Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, welcome. Good morning, everybody. We're back in Southern Economic Development Housing and General Affairs, and we welcome you both in the room. It's great to have you and virtually. Welcome. We have a lag on the You have to turn your computer off. There you go. Great. Thank you. This morning, we are going to turn our attention to h sixty six seventy four, which is our sister state work, which we began looking at last year, how we could develop a better system so we don't just sort of willy nilly make decisions about who we wanna be have a closer relationship with. It's been a little sort of arbitrary. And so now we're hoping that we will be able to develop a a thoughtful system where we can review eligible candidates and make a thoughtful decision about who we wanna develop sister relationship with and what's the purpose of a sister relationship. So we had a working group, and we're looking forward to hearing from Tim Tierney and and all the participants in the room and witnesses who are here. So take it away, Tim.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Yes. So it was actually, not to make a correction, but was two years ago that I

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh, what? Two years ago.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Two years ago. And so, you know, was a Introduce yourself. Okay. So Tim Tierney, I am the director of the recruitment and international trade for the Department of Economic Development, and I'm also the co chair of the Working Committee for the Sister State. Right. A little history on the sister state. So, we've had several sister states, official sister states, throughout the history of Vermont. One was Karelia, and it was now Russia. That was in the early nineties, basically when they came out of communistic rule. I believe it was a shared judicial they were looking at how to set

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: up North The law school had a very Correct. Robust exchange that John Dooley and my husband and all, or good enough, went Right. On that.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: And I think it kinda after ten years have phased out. And now we we have one current official, that's Tokjiu Ri, a prefecture in Japan. You'll hear from Peter Lynch who was a big catalyst of making that happen. And I wanna say it happened very early in 2017. I think

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: it was one of the

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: first things governor Scott signed when he became governor, was to become a sister state with Pokhiri. And we still have that relationship going. But what so, basically, we were tasked to put together a working group, and I and I do wanna say that it it was a very we met monthly from August 2024 all the way till this report was finalized in 2025, and we met every month, and it was almost full participation in every meeting. Very great input, and I'm just cover what we did cover. You did have the report, but very lengthy, just to give a very quick summary on what we did with the Citrus State Working Group and our recommendations. Basically, I've just repeated that we just met every month from 2014 on, and basically our recommendation is to establish a Vermont Sister State Program that positions Vermont as globally connected with benefits extending the communities, businesses, families, and beyond. This is the working group that we put together, and there's a lot of people in the room here today. We did some investigative work on this. We met with directors. We looked at other states that had other sister state programs, and we looked at the pros and cons within each. Some states had to buy they said they may have too many. Like Maryland, like, very close to DC. See, they had, like, 13 sister state that were some were effective, some were not effective. We learned from that. We learned from Hawaii, how they do things. Because Hawaii a lot of these a lot of these places have sister states have a diaspora. In Hawaii, it's a Japanese have people that have, you know, are very Japanese descent. And so that connection there, they have a Japanese American group that then keeps that relationship going. And that's what we found out in every state. It really wasn't the government that kept it going. It was another group, an outside group that had the energy and the ties to keep it going, and that we found that's a very important piece of the sister state relationship. The government to government change, and you need someone that'll be outside of keeping them effective from external or internal. So we did look at all those in the pros and cons of each. And obviously the purpose of this was basically to create an evaluation system, monitoring system, a process, so when sister states someone does apply. There are many countries out there that just basically wanna MOU, or they have a political reason for being tied, so that's the kind of thing we wanna make sure we're vetting these applicants for what's the root, true reason why we're gonna make some official Or sister sometimes, a sister city relationship, which is not statewide, that could be a better relationship, not just even us.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And I believe we had Burlington this

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Burlington has several, Montreal, France, and know And obviously we have, we've already talked about this, we're gonna have folks from the National Guard talk about their state partnership program, which is something that we're really relying on heavily. Our framework, which you'll see here and what we've put through, is that basically we're creating this standard and application process and review process. They're gonna apply, we're gonna actually vet them and run them through the State Department, and then also work through a different variety of security reasons of why this would be a good applicant, and then also what are the reasons why, and making sure that they score high through with this, basically. I'd say it's a pared down review committee from our working group. It's just it's almost the same players, just minus a few. And I think and it's a and it's a breadth of people, I think, that we have on here. I think that's what we found. The group really represents a good cross section of Vermont, and people are involved in international relations. So I think it's interesting. We think it's a great recommendation, and I think the group has a lot of energy once they can do this work. I think this is a big thing, why it's needed. On the screening, it's because it involves such diplomatic, political, and national security sensitivities that are not appropriate for full public disclosure. And obviously looking at all the different reasons of why relationship and putting energy into it. And as you know, we did not put, there's no money requested here at Bonds right now, but there is, and that's another reality of a sister state, that there there are diplomatic, and there are economics involved. I mean, I do wanna make sure that happens, but there's also a cost to it. Think down the road, like, you have to realize that, you know, you do have to welcome people. You do have to

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Host them.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Host them. And that's where sometimes with the outside group, that's where a lot of states that do that, that's their role, is bringing that in and making sure it's there is a cost to diplomacy, right? So this is basically a little brief of the review process, and how we put it together, where an application would come in, it would come to our department, we would look at it, we would let the committee know that it's come in, that we're gonna go and go through the the different vetting procedures, and and then and create probably a meeting to review it once we find out that it's it's something that we want to pursue on a further basis.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: The L grant.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You said

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: an application will come in. Where does the application come from?

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Yes. So the application will be online. Someone's gonna call. It's gonna be online, or someone's gonna say, By the way, the sister state, do you wanna apply? It's on the Department of Economic Development's website, or call us

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: and we'll send it Someone to talks to the potential sister state and waits for that sister state to make an application as opposed to anyone's app applying on their behalf, it's not representative. Correct. Do you, is there the alternate option of the department recommending the sister stay or proposing one?

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Oh yes, as a matter of fact, for one example, there's a region in Austria that we've been talking to, and they've been waiting for us to finish this process, it was we recommended the fact that, hey, you might be a great applicant for a sister state, the province of Styria in Austria. And so therefore, yeah, we kind of instigated that. We let them know two and a half years ago and they were, Well,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: that goes to how do people know to apply, and that is a piece of your outreach,

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: and it's a piece of Right. And then are there those locations or potential applicants that you want to initiate?

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Well, I think, and what are the reasons for it? I think that's what we're, that's what they've helped me to decide. Why, and we put this all together in a basket. Why is this a good thing to actually put a lot of state focus on it? And and are there other ways that I mean, we can maintain relationships without having an under a sister state umbrella.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But I think the point is it needs to be strategic, and we need to be clear on our region reasons. And we need to not do so many that we aren't actually devoting the right amount of energy to each one. And because otherwise, we just as you said before, they're sort of disparate and it depends on what your population is or what the institution is that's actually supporting it that's making it happen.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Right, what are the reasons? Then also, I think down the road, we have a five year, keep looking at this, is this still a viable So retention. Are the players still in place? And then again, sometimes this is cultural, historical, economic, there's all these different reasons, right?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So retention process of reviewing it and seeing how it's working every five years is a great idea.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: I mean, Maryland had I think they said they had, like, seven. They don't even know where they were. They just have these agreements, no one's talking to each other.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Quick demo, chair.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yes, David.

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: In in your due diligence block, I don't see the business analysis. And from my perspective, with the section of the National Guard relationships, this is about an economic relationship. Who's who's analyzing? Well, is on the application itself. That is plays a large role in the I'm sure it was. I just didn't

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: see Yeah.

[Senator David Weeks (Clerk)]: Yeah. It was in a and actually in the the the appendix or the index or a lot of report, there's actually the our application has these questions and has to answer these questions about economics. Okay. Because for us, it would be a return on investment for the diplomatic cost would be would be of our interest. Right. Great interest. Yes. And I think that's why it's in it's even in our department. I think that there's a big economic factor to this as well. Well, think Or opens doors for our.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Of the driving reasons this committee is particularly engaged is

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: this Right.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Otherwise, we'd be a Cub Ops, but it's an economic development partnership too. I mean, this is why we're looking at it with Taiwan, and we want to advance the notion of reestablishing a representative in Taiwan because we we really need to build that relationship for a number of reasons, but in many ways, primarily in terms of economic development.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: And, yeah, and then looking at other states, mean, pretty like Iowa has a lot of partners, but they tend to be customers of their soy and grain in provinces in China. Right? So that's the there's almost the sole reason for it. But then they start doing cultural exchanges.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Lots that kind of flows from an economic process. Correct.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: And this is the application form. So basically, again, there's a whole example of this. And everything that we did, obviously, is a recommendation. But I think there's a lot of thought behind this, I think a lot of care into what we were doing, and you'll hear from our other fine folks here that the reasons that It was well thought out. In meeting with us 14 times, I think we really covered a lot of bases here of making sure that this is a very thorough, highly vetted, and well thought out process for choosing a sister state, and what's kind of impact it

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: would be as the whole state get behind. Is there situation in which the potential sister states makes an advocate, they decided they want to be sister state of Iran, and they initiated as opposed to, this looks like it's an application process. At least as I read this and hear about it, think it would be insulting to some states that the only way you get in is they select you and ask you, the reverse doesn't seem to be addressed. Well,

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: think there's places where we would reach out to And I think coming from any one of those parties, hey, know, and bringing it to the community, hey, this is something that we wanna actually be bringing a partnership. If you But

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: but they have to initiate an application.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: They have to initiate

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: an application. You initiate an application on their form to become a sister state of theirs.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Well, they might have that. I think that some places probably just do not have that kind of I just think that

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: this is a public document, and to become a sister state, this is what you have to do, and it looks like you've got to the sister has got to do all the run all the race to do it. It close to being a two way

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: street? Think some people

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: who don't mind that, but at some places I think we want that, actually, that control. Mean, there's a lot of folks that do it for purely political reasons, And we're gonna make sure, hey, here's this process, and now it's not just one person making a decision, or coming down from the top, it's, hey, this is

