Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Good afternoon. Welcome into the Senate Committee on Government Operations Committee meeting of Friday, 05/22/2026. As I mentioned before we went live, for the first time this year, I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am in great hopes that we will be saying goodbye to each other in a week. Mhmm. Most of us to return, hopefully. And, anyway, I think there's finally some serious movement on the education bill. And if I know this building the way I think I do, the other dominoes will fall quickly in terms of the budget and the tax bills, etcetera. So we're gonna wrap the week up today with testimony from Drew Hazleton, who's chair of the Vermont EMS Advisory Committee. Join us, if you will, Drew, at the table. And I know you have somebody with you, and if they wanna move up too, they can. If you just wanna sit from where you are, that's fine. Sure. Do you know everybody? Yes. We've Melvin worked. Great. Senator White is in Texas for an event, and she will be returning on Tuesday, and Senator Clarkson will join us as soon as her conference committee is included. Okay. It's all yours in the next half hour or so, and welcome in. Hopefully, you had a good trip up.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: Yeah. I did. And thank you for thanks for the opportunity to come in. Drew Hinton. I chair the EMS advisory committee. And, Pat, you wanna introduce yourself?

[Patrick Malone (Vice Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee; University of Vermont)]: My name is Patrick Malone. I'm from the University of Vermont, and I'm the vice chair of the committee.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: Welcome. Thank you all. I have a quick presentation, if that's okay. Sure. And Yep. Did that show up? Alright. So and I'll go through this really quick because the information that we submitted to the committee back in December is part of the assessment you asked us to do. So we were asked to look at the entire EMS system, specifically looking at funding, costs, how things were paid for, of course development, education, and so on. So we did that work. We hired ourselves a consultant, and they did a bunch of work for us, and then we also did a lot of verification and stuff for ourselves. So we looked at everything, from the structure to The US office to the rules to the statutes, what we're currently doing that matches the rules and statutes and what's happening in Vermont, US that doesn't. We struggle a little bit with data around everything. So we put this data disclaimer in the report we sent to you, and we're continuing to struggle getting good accurate data through some of the Vermont data collection systems. And, you know, again, we're gonna use it for training for for some folks. But here's the kind of meat and potatoes of of what we got going on. We have a 100,000 plus EMS calls in Vermont, annual 6% growth. Another 30,000 calls for removing patients from one facility to another, and then about 30,000 where we're actually going out to people's homes, taking care of them and not

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: transporting. Doctor. Rutland?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Does your advisory committee advise both private EMS entities and public or hospital run? Does my question make sense?

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: So advice, so the advisory committee was created by legislation to advise the commissioner and the legislature, and has representatives from all of the EMS districts, all of the professional organizations, ambulance association, professional firefighters, fire chiefs, legal cities and towns, the hospitals. So it's a pretty big group. There's actually 21 representatives. We elected to have alternates, so we really have 42 members that are working on part of project, simply because of the amount of work that we had going on. So, again, just kind of basic statistics around what we have going on for First Response, along with our ambulance services. So, we have about 75 ambulance services total serving the state of Vermont. That's not ambulances, that's individual organizations serving the state of Vermont. So we also have a handful of out of state services that are coming in and providing more of the service. Some of the areas we're working in are a little bit unique. We have some ski areas that have unique arrangements for EMS. We have colleges that have unique arrangements. So there's a lot of kind of different ways it's being done in Vermont, that creates a little bit more complication when we talk about the plan that we're putting together for you.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: What is being done about the people operating in the state without a license? That seems really problematic.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: So right now, nothing. Right. We are part of the plan, I'll pass out some documents, it's kind of what we got to do at this point. We will be recommending, as part of our plan, that in the future we require people that are operating in Vermont to be licensed. I mean, the larger EMS community thinks that's the negative. So we're we're in support of that. Mhmm. You asked us to look at costs and see, you know, what's happening in Vermont. We figured out through a whole bunch of, again, different data sources that we're spending about $98,000,000 a year to provide data services in Vermont. Roughly half of that is coming from direct reimbursement from insurance companies. The rest of that is coming from, a large percentage is coming from local property tax appropriations or EMS. So as a healthcare service, we're spending about half of our We're receiving about half of our funds. We didn't only look at our system from finance and from the area of workforce development, but we looked at medical assistant performance, and not everything we found was great. We looked at individual measures for different districts around the state, looking at clinical and operational findings, and we found out that there are some areas we are doing better than the national average, some areas we are doing worse than the national average, and some areas where the data that we are able to collect, we've launched anything from the standpoint. Actually, we're utilizing this information and we're making recommendations as part of our five year plan on how to continue to monitor this data and improve the actual operational clinical outcomes. So and there's lot more information behind all this should you guys be interested in the similar details. But you'll see that we are not necessarily performing at the level that we want to do across the state. Some of this is data collection issues. Some of it probably is that we're not performing at the level that we would like to, so we're looking at system improvements. This has helped drive our conversation around education, workforce development, and continued education in order to help provide better clinical and operational outcomes. We looked at access to education. I've spent ten years talking about workforce development and trying to get people into our system and support it, and we've received a lot of support over the years. So this is what we have for people. I would love to say that we've been making huge strides in the number of EMS providers in our workforce, but really, we've been pretty much just barely keeping it above water. You know? When numbers perfected, we had to really gain a lot in the total number of people. So it's cut about 3,000 EMS providers for as long as I've been coming in, that's fine. Despite the the

