Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We are live, and now we're going to officially Beck is they're having horror problems. I had invited senator White just because it was her bill, and I have a feeling since it calls for a study, that we were informed of the study that it's done and recommended no changes. The one plate we you are not allowed to shut off anybody who has any medical condition or equipment. You can't shut electricity off during cold spells. We do not have a reciprocal thing during heat waves Mhmm. Probably because until recently that has not been an issue here. It can be. I found out that Beck is constituent. The issue was that she was paying the utilities in her rent and her landlord did not pay the utility bill. And the big cost was she lost food in her refrigerator and freezer. Wow. And there is I suppose you could do small claims court on that one. It would be your only recourse. But that's the that's the story on that. So that one I don't think we can actually help with, but I just I want to have the committee have a discussion about we could testimony was they just asked the utilities not to turn off the electricity during heat waves and they comply. They they don't need a granny dying of a heatstrover because they shut off very air conditioner than they do sell to the public. So that one we're running into a bunch of these that there's nothing we can do and there's nothing Why is this one of this committee? Does it have the implication? We are responsible utilities. This is an electric utility regulation. And so before I'm gonna start a second section up there for pills that we are gonna do, that's one. And I want to run it by you all. So this is the only committee it goes to? It doesn't go to No. This would be it. Okay. If we I mean, it's here. If we kill it, it's dead. So what exactly are we acting or not acting on? Oh, I see. Bill, as I remember, called for a study about a payment or a subsidy Yep. For utility rates. Other states have that. Massachusetts is the one that comes by. They deregulate it. Yeah. So they don't have any control over their utility rates. It's just in the market. We have not deregulated, so I would be okay with this study. So No. The study's been done.

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Yes. That's the

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Oh, so now we're in that we'll be asked for Oh, I see. We're asking for a study that has been done. Okay. It was, and we posted it on our website, I think last week.

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: The study concluded when RPUC recommended to not create a new broad based electric grid affordability program because there's already multiple programs that support this and the real burden is like heating and transportation costs not necessarily electricity. We asked for this study and they concluded to not do this. We'll get

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: this cost. So create a new structure because it's more about the cost driver than cost. Okay. Yeah. Alright. And so that the one thing that isn't that they asked that they asked for was that no shutoff during the summer. With all of these, and we went through this with COVID, once you say you can't shut it off, there's a certain amount of people who will not pay it because there's not any consequences, and once I get my second notice and know the third one's coming, I'll run-in and pay the bill or part of the bill. That makes it difficult for the utilities Mhmm. To budget. And so that's my my thing says it's not It sounds like that instance was really an odd, like, case that probably We had the landlord from hell. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mean how often does that happen?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah, yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: But you'll get the landlord, you can't say, well, if any of you said you can't evict them during COVID, they stopped paying rent and I've still got to pay my property taxes. So there's always a fine line there. And I got a couple of I got two letters from Wyndham County telling me to pass this bill, but we would have to come up with a way to subsidize them Mhmm. Which we would have to raise money somewhere. Okay. Then there's two zero five. That's the AI bill. And I just thought after hearing yesterday's presentation from NCSL, we should have some time to talk about data centers. I don't know why I'm assuming two or three we've got are in Chittenden County, maybe Correct. Do you know where they are?

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: At least one is.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: No. They there's I looked at the map they have. There's two in Chittenden County and one in Stowe.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And one in Stowe.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: A data center.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: But I don't think the data centers that we have would actually meet the definition of the data center

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: of the

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: bill. Yeah.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: The bill is about these massive things.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And I think we need Yeah. If we're gonna do anything, we need to make sure we Yeah. Define it to so we don't lose what we could probably use as some good in smokeless employees.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Our centers are, like, in the one megawatt

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. That's what I figured. Yeah. And but so make sure that we define that 10 megawatts is a lot. It's seven or You can give me

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: a moment. It's 750 megawatts.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So ten's a big deal. 10 is a big deal. And I just keep hoping the Canadians still love us because they're the source of

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: a lot out of our power. Yeah. The whole purchase power agreements. Yeah.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I'm just thinking, wouldn't those trigger F250?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah, I mean that's the other question is, and I think we should have ANR in or maybe the natural resource yeah. The Add two fifty board, whatever we change the name

