Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: We are. You didn't even visit.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Oh, you. I'm

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: busy. I

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: just ignored everybody.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Have a

[Katie Gallagher (Director, Sustainable Communities Program, VNRC)]: lot of overlap. Hi everyone!

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, this is Sync of Natural Resources and Energy. It is a Wednesday, February 4, and we have a variety of topics to talk about today. So we're going to be jumping around a little bit. We're going to start with a new draft of S-two 24. And just for context, this is a draft that I worked with legislative counsel on in the spirit of trying to address some of the things that I felt like we heard. And we're starting to get to the point where I think, you know, we don't have to do all of the things or if we have opinions about stuff, I'm going to start to want to, you know, have that discussion and know what you're thinking about stuff. But as we start to refine. But all that is to say that the draft that we're looking at right now doesn't have to be the draft that we move. I want to continue to be open to suggestions. It's kind of an interim study draft. So I would love to invite the legislative council up. Oh, sorry. So Mr. Rutland, welcome.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Good morning. I'm just going to walk through the graph, if that's okay to go. Yes. So hopefully you all have a copy of graph 2.1 with the February 2 date at a 04:41 timestamp?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: Yes, it's July.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So first section is that authority for the municipality to petition ANR for the delegation over the use of waters. And you will see on page two that there's still the ability, sustainability of the municipality to the petition and to for ANR to award limited delegation or full delegation that remains part of statute. But what you were continuing to do on page two, line 13 is the ability of a municipal select board for the commissioners of public water system to petition for delegation and to have delegation that says shall delegate authority to regulate the use of public water when public water services the source of drinking water or municipally operated public water system and municipality that operates the public water system owns or controls all of

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: the public required and surrounding the public water and municipality accept this delegation by adopting bylaw or by the secretary.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: The municipality delegated to regulate these public watershed complied with and be at least necessary to necessary public water supply requirements. Appeals are to the environmental division. Secretary may terminate the allegation with cause or without cause after six months to notice. One thing that's not here that I think maybe the chair and I discussed, but maybe not the whole committee, and I don't know if the final decision was made, is when the ANR use of waters, that division delegates authority, they don't delegate the authority to bring the fish in here and hunting on the water, that remains with the Fish and Wildlife Board. You you can delegate that authority. That's authority that you have the authority to to give to a municipality if you wanted to. But because that authority is legislative authority and you can direct, Caledonia. Yes.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So as it's drafted right now, this wouldn't address the concern. It was the sort of concern they brought to this bill.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: But what I could do with this

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: authority could limit access to the water fully. It could prevent boats on the water. It could prevent motors on the water. It could limit the speed of the water. It could limit the number of boats on the water. I mean, it could it has a lot of authority, a lot of potential, but it doesn't give the authority to just prohibit or regulate permanent efficiency. Got it. Okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: That is a point we can discuss further.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: So should I move on?

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, sure. Unless anybody has thought they wanted to add, it's

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: just without saying adding something explicit, people still fish and simply what they can

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Well, what you're gonna agree potentially is conflict between the Fish and Wildlife Board, the department, and the municipality delegated authority. Municipality might say, we regulate. We have the ability to regulate the use, we're saying no efficient, but the board will say, the statute says that we are the one that regulates fishing. What we would need to put in here is notwithstanding the authority for the board and for the commissioner delegation under this section also allows municipality to break big fishing on the water. Does

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: this fishing in and of itself that normally imply a boat?

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Yeah. K.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Yes, sir. So, one more, can I get a little more granular about this? Because I've been looking at I've been a thousand emails about this section one wanted thing we wanted out of there. Know, first of all, the the area that I think we've got a testimony is the very city waters by. They don't own all the land around that way.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: No. They

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: do. They do. They own it all. Yes. Even the cookie terrors. They the land.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Can't control one. What what the problem is is that there's a highway that runs right by one side of the lake, and the highway right of way extends into the shoreland of the reservoir and public have the authority to use a highway right of way including access public waters, and so that that is where you have where the tension arises because the public are arguing they have access to the water, the town is arguing, well, we control all the land, we have it all the way. And the department is saying, based on a very, permanent decision, that they don't have the authority to tell the town that they can prohibit the shipping of water the

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: year

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: to pass. Do you delegate to the town that authority? That is your card. And that's what the Berlin Bond decision said. The Berlin Bond decision said, if that public health order that the city of Montpelier was relying on had been more explicit about the delegation of authority, then LongHaPulear could have limited the use of Rohingya pond, but that public health order was not explicit enough to grant an authority and therefore people for now used to service water for Rohingya. I

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: think we're all going to hear a little bit more about the rule that is related to this later today. Proposed? The department proposed rule? Yeah. Okay.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Moving on, you move out of that municipal delegation and you move to abate votes and the home leave requirement in section two. You can skip really to page five because that first section, section two, is just definitions and adding that definition of voter vote and fake vote to the use of Waters language. And then on page five, there would be a new section regarding the use of wake votes on the waters of the state. Okay. And it provides page five lines three through six, person shall operate wake vote only on a wake authorized by the department for use of wake votes. Page five, lines seven through 13, in order to operate a wake vote and remind the person who owns or controls wake vote shall honor the form provided by the department to identify at home. Like there is no longer a decal. The decal is no longer here, but you still have to identify on the home on a form that where

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: your home link is. There is

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: a potential in talking with Damon Leonard, our transportation attorney, as part of your registration, I've identified that the vessel be registered as a way quote and potentially to make your own wing declaration on that form. That's there's a possibility for that if you want to.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: On sorry. On the on the registration. The Vessel

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: registration. Is

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: certainly of interest to me and to you as well. Okay.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: If Danny said, if you're gonna

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: do that, talk to DMV.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Never know if TNK is gonna be seven. Yeah.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I bet I can guess at this

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: case. So

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: a way quote's home, like, is the only lake on which that wakeboat shall be used for the calendar year unless the wakeboat is decontaminated according to the requirements of subsection c. And this is prior to entering the Vermont Lake other than the home lake prior to reentering. The person who owns and controls the way coach of decontaminated the way boat at an agency approved decontaminated service provider. One of the pieces of testimony that I believe you've heard is that existing boat washing stations don't want to be considered decontamination stations. So there's this new sentence that says existing boat washing stations shall not be considered an agency approved decontamination service provider unless approved by the agency to provide decontamination services. So if they want to and they get approved then they can. On page six, prior to entering the leave, the law enforcement officer and employee of the agency or a greeter person staffing and authorized product of a different species selection stage may request the person who owns control rooms using the way both provide a group of decontamination.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Can we pause for one second?

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I apologize. I think I need to go back to page five. This new language, which I mean, I think we might need to add a date to Line one eighteen, like existing boat washing stations as of 2026, because moving on into the future, it becomes, there's a little bit of a cyclical, like it exists and so it's not approved until it is approved and then, nah, I just

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: With 07/01/2026?

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Yes. Do we think of

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: another Yes. Do we actually need to have the wording system? Because what I think what we're saying is a full length of walking station. It's great. It's full wide conversation, but it's not a decontamination stage. It must have passed.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Right. But I think the chair's point, it should say a vote washing station in existence as of 07/01/2026 shall not be considered the agency decontamination unless some of the money approved by the agency. Wouldn't the same hold true for

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: a station opened up the day after the of July 7?

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Yes. So I see your point. I can see. Both Washington stations are not considered The elevations. Unless Yeah.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. I feel like that. And then you don't need a date, it's just at any time. Yep. But they So

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: I have

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: a Yes, sure, go for it.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: I think it's implied here on page five, but is this clear that if somebody brings their vote up from Massachusetts or whatever, they can't work in the waters of Saint Robocles? They have food to be condemned? That that is the vessel requirements

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: applied to all vessels using waters at the state Okay. Regardless of registration.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Now existing law?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: Yes. Yes. Okay.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: I there's reciprocity agreements between the states for the ability to use your vote if it's registered in another state and within Vermont. So you but the reciprocity agreement provides you have to comply with the laws and the state that you're operating in. So are we clear as to make

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: sure It's okay. Are we clear that somebody had to have to have their plate built incontaminated? And and, actually, do we have a time when it has to have been decontaminated? Could it have been decontaminated if they put it up in August?

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: That's

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: that's a there is no time period or a durational provision. It's it has to prove the decontamination prior to the treatment of the lake.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Whether we we would want group decontamination since the last time it was in a lake?

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Yeah.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So if it was decontaminated in May, as long as it's not been in the water since then, that's okay. Yeah. I mean, that is Wow. That's tough. It's We're playing with a lot of things. Just not good.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: And I

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: don't think we can check her. Exactly.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Unless you use the RF tags. But then It's just suggested.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: But I'm talking with a couple of people in the industry. Said that they that could be done. They take it to our bag and put it on when they purchase the boat. Well, the problem's gonna be where both of those are. Once they have a requirement, put it in. You can't bring it in the state unless you set our tag.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: And what does an r tag go again?

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: It basically tells you each where the bulk event record. It can move at the back with those. The GPS, basically.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Yeah. Go ahead.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: I just wanna make sure I understand. So correct me something you said. Are you saying that right now that a boat coming into

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: the state of Vermont has to be.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: It doesn't have to be decontaminated. It's subject to the aquatic nuisance inspection requirements. So Okay. Which could include the little watch. Right. But not necessarily. Well when you take it out of the water it needs to be inspected, needs to be washed, it needs to drain prior to moving with

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: the medicine. There's no requirement that you have to decontaminate by you know blasting hot water into the bilge or the ballast tanks or anything.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: It's not that specific. Okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well then I think of I think we're probably on the same page about this, but just to make sure that, because I associate the word decontamination specifically with weight as opposed to like all boats.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Well, we're only climbing to weight. Right. Right.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Lots of boats have villages. Yeah. You can see the draining requirement on page seven. It's it's right now, it's when weaving the water prior to transport away from the area for the vessel that if they have to drain the vessel trail and other stuff, and then putting the live wells. They don't have to drain their bait boxes. So there there is a draining required. But that's not considered. That's not considered because I think you've heard testimony and and I think you probably know that not all of our abusive inspection stations have hot water. Right. Yeah.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Pretty rare.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So are

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: you thinking that well, actually, let me ask the question first, so to require that a state or that, let's say a weight book coming into the state would need to decontaminate, that's not required right now?

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: No, it's not right now. There's no

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: need for any wake vote right now. There's just a draining inspection for a product uses species of other physical.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: But if we were to pass this wake vote rule, and let's say if we added this requirement of Well, maybe it's already here, like requirement to decontaminate if you're traveling between lakes, that would automatically catch somebody coming in from out of state.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Before you enter the lake, you will have to have the contamination and law enforcement agency employee or her trainer can ask you to move our group of taking the sanitization. Okay. But you don't, you still have a duration issue that sent out bombards, but they'll cover all scenarios.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I guess I'm less worried about time as long as decontamination has happened. Like, if it if it got to, you know, came out of some other lake, got decontaminated, and then sat. I think that's fine. Yeah. Is that, which would be covered by us.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: So is there a way to make this more explicit so that anybody coming from Massachusetts or wherever is on real notice that they're lethal must carry with an approval.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Well, how would you like to provide that notice?

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: So, that's the reason I think this is the enforcement targets. Who's responsible for how you know, what do they need for assets to be able to to do this? And we you know, I think we're telling everybody everybody agrees that they need to do something. You just have to decide who's gonna do it and whether they have the assets or will it Mhmm. So that affects the infected thing and. So the the scenario I'm flashing back to is Didymo, Roxknott. Everybody remember Roxanne and how

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: is a type of algae that when it's invasive and when it attaches to rocks it worms, it's very slimy, very slippery, and it's very difficult to control and it can affect the health of the product species. It can be carried in the felt of your your waiting. That's why we don't have felt waiting. Well, we didn't have felt waiting groups for a while. They were prohibited. And in order to notify people that they couldn't wear felt, there were signs that were put up and there was an educational outreach effort that was required from the department. I mean, you're it's a very similar people going into the water with a piece of equipment that can spread the aquatic invasive species. It's, I mean, I was really aggravated because I just bought a brand new pair of Patagonia.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's personal.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: But I understood, you know, I got, I I realized why. But, I mean, you're talking about people with a much larger piece of equipment with a much you know, depending on how big the bonus of ballast water, what it can carry, it's probably greater than what could be carried in twelve weeks. So

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: what I'm hearing, like, that's the because the outreach was signs.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Signage. Okay. And public outreach in Europe.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: It seems to me that for this, because the boats are a lot bigger than the Velcro boots, you could go into the lake anywhere with boots, you can just walk in. But with boats, there's just an access point. So it'd be easier to have signs there, but it would require some kind of notice. But to your point also though, if you're driving up from Massachusetts with your boat and you get there and you're like, oh man, I didn't know, then that's a lot bigger problem.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Ignorance is a little bit stupid. Yeah,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: appreciate that sentiment.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: I want to plaster this

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: on the air nest, we can help them know that this is

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Why it's so viral? Well, should keep going because we're But I'm appreciating this conversation and the need for outreach. And anyway, I wanted to get that

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: clarity.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: Yeah.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Because there's more. We should keep going.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So on page six, volume six through 10, this is new language, person staffing and authorized supply nuisance inspection station is authorized to inform a person who owns or controls that way code whether they're authorized, whether way books are authorized for use on late. That information should not be considered law enforcement authority and that's as much to benefit greeters as it is to benefit the owner, controller, the waitboat. They need to know, the greeters need to know that they don't have law enforcement authority, they can just inform and then the wait boat operator can do what they want and the greeter can inform law enforcement if necessary.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: You're on page six, is that right?