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: effort Despite all our efforts, we're

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: still holding it back. Holding there. Yeah. Now the question is, without our efforts, where would it be? Right? I wouldn't say that the efforts have not that's you know, not yielded good results. I just think that post COVID, we probably would have been way worse off than we are. But one of the challenges that we're looking at is we're seeing an angle that's at 6% year over year increase in demand for services and essentially a flat workforce for really as long as I've been coming to this committee for almost a decade. We looked at who we teach eighth, and this has become really important in our recommendations for how to improve our education system, where it was happening and about what, seven, eight years ago, we changed the education structure for the new level in our senior instructors, and we can see, for the most part, they're the ones that are doing full core education. We looked at access and making sure that every corner of Vermont had access to EMS education currently, and what we determined over a two year cycle is that we were doing a pretty good job. This is where a lot of that investment did play out for us, is we do have a good geographic distribution. Though not perfect, we have a pretty good geographic distribution of education going on in commodities. Here's a map. There's a couple areas that are a little bit more challenging, where it's a bit more of a drive to get to EMS education, so we're utilizing this information as part of our five year plan, and many of the areas that we're struggling have already been corrected since this data came out. We've been able to shift resources and fill those in this year. And this information is 2024 information, so we were we gathered the information last year. We've been, as a system, taking steps to try to improve that. And this is our advanced EMT data. At the advanced EMT level, it's a bit more difficult. Again, something that we're looking at and hopefully going to be able to make some progress on it.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: And

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: you can see the number of classes based on the different districts. District 3 being the Chittenden County area would make sense that we'd have more area. District 13 is where our academy is down in Newfane. So you know why that's got a higher spike since more programs are run out of there. So we know that EMS is not just 911 calls, but EMS does to make patients from where they are in the Definitive Care, from Definitive Care back to nursing homes or hospice care, so what are we doing in that? About 28,000 runs a year are being moved between facilities. We looked at how that's being done. For the most part, there are six out of those 75, 76 services that are doing the bulk of the air facility transport work. We started looking at what type of services do they need? How acute are these patients? Are they critical? Are these life threatening transports? Are they going be more transports for office or emergency routine care? What we found over here in the right hand column, those are your super critical patients, and we really have a relatively small number of those. The majority of the needs that we have are in that subacute category. We looked at when they happened, what time of day, what day of the week, trying to figure out is there a is there a way that we can, you know, put forward a more efficient and a more effective transportation network. So we're we're utilizing this data as part of information that we're using in our our plan that we're preparing. So we had to come up with methods to collect our data. And, again, stop me. I'm trying to get through this quick because I know we're pulling you guys from the weekend. So we were asked to look at what is the volunteer contribution, what is the cost, so we had to make some assumptions, and these are our assumption slides so everyone knows what we what we used. And then our group looked at the EMS system in Vermont in a few different ways. We decided to slice it by size. We wanted to know, is it financially different for a small service versus a large service? And we also want to divide it up by governmental structure, or organizational structure, governmental, non governmental. So we took all of the data and we parsed it both directions, we looked at it to see what we could learn. And this is what we've learned. So these are small, you know, the smallest services and their call volume, and their cost, the average per capita, that is the cost that the per taxpayer in their coverage area is paying. So their average cost per call, about $800 average cost per citizen to have that service available is about 75. The mid level services, cost per call goes down a little bit, cost per citizen goes down a little bit. That would generally probably make sense to most. And then what's kind of interesting, and I find interesting, is actually once you get up, you start seeing the cost go the other direction. And and that kind of plays out a little bit in the other slides. So we looked at municipal, the data around municipal services. Some of the, and again, we had to make assumptions in our data sets. So there are currently 10 services. They're providing 18 towns worth of coverage. Only about 2% of the accident geographic area of the state, but 19% of the call volume. About 27,000 calls. What was interesting is most of these, these are all fire based, and some of these departments are doing as much as 92% of their work on a weekly basis, or a yearly basis, is actually EMS work, with the lowest amount being almost 60%. So even our career buyer service based ambulance services are doing mostly ambulance work at a rate between 6092%. They do very little in the world of intercity transport. So that second half of EMS, they they only supply about 3% of the hospital hospital work. Which means, what does the drug in line follow? I guess that's not exactly emergency. So that would go in the emergency category, because it's generated through the system. The non emergency category would be going from your local hospital back to a nursing home or going from that local They hospital to another only participate in about 2% of that activity.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Would it still be considered that sort of inter facility transfer if someone was, say, going from Northwest to UVM Medical Center because they couldn't provide the necessary care?

