Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: And we are in Ways and Means. We're working on H. Six thirty two. It is the last bill we are going to take a look at today. We are making delightful progress. And we have Michael O'Grady here, who's going to take us through the bill.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So H. Six thirty two is accolating to miscellaneous environmental amendments, and this is Michael O'Grady, the vice counsel for Burkhardt. When this bill was introduced, it had two sections relating to storm water impact fees and striking those fees, and that would have affected the revenue of the state or the revenue of the EEC specifically. But as passed out by the Committee on Environment, those two sections were struck. And I don't believe there's anything else in the bill that affects revenue of the state. And so I can walk you through the substance of the bill. If if you would like that, I I thought a section by section summary might be the best way.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: I think that sounds the ideal.

[Speaker 0]: There, Ted, are there any particular sections you would recommend? Michael, take us along. Okay.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: So, yeah, not particularly. Okay, great.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. It's Facebook. Happens to me sometimes when I move from committee to committee, it doesn't show

[Speaker 0]: I think this probably gets you a new iPad. I we could all look at our own devices section by section.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: You can

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: go to the Arcanate Okay. You can go to Arcanate page.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: That's what's that's not

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: If you

[Speaker 0]: wanna just stop the screen sharing, we can all just follow along. Okay.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So if you're looking at your section by section devices, the first section relates to what's called the extended battery, producer responsibility program. That's the program where you can, go and submit your spent batteries for recycling. There's a product responsibility organization that runs that. When you first enacted that law, you told ANR to report back to you on how to recycle and manage hard to recycle batteries, EV batteries and batteries, like the Tesla batteries for solar, etcetera. And the stewardship organization has volunteered to do that report instead of ANR. They just need an extra year. So that's what the first section does. The stewardship organization does a report with an extra year. Section two changes the inspection requirements for category one underground storage tanks. That basically right now, it doesn't say that delivery is prohibited to those tanks if they are unpermitted. So you technically can deliver to an unpermitted tank right now, and ANR is requiring that they be permitted and that they meet the other standards, in rule. So that's that change. Section three relates to the Healthy Home Initiative, which was an ARPA program, which provided money to low and moderate income households for replacement of wastewater water or storm water systems. That program intended or required personal information of the applicants to be confidential, but that is not clear in state law. And so section three clarifies that the information that Vermont applicants provided in the Healthy Home Initiative is confidential. Sections four through seven relate to the Flood Safety Act from 2024, which is the act which required permitting of development and river corridors. It required going to a statewide standard for national flood insurance protection, studying whether the state should take over administration of flood insurance administration and other wetlands and several other provisions. What four through seven does is it effectively asks for ANR asks for additional time to do the river corridor rules and river corridor permitting, the NFIP study committee on state administration. And that's effectively what sections four through seven does, more time to do some things that you already require. Sections eight and nine relate to clean water service providers. Clean water service providers are entities that are designated for each watershed in the state to do nonregulatory programs. So those water quality programs that are not required by law or permit or otherwise. And so ANRs have a couple of functions that they need to do to inform those clean water service providers, And they have to take out things like their plan for a watershed or their approval of a project and the value it's given. They have to do that through public notice. But the public notice requirements right now in statute are different. So when they go out, they're not sure which public notice they're supposed to use. They want an informed notice for all the time, so they have to go out to the public notice. And that's what section eight and nine does. Sections 10 through 15, you remember you may remember last year, EPA required the state to clarify that ANR has authority over CAFOs and discharges from CAFOs, and CAFOs are concentrated animal feeding operations. And so you made a

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: lot of changes to both agency of agriculture statute and ANR statute right here to clarify ANR's authority over permitting of discharges from CAFOs. Sections 10 through 15 make a lot of technical changes to that language, largely because EPA wanted them, and they weren't made last year for some reason. I don't know why.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But the ANR has asked for these EPA revisions. And then there's some technical things, too. Current statute says cows slash calf. And does that mean cow or calves, or does it mean cow and calves? And that's important because the number of cow and calves that you have might trigger a different hermit requirement

[Speaker 0]: Makes sense.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: For you. So it was clarified that when cow slash calf means cow and calf. So that's made multiple times in these sections as well. So that's that's basically what sections 10 through 15 are. No fees changes. Now the agency of ag is looking for a fee change for large farms and medium farms, but they're looking at it in the miscellaneous ag bill.

