Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Good afternoon. Welcome in to the Senate Committee on Government Operations Committee meeting of Tuesday, 05/12/2026, up for our consideration. The first today is Senate Bill two ninety eight, an act relating to creating the Vermont Voting Rights Act. This was sent across to our sister committee, as they say, and it's been returned with some amendments and changes to it. And we wanna welcome in from Indonesia, Christina Syvert, who is the executive director of Stamore State Ethics Commission. She's joining us on Zoom. And I understand there's about a twelve hour difference there. So we appreciate you either staying up very late or getting up very early because I think it's about Yes, two a. M. Here,

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: I just stayed up. So fading fast right here.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Well, in. Good to see you. And love to hear what you have to tell us today about this potential bill.

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: Sure. So, yeah, so I am on leave of absence. I've been on leave of absence since mid January, but I do think it's important to testify on this particular issue because I'm one of the only people who have been around for a totality of four and a half years. And it's kind of the specific history of what's been going on during that time. So my first point I want to make is just, well, to give you a quick overview of the history of this. So, the Ethics Commission has always been charged with handling the executive officer forms. We have jurisdiction over public servants. The Secretary of State's office has always handled the dissemination of candidate financial disclosure forms. They have jurisdiction over candidates and elections, so that makes sense that it's divided up that way. The Ethics Commission, for my understanding, was charged with drafting the base form that is used for both candidates and executive officers because the same information is required to be disclosed by both categories of people. So, it wasn't because it was an ethics commissions form, we didn't own it. It was just because somebody had to do legislature wanted there to be consistency in the forms that went out. Up until this point, the Secretary of State's office has always disseminated the Canada Financial Disclosure form with the consent of candidate package, the candidate filing package. I submitted an example of that, because I think that sometimes it's just easier for people to see what it looks like. I looked into this when I first took the job just because I want to understand how it happened. I personally have not ever seen the Canada Financial Disclosure form myself. It was sent over to their office prior to my arrival, I think in 2018 and 2019, and I've never seen it since. So, every year it's been updated by the Secretary of State's office and sent out with the candidate filing package. And it makes sense because it's only gone out to those candidates who need to file, because not everyone who needs to file, needs to file for runs for election needs to file the form. So, this way the candidate, the financial disclosure form goes to only to the candidates who need to file. It makes sense. It reduces friction. It reduces questions. People don't have to wonder, do I have to file the form? They just know because it's in their package. The only point of contention between our office and the Secretary of State's office until this year over the financial disclosure forms was who answers questions. When I came on, I had a handful of people call our office referred to us by the Secretary of State's office, asking questions about whether they really had to file the form. There's information that they didn't want to include. What if they didn't include it? What would happen to them? So, I was quite uncomfortable answering those questions in the context of being a candidate and asking what was essentially required to run for election. So I discussed it with the entire commission and the entire commission agreed that we did not think we should be answering candidate questions. So I brought to the Secretary of State's office at the time. It was a different makeup of people. They felt like they also didn't want to be answering questions. My understanding at the time, it was a staffing issue. I don't think we delved really deeply into it, that's my recollection. So,

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: forward,

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: our office transitioned to an online disclosure system in approximately 2023. We built that system because there was some criticism in the news about the difficulty in finding disclosure information generally for legislators, candidates, so on and so forth. So, we built it with the idea that eventually multiple entities could use it. So, if you build it, they will come. Back then, our office didn't have as much work as we do now. So, we thought it was a good use of our time. So, we transitioned executive officers over to that system a couple of years ago. And that's what we use now. We introduced it to the Secretary of State's office. The previous version of the Elections Division was different people there, asked them if they're interested in using it. They were taking it under consideration. The people changed. We introduced it to the Secretary of State's office again, the new team. They were taking it under consideration as well. At the October 2025, they finally decided that they did not want to use the online financial disclosure system, which was disappointing for us because we felt like it was easier for people to use, it was easier to find the information. And we had been looking forward to kind of cost sharing in terms of we spent about $20,000 to build the system, which was at cost, it was a government contract with a government contractor that all the rates are approved in advance. So, that was the cost to build the entire system that we now use for our online training as well as for financial disclosures, And it includes monthly maintenance costs for a couple of years. That's all rolled into one. Anyway, that is a system that we now use. Secretary of State's office was not interested in sharing the system. And then this year for the first time ever, it came up and I still don't know where this came from, the Secretary's office didn't want to have anything to do with Canada financial disclosures at all. I wanted us to take over all of the work related to it. I truly still do not understand where this is coming from. But in terms of where we are today, I just want to make it clear, I know you've heard this before, that we just literally do not have the staff to do this. We can't. We have one part time executive director, one part time administrative assistant. We tried to come to a compromise on this issue. We offered to have both offices jointly post a form just to make sure that it was available in time for candidates. They declined to do that. We offered in house government operations to jointly post the form and to resolve the question of candidate questions, even though I'm on vacation at the moment, I haven't been getting paid. I offered to answer questions the best I could in like a triage kind of situation over email to help get us through that impasse. That offer was not taken up. At that point, we thought that our office was gonna get an additional staff person that had been passed as part of the House budget that was removed in the Senate side.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: It doesn't mean it's moved forever. It may cut back. We're hoping it'll be there. We're advocating hard for it.

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: I truly hope so because, I mean, we really are excited every year for the past three years, but the ethics commission is really hanging in the balance. But I don't want to take up too much of your time and I'm getting tired. So I just want to make it clear that right now, the most the ethics commission can do related to Canada financial disclosures to post the form. We can't do anything more than that with our current staffing. I also wanted to clarify a couple of points that have come up because I think you understand the staffing issue, but there is some history here when it comes to the change in language that happened in 2024 from the ethics commission shall prepare the form to the ethics commission shall create and maintain the form. So, the ethics commission itself actually specifically asked for that language change. I started the conversation in 2023 when we're talking about Canada financial disclosures. It carried over into 2024. And so our intention in asking for that language change was to confirm that the only role that ethics commission had in the candidate financial disclosure form was to create the form, nothing more. I specifically asked for a language change because I want to be clear that it was on us who was responsible for answering questions. That's not to say that we were trying to push it on a Secretary of State's Office. We just wanted to make it clear that it wasn't our role. And my recollection was that there was a general agreement that the Ethics Commission should not be involved in elections and should not have any role beyond just creating the base form. So I just want to make it clear because it seems that some people are taking that change in language to mean the Ethics Commission was assigned new responsibilities, but that was definitely not the case. There are also just several kind of practical policy reasons, several reasons that are both practical and related to policy why the Ethics Commission should really not be taking on Canada financial disclosure responsibilities, we think we

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: should be out of it

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: completely. Our goal right now is not have anything to do with Canada financial disclosures. This makes sense. We've looked at what happens in other states, particularly in New England states, and the entity that is responsible for Canada financial disclosures is also responsible for campaign finance. So in some states, that's the Secretary of State's office and in some states, that's the ethics commission. But that's the through line. If somebody has responsibility for campaign finance, they also handle candidate financial disclosures. It just makes sense.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: So, Christina, it's good to see you and I hope you're having an incredible time. How many states have it bifurcated so that the Secretary of State does financial filing and the ethics commission does the campaign, does the candidate financial disclosure? And how many states are they united in one place or the other?

