Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Reference to committee or sorry, to county. Larry Atkins, welcome back to the Senate Committee on Government Operations meeting of Tuesday, April 14. Sorry to interrupt, and Tim. We're gonna look at House Bill seven sixty two, and that's relating to the county and regional governance study committee. And we have I have draft 1.2, but maybe that's not the latest draft. One point one and one point two are essentially the same ones edited. Oh, alright. The nature I'm sorry. For the record to end up of legislative council, the nature of this amendment, proposed by this committee to an act relating, to the county and regional government study committee that is h seven six two, essentially just removing all references to county throughout here. So you'll see various highlights and actually the addition of section two from the underlying ad that went from the impact two years ago, I believe, and just where there's additional references to county, governance, and so there's been some there too.

[Tim Devlin (Legislative Counsel)]: So the amendment is actually a little bit longer than the bill as it came over from the house. That's just because it's finding different references to county and the law of act, and that certainly is there. Did Okay. Anyone have questions for Tim? Senator White?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Well, I just wanted to note based on the conversations we've had in committee, it seems like we're not at a consensus point to remove the county language. So I'm personally okay with us going back to the as drafted version or as past house version and not moving forward with the recommendations.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. Does anyone object to them? So sorry.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Rewind. So as it was passed

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: So we had Peter Gregory who wanted to remove the county and some other pieces. I don't know how people felt about the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: other Other people had voiced strong support for keeping county in. Yes. As we look at all the options. Yes. So why take one option off the table? Well summarized. Yes. That's the objective of the committee to actually look at all the options and something and make recommendations to us.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yes. Right? So then back.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: We have the initial author of, it

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: was a committee bill, I think,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: but it was really to look at the whole nine yards and make a recommendation from reviewing all the options.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Yeah. I just wanted to say we can go back to our starting place at the, at the house of Richmond. I think I was the only one voicing, just based on our constituent.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah. I'm just looking at the original bill. Was three pages, introduced by representative by Ron, And it actually, the one aim of the bill was to extend the perspective repeal of this committee and its associated report deadline. That's all we were trying to do originally was push it out because the deadline for the report, which never happened, has already happened. Yeah. So and, again, if if senator Clarkson's indicating she wants to leave, I'm not sure what you were indicating, but maybe I'm asking. Are you saying

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I would suggest you go back to as as my understanding was that as originally conceived, it was meant to look at all the options, regional, county, what? COG, council governments, all the options that are available in The United States for how we do more regionalized and more efficient coverage.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. So if no one has any more questions for Tim, I'd like to invite Senator Hardy up to talk a little bit more about this because she was definitely involved with this. She was the former chair of this committee and that word came out of. If we still have representatives from the folks that were on that committee still here, some of them. I was not on that committee, I don't believe Matt Byron was

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: on that committee. Wendy Harrison.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Wendy and Senator Norris, and then there was another representative from the other body that didn't win reelection, and Speaker was not able to appoint anybody in a timely manner enough to move it along. So welcome. And I'm sorry so much that we have pretty much taken up your afternoon No.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: That's okay. Trying to get in the door. That's okay. I I understand this committee has a lot of questions sometimes. Every committee does, and that's great. So no problem. I appreciate you having me. Thank you for the record. I'm senator Ruth Hardy from the Addison District. And I several of you on this committee know the history of this bill because you were a part of the history of this bill. But this started as s one fifty nine and passed and was signed by the governors at 01/18/2024. It was not technically a committee bill, but all the members of the committee were cosponsors of it. So it was essentially a committee bill. And then we had great help from our witnesses and wanted specifically call out doctor Farnham, who's here appropriately, who helps come up with some of the constructs that were are used in the original bill, and then, namely, the advisory committee of stakeholders so that we didn't have a committee that was 700 people big. That was really helpful. And then sort of the context of of, you know, emergency management and how do we respond to things like COVID and floods and all the all the bad things and update our regional governance. And I it the whole process didn't happen because, as you know, there were changes in committee leadership, and the way it was originally structured was that the co chairs were supposed to be chairs of the two GovOps committees. And then when I wasn't gov ops chair and Mike McCarthy was in the house, didn't win reelection, things kinda stalled. I think technically everybody was there were appointments made to the committee, but the committee never actually met. So h July would make a few tweaks and then sort of get this going again without the requirement that the chair the co chairs be the chairs of the Gabbabs Committee. So giving it a little bit more flexibility, I think is a good idea. I will note that the original plan was that this would be kind of an eighteen month study, and this really shrinks it to once we finish in the session. It'll be more like a five

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: or two month. Yeah. Depending on

