Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Good afternoon, and welcome in to the Senate Government Operations Committee meeting of Tuesday, January 13. Our final item for the day is to hear from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns regarding their priorities for the upcoming session. And we're gonna be joined by Josh Hanford and Samantha Sheehan. Samantha was with us on Friday, if I recall. And you can come up together if you like that. Thank you. Well, you said you'd be available. Yeah. Do you know everybody on the committee?

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: So for the record, Doctor. I don't know you, Senator Morley, but Ted Brady says hi, and where you came from, and what you've done, so appreciate your municipal service, and Otherwise, glad to meet

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: we know everyone. Okay.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: And for the record, I'm Samantha Sheehan, a municipal policy and advocacy specialist for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So before you start, I do want to thank you, Paul, for coming on Friday and, making it clear what was in act 57 and what wasn't. And then the follow-up because the gentleman from reasonable sent an email. Did you get it? Did everybody on the committee get it? Yeah. I did not. And but Samantha answered them, and hopefully that's the end of the line.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Hopefully that answers his concern.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah, I think so. I think we did know he did some stuff.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Thank you.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: But I did appreciate your calling the extra half of the Of course.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Okay, yes, so Samantha's gonna run the show here. I'm just gonna

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: be here for questions and support.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: We're sharing some high level, overall priorities with you.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: At the same time.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: And we'll get to the ones that are most specific to your community, Okay. To your

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Okay. So I will remind folks that ELCP is a member driven organization. So all 251 municipalities in Vermont are a part of ELCP, and all municipal officials are members. So elected, appointed, and professionals, employees of towns. Every two years before new biennium starts, we go through a long summer's long, months long Mhmm. Member driven process to come up with a long list of municipal policies, we call them, that then are voted on and approved by the full voting membership. Mhmm. One vote per ton. And then we work to narrow those down to a list of priorities for the upcoming session. In large part, in partnership definitely with this committee and with others across the building last year, we got a lot done. We we addressed in a number of our top, priorities for our communities across the state. And looking at, the second half of the biennium, we're really coming to the legislature this year with a much more condensed list of recommended actions. And we've sort of brought down our areas of focus as issues to these four. So, lower property taxes. Specifically for us, we look at the ways expanded authorities, revenue authorities, and regulatory authorities at the municipal level can address the municipal side property tax rate, which is about 20 to 30% of every property taxpayer's bill. So that's what we're gonna go through today. We continue really every year, every membership survey since 2021, since the pandemic. The affordability and availability of housing has been the top rated issue by municipal officials across the state. And so, we have recommended actions for to support an abundance of housing in communities across the state, large and small. We have a number of new actually, the public safety slide, if you want, we're always happy to get into it. But this is where our sort of newest issues are in our public safety agenda for the year. And then we are very concerned about the state of the transportation fund and sort of threats to the town program specifically because of the diminishing revenues in the transportation fund. If you remember back to your legislator briefing, probably exactly a month ago, The town highway programs don't draw down federal match. So in an increasingly constrained transportation budget, we have escalating concern on behalf of our members for the for fulsome funding for town programs. So look forward to talking with the transportation committees about that. Soon, so you can connect me. Hopefully. So these are our policy priorities for this session that generally touch upon title 24 authorities and various revenue sending authorities at the municipal level. So one, you'll remember maybe four or five times we came into the property last year about the ever growing pilot fund surplus and the preference of pilot fund contributing towns. So towns that have through local actions and local authority created one of the three existing LOT revenues. They they would like the pilot surplus back to lower, their local budget pressures. I didn't move to that. Yes. I'll be talking you. No. We didn't. We changed the LOT

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: The percent.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Formula, but there's still, as of the end of fiscal '25, and now more than $14,000,000 cash surplus.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: That's what there was before. It was a

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: 10 and it was 14. So it's just, we've changed the percent. Yes. We've changed the withholding from 75 to 70.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: But that surplus stands alone

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: I'm 70 from to 75.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: The new revenue that's waived pay the full pilot payment, and is anticipated to grow even though we changed the whole back percentage because there's more municipalities adding full option tax.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Because three years ago you allowed now municipalities to adopt LOT without a charter change, so now unchartered can bring a town book.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Right. I appreciate that. And that's part of why we did what we did last year. Yep. So you're asking now