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: That one I don't know the answer to. When it comes to New England, I would say there's zero bifurcation. That's what we discovered when it comes to the entire 50 states.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Sorry. So that means they're all registered, both those forms are with the Secretary of State?

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: It means that all the forms are housed in one location. So they're not.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: So it could

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: be with the ethics body or it could be with the Secretary of State's office, but they're not split up into two.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Okay. Are in any of those states, are they all with the ethics commission?

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: No, I think there's at least one as the Secretary of State. To be honest, TJ would be best placed to answer that question, and I can ask him to follow-up with you. But I think there's at least one whether it's the Secretary of State. But different states do things differently. He did look at all 50 states and he found the trend was to always keep them together. When we looked at New England, they're always kept together, but it depends on whether it's the ethics body or the Secretary of States that can be different, but they housed together. So, just trying to raise through quickly because I do understand that you've been hearing about this for a while now, but if we were to take over or if we were by statute required to take over these responsibilities, the people who are really going to be hurt by this are going to be candidates, right? Because we We just can't do it. We just need to make it clear that we can't take on all of these new responsibilities. We've already had to stop, you know, offering municipal services. So when we had to stop offering municipal services, the folks that are hurt by that are the municipalities themselves who are supposed to be getting free services. We do think that we have not heard any complaints previously about the way that it's worked in the past. The method that the form was sent out by the Secretary of State's office, received by candidates, then filed back with the Secretary of State's office or wherever they filed their consent of candidate package. We have not heard any actual complaints about that process from anyone until this year. And as I mentioned, we're still not sure why there's a desire for change, but I have heard that it's been put forward that there's somehow a conflict of interest when it comes to an elected official handling these forms because of the perception of political bias or it's being called a conflict of interest. Sorry, I'm also sick, so my voice isn't so great right now. But the ethics commission, we're the entity charged with the state code of ethics and you're answering questions about conflict of interest. This isn't a conflict of interest. Right? The idea is that there is a sense that there could be a perception of political bias if a candidate files a form and asks for advice and then does not like the advice they receive about what they have to file. But we're talking about a situation where we have nonpartisan state employees who are answering those questions. And to say that there's a conflict of interest, what you're really doing is saying that a potential perception of political bias is really a conflict of interest. And then that is there's a next step taken where that is then imputed on state employees who are nonpartisan actors just carrying out their regular government duties. So I really wanted to flag that because I think it's quite dangerous to start calling something like this a conflict of interest when it does not fall into the category of conflict of interest, but also there's implications throughout government. I mean, what are going to tell the state auditor's office that they have to stop audits? Because it's headed by an elected official and their office is potentially auditing other elected officials or state entities and somebody could complain there's a political bias in that. Same with the campaign finance disclosures. When you're with the campaign finance issues, because if you're saying that Secretary of State's office can't handle candidate financial disclosures, well the same argument applies to campaign finance issues. Are those also going to be moved to ethics commission? And I think that's a legitimate question, but again, that comes down to staffing. Do you want everything to be housed in one place? I think it makes sense to have everything in one place. Do you want it to be the ethics commission? We have to be staffed for that. So, I don't want to take too much of your time and I want to answer any questions that you may have. I mean, proposal for right now is, again, we just jointly agree to post the form. We posted it because we heard it was being distributed by others who are not us upon request. And some people were getting in the form and then coming to our office with questions. And we felt like that wasn't fair, that everyone needed to have equal access to the form. So that's the reason why we posted it. So, we feel, we haven t changed our position. I think both offices should jointly post the form. If we can do that, then I will volunteer to do my very best to answer questions to the best of my ability. While I am out of the country, it won't be immediate, but I'll do my very best to get back to people within a few days or as fast as I can. And then would hope to continue this conversation next year when we can really examine the issues to the extent that they should be examined, because this is all happening very fast.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Senator Clarkson. Thank you. So Christina, I agree. I think we are a candidate, speaking of a candidate, We all go to the secretary. Oh, but I'm not a candidate this year. Okay? Becca's making faces. No. No. She did not find a candidate twenty two years at different points. So we all are trained now to go to the secretary of state's website for everything, you know, for so if if I agree with you long term, absolutely everything should be, I think, at the secretary of state's web website and in their office. For this year, however, we are in this last minute moment where I think and I think the secretary of state's office is willing to work going forward with you on solving this problem, and obviously, we'll look at it in the legislature as well. I think for this year, we really are stuck with half sort of what we've all seem to be agreeing to do, which is moving forward, having the the form posted linked at the secretary's state's website, having it at your website, and just not having any penalties for not filling it in or not getting your questions answered. It's not sure where we are at the moment. We're just there are no there there's nothing punitive if you would have failed to do to to fill it out properly. Or but I do think it would be helpful to post somewhere. I may be on both sites that if you have questions about this, contact, you know, contact a lawyer or contact somebody. So I think it would be great if we could figure out who to send the questions to. Our

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: proposal included posting a joint FAQ that would answer most of the questions. I think our issue is just we want to see it posted both places. And I will say I am really worried about locking in statutory language that gives us responsibilities that we can't handle. I mean, one thing that I specifically said on the house side was, I will do my best while on vacation, while not being paid to answer questions by email, to be a good public servant. Then we ended up with language that said, required to answer by phone or by email. I don't know what that means. Am I going to be spending $50 a phone call to answer, you know, phone call to the ethics for the Ethics Commission from Indonesia? I mean, I would just really prefer not to say all of that language be included in this bill. So if the proposal is that we post it, then we say the Ethics Commission for this year will post it with the understanding that we come back next year for a full discussion. I'm just so worried that this will be ensconced in statute the way it's written now, and it'll be really detrimental to us and to candidates.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, I'd share that concern. I'm wondering, and this is actually, I think, a question for our attorney, and that would be if there is a way to put in session law for this year that it'll be posted, but then