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Larocque. To Larocque.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Larocque. Yeah. We should have them in to talk to us about do we already have Yeah. The I mean, I just we outlawed fracking. Yeah. Well, nobody wants to frack in Vermont. We don't have anything to frack. I mean,

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: do you

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Do we have the controls we need?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I just, you know, Vermont, as we see in the map that was provided, is certainly not a hotbed for even a regular old data center.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: No.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: So,

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: if Act two fifty covers one of these 100 megawatt facilities, AI facilities that Let's can be down

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: yeah. I don't see the point of that.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: The Act two fifty people we need to talk to.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Well, two things. One No. I think actually the what the the entity to have in before LERB is the PUC. Yeah. Because they're they're the ones that would regulate the electricity part of it. The LERB would probably say until we know what it entails, we can't say anything. But the PUC would be able to say if there's a how they regulate a huge user of electricity. That being said, I also heard that the House Energy and Technology Committee about to vote out a bill on the spirit. They have Okay. Heard that in the elevator. Yeah. So I don't know if we wanna just wait for that and see what they came up with.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, we're gonna find something to do for the next

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: four weeks. You know, plow? I mean, current law, when you build a structure, you have to Yeah. Like, coordinate that with utility. You gotta make sure they have enough power in Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Water, but I've you've got a town that doesn't have stoning. But if your intent take hers, how do you yeah. But we we will do our due diligence because when it comes over, I don't know how much time we'll have taken up. That's the feeling. At some point, we are going to be deeply into school stuff. Well, that's what I was gonna say. We can keep learning about seesaws. And what's happening with two twenty? Is that coming back soon? Or tomorrow? We've got that. What about the unpaid caregiver accounts? That's out there. And, we'll how things go. Now what about

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: I personally love a refresher on the foundation formula components and the internal pieces of it if that's going

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: to occur to us or it's not just We a

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: it's it is the present law. So we can get legal counsel. Yeah. We could see if John and Kirby can come in to give us they came in once, but we can ask you to give us a refresher course on how a foundation formula would work. Okay. We've got 02:20. We've got data coming in tomorrow. We're waiting on 02:25 because that's coming out of economic development. That's the two no. That is the sunset on veggie, and we've got 02:48 a that I gather they're doing major things to in the house. So we've taken a look at that. I think we decided yesterday one sixty five, which was the grand list values of parcels with wetlands, that that was already taken into account when it's evaluated. Two zero four is what we've been talking about. 205, we're talking about. We've got the tax credit. We've got us that are your Chittenden. 251, neuropsychiatric conditions. This is an insurance coverage, but I can't even pronounce. Things. But Senator Lyons knew exactly what I was talking about and said, Oh, PANDA. Okay. We have a bill coming in there which would be a Rare Disease Advisory council. Part of that, she said, we could ask to get that advisory I'd

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: like to pick your

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: brain about that or Senator Gulick.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I have a constituent that's talked to me about that rare disease once, I mean, totally unrelated to this entity, don't

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: know if it's in health and welfare or it's coming from the house, but there is It's already come from the house. It's come from the We have it.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: In the end of last year, they passed it. Right? I think. Perhaps.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I don't all I know is that we have it, and it came over from the house. I don't know when. Yeah. I'm assuming we're not gonna I shouldn't assume anything, but are we in the second home tax for the school construction? Is that That's being done In another It's It's already in Act 73, it's set out in the assumption in 73 is that it would pay for the exemption, the household exemption in the bill so you don't run into we have to raise the rate to raise the money to pay you the second home, but until we actually have the blisters go through and give us the estimates for the second homes and their value, we won't know how much money there is there or where that rate needs to be set. Right. But that is in the works. If it doesn't, I've we've got my bill, we've got your bill, there's a couple bills to do that, and the longest thing about the miscellaneous tax bill is tax is such a broad term that things can go on. I've got the supplemental security income payments for households we haven't done anything with. Sales and use tests on fuel use to residents for domestic use, tax exemption. We haven't taken testimony on that.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Which bill is that? That

