Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: We're live.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, good morning. This is Senate Natural Resources and Energy and it is Thursday, April 16 and we are starting this morning at H778 which is about dam safety and we have council here with us. Welcome. And looking at going through the bill, it seems like there is just generally speaking broad support for this, which is very encouraging. We do have some language suggestions from Mr. Forant. Does everybody have a copy of that? It's on the website. It's on the website. Okay. So my thought is to go through the bill and either close out sections or see if people want to change parts and in preparation for the vote, it's possible, depending on how much time we take, like, if it's not super controversial, maybe we could vote it, but I'm open to, doing that another day as well. So I think just to prep our own minds for this, Mr. Foran, since you're here and you've got some language suggestions, you're thinking about something that's on page two, line five.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Oh, I'm right in that,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. Well, I just want to make sure, like if we walk through it, I want to make sure that when we get there, that we are considering what you want us to consider. Oh, so you've got a bunch of life insurance. So we might go back and forth. And did, I'm not sure that this was mister Gabe, was this sent

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: to you as well?

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. But I'm looking at it right now. I'll be I'll be able to I'll be able to be it out on the case in each convention. Okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great. Well, then I think let's just jump in, start to walk through the bill and Okay. Close in front of them.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So we're working off the the as passed by house version. Working on page one, find more section one. This is, in my opinion, just a clarification that the existing all hazard authority or municipal authorities does not restrict the authority of the governor or the director of emergency management to from requiring evacuation of an area. When one of the sponsors above the House bill was gathering information for the bill, he was told by several people that the municipality has to declare an all hazards event before the virus is evacuation. I don't agree with that. There's other authority that the governor and the director have elsewhere in statute, but this is just to clarify that that municipal all hazard events declaration is not a condition or evacuation due to Dan Poehler, part of an interesting Poehler.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Okay.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm losing on. Then on page one, line 17, section two, this is the true substance of the bill. It's the requirement for a state of Vermont emergencies operation planning pilot project. And it's the directive goes to

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: the division of emergency management in coordination with DEC, conduct that pilot project under which the division shall develop a set

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of emergency operations plan. And this may be, 12 no. It's not yet. So then going on to page two, and it would be for two state known plans that have been classified as high hazard potential. High hazardous, and one of those stand shall have a population at risk of 1,000 more persons than the other shall have a population at risk of a 100 or more or fewer than a thousand. When you get to potential language change requested by VEN, it says the set of EOPs for each dam shall include an EOP for each municipality in the inundation zones of the dam. They're asking that instead of, say, the set of EOPs for each dam shall include an EOP, it shall say shall include actions for each municipality in the in the nation zone of the dam. I think they're looking for more flexibility in the language to allow for, basically for allow for I guess it's not as formal of a a recommendation.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Anything you'd like to offer on that, mister Flynn?

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Eric Warren, director of Ron Morrisman, but the idea hitter, my brother, right on is flexibility. And as we work through this, the original thought was an EOP for each downstream event. But it may be as you get into the nuances of it, it may need to be one repetitive EOP for including all because there's overlap in emergency services, there's overlap in dispatchers, there needs to be an understanding of each town. There's also the potential that if we created an EOP for a town that doesn't have the capabilities to keep it up, that it goes and dies on their shelves. So it may be that there might be some recommendation that some larger level would use underlying quotation in italics government quasi entity could hold if or them all and have some kind of updating process. So I don't at the time of the meeting with section chief who's gonna kinda run the point on this, wanna make sure that we have flexibility to come up with a product that will be as useful to the accounts as possible. So

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: I'm open to that as a suggestion for you, though. Yeah.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I mean, too. I the one thing I would say is that if we're going to do that, does it still make sense to say the set of EOPs?

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Prior. In this case the set I think is referencing to.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, I see. Okay. Yep. So

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: yeah, it was kind of a nuance. Almost could be interpreted the other way too, we just wanted to make sure that that one specific line specifically dictated an EOT for each town and region. We have to make sure that we have some flexibility there.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: So the actions might include an EOP or broad EOP, but it

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: oops. Yeah. Just more flexibility.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Yeah, still an EOP, it's just not going to be for Bolton specifically, then Richmond specifically, going be for the Waterbury Resiliency Park. Each one of the 16 towns downstream would be in it, would have actions in it, and how they react to it. They wouldn't have their own because then you guys see being an individual once it all needed to kept up. Yeah. So there's definitely, you know, in the Dam Safety group that worked up the project last year, saw lots of these questions as you don't really have a county level entity that can run stuff like this, so how can you nuance that?

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: I've been trying

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: to lightly touch on things without stepping in anything directly. So there might be possibilities for that, you know, over this pilot project is two years long. It's going to be, we want to make sure that we have options to give the best advice in the

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: end.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Sounds good to me. Any any objections? Okay.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Moving on page to line seven, you're moving in to your directive that in preparing the EOPs, the division shall coordinate with a list of individuals. This is also a request for a team. As with any list, there are people that always think, well, you might exclude somebody. You might invertly include somebody that shouldn't be included. And what the division is is recommending is instead of trying to list out all of those interested parties that you use the theme and definition of whole community and reference that. Whole community is a means by which residents, emergency practitioners, organization, community leaders, and government officials can come up to understand and assess the needs of their respective communities who determine the best ways to organize and strengthen their assets, capacities, and interests. So there'd be a corporation in reference of the whole FEMA, whole community definition, and then it would say the division shall coordinate with and collect input from the whole community traditionally involved in regional and municipal emergency management, that you could strike best.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: So this is fundamentally question that we're do I have to introduce myself each time? Yeah. Fundamentally, this is something we're pushing across all languages, the removing of lists. What we've seen over the last couple of years is each year a new group gets added to the list or someone gets taken away. We want the ability to, know, the definition of whole community is everyone involved that should have some applicability to the response to the recovery. So it gives us latitude to incorporate more people without having to come back and add a new person to the list to make sure that we didn't miss anybody. The other thing it does is a lot of times these lists will be somewhat vague. So for example, and not necessarily in this, but I've seen like a group that works with the disabled. So we don't know what group that is. There may not be a group in that area, and and what's their capacity to actually be involved in this. So we want the ability to work through the list and and generate it because we have the bigger picture. You know, as the gentleman from Montpelier said yesterday, the EM is really just the coordinating entity in this, the facilitator. The towns are going to be the ones that are giving all the information. The emergency services are going be the ones giving all the information. So they're the ones that know that in Bolton there's this group and this group and this group and enrichment, it's that group, that group, and that group, and so it's going be different for everything else. It seems like we're trying to get rid of the list because we want more ability to not hit everyone, but we're looking at it like it gives us the ability to include everyone without having to manage it each time because, you know, that's the way we're looking at it now, but in three years somebody would be like, the list is only four

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: people long.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: We're only working with them. That's all we're going to do.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: My only concern about like, so this is very, it seems logical to me. My only concern is that when we say whole community, that's a term, so that's like a term of art for you all. Is that sort of more or less accurate?

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: Is it

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: a what? A term of art, you know, that's like this means something specific. It's like, it's everybody.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Yeah, mean, it's a basic definition of female use.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, okay.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: In all of their literature about whole communities, and that's the definition I included there.

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: They have,

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: you know, whole classes on what the whole community is, so it's not just the EM saying this is our definition of whole community, it's the federal government

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: saying this

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: is the definition of whole community.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And it could say the whole community is that term that's defined and whatever it is.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: That's that's exactly.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: I was wondering if you have definitions in your if you could link to another

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, if we could I think that makes sense to make that change and if anybody is objecting, like, let him straighten to speak up, I Especially if we can link that whole community definition to female.

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: That would be great. Yeah. Okay. Great.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Moving down on page two, you're still in that subdivision B1 minuteus 14 through 15. The division's also going to coordinate with any lunar operator of the hydroelectric generation facility located at a state owned dam. I think that's just it's a little bit of bootstrapping. They're gonna do that anyway, but page two, line 17 through 20, the division is authorized to hire a contractor, including a regional planning commission, to meet the requirements of the section, including one or both of the EOPs required to understand section A. Yeah. We wanted. And then moving on to page three, if you would like me to. Yes,

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: sir.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Subsection c is what if each EOP is required to complete and what they will do. First is they shall be coordinated with each dam's emergency action plan. So if the dam owner completes, it has the inundation maps, which are key to coming up with an EOB. So they will utilize these dams, emergency action plan, and inundation maps. Page three, line five, they shall identify planned evacuations and evacuation rooms based on possible inundation scenarios, including how to evacuate vulnerable populations. Page three, line nine, identify where individuals shall evacuate to, such as shelters higher than any occasion. Page three, line 11, this is something that the department is requesting be struck because when you incorporated the whole community definition, are incorporating looking at vulnerable populations, looking at the emergency providers that provide service to to the vulnerable populations. And they believe, I think they say that this would be duplicative to you through the whole community.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: And again, it's a list that's inevitably gonna leave somebody out.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Again, as long as it's officially covered, yes. I think

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: it feels weird to delete this, even though it might be included in whole community. Striking this might look like we actually don't want them to do this, and this seems important to me.

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: I don't

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: think it would cost us anything to

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: have been there in the seventh grade. Yeah.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So you could split the difference instead of saying vulnerable populations such as school shelters, etcetera, how they are going engage facilities that house vulnerable populations within the whole community.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, that might be, that's the good suggestion, because referencing the whole community, I mean, makes sense, but I wouldn't want to make it look like, oh, Ashley, the size.

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: Okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: If you're all okay with that. So, populations within the whole community. Great. Okay. Let's Right.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: Yeah. Exactly. It's bootstrapping us and I also need

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So moving on, again, what the EOP shall do, they will plan for use of mutual aid, state resources coordinate, bring municipal, patties, downstream, Page three, line 16, address how to implement the use of pre event communication with early warning systems. Page three, line 19, include any additional provisions deemed useful by the division of the developing of the EDLP. Then on page four, final one, sub d, this is the directive for the division to submit to you the general assembly results of the pilot project, including copies of the EOPs for the two names, a summary of the process of developing the EOPs, including whether the division will be in them with the division staff are contracted out with the planning commission. Page four, line 10, summary of how the division or division contractor coordinating with municipal officials. Honestly, you could probably coordinate with the whole community here to because you no longer have this list previously at the whole community, and so with consistency, probably makes

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: sense. Is this for

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: page four eleven and ten, because this is turning into a list. Right. My only question about using whole community here, this is about who the contractor coordinated with, And so, does I'm wondering about, does it make sense to say the whole community or is this like people who are organized, like at an organizing kind of level within the whole community? Does that make sense? Like, again, like if the whole community includes like vulnerable populations, like are we coordinating? Does that

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: So the whole community involves two sets, Think of the victims, so disabled, the vulnerable populations, the elderly, this goal, but it also involves emergency services, rescue, fire, police, law enforcement, EMD. So it literally means everyone that's involved in both the response and being affected by. So this list is more of the who's in the response to the whole list, because theoretically it doesn't say EMS, right, and maybe EMS needs to be on there, know, fire or law enforcement that just talks about search and rescue. So this is my burden to list as you've made inevitably fall off and using terms like the whole community has defined gives you greater show of this.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: So Mr. Ford, what would your recommendation be to keep this list or to try to capture more of like a whole community?

