whole district, one education tax rate, one set of homestead exemption values for the whole district, things that are much different in today's system where every single town has their own set of education tax rates.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Then the last two that sort of I would add is, it means we don't have to make a different decision about the shape of the rads, which we would have to do. So that's super nice. And that for the purposes, if those districts are gonna vote on a, what was the special thing? What would chief call it? Spending. Supplemental Okay. Districts are gonna raise the supplemental spending, having sort of a brand list that is consistent throughout that area would ease that process as well. So I guess that's the first question. Are we following the recommendations of the department in that way? Yeah. Well, I keep thinking it's

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: good to hear all, but I'm a little concerned about, we're trying to make the brand lists kind of equal in their ability to raise taxes across the state. Is that true? Each of the RADs? You're trying to do that? I don't think there's a, no.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm alright.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Well, is

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: a rads, but the school districts. The school districts said

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: it was one of

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: the goals to try to have the grandmas be reasonably equal so that when you go to do supplemental district spending, there aren't big swings between the tax rate of the district or the tax capacity of the district that's trying to raise supplemental district spending versus the lowest tax capacity district. So, we are trying to, for school districts, maybe match that up. For the regional assessment districts,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: it's less less relevant

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: for money raising for schools. Those aren't connected. I thought that was very connected. Sorry.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: The RADS are about consistency. They're not about sort of value, I guess I would say. Yeah, I get that. So they're connected in that consistency as poor tenet of creating taxpayer equity. The I

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: factors to consider when it comes to the RADs and the boundaries, one of them is, does the RAD have enough parcels to attract a larger firm to do the work? That's one of the considerations, it's like there's a critical mass of parcels where it starts to, where you can attract a larger firm and they'd be willing to spend the time to do it. If you, we currently in Vermont, we have so many different school districts right now, just mean municipality based, and some municipalities just don't have enough parcels to make it worthwhile. So that's one of the biggest reasons for switching over to the RAD system. And then also the appeals is another thing to consider. We have an appellate process. The more parcels you have, the more opportunities that people will not like the valuation and then they'll participate in the appeals process. The way that this is envisioned is that appeals would be handled on a RAD basis as well, especially after a mass reappraisal because they're doing it all together in the same year. So, the appeals naturally from the reappraisal are going to be RAD boundary based. So those two things together is trying to have roughly the same number of parcels for each RAD and then also having a critical mass parcels within each RAD to make it attractive for appraising firms. Those are the big issues.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And then the statistics, you want enough parcels versus quality statistical analysis. Yeah.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: Keep going on while I'm still Oh, okay. Because for the communications and the speak to the rate, this is only about reappraisal in the CLA and homestead exemption and But doesn't that relate to what the district will decide to be asking for supplemental district? See this maybe a connection that I'm not supposed to be making, I don't know why I'm making it.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: But how would you know why I'm

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: making it? I am, I hear you don't.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I can't imagine everyone's head around this table, sometimes that would be useful when I think our brain will explode. Don't know why. Representative Holcombe.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: It would be very convenient if school districts boundaries aligned with RADS. You could have more than one district boundary within one more than one school district in RADS. And I think that's where you're getting. But in addition, you need a provision for realignment of RADS because even if we issued maps this year, school boards still have the authority of statute to change their district configurations, and we can assume they'll continue. So any assignment this year is only temporary anyway. Well,

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: dates that this would be effective would be a little bit out as well. But I agree that there would need to be a partition for realignment. I

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: would note that we'll get into some of this later on in the outline, but the department has pointed out that we're looking at a six year reappraisal cycle. So after this comes online, the RADS, it would incrementally come into effect over six years. And that can be a lot of time when you're talking about legislative time. So the opportunity to revisit after six years and see how things going is probably expected. So you're kind of setting it up to get it going and it's going to incrementally kind of come into effect, if that makes sense.

[Rep. Carol Ode (Member; Chair, House Education Committee)]: Oh, wait a second. I just want to point out that because there is a map at the education committee, nothing's finalized yet. So that's going to take a while. So what we're talking about this is conceptual.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: Yes, and that's what I was saying is, we could probably draft it in a way where we align the RADS with the school districts without knowing exactly what they're going to be yet. We hopefully figure out a way to do that, if that's what you want to do.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: That's my point, because even let's say we voted on the map, that might not be the map in two years, because this is organic. I mean, this changes over time anyway. And so I think we're trying to decide policy not for next year. I mean, think we're hypothesizing a dependency that is kind of a distraction right now. Carolyn?