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: that is two seventy four, and I believe it's a tax exemption. They are they're yeah. If Okay. Your whole household, if you're we don't tax fuel oil to house residences. We tax fuel oil to businesses, sales tax. This would ex this would say that you're going to tax it to, I believe Nonresident. Non I think the deal residence. Non homestead residence. So second homes and Airbnb. And Airbnb. I have a feeling that that until we know if you're operating in Airbnb and you own the property and it's a short term rental, then you're not a resident. It's not a residential property. It's a nonresidential property, I believe. It It's like an apartment building. You're renting it out. It might get problematic if you try and get into the people that rent their back bedroom out during foliage season or maybe a weekend a month during ski season, that but I think we pick up the the commercial ones. The second homes we aren't gonna be able to do anything with until we get the listers to tell us who they are and where they are. Okay. The captive insurance bill is here. It's an h bill, and yeah. Our housekeeping is here. It's an h bill.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: You do those. Just get them out of here.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. Two eighty is a second homes school construction aid. We're still taking testimony. We took testimony to two eighty two, and that might be we had Kirby and Pat and everybody in last Thursday. That one we haven't done. Meals and rooms tax, again, that would make us oh, I I have gotten an email from the Wedding Planner's Association on that one. I told you. I thought you sent out the the energy and it came back. That would put us up there being very high on that one. So I'll leave that to you. The salt bill is out.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yep.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And approves? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The sponsor had asked us to pass over $2.96. $3.00 8 we did last year. Maybe since. We've got three twelve we did today. Yes. Then there is the fee on posted land. Does anyone

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Probably decided yesterday we're not gonna do that.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I thought so. I just wanna double yeah. I mean, I know what I've been told. There's a lot of it that's posted, but how do you get to if there's rifle shot going around 50 feet or, you know, from your backyard, I don't know. All of that is not information. Homestead for everybody 65, no property, I love that, but

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Yep.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I don't think we can

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: It's something we can continue to talk about. It's a topic of rises, I think.

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Throughout the campaign. Yes.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And the government list of scholarships, we're doing that tomorrow. Which one? Governor's list of scholarship granting organizations. We're gonna do our first walk through on that one tomorrow. I don't know what it is.

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: I know we get a big bottleneck the week after deadline because that's our finance deadline. Are there bills we know are coming out of committee that are gonna come here that we want to start taking testimony on to some like There's a week.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: The child. Early childhood education that I know about, no I don't. And that might be

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: I'm hearing optimism that C PACE might leave your morning committee, do you think it will come here?

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I think it will come here.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: I think I probably this morning figured out how it works.

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: The load of crossover week if you wanted to take some testimony. If you all think it's

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I think it will I I mean, you should we've asked the chair, but I think we're close on it, and we might vote it out on Friday or Tuesday. I don't know. It is something that you we should take start lying to people because it is

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: It's gonna take a

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: while to figure a suit that will be Yeah. We'll start taking testimony.

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: It's a one thirty one thirty eight. That's one thirty eight.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes. Yeah. So who do you wanna have? Just walk through it to start?

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Well, Chris Delia. It's

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Yeah. He was very helpful. Okay.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Great. Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. We have, I guess it's left over from last year, a bill on credit card fees.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, we

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: talked about that.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I think that put up last year because it was in court. And Christopher arrived in to tell me this morning and I said, What are we doing to bankers? And he said, Nothing. The court hadn't decided on that if it was immediately appealed, so credit card charges and the ability of states or anybody to regulate it is still in court. So that's what we did pass over last year and it is still being litigated. Not done.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Did we put

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: a bill about, like, the rounding on your receipt? I'm getting a bit of chatter in my Does this about

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: your party?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: My district. Yeah. He's still getting a little fired up Penny.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Not getting their pennies.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: I wanna bring pennies to the transaction. You could to bring cake.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: No. But you could also have Delia talk to us about that. He he he I don't know if you guys went to your bank's breakfast this year. Yeah. You have them in your you have Yeah.

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Yeah. Come

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: in. Did a whole thing.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Well, yeah. He did the he gave us this little spiel about pennies, but then it turned out that the Federal Reserve Bank has done something to ease the penny crunch. So he can address it, but it is kind of a it's one of those things that the Federal Government did without actually having a plan. Shocker. The

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: banks are they've become very miserly We'll see if

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Christina can come in. I mean, we haven't had to christened

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: years. Just pennies to be thinking about revolving the fraternity man. Celebrate. They're all collector's items now.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah. I just heard a little bit of chatter because there was a minimum amount you could use your credit card for, and they fell below that. And then it was like 73¢ was the change, and they got 70 or something.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: Whatever. They were insuring Yeah. About