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: I mean, specifically line 10 number three is asking for a summary of who we talked to. So don't say, oh, it's a summary of who the contractor coordinator is. You don't need to define the list because it's going to be defined by whoever we actually go to.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Okay.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: It doesn't say thou shalt contact these people, it says who did you talk to? And it may be different. Different dams have different downstream effects, different emergency services. So in this situation I have something more generic, like a summary of who you spoke to, who you interacted with, who you worked with.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: So maybe they're just taking out it's probably not proper to end with the

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: With the width.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: With the width. But but but that idea of, like, a summary of

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: A summary with whom the division or the division contractor coordinated. And then you just go into that, open up the EEO piece. Yeah. And, of course, the,

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: you know, municipalities and booths the area of potential inundation for each dam.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Right. Keeping the end in the in the area of potential inundation.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: K. Yeah. It can be coordinated.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Any other thoughts about that change? Okay.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Alright. So moving on, what they've also submitted to you was that this the cost of the EOBs completed, Also, summary of early morning communication systems. It is positively viewed. We need hear about creations or faster evacuations, including weather and things in use of its ET alert system. It will also submit a scope timeline and budget for this division to develop an EOP template, the training on EOP development, more minutes of thousands. And then on page five, again, line one, as part of the report, the division shall, based on the pilot project results, recommended how EOP should be completed with all state or federal dams. There's a month that our high hazard detention dams may not have the population that the list of a very damned person, including whether how to prioritize completion of the EOPs for all high hazard dancing of PAR of 100 or more persons, whether the division can complete or contract for completion for all state or federal dams with a population of persons with 150 more persons, five, twenty three-five, Whether the division can complete an EOP for a federal dam, which is a question I don't I personally don't believe that they can because of the preemption clauses the three two or three flood control federal flood control acts, but you will get a definitive answer on that. On page five, line 15, what it would cost for the division to complete EOPs for dams with a population of the risk of 100 or more persons, and what it would cost for the division to contract with qualified consultants to complete the EOPs. Then recommend how the EOP should be completed for high acid damage with the population at risk of fewer than 100%. Before we turn

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: the page, can I the one comment is on line nine b m, like

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I said, it will come up

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: in in the result, but we're not actually creating EOPs for the dam itself? We're creating EOPs for the towns downstream of the

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: dams. Oh, yeah.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Okay. So the the dams have e EAPs during the action plans, and that's dictated by 10 other rules. So we will use the EAP and interact with the dam, but the EOP is for the towns. So it just maybe the answer is we don't even need to get into it because it's not something that we're not dictating what the EM curves. Yeah. Can try to nuance some of the things that we hope they do, or maybe we can make recommendations. So I I don't know if the the language probably doesn't need to change, but I'm

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: Well, I think

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: it could say EOPs for all communities downstream of state or federal dams.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: I think the gist of the question is whether or not we have any authority over a state or a federal dam, obviously state's guilty of it, over a federal dam because there's four different regulators. So I think that's the root cause of the question, not that's authority that

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: That's you c.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's c, yeah, that's that's line 12. Line nine, so b is whether you complete the Oh, sorry.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: I was talking about swallowing. Yeah.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, I think the problem that you're identifying well, what I'm hearing is like a a language problem, which is that the EOP is not for a data, and that exists in both b and c. So it feels like a

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: technical crash. I work on that.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh yeah, EOPs for dams, yeah.

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: Okay.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Right.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, but actually it's also in a

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Would it be accurate to say EOPs for the towns downstream of state or federal wounds? Yeah. Yeah.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Yes.

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: I think you

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: can go on to page six. Line one, I think there is a request to change by the division, and it there is seeking to strike the required submission of recommended potential funding sources at the division for individual municipalities to access will be your contract for completion of the EOP. Then I go back to the director.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: We understand the desire there, right, to try to find a funding for one, VM is not really the conduit for funding, we need to try to find our own. But two, this template that's going to be used after these two initials could be used for the next one year, so a funding source found out may not be a funding source in five years, so it needs to be done whenever the actual EOP is done. So it needs to be done, what would probably work is including some language in the EOP about trying to find it, but Town's kind of inevitable to do that anyway and may back up to, you know, a quasi regional entity doing it. They may have more funding sources. But in general, VM doesn't have funding sources. We're not experts on them. Then the time differential for years.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I and that's that's maybe true. I'm pretty like, if not you, then who? I remember who.

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: And each Part of

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: it is because each town may have a different subset of issues that might allow them to apply for a different subset of grants. Part of what their pilot project is, what the cost is going to be. So trying to find a source for paying for something that we don't know what the cost is yet, so it's kind of carving for the horse. So that was our intention with that is understanding the desire to find a funding source for these. And part of that could be if it's a quasi governmental, then it goes to that entity in the town. So I don't have to worry about it. In case Both responsibility on the funding.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. What I'm honestly, what I'm thinking is that the bill sponsor in the house, one is me. Concerns was the municipalities don't have access to adequate funding to to either compete with EOP or to, you know, acquire their equipment or other resources that are necessary to comply with EOP. I understand what the director is saying that they're not the funding experts, but I don't know where you would get that information.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: And I mean, the answer might be there is no funding for it. That could be what comes out of this report is that there's 10,000 different funding sources, funding an EOP for a dam may not have. So I'm not dead set on that one. Yeah. I was just trying to for clarity and expectations.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm wondering if Just seeking out loud here, creating the possibility, because it's, you know, recommend potential funding sources, like how do we make space for that? The answer is like, we haven't found any. None came across our path in this.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Right. What I don't want is the expectation that we will somehow generate this long list of funding sources that will be able to execute these plans because there may not be one.

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: Mhmm. It should be true, Janice. Yes. Yes.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: What's

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: what's the association of dam officials? Is it regional and national? Could could the the directive be that coordinate with the association of dam officials regarding potential funding sources for the development of EOPs, and you don't have to come up with the list. All you need to do is or DEC needs to do, Ben probably has contacts there, that they contact them, where do you get funding for you?

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: The interesting concept there is sometimes grants are vague enough that you can apply for them. It's a grand amount of emergency preparedness and they happen to do it for a dam and some other town uses it for building a better evacuation route. So again, I wouldn't want to necessarily pigeonhole it and just asking that one group and that's part of the issue with that vague language is a potential list because there are so many grants out there, less these days, but so many grants out there that do so many things in undefined ways, and each town has a specific set of criteria for them. Really it's at the behest of the town to understand you know what their needs are, but also what their kind of fundamental rationale for needing a grant is right. We're a poor Irish town, we have too much population overcoming too much money, we don't know what to do with it, whatever the case may be. Different grants can be, not for lack of a better word, manipulated, to be used for various things that may not even be imprecision. Again, it's not a showstopper, can definitely come up with something, but the list is almost outdated as soon as you print it.

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: Well, it's a separate question. So I'm

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: just here to you, the towns have no idea, they

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: have their, they don't have

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: no idea what that means, this was an attempt somehow to try to help them figure out what's realistic, where there might be some opportunity to climb these. Somehow we all know, you know, to work it in, even recognizing that they change and that they do. But I get why this is important to responsive because towns just have no idea. I mean, that's the word that means they say they ran. Mhmm. Because it's it's there's an element, you know, which you have to know what you're doing in the inventory, which I get if you feel it will transfer me, supports your position as well.

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: Well, let's They

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: need some help figuring out how to get at it. I mean, yes.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: When the economic development corporations sometimes help identify grants, Maybe it's just asking you guys to identify organizations that could be helpful. Like the one that Michael mentioned, and Economic Development Corporation can support even modestly extended base still exists.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: And it may be that the templates we create in Andalus towns or this region part of Andalus has a potential risk. Yeah, and

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: we have

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: This one might sound more like it's in the report to the legislators and then post it as an appendix to the OPD at the end of the town, and we can nuance that I think given the language that's already in there.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Yeah. We

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: have municipal planning grants.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: And RBCs do not. So maybe, I don't know.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, like the misidea of maybe it's not recommend potential funding sources, but recommend other organizations that may know of funding sources. So like, should people be asking? And that way you're not like the keeper of, it's not specific grants, it's just who

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: should people follow-up with. Yeah.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Then that could be, you know, that could be the RBCs,

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: that could be municipal planning grants, it could be, you know, whatever the, I guess that would

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: be a specific source, who would know the sources? Would you be more comfortable with that?

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Yeah, think part of that's going to come from whoever is the final entity that owns. If it's a town, that's thing. If it's a regional entity, that's another thing. It's state, that's another thing.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: So I think that makes sense. Okay. Does that is that enough?

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. Got it. Okay. So then moving on, page six, nine, four, sub four. This is also a requested change from the division There there's says that the RPC could not be responsible for the the writing or or or executing of these EITs once they are written. They may be involved in the pilot project, but once the bid is complete, they're involved in this renewal. So, basically, it's the take yard PCs out of the list that are going to be educated about the need for and importance of the European's premiers. So we would say, invest to educate municipalities and emergency service providers about the need for and importance of the New York office centers.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Sorry. What was the law

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: for removing regional planning commissions?

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Because the education is based on response, and regional planning commissions not be responsive. So the town is the one that's getting involved on the day on emergency services, the one that has to facilitate evacuations, the regional planning commission is more on that. And I think to your point, General Officer, was the funding side of it, or it could be a contractor that wrote the actual plan on that side of it, but not the actual response. And so the idea would be that education is this is the plan, and this is why it's important.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Sounds reasonable to me. Objection. So Okay.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: I just want

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: to recognize that we are going to run out of time here for next topic, but we're very close. So I think my interest would be to like try to finish going through this and then we'll transition.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Page six, nine, seven. They're going to recommend whether or not an EOP should identify structures that hurt to the reasons you'd expect them to occupy, how to geocag those structures for purposes of the initiative with the alert systems. General community and division requested a change to that. Page six, line 10, there is a request to change here. It said, right now, recommend how often the division, RVCs, and municipalities should practice emergency response. The division is saying that removing the list so more entities can be included. So it would say recommend how often exercises should be conducted to validate the EOPs required for the subsection.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Yep, that sounds good. And

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: then section three is the appropriation, $250,000 for the division to complete the pilot project, and then 125 for DEC if for their role in the pilot project. It's my understanding that this appropriation traveled with the bill. It wasn't in the House passed budget, but it approved by house appropriations when they passed this bill out.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: For what it's worth for accounting for this in December. Yes.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great. Okay. So we've got some changes to be made here. Anticipating a new draft of this. Now I don't know, tomorrow's I'm starting to fill up a fair bit. So probably not back on the

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: list before tomorrow, but we'll see.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. And it's been a

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: good know I that all goes,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: but otherwise, aiming to get this out to Tuesday.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. I will try to get it done today and then be scattered available for you if you want to do it.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Super. Alright. Well, thank you so much. Great. Okay.