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: I'm on page six, line six Yeah, of your

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: feel like that's clarifying. They

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: could also, forward it in that sense. They could also inform them that the book must have been the book must have been deconaminated. That that's already

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: page six, line one through five. They they have been request group of deconaminations. Got it. Got it. Yep. So page six eleven through 14, all the provisions related to robotic nuisance species inspection apply to egg boats. Weight boat users need to drain their ballast tanks, and what is being added is it's immediately before or immediately after leaving water. I think you heard testimony that when they it's easier for them to drain while they are in their home lake, and so that was added on page six, slides 13.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: It just, previously it just said immediately after, and I heard from, one of the things I heard was that it is hard to get a or it can

[Katie Gallagher (Director, Sustainable Communities Program, VNRC)]: be hard to get a

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: wake boat out of the water while it bounces. So like, all right, drain it before or or after, but water's heavy. Water's heavy.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Page six, nine fifty three twenty one, the violation or enforcement is going to be through the judicial bureau, this bureau of minor civil offenses, use of waters violations are already judicial bureau offenses. However, whenever you add anything to the judicial bureau authority, I recommend you talk to the administrative judge just so he's aware they don't like to be surprised.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Do you know who specifically that is?

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Judge Zoning.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. We need zoning. Okay. And specifically about section four.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Right, adding on the late vote violations to judicial bureau authority. They already have other music waters authority, and so just, so they're on notice.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yep, okay. Thank you, I think you had said that before and it didn't stick, but it's sticking up, so.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Page seven, line seven, section five, this is the existing aquatic nuisance inspection, drainage, etc. We already looked at it, but it's adding an immediately before and immediately after condition on that. That brings you on page eight to line 10, section six. This is the use of fish and wildlife access area for aquatic nuisance inspection stations. This is, I'm sure you're probably hearing from people about this.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Mostly about this. Mostly about section one.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Well, you should know that there's a little bit of a there's a weird dynamic with this because the state rule is based on the old federal rule. The federal rule was amended in 2020, and the federal rule no longer has that provision about conflicting priority uses, but your state rule still does. So if someone comes and says that the rule doesn't allow for these uses that conflict, that's not necessarily true, because the current federal rule says a state agency may allow commercial, recreational, and other secondary uses of a grant funded parcel of land or water or capital improvement to be secondary uses do not interfere with the authorized purpose of the grant. Well, the authorized purposes of grants include things like wildlife transportation, the management of fish, the management of wildlife habitat, and for protection of wildlife habitat, protection of wildlife. So

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: And that's included now at the federal level?

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: That's in the federal level, that's an authorized use. What you probably need to do is look at maybe the Joe's Pond grant and see what their authorized uses were. But you have three years to do that because even if there's a conflict in the authorized uses, the federal rule says the state has three years to figure out how to eliminate that conflict for that unauthorized use. So if someone tells you that you're gonna lose money on this and you're gonna have to give money back for jail and ponds, access areas, some other access areas, well, you got three years to figure that out. Out. And I'm supposed to be super nervous.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: That is very interesting. It makes me feel like we need to If we had more time, I would want to do a deeper, like, reformation of this to perhaps match the federal law.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: And that I'm you have the authority to rewrite the Fish and Wildlife Board rules because when in 1961, when you authorized the Fish

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: and

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Wildlife Board, you also authorized the Fish and Wildlife rules in statute. That's why the Fish and Wildlife rules are in statute. If you didn't know that they are there, they are there. And you said at that time basically, you said at that time that that the general assembly can amend the fish and wild vegetables however they want. Right? So until such time is amended, revoked or soon proceeded by the act of the general assembly or by the fishing. So there's tool authority to command the fish and and wildlife. You can do that at any time.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes. Go to go to senator.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: I am just, what is the new language that was added on, H-ten basic from the last draft?

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. It's just some new information. Okay, because I'm thinking about the testimony we heard about how these decontamination stations are really large from a fire tons of water and may not be appropriate to have just right at boat access station, So I'm a little concerned about that because I do think it will cause conflict and it will cause like, there's just not gonna be room for them. And also you

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: need to drain the water

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: and I'm afraid the water will just drain into the lake. Wait a second, that's exactly what we don't want.

[Katie Gallagher (Director, Sustainable Communities Program, VNRC)]: So it

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: seems like we might not want these things there, and that we want them at boat dealer places that are away from the lake, or marinas that have spaces or something. And so I guess I'm concerned about this language.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: I will say that when the department testified before, they made a statement that was a little bit vague and a little bit vague, They said that they believe that this language would take away their physical control of the access area, and they they said that because there's a provision in the new federal rule that says the state agency has to maintain physical control over the access area, the grant funded access area, and the control must be adequate for the protection, maintenance, and use of the improvement for its authorized purpose for its useful life. Again, what is the authorized purpose of that access area? Is it going is it specific? Is it only for fishing and hunting? Or is it for improvement in wildlife management, etc? Which most of the grants probably have a statement about that because the Sport Fish Recreation Act has this provision or previously had a provision that would allow for motorboat access for. So I'm just saying they they they made they made that statement for a purpose. They made that statement to say that because you can't move the product nuisance inspection station readily, that it's gonna take physical control of that access area, and therefore, they wouldn't have physical control. I think there's there's ways to look into that.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: Mhmm. Yes. And said, Harry, it

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: was something that I've

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: been pondering. Like, if that's, you know, argument about having a decon station close to a lake, what about boat washing stations? Like what rules and guidelines do they

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: have as far as, you know, offset from a water body? Or

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: So most of that is is is it's like the the lake associations, they do their best, and they also rely on what the department recommends, especially practices.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So something that would be useful is learning more about the decontamination. I'm appreciating your question because the washing I'm actually more worried about than the decontamination stations because as part of the, as I'm imagining it, it's part of the purpose of having a hot, the hot water. Like what does that do in terms of reducing the risk from the runoff? But I'm making an assumption there and it's worth checking.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, people walk through that,

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: trailers go through that, they go into the lake. I mean,

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: it's it's all right there. Yeah. So I've already talked to some people that are considering putting in the accounts

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Mhmm.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Station. You need real estate to do. Mhmm. And it's almost gotta be a public private partnership for somebody to start a business to be. But we don't know how many weight points you're gonna say for the impact. Well, about a 100, I think. It's it's on. Well, they don't they don't actually have the data because we don't register any joint points. So

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I feel like if that's all we do, that'll be a win. Right.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: So who do you you know, maybe if somebody did that. I know the breeders, the lake associations, they they don't want they wanna keep doing what they're doing. They don't want to have the state come in and start controlling. So you got more issues here to deal with than just weight loss.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, let me think about I feel like there's a lot here, there's a lot to chew on in what the right course is. So let's keep going for now. Do you

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: want to skip

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: to the next major subject?

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: What are we skipping? Well, you'd

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: be skipping over that fish and wildlife rule for the use of fish and wildlife factors. It's about who gets to use, when it's going to use. Sure.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: And I'll just say for that section, so like page 13, I was hearing about people being excited for having, launching kayaks just seems silly to me. I would love for people to be able to use these points. Have different opinions and that's all right. But it made sense to me that we should be allowing.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Kayaks were allowed as long as they were not commercial. Mhmm. What wasn't allowed was stand up palaces. And so so stand up palate words have been added and clarified as being not breast, not on the breast. And and frankly, can fish from the stand

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: up. So If you have really good Sorry. We

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: go back. Some people can

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: because that was the basis for not allowing standing up ballot boards that they

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: were considered sales. Interesting. Okay. So if you

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: don't like it, we could talk about it. That was at least my thinking about it.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: On page 16 at the bottom by 1920 going on to page 17, this is about fishing tournaments. What is added here on page 17 is that if the department receives an application for a fishing tournament on a water of the state that serves as a public drinking water source, and the municipality owns or controls all of the land surrounding the water, the department shall confirm that the legislative body of the municipality approve the use of the water for the tournament prior to issuing the permit. So it's not just the department that has to approve the tournament, it is the municipality that owns or controls that water use as a public water treatment.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, there's a couple of questions. The the municipality owns or controls all the land surrounding water, is that is there just one of those? Is it just the barrier? No. There are 11. There are 11. Oh, I think you

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: 11 municipalities and 14 waters. Okay. Multiple. Interesting.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Because I was just wondering if we needed that phrase, and maybe it's just if that serves as a municipality's drinking water source. But I don't know. I'm game for that change. I don't know how that would change it or not.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Well, you were bringing Lake Champlain. Okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: But Does this conflict with other the constitutional right to fish kind of thing or the other sort of authorities of the department in some way?

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: No, because the constitutional right to hunt and vets is subject to controls established by the general assembly. Okay. For example, you have set multiple provisions in statute, and then in the delegated authority to fish and wildlife board through rule, that limits fishing on certain areas or on the space of fishing to the it's not that sufficient. Limits what you can use to fish. So there multiple divisions that restrict the constitutional rights on fish as authorized by the

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: constitution. Okay. That's helpful to know. It's good. So what do I just wanna just ask the committee, what's the general consensus of why section a if we're at another layer of bureaucracy for and no. So now you have to get approval from fish and wildlife to have a fishing Mhmm. Fishing term. And now you gotta get us you gotta get it from from the municipality because they wanna be informed when you're doing that so they can go down and make sure nobody's littering or or dump the gasoline and water.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, as I heard it from the city manager of Barry that they're gonna be having overtime police patrols to ensure that their drinking water source is not contaminated because of the fish deterrent. So that to me seems like we have inadvertently set up an avoidable conflict. So it's not that they have to get another permit. It's just that as a part of the permit process, it just has to be one more check so that a municipality like Barry or like any of these 11 municipalities don't feel like they need to have additional enforcement out there.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Seems-

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: So if the Barry Fishing Game Fund decides they're going have a fishing group, where would they start?

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So I think they would want to keep the municipality informed. I think that they'd also then go through the regular fishing application tournament purposes. It seems like with this language, they would have to get the various city council to approve it first and then that get a permit from the state. And it sounds like it's not necessarily, you know, they so because Barry loves fishing, but they're worried about the volume. Well, it's a

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: it's a town it's a time issue because I used to set up fish and gerries on Lake St. Catherine. Nice. And you have to get the state to finalize the approval. And then you're watching the calendar and watching the weather because the ice may not be safe. This may just make terms impossible to have it adding another layer.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, think that well, what I would say is that that layer is worth considering when it's a town's drinking water source. So it's good to have an extra pause to be like, is appropriate and is the municipality in Caveman? Because it's their drinking water source. But open to, that's at least what I would say, but you know, open to the conversation. Yes. And we could,

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: to address your concerns, Senator,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: we could put some place that the legislative body must act on the request within a certain amount of time period so that there's not a delay. Like, they can't just sit on it and never take it out. They have to act

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: on it. They meet every two weeks.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. So that seems reasonable.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Within fifteen days. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Because the balls to me every other week. Not sure.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Sounds great. Would that help, Brady?

