Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Unidentified committee member]: Morning.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: It is Friday, February 20. We have done a great deal of schedule rearranging. Human Services and the Education Committee decided that it made the most sense to reschedule the hearing that was scheduled for this afternoon on pre K. They are rescheduling for next week. We might not be able to join them next week, but we've already essentially, the testimony that's gonna be happening next week. The report is on our report page if anyone would like to read it over the weekend. And once they pick a time, they'll let us know. We'll see if we can join. If we can't join, maybe a few people from this committee can go there and others can stay here. And then we also moved our bill introductions from this morning so that Department of Fish and Wildlife can join us. And then Rebecca Sebelia, who is a national expert that was gonna join us to talk about foundation formulas and cost of living variations, had to cancel at the last minute. And so we're moving that testimony block probably to two weeks from in two weeks, not next week.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: At the meeting. The town meeting?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: The week after town meeting, guys. Thank you. And then I think all the things after the floor are gonna work, and we'll have, like we'll be able to clean our docket before next week. But that means that everyone needs to come back after the floor. Because ideally, we are gonna We could try to vote on all three of the bills that we have scheduled for at this floor, which is $5.66, six thirty five and $6.32. All very limited fee related things. I think that is the sum total of my public service announcements. But next week, we're going to be straw polling various sections of the bills we've been working on this week. So please take time over the weekend to read and think and touch.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yep? Are we rescheduled because of the snow?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: The pre K hearing is rescheduled because of the snow. The Rebecca Spelia hearing is rescheduled. It was she was coming virtually, I don't think that's anything to do with weather. Okay. I post. Pre k is the snow. Okay. And I'll still be here this afternoon if anyone wants to talk to me about it. Sorry. Are we having testimony after lunch? We will have no testimony after lunch.

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: Woo hoo. Wow.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: We might go ten minutes into lunch in order to not have any testimony after lunch.

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: That's good.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Great. With that, and with apologies and appreciations, Department of Fish and Wildlife are being rescheduled from yesterday. Can you please join us in whatever configuration pleases you? I just have all three of you here, and I don't know who wants to actually come up.

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: That was considered of you, madam chair. We don't mind cancellations. Thanks.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: Okay.

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: We're guests and happy to be here anytime you can have us.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I mentioned you have another job to do, but it's friends or not. Anyway.

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: My last job ten minutes ago was to sign up to be the announcer at my son's hockey game at 08:00 tomorrow morning. Oh. If anyone wants to be at Stowe, they have great breakfast sandwiches. We're playing some Burlington game in the state tournament. Yeah. Freaking all my voice. How old are they? Pardon me? Oh, they're between 12 and 14. So it's 14 and under. It's usually 12, 13. Be a good game. I'm really excited. We gotta work on some sort of, on the heels of the women's playing yesterday, I've got to think it's fun to I've only done it once. We'll see. Bring a flag. That's a good idea. Except I was born in Canada so I don't know which flag to bring. No, know what it's like. Thank you so much for having me. I'm Jason Batchelbren, Fish and Wildlife Commissioner, and I think to be fair to us, I think I would just love to ask and if you don't want to go this route initially, I would just love to ask why we're proposing this repeal and then maybe we can respond to your comments. But I'm also happy to just lead in as to what I suppose the reason behind the repeal might be.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: We very, very rarely delegate fee authority. And when we do delegate fee authority, it's usually for sort of more of an administerial, like, while you're engaging in a sort of an administerial duty, and it seems that you all sort of jumped well beyond that with the creation of the new license and the new fee attached to it and our

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: Okay. Okay. So it may be a question about the termination of what what 4132 means in title 10 and

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: And I sorry. To be clear, I

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: don't think you violated statute. I think you sort of stepped away from intent slightly, but that is your prerogative to do. We're just trying to

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: Sure, and that's very fair. Maybe I'll jump to the council here more rapidly than I thought I might. But I'm excited for that conversation because we don't want to run afoul of this committee. We don't want to put rules and and laws in place that are gonna run afoul of 90% of Vermonters or whatever the status. But I but I feel this this could be a a response to as as I suspected it, a response to the access area license, and I'm fully prepared to talk about any nuances of that license that you would love to direct at me. I've given that presentation a few times now.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think you gave it to us.