[Eric Forand (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Sounds good.

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: You too. Just checking in.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you. I'm gonna hear with everybody. You just jump right into our next bill or we could take Let's take a quick break. Two minutes, three minutes.

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: Okay, yeah. Four points.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Alright.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: It's a natural resources and

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: energy coming back from a break and we are taking up age seven eighteen about building energy components and we have a number of people to hear from this morning. So, we are going to start with mister Kona.

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: If you're in the writing and so the thought of them is going down

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: the list as it appears and it was this new one, was an agile interview.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, Ray, super welcome.

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: Thank you so much for your time. Matt Cota of the Upper Meadow Hill here on behalf of the Heating

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: and Cooling Contractors of Vermont.

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: This is a nonprofit trade association made of equipment manufacturers, equipment dealers, and the licensed and certified men and women who install heating systems, air conditioning systems, plumbing, electrical as well. We train about a thousand heating technicians every year through our network of teachers in our schools. Most, but not all are practicing installing equipment or servicing equipment for heating oil or for propane gas that goes to boilers and furnaces. Since 2020, all of our teachers in compliance with the law have taught the energy goals module, which was passed by this body in 2020. And it's incorporated into every single class we teach in addition for those students who may not take our classes, don't know why they wouldn't, you know, take it for the most competitive, there's a module available that the Department of Fire Safety has made so that it is not

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: an issue when you get your license.

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: And that took some time in doing, and it was a collaborative effort. I say that all in context because this bill changes that for us. So I'm speaking specifically about sections four, five, six, seven, eight. There's a couple of just clarifying questions that we didn't, they're not answered in my mind. So if you look at page eight, line 17 through 20, It says, Beginning of 01/01/2028, every green year thereafter, the office shall review these education models, consider recommendations by relevant stakeholders and update the modules as necessary. That makes sense. What's not clear is when this new requirement begins. The law takes effect on 07/01/2026. So a couple of scenarios can play out in my mind, which is, starting 07/01/2026, we don't have to teach the module we've been teaching for since 2020. That's one interpretation of it. Another interpretation of it is no, no, no, starting January, 07/01/2026, you have to have a new module in place. That is impossible, literally impossible for me to get that, for me to pass the DFS to produce the module, for me to get that on my teacher so they can implement by July 1, not going to happen. And if it does happen and their license is denied, people won't have air conditioning or heat. We should really dissolve this because they will

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: not be able to practice without a ballpark that allows them to

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: do something. So the question is, are we essentially eliminating the energy goals module because it's past its time and it's not worth teaching anymore? Fine. And we have until 01/01/2028 in order to implement the new module. That's really dependent on our regulators, is the Department of Public Safety, you'll hear from them later. But honestly, the way to do this is to not make this a condition of licensure. To not have someone's wallet card, their ability to earn those trades held up by this law. Now that said, should we, if anyone is capturing on behalf of their customers, a rebate or incentive issued by Advocacy Vermont, should they make sure that they have what's described as understanding building science? Sure, that makes a lot of sense. We want to take a very successful tank rebate program, oil and tank rebate program. We make sure that you can't access that rebate on behalf of your customer unless you have taken a course that shows that you know how to install the oil container. Same could be true for this, but that is not what this is.

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: But that's good. You talk about not following

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: it because I just read this is saying that starting in general and hey, the other modules, that was we could we'll set that to begin with So in

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: order to obtain an additional licensure certification and then to renew it every three years in accordance with the Vermont barcode, you have to show that you've taken these training curriculum. So part of the training curriculum for instance is you have to understand what it takes to install a boiler furnace, you have to understand how to ensure that there's no carbon monoxide coming out, know, ways to ensure that. So part of it is module. If you don't take the module, you do not get it strategically and you cannot practice your trade.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: That's the way it is now, right? That's the way it

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: is now. We want to make sure, I interpret it the same way you do Senator Bongartz, is in fact what we're doing is we're saying in 01/01/2028 this new module has to be in place. I think that's enough runway. I don't know. I'm not the person designing the module. I'm just the person that's encouraging our teachers or requiring our teachers to implement it. But if another view of

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: it is no, you have

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: to have the new module in place by 07/01/2026. How could that be if

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it says beginning January '14?

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: Well, it says in January 29, I read it, it said, must review the education modules and consider recommendations by relevant stakeholders. That doesn't imply the new module isn't in place until 01/01/2028.

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: And if you

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: look at the implementation the

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: implementation date on the final day,

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: it says 07/01/2026. So, several things could be true. It could be true that the intent is no, we want the new module, we're going to give you a year and a half to get it in place. Okay. Another way to look at it is you don't have to teach it

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: for that year and

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: a half, you don't even have to teach the old module was created in 2020. Just looking for clarification on that. Really what we're trying to do is we're trying to get better educated tradespeople all agree. But that little snafu has to figure out because when this is all over, or when we all go home, we're gonna have to figure out what to teach on July 1, and we wanna know where we'll leave.

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: Oh, that's it. Oh, yay. Well, all right.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Sorry. I maybe we're gonna go on.

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: No. It's not a dramatic

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: pause. Yes.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Good. If you want to suggest some language to clarify.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: So,

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: So that I'd be happy

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: to offer clarification language but I also could say my general point is these types of modules perhaps are not best as a condition of licensure maybe as a condition of accessing rebates or incentives not a condition of licensure. That would be my recommendation to amend this legislation. But I'm also happy to see other Wait,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: you don't think training should be a condition of licensure?

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: Absolutely, The reason that people and contractors of Vermont exist is to train over a thousand game technicians every year.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: But didn't you just say you think that that should be a condition of licensure?

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: The module as described in this. Oh, so So adding You're

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: not suggesting getting rid of any training head

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: of the commission. That would be counter to what Okay. We It's very, so when you think about the person that comes into your basement and installs or surfaces a boiler, there are rigorous training requirements, national standards, forest locally, that they must comply with. This is adding to that curriculum and we have done that since 2020 and we're not necessarily convinced that this curriculum as described in this bill is necessary as a condition of licensure. Maybe, I agree, the condition of getting energy efficiency rebates, sure. But to hold someone's plumbing license, because still didn't take the modules described in this law, it was accepted.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: The

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: current system, and we have always been broken up. If that's been an issue. So it hasn't,

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: but it's it's simply a review of the goals. It's a lot of energy goals as designed in 2020 when the requirements are. I agree. And probably you're gonna get from other people. It's not much. It's really not much. It is something that each one of our teachers, whether it's a licensure course, certification course, or a renewal course, puts it right at the beginning. It doesn't take a lot of time to it. Individuals can do it or you can do it in part of the class. This is different though. And we don't know what it is because it hasn't been designed to further emphasizing, we would like to make it clear that it's not

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: required on 07/01/2026.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you. Okay, so we're gonna move now to Mr. Birce with the American Institute of Architects from Lamaze. Welcome.

[Tom Bursey (Immediate Past President, AIA Vermont)]: Hi, can you hear me okay?

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Yes, think we might need to

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: turn up the volume a little bit.

[Tom Bursey (Immediate Past President, AIA Vermont)]: Maybe if I do this.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: There we go.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, sorry, go ahead.

[Tom Bursey (Immediate Past President, AIA Vermont)]: Yes. My name is Tom Bursey. I am the immediate past president of AIA Vermont, the American Institute of Architects, the Vermont chapter. We were a part of the Building and Intracode Working Group, and saw the progression of this bill, and we generally support it. There are a few items that we want clarification on, but, we think the work that's been done, in the house to sort of, clear this is it's been helpful, and, we generally support the bill as it stands. A couple of notes of clarification. We do agree, as the last speaker said, that the implementation of the requirement should not be a requirement until the energy module is actually in place and vetted. So what we don't want to see is some requirement that requires something that is not not established yet. I think that that seems clear to everyone, but, but making that clear in the bill, it doesn't seem clear at this point. So we would agree with with at least that, which is, don't require something that's not in existence yet. And so it would be good to set a date for the creation of that, sort of a deadline for that. And if it is a year and a half or two years, that seems possible. The other clarification is in the section requiring architects and engineers. We would just add a little more request a little more specificity around engineers. There are a lot of engineers that have nothing to do with energy codes. I'm thinking of structural engineers, or I'm thinking of aeronautical engineers or there are a lot of, engineers, and so maybe we wanna be more specific about, mechanical, electrical, plumbing engineers. And I guess the third thing that I wanted to bring up was, oh, yeah, the, the municipality administration of the energy codes. While generally we support this, the concern is that the the bill as written gives them authority without it passing through any state entity. So we would like to see that pass through, the the division of fire safety as it currently is for all of the municipal agreements that they have for all of the other building codes. There is an apparatus in place where each of the municipalities go to the division of fire safety and get approval. And through that process, it means that each of these municipalities is enforcing essentially the same thing, is is getting their authority to, administer these things from a single state entity. As the code is written, it is possible that each municipality will enforce to different rates and interpret different ways so that builders' architects, will need to understand each jurisdiction's reading of these codes and interpretation of these codes, and it could vary widely. And so we do support the idea that municipalities could, administer and enforce the building code. What the concern is, is that this, enforcement could be could vary widely between municipalities.

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: Is that

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: fair? I

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: think so. I think that's fair. And then I want to go back to your other recommendation about the clarification on the specificity of engineers. Do you have a page number for that recommendation?

[Tom Bursey (Immediate Past President, AIA Vermont)]: I do. I actually printed out the red line version. So, yeah, on the red line version it was page 22 of 33, but it is directly it's the first part of the, requirement for education for specific licenses and state energy goals. And above that, the heading is architects, engineers, and property inspectors.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Okay.