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: a process in there. Do any part of this process that talks to potential sister states in writing saying this is the benefit of being a sister state, Vermont? Is this something that is is, and

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: the whole preamble is why this would be a good thing for someone who's sister state, and the benefits, the bilateral benefits, for sure. Right? So, and then again, it's careful how many sister states we have, too. Right,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: how many we can manage is I think also key, which we'll figure out

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: as we're prepared. What's the benefits, and the co benefits? That's the thing, it's gotta be mutually beneficial, right? Right. So, I think there's a lot of times it's one way. Like, I'm just gonna throw out, say, a country that's, say, very ag, and the only thing that we're getting involved, provide them with the council, and helping them up, and that's the question, is does that need to be a sister state level, or is that something you need to provide? I mean, it's one of those we're we're only it's a one way street kind of

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So the current states, countries, cities that we have a relationship with, those will be reviewed every five years. They'll be up for review fairly soon, I hope. Just sister states. Just one.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: We don't do sister cities. That's a whole separate thing, but the sister and Right. We'll review that, it's

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But when are we gonna review the ones we

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: currently We're review the one, and it's actually very active. We just found that the governor of Togtari is coming here in October. Oh, I'm sorry. So and seeing, you know, what level again to post them. Right?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So that's right. Which is where the money comes in. Right. And

[Patricia Preston (President & CEO, Vermont Council on World Affairs; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: So, again, my name is Patricia Preston, and I serve as the president and CEO of an organization called Vermont Council on World Affairs. And the Vermont Council on World Affairs really focuses on connecting Vermont communities and institutions and businesses with international partners in a way that leads to real economic, educational, and civic outcomes. I also served with Tim as the co chair of our sister state committee on this working group. And from my perspective, Vermont is already as you've already established and we've heard Tim say, it's it's very engaged internationally in very meaningful ways. So through our universities and businesses, the National Guard Partnership, which was discussed, and community based exchanges across states. And at the Vermont Council, which is the organization that I lead, we sit at the intersection of a lot of these exchanges and these efforts, and we bring international leaders to Vermont, and we connect them directly with institutions and businesses. And what we see consistently at the Vermont Council is that these connections create real opportunities, which you were just discussing. Right? What what are some of these opportunities? What are the real economic impacts? And whether it's a business relationship that leads to new markets or educational partnership that creates exchange and workforce pathways, or community connections that continue beyond the initial visit, which Tim was just mentioning. A lot of it is that cultural visit, and they're just a dinner with somebody. With with the Vermont Council, we lead a program called the International Visitors Leadership Program, and we regularly host delegations that come through and meet with these Vermont businesses and universities and local leaders. Many of you have actually met with those visitors.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Actually, don't bring them down to the East Side Of Vermont as much as we might enjoy. Yeah. Quite honestly. The East Side Of Vermont is a little you know, I would say that we don't actually get the benefit of a lot of your work.

[Patricia Preston (President & CEO, Vermont Council on World Affairs; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: That's interesting. We do go across the entire state pretty regularly. You may. But Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We I would not say as a senator from Windsor District for ten years, I have yet to be asked to be involved in anything with your group.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: That's an invitation.

[Patricia Preston (President & CEO, Vermont Council on World Affairs; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: That is an invitation. I'm sharing it. Opportunity. I you know, I'm sharing it very loudly and accepting it. And so I think that that to your point, actually, a lot of these relationships either can be missed opportunities or they can be one off opportunities or something where there might be a one connection that might be established and and and and flourished, or it might just be symbolic in some way. And so even though we have these connections with universities and leaders, in many cases and and in many cases, to be fair, there's also ongoing relationships that are sustained and developed into long term institutional or sector relationships. That doesn't always remain the case. And so for me, this working group and what we've established in this bill and are suggesting isn't necessarily should we engage in this way, or are we engaging? It's how do we do it in an intentional way? Right. And how do we do it in a way that creates consistent outcomes for the state? So I think that this bill creates a clearer, more consistent framework to guide how those partnerships are considered and supported at a state level. And from my experience with the Vermont Council, that really deeply matters. So, you know, when institute when when these partnerships are structured well and they're aligned with Vermont's priorities, they are you have sustained engagement. When we at the Vermont Council do a better job at making sure we're meeting with all of our centers across the state,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: we also have better sustained engagement.

[Patricia Preston (President & CEO, Vermont Council on World Affairs; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: And that way, can have a deeper value to the state. And it then therefore is not any longer the one off symbolic partnership. So that is a lot to say, that I think that this bill helps us move toward a more intentional approach. And This work is already happening across the state, but this increases the likelihood that it leads to a lasting partnership. It strengthens how Vermont approaches international engagement and positions the state to realize greater benefit, I think, from these conditions. So whether that's putting us all under one umbrella or just organizing us to you know, with the Vermont Council, we we work with somewhere around 90 countries a year. So I think to your point, when you were saying how do these countries also, how do they kind of, how do they engage, how do they kind of stand up and say we wanna engage in this opportunity. We have a lot of this work happening across the state, and a lot of the committee members, I imagine, could drive those interested parties to that. Yes.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And I couldn't see your work with the world affairs. It's a funnel very natural funnel Right. To identify countries or provinces that would actually that have shown greater interest that would be natural ones for you to be promoting a relationship with Right. A further relationship. And a lot

[Patricia Preston (President & CEO, Vermont Council on World Affairs; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: of our work is we bring those individuals here through the State Department, and we connect them with folks on the ground in Vermont on their aligned work. And so then we're also identifying a lot of the local partners across the state that do a lot of work with these individuals.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: They can help make that engagement much richer. So you said you were a nonprofit. Correct. What how are you funded? Does the state department actually support you financially?

[Patricia Preston (President & CEO, Vermont Council on World Affairs; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Oh, yes. Yeah. They're our largest partner. Yeah. ZIL? Yeah. The miracle. Yeah. They're our

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: largest partner. But we also have we're independent donors, fundraising, the IVHB. Right. Yeah. No one's Can

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: can I ask, have you lost resources from the state department? The percentage have gone down. Might just

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: throw bono. Yes.

[Patricia Preston (President & CEO, Vermont Council on World Affairs; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Yeah. We were hit very hard with that. Yeah. Yeah. But but they're still a large partner of ours, and we still run I

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: mean, the International Disturb Leadership Program is a seventy five year old program that has lasted many administrations, and I anticipate that Is that national or just with It's national. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Terrific. Patricia, it's lovely. Thank you all so much. Yeah. It's great. We get your email, so it's lovely to actually meet you. Oh, wonderful.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Get that different. Yeah. Just great. Okay. Next, we have a a whole host of people, but I think I'm gonna actually ask Peter Blinch before we speak to Patrick slash Jean. I think we're

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: going to

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: chat with Peter first because Peter, some of the inspiration for this were sprung from a meeting that you and Ruth had two or three years ago or four years ago or ten years ago. I'm joining us, Peter. Welcome.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Well, thank you. Great to be here. Yes. So my name is Hunter Lynch. I'm retired from the organization that I founded called Green Across the World, and primarily high school, but a little bit of middle school.

[Peter Lynch (Founder, Green Across the World; Sister State Working Group Member)]: Green Across the World. Green Across the World. That's great. And it still exists, but I'm no longer with it. Our focus was on natural resource native food and cultures combined, And that worked, carried on for about thirty years, twenty five, and I guess it's nonprofit. And so I have far too many, I'm referring from telling specific stories, I'll do the same. It took a part too many of them, but cases where Vermont students and foreign students really benefited and maintained international connection to those sites later in life, including some of, you know, Chinese students at Middlebury College because of that change. But I do wanna, personally, the group that we work with, that's one of members. An honor and privilege to be here. I was appointed by the committee on committees as a representative from the center for this work.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, I think heavily influenced influenced by the fact that you and Ruth really worked on developing this bill and this proposal in the first place. So I think that's

[Peter Lynch (Founder, Green Across the World; Sister State Working Group Member)]: why She took some of the, you know, the drawings I've done on the napkins and turned things up, something real. Then this working group did an amazing job. We had people, as mentioned, from very different backgrounds, different approaches, who worked diligently to kind of come up with a framework has originally thought of this, intentionally from them to the state of Vermont. I think we have a lot of amazing international activities already, but this is an effort to, you could use the word out relative, wholesome of that into an organized, intentional structure that is that's these exchanges to the benefit of her life. And I think, Senator Brock, to your two way street question, one of the thoughts I had is, it's a very reasonable question, but what I'm hearing from Kokorea Prefecture and the Council General, Japan from Boston was up here a week or two ago, is that they're actually looking forward to the sanitation process, I think you can speak to Austrian as well. They and the reason is that currently, sister state agreement of did I take out correct? It was 07/18/2027 or '20 '18. 2018 that Governor Stadt signed a sister state relationship with Hirai, chief of governor of of And the reason they're interested is that sister state agreement was driven by the governor's office. Well, governors come and go. But the idea is to create a committee that, while personnel change, the committee does not come and go. And that's why they're interested in this process, because it confers some level of Of consistency. So, and the other thing that I think is intentional about product of our community's work is, you know, I think it was terrible, it of hit me when I read about Hawaii, which was first state to explicitly make economics part of the exchange. They said, yeah, that's it. If you can create some level of economic activity that is mutually beneficial and leads to some improvement in prosperity of the regions, then everything else follows naturally. The education piece, the cultural piece, the black, it just happened. To do the cultural piece by itself is an uphill battle. So I think having this focus on genomics is both exciting and very important. And if I may, I have, I think, two questions, really, for you all to ponder. I don't need an answer, and your answers, in fact, don't change my unwavering support for this bill. But one of them is, I noticed that the language developed the house, and it took out, they left subnational relationship in, but took out national. And that may be technical because of the role of type of carbon that works in the state.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, it has. Yeah.

