Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We are live. We are live, and we have Caitlin Corkins from Downtown Village Downtown Village Center Tax Credit. There's Caitlin, thank you for This is our crossover weekend. We're juggling staffing bills. So, I think some of the committee would just like a little overview of the downtown tax credit, what it can be used for, and then question was, is there more demand? How much more demand? What aren't we doing? And then we're gonna hear if we can afford to give up another million dollars from the general fund, that we find out more about what we're being asked to spend it on.

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: Sure. Thanks so much for having me. I hope you can hear me alright. I'm squatting in a conference room, so.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Is

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: it echoing?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: No, you're good.

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: Oh, okay, good. Great. I believe Jess Fittenden just sent over some materials, but I also am happy to share my screen. I have a little presentation that I prepared for earlier testimony.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Have lots from you, but sharing your screen would be helpful than anyone in the room or anyone watching at home can see it.

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: Okay. Great. So I will I'll do that. Let me just get that going.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: hope you can all see that now. Wonderful. All right, well, I'll dive right in and please feel free to interrupt me with any questions. So the Downtown and Village Center Tax Credit Program is part of the state's Community Investment Program, which recognizes and supports local revitalization efforts around the state with dedicated staff and funding. The Downtown and Village Center Tax Credit Program is the biggest carrot that we offer through the program. It was created in 1998 and currently we award $3,000,000 annually through the program. It is competitive. To qualify for the program, a building needs to be at least 30 years old and located in a designated downtown or village center. Applicants have three years from the date of award to complete their projects. And what I'm going to do quickly is go through the basics of the program, show you a few examples, and I can certainly talk a little bit about the ongoing demand that we have. So very briefly, there are different types of credits that are available through the program to support different types of projects. And I'll go through these really quickly. The first is our historic credit. This one is specifically tied to historic buildings. So it needs to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places. And you also have to be working through the Federal Rehabilitation Investment Tax Credit program, which is also the RITC program. So this historic credit through the state program is meant to work in partnership with the federal program and it offers a 10% credit based on the amount you're investing in your entire project. So these tend to be for larger scale projects where you're kind of doing all the work all at once. And

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: it

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: is often paired with low income housing tax credits to support some of the big housing redevelopment projects we've seen in a number of towns across the state. For projects that are of a smaller scale or for buildings that are old, but not historic, We do have other types of credits through the program. The first is our facade credit. So this offers a 25% credit specifically on exterior work with a cap of 25,000 in credit, meaning if you spent $100,000 renovating the exterior of the building, you would meet the threshold. We could give you 25,000 and no more after that. For buildings that are historic, but are not choosing to use the federal program, we do still expect that the work will meet preservation standards, but obviously there are older buildings in our downtowns and villages that are old, but not historic. And so with those buildings, there's still

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a lot

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: more flexibility to just make your buildings better, just freshen them up and make them look nice. The most popular type of credit that we offer through the program are our code credits. And this is specifically geared towards making improvements to bring a building up to current building codes. We have a lot of older buildings that are unfortunately not up to code, and this can be a real barrier for redevelopment when a property changes hands, or if a business, leaves and you're trying to get a new tenant into a building, often that's a trigger for having to bring things into code compliance. So this credit is intended to help offset some of the costs of those sometimes significant improvements. We work really closely with the Division of Fire and Safety. Basically anything that they are identifying as a code compliance issue is something that we can cover through the credit. They often send people my way, which is great. This credit can cover sort of the gamut, the really expensive things like putting a sprinkler system in a building or adding an elevator all the way down to smaller things like updating an electrical panel or adding a second means of egress, putting in hardwired smoke detectors. So it can be, you know, a pretty wide range of projects. And it is a 50% credit with some various caps. So again, there's a upper limit of what we can award a single project, but it's the most widely used for the program for sure. And then the final credit that we offer, this is the newest credit as well, just added to the program in fiscal year twenty three is our flood mitigation credit. When initially envisioned, it was hoped that this credit could serve as a way to incentivize property owners to make improvements to their buildings, to protect against potential flood hazards. As it turned out, it was introduced unfortunately or fortunately, I guess, depending on how you look at it right before we suffered significant flooding in 2023, and then again in 2024. So the credit has also been used since it was implemented to support building owners that were impacted by these flood events to bring their buildings back online. And while doing so, make strategic and thoughtful improvements, things like raising utilities out of basements and improving foundations, adding flood gates, that kind of thing. So that you know, the next time there's a flood event, hopefully they will not be knocked off of offline again, or will be able to bounce back more quickly from any kind of flood event. We're hoping and that has proved successful. We've had several projects that have taken advantage of this credit to help support getting them back up and open again, which is great. And our hope now going forward is again, people will be able to use this credit in a more proactive way to support projects that are thinking forward and protecting these buildings against potential flood hazards.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Okay. So

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: just a few more basics here. These credits- May

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: be all the time we have to go through, so that would, I think finishing that up would be good. I had the privilege of going through both this project and Gray Building, as it was formerly called, in Northfield. So Oh, great. I know firsthand walking through various things what conditions I know the Gray Building, we were crutching broken glass all over the floors.

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: Yeah, yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: They've come a long way.

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: They sure have.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: The general store was actually my real estate this week, though I know it well.

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: Yeah, yeah, this was a great project. I just did wanna quickly, if I could just show you something, because I know you had a question about project demand. And so this is just, I know the numbers on the screen are probably really teeny, but this is just showing the demand over the past ten years. We've been oversubscribed by a million dollars or more most every year in the past ten years. So certainly if there was an increase in funding for the program, we would be able to use those dollars. Then this is the same thing, just over subscription by the number of projects. And so, you know, obviously there are some years where we get some very large projects and they take up a lot of the credits we have available. And unfortunately, this means that there are a lot of really good projects that we can't fund. And, you know, sometimes people do come back to us and reapply if they're not successful the first time. But I think there are also some projects that, you know, if they're not successful, they just can't move forward and, you know, that's what we hope doesn't happen.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Right. That would be a good thing to know though, how many actually don't move forward without this credit. If you can track that.

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: Yeah, mean, hard to quantify. We do survey people who use the program sort of at the end, we survey them and ask them a bunch of questions about the program and all of that. We, you know, people that are not successful, we don't necessarily follow-up with them other than to encourage them to reapply.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Senator. Hi, Caitlin. Thank you for this. I just was wanting to confirm that the photos I saw of schools, those are not actual schools. They've been converted

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: to housing or something else?

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: Yes, that I is think by and large housing, there are some multi use like the Gray Building, the one in Northfield that has actually a childcare facility as well as office space and community space, but they are not active schools anymore, yes.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Okay, can this program be used for either public or private schools rehabilitation?

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: So the program is not available to municipalities or single family homeowners. So probably not, I guess it would be the quick answer.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay, thank you.

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

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: This is helpful. I think we all agree that this program does good work, But, Patrick, I think our question for you is just looking at the numbers across the hall, Can we afford another million dollars?

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And you

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: can take that. That's always been there's an awful lot of good programs out there. We fund every one of them, including school and construction, but we haven't had the money to do all of it, so it's hard choices.

[Patrick (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Patrick Durchin, Bethescalakis, Here's how I would answer that question. Under current statute, the board is allowed to issue up to $3,000,000 in credits annually. The governor's recommended budget amount maintained that $3,000,000 amount, so it did not include an increase over current law in the governor's recommendation.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. And we are not dealing in one of those years because the governor builds his budget based on the economic revenue forecasts that were done in July, and we had another one, the e board in January, and we are supposed to keep our spending his proposal within those budget limits. Some years we see a big change in the upward direction. Is this one of those years or

[Patrick (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: what Are you asking if the consensus forecast was upgraded?

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

[Patrick (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: No, I wouldn't say it was a significant change if you're looking from July to January. I will say that one thing that's a little sort of interesting in how we account for this particular credit that you saw in the presentation, the credits can be carried forward for a period of time. We will book the cost of the credits awarded in the year they're awarded in terms of when there's a change to the amount that can be awarded, but you'll see that they do, they do, that their claims, they're not claimed right away.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So So with the level of purchases, the credit.

[Patrick (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I guess the other thing too is, you know, so what we're talking about here, you know, in our parlance, we usually call it a tax expenditure, but a expenditure functions as license appropriation. You're choosing not to collect money for x, y, z reason, right? So that's kind of how your colleagues across the hall will sort of look at that when considering

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: the VAT goes up, then it's where do we do additional problems. But if the revenue isn't going up, then increasing this means you don't have another million to do that.

[Patrick (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Really, it's a conversation for you all that happy about what priorities you have and where you want to allocate them at your legislative priorities. Meeting

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: questions,

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: one will definitely go across the line because it's got lots of. I believe they're talking about it. Right? I think they are giving staff movement back and forth. So we can vote this out and get it officially over there, or we can say, we're gonna make this decision about the extra million dollars. Yeah. I'm trying. I think we might. Okay. K? Is it Yeah.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I'm not I I think it might be for Caitlin. This can I I'm just scrolling through the materials you provided us online? And can any of this funding be used for upgrades to water and sewer or wastewater systems?