[Tom Bursey (Immediate Past President, AIA Vermont)]: Okay. And so yeah. So it doesn't really define each of those roles. I think architects are, defined pretty cleanly. I suspect property inspecting inspectors are defined relatively cleanly, but I'm not sure that engineers are defined in a way that this energy module would be helpful for some and not others. And so I think it would just be clear to differentiate the two.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think the definition of engineers does not show up in the bill. Okay. It's just a header. And so it's a question of what is the definition of engineers and kind of being more specific about which engineers this applies to. I understand. Which is, it's really about the header. Yeah. Not sure, look at the header, but there must be statute El statutory definitions Okay. And Yeah. The

[Tom Bursey (Immediate Past President, AIA Vermont)]: the copy I have references part a, I think, for when the paragraph goes on to talk about who, this specifically intends. And and I couldn't find a definition for engineers when I, like, went back on So it is just the heading. Yes.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Well, it might also affect part A, which is not shown here.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: So we can ask about that. Okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great. Thank you. Any other thoughts or questions for this person?

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: Okay, great. So then we'll go to

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: Ms. Hebert, Secretary of Ms. Hebert, Ms. Cohen, awesome comments. Absolutely, thank you. Good morning. For the record, Lauren Fever, Deputy Secretary of State, and I have with me Jen Twilland,

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: who is the Director of the Office

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: of Professional Regulation. Good morning.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: Good morning, welcome. It's a pleasure to be with you all. We're not in this community very often. We know you all individually, some more than others. I'm sorry. You know it's best to follow-up. Whatever form

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I want.

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: Just for the record.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: So I thought we'd give you just a brief overview of the Office of Professional Regulation, and then how we're involved in this space. Some of you were in the building when the regulation of contractors, home contractors came about. Some of you were not, so there we are. The Office of Professional Regulation is housed within the Secretary of State's office. It's an agency of 40 people. We regulate over 53 professions, almost 180 different license types. So a lot

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: of

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: complexity there. Each license type has multiple pathways, pin, endorsement, exam, licensure from another jurisdiction, lots of ways, some of them have apprenticeships. And then we renew licenses. Frequently licensees have continuing education. Home contractors, which we're talking about in this bill does not. But engineers do. And then we have an enforcement division and our enforcement division has certified law enforcement in it and civil investigators in it. We receive complaints primarily on our website. We have an online complaint form. We also receive them in writing. We receive them anonymously. We receive them identified. We investigate all cases that if they were true, would be unprofessional conduct. And then we do an analysis of whether or not unprofessional conduct occurred or not, hold a hearing in front of a board or an administrative law officer. For this profession that we are talking about home contractors, we have a very limited jurisdiction and it really comes from the way that this bill was passed. It is a registration, meaning everyone who does it needs to have a registration, but there are not qualifications. There are three levels of licensure in this state and the office professional regulation did a sunrise review, which means that we did an analysis of, is there harm to Vermonters by the fact that we are not regulating this profession? And we were asked to do that primarily through the lens of fraud. And we did find that there was fraud that would require registration, but we did not find that, and because we were looking at fraud, we did not find that there should be qualifications for this profession. If we could we could have gone with certification, which is voluntary with qualifications or licensure, which is mandatory for everyone participating with qualifications. And so we we were recommended and what was ultimately passed was registration without qualifications for this field. And what that means is when we receive a complaint about home contractors and Director Cohen will talk about this more, really are looking to see more of the basic elements of the statute followed, and we can look at those requirements on home conductors. And is there the potential that fraud occurred? We are not looking specifically at what's their unprofessional conduct because there's not qualifications basis for the license. So not everybody has the same training and expertise. This was something that was very, very widely debated in 1920. And that's where the legislature landed, quite frankly. Very positive at the time. And ultimately this home contract was passed in 'twenty two. We started the conversation in 'nineteen and then it was ultimately passed in 'twenty two. So the definition of residential is fewer than four units. Definition of contract construction includes interior and exterior construction on the home. And in order to be a home contractor, you have to have a contract with a home owner, meaning developers and subs do not have contract with the home owner and they are not required to register. Now, if the subcontractor then enters into a contract subsequently with the home owner, they do need to register. We collect a registration fee. They have to provide documentation that they're registered as

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: a business with the Secretary

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: of State's office. They have to disclose criminal convictions and any pending criminal charges, And they need to provide proof of general liability insurance. What was settled on was $1,000,000 for occurrence or 2,000,000 in aggregate. They need to identify if they're licensed in another jurisdiction. One of the findings of the Sunrise report was many of the jurisdictions around us do require licensure, either at the state level or the county level. There is a piece of this in full disclosure, a lot of other states are handling contractor registration, licensure, all of these issues at the county level and not at the state level. And so that is the issue here.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Or to that Senator Hardy?

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I know, and I would love to hear

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: from her.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: She has her in. But yes, it is a really, it's an interesting thing about our county government here. You're required to, excuse me, which is great. You're required to register if you are entering into a contract with a homeowner that is for $10,000 or more. And that was also something that was very widely debated. And the Office of Professional Regulation, we wanted it to be at 1,500. Then COVID happened and everything skyrocketed. And so the conversation got changed. And there was a lot of conversation about making sure that the candidate person is not blocked out of, is not required to. Right now, they also need to acknowledge that they are required to comply with Arby's, and then they need to have all of their contracts be in writing. And writing can be on a napkin, it can be a very formal legal document, but it needs to be in writing. And that's so that if fraud occurs, we have some tools to prosecute it. And also one of our key findings was that there was a lot of people who were not having written contracts and that was people were giving half of the job, 8,000 to $16,000 to $30,000 to a home contractor. And then that home contractor was just walking away with nothing documenting the agreement. So that was a key problem that we found. So as I mentioned, because there's not qualifications, we can't hold them to failing to meet the acceptable standards of practice, which is what we do for every other type of professional for the most part at the Office of Professional Regulation with the exception of massage therapists. So if you are a nurse and you commit unprofessional conduct, we have a standard that we apply to you as a national standard. It's a state standard and it's easy for us prosecute that you step outside what is the expected care they provide. And another key part of Act 182 of 2022 was that we would create specialty certifications, which would be available to contractors to signify specialized training. And in full disclosure, we have not implemented those certifications yet, in part because we've been engaged in so many ongoing conversations about what those certifications should be. We've been involved in a lot of working groups and the conversation has continued to be evolving. Also just bandwidth has been an issue. Currently, I thought it would be helpful for you to just know the numbers. Currently for individuals, we have five sixty five individual contractors who are licensed and businesses, have eight thirty five. So quick math, that's around 1,400. We suspect this program is under enrolled. This is not what we were estimating. And sometimes just when I'm driving to my mom's house in the North Of Skinkum or to Burlington, I count the number of construction vehicles. There's just no way that we don't have, that we're not fully enrolled. Based on, I mean, that's just anecdotal, not truth, guys. Right now, we've received over 130 complaints regarding construction projects and outcomes in our enforcement division is right now we have 30 cases that are pending investigation or under review. We have 12 cases where we use public disciplinary charges. Seven of those are currently pending, four of them have been disciplined and one was dismissed. But those are documents that are public that we could give you information on all 12 of those cases, if you're interested.

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: Over what period of time is that?

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: Since 2023 is when we were able to see Three years. Yeah. We've had 40 cases that have been investigated and closed. Of those cases, there were allegations of fraud that we couldn't substantiate. There were quality of work claims, which we can't address, or there was unauthorized practice that was before we had the authority to proceed unauthorized practice. We've had 50 cases that have been screened out, meaning we did not investigate those cases. And usually that is because we lacked jurisdiction because it was a quality of work concern. And one of the things that we struggle with is what is the line between quality of work and fraud? That's a very nebulous line for us. And if we are screening in a case that looks like it's a quality of work problem, it's because we're concerned that it's not just quality of work, it was fraudulent work. But that's a very hard case for our team to investigate. We don't have inspectors. We don't have home inspectors. We don't have a home contractor on our team. Have, back to what I said in the beginning, we have six certified law enforcement officers. They are trained in investigating crime and three civil investigators and a wide diversity of professions that we regulate. So a lot of need for broad knowledge, sometimes with specific knowledge. And we are running out of debt in this program. We have invested more resources in this program than we have recently received in revenue. And that is a problem for us because the Office of Professional Regulation is a special fund, meaning we only on our licensure fees. We did not receive general fund allocation unless there's some extenuating special circumstance. And so at this point, it's hard for us to invest more in this program without resources. And we have done quite a bit around this program, including a home contractor map, where you can look up and see where the contractors are in your area. I wanna tell you that map is going away because it does not meet the ADA accessibility requirements that are mandated at the end of this month. We don't have a way to make that accessible. And it's already pretty far outside of what our office does. We do not have a map of where you can find a barter in your area. We do not have a map of where you can find a tattooist in your area. So that was something that we did proactively to try

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: and

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: help incentivize getting people registered, but I don't think that's working. And it is outside of what our traditional role is.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Can I ask you something?

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, did you make that, Matt, because there was some part of law that required that you do that. Oh, you were just like, we'll just make it.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: No, we trying to always- To get, we tried everything. We had radio ads, we went on public radio, we went to front porch flora, we went, we had flyers in every lumberyard and home contractor possible place where they need to And we were trying to incentivize, register with us, it's mandatory. Come on in, and you're gonna get, the homeowners are going to start to see if you're registered. Interestingly, home contractors is the only profession where we have home owner, like a consumer site of make sure that you can get a contract, make sure that your person has a registration with us, make sure that they have insurance. We don't do that for dentists, we don't do that for veterinarians, but we do that for visitor because we know that there's a lot happening and we are trying to set up this program. But again, we're really struggling to sign up this program. It's an adoption for the workforce and it's in a change for the homeowners as well. I think it's still a good change. I'm not saying that this workforce should not be regulated. Please don't hear that. I just want to be really transparent about where we are and our current. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jen.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Okay, great. And just something Lauren was just saying a second ago, we're still doing front porch format. So I don't know if y'all read front porch forum, but we still put them out. Some are geared towards contractors saying, Are you doing this kind of work on a home for more than $10,000 If so, you need to contact us and register. And then some are geared towards homeowners. Do you have somebody working in your home that's working on these things? If so, they should be registered. Take a look at our website and see if they are. So we're still working on that. And Front Porch Forum is a free- It's not free. We paid for it. Oh, okay. It's not free. It's not But we're doing it, but it's a low resource-

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: Yeah. It's a big investment that we have chosen to make, I think it's paying off well. Okay,

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: so to go through 07/18, we did some work on this on the house side, and a lot of the changes that we had recommended or asked for were incorporated. So we can just walk through this quickly. And we're only going to take a look really at the provisions that impact OPR. So, and I know that I'm working from single sided paper, first of as a past, but there's the, gosh, I'm spacing. There's the two different versions of the pass. Do you know what I'm saying? Oh, the official and unofficial. Official and unofficial. Gosh, I'm sorry.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Think I'm not official.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Okay, good. I wasn't sure

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: how you're gonna look at that, so

