Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. We're live. Welcome, everybody, to Senate Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs. It is Friday, February 27, and we are on our way to town meeting week and also on our way to crossover. So we're beginning to do some of the final work and making decisions on our housing bill today and on our cannabis bills. Those are the two subjects we're working on today in this very broad jurisdiction committee. So this morning, we're gonna kick off with housing, and we're gonna begin with discussing common interest communities and some of the challenges and opportunities that they present. And we are gonna begin with Christina Jensen, and then we're gonna hear from Josephine Boardman. But, Christina, if you you are an experienced lawyer who's dealt with common interest communities, if you welcome to our committee. We'll introduce ourselves in energy. If you'd introduce yourself and and launch into your testimony, that would be great. On Alison Clarkson, I am one of the three senators from the Windsor District.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I'm Kesha Ram Hinsdale, Chittenden County's pet veteran.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Good morning, David Weeks representing Rutland County.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And Tom Chittenden is joining us as will Randy Brock, and they'll be hopefully joining us ASAP. Christina, welcome and the floor is yours.

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: Thank you. Thank you and thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the time. I am a lawyer in Burlington with Primer. I've practiced in the common interest community area for many years. We're not going to do math on that because it's a horrible number. But I'm here as the chair of the Legislative Action Committee of Community Association Institute. And that's an organization that works with common interest communities nationally. We submitted written testimony, so I'm going to try to be brief here. I'm not very good at that. So feel free to cut me off or interrupt with questions because I love questions.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So I bet, Chris, you might summarize your testimony because I bet most of us have not quite honestly had the time to read your testimony. So feel free to share Yep. The key

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: So let's see. S-three 28 addresses areas that are really important to the entire state and particularly challenging for common interest communities. My request is going to be that common interest communities be carved out of S-three 28. Here's why. Common interest communities are common in Vermont, they're extremely varied. We have everything from not quite high rises, but sort of apartment style communities to mansions that have been converted into separate units. Different types of ownership interests in terms of who owns what. A unit can be defined as a standalone structure with a yard around it. And it can be defined as simply a unit in an apartment style building. So it's a particularly challenging area to legislate. And I have a lot of sympathy for you and really appreciate the work that was done in S-three 28. I want to talk a little bit though about the law that we currently have on the books. Vermont adopted the Common Interest Ownership Act effective back in 1999. And that is, it's a comprehensive uniform act that provides a framework for creation, modification and operation of common interest communities, recognizing the various property rights of the owners in those communities. So it's one thing to tell a landlord that you have to allow a tenant to install EV chargers, for example. That implicates only that landlord's rights. But when you try to use that legislation to allow unit owners in a common interest community to do that, to install equipment like that, you're implicating not just one person's property rights, but the rights of everybody else in the community. Because most of the time those facilities are located on common land. And so you're changing the common land, which is owned by everyone in common, to allow it to be used by one person. And that the Vermont Supreme Court has been very clear about is a usurpation of the property rights of the other owners. So installing EV chargers is a great policy. It's really challenging to implement in this context. And the same is true of the other items that you're trying to address in 03/28. Accessory dwelling units, same thing. It's one thing for me to build an ADU on my land and I think it's appropriate to require municipalities to consider those. But when you're talking about doing that in a CIC, I'm effectively building a unit on land that's owned not just by me, but by my neighbors as well. And that's a very different question. Yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah, actually our understanding is that the provision we have carved, that we've been very specific to carve out is only not condominium associations, only for home ownership associations where individuals own their own individual property.

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: Okay, so then that's a terminology question because that would be from a strictly legal perspective, that's not what's actually happening here, But that is something

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: that I think could be addressed. The intent.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. That's the intent. And so if we can clarify language on that, that's that would be great. That's the

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: Okay. So the other issues that arise in common interest communities that are impacted by this bill are things like child care, family child care centers. And those, again, the intent may be only to allow that where a person owns, in an association where an owner owns say a house in a yard. So, it would only be impacting their land. But by applying this to common interest communities, you are impacting condominiums and plant communities where ownership of land is common. So I think that this may I don't know if that's what the intent was.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: The intent that there are so many regulations with setting up a family home care, it's not a child care center. So family home based, family child care in a in a home, and we are we're trying to be very specific about it. Be you know, there are so many regulations around setting one up in the first place. If if there would be no way that it would probably be in a condominium with no with with common land. So we're we're we're working on that, and I think we've made that fairly specific in our language. But I know our legislative council had a question for you, Christina.

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: Great.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, had a question about the EV piece just as you were talking about the common ownership I was just going to ask. My understanding is I think some of the language that's drafted around the ADU and then I believe the EV charging as well kind of limits the requirements to property that is under the exclusive use of a given unit owner and I was wondering if that was satisfying the concern that you were raising about the common ownership piece.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. We tried to do that with parking spaces that were specifically owned or designated for a specific resident.

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: Yes, I noticed that and I appreciated that. It does in practice, it gets very challenging to implement and here's why. There are a couple of ways it becomes complicated. In the exterior context, so outside someone's exclusive use garage, for example, you would be installing something that takes up common airspace. And until the Supreme Court fixes a decision that it made, that's using common property and converting it from common use to exclusive use. So that's a potential problem there. Additionally, the installing the system itself requiring the electricity and the connection to some sort of outlet or something, even if that's exclusive use, implicates the common land. Another problem that we have run into is with respect to electrical infrastructure in older communities. I have had clients who have the capacity to install one or two chargers, but installing chargers after that point would require upgrading the entire electrical system for the community at a huge cost. So how that works in practice is extremely challenging. It doesn't seem fair to me for installers one and two to get a free ride and then installer number three be required to pay the cost of upgrading the system sufficiently to install that charger. Now the other issue that I see with the EV charger language is that I think it's actually too narrow in scope for what ought to end up in the statute. The reason for that is because the statute itself, and I've talked to the drafter about this, the statute itself doesn't address improvements in technology. So I don't think we should just be talking about EV chargers. We should be talking about heat pumps. We should be talking about solar panels. And we should be thinking about technology improvements in the future that would reduce our reliance on fossil

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: fuels.

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: But to build that into the statute in an intentional way that respects property rights and gives the association authority to allow these improvements. Because that is a real problem that a lot of my associations run into, not just EV chargers. It should be broader than

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: that. Right.

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: And I really appreciate the time. I want to be cognizant that you have a lot of other work to do.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, I think we have some questions for you. Okay. If it's okay, thank you very much for this testimony because it's not an area that we have, you know, anyway, it's a it's a new area for some of us to be diving into. And I appreciate your notion of a comprehensive upgrade in infrastructure for common interest communities. Sadly, we don't have the time to do that right now, and we are addressing these specific areas. But I think we I think point well taken on this for future for future legislation for next biennium. But in section six, I'd really love to chat with you about the provisions for common interest communities created before 1999, where when the uniform laws you referred to went into effect. We want to make sure that these amendments will apply to common interest communities that were created after 2011. Are there any sort of legal concerns with the application to those entities already existing? And do you need to do we need to put in language that would make these provisions perspective only, or is it okay what we've done? And is it clear that these do not apply to common interest communities that were created before 1999?

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: I think I would encourage you, if you do adopt these provisions, I would encourage you to have them apply only to communities created after the effective date of the statute. The reason for that is because

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Perspectively, forward. Perspective only.

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: 2011. The reason for that is because if you look at the provisions that apply to preexisting communities created before 1999, those provisions are primarily governance provisions. The open meeting requirements of the act, enforcement provisions, meeting provisions, record keeping, powers of the association, all of those are things that can legitimately apply prospectively only. The problem with having these provisions that you're considering now apply to preexisting communities is that are changing the expectations of changing the requirements physically for communities that people have bought into years ago. So you're changing existing property rights.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Kate, have a question here from Kesha.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: So Christina, we're going to hear from Mrs. Boardman that her common interest community, I believe, had its bylaws formed in 1998. And it wouldn't change the physical makeup of the community. This is the home based child care center piece. So is there a- I can understand the concerns about the physical community somewhat, but we have a childcare crisis. We have a lot more, you know, need for condo associations to house families and we have, you know, an evolving childcare market that does need the home based centers as part of it. Is there a legal problem that you see with making that provision retroactive?

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: I see less of a problem with making that provision retroactive. My concerns with childcare

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: I saw childcare. I apologize for that.

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: The home based childcare. My problem with that is that the effect of those centers are going to be very dependent on the design of the community, the facilities of the community. For example, there I have associations that have essentially single family housing with yards. In those cases, the impact on the rest of the community is going to be de minimis because it's unlikely that we'll be having 20 kids running up and down the common gardens and things like that. Appreciate the need for more childcare centers in Vermont. There are other situations where units are within apartment type buildings. And in those cases, the impact on other residents could be significant.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. A home based childcare setup is totally dependent on the quite substantial regulation and and and space requirements and outdoor space requirements. Those communities will probably not not even be eligible given what's required of them for them to be set up in the first place.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: And it tops out at about sick kids, which ostensibly someone could have a family with six kids.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. It does it's a family based child care different than a standard. So this is it's much more limited, and we would be limited by the regulations of home based child care. And I believe we are yes. So, we those regulations would not probably even allow what I think you're envisioning for an apartment stop condominium.

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: So in that case, and I apologize for my lack of familiarity with those regulations. I can talk to you until the cows come home about condominiums, but not childcare. In that case, my concerns would be much less.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. No. I I we hear you that your concerns or faith would be impact on on neighbors and and other members partners in a a common interest community. Another question we've had is the deed restriction versus the bylaw restriction. And the understanding in this draft is that this would prevent any declaration deed restriction, but also limit common interest community bylaws or rules. So one proposal from stakeholders is to remove the restriction on the declaration covenants, deeds, etcetera, and only prohibit the bylaws and rules from excluding leasing, childcare, etcetera. It appears that doing this would not fully accomplish the goal of the legislation if it meant that common interest communities could just turn around and simply put these restrictions into into declarations or deeds. I mean, do we have to how do you see how those interplay? Do we have to get rid of both of those, or do we get rid of one hoping that the other won't then supersede the other? How do you see those interplay?

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: Well, I think that it Let's see how to address that. One thing that I think that ought to be in your consideration is that common interest community governance is really like small communities. Unit owners have a voice on the board. They can run for election. It's the owners that govern the communities. So the declaration restrictions are the most difficult to amend. They have to be amended by the unit owners. Bylaws are primarily governance restrictions. Those wouldn't necessarily apply here. Rule making is by the board of directors or the executive board of the association. So those are the easiest to change and the most flexible. I'm not understand sure entirely. I think that the phrase you know, no deed, bylaw, covenant restrictions, I I feel like that's

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: kind of boilerplate. This

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: is in section six a and one and three. And, anyway, we just were curious if what your thoughts were on our striking either one or both of those. Our understanding is that this wouldn't that these sections would mean that none of our work would apply to anything before 1999. Is that right? Pam, our legislator pencil is going to jump in.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, Miss Jensen, just to jump in with a quick question. So when you look at the sections about the prohibitions on leasing, childcare homes, etc, it's kind of boilerplate language like you said, it states that you know the declaration or deed restrictions or any you know governance rule or bylaw shall not you know prohibit those uses of the unit owner's phone. Right. The proposal or one of the proposals that we the committee has heard is concern from external stakeholders about deed restrictions being able to prevent leasing and the financing of certain mortgages to fund individuals purchase of a unit in a common interest community. And so their recommendation is to strike in those sections the language that would prevent a declaration or a deed restriction from prohibiting these uses, but to keep the language about allowing the bylaws and governing documents to prohibit those documents from restricting the uses in this way. And my comment to the committee was you can do that, but by doing so, you allow a common interest community to either, you know, move the prohibition from the rules of the community into the deep restrictions, or you're not gonna cover the common interest communities where that restriction exists in the declaration or the deep restrictions to begin with. So, you can do it that way, but you may not be accomplishing entirely the intent of the legislation by allowing a deed restriction or a declaration restriction to prohibit things like leasing and childcare homes, etcetera. So, that was kind of the thrust of the question of it seems like by removing it would not actually accomplish the goal or it would allow circumvention of the intent of the legislation if you allow the deep restrictions of the declarations to still prohibit these activities. Does that make sense?

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: Yes, I think it does make sense, and I think there are two totally separate questions here. The childcare question is different than the leasing restriction question because in order to obtain financing for mortgages that are going be sold on the secondary market, there are prohibitions on excessive numbers of leased units. In order for people to be able to get financing to buy units, oftentimes associations need to adopt rules restricting leasing. That's the reason that we have, forgot what section it is, 3,123 I think, that authorizes the executive board to adopt rules that reasonably restrict leasing to comply with the requirements of his generally Fannie and Freddie. That is an exception to the limitation on the executive board's authority to restrict the uses of and behavior in units. So one issue with the current draft of three twenty eight with respect to leasing is that by prohibiting leasing restrictions from appearing in the declaration and the bylaws and deeds, although these would generally appear in the declaration, You are, I think arguably overriding although there's carve out in 03/28, but I think that you're effectively overriding the board's ability to restrict leasing to comply with Fannie and Freddie's requirements. So that I'm not sure that was even in English to anybody who doesn't live like with her head in the common interest ownership act.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So one last question before we turn to Josephine. On the ADU piece, we had some discussion about planned communities not being able to unreasonably restrict the building of an AVU. You have any thoughts on whether the sort of aesthetic standard or the architectural standards that communities have set these wouldn't impinge on setbacks or anything else. I mean, all one assumes all those restrictions would still be in place. But are there what what's covered under unreasonably restrict? I mean, would that include aesthetic standards? What does that I think we'd love to have a better understanding of that.

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: Sure. I think that setbacks and things like that are most likely to be addressed in the town's zoning bylaws. Aesthetics, there are

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Sorry, did the town zoning bylaws trump the declarations and deeds and covenants of a common interest community?

