Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: General discussion. Morning. Sorry we're late. We are floor kept us busy. For those that are goofball in the Senate, we we have just cleaned up our schedule on the Senate floor of a lot of crossover bills. I imagine that we'll have a little calmness for a few days until the bills start coming back on from the House, but we should be able to start putting in polar vase on our Senate Committee and get to some of the bills that we're looking at. We're looking at a couple bills today, actually a 30,000 foot view. One is the accolades of prohibiting this huge sale of the herbicide Paraguay and the other one is the miscellaneous Ag bill trimming over current counts in the house. Again, a very high overview look and I think before we're done we'll all work together and figure out what we want our schedules to look like in the next little bit. We do have tomorrow, we have some drainage tile issues from from and job Josh and and some Salvation Farm updates. We have Department of Taxes coming in on Thursday. We have some room on that stuff. Then we have agency and natural resources coming after that. And then we have Friday, we're open. So we can start building a little bit of schedule here and start bringing it as I guess is based on what you guys what your preferences are for that. Linda, do you have anything to add to that?

[Linda (Committee Assistant)]: No. Okay.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: That sounds good. The first on the list is because they did on the list first and there might be some folks that maybe want to comment on it, is on H739 and actually for everything they use and sale of herbicide paraquat. Is there anybody in the room that wants to comment on it while we're here or anybody on screen? Do we have anybody? Would you like to comment on this at all? We haven't for any of it, but you're in the room and you've got some interest. So what say you, sir?

[Tayo Jagar (New Prassen Group, for Michael J. Fox Foundation)]: Yeah. So for the record, Tayo Jagar with New Prassen Group, we work with the Michael J. Bach Foundation Parkinson's Research. We were pleased with the with the house committee deliberations, pleased with the results, and, you know, we don't think the bill needs any more work. Heard some great testimony in the house from medical experts, from farmers, and as is probably where there was a unanimous vote of approval out of the house committee. So

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yes. Was gonna say that we have the same bill in here, but I knew the house has taken it up. I didn't really think it was that important for us to be doing what the work that they're already doing. So, yeah, we'll take a peek at the bill and and call in for testimony and stuff and see where we end up with that. So we appreciate that.

[Unknown commenter (Research Group representative)]: Hi. I'm the Research Group. And I essentially second everything that Teo said. We're happy with how the bill came out of the house, and, you know, recognize the health impacts that that Paraquan has on on applicators and nearby communities. So excited for this step forward.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Sounds good. I've always started out introducing ourselves, I know we're a little bit behind it, but Senator

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: Collamore, Representative Rutland District. Right for you. Robert Plunkett, Senator of Patent District. Steven Heffernan, Senator of Essex County District. Joe Major, Senator, Windsor District.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: And Russ Ingalls, Senator of Essex District. Okay, so just kind of looking through the bill fairly quickly. Binding, general assembly binds the paraquat, paraquat, di chloride is a synthetic non selective contact herbicide that is a member of that chemical family. Dipoli, it's all vegetation that it touches. Paraquat was first introduced in The United States in 1964 and in 1978, the US Environmental Protection Agency classified all Paraquat products as restrictive use pesticides because of Paraquat's high acute toxicity and potential for poisoning. Paraquan has been widely used throughout The United States since its classification as a restricted use pesticide in '24 currently registered pesticide products approved for use in The United States contain paraquan. The Pesticide Action Network 2024 consolidated list of banned pesticides identified 72 countries as banning the use of paraquat, including Brazil, China, Malaysia, Peru, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey, and Vietnam. The European Union banned Paraguay in 2007 after a court determined that the relevant regulatory body had failed to apply proper procedures for evaluation of the herb icide and that the regulatory body would not properly thorough in its assessments of paraquat's effect on humans and will help. Multiple studies by the National Institutes of Health have demonstrated that paraquat exposure substantially increases the risk of Parkinson's disease in those exposed to the herbicide. Studies by the National Institutes of Health and others have linked exposure to paraquat to increase risk of non Pashtun's lymphoma and childhood leukemia In 2021, as part of a product registration review of Paraquat required under the federal insecticide, fungicide and rodenticide act, the yeah. The EPA issued an interim decision approving the continued registration of paraquat for use in The United States despite multiple public comments objecting to approval and significant scientific evidence regarding the potential health effects of paraquat exposure. Multiple parties subsequently moved to challenge the EPA interim decisions authorized to continue registration and use of paraquat. In particular, the challenging parties contested the EPA's assessment of the increased risk of Parkinson's disease due to exposure to parafont from violation of what is it? Volatizational during use. Without reading much more than that, I do think that we need to probably find out who's using Ferroquat and whether there's any other chemicals that they could use. I don't go into just wanting to ban anything, whether it's this or anything lightly. As far as moving forward, I believe that the house has probably done its due diligence as far as where they're at with it. I know it was a little contentious on a couple of different things, calling following what they would like. So let's figure out who we should have in and either concur with the house or differ from the house or just find out what their thought process was and what their bail process was. Anybody have any things that are jumping off the top of their heads about who we want

