Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So you can take as long as can.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: We are live.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Lyons and Senate Appropriations February budget request. Today we have Victor's face office. We haven't checked her.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Thank you, Senator Perchlik, Sarah Hilton Hanzas for the committee. Happy to be here to help you understand the budget asks for the Vermont Secretary of State's office. Mr. Chair, can you help orient me how am I giving you the ten minute version, the fifteen minute version, or the thirty minute version? I can do it. It's just a little fast.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah, I don't think we need to go that fast. I think you have some interesting proposals that we wanna make sure we hear about. We don't need the power of the presentation.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Okay.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: I

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: think we thought it would stick about happening.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Do you all have the electronic version of the PowerPoint?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: We have access to it. Right. Whether everybody can access it, we don't know.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: We got it. Well, you'll see the lovely picture of the Yeah. 2025 Vermont kid governor and her cabinet on the front cover. It's standing in front of our building. We can talk more about that.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Did she appoint the governor or the cabinet member's elected as part of that?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: So the seven finalists among the 26 or so kids who ran for kid governor, the seven finalists vie for the title of kid governor, and then the other six become part of her.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Why don't we do that for state government?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: You can propose that. So I will I know that you all are familiar with what the Secretary of State's office does and our four main divisions and our special programs. The first thing that I would draw your attention to is on page five of the PowerPoint that we sent over to you and that is just a little bit of information about the voter guide. In November '4, we created a digital voter guide and for 2026 and beyond, we will be mailing a copy of the voter guide to each household in Vermont. This will track to your ballot from top to bottom and will give Vermonters access to basic information, contact information, website, social media handle of all of the candidates who are on their ballot. We think that this is particularly important because knowledge is power. And if you don't know who is running and what they stand for, and increasingly we don't have a hometown newspaper in every town to make sure people know who's running and what they stand for, it makes it a lot harder to evaluate candidates. So that is a highlight that I definitely wanted to bring up.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I assume maybe the data, the registration data you already have deals with the fact that people's addresses in their voting town are different throughout the state. We

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: do, yes. So people's physical address is often different than their mailing address and it might even be a different town. But we we have the ability to track to the this ballot style that you get. So you you may receive your mail at a PO box in Montpelier, but you live in Plainfield and so you're going to get the Plainfield voter guide. Okay. Okay. Great. Let's see.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And these are the costs on that page five?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Those are the costs that we have been sharpening our pencils and working very carefully to stay within our ability to pay for that so there is not a budget ask for the voter guide.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And the how much in advance of the November? I assume this wouldn't be for the primary, just for the general election.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Yes, it's not for the primary yet. It may at some point be something that we could do for a primary, but more likely only in a digital format just because of the cost of mailing that twice, you know, a voter died for August and for November. But we're taking it in small chunks while we know we can do it and do it well.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: When do you think you would be mailing it out for the November election?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: So your ballots have to be in the mail to overseas and military voters forty five days ahead of the election. So we expect that the voter guides will begin to go out at that same time as well. Now with mail delays, you may not receive your ballot until thirty five or even thirty days before the election. So we certainly hope that you will have your voter guide by the time you get your ballot.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: At least that's one real quick. How how's the information on the candidate? How do you gather that? What does it entail?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: It asks every candidate to fill out a form that says this is my website, this is my phone number, email address, mailing address. This is my social media handle. And this is the statement of why I'm running for this office. And we we have had a lot of conversations with states that have been doing voter guides for many years just to find out, you know, what do you do if the punctuation is wrong? What do you do if, you know, if the language is inappropriate? And so we are following the the the procedures that other states who do this have followed, which means that unless there's profanity in there, we're not correcting your punctuation or your capitalization or your spelling and we're not changing anything that is submitted to us.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Student wants some help.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: So just to follow-up on that. So that information would be collected separately from say the candidate registration or That's correct. Okay. Yeah. So that we one would expect to see an additional well, feel like maybe we did this before. It is before. It was ringing some bells. But Yes. So you will recall that that you all passed a change to our campaign finance laws last year that require everyone to go into the campaign finance system and at least verify affirmatively that they haven't spent or raised, you know, any money. When you go into the campaign finance system then for the first time as a candidate, you will be prompted to enter your information for the voter guide. So we're just sending it to you at the moment that you are coming anyway.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: When is the next campaign? Campion is

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: March 15. Yeah.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I thought I missed it.