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: So that pilot, that surplus existed last year and there was some discussion about it. That wasn't a one

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: time thing we decided. We decided to change that formula going forward.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Yeah, but that formula didn't change the fact that there was at that time a surplus and there still is a surplus and it's growing. Want more. We we this is a return of over collected care of the local option tenants.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: No. I I appreciate that. So you want the $80.20 instead

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: of No. No. That's not what they're at.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: I mean, yeah. Sure. I'm really sorry.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: We also took testimony, I think, from joint fiscal or somebody representing them that suggested leaving the bond the way it is. You could make a case for that as well. I'll just leave it at that. Yeah. That it's always good to have some cash on hand and money in the bank. And then if you deplete this fund and something untoward happens, you run the risk of being in in tough shape. So I understand this is one of yours. We'll probably hear from someone that doesn't have the same.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Appreciate that.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Chittenden. Just to be clear, it has the amount of money needed to pay pilot towns that host state property and AMR lands. And then it has 14,000,000 in addition to that. I would

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: So

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: do I I would just say the same case that you're making about having money if there is a situation, our towns don't have this money, and they've raised this money. And I think we're seeing them have even more frontline crises perhaps than even the state. So I think if I was a smart municipality, if we did allocate these funds, we would hope that it

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: would be used for those purposes. Got

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: it.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: We also had this last year, which is to alleviate the or hold harmless municipal governments for un collected state property taxes. So right now, delinquent taxes are paid for from the municipalities to the state. And and then are only recovered if the delinquent payer is able to, pay in full or through the tax sale process. But for, any number of years and for, for as many years as the delinquent taxes are on the book. Many towns choose not to go to tax sale for any number of reasons. That cost of specifically the state property taxes, which is again 70% or more of the total tax bill that is delinquent, is then carried by the other municipal taxpayers. So it is in that way a burden on other low income and moderate income residents trying to also pay their tax bills.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Also to we have so we have a we have several revenue sharing proposals this year. Some are specific to transportation. Oh, okay. This one has been on the LCT's list in one way or another since prior to legalization of recreational cannabis. We're bringing it up this year as a priority, really also in support of some work being done by the cannabis cannabis board to look at ways to motivate folks to allow recreational cannabis at the town level. Right now, are not benefiting from the cannabis excise tax unless they have a 1% LOT and then they get 1% on retail of cannabis. But in most circumstances, municipalities that have acted to allow cannabis retail in their community are not receiving any revenue.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Senator White.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Thank you, mister chair. So very, if that's right the way to put it, of a bill that I'm getting signatures for, which would go on our wall, I assume, which would trigger that every municipality, unless they opt out, would have a vote at an upcoming town meeting on whether or not they would allow it for their town. So does every town that hasn't voted on it yet, unless they opt out, would automatically have it be on their town meeting ballot?

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Thought that was already already existing statute.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: No. So there's a bunch

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: of towns that haven't voted. And I think many there's hundreds of reasons why maybe you don't vote. One of them maybe being it's a big issue and you don't wanna deal with it right now. There's no, like, impetus to do it. So Okay. Essentially, what's happened at least in our area is we have a few towns who have voted, and now we have these really condensed, like, three places in one town, three places in another town, and

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: then nothing elsewhere. Desert elsewhere. Yeah. And I don't know what yeah.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: If there's a cannabis desert or not, like, if it's more that, I think that over saturates the market and is leading to some issues, especially And nothing. Maybe more northern to us.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: That's the interest of the cannabis board is that suddenly they're So they recognize that in order to encourage talents to participate, sharing some of that revenue is probably a way to entice them to at least consider it.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Yeah. I would love to see on this in the future a little more nuance around the meals and rooms piece because Hartford has a local after tax. There's at least two or three other towns that do, but they don't have it in written in the specific way that would have included cannabis. And we brought that up,

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: municipalities?