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: Unfortunately, it cannot. As I said, we partner with the Division of Fire and Safety for any code required upgrades to buildings, and that is not something that they are involved in. And so we don't really have a good mechanism for ensuring that when people are making those improvements, that we have a way to inspect them and make sure that they're compliant and all of that. The

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: reason I caught my eye is you are funding, thank you very much, a program in my district. It's in Moncton. It's for the Moncton General Store, and one of their main needs is funding for their water and wastewater sewer septic system. And they are I mean, do you work at all with DEC to try that? Because they DEC could do that the same as fire safety does.

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: Guess that's a possibility. We do work with the DEC on brownfield mitigation. We have a process for that. So, you know, it's not something that's currently part of the program, but you know, certainly something that would, you know, expand the benefits to people for sure, but then also increase the demand as well, I'm sure. For

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: sure. But that's a big barrier to especially rural development is wastewater and water.

[Caitlin Corkins (Downtown & Village Center Tax Credit Program, ACCD)]: Yes. We hear that a lot.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: She said, so you couldn't do Well,

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: this project is too it's a private it's they're trying to open and look at a general store, and they need new stuff there. They would. And they can't get it. It's it's really expensive. Yeah. Yeah. So I just it just caught my eye. Is that's

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: a new Where are we from? From the East Palace General Store, and the septic system is under the war memorial across the street.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah. So, okay. That was just my own, you know, little question about the usage, but

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So committee, I've got a room full of staff for 03:00. I'm gonna try and vote this out. Let's see. As soon as possible. So for clarity, yes. If we

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: are not in favor of the increase, we will

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: be voting no unless We should vote no if we are not in favor of the increase on it. They they would remain at 3,000,000, which is what's in the governor's record. Have not we're not anticipating a large law at the end of this budget. That's what I was thinking. So Well,

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: when the friendly amendment of splitting hair. We have. It's not

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: impossible. I mean, it's

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: a time of a austerity and scarcity, and I would be more comfortable with the governor's recommend. I never thought I would

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: say that, but I I'm saying it. So you have it documented. Okay. I'm gonna put that on

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: for a

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: full I've got this next one.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: About now the 100?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Not at this moment. I'm trying, but it let's sit over for a day, but it is going across the hall. Right now we've got miscellaneous agricultural subjects. I think this might be the one I got so many emails on. And then we have creation studying the creation of model biodiversity, which is one I haven't even heard about. And then now I have one which is the Governor's List of Scholarships, Miscellaneous Ag, and an accolades studying the pre creation and model bylaws on the crossing of boat today. And we had public libraries on and economic development also for possible vote. And that we're gonna if you're ready to vote on any of those now Any question? We we could use the public library. We've been told that it will most likely go Yeah. I got to approach and that being worked on amendment could be added there. The worst case scenario is that we would have to do a floor amendment Mhmm. If we approved of the amendment that's trying to make everybody happy. Mostly deep instruction. Are you ready to vote

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Two thirty two, an accolade public libraries and the Department of Libraries. I

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: need a motion. I would move S two thirty two. I think it's version 3.2 as passed by the Senate Education Committee. Pretty much did an excellent job, Ms. Bell.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. So senator Hardy has moved that we approved at two thirty two and acclimating the public libraries and the Department of Libraries. Alright. Version 3.2, did you say?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah. That was what I was thinking.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Is there further discussion? Are there any amendments? If not, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say no. I'm not hearing any no, so I'm calling that seven zero zero. Senator Hardy, I assume you'd like to be fine. Thank you. Then we have are we ready to vote essentially on the downtown tax credits in the economic development?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Can I just hear a little bit more about I mean, I heard that senator Gulick concerned about it currently is 3,000,000? Right. That was what the governor proposed was 3,000,000. Senator Beck is suggesting a compromise. The 4,000,000 is in what came to us from that economic development. 3.5 is in the middle. Right. But how will this work in terms of will this go on their wall? How does this work in terms of

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I don't know what they're doing this year. I wouldn't be they're gonna there's a 100 appropriations in this bill. So everything over there, but it's gotta come out this week. Yeah. They may strip out all the appropriations and put them on the wall until they come to finalizing the budget. I know that's what they've done in the past. They passed the bill, but they'll take all the additional approach and put them up. Then when they've had time to go through everything that's been asked. Yeah. And it's going to be millions more. Hundreds of millions more. More.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: The last credit portion would go on the wall just like in a regular appropriation. Mhmm. You know what I mean? Is that

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I've worked on the tax credit that are signed up. You can't. We can't? Because the well, we'd have to strip it out of the bill, and I don't

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: think I mean, that's kind of that's what appropriations does. They strip everything out and they hold them, and I'm wondering Well, we could strip everything out and hold

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We them could strip out of tax. We don't want to strip the whole thing out because it's presently got 3,000,000,000 and no one's talking about stripping the 3,000,000. They might, if they think it's tight enough over there and they might need to take back some of that taxi capacity, I would think that it's they can do that. Yeah. So I think no matter what we do, they will decide. And this, I think, has been almost an annual discussion since it's all started, And it has gone both ways in this committee. It always comes as an increase. I would say a million dollars is slight compared to some of them that we've gotten. It's a good program. I don't think anybody says that we couldn't do more of it, but it's there's a lot of good programs out there that we are doing what we need to do. So

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I don't mind sitting on Beck's suggestion meeting in the middle. I think that sends a signal to approach that there is, support for it, but a recognition of the realities we're in. I would agree.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I've got three. I mean, there's support for the 3,000,000. Right? I mean, that's Yes. Yes. So This would be adding a half a million.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: This would be asking to add half 1,000,000. It doesn't mean, obviously, that we'll get the half a Yeah. It sends a message on the one hand, but on the other hand, makes a mark that marks the increase. Still, we

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: will need to get your amendment corrected. I can tell Rick. It's all ready. Okay. So you can you put the amendment up in the screen? Oh. No.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: He's not. Will tell him what he wants.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I think we're up we're going to voting to increase from 3,000,000 to 3,500,000. Okay.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So you're not gonna just fax anything out. Does the have the same thing at 4,000,000 of the house.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, we're gonna we're gonna be conferencing on that one too, I'm sure. And I'm sure the appropriations committees will.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: It is put in two places.

[Patrick (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah. It's on our side.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Some point in this prosecution. Yeah. It is. Ever that open.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Last question to that point, when it works through the house, do you fully expect their their health appropriations to strip out this amount? I was I was just dealing

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: with housing groups office earlier. And as far as I know, we don't to go through else.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: There goes this one, is it?

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Or It's in miscellaneous taxes, it's four. Miscellaneous tax also raises revenue by responding to the federal changes. Mhmm. So the miscellaneous tax aims to be revenues revenue neutral, but it generates more

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: than 20%. Know looking at the corporate tax, which is where we were losing about $25,000,000 this year. So they're moving into counseling. I know.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you need that ASAP? What? That you you you need Fritz and then what? So that

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Can you get it done by the end of the day?

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, I'm talking to friend. I'll try with it.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Amendment would be you strike out four and replace it with 3,500,000,000.0.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's But if you make that motion Yeah. Then you'll have to wait to get a clean copy to take it upstairs. But if you would like to make that motion, you could get this bill out of you.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: You wanna move it with the

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I'm what does or he's gonna wait.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: So let me see what that There you go. So I move that in amend Senate Bill three twenty seven as it has been receded in draft 5.1 from 4,000,000 to 3.5 for the downtown. Okay.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So senator Beck has moved that we amend s three twenty seven calculating the economic economic development by striking out the $4,000,000 number and replacing it with 3,500,000.0. That's a $500,000 increase, so there would be a 3,500. Is there any discussion? You

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: said 3,500.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Oh, 3 yeah. 3,500,000. So any discussion? Any further amendments? Okay, and this one, I'm gonna have clerk call the roll.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Senator Chittenden go. Senator Beck? Yes. Senator Hardy?

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

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Senator Brock? Yes. Senator Gulick? No. Senator Mattos, yes. Senator Cummings?

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

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Five two zero.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. Are you reporting that for economic development? No. Do

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: to you report the finance amendment, or would you like me to?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I could. I can do it. Yep. Okay. Senator Brock will consent something.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I need a motion.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes. Now we need a motion on the bill as amended.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: We'll have a draft number or a timestamp, but you still want to move it additionally without a pending? We don't can we move the whole bill now as amended with that motion without a draft number and timestamp?

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, I don't know about the Senate process.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I'd say yes. Did you make any other amendment before this? So it's gonna be 1.1.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It was 1.1 as amended.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I moved oh, that's gonna be something.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Should I commission that, madam chair? Yes.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, that wasn't as amended. Of I would

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: now move favorably the bill as amended draft 1.1 time stamp yet to be determined.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. We're happy.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Rick said he would be happy to let us know. Good to have. So Yeah.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: You're all on the same page, so We I think you're

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: all know what we're doing. Alright. Senator Chittenden has moved that we approve bill two thirty three twenty seven and acclimating economic development as amended, and the amendment we just made, which was taking 4,000,000 down to 3,500,000.0. So any further discussion? If not, all those in favor say aye.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Aye.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Opposed, say no. I'm seeing that as six zero one and Senator Brock is going to report for the committee which is basically just our amendment.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: So that's what's going go on the panel there. Yes, 1.1. Six point But six zero one is what the vote would be. Yeah. Yeah.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So any of those

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Six zero one is the vote. Right. And they'll probably come through the door. Public libraries. Is anybody no, we did that. Yeah, we did it. Ah, okay. I'm getting behind you. All right. We have cleaned that section. Now we're going on to miscellaneous agricultural subjects. I have Bradley Kirby as Two don't know if that's the correct order.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Pardon me?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes. Thank you. Please.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We're

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: on a roll. They'll slow us down. They don't wanna have to stay till 10:00 at night without pizza.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, I

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: concur. Randy, show me an oxalic acid sample. And so I'm going to do a brief overview of senate bill three twenty three. It is a

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: big one, and so I'll give you the 10,000. I

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: will give you the 10,000 foot level view of this bill. I'll share it on my screen, but I wanted to I wanted to be probably scrolling through this.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Is this the bill

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: that is dealing with the court?

