Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Well, I'm. Yeah. There Okay. You So now live is in the new section of the screen. Okay. Welcome to Senate Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs. It is 01/06/2026, and we are beginning a new legislative session, the second half of our 02/2526 biennium. And I am Alison Clarkson. I'm the chair of the committee. And who might I have on my left?

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: I'm Randy Brock from Franklin County and Randall County. And the vice chair.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Senator David Weeks representing Rutland County. And we

[Speaker 0]: are missing today Tom Chittenden who has a week full of UBM requirements and it's very difficult for him to be here this week. And Kesha Ram Hinsdale, who's our majority leader in the senate, and she was in a senate rules committee, which is over, but we're hoping we will see her shortly. And we'd love to have our interns who are here with us. They're here once a week, and we would love to have them introduce ourselves because people will be seeing you, and it would be great to know who you are. Scott, go back and start. My name is Belle Scholl. I'm a senior at UVM studying environmental policy law and law, and I will be attorney for Senator Chittenden for the entire year the session. Great.

[Abe Moskoservis (UVM intern for Sen. Brock)]: My name is Abe Moskoservis. I'm also a senior at UVM studying political science with a minor in law and society. I'm gonna be interning with senator Brock for the session.

[Speaker 0]: I'm Lucy Johnson. I'm a junior at UVM, a political science major, philosophy and marvelous studies minors, and I'm turning for senator. That's great. Welcome. And the most important person in this room is our new committee assistant, Kira Mead. And it would be great to for us to have a chance just to meet Kira and get

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: to

[Speaker 0]: know her. And you did introduce yourself to the world at large. So I'm here. I'm a nuclear assistant. I graduated from PMM in 2023 with a double major in gender and women's sexuality studies, political science, and a business administration minor. I'm very, very excited to be here. And, yeah,

[Kayla (advocate)]: what else you don't know about me? But

[Speaker 0]: Well, it's great to have you here, and we are so grateful for you to get the reins. We are gonna miss Heidi. Heidi took a job with benefits. Sadly, our committee assistants do not get food. That's true. Which is a robot job like Linda said. We don't have cannabis either. So, anyway, it's great to have you, and, we have what what an adventure we're gonna be on. Absolutely. So I thought just today, we would, a, introduce ourselves, and I would love to hear a little bit about the committees people worked on over the set over the over the break and travels that impacted our lives because senator Weeks has just had an amazing global adventure, a couple actually. And just to chat about what some of our priorities are for the year and the priorities here in this committee. And, you know, I just just in an informal start, first and foremost wanna pass around our contact sheet because in case anything got updated, I wanna make sure we all have our names, cell phones, and personal emails so that Kiara can reach us at all times, which as we know often is needed. They've had some sort of things corrupt. So

[Kayla (advocate)]: the

[Speaker 0]: David, you wanna start?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: So summer committees, so nothing really special except LCAR continued. It's kind of a light LCAR session. LCAR means? Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules Rules.

[Speaker 0]: It's a very important committee and I mean just for our interns and for the public can you just kind of quickly say what it does?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Yeah, so legislature passes bills, governor signs them into law. For the most part they go to administrative departments and then they then are required to attach to essentially make implementation rules. Those rules put the bill into effect or the act into effect. They come back, they go through ICAR which is,

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: it's an intermediate.

[Speaker 0]: And legislative rules.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Yeah, anyway, look through ICAR first if they weren't. Then they come back through the LCAR committee which is all legislators, it's half and half,

[Speaker 0]: Senate and House. It's four each, Four

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: each, yeah. And we evaluate whether the rules are in compliance with the initial law.

[Speaker 0]: That's often tricky. Mean that's often

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Sometimes that's tricky.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: I'd say 90% of the time it's not contentious at all. The 10% of the time it just chews up all the oxygen. Anyway, interesting committee. Yeah. And then Senate Education Committee did essentially five visits to schools where we talked with the administration of the school, the superintendent on down, the students, the faculty and the public. So there's always a public comment section, which is fascinating. So as you can imagine, it's all about Act 73 and lots of misinformation about what the act does and doesn't do. But it was so it was a good opportunity just to clear the air, you know, answer those concerns directly. And then to

[Speaker 0]: And how many trips did you take?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: There there were five. They were all day. And Senator Clarkson joined us in the last one.

[Speaker 0]: I was actually also in Woodstock.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Oh, that's right. Yeah, of course. And then Senator Clarkson asked for, so what do we do here?