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: No.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Meals and rooms of sales is a like, so the but it's not all like, you could be a coffee shop that doesn't have a liquor license, so that's not capturing liquor sales. But if it's a restaurant with a full liquor license, then yes, if you have a meal to drink, salad, tea. But how much

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: the liquor store tax revenue, none of that

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: I don't think it's no. I don't think it's

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: showing The the that's a perfect example of we've heard from some of our members that would like to separate out the room the the meals and alcohol so you could choose just to tax the 1% local option tax, which we get 70% of or 75% of just for alcohol and not have to have it for meals and alcohol and some of those nuances there so they could pull the right levers for their community on which local option tax to vote and approve in in charge of. I

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: think what we're getting at here is

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Separate meals forums. I have to look at it.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: It's it's meals and alcohol. You you have them both.

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: But it would it doesn't apply to, like, sales in a liquor store. Like Right. It's Okay.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: You have a local option tag or Yeah.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: You know, what we hear is these can be difficult for any votes to bring forward. And especially when you have a very small local economy with a few number of business owners and a small half paying base of residents, hounds are often interested in excise tax opportunities that are paid for by tourists and visitors. More so than by the people who are living and shopping in that community at their neighbor's businesses that they own.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: And it's not on this list because it's under our housing priorities, but this is where we're also asking the authority to have a 1% local auction tax on just short term rentals. That's a way to mitigate the impact of short term rentals in some communities that are having challenges, but up to each community, and then reinvest that money back into the community for infrastructure, housing support, because right now it's lodging. So you have some communities that maybe the major employer is the one lodging establishment, but yet all the homes around the lake are all short term rentals, and they don't wanna penalize the one employer who's producing the most taxes for the town adding this, but they would love to collect 1% off of short term rentals. So it's an ask. We had support from the House General Committee last year on this, and it was in one of the bills at one point, but it was removed in in ways and means for for other taxing reasons, but we will continue to ask for that.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: And many municipalities are also interested in using those short term rental revenues to pay for enforcement. So, we have already many municipalities that have adopted short term rental ordinances and require permits and registration of short term rentals, with no local revenue authority to pay for that inspection enforcement and to maintain those regulations. And the concerns vary. That, you know, in some communities, the impact of short term rentals on the housing market is severe and something that they wish to regulate against. In other communities that have already a really high rate of second homeowners, folks perceive short term rentals in second homeowner properties as a really important opportunity to activate those properties and bring people in and to to to foster a stronger local economy and they provide jobs and property management and so on. But town like, one of the concerns I hear a lot are from municipalities that have a large number of short term rentals and don't have sewer. Because they know that this is a house with a ANR permit for a three bedroom septic, and then they see the short term rental listing that says sleeps 12. Yeah. Right? And so they need to be able to regulate the short term rental to require a septic permit to know the number of beds that's listed for, but they need a way to pay for that.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Yeah. So Okay. This is a big one. So create a monetary cap for municipal liability commensurate with the states. So the state and other states and municipalities across New England have what's called a monetary liability cap. So if a person is injured on state owned property, the maximum they would be awarded and that civil suit would be $500,000 In all of our other New England states, there is the same cap for state government as well as municipal. In Vermont, when the state legislature acted to create this monetary cap for state liability, it did not add a municipal monetary cap. This is relevant because it drives up budgets and increases the financial risk of all town governments in Vermont, large and small. That's why I found this lower property tax category. It's also relevant because there are a number of shared policy areas where municipal government really wants progress to happen and and state government and this legislature does as well. But the the outstanding liability concern is sort of preventing our enthusiastic support of those. So for example, working with three acre regulated sites for storm water, the state agency desires towns to take those over and build infrastructure, we say we can't because there's a massive outstanding liability risk to take over storm water infrastructure on a private property. But if we had the cap, then that becomes workable. Last year there was a salt bill, salt reduction bill, totally share and aligned state local interest there. We want to keep clean water. We want to protect our lakes and streams. We want to effectively manage salt and transportation budgets, and reducing the amount of salt on roads is good. But with the outstanding liability of slip and fall lawsuits against town government, which is then compensated for by the taxpayer, we deem to have this liability problem addressed.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So we have no cap.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: We have no cap for tenants.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Good. State has a cap. We just wanna match the state cap. We got it.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yep. Yep. So there are more of them. God, I

