 September 4th, this is Senate government operations and we're going to be looking at a couple of different things today. We're looking at the off the shelf bill or the lessons learned bill, whatever we're calling it. And first of all, I guess my question is, does anybody who's joined us have a time constraint so that they would need to leave early or anybody? I do. You do? Okay. I see you're in your car again. Oh, yes. And that's what I got to meet somebody around two o'clock. So you got me for an hour or 55 minutes. Oh, yours won't take anywhere near that long. And I don't know. Jack Anderson had called me this morning. And I have not had three minutes to return the call. But you understand what we're trying to do here. We're trying to say, should we leave in permanent statute the ability for the sheriffs to access the emergency funds, the emergency funds? Oh, Anthony, do you want to take over? Sure. So you heard the beginning of the beginning of the question, right? Talking about the use of the money, federal monies and how things worked out, whether it was adequate, whether you have other budget needs, whatnot. So you want to just talk to us a little bit about that? Yes. On the county side, if the side judges don't have any issues, just leave the wording as is. Just continue it on for, I'd say another year until this pandemic is over with. And then I did get an email from Jack stating that he'll talk to his colleagues, the other assistant judges, and the sheriffs will work with the assistant judges to look at maybe some changes down the road with some of the way the sheriffs are publicly funded or not publicly funded. I was going to say, public funded or not? Yes. So that's something, hopefully, we'll work together on this. The pandemic has really put a limelight on this. So we want to be fair, reasonable to everyone, everyone concerned, even our taxpayers, we want to be fair with everyone. I'd say, Brian? Thank you, Senator. So I just want to be clear, many of the provisions in the bill that we're probably going to pass next Thursday have no deadline in terms of an end date to them. They're not sun-setted, but are you suggesting that in your case, Sheriff Fognac, that we should have a sunset date? In other words, the bill's designed to take all the stuff that we did in terms of license deadlines and all that sort of stuff and just put it into a bill that says whenever there's a declared emergency, and we still haven't come up with a wording that is completely 100% right in all cases, but whatever that wording is, whenever there's that emergency again, we don't have to go back and pass the bill again. It's already in statute, but you seem to indicate maybe in your case we should carve out a little bit of it. Well, if the side judges, if they're in agreement, the assistant judges, we could do your wording. I have no issues with that whatsoever. I'm just trying to make sure that without hearing from Jack, that's okay to do. Okay, you mentioned it would be good for one more year, but in our bill it's good forever. Right, and that's that's fine too, because we don't know what the next event's going to be, and like you said, we may never use it again, but at least they'll be there. Okay, Brad, I'm leaving the meeting for a few minutes. I'm going up to a different place. Okay. Go better place. That's an open one. Yeah, all right. Thank you, Sharon. So I'm not sure whether we're talking about having an end date for these provisions, like we had talked before about whether or not they should say these will be in place until such and such like 30 days or 90 days after an emergency is removed. I don't know whether we're talking about doing it that way or not, or were they just being placed all the time? That's a good question, and I don't think we've answered it yet. I know what we're trying to do, but it gets so complicated sometimes to find the exact language that you need. What we want to do, I think, and I don't mean to speak for everybody, but if we find ourselves in the exact position that we found ourselves in March, rather than have to spend two months trying to figure out how to change this little thing and that little thing, all of that will already be in the bill that once there's a declaration of emergency declared, we don't have to do any more legislation. We're leaving it up to the people that know in those cases what the best situation is for them to do. I mean, how they define emergency, because we talked about whether some emergencies have a duration of a couple of days, some might have a duration of a year, like how do you determine whether, which I'm sorry, Allison? No, no, I think this is a good discussion because I think you're right, Brian, we want to have these permanently available when we have a declared emergency, and I think that the duration of up to 90 days is great, and then we could deal, because then it could be a week, a month, 90 days, but then we also could have the option of they could be extended by additional x, additional an extension of the executive order and an extension of the declared state of emergency, whatever it is, the opportunity for them to be extended if necessary, but up to 90 days gives flexibility for a short term one, and then if it's a longer term one, obviously then we would probably turn to the governor to be extending that declaration. The governor is the one, the governor is always the one who declares the emergency though, right? Right, but you know, we could build flex, and you know anyway, that's obvious flexibility is what you're saying, yeah, but if you have the initial full-time opportunity to go in and use these statutes, the statutory opportunities we're creating, it gives that for at least 90 days, and then beyond that it would depend further on extensions of the executive order. Okay, Betsy, did you have your hand up? Yeah, just I was going to note for reference, in Act 100 that addressed COVID-related GovOps emergency provisions, the language in regard to sheriffs being able to use a county's reserve funds with the approval of these assistant judges provides at the time frame in which sheriffs can access those reserve funds extended throughout the duration of the COVID state of emergency and provided that the sunset for access to those funds is two weeks after the day the governor terminates the state of emergency for COVID. So if you wanted to consider that for a reference, yeah. Two weeks seems pretty quick. I thought it was more like 30 days at least, but it doesn't matter so much. I think it's a little quick too. Chris. I think it's the sheriff can, oh, sorry. That's okay, Chris. That will come back, Betsy. Well, go ahead, Betsy, you have more to say, so let's stick with you for a while. I was just going to say the sheriff, I think in discussions in this committee and the sheriff can remind we chose the two weeks as what the committee thought was the potential time frame in which the sheriff would have ongoing emergency needs need to respond to. So I guess whether that's appropriate or whether maybe the sheriff could discuss whether that still seems like the right amount of time. If it came to using the money, it would probably be during the emergency, the declaration, and not really after it, but we did put that two weeks period in. We thought it was just fair. The side judges were agreement with it, so we left it at two weeks. I think if it came down to really need the money, it would be during, like right now, there's still a declaration in place, and if we needed the money, we would ask. And I believe like Wyndham County is the only one that has asked from the side judges any allocation. So are we all set then? Yep, as far as I'm all set, thank you. Was anybody else? I can't see who else