[Speaker 0]: Yes, that's okay. Yes, because our real lives are very important to our legislative lives and they serve informed and answered in from our worldview.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: All true. So thank you for asking. I'm not sure if it's completely relevant, but I spent essentially a month in India. My wife's had school in a new school in India. And that was a fascinating experience to see a new school starting up in a, this was definitely third world environment. That's a fascinating opportunity to see that part of the world. And then came back, repacked my bags and went the other way around the world to Philippines.

[Speaker 0]: We had lunch in between. Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: So all about shipwrecks, scuba diving, fascinating. I did that for several weeks and finally dragged myself back home.

[Speaker 0]: Focus was on this. Yeah. Thank you. What an amazing summer. Oh. And the fall, really incredible. Randy, what was

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: I didn't do anything this summer because senator Weeks did it all for me.

[Speaker 0]: You've got to live vicariously for David.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Absolutely. Absolutely. Committees. This summer, the Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee Oh, right. Which takes a look at the whole issue of our information technology structure and how it works and what are the priorities and manage to go through the entire year without defining any priorities,

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: which again is one of

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: my concerns. We looked at a bunch of things in no particular order that are all important and that all spend a lot of money and hopefully ask enough questions to ensure that our comfort level is at least where it ought to be. I am concerned that there's more that needs to be done in that area without a doubt.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: I'm on What did can I just ask you

[Speaker 0]: a question? Yeah. What did you guys do in the wake of the AI task force? Did you do anything additionally following up with the AI task force? Not really.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: There wasn't anything really that the oversight committee did except look specifically at particular issues or programs or processes that we have in effect that need to be watched such as what's going on in the labor department and unemployment as an example. I I sort of had some longstanding concerns over the years. One of the tasks I think that the committee has probably more than any other is to light fires. So that when when the fire dies out, know, when people haven't talked about it for a year, it tends to get forgotten and put off because there are other priorities. And and one of the things that oversight committees do is keep the fires lit

[Speaker 0]: Yeah.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: To make sure that the bodies that are involved, the departments and agencies don't think that we've forgotten about them. And particularly, if we ask a question a year ago, we didn't get a good answer. And a year before that, we didn't get it again. We're ask the same questions over and over again until we get answers that that we're comfortable

[Speaker 0]: with. And we have joint oversight committees on many subjects. We do. And it would be I don't actually know how many, but we have them on corrections. We have them on on the judiciary. We have childcare, child welfare, we have them on a number of in healthcare and, you know, I actually don't know how many joint oversight committees we have, but we have quite a few and they're ones that people serve on all year as opposed to these are standing. Anything else you did? You and Andrea do some exciting travel?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: No we didn't. We stayed home.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: That was excitement all the Staying But home is excitement because that's one

[Speaker 0]: of the most beautiful gardens in Vermont, and Kennings went loving it and making it glorious. It's one of the

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: My wife is a superb gardener, award winning. She's been in all kinds of magazines and so on in terms of photos of the gardening work that she's done, I will say that she's done, not necessarily that I've done.

[Speaker 0]: In this spring, we're gonna have a field trip off to see this garden because it has it has you know, gardens and gardening is an economic development driver definitely in the state and definitely with

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: the area. It it's certainly an economic development driver because I know I've been driving most of the time in Franklin County for the past couple of years.

[Speaker 0]: Back and forth to the supply to your wonderful garden center. Other

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: committees, I'm on the committee that, I forget what it's called now, it's an oversight committee that is actually part of a tri state organization that looks at the future of Lake Champlain and how Lake

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Champlain

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: operates. And there's a New York group, there's a Vermont group of which I'm a member. And then there's also a Quebec group. So and the the the three parts get together from time to time. And we look at the future of Lake Champaign and also the health of the lake and talk about issues and propose each year a series of recommendations, ideas, in some cases legislation that comes through here. So that's something you may hear something about periodically. Results so far are good, are pretty good in terms of what we see in terms of the commitments of the lake and maintenance of that lake. Although there is still a lot of concern about stuff that's getting dumped in the lake, particularly by municipalities such as Burlington when things go wrong. That has

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: a cost. There's a cost to all of

[Speaker 0]: See the closure of the beaches with all the phosphorus

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: is Correct.