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: I gave it to you with ice skating in there, and so I apologize for that. It's not. I'm looking at rep Holcombe, I I'm I'm only joking. But I I would love to answer any of those questions. But as far as as an intent and the way the law sits now and and how we may have strayed from that intent, I'll leave that to counsel if you're okay. But I'm here and I'm anxious to talk about anything.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: Good morning. For the record, my name is Hannah Smith. I'm General Counsel of Fish and Wildlife. And I will just provide some context for the current statute and the rule that the department has adopted pursuant to that statute. So 4,132 includes broad language that allows the department and explicitly references the general assembly's authority to create fees and allows this as sort of an exception to that authority. And it mirrors the language that the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation has in their statute that also allows them to set fees for things like the use of state parks and state forest lands. And so when this language was adopted, I did a little digging and it was my understanding is back in 2004, this authority was granted to the department. And the language in the adopting bill included a request from the legislature that the department provide this committee with a proposed schedule of fees that included fees associated with the use of state fish and wildlife lands, including charges for the use of access areas, landing areas, parking areas, roads, camping sites, buildings, and other facilities. So just in my own sort of legislative research, it does seem like it was contemplated that the department would set fees for the use of these facilities. The rule that we did eventually adopt, it's indexed in all the fish and wildlife rules are in the appendix to Title 10. And it's our fees for the use of fish and wildlife department lands and facilities. It's been in effect at least since 2013. We actually amended it this year to update the camp tuition, which hadn't been updated in a while and fell well below market rates for overnight summer camps. But the rule itself establishes fees for rental use for two of our facilities, the Buck Lake Conservation Camp and Keogh Education Center. It establishes the tuition for the Green Mountain Conservation Camps. And then establishes a fee range for special use permits and licenses. And so the way that that's been used currently is we issue licenses, which are sort of, it's an authorization to be on state lands, but doesn't convey any ownership rights. So it's a more nimble way for us to authorize certain activities without an easement or a lease to some third party. We issue licenses for, the most common one is for research, folks who want to do usually like UVM or other associated organizations that want to do extensive research where they're on usually wildlife management area lands. And then the other one where we issue a lot of licenses are to utilities who need to either build utility infrastructure or run lines across state lands. So it's an authorization from the department to use the land. The license fees are almost always $50 which is the minimum established in the rule. For the utilities, they might be slightly more. There's a calculation based on the footage of wine across state lands. Can I ask question about that?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Sure. There's a similar provision for fee authority for the

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: well, it's not

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: really fee authority. There's a similar provision for fees that the DMV, or the Agency of Transportation, has jurisdiction over for utilities on state roads, basically, and roadways. And I don't know if you've ever checked in to see if your fees align in any way or if your protocols align in any way for I assume almost identical use from almost identical users. And also, land is a different kind of state land.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: Yeah. I'm not aware that we've discussed the fee structure with DMV. We employ the same B structure that FPR uses when utility lines across interstate finance. So just the, I guess our interagency collaboration has been easier than reaching out to DMV. But I can look into that as well. Is

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: it AOT or DM? AOT.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: Okay. I'll let agency in

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: that department. Yeah, sorry. I spoke on it.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Can I ask you a question on those other licenses you said for research and also for utilities? But that usually aren't those granted for the installation of monitoring stations in the case of wildlife management areas for weather or conditions of soil and that kind of thing. It's not just use of the land temporary, it's more construction of a permanent or maybe long term structure, medium permanent?