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: it will be much, much shorter. So that is one thing to think about. I mean, much as I really want this to get done, I wanna make sure it's done well. So really thinking about is that enough time to do all the work, and you might wanna hear from other people to see. So I really appreciated the conversation you just had about about whether or not to remove county. I was very concerned that that was the direction you're going. Okay. I think it's really important that county stay part of the conversation. To senator Clarkson's point, county is the actual constitutionally prescribed regional governance system that it happens on. It's challenged in a number of ways. So I think it needs to be part of the conversation if we're going to be doing governance restructuring at the regional level. County government governments

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: need to

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: be part of that conversation of what do we because even if you decide to do another thing or we decide or they or whomever it is decides to do another thing, like a council of governments, still have a problem with what we do about county governments. They're they don't go away unless we have major statutory and, frankly, constitutional changes. So I think it would be really important for this committee to recommend what we could do or should do with county governments, and that could include things about regional policing, which I know you've all talked about this summit session, things about voting, things about how elected officials at the county level, which there are challenges all over the state with that one. So, you know, there are a lot of conversations to be had about county government, and it is not we have pretty well established county lines right now, but they a hundred and twenty five years ago, at the end of the nineteenth century, those lines were still changing. So it's not impossible to change those lines if that's something that is desired or or or would make things better. Or you can have those county lines for sort of mapping purposes, but not governance purposes. That's another option. That's what Connecticut does. They have county lines, but they don't have county government. Council government. They have the council governments model. And we the committee did meet three times in the 2024, and we started some really good work and great testimony. We heard from Connecticut. Heard from Oregon. We heard from Maine, think. We heard from the National Association of County Governments. We heard from a lot of people who are really laying the groundwork for the committee to to understand the options out there, and that's why I think it's really important to keep county as part of it and and to consider new models like the Council of Governments. One, I wanna just make sure I think that the the advisory committee stays in the bill. It's just not shown in the bill because it's just the three three asterisks. Okay. So I wanted to make sure that the advisory committee state a thing. It didn't get deleted because it's not in the bill, but it's it's still in statute or in in state what you call it? Law? What is called tips?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Session law.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: Session law. Thank you, brain. And the one thing I would suggest is in this interim period, if you're gonna stay with counties, thank you. That was my big thing. So but sounds like you are. Thank you, senator White. And the other suggestion I might make is that in this interim period when the legislature has not been doing this work, there have been a number of groups that are doing this work in some way or another. And they may have different agendas, but they're still doing some research. And one of them is through the University of Vermont Center for Rural Studies. I was interviewed by a group of graduate students, which you might recall senators who were on this committee. We were going to contract with this center for rural studies. Oh, yes.

[Douglas Farnham (Chief Recovery Officer)]: We were

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: doing that. What is, like, having talked with that? Yeah. Well, they ran with that idea, and the professor who was going to work with us, I think, went ahead and sort of did her own version of it with some graduate students. So I was interviewed as part of that, and I know others were. I think I think Donna was. And so you might wanna mention I mean, can do this without you even mentioning it, but if you if you want to have them in to to testify if you have time, but if not, just mention that there are other there's other work happening that should be taken into consideration, and that might save the committee some time because I think they've been working on some ground work, like, what are the options? What do other states do? What does this what does this person think? And they may have collected some of that data and some of those opinions. So and I think there's another group that was doing it too, and it might have been I'm not sure if they're related, but I think the planning commission regional planning commissions, it was doing some of their own research, and they might be connected to the UVM people or maybe not. I don't know. But point is is there's there are people doing some work out there that might

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: be helpful to dovetail with.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Excuse me. I think they're we call it

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: a technical task force or something that for me, that was sort of behind the scenes.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: Yeah. It's called the technical advisory group. Yeah.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: That's a

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I think the advisory group.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: It's a

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: it's a technical advisory group, and that was convened by the Vermont Bond Bank. So checking in, having maybe Michael

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Gone.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: Michael Gone from the bond bank come in because he was coordinating that technical advisory group, and we chose him in large part because, one, he was willing to do it. And, two, he's somewhat the bond bank has a has a a it's like an interest in making sure regional governance is effective, but they don't have a direct stake in the game. They're more or less they're more neutral. They want regional government to work, but they don't necessarily care what the model is. So Michael was really helpful in thinking about the advisory group and getting them all together. And they also met sort of parallel to us Yeah. At the same time as the meeting that we canceled after the election. They were gonna come in and and talk to us about the first topic, which I actually think was recent releasing kind of coincidentally. Sort of began. Yeah. So, you know, there are a lot of, you know, there are a lot of topics that I think could be and I I understand that Peter Gregory's point was, you know, trying to focus the conversation, and I totally get that. But I think there are other ways you can focus a conversation without narrowing the options for what might be recommended.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: So another is also the Vermont Council on World Development, which might be a piece