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Have you seen?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. That did away with the blanket exemption for agriculture in downtown. I have been more emails on that one. So if you can explain

[Patrick (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Oh, good. Okay.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: What they do. Okay. I understand that we couldn't just put it back in, but that they were working on something else.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, so just some history there. Up until the May, the state was operating under the assumption that municipalities could not regulate farming activity that was subject to the required agricultural practices rule. And so the short version of that is the required agricultural practices rule is a series of water quality rules from the Agency of Agriculture that is meant to regulate farming and be in compliance with federal water quality inclusion requirements. And so not all farming is subject to those rules. You have to reach certain thresholds in order to be subject to that those rules, such as farming with getting a gross amount of receipts from farming, having a certain amount of acreage, having a certain amount of animals, things of that sort, to be subject to those rules. Smaller scale farming was not subject to those rules and thought of as being able to be regulated by municipal governments,

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: but

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the kind of larger scale farming was. And what Street did so Tap Street is a Vermont Supreme Court case that came out the May. And what that case did was construed the statute, the controlling statute, a little bit more narrowly than than practitioners have been construing it so far. And so what the Vermont Supreme Court said is that municipalities are free to regulate any farming activity regardless of the size, regardless of whether it was subject to the required agricultural practices rule, so long as those municipal regulations do not regulate the actual practices as outlined in the required agricultural practices rule. So you got free rein to regulate the farming, but weren't able to regulate the kind of water quality rules and treatments and things of the sorts that farmers had to do.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Okay. That's how the Supreme

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Court ran that rule. And and so there's some folks who think there might be some unintended consequences with that to kind of open the door for municipalities to regulate farming activity. And so what this bill does is meant to kind of restore that pretask street understanding of the municipality's role in regulating farming while also accounting for the desire for municipalities to regulate some kind of farming. And and so what this bill does is, starting in section two, page two, is amends the statute to do two things. The first two things it does here is say that a bylaw, a municipal bylaw, shall not regulate the cultivation or use of land for growing plants, food, fiber, Christmas trees. Any of those gardening in a person's backyard or smaller scale kind of growing plants, Viticultural orchard car crops. It's not a gardener calling it a personal garden. It's it's a little bit of a misnomer, but the idea would be smaller scale cultivating of land. A municipality may not be able to regulate regardless of the size the the land that takes place on. And then a municipality may not regulate the raising, feeding, or management of small backyard poultry flock, excluding roosters. So people could have poultry. People could have their chickens, but they wouldn't necessarily be

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: rooster before I am that he bothers the neighbors.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They were very thoughtful in drafting this. And but you'll notice that other farm animals are not listed there, so pigs,

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: cows, understand there is an issue with the pig farm.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I believe so, I believe so. And and then this section c is the the amendment that is meant to restore the pre tax rate status quo. So farming that meets the minimum threshold criteria in requiring agriculture pact rule and is therefore required to comply with the required agricultural practice rule.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I'm fine with this language, but I'm pretty sure the community I live in, we do have a bylaw regulating no more than six chickens. So is this overruling that?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You know, potentially, because the word small is not necessarily defined, and so, you know, potentially someone's gonna challenge that municipal regulation saying, well, six is

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Too many.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, or six is not smaller, or yes.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Probably will come down to older. And

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so the word small is not defined, so that's a potential potential issue. And so this section is meant to kind of restore that status quo. Also, construction of farm structures is not able to be regulated by, you know, municipal bylaw. And that is the statutory change to to kind of overturn is the wrong word, but to address the the potential unintended consequences of the Supreme Court case that we discussed a moment ago. This bill does something else too. So earlier, we were talking about the RAPs and acquired agricultural practices rule, farming activity subject to those rules is exempt from municipal regulation. Well, what this does is it tries to kind of change some of the circumstances in which a person would be subject to the rules. And so looking on page four, you'd be subject to the rules if you had gross income from agricultural products from the sale of agricultural products at $2,000. That's the current rule. So we're we're amending a rule in this section and not a statute. The Senate's proposing to increase that to $5,000, so they want to capture They don't necessarily want to capture smaller scale farming, they wanna capture farming with a greater income. If you're preparing, tilling, fertilizing, planting crops for sale or for charitable donation on a farm that is no less than four contiguous acres in size, so they amended that to permit farmers who primarily donate their crops as opposed to sell them. This is stating the same if you if you have these this number of animals on no less than four contiguous acres in size, was subject to the rules. No changes there. The secretary, otherwise

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: subject if you have 15 swan.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. You're you would be sub four no less than four continuous acres in size. And so there's a size and a number of animals criteria there to be subject to the rules and therefore exempt from municipal regulation of agriculture. And then another thing this bill does is it makes a change here. So you'll notice up until this point, we were talking more about no less than four contiguous acres. Right? And then so less than four contiguous acres, with the exception of farmers who are making income from their farming, on less than four contiguous acres, the rules didn't necessarily address or didn't necessarily want to consider that farming subject to these rules. And so what this section does is if you're raising, feeding, or managing livestock on at least one and less than four contiguous acres in size and has a sufficient land base for appropriate nutrient management, you would be subject to the required agricultural practices rule. So what this rule, what this piece is meant to do is to regulate individuals who might be raising livestock on one to four neighbors. And so smaller parcels in the the agency that agriculture is normally regulating, but not but in in the one to four range for for raising livestock. You'd be subject to the rules, and then you'd be responsible for carrying out these rules and ensuring that you're meeting these water quality standards. The next change here is for someone who's raising, feeding, or managing livestock on less than one contiguous acre or on between one and four contiguous acres in a municipality that flags ordinances or bylaws to regulate livestock, the secretary can determine effort opportunity for hearing that the livestock are causing significant adverse water quality impacts and the required agricultural practices rules apply. And so this scenario is supposed to get at situations where someone's raising livestock in less than one acre, and they do, that that does happen. And they're they might be having a significant impact on water quality if you're, you know, processing an animal or something of the sort. On a small acreage, you could, you know, have things leach into a water supply, and the secretary could make a determination at the opportunity for hearing to determine that those practices should be required to follow the state's regulations. Yes.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: So, I think you've already gone over this section, but you didn't, I don't think I heard you mention it, Bottom of page four. Adding the four for charitable contributions of farm crops. Yes. I think this comes into play in a couple places.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This does yes, this does come in later, this comes in later. And And Kirby will tell you more about it, but it comes in later when discussing eligibility for land use appraisal for agricultural lands. Yeah. This bill would change that such that donated farm crops might would at a certain dollar amount would make you eligible for land use value appraisals. That's right, Kirby. Yeah.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Okay. So Kirby's gonna talk about it in that context. But in this context Thank

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you, Peter.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: This is just saying whether you're plant you're planting things or etcetera for sale or for charitable, that's makes it and the owner of the enrolled and unrelated to the owner of the enrolled land. What does that mean? Does enrolled mean enrolled in UVA?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Enrolled in the required agricultural practices. So that might be, please.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I don't think you're enrolled. I think that's enrolled, but you spell it.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's language is being used in this section and in the sec Kirby King legislative council, same section related to current use.

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

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, yeah, maybe we can Oh,

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: maybe that was just a economy of east air on my part then.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah. Don't think it makes sense in this context.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Right. So

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Okay. And I'll have more questions for Kirby when we get to Kirby's section about this language. Okay.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. That's that's good. Good. Thank you.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yep. Okay. I think this is coming. Yes.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. Okay. And so those are kind of the changes to municipal regulation of agriculture. So what this bill does is, in terms of that piece, is it tries to restore this idea that municipalities may not regulate agriculture activity subject to the required agricultural practices of the rule, make some changes to what would be subject to those rules, and then essentially permits municipalities to regulate things that are not otherwise prohibited. Right? And not subject to these rules, and municipalities also can't regulate small backyard poultry blocks and growing up plants. That that is the big piece on on this bill. Are there any more questions on that piece? Because there's a lot more sections of this bill.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. No. I think Okay.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Okay. Do have a question. So so just on page five where it says raising blah blah blah, livestock on a farm that is no less than four contiguous acres in size. So if it's less than four acres and they're raising animals like this, then it would be subject to municipal regulation.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Potentially. Potentially. Unless another criteria is met that is currently in the rules.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Okay. So in Downtown Burlington, next to senator Gulick's house, somebody couldn't have 15 goats on their property if it was only one acre lot.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Potentially. And and that's one of the the problems of of the of the rule. And so we do have one thing I do wanna point out is number six well, I guess, one of the it it is one of the kind of loopholes. Right, and one of the things that this rule track the amendments to this rule is trying to change is to say, you know, if you are raising feed or managing livestock on one to four continuous acres, we can regulate you, And if you're doing on less than one continuous acre and you're having adverse water quality effects, we can regulate you. And, but otherwise, it would be subject to municipal regulation. And if it does not meet the criteria set forth in this pool Did did you just say it wouldn't be subject to municipal regulation if it was 4.1 acres or greater? That is that is correct. It would not be subject to municipal regulation. It would be subject to mitigation agriculture the regulation under these permits.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: What is the difference?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It it would not necessarily that is a good question.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We had two pigs in a very small downtown lot. Mhmm. And so complain that I know of. They were cute. What