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: Yeah, sometimes the licenses authorize things like those building concrete pads that have transfer stations and stuff like that. So they do they can be issued for longer periods of time. They might be issued for ten years. And then every ten years, we'd reevaluate whether the infrastructure was still there. They'd be conditioned around access to the site, management for avoidance of threatened and endangered species. So they're fairly simple authorizations, but they allow the department to evaluate what impacts the infrastructure might have on whatever the protected conservation values of that lands are.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: It's different. So what had been contemplated before with the wildlife management access fee or license.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: The public access license. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: It's a curious choice of a license versus a fee.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: Well, think that the terminology is used, yes, the way that the rule currently has licenses, it has these permit fees, which is a range of $50 to $10,000 And then the permits I didn't talk about, but we issue special use permits for things like large group activities at access areas, aquatic invasive species management at access areas. So we also issue the special use permits pursuant to that permitting fee authority, also $50 to $10,000 But yeah, two fees that are authorized in the rule, permit fees and license fees, they don't have additional language attached to them in the rule. I'm just providing context for how they're currently used, but my understanding of the way the, in the way the bill was drafted, it seems at least to have contemplated that there may be an allowance for fees for other types of use of department lands. We haven't used the rule in that way yet.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I just want further context. All of the ways that you're levying fees right now are very similar to the way other departments or agencies might levy fees. It's just that you are really one of the few places where your department is deciding the actual level of the fee. In almost every other place, it comes through as a regular fee bill for changing those rates.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: Yes, acknowledging that. Think that

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Which I'm sure is easier for you.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: I think that it allows us to be flexible in terms of the fees that we are charging, particularly when we're working with organizations, like the licenses that are issued to research organizations. I don't even know when the last time these permit and license fees were changed, but because it's a rule, it goes through the rulemaking process. We went through the rulemaking process to update the camp tuition fees. So the general assembly does have oversight over that. It's not something that the department is able to just impose on providers without any kind of review.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: What about the year round education center? I'm thinking of the Keio Camp.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: There is, the rule establishes rental fees for the use of those facilities. And actually, the vast majority of rentals of those facilities happen through partner organizations. And we almost never charge a rental fee when we're working with partner organizations. So if we're holding some kind of event where Fish and Wildlife is involved, we rarely ever collect a fee. I think that we generated on average around $1,500 in revenue from rental fees from our educational facilities over the last four or five years. So it's pretty minimal. I

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: just want to follow-up with former representative Bob Helm worked diligently on getting that building there at Keogh. And I think hopefully you can raise those feet because it's used year round,

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: and

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: you guys know.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: Very nice. Sorry, excuse me. In the last rule update, there was a nominal update to those facility rental fees. The issue again is that we rarely charge them because we're almost always working with the organizations that are having conducting activities there.

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: If I may, we have gone to imposing a cleaning fee after every now and even the cleaning fee has become a very big bone of contention for folks. And the warden service has been asked to pay their own cleanup fee because we have a big event there every year for the wardens, and so they said, well, we'll just clean it ourselves. That's fine too, but there's always some sort of a rub with a fee, but I completely understand and I value Mr. Helm's efforts there.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: Yeah, represent me.

[Rep. James Masland]: Thank you. I was impressed or interesting to hear, you know, a little while back in your testimony, you use a third authorization. Well, license is the correct terminology station and and statute and whatnot, but but with regards to utilities going across state land, in functional terms, does seem more like an authorization of carry out an activity. So I just was impressed with that. I wouldn't ask anybody to change anything, but in terms of explaining things to us and us, the constituents, authorization seems quite practical. So, thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm sorry, might have had to lose your place with our