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Or is it at their next regular decision? Think so.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: But maybe at their next Yeah.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: I'll put in alternatives for you.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Okay. So

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: there's additional language in section eight. It is related to the cost to the municipality, that is where the tournament is ongoing and the municipality uses that water for a public drinking water source. If the commissioner approves that fishing tournament, our water of the state serves as a public drinking water source municipality. Commissioner Rutland shall require the applicant. We're the tournament to reimburse the municipality if the cost of municipality incurs and ensuring that the drinking water source is not contaminated if that municipality is a good vote. All the way.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Just not a recognizable provocative. I'm just wondering if there will be a dispute about what the costs are, like the town might say, well, we needed to have extra police out because of all the people, but is the police president or presence a cost that's protecting the drinking water? I think there could be some some ambiguity about what it is. And I'm going guess that DEC is going to argue that they don't improve fishing tournaments that are going to impair the waters of the state, but I can let them make that argument, but

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: I think they have already. The answer there

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: is with the family, so it doesn't.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, get it. If that's their argument,

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: right? Obviously,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: there's a difference of opinion, but I think it, I understand why you wouldn't include this, but I am just concerned about the definition of what those costs might be and then being unclear. Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: So just wanna remind everybody why the fishing game folks have derbies. It's normally to raise money to send kids to conservation here. Unlike the late game claim internationally, you know, it affects commerce and brings funds into the state. These don't these are all usually the they're conservationists who like to hunt and fish and and really take care of you know, they're they're concerned about the and, you know, I've seen them actually go and say, hey. You know, I drink that water, and I'm. It's my. Mhmm. They'll be doing something.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I I think so. I hope so. So

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: And you're right. And I I agree. Yeah. Do we have we had talked at one point about the notion of the application adding to the application, something about description about how access will be achieved.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Did we do that?

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Did we take that

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: out? Was take that out.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: I was take that.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: You because if if you're getting trying to target the problem

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Well, actually, it's still in

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: there. Okay.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: It's still I'm sorry. Page 18, line 17, applications, the form shall require the applicant to identify and act as point of large participants in.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think there's multiple open again, open to that conversation.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Makes sense. The pictures know how the access can be achieved. Well, they approve. Yeah. Okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: I think I'll be back, right?

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: I think you will. Thank you.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'll be back. Really appreciating the conversation that we just had. Sure. Well, anyway, would love to come back with another doctor.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Are you hearing from Brian Revin today on 02:12?

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: We were gonna, yeah. We were gonna have him back tomorrow, but because I had a rating question, but I I emailed him my question and got that, I think, resolved. So I'm happy to post that exchange if that's useful to anyone. Okay. So

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: I don't have direction on what to do with 02/12.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think there Okay.

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: What to whether

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: or not to allow

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: individual permits and and whether or not to have a tiered permanent system based on the complexity of the connection. So

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I took some notes based on the yesterday, which I can email you, but they realize this I mean, we're hoping for a new draft in a few twelve on Friday.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So and more to come on 02:13, but

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: Right. You know? Right.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Yeah. It's Is there one document where the fifty day rule was going? Well, 1962. Well, the

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: for markedly, a lot of the 1961 rules still exist as they were enacted in 1961, but you can get them right there at title pen app.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: They're all right there. Okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: All right. We are going to switch topics, and we're coming back to the committee bill that we voted out, brought back to me as three twenty five, which is largely based on Lesbold Holmes proposal about some follow bylaws. We have Mr. Weiner Group with us.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Welcome. Thank you.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. Just a copy of this number. I think we have this as a graph. Yeah. More Super Bowl, and thank you for being here.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: Yeah, I really appreciate you having us in and already taking action to take a step towards exploring the possibility of what we've been calling root zones. I think in the bill that acronym may have become rude, a little concerned about that, but hoping that's one of a number of things we might be able to sort of talk about in these early stages. Great. So again, thank you. Thank you for having me in. I'm Monroe Weiberg. I had the privilege of serving with the chair when we were both part of the Vermont Beyers coalition, and I'm the hat I'm testifying the other day is as the executive chair of Let's Build Homes, which is still quite a new organization. We launched about it a year ago. It's my first time, first time I think anyone from Wet'swell Homes has testified in front of this committee. So just to say very quickly a little bit more about what this coalition is. Over the last year have grown into a coalition of almost two seventy organizations with over 900 Vermonters individuals and organizations for every county in the state. We're a little over represented in the North and underrepresented in the South, but truly, you know, even the Northeast Kingdom is overrepresented. There's a strong interest in the issue of housing statewide. More so than just a number of organizations that have been part of the coalition, I think is notable is, somewhat different than past housing coalitions is just the breadth of it. Certainly have what you would think of as the housing usual suspects, whether those are nonprofit or for profit developers, business community, there are a lot of hospitals that are part of this. There are a lot of utilities, there are secondary education institutions. And then I think a sign of just how significant our housing shortage has gotten and the impact that's happening on workforce issues. We have AARP as part of this down to groups like H and A kind of some called B pop, which is basically 20 30 folks who consult for modern people oriented places and they care about as well. So this is our mission. I think what is relevant to today's discussion, just to highlight, is we see it as our job to certainly create more housing opportunity, abundant housing as we call it, for households of all income levels. We are very committed and other communications we have said, you and

[Michael Lazorczak (Town of Stowe Electric Department)]: your

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: colleagues support the continued public investment in housing subsidy, updating my operating system and there's some weird, if there's some splashing. There's some weird things here. We think we need to broaden the lens to truly address Vermont's housing issues. We need not just to build more permanently affordable housing, we need to build more housing of all shapes and sizes for all of our neighbors. We think there's a way to do that in harmony with our working lands. And I think this bill would be add to the tools that you have already created that ensure that. And just final slide on the sort of introductory, we're very focused on the needs assessment that was published in late twenty twenty four by the Monoveston Finance Agency. And these are two graphs that need to sort of summarize our challenge. The graph on the right being what we have been producing in terms of plasma production, going back little over ten years, 2025 numbers are not fully in yet, but my understanding is it will again be a year like last year, which is, has, I think reasons to be hopeful that we are, the work that you have done and work the municipalities is doing is increasing housing supply. It will be another kind of relatively big year. It will still be a year well below what the state's sort of official housing targets are, which says to us, you know, we need to keep working, we need to keep moving. Just to clarify a question In

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: figure three, let's say occupied,

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: is the definition of occupied like a twelve month resident or? Yes, that's my understanding of that graph is an attempt to distinguish between permanent housing production versus secondary home production. Okay, thank you. And you can see that it's dropped around since where we you know, a few decades back, which to me is the reason being concerned about where we're at, but also hopeful that we don't have to go back that far in our history to see a time when we, you know, we were producing homes at a level that was keeping up with our needs. Here's the rest of my presentation is gets into this concept of residential opportunity, overlay hounds, root zones, you know, still new to the ways of capital here, but I have learned that you need to get good acronyms. Sorry, shout at that. Not too much bribe authorship if people have a better idea. Spent a little time talking about why we think this is potentially an important intervention for the legislature to take, give a high level presentation on how a communication could work, kind of lay out what would be in a state model code in this sort of model code that we're calling room zones. I'm mindful that we've just been scheduled for a half hour a day, know we're sort of behind schedule so I try to keep it at a high level with the thought that if there is interest in pursuing this further we do have, we're actually working with a couple experts we'd love to bring back and get into more of the details. And I will just say out of box, I'm grateful and we're very excited that you are taking the step to write up the possibility for a task force on this. If that's where we end at the end of this session is on a task force, that would be very exciting and we would use that opportunity to its fullest. We also come to this work with a sense of urgency, with a sense that, you know, have promoters suffering right now in our homeless shelters, at risk of eviction. We think there's urgency to trying to change that trajectory that I just had a moment ago and the actual legislative intervention we think here would be fairly straightforward. Likely think, at least to start the conversation thinking it might be possible to do more than create a task force this year. And that we could actually move to some level of action. Why do this? This primarily comes out of the conversation, a broader conversation that is going on, the legislature has encouraged action on discussion on with your provision within Act 181 to look at the permanent appeal system. And as you know, the land use review board produced a report on that appeal system And just go ahead to this, report has many importantly worthy discussions in it. It has this one note that I'm focused on here, which is that concept of buy right permits under certain conditions was advocated for by many of our housing experts, supported typo there, sorry, by the NRC as a compelling idea that needs more time and discussion as it could speed up the production of housing in an effective way. The report doesn't go further into that. What we are doing here is, I think should be seen as one of several efforts underway right now to look at that kind of exciting opportunity of some consensus and say, more can we do there? I do think the governor's EO2 homes program isn't very much should be understood as one of these attempts to create buy right housing. I know you're hearing from the NRC after me today and we've had some good discussions about potentially other state mandates that could be kind of direct ways for the state to get into this role of encouraging buy right development. And I personally, Lesville Homes is supportive of all that. What we've tried to do here with Root Zones is an attempt to, I guess while we're supportive of all those efforts, We look back at the history of, for example, ADU reform in this state. And the way I see that history like this, it has been encouraging accessory dwelling units to be built going all the way back to the nineties. There was like a bill back in the nineties that said ADUs should now be legal. And Burlington took similar actions at the municipal level trying to sort of mandate the legalization. And Hawaii, what we found is that those mandates had a limited impact until you really got into the DNA of how we regulate housing at the local level. You got into the zoning details like lock coverage ratios and parking requirements and setback requirements. We had a comprehensive reform in 2018 in Burlington that did that. Finally, after that, we have seen some uptick. I have some, I'm both hopeful that there are things that can be mandated about by right zoning that are simple, but also some concern that until you really kind of get into the DNA of zoning, you're not really gonna crack this out. And that's what root zones attempts to do. There are some additional purposes that I'll touch on, but really that's the main purpose of this is to address permit appeals, which I will say my prior year, I think this permit appeal system, this issue it's a very serious issue. The report from the LER acknowledges that they document dozens of appeals around the state every year. I think what we can see in some ways is just the tip of the iceberg. I say that, I'd like to just share a kind of personal story that maybe explains a little bit why I'm here in front of you. I was a builder before I was the mayor of Burlington and we attempted to build one much needed 25 unit apartment building on North Avenue, one the main arterials in Burlington. It was held up by appeal by essentially one neighbor for five years, took us from 2003 until 2008, so from a housing boom until the housing recession. We stuck with it for another five years, eventually got it built, and 25 households live in that building today, five permanently affordable homes. It's one of the few truly sort of eightytwenty mixed income developments in most of our formal housing doesn't get built that way. Was one of the few such projects Burlington had, probably got it done. We never attempted another one. It was a harrowing experience. It nearly bankrupted us as a company. We were years into it and billions of dollars into acquiring this and really not knowing we'd be able to build anything. I truly don't think we will have a functional housing system until we crack this nut of addressing permitting. And I have a further slide I wanna show you here that comes also from my experience of trying to address this at the municipal level, with some success. What I learned about that tough experience was that the appeals, the debates happen, the lawyers argue over the subjective elements of zoning ordinance. The appeal of our project was about the character, whether or not we met the character of the neighborhood. We brought in John Anderson, a great architect to make the argument that we did. You and I could argue all day long about whether something meets the character of the neighborhood, more to the point, our lawyers could argue for years.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: I know you