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: to have in? For me, it's whoever's been using it is why they think it's so important to use. That's, that's- Say that again, I'm sorry. Yeah, because for me, who is, if we can find people that are using it- Yeah. And why is it so important over another chemical that they're using? What makes, because they know that risk has hazards with it. Why are they willing to take that larger risk with that type of chemical knowing how bad it is and how much it's been banned everywhere.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: It's another chemical, but what makes it so much more effective than something else? Exactly. Linda did share me a witness list. I'm gonna pass it around, but policy expert, Zach Hardy, senior manager, state government relations, Rutland District Michael J. Fox Foundation. Grant Culp, Environmental Health Policy, Lead of Michael J. Fox Foundation. Scott Barber, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, Environmental Working Group, Food and Farm Professor at Georgetown Law. Doctor. Dave Morrison, Professor of the University of New Hampshire. Doctor. James T. Boyd, Neurologist with expertise in Parkinson's disease. So it's very heavy on Parkinson's stuff. I don't know that we have to have all those folks in. I like to get UVM in and to see what we would want to have with that. There is a, Jason Kerchak, Staff Nurse and Hematology Oncology at UVM Medical Center. I think that if we were to pick a couple of these people off this list and maybe get some Maybe we can ask Heather Darby tomorrow or we can ask UVM who we might want to get

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: in on that. We must have a pesticide

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: or- Yeah. Was side sales we have. Yeah. Yeah. It was We have the HE bag. We can let's let's get them in, and let's talk about that. Just to get a balance. Yeah. I wanna get a balance of of everything. Didn't any farmers on that. I didn't any farmers on it.

[Linda (Committee Assistant)]: Here's a farmer who's requesting to be testified on this.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Charlie Gray. I think Greg Burr is on the ag committee as well on the house side. I think we ought to get him in. He has an orchard. Yeah, he's got an orchard.

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: And I know Richard Nelson was talking to Eaves.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Oh, really?

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: And he goes, It's pretty bad stuff, but I, did he get it? Correct.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: That's what I'm gonna be, that's really what I'm gonna be looking at. I'm gonna be looking at what are the risks, is it worth the risk, all that stuff. I just don't want to say we're going to ban it and already looks like there might be a triptyly case to do that, but as this committee has always been fair with everyone, good and bad, whatever the subject that we are, let's do our due diligence on it. Let's go into it. As we always do, as we always do, I just wanna I wanna hear the facts, and I wanna I wanna base it on the facts of what we're hearing. K? So we're we're all good as we check as we know. Yeah. We'll all get pressures from each side. Let's hear it out. Let's figure out what's going on with it. Do we have a good start on that, Linda? Yeah.