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: So we

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: think we have to, because they're using this to do the reassessments, Is it also the supervisory district? The same areas of towns would also

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: be a supervisory district for governing schools, or is it just a reassessment? All we're talking about here is the reassessment districts. The department hypothesized that it would be convenient if we applied the same geography to the regional assessment districts as the future school districts are. Because that would be convenient.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: I think that it would be

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: convenient, but does that then also mean for reassessment purposes, you're gonna put them all together. They should be similar, like a lot of farmland or a lot of woodland, or

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: we don't need to have that?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: In my reading of the report, that was not necessary.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: No, I don't think something like that would be necessary.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: Reappraisals are often done municipality by municipality with their diversity of property types in that level. Why do we have to make a reassessment district at all then? Why don't we let the assessor do it? Whatever chunk of Vermont he wants to pick. I mean, these are Can

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: do it

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: in a year? I

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: think Representative Higley loves your idea. But that's It's sort of the

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: This is the first time today, you smile.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think that's counter to the purpose of the statute that we passed last year and that we are trying to implement this year. The idea is we're moving to larger swaths of regional assessment areas. Why? To create consistency of the grand lift for taxpayer equity and so that we can have enough, so that reappraisal firms will bid on the contracts.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: Representative Waszazak? Could we do some sort of I understand it would be convenient if we did by school districts. The system we have now is extremely I think anything we do is gonna be more convenient than what we're doing now. So could we do some sort of fail safe where we designed it to be If we can do it by school district, great. If not, it gets done on a countywide basis.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Rebecca is not at the end. Do. Representative Kimbell.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: So I just want to forsake your argument, if we do effectively have the RADS operating as we conceived it last year with 12 different assessment districts, and they do their job, it shouldn't matter where the school district's boundaries are.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I agree. That's the point. That's what I was trying to say.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Because you've got the valuation that's done on a consistent basis. Know the recommendations have the RADs all appraised at the same time, all towns within the RAD. So you wouldn't have to have a CLA necessarily. But the other point is that, was it Act 46 that authorized school districts to do an appraisal at the same time or come up with one CLA? Or am I just conflating different things?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think you're conflating. So I think one problem with what you brought up is one of the things that would be helpful with having grads in school districts be consistent and wouldn't work at the county level is we have lots of school districts across county boundaries, and having all school districts be in the same rad means that you would have one CLA for the entire In thirty years, maybe we will actually finish this entire process, we won't need a CLA anymore, but we are so far from that. Yeah,

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: just and again, I just saw the map for the first time tomorrow as a lot of people did, and we don't know

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think everyone. I don't think anyone's

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: got to

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: be But, I mean, I'm just looking at up in the Orleans, Essex County area, there's 28, 29 towns. And, you know, I'd have to have a better understanding of what that means before I could say, yeah, let's just, you know, use the map that we have and have that be the RADS. So.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Well, Wasson Zak, I don't know which order you were in amongst

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: yourselves. Fight it out.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: I don't know.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: Think fighting force fighting. Yeah.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Mean, like, it's right now we have, like, two fifty one, two fifty two now. Like CLAs and things to deal with. I think we should just do the idea that we talked about last year, which is like 12 big districts, roughly, with roughly even parcels. And would it be more convenient to do it tied to the school districts? Yes, but I don't think it's necessary, so to speak.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: I think we're trying to bring simplicity to the system. I think that the ideas that we floated last year were a lot simpler than trying to tie it to theoretical districts that this map is gonna change a 100 times.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yeah. And I don't think we would have to put I guess I'm not imagining that we would put language in that cemented whatever map was very abstractly put on a table yesterday. I'm imagining that we would put, like, language about alignment, not, like so, Kirby, can you just talk a little bit more about what the constituency language looked like?