[Peter Lynch (Founder, Green Across the World; Sister State Working Group Member)]: Because it cursed me, it's like that it also rescinds the Irish economic. Yes, well that

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: was a complicated, that that Yeah. That, again, was because a pro tem wanted it and and a member Yeah. It didn't go through a pro tem. Oh, we know there's a lot of So we could sort of that was a political Political, but

[Peter Lynch (Founder, Green Across the World; Sister State Working Group Member)]: also there's an opportunity to substitute that with if if Ireland happened to be a country that wanted to have a relationship with them on, they go through the sister state structure instead.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It will be reviewed in that process, your retention process. The thing

[Peter Lynch (Founder, Green Across the World; Sister State Working Group Member)]: you've established. That's a relationship with a nation, not with a subnational. Right. And then there's gluttony. Well, we Everyone have a relationship with gluttony. Their population, entire population is similar to the ones. So that's just just a thought. Yeah. And the other one is about the membership of the duty where the current language has House member appointed by the Speaker, a Consentative member appointed by the Committee the Committee. The House is big body, and finding somebody who is really interested in doing this thing will not be that difficult. But with 30 senators and if that language had been in the sister, the working group, I would not have been appointed.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So committee on committees can afford appoint senators or non senators alongside

[Peter Lynch (Founder, Green Across the World; Sister State Working Group Member)]: the language.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I mean, they could appoint anybody they wanted that was just as the committee on committees appointed you to the committee. So you were not doesn't preclude that.

[Peter Lynch (Founder, Green Across the World; Sister State Working Group Member)]: You were much better than anybody in the Senate today, and that's why they wanted you to sign Thank you. I'm not sure about that, but

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I'll But put it that's to answer your question.

[Peter Lynch (Founder, Green Across the World; Sister State Working Group Member)]: Okay. So it's not. It's that language isn't prescriptive. It is not. Okay. That seems to me sort of time. It's been on your back. And that that was really you know, that's that's really what I have to say. Thank you. We've been having another six hours in which I have a lot. You spent a lot more to say. I like to turn it over

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank to you for your word. So I'm we're gonna invite wonderful folks. General light up, and then we will, invite Patrick slash Jean, who I understand you referred for for

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: for for.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Greg Knight, welcome. In your is this the first time you're testifying post retirement?

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Yes, we do.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We welcome you. It's wonderful to have you. You again You for your know how to be appreciated.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: I appreciate it.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And it's great to have you in this capacity because some of us benefited enormously from your work on these exchanges and really enjoyed hearing about it. The floor is yours.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: Thank you. Major General retired Gregory Knight, former Vermont Agingen General.

[Patricia Preston (President & CEO, Vermont Council on World Affairs; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Nice to say retired is the way.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: I'm not sure yet,

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: so I'm retired.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: Sure I'm they ate for me, but we'll see. I will tell you, time in the military, the state partnership program has been truly a absolute experience Because I've seen the impact. And my immediate interest in this bill, it is kind of a furthering of the goals of the state partnership program. So for a quick background, within the National Guard, the State Partnership Program had been in place for thirty four years. We were one of the founding members of Verse thirteen, partnering with then Macedonia. So we've been with now North Macedonia for thirty four years. I've been with Senegal for going on eighteen years, and they will part four years with the Republican Bossier Henry. So it's an original incarnation foundational effort is a military to military relationship, and we help professionalize our partner in the nation's military, increasing their capability and capacity, focusing on interoperability. But if you look at it strategically, we've been saying this for years, perhaps not executing it to the degree of life, is bringing a whole of society approach. That was my mantra for the seven years I served as the adjutant general. Then towards the end, we started to really see some progress. There were things that were unsolicited from the guard because of the relationships that we'd established. So our Secretary of Agriculture, Anson Tevits traveled to Senegal since past spring. And that started a relationship beyond military to military with Senegal that's going to bring our Senegalese partners here this summer focusing on agriculture. Bigger picture, if you look at the experience of the National Guard and our efforts to push beyond just to build the mill, it's been pretty significant and of course, partnering with the folks that we have. I would like to acknowledge the great work of the Sister State Working Group. It's been phenomenal to be a part of. But having Peter Lynch there, Christian Preston, their work, very diverse group bringing a lot of different experience and approaches. That to me furthers the beginning, and that was what I found most attractive, is hearing, and I said this during my state of the art, hearing it beyond just bills and nothing. To And your question, senator, it's not always just hanging on. That will be a part it. That's certainly a mutually beneficial for us. There's a lot of things I think that have yet to be constructed.

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: I mean,

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: who knows that North Macedonia has a a very robust textile addition, and they're very proud of it. I only knew that recently. Was my last trip there that I just So there's a lot of things that we can do. We talked mutually beneficial. In my State of the Guard, I mentioned that regional stability and security is not just the military concern. All the things that we're talking about today, it's all the things that Peter bring up. It is food and fuel security. It is environmental conservation. It's agriculture. All of those education arts, all of those things that Vermont does really well. And we've seen a number of successes, that have originated, in this case, from our state partnership program, having a partnership with the Rubenstein School at UVM helping to preserve Lake Chamtenay, and a partnership with the Lake Oak Ridge Hydrobiological Institute in North Massadonia. It's a world heritage site, and they're really struggling to preserve that. That is now a partnership that originated through Dean Enriquez's work, facilitating the relationship, not necessarily military to military, but it's certainly grown beyond that. So that's my primary interest and why I support this bill so strongly. I can see a lot of goodness here, everywhere. By every trip, overseas, I just saw potential.

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: In

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: return, it was more and more than military to military. Three very different relationships, different partnerships, the needs different in Senegal than it is in Austria. We could probably learn from Austria when it comes to tourism and some of their agriculture practices, as Tim had mentioned in the province of Schirich, which is very much like Vermont. And so to wrap your question on the application process, I think it is a mutual approach to this. The way the guard does it, it's kind of a parallel state partnership program. It is an application process. It is competitive for the states. So when a a nation comes available and and tells our country we wanna be a partner, the state partnership program. It's an application by the respective guard state that wants to become that partner. Then it is a competitive process, you build a patent, you gotta build a good one, and it goes through the Office of International Affairs with the National Guard Bureau, eventually through the Chief of National Guard Bureau, and then to the Secretary of War who made the decision on whether or not that partnership bill is going get to state.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So does every National Guard have sister state partnerships?

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: All of Idaho, I believe, currently. There are 160 partnerships across

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the globe. And they're all different. Nobody has Macedonia. You have Macedonia.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: Yes,

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: ma'am. Got it.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: So we have three. All about it.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It's dead people we can tolerate. Wow.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: 160. If you can look it up online, there's 160 partnerships across the globe. All very different. All have different demand coming from the partner nation. It's what they desire, what they can tolerate, and what we saw. I think where this differs in another one of those untold stories is partnership with Vermont. If our operational tempo is so high that we can't sustain our numbers of engagements any given year, we can lean on other states. Have partners in the region who can help support whatever type of exercise So that we

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: how do you, when you have an opportunity, like the textile industry, in Macedonia or another economic development opportunity, how do you further that possibility for further development?

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: Well, I'll let Jean speak about that in some detail because he's very good. It's it's

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But you would you you personally knew about Anson and got Anson to be engaged. What I guess I'm hopeful for is that we have a process in this new system of of thoughtfully reviewing and and choosing sister states where where it wouldn't just be an individual relationship that would mean but that there would be a way that that once something's identified, that it can be developed and that that further exchange, whether it's environmental or economic development or cultural or educational, that we put it on on a on a conveyor belt of of of of review and and and opportunity. It was, like, getting it there, not just from an individual relationship, but, you know, ah, this is an economic development opportunity. Let's give it to the Department of Economic Development, or, you know, just a a way that we can further that.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Yes, ma'am. So it's where it starts.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: I I I think, excuse me, it starts with the relationship. My seven years in that job, I know this much about this much.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right, but then it gets shared with the council, then the council can figure out how to then

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: That's right. Make it happen.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If I don't know

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: where to go, I'm gonna call Tricia or Peter or Dean and say, hey. Who do you know that has an an interest in Roman text on?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And how

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: put this? And then

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: it goes from there. Right. Right. Terrific. Any questions for Greg? Perfect. Yeah. It's been wonderful. I I treasure the things you've brought. You know, you've brought back so many treats for us from Senegal and Austria. I'm wearing this in honor of today's conversation. Thank you.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: Thank you, ma'am.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So, Gene, we welcome you to come join us as well. Thank you, madam

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: chair, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for having me today. Lieutenant Colonel Gene Nareepesha from Mau National Guard. Ironically, seven days ago, I represented General Knight in all affairs that are international, but as of the first of the month, I officially represent General Harter of the Mau National Guard, and it's a pleasure to be here. General Knight, there's no better advocate for what we do internationally than the guard I was in General Knight. Yeah. He's been a fierce supporter, and

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: he

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: couldn't have done many of the, couldn't achieve what we've had without his support. So just not to reiterate too much of what the general mentioned, I was brought on to the committee to advise on essentially the technical and maybe federal considerations and aspects to partnering due to having been involved with the state partnership program for officially four years, but in the last fifteen, twenty years, I've been working quite often in the State Partnership Program.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So you're the director of

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: the state? I'm the director of the State Partnership Program. Was for three years a at the US Embassy in North Macedonia from 2017 to 2020, So I worked directly with the State Department and really working to meet the interests of the Vermont National Guard, first General Crave, then General Knight while I was there. Then when I came home, I ended up the director of the program. So I've been working in the SPP for about four years now. So I would offer that the authorities and the resources for our activities are derived from the Department of Defense, the federal. The requirements for our missions and what we do with our partners are defined by federal agencies, the state department, the military offices in those embassies, but the outcomes are really driven by Vermonters. I wanna emphasize that. When I say boots on ground, don't mean deployments. What we do in our partner nations are exchanges and exercises, and as General Knight mentioned, interoperability, but also sharing the best of what we have and learning what we can for our partner nation. So it's a two way street. Ultimately, it's a military program, but it has evolved over the years and expanded into other areas, other sectors of government. In the early years of the program, emergency management, law enforcement, fire departments, which were natural partners for the National Guard. We would engage with the national partners. At the time, it was only North Pacedonia, eventually Senegal, and since February year. But really, during General Knight's time, around 2022, we started expanding aggressively into nonmilitary centers. In November '22, the Austrian ambassadors of The US visited Vermont, signed an agreement Remember that. With Governor Scott for apprenticeships. It was actually signed in a Hayslip manufacturing facility in, I think it's Fairfax, Fairfield. That company, just a small example, employs about 160 personnel, brings in about 15 to 20,000,000 a year. It is an Austrian company, but through these indirect relationships, we can really say that we benefit. Senegal has been more of an agricultural relationship. Wait. Just on Austria,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I just wanna clarify. The ambassador came here. Did we have a previous military relationship with them?