is online who might have something to say about this Gwen is here. I don't know if she has any interest in this particular piece of work. I had interrupted Senator Bray to that's true. That's right. Senator Bray. Well, so that as Senator Collin said, it's an easy thing for us to agree to generally. And then when we start to write the details, so the threat yesterday, we spent some time and I'm feeling like there's still a fair amount of openness. And what's that threshold for the emergency that kicks off the provisions? And although I'm not suspicious in any way of what's going on, but does the legislature want to retain some sort of way of responding to a declaration of emergency and say, well, our judgment is otherwise we wouldn't want to have 27 different things all fall out. I mean, you know, go to another way of being regulated or managed because of that declaration. What if I don't know what how there would be controversy, but I just think I want to at least think about that a little bit so that if someone said, well, that's not a full fledged emergency. It's being done for other reasons. So I don't think we're not dealing with any of that now. I'm just thinking that we would want from the checks and balances point of view. Is there anything that we would ever want to say as a legislature about having so many things sort of automatically fall out based on a declaration that we don't either that we don't get to make and that I'm not sure that we ever get to to question or challenge or modify or any of that kind of stuff. So that's a good point, actually, whether we have supposed to get would we ever we as a legislature ever challenge the governor's declaration of emergency? And if so, would we would we even be able to do that? May I ask here with Betsy Ann, how does the state of emergency declaration interplay with the feds? I mean, is there a fed because is there a federal overlay that could be a declared state of emergency nationally? Like could a president declare an emergency and supersede a governor? I don't I just don't think so. Can they? Well, it might be related to a federal emergency, but 20 vsa chapter one provides the governor with that emergency state of emergency authority, and it's based on when there is and what's defined or what's called an all hazards event. And so we I think we had Tucker reviewed that with you the other day. And so it's not necessarily tied to a federal issue, but there might be two ongoing things happening on the federal and state level that are related, and that might constitute an all hazards event, or a state specific just on a state level issue, such as Tropical Storm Irene, for example, just affecting not the nation. But I'm thinking of the darker side. I'm thinking of a state of emergency. We wouldn't agree was a state of emergency that might be imposed in a situation that our state legislature didn't agree with to go to Chris's point. But but wouldn't you title 20 says it's a governor's declared emergency. So this none of this would kick in in a federal declared emergency. Yes, I think exactly, Madam Chair, I think that's how you've been structuring this language. It is based on the governor declaring a state of emergency title 20. And there's I'm sorry, Chris, but and there's no there's no provision at all that allows the let's say to challenge that, obviously, right. Well, this, the governor is exercising this authority through the statutes enacted by the General Assembly. So is the General Assembly that enacted authority for we've given them unbridled power to make those declaration. I wouldn't say unbridled. I mean, there are standards. But yeah, you have delegated to the governor this authority to declare states of emergency and then to act quickly, which I think with the powers granted to the governor in this chapter are for the purpose of nimbleness and responding quickly to these emergency situations that, you know, not in all cases could be addressed by the General Assembly quickly due to the legislative process. If I can throw in here, I thought one of the things we talked about was so the governor declares a state of emergency because the corn crop was all ruined this year. I don't think he could, he or she, but and this this doesn't impact the ability to have open meeting laws or anything like that. I thought that what we talked about was tying all of the things to the state of emergency that would have an impact on that. So if the state of emergency was in Chittenden County because of the flood that does not impede the ability to have to go to select board meetings. So it doesn't kick in just because it's a state of emergency. It has to have an impact on whatever it is. If there's a state of emergency about Irene and it doesn't in five counties and it doesn't have any impact on OPR granting licenses, then it doesn't kick in. It has to be relate, the impact of the declared emergency has to be felt on the, on whatever the issue is that we're dealing with. I thought that we'd already talked about that. So even though even, oh, sorry, go ahead Betsy. Actually, Chris Frey had his hand up earlier as well. Did Chris? Well, so again, you know, some in a certain way it seems like, you know, I'd be impugning some future governor like to even think this way. But it just seems like a valid question to ask. And the other thing is we've seen in some states where things around COVID with masking or not masking or closing or opening the economy or how elections are carried forward that other states have gotten into some serious struggles over trying to manage those things with very different approaches being proposed by the executive versus the legislative brain. So I figure for monarch exceptionalism aside, we could run into something, you know, that might surprise us someday. So I just want to think about it while we're crafting something. I agree with you. I agree with you. You know, we could have a, let's say we had a president, you know, let's say we had an extreme presidential situation where our governor was extremely supportive. And it they chose to do things that we totally did not agree with. That would be our only check on going into something that we didn't want to go into and a state of emergency that we might not want to agree with. So we so we have a couple options here. We can say that the state of emergency has to be supported by the legislature, which is really time consuming and doesn't offer for any nimbleness at all, because if we're not in session, and even in session, how would we do that with in less than two or three months? And or we could just not do this bill at all, because we're afraid that and then what would happen is we would have an emergency and we would have to start all over on each of the issues. But it seems like the other option, another option would be that you declare an emergency, and then you would look at this menu in a way, we'll look at what we're putting together as a menu. And you'd say, well, these are the ones that are going to kick in under this emergency. These other ones are not going to kick in. That's a possibility. That's okay. I think it would still have to be legislated then. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. It would still take a number of months and a number of time for us to do. I'm imagining the governor would pick and choose off the menu as to which things are. No, well, then that's giving him the same unbridled power. But anyway, okay. Are you saying nimble legislature is an oxymoron? Yes. Yeah. That's a we're deliberate, not fair and slow. So you can discussing for this bill, qualifying it seems the circumstances under which this authority can be used based on what the emergency authority is. For example, in the elections one, you have tentatively discussed that the elections provisions, most of them are for a statewide public health related state of emergency. And for the Australian ballot for a municipality's legislative body to decide that the next municipal or municipal elections will be held by Australian ballot, you tentatively discussed tailoring that to a state of emergency affecting that municipality specifically. So, and I think also in Tucker's provisions with what you were talking about, Madam Chair, with the open meeting law, there has to be some sort of impact on that municipality that serves as a basis for why they need to use the special open meeting law provisions. So I think you are addressing that, you know, tailoring the different authorities in this bill based on how broad you want the emergency power to be tailored to a specific circumstance. Do we need to do more to assure everybody that we're not going to have Putney refusing to have an open meeting laws because there's a Chittenden County flood. I mean, I think that Betsy Ann is right. We've tried to tie it to the not only to the type of emergency, but that it has to have an impact on the entity that's going to use the provisions, whether it's a town or OPR or the medical board. It isn't just an open ability for them to do it just because there's a declared state of emergency. Right. Okay. It might be helpful. Excuse me for the committee moving forward to look at each area that you're working in and determine what the test should be. So the example that you've brought up again and again is the open meeting law. All of those provisions deal with being dislocated from your physical meeting space, not being able to use it. That is ultimately where you will build that test. Does the emergency make it so that the public body can no longer meet in that designated physical location? And how do we provide them with authority to still hold their meeting while they're dislocated? If you look at each of the policy areas that you're working in in this bill, there's likely going to be an obvious test that was exposed during the COVID response. What was the issue that we were resolving? And how do we make sure that when that issue resurfaces in the future, this is automatically triggered during the state of emergency? And to help frame some of the discussion that you've just had for the last five minutes so that you can make your policy choices, the way that the COVID response played out was that you had to address discrete areas of law where the governor did not have authority to supersede statute at that point during the state of emergency. So as you've said, you had to take a couple months to address those areas to make sure that the response played out according to your policy vision. What you are doing with this bill is flipping that. You are giving advance permission for those things to play out according to your vision. If you don't like the way that they are playing out, then you would have to spend the time to come back and pull that power away. So those are the two models, the one you've worked with in the past and the one that you may be proposing in this bill. It just seems complicated, not complicated, but it seems like what you're proposing Tucker, which kind of makes sense, changes the bill quite a bit and there would be a lot more involved in it if we're going to go through each policy and determine what the triggers are. Let's say it's a bad thing, it's just different. I don't think I agree with you, Anthony. I think we've already done that in a way. In the open meeting laws, for example, it says that they do not have the ability to meet physically together in a meeting. I mean, it says that. It's more than just being dislocated from there. There's an emergency that prohibits them from meeting together. When we talked with the medical board yesterday, I think that it was very clear and with OPR that it was an emergency that impacted their ability to get their boards together. So I think we've already done that in many of them. We may need to be a little more specific in some of them, but I think that the concept is already there that we've talked about. I guess I see this as pretty straightforward. I may be all wet here, but it seems to me that it's pretty straightforward. It says if you're in this situation, this is what you can do to mitigate the impact of that situation. Short of not having things there, it means that in November, we're not going to be able to do anything. And if the state of emergency is undeclared and then it comes back, or there's a different state of emergency, because if there's something else, a state of emergency related not to COVID-19 that has an impact on some of these areas, we won't have the ability to respond to it at all. And in January, if there is no more state of emergency, or there's a new one, we will have to start all over. So I'm understanding us being cautious, but I think that I don't know. I thought it was pretty straightforward, too, until we started talking about it, to tell you the truth. I'm willing to go with what you said. I thought we were on the right track and we were getting there, and then this conversation sort of moved me off track again. I still think we're on track. And I would agree with Tucker that each area, as long as we are clear in each area, what is the triggering situation, we're fine. I think, and guess what? If it's not fine, we'll fix it. And is it still the idea that the governor would be able to, I guess it would be the governor would sort of pick and choose sort of like a menu of things that could change, or is it a whole package? No, no. If the governor declares a state of emergency and it has this impact on this thing. On an area, on the whole state, on the area, whatever. Right. But he doesn't get to say, okay, we're going to adopt the open meeting ones, but we're not going to adopt the LPR ones. If the state of emergency has that impact on that particular entity, I mean, he doesn't choose which ones. He's basically choosing the area. I think that makes a lot of sense now. It's becoming more clear. Chris? My job today is make things harder, I think. So can Peggy, can you mute him? So if there's, I just want to be clear on these thresholds and triggers and stuff like that. And so if there's a question as to whether or not that state of emergency applies to area of operation X, who's the arbiter? How do you decide? We were here in person to make those decisions. If we're setting something up as a contingency, I'm just thinking, you know, you would generally, we do things like have an arbiter or a way of appealing or something that just brings balance back into the equation. That's a good point. That wasn't so bad. So who would be the arbiter? Chris, would you like to be the arbiter? Yeah, who wants the arbiter? May I just make a couple of comments about this? So we see the dilemma that you have. I would caution you not to include too much detail in terms of directives to the governor on the state of emergency. You're, I think the maximum amount of time that the legislature would not be in session is about six months. And during that interim, you do have the joint fiscal committee and you did actually utilize the joint fiscal committee as a bit of an arbiter during your recess here. So that might, you might consider providing them some level of jurisdiction. But again, I would caution you not to give away so much authority to something like the joint fiscal office that you stymie the governor's ability to act in an emergency, which is really what you need him or her to be able to do. So can I just respond to that a little bit? I think that when we talked to the medical board and OPR yesterday, they did have an arbiter or they did have