[Speaker 0]: And they are expecting that.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Not not in this bill. Section 16 relates to permitting of dams whenever anyone is going to do a repair, alteration, removal, construction, any type of action relating to a dam, they have to apply to a state jurisdictional dam. They have to apply to DEC for a permit to do that. Section 16 provides that when dam removal is an appropriate alternative to the applied for action, DEC informs the applicant. The applicant doesn't need to go to dam removal, but they will have the opportunity to revise their application if they wanna go to dam removal. But right now, there's questions about whether some of the applied for projects for repair or replacement will be better served by a dam removal. And so this is just providing that option in the application process. So that's nothing more than feedback saying, you know, you

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: should think about removing the dam instead of repairing it.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. It's not mandatory. Still the applicant, the dam owner's choice. It's just that the advocates were saying in their experience that their project applicants were not being informed that dam removal is an alternative. And so now it's an alternative that we'll be informed of that.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Because I have a constituent who's looking to repair a dam on a body of water, and as soon as they talk about trying to get state money, they realize there's money for removal, but not for repair.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But that's not necessarily true. Because last year, you changed what used to be called the unsafe dam removal fund, which unsafe dam removal, and that's what your constituent probably heard. But last year, you changed that because it didn't make sense to, like, wait for it to be unsafe that requires removal. And so now and that that change probably just happened in January that allows for that fund to be used for dam repair. And I can send you that, Grace. Yes.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Section

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: seventeen and eighteen relate to the Emergency Rulemaking Authority. So there's a process for adopting rule under the Administrative Procedure Act. It generally takes if you do it as down to the minute of all the things that you're required to do, the notice, the response, the comments, the meetings, you can get it done in as fast as four and a half months, but nobody does. It usually takes closer to eight to ten months. Well, you have an emergency rulemaking authority that allows agencies to go and avoid that normal process if there's an imminent peril to health, safety, the environment, or there's a federal law that requires them to do something quickly and they don't have enough time to do emergency rulemaking. ANR is now looking for a third option for emergency rulemaking. You may know that many, many state programs, and it's not just A and R, it's banking, it's Medicaid, it's some housing conditions, they rely on references to federal law. So when you go and look at their rule, instead of repeating all of the federal rule and the state rule, they just cross reference, probably corporation by record. For example, the banking institution law has about 60 references to federal law. So air pollution control regulations have about 70 references to federal law. The agencies are concerned because there was an executive order that said actually, have to step back one. Does everyone know what Chevron is? NRDC versus Chevron, where the courts were supposed to give deference to agencies in their interpretation of statute when they adopt the rule. Well, had been on the book for about fifty years, and state federal agencies have been using that as authority in their adoption of rules. But the US Supreme Court overturned Chevron two years ago, almost two years ago. And subsequently, the the president issued an executive order that said agencies shouldn't repeal anything that was unauthorized or or unsupported by law and cited specifically Chevron. So, technically, agencies are supposed to go out and and repeal under what's called the federal APA good cause exception to repeal all those rules that were based on Chevron. So if you're a state agency that has 70 references to federal law in your rule, you're probably a little terrified that some of those are gonna go away, and you won't be able to implement your program because it's no longer incorporated by reference because it doesn't exist on any So what the proposal from the agency is is to allow an agency, any state agency, to go to emergency rulemaking if that repeal of a federal statute or rule would jeopardize the ability of the state ability to implement the state program. Emergency rules are only valid for one hundred and eighty days. The agency would have to come forward with the permanent rule at one hundred and eighty days or potentially ask for another one hundred and eighty days. That's a possibility. But it's only good for two years, because that executive order and removing those federal rules is supposed to happen quickly. Won't happen quickly. There's going to be a lot of litigation. But you will revisit that in two years to see if you still need that emergency rulemaking authority. But it will prevent programs, Medicaid, banking, air pollution, water pollution from from just not being enforced. Thank

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: you.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section 19 relates to the hauling of waste tires. The committee downstairs, House Environment, was looking at an extended producer responsibility to fill for waste tires. And they just couldn't come to consensus with the regulated community, with the agency, with themselves, and they decided not to go forward with the EPR program. But they still wanna address, in some respects, the hauling of waste tires. So you may know that that a lot of solid waste prohibitions are enforceable at the local level. Like burning waste, that's enforceable at the local level. Littering, enforceable at the local level. One thing they want to make enforceable at the local level is the transport of waste tires. There are companies out there that are going around and collecting waste tires for whatever purpose, and they are not certified solid waste haulers. And so that's important because certified solid waste haulers first need to be identified to the agency so they know who they are, and they need to meet some vehicle safety requirements for their transport.