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: of Yeah. They're not they're

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: not on the technical advisory group. But it also just says other relevant stakeholders. Exactly. Catch all. So But, yes, they would probably have some

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: nice stuff. I hear you on the the sort of speed with which the expect the expectation in this bill is is is enormous that you're Yeah. Accomplished in a campaign year Yeah. All this. Actually, one of the things I would put on the table is that says that the committee shall cease to exist July '28. I would have us going taking this crowd right through '28 and have it have the report due at the December '28, not '27.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Not Yeah. Yeah.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: I mean, the original bill created it in '24, and the report was due in November '25. Right. So it's like eighteen months. So if we did eighteen months and had

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: the report due December 27, that would make more sense. Yeah. I think that it That makes more sense. You could do It's sensitive. Yeah. Bag '28. But I think the having a report due in December 27 instead of '26. Because right now

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: it's due

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: No. What's isn't it right now it's due

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: It's

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: No. It says December. December is

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: That's what like three or four months.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. So I would to

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: see that.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: We do that. From that and say December 27. Yeah. Or or you can

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: do 11/01/2027. And the reason that we chose November 1 is because the drafting deadline in the second year is early.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: So I think that was actually mister Devlin's suggestion that if there was gonna be legislation coming out of it, having that that month to actually draft a bill would be helpful.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: The second year of the filing is a that's

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: good November '27.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I would do November 27.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: The subcommittee would be Would couldn't stay the same. Or a coincident with that. The '27.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: Yeah. The reason we kept them alive during the commission during this session was to so that they could testify. But they're all legislators.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I wonder how many of those folks that were on that technical advisory are still, like, around.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: A lot of people

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: They were a lot of them are because what they they ended up being, you know, like the I

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I said they're not I

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: I don't know if they're still alive. They're not just gonna die. They're not dead.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: I'm still they're not dead. A lot of them are just the same people who come in and testify here. You know, it's their sort of public facing person. Yeah. So I I think a lot of them are still probably around and but Michael Gone would have the list of who was on that technical advisory committee. And yeah. So great. That's all I have to say. If you're keeping counties, thank you. I appreciate that. And think about the date and think about adding in something about other organizations that I could do with this work.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Okay. Yeah. Right. As you're you're right. The center those places. Yeah. I think it was But but VCRD does Yeah. VCRD is a good I think it

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: was one by one.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: They've been doing a lot of work with towns, and so they may have some ideas.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Very focused on towns, but if they are focused on regional objectives. And one thing that they're

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: of the things that they're really good at is facilitation. So Mhmm. If there were some changes, you know, they could facilitate a conversation about camp county or regional government. I don't know. They might be helpful. Shared services. Exactly. Exactly.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So did you wanna say anything or are you just listening?

[Douglas Farnham (Chief Recovery Officer)]: Yes, mister chair. I thought I was gonna test them as

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Oh, okay. Well, I'm gonna

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: back and pop up corporate taxes. So Definitely.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Wait. Did you see this?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Hold on.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: I'm gonna

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: show you before you go.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: 80% people in Vermont support. Okay. There you go. How many are you? Wealth tax and

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: the surging tax increases.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: Bye, guys. Have fun without me. Point four. I think it's everybody. I'm so welcome. Because it is. I know. I can't have you, sir. We can go ahead and hear the testimony.

[Douglas Farnham (Chief Recovery Officer)]: You. For the record, Douglas Farnam, chief recovery officer for the state. Thank you for having me. So I would start off by saying, yes, the administration supported the the original iteration of this study committee. I would say not without reservation. I think the the topic is very fraught and has the potential to create unex unintended expenses. Right? And I did see in in this version a new section on legislative intent, but it's not enough that I'm not asking for a specific change. I just wanted to point it out to the committee that some of the additions in the most in draft 1.2 focus more on the services side, but I do remember one of the points of creating the committee was also the accountability and the responsibility side. So I think

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: They didn't get rid of that.