that oversight because the medical board said that it would, they would only kick that in an emergency with the okay of the commissioner of health. And the secret and OPR said the same thing, but using the secretary of state. So there is that, that other eye there, it doesn't just, and we could do the same thing around if it's open meeting, maybe it's the secretary of state that has that that says with that it goes into effect with the upon consultation or something or approval with the secretary of state. We could do that for the different areas, I think, because we've already done it for those two. So the government would make those declarations based on consultation with these other leaders? Not the declaration. The declaration of emergency is done, but for those, for these, for them to, in that case, for the directors to make those decisions and usurp the power of the boards, they would have to have the okay by the department of the commissioner of health or the secretary of state. Or in the instance of municipalities, I mean, what, what you're talking about is granting them some of these authorities based on the circumstance. Is it a geographic area that the declaration refers to? Or is it a timeframe that the declaration refers to? And municipalities would have the choice of whether or not they wanted to avail themselves of the authority that was granted in those particular circumstances. So in one sense, it seems like what we're doing in this conversation is we're actually clarifying what we're intending to do. I don't think we're disagreeing. There's not a lot of debate going on here. It's more like we're, I think, talking it through again, as we've done for the last couple of days of coming to the same conclusions that we tend to agree with where we want to go. Is that fair enough as an assumption? Yeah. Yep. So my point being that in terms of the draft proposal, the conversation we've had so far this afternoon has not led us to make any particular changes in that draft proposal. We're still happy with the direction we're going in, which leads me to believe that what we should do is move on and talk about the election parts of the bill. I agree. You know, put this aside for now, because I think it's been good to talk it through, but that's all we're doing. I think we're going to talk about it so much. We can talk about it again next week, of course. So Anthony, may I make an observation about elections? Sure. I've been thinking a lot about that. And in my opinion, when we talked, when Brian and I went to rules this morning, I said there wouldn't be anything controversial in this bill. The one we're talking about now, the self-bill. Yeah. And I had been thinking about this a lot last night, is that I think the one area that could cause controversy is not the municipal elections necessarily, but the general elections. Because there was some discomfort with the way it rolled out and some disagreement about how it should happen. And I wondered if, since we won't have a general election for two more years, right, am I right about that? The Secretary of State's office elections would not be impacted until two years from now. So I wondered if we should actually just not even put that, those elections in there to avoid any possibility that this bill gets tanked because of that. That's just an observation. I concur. Bless us more. To no one's surprise probably. No, that makes sense. Madam Chair, Mr. Winter just has his hand up, I think, in case you can't see him. Yeah, I can't see him. Chris, are you there somewhere? I am there. Thank you, Senator. May I make a brief comment? You may. Thank you. Great to see everybody again, and I'm glad you're talking about this. It's a really difficult thing that you're struggling with. Like you have all said, it would have been really tough for us if COVID had come down when you weren't in session. It was hard enough to get things up and moving on a temporary basis while you were in session. So I appreciate the discussion, but I would echo what Senator White said, which is that the elections provisions are maybe some of, I don't want to say they're more serious than any of these other issues you've got here, but perhaps more controversial. And I think we'd want to move very carefully with these. And I agree that the general election provisions, if you want to put something in place permanently for a declared state of emergency, that maybe you wait until your next session to really vet those, especially with all the stakeholders, all the people who are interested in elections and voting. Perhaps with the exception of some local elections provisions, that's one of the things we're hearing about is four town meeting, annual meetings, budget vote, real budget votes that are coming up early next year to perhaps have something to address that, which is our very limited need. But with respect to general elections, I think we can wait and perhaps make sure we vet that a little bit more before we make changes. Alison. Thanks, Anthony. Chris, I appreciate that. We also, we've had the benefit of living through the primary and living that experience. And it will be, I think, additive for our whatever we do in lessons learned on elections and whatever provisions we do put in place as opportunities for future disasters to have lived through a general election and have the input and feedback from that experience before we, before we make this move. So I would, I would agree with our chair and I would add our, we can always do it as a bill in the next year. And I would, I would suggest we, we do that and wait until we've actually lived this experience. I'm sorry, Chris. Sorry, the one other thing that I would add is that there's another piece to this elections piece, which is the timing. If you recall, the temporary elections procedures were good for the 2020 election cycle because we were really concerned that the state of emergency would be lifted and we'd be left halfway through a vote by mail plan or something like that left holding the bag and be in a tough spot. So there's some consideration to be had, I think, around how long after a state of emergency, perhaps the temporary elections procedures could stay in effect. I think there also might be a discussion in the upcoming session, depending on how successful we are with the general election, I think there will probably be people who will propose that we do mail and voting all the time. So there'll be a broader conversation around that idea. So it's not just during emergencies, but it's just becomes a regular way of going about our business. True. So Christopher. Yeah. So just a quick question. Have we provided for elections at town meeting day in the bill carrying over? Because I'm just wondering if, you know, if we're saying it makes a lot of sense, everything that people said in the last five minutes, I'm just thinking the legislature reconvening how maybe not in person, maybe somewhat, you know, in the limited zoom sense of things. If there is still, unfortunately, a state of emergency, in effect, or another one, will we be able to act in a timely manner, particularly given like warnings for town meeting and all that stuff for them to be able to manage them remotely for one more cycle? So I don't think my suggestion was not that we don't deal with municipal elections, but that we just not deal with the general election. Sure. That we do put provisions in here for municipal and local elections. Okay. I believe this Karen had some is going to have some suggestions. We think Karen and Gwen had come up with some stuff. So these would be new provisions, not provisions that are in the current declaration of emergency. It could be a combination of both. Some things may be in there