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: No, no. So the town zoning bylaws would sort of be at the base requirements and those would be complied with generally when the developer builds the community. There are some where a person would buy a lot subject to covenants. But the issue I see with ADUs and common interest communities is that the declaration is required to provide the maximum number of units that can be created in the community. And so adding and this again may be a different this may be something that you didn't intend, but by adding ADUs, you increase the number of units arguably in a community that can put pressure on water and sewer and other facilities that serve the community. So that's really challenging and I don't know. Back to aesthetics, some communities have architectural standards, some don't. Any additional building in the community is generally going to require approval by the executive board. And that approval already under the statute cannot be unreasonably withheld. The board already under the existing statute has obligations to act in the best interest of the community, to act reasonably. So, those are already requirements.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That that's helpful. Thanks. So any other questions before we turn to Josephine? Josephine, why why don't we welcome you into this conversation? Introduce yourself and tell us your share your testimony.

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: Thank you so much. My name is Josephine Bodman. I had to take care in my condominium in Quarry Ridge for about five years, and where I take care of it was licensed by the state of Vermont and I was at I can take up to 10 children but I only do six because I'm the one running the daycare. It's a home care where I have young very young kids from two weeks to probably five years. At each point in time I have just about maybe daily attendance of four children and they come in at different times and we're very flexible with modest small daycare. We did that for some time and with the state inspection approving the place and giving me the license and they come for inspections. I had no problem until the June 2. I got a letter from an attorney from the H2A that I was I was not the compliance with the rules of the condominium and I had twelve days to close down the daycare and I told them to I had to get an attorney to tell them that I've been running this, I've not been in anything, there have been no formal protest or anything and that I needed time to do this, I'm a respectful member of the community and I'm helping the community and some of these children are very vulnerable and I'm providing care for them and the shortage of care in Vermont. And they went back and forth, back and forth and they said no, that they would not and grant me more time to relocate the place. Then we saw the board of directors and they promised that they would discuss it, but they came back and said they've given me just a month more to leave the place. The state of Vermont wrote them a letter telling them the services I provide and how important it is, and if they can allow the daycare to stay but they refused. All the parents wrote individually to the board, they refused. This was going on, I had to do it. I had to be made to pay for the attorney fee of the board at Mount Attorney and I spent almost about $89,000 in all the fees and there was threats that if I don't leave they're going to get the sheriff to come after me, they're to take me to court all sort of things and it was just so overwhelming, and the the parents could not relocate their children because the time was so short, and they wrote to them that give us more time, but no, and one of the things that the board said was that it was causing traffic which was not true. Because I only have six children and I just have four. Average everyday. And the well I didn't have any complaints from my neighbors. We didn't have any problem at all. They said there was traffic cost here, that was not true because we have greater traffics here. They fed the ex UPS, they come here every day to deliver things with big trucks. That's not the situation I have. And it's really sad that first of all, children, there was a passion for me. This was a job I love doing, love the children and not having a place to keep them and the sudden closing of the place apart from impacting my finances, having any job, my heart goes to those people that are affected, the children don't have anything to do, that cannot fend for themselves and vulnerable. And also we are in the community here, we pay our dues to the HOA, which is not even cheap, and we're supposed to be acting in good faith which we have done as members of the community. But it just was just so it was really really emotionally draining and the money spent and not just having any sympathy for those that were affected.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Thank

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: you, Josephine. Did you are you in a a a condominium in an apartment building or are you in separately owned individual lots of in your community?

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: The the condominium has two two condos.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Two condos. And do you do you did you go to your condominium board before to ask permission to set up the the family home care?

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: Yes. Because we have a board member, the next condominium to us. And when we're back, we asked her. I said there was no problem.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So the oh, so you asked your neighbor, but the board the board itself board. She's a member of the board. Ah, but did the board weigh in also as a as a unit? Did the board say yes?

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: No. The board didn't tell me anything until I got this letter last year. That I've been here for about five years, but they didn't say anything to me.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. And and how how long was your family day care center open?

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: About five years. About five years.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Five years. Yeah. And you you said you were licensed by the state of Vermont. You had gone through licensure?

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: Yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And so they had reviewed the the space and everything was okay and up. Right?

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: Yes. And the permits, everything was done. Everything was done. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Thank

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: you. David? Was there anything in the in the HOA?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. Economy HOA. Anything in

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: the HOA bylaws that restricted your ability to set up this business in the first place?

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: No. They didn't tell me until the June 2. They wrote to me that, I mean, the the rules of the condominiums is I cannot have a day care. That was on the June 2 What did

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And so to follow-up on David's question, did you go back and look at your deed the at your deed to see if it

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: said said that? It says there that no business, But it didn't specify. It said except customary businesses is allowed. But it didn't specify, but later on in 2022, there was a draft that said specifically day cares. It was not in the original one. That was added later. It was a draft. I don't even know if was ratified or not, but there's a draft at 2022.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That said you that day cares were not allowed.

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: Specifically, but it's not in the original one.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And as far as you noted, the board vote on that? Did they adopt that by law?

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: Think so because it was a draft. Yeah.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Any

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: other questions for Josephine? Thank you. That's a I'm so sorry that your work that you clearly care a lot about has come to a halt, and you haven't found a new location?

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: No, it is so difficult. Know, Vermont, yeah, I've tried a lot and it's really difficult, and because it's a home care, I need to get another home like a stand alone home and I have to live in there, I have to leave this house, that's a place, that's the that's the rule for me to have a family home daycare center, I have to live in the home. Lots involved in that.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: And while we have missus Morgan, I just wanna say, her husband has a wonderful church that I visited. I don't know if it's still in Colchester.

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: Yeah, exactly.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: And her daughter interned for me in City Hall in Burlington and for Senator Bernie Sanders. So it's not often that someone knows how to reach their elected official to, you know, to to share something To share that frustrate your daughter, Samina, but that, you

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: know, what can reach I out to know. Right.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: And I'm sure this has happened to to other folks as well.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Committee, any other Christina, before we let you go, any thoughts on this? I mean, I think on this situation, is there anything in, Christina, are you still there?

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: I am, I'm just having trouble pushing the buttons.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh, that's okay, we have trouble doing things all the time. Any thoughts as we craft this legislation that would help clarify this situation? Because anyway, any thoughts on this?

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: Yes, actually. This is, so, I am a little bit familiar with Quarry Ridge. It is, as I understand it, a a townhouse townhouse type of development. But it is one where the units are the space within the exterior walls. And so all of the yards and everything would be common elements. So, it's not clear to me how this squares with your description of the licensing requirements requiring yards and things like that. This strikes me as the type of community where an in home child care would have an impact on the property rights of other owners in the community.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Although, so if they were licensed by the state, you could say the same thing about any community that doesn't have owned backyards, exclusively owned backyards. And I mean, cities have to deal with that, you know, Downtown Burlington and probably Winooski have to deal with that. So if the state licenses them, then what you're talking about is some kind of infringement on a common interest community that would be the same scenario as for anyone living in multifamily housing that doesn't have their own backyard or the sidewalks of a public street nearby. I mean, this is, like, getting a little bit this isn't I don't feel like you're talking about a legal argument at this point.

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: Oh, I am. Because the spaces that are being used are unlike the public sidewalk in a city, unlike a municipal park, they're owned, these spaces are owned by all of the unit owners in common. So it would be like me using my neighbor's backyard for my barbecues or something like that. So that's a very different scenario.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: In Josephine, I understand you have another thought.

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: Yes, because when the kids were here, we normally go to the Jeep Park. We work there, that's where we do our recreation, not necessarily backyard, and each of us have our own backyard, though it's not debarketed, but we have our backyard, but most of the time we take the children down to Jay Park, that's where we do recreation.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That's where we played outside. Josephine, another question for you. Had there been any other family, had there been a precedent for family daycare in your condominium association? Had there been other family daycares before you set up yours?

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: None that I know of. Okay. I don't know if they were here before I came in, but I don't know.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. And so, I'm just curious, because I think it's sort of interesting that your neighbor who was a board member, you said, of the condominium association. Mhmm. I'm sort of surprised that the neighbor didn't suggest you come before the board to get, you know, to get permission and get permission from the board to set this up. It's sort a surprise to me.

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: I know. And I've been here, and nobody complained until last year.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you. Any other questions to clarify on this area for for people? I think, Christina, we we I think we've worked I think, Pam, I think we've worked the language on the ADUs to sort of narrow it to only communities with exclusively owned land. So we have addressed that. We have not with the family family care. Hope we don't.

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: Hope you don't.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. No. No. I I don't. But I do. Yeah. And I don't. So I think unless we have other questions.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Let's just make a comment.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. Comment.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: So all three of my kids went to a small home based childcare. It was the perfect thing for our family. It was supposed to where my wife works. So we need to find ways to enable facilitate these small care solutions because people have a right to rear their kids. That includes being able to drop their small ones off to somebody that lives close by or despite the work. Right. So, totally support us focusing on this and finding ways to allow for these things Right, within these

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I'm thinking about celebrating the Bay Ridge opening near me and it's the only playground. It's a common interest community now and it's the only playground near our home and on Route 7 in that whole area.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And is it accessible for the whole community or

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: just No, for the people who live I mean, no one at Chippling Housing Trust says, you can't use it. I really celebrated it publicly as a community resource to have a playground. This really speaks to me as like people are just asking us to have our children not be seen and heard. Someone could have six kids and also use the common space. Like we see we see common interest communities saying you can't leave kids toys or bikes outside or have a sandbox. Yeah.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: It's a village.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. So, Christina, given given I think there's a lot of interest in enabling this kind of business, is there any additional work we should do and add to this proposed statutory change that you would encourage us to do to help us move forward on this? Would you and Cam be willing to be in touch? I would

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: appreciate

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: that because this discussion has been really educational for me and I would like to give it a little bit more thought and get back to you with some, you know, a more considered response than I'd be in a position to review right now.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah we will have you and Cam be in touch and Randy has one last question.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: And that is in your discussions it would be very helpful to try to clarify a little bit the conflict that we see as in this case between the rights of property owner and the rights of a tenant or someone occupying it or someone in the relationship in a shared interest community. This is still not entirely clear to me as to where the line is drawn and whether or not things could be done in effect retroactively as well. Now, we've tried to address the retroactive issue here, but I think of the situation that I guess the homeowner or the association can make a set of rules that are done after the date that we put in, but if they conflict with, let's say, public, what we have in our public laws regarding daycare centers and the rules associated with them, I'm still unclear of where the line is drawn and when and not. In this particular case, if Josephine went to court, where would she stand? And south from the discussion that you have, she would not do well. Is that your opinion based on what limited amount that you've heard here?

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: Based on what I've heard here, I think that there I think she probably would not fare well. That would be dependent on a lot of things. I think that there is least one local municipality that I think defines a small home childcare less than six kids or something like that, as a residential use. And that would certainly have an impact on the result of any challenge too.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: That takes us back to the issue of what we do here relative to this bill. Based on that discussion, it doesn't sound like there's anything that could be done legislatively to change that.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh, yes, I can change that. I think she just said, I think she just changed, subjected that change.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: That what miss you've suggested? Did Mr. Perkins, what you said?

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: Well, think there are situations where municipal law The hierarchy of sort of legal trump cards here is rules at the bottom. If rules conflict with bylaws and bylaws control, if declarations conflict with bylaws, the declaration controls and the statute trumps the declaration. So if there's an applicable statute, then that's going to trump the declaration bylaws rules, which is why I'm concerned about S-three 28.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right, which is

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: Because it's going

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: to have an impact on everybody lower down.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: So if legislation in effect trumps some rights, as in this case, could someone, our property owner for example, the association argue that something has been taken from them because they devalued the property by allowing a use not allowed previously? Would that create any sort of liability issues?

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: I I think that that is potentially a fertile ground for litigation.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Thank

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And I think, Josephine, you did have a moment in court. Right? I mean, you were all those fees that you paid? Was that in court? No.

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: It was with my attorney. I had to get an attorney, and she actually said that if I go to court, I'm not going to win because they Yes. Doing a strong bylaws and that unless it is changed, there's nothing I can do. But But she tried to mediate between us and the HOA, but they refused. So those what are those fees? Because I the the way that the HOA is formed, I have to pay their legal fees if they take

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So the legal fees are the fees that you? Yeah. Thank you both. Thank you both so much. This was very helpful. And we we have Christina and Cam will be in touch, and we've got your your email to Cam. Cameron Wood is our legislative council on this issue.

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: Thank you both so much

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: for your time. This is really helping us as we the legislation. It does. And you both have a lovely weekend.

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: Thanks so much. Thanks for all your work on this.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Bye bye. Bye bye. Ted, we welcome you to the stage.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Alright. And I will step up. Oh,

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: in a few minutes. Yeah.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: But I gotta be back in somebody.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go. Thanks. I'll I'll follow-up. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We are looking at tests here. We've made your fiscal note yesterday a lot simpler on the sick refill. I Did see my email?

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I did see your email. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. You're welcome. I will appreciate the extra couple hours in town meeting week. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: anyway, thank you. We will have a fiscal note on the prohibition on deceptive devices and vaping vaping bill after Grunt's over. I mean, after Chittenden. Okay. Ted, thank you. Do we Yeah. Are you gonna pull it up, or do

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: we have Oh, thank you.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: You all have it Oh, this is Jake on your Thank you. I think so. I think everyone has it.