[Linda (Committee Assistant)]: Okay. I'll go over that with you afterwards.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Oh yeah, sounds good. Any other thoughts about that as far as that bill right there? Everybody good? Sounds good. Okay, sounds good. Okay, their miscellaneous ag bill, Let's just look at section one of that, and let's just go down through these sections again. Let's get the gist of what they're trying to do, and we'll set up some testimony for some of that stuff. Linda, do we have any We probably don't have Do we have a witness list as far as what they looked at as far as all that?

[Linda (Committee Assistant)]: I do not, but I can.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Okay. Great. As you graduate very well, the miscellaneous ag bill is basically, they've got six or seven subsections in there. They're all like independent bills, so it'll take a little bit more testimony go. As Let's get an idea of what sector one looks like. All about the drainage. Yeah.

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: That's a quality. So. Controversy. Yeah.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Me read down through some of that, or you guys want to just read it as you go?

[Tayo Jagar (New Prassen Group, for Michael J. Fox Foundation)]: Section one seems to be technical corrections.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: I thought they were gonna address some of the same provisions we had in our bill, but I don't see them.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: No, I don't much crossover as far as anything that we've done. Maybe they've maybe they got struck out, so that was all said and done. I heard that they were working on municipal zoning. No. They have. No.

[Linda (Committee Assistant)]: He's okay. Oh, okay. Going on the floor today.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Thank you, Linda. This looks pretty. And

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: Retail pricing standards.

[Tayo Jagar (New Prassen Group, for Michael J. Fox Foundation)]: Kinda section three looks like it's

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: more about specifically I don't know if we had agents.

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: I wrote some scales. Yeah. You know, we'll

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: look at a That is true.

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: Filling your gas tank up. Look at the pump and you'll see they're staying up.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: So we can skip around on this bill if you want to start somewhere first. I mean, the first one is, again, like technical corrections and all that. That wouldn't be my first choice to jump right into that one. Section two, management of non sewage waste. I've used in this section. Non sewage waste means any waste other than sewage that may contain organism pathogenic to human beings, but not means dormant runoffs, sewage means waste containing human fecal. So is this a bill of looking like spreading waste from maybe sewage water treatment plants?

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: That sounds like it. Does it address the plastic thing there now? PFOS? PFOS. You mention that, though, does it? We kinda, we'll try to round it up in there, does it? Maybe we just judge Collier. It's really technical corrections, definitional changes. We haven't seen anything to say.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: But think Collier would be good for sections one and two so far. And and and three as well, if we're gonna get ATVAG, and we we all went there to the weights and scales and all of that stuff. That's right. That was fun. See, worked out with good trust.

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: Oh, there's only four sections. The last one,

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: the effective date. K. What's the what's the fourth one? Oh, what's the third one? That's the That's I'll say. Yeah. That's all. Okay. Well, that's a pretty simple build. So I think I think probably if you got steeped all year in as far as all that, then we can go down through that one.

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: That might that might create a witness list after that. Yeah. Maybe whoever reported it for the house.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I'll take a look at that. I guess. Yeah. I read this letter from the back on the paraquat one. Yep. One of the farmers that wants to testify. It's Charles Gray. My name is Charlie Gray. I'm the field manager at Four Corners Farm and the vice president of Remox Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. I'm emailing the committee today to request an appointment. This one didn't come to us. I guess it didn't come to us. I'm emailing the committee today to request an appointment to discuss paraquat as a large acre strawberry farmer. Paraquat is an essential tool on my farm. We use it to remove runners, daughter's plants, to address an issue that would be financially feasible to resolve otherwise. I would like to discuss the possibility of adding strawberry to the exemption list along with apples. We So have some exemptions. So I've sent a video explaining why it needed to be in for strawberries. So he's from Newberry. Who's in Newberry? That you? That's Orange, isn't it? Orange County. Orange? Okay. Newberry. Yeah.