already and some things haven't been because of town meeting. I mean, I don't know what they're going to come up with, but it does cut part of Betsy's workout by not having to deal with the general election. That's always part of our goal. Yeah. So we kind of agree with that. Then we put that aside in general election and talk about the other aspects of the elections. And do we want to do that now by hearing from the league or Chris? I mean, where do we want to start this conversation or with Betsy in terms of what's in the bill now? I would start it with, I think that Betsy could say what is currently in language that was passed that deals with municipal elections. And then I believe that Karen and Gwen had some suggestions for us for going forward. Is that okay, Betsy? Yeah, sure. So right now the draft that I have is just the draft that we reviewed yesterday. So with the understanding that you would eliminate from that draft anything related to the primary or general, what remains for local elections is stating that in a public health related state of emergency, there would be the suspension of the requirement to get voter signatures in a local election petition for office so that anybody running for local office wouldn't have to get voter signatures in order to be able to run and instead would just file a candidate consent. And in that language that was enacted for all of 2020, although you shortened the deadlines for candidates to file their consents for the primary and general, you did not do that for local elections. So you could still pursue that language. The other, the next provision was in regard to the Secretary of State's temporary elections procedures where you tentatively agreed that during a public health related state of emergency, the Secretary of State would be authorized in consultation with the governor to order or permit applicable appropriate elections procedures. And so if you tailored this to local elections only, you could still use those same provisions if you wanted to still pursue that for local elections, which would it could include requiring town clerks to send ballots to all the registered voters for a local election. The early mail ballot collection stations for local election ballots when the clerks got those ballots back, allowing them to process them in the 30 day window leading up to the election, permitting the drive up car window collection of ballots, and extending the time for clerks to process and count ballots, and extending the voting hours on the day of a local election. That was the non exhaustive list, but that was those were some of the specific examples of what those temporary elections procedures could include. And if you want it also could it also could it also give me this stuff about moving from town meetings to Australian ballot that kind of stuff. Yes. And that was the third provision. And so the main provision that you tailored specifically to local elections was to not withstand the current law requirement that the voters of a municipality first vote to apply the provisions of the Australian ballot system to other municipal meetings in the future to allow the legislative body instead to have that authority. And so the voters having to get together during a public health situation and then vote to say that their municipal meetings will be held by Australian ballot. So you still could pursue that also for local elections. And you talked about it. And actually for that one, as I understood your conversation yesterday, it didn't necessarily have to be a public health related emergency. From my notes, you were discussing that that could just be for any state of emergency that was happening within the municipality, such as a flood, where it wouldn't be safe for the voters to get together first to vote to apply Australian ballot to their next their other municipal upcoming meetings. So are you saying people would still have to get together to take a vote and whether or not to vote? Well, the legislative body would instead have the authority to apply the Australian ballot. And that's when perhaps they could use some of your emergency provisions for meeting remotely to allow them to do that. Jack, wouldn't we want to make sure that somehow the emergency prohibits them from from meeting? I personally hate Australian ballots, but I could see you use the example of a flood, but they need to, timing is so crucial here because they have to do all their warnings by the end of January, I believe, and have that done for the meeting that's going to be in March. There may be a flood that hits in the middle of January, but it's going to be all over. They can hold their meeting in March. So how do we do that? Do we give them some ability to be flexible in the timing of their meetings and the location and the date? I don't know, but there's a period of time there that they have to make a decision, but the impact might not still be held by, I don't know how we do that. My note on the draft was SGO, Discuss Implementation. How do you make this work? The current provision for COVID was just that you applied it to the year 2020 because you know what's going on right now, and so you granted that authority municipalities to their legislative bodies for all of 2020, but yeah, it's perfect point. I mean, how do you tailor this power to future emergencies of a various kind? An emergency might go away before the actual event takes place. The voting takes place, for example, yeah. Well, it might or yeah, that's why I wanted to be flexible. It could either way. So Karen might have some suggestions. I hope so. We'll try. We did talk about this a little bit this morning. One of the issues that came up actually is the language regarding suspending the need for signatures at local elections, and we don't actually know if we would need to do that. Generally speaking, you need 5% of the registered voters to sign to put their signatures on for a candidate or for a petitioned article. You could use electronic signatures. Some towns have done that recently, and 5% is not necessarily a lot of people in most of our communities. So not so much for candidates as for articles that an individual might want put on a ballot. We think that leaving the signature requirement in place is probably reasonable. And then we talked a bit about the local legislative body could just depending on the nature of the emergency again, the local legislative body could vote to use Australian ballot for that particular election, like they wouldn't be overriding the will of the voters for all time just for that particular election or that particular town meeting. They could also vote to change the legislative body, could vote to change the time and place of the meeting, or to move it completely remotely. Those were all provisions that were in the COVID-19 emergency measures that you passed. But if you think about it, so what we have now in COVID is an emergency that as you say spans a long period of time. You might have the snowstorm that we had several years ago. And in that event, maybe what all you do is delay the date of the meeting, right? You don't have to change anything else necessarily. So I think that we're thinking that there's some flexibility here based on, again, the nature and the duration of the emergency and the geographic location of the emergency. We've had a lot of small FEMA qualifying disasters in different parts of the state recently. So Jericho might need to delay its meeting or change the location. But nobody else. It is, it's kind of interesting. And then Gwen is going to jump in and help me out here. Yes, she is. And we talked about what time span, and it may not be necessary really to put in the number of days ahead of time that a local legislative