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: Well, just sitting here and hearing you talk I You're could causing me to think about it, Margaret. There could be something where you charge the department deciding the RAD boundaries, with giving them specific guidance of it should first priority should be to follow school district boundaries. Also to consider the right number of parcels for the district, also consider the potential appeals load. So you could delegate, in other words, that would give you some flexibility where you're not deciding in a minute way what exactly the boundaries are all the time. And since we're in a position right now where it seems like it's possible that the boundaries are ambiguous in the next short term, maybe an approach like that is what we might have to do, and then we could also keep some language in where the county approaches the backup if things change. So something along those lines sounds like what

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: you could do.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I see that everyone some people don't have the report as fresh on their minds as might be helpful for this conversation, and there's lots of disagreement on the committee. So I'm gonna move on to the next one, and we're gonna just sit on it.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: Yeah. Okay, I'm so sorry.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I have a very Friday brain tube, so

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: take care. I actually appreciate representative Branagan's question, because I think what we're talking about is what's the purpose of the rats. And just to, I think you answered the question in that it's to address inconsistency of property valuation, but it's also about the fact that some tiny towns are not able to drive the contract. But in theory, if the system was working well, there would be incredible consistency across all RAS, because that's kind of the goal. I understand why the tax department is driving language around school districts into this, but I also think that that is not relevant to the conversation about the RADS because if the RADS are working, I agree with Representative Waszazak, it shouldn't actually matter because we should have consistent valuation across all regions. And I would just encourage us to stay focused on what problem we're trying to solve, particularly because we can't be building an evaluation system, property evaluation system around something that we know is a big target.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I appreciate that. I think the idea that RADs are going to very quickly create consistency between them is really incredibly overly optimistic. I really think it's gonna be like twenty years before that happens. 100% agree.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I also don't think larger districts can solve special education problems. Think that's the thing for everything we do.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Let's move on to the second So bullet point, or number, whatever you would

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: number two big question is, this is one of the bigger questions. The recommendation was that the RAB municipality should be required to be based on the same schedule and be considered a single entity for equalization. Within that though, the department is recommending that they not be required to join the appraise necessarily, but giving at least in the short term, first six year cycle, perhaps to allow some individual reappraisal, as in some municipalities, they wouldn't be required to work with the other municipalities, they could hire their own or go their own way. So that's the recommendation. Yes, they should have to reappraise on the same schedule, that is in the same six year cycle. And yes, they should be considered the same entity for equalization, as in other words, since they're reappraising in the same years, the equalization study will treat them all as the same unit. That's the recommendation. But they shouldn't be required to reapply.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Anyone have anything on that?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Just giving the department the flexibility of not requiring them to be done jointly.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: There's language in Act 73 for acquiring appoint reappraisal, which means making them work together. And the departments, they have their working group there, and so I imagine that the strict commission is partly on the feedback from from those folks. But, yeah, that's that's their recommendation, and that's the decision for you is, what to do about whether you're going to require a joint reappraisal. Think the rest of it is in line with what you already decided with Act 73, same reappraisal schedule. I don't think anyone's considered anything other than that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm concerned about individual reappraisal municipalities, one, because it puts the department in a difficult situation about having to decide when that would be equitable and when it wouldn't.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: I don't think the department would decide on what they're pitching. I think they're simply leaving it out to municipalities.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And I think individually, if you wind up with two different firms, you could wind up on two different appraisal schedules with two different types of appraisal systems. One's doing it in house and one's not inside people's houses and one's not doing it inside people's houses. And then you have some equity variations between towns within the same RAD. It feels to me antithetical to the purpose of the RAD.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: It's a good funder.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: Represent Rutland again. I think what I've heard several times is that the problem is there aren't firms who will do this, there aren't enough to do these reappraisals. And I know there's one town in the district I represent that hasn't had a reappraisal for fifteen years because they can't find anybody. They have money to do it, but they can't get anyone to come in. So what happened to the idea of the state having their own reappraisors? Did he give up on that? I remember Jill talking, Jill was director of property valuation. What happened to that idea? I get it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So I personally love the idea of the state taking over all of it. I don't think the state loved that idea very much. I know Representative Higley didn't love that idea very much. And so this other model was seen at the compromise in order to not further increase

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: the

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: cost of

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: the state. But I don't see how this will work ever, no matter what we do, unless we have more people to do the prices. So I don't know

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: if you remember the part Jill's, when Jill was talking through the report about the sort of a concurrent process they're doing is about increasing the fields, like the opportunities for recruitment, the field communication for the field, all of that. And that the larger RADS mean that contracting would be significantly easier. That is not the only reason for the RADS. It is one of multiple reasons for the RADS. The consistency is another really important reason for the RADS. I love that they're called RADS, though. It really adds a little perk to each sentence. Represent, I think.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: No, and if I can