[Unidentified participant]: Yeah. So Pat's gonna write his with AI, so he's not gonna have to worry. Yeah.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Moving on. Shout out.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Shout somebody's initials.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Alright. I'm gonna I believe I can skip to page eight now. Just to review with you the Secretary of State funding sources, we have two special funds. The Secretary of State Service Fund, which is composed of corporations fees paid into our business services division. We run our elections, our admin team, our business services team and the SARA out of the revenues collected in the SOS Service Fund. And our second special fund is the OPR Fund. The OPR Fund is by law required stay within the OPR functions. So it covers the costs of the IT system that we use as our licensing platform. All of the women and men who work in our Secretary of State's OPR division, all of the enforcement folks and the prosecutors, etcetera.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: What's the SARA again?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Vermont State Archives and Records Administration. It's a mouthful.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: That was

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: my question. So moving on to page nine, a little continued, background and context on our funding sources. We have in the past always been able to rely on federal funding for the support of elections. The reason for that federal funding is that over the years, Congress has passed laws that require states to do certain things that cost money. When Congress directs the states to do things that cost money, they generally make an appropriation to support the cost of that. However, we are seeing a diminishment in the amount of money that's been appropriated in recent years. We had been getting about a million dollars a year. Last year, that was down to $272,000 And so I just want to put a big flag in that issue for this committee. Because when we came in to do our budget, you know, in November and December administration, expected that we would need to ask you for money to backfill that shortfall in the federal funding for elections. But here we are midway through the annual renewal period in our business services division, we are seeing revenues continuing as strong as they did last year. And so we are cautiously optimistic that we do not need to ask you to backfill the shortfall in federal funds this year. And I know how hard you all are going to work to do the things that Vermonters need. And so we don't want to ask for money unless we absolutely need it. So we are going to ask just for our base $450,000, from the general fund, which is the level at which you supported us, in past election years. And we are not going to ask at this time to to any help to backfill for shortfalls in the federal funding. I just wanna make note that if things continue as they have been, we may need to come back in future years and ask for that support.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Are you getting some money? Or you haven't received it?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: We don't know what this year's grant amount will look like. If there is one, know, it gets So you're counting

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: on zero and then whatever you get would be Yes. Great.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: We will use it very carefully so as to stretch it out as long as we can because we recognize that you're being asked for backfilling in many different areas of our state government.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And is is the Fed saying you're noncompliance or whatever whatever the right term is, like the lawsuit that we're involved with around the data roles that are they using that as a reason not to get funds or that?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: To my knowledge, they're not yet, but that doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility for the playbook that we've seen so far. Putting new strings or barrier or terms and conditions on federal funding for states has often been a a way that this administration has tried to exert leverage to accomplish things that they can't legally accomplish in other ways.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay. Senator Berg?

[Unidentified committee member]: I don't wanna derail this too much, but on the heels of what you just said, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's receiving complaints from people about the mail service has appreciably disappeared. And I'm wondering about mail in ballots. Without going too much into it, can you just tell us what you're thinking about that potential problem?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Yes. I think we can expect there to be mail delays that make it take longer for you to receive your ballot than you have in elections past. We are gonna do a concerted public push to remind people to return their ballot either using the drop box at their local town hall or mailing it in very early or bring it with you on election day. We call that BYOB, bring your own ballot. It's often a fun way for people to have the fun experience of meeting all of their neighbors on election day, but they don't have to worry about standing in a line or waiting. They can bring the ballot that was mailed to them. So there's lots of ways to return the ballot. Vermonters need to be reminded that we are not a postmark state. Your ballot has to be in your town or city clerk's hands by close of polls on election day. And so we recommend that people use the Dropbox or walk it into the office themselves. Great. Thank you. Okay. Alright. Any other questions about election funding? Alright. So there's a lot more detail in here about the history of federal funding for elections. But page 11 has graphic to help you sort of see how that has worked in that, you know, since 2016, 2018. You can see that the relatively consistent general fund election support, and then you can see the HAVA security grants, which started off pretty robust in 1820. And that is because of new requirements that were put upon the states that needed an infusion of cash to begin with and was expected to maintain at about a million dollars a year, but has not. So thus our uncertainty about the future of federal funding. Questions on that?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So you're asking for less than you prefer the

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: We're asking for the standard general fund amount of $450,000 which is what we've gotten in those last several elections, the green

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: 25, it was 700. If it's above 500,000, if I'm reading the green bars on the

[Unidentified participant]: left. Mhmm.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Yes. I believe that maybe was to help support the new election management system. Yes. Yes. We had some IT systems to build over the last couple of years. I'll I'll dive in a little bit more on those projects towards the end of this presentation. Other questions? All right, so next one I wanna shift gears to slides twelve, thirteen, and 14. We collectively call these three slides the democracy journalism grants. The Vermont Access Network allocation that has been granted to our office so that we can send it out to Van has been in existence for several years. It was always envisioned that it would grow incrementally. So this year's ask for general fund appropriation is 1,800,000.0. This is to support our local public access TV stations that are often the best way for Vermonters to be able to track what's happening in their municipal government or in other local events. Think of times when you wouldn't expect one of the big networks to come, but you often see a van TV crew covering local events. This van grant is, you know, it's not nearly as much as it costs to operate these small TV stations, but it is a commitment that the legislature has made in years past and we are proud to facilitate getting this money to the community access television.