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and it would it would depend on whether those activities rose to the level here. Right? And so if it's a small plot, it's not for continuous acres, so it's not going to meet the the required yeah. But if they're making annual income $2,000 or more, potentially. And there is another piece that has crossed out here, but it's managed by a farmer filing with the IRS at ten forty f of both farm income on a tax statement in one last two years.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It's probably it will come down to as long as they make they care for the waste in an appropriate manner so that it does not impact the quality of life of the neighbors, they'll be fine. But if there's a manure pile in the back of the quarter acres and it's a pig or a chicken that is impacting the neighbors. That's probably when a lot

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: of And

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: under these rules, you know, so long as someone does not trigger one of these threshold requirements in requiring agricultural agricultural practices rule, mean, this is how they could regulate that.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And it's also municipalities are in a hurry to do that unless there has been an issue.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And that would be, yeah, and that would be their their project.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. I know we're digressing here,

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: but I think and then if you add cannabis into the mix, that is a

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: whole different whole different structure. Yeah. Right? Okay. Because I'm having that issue in my district actually. Okay. Yeah.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We've got docs too. She's docs in case of cannabis. It it's a trifecta.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Are you on cannabis?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: They are. Because they live a little super mellow. It

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: is only Tuesday.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Okay.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We're going back to see if we can't get the spill out of you. It And it's this one needs to go across the phone.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: They're contributing to after school programs. Thank you, Keith.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: One one thing to note about Digress. One thing to note about regulation cannabis is that there is a different statute that does permit permit municipalities to set cannabis cultivation districts in their district. They have to have at least once. They can't use they can't, you know, essentially say you don't have any districts. They have to have something in the municipality, but they can regulate cannabis by bylaws separately from this. There's a little bit of a different scheme for cannabis.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: You can't say no, but you have you can't say when.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's exactly right.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Probably not next to the middle of the summer. And

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so we got to the accessory on farm structure permit section, and that's Ellen. And so it depends on how the committee wants you know, run and get to Ellen's and then

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: our domain involved. Right? I'll check

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: out the absolute slate counsel only in that it is expanding the exemption for accessory on foreign business from 1950, so potentially there will be newer permit fees.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Why don't we finish with you?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And then you're free, and then we'll do Ellen, and then we'll do Kirby. Because Kirby's probably where we're gonna use the most. Okay.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And then so I'm going to I've got my cheat sheet here, let me just

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: get the

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The rest is I don't think the rest is as nearly as exciting as municipal regulation of agriculture.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Not they could be as exciting as pigs. Well, uh-oh. What do we do to get to? We fund the others, we would say, just stumbling, passing our notes. Okay.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Alright, so section seven of this bill on page 11 amends what we what we what we think is a mistake in the statute. Basically

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I know.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Oh, you're skipping over Kirby's part?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm skipping over Kirby and Ellen's parts, and we are on page 11, line 13 for section seven. This bill this piece changes what we think is a bit of a mistake. So this section concerns conflicts between milk producers and milk purchasers. And if milk producer has a plural for verbal verbal or written contract with a purchaser for that purchase to buy the producer's milk, and there's a conflict that the purchaser wants to back out, this section deals with producer's right to request a hearing for that. So what they changed is if a request for hearing is made by a producer, refusal of the purchaser to purchase the goods shall not become operative until hearing a decision in the purchaser's favor by the secretary. The statute as written, it says if a guarantor request is made by a purchaser, refusal of the purchaser shall not be made operative, and that didn't make a lot of sense given the context of the statute, because you'd be requesting a hearing if you're harmed by something. So it'd be the producer requesting a hearing to force the purchaser to go forward with their contract to purchase the bill, not the purchaser would be gonna need that hearing. This next section on page 13, section eight, permits the local, what we call the Farm to School Program contracts on the local foods, through the change into the local foods program. Currently, there are only this Currently, there are only grants set up for the Farm to School program and this section would permit the Agency of Agriculture to provide local contracts, in addition to grants, for purposes of helping Vermont schools develop a Farm to School program. And so this section just kinda changes that to allow for contracts in addition to grants.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: What does that do in practice?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think in practice, grants might have reporting requirements, have more administrative process involved in applying for reporting on the grants and things of that sort, so this would permit the agency of agriculture to contract with an individual to set up a curriculum program to help schools develop part of the school program, or necessarily be a grant that has reporting requirements, things of that sort.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: That is range. I've never heard of this. I've heard of changing the word grant to award. Mhmm. But doing it in contract, I mean, a contract is is usually saying you're gonna provide some kind of service for this contract. I don't know. It seems odd.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And it might be worth getting testimony from the Agency of Agriculture to get more information about what their thinking is on that piece, but the idea from, at least from testimony that I've heard, is that they think that it would be administratively more efficient to be able to also pursue contracts instead of grant awards.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Would the contract be between the agency and the school or perhaps between the farmer and the school district?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, we can just take a look at the statutory language on page 13. Agency of Agriculture creates this program to execute, administer, and provide local grants or contracts, and so the grants and the contracts would be between the program for purpose of helping the school. Now that said, once it gets to, you know, kind of administering the program and kind of the nuts and bolts of administering that program, I might not be the best person to answer those questions at this time in terms of, you know, how the schools were chosen, how the curriculum's developed, you know, what what obligations a school might have in terms of, you know, administering the grant or or contract or something of the sort. Those those aren't necessarily questions that I'm familiar with or prepared to answer.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I bet

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: that I think what you said is they that's what I was thinking too. It's that they help execute contracts between farms and schools for, like, you know, you're gonna get so many potatoes every month for the school or something. Yeah. But we And maybe

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: it would just be they would pay the farm. Yeah. For x pounds of potatoes.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah. But maybe we should ask them. We should. It is a little confusing to me.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. Let's keep moving. We haven't gotten our section yet. I did see fees, but it doesn't look like they're changing.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Think we've got these just yet. So

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: On 15, unless you're almost there. Section

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: nine is peeling we're peeling the pest control compact. This is was an interstate compact meant to help coordinate efforts among states to repeal or to to address pest infestations that might cross interstate borders.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Army worms?

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: They were I was told there was a number of years ago, but they could decimate a 10 acre field in one night. Not army ants, but army worms. These were some kind of just when my daughter was an agricultural insecticide.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Interesting.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: They they came marching through. Thought over on Addison County. Well If the There are, what are we calling them now, squishy moths, pet caterpillars. Oh, wow. I've got those called roaches.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. That'll come to me. I know what we're talking about. But spongy. I think it's spongy Fungy. I think it is.

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

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Fungy.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Probably known by another name. Right.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. And and so this pest control compact actually went debunked around 2034. Oh. And so it was like an insurance fund that states could tap into and pay into, but it had gone defunct in about 2014 due to a change in the complex IRS status, and it just didn't become financially tenable. So this would just repeal it from our our our statutes. Okay. Okay. So this is licensing pesticide applicators. There is a little bit of a fee in this one. So this section, we are on page 14 and actually on page 15. This section would permit an individual to take the pesticide exam as many times as they'd like. Currently, it's limited limited to the second or third or to to three tries. And I think by rule, it might be three tries in a year, but the statute doesn't actually specify a timeframe. But this kind of takes out that limitation, and just says examination fees are $0.5 no matter how many times you wanna take it.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So you're changing some of the wording, but not the actual fee.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's right. That's one fee that is is being taken out.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: You take the government municipal and public education institution applicators. Right.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so there'd be no fee for there'd be no fee for that.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Oh, we are charging ourselves a fee. Yeah.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It it appears so.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Some of those herbicides are highly toxic. Kinda gives me a pause that they can just keep retaking the test. Anyway, I don't wanna digress too much, but Interesting. They're on the feet right now. Sorry. And

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the statute would say, There is no limitation for the frequency for retaking examination for private, commercial, non commercial, or government applicator certifications or DOO licenses. And this next page, on page 16, section 11, we are talking about conforming seed law to universal standards, and not a lot of this does have to do with these, but it does conform seed law to just kind of standards set out by the Association of American Seed Control Officials, and it's recommended publication, recommended uniform state seed law. And so, you'll see some definition changes, and I can go over these more quickly or more thoroughly if you'd like, but we just said some definitional changes, adding wildflowers to seeds, changing some labeling requirements, and then changing adding the definitions for distribute to include a host of ways someone could obtain these, sell sale barter, supply the seeds through any means, including sales outlets, catalogs, telephone, the internet, or any electronic means. And just to clarify that if you're distributing a seed on the internet or by phone or by fax, that you'd be subject to the requirements in these statutes. Distributed means any person who distributes seeds in the state or fixes the labeling or any relabeling required under this section. And then we added the definition of the word treated. Treated deals with usually substances meant to reduce, control, repeal certain diseases or organisms, insects, other pests from attaching to seed or the seedling, and so it's adding a definition of treated, and also permitting the Secretary of Agriculture to use terms defined in addition to those terms defined in subsection a to also refer to the uniform seed law for additional definitions Okay. Of of items.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: When I go out to my local box store and I buy seedlings or flowers, there's been a lot of concern that a lot of the seeds those flowers come from have been treated with insecticides. Are those gonna need to be labeled now?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They should be. They should and they should already be labeled if they're if they're treated with some some insecticide or or something of

