Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We are live. No. We are live. I know it's Friday. Okay. I will try and get you out of here early because it's Friday. I hope no one had trouble going home last night. I gather the Bolton Flats between three and 03:30 was like an ice skating rink. Cabot and Danville this

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: morning were pretty smooth and slippery down.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Somebody said they came home, yep, from Saint John's Ferry this morning, and between Cabot and Danville was It

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: was Yeah.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: An adventure in driving. Oh. It's terrible. Exactly. So, anyway, we are not scheduled well, now it's been put off talking that what? Ten minutes? Yeah. 02:10. Until 02:10. Tom is gonna come in and no. We're going to Room 11. Oh, I'm going Room 11. Beautiful. Okay. The other trip was going down the hall. Then it approves. Alright. I thought we were resuming that.

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: And we're starting at, what, 02:10 then?

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. But we haven't, since the first day, had time to actually do the, hi, how are you, and what do I wanna do this year, or any thoughts after a week of taking some thoroughly depressed testimony. I just thought we'd take some time, and if we have any extra time, we can do the list of reports that we do. We do not. I went through and did my ideas and so.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Well, I was just gonna wrap up.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I mean, if you can't go around.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: No. No. Sorry. I'll be right back. Okay. Just getting my computer. Well, is it on the market? From where is it? It's probably

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: it's probably going to that statue.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I found that I wanted more as I get closer to this year. So anyway, consider yourself lucky counter welfare. It's 13 pages. Is that Yes. A lot. And we've been through them all. I've not had much counsel come in here and tell you my report we get. I am unaware of getting most of these. I'm sure they come in and they get posted, but I can't recall using especially the older one a whole lot. So that is out there, and that will save us some time next week. We're getting more and more bills, so we're gonna have to move that along. And then we have the little thing about property taxes. I've asked Joint Fiscal to come in and do a presentation on income tax, what it looks like, how it's structured. I've got a couple of concerns. One is what kind of an income tax rate it would take if you tried to fund education on the income tax. The back of the envelope calculation was that it would probably double the income tax rate, which would probably give us some real competitive issues, but they're gonna see if we can do that. The other one is, and I think it came to me when we were listening to the CFO of North Country Hospital talking about the difficulty of recruiting doctors to Vermont. Well, a) they can't find housing in The Kingdom and b) they it's the financial tax burden. Our when we were trying to be more competitive back in the early nineties, Michael Costa was the staff for the first Blue Ribbon task force. Who was it? Cathy Hoyt was on it. It was half the guy from True North Radio was on there. It was and Michael Coster brought in a report. There was a minority report, but their task was every time the Tax Foundation or somebody listed Vermont, they listed our top marginal tax rate, which was one of the highest, maybe the highest in the company. So Vermont was terrible. The fact that for most people your tax bill was less because of the way you were structured, you only, you know, pay that portion on that portion, but it hurt. And they came in with recommendations, and after that, we collapsed the fifth and fourth bracket and lowered that top tax rate. I have a feeling and I wanna look at I think it is 284,000 for a couple. We start our top tax rate.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: I think it's a three.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Is it three? I thought it was three Single by the two. Maybe in single. Somebody told me two at Ozark, really? But even that for two professionals, if you're talking about two doctors in a household, I mean you got a teacher and a superintendent, you're coming up against that. So I've asked them to see if they can find some revenue neutral way we might put that top tax bracket back, maybe go up the quarter of a percent, so we equal Massachusetts. It won't generate a whole lot of money, but it might help in some of that tax burden. The people we really need to attract right now. Middle in the middle or In the middle. Upper middle. And, generally, most of them aren't the ones and we'll I wanna do some more of the thing we saw yesterday. But I know when we looked at the last tax cut and job bill and rewrote our entire income tax code just to make it so Vermonters weren't paying more. There was some benefit at the bottom, there was benefit at the top, but a lot of the benefit was like pass through for business. So you owned a business and could pass through and depreciate, but your income was the business income. Those were the people that benefited the most. The ones that got hurt were the two professionals who were paying good income tax and a big property tax if you owned a nice house and maybe Shelburne. Right. And they couldn't deduct that anymore. Right. So they're still getting hurt and any workarounds that we looked at, workarounds through the business, which are the ones that but that that group is out there. So I because I've been told by businesses, well, you know, if our top executives are gonna pay the highest taxes in the country, that's detriment to being or staying here.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Wow. So That's, you know, I was just gonna ask if we can maybe at some point unpack that presentation we had yesterday. Yes. That was really great. Yeah. Feel as though, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but it seemed like there was a suggestion that there are some things that we should do to kind of offset