[Unidentified committee member]: Am I remembering right? I know it was going up by gradations. Is this the final?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: I think we're slated to go to 2,000,000 next year.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I see, okay.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Any other questions on van TV? No. Next slide is the van community radio request. This would be a request that that Van is teaming up with our community radio stations on slide 13. You can see the distribution of these 10 community radio stations a rough outline of their service area. And this is an ask of $90,000 that would be passed through our office and sent out to these community radio stations.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Do know how much it was last year?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: I don't believe it existed last year. This is new.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Well, it's new that the community radio stations with the band. Was it $50,000 if you remember? We did give community radio money to public safety.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Oh, okay.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So it's a little different. Okay. They were to to help with public broadcasting during emergencies, but they were important during the floods. So that it went through them, but I think it was 50,000. Okay. Maybe or maybe even then. Okay. Okay.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: And page 14, slide 14 is the local civic journalism awards.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Can I ask you one more question? Oh, sure. Do you give grants individually to the different Vermont access and to the individual radio stations or do you is there somebody else that helps?

[Unidentified participant]: Do you know how that's

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: envisioned to be? I'm I'm phoning a friend. Have budget team over here.

[Unidentified participant]: We do one grant to VAN.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Okay.

[Stacy Drinkwine, Director of Administrative Services (Vermont Secretary of State’s Office)]: And and we get reporting from them on how they

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And and will VAN do it for both the radio and TVs for this new

[Stacy Drinkwine, Director of Administrative Services (Vermont Secretary of State’s Office)]: I believe they're taking the same approach for that. Yes.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: And that's Stacy Drinkwine, our director of admin services.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Because I think there's new comedian radio stations that could show up so they would just talk to me. Yeah. Okay.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: All right, slide 14 is Civic Journalism Awards. The first round of awards were just celebrated in a press event in the Cedar Creek Room a few weeks ago. This was $50,000 in general fund appropriation last year that was matched by the Vermont Community Foundation for a total of $100,000 There were 16 recipients, local print media throughout the state, some digital, some paper print. And those grants ranged from $5,000 to $10,000 And we heard a lot of really great stories at that press event about the things that these local print media outlets are able to do with just a little bit of money. This is replacing computer systems and upgrading their digital platforms, you know, investments that are critical to these outlets being able to stay active and vibrant and covering our our local town and city governments throughout the state of Vermont. And so we certainly hope that the legislature will come back and fund that again this year.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So that was really important. Like and she's a real small organization throughout the state that are covering school boards and select boards and these things that it's either the statewide news or LAs like Digger can't cover public and national press is definitely not gonna cover what's happening in East Dallas.

[Unidentified participant]: Why not? Is that the center of your universe?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Slide 15 has a nice picture of the Barton Chronicle. Of course, he came bearing the two latest issues of the paper. So I have some good reading material to take back to the office. And that's a summary slide of the democracy media grants. Any other questions on those democracy media grants?

[Unidentified participant]: So this is for this is for the this is the request of the community radio ninety k. That's just your the request. Yes. So

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: we wanted to also talk about four new position requests. And so slide 16 breaks down those four new positions. The two that you see on the left, the records and information management specialist and the business services administrator, those do not have a fiscal impact because we believe that we can cover them from existing revenue that we have within the Secretary of State Fund. And the two positions on the right, early childhood educator executive officer and staff attorney. Those are contingent upon passage of S206, which is the early childhood educator licensing bill. These are the first two positions that we would need to start to build that program. This bill is on the move and we thank you so much for your work on it. We're really excited to be able to help launch the licensure of early childhood educators. These are the two positions we would need for OPR to begin doing that work.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: The appropriation in s two zero six, was it because of the cost?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Well, we certainly hope so.

[Unidentified participant]: The bill's in here somewhere. Yeah.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Oh, is it? You're go

[Unidentified participant]: to finance first, right? That

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: makes sense. Any questions about the two new positions on the left that we that don't have a fiscal impact, but that we need you to create within the budget?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: No, but I'd say that it could still be considered fiscal impact because that would be money that you would normally direct out to the general fund.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: It it could. Just in

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: all in all fairness, there's a defender in the general fund, but