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: We have had

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: With the whole country or just with that one province?

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: So with the country. So the That's what I thought. The country Austria has done our partnership in 2022.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. But that was a military one, or was that with the when they just

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: did a It was a

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: military piece, which I remember well because I'm I would offer the memorandum of understanding was a bit

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: open so that we could leverage those opportunities. And the National Guard nationwide has been has also been open to supporting these out of other than military activities. So the specific partnership with STIRIA that Tim mentioned was discussed originally in 2023. They're known as the Green Heart State. It is the Southeastern province of Austria that that is the pathway to Slovenia and Southern Hungary. It is the second most mountainous region. Their symbol is a green heart, where they, that's what we saw, a good connection. Their major agricultural product is pumpkin seed oil, whereas ours is a whole flow syrup. We found many of these small similarities, just beneficial to the discussions. But as Tim mentioned, we've been on hold with agreeing on a partnership with them until this committee comes to a conclusion on how to move forward

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: with And we would do it with Stiria and not with all of Austria? Or is all of Austria taken by another state?

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: All of Austria militarily is partnered with us. There are other

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So that is our mil it's our third military to military. Right.

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: Also has some other provinces partnered with other states. So Lower Austria has partnership with Colorado. That actually is not functioning well from what I understand. There hasn't been much movement since their signature. So to your point, it's extremely important to monitor and assess how these partnerships are going in a periodic, a period of time to ensure that they're being effective. And so we would certainly do that with our partnerships. We haven't come to a point where we graduated from our military partnerships, and our civil partnerships are still very young we're the state partnerships. We're thrilled to hear they're evolving. They are evolving, and with your support and with the government support, Secretary of Defense has been over several times. To Benagolli

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: and his parents, to see those papunzi. Yes.

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: He hasn't been to Stern yet. But that was Tim Tierney and Secretary Kurley that went to Austria with then Mike Carrington, our Commissioner of Labor, in 2024.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, yes, because it all really began on a workforce development.

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: It did. Exactly, it did. But I would say Secretary Charlie has also visited North Macedonia in 2021 with then Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray to communicate dialogues. And then that's what it is. I think every one of these exchanges that we do creates an opportunity, especially the leadership engagements. Senior reviews discuss, they come up with ideas, which is a natural process, and then staff takes it back to see if we can actually make some. That's where the textile discussion was initiated between secretary Kurley in North Ansedonia. That's where

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But it's the textile company that's here is Austrian.

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: No. That is a manufacturing that is a pipe franchise.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh, it's a pipe manufacturer. Okay. But that is Austrian, right? That is how it is. And it's in Fairfax? It is in Fairfax. Great. David, did you have a question? If

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: I can close with one last Yeah, thank So I think it's really, I would say it's really important. I'm first generation American. Moved here at the end of the '90s after college, I never left. I grew up, I spent my entire life overseas between Europe and Asia. And to me, engagement has been so important to my growth as a first citizen of Hawk. What we see in our soldiers and our legislators and our government officials and even just civilians, because I helped establish a sister city partnership in Senegal last year, is just the growth that comes to an individual from doing such activities. Working with partners, compromising on difficult situations, and coming to a conclusion that benefits both sides. I think it's important as a citizen in Super Monitor, and why the state partnership program advocates this bill to be concluded and that we have an effective process to to match partnerships with the state. So I'm gonna

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: ask you a finance question. Yes, You have a budget. I do. Unlike the state for this one. What is your budget for this

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: one? So officially, it's been around 3 and $50,000 This fiscal year, it's been close to $2.50.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Is that federal cuts or your The

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: Foreign Assistance Review of 2035 dictated a change to our foreign assistance policy.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Such a short sighted choice. Okay.

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: Yes, ma'am. And FY '27, though, appears to be a better year, will appear to be

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: a better year for us

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: in terms of military cooperation. Now, we've been able to use our budget to support some of our bill to civ or sit to civ activities as well in terms of organizing activities, renting venues. So we've worked mostly with the Vermont Council for years, cost sharing activities, pooling our resources in a time that's difficult.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. No. No. I thank you and wish you well in how we negotiate your budget.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you.

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: And Madam Chair, Gene's setting himself a little bit short. Was able to work with Africa Command and secured another $250,000 so we could continue our medical readiness exercises setting up.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh, that's great. Part of

[Lt. Col. Gene Nareepesha (Director, State Partnership Program, Vermont National Guard)]: the job requires seeking other sources of funding, so it's called out. Yeah. Job that I know Christian knows very well. Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Great. Thank you, Jean. You can stay there if you want. Peter, who had a question for our legislative council? And I just we have three minutes. I just wanna quickly have you because we need to address them. And Rick is here now.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Peter, you had a question

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: about why the committee upstairs took out subnational versus national?

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: No. They took out it used to say subnational or and or national. And now it just And now just says subnational.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So that's that's one question, you know, perhaps with rather why.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And then you had a second question.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: The other one you answered already, which is Oh, yes. Many other committees. Yeah. The speaker have the leeway to appoint anybody.

[Patricia Preston (President & CEO, Vermont Council on World Affairs; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: And she

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: The the speaker also has the ability to not appoint a member. So Yep. It it just it's, members can suggest. What that does is it creates the opportunity for us to, to suggest experts.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Makes it easier.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: But

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Do you wanna just quickly address the subnational person?

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So Rick Siegel, Office of Literacy Council. I'm on page one of the as passed by the house, the purpose section, and it says the purpose of the program is to strengthen Vermont's international engagement and foster mutually beneficial relationships with national and subnational It

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: still says national.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, okay. So The introduced version just said it's subnational, and there was concern that we'd be excluding countries. Yeah.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: And

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Maybe I thought I was reading the current one, and it's like for the introduced one. No.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: It says international online and and national and subnational on lines eleven and twelve.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Let's not spend any more time on that. Great.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Good. Terrific.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Any other questions for our incredible It's great to have you all. It's a significant percent of the task force.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: To Gene's point though, and you're a first generation American and more like sports, my experience is very similar. Starting in 1995 when I got involved in taking the students to Hong Kong, I have learned so much more about Vermont, come to appreciate Vermont so much more because of all of the international work.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And that is, I think, one of the greatest values, particularly with educational exchanges. Every high school student who goes and spends

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Six months to a year abroad comes back really both with a broader world view

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: and really appreciating student journals there. Say when they did the Vermont side of the program Yeah. I I went to all and I'm a was born and raised in Vermont, and I had no idea all the cities had.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But I think one of the saddest is is that we've lost the American Friends Field Service. The program in large measure, every high school should have an AFS duty both there for the year Yep. And sending somebody else somewhere else. We've lost the consistent when you talk about consistency, that program, those programs have really lost their robustness in, I think, in provided way. So great. Well, thank you very much. This is terrific, and we'll take up again. And my guess is the house did such good work on this. My guess is we will come in with this quickly. If you have any other thoughts, we'd love to have all your testimony if you can. You because, Rich, I know you've written yours down. If you'd be kinda They were in the care. Did she send it already? No.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: No. No. She has not quite

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: if people would send if they have written testimony or anything further you'd like us to know, if you'd send it to Kiara, our wonderful committee assistant, that would be great. Terrific.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: So thank you. Thank you all for taking this up and taking

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We're so pleased. Well, it came out of this committee, and so we're incorporating It's

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: coming back.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: This is great. Yeah. Terrific. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. We are, going to, go right into I believe we're going to take a deep Thank breath and you, Kim. Thank you all. All good to meet you. Greg, Rachel's a one.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: Good to see you, Andrew.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I'm so glad that you are. This was your first city for There you go. That's funny. Happy retirement.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Still doing great. Thanks for

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the estate.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I know. Peter, lovely to see you. Take care. Thank you, Yes, ma'am. I appreciate Thank you, Gene. Lovely to meet you.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: You as well, ma'am.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Door closed?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, no. Leave it open until we have everyone here. Thank you. Thank you.

[Patricia Preston (President & CEO, Vermont Council on World Affairs; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Okay. We are the hot seat. Good.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Great. Oh, here come the data. Proper people. Great. Terrific. Katie, would you be kind of Dylan, would you be kind of closer to her?