[Speaker 0]: That's a different I'm not going to ask.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's Okay. But you don't need a big, huge truck to be a certified solid waste hauler. You can do it in a pickup truck. They just wanna know who you are and that you're doing it safely. And that would be enforceable at the municipal level just like burning waste, littering, snowmobile waste, vessel waste. And then section 20, they instead of the EPR program for tires, they wanna report back from ANR after a stakeholder process on how to manage legacy waste motor vehicle tire piles and recycling or reuse options for waste motor vehicle tires. And then the last substantive section is the emissions repair program. When you, General Assembly, required emissions instruction as part of the state air pollution control plan implementation plan, you created this assistance program for low and moderate income individuals.

[Speaker 0]: I had no idea we had that program until I just read this. It sounds like

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, maybe you I will tell you why you had no idea. Because while that program has been in existence, DMV also had the authority to waive your failure of your

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: And so emissions

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: they have been waiving your emissions inspections failures, but if that goes away this year. And now they expect the emissions repair program to become more popular because, frankly, they've only had three applicants.

[Speaker 0]: And

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the other thing that they want to do is they want to make the eligibility criteria more just easily implemented in the pool. Because right now, they're using a standard, which you have to do certification for. Now, they're just gonna be using percentage of federal poverty level and the applicant's attestation and potential submission of documentation, stats, or otherwise. Great. That's the bill.

[Speaker 0]: Questions?

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Question. Way back on section two, underground storage tanks. The language you wrote is perfectly fair. I understand you've said the question I have is what if there are underground storage tanks already now that aren't permitted, that are in use? What if What happens then?

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They have to go get a ballot permit from ANR. And so there's no delivery Delivered. If this passes, that there would be no delivery until that. And then an underground storage tank isn't your home heating tank in your basement. That's actually in above ground storage, even though it's in your basement.

[Speaker 0]: Ground storage More like unburied. Yes.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. That's that's exactly it. An underground storage tank is one that is 10% or more buried in the ground. K. So Yeah. It's not farm tanks for motor fuel, and it's not residential heating tanks as well. Some people have actual underground storage tanks for their oil. I know that because when I moved my grandfather out of his house, I found one.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: Yeah.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Remember a number of years ago, quite a number of years ago, we did a bunch of work on these and also with the with the lines between the tank and the gas tanks for for the pumps and various other kinds of things.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. So a category one tank is not just the receptacle that holds the fuel or other regulated material. It's everything that's related to that that that system.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Okay. Without going back through all the testimony, the best of your knowledge and belief that t's are crossed and the highs are dotted with regards to underground storage tanks that will now need a a permanent process is Yes. Pretty well

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I I think it is. For a while there, and I think this is what we recognize on this initiative, there were single wall tanks. Right. And the single wall tanks are not reliable. And so the state has moved to double walled tanks and some other alternatives. And so that is that's been fully transitioned.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: Thank you. Thank you. On the sections four through seven FLUT, APS, extensions, it asked me to speak for it. Do you have a follow-up if I did any rationale for the extensions? Involved. Great.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I I can't answer.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, great. Please do so.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But when the flood safety action passed, they said they needed more time for all the requirements in it, and you didn't give it to them. And so they came back and said, We still need that to mind, and could you please give it to us? And they were given 14 positions under the Flood Safety Act, and it took them time to fill those positions. And they have to do a lot. And so that's effectively their test line.

[Speaker 0]: Anyone else? Yes, works everybody gets sections 15, no 10 through 15. Are these necessary?

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Are these, I'm sorry?