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: I don't think we it.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Nice and readable. We're so great.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Some big and fun I've ever

[Christina Jensen, Esq. (Chair, Legislative Action Committee, Community Associations Institute–VT)]: seen some

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: of it.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So you know us well.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I will say that was entirely Kiara, I think, in the formatting. So I will give her the credit on that. Will Thank say you. Also, we do check-in the office to make sure things are legible because we put a lot of information on pages, and it gets shrunk down. And yeah. So it's good that you all can see it.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you, sir.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: The first thing I will note as you're looking at the table, I know eyes go also tempering it from the fiscal office. If I haven't said that, I know tables immediately go to or eyes go to the bottom of the table and look at the totals. The totals at the bottom are not intended to sum, so you can't do math. It's not that 9,000,000 subtracting 5.3. You know? It's it's because the way money was accounted for in 03/28 versus how it's accounted for in the gov rack. Those they're slightly different, and so the circles don't sound at the bottom. So I don't want people to think that, you know, they're not seeing something correctly or whatever. That is intentional. So would you like me to just kinda run line by line on the table and provide a little context? What would be most helpful for you all?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, I think why don't you just cruise through it because it's not that long. Sure.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Can I just clarify? Is this the the next this is the next generation of this That's 03/27. That's a different Yep.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Eric. Yep. The numbers are close together. So the first piece that I will talk about is extending the VHFAA down payment program tax credits through 2031. The cost in fiscal year 2027, so this table is entirely reflective of 01/27 cost is $250,000 to the general fund. I will note on the back, there's some additional notes that the down payment assistance program, those tax credits run for five years. And so in each year successive fiscal year, you're adding 250,000. And so in fiscal year twenty thirty one, the cost would increase to $1,250,000 in fiscal year thirty one before scaling back down if you decide not to continue the tax credits. But that's

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, the so the reason it's not in the governor's budget, it's still in play through this year. Yes. So it's not that it's not in the governor's budget. It's not accounted for every year.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: It's not yeah. So it's in law

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: that the fairness as we look at this, it's not like it was excluded from the governor's budget.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes. Those tax in in current law, those tax credits are scheduled around '26, so you would need to reauthorize that.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So this is basically a reauthorization of something. It's not that it was excluded from the governor's budget. It's yes. Con continuing an existing tax credit. Exactly. We just have to sort of view it that way. It's a reauthorizing of something that is already in law and effectively working, and the request is to increase in that reauthorization to increase the funding, the amount available for the Vermont Housing Finance Agency to lend out in down payment assistance.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I'll just say, I I think this is a reasonable amount. I think if if it comes down to grass tax, the appropriation, it would it would still be good to get the get the extension in even if it's a lower coming out. I don't wanna negotiate that away now, but

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: it would be I think it

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: would be nice to have the extension even if they have to cut it to a 100 or

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So the request is what's not reflected here is the request because it's not written down. Yeah. I The request has been that we raise this amount to $3.50.

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

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And that request And so the the what you're saying here on the back is that if we did do that, reauthorize this legislation at the level of three fifty a year, that by f y two thousand thirty one when it would expire, it would have the value of over $1,000,000. Is that what you're saying to me?

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes. The tax credits, they're five year tax credits. And so in legislation, it says, you know, a first year tax credit amount of $250,000. So in fiscal year 2028, you would have the $250,000 from that were authorized in fiscal year twenty seven, and you would add an additional $250,000 authorized '28, but the tax credits authorized in '27 would also continue. So you just kinda build

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So build it if they thousand dollars per year.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: You build it only if they don't use it. Correct? But it's a revolving lump. It's a it's not real. So there's Chad Smith, I was in

[Chad (Homelessness Alliance of Vermont) [last name unknown]]: the homelessness alliance for Vermont. It is not a It's not

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a yeah. It's a straight point.

[Chad (Homelessness Alliance of Vermont) [last name unknown]]: No. I'm sorry. The out payment assistance is essentially kind of an assignment second mortgage.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. You pay back when you sell.

[Chad (Homelessness Alliance of Vermont) [last name unknown]]: Pay back when you sell or revive.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And remember, the reason that they've requested an increased amount is that, a, homes are costing more. So $10,000, which is what they're hoping to maintain that down payment assistance at, is is meaningful only if we can continue it at 10,000 because the cost of housing has increased so much. And the result of the cost of housing increasing and the scarcity of housing to repurchase as you grow your family or whatever you're doing that you need a bigger house, that that that has slowed the repayment into the as people sell their houses, they repay the down payment assistance, and that is still repaying this stuff.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yes. And totally that yes. Reflecting So that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I don't fully understand. So by 2031 that the the fund itself was thrown to that amount.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So an important distinction here Sorry. That so I see Chad nodding. Sent over there is that the way the down payment assistance program works is they receive revenue from tax credits that are sold to businesses that claim those tax credits over five years. And so that's the tax credit or the cost of the state, and then the mechanics of how the down payment assistance program works is is different. And so they're making money available to folks, they're paying it back. So it's helpful to think about how the program works separate from how it's actually funded. Same. Yes. Okay. So

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: what we have on the table there is both the reauthorization of this program. Do we reauthorize it at the amount that it's been for the last five years, which means that sadly the down payment assistance will probably have to be less. It's been 10,000 for down payment assistance. And the second request is not only to reauthorize it, but to reauthorize it at $350,000 a year. And to make to continue the availability of these grant, these down payment assistance loans at $10,000. That's my understanding of the ends. So thank you, Kesha, for weighing in, and we just I think we have to figure out if we wanna raise that tax expenditure for $3.50. The sec why don't you keep going and Sure.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: The next section is a proposal that is also carried in a house bill seven seventy five that would increase the 10% Vermont program, which is currently, as you all sure have heard, making substantial investments in housing projects to increase that credit facility from 10% of the state average cash balance to 12.5%. And 1% of the state's average cash balance of that so 1% of the 12.5 produced for off-site construction. This is I'm lumping together that policy with the provision in that section, which would allow the treasurer to retain the interest that is earned on these investments. Currently, that so when the treasurer is making out loans to the 10% for Vermont program, when folks repay that interest Yeah. Under current law, it goes to the general fund. In this bill, it would be retained in a Vermont housing special fund and be available to use for capital for housing projects. And so in fiscal year twenty twenty seven, since the two pieces. First of all, the diversion of interest income the main piece, sorry, is diversion of interest income from the general fund to the special fund is about a million dollars Right. Foregone interest revenue. So there is section three. Yeah. There's a question on that.

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: So my recollection of Jane Kesha, well, she didn't much care for her when we put bunnies aside and segregated them out with the general fund. Is this something that even if we pass it out, appropriations is going to have their way with it, and they're gonna apply their lens on whether or not this should be segregated. Is this really any jurisdiction for such an ask?

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I think it right. It's ultimately not speaking entirely for the process, but you all could have policy ideas on how to support housing in the state, and the appropriation committee has The way into. The the tough task of figuring out what the funding and prioritizing the budget.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I don't wanna cut into our next, witnesses' time too much, but I will make this proposal for our committee to think about, which is given this entire proposal is in h seven seven five. It's coming our way. It's in ways and means right now. I would boldly propose that we consider striking this entire off-site provision with two exceptions. One is keeping the increase of the Vermont local investment program up to 12.5%, keeping that piece and keeping at the very end of the off-site construct construction idea, keeping the request to have the Department of Housing and Conservation the Department of Housing and Community Development work with Division of Fire and Safety to develop statewide off-site building codes for our consideration in two years. So those are the two pieces I'd suggest we keep, and I am going to boldly propose we strike all of the off-site. It's a it's it I think it's gonna take more time than we have, and we have a fully developed proposal coming at us that has been vetted and will be, you know, passed by the other body. We'll see if it gets passed by the other body. And so we it'll have gone through the appropriations in the other body, Rutland Thomas. So and so if we just continue quickly, this is for us to to consider for our discussion on Tuesday, mostly, Chad, if you could just quickly finish this identifying the the sections, and then we're gonna turn to service support and housing.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Sure. One comment on if you do retain the part of this provision that would increase the 10% for my credit facility to 12.5%, that does also it still has a fiscal cost. It wouldn't be realized until later fiscal years. But, essentially, you're taking approximately thirty you're making available up to $30,000,000 of additional lending. Right. And if those monies are lent out, right, they're not available for the treasurers to invest in on the cash balance. And so there would be foregone interest revenue from that. Well, but talking about the treasurer, they probably wouldn't start to get that additional money out the door in fiscal year twenty eight, twenty nine. So the future is not a this year budget conversation, but it's a future one. So just wanted to make that.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you. That's helpful.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Point. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Servant support of the advisory council de minimis Yep. The municipal plan resilience. Let's just quickly go through

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: this, but we just need

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to turn to this next the next Yep.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: So there's just three more appropriations. One is an appropriation, which is this language made it to appropriations or even here would suggest changing the appropriation to a transfer, transferring money to a fund, as it said, appropriating into the fund. But, yes, it's a $250,000 appropriation in the bill, but could be a transfer to the municipal and regional planning and resilience fund. Which would you

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: pass that suggestion to Ted? To what? Yeah. Pass it to Ted. Would you be kind of just share that with Cam? Yes. That language change. Okay.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Totally. And then, yes, there's a $5,000,000 appropriation to DHCD for BHIP. Would note that the governor's recommended budget, it's 4,000,000 in base for BHIP. This would be an increase of $1,000,000 of base funding for VHIP, and then finally, $3,000,000 to VHCV for affordable housing for individuals with disability. And so that's the full run of the money in the bill.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: You are a peach. Thank you very much for having done this for us in this time, and we will take this with us as we will the updated housing bill, which we will have pending this conversation and some of the work that we did this morning with HOAs. We'll have Pamela get to us in the early part of the week. It's One quick question. Yeah.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Affordable housing for individuals living with disabilities. There's no governance record of that. You're just figuring out

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. Well, we're about to hear about that from Polly because this this was running to a previous Schools. I'm just saying. The pilot that we started. So then probably a poly major government. Ted, thank you

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: so much.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Pearson, would you be kind enough to join us? So, running a little behind, but we have big things. We are having to One of the get out the door and crossover is fast upon us. I understand. And great to have you back, welcome.

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: You. My name is Kirsten Murphy. I'm Executive Director of the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council. I also have the honor to chair the Housing and Residential Services Committee. I was here by the name of the legislature under Access Denied Section five.

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: You will recall that earlier in the session, presented the committee's report, the Roche Home, which is a 13 plan for developing the housing needed by the Well, there's the intellectual development.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: There's the seats behind me and there's a seat here.

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: So I'm gonna do an extremely quick level set just to remind us about that. Right. That's why we're here. Because it was a task force I served on. Yes. Yes. And we have presented that plan to you. The Vermonters that we're talking about today are those that are served specifically by the Developmental Disabilities Service System. And I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: just wanna focus our committee on what section we're on. We're on section 10. We're on in the new draft, we're on section

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you. Yes. We're on section 10, which is page I'm just trying to get a call on the same page where it's on page 18.

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: It begins on page 18. Okay. We are talking about providers that are certified the Developmental Disabilities Service Program. And this is one of three programs that uses unique permissions in federal Medicaid rules to pay for what are called home community based services. And these are the supports that people with significant disabilities need to be safe and productive and fully included in their communities. There are roughly 3,400 people in that program. And I think we're gonna see a slide in a minute that I just wanna remind us of the problem we're trying to solve here.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Get that to come up.

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: I just sent a shared request. Oh, no worries. What you will see is a pie graph, and the pie graph has two sections of the pie that are quite large, that Zach, grabbed. Yes, were testifying. 3939% either staff living with, 39% living with families, family caregivers, and 39% living in what is essentially an adult foster care model. Now those are always gonna remain important parts of the system of care. People will continue to live with families. That's a very viable option. But we have a challenge in that many of those families are aging beyond their ability to provide care and wanna know that their family member is gonna go to something permanent and safe and supportive for them. The adult foster care model is not a permanent housing model. People move in and out of different situations in that model. And also there, there are fewer people wanting to do that work as home providers, and they are also aging. So those two sections of the pie are disproportionately large given the environment that we're operating in now thirty years after family nurses. So we've relied on that. We rely on that. Almost 80% rely on those two housing models. And we have outgrown the capacity of those continue to serve 80 of this population. So we need to grow the other sections of the pie, different versions of living maybe three people together or also living independently in an apartment, possibly with a caregiver also in a separate bedroom. Are all options that are being explored and Polly's gonna tell you more about some of the projects moving through the system to take advantage of that. We really need in the next at least five years, maybe a little longer, to rebalance that system, which brings us to Section 10. You will recall that in the Road Home I stressed that it is a 13 plan designed with recommendations that reinforce each other. So we're seeking to change the system and meet all the tools in the toolbox. And peeling off one or two recommendations and saying, Here, this is the thing we'll do, is not the road to success, especially if Vermont is investing funding. We want all the pieces in place, including the pieces that hold various entities accountable for implementing all of the recommendations in this plan. Now I understand skepticism about committees. I've served on committees that are very productive. I've served

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: on committees that are less productive. Well, I will point out that you helped make our task force incredibly productive. So we are very grateful

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: for your leadership on this. Thank you. The Road Home recommends that we have a committee to oversee for a time the, advancement of all 13 points of this plan. So that's what the advisory council That's what the advisory committee would essentially

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah, advisory council. And you have other councils like this are ongoing to oversee some of of certain programs. Yes, and

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: mirrors the composition of the Act sixty nine committee that I chaired that was a productive committee, and I think the genius of it was that the legislature put together different entities from government that never had an opportunity to problem solve together before. And it generated a lot of moment. But every meeting were like, oh, I didn't understand that's how that worked. Now I see a solution and brought together people that really, you know, were able in literally two and a half to three months was effectively the time frame that we had, able to come up with, I think, a pretty viable plan, but the work isn't done. You know, that was a short period of time. There are 13 recommendations at the road. And while some of them are addressed by S-three 28, others need expertise, and dare I say a little cheerleading, to move them through Dale, the Agency of Human Services and other branches of government. So here I'm thinking about the need to refine our data collection and build a model that is more precise in predicting carefully where we're gonna need housing when. We're using a rough number of 600, but we need to collect much more precise data and build that model. That's something that's committed to doing. And in fact, it's one of the duties you put in Section 10. I'm also thinking about the need to build a communication strategy that ensures this population takes advantage of existing affordable housing opportunities. People in this particular population did not know they could sign up for Section eight and did not know that that could be an opportunity to get an affordable apartment with a caregiver. They were just not told about that. Not, I don't if anybody's malpeasance or any wrongdoing on the part of the housing authorities. The gatekeepers in their lives didn't necessarily encourage them to do that. That is a viable model. We now have some data showing that literally at all levels of support need, people use a model like an independent partner, including people very much. That is a possibility with the right support. That's another thing I'm thinking about, needing to continue the work. And then, currently I'm facilitating bit of a raucous process that's looking at licensure and policy around licensure for some of the residents of the dyspopulation, for example. We would have given that to an advisory committee, but we didn't want to wait for that to be consulted.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Hope it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. We don't need to exist.