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. That's so funny.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: So, already a voting about

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yes. You have. I know you have to testify. Okay. Great. Welcome, everybody. We are gonna now turn our heads to the data broker bill, which has come to us from the house. And the we're gonna begin with state reps Monique Priestley who was the order of the bill on the floor. And then we're going to so we're gonna get a big picture of what this bill does and how it moves us forward. The original data broker bill came out of this committee in Brian will remind us, and then Brian's on deck next. But Brian worked closely with us getting this bill out in, I want to say, '17 or '18. Was early on in my tenure in this committee. So we're going to begin with sort of the big picture, why we need this bill, why it protects consumers, and because this is one of our three important consumer protection bills that we have in this committee right now. And then we're going to hear from Ryan and then we're going to walk through it with Rick. You want one of these? Yeah. You're welcome. Okay. Monique, before Great. I get

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: you. So, data brokers are generally third party entities that are selling So who are you? Monique Priestley, representing a Monique Priestley reporter. So, Dan brokers are third party entities that are selling consumer data often without the consumer knowing that that's happening and often without the consumer even knowing, like recognizing the entity that's doing the selling. There are plenty of legitimate uses of data broker data such as fraud prevention and identity verification as examples. Data broker data can also is used to fuel highly targeted profiling used in dynamic pricing, scams, fraud, stalking, and national security incidents. In 2018, Vermont became the first state to pass legislation to create a Data Broker Registry. H2.11 updates the definitions, fines, fees, studies a deletion portal, which I'll cover in a little bit, and then creates the right for Vermonters to request the deletion of their information from basically being sold by these data brokers without their permission. Following in Vermont's footsteps, California, Oregon, and Texas created registries. So this was after we passed the Yes, exactly. As these dates have passed, signals have updated definitions, fees, fines, that kind of thing, as well as the registry, like the data that is collected and shared in the data broker registries themselves. And then, I just checked as of this morning, we currently have two ninety two brokers registered in Vermont. Privacy Rights Clearing House, which we heard from Emery, which was on our witness list, he shared a report that their research finds that there are approximately seven fifty data brokers collectively registered across the four registries in California, Oregon, Texas, and Vermont, and with a large number of those brokers missing in every single one of those states, which is why everybody's trying to work on updating definitions and things like that to capture more of that, as well as obtaining things like fines to encourage registration. So that means that there's just over four fifty that are potentially missing in Vermont as of this morning. January 1, California launched its deletion portal, which basically, since there are hundreds of these data brokers that have Vermonter's data, and in that case California, going through manually and trying to, one, know that these brokers exist and have everybody's data, and then going through the steps to try to find the deletion request manually for everybody is really onerous, and it sometimes may not even be possible, depending on the hoops they have to jump through. So California created like an automated mechanism to attach the registry. This is basically check off here to remove request deletion from.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Alright, sure.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I just went to the privacy.california.gov, ca.gov in case anybody else was trying to Do you know how much this website cost?

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: I do not know how much it costs. The Secretary of State and the AG had a meeting with CalPrivacy to talk about that, and so that's part of the reason that there's study built into this bill so that they can look at whether or not so California has been talking about extending basically access to states to be able to connect to their mechanisms, so that's a thing to explore. There's also like more simple methods that data brokers themselves have said could be an option to creating a similar mechanism, removal mechanism. Connecticut is also looking at creating a similar situation as California because they have data broker registry and deletion bills for this year. So there's options, and so that's why Sure,

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: as in Doug, there's an option, so what we've created in this bill is a study.

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: Still need some options. Totally.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And, like, I hope the main option is, like, California's becomes everyone's, you know? Like, like, we just eat theirs because we're not gonna be as as good at this, and, I mean, I remember when the secretary of state's office came in the last time we talked about a deletion registry, it was gonna be $8,000,000. Now to California, that's probably like, oh, great. Let's do it. To Vermont, that's never gonna happen. So, if someone, at some point, can speak to like, how does California economize this? Because the treasurer just sort of

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: Yeah, the privacy team has been super supportive, in general. Definitely wanted to opt in conversations. They've been talking to multiple states, so their team testified, their lawyer testified, their executive director, Yeah, they're all they'll have to Then they sat down to the clinic center to have a meeting to talk about, so, yeah, definitely an option. Let's go. Okay, let's see. Just a few stats that came out actually the day we were trying to report this on the floor that CalPrivacy was sharing as a result of them having expanded the data being covered in the registry, like trapped in the registry that I thought, as Mark had wanted me to share this on floor, I thought you might find it interesting as well. So, of March 24, out of the five sixty seven registered brokers in California, 110 data brokers were selling precise geolocation, 52 data brokers were selling personal information to the federal government, 33 data brokers were selling personal information to foreign actors, and 31 data brokers were selling personal information to generative AI developers. And these are a few categories that are we're not we're not currently tracking in our registry, among other things like immigration status, reproductive, stuff that we added as things that should be tracked.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: This this testimony, I hope you have sent and or will send. I can send that to. Right? That would be one. Sure.

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: And then this bill does not regulate entity

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That's that I just wanna highlight those statistics that you just gave us. That is the core in many ways why this is an important consumer protection.

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: Probably not ideal for people to be having their data sold in these cases without them knowing. And fine if they

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: okay it, but usually not done what they don't agree. And

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: then, so this bill does not regulate entities like banks and insurance companies and things like that that rely on, but those entities do rely on this data that we're seeking to regulate. At SSH, we spend a lot of time trying to really finely craft the exceptions to, like there's non exceptions to registering for this if you are a data broker, but we crafted exceptions to where entities should be able to deny deletion requests, especially if that data, specifically if that data is things used for things like fraud prevention, identity verification, and other types of processing that is beneficial to a consumer that they would reasonably expect that, like, an entity needs to do to do things like approve mortgages and credentialing. We're still in discussions with the, which I'll happily share with everybody here, and they've reached out, is like the education clearinghouse wants to do things education credentialing. So, there's other legitimate things that we want So, what if there's insurance companies? No, so the exceptions are based on So, they're In the past, when privacy bills started passing this country, we were doing things based on entity levels. So like, basically it would be like, every entity that exists under like Grammysh Blyley, or every entity that exists under like SBURBLA, and things like that. And states started moving to data level exemptions, so the data that is like used by these entities for specific purposes. This bill actually goes further to the use case exceptions for this to say the data that say an entity takes in, say for instance data brokers that have credentialed, really secure databases that are used for under the record or whatnot, there's some verified identity. Like that data, as it's being used in that database, in that relationship should be exempted and should be able to be fined. The cases that we are hearing from Data Broker employees and from entities that are using this data is that there is cases where data will be essentially received under something like the protection of very much violate, but then shared with the marketing department and then used for advertising. Or shared with another arm of People Search Engine and then used in the People Search Engine, and you can't, if you exempt that whole entity, you are basically blocking people from being able to make a deletion of Rust for like the People Search arm of that business. Sorry, I No, it's okay. No, it's really a complication.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So keep going with your overview. Okay, I'm

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: almost done. Let's see. I just wanted to add New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, Minnesota. I'm not sure what other states, but I know those for sure are working on data broker registries and or deletion mechanisms this year.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And some of them already have data broker regulations.

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: The only registries are Oregon, Texas, California, and Us, but other states, especially because of all of the things like Melissa Portman's assassination and things like that, where it brought to light bench judges being targeted, where it brought to light the use cases of people being their data being used to kill them. So a lot of states, we all just kind of started talking about, we all have to like do something about this. Right.

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: Anything going on at federal level at this point?

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: You know what, I don't actually know that there's a federal level of this. Don't think there is.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. The current

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: administration, I doubt.

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: Yeah. No. Not that I know of, yeah. Yeah. I would say that generally things like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have issued reports of like asking for us to look into this kind of thing, and there was a report that was essentially pushing for entities that are not currently falling under the Fair Credit Reporting Act regulations, that more entities should be falling under So that was like a

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: report, those were just like reports on the whole stuff. How was interaction between state level entities. Anything going on there? Data sharing?

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: Between the state The

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: ability to extend the reach of state or protect data that is another person's database, commonality of each

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: other's different question. Question. That's question. Like, of like building on a compact issue that discussed with our campus bill. Do we

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: have a compact Senator Ram Hinsdale was mentioning about the ability for states to share, plug into each other's registries, that's starting to happen as a discussion. And I think kind of more like watchdog or nonprofit entities are doing reports of trying to highlight the concern about the lack of, like, data in each state. So I think a lot of that groundwork is happening, but they don't work right

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: there yet. And how about commonality of disclosure requirements?

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: The same thing. We're all basically like starting to compare notes with each other, and for the states that don't have something, saying like, you say you should have something, and the ones who have it are starting to share notes about like what is missing here.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: I think we're very interested in terms of privacy legislation at the state level, and indeed, on our own state level in particular. Totally. What does the disclosure that is required to be shared with the consumer look like, and is it longer the application process?

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: Yes. So that is a great the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse Emery, he's in Italy, so time zone is a little awkward for his testimony, but he will get up early into it. He testified for us. He is that is a great organization to have, to be able to give kind of the landscape, because that's what they are studying. Right. We're gonna well, he's Yeah. Happy about And again, Cal Privacy is like a great one. Cal Privacy is really like leading the charge on getting state AG's offices to, since they're the only kind of dedicated privacy enforcement regulator for a state level, they've really been working together with other states to form a coalition. So for instance, they were just ads by the Internet Advertising Bureau meeting at like Summit last week in DC. Tom Kemp from Call Privacy basically to the audience was like, you're all on notice because I know a bunch of you are like violating stuff and I'm going to start working with Connecticut and New Jersey to go after the specific thing. So it makes

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: some sense because it is a common problem. Totally. And one that we could solve together time. Yes.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: So you mentioned that other states are tackling this too. My question, this seems to be one piece of the larger conversation on data privacy and consumer protection. We're talking about in S-seventy one.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: What is your rationale for splitting this out to a separate bill and also are you seeing other states take a similar approach where they're separating the two?

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: Totally, yeah. So the approach for separating us is completely like that. That is what's happening in all other states that focus on this specifically.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And also quite honestly, it began a It company, began with this committee in 'eighteen.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Or put our data privacy bill from last by any them had both. It was data brokers.

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: Yeah, it's different bills that are attached to each other. Yeah. For sure. So the reasoning generally, what's driving the reasoning for this is that the data brokers have a third party relationship with people, so they don't have a direct relationship with the consumer, whereas the privacy bills are very much built on first party kind of relationships with the consumer.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Are you done. I'm done. Terrific. Thank you so much. Thank you for your work on it. And we're gonna turn to Ryan for the next big picture.

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: Thank you.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And then we're gonna move to Rick to walk through the bill. And then we have two more witnesses. Uh-uh Sean and Zach and Scott if we have time. Right. Ryan, welcome. It's good to have you back in this committee. We spent a lot of time in 2018 together working on this initial data broker bill. Introduce yourself and give us the big picture as why we need this.