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: Yes. As part of our plan, one of the things that we've we've put forward and that we will be making recommendations around is clearer definitions. So part of the challenge around our data collection is the word interferably transfer, the phrase interferably transfer actually means different things to different people across the state, so getting accurate data was very difficult for us. So we've put together some language already that we'll be recommending so that that documentation is more consistent and everyone understands what box to put things in.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: That That makes a lot of sense, because I think it's probably a different set of resources and needs if you're transferring someone from a hospital to a nursing home versus transferring someone whose level of trauma exceeds the ability of that receiving hospital. And we've had a lot of conversation.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: We have a healthcare integration work group that's working on trying to figure out how those mechanics work as part of it. So as far as the costs go, about $34,000,000 of our EMS spending goes to this class of provider. Their average cost per call is $11.68 dollars Average reimbursement's about $476 So you can see the gap, and I think most people are not seeing it from here. Municipal budget, yeah, as those numbers. We separated out strictly municipal third party ambulances, or third service providers, if you wanna look at those. It's about 11% of the state. They have about 10,000 transports. Their response times are about the same. Only two of them provide inter facility transport, and between those two, Barrytown being one of the largest ones, they provide about 11% of their facility transport business. Their costs per capita around $57 They're cut I'm sorry. Range from 6 to 163, average about 57. They're also seeing average reimbursements around $476 so their cost per fall is 800. So that's the gap that we're currently seeing in municipal budgets. You've got 19 regional ambulance services. We find that as services that are covering more than four separate municipalities is the way that we'd find it. They cover about 52% of the square mileage in the state. And I'll provide this slide show again the blanket.

[Patrick Malone (Vice Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee; University of Vermont)]: It will be kind of just

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: to Lynn so we can

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: post it. It will be helpful for next year's conversation. About

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: 43,000 calls. They do provide the bulk, so 37%, the largest number of the, I'm sorry, 47% of the inter facility transports that happen. Their average cost per capita is about $31 average cost per call is $670 and their average reimbursement is about $665 So as far as the numbers go, this is the the least tax burden of what they looked at. And then when we put in a category less than four towns with local ambulances, just the way that we categorize them, There's 18 of those services around, about 1,100 square miles. 15,000 calls, 12% of our inter facility transport work. Their average cost is $53 per citizen, and their average cost of about $7.29. We did have a interactive map added, so if you're interested, there's a link I can send Yeah. Or you can click on any town in Vermont, and it'll tell you what the cost per capita and cost per fall is. So we put that together for you so you could look at your own or if you chose. And then we looked at some of the other college based services and skier services, but they don't really fit in these categories, so they were they were kinda separate. So that's a very quick overview of a ton of work compiling data. We have multiple other reports that go with this, but I wanted to kinda put that up there. Our report is in your party, your your collection that we submitted in the fall, But we've been utilizing that since then, is what I really wanted to talk about. So we took the legislation where you asked us to do an assessment, and you created a five year plan. We split it into two separate, distinct projects for us as an advisory committee. We did the assessment, and that's what I just kind of really blew through real quick. And now we're utilizing that assessment to build a five year plan for a statewide EMS system, which is what you asked us to do. So in order to tackle that, it is a massive project. Our group is made up of representatives from every district. Each of the stakeholders, pretty close to crisis organization, is relating to hospitals, and we had a conversation about whether we wanted to hire this workout, like many groups do, and have some consultant write a report for us, and this group was adamant that they wanted to do this work themselves. That the experts that we were seeking were the ones that were in Vermont doing the work, and we wanted to be able to bring in subject matter expertise, we wanted to do the work. That was a huge decision and a huge amount of work, so what we decided to do is we decided to give every one of the named committee members an additional alternate to go from a 21 member group to a 42 member group so that we could then divide those into work groups and start tackling these in smaller groups. So we have multiple work groups that are working on this, and we are actively going through data that we collected and coming up with different I'll pass these around. Hope you guys get this electronically too. So and I do have printed copies of Blanche if anybody does want. Yeah. And I actually have to report if anybody wants to take home a paper copy of our reading report. We've