[Linda (Committee Assistant)]: That's the weakness. This is the senthouse. I'm on

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: The witness list on the House is Patricia Brown, board member, Vermont Retail and Grocery Association, so that would be on Jared Carpenter, we know he'd be on the water section. Steve Collier, obviously. Scott Nolan, Agriculture Weights and Measures, so we know what section that is. Scott Kelly, Solid Waste Program Manager, Waste Management and Prevention Division. Mark Pokkett, Chief Weights and Measures, and Bradley Schulman, Led to Council. So K. Let me take we just pass pass that around. Remember too that we got some we got some wants that we wanna get on there back into action. We wanna talk about current use stuff. I go, we'll get, so we know what we want. We got some current use stuff with buildings that have missed the deadlines of taxes and also the horses. Have to maybe have some conversations about if some of the sections didn't make our bills that we want to take some time to put back in. Might be something that we, some conversations maybe we might want to have. Definitely should have them.

[Linda (Committee Assistant)]: Joe Remick and Will Baker from Texas are coming in Thursday. Do you want me to send that bill to them? They're coming in to talk about some of your older issues.

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: Yep. I don't see anything in the miscellaneous bill about taxes.

[Linda (Committee Assistant)]: What he was just it's about

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: The Current use. The current use taxes and all that, where the farmers missed out on building the No. Remember that. I just

[Linda (Committee Assistant)]: Oh, not in that bill.

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: I don't think it's in the miscellaneous bill.

[Linda (Committee Assistant)]: Yeah. No. I

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: That's what we talked about. Right. We're probably gonna add that to I'll I'll go

[Linda (Committee Assistant)]: to the bill. There's data coming there, so Yeah. Be kind of a discussion.

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: We are way out of England to add to it. We can have a minute talking about that. We can have a selection.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah. They're on they're on Thursday. They're coming on Thursday and along with really more. Some of what we're talk about is a little bit of the bedside manners, some of these. So we wanna be prepared for that. We be I'll admit we are respectful, but we're gonna ask them if they have a plan to address some of that.

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: I'm trying to remember the last time that she was here. Did she acknowledge that? Not here. Was last yeah. She hasn't even heard about this. She really has.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Great. And I remember that it was Sisters of Anarchar Anarchy and some of the other ones that we've actually had some, you know, some real hard time. I was also whisper to in the in the in the hallway from some other folks that said that they had heard that they were working on some of this. But So yeah, so we'll talk about that. Okay, what else? I'm sorry for such a short time. I planned to be a little bit longer, but we're bumping up again in time.

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: Well, isn't like that miscellaneous bills. There's really not much to do it. The biggest one is gonna be this art block bill.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: So we're gonna have some time, to jump into some other stuff, and we would have time. I want to just caution you, and I've already talked to the pro tem about this as well. I did hear the chair of agriculture on the house side really got right into doing a lot of PFAS stuff that they going to attach, they wanted to attach to our miscellaneous fill. I said to the program, I'm not getting into anything that going to, that should take the whole year to have conversations about and try to figure it out in ten minutes. And if that bill comes back over and has stuff on that, I'm just gonna strike it out. And I said, I'll bring it to you and consult with you about where we would be. But I was set at the CARES table and that, I mean, we kind of got a non agreements all the way around that in twenty two point two seconds on something as big as that, that it would take more time for us to to go down through. I'm not sure what he's doing, but I hope he can take a look at that because there's a

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: big issue. Shas well, there's a

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: big issue. Yeah. No. Is. Especially, I didn't Shaspray, so I I don't know what they're planning to Right. Especially down take a look at it. No. We will. And and if it comes back over as far as, you know, however it comes back over and all that, but that's just one thing that I've heard on that side. So I do know that in the southern parts on the tail parts of yours and Senator Plunkett down east of you and where you're at, there has been some big issues. I'm gonna be very cautious about we'll wait and see what comes up. We've been very deliberative in what we've done. By the looks of things, unless we get a lot more, we're going to have some time. We're going to have some time to delve into some other topics if that's what you guys decide you'd like to do. Anymore before we call it a day? Okay. Welcome to the second half of the biennium the biennium biennium. I look at it

[Unidentified Senator (Committee Member)]: as the last. Yeah. The last period.

[Senator Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: We'll Linda, we'll call it a day.