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: Thank you. Thank you. My name is Ryan Can you hear me okay?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: We can. Okay.

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: Name is Ryan Krueger. I have been a resident of Montpelier, Vermont for fifteen years. For most of that time, I worked as an assistant attorney general in the Vermont Attorney General's Office Public Protection Division, focusing on consumer protection and antitrust enforcement, and over time, I focused more and more on privacy and data security. After that, I worked at the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Privacy and Identity Protection. I also teach about privacy law and policy as well as consumer protection and First Amendment. I believe senator Ram actually spoke to my class once many years ago, my policy class, at the University of Vermont, and I've been doing that since 2018. Currently, I am the Deputy Chief of the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office Privacy and Responsible Technology Division. But today, I'm speaking in my personal capacity as a Vermonter who cares about his own privacy and the privacy and safety of his wife, his friends, their children, and his fellow Vermonters. My comments today are mine alone and do not reflect any positions of the Massachusetts Attorney General or those of her office. When I was a Vermont first off, I also want say I wish I was in the room with you today. I had to work in Boston today, but I Okay.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, I'm sure we'll have you back, and and it's good your time. Time.

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: I I I appreciate with the stakeholders, I observed incredible pushback from industry and their lobbyists. Years later, I was told that one major data broker had made killing that bill their primary focus for the year. At the time, I didn't understand why the pushback was so ferocious given that the bill didn't actually require any businesses to change their practices other than documenting the fact of their existence. Sure. Over the course of that experience, I came to realize that data brokers really don't seem to want anyone to know they exist. They are the only industry I have encountered in two decades of legal practice that doesn't want anyone to know about them. Most companies spend a lot of money announcing their existence in the form of marketing and advertising, but not this one. One lobbyist told me in a moment of candor that businesses didn't want to be in the registry because being called a quote data broker was like having a scarlet letter. His words. I pause it that if you are actually ashamed to acknowledge your line of business, that says a lot about the ethics of the work you do and its value to society. One might wonder why they might feel that way, and I've thought a lot about this. Okay? So the business of a data broker is to collect private and personal information about you. And in the abstract, that can be hard to imagine, but we're talking about the products and services you buy, the books you read, your political and religious leanings, your health conditions, your physical location, and that of your family and your children. Then some data brokers analyze the data and they score it. Okay? Think of your FICO score. That's really just a score that says how likely are you to be responsible with your money and repay your loans. They score people on lots of other things. And some of them might be brand loyalty, others might be gullibility, how financially desperate you are, how manipulable you are. These are scores that data brokers actually sell to businesses and others. They sell that information, like was just discussed, to the federal government, the government of other states. They have been known to sell to con artists, fraudsters, foreign powers, whomever. And let me just dig into that for a second. It was mentioned precise geolocation data is something that is being sold. Okay. What we're talking about is the GPS data that comes out of your phone that can be used to track every movement that you have made for the life of your owning your phone. What can this be used for? Well, it's purchased by ICE, for example, to track down people. Okay, imagine we live in a world where the government can now actually track every citizen wherever they are. Okay, it, after the Dobbs decision, which allowed states to once more criminalize abortion, it came out that there were data brokers that were selling geolocation data linked with business locations so they could tell who was going into reproductive clinics, and then selling that data to people in states where abortion was illegal so that they could track people down who had left state lines in order to have abortions done and prove that they'd done that. They were also selling people's going to places of religious worship, other types types of health facilities. You can tell a lot about a person by tracking their every movement, obviously.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think it is Kesha has a question for you.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: Yes.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So, I mean, I think we all hear this and and are rightfully, like, concerned, scared, want to make sure our data doesn't fall necessarily into the wrong hands in any way. I

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: have

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: been on a healthcare working task force in the state where some company came and said, we know all of this about Vermont, right? Like your data, terrible. Pay us $4,000,000. And it certainly concerned me. But I don't know how we separate what it means for this data to get into the raw hands. Right? Because the delete you have to be really pretty pretty conscious and pretty engaged to find the delete portal, to delete your information. Many people right now are probably concerned about putting their name and information anywhere. I'd like to stop any of these groups from selling our data to the federal government right now. I mean, right, I, like, I stopped taking census texts and answering them, which is sad. I I usually want the federal government to have information that that even helps them make consumer or policy choices. So, like, what do we do in the broader context than just an individual not wanting, you know, certain subscriptions to to come up on their radar? Like, how do we actually attack private and sensitive personal information from getting to ICE?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Sure.

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: Okay. Great, great question. And by the way, I also did not answer the census postcard that I got for exactly the same reason. And I got many follow ups saying, you have to, it's under the law. I looked up the statute, it said it's a $100 fine. I thought, I'll pay the fine. I just don't want to give you that information. So you hit the nail on the head. What do we do about this world? Now, I mean, there are you've probably heard about GDPR, the European privacy regulation. There are people who argue that the entire data broker industry is illegal under GDPR, that their entire business model of collecting information with no consent from people violates core principles of GDPR. So one answer would be ban the industry. I doubt that's going to happen, right? We do have to remember that there are some useful purposes for these, and this law does a good

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: attempt Yeah, to balances that.

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: Yeah. So if you think about the comprehensive privacy law that's been working through, I don't know what the status of that is, but there was a data minimization provision in that one, and a lot of states have data minimization provisions, most of which are very, very weak, except for Maryland's. They were the first one to come out with a really strong one, which basically said, you cannot collect more data than you need to provide the product or service that someone's asking for, then and if you collect it for that purpose, you have to use it for that purpose. So if I go on amazon dot com and I buy something, I give them my address, and they can use it to ship the product for me. But they can't then sell the address to somebody else. They shouldn't be able to track me all over the internet to figure out my purchasing tendencies and then micro target pricing to me for that reason. So mandatory data minimization would stop a lot of this data from being collected in the first place if it were enforceable. Right? Question you asked is Yes. How

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: because how how is Maryland doing? Right? Like, does Amazon look different in Maryland now? Because that'd be great.

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: I mean, first, I don't know that Maryland Maryland may have gone into effect very recently. Okay. I will say this, okay, and I I don't wanna overstate this, but when businesses say just tell us the law and we'll comply with the law, some of them mean it. And some of them mean we will comply with the law when you make us comply with the law, when you catch us violating the law and make us comply. That's my entire business is trying to find, you know, companies that are violating the law and making them comply. I I do wanna talk a little bit about enforcement and enforceability, later because I think it's a critical thing to think about for any of these.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Why don't you finish your test, Brian, because we need to then walk through the bill with rigor.

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: Yep, And we'll have

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: to be back because you have so much knowledge and information in this area.

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: Okay, I'll move through this a little bit quicker. I did want to note that it's telling that U. S. Congress has passed one piece of privacy legislation in the past twenty five years. The last piece of privacy legislation they passed, I believe, was actually Gremlitz Bliley and COPPA at about the same time. And that law, was passed in 2024, was the Protecting Americans' Data from Foreign Adversaries Act, which basically prohibited the act of selling Americans sensitive information to enemies of the state. Okay? Think about that. The only industry that has been able to convince Congress to rise from its torpor on the issue of privacy is the data broker industry, and then it was only because it was the only way to stop them from selling out their countrymen to foreign governments. Basically, if you are on if a country is on the NNB, like enemy of the state list, we're talking China, North Korea, Russia, data brokers aren't allowed to sell them data about our legislators, our law enforcers, our military, which they were doing and had been documented doing before then. Okay. So let's see here. Going back to the passing of the original law, despite the resistance from industry, this law was enacted. It was the first in the nation state or federal to actually name data brokers. That should be a point of pride for this committee and the state of Vermont. Were it not for this law, I do not believe California would have passed its data broker registry, which was modeled on Vermont's, and we they would not have gotten to the DELETE Act, which creates that ability to opt out. And the question and and by the way, this is another weakness in so many of these laws is they just like senator Ram said, they require consumers to take an affirmative step to protect their privacy, and it is well established that maybe 3% of consumers will do that if they even know about it. Most will not. So any law that requires consumers to take effect is already going to be limited, you know, in in in way. The DELETE Act isn't a perfect law. It has more exemptions than I prefer, and, like many privacy laws, requires those affirmative steps. Now this law, the the broker registration, when we put it into effect, it received criticism from some privacy advocates, mainly that it doesn't do all that much. It just requires businesses to register. We called it light touch regulation. And there were that was intentional, okay? One reason for that was we wanted to make sure that if we were gonna pass a law regulating data brokers, we knew it would be challenged and we wanted to make sure that it could absolutely withstand constitutional scrutiny. At the time, a different law and lawsuit was well in everyone's mind, a case called INS v. Sorel, Sorel being our former attorney general, this legislature had passed a law basically allowing doctors to instruct pharmacies to not sell their prescription information to a medical data broker called IMS, who was then selling that information to pharmaceutical companies so they could know who was marketing their competing drugs and target them more to market their own drugs. The law didn't ban that. It just allowed doctors to request the pharmacies not sell that information.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: It was