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: addressed that with Act 181, you've taken out that particular test, many other subjective tests remain. Burlington had a subjective parking waivers. We had undue adverse impact tests about traffic circulation and other, know, I mean, lot was put in the language, blunt new adverse impact and deferred to the DRB, the developer review board to make those decisions. We systematically attempted to remove all of those subjected tests when we did a form based code for the downtown, downtown code. And it took years of work. It's quite expensive for us to do it. And that's sort of reason for this effort too, but we got it done. It was adopted for the beginning of 2018. We went from it before 2018 and my time as mayor, there was basically an appeal every year, close to every year. We're talking small numbers overall, there were numerous appeals. And even to the point of like, some of this is sort of below the tip, below the water level and you can't really see it, not on the list of formal appeals or other projects where an appeal was threatened in a project and I hung over everything. And we spent countless hours in the mayor's office mediating resolutions of appeals or potential appeals. And since 2018, the form based code went in, we didn't get it all right. I'd say it's a very prestigious code, it micromanages in some ways, it adds expense, other experts, witnesses you bring forward will say negative things about the, and I feel some negative things about the form based code, but at a fundamental level, I think it did work. At least in the sense there has not been a single zoning permit appeal, development permit appeal since 2018. I put an asterisk on that because there happened some demolition appeals. There was a kind of carryover major project, the city place project, you guys have seen that. There was an appeal of that that predated the form based code and then kind of continued into it. So people could quibble, but basically there has been, I think, dramatic change. This has basically solved the permit appeal issue and it's been significant to the city meeting its housing goals in recent years, which is what that lower chart tries to show there. So I think this could be a significant strategy for the state. Here's at a high level how root zones would be implemented. If you guys like this idea, the vision is that the state would create a model zoning code. Just to pause on that concept for a moment, I don't have more in the presentation, could produce more to back this up if you're interested. There's a lot of precedent for this concept of model codes. Zoning became a widespread innovation because Herbert Hoover, when he was the honor secretary produced like the first national model code and it caught on like wildfire. And within a few years from that federal action, 70% of the population in the country was living within under zoning. Have been many other efforts to come forward with model codes with varying degrees of success. I think it makes a lot of sense in that zoning is really important. It's very technical. It is lot of detail in there. It is hard to get right. It is truly hard for every municipality working on its own to get right. And so that's sort of the appeal of a model code is that it gives something you're still, as you see in the next thing, this is is, I'm envisioning the towns adopting this. This is not a state mandate, but the state would be doing important work to craft this model code. And that is the reaction I've been getting from the handful of municipalities we've talked about this with so far. I will acknowledge we have more work to do there, but every municipality I've raised this with has expressed some level of openness about this to be a helpful tool for them. So State Cave creates this model code, towns adopted. There is some level of state review that that town action. And I do envision there being some customization and there could be specific things that Montpelier, city Montpelier might wanna do. There'll be some review from a state agency. And I think that is probably an area for some debate, who's the right agency to review this, but there would be state agency review to ensure that the state goals are being met by this model code. And then the kind of magic of this as I see it is the actual process of once a root zone is in place, it's overlay district. That's what this is, an overlay zoning district that sits on top of the existing zoning and sort of trumps the existing zoning once this is in place. Right now, almost universally, when you come forward for a DRV, a zoning permit in Vermont, it's certainly one of these towns, the great majority of towns that have these sort of subjective discretionary review processes, you're starting a months long process, maybe years long, if there is debate about those subjective issues and there is appeal. And instead of that, the review of an application becomes much more straightforward. A zoning administrator is simply checking, going down sort of check boxes and confirming that the clear objective rules in this model code are being followed. And if they are, if they're not, you don't get a permit. If they are, the issuance of the zoning firm becomes an issuance of a certificate of zoning completion. It is no longer a new governmental subjective decision that triggers appeals rights. It is a certification process and can speed up the process of getting a permit, add certainty to that process and dramatically reduce the amount of administrative effort as well. Thank

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: you. I have a question. So if a town adopts the model zoning by us, does that imply that they give up the ability to tweak a plan. So somebody comes in and wants to build an apartment building and the original plan doesn't, I don't do this stuff, so I'm just gonna make something-

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: You know, it's a great question. You're right on The one of

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: original plan, the parking lot is too big and there aren't enough trees. Those are two of my personal pet peeves. Does the town still have the ability to go back to the developer and say, you need to plant more trees and shrink the parking lot, or is that in the ordinance itself? Like, so where does that kind of back and forth come in?

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: So great question and there's several layers of answers to that. First of all, there would be an attempt, and I've got some slides in a moment to show you, this would be, I'm envisioning this as ambitious about what is in the model code. Would cover what we typically think of as sort of the dimensional regulations of zoning. It would be an attempt, if you get this right, it would also, I said it there at the top is like, we want to ensure that what gets built is better, it's improvement. Part of that is regulating that public space. You know, we actually have in the zoning in Burlington, in the zoning rules about what we call kind of great street standards that define the width of the street and ensure that it's walkable and bikeable and that it has good street tree coverage and that there are places for outdoor art, all that's actually in the zoning ordinance. And if we get this right, it would be in this as well. So it would be an attempt to address the most important issues while also being a principle would be to be lean, to not be adding undue expense to the cost of housing. We know the cost of construction is a very real one. So that would be another principle. In particular, And I see this in the work that you have done in 01/1981, I'm, you know, wasn't, I was mayor at the time was not as, you know, super involved in that process, but I see in the way that you are granting municipalities tier one status, an attempt to define what is important to the state, what makes for good development. And I think, you know, I think it's a good list of things. This would kind of go beyond the list and put into design terms, how we ensure that new stuff that gets built is consistent with the historic fabric of Vermont that we love. The walkable kind of largely rectilinear mixed use neighborhoods. You could actually have all of that built in.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, so if somebody puts forth a design, the town sees it and it's like, oh, you don't have enough trees that's in the actual model by law, so you so many trees per whatever. There's still that conversation between the town and the developer. It's just once the town is like, you've met all the requirements in this model by law, there can't be an appeal because the

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: appeal is front So

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: I think that's close to what we're get to, but let me take it there. I will say an issue with form based codes that I've heard from people who, the type of code we're talking about here from, from builders and lawyers who have worked with them. There's often a lot of frustration about them for a variety of reasons. Part of the, some of our reasons like I mentioned, like in Burlington, we kind of put too much in it it became a hard and expensive code to work with. Another issue is it's very hard in a, to envision every, it's impossible to envision every scenario and almost invariably for there will be some projects where there will be some element that's not fully contemplated in the kind of model zoning and that requires some level of discretionary decision by the local DRB. And it will be important that for issues that aren't fully worked out and that there'd be some ability to do that. And that of course then, you know, that would trigger appeal rights at that point, if you are making some kind of discretionary standard. You know, again, we can get deeper into it with a lawyer in the future. We are envisioning there being some sort of deferential standards to that decision that keeps permits, appeals limited. But yes, there'll be an attempt to get the issues right upfront and then to agree there need to be discretionary decisions by the town conversation discretion, would still be a mechanism for doing that.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Okay. Okay. I think I understood that. All right. Thank you. But

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: we had the same Great.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: Just say a little bit more about well, I just want to say a little bit more about where this effort stands. We actually, Let's Go Home Loans has secured some funding to explore this concept and we are doing that sort of in parallel with this legislative effort, not knowing what would happen here. And because this model could be helpful to municipalities, even if the legislature does nothing. I think there's a lot to be gained by legislative action and that's why we're here. But we have engaged, as you can see in the blimp there, this firm, which is a planning firm. They're actually based in Boston, but they've done a lot of work in Vermont. They did work in Burlington on various several zoning issues. They also are working for the state right now on the governor's eight zero two, you know, they should call it just the governor's, the ACCDs eight zero two homes proposal. And what they are doing with eight zero two homes, which would also be kind of scaled up here is, you know, they're looking very carefully at Vermont's existing residential typologies, trying to sort of understand what is, there's the sense about like a Vermont vernacular, what has the existing fabric made of and see this real variety in it. With the eight zero two Homes program they have started turning this into these prototypes that what they are envisioning as you probably are aware is some kind of state mandate pre approval of these prototypes. This zoning would dovetail with this effort and that it would, like I mentioned with the ADUs, we start to grapple with these other, mandate that is being measured right now from the state is limited. It says you still have to meet these other requirements. This zoning would address those other requirements, try to make sure that it's towns adopt model code. It allows these typologies to be easily built and it would go beyond these wouldn't deal with sort of denser, a bigger downtown and arterial buildings as well.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: There's actually no mandate.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: Not yet, yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: From the state on the system. This is purely designs and so on and then they decide if they want to improve the designs of this Goldman Sachs school. That's what it is. It's not a statement.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: My yeah, no. Thank you for that clarification. I totally agree that's current status quo. I'm under the understanding is that there's a proposal from the governor this year to introduce some level of limited mandate. But if that hasn't gotten to this committee, you know, I- We haven't had it yet. Yeah. This, you know, it would, you know, this code would have, like I was saying, footprint, height, roof form type regulations. We're talking about, you know, maybe multiple footprints on properties and issues like that. We talk about, you know, placement of parking lots, how, you know, in any kind of downtown or certain village forms you want to try to put the buildings in front of the parking lot. Would have analysis showing how existing neighborhoods once this model code was adopted could be densified along the lines that you called for with the whole max and show how, you know, kind of really work out the details about how additional structures can be added to existing land. You know, this sort of shows, and as an example that you chose about for, you know, Newton, Massachusetts, but that when a municipality is actually implementing a root zone, actually be likely multiple sub zones of that, you know, neighborhood type zoning and then a different level of density allowed along in major streets and maybe even, you know, another one or two for the downtown. This model could get into all those issues. To Senator, your point, I think this should attempt to grapple with other issues that the state finds important. And I just wanted to thwarts where I exist. This book has been actually quite, shows my the wackiness. Find this book moving, it is a book about zoning called Key to the City by Sarah Bronin. She's actually a former Hartford, Connecticut mayor. She kind of rekindled my belief in zoning and why it's so important. Just to read one paragraph from it, she says, To be sure, zoning is not the only tool that matters. History, time, wealth, geography, and countless other factors will shape how communities evolve and develop. But while good zoning is not sufficient, it is necessary. Most important, it's something we control and that makes it the key to building the cities and towns we long for. And I think we should attempt to do that with this model code. One last one, and think I'm basically done is this isn't a revolutionary idea in the sense that there are like, well, Bongartz is not the only place in the state that has tried to move in this direction away from traditional zoning towards these clear objective form based standards. I can come back with a comprehensive analysis of the accounts that I think there's a seven or eight, I need to check a few things, seven or eight that have done it. I believe they have seen similar positive impacts in terms of predictability and an increase in investment in the zones that have done this. It has not been easy for the municipalities to view this on a city by city basis. A figure, Charlie Baker, the head of the Chennai County Regional Planning Commission says that when they try to help municipalities do this on a kind of one off basis, they easily spend like $150,000 on municipality doing this. An additional, very concrete benefit if we got this right is would very much simplify that existing ongoing effort to create these form based codes. It would be much easier with once this work is done for municipality to adopt it, our estimates, these are conceptual at this point, but instead of like $150,000 of additional planning work, we're talking like $25,000 of planning work that might be necessary if we got this original work right. And I do think that is something that if this, when we talk about why state involvement, I think the state could accelerate the adoption of these zones if they provided some level of municipal support for these, follow-up planning work that would be necessary. I think it'd be an interesting discussion to have, well, a downstream discussion and one, and we flashed by right up front. I'll go all the way back to the beginning of my presentation. Additional purposes of root zones that, first and foremost, it's the appeals purpose we've talked about. Talk about improving the quality of what gets built in these zones. The last two, I think are worth thinking about is what, well, if these were broadly adopted, we would be moving towards something of a, right now builder building Vermont is looking at dozens, if not hundreds of different regulatory environments, depending on where they're trying to build. And that is complication that slows things down, that drives up expense. The state of California, going back to ADUs, I just wanna show one one slide from another report that I found very striking. It's I screwed up. Yeah. It my apologies for being psyched around. Now I'll I'll send you a slide separately. It shows what has happened in California with ADUs since, I'm gonna stop sharing because I think I should

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: have something to It

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: shows what has happened in California after numerous reform rounds and really creating a state regulatory environment for ADUs. They have seen just an enormous increase in the adoption of ADUs out there, gone from almost none being built in 2016 to the point where like 25,000 a year are being built in that state. It's like a third of all homes in some counties are now in these ADUs. So that is a further benefit if we added it through this over time, we had some common way in which from municipality to municipality housing was regulated. Think we could get some of those market efficiencies, construction efficiencies that would bring down costs and speed of up production. And then finally, the final benefit that I thought might be a particular interest to this committee over time is, I know the numbers are still early on this. 181 implementation, I've come to understand, and know Senator Bongartz, you were a particular champion of this, I've come to understand that one and eighty one represents a real breakthrough in that we are on our path now towards having these tier one areas around the state where really, I think for the first time since Act two fifty was passed, we have some really meaningful legal level of consensus that we want housing to be built in these areas. I'm impressed by the maps, generally speaking that I've looked at closely in various counties. I think they have a lot of rationality to them. And I think that they reflect a lot of good thinking and work being done at the regional level and local level. Also think we are likely to end up in a situation where best I can tell from BAFTA, we're gonna have like 2% of the state land area will be in a tier one area. I think that's all gonna be enough ultimately to meet our goals. And I think in further value of root zones, if we got this right, might be that this could become a way that the state felt confident in, that maybe environmentalists felt confident in, that could allow for more land areas to be brought into tier one regulation, the benefits of tier one to be opened up to more rural communities and the large areas that we're gonna need to evolve and adopt as we stop building in floodplains and need to be building in new areas. So that's a final thought as to why this could be a significant effort.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Super. Well, thank you so much. Any questions at this point? Okay, super. Well, more to come on this topic certainly. So thank you. And with that we're gonna take a quick break. We've been doing it since time so let's be back.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Thank you.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: I'm a

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: little scared there's no questions what that means. If there is any interest in getting this further we do have good experts lined up that could get into the details and I think really accelerating the conversation about what this could be efficient for sale. Sorry about that.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you so much.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: Good

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: morning again, Senator Richards and MD coming back from a break. And again, we are in a mode where we are jumping topics today. So thank you for bearing with the new switch. We're joined by Mr. Herman. And I think are you, you, for this part, is it just you?