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: not paring

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: it right. After the sessions.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Oh, that would that would be helpful.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I mean, I they still propose striking the house language saying that the ethics commission is required to answer by phone. But the dual posting, we could put it in session law.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Anyone else have questions for Christina? Or So we could I'll just weigh in if I might. We did very clearly advocate for you to get the resources that you had asked for when we sent our appropriations request to the committee next door. You were on our list to do what they could to fill the the positional, requirements. So it was the Appropriations Committee that made the final determination. We don't make financial determinations here. Senate Appropriations Committee did it. I did speak with Deputy Secretary of State Hibbard earlier today. And as Senator Clarkson has indicated, that office is very willing and open to continuing discussion with your office to come to a resolution. It probably won't be this year, though. It'll have to be next year. We're in the middle right now, as many of us have discovered, putting petitions in, consent form, and then answering a financial disclosure page. And there are, to be fair, some FAQs on that form. I think there's three or four of them, were helpful for me. And I haven't filed my papers yet, but I did look at the disclosure form. So it's clear that unless you have $25,000 in a particular stock or you're able to control sort of the, way that a company is run, whether you own it or have enough equity in it to be able to direct it, then you're not required to be any more specific than that. I was a little bit still confused about trusts. Some families have trusts that, someone's spouse may have. I guess, again, it's all according to how you interpret what trust means, whether you have to disclose all of that. But anyway, so both sites now include the same forms and have probably the last week or so. But in the meantime, we're halfway through this period of time when we have to get our paperwork in. So that was the thrust of the, indemnification, if you will, political candidates not being held liable for any penalties that would be incurred. But I'll just say again that I appreciate the FAQs. I did my best to answer it. And if to me, this is a complaint driven situation where unless someone points out the fact that someone has answered this incorrectly or not entirely, I'm not sure what else ever happens here. The same is true for our ethics panel inside the Senate. There's a one page financial disclosure. Many of the questions are similar. But unless somebody kind of rattles the cage, I'm not sure anybody else would ever even bother looking at someone's financial disclosure, let alone bring it up and looking for some sort of investigation. I am a little bit, and I don't know whether it was Senator White's, one of us brought up the fact that our addresses are now on the form and that could lead to someone stalking somebody or finding out where they live kind of thing. And I'm not sure why we needed that part of it, but it's, it's on the form. So there's

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: not much we're gonna

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: be able to do about that.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Our dresses are in phone. I mean, our dresses are in phone.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I think what's that? I think we'll talk to the secretary of state because we did in a bill I think it might have been the same bill where we did this language. We did allow for some of this information on these forms to be redacted. But my understanding from the secretary of state is for some reason

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: Yeah.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: It's not redactable on these forms. Oh. And we could change that.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Well, again, we could

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I think

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: for your address, you can put your work address.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Well, no, actually that's not your don't believe that's accurate information because you do require on the form, I think it's listed home address.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Yeah.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Yeah. And it's, so that's not my home address. And then also it asks for the, the workplace address for both you and if you have a spouse or a domestic partner. So I do have to list where my husband works and I have to list where I work as an address. And I guess my main point has always been to this one, is that should be redacted.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: And it

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: is Well, that's dress not where they work.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: I mean, I also would feel more comfortable if that was redacted as well

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: because It's important. It is. Trans I'm sorry. I think that's public information, and that's important for the public to know where our partners where we're influenced. How are we influenced? That's what we're all getting is influence. And so where a part person's partner works is important to know where doesn't have to have the address.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Yeah. I guess I generally don't feel it's relevant other than the what my partner's profession is. Other than like, I can understand the conflict of interest with that, but I yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: I guess it it makes me conflict. Of interest that we've experienced in the budgets.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: I yeah, I I wish it could be more general.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Doctor. Why don't they I am on Social Security. What is the address of Social Security? I have no idea. Is it Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington? And how about the State of Vermont? Because we all get a salary and expenses. 115 State Street. So, okay. But I mean

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: looking at the form that's posted on our website. It does not ask for your home address.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Okay. Well, when I see let's pull it.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: It says Is that the 2020 version? Or is that the current version No. Of

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: This is the updated one. Okay. Yeah. So, it doesn't ask on this one. There's also a financial disclosure that we fill out for our senate. I believe that that that's my apologies. But it does specifically ask for employer address.

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: Yeah. Yes.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: So I would I think the argument holds true in that respect as well because a lot of stalking is actually related to your workers.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I will

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: say that that information is not newly acquired. That's been there for the past eight years.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Yes. I think you wouldn't mind miss just understanding. Like, understand your argumentation back and forth. That's not new, but I think you could understand perhaps why it may be information that now that it's clear, people may not want that information.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Sadly, things have changed. It's not safe for everything. That is heartbreaking.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: A woman was murdered in her home. Her husband was murdered. I mean, it's it's serious since we've had these conversations.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Sergeant Morley, are we going to take off the attestation on the ballot?

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: We have attestation every time you put your expenses in.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: We self adept all the time.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Devil's advocate here. If Chair Collamore incorrectly puts down some information here. Right. He does hereby attest that this information is true, accurate, complete, and the best of my knowledge that I understand that the intentional, falsification, the omission, concealment of a material fact may subject him to administrative civil and criminal liability. Yeah. Okay. There's an out there.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Yeah, there is.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: To the best of your knowledge. Like always, I mean, you can only say yes to what you know. Okay. Or things you know.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: And I think the other perhaps more fundamental argument, it's not really an argument, maybe interpretation is, and I invite Tim up to the table if he so chooses, only if he so chooses, that the interpretation of create and maintain, I understand what you're saying, Christina, that in your view, that just meant coming up with a form and changing it when new statutes were added or provisions to, our election law. But Maintain to me could mean having it having control over that form in some fashion that you store it in your office or online digitally so that you can refer back to it on occasion. And I don't know whether that's a true, definition or not. I don't know why we use the word maintain, but we did pass