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: it's since the 5.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: So you put there around the disclosure. Even if you price all your stuff in a nickel over One of taxes. This is taxes and just yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, I mean, doing things at $9.99 was a retail thing because it sounded cheaper than $10. Yeah. So now it's going to be $10 for

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: If you want bread change. If you

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: want spring tents. Spring tents. So, anyway, okay. So we will talk to the PUCC, and they'll come in and talk to us about data centers. We will talk to and that that is probably the biggest bill we've got here. We will talk to who are you? The tax department. Think I know they can't they can't do second homes now, and I doubt that anybody knows who's renting out their back bedroom and how you divide that or I'm gonna tax one tenth of your fuel oil, I think that's that's gonna be hard to do. We have

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: to, though, as far as act seven thirty and that property. I mean, the thing that we need to do well, that's not is to set the definition. And I think in the bill, it says if we don't set the definitions, then it adds the missionary.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: What what is this? The

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Oh, second law. Of what exactly is you know, what is a non, what is it? Homestead residential. What exactly is that? If we don't, then the tax to insurance goes Yeah. All over

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Isn't that, again, something House Ways and Means is working on and sending it over to know they are working

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: on a whole lot of that, and they're also working on the yield bill to send

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: them to us.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And because they're revenue bills, they generally start that. But I like to keep us in the loop. And maybe we could ask for an update from property valuation as to what? We haven't heard from the clerk's association. And they I was finding I asked this morning. Nobody seems to keep any kind of record about property tax delinquencies. And the clerks know On a town by town basis. Town by town basis, but there's no place so that we can mean, we get all those graphs about insurance costs and school costs, but we don't have a graph about is there a similar line for property tax delinquencies? Are they in fact going down, up? Are they remaining the same? We they said somebody said, oh, the legal sayings because we changed the definition. Well, we made it a higher amount of 1,900 is thinking in my mind, and you can't if I've got a $50 or a $100 delinquency, you can't send my house tax sale, which should decrease the number of tax sales. I don't think most towns rush into them, but there are stories out there from the good old days. But it seems like we ought to be tracking that information. And probably should, maybe we'll ask the clerk's association to come in and talk to us at property valuation about a system. Because again, this is, we know what's going on with schools, we know what's going on with insurance, we don't know what's going on with taxpayers. We don't know.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, we also don't know how many get paid, how many get paid in full?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: How many, yeah, I mean, that's the other side of the coin. So maybe next week or even if we yeah. I'm walking on eggshells. I don't wanna ask my town clerks for too much, especially not now before town meeting. But

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: I mean, if somebody wanted to go through and go through every town's report, they would and they list it all, they iterate the amount by a year and who the owner I mean, they it's all there, but you'd have to go through two fifty one reports.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: But I I would think somebody knows in the clerk's office how many delinquencies there were this year, period. Not who, not how much, just how many tax delinquencies are there and how many were there last year?

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Austin Davis caught me in the hall about this, so I think he saw some data about this somewhere. I don't know.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, there was apparently a show on Hancock

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Granville and Hancock.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Granville and Hancock.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Yep. That's

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: seeing it, but they're so small that, like, three delinquencies was 30% of their tax. They're in my district. Yeah.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: They also had a really, really high their CLA went up or went down, so their tax rate went up because of that. I mean, obviously, school spending too, but that was one of the driving factors for the huge increase. And so So Yeah. That was poor talent. But mean,

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: we should be monitoring that somehow. On Peelers Roxbury Roxbury is looking at a huge tax increase. Same budget, but it's the CLA in two different towns. So a budget is having a very different impact on those towns. But I think we we'll try and get some testimony on that and see if we can track it. Alright. Anything else in here? So we will get PUC and the whoever what is the new name for whoever's in charge of Land Use Review Board. Land Use Review Board to come in and talk with us about and maybe ANR. Do we have adequate tools to protect us from

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Onslaught of

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: the on

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: the Yeah. Well, just somebody coming in and draining every reservoir in the state because there's water and PC probably could control electric. The other thing though is if they're going into anybody else on the grid, if it requires if Massachusetts is incenting them and they have to build new mission lines, Vermont has to pay a share of that cost. They pay a share of our cost, but we aren't building the lines that they could be. So, if AI centers start going into places on new ISO New England, we could be paying some of that cost in our electric rates, but we'll get the PUCs to talk to us about that. And maybe we'll say, no. This is the first time when we told them we wanted credit for saving electricity and not using it, we were told we were nuts. We got it. What is it? Forward capacity. We get a forward capacity payment because of our efficiency efforts.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: If I'm going to build a data center, who do I have to get permission from?