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: I want to go first and then

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I want to go over to

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Dave Gallagher.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great. To chat us about details of appeals, specific aspects,

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Yeah, it's very related to the last topic. So for the record my name is John Brodman, I'm the VRC policy and motor program director, and so I'm going to talk about

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: appeals generally. You heard a

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: little bit from the mayor about appeals generally and the importance of improving the process. So I'm going to try to create a further foundation to some of the appeal issues that have been discussed for a long time, create some context and maybe make some recommendations about moving forward on some of the issues. And then Katie Gallagher, my colleague, who's the director of Community Sustainable Communities Program, she's gonna directly talk about the root zone political that you've just heard about and s 03/25 and and more broadly the idea that the mayor was talking about in terms of addressing appeals in these current areas. Before I get into the substance of appeals generally just a little bit about my background on this particular issue because I think it's important. It'll help as you hear me talk understand kind of where I'm coming from and how I form some of my opinions and some of what I want to do is kind of lay out actual, not opinion, but kind of how things used to work and how they work now. But I'm an attorney. I'm an attorney for Vermont Author Resources Council. I was in the mid-90s, was an attorney for the agency of natural resources, and I represented the agency before all the district commissions. I've appeared before every single district commission. I would represent the agency of natural resources, and actually the other state agencies, VTRANS, started reservation, before the former environmental board, and I was talking about kind of the appeals process changes we've seen, and the water resources board. And then at DRC and then I was the general counsel for the agency of natural resources in 2010s ish and I represented the agency for the environmental division, for Vermont Superior Court. I represented ERC for the environmental division in Vermont Superior Court. I represented both BRCA and our report of Public Utilities Commission. So all this to say, I've seen these issues from a lot of different angles. So I'm just trying to bring my perspective from actual experience. And then importantly, I did have the privilege, I was chair of the former natural resource support that administers the Agni 50 program, So I got to see the district commission's process and the appeals process, know, from that seat as an administrator of that program, and now of course we have the Vermont Land Use Review Board, the LORD that face natural resources board, and I was a member of the LERB appeal stakeholder group, so I, you know, attended all the meetings this summer and fall and, you know, participated in the discussion that led to the report. So that's the context. So I just just so a brief history. I think I'm gonna submit after I testify, I just couldn't get it done before I came here today. I'll submit this testimony but I've testified on these issues for a long time in the legislature at least going back five or six years maybe longer. In 2024 I testified about this issue that you heard when the LERD presented its appeals report is in the report about should we have a professional board that hears environmental permit appeals or should we stay with the court? I have testimony that again I'll submit that I think is still relevant, of presents the arguments for the board and the court and some of the issues and where I come out on is that I think moving appeals to a professional board would improve the appeals process as the mayor indicated that you know there's both the group's own idea but just general improvements to the appeals process. You'll see when I submit that testimony we actually did an analysis of BNRC that we looked at five, the last five years of the environmental board, and then we took two year five year periods for the environmental court starting your Act two fifty appeals and analyzed the timelines that it took. And the the environmental board was much quicker in one timeline it was I think two sixty five days it took for the environmental board on average to process an appeal. The court for one time period was like four sixty days another was like five twenty days. And you know there's lots of outliers in terms of things like in terms of the numbers, but it was clear that the old process was faster and that wasn't surprising in that the environmental board, when it heard Act two fifty appeal, that's what it focused on, it heard Act two fifty appeal. The board's docket is very, very, very large and it's got a lot on its plate. They hear Act two fifty appeals, they hear zoning appeals, they hear agency natural resources affirmative appeal, they hear enforcement appeal related to every single one of those programs. They had two judges and two law clerks, that's the staffing that they have to do all that work. Environmental Board had at least five lawyers, and I don't know how many lawyers that the Land Use Review Board has right now, but they have at least three lawyers. And they have the professional board members at the Land Use Review Board. So I think that's part of the reason I think as you know when I talk about the Lurbs appeals report and some of its finding, there's just more flexibility in an administrative appeals process where you're in court, you're in court. It's the rules of civil procedure. It's the rules of evidence. It's very strict. There's not much wiggle room. You have lawyers that are very comfortable in court and they know how to use all of the procedural rules and the discovery rules which is when an appeal is filed under the court rules you get to depose every witness, ask questions of every witness, request documents, it's a long production of document period. That didn't exist in the administrative process that appeals process that the environmental board ran and there's all kind of models where this could be some everything from the full discovery and procedure and formality of the court to Little to Midland process. You could, it's a continuum. And I think with court we just, we don't have that continuum. We kind of, we kind of swung all the way from very informal and flexible to the court for now. And so the lawyers are fine with it. I'm fine with it. I like going to court. It's really interesting, experienced. I've always represented the government or nonprofit, so I don't get paid by the hours. So I don't actually, it's only about getting buried in discovery, but that's the process, that's the core process. So I think those are some of the reasons. Another trend that you'll see when you look at my testimony that I think the old environmental board brought to appeals was that Act two fifty is obviously complicated, but the way the statute's written, it's not like black and white criteria. It's not like you get a stormwater permit and here's the engineering standards, you build your stormwater system this way, here's the engineering standards, you build your septic system this way, it's no undue adverse effects on aesthetics. That's what this statue says. There's nothing else there. Do not destroy or significantly imperil necessary wildlife habitat, undefined. So the old environmental board spent decades defining what is destroyed, what is imperiled, what qualifies as wildlife habitat, what qualifies as mitigation. And the board was very good because the people appointed to the board and it wasn't a professional board so I think the LERB is much better situated because they are full time paid and they have to have certain qualifications beyond the LERB But even without that, the point is to the environmental board, know, they've got all the governors that made the appointments, Republicans and Democrats try to choose people who had land use background, environmental background, development background, and so they were able to say, well what does it mean? What's the test for aesthetics? Like how do we create some objectivity around that, or how do we define some of these terms?

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Go ahead, a question here. So a question to that, because I'm still learning all the things. If they spend decades defining things like what is a habitat order or what is damage, does that mean that all of that is defined now in case law? Yes. That the court or a board could refer to that case law to say, this is how that something is defined. So it's not defined in, they didn't issue rules, it's really

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: They could have, and I think the LERB will be much better situated because it has more capacity, and that was one of the advantages of creating the LERB is that, you know, so the environmental board was a nine member, which is also you know really interesting that they chose that's a lot of people. It's my argument like I said you know like in front of nine people from China and like I said all volunteers except for the chair they had some legal staff, they had you know some other administrative staff, but I need to have more capacity with the five member press reports to actually turn some of that precedent into rules, which would be a really positive thing because we're relying on the precedent that you're talking about. And then also things change. It's not stat. A lot of that precedent was created in the 1980s. So why would the science change? Like, a lot of things Yeah.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: If it's in case law and they want to redefine now something that was determined and defined in 1992 or something,

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: and

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: they were like, well, there's new information or new science, to do it through case law, have, I mean, that's a long process to

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: It is, sort but you could do it, and I do think that, the court is just, and I want to be really clear and Brooke Dingledonia said this when she testified, judges work extremely hard, they're extremely capable, nobody is questioning their abilities and their work ethic, but it's really the system. The court system, they're not an administrative entity. Courts exist to resolve disputes. That's what we have court for and they're very good at that. So it's more about how do we resolve this dispute, do your discovery you know try to work it out and then we'll look at the evidence and it's mostly sort of a battle of the experts. Think we have a wildlife biologist and then the other side had one and then like whose expert am I more persuaded by? They're less inclined and it's not really the traditional role before to say you know what this test for like destroy and empower wildlife habitat needs to be changed, the science has changed, because they don't really function that way, that's not something that whereas the old environmental board and I think the new land use review board, they could do it on appeal saying you know what, you've seen the evidence and a lot of it's going come from the agency natural resources. A lot of that early precedent really important to wildlife biologists there. The Agency of Natural Resources hired aesthetic experts, like that was a real tough nut to correct, right? How do we measure aesthetics and hire someone to basically create what we had called the Buchi test now, which is everybody accepts. Was like wow, that was a brave thing that we have, but it didn't exist, it's not in the statutes.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Sorry, so the Fuchi test came from the environmental?

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: It came from the environmental board, and it came through expert testimony, like I said, with the government, knowing that this board could, part of its role, yes to resolve disputes, but also bring clarity to these issues especially in Act two fifty where all the criteria is like undue water pollution, undue air pollution, and there's a little bit more over time you've come to rely on those issues on agency natural resources permits which have gotten more sophisticated. So but it's really the issues like aesthetics as wildlife happens at a natural area, of the community impacts, even traffic is it's that's the standard is like no undue traffic. So it becomes, you know, a battle of traffic experts and trying to deal with those issues. So, yes, you're right. It takes longer to case pressure, but they have the opportunity if they heard appeals to do it. And then they can turn that into a rule. But they don't have to wait for that. I think that there are things that the lawyer can do through rule. And I think once they get through and as we talk about appeals and where they should go and all of that, mean we recognize and everyone recognizes how big the alert is right now. Yeah. Like we just created this as the mayor indicated early days of this, the maps are just coming out, they're doing all the tier one maps, they're doing the tier three goal, they're doing the road rule guidance, they're doing you know, rulemaking around a new criteria. But I think once they get through all that, then they will have time in states, right, to do some of this rulemaking and and some of that work.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: You want another question from here?

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: So you you mentioned that when we see your testimony, do we have?

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: No. I'm sorry. Didn't see Okay. It

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: because you know, a lot of times, I wasn't focused on act one eighty one when it was being, you know, mulled over in this committee. So I'm trying to catch up to what Act 181 actually is. Right. So and so I'm admitting to my behaviors here but my understanding I didn't even know that cases actually go now to learn rather than going to the environment.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: No. They don't. Don't. They

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: don't. We haven't done that.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: We haven't done that. Okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, and then We haven't done. The report suggest.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: That they made

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: an application.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: But just so you know, tomorrow we are going be hearing from Pete Gillen. No, no, never mind. Never mind. Sometime in the future, we're going to have a good like 101 on Act fifteen-one 181.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: I'll submit this testimony and my prior testimony that just had all this background. And just the last thing I'll say on background is that the way the system was before 2004 is actually 50 fields went to the environmental board, and our water burn appeal went to the water resources board. There was a waste facility town that burned appeals of, you know, landfills and other solid waste management facilities and other issues related to that.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: I appreciate your testimony, and I and I look forward. I'll read

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Yeah. Read them. I appreciate that. Yeah. So then we changed in 2004, and we sent it all to the environmental court, and that kind of created that very large docket, which I think is how I have sympathy for the judge. I think

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: they do as good

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: a job as human beings can do and try to manage it and it lapses and wanes depending on how many appeals that there are. Now we're having a conversation and we've had it for a while. This was part of the Act two fifty the next fifty years report I don't remember how long that was ago more than five years ago they also Wait twenty

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: years ago. No no well that's one of them.