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: that. I think you're right. I think that the board maintained, it does imply you're going to restore it. You're going to keep it. It may not imply much more than that, but for me, it implies you're going to keep it.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: And unfortunately, I don't think you could. I think it would be hard for anybody to have found a a worse year to ask for funding. It just was one of these years that there just weren't a lot of quarters or dollar bills in the cushions of the couch. Oh. And so I know that's glossing over something that's very dear to your heart and I understand that, but I don't think it's gonna come out of the conference committee any differently than it went in. So I think we have to, as Senator Clarkson mentioned earlier, look ahead to the next session to find a solution to this. Hopefully that means that you do get additional staffing or that if we choose that it's the other way in the Secretary of State's office. And I think Deputy Secretary made it very clear they need another position as well if in fact we're going to make them room to work. So I I just offer that out as a where we are kind of thing. Senator Vyhovsky.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I would given that the secretary of state's office has already been doing this work for the last eight years, I'm really confused why they would need another position to continue doing it. Whereas we're asking the ethics commission who's been telling us for years they don't have to be staffed to do the work they've already given them to now do work that's previously done by the Secretary of Office. And I'm just really confused because up until this argument, for lack of Before

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: this bill and then this discussion The Secretary

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: of State Office was already doing it.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: But I'm not sure how often they were charged with answering questions about

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: the

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: phone They answer questions about it.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Also, it's an election year. I think this people never really cared last year. But they've been doing it

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: for eight years. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. And so I don't know why it is suddenly an issue. They've had the form, but I have changed the mean, we changed the language to say that the ethics commission would make the form. Yeah. But that didn't change

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: It didn't.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: The hosting of the form or or like

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: But we need to clarify going forward after this session. It We need to clarify the answers to questions.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I guess my point is that it didn't create more work than already exists with the Secretary of State's office.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Well, I just recall the testimony from Lawrence saying, if we are to do this, we need a position. And just as unlikely as it is that in the conference committee, anything will change with respect to the funding for the ethics commission. I don't think they're gonna find a position in the secretary of state's office.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: No. I hear that. I just I guess my confusion is they're already doing it and have been for the last eight years, so I don't understand who makes them now. The elections division is very busy and probably also understaffed, but this hosting and managing this warm as part of the candidate packet is not new work. It's work they've already been doing. So why do they need a new position to continue doing the work they're already doing For eight

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: years.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I'm not sure that this is an additional work, I guess. So It's

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: not, though.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: They've already been doing it.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Christina, I would hold out hope there's a major $12,000,000 negotiation that's going on. And if some of that 12,000,000,000 is liberated, I believe the Ethics Commission is top priority. And we there was a great piece on Vermont Public, which you probably didn't hear in Indonesia, but it really Paul was was interviewed. It was just terrific. Really crying out for supporting your, commission lawfully.

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: Okay. Yeah, thank you. I mean, we still do have hope.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: I'm living in hope that your position is going to be funded.

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: We still do have hope for the situation. I should make it clear, like we don't think of an entire position is needed just to do this particular work. I mean, it's going be for six weeks every two years. Right. And what happened the last election cycle is the Secretary of State's office did answer the questions. When they didn't know the answer, they contacted us for support. We told them how we answered for executive officers, then they were the face of it for candidates, which I think is the appropriate way to go with that. I just want to make a note about the maintained language. So initially, the language that we requested was we create the form. Somebody by my recollection, somebody, the committee raised issue of like, well, what happens when it changes? Who's responsible for updating it? And that's how the maintain language got added. So specifically tied to the idea that we would continue to update the form. That's where we came from. But just in summary, I mean, we're perfectly happy to have the status quo that we're doing right now jointly post the form for this session. We're not arguing about the financial penalties. We couldn't do it for executive officers this year either. So, we're not arguing about that particular piece. I mean, we understand we can't do the work anyway. We can't do it for executive officers, but I would like to just request that we put off the full conversation until next year. And for now, you mentioned session law or whatever it might be that we agree to jointly post the form this year and next year we have a more fulsome discussion so we can generally look at the issues to the extent that they need to be looked at.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Well, can respect that point. And I guess I have kind of two trains of thought. The first is what within s February that we're doing now would need to change to allow for that? And I my preference is that we concur as much as possible with the house version. We would like to avoid as limited of changes as possible. There was an earlier conversation about, like, statutory, like

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Session. Session law. So I I would love to put it in session law because

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: that would mean it was not

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Yeah. So I've had it in that conversation, but then the other train of thought, and since we have a separate here, I guess I'm still confused about is, let's say next year it comes out that there is a belief that a candidate has violated something related to their employment and their candidacy or when they became elected and it was their some kind of violation occurs. What information I'm just like, what what happens then? Because my understanding is the ethics commission now can't investigate or do anything. So we'd already be relying on the senate version of the form through the senate ethics commission. Sure. And no one would be holding candidates accountable either way if because they are unable to violate it. So I guess I'm just wondering, like, what is the harm that's occurring if we do what we want to do and there's no fines and no one's answering questions? Like, what actually happens if there is an ethical complaint?

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Well, I can remember suggesting to the committee that we just do away with the form this year. Kind of put it on the shelf and don't have it. Then the pushback was, yeah, but what if you filed your petition on the first day you could, which I think was April 27. Yeah. And you filled out the disclosure forms. That's not fair either. And so we're about halfway through that period now, and I don't know what else to do except to, go with what was suggested by the House.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Okay.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Senator Vyhovsky?

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: So part of the confusion this has created is happening now for the third or fourth time in this discussion, and this is part of the confusion created by housing this with the ethics commission. A candidate can't Yeah. Exactly. Make an ethic can't have an ethical violation because the only thing the candidate can violate is not violating the form. Mhmm. The form is not about ethics. It's about transparency. Mhmm. If I have a candidate And if I I'll use myself. If I am a candidate and I'm running saying, you know what? I support a great new deal. And then I file my disclosure and it turns out I work for Exxon Valdez Right. Good stuff. People might wanna deserve to might wanna note that.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Yeah.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: It's since it's not that my working for Exxon Valdez violates anything, it's the information people wanna have. If my primary income is coming from oil.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Oh, no. I completely agree with that. It but this is why

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: my argument is that it shouldn't be with the ethics commission because there is no ethic. There is no hinge on which it's an ethics issue. It's just a transparency. No. But they

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Ethics commission took on creative Right. Court.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Because they do for the other stuff. Right. So they were like, sure. We'll give you

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: the form we use. But for this year, we've agreed to keep the form. We've agreed to

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: But maintain the status quo, essentially. Right. But my concern is that the house language does not maintain the status quo. The house language tasks the ethics commission with answering questions and being in charge of this form. Well then, I

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: thought that they were not thought we that the House had no penalties or no consequences. That's part of

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: it, but the other part of the section the other section that the house sent over Ethics Commission. The ethics commission with being responsible for the Okay. In in all fairness then, I I mean, I agree that we it would be

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: great to just concur, but we could concur with a very modest strikeout.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: And what I'm suggesting is we strike that part out and we put the suspension of binds in session law. And put it all in the session. Because that would maintain the status quo.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Okay. Right? Yeah. I'd like to maintain the status quo.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Yeah. I guess I'm not disagreeing with the transparency angle. Like, that's a value. I guess I'm trying to understand, like, outside of just generally having information that's relevant to your voting. That's why it's relevant. Yeah. And I think that is relevant. I also hope that a candidate would be forthright in if they worked for a certain company.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Or where they're invested. Not both. Right?