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: We pushed ahead and are hoping to have some proposals by mid June. Those proposals will be stopped or if they then feed into an advisory committee before they come to the legislature. So, there were also other ideas on the table and here I'm thinking about some of the work that you've supported through the agency of Commerce and Community Development that we did not have time as a committee to look fully into how that would be a part of standing up this 600 or so units. Third, the legislature should expect and does expect annual updates about the implementation of the road home and future recommendations. These are public investments and they deserve your oversight and we can, as a committee, be a part of that process. And then finally, the projects that Polly's going to describe to you are really very complicated, both from a counselor standpoint and from

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the standpoint of a service provider.

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: We see a role for the advisory council to review potential projects even before they come to the Claw Housing and Conservation Board. They would be stronger proposals if they had that ultimate expertise. And that doesn't have to be achieved in this bill. It's something Vermont Housing and Conservation Board could simply ask applicants to please do. And so that is a role at the individual project level that this committee could play. The advisory council should be a time limited project. Their job is to work themselves out of a job. At some point, they should fund that. But we really need this piece of infrastructure to keep moving forward, this plan of action. And I finally wanted to call your attention to just a few clarifying language changes. Is that all right? Yes. So we're going to put them up here. And you have these available. Right. The correction that I'm trying to take here is actually literally capitalized. But when developmental disability services, so when we refer to people or individuals who receive Medicaid funded small D developmental small disability services, that could mean other people in the Choices for Care program to avoid that confusion. Literally just capitalizing this and there are a couple other pieces Helps differentiate. That would suggest on other slides, some language changes that would just clarify that there are people in choices for care that have developmental disabilities. They have other housing fees. But that's not the problem this group is trying to solve. That makes sense?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. And then

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: I really would like to bow to, unless you have

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: any questions.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I'd love to go to your question about this. You've made a strong case for the advisory council and its importance in moving this work forward for the next few years. Would you suggest a sunset time? I mean and then we could always extend a sunset.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: But I don't think that's a I don't think that's a bad idea.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. So I think that some of us would be open to that. Given how much you've accomplished in such a short period of time, I have to say I'm impressed. We do have this challenge of transitioning a lot of housing for a lot of people in need. Yeah. And would five years be I

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: think five years was a possibility of revisiting that at year five, but that puts some pressure also Yeah. On

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think some of us would appreciate that. Yeah. So if we put a sunset on, like, 2031, something like that.

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: I I think that that's entirely reasonable. It might help people feel more confident that this is not, you know, this is not a forever, right?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: No, this is a need immediately. Yes. And with the parent, you know, you've listed all the immediate needs that we see both in the pie chart, the aging out of the adult foster model, is people are less interested and they're aging out, parents are aging out.

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: We have a regulatory environment that now makes small group living not have the aversive things that we originally thought People's thirty years rights to autonomy and decision making are far more protected now by federal Medicaid rules. They weren't thirty years ago, so rightly Vermont had a fear of group living. And hence the closure of Brandon. Well, also the closure of Brandon, but they didn't wanna replicate that with large group homes, which is what New York State Right. For example. And I don't like large group homes either. But on a small scale, it's very age normative for people in their twenties and thirties to live with two housemates. That's in fact what a lot of people want to do in our community. Right.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Visited Riverflow, which is the latest example of a four unit community in Moncton. Mhmm. And they and they are looking to expand, but with less congregate living and a lot a range of options for folks. I just think

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh, these are these are

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Therapeutic settings just got a bad rap, but we all like, done well with the appropriate careful staffing and community involvement. It's a it's a great option. And you're right, it's like anyone in their twenties would love to live in a previous farmhouse system.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And the farm. Heartbeat. Heartbeat Farm also, just like the

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Yeah, it doesn't even work. Wonder. Can't And

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: and know, there used to be Oh, really? Because it's common in my community that the advocates would sort of pass judgment on what's an appropriate model. Oh, we don't believe in that or something. Act 69 Committee, if it meets now rigorous federal and state standards for not just safety, but for the way people's rights and autonomy are supported, I'm not gonna pass judgment on one model being better than another. There are a variety of models, and what people are guaranteeing under federal Medicaid rules is a choice in where they receive their home community based services. Currently, people do not have that choice. At best, they're offered one shared living opportunity. I take

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: it early then. And our only state housing metric is that people with disabilities are able to live in with dignity in a setting they prefer. We learn that on the government accountability. It's our only health metric currently.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So thank you. Give us our time. Yes? Let me just ask you

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: a question.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Oh, Randy, sorry. Have here section 14 and the capitalization of developmental disability services, meaning suggesting that it means different things to different people.

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: If we go two slides down, I'm suggesting that we capitalize developmental disability services because it refers to a program then. Right. As opposed to a a body of of services that you administer to a couple of programs. Right. Well, I guess one

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: of the questions would be would be just it'd be easier and certainly clearer to have, in fact, the paragraph under definitions that says, Development disability cert stat wise means this, because you use

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: it for I just wanted to draft through people, but I was trying to come up with it the quickest.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: I would think something that is more specific and definitional would be helpful.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. We can be in touch with Cam, but I'm not sure if that's what it means. I think then that's fine, because we meant to refer to

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: the program. Yeah, and you might add the word program

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: after it. This

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: is the moment where I think I, I think we have a witness maybe Right, to right.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And then we have Polly who's gonna talk about the pilot and the funding for the pilot. Okay. Yeah. Because we wanna continue the pilot There's fund the

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: somebody who I added to the witness list from River Float who also created Heartbeat. I'm not sure if there's She's not available to Okay.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Available. We we

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: we did sort of provide her

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a check.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Thing that I wanted to flag is that she they some of what they did was with VHIP, and then they became ineligible for VHIP under some new rules. That's some complexity that I have

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: to defer to Polly on, but yes.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Okay. But, Polly, I really like to I put a pin in, like, exploring how to re include this. Well, is the kind of problem

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: that, see, if we had an advisory and they brought the proposal to the advisory council in advance of application, that could have been flagged and worked through.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Yeah, so that's Well, keep in mind, it didn't happen. I don't wanna extend VHIF without looking at what might have happened to remove ineligibility for disability.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That may take us a little bit more time than we have, but we also, I think this is heard right now, a good question for the advisory council to be working on with Sean.

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: And that's the level of complexity that this kind of housing brings. And so yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Great. Okay. Given our time frame, thank you for that. Yes. I'm sorry. Marl, who would like to go first? Marla? Yes. Kate, you wanna

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: go first? You wanna go Polly? Polly's great. Would you like to Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Hear from the advocates first, then it'd be

[Kirsten Murphy (Executive Director, VT Developmental Disabilities Council)]: last, or

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: would it up to you? Why don't we quickly hear from the advocates? Because that building on Kirsten's testimony, and then Polly's going to the nuts and bolts of the pilot and how we're gonna either keep funding the pilot that we'd set in place two years ago, I think, and that we wanna keep going, but it does need money. Yes. Good morning. Kate, welcome.

[Katie (Kate) Tormey (Parent advocate, DDHI)]: Thank you very much. My name's Katie Tormey, and I live in Burlington. I'm the mother of a 37 year old young woman, Emily, who has Down syndrome. I'm also a member of the Developmental Disability Housing Initiative. Most of you have heard from us over the past four years, but for anyone new, we're a parent advocacy group, 175 families throughout the state advocating for safe, permanently affordable service supported housing for our adult children with intellectual and developmental disabilities, many of whom have high to moderate support needs. I'm here today to talk to you about the immediate need for housing for this vulnerable group of Vermonters. As Kirsten just spoke about, the Rolling Home is a plan. The recommendations are actions that the committee considers to be urgently needed to achieve the goal of this plan. 600 plus units of permanent affordable service supported housing within a five year timeframe. We don't wanna see this plan fizzle and dissipate. Continuation of this work is necessary. Section nine of S three twenty eight calls for the creation of the service supported housing advisory council, what we're just talking about. The advisory council will be the next step towards the creation of these 600 plus units. The group will be charged with carrying out the plan. This group will need to be held accountable by not only this committee, but others in the State House as well. We need to keep moving forward. Section 13 of S-three 28 calls for the creation of a full time housing specialist position within Dale. As a parent, I see the advisory council and the housing specialist as central components of the vast and complicated world of service supported housing. In addition to being a parent to Emily who has a development disability, I also have two daughters in their 30s. I've spent forty years working as a physical therapist. Before becoming involved with DDHI, I knew nothing about housing, let alone the service supported housing that Emily needs. The world of developers, housing trusts, funding streams, licensure, all of that is totally intimidating. And this is how all parents of adults, adult parents of adult children with IDD, that's how we feel. It's so overwhelming that it's hard to even know where to start. We families need someone or something that can help us navigate the housing development system. It's our hope that the Housing Advisory Committee and the new position within Dale's can make sure that families receive the education and support that's needed to find their way towards housing. When I first began to think about housing for Emily, I did not think a Section eight voucher was something she would be able to utilize. I had the idea that a Section eight voucher would only be for someone who was independent enough to live alone. Emily is fairly independent, but she was not at a point where she could live alone. So years went by as I was looking for housing options without Emily being on the waiting list for Section eight. Speaking with a parent within our Down Syndrome group, I learned that there was a way to make use of a Section eight housing voucher. There exists a two bedroom housing voucher that one of the bedrooms is used by a live in aid. Nowhere in the system had anyone ever told us about the live in aid possibility. Emily's 37 I mean, there were a lot of years that we were talking about this and this was never brought up to us. The Live in Aid lives rent free, pays 50% of the utilities. It's a great deal for the right person. Within a year or two of being on the waiting list, Emily was finally awarded a two bedroom housing voucher. Next came the search for a two bedroom apartment, or do we look for a roommate first? Who helps us find the roommate? Who helps us find the apartment? All of this landed on our family. Nobody had any help for us at all. It took over four months to find an affordable apartment that accepted Section eight housing voucher and was in a somewhat safe area of town. Emily is a very vulnerable young woman and she couldn't live like in Downtown Burlington. Then came the search for the roommate. We advertised in Front Court Forum, UBM, Howard Center's listserv. Again, it took a while, but we eventually found the young woman to be Emily's roommate. My point with all this is that families need support, education, assistance in all areas of looking at permanent housing. Detailed information about housing vouchers, various models of service supported housing, services available, smart technology that might facilitate more independence. We need all this stuff. Unfortunately, we don't have it right now and we need it. There was a there was a group in Addison who, you know, even the simple thing of driving by and seeing, you know, developers sign, it's like, my god. There might be units there. How do we get my kid in there? And when you're that late, before they've even started to dig, it's too late. You have to be in on an early level. But how do we know that?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So this housing advisory person could really be helpful. And working as closely as you are with some of the affordable housing community who are all developing before the shovels in the ground.

[Katie (Kate) Tormey (Parent advocate, DDHI)]: Exactly. That's what we need. So, I feel lucky that we were able to get Emily set up in her apartment, but the situation's not forever. The only way this works is because of a lot of family oversight. I mean, it's a it's a full time job just looking at everything. And we parents one day will not be here to provide that oversight. That's why service supported housing is such an immediate need. I'll be 70 this year. Emily's dad is 75. We don't have ten or twenty years to wait to get this to work. So you legislators have shown support for our families within the passage of Act one hundred 80 six three years ago and Act 69 last year, supporting the creation of the Housing Advisory Committee and the housing specialists within Dale will be yet another chance to keep this momentum going and move things forward. Thank you so much. Thank you. Any questions?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I am just realizing that in the fiscal that we just got, Ted did not include this position nor did he include positions from DHCD. So the positions are not on this. So I'm gonna ask Ted to update it. Thank you very much. It was a trick. Marla, if you want, you can just stay right there if you want. And then you don't have to move because Randy can pivot, and you could be seen by the cameras, and then Polly can come join us here. We can get started after you're done. Yes. Do you want me

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: to shorten this? Sure. You have it to read.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We have it to read. Both Tate and Marlow are kind kindly included their testimony. Why don't you do whatever you'd like of it? Yeah.

[Marla McQuiston (Parent advocate, DDHI)]: When I'm gonna pass out the this is our DBHI family stories. It's about a number of different things.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh great,

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: so we could take a And time to look at

[Marla McQuiston (Parent advocate, DDHI)]: this is the Williston Observer just came out with a story of the Williston book by Sunnets.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Super exciting. The second from the right. Second from the

[Marla McQuiston (Parent advocate, DDHI)]: right with the baseball hat. Yes. But we are, I'm Marla McQuiston. I'm a whole And I, we really appreciate you listening and supporting us. We really appreciated having Sandra Clarkson on the Act sixty nine Committee this summer. Was really fantastic. It was great to have her. It's great to have to continue this support. So my son has Down syndrome. He's 28. My husband and I are 68

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: and

[Marla McQuiston (Parent advocate, DDHI)]: 70. We're looking for, you know, a place for him to be once we're gone and to be able to stay there and be able to stay in Williston. The three things that we're asking for is the money to start a pipeline. We've got three projects, planning project money, and then we've come back and asked for money for them every year. And at this point, we've heard from legislators, please stop coming every year. Can we just have a pipeline that it's designated that it will just keep funding this every year because we need 600 units? So we had asked for 10,000,000 for five years figuring that might get us to 600 units. And I realized it's only 3,000,000, but if you could even make that an annual thing that it would be the idea would be there that this needs to happen every year. It does leverage other money if, you know you know, 3,000,000 is barely gonna manage one project or help one project, but it leverages other grants and funding from different places. You know, we started this because my friend Elizabeth, her husband died, and she's kind of one of the main people behind Riverflow. Those communities are campy, oh, communities, which are around the world, they're international, But there's also other types of housing that people are looking for. The one in Burlington is a bunch of small apartments that are all these communities where you pretty much need to have a shared kitchen living dining because those people that were, our group is people with high moderate support needs. So some of these people need to be fed and diapered and can't do any of these things. But then my son could get his breakfast and his lunch. He could live in a little apartment and then have dinner with his friends and make dinner together with people. So the big cost with this is it's not the same as regular affordable housing because you have to provide a way to keep the community space. So, we're asking for money. The other thing we're asking for is the dedicated staff person at Dale, which as Kay said, you know, we're doing all this on our own. We're figuring this out and we're talking for, there's 175 in our group, but each of us know other five families who don't have the bandwidth to do anything with the group and are sitting back and just, like, awake every night going, What am I What's gonna be? What's my schedule? So, I hate to bring it up, but the Ohio Developmental Disabilities Division website is a thing of beauty and and you go to it and you could pick out, oh, this is the question I have, I can go look at here. This is the question. It's information. We want information. You have a kid with the capability. Nobody comes to you and says, this is what your thing is gonna be. If you go to your agency, they say, okay, we have shared living. We need to know more than that there's shared living.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right.