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: thank you. So looking at section one in the findings, number five, we agree that the Building Energy Code Working Group recommended that our regulatory program for residential contractors, that they recommended that could use provide market incentives for people to register. So that was a finding of that working group. So we're not going to get into, do we agree with that finding or not, because that was a finding of the working group. So we also agreed that homeowners would benefit from additional protections beyond the current regulations. In finding number six, we agreed that the regulatory program has not produced sufficient revenue to adequately resource the substantial stakeholder engagement outreach to the profession, policy work, and rule making that would be necessary to significantly improve upon this regulatory framework. So the program just, we don't have enough people registered to provide the licensing fees. In section three, the Residential Contractor Registry Task Force, We agree that the task force could help advise OKR on ways to improve the existing regulatory program and expedite the creation of voluntary specialty certifications. So we know that there would be value there. In subsection B, the task force membership should also include one member appointed by the Vermont Department of State's Terrains and Sheriffs. And we also ask that a couple of homeowners be put on the task force as well, because the scope of the task force is not only related to energy work, it's also related to how can we improve this regulatory program. And I think with that homeowner voices, and we've had a lot of complaints from a lot of homeowners, so it wouldn't be problematic to find some folks who would be interested in helping to improve the sports brand.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: And just to put a fine point on it, if I may, we are having to say to people who have had very substandard work in the tune of 200, dollars 300,000, we can't help you. And you can go sue in civil court, but that's your remedy. And that's very unsatisfying, Tom Wander. So there's a lot of interest that we have to navigate, a lot of frustration out there that this program does not work. And one of the reasons why we would like the state's attorneys involved is there are people who commit criminal fraud and then are not being prosecuted criminally, including people who are walking away with $25,000 which clearly is a crime, but the SAAs at this moment are not actively prosecuting those cases.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: And there's another bill in the legislature, and I don't remember the number, but in Washington Superior Court, there was a decision that came down maybe a year, year and a half ago that questioned the constitutionality of the home improvement fraud, just a small portion of that home improvement fraud statute, But I believe that question raised in that case had a chilling effect on state's attorneys' willingness to prosecute home improvement fraud. So there is a bill, I think, that's pending to cure that issue in the statute. It's 183? Yes. -one hundred

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: eighty three.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's already passed in the Senate.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: It's unannounced. So we're excited about that bill and hope that it will pass because it's not a great environment for state's attorneys to feel like they can't prosecute.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yep. So you want to add an essay onto this working group? That Yes.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: Yes. And also to homeowners.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: In subsection oh, yes, sir.

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, I'm sorry.

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: Oh, no. That's a.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: In subsection C, 1A, couple subsections there, there's one of the charges of the task force would be to advise OPR about how to improve public facing web presence. And we've been pushing back on this since we were in the working group because we regulate 53 professions and we're there to assure the public that the people who are licensed or registered with our office have the qualifications that they're supposed to have, and to enforce standards within those professions. It's not a consumer tool. That's not what OPR is. That's not what we're intended to be. Our mission is public protection, not creating tools for consumers. So we would ask that subsection A be removed from there.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: And then again, we don't do that for anybody else. So if we're spending resources there, we are taking resources away from regulating other programs. And that's the brass tax of it. We have limited resources and they can only spend so.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Yeah, and other programs will ask for that. So if we had to do some special thing for contractors, and I'm surprised we haven't gotten that request on a map yet. That really happened. For real estate So in we're lucky that that hasn't happened. We want things. So the other thing I want to mention with respect to this is we're happy to share our data with anybody else that wants to create a consumer oriented website. So we're all about being good partners in this space, but also staying in our swim lane of public protection, licensure enforcement. Okay. And then subsection I, so that's on page let me just get to the we're skipping ahead a bit. Oh, you know what? I think subsection I may have been removed. But, me just sure. I apologize. There's a GZ link.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: For this section, looks like it

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: goes up to G. Yeah. B.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: It's a bit down section 13.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Okay. Well, previously, there was a provision that gave OPR an appropriation to improve the website, which we're saying we don't need because we don't want to be mandated to have website improvements. But because we are running this task force and because there's going to be a lot of resources required for that, administrative, attorney time, staff time, and also reporting every year for three years that we're going to have to do coming out of that task force, we would ask the committee to consider an appropriation to OPR for this work. Already, this program is running at a deficit. We've spent way more than what we're getting in fees. And again, we're dedicated to improving this program. We believe in this program. It's important for residential contractors to be regulated in the state, but we don't have the financial resources to manage this task force. It's going to be a lot of work. So we'd ask the committee to consider that. Do you have a sense of how much

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: that would be appropriate? Yeah, we've had

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: some conversations about that, and our ask would be $50,000 a year. And I assume that would

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: be face, because it's on

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: bill. Yes.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I have a tangential question, I want to, I'm going ask you since we're here. It's a registration Other at this levels are certification for licensure. So when you did the sunrise report, was registration the recommendation that came out? Yes. Okay. So, okay, I guess I'm coming back to that because I'm wondering about are there reasons to elevate it and would it potentially, I mean, it's

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: a licensure and everybody's required. Yeah, there are reasons to elevate the qualification. The reason why it was in registration was so that nobody had to go back to school or go back to an apprenticeship program or someone who had been running their own business doing relatively medium jobs, may not have any official training, and we didn't want to take them out of the marketplace. And it needed to be something that was mandatory so that everyone who was doing a job over $10,000 had to be registered.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: And also, can I add to that, though, that the focus of the Sunrise was fraud? So in other words, to prevent people from doing fraud, you just need some regulatory oversight to remove them from the marketplace if they commit a fraud. We weren't asked to do a sunrise on quality of work. We were really focused on addressing fraud. So we stuck to that mandate and recommended registration. But quality of work

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: comes up in any conversation that we ever have about the contractors, and this body in a previous iteration decided not to have us regulate quality of work, that was something that was debated, but was not ultimately decided on. And if we were responsible for quality work, we'd have to have an extensive conversation about what the qualifications would be, how we would get people there. I mean, it makes early childhood education actually look like cakewalk. And because it would be complicated, not impossible, but complicated. And we would have to talk about resources in terms of our enforcement team, because we would need to obtain some inspectors probably who are trained in home construction so they would be able to make an independent assessment of quality, or we would have to partner with public safety, or there's been conversations about whether this entire program should go to public safety because it is more similar to plumbers and electricians than it is in some ways for architects and engineers. Although, I mean, that's been debated

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: for years. And

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: one thing that I would add to your question is that on the house side of this bill, we asked that one of the functions of the task force be to consider whether registration is the right form of regulation. So that is already, that has been changed in the bill. It's in the list of things task force needs to consider and advise what we are on because we have had the conversation about whether licensure is appropriate here. And so we'd like to have that conversation. Yes, okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: And it is in the bill, president? Yes,

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: and there's a certification pathway, if it was adopted and if it was used, could be a medium, like a splitting the baby kind of, because if with a certification, that would be qualifications based. We would hope that it would be pursued by people. It would be voluntary. Not everyone would have it, but then the homeowner would know if they were entering into a contract, that they would have the choice of entering into a contract with someone who's only registered or with someone who's registered and certified by the state of Vermont, which means we support what this person is, we believe this person is qualified. The classic example of certification is a dietitian. Anyone can give you diet advice, but only dietitians can say they're certified and they have the seal of approval from the state of Vermont. They get insurance reimbursement, but everyone else, you're just copy edit for on those things.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Section four of the bill about the modules. So we have three BSA 138 that requires the energy goals module in eight of our professions. And they're required to complete that education every time they renew, which is every two years. And residential contractors aren't in that list. And the reason residential contractors aren't on that list is because it's a registration. There's no qualifications. They have no CE requirement. So really, of all of our professions, that's the profession where it's really needed the most. Also, we have several professions that are listed in there where there's very little relevance of the energy modules to those professions. And those are pollution abatement facility operators, wastewater and water system designers, and landscape architects. And the reason I'm mentioning those is because we would suggest that those folks be removed from that requirement. Also, have Dylan Bruce with us today. He's our research and policy manager at OKR, and he was the person that was trying to help us implement this energy module requirement. And he worked with Department of Public Safety to kind of come up with a module. But really what we see is in other professions like architecture, engineering, those folks already have substantial training on energy and energy efficiency. And so the module as designed and as implemented really has no value add for those folks. We're telling them stuff they already know. And it's a very simple module because it's broad and it applies to all these different professions. And so there's not much utility in it. I just want to say that. So our recommendation would be to change this requirement for these professionals. They have to have continuing education every time they renew. We could say one of their continuing education hours needs to be devoted to energy efficiency. And then they can choose the program, the class, whatever it is that's most relevant to their practice. And we, as a lawyer, I have to have so many CE credits, and each time I renew my license, two of those credits have to be on ethics and six of those credits have to be on something else. Actually don't know what they all are. Don't know what they're take a look. But what I'm saying is that we don't want to put an added burden on folks, but we do want it to be meaningful to their practice. And this is not meaningful to their practice. So question about this, because I want

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: to make sure that I am following where to

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: make these

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: changes that you are suggesting. Yes. And I'm guessing that, again, this might be in, you know, PUBSA-

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: It is.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: 138 A. That's right.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: And that A, again, is not

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: shown here. It is not shown. There's eight professions in an A. Okay. And it is the eight professions that are regulated

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: by the Office of Professional Regulation Review. Yes.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: So I don't know if you were intending on submitting written testimony. We did. You did? Okay. Thank you. So I'm not looking at it right now, but- We

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: did include proposed language. We can do that.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Would be helpful, especially since we don't have it to look at. Right. But in its version, maybe we can- We can tackle that. Okay, that would be great. Thank you.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: The other point we'd like to make, if this green energy module does continue in some iteration, We would strongly suggest that it include information on state incentive programs and contact information to find out how to access those incentive programs, because making energy efficient solutions affordable is what's going to drive professionals and consumers to want those solutions. So if people aren't aware of where those resources are, they're not going to get utilized as much as they could.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: And the reason to include them here is we do see disparity across the state. There are pockets where those programs are more utilized over other pockets. So having, if the module continues, having it included those programs in means that everyone in the state is receiving the same information regardless of whether they live in Washington County or Leans, and that's important.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Another thing I would like to add about this module is that OPR doesn't create educational content for our professions. So the creation of this module is outside of our expertise. We don't have the knowledge and understanding of how to do that. So, know, the idea that we would be responsible for creating such a module and then for specific professions, like, we don't have that ability. Yeah.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: When this was added, the big argument that I had against it, and I just want to be clear, I was opposed to the addition of this module when it was added, was we do not know We have no knowledge of the state's energy goals. We don't participate in creating them. We don't participate in enforcing them. So for us to be training people on them is a very weird thing. And it's stepping into, as Jen just said, states that we don't provide education. We improve other people's education and we approve that somebody's done consistent education, but we don't create education.