body would need to make the determination to go to Australian ballot if you also gave them the authority to change the time, the date of the meeting. So you might not have to go to Australian ballot if you can just move the meeting out a month. Is that what I'm saying? So we talked about that. And 2680 is the title 172680 is the Australian ballot system legislation. And section D talks about hearings. So we also talked a little bit about what do you do about your public hearings ahead of Australian ballot elections. But I think, again, you can be a little bit flexible about that if you, you know, if you don't put in the number of days ahead of time that you have to make that decision. Or if it's a COVID type long term emergency, you could make that decision 30 days ahead of time. But if it's a flood or a snowstorm, you couldn't. Was that perfectly unclear? It felt like it. No, I don't have anything to add. No, no, you brought up the part about the 2680 subsection G where that hearing requirement is in statute. So the question that Tucker had brought up was, you know, how many have those dates ahead of time. And I think it's probably best not even to put the dates in there and just reference that subsection G. It just gives maximum flexibility. But yeah, I think Karen nailed it when you, if you're able to move the time date place, you know, sometimes you can you don't have to go to the whole rigmarole of, you know, moving to an Australian ballot, it just depends on the state of emergency. But I think the most important thing now is just preparing for a town meeting for 2021, like that would be the most important thing. And I think Act 92 has written it pretty much covers all the bases. Except for that, you know, question, again, that Tucker posed about the hearings that go along with moving to an Australian ballot system. So good job, Karen. You know, is your hand up to that? Yeah. So I hate to say this, but by giving flexibility, we're giving flexibility here in a declared emergency, we're not giving general flexibility. But are we slowly creeping toward home more home rule? Is that what we're doing? I mean, the next thing you know, we'll be giving flexibility without an emergency. My dear, whatever happened to our bill, our pilot bill on that, the house never did anything with it, did they? It's still in their committee. I forgot, I've even forgotten the number of it, but 219. 219, I think. No, 219 was one of your police bills. Oh, anyway, you're right. 160. 106. Right. Doesn't matter. We're not going to hear about it for a while. Not going to hear about it again. Okay. Well, until we until we send it to the next session. Right. In terms of the flexibility, I just want to back up for a minute, Karen and Gwen talk about postponing a meeting, which is good. The flexibility is good, but there's some kind of restraint on how long ago, how long you could forego the meeting for. Could you postpone the meeting for six months, or is there a limit on postponing no more than a month or something? Have you talked about that at all? Does it not matter? Well, again, it would sort of depend on the nature of the particular emergency. And I suppose, well, I suppose what you could do, this is granting the governor more authority, but you could allow him to specify how long, you know, local governments had that authority for. That's a bad sentence. Another bad sentence. Don't keep dissing yourself. You've been actually very clear. I think, well, so here's the other sort of automatic constraint on delaying your meeting for six months, for instance. You don't have a budget. So how are you going to pay your bills? So perhaps the, we talked about like the medical board needing to have the, not okay, but the working with the commissioner of health and OPR working with the secretary of state, perhaps the, if there needs to be any arbiter here, the secretary of state, along with the VLCT and the Turks associations can kind of give some kind of an approval or can set some parameters so that they're not delaying it for six months or adopting their own budget for six months. Yeah, so nothing's abused. They could be the check and balance. Yeah. And I don't know how you do, how you say that, but those are the three bodies that would be the three entities that would be interested in making sure that it was done well, would be the secretary of state, the VLCT and the Turks Association. I think. So can I just check in a little bit in terms of where we're at? Would it be reasonable to say that from here on in that the league folks could talk with Betsy about some of the things we just went over about the delaying of meetings and those local things, the arbiters, the arbiters, the eliminating the general and primary election bill pieces, talking about the arbiters of the decision making, the local elections, the delay of meetings, some of those kinds of things. Would it be reasonable to assume that you guys could work on some language that we could take a look at? Is that, are we at that point? Betsy, you think? Okay. And Karen, you're at that point, right? Because you've already thought it through. Chris. Yeah, we can try to, we can do that certainly, although not this afternoon. Right. No, no, I wasn't saying that. You do it tomorrow. You got all day Saturday. Yeah, okay. Chris. Senator, I just asked that if we could be involved in that, I'd get it in front of Will Center. We get a, we get a ton of those questions and can speak to our experiences, what kind of issues we're seeing and hopefully we can agree on some language would be great. Sure, that'd be wonderful. Brian. I'm just wondering, and I'll take Madam Chair is kind of not warning, but I guess I'm feeling a little nervous feeling like maybe if there's a snowstorm, we're going to cancel a town meeting and move it to another date. I don't see us doing that. I think what we've learned in the primary, hopefully in the general election, I would not be opposed to the electronic signatures for people running for local office and or for issues that might come up town meeting day. I think that's appropriate. So I don't think I'd favor doing away with the requirement that those happen, but I'm wondering whether we're talking about just the next town meeting or is this something that we're going to put in our bill that will take all future town meetings into into account? I think we're talking about town meetings if there's a declared emergency that has that impact on them, the same as we are with OPR and everything else. We're not, it isn't just all town meetings. There has to be a declared emergency that has the impact on their ability to do these things. Okay, great. Yeah, that's what I think. I agree. We all agree with that, right? Yes, that's a given. That's the foundation upon which this lessons learned bill is going forward, I think. So, and we have, have we agreed that we're gonna put aside the general elections issues? Yes. Until until next year when we can have a more robust discussion about them? Yes. Okay, good. So are we ready to sort of stop this conversation for a while? Okay. Yeah. So for Chris, the Secretary of State and the League of Susan Towns and Betsy, we'll get together and hash out the language around the things we've talked about. You'll spend tomorrow doing that. It's gonna be a nice Saturday. And Monday's a holiday, so. True. You could do it on Monday or something. This means we get to work hard doing something else. Well, is it reasonable to expect that and then we'll have something by Tuesday though? If nobody's gonna work over the weekend or Monday. Were we talking about trying to get this bill ready by Thursday or is that next Thursday? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, Thursday. This coming Thursday. Yeah. And Tucker and Betsy Ann smiled and said yes. That's right. They said it was not unreasonably something or other. Right. I qualified. I think these issues are when they, when those great minds get together, I think they'll, it isn't as complicated as we're thinking right now. I think that they have the foundation and what's in the bill now and what we've talked about. I think that if they, if they can come up with some even draft language by Tuesday, and I'd like to, it would be great to be able to get this voted out by on, on Thursday. I agree. And I think that if we can't do it on Thursday, we have to do it by Friday, but it would be great to aim for Thursday. And so we'll have Wednesday also. For you folks to get us something by Tuesday afternoon. I think we can. Okay. Cool. All right. Perfect. Okay. Go to the cafeteria and work it out. Well, that's great. Thank you. May I just say on a personal moment of personal privilege, if you say it three times fast, I want to just say that Tucker's reference, Tucker's reference to a VSA 20, the hazard, the hazard definition has prompted me to have to learn how to use Vermont statutes online, which I have, you know, not used so much. And it's great. I really appreciate it because I have now done chapter two and I've gone and looked it up. It's great. So it's actually incredibly easy. I had not realized it was one of the banner top things on our, anyway, it's great. And I'm so thank you, Tucker, for prompting this education. Well, we're also glad to hear that. Yeah, I'm sure. Thanks, Tucker. So, Anthony, I don't have access to another screen here, so I can't see what else we had on for today. I can. Do you want me to tell you? Sure. Okay. Here we have, we had a German on, on continuing this budget discussion addressing bills coming from the house, beginning a reviewing lessons learned and preparation for potential emergencies bill. We had, we have heard from Gwen, Karen, Betsy Ann and Tucker and Chris and Bill Boniak. And the only person we have yet to hear from who's listed as a witness is Jack Anderson. And we could have continued budget discussions and address any other bills that the house may or may not be taking up, which we've already done when we talked about briefly, S160. 106. 106. We could, we could ask Betsy if there has been any more movement on S220 or S124. Yes, we could. Why don't we do that? And, and I take it Jack Anderson has declined our invitation or is just not. He called me when we were in the Senate session and I have not had a chance to call him back, but I, what I understood while I was madly trying to reposition myself here was that you talked to Bill Boniak about that and he's going to check with Jack Anderson to make sure that the language is okay with the side clerks, side judges. Yeah. Yeah. So Betsy Ann was all ready for a update. All right. I'll start with S220, the professional regulation bill, that was the annual OPR bill, regulation of massage therapy body workers and touch professionals and education for specified professionals on state energy goals. House Gov Ops has voted that out with eight instances of amendment. And I would call them qualify the mostly minor. The first one is just revising the OPR's background check language in accordance with follow up request from BCIC on how it's phrased. So that was the first instance of amendment. And then the second and third instances of amendment just push out the deadlines for clinical pharmacy prescribing. That's the commissioner of health's initial deadline to come up with certain aspects of the state protocol and then the required board rules. So just pushing those deadlines out from January 1, 21 to July 1, 21. The fourth and fifth instances of amendment are in the massage chapter. So if you recall, a requirement for registration is one of those massage professionals was contingent upon the professional providing services to clients in a manner in which the clients remove street clothing and have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The committee proposes striking that street clothing qualification so that it would just come down to person eating clients in a manner in which the clients, sorry. So it would just, they remove the street clothing qualification and it would be if the professional provides the services to clients in a manner in which the clients have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Also they proposed to push out the effective date for the regulation of those professions, the massage professions. I think it was from November 1 of this year. They proposed to push that out to April 1 of next year. So a bit more time to ramp up. And then accordingly, there was that OPR report back three years from the effective date on how the regulations going and whether there should be any changes of that. So they pushed out that report back to be consistent. So a full three years. So April 1, 24. And then they changed the overall effective date. It was July 1. So they changed the overall effective date to be October 1 of this year. And they made no change to the continuing education on state energy goals requirements that as past the Senate had a July 1, 21 effective date and they maintained that. So this morning I reviewed the bill what's house ways and means because that's where the bill is now. And did a walk through with that committee. And they are going to ask the director to come back and just provide some more information on the fee structure. They just have a few follow-up questions as I understand it about how OPR uses its fees to regulate its professions. I think one of their questions that they'll pose to the director is about for the massage professionals. It uses the standard advisor fees which is $75 for initial registration and then $240 for biannual renewal. And they just want to hear more about whether those fees are appropriate. And I think more testimony about whether those fees are going to be appropriate for regulating those new professions. So I think that's where it is now. And I'm actually also scheduled. It seems like the house is wanting to pursue the bill quickly it seems. I'm scheduled also to be in House of Props on that bill on Tuesday to discuss the two positions that go along with the new regulation of the massage professionals. Great. I can give you another update on your S-124. House of Props has been taking testimony on that. And we did another walkthrough of it today. So far they've just discussed some technical corrections that include removing language that was already addressed in S-219, which also addressed law enforcement. I think that was the use of force bill. And so S-219 already made some changes to like the council disciplinary authority over category B offenses. That bill made the excessive use of force first defense change rather than second offense. So right now they're ensuring that S-124 doesn't duplicate what you already did in S-219. And then also just there is a little bit of overlap with S-124 and S-219 in the area of who comes up with the body camera policy. S-219 as enacted seems to indicate that the general assembly would come up with the body camera policy. Whereas as past the Senate, S-124 kept the body camera policy authority with the LEAB. So I think that's one substantive issue to review. House Govops plans much more substantive testimony in the next week. So we'll see what other changes they may propose. But I'll note that I also just did a high level overview of S-124 and House Ways and Means also when I was in there this morning on S-220. Because at least a member who was interested in that dispatch rates issue and S-124 where the commissioner of public safety was required to adopt rules that set forth the rates for