Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: Am the official weatherman of set of agriculture, so We are going to spend some time this morning talking with Stephanie Smith, Deputy Director Plant Industry Division, Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets. But as customary, what we normally would do on a Tuesday, is that we will go around the table and introduce ourselves, starting with the senior member.

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Brian Collamore representing the Rutland District. Rutland Market, Bennington District. Joe Major, Windsor.

[Sen. Joseph "Joe" Major]: Russ Ingalls, Essex District.

[Brenda Lehman]: Brenda Lehman, Committee Assistant.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: Welcome, the floor is yours.

[Stephanie Smith]: Yeah, so Stephanie Smith with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, and I'm here to talk about, I believe, Section 13, well, to talk about, I was mentioning the topics.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: Fourteen, fifteen, and 20, think.

[Stephanie Smith]: Fourteen, fifteen, and 20, okay. Related to a change in the pesticide applicator statute and then the other changes within the seed regulation of statute chapter 35. I don't have to talk about the pesticide compact, but if you were interested, I do have notes on that, which is in the section right about previous.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: But that's what we don't do anymore, is that correct?

[Stephanie Smith]: Yeah, don't do it anymore, so we're appealing it. Okay, you're all set there. Well,

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: just to say it for anybody else in case whatever, as far as,

[Stephanie Smith]: yeah. The Interstate Pest Control Compact Governing Board voted to dissolve in 2012 and ceased operation in 2013. With that, one of the Vermont Pest Control Compact was on some things. We're just working on general section in order to address that change.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: Okay. Is that non controversial? Nobody's going have a problem with that? Yeah.

[Stephanie Smith]: Okay. Actually, reached out to the State of Maine because I was curious about it. Was unfamiliar with this particular section of the law, and they, I believe, may also consider repeating your law as well. We're in good company.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: Any questions about that? Nope? Okay. Great, great. So

[Stephanie Smith]: on pesticide exams, we're amending section eleven twelve to clarify and simplify the categories for pesticide applicators to facilitate the administration of that program. We are kind of collapsing government applicators with municipal and public education applicator categories. And then we're taking the retake fee and changing it into a, we could call it an examination fee or an application fee. That $25 that's to address the administrative purposes of the pesticide exams that occur, the first exam, three wall exams that are taken, and then finally we're changing the amount of times, or not the amount of times, but the frequency with which an individual can take a pesticide exam. Currently, it's if you're scheduled to take it on Monday, on a Tuesday, you have to wait seven days to take it again, and then after that you have to wait thirty days, and then after that you have to wait a year. We're going to remove that requirement to allow people to take an exam when they want to take an exam. This will allow people to be employed and it will also support companies that need pesticide applicators. We believe that repetition is a form of education and people learn through that process. And as well, that includes the ages of applicators on multiple occasions post becoming certified applicator. That includes our outreach to our pesticide applicator newsletter, the requirements for continuing education, and then our inspection and permitting processes. So it's not like they become an applicator and they're done with us. We continue to reach out to them and we'll go now. Is that any questions concerning? Yes.

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome, Stephanie. It's good to see you. So assuming, potentially, someone had a constituent who had a license for many, many years, and for one reason or another, didn't get emailed or snail mailed his normal application because it's a yearly exam. Well,

[Stephanie Smith]: So you're required by law to renew your application annually. The applicator is required to renew. Correct. There isn't an exam every year. There are requirements depending on the type of applicator you are, private or commercial, how many continuing education credits you need to get within a particular time span. I think that time span is five years. I can't remember the credits for the private applicator. It might be eight credits over that five year time span and then 16 credits for a commercial applicator within that five year time span. But if you fail to renew timely, then in order to recertify, you have to retake the exams to become certified again.

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: Again, potentially, this was maybe a rather elder person who had been doing it a long time and didn't make his annual application, didn't get notified, maybe got notified, it kinda got lost, and then went to a seminar, as I recall, and no one said anything when he registered like, Hey, by the way and then contacted his legislator and sought relief from this. And I will say that the Secretary of Ag got involved and was extremely helpful. So there's nothing in this bill that would have allowed because once according to the secretary, the federal requirement, and once that has elapsed and you have not made it, it would have been two years and there was really nothing he could do.

[Stephanie Smith]: Yeah, we, as an agency, we're the state lead agency for the management of pesticides, which includes pesticide applicators, and we submit a plan to EPA and we have to abide by that plan. Because that ensures that we're regulating to a bar that EPA agrees with. And that does include this requirement to renew your license annually and to maintain your certification credits and that the remedy in the situation, as you've described, is taking the exams again. Just so you know, there's a core exam that goes over the basics of pesticide application that covers every applicator has to take the corn, and the private exam is similar to before, and then you have to take, if you're a commercial applicator, you then have to take a category as well.