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: Yeah. The one that England was chair of.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: But anyway, that's just background. So as we hear all this stuff, I just think it's important to understand one of the changes that we made and you know people disagree about this issue that's why we've been having testimony for so many years, but this is my point of view and there's other lawyers who agree with me, are other lawyers who don't agree with me, but the LERB actually did find through its appeals group you know a lot of the same reasons that I just stated that moving appeals to the learner would make sense. They talked about they could be more flexible and they said you're not in court, you could use hearing officers. Right now I think one of the issues with the court is that there, like I said, there's two judges, every case is the same. It could be a small zoning dispute about a small project in a community that for whatever reason is controversial, but it's kind of a fight between neighbors for whatever reason or it could be a giant Walmart like that brings community out and everyone's arguing about it. Cases get the same attention and the same amount of process. It's really not like a prioritization of cases. And this has come up a lot with the housing issue. I do think that the legislature could and maybe has even, this has become a constitutional issue between the judicial branch and the legislative branch about prioritizing certain matters. I think that the federal court could be directed to prioritize housing and I think it certainly would have more resources with hearing officers to be able to do that. Mean, and that's kind of, this idea has come up in the last couple of sessions with New Hampshire has a housing board of appeals that they kind of sort of call that housing permit appeal, they sort of get it out of the normal process and sort of send it there to sort of experts to prioritize those. So anyway, that's some of the benefits they recognize, the ability to create precedent, and so on and so forth. The last thing I'll say about a provision in the LORD of appeals report that I want to highlight is that as you hear your testimony and as you dive into this issue, one criticisms of that comes up of going to a court model is that it would be a conflict of interest that the LERD administers Act two fifty so how could it adhere to appeal that somehow that creates a conflict of interest. Old environmental board administered Act two fifty also heard and feels it wasn't a problem. I'm just going to read what the alert said because I think they said it well and they run the program now and I just want you to have this in mind as you hear from other testimony. On that issue of conflict of interest alert said contrary to what some commentators argue there's no conflict of interest with district commissions making decisions that are then heard by the board on appeal. District commissions are quasi judicial bodies that make decisions based on facts and law on a given matter. The board has no role in the district commission decision on a given matter. What they're saying is that they don't that that if an appeal comes from the district commission, the district commission is making that decision. The board has not made that decision. Have no authority to make that decision. Act 21 did not change that at all. But what Act 180 did is provide more resources to the LERB so attorneys could assist the commissions if needed and if requested. And so the LERB says, board of attorneys can provide legal advice to different commissions on a matter if the commission requests such advice. If legal advice is provided to a different commission, that board attorney can take you all off from working on the appeal of that matter with the board if there's concern about any conflict with the appearance of the college. So anyway, I just wanted to flag that and you're going to hear a lot about that. And please just keep that in mind as you get into the debate about that issue. The RNC, so the recommendation, what the LERB did at the end of day, you heard this, we watched your joint hearing, you pointed the House, your House counterparts on this issue. The LERB recommended moving Act two fifty appeals to the LERB and housing appeals in tier 1B area under Act one eighty one and all appeals under tier 1A. We support that as you know for all the reasons that I indicated, but I think the we kind of ran out of time and what we didn't get to is some further disagreements about like how those appeals can be processed. And those the main issues there and these are things that you've heard have to do with de novo versus record review, what the standard of review is for the record review if we have it, how we're going to use hearing offers, that officer that just mentioned, and that is a, I think, a benefit of a board model. And then I mentioned a board could limit some of the process, provide due process, but as I said it's a continuum, but so how how should discovery be limited that process of finding out information at

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: the beginning of the day

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: and even procedural sort of maneuvering that lawyer to do in these cases. So this one, I'm just briefly trying to highlight some of these issues because you're gonna hear a lot about them. So de record review. So de novo review is the system we have down. So zoning permits, agency natural resources permits, and active duty permits are verge and novo by the environmental court. What that means is that the decision that was made that is being appealed is not regarded at all

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: at all. It has

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: no legal weight or role in the process. So the Acting fifteen Commission decision, District Commission, start all over again for whatever the appeal of issues are. Same with zoning, the development of Newport, the zoning board of adjustment, start all over again. And it was same with the agency not introduced versus the permit. You don't, you know, the permit is there, it has to be introduced into evidence, but it has no you're basically taking all the evidence of new, that's what denotable means. Record review is where you either basically say the the wherever the appeals go, they're just gonna look at the record. And they're gonna look at the record, and the standard of review is is there substantial evidence in the record to support the decision that was made? So what the judge is doing in that day is for whoever the decision maker is, is basically they're not taking new evidence, basically want to make sure that for all the finding conclusions and decisions were made that there was evidence to support that and the parties could argue that that evidence, no evidence to support this finding or this evidence was flawed in some way. And then there is some ability, like again there's a continuum with these systems you could have make it very difficult to submit new evidence in a record review framework, or you could make it fairly easy. So the LERD recommends that's no overview, but giving due consideration to the existing decisions. So they want to actually make the zoning decision and the act decision formally and legally evidence that automatically in the proceeding. Is just in the record and people cite to it and it has lead the way.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: How is isn't that contradictory to the whole concept of de novo? Like

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: I mean, it's all it's semantics in a way. And then they're saying you can submit a new evidence to it. There's no limit on new evidence that you can submit in addition to that.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So there's, they're saying that the reconsideration of the appeal would be de novo, but part of the evidence could be the decision that would

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: It will be, yeah, it's like automatic. It's automatic. Yeah, But then you can submit new evidence and then you can cross examine people and challenge the evidence that did come in below, but it is in the record. You don't need to resubmit it. Think How

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: about the working court now? I mean, it's de novo, does that

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Well, now

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: get submitted into evidence? The

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: No. Sometimes the the court will take, like, what they call, like, judicial notice of it. Like, they'll recognize that it exists. But if you cite to it, you need to basically say, we're citing to this. This is in the record, and then try to get it admitted into evidence. Uh-huh. Like, it's not in the it's not in evidence, and it can't be part of the decision that the court makes unless you kinda go through that. But it's kinda they take notice of it for background. Like, all the parties usually say because it makes sense.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: It's like

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: they usually say, judge, yeah, read the zoning decision, read that. So then you know what's you have so many what's happening. Right? So you have a context basically. But they can't base their decision on anything, any evidence that is in that decision unless it's resubmitted you know as part of the court process. As a practical matter they do recognize it exists and I think it is helpful like I said for background, but like you can't you just you can't like the court can't write a decision and says we're deciding this because the district commission found, you know, blah blah blah. Then the other lawyer would say, well, wait a minute. That's not into evidence. We didn't get to challenge that in court, you know? So Interesting. You can't base your decision on that. You could use it for a background, you know, unless someone said it would be prejudicial in some way to do that, but most of the lawyers in Vermont don't, everyone's pretty much okay, let it in for background, but with most of the the slight change the LERB is making is that it would be in for more of the background, It would be, like, part of the records that could be relied on. And maybe in some cases, that would be enough. Like, maybe the parties would say, yeah. You know, we stand by what we did there, and we don't need another what that said. So we because what the learner's trying to do, I think, is put the baby a little bit and trying to say, like, if we could use the record, let's not reinvent the wheel, and let's maybe expedite things. But another approach, which is represented in representative Mahali, you have the bill that he introduced, goes to full record interview where you're not, it's very difficult to produce new evidence. You have to, the standard is something like just cause and the evidence has to be material to the this new decision. And cause is like, why didn't you submit this before, basically? Some of the arguments, like, are important. And so record review, obviously, you know, on that continuum, the further you get towards using the record, it does speed things up because you don't have to put in new witnesses and new evidence. But there has been concern, and that was Senator Bongartz was here to see has been one of the main voices of this concern, is that it does make a process below more formal. So the district commission process people will pay a lot more attention into, okay, but what's getting into evidence there, what is the decision being based on? And same as zoning proceeding, and there is some concern, you know, matters get resolved often at the different commissions because it is so informal, and you do know you have to know about review, you can do it all over again, so there's more free discussions about resolving things. So there's a concern, and you should have senator congress testify about it because he's thought about it a lot, that this would that would chill some of that informality and have a negative effect. Reverend Mulhollyville has this scheme where you would look at your case would be designated as like a simple or complex matter and like that would that could you know determine

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'm saying a bill is simpler or complex, can't know, but

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: any reason to talk about it.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Yeah, I mean so but anyway this is why this is complicated. There's lots of ways to do it and the people don't agree. We are a minority for zoning permits. I think we're the only state that mandates a de novo review. There are about a handful of states that allow for a de novo review, like you could ask the court for a de novo review. It's only permits do go to court in most states, but it's not the vast majority states conduct a record review. Obviously, most states don't have Act two fifty, so it's a harder corollary to to draw, but but the general principle is most even like

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: the

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: administrative agency appeals are mostly record review. So that's a big issue that happened, didn't get to in the letter report, and I think we it would be worth spending time digging into that whether we stayed with the court or went to the to the LERD, and we support moving to the LERD, but I do think that we do need more work in, like, okay, where should we be on that record review, no overview continuum, and what should the rules be if you're going to get to the appeal. Similarly, when to use hearing officers and when to limit discovery, like I said, and to limit procedural motions, I think as a matter of like a general principle, I think there is agreement that we should have some limits, but like the devil's always in the detail of like what should those limits be, how do you determine those limits, and similarly like ANR permits did, you can see in a little report they basically said we're not going touch ANR permits and ANR asked for that. I do think it's fair to like look a little bit more at, we're a real outlier for agency technical permits and EPA, their permits, their record review is an internal administrative appeals review and when you get to court it's only a record review and it's only legal interviews. We're not asking the courts to get into technical issues related to stormwater or wastewater systems or whatever it is because again, that's not how courts they resolve disputes there. Even if there are judges that are used to seeing environmental matters, it's not their expertise. So I think it'd be worth having a discussion. All that's to say, maybe as you're considering what to do this year, maybe it makes sense to delve into some of these. I do think they need more time. You can look at the Mahali bill, you can look at the LERB report, you'll see there is like a gap between those and then you're going to hear other people come in and say Rutland is wrong about this and that and you should do it that way and you'll hear all of that. So I do think I agree with the mayor that it's important. I do think we can make improvements to the appeal system, and I know it's frustrating that it takes a long time, but these are complicated issues, and I think we made a lot of progress with the LIRD report. I think they did some really good statistics in there, but I don't think we hit on all those issues that I I kind of ran down and, you know, and you'll hear different opinions about them, I'm happy to give my opinion at the appropriate time if I get closer. But what I really wanna do today is kinda frame kind of what the the discussion had been and what some of the choices are and what some of the issues are. So that's really my part of this. I'm happy to answer questions, but, like I said, I wanna make sure Katie Gallagher has enough time to talk about the Rutland idea that you had, but I heard also a bill that you have in your committee.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you. One question that I just want to connect the dots on something. So a phrase that you used earlier, it's something that I've heard from other people is like, that you can get very, as a lawyer in the process going through, an appeal, that you can get buried by discovery.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Discovery, right, yeah.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: And

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: so does that, if we were to move to on the record reviews, how does that, does that affect the burying that can happen?

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: If it was the sort of Mahali strip record review, there'd be no discovery because no new evidence, basically. All of that sort of finding out what the other party's evidence is and arguing about it would happen at the district commission level or at the zoning court level. And I should say, think the other issue is really important, forgot this, is creating that record. So there's a real disagreement about, so some lawyers will come here and say to create a record you need a transcript, have to hire a stenographer, you have a shortage of stenographers in the state, that's absolutely true. Other lawyers will come in and say you don't need to do that, you could just like you know record it on zoom, know you can record them and create a record just by reporting it, you don't need a transcript, that could be the record, and all the evidence that came in, that's the record. So I think that's another issue that needs to be studied, it's not and we talked about this in the alert stakeholder report, but again didn't have time, there was just disagreement about why it takes to create a record, but under the strict approach of like you could just report a hearing and that record goes up and you don't have just cause to supplement the record, then there's no discovery. Because, basically, the judge of the decision maker, whether it's a lawyer or the court, is, like, just looking, making sure in the evidence there's support for the conclusion, and then we'll get briefs on the other side and say, there is not, that evidence does not support this conclusion for whatever reason. The evidence is weak, it has a gap in it, whatever it is. And then often it'll be you got the law wrong, you misinterpreted the law on whatever the issue is, so you wouldn't have discovery. Under the Lerner approach or due consideration or more liberal supplementing the record, you could have discovery on the new evidence that comes in, but it would be more narrow because it would be not the full evidence. And then you could just limit discovery. The old environmental board didn't allow any discovery. Instead, we have what we call pre filed testimony, which you could still do with the court, but it's and then I don't the more known for those they don't like it. They'd rather just have the witnesses come live on the stand like you'd see, like, in law and order. They like to you know? And the Lord wanted it like that because it's fun, you know? But prebout testimony is you write it all down and you send it to the other side or you send it to the court. When you go into the hearing, you know everything that the person has said and then you kind of cross examine just based on what's been written and you can do discovery on that too. They give you all the documents that you every email that you sent, every report that everybody, everyone you talk to about this ever in your life you know. And then you know it's objection overly broad and maybe you can win that but mostly the courts are like the way courts work, all courts is like hoping the lawyer will work this out. They don't want to hear discovery motions, their document is already overloaded, so mostly it's kind of left to the lawyer to try to work it out. And the process has become like I'm involved with a couple of appeals right now. One is an AR appeal involving a hydroelectric facility. Yeah, mean, the discovery requests are incredibly broad. It was scrambling around to get all the documents. There'll be depositions. That takes time. That takes months and months and months, and it takes a lot of money to do all those things. So the environmental board relied on three false testimony and the water resources board, no discovery. That was one of the things that moved us to the court. There are a number of lawyers that said that's not fair, should have some discovery. The environmental board was actually working on could we have like, is there

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: a halfway? Could we allow a little

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: bit of discovery? You got to make a case of why you

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: need it and kind of

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: what you want to ask and could we and the public utility commission does some of that, So there's a model there. And I personally that's where I thought. I was like, I think, you know, under some circumstances, you should be able to ask some of these questions to know what the other person's argument is, but it it gets reviews. You know? And you just open it up, and there aren't any limits at all.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So So in a way, you could boil it down to, like, if we don't have discovery, then it goes faster.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Yes, definitely goes faster. Okay. It's a matter of like how much profit. Sure,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: not much profit. Then appreciating your describing it at the continuum, like what's the right continuum. I'm also appreciating reference to the PUC process as a potential model for like halfway point.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Yeah. The PUC, like as you've heard, I know you heard testimony this year over the years, it's very complicated, but I do think that they do have many more tools to limit discovery and limits some of this process. Even within their the complexity of, like, some of their rate cases or, like, you know, some of the grid issues, the liability issues that they deal with. And now they're dealing with citing cases, is where they, I think, have used some of their tools to because the citing cases really are like zoning and Act two fifty. Right? That's really

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Spares them.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Yeah. Anyway Okay. Thank you.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: That's They're noble. Yeah. No. That's that's great.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: I'll back. If you're gonna continue with this, I'll send my testimony.