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: been going through and looking

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: at the EMS system as a whole, looking at the data, and these work groups have been meeting every week, so I can't emphasize enough the amount of energy and work. We have, Pat and I have the pleasure of sitting through a lot of meetings. We have three meetings a week in person in Vermont going through and writing up the consent items that are then being moved through our system through our advisory committee will eventually become a report. Some of the message that I wanted to give you guys today is that we are actually going to be on time, and we are going to be on budget. Tiny.

[Patrick Malone (Vice Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee; University of Vermont)]: So I don't know, you guys probably

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: don't hear that a lot in this building. We don't. But we, at the rate we're going and the work that's being done, I am confident as the chair of the committee that we will be providing you a five year EMS plan and recommendation on time this year. What's sitting in front of you are the first 21 consent items that will be rolled into a plan, and this is really important to me because we've gotten to this point where I'm not gonna tell you that every one of these consent items move forward 100% unanimously, but I can tell you that out of the 21 consent items here, there was a total of two NAY votes. Total, just about two NAY votes across the entire group. So we have worked really hard in these 42 people from across the entire state, from, again, every congressional organization, to really think about what the system means and what the system needs in Vermont, which I think means our plan is gonna be pretty robust. Senator Morley.

[Patrick Malone (Vice Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee; University of Vermont)]: So we have all these emergency unit up where we are. We actually do all the transfers for UBM, and we go we go out of Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Quebec City. One of

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: the issues

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: I'm discovering is you've got Newport up there where we are. You've got and they've they've gotten bigger. We've gotten bigger. And you have a glover. He's fairly small. You know, he's like, you know, and there's some pilot programs that are starting to go around here with sheriffs. I'm just wondering if in your consideration whether or not you look to regionalize or county go look at it countywide, these types of services. We were thinking of going through like a county tax or something like that. Didn't know if that's something you guys have even ponder and thought of. But one thing that's happening is all the food departments are poaching staff at one another, and so you're competing constantly with, other divisions as far as a, as far as health care, as far as retirement, and it's ambitious. It's just starting get me ambitious. It's a BD frenzy. And I'm not exactly sure how to get around that. And when you're really small BD. As you said, there seems to be a sweet spot right there. But I have a lot of concerns. Our communities, they almost gave up on it, and then our trustee said, no. Let's look into this. And now it's a it's a nonprofit, but now the Village of Orleans is doing all the financials, all the payroll, all of that, and we have some very dedicated people there. We seem to be pretty strong, but I just didn't know if that was something that you had thought of when it comes to looking at moving these types of surfaces outward.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I have been thinking of it because we've been

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: a big habit with them. So we won't see it here because we have not gotten all the way through the consensus of the entire committee. Our governance work group is actively talking about what that looks like. So we have a governance work group, we have a finance work group, so they get the, you know, both kind of apps that we're talking about, the finances, and what it would look like. So I don't believe you're gonna see any recommendations that come out of our committee that's talking about forced mergers or anything like that, but I do believe, based on the conversations that we're having, that people are ready to have conversations about whether it's regionalization conversations or consortium conversations, if we can get them the support to do that.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Yeah. I don't wanna force either.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: I don't

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: that's not fire fire services are the same point. Yep. You know, we're having the same issues with fire services. Student trainings. Right. Absolutely. It's a lot of them. Unlike our friends in education, we have been adamantly avoiding the term regionalization. Even though you saw the numbers, we try not to use That's