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: the sort.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So I I could look for Yep. Nontreated flowers that won't kill my beach. Yes. And

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: section 12, it just conforms the language to instead of transported solar offer per sale, instance, word distributed, just to kind of make it clear that distributed means any form or method of sale. We're on page 19, section 13. This goes into label requirements. So, you know, all seeds that are distributed in The States have labels that include, you know, who's responsible for labeling seeds for any treated agricultural vegetable flower seed. The label shall also include statements describing the treatments, and if the substance, the amount of the substance that is present, if it is harmful to humans or other vertebrate animals, and a caution statement on there. You'll see that the statute already requires, you know, some labeling for treated article seeds, and this just kind of makes some additional specifications for treated article seeds as well.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We have come a long way. When we first had to talk about labeling seeds, There were crowds in the front lawn. Now it's routine. Actually. But that genetically modified GFO seeds. It was very, very controversial.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This bill would also require all bins or bulk displays of certain seeds that should be labeled with the same information. So if you just kinda scoop it out yourself, there should be a label affixed nearby.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. We're gonna have to move it along because we've got one more bill.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I saw an administrative fee up here on page 21, maybe 20. And

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so administrative penalties on section 15, I don't believe these penalties are changing. And let me add my cheat sheet here. See, section 16 has another fee. And so this actually, double check, because it moves the fees around a little bit. And so the registration fee is $85 annually for each distributor that distributes any seats to The States. It used to say a flat fee of $85 per company for any seed sold.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay, what page do you want on

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm on page 22 at

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: the top. There's a section here

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that's crossing out of $10 per ton for any seeds sold in containers of more than 10 pounds. I believe that that is brought back down. A fee of $10 per ton of seeds distributing containers of more than 10 pounds shall accompany the report due annually, and so it it it appears that they are changing when that fee takes place.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: A distributor would be each individual store of, like, Garden Way, or that would not the mother company, but each individual location?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Distribution is defined as any person who distributes into the state and affixes the labeling or any relabeling required, so it would be the person who

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It gets be mostly, probably, some centralized entity.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So it wouldn't necessarily be

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It the would be Abishan Corporation or whoever sends all those flower pots to the groceries at the local park. Canada requires an awful lot of the plants to come in here should be coming from Canada. That wouldn't be so modest.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But if they want access to the market, they do have to register it. They do to do that. Yeah. So, and that is reflects the the current structure.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So they register, but they are gonna have to pay $10 a ton. That's crossed out next.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, and so this is so they're required to register, and then the $10 per ton fee is actually added down here to reporting. If you have $10 per ton shall come of seeds distributed in containers of more than 10 pounds

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Shall reduce. Crushed out. It comes back in.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It comes back in on 08/23.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: In page 23. Okay. And

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so this, so we're on page 23, line seven, eight, and nine, thereabouts, and there's some crossed out language and some new language. And so this section used to refer to the fees based on the $10 per ton rate. It used to reference a fee above, and it the fee above is now crossed out and described down here A fee of $10 of seeds distributed containers with more than 10 pounds shall accompany the report as to

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: annual. And no fees. No fees

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Consolidating

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: BCAP within VITA, there are no

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: There

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: are no fees.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I thought we did.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Thought we did.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, yes, you are correct. I think I know what you're gonna say because there was

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: some We it last Yep.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There was some reorganization, and that was our question as well, is didn't we already do this? And this is one of the programs that was not. And so this is being reorganized from chapter 16 a to chapter chapter 12 sub chapter 16. It's being

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So this is a reorganization. The money's been coming through VIDA Yep. Anyway.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. Yep. And the money comes through VIDA, and and then so there shouldn't be any changes because VIDA's kind of its own.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes. It has its own regulation instructions. That's exactly right. Significant.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so I'm just kinda scrolling down because there is a fee that is changing. Section 24 of pages 35.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: You have a list of where the fees are?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have some notes.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Whoever is the reporter, I'm sure, would appreciate just a list of

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, the reporter, yeah, the reporter will have a section by section that that that deals with these things. Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. Because we're not gonna report on all of this. We're just gonna need to hone in on Page each

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: 34, before you, there is crossing out something about money's going through. Oh, What is this substantive?

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So this was

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a program that said that the Vermont Agriculture Credit Program, the Vermont Agriculture Credit Program is already kind of a project of VIDA. So VIDA, under the current law, sets up a nonprofit corporation, the Vermont Agricultural Credit Corporation. It's a nonprofit entity that administers the Vermont Agricultural Credit program. The Vermont Agricultural Credit Corporation is a program of and so VITA's already aware of the kind of things that are going on. And so when VITA was proposing moving the statute, they said, we actually don't do this program. And so they suggested costing costing it out.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: They don't do the Vermont Agricultural Credit program?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. They don't do the thank you for that. The monies in the funds may be loaned to the Vermont Agriculture Credit Program to support its lending operations as established in sixteen k. And so there's this line of credit for farmers that was that was the program of the Vermont Agricultural Credit Program. Mhmm. And Vida says that they don't administer this line, this particular line of credit.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Does anybody administer it, or is it just not a thing?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: As far as I'm aware, and it might be worth asking them for more details on on their workings in this program. Uh-huh. As far as I'm aware, it's not an active program in any no entity in the safe's administering that this line of time.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Last

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: time, I thought I saw a Vermont Jobs Fund up here, but I don't think that

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: You might have. There is. This is on the Vermont Jobs Fund. Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Because we did this I remember the Vermont Jobs Fund, and there was a whole reorganization and a lot of these that had been just kind of hanging out there and weren't really being used anymore, got consolidated under. And it sounds like they found a few more that they need to tidy up.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I think that's right. This is actually a cross reference that I found when I was putting this together, and so I kind of ran all the cross references when we're moving the chapters, right? I looked for all the cross references in their statute to make sure that everything still lines up, and I brought this one to their attention, and they told me, oh, we don't actually administer. This is not a program that we administer anymore.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Because we did a lot of programs. It might have been as long as ten years ago, but when farmers were selling off herbs, like, crazy. There was a real shakeout in the farming industry. I think just last time gold prices died. And I know we put a lot of programs in place, and it sounds like now we're looking back and saying, well, we're really just using one of these programs, and we're if there's any money sitting anywhere, it's all going into the one program, because that's what you're using. Okay. Are we running with we may be running

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I just point out a couple of pieces that are changing that are pretty substantial in this. So page 35, permitting a large or medium farm operations. It's removing the fee for a large farm operation. It was an annual $2,500 fee, and removes the fee for a medium farm operation, which is annual $1,500 fee. I believe the agency of agriculture said removing both of these fees adds up to about two a little over $200,000, maybe between 200 and 250,000. I don't have the exact number, but they're moving to

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: six we'll see them?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think they the idea is that they feel that, you know, they it's it's a way to support farming and that farmers are are burdens anyway, it kind of reduces an economic burden on farmers. They were also We're

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: gonna have to have the Department of Agriculture come in.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I have a question. Well, first of all, is there a fiscal note? I don't see it on our website. Didn't

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: have it yet.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. I

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: think this bill just came out. It's a big bill. Yes. Wrong. So

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I I Bradley, I asked one of your colleagues about this, but I just wanna double check for you since you drafted this. My understanding is that these fees are fees. They're just regular quote unquote large and mediums pharmacies. There's another fee that is for pay photos goes to the agency of natural resources to administer the cable program. Mhmm. And that's not this fee. Even though pay photos are referenced. So it's not eliminating the capo fee that was just established last year, basically.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That that is record. He can use still still for us.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Okay. So it's just the large farm fee in the middle of size.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Another fee I wanna draw your attention to, so this transitions the hemp, the regulation of hemp from agriculture to the cannabis control board. And because we're running out of time, I'm going to scroll That

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: sounds like that population. I

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: think if we had more time, I would give you the the the backstory.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, I've lost my staff, so Oh. Oh, gone sick.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Now you have all the time you want.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I do wanna go to page 45.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: There, please. These are new

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so these are new fees and a change from old fees.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Is this just moving it from Agency of Ag to Cannabis Control Board holds?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Not necessarily. So there are some changes, and the fees are one of them. And and so under current statute, there's a $100 fee for the word producer and the word grower are interchangeable. There's a $100 fee for growers and processors. So this lowers the fee for producers slash growers. It raises the fees for processors. The product fee is also new. However, it removes

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Who's the product? You make a hemp or

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: hemp infused product. And so any hemp or hemp infused product with more than point 4% THC concentration must be must be registered, and then it would be subject to that fee.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: The product is the produce it's really the producer, right?