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: thought I remember hearing something about sovereign immunity.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Great question. So there is sovereign immunity, however, title 24 requires that municipalities so state law requires that municipalities indemnify and defend municipal officials. And multiple court decisions in Vermont against, I mean, an individual who worked for a municipality. In those cases, the court has ruled, no, you can't sue the plow truck driver. You have to sue the town. And then when that happened a couple times, state law was changed to be consistent with that. So the government has immunity, but the government also has a responsibility to indemnify and defend the actor of the government, which is the official.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Employees. Got The employee.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Or the select person or whatever. There is a there is a defense here in Vermont, which is called god. What's the word when you're deciding something?

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Deliberative.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Deliberative.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yep.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Yeah. So if thanks.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: You can decide not

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: I'm cinnamon. Say that. So Decide not to to do So if you have a stop sign and you discuss building a race crosswalk and then the select board decides we can't afford the race crosswalk, we're not gonna build it. And then there's an accident because of that decision, then that decision is projected. Yeah.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: But if they put the blinking light on the crosswalk and the town employee who's supposed to make sure that those lights work every day, light goes out, someone gets hit, then they can be sued. And that there's examples like that in Vermont municipalities that are public, and we can share if there's interest in very large settlements that the state doesn't have to pay out if things happen on state parks or at this building or any office building where municipalities have had very large settlements. This is not to protect criminal activity or violation of someone's civil rights. This is this is about and and a lot of it comes in the recreation space. Yeah. Skate parks, recreation facilities that municipalities decide.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: They have a lot for state.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Their attorneys are are advising them. There's a lot of liability risk here.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So Alright. Senator Vyhovsky.

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: So we had a lot of discussion about SALT in judiciary, last year, and one of the sort of sticking points was the the idea of this sort of liability protection for gross negligence. Mhmm. And I wonder and I don't know what the state policy is, and I'm fairly okay with a cap as long as the injury isn't due to gross negligence on part of whatever actor it is. And so I wonder what your thoughts are on that.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: So in my salt bill from last session, the limited liability, the caps you're asking for. Yeah. Like, I'm not okay with that

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: if it applies to gross negligence. And so I guess I'm sort of wondering what your thoughts are.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: I you know, I I need to ask the lawyer. Okay. Because I don't know the relationship between an act of gross negligence and the criminality. So what I can tell you is if the municipal official elected appointed or staff is performing the duties required by their job, they would be protected by this. My question I would need to ask and follow-up to answer you more fully is what it is so if someone's being negligent, they're not performing their job. Right? So and same thing if someone's consuming alcohol while they drive a plow truck. Not the duty. That's not their duty. That's not what they're required to do to perform their job, and it's criminal. So I'm not sure where gross negligence falls. My instinct is to say it would not be covered, but have to double check.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Okay. That's great. Great. Let me just just remove this. Great.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: We'd like a local vote in setting county budgets, which we collect, and and pay. And we would also like the authority for municipalities to, collect fees on properties that are state man that are property tax exempt by state mandate. So, big hospitals, big colleges, large campuses that require a higher, more intensive level of municipal service, and they are not contributing to the cost of those municipal services because they're tax exempt.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Think AHS, when you partner with an organization, if it's an AHS building and it's their staff, they're paying pilot funds, but when they partner with an organization providing AHS services, that organization is tax exempt, but yet the municipality incurs a lot of fees. File the roads, their sidewalks, perform all these duties, but they're paying more property tax, and in some communities, it's a very large institution in some cases that has a substantial impact on municipal services and fees.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Is this is this

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: like Wallop, like, Quechee Lakes Landowners Association in my area?