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: just so much better

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: for everybody. That's right. We don't like to use the artwork. And to kind of set the, to help set that environment, the state EMS system is devised, is divided into districts that historically based on the receiving hospital.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: That's why it's 13 instead of 14.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Okay. Yeah. And one of the things that I think almost every committee member is supportive of is to go from 13 EMS districts to EMS District eight zero two, one district, and to kind of to break down the barriers, some of which it's easier for five towns in one former EMS district to collaborate Yeah. Than all of a sudden you go across that district line, which are just Yeah. Artificial lines anyway. So another thing that's really bothersome to me that I haven't dove into yet, being down here, but I'm going to, is that the fire tax or ambulance service stuff.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: Can't remember what the

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: rate is, but 1.5% to

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: No, 3%. 3%. It's

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: becoming a lot of money that these services are sending to save the bond of the gain. Then it's going, think it leaves one with the general fund, is what's happening. But you're already not paying these entities much. You're already not paying enough for Medicaid and Medicare, just like other health associated services, if you bring a patient out of state, those revenues are not subject to the provider index. I'll probably be doing something with that next year if I get something like that. It's driving me nuts.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: This may be your baby next year.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: The challenge is EMS faces lots of challenges. Workforce development is one of them. Payment structure is another one. So for us, most all ambulance services, the majority of our revenue comes from federal payers, whether it's the state run federal payer or the federal run federal payer. Most of our patients, large percentage, is Medicaid or Medicare. Unfortunately, we don't get to pick our Medicare rates. Especially in the rural areas, though. Exactly, and we have not Medicare seen rates are

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

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: Growth in Medicaid, so our Medicaid rate has been unchanged for quite a few years. The provider tax came about because when we had that conversation, the Medicaid rate in Vermont had not changed in well over a decade, and it was the only tool we could use to help improve Medicaid rates. So what's happened is since the provider tax came in and it increased the rates, so for the most part, the vast majority of it, there's only a couple of places that had high Blue Cross areas, getting more back from their provider tax The than they were putting challenge is Medicaid is now staying stagnant for so long that the percentage that you're paying because of the very small increases in Medicare and those private insurance is now changing that off. If we were to do away with the provider tax and not do away with the Medicaid increase that was associated with it, I don't think you'd find anybody that would be upset about that. But what we would not want to do is go back to the Medicaid reimbursement rates that we had pre provider tax. Because the Medicaid, as you can see on the slide, we're receiving in every category less per fall that it's costing us to deliver. Oh, yes. Ridiculous. Keith, other thing that, and I've been saying in this committee for, like I said, a long time, every time we ask a local municipality to pay for Medicaid services with property tax dollars, we're missing out on our federal match. Yep. So and we haven't changed that in in the whole time we work on.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: And the only reason you need municipal match is because it's not covered by all of our communities and ask for more money, which they understand, by the way,

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: because they want the service. They're only willing to pay that match because or the gap because everyone wants a successor. And so it's so much more efficient regionally. And I you are in the region of the Windham Sheriff's regionalization work And I and his pilot. And I am wondering how you might emulate that elsewhere, even maybe in the same region.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: So what's interesting is a lot of his program is actually based on the way that we do business. So actually the sheriff's department and the rescuing, take my advisory hat off, we actually have a consortium already. So we work together to provide paramedic education. So we're already connected, we do a lot of work together, our organization and the sheriff, and part of the thought process behind his is the way that our regional model works. So we serve 14 towns. They all pitch in, and we're able to move our resources and assets within those 15 communities. So for example, not last Tuesday, but Tuesday before, the town of Newfane, which is 1,200 people, happened to have five emergency calls that all came in within thirty minutes. All five of those emergency calls got ambulances. They all got ambulances within a very short period of time because we were moving assets. As soon as the first call came in, we were backfilling it with one from other reasons. So none of them went unanswered. In fact, we have not missed an emergency call in over ten years. We have a 100% batting average, I think we've not got an emergency, for the last decade. And it's because it allows us to shift and move resources, and that's what the sheriff's proposal is really valuable. So I completely support it. I think we've a great idea.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: We'll be watching it, see how that develops. Sandra Vyhovsky.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Do you have a sense on average in any given year how much federal money is left on the table because of the way we're funding for doing things?