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Yeah. Well, no. More where they're employed, I think, is the point.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Or how many apartments they own, as we know. That is Yeah. The different bills in this building. It's just astonishing work.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: And that sort of, like, gets to the point that you have made is this doesn't belong with the ethics commission. There's no ethics to violate. Yeah. Exactly. That's what the

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: is the whole thing for me.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: It should be housed as it has been through the last eight years, the secretary of state.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Well, I think we actually have a a a because I think I want very much to get Kurt, but I also would love to be able to carve cut this out and put it in session law and just take out the piece that requires doing anything but the status quo. If we can do the status quo for this year, I'm fine with that. I thought that I thought the bill sort was the status quo with no consequences. Again, in my view, when I'm

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: not an attorney, it depends on your interpretation of what create and maintains. We passed that a couple years ago, and I thought it meant that the ethics commission would hold on to the form and maintain it, store it, and then be able to answer questions if any of them came up since it's their form.

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: Well, mean

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Well, listen. We put

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: this line, what, Jan? '24. Yeah. I can't remember.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Go ahead,

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Christina. I was part of it.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Made a mistake.

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: Sorry. I mean, we did reach it was part of Act 171. Unfortunately, Act 171 got really bogged down in financial disclosures when we really wanted it to be about. Sorry about that, municipal ethics. But I think we did reach out earlier just to get a sense of the committee makeup at the time and how they had read the language. And it did come back to us that there was an understanding that the Ethics Commission wasn't required to answer questions as part of the change in that language. Because again, would have never we requested the language, we would have never requested it to give ourselves additional responsibilities. I myself specifically requested it with the understanding that it meant we created the form and did nothing beyond that except for update it when the statute changed, which is what was happening with Act 171. So it's happening in conjunction with the statute changing the disclosure requirements at the time.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: But in effect, if there's no penalties, it really does in a way not matter about the form because no one's going to be able to do anything about somebody that files it late or in fact doesn't file?

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: No, there won't be any financial penalty and that is the status quo that's been going on for the last few years. So it's just something that needs to be organized because we have to put an actual system in place for invoicing, reaching out to people doing all of those kinds of things. Where the forms are most likely gonna come up is in identifying conflicts of interest, that's the purpose. The transparency is so that if people want to identify a conflict of interest, then they have it there. So, if somebody were gonna file a complaint about a conflict of interest, then the financial disclosure form, wherever it's housed can be added to a complaint as evidence of a conflict of interest. So, that's like the main place where it would be likely to come up. If for example, somebody filed a form and they intentionally filed false information. So, they work for an oil company, they intentionally did not disclose that because, for example, they wanted to work on legislation related to, oil company, is a case where somebody could file a complaint with our office based on the attestation and refer to the Attorney General's office to look into. When we have people file the executive officer form with our office, we do give everybody the chance to update it. We reach out to them if we think a mistake has been made. So we really do try and work with people just to make sure the form is correct. So it would really be a very kind of severe situation where somebody is actually getting in trouble because they have every opportunity to make the changes to the form.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Well, you. I know you're up very late or very early, depending on how you

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: look at the clock. She's getting jump on the day.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So we appreciate your taking time today and we'll see how this moves.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: And enjoy all those amazing temples on Java. Go and see

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: Thank you. You.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: New temples, they're amazing.

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: I will, I will do so. All right, thank you

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: for having me.

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: Okay. Thank you for having me. Good luck. Thank you. Bye.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Thank you. Well, okay. I was hoping that we would just move this today given the pro tem's talk at the end of the session about being ready to report when it's on the calendar.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Right. I agree with you, and I I think we could do that today. I think we could build with that change that we just talked about. I didn't know when you sent me that note, I wasn't clear. Is the amendment a piece of moving the bill? Yeah. To the bill. It's Oh,

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: no. That's that that's different. The pack of it.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah. We talked about that on

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: No. I know it's

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Friday and decided with a three two straw vote, we would not include it in the bill. I thought.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Right. That's how I Yeah. No. No. And and And There's so I seem to have Oh. There's I know

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: there's needs to be in space. So I know it was the, I believe, the three of us that were opposed. There is a a middle way that does not open the door to what we were concerned about, but does solve some of the issues that were being brought to us. Okay. But I don't have the language yet because I'm still pleading for it. But It's way. Hopefully, you also don't have the language yet.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Oh, well, I'm looking at Tim like it.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I think they were from folks who told me who brought to me that there was a a middle way a a forward path where everyone can get what they need. Where

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: we address dark money and

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Where we don't the door to dark money, but we address that with the strictest reading of the language, everyone is a path.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So you're suggesting that we delay it again.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: I'm Yes. Maybe. I personally, I'll just say, well, I really appreciate that. I still, and I've talked to the people who I like who have told me that this is a good idea. I also am concerned about the dark linen angle. So is I would be comfortable with a change if it did not create that loophole again. Because I think although it I've been told by individuals who may wanna testify on the topic that that's not really a concern, I also received multiple emails from individuals who I reached out to who it is a concern. Oh, I I agree.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I won't I I can't start working. Okay.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Apparently, they only contacted three in the five minutes.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: They I I I'll say

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: This is all news to me.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Yes. And I apologize. We probably should have connected prior to

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: the Probably a good idea.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Council. Have you received any of these suggestions?