[Marla McQuiston (Parent advocate, DDHI)]: We need the information. Like Katie said, you need to be able to get on a waiting list for a Section eight voucher when your kid is 18, but they don't tell you that. Right. So, and the state has been woefully sideloading. Housing is over here and developmental disabilities is over here. We've had the committee this summer.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And the council too. I mean, I think that's one of the great things about the council. It'll be great to reconcile a lot of

[Marla McQuiston (Parent advocate, DDHI)]: the work. Yeah. And we've worked with, we've got started working with LAOB and ACHB have been very supportive and they've been like, what? People don't find out about a Section eight voucher till their So parents figure it the third request for the advisory council is that you would be the legislative checking on that that homework is done. Thank you. Fine.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank That was terrific. And we kept Laura Ann Fates' testimony in our packet. Hi, would you come join us, please?

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: Yeah, I included the appendix for the it's kind of the short form of the Oak Road home. I see. Appendix A. Yes. And if you look through there, there's like four things that need to be done legislatively. The rest of them are mostly to be done by Dale, and so that's where the legislature can say, Dale, get your job done. There are

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: of common issues here that grow, not just here, but across state government. This is a very complex organization we have. People have questions. It's very difficult to get coordinated answers with all the players who have those answers. Now, this is a great AI project

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: to stay. And AC too.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: You're absolutely Holly, welcome. We sadly have very few minutes, but we really need to have your input on this because you're a key player as we de silo things. Well, thank you

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: for your record. I'm Polly Major. I'm the policy director for Vermont Housing Conservation Board. And I think I'm gonna really cut to the chase and talk about the background of the pilot projects, how they came to be, and what we see the role of the council is in allowing for future housing development.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Does that

[Polly Major (Policy Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: sound helpful? Great. Alright. And I'll just start by saying that BHCV has a long history of focusing on the on housing needs in vulnerable Vermonters that the legislature has really asked us to focus on. We've played a role in closure of Brandon as well in creating housing there.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And we really appreciate your partnership with us.

[Polly Major (Policy Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: So as the chair mentioned a couple of years ago, the legislature passed act one eighty six, which created a pilot fund at Dale to fund three pilot projects around the state. And it was planning grant money. It was not capital money. So these planning grants allowed these three projects, which was River Flow here, Saint Paul Street in Burlington developed by Champlain Housing Trust, and a project in Randolph with Upper Valley Services, Thomas Fest, to really get those communities to come together and say, how do we build the housing that we need to house these individuals? They created these projects, and they but they didn't have capital funding. So they came before the Housing Conservation Board to apply for the general affordable housing development funding that we administer administer across the state. And because of that planning grant money, these projects were successful at securing development funding from VHCb and other development sources around the state, such as in the case of Riverflow, we have played a role there in the first phase in Saint Paul Street. There was a special appropriation in the budget last year that you passed through VHCb to help bring this project up and online. And I think the success of this pilot was really threefold. One, it resulted in three projects. Two, it tested out different living models. So Saint Paul Street and Riverflow I have in this slide is two two very different models. Saint Paul Street is really independent living with a car apartment for on-site twenty four seven staff. And then Riverflow is a therapeutic community model. We've also seen in another project I'll show later, Marsh House, where we have designated units within a traditional affordable housing LIPEC project that are able to go to people with development of disabilities. So it's exciting that we're testing these models and seeing what services we need to make them work and how we line that up with the capital we need to make that work. And from these three projects, three other projects around the state have come forward to the Housing Conservation Board for funding, so that's even provided those.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Double the success of three projects in the works, three different models, and three now new additional costco.

[Polly Major (Policy Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: And 37 units working towards that goal of 600. So I'd say there is more to do, and we served on the working group that came up with the Grow at Home plan to develop those 600 units. And as I said, BHCV's role is the capital funder here, and we also provide project related feasibility funds. And this is a project down at Bratiborow that our board of funded in October. But some of the observations we've had as a funder working with these projects is this goes without saying the availability of funding is key. I have your bullet point saying that. Yep. The projects are highly unique, so what need a lot of that technical support, and I think that goes to the impact a a council could have. Rental assistance is key and an important piece of this as well, and how these homes fit into the existing rental assistance model, and do we have capacity there to fund more vouchers? And then Oh, we One of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: our hopes dashed at the VAA, but, hey. And that keep working on it.

[Polly Major (Policy Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: The projects that we're seeing common in front of us often have assumptions that they can secure rental assistance. And without that rental assistance, they face they could face real operating cash flow challenges, making a project potentially unviable if they can't solve that problem. So it plays a critical role whether rental assistance comes from the federal government or elsewhere. And and just third, that the input from communities is really key here. I think these pie charts, which represent the funding sources for two different projects, represent the complexity of this work. The top one, Homest Fest, is a house in Randolph that was sold at below market rate to Upper Valley Services to develop into three units. And then Holton Homes, in the last slide, is a what was senior living facility then was work nurse work force housing, now is getting redeveloped into housing for people with disabilities and other units. And you see really different working funding stacks. But to speak to I can't speak to the regulations around BHIP and what may led to the change there. We have seen that as an important source. And what you're seeing here is that being able to match the service programs up with the housing programs is tricky and really critical to make these complex developments happen. These low income housing tax credits are complex in their own way, and we do use them in some cases, but they cannot be used with every model. And that means you see whether it be the light blue 67% of this Randolph project coming through being funded through VHCV, or the 26% in Holden, a large percentage of these of the funding needs to come through VHCV to make these projects pencil out. And with our declining high housing resources as we move through the COVID resources that we've had, our ability to fund future projects is going to be declining, and that's, I think, what the appropriations section of this bill really speaks to. In order to keep that pipeline going to do more projects, there needs to be special designated funding, as you did last year, to advance the St. Paul Street project in order to make sure that these complex projects continue to advance. Can I flag Sure?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Something? So I don't know if you've had a chance to give any more thought to the notion that there are permit removal barrier barrier of barriers for permits. Sorry. What else is it? Or expedited permitting if they have VHCB funding. But that came up at Riverflow, right? Because they whether or not they're working with VHCb, they still had to go through probably $100,000 and are still working to try and get in the Act 181 map area and things like that. So

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And and we have for us

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I have something we to

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: have it's something to consider for us in this bill, which eliminates which enables that.

[Polly Major (Policy Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: And I would say anything there helps. The pie charts that actually cut off out showed the acquisition and hard costs versus soft costs, and this acquisition hard costs are really the bulk of these projects. But what I would say is that what a service supported housing advisory council could do is speed up projects. Nearly every one of the projects that come forward to the board has needed to be deferred or take a little bit longer because they're working through issues of licensure of how many homes can you include within a broader project and still meet the requirements? How do you make sure that the Medicaid rules or the Section eight rules align for this population? It's really complex work. So if developers could bring a project in front of a group of experts early on in the process, they could design a process that a project that would move through both the social services system and the housing system in a more streamlined fashion. And time is money. That saves money. Also, work of life that the licensure committee is doing, if they have a clear path to licensure, that in itself can save some cost here. And so it's so wonderful that the Out the Road Home group, they took it on themselves to have this licensure complete. It could also enhance the pipeline if as we learn what it takes to do these projects and really identify where there are policy changes to make them more possible, to speed up the pace, to bring down the cost that those are being flagged annually for the legislature. So I think there's a lot of value to this council here. And the council alone is not going to lead to housing. There's going to be a section of that development pie chart that because of the purchasing power of this population being not as high as market as just a market rate tenant, it needs to be subsidized. And so we need a capital source to make make these projects cash flow moving forward. That was fast. But

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That was fast. Good. And Tucker is here reminding us of our time frame. I will say we've been working on trying to find a source for the $3,000,000 with treasurer's office, and I would ask us to maybe consider that some of that additional 2.5% added to the lung capacity of the the the lag that we could maybe dedicate to some of this. But we had originally hoped to claw claw back some of the not unclaimed, but unknown property money that the treasurer oversees. And, unfortunately, there were complex reasons we couldn't use that because that goes straight over to appropriations as it would be again, it would just be another appropriation. So we will discuss this, but it is without for the money to be HCB, we don't have, at the moment, the money. We have to figure out where the money's coming from.

[Polly Major (Policy Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: I'll see if this is going. I'll say with regards to LIAC, you look at Fulton Homes here, 4% is 25 debt from from Vermont Housing Finance Agency. What you're seeing here is that these projects can't support a lot of debt. They can't support a lot of the debt. Right. It needs to be kind of in Or grant or deferred loan. Right. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So the lag wouldn't work.

[Polly Major (Policy Director, Vermont Housing & Conservation Board)]: It it could in certain cases. It's not gonna work. If we

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: make it available, it could work in certain cases. Thank you. Any questions, committee? No. Thank you all. Thank you for your tenacity and your advocacy. So much appreciated. Thank you. Okay. Committee, we are now going to shift to cannabis. So I know you haven't had a break. I know, Thomas, you know, are we okay with taking breaks as needed?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: You have

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a Right. Given that we have about an hour and five minutes. So thank you, Marla. Thank you, Kate. Thank you, everybody. And okay. Okay. Everybody take a deep breath. And so I think we have shifted the day a little bit.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Let's look for the right We

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Kara, tell us what we're doing here because we were quickly going here before we go through this bill. My hope is to really have everybody identify as we go through these sections with Tucker after we hear from some of the other states input, we ask for other states input, and we have, I believe, a couple of people who are gonna represent California, Massachusetts, and New York. And then we're gonna move to Tucker. And hi, Julie and Gabe. Welcome. Hi, Jeffrey. Are I I would really hope that that we look at this bill and figure out what we have appetite for and what you honestly don't have appetite for. Okay. Because I think that's gonna be the key. So who is Kara, who

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: is up first? We have Damien Ross to speak on the states. So we wanna have Damien go first?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Who's that Ross Gordon?

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: And that's Damien.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Damien. Okay. Sure. Damien, we welcome you again. It's good to see you.

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: Hi. Thanks for having me.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So if you'd be kind enough to introduce yourself and you're going to be addressing the experience, because in large measure, patient factor could say this perhaps better than I, but in large measure, this bill is about aligning aligning ourselves with the states around us in a number of different measures. And that's the the the and and so I think we're wanting to hear from some of those other states about how how you're doing.

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: Okay. I have a just a brief presentation. I'm gonna share my screen.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: As Damian's working on that, I think there were just a lot of questions about why this amount, why this purchase threshold, you know, and they we at least asked them to talk about New York and Massachusetts because we heard that we experienced direct competition from them, advertising in our state. Right. That if there are different limits, we're not changing anyone's behavior except to push them out of state and stuff. Right. And away from our business if we're not on a level playing field and will be further disadvantaged. Right. We'd be scheduling it. Yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And I think to underscore that, as we look at the scheduling coming down the pipe from the federal government, we need to be as well prepared as possible to protect our craft industry here and just to align ourselves with our neighbors. So, Damian, when you're ready.

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: Yes, good morning. Thank you again for having me. So it's a brief presentation on how we've done delivery in New York. If there are questions from the panel, we can just talk informally about what we did.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Great, Sorry. Our time is very limited, so this is addressing how we deliver cannabis straight from the grower to

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: And could you touch on purchase limits and potency?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: So

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: Yeah. So I'll just say right off the bat, we do not we have purchase limits that are pretty standard. I think we we have the same as Massachusetts. We do not have potency limits and do not regulate that. I do say, would say

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: with regard

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: to potency limits, it gets very complicated at the testing and lab level for really regulating that and overseeing that and it's very expensive. So if the state is prepared to pay for extra testing, that's really the only way to make it viable. Otherwise, small producers are constantly testing potency.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Sir, may ask a question on that?