[Unidentified Committee Member/Staff]: We don't create.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: We would strongly urge the committee to remove the requirement that OPR will be responsible for that and responsible for updating that module. Where is that specifically though? It's in section four on page eight. Approval. So the module shall back wait.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's 09:17 through twenty. This

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: is the office. The office shall consider any recommendation on the modules. And that meets the Office of Professional Regulation there.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: There's similar language for fire safety as well.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: And then I do have a

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: question on that, which may be more appropriate for

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Mr. Geraci, administrative part safety.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'm thinking about if there are Well, I can ask

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: you this later. My question is going

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: to be if there's

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: parallels for other professions that are regulated by the individual's first. You can type that in. Okay. Yes. And then two more sections of the bill, section nine and section 13. Section nine requires, let's skip to the page here, page 13. Oh, I got it on page 14. 14, yeah. On page 16, sorry. Page 14, the Energy Professionals Regulation Report. We had suggested changes to that original language or the language of the original part of the bill, and those were incorporated. So I just want to say we're fine with that section of the bill that requires us to do a report about whether energy curves raters and energy professionals should be regulated professions at OPR. And we asked that the due date for that be no sooner than November 2028. So that was incorporated and we're happy

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: to do that. And this is essentially us doing a summarize on that.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Yeah. And then the last section that we want to comment on is section 13, which is on page 18, contingency funding.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: And

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: has a duty to implement The duty to implement the task force is contingent upon an appropriation of funds. The funds that are appropriated in this bill right now, it's got a $5,500 appropriation for OPR to be able to pay task force members who aren't otherwise compensated in the course of their employment for participating. So that's fine. And we're happy that the contingency funding is there. It's a three year task force, so there's no expression that that contingency will remain in future years, number one. Number two, again, we're asking for an appropriation to be able to do this task force and to implement it. And so if the committee does see fit to include such language in the bill, we'd also want a contingency of funding

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: with respect to those funds.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: Do you mean for

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: the future years? Current fiscal year, for added funds that we're asking y'all to include.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: So for total, we're asking for $55,000 per year, per year, 55,000. 55,000. Right now, it's 5,500.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Okay. And we want an additional 50 each year to support the work.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: And we may need to hire a contractor. We just don't know. Okay.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: And that is it. So thank you and happy to answer any questions. This Yes, go

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: is just a game changer because the corporation could be a dollar.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Yes. Right.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: We need to have an appropriation of funds in fiscal year two thousand and seven office in the federal government, federal government's federal regulation sufficient to. This

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: profession, I just can't underline enough that we feel they're responsible for this profession. We have advocated for this profession. There are big goals that folks in this building have had. We've worked very collaboratively with those partners from here. It's not meeting its needs, and we don't want to promise to deliver a task force and then not have the resources to be able to give it appropriate attention or to be able to move the conversation forward. Right now, the conversation has been moving, but it hasn't been moving forward quickly enough to solve the problems that we're seeing. And for us to say, let's do a task force, we would want it to be a good task force. We'd want it to be something that people felt like they were enjoying participating in. But even more than that, we would want it to lead to something productive. And without more resources and with the current work that we are being asked to do and that we're asking the legislature to give us to do, we're worried that this task force without funding cannot be the priority of the office. And so I just really have to say that 40 people, three lawyers, 53 programs, We do the most rule making of any state agency. We filed 10 admin rules this year. We're productive, we're churning, but there's a limit to what can be asked of our folks. And we are advocates.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: And we want to make this program better. So public protection. Yeah, I mean, it's really necessary to improve it for public protection and we're dedicated to that. So we're happy to have your help in doing that.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So I think just so in this case, what would you do with the 50,000? Because it's not an upward position.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: It's not an So what

[Unidentified Legislative Counsel (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: does it actually do for you?

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: I think we may try and hire a contractor to help us with at least coordination of meetings and agendas and minutes and doing some of the admin worksome of the legal work.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: We just don't know what that would look like.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. Okay, thank you so much. Are you going to submit specific line? Which suggestion?

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: On the energy module, we will submit. And on the contingency funding, just for clarity, we'll

[Matt Cota (Heating & Cooling Contractors of Vermont)]: do that too. That

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: would be great.

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: Thank you. Thank you. Okay, all right, we're gonna move now to Mr. Deroj. Hello? Did I say your name correctly, said? Deroche?

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Yes, perfect.

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Okay, all good. For the record, I'm Michael Barotra,

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: I'm the executive director for the Division of Fire Safety. Thank you for having me here. And I thought what I'd do is just a real quick division overview to start with, try to set the cadence on how I'm gonna move to the desk because there's a lot here and we've been involved in a lot of construction over the past twenty four years regarding energy efficiencies. Our division is responsible for all the construction permitting across the state. We do about $700,000,000 worth of construction evaluation review, issue 3,000 permits approximately. I have four district offices, one in Springfield, one in Rutland, one in Williston, and one here in the Waterbury area to the Milwaukee Police headquarters. We are responsible for all the home enforcement activity. We enforce the rental, health and health and safety code. We have the fire service training for all career and volunteer firefighters. We have the urban search and rescue team. We have hazardous material response. We have a fire investigation unit. And under the umbrella of this stuff, we also have the electrical licensing board, the plumbing licensing board, the elevator safety board, and the heating path accessibility board. Celestia, that kind of a quick overview of what we're doing. In our wheelhouse right now, we have no authority over energy efficiency, and we do not regulate Anything in single family owner occupied homes. So we're not in single family owner occupied homes. So in the past, I don't know, maybe rec camp balcony that have cleared fire for at least the last three years, by then pretty much opposing moving energy efficiency under our umbrella. So the big high level push is to get the Division of Fire Safety to enforce the energy efficiency codes and standards across the state. And because I have no expertise in this, no bandwidth, and I know what it takes to build a program, I have been opposing this. But one thing I've always been clear with is I've been supporting energy efficiency awareness and training and education, and I have been advocating for building an energy efficiency program that starts out with the grassroots, and then you build the program up, rather than stacking it with a bunch of regulatory laws and regulations down to an industry that can't fulfill those regulatory obligations. And so one of the problems I, and we have great contractors, so this is not anything negative about our contractors. Energy efficiency is something that needs to be taught to contractors, builders, and so forth. If we're going to improve the failure rate of energy efficiency within structures and buildings, I think, you've got to educate these folks. Certify gas technicians and we're not out there watching people do gas piping. We have to rely on these national certifications and training. And so to me, the energy efficiency profession is no different than all these other programs that rely on national certifications. And I think the OPR's point, that's how a lot of bidders would probably operate it too, really. They take a look at what national industry is setting for standards, and then they accept that as part of their credentialing. So I just wanted to give that quick overview that I have been opposing that division fire safety take on the salt energy efficiencies

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: forward.

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: So I thought what I'd do, I looked at the red line version and saw on page 17, section two, the adoption of the residential building code. Real briefly, we have a building called up mid off for three units and up that's causing the option to build a company. Sorry.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: So I think we're at page three.

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Sorry.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: You said section two?

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Yes. Yep. Yeah,

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: that's okay, anyways. Okay, got it. So

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: we do not have a building called for one and two family dwellings. There is a national, or an international residential building called referred to as the IRC, for one and two family dwellings. We currently do not adopt that standard. We have some provisions in our rules, our demiplier and building safety code. So we do regulate them, we just don't have a specific building code for those types. So there's a lot of advocacy work and a lot of pressure coming from different sources that we should adopt this one and two family building code. The next is being that maybe this would improve energy efficiency, which is in, I think, the first couple paragraphs of this bill, it alludes to that the division has no statewide residential building code. Just for transparency, if we adopted the IRC, we would delete the whole entire chapter on energy efficiency out of that IRC because it conflicts with the energy efficiency rules and standards adopted by public service. So, I think where you would gain some benefits might be from a building science perspective, right? But there are, I'm gonna get to this. I do support doing this assessment and providing the report by 01/15/2027 in this section. We are working on it currently now, believe it or not, we've been working on it for about a year. But I will have a recommendation as to if we did adopt it, this is what that standard would look like, and this is how we would do it. But there's a lot to it, what's the impact on affordability, There, you know, who's a design professional for one and two family dwellings? Is there an architect? Right now, architect is a design professional in the cold world. So anyways, I support desk, gonna work on that, it's best of Canada. New focus on discussions about this energy efficiency market, going back real quick to 2020. The Division of Fire Safety was really put under the gun here to develop an energy efficiency module pertaining to our electricians, plumbers, gas and oil techs. And that's about 9,000 roughly trained people that we license and who are certified in those four professions. We had to mesh this new curriculum for this module into all the continuing ed programs that belong under our umbrella. Was about 125 continuing ed providers that had to incorporate this education module into their continuing ed playground so that we were not going to hold up the issuance of license renewals to all these trade professions. I think that module definitely needs to be redone, It doesn't serve any purpose. It is twenty minutes in length, and the reason it's twenty minutes in length is because we have to incorporate that into all our existing curriculum without changing the hours on our continuing app for all these trade professions, because those are all done by rule. So, electrical rules, plumbing rules, and our fire prevention rules all dictate what those continue and have hours of it. We would have to promulgate all, change all those rules to incorporate this extra education module into that program. So the way the language is written right now is the energy module costume address the effects of energy, airflow, moisture management dynamics of the building as an integrated system, and include education, state and utility incentives relevant to the profession. There's, I'm here to do this, that detailed of a, well, first of all, we don't have any expertise just like OPR. So we're gonna have to rely on other agencies that have expertise on this energy efficiency, and work in partnership, so that I can have a program that can be, again, meshed in through all our existing curriculum stuff. And so at the end of the day here, I'm just, I do have some proposed language I'll send to you to make this language more broad, so that it refers people to more information on incentives and stuff like this. But at the end of the day, even on the health side, I asked whether this education module was even necessary, okay? You're looking at gas techs, oil techs, plumbers and electricians who we see tons of education in this environment from manufacturers, from seminars they go through, and they're just in curriculum. So I just ask this committee to consider whether this education module is best served, maybe it's efficiency for law, or some other entity that houses this education material, but connecting it to license, I'm just telling you, a real challenge because we have universal licensing, we have military reciprocity agreements, I have state to state reciprocity agreements with other states on electrical employment. And we also just joined, for example, the National Electrical Reciprocity Alliance, where states from across the country, if they meet criteria, they can obtain a license here. So on one end, I'm trying to get licenses out to qualified people as quickly as I can, and bring qualified people into Vermont to do work. But then on the same time, I'm putting out this twenty minute education module that just doesn't serve its needs. But I want to be clear, I support energy efficiency education. I just don't know if that's the right platform that's following all this in all these professions and stuff. Is there a better way that we could get better education out there academically to our current professions. That's all.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: To that point,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: with your interactions with other states and the risk of the agreements, do you know how other states have incorporated energy efficiency training? Is that? I don't. You don't know that? Okay. So I'm wondering if other states have it as a requirement of licensure, if it's a separate type of module or it's voluntary or required, but not part of licensure, so I don't know.