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: jog folks' memory as well, Ed Glottfelter from Mimric said that there's a group of folks out there that are coming around and taking on more and more of this work, so it isn't that there's not enough. I mean, I'm surprised you're saying that about a town, I mean, we reached out early on and we had to work two years down the road, but we did fit one, you know, there's the possibility of that. Again, as far as the, and I think I mentioned this last time, I'd have to have my head around and have some folks come in and talk to me about this equalization study and how that's really going to be realistic and then how it's going to work overall, especially with such a big district and different whatever it might be, whether it's scary in one town, know, like well-being in another town, there's such a variation in values there. I don't even see how they could come up with a realistic land schedule for a big district. Just sizz me, I just can't believe it. I can't I can't get my head around a land schedule alone in a huge district.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: You mean a district in terms of a RAD, these four free jobs.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Rebecca, do you want to share some sort of more context on why

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Sure. Well, make sure you finish your sentence.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: More context from discussion, I

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: think would be great. Just a reminder from our January 2020, from the day that's my birthday. I'm hearing some confusion from members around how does this achieve the goal? I totally understand that because I just wanna remind that our little bit of general, the style of this proposal was kind of like a walk before run approach to regionalization. And that's exactly because of some of the issues that members pointed out today, like workforce capacity. I really truly don't feel like we would be successful taking most of this work at the state in the very near term. Really you have to build up this workforce. Maybe cannibalizing the same expertise that's needed at the top right now as well, unless the state were to take over 100% of all of Ram's maintenance, which was a big resistance to that idea when I think it was actually pitched in our first report in 2024. That's a potential way to regionalize things. A lot of these things, making the joint contracts not mandatory is kind of part of this block before running. A lot of the policies we're recommending here, including the alignment of school districts is really creating this connective tissue. So it's really, to really encourage municipalities who are already thinking like, we're going to have to operate differently in a six year cycle just to make things work. Just make it so easy to work with your neighbors, same timeline, same school district, same CLA. And there is really something better with tying school districts to RADS because if lines intersect, if those are not alignment, then you will have talents that you're raising at different cycles. The vision of the RAD is this is a group of towns that are rephrasing on the same six year cycle. You want all the towns within your school district to have the same three at less age because that reduces To the extent, if there are still CLA differences or just general differences in timing and property evaluation, you want those reduced as much as possible. So taxpayers within the district are having as similar an experience with their tax bills as possible. Yeah, just like that framing that we're kind of feeling this has to be an incremental approach to regionalization and we're trying to lay groundwork that can eventually be built upon to develop this additional policy support, either centralization or regionalization as we hit some of these baseline fundamental needs like workforce, doing our audit of pre appraisal standards and outcomes right now. So we have something to benchmark progress against. We can really evaluate how things are going in these larger districts. A lot of opinions based on anecdotes in this space right now. And I think that's another really key foundational need.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And then it's something that can

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: just give us time to do some of this work, like standardizing some contract line wage that will also really help municipalities get over some of these identified hurdles to actually contracting together. There's a lot of interest out there, but it's like a lot of, it's new territory for folks. So we just really want to try to streamline that as much as possible. So it's not an instant fix the way that we have proposed, rolling out these policies. It's really kind of a stepping into what's needed to consider further regionalization efforts. Could you remind me how many RADs we were thinking were the right buffer? 12?

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: I was wondering if there was some way to say, if we're worried that the rollout, or that we're going to argue for a while about an actual school district map, whether there was a way to say, there's a seesaw map for shared services that's going to have bigger boundaries than school districts would. There was a way to create a map that sort of lined up that with RADS and then school districts, once they're designed, if we go down that path, fit. Maybe we could be strict enough to say that the school district would fit within these boundaries. But I don't know if 12 is a bigger number than I was thinking, what I was thinking through that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think the idea though of a maximum and a minimum for statistical appropriateness for the RADS would make sense. We don't want them to be too big to be unmanaged. As the department said, we don't want them to be too big to be manageable for appeals, and we don't want them to be too small to not be statistically significant. So I think there's something in there before that. Let's go to the single entity.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: It's the equalization study question.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yes. Say a firm yes. How do few people feel about that?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Well, within that thread, theoretically you would have some communities that are having a lot of real estate activity and some that weren't.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So, okay, I think that's a problem, I agree. And then when problem, I think about how in my town, there are some, which is not very big, it's 12,000 people. I know it's bigger than a lot of people's towns here. But there's actually neighborhoods that see a lot of brandless growth, and neighborhoods that are seeing a lot of brandless loss. And so that's already a problem under existing law. Fair enough. And maybe every other town is significantly more consistent, but mine has the good side of the town where everyone, right? Okay, great. Like the