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

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: I take your point when it comes to the flower. My question is do you have potency limits on edibles? Yes, yes we do. Okay, so you need potency on Yes,

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: that seems reasonable. Ten milligrams per serving, one hundred milligrams per package. Is our I will say that we are we have been getting pressure from consumers to raise that limit just to compete with the illicit market. I don't think that there's an appetite to do that just yet. So, it's still is ten milligrams per gummy and and edible packaged edible and one hundred per package. Very quickly, the the delivery framework in New York is is is pretty bare minimum simple, and that is primarily because we had to create delivery regulations for dispensary and a micro business on the border with Vermont and in Manhattan. And the rules had to govern govern both businesses equally. So the we treat delivery right now in New York as an extension of a retail dispensary. In order to get a delivery license, you have to be an open and operational retail dispensary. That is not how the law was written. You can have a standalone delivery license. We just haven't opened that up for applications yet. So the framework is really just to treat it right now as an extension of a dispensary. Our micro businesses, our craft producers are allowed to have dispensaries, so they are doing delivery in the state Of New York. Our intention with the delivery license is to produce small business activity. So in the law, it limits the number of employees a business can have with a delivery license to 25 employees. This is primarily to ensure that we don't have one delivery company that is monopolizing the space across the state. And then, you know, using that market power leverage to raise fees against the operators themselves. Our regulations prohibit delivery from a centralized warehouse. They must originate from a retail premises. I think the most relevant to Vermont with our delivery rules are protections on the profit margins for delivery and the labor standards. We restrict third party platforms similar to Uber Eats or DoorDash from handling transactions. The transaction from the customer to order delivery has to be done on the retail dispensary or the micro business website. It cannot be done on an app or a third party. Tech company this prevents external third party companies from extracting you know up to 2030% of gross revenue from the small business doing delivery. All delivery personnel must be W2 employees of the licensee. This ensures direct oversight of that license and the delivery and standardized training. Inventory control, you know, staff must pull product directly from the retail store, you know, it can't be something from some other location. Customers must place orders before the delivery departs. We have prohibited mobile vending, the ice cream truck model. So it's it's do they cannot carry extra stock in the delivery vehicle for for pop up sales or anything like that. Regulatory accountability overhead costs. So physical lease in a high traffic area means that the biggest hurdle, you know this, you have to open up a retail dispensary to do delivery. When we first opened the market and we had trouble opening dispensaries because we were under injunction and there were lawsuits and there was a lot of court involvement with our retail rollout. Did temporarily for about a year allowed the stash box model, which was if you had a retail dispensary license, you could do delivery out of a warehouse direct to consumers across the state really. Know, someone in Brooklyn could deliver in Long Island. That was not happening very, very often. They usually had minimum orders of, you know, dollars $3.50, but it did allow for product to flow from farmer to retailer to consumer. Cannabis specific vehicle insurance is something to watch out for. It's a they're very high premiums and fleet maintenance costs really offset the benefits of doing delivery. So the best of your ability, looking at that insurance space, looking at the fleet maintenance costs associated with these, maybe there's a way to share resources, delivery resources between small growers because the margins are razor thin on these deliveries and especially in rural environments where they're traveling long distances. The market reality is really that, you know, high volume urban retailers currently find delivery a lot a lot more, you know, beneficial than our rural operators. New York City is the delivery capital of the country probably, and so that is something that is is is delivering a lot of value to our our retailers and get a lot of product out but for the most part in in rural parts of the state, it's a lot of big parking lots next to a dispensary. Really, I I I my my my final thing here is that, you know, there isn't much to mimic from New York's delivery rules for Vermont. Again, we were addressing the constraints we have as a place, you know, with with Buffalo, New York City, and, you know, a town of a thousand people on the border. But there are the the two frameworks in our regulations that I do recommend taking a look at are the ban on third party apps, which has successfully sort of prohibited them from from taking over the space, particularly in New York. Our ban on third party Apps is directly informed by what we saw in California. I directly asked retail dispensaries what they were paying third party platforms to deliver product around Los Angeles, and you know they as the third party platform became more. Necessary or more popular with consumers retail dispensaries were more and more willing to pay higher and higher fees to use their services, So so you would end up paying up to $30,000 a month at the top dispensary in Los Angeles just to appear on their platform at the top and to to access the consumers ordering cannabis for delivery. Okay.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: So Hey, Jamie. Yes? Jamie, we have a question. Trying to keep up with you. What's a third party app? What's the

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: Like Uber Uber Eats do DoorDash for for cannabis.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: K. Thank you. You mean

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: a third party delivery app?

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Yes. Sorry. Yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Can I

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I ask can a clarifying question?

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: I

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: think we heard that California limits delivery to where there's no retail establishment within a certain range of miles. That seems like it, you know, it might work for our rural state as well to begin with. Is so is that is that just California?

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: No. So we and I'm sure Ross will be able to clarify, but I'll just say that for us, you know, we have opt outs in New York. You know, 30 to 40% of our municipalities have also opted out, primarily Long Island and some parts of Upstate. But what we saw with the what we see with delivery license is, in fact, that there are dispensaries that do deliveries, let's say, the border with Long Island and Queens into Long Island. There is an opportunity there to, to get product into opt out locations that, that our delivery license has, has managed to help with, but we don't limit it to those locations. We let the market kind of decide for them.

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: And I will say Ross has his hand up,

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: and Right, then you might be able to answer the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Ross, if you join us for that. Thank you.

[Ross Gordon (Policy Director, Origins Council – California)]: Hey everyone, happy to be here. Just to briefly introduce myself, Ross Gordon, I'm with Origins Council, we're a California five zero one(four) nonprofit. We predominantly represent small and rural cultivators in California. So in some ways, similar to, I think, the small and rural cultivators in Vermont. Just to jump in specifically on that question, California actually doesn't have a prohibition on delivery to places that have retail access. Actually, our most developed delivery markets are cities like Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, that also have a high density of retail. So that's not a restriction that we have, just to clarify.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you. That's helpful. Damian, anything else? Or should we shift to Ross?

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: You can shift to Ross. If there are any questions, I'm I'm free to answer. I'll stick around for a little bit in case something comes up. But Thank you. For me.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And and remind us, the parental project focuses on all states, on

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: You're based in New York.

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: The Parabola Center is in Massachusetts, outside of Austin.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: I'm based in New York, yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yes, Kesha and then Tom.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: It says on our chart that every state that we're comparing to around us, including Massachusetts and New York, have recreational delivery. Do you see any activity where they might try to get that delivery close to the border of a state like Vermont that doesn't have delivery? No. Okay. So that would be, like, fully illegal to Yeah.

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Would the run.

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: It would be too big of a risk because that would be a federal crime. And so our licensees would be, you know, risking their license and and their safety for one delivery. We don't see the incentive really mapping out to that.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Right.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh, Thomas had a question.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Is outside the scope of what you just spoke to, but I'm wondering if you could tell me how New York and California to you Ross, in Vermont we currently require communities to opt in to allow for the sales, retail sales of marijuana, so dispensaries. Do you have something similar or in New York and California, can a retailer open in any community across your entire states? So yeah, we have opt outs. Opt outs. Yeah, we automatically opt in municipalities across the

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: state after the MRTA was signed. They had I believe, eighteen months, two years to have a vote to decide if they wanted to opt out. So everyone was automatically opted in. They had a vote to decide if they wanted to opt out of retail sales or on-site consumption. 30% of the municipalities across the state did opt out, but they always have the option and opportunity to opt back in with another vote. So that we have seen over the course of the last three years since the MRTA signed probably about 10 to 20% of all the opt outs opt in to retail sales. They are mostly, you know, watching to see how the industry develops statewide to make that determination. I think a lot of them are starting to see the local tax revenue that is afforded to the municipalities through these sales especially in a time where they need all the dollars they can get, more and more are opting in.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Thank you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Perfect. David?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: A question for David. Since you said you represent or you lease keep perspective on all 50 states, Specific to delivery permits, in previous testimony, it it had been mentioned that Massachusetts had a problem with this effort. And I'm wondering if you can allude to that a little bit and tell us what happened there. And

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: Yeah. So they sorry.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Oh, was there more?

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: Massachusetts. At first, there was two big issues with Massachusetts delivery license. The first one was that they initially in their regulations required that there'd be two individuals in the delivery vehicle with body cameras that proved to be way too expensive to justify the cost of doing delivery. They changed that after a few years and reduce it to one person who's I believe still does have to wear basically a body camera to track the movement of the product. But these are all costs that that that fall onto the small business and disincentivize them from even doing delivery. Because again, the margins on delivery are razor thin so to the best of your ability to ensure public safety, but also keep costs down that's that's probably the best move. And the second thing Massachusetts did is that they created a standalone delivery license for social equity. This this allowed this was sort of the stash box model I alluded to earlier where they don't need to open up a full retail dispensary location. Can store product in warehouse, in a small storage unit and do deliveries direct to consumers from there. The problem, however, is that you know we have not seen that that business model has been at all successful in Massachusetts. A handful have ever opened. They've licensed maybe 50 and the ones who have opened have spoken in the press pretty clearly that it's not a very profitable venture. It's very difficult to acquire consumers. People have already become, at that point, already become very familiar with their local dispensaries. So it was hard for them to attract the necessary volume to justify the business. So it it it's it's that's that model has not really been working in Massachusetts.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Thank you, Damien.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. Ross, thank you, Damien, much. If you'd stick and be part of this conversation. Ross, we're going to turn to you and then we're going to take up with Tucker. Thanks.

[Ross Gordon (Policy Director, Origins Council – California)]: Great. Excited to be here. As I mentioned, Ross Gordon with Origins Council in California and happy to give just the general overview of how delivery operates in California, and then maybe some thoughts about what that might mean as you're looking to get a possible delivery law in Vermont. I want to say I really appreciate Damian's comments, agree with most of them. There's a lot of parallels, some differences between California and New York. So one difference I'd note just out the gate is that California does have a standalone delivery license. And so in California, we have a number of different license types across the cannabis supply chain, cultivation, manufacturing, distribution, retail, testing labs, cannabis events. And generally speaking, anyone can get any license type and there's not restrictions on vertical integration. And so many licensees can and do have multiple licenses of different types, or of the same type if if they choose to. Specifically for retail, we have two types of retail licenses in California at the state level. There is what's called a storefront retail license, which is a traditional dispensary open to the public. And then there's a different license type called a non storefront retail license, which in other words, is basically just delivery. And to get that delivery license, you don't have to meet all the requirements of a storefront license. It's really a strictly, more accessible, lower barrier to entry license than a full, storefront retail license type. It's worth noting both of those license types can do delivery. So if you're permitted for a storefront retail dispensary, you're also authorized to do delivery from that dispensary, but you can also get this delivery only standalone license. There are some regulatory restrictions which are placed on that license. For delivery only license, the physical location has to be closed from close to the public. The cannabis does need to be stored on-site on that license. Like in New York, deliveries have to be conducted by either a employee of the licensee or it can be conducted by the owner of the license itself. There are hours of operation, 6AM to 10PM. Age confirmation is required on delivery, and there's also a maximum of $10,000 of product value that can be carried in a delivery vehicle at any given time. There are ways in which the regulatory requirements are lower for delivery only licenses than a full storefront retailer. For example, in California, a full storefront dispensary would be required to contract with security personnel. That is not required for delivery only license because they are, not open to the public. And finally, I'd note that, in general in California, including for retail license types, licensees are required to pay an annual fee to the State Department of Cannabis Control for the license. Those fees, are tiered based on the size of the business and specifically on the annual gross receipts of the business. So if you're a smaller retailer conducting fewer sales, the fees that you pay to the state for your license are proportionately less as well. I think that's high level on the requirements. I can offer a few thoughts and overall would echo a lot of the things that Damian said. I think the impetus for the delivery conversation in California, including to have a license type specifically just for delivery, was really related to two important priorities. One is reducing entries to barrier and operations specifically for small businesses, and the other is increasing access to legal products for consumers and patients. I'd say that overall, California in many ways is struggling to meet both of those objectives within the context of the legal market as a whole. That said, I think delivery is very much a bright spot. I do think that delivery overall has helped advance objectives of both creating a lower barrier to entry for small businesses and for increasing legal consumer and patient access. From a principal perspective, I think there's also a lot to say for the approach of the non storefront retail delivery license in the sense that the scope of regulation that it proposes is consistent with what's actually required to operate the business. So what I mean by that is, California didn't decide that you have to meet all the regulatory requirements to run a full dispensary just to do delivery, you only have to meet the regulatory requirements which are truly and really necessary to operate a delivery business in order to get that license. And I think that's a principle that can often be useful for creating more accessibility for small businesses to only really regulate the things that are necessary from that compelling regulatory perspective. I'd also echo what Damian said about some of the distinctions between urban and rural areas. As I mentioned, Origins Council, we represent rural areas of California. Many of those rural areas are very far from population centers. Where I live in Humble County, we're about five hour drive from a real large population center in San Francisco, we're quite remote and rural. And we've definitely seen that delivery licenses are significantly more popular and more useful in concentrated urban areas. So most of the delivery licenses in the state are in places like San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Sacramento. There are fewer delivery licenses in rural areas, they still can be helpful, but as Damian mentioned, the margins really can be razor thin, especially when you don't have access to large numbers of consumers. So I think this is worth thinking about. The geography of every state is different and the market in every state is different, so I wouldn't assume that that's going to be true in a place like Vermont just because it's true here in rural California, but I think it's something worth looking at. I do think for us, this points to the importance specifically for small producers and in rural areas of looking at a variety of options to create accessible entry points in the market for small producers and to create access for small producers. So delivery is one important mechanism. We've also looked at things like on farm sales, event sales, which can maybe be modeled off a farmer's market or more of a beer festival model are ways of thinking about that. And even things like direct to consumer shipping through a common carrier. These are all mechanisms we look at for market access for small producers and craft producers, that depending on geography and depending on market conditions can really have a big impact. And it's really not one size fits all. All of these options from our perspective are really important.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Great, thank you very much. Before Tucker joined us, Damian, before Pepper left, he didn't actually weigh in with us on the notion of establishing a regional compact. If we look at the federal lease scheduling coming at us, we proposed thinking about how we would pull together a regional compact to come up with some agreements regionally that make sense. Have you begun work on that at all? Or is it up to the smallest state to maybe watch some of those conversations?

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: No, those conversations have absolutely been floated around with cannabis industry leadership in New York for years now, including when I was at the office cannabis management. I think those discussions need to happen. I think there's a Northeast compact that's pretty evident that that could create a very strong regional market that respects our various cannabis cultures and small business communities. I think that those conversations need to be had at the at the the regular regulatory authority level. There's so many issues with market integration and challenges that I think that for the good news is that I will say that there was a new executive director nominated by the governor in New York just yesterday, who will probably be going through Senate confirmation soon. We haven't had permanent leadership at our office of cannabis management for at least eighteen months now. So there hasn't really been further into those conversations, but I think that that will change hopefully soon with a new permanent executive director.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And how might a state help move this along? Mean, what I mean, I I think that's one thing that we're thinking about is how how could we help you know, what what could we in Vermont do to help move that compact creation along? And I'm I'm not sure we have the time to do that before crossover, but it is something that I'm very keen on are trying to help get into play and place so that we're not left behind and overwhelmed in this transition.