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: challenged by IMS. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, in a decision which has been criticized by many legal scholars for using the wrong standard, found that it violated the constitution, and the state had to pay the legal bills of IMS, a little over $1,000,000 because it was a 1983 action. The reason why the court struck down that law was not because data is speech or anything like that. It was because there was a section of the law that allowed academics to use that information but not for commercial use. And the court said that's viewpoint discrimination. You're saying marketing people can't use it for marketing, but we'll allow it for study, that violates the First Amendment, and they shut down the whole law. That's what happened there. Okay. My hope at the time was that having laid the foundation for this law, we would eventually return to it and bulk it up a little bit and give it those extra benefits. And that's what you all are doing today, and I'm so appreciative In for particular, going through this law, I applaud the following improvements. In the original bill, I had asked there to be a strong credentialing requirement to address the problem of data brokers supplying information directly to fraudsters and other bad action actors. This bill corrects that omission in 2431B. Once we started enforcing the new law, we quickly realized that while the law imposes fines for failing to register, it did not impose fines for filing incorrect or overly vague information. This bill corrects that in 2446, it imposes appropriate fines for filing materially incorrect information. It also incorporates a suggestion I made on the House side to address the problem of overly vague information. These guys will register and they'll answer the questions, but they'll answer them in the most opaque way possible, often so that you really, it's not actionable information. And so what the new law says is that if someone provides vague information and they're notified they have thirty days to fix that, and if they don't after thirty days, then the fines start. So it's not gotcha, it's, you know, please do this. I worry that it's a little bit exploitable. There are going to be companies that don't do the right thing until they're specifically asked to, but I don't think that's avoidable. The bill includes a number of additional reportable data elements in Section 2446A, which I believe will be extremely beneficial to consumers, enforcers, researchers, advocates, and journalists, and I recommended the data of a couple deletion of a couple that were now redundant, those actually were left. I have long argued that the exemption, almost all of these privacy laws exempt public data from the definition of data, public information. And that is because of basically a lobbying win that happened about fifteen, twenty years ago that then got replicated throughout all the new laws. Prior to that, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, for example, doesn't exempt public information. In fact, it explicitly includes public information in the definition of the type of data that is included. What you'll hear from lobbyists is, Well, this information is all in the public anyway, so we should be able to do whatever we want with it. The problem with that is manyfold. If you post something on Facebook, and then you realize that, oh, I've set the access wrong. I made it available to the world. I'm going to change it so that it's available just to people I know. For the five minutes that it was available to the public, if a web crawler caught it and put it in their databases, that's public information. You've lost the ability to remove that from the public according to the data broker industry. Another thing that I want you to really think about when if and when you're lobbied to you know weaken this bill, you often hear the argument that this information is out there, it's public, especially when it comes to the address data. Okay, let's take that one as an example. Address is generally not considered sensitive information. Okay. I see your chair. Do you want me to move on to a different topic?

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: This is great, but you're really going into the bill, and we

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: haven't even walked into the

[Representative Monique Priestley (House Sponsor of H.211)]: bill yet. Okay. Fair.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So I think at the moment because we need Rick, and it's gonna take a while to walk through it. I think it would be great if you were willing to come back and and actually address section by sections that you have that you support and have concerns about. That would be terrific. I was hoping this morning we would do sort of teeing it up so then walk forward. Absolutely. But this is great. I'm glad to think overall that H two eleven takes us forward and improves on the bill that was initially done. Well, actually now it's quite a long time ago. David, you wanted to just finish up on sort of overarching thoughts?

[Ryan Kriger (Deputy Chief, MA Attorney General’s Office – Privacy & Responsible Technology; former VT AAG)]: Sure. Yes, as Senator Rim indicated, it would be great if we could just kind of prohibit this information collection in the first place, and some of the privacy laws would allow us to do that. In the absence of that, the ability to at least ask them to delete the data, or to correct the data, or to know the data, you know, is out there. I'm going to give you kind of a silly example that, you know, to my mind. There was a period of time when I was receiving text messages from local politicians in Michigan asking me to support their runs for the state house or judge or things like that. I had never been in Michigan. I don't know why I was getting these text messages. It was because some data broker had misinformation about me. Somehow they'd filed me wrong and were selling me to, you know, fundraising lists to, you know, if I could have just corrected that information, if I could have just known who the data broker was and contacted them and said, I don't live in Michigan, like, please stop blowing up my phone with these things, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, if someone has misinformation about me and they use that for an adverse action against me, they have to tell me which credit reporting agency they got the information from, they have to give me the contact information, and I can then go to them and correct the record. I can look at my credit report, right? The CFPB tried to basically extend those protections to a lot more data brokers, as Representative Priestley indicated, and it went pretty far until there was an administration change, and it ended there. So there are kind of common sense protections that it's not even necessarily about demonizing the industry or saying, know, these shouldn't exist, it's just common sense stuff that should be allowed to happen. And if someone doesn't want data brokers buying and selling all of their information to whoever wants it, the ability to say no, I want to know who you are, I want you to remove this information, please do so. And then, and I won't get into this now, I'll get into it when I come back, Enforceability. The fact of the matter is, when we ask people to leak this information, it is going to be very, very difficult to know if they've actually done it. There are people who are working on that. There are people who are trying to track that sort of information. It's difficult. You basically have to subscribe to the data brokers and request the information that you claim was deleted to see if they still have it. And that gets to enforceability. How can we make this, a bill, strong enough so that they actually pay attention to it? Because if it's not strongly enforceable, then we're all kind of spinning our wheels here. We're doing something that looks nice, but isn't actually going to get the job done. So I can talk about that when I return.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Oh, okay. You've hit on some key key overarching concerns, and this bill addresses that in part, but maybe not as fully as we'd like. So, Ryan, thank you very much. Thank you for taking the time. We are Massachusetts Day. We will have you back after we have gone through the bill, and we're gonna start going through it now. We're gonna take a break at eleven for a few minutes, and then we will return. Great.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Good morning. Good morning, Rick. Welcome.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Rick Siegel with the Office of Lenten Council. So it's a small little bill, right, h two eleven, only 43 patents. I say that joke, it's didn't get across. So I I do wanna give a little bit of background of what we're doing here. I appreciate the previous two witnesses talking about what a data broker is and what the business is like and the consumer protection piece, but the bill is not just data brokers. I wanna make that clear. There's other things in here. The big picture may be data brokers, but there are some other laws that are not just about data brokers that you all should be aware of that are affected by this legislation. I'm gonna share my screen and show you what I'm talking about. We are in Title IX, Chapter 62, which you are somewhat familiar with for various reasons. So this bill touches on almost all these various subchapters. Subtepart one, definitions for the most part. There are a number of definitions changed in this build. The definitions apply to every subchapter, and I will make that clear when it's important. Subtimes two, the Security Breach Notice Act, there are some changes there, where if a data collector has a security breach, they must alert you and the AG. That's already law, but there's some changes to it. Subtimes three, Social Security Number, no changes there. Student Privacy, a technical change, I'll get to when I get there. The Documents Safe Destruction Act, no change to that. Subtitle five, Data Brokers, many changes to that one. And the Vermont Aid Appropriate Design Code, kids code, no changes He passed that last year. It takes it back 01/01/2027.

[Patricia Preston (President & CEO, Vermont Council on World Affairs; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: So that's the

[Tim Tierney (Director of Recruitment & International Trade, VT Dept. of Economic Development; Co-Chair, Sister State Working Group)]: way it's

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That gives us sort of a picture into which this is.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Because this is not just at work. It's personal information. And, you you had the witness, Thomas Weiss, last week to discuss the organization of this chapter. It doesn't always fit like a puzzle, but this is where we are, and this is where these bills exist, and we are amending a number of sections in this

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Of this chapter. Yes. Of TEDpots. Yes.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So Great. Two eleven yeah, of course. To two eleven, it is 43 pages, and I it's a very technical, complex build. So what I wanna do, if I read this to you, it would take more than an hour and a half. I'm not gonna read it to you, but I will focus on the things that I think you should know about, the things that are important, that are going to really Yep. Change the landscape of of what or how Vermont regulates our personal information.

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Can I ask you a question? Yes, Randy. Just a general question. With all of these changes and so on, is there some type of a change to the disclosure provisions in terms of how this act affects the public, or disclosure that might be in footnote about the privacy of individual's affected by this?

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the attorney general will need to have a webpage that provides consumers with information about most of them, the opt out, the deletion function that consumers have the right to. So that piece will be is in the bill, but there's not anything else that requires consumer notification of this new law, if that's

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: what you're asking about. Yes.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Maybe once about a

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: new law or the law is amended. Right. I think

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: maybe once we get there, if you wanna beat that up, that section.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think we can not only beat that up, I think that that goes to the concerns we've had about resources we have for small businesses is how do people know about these things? And that's incumbent on us and our partners in the executive branch to do a better job and with the AG to do a better job. Yeah. Or, you know, letting people know what

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we've actually accomplished. House of Commerce head David Hall from the Secretary's State's office come in and testify about what they can do, what they're comfortable doing, and I'm sure he'll come and testify to this committee as well, and you can ask them what else they can do to inform consumers. Okay, shall I go through the Yeah. Alright, so definitions first. I'm not gonna talk about authorized agent. That's pretty clear. A consumer can designate an agent to act on their TAP. That's a pretty standard definition. Biometric data is the same that you've read in other bills. It's data that is generated from the technological processing of individuals' characteristics, your iris, your fingerprints, and so forth. It does not include a physical or digital photograph, an audio or video recording, or any other data generated from those two things.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Thank These are key definitions that we have already looked at initially with the genetic data privacy bill.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right, and this biomarker data is not as important in this bill. It is mentioned, but it's not, for example, broker information, that's a major change. So the current definition, and this applies to data brokers, right? So data brokers, they handle brokered personal information. So how you define that is going to affect data brokers. It means, currently under law, one or more of the following elements of the consumer and lists name, address, date of birth, place of birth, etcetera. At the very left, there's a number of these that have been struck through. You'll see the last element there, number nine, that's struck through, Other information that alone are in combination with the other information in the license would allow a reasonable person to identify the consumer with reasonable certainty. It's kind of a big catchall. And I think of the new language as kind of replicating that and also maybe expanding it, and made no mistake, this is expanding the definition of what broker information is. It's any information, including derived data and unique identifiers that is linked or reasonably linkable, alone or in combination with other information, to an identified or identifiable individual, or to a device, so if you have a phone, tablet, those have unique IDs, those devices who, that identifies, is linked to, or is reasonably linkable to one or more identified or identifiable individuals in a household. So that is now appropriate virtual information. It could be your address, right? It could also be your name, it could be your social, but it's also much more broad. It could be a mobile advertising ID. It could be all these things that aren't currently listed in that exhaustive list of elements.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay?