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: I don't think so. I think one farther south than you that's been used as examples like the Broward Retreat.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Oh, okay. Our church, everything.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: The churches, colleges. Okay. The CCB, Think of the CCB parking lot. But I think a lot of it is also private pay. They're also some of them are private property and

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: do pay. There's some voluntary agreements that they pay.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: And there are voluntary

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: But it's not condom. Most of those institutions are facing pretty significant budgetary crises themselves Not great here to ask about that.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Municipalities can enter into voluntary agreements with these institutions and in some cases do, but then that becomes unequally applied. So some colleges and some hospitals may be supporting municipal services and some are not, or some nonprofits may have started small, grown very large, sort of escaped a voluntary agreement. So what municipalities don't have is the ability to, like, set through ordinance something that says 3% of your what you would otherwise pay shall be paid in the form of a fee so that it's equal and fair. They have to negotiate and enter into a signed agreement that's voluntary on behalf of the payer.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Senator Clarkson, you could, you don't need us for this, you could, come up with a model agreement for a town with a nonprofit and circulate that to your towns, and they could enter into this on their own. They don't you don't necessarily need legislation for this.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: The the other party doesn't know how to participate in that. That would only be They're also we

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: vote every few years to continue to give them status. Yep. Yep. So I mean Yeah.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: It's Anyway, this has been floating around for a long time, this issue. The other one about the per parcel fees when we do reappraisals and maintenance of grand list, those fees we get to start keeping up with that cost. And so why would you do a reappraisal when you're gonna have to put out more money and then have people complain that that's a raise of tax it's just it's a failure of our system as it exists now as we look at reappraisal. And the last one, we have a war on the Public Records Act. There we've had some discussions in your counter upstairs, and there's a lot of people looking for modernizations of public records to reflect the true cost, deal with that this is a very old statue, and things have changed a lot. And so we have some

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: So I will just say we're expecting a committee bill from your house, and I didn't provide a richness of detail, but wanna sort of preview. Happy to talk later, answer questions about it in a more fulsome way. But we're looking to extend the numbers a number of days to respond to the initial request.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Right now, it's three days.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Clarify an active denial. So right now, a late response is in denial, is appealable. So we're trying to avoid going to court on a late late reply. Allow municipalities to cover the true cost of producing records. Though in the past, it was expensive to make copies, and that was the primary expense of producing a record. Now we've had a growing number of changes to state law, which require the redaction of public records to protect the private information of the public, as well as victims of crime Employees. Employees, witnesses of crime, juveniles involved in crime, and then the list goes on. Right? Like, as an employer, a municipality has people's social security number that is on a public record. It has to be redacted. So I think there's 27 exemptions to public records, if I'm remembering the number correctly. So an attorney has to go through the records that are produced and collected, appropriate apply as required by state law, the redactions, and then the clerk or the custodian of the records gives them to the member of the public. And if the request there that's a member of the public chooses to inspect the copies rather than receive copies, then the municipality can't collect any money to cover the cost. So that work by the municipal technical staff and in many cases, a contracted municipal law attorney, it never paid for in the cost of producing the right Yeah.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Some communities, think, I think they testified last year their fee was over $80,000 last year to comply with public records requests. They've had, you know, certain individuals that Yeah. Make repeated requests every other day, and sort of that's the entry into the the the next interesting sort of part of of what we're proposing.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: So we've certainly heard from, and you, I'm sure, have as well, from municipal officials who are receiving these sort of repeated requests that may be intended to keep town offices busy with the record requests and not busy with the administration of government. Or situations, unfortunately, where the request is includes harassing language and threatening language. And we've scratched our brains, and we've talked to our colleagues across the state to try to come up with a way to address that concern without affecting the spirit of the law, which is transparency and access to the record. We learned from our colleagues in Maine, a change to Maine law that creates something called the vexatious request. So it's defined in law and the municipality can, if they want, they don't have to, if they want to, seek an order in superior court where a judge looks at the evidence presented by the municipality. And if it is a vexatious request and it's ordered so by the judge, then the municipalities don't have to reply. They don't have to so it's not a consequence, not a punitive consequence on that requester. It is a relief from the order to comply for the municipality.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Is there