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: 400 miles of Barrie City, we have suburban Barrie City with the single family homes, and then we have the North End, which was every two minutes. Yep.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: And in my neck of the woods, I tried to get in my mind what this would really mean to us. And I said, does that mean all farmland or all woodland? And he said, no, not necessarily. So then that gives us the problem you're experiencing with your neighborhood. Some growing, some not growing. So some areas, some property. I mean, it's just so I don't see how a single entity could be helpful in those circumstances.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Well, we already have a single entity. It's the municipality, that's not working. So As some clarifying language,

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: is this what you mean to the equalization studies statute regarding a single entity? That's what you're talking about? Yes. And I don't know what they mean by single entity here.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Herbert, do want to clarify?

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: Yeah, so yeah, it's for purposes of the equalization study, treating the entire RAD as one municipality, you could say, when I say entity, it's just so that the equalization study work is done for that entire area instead of doing it municipality by municipality. The reasoning is that they're reappraising on the same schedule, they're working together, and so things should be in line. So for purposes of the equalization study, treating them as one unit.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: Okay, got it. Thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: It's on to four. Oh, sorry, three.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: That's

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: three. There is the don't want to skip over. Mean, there's the recognition from the department to have PVR establish common standardized contract terms and outcome expectations for reappraisal contracts. There was some talk of this in Act 73, but the department's report says, yes, we want to do that. I think like I said a moment ago, in this walk, don't run period, they want to be able to flush that out over the next few years. So that's a thing there too.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Can I just ask if you need rules or guidelines sufficient? Is

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: that a pertinent question?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: I think so. With ACCD, we asked them to come up with guidelines, not rules. They pushed back because they didn't want to take the time on rule making.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Yeah, I think we had I remember the terms through rule making being in the report. I'm sorry, this is more of a my legal copy question. So I can get back on that clear recommendation there. I think through rulemaking was our vision, but I'm not

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think was essentially they're telling municipalities what to do rather than establishing, like with, say, CHIP, guidelines are about people are voluntarily entering the realm of ACCDH to apply for something, so a guideline makes sense, but if you're mandating, you need a rule.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: If you want the The legal answer difference between a rule and a guideline legally is that once you go through the rule making process, it has the force and effect of law, the rule. So it's as far as any challenges go, you're on a stronger ground if you have a rule. The flip side to it is a practical thing where the rules are not as flexible, it takes a while. I did note here this is a Kirby note where it says if you want to approach this through rulemaking, then start sooner so that those rules can go through that rule making process before the rads come online. So I think that that is something I would like where you need to prepare quicker if you imagine this through rules. Okay. Number three, recommendation was to restructure the per parcel payment for reappraisal and grand list maintenance so payments are distinct. I reached out to get some clarification. There was the department's recommendation is to have per parcel payments for three different things and have those things distinct from one another because there's concern about what payments are for and how it should be used by municipalities. So distinct payments for one reappraisal, payment for brand list maintenance, and a distinct payment for the equalization study and the work that goes into that. So that is the department's recommendation is to not try to squish any of those things together when you're compensating municipalities, but to make them three distinct payments. There's this ancillary question when it comes to the reappraisal payment. The department's report points out a scenario where what do you do when you have the RADS, you have a reappraisal year for a particular RAD, you're not requiring joint reappraisal, so there's a municipality that has not joined with others, it's on its own, and by the end of the clock, so to speak, to reappraise, and they're supposed to be reappraising that year, they don't have something lined up.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So from my perspective, that's like reason number 20 why we shouldn't allow an exemption for municipalities to be part of the large spread.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: What the department is suggesting in this case is to allow the department to step in, get a reappraisal contract done, and to to for the department to take on the municipality's work in setting it up and getting that reappraisal done. And they're also saying like if that's being done, then the department's holding those reappraisal payments instead of it sitting with the municipality for the six years leading up, the department's holding it so that when they have to step in, they use that money that was supposed to be for the municipality to pay for it, but then the municipality does not get the money because they stay spent on the rat.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Rebecca, can you clarify something for me? What is the difference in the department's mind, or your mind, I guess, you can only speak for your own mind, between holding a reappraisal payment until time and the department paying for reappraisal?