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: what's coming from the Fed. And I think some of them, they were said in a little different language, but we got the business ones from the joint presentation. Right. I am assuming that well, it's a revenue thing, it'll start in the house. I'm assuming that they're going to make the changes. They've rewrote the tax code to where it is now, and we seem to have done a good thing with that. It looks like there's one or two tweaks, but I think the total was 6 to 9,000,000 we might lose, which isn't devastating, but we could We're breaching the accounts

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: right now. Yeah. Right. Obviously, when we look at

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: the 9,000,000, all that decimal does, you know, And so we're gonna be doing that. I'm gonna work through the bills we've got. If there's any up there from last year, the I think we've taken down the ones that we did in other bills, but they're just not on the board. I went through them, and I think we decided most of them we weren't doing. I think we took testimony on all of them. The new ones are on this side, so the second line over. The ones that the paper has a yellow on.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: So there are bills that are in this committee that are not on up there? No,

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: there are bills that we, things like the Veterans Pension Bill got dealt with in the Homemaker Tax Exemption. Right,

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: but that's still a bill we have.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That is still a bill we have in this county.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: I only think of that as for, you know, down the road if you need a vehicle or something. Oh, yeah. There's still

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: a bill that five jacket with Charlotte. She's still got the list. Okay. I don't, I mean, the reason women's sanitary projects became Corporate tax bill. Corporate tax bill. Right. It's because tax is a really broad

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: Exactly.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Well, is the military look at your stuff. It's still there.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: Senate. We don't know.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Oh, that that house bill.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Yeah. You were on fire today. Yeah. I shouldn't.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: But again, the old day it was windy. It's like I know. Certain needs. Yeah. Well, think the staff says, do you want to release your bills? I thought I'd okay. I mean, trustee had a little over the center. Copied Ann and Andrew and said, that's one of our town And I said, Well, I didn't know if you want to sign on. Okay.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Thank you for putting my, the new version of

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Child unpaid caregivers tax credit back on there.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: It's a new version Yeah. That I updated based on feedback we got last year.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Scott, is there

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: is there a two version? Didn't you put in one also, Martine, which is the one in the Alzheimer's version?

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Yes. But that's not a tax bill. That's went to health and welfare. Okay. Yeah. But, Mary, is it on the wall there? I think it's not on the wall there. Got referred to health and welfare. The rest of it grant.

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: The rest of it grant.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Yeah. It's it's in health and welfare.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. And they'll go to approach. So

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Yeah. Right. And then there's a bill that we did take testimony on last year, and it got put and I don't I don't remember the number of it. It got put on hold because there was a pending court case, and I think it was related to credit card fees. Oh, yes. And we were waiting to see, and I think the court case might be Settled? No. Settled this month or next month. No.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Was one was required. It was what? It

[Representative Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: would have made the credit card fee on all taxes, all local taxes, state sales taxes, tax.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Yeah. And Andy mentioned it to me the other day. And I said

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I don't remember seeing that up there. I I

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: thought we still had it on Here's 100.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: The 80% over on YouTube.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Yeah. One thirty five. Okay. And he was thinking about introducing a new version of it. I was like, think it's still on our wall.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It's still in play. We have the sponsor.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: There is another one. We might wanna just ask in a in before having him back in, the drafter if that court case has been settled in a way that would, because I think that there was a lot of ambiguity in gray area and we didn't wanna do anything until we heard back.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's right. That was my local merchant that

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Exactly. Exactly. It was your constituents. But there is another bill because I just signed onto it. That Andy's doing? Yeah. Okay. I think it's the same kind of thing. I think it just shifts the cost from banks to credit card companies.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah, I think that was another issue.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Ships the bank. I mean, I told he asked me about that and I was like, oh, we could just amend this bill.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay, so we'll put 135 on for Well, Brooke, if you can ask the drafter if The court case. If the court case has been settled, then we can take it. Yeah. It might not happen, but

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I think it was scheduled for January. So I don't but I don't not an expert, so I don't. I just so it's in the ether somewhere.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And then there's the appeal time. And Right. Yeah. For sure. Okay. But okay. That's good to know. Alright. Anybody have anything else in here that's really important to you?