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: I really don't know. That's a good question, but Sandy may I'm

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: asking that. Okay, I can figure it out.

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: Well, basically the way this sits right now is, for the past six years, we've had the same module online, and all our renewals, which is, that's several thousand, have taken the same exact module over and over again. It does not make sense the way this is set up right now. And to have people instruct and stuff to people that have taken it twice already, it's not productive at all. And then again, what's your target audience? Like, what is your, like, contractors and builders a relevant audience for energy efficiency training and education? I would think so. I just No. As far as the passport as well as I participate on all this stuff, have them for a number of years. And will say on the health side, Doctor. Rutland, it includes some things that we've suggested. So he did remove the commission of oil inspectors out of the mill, which I thought was nice. Thank you for the doing that way. They have nothing to do with energy, if I should say so. In good spirit, there's been a lot of communication by people.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: I have a number of questions, other folks have questions? Okay, I'm

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: going to back up in here. You mentioned that you thought it would make sense to have the energy efficiency program in whatever form start as a grassroots effort.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: What do you mean

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: by that? I think what we've said is just my opinion about it. With all the other trade professions out, we regulate in house, whether it's fire alarm installers, sprinkler installers, emergency generator installers, wide range of folks, these folks are educated and trained, and then there's a national entity or some type of qualifying entity that will say, you're qualified to be doing this specific type of work. And then what you do is you rely on those particular credentials to allow these people to do a certain work, just like our electricians and plumbers and so forth. I'm not sure there's anything out there for energy efficiency that we have now, right? We don't have like a, I don't know of any state entity that issues any kind of certification to an energy efficiency person that says, with this certification you can do a E, C, and D. And so when I say grassroots, you can put all the regulations you want, but if somebody doesn't know how to properly install a window, or doesn't know how to properly insulate and seal around the window, you're still going to do, for example,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: a blower door test, and you're gonna fail that test if you haven't done the work properly. So I think I'm still unclear on that because are you, you're saying that it would, you're, that the grassroots is the relying on a national entity to do the certification, it's just saying, okay, I'm getting this, and then, but you're also not aware of any national entity that does this?

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: No, there are national entities out there that do this. Okay. It's costly, and I think that's been discussed in our task force over the years, but it comes with a price tag, and if you're looking for recommendations, I think there's enough smart people here in Vermont in the energy efficiency landscape, where a program could be designed and made it voluntary and somehow with some type of incentive to get these contractors to want to learn and then receive some type of credentialing and they can be volunteers so that they know what they're doing. So when they go out and build a house, they know how to put the window in, and I'm not knocking what doing, but the energy efficiency landscape is complex. It is. That's why we're not energy efficiency experts by any means in fire safety. Our mission is to try and prevent fire fatalities in any race.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, but you also have oversight over the electrical licensing board, the plumbing licensing board, etcetera. And so, I'll just say, like from the asset, it seems logical that your shop would be the place for this to land. But I hear you that like you have no expertise or bandwidth, But when I hear that, I hear dollar signs, is that with funding, you could have the expertise and you could have the bandwidth. And so I'm wondering, and you're also saying like, you know what it takes to stand up the program. Do you have, like, if we were to say, we would like you to do this, do you have a dollar figure in mind? Do you like, could you describe what that would look like

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: to stand up I for a remember years ago, put a rough draft together, not knowing what I know now, because over the past three years, working with everybody, I've learned quite a bit. You're into several million dollars, and you're talking about, and again, building that program without having the base level people that can do it, that's what my opposition has been, is that if you have people that can do the work and so forth, and then you want to build a program and say, oh, hey, I've got all these contractors out here that can do this, that's a lot easier than trying to do this, pouring millions of dollars into a program where people don't have the training and the credentialing to do it. And so that's been my, kind of my perspective. To your point, it is very logical when they're sitting on the outside to say, Director D'Roche does a lot of stuff here, this makes logical sense to send it over to Fire Safety. So logically, you're looking at it from that perspective, I understand that. It's not a, I'm not gonna argue, not gonna argue at all, but what I'm trying to get to is how set that program up under all the affordable housing pressures and realities that exist today too.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, because I would also say too, it feels a little chicken and egg, you know, like

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: we can't decide if we have

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: the expertise, especially on the expertise, so because it's not signed, there's, I'm, and again, I'm not suggesting that we actually do this, but I'm trying to, you know, problem solve out loud, I But thinking about what, like what if you had a position specifically dedicated to this to help design this program? And I'm thinking now about the animal cruelty position that we created. Was no, that like animal cruelty had, I'm using this just as analogy, there had, there's had a lot of problems with it. And there was sort of this circling of like, whose responsibility is it? And no one really owned it. And then we ended up saying, okay, we're just going to create a position and they're going be responsible for designing the structure, the system for addressing animal cruelty. Knowing

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: that we were

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: starting from scratch with that as a topic and faith, well, that's not totally true, but, but at least it identified where that topic needed to live. Like who, like what department was responsible for that? And so I guess I'm thinking about, again, spitballing here a little bit, but, and happy to be wrong about all of this, but I'm wondering about that as a possibility to get a position to start designing the program, say this is what it would take to flesh this out and

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: sort of like we did with the

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: other one. A couple of things

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: there. Think there's, with the creation of these task force over the past three years, I think, the intent was, and the messaging from the legislature was to do exactly what you're stipulating or meeting to. And my opinion is because there's been so many stakeholders involved in that process. That is good. And I don't think there's been pretty much idle, right? You come out with the recommendations and then the pressure of how can I fulfill these recommendations comes to reality? And then it's just one year after another, we'll probably know what forty years have gone by. But I would ask to go back to the original problem that I'm trying to solve, and that is improving. And again, I don't want any the efficiencies. If we're going to improve the compliance failure rate from a performance measure, right, that a particular structure is failing this performance measure, why is that occurring? Why is that particular failure occurring? And it's occurring because we don't have folks that understand and are trained to build to these standards. And that's what the problem is. So even if I hire somebody, or I devote some of my staff resources to say, well, how do we build this program? The root problem is that least that's been presented to me as compliance failed rates. In the commercial sector, you see higher compliance rates because there's design professionals that are more involved, and you don't see that as much on the residential side. And so I understand totally what you're saying. It is the way that I kind of work my everyday is like, what's this problem? And how am I going to solve that? And this has been very complicated.

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: I'm thinking of another question. Thank

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: you. I mean, in addition to the sort of building compliance rate that you brought up, it also seems like the problem is the consumer problem when people are working with professionals who they're trusting with either remodeling their home or building a new home for them, they're not getting the quality of work that they are paying for. So it does become an affordability issue. I mean, we heard OPR talking about the fraud issue. So that's on one extreme is that there's acts of fraud happening. And on the other, more in the middle, it's just some of the quality of the workmanship is not very good. And so people are having to pay for fixing problems that they shouldn't have to fix because they got shoddy workmanship to begin with. And if we're not meeting energy efficiency goals, then people are paying more for heating and cooling of their homes too. So it is both a safety issue, but also consumer protection, financial consumer protection issue. I hear you that it's complicated to fix, but it does, I think I was one of the people that was like, oh, it should be fire and building safety, you know, your division, and that it does make sense for you to have some oversight of the building safety part of

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: it too, in addition to

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: the fire safety part of it.

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: I mean, do have codes and standards that we do enforce on one to two family dwellings, electrical wiring, heating, all that stuff has to be done by certified people. Would get scale truss rods from the lumber company for trusses and floor assemblies. So it is, it's not, and they get inspected. Our fire marshals and our inspectors go out and inspect the green occupancy in these one, two family dwellings. So where is all this selling on? That's a year. It's all is that's a whole of Absolutely. Yeah. You're gonna Yeah. I'm gonna about my agents. So you my role is executive director. Which agency do you align with? Are you a positive government agency or are you a nonprofit? No, I work for the Department of Public Safety. Yeah. So you've got the authority to do this if you have the expertise? Correct. Except for single things on our occupying office.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Any other questions at this point? I do actually have one other question, which is related to the education module. Because right now,

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: see the, if I can find it here,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: it's the language, oh, there it is. So it's, for us, it's the page eight, line 17 through 20 about updating the consider recommendations around the stakeholders and update the modules as necessary. Right now, it's the OBR that is doing that. One hypothesis is that it should be you all

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: that's doing that. As far as? Reviewing the modules and updating them. We can review it. We just don't have any expertise on the material.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Sounds like you

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: have a business. I don't know what the energy efficiency incentives are, and I certainly don't know how to, how to design airflow.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Can we hear from energy,

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: or proficiency or not? It does seem

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: like maybe that's their wheelhouse. Everyone else is saying this is not our wheelhouse, so maybe it's theirs.

[Michael Desrochers (Executive Director, Vermont Division of Fire Safety)]: And I would agree with my own as far as the clear some patient on his tummy, or against the limitation of the logical. Okay,

[Committee Assistant/IT (Unidentified)]: great. Any other questions? Okay,

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: well thank you so much.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: No, thank you.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, okay. And we're going

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: to move now to Juanicipas Rutu,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: who is not previous on our list, but Mr. Brewer can be with us today. So

[Sandy Vitzthum (Architect; member, Vermont Builders & Remodelers Association)]: yes, go ahead and introduce yourself to Merkin. Thank you very much. My name is Sandy Bitschom. I grew up in Montpelier. I've practicing here my whole life. From the beginning, I've been a sustainable design fanatic. And I've also, you specialized in working with home builders and to the extent of teaching them, I help organize classes for builders. I also do small commercial work, I can talk a little bit about CVs, which we haven't covered such today. How many minutes would you like to take?

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: We're going to adjourn, Amy's adjourn at twelve, so about twenty minutes.