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: You can read it over coffee

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: and enjoy it.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Perfect. Yeah. Thank you. And welcome, miss Caledonia. Thank you. Yeah. I know you're limited on time, I can be humiliate, brief. And I also have a written testimony

[Katie Gallagher (Director, Sustainable Communities Program, VNRC)]: that I wasn't able to finalize and share this morning, but I'm gonna send it over afterwards.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: For the record, my name

[Katie Gallagher (Director, Sustainable Communities Program, VNRC)]: is Katie Gallagher. I direct the Sustainable Communities Program at the Vermont Natural Resources Council. I'll say, I also am on my town planning commission and have a background in planning. So that is the perspective that I am coming from. I also want to say that when we're talking about housing, sometimes I feel the need to share that housing is an environmental issue. It's an environmental solution. And so not just talking about housing for the sake of it, but because I truly feel that this is, we need more housing, we need compact housing, we need more diverse types of housing to meet our environmental and climate goals. So I want to be clear that there's a lot of places where the inner city reads, but let's build homes in terms of group. Some of those ideas, we've talked about this together and are continuing to work together. We share a concern that there are examples of frivolous or bad faith zoning appeals that have caused really significant undue cost related housing developments. That is a problem that we would also like to address. They have also referenced the other potential benefits of this proposal in terms of higher quality zoning bylaws, potential for expanding tier one areas. And I think those are all goals that we also share. I think also specifically to tier one areas, we've talked about, we are going through this fairly significant process to identify these areas. Are there other ways in which we can leverage those and take a closer look at how zoning appeals function specifically in those areas? All that said, I think as currently framed, we have some questions. Again, won't get into too many details since we're short on time, but there's questions that

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: I would offer for you

[Katie Gallagher (Director, Sustainable Communities Program, VNRC)]: to consider as you're looking at the proposal and the bill. So first, I think it would be helpful to more clearly define what the problem is that we're trying to solve. It seems like this solution might be a little overly complex in some areas, and there's the administration of these types of model codes that are difficult. And then finally, whenever we're talking about limiting appeals, here from John,

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: and you can go into more

[Katie Gallagher (Director, Sustainable Communities Program, VNRC)]: detail about it, but you have the risk of limiting residents due process rights in ways that may have unintended consequences. So just to really quickly go into each of those a little bit more, defining the scope of the problem itself. What we're referring to here is the question of, are we talking specifically about frivolous appeals? Are we talking about all zoning appeals? Is it a problem because of the delay, like five year delay, or is it just that we don't want it appealed at all? So really getting a clearer sense of what it is that we're talking about would be helpful in trying to assess what the solution is. I do want to note that in the BOEM Act, the legislature made a really significant change for discretionary bodies that we are, part of what we're trying to address here by saying that those, the development review board or other municipal bodies need to actually follow what's in the zoning bylaws. And so they can't actually say, oh, we're proposing a multi family home, we're actually gonna require you to do X, Y, and Z because we don't really want that multifamily home, or we wanna reduce the number of units, they're not allowed to do that. And that was a really powerful change that I think is important to take into consideration in this conversation. The idea of model codes, I think, certainly has a place in our broader conversation about how we support our municipalities in either modernizing or adopting zoning. But it's also important to know, and the previous testimony, you've already acknowledged this, that it's not necessarily a simple checklist. So just the complexity with which the development of those model codes, I would anticipate it to be like a multi year process potentially. But also it takes a lot for those to be implemented. It is worth knowing, A, that we have a lack of planning consultants in the state. So even for towns that are trying to just update their zoning or do any of that work, it's really difficult to even hire anyone to do it. And we have a lack of staff and firms still rely on largely volunteer bodies. So there's a lot of complexity when we get onto the ground as well with actually making this happen. I also just wanted to raise a question around the proposal for switching from a zoning permit to a certificate of compliance, which is usually what is provided at the end of a development to say, yes, you did these things, or certificate of occupancy to say, Yes, it's safe for somebody to live here. You can be asked upfront, I'm just not familiar with that being done and how that would work both in statute and in practice, so just a thing to maybe look at. So then moving on to the due process concerns. Again, just to stay kind of high level, I think there are unintended, potential unintended consequences. I think we share a desire to put more of an emphasis on upfront planning and saying, if you are going through a whole planning process, we shouldn't have to have the same fights over and over again throughout each stage, but how that actually plays out on the ground can

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: be complicated, and what

[Katie Gallagher (Director, Sustainable Communities Program, VNRC)]: we really don't want to do is undermine the whole process and trust in the system. All, yeah, as a person, we already struggle with getting people engaged in the planning process. And so we don't want them to turn around and say, We don't want any housing. And that is partly what we are seeing that a little bit in especially smaller towns that are feeling a sort of loss of agency. Finally, I'll just leave you with, there are a lot of existing tools already to address some of these concerns. Municipalities already have tools. For example, they can designate certain uses as by right. We started to do that already at the state level. There can be more targeted amendments to these discretionary standards, like an administrative review or official use review site plan, there's other related processes. We've already started to, I think as was mentioned before, narrow what can be appealed, such as the character of the area standard. Are there other kinds of subjective standards like that that we can loop in and say you can't appeal based on this? And we have existing programs that are providing really significant technical and funding assistance for towns to update their zoning bylaws, as well as to build that capacity again for them to be able to have more sophisticated zoning. So I just want to note that those are really important programs that are doing a lot of work. We are no longer funding our bylaw modernization program. And so just as we look at this, instead of creating new processes that we would need to fund, I would suggest that we look at some of the existing work that's happening, particularly through the Department of Housing and Community Development to do this work and build our municipal capacity. I would also urge you to, in your consideration of this, reach out to municipal planners who would have a good sense of how this would play out in the ground. That seems to be a missing body within the recommendation of who would be a part of this potential stakeholder group, and they can provide a lot of insight. So

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: just to

[Katie Gallagher (Director, Sustainable Communities Program, VNRC)]: close that out, again, appreciate your time. I think this is a good step to, as John said, think about more broadly how we're addressing appeals, but it would be helpful to more clearly define the problem that we're trying to address, whether existing tools can be strengthened to help get at both zoning appeals, building up our local capacity and modernizing our existing bylaws, and carefully weighing the implications of children's.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you very much. Thanks so much. Yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Is that written testimony?

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, that all did it. Okay. Yes. And I think you've heard this, of course, Mr. Gorman's going to also say that it's just for instance. Yeah, any other thoughts or questions? Okay, thank you so much. Okay, super. Right, and just to give folks a heads up, we are not going to be hearing from Mr. Burke, who is on our agenda for 11:30, and said we are going to just go right into a new topic. We've had a whole day of shifting topics, and so this is the last shift for the day. We're going to move to S213 has an aspect around smart meters. So for them, invited some of our electric utilities to come speak to us about this. So I'm planning on just going right, or do you need to go first or left? No, I would go together.

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: Would go together because I want

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: to help you.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, but I'm going first.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Andrea has to go first.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: And I know we also have Mr. Liszczyk who is with us digitally, and so we'll go to him after. Great. Yeah, okay.

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: Andrea did her homework and has written testimony, so she can go first.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, do you want to

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: share her names? I did send it to you. Yeah, I have it. Oh, I have some copies actually. Oh, okay. Did it feel like

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: messing with my computer? Yeah. But we can share this morning. For

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: the record, Andrea Cohen from Bongartz Cooperative.

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: Lewis Porter, general manager of Washington Electric Co op.

[Andrea Cohen (Vermont Electric Co-op)]: With the co op together at the table. Thank you for the opportunity. I did send this to you, Jude, you have Great, some thank you so much. My comments will be pretty brief and Louis can weigh in as well. Regarding smart meters and our history with that, Vermont Logic Co op has had smart meters in place since over ten years now. And our co op invested very early in that knowing it was a tool that would really serve us and our members well, it's a lot of effort, a lot of money, and it really has served us well. Over 99% of our system already has smart meters on it, and this is the kind of older technology now, it's already cycling around. It was the PLC meters, which is over the power lines. The communication was still on the lines, it wasn't like a wireless thing, and we connect the meters to our substations through the power line carrier. Now we're in the process already of changing our system and upgrading and moving to the RF radio frequency infrastructure. And that's going to take us several years, this is a lot of money. And so we're just going to pace ourselves so it's not too much at once. That technology works kind of like cellular communication. It's a wireless radio frequency. And we're pretty excited about that because it's going to allow us to, for the smart meters to be even smarter. People think they're smarter than they are. They're not as smart as something. The RF will really allow us to have faster, reliable, and more real time information going two ways. And the system requires that now. The issue in S213 that I think you were discussing was opt outs and how we manage that. So I'll just share a little information with our system. Members have the opportunity to opt out if they do not want an AMI meter, they don't need to have one. We actually prefer that they did, so if we don't love that people opt out, we really think it's beneficial to them and us, but if they choose to opt out, they have the right to do so. In our case, they fill out a form and they submit it and their responsibility is then they actually have to read their own meter monthly and send in the results. But we will go out at least once a year, if not more, to check that and make sure that the billing is accurate and everything is right. So opting out, again, it isn't great for the member because we don't see their outages as quickly. So they actually have to call in and say, my power is out. We won't discover that unless they call us and let us know. Also, they can't use the smart hub technology, which they can't see their own usage and monitor usage and all the cool stuff that smart hub program allows. And then they can't participate in loan management programs like EV rates and things like that because

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: we don't have that

[Andrea Cohen (Vermont Electric Co-op)]: kind of information. So there's some downsides to them and us, but it is an option for them. Currently we have over 40,000, almost 41,000 meters in our system and currently only 62 people opt out. So if we do the math, it's less than oneten of 1%. That doesn't mean as we transition to radiofrequency more people won't, depending on how they feel about that technology. So we are cognizant of it could be more than that. There are cost ramifications. Currently, the time that we have to go and do the manual reads, the time that we have to take to manually input the data, update the billing, it's a hassle and it's time consuming. And again, the problem is if they're not paying for that policy, they have the choice, but what ends up happening is other members have to cover, you know, we're spending time doing this and not other things, and therefore there's a little bit of a cost to other members, the choice that those members are making. So when we saw this bill, we saw that there was an opportunity with the water meters for the utility or in this case to recoup those costs, a fair cost. We felt like we wanted to offer some language and propose that's parallel language for the electric. So I did offer the language as that second paragraph, and it's just to parallel what you have at S-two thirteen. So that was my thoughts on S-two thirteen.