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Are we gonna do a miscellaneous tax bill, or are we gonna just respond to the one we can? Alright.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We use it usually comes from the Department of Taxation. Okay. Then we use it's a revenue bill, so it starts there. We then change the denverations Okay. Frequently. That, because it is so broad Yeah. Is where we will probably have to put anything we do on property tax if we can find anything to do. We well, we have the cap built. Yeah. Because we could

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: because what's important to me is just looking at the past landscape and and making tweaks as we can, especially in response to the federal. I didn't introduce anything because I assumed we would have a miscellaneous bill we could use or we could do a committee bill. Yeah. And I don't know when the deadline for the June. It's the end of the month. '29. I think so.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. I don't I mean, I'd like we've we've heard about the income tax and the HR one and the impact on the state. A lot of the Medicaid changes, provider tax, provider tax being the big one that Nolan is really worried about, but it doesn't start until next year after the elections. And but in the it's phased in, I think, over three years. That one is gonna be a lot of money plus Right. Is it 7 to 9,000,000 it's gonna cost us to administer, plus then you're gonna have to do the double, and that's all in health and welfare. But I wanna look at the health insurance, which is ours. We have banned associations in this state Two years ago no. Must have been five years ago. Trump won. They allowed they went out with the Affordable Care Act. Everybody went to the exchange and nothing can higher. Trump won, said they could come back and we took a lot of testimony in here and the small businesses were really benefiting because if they're all together, they get in the big big pool, and rates are cheap because it's a much bigger pool. And I was dreading having to make a decision, and then the feds changed their mind and said, no. Yeah. And we got off the hook. Well, now they've said yes. And I don't know why the chamber hasn't been in here. I think the people that ran the last association have moved on, And so I've been told they're working at how they restart that. Just new people. I assume this committee would have to allow them and then would have to regulate them. And I don't I think everyone is waiting. Enrollment ended. I believe yesterday, open enrollment, is waiting to see the impact on the exchange of the new higher rates. And then still don't know what the feds are gonna offer in exchange or if they're gonna find deduction to the extent the house has senate hasn't taken it up. But if we get a significant number of people, young, people mostly because they have the best chance, opting out of buying insurance, that could have a really negative impact on our insurance pool, which is small to start with, and further jack up the ranks for everybody else. So, we've got a lot, and it hasn't hit, like, property taxes in the middle of the table because I think everyone's waiting to be able to calculate as of yesterday what happened, but I have a feeling in the next couple weeks, we'll start to get numbers about who's in, who's out. I do intend to take a look at whatever the suggestions are that came to us for the teacher's health care. I know that I think the only thing that the commission finally agreed on was that salary and benefits should be negotiated together, but there was not agreement as to which level Teachers have much better health care than they did. I would say they felt like they may have platinum plans. Generally, they've been younger and healthier, but it is being expensed for schools. I'm also we've got numbers, we can we'll take oh, we are going to take some testimony. Make The Something Foundation campaign for Campaign talking for Vermont about their numbers for your shared services. And if we can find anybody else, Holcomb's supposed to be sending me names from red states to talk to have come in and talk, but I haven't seen them. Charlotte, you haven't got anybody per seat for the

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: you haven't gotten anyone to testify for the other than the campaign for Vermont for shared services? No. That's what I reached out to. Is there someone else I should reach out Well, we were supposed to get it. I just wasn't

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: worried if we heard anything, but sounds like no. We could get because I don't want her

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: to give the contact to Charlotte. Yeah. Mean, it would be great to hear from Sherry Sousa down at Yeah. Woodstock, the Woodstock area because they've had a very successful model.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. I mean, let's heard it. But Let's see. If you can get that into Charlotte, we'll get them in. We will we'll get that you know, is there something we can do to tweak that to get a little more balance? We are hearing from the kids. That's next month. That's next that's the 20 oh, of next month, not this month. Yeah.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Oh, which is.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It was a perpetual event. Oh, okay. Okay. And I know they had us out to the community college, but she wants to talk about I'm not sure if it's dual enrollment or early college. We call early college. Think and that was the one we were told don't touch because

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Depends who you ask. It goes both ways. So

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: we will see where that goes. Think that's it other than all the bills we

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: Well, I had to say, I think I mentioned to you that I was looking for a miscellaneous tax bill or something small to attach it to when it relates to reverse mortgages.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Oh, that's right. Do have a billing on that?