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: I Yeah.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Understand you're saying it wouldn't cost it wouldn't wouldn't be in any money for the general.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: We're not asking for appropriation. Right.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: And you on that issue, I don't know if you can answer this, but the secretary's state office used to direct that substantial money. I know there's reasons around OPR and IT stuff, but do you see a future that that would return?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Or Yes. Yes. Yeah, I mean, this is all contingent upon revenues within the business services division. And if they now that we have finished with the build phase of the replacement of these four IT projects, and we're now in the maintenance phase. We certainly hope and expect that there will be a surplus to sweep at the end of the fiscal year.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Is this the next fiscal year or is this some future fiscal year?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Well, in an ideal world, there would be a sweep this year. It's too early to say because we're not through the first quarter yet. I understand he's counting pennies there in the back

[Unidentified participant]: of his mind. He's cheering. For appropriate. Yeah. Smart man. Yeah. We're trying.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: So there's one other position related request that I certainly hope you will see language for when the big bill comes over from the House and that is the switch of a limited service position that you gave us last year into a permanent position. You gave us an extra position in our municipal services division. This is the division that helps Vermonters understand how to navigate within their municipal governments, helps municipal bodies understand

[Unidentified committee member]: how

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: to comply with open meeting law. We have hired into that position, we would like to keep her permanently. She is fabulous and dynamic. And so we'd like that position to be transferred from limited service to permanent. Okay. And I think that gets me to slide 17, which is the summary slide. And I couldn't resist the opportunity to show you another cute picture of the kid governor and her cabinet. And this is a summary page that

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: How did the voting for kid governor happen?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: So we had over 50 participating classrooms and some of them were voting only classrooms, others of them went through the whole curriculum where kids learn identify a platform and how to write a platform speech and then how to make a campaign video. And so we had over 1,000 kids in fifth grade in Vermont who, who voted in the election, for these seven finalists. And they actually had a scoring rubric, and I kinda think that grown ups need to have one too, because they weren't just looking to see who had the, you know, the best video quality for their campaign platform video. They were actually evaluating, you know, is this is this actually a problem that we're that we do need to solve? Is it reasonable that the things that this candidate is suggesting could actually fix the problem? Is it something that a fifth grader could accomplish? And so they had, you know, very specific rubric of scoring. So, they were taking away any sort of, I don't know, popularity contest or whatnot. They were evaluating based on And what was

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: the lead kid president debate? What was their video?

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: So Roslyn's issue is ending homelessness in Vermont. Roslyn is from Highgate. Of course, I've talked to kids all over the state and they all agree that we need to be working on ending homelessness. And so she's got some specific platform ideas on how to do that. But she's also over the course of this year working with our office going to be able to pick bits and pieces of each of her cabinet members platforms as well to try to work on. So we'll be raising awareness on kids access to mental health, on the need for screening free days, mindfulness and time in nature. Three of the kids were sort of mental health related issues. One of the kids platforms was in more healthy school lunches. Another one was ending homelessness, excuse me, bullying in the classrooms. And so we'll have a chance to work on helping these kids raise awareness and fix lots of different issues that I think we might all agree are problems.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: I like the team of rivalries approach the government. Well, you you almost got half of my question. And so I just wanna make sure we identify Highgate where the kid's yogurt is from, which is located in Franklin County. Franklin

[Unidentified participant]: County will solve all of them. It's all in you now.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Not every day is in the year. Okay. Then you just have the detail.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: There's lots of details in there. And if you have any questions for me now, I can I can defer them to my dream team over here? Yeah. But we're also willing to come back if you have any other questions

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: in the future. Your postage, that's not a 5%. That is a million dollars, but it's a lot less or is that just these are ups and downs or these

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: are totals? Which page are you on?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: This is page 22. 22. 22. Oh goodness. I assume those are commas, not decimal. You're not taking the decimal out of three spaces. I just because of the mailing out of the unless this is just part of a subdivision, like elections has their own postage or something.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Yes. Elections and elections postage cost is very cyclical. Right? In even numbered years, we have an election that we have to run. So we're mailing out general election ballots and in non election years, our postage is really just know, more voter education related. Does that answer?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: So maybe that yeah. That's why I just wondered this line, that point 25 is a million and if I try to say it's only a 180,000.

[Unidentified participant]: What is that?

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: If it's yeah.

[Unidentified participant]: I have to call it. Okay.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: We'll dig into that. Thank you for identifying that.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Just happened just happened to notice there's a big delta there. Mhmm. Okay. I don't have any other questions. Thank you for your work and your highlighting of the good work you're doing there.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: It is my honor

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: to Maintaining

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: do this work on behalf of Vermonters.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Thank you. And for maintaining office in our downtown.

[Unidentified participant]: Okay. We appreciate it. We love it. And we

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: feel so fortunate that our building was above the floodwater.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Yeah. Your neighbors are all gone.

[Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vermont Secretary of State]: Some of our neighbors didn't care so well. Yes.

[Senator Andrew Perchlik (Chair)]: Okay.