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's really the

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: I'm sorry, what was

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: You're not putting a $75 fee in each product. You are the fee goes to the producer of the product for producing that product. Who can In a way.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: In a way. So it's it's someone who's registering a product for sale in the market. And so if you have hemp infused honey and you're selling that hemp infused honey, you pay a $75 fee and you

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's can sell it. You're paying for yeah. To produce a product for the market Right. In order to get there, you have to pay this fee. So if you've got a new hemp infused candy

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Mhmm.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Who would pay this fee in order to gain access to markets within the state. Got it.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so the current statute does contemplate additional fees for growing of hemp based

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: on Not certain cannabis.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Hemp. That is correct. That is correct. Because hemp is an agricultural product. Yes.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So Sending it to the cannabis board.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so the cannabis control board would like to regulate hemp because federal law is changing, this is the part I breezed over, so I think the history is federal law changed in 2018 to permit hemp infused products to not necessarily be schedule one drugs. And And so, however, a law in 2025 came into effect that threw that into question. Okay. And more hemp products will be considered schedule one based on their THC content, and so this is meant to kind of get everything in to make sure that every hemp infused product is legal for sale under state commerce, or legal for sale in the state. Under state commerce,

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: you have to purchase a law.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Under federal

[Patrick (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: law. Okay. And I am

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: can I

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm gonna stop sharing and then reshare because I'm gonna share my whole screen now?

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

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: These are the Ps under the consent sheet.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It's on. Okay.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Stop sharing, reshare. And so these fees are being removed. And so these fees are there's some exception, but except for provided below, an application or renewal of registration to grow

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: a

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: process or grow and process hemp commercially is subject to these fees. And so these are fees based on acreage, you know, and you can see the the acreage or poundage here would have to pay these fees, these fees are being removed from the current statute.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And your wants are being put in.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And your wants are being put.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. We're gonna we are gonna go to the in the back.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: This might also be canvas control board also because the fees are going to

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The Cannabis Control Board. That's exactly right.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah, we need to get involved with those.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And the last section of this bill does not have a fee, but it does permit the Natural Resources Conservation Councils to take out mortgages to buy property. Their current enabling statute to do that is in The US. It's kind of interestingly read, but this change to the law would would permit them to mortgage property to for their office space. They were having some problems during government shutdowns with the USDA. They currently share their space there, and they like to buy their own property.

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

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And that's all for my piece. I'm gonna stop well, I guess, do you want me to keep this up on my screen so you can show?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I think for whoever presents this, Phil, it would be helpful if you could just do section this, this is the fee and the change from current law. Just this kind of a current law, new fee, and if there's any reason for it, we'll also try and get you to the proper design. I mean, give us a reason on cannabis because it is a massive, that's even better than old and well fixed. And it'll take a while to digest it, and I have a feeling that this would need to go across the This one needs to go across the halls, and we're gonna need to get it out of here tomorrow. Assuming that they're probably taking part of all the units that they need it. So any questions at this point? Well, I have

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: this question. Is Kirby gonna come up? Kirby is

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: coming up and well, it's an Ellen. And Ellen. Yeah, and Ted.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You wanna go down?

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, no, no. You can leave the computer.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah, I'll the Ted is the next one. So I which I've got

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I'm having to be very quick.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I've got three agendas here. Let me make sure I've got the right one. I've got, on this one, so Kirby, I have you under this, but I don't have a handout from you.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well I was just gonna walk through, there's a couple sections of the bill.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay, so Ellen, is that working for you? Who should go Oh, I

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: think I'll be very quick and then also you have me on your agenda for after the S-three 25.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes. So, you stay for those? Yes.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I'm gonna be very quick on section four. Section four is at the bottom of page eight into page nine. Is there is this existing Act two fifty amendment for accessory on park businesses. The amendment in S-three 23 expands the businesses that would qualify for I don't think there has been a I think I don't know the universe of businesses that would qualify for this exemption, so I don't know what the fiscal note will say. But it isn't a change to the fee, just potential amount of revenue that would be generated by the I-three 50 permit fees.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Did you say what was being exempted? What types of structures?

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

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: For accessory on farm businesses, currently there is an exemption for businesses that are procuring or processing qualifying products. So long as 50% of the total annual sales come from products grown on farm, this is an exemption from Act two fifty. Act two fifty. And so the amendment being proposed in S-three 23 would expand that for businesses also if not more than $250,000 adjusted for inflation in total annual sales comes from products that are not produced on farm where their business is located.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Taking a step back, this permit is for new building constructions, and so how would they know how much materials they're gonna process in that?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It's a very good question. So

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: originally conceived, I think using a 50% rule, which has been around for a while, somewhat makes sense. You're going to An example would be blueberry jam. Are you are on it. It has to be on a farm because this is an accessory on farm business. And so the the statement is you you can be exempt if you're building your processing facility to make jam as long as you're using at least 50% of

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: the blueberries from your own farms. In perpetuity.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Forever going forward. Yes. You'd sign then if somebody calls you out,

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you'd If do an

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: somebody does that, there could be an enforcement action in which there could be an investigation saying, are you no longer using the blueberries grown on your farm? No, I think not. If so, you will be required to receive, to get an Act two fifty permit.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay, you're reporting them from China and Mexico, you're in trouble. Yes. More than 50% of them.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Yep. Alright. Are those enforcement actions common to me?

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, so this is a pretty new statute, so I don't think it's happened yet. But, yes. So, well, so it hasn't happened, it's pretty new.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Believe When people agree to things for

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: new development in perpetuity in Act two fifty, is there often a lot of enforcement?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: There can be,

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They do have They have been They've hired additional enforcement officers in the last few years. So, it is almost entirely complaint driven. It has to be. So, they're not doing necessarily random spot checks, but they investigate complaints.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes. This introducing

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a different concept of that the sales cannot come from You can also be examined if not more than $250,000 in sales comes from things not producing or producing. I'm gonna ask. I don't know. Can you just say what it is?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's I always have to read the statute because there's two knots there. Yes. It's There's it is tough, but not more than $250,000 adjusted for inflation in total annual sales of the equivalent donated crops comes from products that are not produced on the farm where the business is located.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So you can under this scheme, would use you could use up to $250,000 worth of products from someone else's farm in your jam. You could get up to $250,000 worth of blueberries in my example, although practically this seems difficult to me.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. So this does more than blueberries. Correct. So you It's any kind of deadline. This is that intermediate period. No. No. No. This isn't while we're getting tier one, tier two. Nope. Okay. Nope. So this says well, it ends Let's see. 30. Right? What are you looking at? I what page am I on? Four. Yes. Four. I'm on page eight and nine. There's no no permit or permit amendment. Think it's on the.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: There's two bills I was doing for us.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Oh, maybe you want one time since we're

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: still at. 323. Okay. I'm on

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: the wrong bill. I have 325 and that's the only one I have from you.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, the agenda was updated. It's an update. It's under Bradley's.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It's under Bradley. That's why I don't have it. Not a chair plant. So, I'm on where you are, Allen.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, again, I think this definition of donated farm crops that you cut and paste at the bottom. It says an old plant. Has an old plant, which I think is also Should probably be fair to say. But but my question for all of you, because this is in all three of your sections, is how many do you know how many farms this the donated farm crops applies to? I mean, I know there are farms that are regular agriculture regular agricultural farms that donate crops that are, like, bruised or gleaned or whatever, and they're you know, they could be just I sell those. And then there are farms that how many are just donating props and not actually selling them?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm not aware of that information. I know that there's at least one.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Exactly. I know there's at least one, but nobody can tell me beyond that one if there is any. There are farms that donate part of what, like I said, their gleams or their, you know Pumpkins after Halloween? Yeah. Or things like that. But is there anyone else? Is this just a carve out for one person on all of these things? That's what I wanna know.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think that that would be a good question for the agency of AGRV

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We're to provide trying to get the agency in here, I hope, by tomorrow morning. Okay. Because we've got questions.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, in S-three 23, Section four is not related to the tiers. It's an existing exemption for accessory out of our businesses that's being expanded. Potentially more businesses will be exempt under this exemption.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. Okay. Thank you. I will pass

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: out for

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: John Kirby. Thank you for hanging with us.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's been fun.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Isn't it like a month now. Month sorry. Now.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I always sound

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah. We're always fun. This is really exciting. It really is. As

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: as things of of of things of mine that are heading over from the house, yeah, We'll be seeing each other a lot, so maybe

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: we'll I gathered that.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Get used to it and hang out a little bit.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So we're gonna talk about current use

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and a couple of sections in Esther 23 relating to current use and some changes. We're looking at the definition of agricultural land within current use. What page are you? One page. It starts at bottom of page nine, but the changes are on page 10 starting at line 11. So for some background, when you go to enroll agricultural land in current use, if you have 25 acres or more, it's pretty broad in what the department's going to accept in an application for considering agricultural land. But when you're talking about smaller parcels under 25 acres, there's some criteria that get applied, and that's what we're looking at. Starting on line five, it says there shall be a presumption that the land is used for agricultural purposes if: a) it is owned by a farm and is part of an overall farm unit. Farmer is defined, it means at least 50 of your income is on your income taxes is from farm income. B) It is used by a farmer as part of the farmer's operation under a written lease for at least three years, so some folks, for instance, use that to have a lease with their neighbor and have their neighbor pay their bills.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Why is there some nice houses that have a farmer essentially grow hay on their front? Yeah,

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: one's relatively common, and then C, another way, is it's produced an annual gross income from the sale of farm crops, we're gonna skip the edition for now, but so the current law is that producing annual gross income from the sale of farm crops in one or two or three or five preceding years. At least, and then there's there's a number of amounts, but you know, $2,000 total per parcels up to 25. So what this does is it widens that a little bit to also allow for the equivalent value of donated farm crops up to that amount for those smaller parcels. So allowing potentially more parcels to be enrolled, probably going to be more in the smaller parcels

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: based on donations.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I have three or four acres. I'm assuming somebody checks the value of what I'm donating.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So so I can I can get more into the way the donation part works? So I I personally, since I've worked here the last few sessions, have seen this proposal before.