[Speaker 0]: Huge impact on the whole

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: All phosphorus issue is significant statewide. I'm concerned on this particular committee because we're concerned about Lake Champlain as opposed to the broader issue that health and welfare of the Natural Resources Committee is the Senate, the primary committee that takes a look at that. Senator Weeks is on the judicial rules committee. I'm on, as was

[Speaker 0]: You know, you and

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: I are on judicial rules. I'm sorry.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Rules, We're on

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: are the rules that govern the judiciary. And it is a I'm on with Senator Clarkson, and we both are thoroughly excited by what a tremendously captivating set of meetings that

[Speaker 0]: we Yeah. Often, handy. It was particularly captivating around electronic filings. It was very captivating at that point. But it's it's very interesting. The minutiae is actually where it all matters, where the rubber hits the road and where it gets applied. So actually, we've had some very interesting We

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: actually had one issue this, I think, this year that that actually got people's attention. And

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Yes. But or you can disrupt that. I'll get back to you.

[Speaker 0]: So well, anyway, I'm looking actually, I think it would be fun to do a a field trip up to your to your garden if Andrew is willing.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Please do.

[Speaker 0]: So I had I had a great summer and fall. I we married two our only two children. We married both our sons within six weeks of each other, which was fabulous. I did have these days of myself. It was great. And one was married in Woodstock, and we had a big, huge Vermont wedding. And one was in in England at Burway House, which was also founded. So they were one was big, one was small, one was broad, one was here. It was great. It was altogether wonderful, and they get married to fine women. And, anyway, today it's old. And right now, our youngest son, William, is on their honeymoon meeting. Kelsey, on their honeymoon in New Zealand. So and, again, these cops decking pictures. Molly, just can't believe the outdoor opportunities there. Incredible. I know. That was a large part of the summer. I also served on the act sixty nine task force, which came out of this committee as you'll recall, which looked at the housing the challenge of how we create housing for our intellectually developmentally disabled providers. They're not young anymore. Many of them are getting to be very middle aged, and their parents are older than I am and and aging and not able to take care of them. And the houses they have been living in are often not able to continue to take care of them, and we need it, it's estimated at the moment, about 600 housing opportunities for for these citizens of ours. And so we are gonna be hearing one. If you look at our agenda this week, we're just gonna begin with a report from that committee. And that was really the only other than judicial rules. The only committees I worked on, although I worked very hard with the chair of house of general on landlord tenant bill, which will be coming to this committee. And as we continue to look at housing issues, I also work hard on some other bills that will be coming to this committee. So we're gonna have vibrant conversations about a whole range of things that

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Taking that that issue about people who have difficulty maintaining housing. Another committee that I'm on in the summer was the Senate appointment to the Alzheimer's and related disorders committee or commission. And that has largely outside members and there's a member from the senate, there's a member from the house and that always provides a variety of both bills and proposals to again take care of people who can't take care of themselves well. And I know we're talking about, for example, this year, considering, again, the respite grant issue. Tons of people in Vermont, not just hundreds, but literally thousands of people take care of other people who can't effectively take care of themselves. And often, almost invariably without any compensation of any kind, and in many cases, having to take off from compensated work, thereby losing family income, and in some cases sole income in order to provide these kinds of services that people can't afford to pay for themselves. And we do have a couple of bills back in two different ways looking at how to provide some kind of compensation for the respite work with a rationale that if you don't provide some kind of compensation, then those people wind up in nursing homes in which the cost is much, much higher than any respite grant that you might do. And so in trying to save money, you actually cost money. And that is again something that we're continuing.

[Speaker 0]: It's that building on our Choices for for care program which is already in place and knows exactly that which helps pay family members for caring for people who are at home and so oh and then I my committee knows this because they've been celebrating my seventieth birthday all year long since March all the way through. And I ended my that celebration with going to Vienna, which is where a large number of my family are from Austro Hungarian Empire and a lot in Vienna, and it was great. Oliver and had a wonderful week bringing in the New Year in Vienna, which meant a lot to me, and it was really really moving. For so it was it was just great. And that is that has been the catapult that has catapulted me into this session. And, Kierra, what have you been up to this summer and fall other than getting ready for this? This summer and fall, not too much, honestly.