[Speaker 0]: Are there always changes necessary for farmers and the farmers committee? This is not really our billing rate, but is there enough for me about now on the

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Some of them US EPA required, and some of them that EPA required kind of picky. For example, currently in Title X, there's cross references to definitions in Title VI. EPA doesn't like that because it makes it look like Title VI and the Agency of Agriculture has some authority over Title X. So they require the removal of the cross reference and just the inclusion of the actual text of the definition from Title VI. So pretty picky, but that's what EPA wanted. The way that you define two farms that need to be treated is one for purposes of getting a permit. You have that in your statute, but EPA doesn't like how it's worded, so they want their word. There's a That's something

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: very helpful. Thank you. So

[Speaker 0]: We're doing this because the federal EPA is requiring us to?

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. The agency of Ag is getting some things that they would like as well. And there's something that I missed in a reference to an old MOU between the two agencies that's in a section of law that I never even thought the reference would be in, but it's there. So I had to put it to change that as well.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Then is the House Act Committee they have this yet?

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have seen it, and they approved it, and so has the agency.

[Speaker 0]: We'll get there in a minute. Anything else for Michael? Michael sees nothing, and so he is leaving the table. Great. Which of you are How are you

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: guys doing over there? I have three sentences.

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If you'd

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: like me to get in the chair.

[Speaker 0]: You can stay right there. Is that okay with you, Page?

[Logan Newman (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I can Absolutely. Okay. Thank you for So it's government Trump's fiscal office. Yes, really minor kind of going through the downstream potential fiscal impacts. I don't have a fiscal note yet. I'll have it ready for you all early next week. But to the extent the state would be permitting development in river corridors and that time permitting goes live is extended from fiscal year twenty eight to fiscal year two thousand and thirty. You would realize that fee revenue later, but since they saw the new rule making and set up the program, it's unclear the magnitude on the preference, the fee amount, etcetera. And that's basically all I have.

[Speaker 0]: Logan Newman, yeah.

[Logan Newman (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes, so for the record, Logan, we're at the Joint Office. The only thing there is a matter fact today is the Section 21, the efficient computer program. I don't know if it's necessarily the case, but this is, as was mentioned, changing that program as well as my understanding is search can increase who is eligible for this program. So there will likely be more people using this program and there'll be more vouchers issued in the future. So just trying to highlight that change. More than a three. That is I think the hope of alleged practice.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, thank you. Anyone need anything else?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Just a question for Ted. So was there anything projected for those applications or fees that you were talking about in this year's budget or next year's?

[Logan Newman (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Not anything in the budget that I know of. We're looking at fiscal year '27 so it would be a year later than that and I checked the fiscal note for Act 121 it didn't see any commentary on the fee revenue. There

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: isn't even a fee set for those comments yet.

[Logan Newman (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah, okay.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: So Michael Brady, did this get a drive by from the transportation committee?

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: It did.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, everyone spent time with this. They

[Michael O'Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: were at first a little skeptical of the program and for the three applications, but then DMV came in and said they're no longer a waiver card here. Okay. Can you that's what happened. Logan probably was there.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Anyone else?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Madam Chair, I would move that we find draft 5.1, Strike Almendment to age six thirty two favorable based on no financial impact to the state.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. Representative Waszazak, second. Representative Kimbell, first. Sorry about that. Discussion. We used to be able to vote one way on the bill in committee, and then when we get to the floor, we have our own decisions to make on the floor. Always and forever, Representative President. Okay, thank you.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: Alright. Can you just give a call?

[Speaker 0]: Anyone else have anything? Alright. Seeing nothing of Kirk O'Felie Kornheiser? Absolutely. Representative Branagan? Yes. I'll vote yes. Does Representative Burkhardt? Representative Higley? No. Representative Holcombe? Yes. Representative Kimbell?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Yes.

[Speaker 0]: Representative Masland? Yes. Representative Ode? Yes. Representative Page? No. Representative Waszazak?

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: Yes.

[Speaker 0]: Representative Canfield?

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

[Speaker 0]: And Representative Kornheiser? Yes. We have voted the bill favorable as amended nine-two-zero. Thank you. Just not amended. Not amended. Not amended. Oh, as we got it. Okay. I did. It's almost on Okay. That's good. Okay. Thank you everyone.

[Rep. Edward "Teddy" Waszazak (Member)]: You open your reports? Sure. Okay, great. Doctor. Kimbell for cutting.

[Speaker 0]: And we are done for the day.