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

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So to give you some background, I went into senate ag and testified on on these items. There was a version of the language there. I pointed out some ways to to strengthen it. I got permission to work with the Department of Taxes. So the rest of what you're going to see is me working with the Department of Taxes to make sure that if this is going to be done, this language is a sort of newer, it is me working with tax to make sure that it's something they can administer. So below you'll see we have a definition for donated farm crops. It says it means charitable contributions of farm crops that are allowable under 26 USA section 170 C. That is the definition for a charitable contribution under federal law if you are going to take a deduction on your income taxes. It is an established definition, one that the Department of Taxes is comfortable enforcing. The types of entities that can be donated to are laid out. You know, there's IRS guidance on these things.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And we found out you can shoot a deer and donate it to your local fishing game fundraising game and dinner. That we had a bill in here that would have allowed it, and we were told that it was already allowed under federal law. Oh, for charitable contributions. For charitable contributions.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. That is correct.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Because that would be about roadkill, but I

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: do know that It wouldn't let you enroll in current use under this, though, just to be clear.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Maybe if

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you were raising the beard.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's not Initially. Either.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Is there a deer deer farms? Yes. In my district.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Are there for the ag is really nervous about those and wasting these. So

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: that is a definition that exists and then there's this extra length of sense and that our may put an organization that is unrelated to the owner of the enrolled land. In this case, enrolled land is appropriate, right? Right. But then the unrelated part was that came from a concern from the department to say, we don't see people setting up phony nonprofits. And, you know, so

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I can't eat it.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I personally, I would be impressed by someone being so audacious as to go and create a five zero one c. So

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Just like said, warned my

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So we do have language to avoid anybody who's trying to find a loophole there.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Mine is so small. Somebody would catch you so

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So none of that is allowed, and that's something the department would look for. So as far as something that they can administer, they felt comfortable with this, of course the policy decision of whether you want to open up current use enrollment for donations is, you know, that's the journal assembly.

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

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: And it's a donation of it's it only has to be $2,000 of donations.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That is a lot of food in this day and age.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And there's IRS rules for in kind contributions, since we're using that federal definition, we at least have something to work on to be able to decide what value attached to things.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I mean, 2,000 in food as the chairs, that's

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: not that much.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: To get the best value appraisal.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: how, so I mean, how much difference would that be in the appraised value of property? And do you have sort of on average, like, much or, you know, what what how much of a tap break is that for the

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh. For current use. Yeah. Know, the property's value to use value and the and the land in any any farm buildings would be valued at zero. You do have to have a house site in current use, so the the house there wouldn't wouldn't be taxed normally. But if there's any farm buildings, they Farm employees. So, I mean, if it's an expensive farm bill then

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: It could be pretty significant task for two for donating $2,000 of food, which which you would also get you could potentially get if you sold it.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Under current law, you sell 2,000, you can roll it down.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah, which is also pretty low.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: But in order to be a farmer, don't you have to make half your income? In order to enroll as farmland, half your income has to come.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's one of the ways, but so the way we're laying this out is the subdivision we're talking about to qualify under that does not require you to be to the classifieds department.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yeah, if I take my entire backyard and I grow high quality tomatoes in it and I donate them last time I went to the farmer's market a tomato like that was $7, I don't have to donate a whole lot of tomatoes to my local school or food shelves to be able to have a $2,000 donation. But my land is then put in current use, which is the additional what about that? Something acres that's unbuildable on time.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And the way the land value tends to work is actually the smaller parcel, the more value more valuable it is per acre. Right. So we are talking about smaller parcels here. So if you have a very large farm, the use value might be pretty close to its actual market value per acre, but the smaller parcels it could be, I don't know, dollars per acre in value, but the use value would change that to having a value of $100 for agriculture.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes, Yeah. I mean, this will get to the farmer that wants to give his kid a one acre house side as a wedding present and has to pay the penalty the fat. I mean, that one acre is worth a lot more per acre individually than it is as part of a 100 acre parcel.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: And so this and also this the donated farm crops would be could be a tax deduction on income tax, right, if they're Yeah. A person. Yeah.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There's there's nothing here including someone from also using that as a income tax deduction. Yeah.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Plus the other two things, there would be an Act two fifty exemption for this person, and what was the thing in your area that had about the donation?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It was being eligible for the required agricultural practices.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: So, would not be eligible?

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If donate the equivalent amount of farm crops, the crops for sale or donation.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: You would

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: subject to the required

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: They would be subject to the RAPs, but they would get exempt from Act two fifty and exempt and they get beyond use value and they could have an income tax. That's a

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: pretty good deal. That is fair to do, Chair. For potentially one person in our space.

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: As as a footnote on the income tax deduction You

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: have to have fair amount of money not So You aren't making your income off the farm. You're able to support the farm either through unearned income or you've got a really good job somewhere else. I think when we're looking at donations, we were looking at farmers who what groups come in and clean their fields. That's a different story.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Those are actual farmers. Those are actual

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I mean, that's when they started doing the deduction. You know, I can only sell half my sweet corn crop this year or, you know, 90%, but I got 10% of my carrots left over, and I'm gonna donate them to the food shelf or my tomatoes with a blemish. That's different than saying you can donate all your food from your farm and be in current use. About

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the condensed section, just to be thorough the explanation, you have to itemize to get the full effect of the charitable contributions. Since this federal standard deduction is very large these days, like, lot of people don't, so you don't wouldn't the person wouldn't necessarily Get

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: an income tax deduction. But it's possible. It's possible. But current use, if it's prime land, would be a really good

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think it's if it's if it's more urban, it would. It is. Factors that would make the land value higher, being like in a more urban area.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: And if I'm an out of state owner, and I know we have out of, especially in forest land, have out of state owners. I could have a farmer living on my farm donate the money from my three acre farm or donate $2,000 worth of veggies and I have my three acres on Lake Champlain in current use. Under

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: current law, if you've got a you've got a barber company on that, we probably can find a way to qualify the current law.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. Gonna have to think of this. Yeah. We will we're trying. Tell her if they want their bill, they need to be. It still needs to go. We need agriculture. Which section specifically do you want to hear about? Which section, Bradley, do we want to hear from? The money section.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: All the money. They should be able to figure There's no fees. Well, in this section this but you get all the things charitable donations. The the fees. Yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: We're not I mean, you know, you're raising the fees on seeds instead of they can tell us that'll cover their costs, but I think ones like this, we're gonna wanna talk about. Okay. Any

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: further questions for me?

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

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. We have one more bill committee upstairs. They wanna know what if you still plan on something on anything else. I'm not voting that one. I have I have a feeling that three twenty five, Ellen, I'm looking at you. Is that at all controversial?

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: That's the I two fifty vote. Yeah. Yeah. It's the I two fifty vote.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. No. We're not voting anything yet.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Alright. So you're back and I have almost well, we've seen it already. Okay. There isn't much related money.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: There really isn't.

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

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: And what's

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: to do today? $1.61 is?

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The scholarships. SGM.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: No. I don't think we're gonna well, we might decide not to vote it out. To attend that. SGM. I don't know. I'm talking to the

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Actually, not both at all. Okay.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'll let you pass the officer to the council address s 325, which currently is I was looking at. It's currently titled something about Something about model violence. And it's not about model violence, it's about Act two fifty. So, would you like me to put it on the screen? Yes, please. Alright, so this is the bill that Southern Natural Resources worked on. It is going to be called after the amendment an act relating to regional planning and act to the key tier jurisdiction. And it is about updates largely to Act 181.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. Has this been down to economic development?