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Department paying for reappraisal.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Is this holding the payment until reappraisal time and then issuing said payment to pay for reappraisal.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Yeah, and I think that's a really important question, like a couple of steps further into rethinking or clarifying the purpose and intention for these proposal payments. Because as designed today, it's very fungible. We have one payment that's for grounds maintenance and reappraisal. So it's actually not clear to municipalities, to state even, what is the There's no like here agreed upon share of like the state pays for this much, towns pay for this much. Towns get this amount, which they only spent it on reappraisals. They could save over six years and it would amount to a little more than half of the per parcel cost of a reappraisal. Dollars 100 per parcel is kind of, that's the going average based on PDR data to date. We get anecdotes of per parcel costs that are above and below that, but that's our data average. So over six years, $8.50 amounts to just over $51 per parcel. So if it was just saved for that purpose, then you'd say, Yeah, the state seems to be covering about half. Municipalities cover about half. There's other costs baked into a contract besides just this partial parcel reappraisal cost, especially because many contracts include other groundless maintenance services from the same contractor. But that's like one way to think about it, but that is naturally how statute instructs municipalities use this these funds. They say you can totally use it for groundless maintenance too, especially for smaller communities. That might be how they pay their part time blister or assessing contractor. So it's not realistic for them to be swirling that away or paying for half of a reappraisal every six years. So there's no real shoulds in there yet in clarity. So part of the working group's recommendation that we totally agree with

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: is

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: that this conversation would really benefit from isolating those two, brandless maintenance, which is kind of like the ongoing work of maintaining your brandless for education and for municipal purposes, but much more heft is put on the education side of the ledger there. And then separately, what's the appropriate state payment to support municipalities in paying for reappraisals or if a municipality is paying for reappraisals at all? Why it was not a monolithic topic by any means, lot of opinions about what the appropriate share of state and municipal support would be. And I don't think

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: we have a strong opinion

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: on that? I think clarity would really be helpful though, because it's definitely like a sense of scarcity for everyone, not just funding isn't enough to fully do either thing.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: I was just thinking, if you have an amount that you're setting aside, whether it's at the municipal, municipality, or an account, maybe a better bargaining power when you go to negotiate a contract for, to contract someone to do the reappraisal, you say, well this is the amount that we have, So they don't think that they Yeah, interesting question.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: So it looks like we're discussing kind of three and four simultaneously here, which is good, so we're moving along. The only the only other thing within this that we haven't talked about is the department has mentioned before possibly increasing the reappraisal per parcel fee. They've pointed out that the $8.50 per parcel over six years adds up to about half the cost. But this system is generating taxes where three fourths of the taxes go to the education fund on average, and about one fourth goes to municipalities. So they pointed out maybe you want to increase that fee to make those things about equal, which at the end of the day, based on Kirby's math, it's about increasing that $8.50 fee by about 50%. They haven't specifically said that, but between the lines, that's what I'm seeing there.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: That pays for the 75% state to be responsible for paying for the contract.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: They would more or less be paying for 75% of the cost.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think increasing the amount that the state pays for and how the state pays for the reappraisals and separate from maintenance makes sense. I think it's a funny thing to sort of equate it to the proportion of taxes going in each place. Does that mean that if municipalities start drastically raising their property taxes, we're then gonna spend less on that? So I'd rather not tie those two things too closely together because they're subject to change for various reasons. It seems like if the state is the one initiating all of these changes and even talking about holding payment, I think it makes sense for the state to be managing that and covering more of those costs, especially given how much I quibbled about the way people were using the phrase unfunded mandate previously. And I think unfunded mandate would be a more appropriate thing to frame to use for our municipalities. People don't then envision, and then the state's the one who enters the contract. What's the contract like? There's rules governing what those contracts should look like,

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: not

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: guidelines. Which we just discussed. Yes.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: Okay. So the next on our outline, the next item is a fun topic of appeals. And the department has suggested that there be a RAD appeals board, which I believe this committee discussed or considered last session. The only change to the long appeals process involved with property valuation would be to, with a step in the process where the DCA would decide appeals to replace that with a RAD appeals board is the suggestion. And then the departments further suggest that municipalities should collectively appoint panelists for those appeals boards. And they've given some suggestions about how this should be laid out. But I saw some feedback and was told that this is as far as the details within this appeals system, within this RAD appeals board, that that is not one of the department's most closely held

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Like, suggestions if anyone's like, what is happening with Nolan? Poor Nolan. I'd like

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: service announcement. For me. Sorry. I