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: No. No. No.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: It ish.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I I agree with you, senator White, that I I can't support moving back to OR. But if there truly is a way to solve the issue that is being raised that doesn't do that, but I haven't seen it yet. Yeah. I mean, I've been told it exists.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Trying to think procedurally.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: We could it on floor another day.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Well, I was thinking about a floor amendment, but I don't know that I just told them

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: on to it for another day. We could I think that the fire has to be lit under this person's chuckers.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: You better go

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: see I'm what's

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: gonna have to talk to Senator Rutland because it was obvious that he wanted if it's on as a house proposal of amendment, you either are gonna concur and move it or request the conference committee.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Mean, we've got two weeks, three weeks,

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: maybe

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: have bills that haven't even come back from the house yet. I'm we're all in a bit of a pickle.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Would you be able to enlighten the two members of the committee who have no idea?

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I don't know what it is. I I

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Well, how do you strike So a

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: much of the two questions. Listen.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. We should not in our

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: seat. BCP. BCP. I apologize. Vermont conservation partners.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. You want me to Sure. Okay.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: He's got a draft.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: I'm just a No.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: I know

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: what I'm doing. So

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: we're trying to make all our friends happy. Just so

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: Dan Fingus, executive director of Vermont Conservation Voters. I'm not a lawyer, which is why I'm happy to talk about this, but we also have attorneys who are working on this, and they're already in conversations with Secretary of State's office to make sure that whatever is created is not then gonna flag for them and be a problem. And so that's why it's taken a minute to get this language. So you all looked at language that looked at changing the definition of a pack. It used to say Or. Or, and it got changed to and. Mhmm. There are multiple layers of potential consequences to the one word change. One is that because you also changed it from two to one Mhmm. And there's a committee or informal committee, there is a concern from at least two elect elections attorneys and maybe the secretary of state's office that you say one person in an informal committee doing either thing, that every single donor to a campaign who spends more than $500 becomes a patent or has to register as a patent. So I write a check. That's a huge problem. The other thing is organizations like mine, the c four, five zero one c four organization, and and unions, a lot of different kinds of organizations have been able to share with their membership their endorsements. Say, we endorse these people for these reasons. Under this new strict rule, changing the word, all of those endorsement activities would become PAC activities. And we become a new position. I'm a C4. I get donations for lots of different kinds of work. We do endorsements, but we do a lot of other things. We get grant funding from different nonprofit organizations. We wouldn't know. We'd either have to look at not doing endorsements even though they they're part of federal election law and state election law for a long time, or do I have to put every donation I get from everybody no matter what it's for into the campaign finance system? If a if a nonprofit gives me a $10,000 grant, how do I put a $10,000 grant if likely this would be a coordinated pact? Then that's over the limits. And all of a sudden for organizations and then do unions then have to put every single member of their union who's giving them dues into the system? Because they're using treasury dollars to do their endorsements because it's always been member to member communication. And so this or to and actually has created huge problems for potential individual donors, c four organizations, unions, all because of the one word change because Little word. Because we as c four organizations, unions, even individuals, we don't fundraise for elections. Right. We have IE packs and coordinated packs that are separate that we do fundraising to, but as a c four nonprofit organization, we don't fundraise. And so with the and language, we never fundraise for elections, but then we would spend a little bit of money on endorsements and we would not have to be a pack. Now that you have the or language, we're not fundraising for elections still, but now as as soon as we spent a penny on any kind of endorsement activity, we are now

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: a pack. So this is a this is a this is the best articulation This of a is a better articulation of a problem than I've learned today. Okay. So thank you, Yes, ma'am, for

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: I regret

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: we heard from you a week or

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: two Yeah, I wish I'd known you when we were on your schedule on Friday. I would have been happy to be here on Friday or or and just so you know with the different we brought we had brought this to to various folks in leadership. It was thought that this was gonna be dealt with in the house side. So we did meet with the chair of house government operations and well, the last issue that you just dealt with popped up and their committee time went to the ethics commission issue and they didn't have time to get to this issue, which we did not realize until after crossover when we were meeting with our attorneys and they said, here's changes to the laws. And they dug into it enough to see where that there were gonna be these new new definition problems.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: And these new challenges.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: So it's all, like, the last couple weeks that we even knew this was an issue because it it didn't ping because you were all working on it for a whole different reason.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: And It sounds like this is an issue we should fix before we go any further.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Don't we

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: just go back to Anne?

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Because it has problems too.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: Will I will tell you that what that has been our preferred option because it is the simplest way to fix the problems. I know that there are other issues that people are concerned about. Yeah. Our position is there are there are real world, like, for sure things that will happen Both. That are negative if we That's every if we change, and to donors, we don't change it back, there are concerns about other potential scenarios

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: if we. So, yeah, if this amendment isn't included in the bill, doesn't and remain? No,

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: is the law. The or is what you all passed. Okay.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: And so they're asking us to do this with Correct. The

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: Yeah, there are other options to fix, but it gets much more complicated.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: It's not everything else.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: This has been the law for three years. How has it not become a problem before now?

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: No. This is this the the definition change, at least according to the Secretary of State One year. Became it's part of 07/01/2025.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: It has not been an election cycle where it has been a part

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: of a lot. That

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: is my, that is And I can double check, but I'm almost positive this was something you all did either, I think last didn't take effect

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: for you. Right.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: Or it didn't take effect. So it has not been part of an election cycle think

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: I mentioned the team word before. Whoever's working on this, we need this ASAP.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Yep.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: And we we could deal with this to talk us.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I used the word

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: fire alarm to talk us already, so I think she, you know, because I've seen it across her neck

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: I thought she

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: meant laughing

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: at me.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Yeah. I I figured I better not use it again. But I think that we need this as soon as possible.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: It gives us then some time to also try and fix the session relation.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: And I I will say, I I still believe the end of order, I know that there are people who don't don't all all love it, is the simplest way. The way that we have that's an alternative way is to take some federal take use some federal language. That definitely fix Oh, jeez. That definitely well, the way the federal allows de minimis administrative things can help, that will help the organizations and the unions and a bunch of groups. I'm not sure, and and there are others who would have to see if that helps with the donor problem. Because it's really the confluence of one informal committee and or that creates the every donor who gives money becomes a PAC. Like, it's literally baked into the current definition of PAC that anybody, any one individual who spends money, be as a pack. And if they spend more than $500 for, technically, as soon as they've spent a dollar, they are a pack.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Sounds like

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: that's You brought in the pack you brought in the pack definition so much. But it sounds

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: like that's still a problem with the word and.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: That doesn't solve it. No. And it does because if you're an individual, you're not raising money to then give it to a political candidate. You have money. You're working or you you have retirement or whatever. That's true. No, it doesn't fix all the issues

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: up there.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: There is a fix in the works, and we just need to see it.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: There is a fix in the works for some of it. I still, we'd have to talk to Secretary of State about fixing the donor issue. That is because it, I don't know how you and there's an attorney behind me that I can't see, but he he may have thoughts. I don't know how you get around that definition without changing that definition, but that's not that's beyond my pay grade.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Conservation voters, you think you know everything So about

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: don't have a law degree. And there's value in a law degree.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Yeah. I guess yeah. I hear what you're saying. I'm supportive of the fact that this would be you know, it doesn't stop people from donating. It doesn't stop you from doing your work, but it would be a frustrating annoyance to have to continue to do that. And I can respect that that's not the point of the law. The law is not to limit engagement or cause frustrating bureaucratic requirements. But, again, my main concern is the carryover from election to election. So you have draft proposals to resolve that as well, and when would we be able to see that?