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Broker proof information does not include publicly available information striking through to the extent that it is related to a consumer's business or profession. No change to the definition of business or consumer. The next big change is to the definition of data broker. So what it is doesn't change. It is a business or units of the business separately or together that not only collects and sell or license to third parties the broker personal information of a consumer with whom the business does not have a direct relationship. That is the same subject. That kind of general, these are mostly companies that consumers haven't heard of, that you don't interact with, right?

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: That's what a data broker is. Thomas.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: The large question I'm gonna have, this conversation goes forward, is the importance to me of regional consistency. Could you give me an idea of where these definitions originated from? Are these cold cloth, is that the term, where we come up with them as Vermont creations, or is this inspired by what we've seen other states doing, especially with the data for?

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I would defer to the sponsor of the bill, when I increase who also testified that there's a few states that have this one, and it's a few, Texas, California Oregon. Oregon. Right? So this is kind of a new area the states are regulating. So I I can't say that this language is word for word what California did or what Vermont started it back in 2018. So that some of this language is descended that everybody came up with originally. Some of it's being re rethought, revamped, updated with time.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But she also does find that there are some states, Thomas, that are in the middle of doing this one now, catching up. And I think it does, you know, the question of how can we also begin to work together so that we do have consistency around all this would be fair would be very helpful. Right. Oh, sorry.

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: But then if we just go back to the one that you sort of highlighted as an important thing, the new definition of brokered personal information, I see a lot of interpretations to this that if it hasn't been fleshed out in the court of law, like, has a MAC ID. It's a device. Not any reasonable person can associate that to Tom Chittenden, but many things can detect this signature and know that I was in a space at another time. So I'm just I'm seeing this language as being hard to defend, so to speak.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well When is it the device versus

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the person? Perfect. So you're on pay when you're talking about that definition of

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: It's page three.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So I don't know what

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: was wrong with our previous one, what we're trying to accomplish by broadening it to linkable to devices.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Because that's the personal information that can track you. The device is doing it, but not

[Senator Thomas Chittenden (Member)]: But it's not the use of the on the device. It's not the device itself.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I think you'll hear from witnesses the technical aspect of it may be helpful, and why that's necessary or why maybe it isn't necessary. It's up to you all to determine what you want to do.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Right. Okay. That's crooked in that, Thomas. Yes,

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Randy? The other question I have is, with the new definition on page three, I'm reading that, wouldn't that include a telephone directory? I could get a person's address from that. I could get their middle initial and middle but Obviously, can get their phone number. Now it's publicly available, but what if I didn't get my permission? And you do have the ability to opt out being listed in telephone directories since they're published. Actually, cell phone information is not publicly available. Not cell phones, but, you know, the

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I don't know what's happening lately.

[Major General (Ret.) Gregory Knight (Former Adjutant General, Vermont National Guard)]: You've made it online. So the

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the question is whether a phone book would be brokered personal information. The information in that phone book, your at your address, if it's there, your phone number, could be, but it depends how the information is used. Is it sold? Is it transferred from data brokers? Like, that that is maybe not enough. Right? There's nothing inherently wrong with broker personal information. It's what is done with that information. It's what this bill

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: may eventually get I'll edited it. I still get a telephone book, which sure publishes it, but I get a telephone book covered by town and surrounding towns with talcry changes. That's public information. Is

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: it public? Is my telephone number public or something? Absolutely. Absolutely, it's on our website. Yeah. If you talk information, it's published. License plate for the car.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's a device. So I public. It's my car. It's my

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So let's put a pin in these and come back to them. Really love to have us just try and get through so we can see the totality of this. And then let's So let's be thoughtful about putting pins in the So definitions, definitely, let's put a pin in. Page three.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, we're on page four and all to Data Broker that first introductory definition has not changed. However, in current statute, you have examples of a direct relationship with a business includes the consumers, a past or present. You know, you have one, two, three, four, five there. So instead of that, that's being struck through, and instead, as using the subdivision, direct relationship means the consumer has intentionally interacted with the business for the purpose of accessing, purchasing, using, requesting, or obtaining information about the business's products or services. A consumer does not have a direct relationship with a business if the purpose of the consumer's engagement is to exercise a consumer right or for the business to verify the consumer's identity. A business does not have a direct relationship with the consumer simply because the business collects brokered personal information directly from the consumer. The consumer must intend to interact with the business. A business is still a data broker and does not have a direct relationship with the consumer as it brokered personal information. The business sells by the consumer, data collected outside of a first party interaction with the consumer. So very specific here, the general theme is that if the consumer interacts with the business, get you a quote from an insurance company, right? You or that's a first party interaction. The insurance company has your information, but you also requested a quote from an insurance company. If that insurance company then decides to sell your data, they're not the date of but the company that receives the information may not be the date of birth, if that makes sense, so you have these third party transactions that are conducted. More structured language, the following activities conducted by a business and the collection and sale of licensing of appropriate personal information incidental to conducting these activities do not qualify the business as a date of birth. And you have these examples, developing and maintaining third party e commerce, providing four one one director assistance or services. So, Senator Brock, this might be something you wanna think about. Including name, address, telephone number on behalf or of or as a function of a telecommunications carrier providing public bill information related to a consumer's business or profession providing public bill information via real time or near real time alert services for health or safety purposes. So this

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: is no longer a part

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: of the data broker? Right, those were exceptions.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. The phrase sales or licenses does not include, this is current law, just a one time sale or occasional sale of assets between a business, and striking through a sale or license of data that is merely incidental to the business. So you are broadening the definition of David Weeks. You are keeping that initial paragraph the same, but you are still and you had testimony from Ryan, I think it's Kreger? Kreger? Yeah. Kreger. And he kinda said that was the goal, right, is sort of expanding the that you may not agree with, but that's what I'm doing with this. Right. Striking through data broker security breach, I, it's not gone. This is kind of technical, I'll get to this in a second, it does come back.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Sorry, this is the next definition, is on page six.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, so on the data broker security breach, it's removed, it comes back, and I'll make note of Page seven, no change to data collector, no change to encryption. The definition of Jet AI system is only important because it's requested when a data broker registers, they must put in their registration that they use these systems. They use further information in these systems, they must

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So say there's an update of what's currently

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: In register, yes, that they use that information in some kind of Gen AI system. Number 10, I don't know if it needs to be defined, but it's here. Identified or identified by an individual means an individual who can be readily identified directly or indirectly, just in case there's confusion about what that term means. Technical change to login credentials. Personally identifiable information mostly applies to the Security Breach Notice Act, not as much data brokers. There is some data broker requirements here. The change is the exception added. So it's a consumer's first name or first initial and last name in combination with one one or more elements. So if there's a security breach, it has to be either, you know, for example, if your name is Jim Smith, it must be either Jim Smith or Jay Smith in addition to one or more elements. And those elements are your social, driver's license number, some kind of bank account number, credit card number, or password, some kind of sensitive information, right, Biometric data, genetic information, health records, and so forth. The change here in C is this came from DFR, actually. DFR enforces the Security Breach on this Act against financial institutions, and they testify that there are times where it seemed they they would like to enforce it. There is a security breach that they believe happens, but the institution says, well, it wasn't the name. It was part of the name and the password. It wasn't it didn't meet the definition of what is enforcing. So we've added language that says it does not require a consumer's first name or first initial and last name in any of the data elements contained in the subdivisions. It's sufficient to perform or attempt to perform identity theft against the consumer. So it gives a little bit more legal interpretation as to whether that security breach could be harmful to the consumer. Okay. Precise geolocation, that's a pretty common definition. Processor is, as it pertains to data brokers, when they register, this is some of the information they must provide. Publicly available information is the same. It's rather we use across the Title IX. It is information made available through federal, state, or local government records or to the general public from widely distributed media, or information the data broker has a reasonable basis to believe that the consumer has lawfully made available to the general public. So it gives them a little bit more leeway to say, now we believe that you made this public. It does not include biometric data information that is collated and combined to create consumer profile that is made available to a user a publicly available website, either in exchange for a payment or free of charge, information that is made available for sale, and inference about the previous two.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Sorry. Are you now on does not include them page 12?

[Senator Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Page 11. Yeah. What line did you So

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I started on line four. This is what public

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. I got that. Yep. And then I oh, I don't just see where you start with what's not avail what's not.

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So line four on page 11. Biometric data. Biometric information to create a consumer profile, information made available for sale, interference about one of those two, any obscene visual depiction, brokered personal information that is created through the combination of brokered personal information with publicly available information, genetic data, unless otherwise made publicly available, information provided by a consumer on a website or online service made available to all members of the public for free or for a fee where the consumer has maintained a reasonable expectation of privacy in the information. This is that Facebook example that Brian gave a little bit ago. Or intimate images, authentic or computer generated, known to be non consensual. No change to record, technical change to redaction. Definition of sale is the exchange of a consumer's broker personal information by the daily broker to a third party for monetary or other viable consideration. It does not include the disclosure of that information to a processor that processes their information, the disclosure of that information to a third party for the purpose of providing a product or service request by the consumer, The disclosure or transfer of broker information to an affiliate of the data broker. The disclosure with the consumer's consent, top of page 13, of broker information where the consumer directs the data broker to disclose the information or intentionally uses the data broker to interact with a third party, the disclosure of publicly available information, or the disclosure or transfer of appropriate information to a third party at an asset that is part of a merger or acquisition, etcetera. Definitions of affiliate or control as used in that definition is pretty standard. Can skip that. Page 14, Security Breach. Yep.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I think let's get through to 2431, and then we'll take

[Rick Siegel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a Take a break. Right. So no change to Security Breach except the technical grammatical change. Page 15 is the next change, which is the next section. So, 24, 31.

[Senator Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: So security breach is the last definition in this sector? Yes. Great. Okay. I would suggest as we finish the definitions that we take a bit of a break. We've been subject to We'll Yeah. Submit it. Thank you. We'll take a break and come