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: was just barely paying attention. Barely here. No, just kidding. Those are the questions before you, this appeal system. Like I said, I think the department as far as the details about doing this is deferential to whatever local government system you wanna try to leverage. But that is their suggestion is to replace the BCA with a RAD appeals board.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think that this was an issue Of all the issues that we got lost in the weeds on last year and couldn't come out of, this was the one that we got the most lost in. And the one that we most needed, the working group from the department to work through. And I would very much like to follow the working group and the department's guidance on this because and make sure that we are really staying in the loop with gov ops on this one as well. And maybe even judiciary, this is the one that So

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: the other big appeals related recommendation was to revamp the property evaluation hearing officer role to have it more like one permanent hearing officer housed at the department. If you recall, it seems to come up every year where, you know, PVR is currently relying on a number of part time property valuation hearing officers, but no one is full time, and we've revisited the compensation for those people to attract. In this case, they're saying, let's just do it like we do our other tax appeals and have a dedicated hearing officer. So that is another suggestion that they have.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Rebecca, is this in your budget ask for this year since it's like or is it another year out? So it wouldn't be Yeah.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Wouldn't be for this year. Can't fix it for this. But have these conversations with the committee and kind of check out where things are going.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: The report also mentions in addition to the full time hearing officer, a docket clerk for that hearing officer. So it would be two conditions. Number six, We're now departing the heavy decision making. And we're going hit on some lighter things.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Workforce

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I don't think that's what the good time curve is.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: Yeah, I know. It's like, how dare I label what's heavy or not? Fair enough. Workforce development. There's part of the reports dedicated to that. As far as I could tell, there was one thing that was oriented towards the general assembly, and that is to appropriate funds for a list of certifications. The other workforce development related items in the report seem to be things the department was independently pursuing such as the apprenticeship program for the Department of Labor and a licensure program for the Secretary of State. But they are asking for an appropriation for Lister Education Programs, which is something that exists in statute already. And then there's a technical change there too about where the appropriation will come from, general fund or education probably, but I don't need to go.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: You go

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: from the

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: tax department?

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: I'm sorry.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Well, this is certification and appropriation. It's probably not in the current budget request.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: It's not. No.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And how looped into all this is the Secretary of State and the Department of Labor?

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: We've had initial conversations with all the entities, labor, CCP also, Secretary of State. Having initiated these first steps in the aircraft, was something called the Secretary of State.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: There was already some money in the budget, so it'd be an increase to the existing budget for Lister certification programs.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Yeah, and Jill's really the expert in how that application gets spent today, but that's kind of like the funds that are used for the existing list. And it's also a little more increased with the trainings being mandatory for listeners as well, which is taking a lot of work for PDR to kind of like set up our own learning management system to just handle that volume and the tracking involved in that. So it's a strange pot of money right now, but we didn't formalize any ask for this budget, just with a little fuzziness of what our actual moving forward with this. But it's an area of strength for DBR right now, mostly the team and team and team team responsible for managing that increased educational requirements.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: Number seven, the report addresses the contiguous parcel language change. This is something in Act 73 that's actually in the classifications section because that's because classifications is where the grant list statute is being amended. If you remember when we were looking at language for classifications before, I've just taken this out for now. This is flagged for now to be more of a miscellaneous tax bill issue. So not something that we have to go through right now. But the gist of it is the language we have would have changed valuation in an inadvertent way. So we want to make sure the language that's in there is helpful for mapping for VCGI, but no, there was never an intention to change how valuation's done as far as contiguous parcels go. So just gotta make sure we get that language right. It's an Act 73, the change would not be effective for a few more years. So we just gotta, more or less a technical fix there. Number eight from the report, the department supports the state archive study regarding statewide digitized land records. There's no action but to be done they've just noted that because it could relate to all this. If there's statewide digitized land records, it makes a lot of these processes easier. And the ninth item is the recommendation to have the January 1 grant list date. That's part of Act 73 right now. Also in Act 73, there was a request for the department to provide conformity language for making that transition, and that's provided in the report.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Any questions or thoughts about any of that? Rebecca, do you think it makes sense for us to have the Secretary of State and the Department of Labor in on this, or do you have lots of work to do before any of that happens?