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: So we have, we we have draft proposal that our our training is to And

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: that Warren's looking at now.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: And, yes. And so we're we're trying to figure out for fixing some of it. I think part of the carryover thing, and and again, I'm probably over my skis, is there are things around public questions that are different than candidate campaigns. So some of the examples that you all are giving about one person who's gonna influence a public a public question, The public question thing isn't actually fixed yet. So you wouldn't have to show your contributions to a public question anyway, according to the sector of state. Again, I I'm

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: just going by what I've been Okay.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: By an election for a candidate.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: An election for a candidate. Yes. Yeah. I get the multi cycle. I think there are ways to fix this. I think trying to fix it in the definition of a pact has brought in the definition of a pact so much that it's every federal.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Okay. Well, then I really hope that we get some clarity for Shanann because I'm happy to support the amendment if there is no all other alternative. Like, I'm ultimately happy with that. But I would prefer It seems big. To the carry forward because I do

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: have.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: I have heard the same. I know you've said that it's not a big issue, and I read your lawyer statement. It's not a big issue. It is a big issue. And I heard directly from folks who work in campaigns in other states who described how this has been a loophole there. It's especially something that's been exploited by Americans for prosperity.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: So So Lauren is listening. Oh. And Lauren Hibbert. Yeah. And she's texted me. Us, actually.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Oh, She doesn't think contributions to a candidate have to be disclosed and union dues do not need to be disclosed.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Oh, okay, there you go. There it is. Okay. And then you're- Then I think that may solve the problem with your solution.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: All right.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: The middle ground solution.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: We will get you language. Okay. Yeah.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. So All right. Then I'll have to talk to the study program, and we're gonna have to put this off another day, I guess.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: And then so I'm asking Laura well, Laura, you're listening anyway, so we could just ask. So we hope you're working. We're gonna have language, we hope, in the next day. We need it ASAP. Yeah. Great. Thank you. You for listening.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: I mean, I have the federal language. I just don't wanna I don't know enough about the state law to just give you federal language. I know. So I'm gonna be

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: to ten.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: We're gonna have Anthony Arafino, who's

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: our attorney, get language to ten.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Wonderful. Okay. Thank you. That sounds good.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So we might be able to fix that.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Yep. And session wall all at

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: the same time. Tim, the session wall fixes too difficult. See? He

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I'm not necessarily a pain. Okay.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: But at least he says.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: He certainly can do what we ask him to do. I know. Exactly. He plays are aware.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Well, I mean, you know, not everybody says it's easy make me do my job.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. Well, nice work, guys, for an hour. So you gotta take a step backwards.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: No. No. And all time I'm gonna move forward. I promise. No.

[Christina Sivret (Executive Director, Vermont State Ethics Commission)]: I'll get it to you.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: But, Thanks. Thank you for

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: articulating the problem. But I won't really find

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: the best that we've heard so far.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: I appreciate it. I'm happy to

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: do it.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I appreciate it. I wouldn't have done it as well since. So I appreciate him doing it as well.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: We have the city of Barrie, Maine.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: They're right there. What Nicholas is right here with me.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Oh, hello.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: But it's very shorn.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So let's head right into two nine of

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: the two spring look And aggravating

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: to approval the amendments of the chair of Okay.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: I would like to be

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Hello, chair and members of the committee. Good to see so many of you after our Sorry, I didn't

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: mean that from you.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: It was Melissa.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: It was Melissa. Okay.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: To see if we passed anything. We were hopeful. My frustration was that we had better.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Okay. Thank you, chair. Yeah. Thank you, chair and members of the committee. I'm glad to be here to testify on H nine zero two. This codifies two changes to the Berry City Charter that were approved by our voters at the May 2025 town meeting day election. The first change is pretty technical, relates to the sale and lease of city property. The charter, as it's written, says that only the mayor may sign all conveyances of city property. The change that was approved by the voters would expand that to provide that in addition to the mayor, the city manager or a councilor so authorized by an action of the city council could, execute conveyances. This is this was really just about good governance. This is about preventing a future crisis. Imagine for a moment a mayor who, who becomes incapacitated. Imagine a mayor who's out of the country. Imagine a may there may be a time where there's a conflict. Imagine that the city's selling property to the school district and the mayor works for the school district. Those might be situations where we wouldn't want the mayor to be executable. Yeah. So, so this is all, just about good governance and making sure that we don't run into a crisis and then have to figure it out on reply. This charter change was widely supported by the voters. It passed by a vote of 522 to 293, which is a 64% to 36% margin. The second charter change before you relates to the cap on our undesignated fund balance. Currently, Berry City is allowed to retain 5% of our general fund budget as an undesignated fund balance. The proposal would be to double that, so that the city council could vote to retain up to 10% of our general fund balance from one year to the next. This charter change was the impetus came in the aftermath of the twenty twenty three flood. Going into the recovery from that flood, we had, retained the full 5% as a fund balance, and that is about, for us at that time, was about $600,000 in our fund balance. We had built that up, like many other communities in the state, not because we wanted to have a fund balance, because we had unfilled positions that we just didn't hire. Had police officers, public works, you name it. Anytime those positions are vacant, you accumulate that savings. That's basically how we had built it up. I can tell you, we much would have rather had those positions filled than have the fund balance. That said, having that allowed us to recover from those floods without having to borrow money. So as you know, FEMA is a reimbursement based program. You have to upfront the cost, have to pay all upfront, and then you get reimbursed on the back end. Having that $600,000 as a rainy day fund, so to speak, allowed us to make all those repairs, load ourselves until we got those female reimbursements without having to take on any additional debt. That was huge for us. The reason we're looking to double this is because we know that it's going to happen again. It happened again in '24, and so it's good for us to have that reserve to be able to respond to an emergency and not have to borrow and take on additional debt. This is something that many other communities across Vermont have even more flexible limits on their own designated fund balance than the 10%. Our proposal is is modest, I think. It's forward looking, and the voters approved this charter change by an even wider margin than the than the technical one. This one was approved by a 618 to one seventy four margin or a very healthy 78% to 22%. So those are that's it. Those are the two changes. Really appreciate the committee's time, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: So good to see. How many years did it take you to accumulate the six That 100

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: was probably two to three years. Started before my tenure as city manager. When I started my tenure in '22, we had started to basically max it out. So it was about two to three years of budgets with those vacancy savings where we had accumulated that 600,000.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Any other questions for now? Sarah White?