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: Yeah. And I think that the the only venue that I've been a part of that allowed for those conversations to happen between our states was through Canra, the the regulatory the the the regulators association, the National Regulators Association events there is when I I spoke to people in Connecticut and Massachusetts about these issues. So I do think there needs to just be more regional conferences meetings between regulatory authorities, more interaction, more events where they can actually interact and talk about how this how this works. We've already when we wrote the regulations in New York, we were already trying to socialize them and and and map them with our neighbors regulations so that they're that when when this time did come that there wouldn't be so many variations in our different methodologies that it didn't make sense. And so those rules need to start being more and more accommodated, I believe.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, and that's certainly a piece of this legislation that we're looking at is aligning ourselves in all sorts of ways with our neighboring states. Anyway, well, thank you both. This is very helpful. Ross, I do believe there is a compact already formed in Northwest with Northwest states, is that correct?

[Ross Gordon (Policy Director, Origins Council – California)]: So we don't currently have any interstate compact. California and Oregon have independently passed pieces of legislation that give their governors the authority to do that under certain conditions, but those conditions have not been met. For example, there's various ones, but in California, one would be the Department of Justice issuing a memo and saying they tolerate that activity. Obviously that hasn't happened. So there is the potential for it if certain standards are met, but that has not been implemented yet.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you. That's helpful. Maybe

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I'll we

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: say one more thing just really quickly

[Damian Fagon (former Chief Equity Officer, NY Office of Cannabis Management; Parabola Center collaborator)]: is that I do believe standards are the mechanism for integrating, you know, markets and for assessing imports from out of state. Every state should should should should have its own product quality standards, its own production standards. And if there are states that are not meeting those production or quality standards, such as states that are have these massive markets with the indoor grows that are environmentally unsustainable or that have, you know, non organic production methods. These are methods for limiting interstate access to from states that don't follow those same standards. I think that those need to be looked at and integrated more cohesively in our region.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. Thank you both very much. Okay. God. So great. Tucker, you wanna come join us? And I think, Kara, have you given everybody updated section by section, which had the sections actually on it.

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: I would just give it to you, but I would give it to everyone right now.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. Just it it it's just helpful as we talk about the subjects. That's where people can find it in the bill. And and thanks. Well, we have lost Kesha and Thomas for the moment. Gabe, thank you for your memo. I clearly, I was up in the lounge way too late last night because I had read it late last night or it wasn't that late. But I sent it to everybody, and I think Kara has kinda made a copy for everybody. And if we have time, it would be great for you. And Julie, maybe, thank you both for coming today. And Jeffrey, thank you for having me. You as well. Always good, daddy. So I would urge the committee to make sure we read Gabe's memo even I don't think I remember to send it to Tucker, but maybe Gabe already sent it to you.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: I did. I'm sorry. Okay.

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have not seen it, but I am certain. It's wonderful. Good morning, Tucker and his legacy. Tucker, well. Before we jump into the section by section, think you've got less than two minutes for each one of the decision points here for the time that

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: you're Yeah, I think we I'm just gonna send this down to Tucker to break it

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

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Briefly starting with the discussion of an issue that is not in current committee amendment, parenthesis two seventy eight, which is the use of compact. Yeah. The overarching concern, particularly Pacific Northwest, with the agreements, they're not agreements, they're individual Authorizations, Adopted by each individual state is specifically around the movement of cannabis across state lines. Now that is not the entirety or the totality of the issue of states being tackled by a compact, but it is the one that has contingencies attached to it to ensure, as the chair of the CCP brought up in prior testimony, that you don't cross into the territory of conspiracy to commended federal law. Right.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: The issue that I brought up

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: in the initial testimony is that the states, if you have these conversations in the front of these, you could start by talking about ways to adopt consistent state laws around chartered state level non member banks that could support the industry. That's the only area that I can find that there's been some sort of sustainable research around compacts at the state level as it supports the cannabis industry, which is around having banking laws at the state level that are consistent between states that are members of the Coalitioner's Compact that don't bear a relationship with the Federal Reserve and their work can operate outside of some of the restrictions on use of banks by the Kansas City Service, because they're happy to send along some law review articles that are related to that. And if you're ready, I'm ready to jump into the bill.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. I I just to follow-up on that,

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: that seems like a

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: huge undertaking for us in a very short legislative session. Am I correct? It would definitely be a

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: heavy lift over the next two weeks. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, or I mean, is it something as we've kinda hopefully passed pieces of this bill onto the house to work on? Is this something that we could, in conjunction with the house, work on and and effectively make a stab at before the intercession. Your Office of Legislative Counsel will always endeavor to meet the bill of the gentleman's head waitress. Oh my god.

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's a lot of advisor hate this. I'm touching the more concise version of that that I used to give senate and governor all the time is, and so it shall be done. And so it shall be done.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you. So I think our hope today this is a big bill. It has many parts. Some are more ready to be adopted. I think it's important for us given that we have a week when we get back. And even in that week, it cannot be all devoted to cannabis because we still have to pass out our other bills. Realistically, I would love to have us look at this at the moment, given the timeframe we have, and see what we can realistically manage, where we have enough agreement to move forward. Okay? So I'd love because I don't want Tucker wasting time during the break to be redrafting stuff or working on stuff that we are not inevitably, you know, next week gonna say yes to. And I know there's a lot of diverging opinion in this committee on this subject. So to that end, Tucker, let us just at least begin going through the bill. You have a section by section so that we get we have the content here. We have Gabe's test the CCB boards weighed in on how they feel about the bill and the sections. Gabe, as we go through this, if you and Julie have additional things you would like to mention, feel free.

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Doctor. First issue for the community to consider, sections one and two, THC content limitations for cannabis products. Section one increases the percentage cap for THC content from 60 to 70, and section two raises the age for access to those products that are between 60 to 70% to 25 years of age.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Go ahead, uncharted. Comment, sorry,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I'm just trying to

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: I can read the language, but I always laugh the lawyer anyway. So this would be I I'm okay with rationalizing cohesive with the neighboring states on these potency limits when it comes to the flour, but I have some serious reservations about concentrate that we use for edibles. So how does this language overlay with will this make gummies stronger and more potent or allow them to?

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That is likely a question you'll wanna hear from an expert who does not.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Because I so if you wanna know where I am, I I don't support making it possible to have higher concentrated edibles. I have no positive concerns with edibles. With regards to flour, people know when they smoke it, and I don't necessarily want them to have to smoke more in order to get high, but I I don't like the idea of really strong edibles that have delayed effects and can also have instances where kids eat them because they are in a sugary type of event. So that's personally where I am, madam chair, is I think that's what you're looking for is a gauge.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I I think we would love a gauge. So you're you support, making more consistent with other states on everything but edibles.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: The flower, which is to me the the buds. So if that could be more coherent because that needs to be smoked. But when it comes to commercialized edible products, I don't want to allow the state to have them be a higher concentrate. That's right.

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: To help clarify some of the products that we're talking about here, first, cannabis flower language is not in here. From what I understand, the maximum content is currently established at law is 38%. Does that sound right? And that is kind of an upper natural threshold that surpassing that would be a bilaterally, but the section that we're dealing with here is specific to liquid concentrate cannabis products, and you may wanna hear what that specific category of products is, because it may not be a perfect overlap of what you were describing as edibles. The liquid concentrated cannabis products can be used in a number of different subsidiary products, but the primary one that I have read about in the literature would be cartridges that are used for the status.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay, so this is, this section, section one increases what

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: can be packaged, not the concentration in the product. It is the concentration in the products and the language is specific to the word.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: So I guess to elaborate on that, I I was think we still have some regulatory control and oversight on what can be put into a sugary product that is wrapped in a edible at a certain cost concentrated potency, and that's where I would want to ensure any potency limit increases still restricted that because I I would want people to still have to meter out of pace at a a very regulated amount and a smaller amount for these products. That's where I am, but I don't know cotton. I'm trying trying to learn it. Welcome education on the matter. Always make cheesy jokes when it comes to pot, and I probably shouldn't because That's pot. We're doing some pot today. How you doing today?

[Julie Hilberg (General Counsel, VT Cannabis Control Board)]: If I if I may, I don't have to stress

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: that. Think just to identify you.

[Julie Hilberg (General Counsel, VT Cannabis Control Board)]: Julie Hilberg, cannabis control board, Gabe will

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: probably put this better than I do, but I

[Julie Hilberg (General Counsel, VT Cannabis Control Board)]: think your concern actually addresses milligrams and

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: not percents of THC, which is what this part of the bill I think is really about the percent THC.

[Julie Hilberg (General Counsel, VT Cannabis Control Board)]: So would be the next section, I think, that would raise your concern.

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, for all your, the public health case makes sense, and things are as you would like them, think. There's a five milligram statutory serving limit, and that is not captured by this bill.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Jeffrey? If I may,

[Geoffrey Pizzutillo (Executive Director, Vermont Growers Association)]: Jeffrey Pizzisella, Vermont Growers Association. Just recall, a great question by the way, Senator. There, in statute you all, years ago with the enabling statute, you have categorized concentrates into two different categories, liquid concentrates and solid concentrates. The reforms are to bring the solid concentrates into parity with the liquid concentrates. So liquid concentrates are not capped right now, and so you would defer to the serving size as general counsel just alluded to, which is staying the same at five milligrams. So that's a catch all. So it's really about there's not parity between solid concentrates and liquid concentrates, and so

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: that impacts manufacturers. Do we create greater parity here?

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: We get closer, I believe,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to that situation. Going in

[Geoffrey Pizzutillo (Executive Director, Vermont Growers Association)]: And she would support greater parity.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: This bill gets to greater parity. Yes. David and Randy, are you so this sorry, I just want to clarify. So this both addresses concentration and volume in which it's sold, right? We haven't gotten

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to that section. That section is section, Section three, It's the very next section that we'll get into. Okay.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: This is concentration of Is there a better way to describe it?

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I would continue to use the word concentration. Yeah. And then for purposes of individual serving, it's dealt with it being packaged, loved.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And I think that's what you're concerned with, Thomas, is limiting the name. So I'm a yes. That's my concern. So I and for me, this section really helps us align with our neighbors. Correct? Is that a key piece of this? And so for me, this is an important if we're wanting to move forward, aligning and preparing ourselves for descheduling. I think this is a key piece that we need to probably move forward on, David.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Well, at least regionally. So we've got a good matrix

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: of Yes,

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: we have six great. And that's not necessarily the case. The product packaging is indicated on our matrix, which again, I'm not sure where we produced it or who validated it, but there's only one state that's got a significantly greater concentration. Right, are

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: you on H1 with the potency?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Oh yeah. Only Maine has concentration higher than Vermont at two hundred milligrams, but we're currently at one hundred milligrams. So we need to understand, when you say that the neighbors have higher concentrations, trying to find an equal playing field, well, five out of the six states have a higher concentration. Or five out of the six states have nearly the same concentration. Only one has a higher so you're right in saying that if we were all to fleet up, bump up to a equal playing field, five out of six states are much lower than the one leader is up at twice our concentration. Right. So we kinda make sure that we're turning this properly. Right. And I don't believe we'd get up to the same concentration of the others because the others are 100. We're still only proposing it at 70, right? Well, again, there's a problem with the matrix that it doesn't, I don't think it represents liquid concentrates at all. It looks like it's all first orbit.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: This liquid is 70, sorry.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Don't, again, trying to figure out this, I don't see the liquid It's not here. That would be helpful to fully understand what we're going on here. So in comparison to neighbors and so

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: regional continuing

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the conversation to blend a few different measurements that are covered by different divisions. And in these first two sections, just discussing a concentration limitation or specific subset of products. When we get into the milligram measurements, those are limits that are placed on individual servings, or in section three, the packaging, which I believe that you were pointing to, the two hundred milligram per package limitation. I was trying to think

[Ted (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: of a good way to put

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: this in terms a committee might be familiar with with another regulated substance, alcoholic beverages. So you do have, for a few beverage categories, limitations on the alcohol by volume. That that product can again stay within its beverage category. Right? Right. So for beer and wine, it's 16%. If you go above that, you're automatically considered a scoop. Right. And then we have fortified, you know. Again, there's special privileges that are afforded to certain beverages, like ready to drink spirits beverages, where they're not treated in spirits, but the packaging has to be under a specific law in order to get that. In this space, these are just hard, right line prohibitions, right? And for the purposes of concentrate, that's like talking about your alcohol by long, and then when you're talking about the two hundred milligrams of H, that's about a bag. No. That's the total So content that's allowed in a given

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: as we look at this chart, if you go to David's question, as we look at this chart, and I can't remember who gave us this chart, is it the pepper? Can't resist the Yeah. CCB. So this is the CCB chart, so that'll help us understand it. The potency is the concentrate, the chocolate, which is at the top. The serving is the packaging. For edibles? For

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: for everything. There's okay. I think

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There's serving sizes for flour. I'm gonna defer to the CCD as to what that means because that might actually be the CCB might there be indicating what the serving size would be under specific upper thresholds as per potency. I don't know, based on how this journal is laid out.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you. And then the product the packaging is the packaging, and then what we don't have is the concentrates with liquid versus, solvents. Okay. Gabe and and, Julie, do you have anything you wanna say about this chart? Because we're clearly looking at this chart I as we go

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: can just clarify that potency is expressed as percent THC and applies to concentrates as well as smokable flower. Those are measured in potency.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So it's both liquid and solid.

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. In both cases, you would express that as the percent THC. In edibles, there is a five milligram per serving limit in Section eight eighty one(three). The bill doesn't touch that limit and consequently edibles would not become stronger.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Could however, in this bill, to go

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: to Tom's point, be packaged in larger volume. Yes, the serve is going to

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: have to be separate. As you can imagine, we have had to police what a serving means fairly aggressively so that somebody doesn't say, well, this is 10 servings in the scanner. But that has worked. This would not alter the strength of edible cannabis products. Yeah, Thomas.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Who buys this concentrate? Is this from wholesaler to manufacturer or is this at retails? What is the concentrate? Is it a liquid that you put into a vape?