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: I don't have a bill.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: I'm not gonna do a bill. Thought it

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: was best to do, rather than create the buyer of a bill, is put to it on this way, because that's where it basically is.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. Now if I'm sure we can find a bill up there that has the word tax in it. Yeah. If they don't send us one

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Oh, I already got two coming. Mhmm. So we will.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: You got two bills with taxes? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm we I think I can only remember one year that there I mean, if nothing else, we have to attach to the federal code. There's a couple things in there. I'm still I gotta call to contact Joe Rimmick. Apparently, when we rewrote the tax sale statute and said, you can't evict someone because they owe $200 in taxes. We settled them at something like 1,600 or yeah. Apparently, there is an old development in Warren that sold very Somebody emailed me about Like campsite. Oh, mentioned that. Yeah. And in order I mean, yeah, the taxes are $100 to $200 a year and people have never you know, it's just something somebody bought fifty years ago and it's sitting there, nothing's done, they die, the taxes don't get paid, it's in an estate and the town and I'm not sure if I'm I'm hearing from the town clerk, but what they've been doing is just once the tax has fallen or reared, they've been going to tax sale and being able to get these things off the books. Mhmm. I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't somebody who's buying them up as they but somebody's paid the tax on the previous but the total it would take twenty years for the total amount of taxes to reach the level where they could go to a tax sale and they're fine. And I'm hoping I sent the emails over to Jill last fall, and I just need to see if they found a solution. If they haven't, then we may do fine. It may be one or two others, but there's anomalies out there even. Catch. I think it's strange things sometimes.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I think that often the director of property, Jill's position has she she has some waiver authority on things and and that's

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: what was hoping she could tell me.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: She might. I I don't remember in that bill what we did. I don't either. But in general, she has the authority to do things like that. Were you talking about age four fifty four? That one?

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I think it was no. Was it came from Emily. Did the work on that.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Came to Gabbat. It started in the house, but yes, and then it was in Gabbat. Was this the minimum amount of past due tax debt before the municipality moved forward with the non judicial tax sale method? That's it. Yeah. Alan Bjerke was in this. Yes, he was. Presenting last year by that. Yeah. Because he thinks it should be fixed. It's dealt with. It was section 54 of that bill. Oh, that bill, h four fifty four is act 73 for me. He was testifying The on the

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: districts, the reappraisal districts.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Yeah.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: This one, it just apparently, you know, there's all different numbers when you can go to tax sale and when you can't go to tax sale. And the concern was if you were somebody the town didn't overly like, even like, I mean, I have heard stories in the

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: olden days. Yeah, so this film made it more equitable. He might have been referring to something that's in the law, but he was doing it in the context of the H-four 54 property assessment. But I remember him talking about that.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Water burial. Now this is Warren.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Oh Warren. Warren. I'm sorry, I always love those two together. Yeah. So Good

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: thing you don't remember except this district. Sorry. They are in same school districts. Their cultural differences seem to have mellowed out. Okay. They were first merged before I did anything in government, but I was selling in stores in the valley. Can't come to Queens.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Well, my apologies. How much are

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: you spending? It's more than. Okay so nothing up on that board is anybody's bill that is really important. Need

[Representative Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Okay just to let me state you with so the PANDA PANS bill that about a medical condition that we don't really cover, but 16 other states have covered it. I I don't know enough about it, but if there is time, I I mean, if there's an advocate that would love to just

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Think why not will that we can get I mean, the bottom line is what's it gonna cost. Yeah.

[Representative Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: And that I don't know. So that's why we

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: have time.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And that's why things I and would like, and this is not the committee, to know why

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: $2.51.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Our exchange plans are twice as expensive here as they are in Maine with a similar demographic.