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: I just wanna say thank you. Fully supportive.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: And I appreciate the thoughtfulness and looking to the five to 10% because, well, I don't wanna break any news that you're not aware of, but you're gonna be hit by a bullet.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Absolutely. Yeah. And FEMA's not gonna be there for you right away.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Exactly.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: So I

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: think this is really proactive, and I hope if other communities who are impacted have opportunities like this to address it in their charters or whatnot, that take the Because it's really productive thinking.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Same thing, sir. And and we this is the way we sold it

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: to our voters.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Thanks. The way we sold it to them was, look look what it did. We we didn't have to borrow. We didn't have to take on debt. We didn't have to take on debt. That was and we have to pay back with interest. This was a way for us to start, and we could start doing recovery right away.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Exactly.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: We have the money in the bank. Tanya Vyhovsky?

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I I'm also supportive. I do wonder we had the Vermont Lake Cities and Towns in sort of early in session actually talking about what is a healthy amount of food and what balance to be available to Towns students. Did you consult and I can't remember what that number was, but did you consult with them at all in selecting 10%? Because it feels to me like it's actually lower. I feel like VLCT was actually suggesting higher. I could be wrong because that was what feels like approximately three lifetimes ago. Yeah.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Yeah. I I didn't consult with them. What we you know, when the counseled talked about this, they they they tried to look at a couple of different options. We did. You know, we did have the idea of eliminating altogether, which I would personally love. But, you know, we we decided to start with a modest change because we wanna build trust with the voters, and I think the voters saw what we did with the fund balance the first time around. They saw what it meant for us to have it the first time around. The voters also flaked that 5% cap on us in the first place, so we thought it was responsive to the voters not to do away with it entirely, to earn their trust. If we're if we're successful and if there's a need for it, we might be here again, but only if we've earned the trust to to go up. I think that, the the 10% will get us to about $1,400,000 now that our budget's grown. That's a pretty good amount of fund balance for us to to retain and to be able to react to a flood if we need to. So we're pretty comfortable with what it means. Or any disaster. Thank you, senator. Yes. So that 1.4, we think, gives us some room, for the things that we might be confronted

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: So very fairly conservative moving forward knowing that may not fully be

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: And and and if we earn, you know, we earn the voters trust to get to this point, obviously, 70 I'd love to have my budget passed by 78%. I know it won't, but I think we earned their trust. I think that 78% on that vote was pretty telling to us. And if we're good stewards of the of that fund balance, hopefully, the voters will reward that if we if we see a need to come back. But we're hopeful that that's one this means 1,400,000 for us and and a rainy day reserves. We think that gets us what we need for sort of the immediate aftermath of of any disaster.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Senator Clarkson? So I'm I'm sure Doug Farnham isn't listening right now, but we started the resiliency fund. I can never remember the full title of it, but we started the in this committee, do you remember we started the whatever it was called with with fund. We started this one. This could be a good to go back to your point about the LCT and what they might be asking to in in their general fund balance. Yeah. That's a I always think of this as a contingency. Yeah. I mean, it's a it's a contingency amount that any good budget has. It's a great carrot that we will given FEMA's challenges, if if the state builds up this resiliency fund, which we hope when we have a better budget year, maybe next year, that we will be able to add to it again, that this would be a great way. These would make towns eligible if you have a more substantial contingency fund that they would be towns that have more than 10% would be eligible to have that matched from the contingency fund, something like that as a carrot to get towns to build their contingency funds. That's one. And the second, it's a question for you, which is, have you moved or fixed the garage yet?

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: We have. We are moving to a location in Marytown. We have acquired the building, and we're going through the Act two fifty process right now.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Great. Okay,

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Good. Beautiful site built in '87. I mean, it's it's really in great shape. Not in the flood. If that garage floods, we're in all in the trucks.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: That feature was so worth a thousand words going to that garage of yours. So I'm so glad that's it with you.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: We're very we're very happy.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Yeah. But you're

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: No.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: It's it's it's in the probably we're owners of the building. We have all our design. We have our contractors. We're waiting for the go ahead from Act two fifty, and we got all our approvals from Barrytown. It is it is it is very, very excited about it.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: And do you have a date for, like, fully getting moving?

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: We're we were hoping we were hoping later in November, but I think that's gonna skip out because of the Act two fifty process. It's becoming a little bit longer, so probably next late next spring, maybe, or maybe summer next summer. Invite us to Absolutely.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Even those of us who've retired, invite us.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Absolutely. We'll we'll invite you. We'll we'll have a rise on the back door.

[Senator Rebecca "Becca" White]: Oh, I didn't back out

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: to that. You know her favorite part. Yeah. Okay. Was pretty impressed with the back door.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: The back door was cool.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: We'll make sure. We'll make sure it's there.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: God. Right. Okay.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate the committee's time.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: We're gonna check this up again Friday when Nick Bolton or Michael Bolton comes in. He's gonna respond from Yes. Oh.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Thank

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: you. I was gonna make a motion move it now. I was gonna say No. Good morning.

[Dan Fingus (Executive Director, Vermont Conservation Voters)]: It's just did you provide your touch

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: I did. I I'll let I emailed it right when I was here. I'm I'm

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: It's on the printer right now.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Oh, perfect.

[Senator Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Alright. But I have weaved.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Thanks, everyone. We'll stick

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: with you.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Thank you.

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Okay. Why don't we take a twenty minute break, and we'll be back home. Excuse me. At 03:30, I'd like to really move out the emergency of the

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Good good idea. Probably, that doesn't have an amendment about that.

[Nicolas Storellicastro (Barre City Manager)]: Seems like

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: As far as

[Senator Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I know. But but I know there's email me about that.

[Senator Alison Clarkson]: Yeah. Yeah.