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: We didn't get this bill.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. Did not get economic developments.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. Well, those are usually the two who are adversaries on any of these bills.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I I think there was an agreement. Yeah. I think the chairs discussed. The chairs are

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: an agreement that makes our money laud. As

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: far as anything fee related in this bill, there is not anything fee specific. There are a number of exemptions that are being extended, so there will be lost fee revenue from extending exemptions. Then, there is a small amendment to the Downtown Village Center Tax Credit Program that will not, and I know you were talking about it earlier, it will not be changing anything substantive. Is a clarification the existing. I think depending on how in-depth you'd like to go, it is mostly a conversation about the exemptions or a loss of fee revenue. Okay. And then maybe we can briefly talk about the tax credit updates lately. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Well, I do. So,

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: is this large enough? Yes. Great. So there's an intent section about maintaining the intent of Act 181, and most of this is gonna be extending the Act 181.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Thank you, Jess.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Session two starts with the road rule. It's not a road rule. It is a road construction jurisdictional trigger. It's being pushed out until 01/01/2030, from July 1. Okay. Next is one of the first interim exemptions. This is the Priority Housing Project Interim Exemption. It is extending the interim exemption for priority housing projects. No cap on the number of units that can be built under that exemption until 01/01/2028. Also adding clarification that the exemption shall not apply within river corridors and floodplains unless there's pre existing development in there. We do not want

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: to be encouraging exempt units to be Those should be leaving out of all of our downtowns, most of which are river corridors. Okay.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section three amends the definition of priority housing project for the future. Currently it is tied to the designation program and this is adding that it will now be tied to areas that are eligible for tier one B area, but that are not currently approved as tier one B. Section four is about more of the exemptions. So, on page four, the first exemption for accessory dwelling units, extending that to 01/01/2030. Then, the exemption for converting a commercial structure into 29 units of fewer housing to, again, 01/01/2030.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: The mapping isn't going quite as quickly as we hoped

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it might. So, no, I wouldn't say that's the issue. I would say the issue is that the tier three rulemaking- Is not going as far That is behind, yeah. So the tier one stuff I think is largely on schedule, but, well, depending on who you ask, but I would say it's more of the tier three divorce. It's like,

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: why rural towns are a little concerned about tier three? Yeah.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Still in this section, page five, more exemptions. This one is the exemption for new town centers, birth centers, and neighborhood development areas, Construction of housing, this is being extended until 01/01/2030 as well. So is the next exemption, and this is for the 50 units of housing in village centers or in transit corridors, and this is again 01/01/2030. And then again, the exemption for construction of housing in downtowns being extended until 01/01/2030. Is that section five then pushes out the tier three rule making. It first adds clarification that their rules should add a determination of which and under which circumstances. The Act two fifty criteria should be part of tier three area review, opening the door for less criteria review in tier three, depending on the circumstances, and then also pushing back that they don't have to finish the rules until 06/30/2028. Corresponding further in here, we'll see that means the effective date is also being pushed out. So, tier three is being pushed out until 2028. Next, this is also giving the board additional authority for tier three and the road rule so that, again, they can limit which criteria will be part of the review for those areas. Section seven, as I was just mentioning, is pushing out the effective dates further. So, first, in sections twelve and thirteen, those are related to Criteria 8c, Forced Blocks of Habitat Connectors, that's being pushed back until 01/01/2028. Section 21 is the tier three and that is 06/30/2028. And then the road rule is being pushed back to 01/01/2030 for the effective date. Section eight, this is not really, I would say, fee related. It's striking that tier 1A areas address rare species in their bylaws. Section nine is an update about tier 1A areas, clarifying that only conditions that have been moved into the permit are to be enforced by the municipality, this is already the law, it's being clarified, but then also removing the requirement that towns enforce Act two fifty permits before the permit conditions have been transferred, that is going away. I'm happy to slow down, but

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: I don't necessarily know if this relates to the fact that haven't seen anything. I might get this one out. Oh, shit. You got it.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm trying to move quickly,

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: You but are moving really quickly, keep going. I haven't seen anything that's in our jurisdiction yet. Right.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, I think there's the argument that because the exemptions are being extended as

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: long as there won't be fees coming in from Act two fifty. But they also won't be doing the cases.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section 10 is a report asking the department to look at negative impacts on municipal zoning review of housing and if there can be ways to fix the discretionary review Section of 11 is then an update, starts updates to the regional planning process to make sure that there is a new discrete process for amendments to regional plans, and therefore also tier 1B areas so that they don't have to go through a full update. They can have a slightly faster process for those areas since they are now part of the regional planning process. So, the amendment process is being struck here and given their own process a little bit further down. Yep, so regional plan amendments. They

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: only have to

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: go through one hearing as opposed to two. Future land use maps have to be consistent with the smart growth principles. Municipalities are allowed to have more than one center, and it is the intent that most towns have at least one village center. Sorry, I went a little fast there. Making a couple of changes to phrasing about whether things need to be in walking distance. This is being changed to compact and have multimodal connections. Walking distance is a little bit ableist.

[Patrick (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: Yeah.

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

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: but when it was pointed out to us, we changed it. Yeah. We'll do this. That's my my.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: One small event that I'd love to put forward. Can we just

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: permanently rename it to

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: be the review board for land use? No. RVULU.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: No. RVLU. R b l u.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Landry should be words on exactly what they do. They are the very few words for it.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: It's not in our domain. It's

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and also, Larocque Gulick.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Seems to hate that word, Larocque.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Not every no. Not everybody.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Just a couple people. Most people love it is what I heard. I love it. We're keeping it for her.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's That's why I'm so sorry.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Anyway. All right, so there's just a couple of small changes about the land use categories and this sort of But

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: this bill is here because, basically putting off this, extending this process because it's more difficult than we thought it would. Only other

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: thing I would flag for you is this last section. Tax credits. The Downtown and Village Center Tax Credit program, when in ACL-one '81, when you updated the designations, downtowns, village centers, previously were their own categories. They have been lumped together into one, and new town centers have also been lumped in. And so, under that program, technically under the statute, new town centers could be eligible for the Downtown Village Center Tax Credit program. However, to qualify for the historic tax credits, it needs to be of historic age. And most

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: things All that development going on at the Berlin Mall, which is starting to become Downtown Berlin because there is

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They didn't know Berlin. Well, and they did seek a designation, right? Think they have it. Yes, and so, but because it is new, it technically won't qualify because it's That's not not billboard that old. So, to be very clear of that, section 18 has been added to say, The guidelines shall clearly indicate that only applications located in Step two and Step three designated centers or Step one centers where a portion of the designated center is listed or eligible for listing on National Register of Historic Places shall be considered. Okay. This says it in the language of the statute, but it's that if they have to be eligible for listing and some of these areas were sort of pulled in, they wouldn't technically qualify, but this is being very clear about that.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Okay. Those buildings are not

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They're not gonna be eligible

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: for the historic tax Building yet. Right. Okay.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Alright. And that's it, I believe. Oh, there's a, oh, there's a reparations, but otherwise, yeah. Okay. I see. So, I just want everybody to know this came out of Natural Resources five zero, and it was a lot of work to get there, a lot of discussion, and it was happens. We came to a good place where we agreed on most of it and extending a lot of the deadlines, the, and the interim exemption. Yes. I didn't like that.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: The chair did tell me that it was unanimous vote and I should hope we could use the same equipment. And economic development has seen this.

[Ellen Czajkowski (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't know if you guys have seen it, but I know that They said they would schedule me for next week before it's on the floor. Yeah. It's We were busy.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Nothing anybody's Yeah. We're looking

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: at Bear Mill this week, and they're gonna probably.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: So Okay. Committee, what do you wanna do with this one? I mean, it's here because they've extended the deadline because, basically and I know I've got I've got towns where the entire designated downtown is in the floodplain, and tier three, as it's described, covers everything else, so this town is

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: No, tier two can't cover Tier anything

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: three is No, they're talking tier three. They've got a lot of open space and I don't know. It's probably tier two. But they're concerned. There's they're quite a I've got several world towns that are concerned that the mapping could make it so they can't grow. So to give that mapping more time, I think is a good thing that's it's very important, and we should do it well, or we'll spend the next two ten years redoing it. So I'm ready to vote this bill if the committee is ready to vote this bill. I'm ready. Yep. Am I in need of the vote, sir?

[Patrick (Joint Fiscal Office analyst)]: I just pass the sheet.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I move quickly prove S three twenty five version 6.1 as recommended by the Committee for On Ethical Resources and Energy. Okay.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Senator Hardy has moved that we approve S325s, an act relating to the study to studying the creation of model bylaws, and it was what? Version 6.1. 6.1. Okay. Established. Is there any further discussion? Any amendments? If not, the clerk call a roll on.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Senator Chittenden, sure.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: That's not an official Yes.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I marked it down. I marked

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it down. Senator

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Hardy. Yes.

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Senator Brock. Yes. Senator Eulick.

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

[Bradley (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Senator Mattos, yes. Senator Cummings?

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Yes. That's seven. Seven zero zero. Senator Beck, you're a natural resources, aren't you, Chittenden?

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: Oh, yeah.

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: Would you report this one? I've ended a couple of the standard parties after that. I'll report it pretty quickly for me. This is what is gonna be done. Thank you. What happened will be done? We had a lot of bills at three point three today. We did model bylaws. One sixty one is the other one that's on here. This is the governor's list of scholarship grantee. Does anybody wanna go forward with that? The risk is the feds haven't developed the rules.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: My understanding is that we do not go forward, then the rules come out to the other

[Kirby King (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: which is The governor.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: The governor, judge, judge, and determine what these are gonna be. But

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: we could, and we can anytime, I think, this session's yet. I think it's unless the legislature act. So if we say we're opting out

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: That would be a different bill than what

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: we have on the wall. Yes. Yeah.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: That's think what the house has either they are the house has said that we're either I think their bill is to opt out and and require the legislature to to

[Sen. Ann Cummings (Chair)]: opt in. Opt in. Okay. So we have a vehicle coming. And maybe before we leave here, we'll have a better idea of what the rules will be, and this may very well be if we're gonna opt in this would be a good way to do it.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Member)]: So I'm finally waiting the vehicle I will say I don't support opting out I don't support that at all I do support moving this forward but getting more permission also seems to make sense so

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