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: Great, thanks. We handle opt outs slightly differently. We have a different metering system. We have opt outs also, we handle them slightly differently. But as Andrea said, are also moving to the next generation of metering technology and expect perhaps more opt outs. In addition, the way we do the power line carrier opt outs now is we turn those meters on just for a minute, you get a reading and then turn them off again. That's not possible on the next generation of meters. So we will be doing manual reads as Andrea pointed out or estimated reads as she pointed out as well. So we're really looking forward. We think your bill on water meters appropriately puts the costs of those additional, that additional work to read those opt outs to those members that do opt out and support Andrea and from our electric pulse language making parallel changes to the electives.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So just as a question about the process for that, if we were to allow utilities to charge for that opt out, I think I know the answer to this question, but just to say that the amount of that charge would have to be justified, would be reviewed by the PUC, couldn't be really out of step with what it's actually costing you to do the reading. Is that accurate?

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: There are a lot

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: of places where we do actual costs now and we, in those, we do that justification, explain how we reach those costs and how we allocate them. I wouldn't say there's never a disagreement, but we work those out and I think it works very well. We're skilled, experienced and skilled at allocating costs.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Yes, we have a process for any of our other fees because people have us come out and do different things. We have a kind of a menu of all those fees and what we do is, as you know, we're highly regulated. So we put together a proposal. This is what we think it costs based on, you know, our research, you know, we have to roll a truck, we have to pay the field staff and we come up with a number and we go through that process where we can't charge anything that's not approved.

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: And RoHawk may not be unique in preventing those costs from being allocated to the opt out member, but it's quite unusual. We've been talking to meter vendors as part of this process and we tell them that and they're shots. They're like, well, you can refer, we say, how would you recommend we deal with hot cuts? They say, oh, well, do manual reads or you do estimated bills and then true up and you allocate those costs. Can't allocate those costs. Can't. We may have it completely unique, but it's fairly

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Interesting. I guess Did you

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: say that the next generation of meters, you're gonna have

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: to go back to reading?

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: Did I misunderstand you? Well, the next generation

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: of meters will not allow you to turn them on and off

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: in any way you do

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: the PLC meter currently. So we won't have to go out back to reading them for all of

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: the members just for those adopting. Does that make sense? Not to get too far

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: into the technical details, I'm definitely not a meter tech or an engineer, but basically the RF mesh system requires participation and engagement across the meters. And so you can't just turn one on and off when it's it's time to read the meter, you have to either cut it on or have it off. Obviously, if Toby opts out, we will not have it on. We'll make it work, but you can't turn them off and on instead of the person's Maybe

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: another way to say it's just the default is that once it's installed, it's on.

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: Or, yeah, or off, whichever way.

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: Okay, great. Yeah, great.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Yeah, yeah.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you. Do you have an idea of how many opt outs you have currently?

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: Sure, we have 32 opt outs right now, which is a higher lower number obviously, but a higher percentage. We're about a third of the size of the EC. We have 32 opt outs right now, but the PowerLine carrier meter does not have any radio frequency, and so I would not be surprised if more of my fellow Washington Electric members opted out under the new system than do under the currents. So we did quite a lot of education and outreach to our members to explain to them that the power line carrier system is a telephone signal across the copper line, I mean, a communication signal across the copper line, just like

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: a old landline telephone, there

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: was no RF. So there may be more people who choose to opt out when they're going to frequency system. Of course, they should have the right to do that. I also think it's fair that the cost for doing that being allocated to them and not to the rest of the membership at large. One

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: of the things in the bill, and we're still trying to figure it out, but is a requirement that if you do have smart meters, which you do right now, that you have to meet certain cybersecurity and data privacy measures. So could you, and I know you're heavily regulated and you have to do these things, but could you just talk a little bit about those so that-

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: I can, and Andrea probably

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: can as well. Yeah, so we, our industry and Washington Electric Co op in particular is moving into the digital world very quickly. When I got there five years to four and a half years ago, we did very little digitally and now

[Mr. Rutland (Legislative Counsel)]: we do a lot of

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: our work digitally. That comes with an obligation to provide cyber security at a very high level because we have members information and we manage a vital service. So we work with national vendors that do, that manage and develop and manage our systems on cybersecurity. So with one small example, we moved from having in house servers for a lot of our data to off-site hardened server farm systems that have redundant servers so that if we did have a cybersecurity issue, we would be able to quickly scrub and re upload all that data. So that's one example of the kind of cybersecurity we have undertaken in the last few years. That would be true for this metering technology. I don't know if I answered your question or not, but.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: It's both for the member protection, right? So our efforts focus on both our system security, can't have people messing with our system and take it out every day, right? So there's that end, and then there's the privacy and the personal information and the vendors we work with, that's like in all of the projects, it's first center and who we work with, like why we work with certain people and other people. Are It's going through our RFP process, right?

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: Yep. Yep, we did. We just, they, they, BEC has a little bit of us, but we just going through our own RFP process on the new meter vendors. There's basically two essential components. There's the management software system, which is called NISC, which works with probably 600, 700 co ops around the country that does the software side of the backend using the data and helping us manage outages, predict outages, all of a sudden. And then there's a metering company and the metering information, where any of the vendors that we choose are going to be national, hundreds of clients around the country, and there's a utility in different parts around the country, and those two will be essential to our and in charge of our cybersecurity efforts. So although our IT guy is very good, he's one IT guy, one small co op. Be then that it

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: necessarily give you comfort that you're using these big national firms, I'll have to say. Well, agree with But I mean, so what are their requirements? Because once you sort of offload your stuff, like who regulates them and how do we know that they're doing what they should be doing?

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: Yeah, so they are, I hear you entirely, no system is impervious to cyber attack. Yeah. However, working with a vendor that bands together millions and millions of dollars from multiple co ops to create a system and have a system supported, I think makes sense rather than each co op. Mean, spending their own money to kind develop their own cybersecurity system. They are basically regulated at a national level by the cybersecurity folks, including FBI. And then they're regulated another way, is they want to win bids like the one we're doing right now. They need to demonstrate a very high level of cybersecurity and a good track record.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Does the PUC have any role in

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: regulating your cybersecurity? The DOC has a role in regulating everything.

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: Not quite what kind of toilet paper we buy, but everything

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: about that.

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: So yeah, they will approve, obviously, well, both of us are using state grant money for part of the theater projects, so they have to approve our vendors and the cybersecurity is part of that. We also have a federal grant that has cybersecurity DOE, cybersecurity standards that has to be approved for selection of our vendor and the implementation of our program. And then of course they have to, PUC regulates all aspects of our revenue spending and performance through various, any, I'd say there's several layers before implementation and on the back end

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: of oversight. I think it's fair to

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: say all of our rates, the pressure appropriately so on our rates for doing cyber better, up with that, it's a bigger part of our budget and will continue to be, because we have to make those investments. So when we talk to you about priorities, that's one that's on safety, when we talk about safety, it

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: includes cyber. Another question. Something you said earlier about passing on cost of, can you explain that a

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: little more? Sure, it costs us, when we roll a truck with a union IDW meter tech or apprentice lineman in it, that costs us money to go out and read that meter in a guide. Then people in the office take that money, take that information back, put it into the bills, put it in our billing system. That has a cost. Somewhere along the line, somebody pays those costs. It's either socialized across the entire membership or it's allocated as the chair suggested at cost to the member who's who's off of it.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: So that is electrical in terms?

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: No. No. I'd say the the water

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: Well, now I'm, like, I'm

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: do there.

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: I'm always talking out of my deck, but not definitely. So I would say the water utilities are are similar in terms of how they allocate costs. I don't know regulatory structure as well

[Miro Weinberger (Executive Chair, Let’s Build Homes; former Burlington Mayor)]: as I do have any opportunity.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Great.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Super. Thank you. Thank you I so appreciate that. All right. And we'll move to Mr. Virchak. Welcome.

[Michael Lazorczak (Town of Stowe Electric Department)]: Hello, thank you. I work for the town of Stowe. My name is Michael Lazorczak. Sorry, I can't be that person. Sorry, I don't have a video that works.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: No worries. It's all good.

[Michael Lazorczak (Town of Stowe Electric Department)]: Yeah, thank you. So the town of Stowe, we have 4,700 meters. We have 18 individuals who have opted out of our AMI meters. We've had AMI since 2012. And we do have six AMI meters that are beyond the cellular range for the backhaul back to our MDM. We also use NASC for billing. So we do, you have an employee who twice a month drives around and pulls the meter reads from those meters. So it's a little different from how the co ops do that side of the building, but we are also a smaller service territory. We also do the billing for the Town of Stowe water and sewer department, and they have a fully deployed AMI metering system. I don't know the opt out rates for them, but they utilize our cellular backhaul. That also goes into NAFC. Then we bill out for the town and then we pass on the receipts to the town of Stowe. We do mandate AMI metering for anyone who is a net metering customer or wants to enroll into a time use rate or our electric vehicle rate. But again, we have a low opt out rate like the other, the two cooperatives. I largely agree with what Lewis and Andrea have stated. What we do is we charge a fee for the meter installation for AMI, which is the cost of the meter, and then a half an hour of snap time. And that is a flat rate that's provided to the customer before they start service with SED. Unlike the cooperatives that provide a list, know, a list that they update annually, most municipalities, we just do a straight bill,

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: this is what it costs.

[Michael Lazorczak (Town of Stowe Electric Department)]: If there's anything else I can add, you know, we find AMI valuable. It helps us communicate with our customers. It helps them see their load. It helps us talk to them about how they could save costs on electricity by changing behaviors. A lot of customers enjoy logging into NASC and checking their pattern, their AMI, and it just allows us a point of communication with them. And then we do utilize the remote disconnect, reconnect, which saves us on costs, which then it will save our customer costs because we don't have to We also have union linemen. We don't have to get them out of bed before or after hours, roll them over time, that sort of thing. So I think Andrea and Lewis have covered it. AMI is a beneficial thing. Of course, if someone doesn't want it for whatever reason, it's fine with us. We'll accommodate our customers the best that we can.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great, thank you. So you referenced these AMI meters. Is that, what is, that's an acronym. Do you happen to know what that is an acronym for?

[Michael Lazorczak (Town of Stowe Electric Department)]: Advanced Metering Infrastructure.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, okay. That makes so much sense.

[Michael Lazorczak (Town of Stowe Electric Department)]: Yeah, we use Honeywell. I believe the cooperatives are headed in a different direction, but Honeywell is our first gen. It's just easier to maintain those meters and then it matches with the cellular backhaul that we've installed throughout Stowe.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Interesting. I'm wondering if, I'm so just now I'm having this moment of like, should we be calling them advanced metering infrastructure? Would that be more technical as opposed to That's smart a Yeah,

[Michael Lazorczak (Town of Stowe Electric Department)]: think it's AMI, you know, in my mind is sort of a broader definition. Smart meter would be, in my mind, just a meter. AMI would then be everything that encompasses that meter, like billing, cellular backhaul, etcetera. That

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: is interesting. Fair enough. And so it sounds like you similarly have a very small opt out rate, but it's still true that the cost for reading those meters is being put on to non opt out customers.

[Michael Lazorczak (Town of Stowe Electric Department)]: Correct. Yeah, it's, it's, it's staff time, which then is socialized throughout the rate base. Yeah. And the biggest cost is, is the meter itself. That's the biggest expense for the utilities. And again, we have union linemen just like BEC and WECC, so those employee costs are going to be similar. The cost of the meter might differ just depending on the vendor, but we mark up the meter. It's what it costs the utility to purchase is what is charged to the customer.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great. Okay. Super, any other questions? Okay, Thank you.

[Louis Porter (General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op)]: Thank you very

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: much. Thank you. Appreciate your testimony on this. And, well, I guess I'll just say, because we have like, just a couple minutes, this is something that I'm interested in.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Yeah, it's totally Washington.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: What do think there, the Senator Loom's feeling okay about it? Okay, great. Do we have

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: a tremendous issue since everything is about electric?

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: I don't

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: Okay,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: well we'll see how we can move forward. Okay. I think any other thoughts before we adjourn? Any thoughts or comments about anything else that we've heard this morning? Opening it

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: up. No. I have a lot more work to be

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. Thought we were getting closer, and now I'm not as clear that we're getting closer. So open to To

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: go ahead and, you

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senator)]: just some of little stuff.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. So it's the thing that Well, anything ever is. It's hard. There are multiple issues in that same bill. Yeah, any one of those could be its own thing. So to be continued on that.

[Jon Groveman (Policy & Water Program Director, VNRC)]: But