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: anything else? We've done some similar things with, like, nuisance lawsuits, but that's a much better word than nuisance. Like it. My question, though, or is it it's actually been back to four, and my question is sort of how one would so my concern let me actually start with my concern, is that some people, particularly lower income people, people with disabilities, can't afford to get copies of public record requests might choose inspection because that is more cost effective for them. And I certainly have heard of multiple instances in my constituency of people who have applied for a waiver of those fees and been denied it. You get it. And so I'm I'm a little concerned that taking away that avenue may inequitably shut out lower income providers from being able to access those records. That that is a smart concern.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: There are other ways to maybe mitigate those that other states do, such as having in the case of a denied waiver. So, like, a party that's not that's outside of an appeal process. We have in the longer version of this, recommendations such as providing like, also in the in this change requiring that the municipality provide a cost estimate and be able to collect the deposit. Of course, there's the waiver opportunity now. But I've I've worked in in being responsive to public records requests. And I think also with the extended timeline that creates an opportunity for the municipal official, the custodian of the records to work with the requester to maybe bring down the volume. Right? Because oftentimes folks put in there might be something they're looking for, they don't know what the name of the record is or how to find it. And so they say, want every correspondence between these 10 people with these 10 words. And that produces a really streamed volume of the record that may or may not even encapsulate the material or content that the requester is looking to access. And so we also wanna extend this timeline to allow that sort of back and forth so that the clock isn't ticking on the beginning of it of an appeal process or the failure to comply by the municipality, but that doesn't mean the work to deliver the records isn't happening. Right?

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. No. The extension of the number of days to respond makes sense to me. Three days is something. What doesn't necessarily make sense to me without some clarification around waivers and is the like, yes. I know it costs money. And if we are gonna charge for even an inspection, we're gonna shut people out of being able to access those at all because they simply don't have the money.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Yeah. So then we we might wanna, like, explore what some of the other states do to provide enough ombudsman process. It's the because there there may be an inability to afford the cost of the record. I acknowledge that. And there may be a skepticism about the cost to produce them. But the attorney time is required again by the obligations of state law to protect certain private information. And I think there's certainly a fair process that could happen to make sure that that's factual and that is the, in fact, the true cost of producing the record that we can keep out of court, which is also

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Another cost.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: A cost. You know, the reality is we are also seeing AI requests, which are really business endeavors. Yeah. To request all RFPs and bid documents for all rote. It's really just helping businesses that are scrubbing with AI public records requests to have be better positioned to earn contracts and employment and etcetera. And because we don't have any citizenship requirements or state resident, there's no requirement. You don't ID. There's have become a challenge. Who is making this request? For what purpose? Could we have some ability to collect a little more information about what their requester is, what they're after to make sure this isn't just a a scrub of records for AI to to create a better business opportunity, which has happened in in municipalities all across the state.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: And this is the last is this the last thing? Yes. That so we just wanna give you sort of an update on work that we're doing at the LCT to provide technical assistance for municipalities to support the administration of government. So, we wanted to remind you that a very popular program, the MPAT program, was created in the fiscal year twenty three budget adjustment and made eligible later that year to all flood impacted towns regardless of their size, was a successful path for many resiliency and long term projects that helped many municipalities access federal grants, including ARVO funded grants, time limited ARVO funded grants. Just the MTAP proved just the MTAP funded projects that VLCT worked on, which we were only one of many technical assistance providers, helped towns draw down 15,000,000 in the last fiscal year that we had the program. That was not funded in the FY twenty six budget. However, that's the bad news. The good news is that we just received news that the Northern Borders

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Northern

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Regional Borders

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Northern Border Northern Border Regional Commission. Yes. Thank you. Through

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: their Catalyst program, we received a $500,000 grant that will support three years of technical assistance programming at the LCT specifically for Chitt preparedness. So we're gonna start that program actually next month as the first opportunity for town officials to participate really with sort of education and outreach about the new program, what it does and what it doesn't do, as well as an introduction to sort of necessary concepts to be able to leverage it, such as what is tax increment financing and how does it work. And then in year two, going to a high touch cohort model. So basically, towns that have a CHIP project identified will will they'll join together and sort of go through a series of much more specific skill building type educational opportunities, such as blisters need to learn how to set an original taxable value. So there will be a session on that. And then finally, developing a resource bank for towns to use model policies, model ordinance, model development agreements to sign with home builders that we hope will long outlive the three year grant period. And these are, of course, open to all VLC team members, but also RCD and RPC staff who often are a technical assistance provider.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: They have a separate streaming for technical assistance.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: What was that? They have, yes, separate funding to the other Yep. Yes.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: And they're gonna be part of our trainings.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Coordinate that on all the chip, but on all this technical assistance piece. Mean, we need to be aligned on who outreach, what, where, so we don't duplicate efforts.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: But, yeah, we're happy to share some of you know, there's much more we could talk to you about. Any questions that you have on this or anything else? We're we're here. We're here now. We're here later. Send her away.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Thank you, mister chair. So where are all of these? Like, you do you have them in a bill form that they're moving forward?