[Representative Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: What if we're from Jennifer Carvey is this might be a very modest and might not, I don't quite understand how Medicaid coverage might work, but she said it might be very light lift to 16 other states that died,

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: but I don't understand healthcare.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, you're not sure that

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: we see You're not a real

[Representative Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: standard and

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: we require the same premium regardless of age. Think

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: that's where you

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: said. Do they allow date? They don't do community rating in Maine?

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: Think I think that's their,

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: You know, some of the other problems.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, yes, we have other problems with pricing.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: So I have a bill that's not here yet. It will be probably next week. Manufacturers tax credit, which, the people that have it, I know there's the one business in my district that does have it, they can't use it because it was tied to the Vermont corporate income tax. So I can figure out

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: and do they not have sales in Vermont?

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Is that Oh I think I think I know that might be.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: It's why. I don't know the others that's why I have

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: We did a project ten years ago. We got the credit. They can't use the credit.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Can they settle? Is that a credit? I credit you can sell.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: I set the bill up to make it refundable on a annual basis up to a certain amount. You it could be good for sale. That is one way you can Okay.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I don't know. Because I know we do things, and this may come out of that, with the veggie credits because they were international, and they were trying to keep the plant here and save employees, not and they had to add employees in order to get a credit. Yeah. And they They did everything like they did all And it was like if if they couldn't get some local support today, because this was an international competition Yeah. All over the world. And we did it it ended up going through in a. We tried to get it on miscellaneous tax

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: I think Jane was pretty involved.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Jane was very involved. But it was trying to keep those jobs, which were good jobs and a lot of jobs in the kingdom. It's that in my cardboard box plant up in Richfurter.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: Yeah. Well, that's what Whitener does. It effectively makes cardboard zealous. You know?

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. I mean As

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: far as this so much is this the one was it in Innisbury?

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: No. It's up they make we put them in the energy tax. Remember our experimental thing we did with the energy charge. Yeah. That that that was in Ennisburg. Is it in Ennisburg? I thought it was in Richmond.

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: No. Not not Ennisburg. Actually, it's in Sheldon.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That may be it. In Sheldon. I know. They're they're aiming at the Canadian market. Yeah.

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: Well, they had it was a company I think they have, like, five or six plants around the country, and Lamont is the only one that had this tax issue.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, it was the surcharge. It was the energy efficiency charge. Yeah. That's what it was. And we allowed seven or eight companies that came in with projects to keep their charge, and the and the other one was they couldn't use electricity. They had gas drive blowers. Right. And but they could do more efficient, and we did. I remember there was a lot of tension with my co chair. Mhmm. And then COVID hit, and everything kinda got Yeah. Put down, and we gave

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: And so there was a delay.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. And it was an extension.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: Mhmm.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We probably should find out how that went.

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: And I gather was successful. Looked like they hit the pregnancy.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: They had after COVID had been successful.

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: And one of the problems was they had a very active person who was the liaison with legislators who kept everybody involved, and they got rid of them, and they had one of the local crowd that comes to everything, and the flow of information was

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: close to stopped. On the right hand, I understand that the pellet plant at Rite Aid is doing well.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: Yeah. Yes. Basically, all there, they fit. I went down and toured it in the summer. Went down and spent a couple hours there at Dorian. If you ever need to, like, you know, sweat off a couple pounds, you're great. It's a great tourist. It's really a. But Yeah.

[Representative Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Yeah. They went through the whole the whole thing with them. They showed me

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: where they were doing their Okay. Upgrading, and it sounds like it sounds like it's all come together and it's they're getting the results they expect themselves to do.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That has been a long, slow, painful

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: Maybe we'll never see them again. I don't know.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: No. They have to come back because they've got the deadlines.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: Have to take back. It's they've sounds like they've got us figured out.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: It'd be great if we never saw them again.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: Yeah. Last we mentioned that. Under those trends.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Josh Barney.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: I I heard you said to them, I really don't want to see

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: you again. You're an shrimp barley in. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

[Senator Martine Larocque Gulick (Member)]: Let's do a field trip.

[Representative Scott Beck (Member)]: Yeah. Yeah. It's a very

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: hot What's the role of group? That is a well, somewhat chilly. And well, it's a painter in Vermont. Okay. We've got about three minutes, so we should go up live here, move to Room 11. I think they're looking for us.

[Senator Randy Brock (Member)]: K.

[Senator Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And then we will come back here. And you can feel