[Kayla (advocate)]: But prior to working here, I worked

[Speaker 0]: at Norwood University for the

[Kira Mead (Committee Assistant)]: as the school director of civic engagement. And so I had

[Speaker 0]: the really unique opportunity to go to the hall to So in terms of this session so we've had two new advocates join us and we're asking everyone to introduce themselves. So Molly, why don't you start? Who are you? Thank you. I am Molly Hyer, president of the Vermont Ski Area Association. We're trying I'm trying to train myself to go by Ski Vermont instead of the longer name, but it's the scheme, and we are association for the Alpine Cross Recreation here as a process to do. Happy be here. It's great. And you also keep an ear for outdoor recreation, which is a big piece of our economy, a growing piece of our economy, and an important one for this committee. Yes. And we have outdoor recreation day at State House coming up on February 5. Oh, good to know about. Yes. Maybe we'll have some outdoor recreation opportunities out in front lawn. We're happy to see the weather cooperating this year. Well, so far.

[Kayla (advocate)]: Hello. So hi. My name is Kayla, and I moved to Vermont in August 20 parliamentary side. And I do do some consulting for the current foreign minister, so can't really keep my yeah. Keep keep away. But my interests

[Speaker 0]: great. It's big island there. Yeah. Okay. But there's

[Kayla (advocate)]: 380,000 people.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Yeah. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: It's half the population. It's not it's bigger than Vermont. Yeah. Yes. Twice the size. It's huge. Yep. I but it's very few people. We work away every year. We're only here four and a half to five months a year. We work really hard to try and we're really dedicated to trying to reduce the barriers to housing development in this state in a thoughtful way that balances both continuing to maintain the gloriousness of Vermont's natural beauty, but also to be able to house its population because we have a huge need. So the the we have the bills that we still have on the wall. I'd love if if we could we would take some time to review them, what's still here. And then, of course, we're getting masses of new bills that we will be getting. We oversee for all of you who are new to the committee, we have a broad jurisdiction. One of the amusing things about having an assistant whose last name is Mead is one of our areas of oversight is liquor and lottery and and gaming. And so, you know, meat is one of the proud products we make here, an alcoholic beverage made of honey that actually has quite a fall from the medieval times to right now. So but we oversee, obviously, the so of and so you we're will see a whole range of bills to which reflect that obviously. Any top sort of priorities for you two coming into the session that you haven't already shared with me. I know you shared some because I'm trash, both of you, but I think we're going to plunge right in, we're gonna, I am working one of the things we've asked for. So we ask for things. We ask people to go off and do further work on them because we don't have time to. One of those is act two fifty appeal. The land use review board, which we created two years ago, has met and actually has found their recommendation. We are it's on our committee web page. Right? All the reports are now on our committee web page under reports and resources. We will be probably doing a joint hearing with natural resources on on the appeals because our deadline was so early. It is a bill that I that Anne and I ended up introducing. We basically took the LERB report and Alan turned it into a bill just so that we would then get this started. But there are some really thoughtful additions to that work that are being proposed that we will be hearing about. But we're next week hopefully gonna have a joint session with them to hear the to hear the report on on the report. And there are many other things that you think we would would benefit from having a joint session on a subject that you know is of of of joint interest with another committee. Workforce development, we'll be having joint hearings with education on on the work we did. Kesha and I were on this group that she pulled together that met over the summer oh, I forgot to mention that. Over the summer in fall, Kesha and I worked on on workforce development, and we had three or four meetings at different career technical education centers and are going to hopefully be advancing work along with the education work that we're doing this year on our career and technical education and workforce development. So those things are coming. The other reports that are the task force on intellectually developmentally disabled housing that will be will be taking that up and there's so many other things and the data trust work we asked for is coming back to us. Labor will be bringing and we'll be discussing that Wednesday. But as we sort of make it through the next sort of week or so, please let me know if you think if you'd like to have a joint hearing with the committee that you think we have

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: joint interests This is not so, we have joint interests with so many committees. This is true. And we have interests about what so many committees do. My interests often get translated though into a few concepts that as I'm looking at every bill and I'm looking at everything we do, that we plan, to ask questions, why does it take so damn long to do things? Look at the efficiency of processes and just look at the inefficiency of government. If you want to not get something done, give it to government to do. And they will not do it and they will take a long time not to do it. But as you look at issues of why does housing cost so much? Well, one of the reasons housing costs so much is it takes years to get a plan done that is acceptable and that passes through this labyrinth of agencies and departments and groups and people who are involved in doing it. On one hand the argument is well you know we get that way we get citizens involved. Well in many cases the thing that we hear most often is citizens don't feel they're involved because they think the bureaucrats are doing everything. And so there are different perspectives, but the bottom line is when you try to construct a complex of apartments in a place like South Burlington, why does it take three years to do it? And you look at those states that have lower cost and faster moving economies in many ways, they don't seem to see the same kind of, you can all call it, citizens involvement or you can call it mass confusion that you see here in Vermont when we try to get things done. And those are just questions that you will notice for those of the interns, the kinds of questions that I tend to ask witnesses over and over again are along those lines.