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Are you asking what's the ask of us Yeah. For this event?

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Oh, there's a That looks like there's some that are or some that

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: aren't in bills.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Yeah. So there's not but

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: I guess maybe just the

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: really easy one is yeah.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: What is the ask of us? Are you asking us to introduce a bill

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: on this? So there is a bill for the monetary cap. It is introduced to house judiciaries. There's not a senate bill. And we would love a senate bill on the monetary cap. I'm not sure

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: how you'd do that. You have to do a committee bill at this point. Yeah. Our judge entered that. Except for committee bills, is January 29.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: There is a we're anticipating, again, a committee bill at from your colleagues in house government operations for public records law, which also could be a vehicle for other things, of course. Right? And it it's likely that the per parcel payments may be addressed by either chamber as part of the ongoing reappraisal re reenvisioning of the future of reappraisal in Vermont work that the money committees are doing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think this is going to be a recommendation from PVR as a result of a summer study process that we participated in. So that would be great to have their agreement on that. Other than that, what am I struggling? Cannabis, we have we believe or we yes. There will be a cannabis bill. Okay. That I think was put in prior I think there will be a bill, but it hasn't been introduced yet, that the board is leaning on. And other than that

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Matt and I are meeting about who started what on cannabis to cooperate. Great.

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Because I I would just the reason I asked is I'm very supportive of the majority of these things. I'm also in favor of us expanding the pilot fund percentage as I was last year to a 100. So if there is support you need in a bill from this committee,

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: I think You have a cheerleader.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Yeah. And pilot comes with. Pilot, of course, could be done in either the budget adjustment or the appropriations. Okay. Yeah.

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: And you're not actually asking for an expansion of the sharing percentage. You're just asking for that surplus money? Yes. Okay.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Correct. Per year or going forward? One year. That's what's confusing me. Is that

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: going forward or just that 100%?

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Well, return the surplus to the communities that raised it because it's gonna get harder and harder because there's more communities contributing to that over time. I agree. It will get smaller and smaller. We could discuss sort of as a new surplus builds, what the good way to use it in the future.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Yeah. So really, we're asking for two things. One is to return the current surplus, which is substantial. I mean, a responsible amount of the surplus, not putting the special fund dry because that's also municipal money that goes to pilot towns. Well, that's already being taken care of in the original Right. So a return of a surplus to the towns that created it, as well as a plan for future year surpluses. So to set a goal, right, for that fund to maintain and to agree when it goes over that here are programs that are appropriate places to be funded by this revenue that which is municipal revenue so that this doesn't happen again where we don't have municipally created revenue held in state coffers to the tune of $14,000,000. I mean, that is it that is significant funding for these pounds.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Yeah. Municipality is debating budgets right now, very contentious meetings over 50,000 line items

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Yeah.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: When they've been paying into this pilot fund for ten years, and their share is well beyond that amount. And, you know, literally,

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: cutting programs and staff. How many towns have local option tax?

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: About 35, 36. Okay.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: That means it would be roughly, if we just did that now, that would be about $380,000 per town. That's huge. So that's huge.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Yeah. That's nearly my town's budget. That's twice our town's budget. We don't have an allergy, but yeah. But there are some really small towns on that list.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Right. So Yeah. When you if you don't earn that many times at the moment, but we're below option tax. So that's why it's a significant. And

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: there's lots of different ways to do that, of course. Right? Because there is records of who actually collected it, which towns contributed how much they

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: had. Complicated.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: You

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: can't just divide it by 30 times the collection. Yes. Disproportionate. Woodstock collects a whole lot more than Right.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: But it's fact how much each town contributed. That that's not hard to

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: But we're we're also very open to a reasonably and possible to administer plan to return that money. Right? Like, it doesn't have to be to the penny raised.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: If it's reasonable, if we know that on average, Williston contributes 10% of the fund per year, and then Williston should receive 10%. Right? Like, the point is not how do we set LOT towns up to fight for that money against each other. The point is how do we allow the municipal budgets to leverage the resources that they raised, which have been unavailable to them in the pilot fund. Okay. Yeah. Lots to consider.