dispatch services that DPS provides. And so I know that it sounds like both committees, House Govops and House Ways and Means want to further address that issue as to who has authority to set the dispatch rates, how they're set. So I anticipate some further substantive discussion on that issue also. Great. Anthony, where are we? Well, we could be almost done since it still is a beautiful day out there and the dog needs to be walked, I'm sure. I want to touch space. I want to touch space for a minute though about this letter that I think I forwarded on to folks on the committee. It was one of a couple of letters that I've gotten. I don't know whether others have from the veterans for peace and some other groups who are interested in having a discussion about the role of the, well, I'm not sure how to phrase the question, but who has authority over the National Guard? Should the federal government decide to mobilize them in Vermont for any reason? Has it been going on in some other states around the country where protests have gotten very hot and heavy and there's been some violence and whatnot where the president has talked about sending in the National Guard to quell the concerns of citizens and whatnot. So there seems to be questions about like, who is a guard? Who's authority does the guard come under? Is it the presidents? Is it the governors? Is it the legislatures? What will happen if the federal government decides to declare an emergency in Vermont and decides to move into the National Guard? So these folks have asked us to hold some kind of hearing or meeting to have this conversation with the National Guard, with the veterans groups and a few other folks to be clear as to who where the lines of authority are. Should something like that take place in Vermont, which may seem like a long shot, but on the other hand, the way things are moving around the country doesn't seem like that long of a shot. Seems like it's quite possible down the road that something like that could happen. Does that make sense to people? Yeah. I actually already done something like that earlier, like last year or something with limiting federal action. You remember when the governor was bucking sort of federal imposition and we passed something last year, I want to say, is no one else recalling this that I want to say that the immigration asked us to do this. About the guard? Yeah, maybe it's about the guard. I mean, is this ringing any bells? I wish I'm was pulling up. We passed, we did pass the thing with the with ICE and, yes, that was it. And the immigration laws, but that had nothing to do with the National Guard and calling out the National Guard. No, I realize, but it's not a dissimilar Fed state interface. Yeah. That is what I'm trying to say. So, yes, we have acted before on something similar to this with when we did that with ICE. Thank you. I just want to. So what if we think that next week it looks like on we might not have to 20 until the end of the week, if you're going to be there, Betsy Ann in those committees on Tuesday, we want to make sure that we what if we scheduled scheduled that for the following Tuesday. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Because next week it's going to be pretty tight up next week. If we if we want to get this out. Yeah. Yeah. I think this this lessons learn bill is our chief objective for next week. And then, yeah, you're right. We could maybe begin on Friday if they act with haste. Well, let's let's leave Friday though, because we might be dealing with 220 and thought finishing up. I hate to have a lot of people scheduled to come and talk to us and then tell them that we can't. So, Anthony, next Tuesday. Sure. I mean, not not that this coming Tuesday. 15th, I think something like that. Yeah. Okay. And should we ask these folks to phrase this sort of frame the question that that they want to get out? Does that make sense? Yeah, well, that's and then we can put that on our agenda. Yeah. Okay. Brian. Thank you, Anthony. I'll just remind the chair, we did make I didn't, but you did made the promise to the rules committee that the lessons learned bill would be the last one we would ask for permission to advance. Yeah, but I always lie to the rules committee. Oh, okay. All right. No, and I don't know that there's any bill that would come from this. Yeah, I wouldn't expect I wouldn't expect it. I expected to be a conversation to clarify things which might lead to a broader conversation if necessary in January. And then 124 and 220 we would just in essence be either conferring or not. Right. And the way 220 sounds we we will probably just be able to concur with with them on that. And 124 if really at this point there, they seem to be interested in the whole dispatch rate things. I mean, you know my feeling about that anyway. So I don't really care. Brian cares about dispatch. Oh, no, I care about dispatch. Yeah. I just want to make sure that what it was a three year delay. If that doesn't pass, where are we? You mean if they remove that from the? Yeah, or for some reason we don't get 124 past the finish line. We've got to get 124 past the finish line. Yeah. I will physically I will zoom bomb their meeting. Oh, I would like to see that. I don't know how to pull out the National Guard. So can I go back here to one agenda item is that we had talked about having Suzanne Young come and address what might be a general authority given to the governor to put to allow deadlines to be extended. And he she she wrote back and said that she needed a little more clarity about that and then was going to talk internally with with the governor's people and then would get back to us. So I'm hoping that she'll be back to us on and and we while we would like to make this a really comprehensive bill. I think that by Thursday, if there are things that aren't in here, they're just not in here. We'll we'll do as much as we can. Yeah, Betsy. And right now in regard to extending deadlines, the way I have it set up right now and I'm working on the revised draft is right now I've just have it tailored to professional licenses. Just to let you know it was the way I have it drafted right now is for under an in a state of emergency. The governor would be given the authority to consult with the head of the professional regulatory entity of an agency under the office of governor in order to extend professional licenses. That's where this draft is now it was related to your conversation generally yesterday about extending professional licenses. So I'm just not aware of the effects of any other sorts of licenses. So just to put that note out there for you, I know that Tucker's language that he was working on for you dealt with the executive branch being able to extend deadlines relevant to municipal corporations. So there's still that if you'll pursue that. But because I just don't know the full extent. I couldn't tell you what other sort of authorizations or deadlines are out there for the governor that under a more general authority. Right now it's just this draft is tailored to professional licenses. And I think that's okay. I think that the the question was do we want to have some kind of a blanket statement that gives the governor the authority to extend deadlines on things like motor vehicle registration, driver's license renewal, stuff like that, if need be. And that so it would not be specific to any it would just be licenses and deadlines under his authority. But then that's what that's what I posed to Suzanne. And they may not want that. Okay. But so she'll come back. Okay. Sounds good. Thanks for that. But Tucker's thing is definitely we want that. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. We're gonna call it a day then. See you next Tuesday.