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: I mean, that would be my highest triage testimony.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: We're only doing highest triage testimony right now. You for that.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: You mentioned the appeals work, which I think is like a really exciting recommendation. And I do wish to spend more time answering our own follow-up questions on that one. So like that is, you talked about GovOps and there were some questions I would love to just like get deeper on with folks that are currently sitting on VCAs. You know, we try to tailor what the size of a rad work to handle, I like made a complex, algebraic indication that has something to put it that I don't know, like, you know, reasonable hours of hearing per member per things like that. That's the level of granularity we wanna see there, but it does have some, I think, pretty big also consequences. So that's an area that I think would be really right for learning more about more people.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm imagining that I will work with Kirby and whoever else wants to join me to turn this into draft committee bill language. And then we'll do one more sort of just run through to make sure we all understand what the outstanding questions are in it. And then we'll have all of the necessary stakeholders in to give us advice before we do another draft from there. I don't know where it'll go yet. It's unclear what vehicles are going to arrive from other places at this current moment. Anyone have anything? Yeah.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: I would like to have somebody from PVR come in and have a demonstration on how a rep would do an equalization study.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: Go ahead.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Yeah, I mean if we're talking about the math and mechanics of not considering multiple pounds and one to eat. Strange

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: you're going to have

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: wealthy rad, some kind help with washout and roll on.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Anyone wanna go back to any of these topics here? I'd love to stop at 11:30, but if we go a little past that, that's okay. Yeah.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: I would just say, I think just to summarize my thoughts on this, is that I don't think that I think it would be, for purposes of progress, that we should do more county esque maps for the regional assessment districts. Frankly, something like I'm not actually suggesting this, but I'm imagining something similar to, frankly, the map of Senate districts that we have. Chittenden County, you're gonna have to chop that up a little bit. And I think that each rat should have one big contract to do all of the reappraisals within that rat. I think there's details within that to figure out, but that I think is the system that I think would be most beneficial for actually achieving what we're trying to achieve.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Do you have any outstanding questions that they want to cover from earlier before we got to the lighter stuff?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Just how hard Kirby, you've already done some work on conditional languages. Conditional language for if not school districts then county. It'd just be great to see a version of that as to what that looks like. If school districts are not available, really configured school districts, or do not meet a per parcel minimum or something like that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think we'll do some combination of Kirby and whatever algebra Rebecca has created to figure that out.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: I guess to respond, I mean, I guess there's still some decisions to make within that. Like, you want to do the delegation approach that I mentioned, maybe you don't need to talk about the county. The county thing would be if you were like, this is what we want the RADS to be based on school districts. You wanted to put it in law, and then like, but then have a contingency where like, if school districts are not actually set up, then we go county. So hopefully I wasn't too confusing. There's like two pathways.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: I guess, you know, we talked about bifurcating the money that was sent to towns for now reappraisal versus maintenance of Grand Lids. I guess, you know, I'd like to know, have some idea as to how much more that might be and how it might be broken out. I mean, is it going to be broken out per town, for the maintenance, is it going be based on the parcels, is it going to be, you know, I mean that sort of thing. I think it's important to, it seems to me that there's going to be quite an increase in money, and where's the money coming from? I'm assuming the general fund now, but how much more are we looking at?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: If you have suggestions on how to make that work well, that would be great.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: So then

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: not Right. Because right now, we do per per we do per parcel. Right. I don't maybe that's not the most appropriate way to do it. Don't know. So

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Might be a better long version. And now it's coming out of pilot funds, so not general fund.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Just for this year?

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: It's coming out of what?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Pilot funds.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Budget adjustment. I thought reappraisals came out of the general fund.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, the recommendation was to move, kick it out of fund instead of the general fund this year.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Which is a conversation we'll have.

[Kirby Keen (Office of Legislative Council)]: Other

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: outstanding pieces from this higher up parts? Seeing none, thanks for a good week.

[Rep. Carolyn Branagan (Member)]: Yeah. We did cover a

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: lot of territory. Next week will be very similar. I think we've been a little bit scattered in the last month of testimony. And so I'm really gonna try to repeat sort of the chunks from this week next week so we can continue to build on them. Anyone who has time to reread the report related to this now, probably that's a great idea while the conversation's fresh.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: Thanks.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Jim, yes?

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Yeah, just to reiterate or sum up, I was thinking maybe I'm the only one that needs to reread all this stuff, but maybe we're all I don't think

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: so, no.

[Rep. Mark Higley (Member)]: All in

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: the same caliber, you know?

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: There's a lot. Thanks.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thanks, everyone.

[Rebecca Sameroff (Vermont Department of Taxes)]: Alright.