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: Yep. Great. Thanks very Thank you. Alright.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Wow. Now that's not even all your housing,

[Josh Hanford (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: you'll No, It's housing. We can talk to you. Certainly talking to. I know. It

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: might be helpful to have the cannabis control board in. Yep. WJ. I know that most of that's happening. I know. Sounds like

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: they're failing. They're having better

[Samantha Sheehan (Vermont League of Cities and Towns)]: at IRL. And like, well, I know, it's my mom and pragmatic vibe. Hello, Marie? Yeah.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So tomorrow committee, we're gonna hear from PPS, Private Public Safety, Commissioner Obinan with their priorities. What I might suggest we do with S-one 164 with Senator Watson's health benefits bill for the General Assembly is have you take your bill right after her, and we can kind of compare the two at So one we'll see 29

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: on there too. Yeah.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Can you raise that up? And then on Thursday, I'm finally looking to get an s 23 done with. We're gonna have Shay Waters Evans come in along with Rick Siegel to tell us what they changed in that synthetic media bill. And then if it doesn't appear that we have issues, we'll just vote to concur with the house and be done with it. And then I have reports repealed survey. This is something that Madame Vyhovsky had asked many chairs of all of the committees. We have a whole bunch of reports. Whenever we pass a bill, we ask for a report. I'd be amazed if anybody ever read every single report. It would blow you away to have somebody say, Yeah, I spent all summer reading my reports. So with that in mind, this is at least a way for us to look at what we ask the agencies to do. And if nobody cares about it and nobody reads them and they're five years old, we will repeal them.

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Are these the reports that are coming to this committee or the reports go away? But I would hate to repeal a report that

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: someone in judiciary is different. No, These are specific to each chair. Alison

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: got in for economic development. I could see it on her desk. Those are the reports that come with each committee. So each committee's been asked to do the same. That

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: makes sense. Normally repeal boards and commissions, we sort of looked globally. So I just wanted to make sure we were staying in our lane.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So we'll need to get a copy of all of those reports, not every bill.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: We're just We can't make decisions for other committees about what

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: We're not going to. That's the question I was asking. No.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: I appreciate that. That's why I've been sent this. But I don't think I I they those reports, we wouldn't ask for them if they weren't necessary. Some of them were just by statute. You're right. Some just come by rote. Some we ask for. They all live on our committee web pages and are often, you're right, maybe not read until the subject comes up, and then we remind ourselves.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So they're only one time. They were done, they're done. But they're annual ones. I

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: think the annual ones are kind of what you're really getting at. Not necessarily. So Yes. Look. I have four pitches. We'll probably need I don't know we

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: gave alleged counsel in on that. I don't know. Guess I told you you did. So we'll take a look at it. And

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: quite honestly, this also requires work of the chairs to go and talk to the agencies and the individual departments that are producing them. Well, we

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: can at least highlight the ones that we think we might be able to rule it out.

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Discussions have Thursday.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah. That's what we're Yes.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: That's what we're

[Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: what's going on Friday?

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Friday is Property. Property.

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Property tax sales.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: Tax sales.

[Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: And security briefing?

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah. That'll wind up the day. Cool. So that's what I got. That's good. And if there's nothing else, we'll call it a day.

[John Morley III (Clerk)]: We have chairs meeting at 04:30. Not today. But Phil just told me

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: we did. Next week, could be the evening.

[Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I talked to the pro temp. I said, are we happy? Chairs meeting Saturday or something? He said yes. Okay. Okay. So we have a new email that says

[Brian Collamore (Chair)]: sent one out yesterday. He said we'd start on the