[Speaker 0]: Well, we will be speeding up things like the eviction process with our landlord tenant bill, but you have to balance both sides of it. So you have to do to make progress. You aren't gonna make any progress ramming anything down in base roads to get binding.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: From both

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: sides to have measurement though. Yeah. And by measurement, you can't say that things are going well. What you will find with agencies, particularly if you've been here and you listen to this, and Alison, I think you know that, is that we often go over the same issues over and over again. And you have to ask questions because people will not, who testify, testify to things that they're not doing well at unless you ask the questions to get that out.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, often the case. I would say in terms of speeding up the appeals process that is part of what the report is about and part of what we're

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: And it's really important.

[Speaker 0]: And it's important although as we all know, actually, very few of the appeals take a long time. Most of them go through recently, frankly. But the that is what we're our objective has been to to speed up the ones that need to be speeded up. And you also have

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: to recognize that you have lots of interests that testify before legislative committees. And sometimes, if not frequently, those interests are at odds with each other. And although you may have, for example, a goal to get things done rapidly, there are others who have a goal that is exactly the opposite, to slow things down because the concept is we're moving too fast, we're doing this, without enough citizen involvement and so on. And so you just have to understand what the competing interests are. And and as you digest what they tell us, you have to also ask yourself in the back of your mind, why are they telling us this? Is it for a valid reason or is it because of another objective that is different than the objective, for example, that the committee has tried to achieve?

[Speaker 0]: David, any thoughts on things that you've

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: No, my priorities remain the same. In my neck of the woods, we have a housing problem but we also have an access of unoccupied houses and the cost of renovating a house versus building a new home is essentially 10% to somewhere between 10% to 25% comparison. And I really wanna make sure that we put the proper emphasis on VHIP as well as conversation about housing improvement program as well as evident domain. On that, as

[Speaker 0]: you know, I've put in a bill that work with that we can build on with Govops. That is a good example of both our housing engagement with Govops. And I let me just give you this. Senator Ram Hinsdale, why don't

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member; Senate Majority Leader)]: you come join us and go on? I like the new arts.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. I okay. What we have been meeting since eleven. Yay. And we would love to have you introduce yourself and fill us in on what you did this summer and fall, and then we're chatting about priorities.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member; Senate Majority Leader)]: Okay. I don't know what I did this summer and fall. Now that you're in February. Well I'll say what I think is relevant So to the I'm Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale. I taught a class at UVM that someone was in.

[Speaker 0]: I

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member; Senate Majority Leader)]: am the Senate Majority Leader and I serve on this committee and Senate Education and as the chair knows I took it upon myself to try and lead some informal work on career technical education. I just mentioned that. So that's what I was working on policy wise in addition to my housing work and in addition to a comprehensive bill on the regulation and enhancement of the cannabis market as the federal government looks to schedule cannabis we need to as a committee be the leaders in making it a consistent market rather than a substance that's so regulated that it pushes people back to the illicit market. That's always the balance we try to find in this committee. We were also on the road a lot education and that was very instructive to And all of I have walking pneumonia so I might not be here in full capacity all week. That was part of my unplugging and going on vacation with my kids and coming back to the bitter cold and it's post viral it's not contagious but staying healthy yeah and I have my two little kids and

[Speaker 0]: she has two young children under the age of five.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member; Senate Majority Leader)]: My one year old and my two year old under the age of three so they may be in here from time to time. They will

[Speaker 0]: be in and it's nice to meet you. Yes Nice to meet you

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member; Senate Majority Leader)]: as well. Here in meeting you.

[Speaker 0]: Here as a patient. And they are delicious. They It's both have cooked in true, it's true.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member; Senate Majority Leader)]: They know Senator Clarkson's boys very well.