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: So, you're PUC or a PUC? Well,

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: that would be local planning.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: You have to get from the PUC to take a certain amount of electricity? Is there some point in which you can't plug in?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's the question. Maybe it's just at 02:50, would you? And if I be at 02:50? Yeah. I mean, I know Montpelier said no, probably they came in because they would have used up out of the sewer capacity.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: I guess that's a question which I don't know the answer to. Yeah. It's depending on the size of the data center, do you have to get permission? Or is there some limit based on the electricity use? If you build a center that is in an urban area and it doesn't exceed the size limits and so on of a plot, doesn't cast an ugly shadow, and so on and so forth, do you have to get an Act two fifty or whatever permit?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah, I think that's the question. I I don't know. Is these technology permission too.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Mhmm. I mean, that would have unlimited transmission.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: No. Yeah. These don't? No. Yeah. I mean, that's but if you are on a five acre site and as technologies improve, you might be able to pack a whole lot of stuff using a whole lot of energy into a small footprint. Do we have the capacity to say no? What would trigger Act two fifty?

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: And the converse is the bill to prohibit diocetids for three years. And we ask ourselves, with the speed that technology is developing, do we want to put ourselves out of the growth business for three years by law when there may be a solution to this day after tomorrow fall? We

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: don't. Yeah. I think that's part of my concern is do we just wanna say we don't want you and get ourselves labeled unfriendly to technology? Mhmm. We can't stop that situation. I like

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I think versions. I think, first of all, like I said, the bill

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: is about bigger, bigger rights, first

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: of all.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Second of all, I think a lot of states that as we saw in the Ann South that incentivize them are now, like, regretting that they incentivize them and are like, oh, shoot. Maybe, actually, we want to

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Mhmm.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Impose limits on these things. And so I think it's smart to take a pause and make sure that we have the regulatory framework in place. And maybe we already do. Maybe the PUC and Act two fifty already would cover it, but maybe not. And so I think that's the point of the bill is to make sure. And that's what I think the house committee has dug into quite a bit. So you might wanna check-in with Yeah. Rep James, see where they're at. But they'll also do our own due diligence.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: And I said do our own due diligence because also you don't want to get into a situation which you lock yourself out of and you create a legislative logjam for something that actually could be a significant benefit to us and that the safety things that may not exist today may in fact exist tomorrow. But then we get into a situation which it takes us, you know, five years to make a decision, then we're out of the picture.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Yeah. I mean, I think the the the safety concerns I mean, the the things use a ton of energy. That's the thing. They use so much. Now our grid is already, you know, a little So we can start I mean, this is to give us pause so we can look this through

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: before we're faced with

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: of course, if we're faced with something, we always say no.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Right. And that's it. Do we have the power to say no?

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Well, might not be us. That's the thing.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, I think that's what we're going to asking the question. What power do we have? What do we really want to prevent? Just saying no.

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: I don't think this is the problem that we have to solve because it just, we don't have incentives in place. We don't have an abundance.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, we have incentives. They could come into veggie.

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: That center, that's losing salaries, if not mistaken.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's the employees. If they come in or capital improvements

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I don't generate that.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Don't think they do, but I think we need to make sure that that's that they aren't going to get a veggie brand.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: I think it's a point. Our electric feature. Yeah.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I think it's our our largest data center, one megawatt.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: People Yeah. Like that. Say, yeah. We love data centers as long as they don't use one two megawatts or x number of gallons a day. And then there's that. What is it?

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Just like I don't know.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We got it now.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: In skyscrapers per

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: month. Industrial wells and the water issue, something in if you sink a well to provide water to your manufacturing plant, you couldn't what did PCBs? What did we outlaw in the past? Maybe it was PFAS last last year, the year before. And it it could work at your ability. Of course, taking that much water out of the water table, and we don't have the real ability to do that. If we got there were a couple companies that were to take me out spring water. Remember we've had bills exporting water? They were bottling it and shipping it out of

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Sixty months at a time?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Shipping it out of state in bottles and there was a concern because you can draw down a water table from all of your neighbors. Was selling a house across the street.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: That has to be a lot of water bottle capability.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah, but one of these could sink a well and draw down the water table for $25 to make sure that we have the ability to