[Sandy Vitzthum (Architect; member, Vermont Builders & Remodelers Association)]: I will be as brief as I can. I thought I would only have five. But then I'm trying to take in Andrew's comments as well for VPRA. I am a member of VPRA, so I can speak for them. Our number one goal for the home builders, and for me personally as an architect, has been to align with other states to help the building community be better at what they do. Builders, the number one thing they need is consistency for goals. When it changes, there's so much money involved, it's horrible. One case where a building fails and you're build out a business. An online builder, by accident, could go out of business. It's a really big problem, and it could once solved effort. I can think of like 10 examples in my head right now, They make a family lose their family, they're all their shameless. And there's a lot of fun. So there is most definitely a fraud issue involved. I have heard many times people walking away without resolving the finance part. The huge part that I focus on is the competence issue. So the number one goal that BBRA has been advocating for for four years now is to have a unified authority over anything that didn't need construction. And it needs to be efficient, but one is a small state. Our whole state is the size of many counties in The US, and actually the size of many cities in The US, and a one stop place. And by one stop, it is critical that one set of rule makers, people who come and look at sites during normal work, and then even enforcers if something happens, and the analysts of the building actually breaks down, that they all are under one god. We would like it to be like the roachers. And the reason is, buyer safety is amazing at their job. And because they're so amazing, they keep getting these extra responsibilities, and he's codified. They are over. There's no doubt about it. But they have taken on billing codes in general back when I was very young, like in the 80s. They have taken on accessibility, and they didn't think they had asked me, but guess what? Within five years, every single marshal was trained, and they are actually the best person to ask if you can't figure out where the web bar goes. They actually have a little page on their website. They have taken on rentals. That was a huge thing. Was it two years ago? They were not excited about that. But guess what? They have revolutionized how Vermont deals with rental, the life conditions, safety conditions inside an apartment. They took on condoms, when we get resold, they have to do inspections. That took a lot. So I'm actually almost crying with Julie to hear it. Then her Watson

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: even bring up the idea

[Sandy Vitzthum (Architect; member, Vermont Builders & Remodelers Association)]: of that, could there be someone who is inserted in this process? Because I think that Senator Katz, who's represented a candle who's been working so hard on this issue for so long, everyone's circling around the issue of not wanting to overburden the best enemy for us. How can we do this? So what AIA Vermont came up with, and BBRA, so to speak of BBRAs we have today, is a chart. I have sat on the working group committee for two years, and they also have representative, they came up with a plan, a four year plan, about how the whole show could coalesce underneath fire safety. There are different routes. The easiest route is to deal with public buildings, because public safety already takes care of. If you had a DMV, like a air painting, and you rented your house one day ever, they have jurisdiction in your house. If you have a duplex, they have jurisdiction, so we could focus on that and trickle down to get owner occupied. It would have an immediate benefit for the whole city. Fire Safety is really good at training, and they have a cool process, which is not legal, ending up with lawsuits, where all their inspectors on job sites, they can actually help journey them and improve their work. So it helps prevent problems before they happen. And there's kind of a continuous improvement circle where people can learn and they can actually over time improve the rules. I found a problem once I submitted my rule request for daycares and lo and behold, in the last code update, it was in there. And that will help towns like Greensboro be able to build affordable daycares. It's amazing that it doesn't need lawyers or lawsuits. Okay. So, I would hope that if you do hear this bill another time, that BBRA could speak again and share their timeline, because there is a way this could be done. Today, I want to focus my comments on one provision that we are very nervous about. So in this kind of Vermont manageable way of going step by step to get to where we're going, You want to be careful not to set up new fiefdoms, new kingdoms, and new silos that prevent going in the right direction. And that number one problem is the municipal authority clause. I believe it's in this, the parts of it are in Sessions ten, eleven, and 12. I can't tell you the pages. Page 14. Thank you so much. So, there is a little sub provision in there that I need to talk about separately, but this is done with the best of intentions, we understand that. It's an idea of getting something going because some towns have financial ability to get some kind of enforcement going soon, but it will be a disaster for the construction industry. We need consistency. I'm going to give you a quick example. I've been working on three buildings in Burlington. They are now four families and they try to add two payments to each building. So, would be six unit buildings totally under five or six feet, but they have a memorandum of understanding with Burlington. So, the inspector looking at this project is in Burlington. We had our first meeting with her and she said that entire building needs to be sprinkled. That's about $60,000 That's like way over, probably hitting 2 and $40,000 with all of the other changes. Starts to make that project unaffordable. In the building codes, I can just ask one of my friends at the Center of Fire Safety and they can answer whether she's correct or not, Or if she actually makes a decision, we could appeal it up. So this idea of having a state authority that equalizes across the state for consistency, where appeals can rise up, variances can rise up, but it lets the local people on the ground do the work. That's a great model for the energy phones as well. I couldn't, I wouldn't have that option if Burlington had its own billing of COVID department, I wouldn't have the option of asking up to fire safety. So it's a really critical and especially if that already started to be built without sprinklers and then the sprinkler to actually you tear work out. That would be crazy. Can you see the question

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: about that? Of course. So, because my understanding of this was that the municipalities themselves would not be setting their own code because there's just one state code. It is just about the municipalities enforcing that code. The code would be the same from municipality to municipality, but there is no enforcement mechanisms. So And so they're just saying, we would like to enforce this uniform code. Well, way this

[Sandy Vitzthum (Architect; member, Vermont Builders & Remodelers Association)]: is written right now, they can adopt the code. We don't know if they make insignificant changes to it. So there is the possibility, the way you think, the way it's written right now, that there could be code differences. For instance, there might be a difference to Whether you have a HRS rater or not, you force HRS rater and do a certificate for every single building. And then within the code, we now have regular and we have stretch code. And then actually right now we have four. So we have twenty twenty and twenty twenty four. So within that period, the problem is within two very quick examples, because it's such a critical thing that you ask, it's all about interpretation. And if you look at the building codes, chapter one is all about who gets to have jurisdiction to interpret. So what happens all the time is that the interpretation varies wildly from district to district. I framed out a house in South Bend, Indiana with normal fire, stairway width. It got framed out before the inspector came and they said, Oh, no no in South Bend you have to have 36 inches there between the handrails so the strict there is sizes three inches wider they were about to force us to tear out that whole floor system to move this air out, and I appealed to the national, but then the Coca Cola got a letter, got fixed. There's no, what you're proposing has no higher level for consistency to calm things down. Another example is I was working on a house in North Carolina, where the local guy came, and he told the mason to build a chimney a certain way. The chimney went up. Two or three days later, the county man came by and made him tear out the fireplace below the throat to to build the throat to his right foot that the cost went directly to the owner and many owners would say, sorry, contractor, you have to pay for that. So, you see times, times a million maybe, but there's so many decisions in each building that we make. And then if you across the state, it's just overwhelming to us and we get incredibly freaked out by this permission. I hope this makes sense. Consistency is everything. But we do need the safe harbor clause, and this is not a political reason. Up until November, there was no Arby's software to certify. So things have been, we've had to certify using 2020 code. And for commercial buildings, there's still no current software. AIA Iran has directed members to certify the 2020. We have to certify the 2020. Anything that was built last fall is getting built right now. So this statute, the problem won't be fixed until July, but buildings are starting construction right now, and if there were ever a lawsuit, the trigger would be the day of construction. And so there's a huge problem right now that we can have had to certify using old software because the new software was not available. That is why we're asking for the safe harbor. It's a completely, it a shortcoming that we couldn't get the software before the code became effective.

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: Sorry, can I ask you

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: more about So, is there software now for the 2024

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: code? For RVs. For RVs, but not for seats. Correct.

[Sandy Vitzthum (Architect; member, Vermont Builders & Remodelers Association)]: But the problem is that only became available after most houses for the spring were designed in France. So, everything could be certified now, but it turns out that if something has to be changed, that turns into a price problem. Like, who pays for that? Does the architect pay for it? Does the contractor pay for it? Does the builder pay for it? It's a serious kind of in the weeds problem, which is why the State Farm is asked for it. Just to make it legally clear, it's significant, lawsuits could come up ten or fifteen years from now, because there's no statute or proposed, it would help to have this language just to avoid a long, drawn out lawsuit. All right, so to get to answer questions from before, yeah. I'm sorry, I'm down. Just

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: to say it out loud, I have a lot of hesitations about the state harbor provision.

[Sandy Vitzthum (Architect; member, Vermont Builders & Remodelers Association)]: Okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: And I'm wondering, because there's no statute proposed, if

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: we were to

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: do that instead, if that would

[Sandy Vitzthum (Architect; member, Vermont Builders & Remodelers Association)]: satisfy. Well, statute proposed would be wonderful. And I think that that would help. So that would narrow it down to lawsuits and confrontations that happen for the next whatever years. So that would definitely help. Okay. That is kind of your land, little negotiation there. So, I have in my little position, don't know if I can say yes.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I have this. Have joined.

[Sandy Vitzthum (Architect; member, Vermont Builders & Remodelers Association)]: That's really brilliant. It's a good, wow. Okay.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: And I'm not saying that that's a

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: good idea. I'm just thinking all that again.

[Sandy Vitzthum (Architect; member, Vermont Builders & Remodelers Association)]: So I'm going to turn this into my closing remarks to answer the question about how is this done by training for efficiency in other states, and also the budget for the special certifications? Can I answer both? They're doing the aliens, but basically make sure I give you factual answers. So in most other states, the energy code is simply one of the domain codes. There's no separation because, and I've always wanted to give public service credit for stepping in when there was a severe problem. They stepped in, but it doesn't fit in their real house, just like competence does not fit in the Secretary of State's wheelhouse. So, what happens in every other state that I'm aware of is you just get your builders and all of the trades and all of the design professions, we just get continuing that. And it's just one of the options for that year. And we just manage it ourselves. It's that simple. It's a non issue. In Connecticut, they just went to the twenty twenty one codes. In their state, all of the contractors get trained before the code goes into effect. Can you imagine such a thing? So the day it goes into effect, all the software is ready, everyone's been trained, everyone's taken a test.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Boom.

[Sandy Vitzthum (Architect; member, Vermont Builders & Remodelers Association)]: Applying for a project is just one little paragraph or its own page in a construction set. It's all part of one picture. And that's why Vermont is so very strange right now. The question about special certifications, to my knowledge, they are mostly voluntary things that homeowners do to improve the value of their home. There's one state that recognizes, according to the information I have, one state which is Nevada, that recognizes special certifications as part of their licensure program. So thank you for your time. I hope I answered. There's a lot more here, but I think it's more important to stick to your schedule. Hopefully, you will let me be or I speak again sometime. A lot of people may need to take a little

[Jen Cohen (Director, Office of Professional Regulation)]: bit more testimony on this. We really hope this bill

[Sandy Vitzthum (Architect; member, Vermont Builders & Remodelers Association)]: passes this year, right through signature from the governor. We want to help you. Super.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Yes. I'm just thinking out loud here. I'm also thinking we need to, no, we can't, but we did figure out some agenda items for tomorrow.

[Lauren Hibbert (Deputy Secretary of State)]: So tomorrow we're looking, we will be hearing from Matt Chapman on the bottle bill.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I haven't gotten a preview on that, but it's like I said, here we go today. And then we'll take up a little bit more on 09:40 and we'll do an introduction on the Fish and Wildlife Miss Langhisville. So my best to appreciate you for tomorrow. And with that, we are adjourned. Thank you.