[Douglas Farnham (Chief Recovery Officer)]: They didn't get rid of it, but by adding additional focus on service, there is kind of a risk of the perception that we're just talking about services here. And honestly, I work extremely well with the RPCs. I work well with Peter Gregory. He was very focused on the service delivery side, which makes sense. That's where he comes from. I come from the who needs to be responsible, and one of the main drivers for creating this committee was the federal government will only connect with whoever's legally responsible for a government action. So if the locals are still responsible for everything, if if if none of the responsibility ends up being sourced at the regional level, the feds will not work with at all, and they will not interact with them at all. And it will be potentially a pointless layer from the federal perspective.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Because some of this began because of FEMA and the inability for us to really accept monies that were focused on county Yes. On supporting counties, and we didn't have a a good way to

[Douglas Farnham (Chief Recovery Officer)]: And for the last three years, I have witnessed struggles of, you know, over 200 municipalities trying to work directly with FEMA, and some of those smaller municipalities having real challenges, even with state support Yeah. Of just meeting all the federal requirements, understanding them, and Right. When there's turnover in a local election, suddenly you lose all institutional knowledge. And despite all the best intentions, the locality goes this way and the feds expected them to go that way. So I think that accountability is a really valuable part of the and that's one reason I agree with the not removing county and it wouldn't be enough to make the administration oppose that because we could still argue that counties are a form of regional governance, so it's still on the table. But I think the redaction would send, I think, the wrong message as far as and I would also say, yes, senator Hardy's testimony about what's going on in this space with the UVM work and everything, I think the additional like, the November 2027 timeline works much better with that. There's also a lot going on at the federal level that giving the study committee that additional time to potentially react to anything that happens at the federal level makes sense.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Is there anything good happening on the federal level?

[Douglas Farnham (Chief Recovery Officer)]: Potentially. Actually, yes. All of the back and forth on FEMA, and how the feds interface with the states and disaster response, it still could go in a negative direction, but I was able to connect directly with some of the members of that represented different states on that FEMA working group, and some of them are pitching models that wouldn't work very well for the state and might require Vermont to consider adapting a little bit into into how we organize regionally, but it could be productive. Good to hear. So certainly not impossible that if some of those if some of those paths are followed, that it's something that maybe we could work with, and that this committee could have valuable input on helping the state adjust to that. Right. So that being said, think, again, the main reservation that the, we don't have any reservation about the extension of this committee, and it would just be about whatever comes out of the committee, we're all interested in more efficiency, right, in allowing those local, the people in smaller communities to receive the same quality services that we see in our larger communities, and how's the right way to achieve that in Vermont?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Right, we're done.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. And did you serve on the technical advisory?

[Douglas Farnham (Chief Recovery Officer)]: So my role is a temporary appointment, so the administration had asked for it not to be formally part of the technical advisory group, I thoroughly supported the efforts, and I would continue to.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah, not right after Alison. And important to all your work at our recovery office.

[Douglas Farnham (Chief Recovery Officer)]: Yes, I think our current structure does not facilitate recovery. We're Vermonters, and we're good at getting it done anyway, but I think we're fighting against our structure and no fighting effort more than it's assisting us. That was just a great question.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Anything else for Doug?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: No. Just always thank you for all your ongoing work.

[Douglas Farnham (Chief Recovery Officer)]: Thanks for having me.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: We're sure. Yeah. We love having you. We'll make, hopefully, the date changes. Mhmm. And take this up again. Hopefully later this week

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Member)]: or That's the only change. I wonder if we can make the date change and vote it out by the end

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: of the week. Yeah. That'd be great.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: We've got the animal welfare procedures tomorrow. We have some humane societies coming in unless there's violent objection from that group because they will mostly do sort of additional administrative stuff with that bill. Actually, we have

[Sen. Ruth Hardy]: Oh, I'm sorry.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Age 67 up again. I'll let him say that operations and accountability tomorrow. I did get a fiscal note from a joint fiscal. There is still some money that was appropriated a couple years ago that's available for that. It's not much. It'll take care of the per diems if we choose to go that route. I know we have our own bill. This is the one that I believe sets up $300 appropriation from joint fiscal for that joint fiscal committee to make JFC work on this government accountability issue. So I don't know if we pass it, it's probably, well, not probably, it will go next door. And the indications from the chair there were that they probably would not fund the 300, and I don't know whether joint fiscal will do it for free. Well, as far as joint fiscal committee, I think No. It's not the ability fiscal office to come up with a position. It's a 150 times two with the two year position to study government accountability. Just saying Yeah. It wasn't a huge fan of that. So Yeah. And we got the big treasury bill on Thursday, the tech technical corrections bill also.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Oh, is that kind? Are we?

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah. It's on our desk on Thursday at three. How exciting. It'll be our hopefully by the end of the week.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Who is now the legislative council on the technical corrections? Maria. Maria. The royal. Royal.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Anything else more of the committee today?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: No. It was good. I thought the actually, I thought the firefight was great and very interesting and different from what we often deal with. But, really, they found some good work

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: in rethinking. Yeah. That's that's pretty