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: So darn hard, Bill, just about anything in this city.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I'm not

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: I know. Something to

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: really put these things, but that's Let's

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: take some test. I have actually I think we should I've I've had some conversations with the second. You know, we should take the data center approach. Right? So these data centers for, you know, AWS, those are the big ones. Right? It's companies, though, that need this computing power, and they need it to be really secure. Right. She's really reliable, you know, professionally managed. I I said, you know, why don't we take our, our captive insurance model? We're we're, like, the premier captive insurance regulatory. And why don't we take that and tailor it to data centers that are gonna provide computing power for companies that need really good you know, and these are, the one megawatt, two megawatt. Right? So not the Let's talk about that. 2.4 jigs.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Rather than ban things, let's encourage what we We don't lose weight. The question I asked yesterday, I was trying to get at, is there an offset? So if we're providing power to data centers that are doing, let's say, environmental efficiency work, you know, you know what I mean? Like, it's it's like it pays itself back. I was wondering if it doesn't sound like anyone's it doesn't sound like anyone's doing that data, but it would be interesting to see how it pays off. There is. Think, you know Gotta be.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: If you're, you know, looking for people that need really highly secure, well regulated data processing and computing services. Like, you could set up the regulatory framework here so that if a company needed that, they would know that that's if I need that level of service, like, Vermont has the regulatory structure that needs to do it. But electricity is the key determinant of that. Yeah. Know, you have to electricity.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Right. Mean, that's why I think, you know, those are, the one, two megawatt varieties. Yeah. Well, you know, you just have to have some base load generation to support that. I mean

[Christopher Mattos (Clerk)]: Have that? I don't think we do. We don't have excess. We ran a nuclear power plant that

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: we Right now. I think I think right now as we sit here, I mean, the environmentalist wouldn't wouldn't care for this comment, but a a business that decides to do its own generation. Okay. Can use natural gas. We have natural gas. Well, this is part of the stadium. Right? I mean That

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: should be

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: If you the all those res requirements, those are only for utilities. If

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We went through this with IBM and Greenville Foundries.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Because they use more electricity than most of the rest of

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: the state. As much as Burlington. Yeah. Yeah. They

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: were a big user, and we don't do in a lot of other states. Massachusetts, the more you use, the lower rate per kilowatt you pay. I never would figure out why my grandmother's electric bill was higher than mine because I had kids. I was putting clothes in a dryer and all kinds of other things, and we don't do that, so they didn't get any and that it was a competitive model with fish kill, and we finally let them become their own utility. But that was I think the first ten years I was here, and these would be similar big users. So it might be a good idea to think through how you would set them up because they aren't gonna get any preferential rate, which probably means they won't come here. New York, on the other hand, uses cheap Niagara power and their business rate is lower than their residential.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: It's less than half of ours.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. They and we don't have Niagara Falls. So

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: You can just set up your guidance and put it right above your sewage treatment plan.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Oh, I was thinking of your manure. I was thinking of the, actually.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Member)]: They cut your manure anyway. I have wood fired.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Wood manure. You could.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Which probably a reason why they aren't gonna come here because if they're getting a preferential rate for being a large user in other states, they are not gonna come here to do that.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: However, set it their own generation. That

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: is something, and they're going to have a lot of roof space to put solar panels on.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: The other states are starting to require that, they're saying. So you gotta go ahead, build your 100 megawatt, data center, but you gotta, you gotta roof on it.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes. You've gotta,

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: you know, very least. You can't just take it off the grid. Yeah. Double 11. Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's a big roof. Yeah. Large. Yeah. So

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: It's an interesting industry.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: Less than what I think I understand. That's what the whole reality nitride project is. Right? Is to to make it so the chips that run all these, CPUs that make it its data centers have a much more, energy efficient Mhmm. Chip. That's what the whole gallium nitride. That's why the military's getting it right because they they have these chips in in the aircraft, and they only have so much generation. So get a gallium nitride chip. You don't need to have this much generation, And that's what it's all about.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. Yeah. You know, manufacture those.

[Sen. Thomas Chittenden (Vice Chair)]: That's what we got the, yeah, we're doing it over at UVM and Vermont semiconductor and yeah. Yeah. The works were kind of on the cutting edge of that whole thing. Good for us.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Great. Okay. I just hope we've got some All direction in the right. Awesome. Do want to go apply?