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: So nothing in this bill would change? Doesn't

[Stephanie Smith]: change any of

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: that.

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: Again, I I wanna compliment Secretary Chebbets for he even got to the point where he could have done it online kind of thing, Yeah.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: Anyway, the gentleman didn't follow through and has since retired, so. Well, I will also say that I've taken that exam, and I had half year's license for five or six years. But I will say that there are other people that were in there that probably weren't as book smart as I was, and knew more about pesticides and applications and everything and how to do a better job than I could ever do ever. But they struggled. They struggled with the portion of the exam part of it because they just, it is what it was. So I'm glad to see that we've made it less onious as far as to stretching those things out. Because as you said, these people that I was, know, quite a few years ago, forty years ago, I'd imagine that what it is. But it was their livelihood, it's what they did. It's a field that they were in. Yeah, I'm in favor of that.

[Stephanie Smith]: And so the next section that were, that I'm on mute, to have to talk about is the changes to the seed law. And so primarily what the agency is attempting to do is to bring RC law into conformance with the definitions that are contained within the recommended uniformed seed standard law, RUSL for short, which I would use. So, are many definitions within Russell and we have updated definitions within our law to reflect those Russell definitions. And then as well to define, we don't register individual seed products. We don't review labels for seed products. If there's a concern about a label or claim that's made on a seed labeled product, we would respond to that complaint, but we don't review the content, we don't test out seeds for germination rates. We register the folks that distribute those products. As a part of this change in the law, we're including a definition of a distributor and distribute, as well as in the final section, as opposed to calling it an inspection fee for the seed distributors and then there's some clarification on reporting requirements contained within this law. As well as, because we'd like to receive the reporting relative to the treatment that go on seeds and the EPA numbers associated with those. We do a seed report which is available on our website with the collection of that information. But we did include that it would be an enforceable offense if you didn't report to us, even report zero sales, because if we don't have that mechanism, then we don't know if someone sold or didn't sell, and this just provides that ability to have more accurate reporting year to year.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: So anyway selling seed in the state of Vermont needs to be licensed?

[Stephanie Smith]: If you're selling seed, you need to have a, yes, need to be registered with the state of Vermont. It's an $85 registration fee, and then additionally, you sell in containers greater than 10 pounds, there's an additional tonnage associated with that.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: We're very sensitive to what's going on. We've spent some time on it. Some senators won't hear when they pass the neonics ban and all of that. This isn't in any way, shape, or form anything to get around any of that stuff or anything make it easier or anything like that. It's housekeeping, on seed selling in the state of Vermont, that none of my senators can get pounded up by anyone supporting something like this.

[Stephanie Smith]: No relationship I mean outside to, of until the ban goes to the place that we would collect information regarding the seed treatments.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: And if the ban was in place and the OC could be here, the people that are trying to sell the seed from the outside in without being registered in the state of Vermont could get criminally charged. We would be aware of it and be

[Stephanie Smith]: able to take the necessary steps to inform them of our law and further enforcement directions.

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: So I notice at the bottom of page 29, line 17 sub 13, there's a definition of creed and seed. It's underlined, so I thought maybe that means it's a new definition, or is it just rewriting what's current?

[Stephanie Smith]: It is a definition that I believe is part of Russell. So, again, we're trying to Compliance. Yeah. Compliant or in uniform with Russell. Because Russell applies I should mention Russell applies nationally, and so when someone's working in the state of New York, they're being held in the same state in Okay, thank you. Yeah. Rudy?

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: So, everybody good? Yeah. Good. Is that it for us?

[Stephanie Smith]: Those are the sections that you've invited me to speak on tonight, and I appreciate that you mentioned the Ag Producer Night this evening.

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: Just hope

[Stephanie Smith]: to see you there. The weather is Is

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: that here in the building? Yeah, is. And it starts at 04:30. 04:30. I got a Mhmm. Retention started at

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: 04:30, so I'm not being able to

[Stephanie Smith]: You can come a little early against it.

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: Okay. Oh.

[Stephanie Smith]: We just wanted to give a half hour for folks

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: instead I've another thing too, so

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: Yeah.

[Stephanie Smith]: And we'll be there on 05:45.

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: So on the agenda, Stephanie, it says fifteen through twenty, which we just did.

[Stephanie Smith]: I

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: was stuck back on your fifteen. Gotcha. Excellent. Okay. Okay, well, definitely all I'll do is quick make for

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: five sections of the committee.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: Yeah, was really helpful. It also was very Well, think it put some relief into the committee because we didn't have a lot of sections on our miscellaneous bill, and so we could see how this all gonna go. Trudy, any more discussion on this?

[Sen. Brian Collamore]: No. Great. Well, want to

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: thank you very much for coming in, and I think we have some time to kill for just a minute.

[Stephanie Smith]: Keep us going be dead, Tim.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls]: Okay, so let's adjourn.