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It takes several different forms. It could be liquid that is in a vape that is made for us by a wick. It could be a solid paste that is heated and inhaled, or it could be a tincture that is dropped on the tongue as a liquid. But the isn't added

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: on the concentrate that's in the product. Yes.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: This chart that you all created with the note that applies to the concentrates in other states not just flour. It says parentheses flour but these potency limits also apply to how the other states have not regulated potency in the concentrate?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Correct, so Connecticut has a limit for their concentrates, but in Massachusetts it's 70%, New York we just heard does not have a limit for their concentrates in terms of percentage C. Connecticut is the only other New England state that has something comparable to Vermont.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: So this could just say potency from flower and concentrate.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It could. Yep.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: You. There would be different numbers, but yes.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Appreciate that. Flower and liquid. Good. That's helpful. Thank you. Sorry, Pat McTucker. Okay. So section one. How are people feeling about, increasing this the concentrate of? Should we I'm fine with this because I think he doesn't take the answer in the direction that we want to become positive.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: My general principle is I want to see a coherent market with our neighbors, and so if this aligns with Massachusetts Massachusetts and New York, I simultaneously want to say, I don't want to adopt policies that will encourage the more use of marijuana. Just like I don't want policies that occur to drink more alcohol or play the lottery more. So that's just where I'm coming from. But I do like the the general approach of coherency with Massachusetts and New York.

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

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Consistency of market, and I think that's what this goes to. And so, shall we move to section two? Anyone else wanna weigh in

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: on this? I just wanna add that if we can get this particular so seventy percent sixty to 70% I don't see 6070% anywhere on this matrix so I'm not really sure how we compare it. That's my only thing. Right. And I just think we need that visibility We all understand what the market would look around. So if CCB could do that before we come back.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: CCB, can you explain how 30% THC equates to what we're talking about 60% to 70%?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: So the 30% is for the flour and we're talking about solid and liquid concentrate. So something that's already flour that's already been processed into something else. In Connecticut, the concentrate cap is 60%. In Massachusetts, it's 70%. In New York they do not have a cap, and I don't have Maine in front

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: of me, but I don't believe that they have.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So they don't have caps either?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Maine and New York I don't believe have a cap on their concentrates. And New Jersey?

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: I don't have New Jersey in front of me. I only have New England.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Vermont is currently at 60.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Vermont is currently at 60.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Massachusetts, 70, we'll wait to hear what New Jersey is.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Yep.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. Jeffrey? They don't have a

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: New Jersey?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: New Jersey had no cap. Correct.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Yeah. I'm getting no state because caps are concentrates except Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont. Got it. Okay. That's helpful. So they're right up there.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: They may be substantially more than we at the moment. Yeah, okay. All right, we've got

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: some excellent information before we make that assumption.

[Geoffrey Pizzutillo (Executive Director, Vermont Growers Association)]: I would say one way to think about this is these are products that will be available on the illicit market. Does the state want to bring them into its regulatory framework or not? And in that process, you're ensuring a degree of public safety and health, but also you're capturing that tax revenue and ensuring that those businesses are playing by by the rules. But I think what David's asking is, what are the concentrates? What

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: are the percent factors now In Maine and New York and That we're seeing, that we're competing with in the illicit market, Gabe and then Jeffrey.

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I believe in the few states that regulate the concentration of inhalable products, 70% is the norm.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: I think that's fair. Ah, that's helpful.

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Again, there, the public health consequences of changing the inhalable gap are not the same in words view with the

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: public health consequences. It's inhalable versus nothing similar.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Jeffrey, anything to add? Okay, good to go. Okay, so Randy, where are you weighing in on this?

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Consistency is important to me, at least for now. Since we dealt with this the last time, as

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: you know, I think all of

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: us have gotten, at least I certainly have gotten an avalanche of letters from medical providers in particular, and we haven't really heard from them. Yeah. And before we do, and

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: again, I know what we have to do

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: today in order to get to CrossOver, but before we get to finishing up next week, I'd like

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: to hear from one of them.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Can I just comment on So, and I, I verified this with, I'm not, I don't think I'm saying anything that's, that's factually less clinical? So, Jill Sudhoff Garen represents the Vermont Medical Society. Mhmm. And had the opportunity to have three witnesses at our hearing. She confirmed that a majority, like 99% of the emails we got from doctors and substance use prevention experts came from her request to them to reach out to us about the health impacts of cannabis I wrote back to all of them and I copied you on most of them, which also helped me learn it helped me confirm that they all came from the same place because they all spelled Tom Chittenden's email wrong. So he didn't get most of that. Enough people. So when I wrote back to every single one of those people, I got an undeliverable message for senator Chittenden. Mhmm. So I did point that out to Jill. I just said, by the way Mhmm. He didn't get any of them. Yeah. And she acknowledged that that that was her group that she had reached reached out to. So, I kept the file of all of those and I responded to every single one. Mhmm. And since then, no one has responded back to me about our the philosophy that we're discussing right now that it's we're not trying to increase youth use whatsoever. In fact, municipalities being able to control time, place, and manner, just like they do alcohol and tobacco, could give them more tools in their toolbox. Being able to control advertising would give them more tools in their toolbox. No one thus far wrote back with any further concern or commentary to those, and the

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: last- Did they disavow, of those that we got, did they disavow anything that they told us?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: No, they didn't disavow anything they told us. What they told us is here are the health effects of cannabis on young people, and we don't want to increase access for young people. People's market.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And and in many cases, they were trying to address something. This is and Kesha kept saying, this is is law. We are dealing with current law and we're being reformed.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: We start medical is legal in almost every state.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That's true.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Right. And, you know, when recreational in these states where it's legal, we're they're not necessarily speaking to how many kids ate a illicit package or a Massachusetts package, you know, just like when we did to go cocktails. We were like, are the are the

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: DUIs from And we found out there's a ball jar.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Publicity is one of the things that honors us, the notion of consistency, presumably it's right consistency.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right, and we heard from the Commissioner of Health, and we're happy to have him back in and or another, maybe we get the Commissioner of Health back. Tucker, why don't we keep going? So section one, I'm fine with it. Kesha? I'm fine. Yeah. Come? Yeah. And Randy and Dave?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Yeah, so first of all, think there's nothing wrong with that because giving us their, organizing their Yeah, absolutely. This whole building is built on that premise.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: And there was no, I wasn't like Deming her, just was like, you stopped her.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: So I do think we should give the opportunity for the medical community to provide one more opportunity. I'm pass. As you know, we're putting heavy emphasis on this particular bill, the same time we're putting heavy emphasis on tobacco, which seems almost in kind of a dual purpose intent. And I just want to ensure that before we like launch, launch this thing, that the medical community have another opportunity, they take it or not.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think our Commissioner of Health was incredibly articulate and thoughtful.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: He's going to come back with citation.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And he's coming back with citation.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: And it wasn't necessarily a positive support for the expansion of the ultimate programs. So let's keep going, because we're gonna turn into pumpkins in a minute. Section two builds off of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: that. We're talking

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: about it. It's too good to say.

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: I'm just so used to this from sports betting. Section two

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: builds off of that concentration increase and establishes the 25 year age limit, right? You have to be 25 years old to buy anything older than 60% concentration.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And you have to be 21 to buy anything up too.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Correct, so the stronger stuff you gotta be 25.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: I'm not really sure what we're doing here. We're kinda like, it's kinda like gradually increase the piece balance, again, we have a two step process. Just seems a little wonky in relation to our conversation about tobacco where we're doing just the opposite where we're trying to prohibit a decrease. We're trying to prohibit addictive vagus with nicotine. I just it's like a two headed, approach to somewhat simpler.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: No, this is making it harder. This is raising the age of the, for the stronger stuff. I, I got that.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Oh, okay.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: We did hear some testimony that in the islands, their average customer age was 58, but, you know, the people who are making a Costco decision, like how often can I go to New York or I'm at the Chittenden?

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Yeah. Well, it's a state Democrat or older

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: folks. Well, all those. Yeah, I'm restraining myself.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: I'm really fine with this too, I agree with other comments. Would love to hear from the medical opponents to this when we come back just on the more likely version of this bill.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: For the medical community, they're not all opponents. Sure. That's true. Yeah.

[Josephine Bodman (Licensed family child care provider, Quarry Ridge condo)]: I I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: would just point out. Medical community are not all opponents. There are a variety everyone has different opinion on this subject. Okay. So section two, we, general okay.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I I will also say I know I'm pretty confident health and welfare is gonna wanna take testimony on the They may. So

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We're gonna try and get this out as soon as we can. Good. Week. But, it's so section three. Now we get to Packaging. Packaging. You do have

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: a hand up, but that's up to you.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh, I'm sorry, David. Didn't you're right

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: in front of me, and

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I just didn't look up. I apologize. Hi. Welcome. Thank you for Thank

[Dave Silverman (Vermont Cannabis Action Fund)]: you. Greetings from Northfield, Minnesota. Dave Silverman of Vermont Cannabis Action Fund. Really briefly on this age limit, I have some deep, deep concerns actually rooted in the health of our consumers here. In in 2019, seventy people across the nation died from tainted vapes, acquired on the illicit market. And if we limit, the ability of 21 to 25 year olds, to purchase vapes, in the legal market, they will buy them from the illegal market, where they will be harmed. And so if you're going to make this change, at the very least, I would beg you to exempt, to continue the current exemption for vapes, which are already not subject to the 60% potency cap. Because now with with the way this language is written, you would kick people off of the regulated market for a product they can already get today. Today, solid concentrates capped at 60% do not include vape cartridges. Under this language, I believe they would. And and so now you're you're limiting people's ability to buy in the market. And, again, sixty people died in 2019 from tainted vapes. Over two thousand people were hospitalized from tainted vapes on the illegal market. None of those came from the regulated market because we're clean.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So sorry, David. I'm lost. Are you in section two about the youth, about the despair the change in age? Correct.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: I've made this one comment. I I hear hear what Dave's saying. I don't think anything we're doing here is going to affect the illicit. That's the reality. The relook the illicit market will continue to be illicit. Which is the nature of the business. And we're we have no effect on that. Not. I think you're I think. Well, As we're trying to control behavior. What market they go to.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. Which we're trying to do in both those bills, these bills. You're absolutely right. We are trying to control behavior, but but I my understanding from, I think, some of our advocates is that by raising the concentrated level we actually take a stab at having impact on reducing the illicit market. Is that correct?

[Geoffrey Pizzutillo (Executive Director, Vermont Growers Association)]: Yes, it is. That's how we see it. And that's how we see it play out in other states as well.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: And we do ask CCP for a report regularly on what people go to purchase on the illicit market because they cannot get it on the legal regulated market.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: Sure is how we do that given that it's a black market, the dark market. Perhaps Julie or Gabe would

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: like to tell us how

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: to We do just heard from some economists that we've been working with and their final report isn't done, they did present to us that the reason that people remain on the illicit market, one is potency, one is price, and the other is convenience. Those are

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: the top three reasons that people continue to purchase from the illicit market. So if that helps sort of shape your confidence.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So we're addressing two of those three with this bill. Okay, thank you David. So David, your recommend is to not raise the age, is that correct?

[Dave Silverman (Vermont Cannabis Action Fund)]: Correct, I would either not raise the age at all or at the very least exclude vape products, which already are not subject to the 60% potency cap.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I feel like we're talking about vapes in other realms, but I want to make sure I

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: understand what we mean, what that means.

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Based on the decisions of the committee and the context of the conversation, I will reevaluate the use of the term cannabis products as a broadly defined term here to make sure that this is just for the liquid and concentrate products pardon? Governed by the section development. Just for liquid concentrate? Yes. Making making sure that the language is consistent and that the sections seem to learn to each other.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But raising the age for all the other cannabis products? Raising the age for the products that have increased concentration under section one

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: of the building. Right. To make

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: it consistent. The same concentration. Same. Yep. Same difference. Yes. Never

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: mind. Alright.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: I'll read about this next week. It'll be an expert on pop if you come back.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So I Go visit

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: a store in the state. Or

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: go visit a store here and see what they're like. Yeah. Not too many. Or a farm.

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Packaging? Yeah, let's call it We've already discussed this quite a bit. Raises the per package limitation from one hundred milligrams to two grams.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And it, for edibles for the concern, Tom has.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: This would apply to those, but they would still have serving sizes of the same five milligrams. They could just have twice as many edibles in the package. Okay. That's comparable with the neighboring states. I see. You're edibles themselves still don't have more. That's my concern. I just don't want really strong high potency sugary things.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: And Maine allows for double what other state allow for in a package.

[Sen. David Weeks (Clerk)]: That's the only way out. The others are are 100 mil We're currently Iceland or It's our goal is to go to Maine's level.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Yes. Anyway, we should stay where we are to be potentially sensitive.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: I I think

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: Which just means they buy two patterns. Right?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Yeah. But then they're limited as to

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: how many total?

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Per transaction.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: They just leave the store, come back in?

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: That's what they And were mean, like, we could talk to Maine, but they're also a behavioral state. So I think and they don't have as many opportunities to cross the border. So that's would be my guess as to why.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So I think sadly that we need to end there given we're being called to the floor. I was a good Dutchman.

[Kara (Committee Staff/Assistant)]: I'm I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: further, I would encourage the committee to read this bill to look at the Tucker has now given us a section by section that the with the description of the section Gabe and CCB have given us a response to where they are on this bill. Is there anything further for us to be thinking about as we go into the break and reviewing? Tucker and Julie, look like your thoughts.

[Tucker Anderson (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So my suggestion was gonna be for the committee to look at the breadth and scope of a two pilot permits that you're putting in place for the CCB to issue over the two year period. The reason being that a lot of the discussion and the questions that have been raised both at the public hearing and this morning by some of the experts you heard from are covered in those But there are events. Right. Specific policy choices that are made within those sections, the committee should be informed about them and understand what you're delegating to the CCW. So just as an example, the event firming does not exclude cannabis establishments themselves. So by proxy, you have an opportunity for the lounge or on-site consumption to take place depending on how the CCP operates that permitting program. Makes Right. For the deliveries, it is based off the alcoholic beverage statutes, and it allows agents to deliver, but they have to be connected to the actual establishment and have to receive training from CCB. That excludes those app based retail delivery services. Thank you. Let's look at those sections and make sure it matches your intent.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden]: For the record, I wanted this committee for housing, not necessarily for housing.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: All economics developed.

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