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: I don't have that number, but it's something our finance group is trying to put their hands on. Yep.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Well, thank you both.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Patrick, good to see you. It's always true. I've been here for all the ten years you've been coming in here. Me too. Yeah. So have a great weekend, a somber one. Yep. And thanks for your service.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. Let's let's hope you have very few calls.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Yeah.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: Like none. And I look forward to next year laying this out for maybe getting some legislation around our new EMS system, because I think we're gonna have a pretty good product put in front of you next year. Which is terrific. Thank you. Thank you.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: It was terrific. Thank Just remind me, are you one of the people at the table for the county government's study group? Because I, this is sort of one of the many layers of our progress. I

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: think still work. Were not. Oh, excuse me.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: Yep.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: Well, Okay. Our IV team participating if it was Yeah.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: No. I just we looked at the sort of quilt of different services provided in different ways, your layer of service was certainly in there, but I think it's an important part

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: of that conversation. Okay, I'd like to talk about nine to seven before So we leave thanks again, Thank you, of Thank you, We'll

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: see you again. I hope to help. Thank you.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: This was on notice today on the calendar 09/2007, the reporting requirement bill. That's right. Chair Marcotte of the House Commerce Committee has fashioned a an amendment, which

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: you all now have a copy of. So I would urge you all take some time this weekend when I

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: can walk over the whole thing. It's a nine page amendment. But I'll let Tanya speak to the driving force behind this,

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: and then I'd like us to

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: be able to concur with the House proposal amendment so when it comes up on the floor on Tuesday, she could get up and say that.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I'm chair of the committee. The amendment came out of mostly because it's our sister state amendment. Our sister state bill that Randy reported on before.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Okay. And this is Well, that's the great doctor. I didn't mean to

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: she's the reporter of the bill.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: I know. So I'm just saying I'm happy to talk to we could even vote on this today if you wanted.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: That's I Yeah.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: That's what I want.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: I've read it. I've gone through it. Mhmm. Good. Well, it's

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So at 25 words or less, what does it do?

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: I mean, I think senator Clarkson nailed it. It takes the bill that the governor vetoed, removed the part he found objectionable, and puts it into the reports bill. They didn't actually change any of the work we did on the reports from us. They

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: just this is that. This

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yeah. It was vehicle that we used. Right. Exactly. Okay. And this is the sister state bill that Randy reported that you'll recall that in that creates a system for how we evaluate which countries and cities and and maybe cities that we that decides to create a sister state program with. The governor objected that to the board or whatever they call it, the advisory council begin to terminate things that people that was not constituted on. So we they changed it, fixed it, and that is in that that fix is incorporated into the Sister State Bill and is. Okay. So,

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: show of hands to all we hope to concur. Okay. And you will have our guidance and work for your report?

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Should take care. Only one thing. Let me hold it.

[Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (Vice Chair)]: And if you want I'll make as long as I make it take.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: Yes. And if you want Randy to report the sister state of it, you're welcome to defer to him on the floor. And you just felt he had the fantasy. Just mention,

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: while we're still online, also, there are three other House withholdable amendment we'll take up. I don't know, to be honest with you, whether we're gonna have the opportunity for the Willisman Charter. We need a rules committee meeting first to release it, and then we'd have to take testimony. I don't know what it does. I don't know if it's one of those things that has to happen this year or if it's just a sort of a housekeeping charter change. I don't know where that goes. Based on what the pro tem indicated before we adjourn today, with double sessions all next week, I'm gonna get ahold of both Tim Ash and Justin Kenny over the weekend just to tell them we're not gonna be able to have them come in Tuesday. My guess is we'll start at ten in the morning, right?

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Yeah, that's what he said.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: We'll go it till probably noon, 12:30, waiting for lunch, come back in the afternoon, could be another two hours, could be three, could be four. I don't know. So there's no sense in having people sitting here waiting in case we can't make it up in

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: two. So Yeah.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Have we done this before? Is this is this the way to set it? Mhmm.

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: Yes. Okay. So We

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: may have more than two. If this gets to the point where you gavel in Gavel. Get a quick report from the protem, gavel out because Okay. And then

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: you go see the slideshow. That is your moment to go and see the slideshow.

[Sen. John Morley III (Clerk)]: Okay.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: So is there anything else to come before the committee today?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: No, I'm just real reactive on 09:07. That's great.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Yeah, well I just try to keep ahead of them. Just one step ahead.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: You are so ahead.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: Am so impressed. I didn't I wasn't fishing for a compliment. I really wasn't.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Member)]: That's okay. I am happy to give you

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

[Drew Hazleton (Chair, Vermont EMS Advisory Committee)]: Okay. So

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Chair)]: I