[Speaker 0]: From the womb. Well I think I think that this is great. One of the things I did want to talk about is our meeting schedule. So right now we are meeting from nine to noon. To my calendar? I mean, we have, as you know, very limited time. I would love it if we could commit to meet meeting one or two times a week. I know 09:00 at 08:30 is challenging for the commuters, but I I really would love to maybe one or two days a week commit to be starting at 08:30 instead of nine. It would that make it more palatable if it wasn't every day at 08:30? Because I know I know I I know where the resistance

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: is. The distance, obviously, the distance in time

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member; Senate Majority Leader)]: I'll step out of this conversation.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Is challenging and I, you

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: know, I looked last year, we were

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: the only committee that met at

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: 08:30.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, I don't believe that's the case. Jenny, I'm gonna start today.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: The list that was published, you know, we had the list in here and I think it's out there in terms of schedule. We're the only committee that's better than you do.

[Speaker 0]: Well, we have more to do than me. So I also think, anyway, I'd like you to think about that. We are gonna be doing our agenda planning. If you have anything you wanna make sure it's on the agenda, we're gonna be doing agenda planning as we have in the past. Wednesday after our committee breaks, we'll be doing agenda planning from sort of twelve to 12:30 initial on that course, it continues.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: I know you're gonna be here on Wednesday, so you'll be able to benefit from that and be able to provide that to everybody else.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member; Senate Majority Leader)]: I mean, I'll just say I think will meet whatever time the chair wants to meet. I think it helps when people know that we have a lot to accomplish and we're moving through the agenda quickly. You know like meeting at 08:30 because we have something day in the state house you know I think is is a harder sell than we have a bill to move this week.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, let's see

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: It's the how bill of time allotted.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I'm happy to look at the next two weeks, nine to twelve. I would really like to think about a Thursday or a Friday starting at 08:30. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Maybe a different approach is keep

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: the nine to twelve schedule, but then agree that if we need to expand, we expand on this particular day we all understand that three weeks from now we may in fact have a requirement at 08:30.

[Speaker 0]: And the goal is to get a bill out.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Right.

[Speaker 0]: So I will tell you that a new requirement this year is that the committee bills have to at least be the substance has to be identified and drafted by the January. That is a new requirement that we have some major committee bills that we're gonna be working on. Housing, workforce development probably, and and and economic development. So we have actually some substantive stuff that we gotta get through the grinder by the January. Mhmm. So it has to be made up. It can then be introduced on the floor and come back and be reassigned to our committee for further work. It does not need finished, but it has to be at least the concept and some of the key elements strategy. So that is a pressure we have not ever had before in terms of committee bills we've been able to do committee bills sort of whenever we wanted that I would say is the big addition for me for January for wanting to start a little earlier. So did I miss you saying what committee bills you want to get

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member; Senate Majority Leader)]: out by the January?

[Speaker 0]: I've been starting with a lot of people's priorities first and then we will get that but I'm hopeful we'll get quite a bit And but the committee bills the the commit the any bill that's introduced on its own is fine and can be taken up at any point. But the committee bills the real pressure is on the committee bills. And I think they're more

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member; Senate Majority Leader)]: important than what's on the law.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, well there's a lot of

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: good stuff

[Speaker 0]: coming into our community. So I think that is it for today. Yes, David.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: To center on Hinsdale's point, the art, the new art, economic development perspective?

[Speaker 0]: Absolutely, the art and this realm, and these two are just placeholders. They're not peaceful than the rest. The objective in both economic development. Creative economy is a critically important piece of of the of economic development in this state. We have more artists than any other state per capita. And so the objective in this room was to have art that was for sale, three portraits of women farmers of farm women by Juan Carlos are coming to this room, I hope, and these will be removed. And we'll have one more there. So and all the art in this room and in Saint Gavas are for sale, which is incredibly important part of our world.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Oh, how do we do? What? How do we

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: do the sales?

[Speaker 0]: Sadly, we have not sold one thing, but we've had their work exhibited and we actually this year if we have time, we might you should have the artist come in and leave them.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member; Senate Majority Leader)]: I mean, if I was staring at something I like all session, I might buy it. You know? These are they stress me out. Because these

[Speaker 0]: I wish I wish yeah. They are.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member; Senate Majority Leader)]: This one's sorry. Yeah. Artist. These are very loud. Yeah. And I thought they were gonna be changed out.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, okay. But we will certainly do this. And they have a toll ready. Yeah. Well, this is true. Hard. Anyway, thank you all. I think we're done for today. We will meet first thing tomorrow morning at 09:00, and we will be jumping right in with economic development and housing with our new commissioner of economic development, Lyle Jackson, and our commissioner of housing and our secretary of the agency of commerce and community development. So thank you all very much, and we'll see you tomorrow. You too. Last time. 08:30 tomorrow.