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: questions. No, I'm happy to answer any questions. I really wanted to just provide the context for this rule. The Department of Forest Parks and Recreation, again, pursuant to very similar statutory language also has adopted a rule. And I see the way that they charge fees for access to state parks as sort of a similar construct to the idea behind the public access license, which has not been adopted, it's just discussed. So yeah, FPR has a rule that's similar to ours. Their rule is more extensive. It includes some management objectives of state lands and some restrictions around how state parks and state forests are used, but establishes a similar sort of fee structure for gaining access to state parks and state forest lands.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think I'm curious to find a way where we could narrow your scope slightly so that you are not creating essentially sort of brand new categories of ways to charge the public without full legislative authority, but are able to make sort of the kind of adjustments you need to make in order to meet the exact market needs. There's also an overlaying concern that we've talked about at various times in committee, which is, given that we are not receiving or passing fee bills across state government, departments and agencies that have the authority to do it themselves in a more subtle way are really at a competitive advantage with other departments that are looking just are sort of fighting it out for general fund dollars with each other. And it's just one of the ways that we, I think, are creating a challenge within the whole of state government. And so we'd love to craft a way to narrow this to meet the needs and also leave some of the flexibility that it sounds like you require.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: Yes. And I did make kind of a ham handed attempt at that, which I said earlier this week, but I think that it might require some more review. The attempt was to revise 4132 to sort of narrow the scope of the fee making authority to use of department facilities. But in retrospect, I do think that it's really important for us to continue to have the license authorization for the research activities, for example, where they're working directly with our biologists and our staff. So if the committee is receptive, I can take another look at that language and try to be more carefully tailored so that it doesn't create an open ended authorization for ongoing fee authority. That would be It just allows us to keep our current rules so that we can continue to administer that rule. Yeah, we would

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: love to take a look at that. Thank you. Yeah.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: Yeah.

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: And just the short time we have left, I did want to take one more swing at something I feel like I missed when I proposed the access license the last time. Just sort of a a a reasonableness, standard argument. And looking at, what I asked our access area sorry. My phone's ringing. Area specialist Mike Wachowski, I asked him to to put together what it would look like to if we were to purchase another access area today, like what where those funds would come from, who would be responsible for that land, and then and then who would essentially be getting it for free, because that's where my small mind and thick skull goes with this effort. I look at anglers and hunters and people who are buying motorboat registrations as sometimes double and triple dipping into paying for the maintenance and use of these access areas. And paddlers who we maintain access areas for, we maintain infrastructure for, at at no requirement from the federal government. We don't have to to create anything for paddlers. It's it's all for for motorboats and and hunters and anglers. But we do. We we we do create all of this infrastructure for all of these uses, we want and we need, and people are moving to Vermont for. We feel as though if you put all the people in a bucket who are paying and and the the pilots are are still outside of that still outside of that bucket. And I don't I just don't feel it's like an unreasonable, ask of us to to to create a license that would involve them in the in the in the payment for for some of this. And and to be to be very plain, money that would hypothetically be paid would not be going into some bucket that would solely take care of access areas. It's for our budget. It's for our budget. And in twenty years, I feel like when this would be normalized, this would be great to have, whether it's $20 or 250,000 like we can answer. So I just wanted to make that that that sort of pragmatic from my standpoint argument, and and and then respect and honor whatever you wish to do.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And I just want to say, I really appreciate that policy thinking. I think having that policy conversation through the normal channels would of proposing a new license, proposing a new fee, us working through that and talking it through as a body with you all would be something that we would be welcome to. It's just that we're doing this in sort of a weird reverse way. Sure. Thanks.

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yeah, absolutely. I hope you have a really good hockey game. Yeah. Everyone

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: If we win, we don't go on vacation to Florida. If we lose, we'll go on vacation Florida.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I absolutely miss wish Florida. You

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: lots. Thank

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: you so much.

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: Have wonderful Friday. Thanks for having me.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: Commissioner? Yes. Game's over. If you don't win, don't say we lost. We're going to Florida.

[Hannah Smith (General Counsel, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)]: It's gonna

[Jason Batchelder (Fish & Wildlife Commissioner)]: be a hard time.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Folks, we're back here really right after the floor, please. Oh, I'm so sorry. I really just didn't read my agenda. And we've never worked together. Sorry. I did. I'm so sorry. Okay. We'll figure that out. Thank you.