 Welcome this afternoon to the Vermont House Government Operations Committee. We are continuing our work of orienting the GOV ops committee of the 2122 session with all of the areas of of our jurisdiction. So we did have an opportunity to speak with the elections division of the Secretary of State's office in the context of moving h 48 through which I'm happy to report past all stages in the house and was messaged to the Senate today. So they will be able to get going on their work on the bill. And so thank you to the Secretary of State's office for your excellent support on that bill and now I want to welcome Secretary condos to to help us with an orientation and introduction to the other parts of your office. Well, thank you. I think before before I ask Andrea to post our PowerPoint it's a it's a brief PowerPoint. Let me just identify the people who are on this, this zoom with us. Obviously, you know, Chris winners. Hi, Jenny Prosser is our general counsel and municipal director, Lauren Hibbert is our office of professional regulation. Tanya Marshall is our visara the state archives and Stacy drink wine is our admin services and budget finance person. So, let me, let me start by, are you are you going to post this thing on online or it is up on our committee page and I think most members have the ability to follow along with the document on a different device so that's what I would welcome folks to do. All right because it's not showing up and what I've got so I'll pull mine up. Refresh. Yeah, if you go if you look at today's date under documents and handouts, you'll find overview of Secretary states office. Not on the zoom call. Oh, okay. That's that's where I can't find it. Hang on. I'll be there. All right, there we go. So, I wish that was my office but it's not. Can you all hear me. Yes. Okay. So, on the on the second page. You will see that we believe in smart good government solutions it's what we've focused on in the 10 years that I've been in office, and we have transformed the secretary states office agency from what was a paper driven process to a digital environment. It was paper driven back in 2010 11, and we're now totally almost totally in a digital environment. We've gone from 0% to 97 over 97% online activity. We give back every year, starting around 2012. We received 1.8 million in general fund dollars at the beginning of the year and then at the end of the year anything would be swept. We now no longer receive that general fund dollars we operate totally from fees that we collect and the general fund sweeps what we don't have from our secretary of state services fund. So the focus is for me has been customer service. When I first took office. My directive to all of my directors was that we were not going to be a state agency that didn't answer phone calls or didn't answer emails for four or five or six days that we were going to answer the phone answer our emails as quickly as we could, preferably within 24 hours. We couldn't do it within 24 hours at least let people know that we can't respond yet. We have since become more efficient and accurate. We are And I would also add more transparent. There is more information posted on our website on a daily basis than ever before. What we add stuff today that wasn't there yesterday the year or the day before. It's a constant work to update our website. Our goal. Our goal is to do good work, exceptionally well. We have four divisions at the secretary of state's office, the office of professional regulation which is better known as OPR Vermont State Archives and Records Administration, better known as this visara Elections and corporations, those are the four main divisions. And then we have a what we call our fifth division which is admin services, and that's basically our finance and budget group that deals with the everyday finance stuff. In addition to this, we have other programs that many of you may may know, one is the municipal assistance we have, Jenny Prosser answers that phone from municipalities and actually citizens and municipal officers were the one place that they can come to pretty much for information that they may not find elsewhere. And I know knock on VLCT VLCT is a member organization, and their, their customers or their clients are the municipal officers the municipal towns. We also handle the safe at home program we've now, the agent, Secretary of State's offices had, we were the third third state to start a safe at home program. This is essentially a address confidentiality program for men women and children who are have been sexually abused attacked of human trafficking, etc. We essentially have about it fluctuates but it's between 150 and 180 names that are on our list, it's kept under lock and key it's in a vault, when it's not out being used. But essentially, the information allows people to use our address as their legal address, and then we collect their mail at the post office and, and, and send it out to them. The temporary officiants program which started, I would say probably about 12 years ago by the legislature I was actually on finance when it was brought in. And this allows for people to become a temporary efficient to be able to marry people. We have $100 and that actually that program has grown tremendously. Since we started it, it used to be about 75,000 a year that we collected in revenues and we're now collecting about 150,000 a year in fees from that program and this allows people to have their father marry. The daughter and boyfriend, or whatever you know a cousin or, or somebody else. We also maintain the APA rules and legislative clerked. So we deal with that as well. Safe at home. I know many of you or some of you have heard this story but we had a case a few years ago on the safe at home. The person who manages it called me in my office and said that she had a very angry individual on the phone, who insisted that we provide the name of the, the person he was looking for because he wanted it was a welfare check on the persons on a the woman who was in the program was a welfare check on the daughter and so the call came to me and the person identified themselves as a law enforcement officer and that but they were from Massachusetts and and but he needed this information to do a welfare check on the daughter. So my response to him was well you know the program. I said, if you don't have a court, if you have a court order or are our law enforcement here in Vermont tells me to release it, I will. But other than that I won't use why have a court order and I said, well send it to us. Didn't hear back from a week later, he called back I guess he thought Vermont state government was a big place he called back again and he got me on the phone and he said I'm a law enforcement officer and I just want to let you know that I need to do a welfare check and I need this person's name and I said well last week you told me you were going to send me the court order we didn't receive that. So long story short when it when it got I got off the phone that second time with him I called the state police office and they said they did a welfare check and as it turned out, this person was in fact a law enforcement officer from Massachusetts, but the person he was looking for was his wife, who had left him and looking for the daughter and because of abuse in the first place. So this is the kind of program the safe at home is and it can be men women or children. In our corporations and business services division we we strive for common sense solutions for business registration. The corporations division is responsible for the registration of business entities from small proprietorship to trade names to incorporations. It also is the filing repository for the uniform commercial code filings for the state of Vermont. And we also deal with nonprofits as well as profit companies. When we first started in 2011. It used to take literally 14 to 15 days to get a to get your certificate back that you had successfully set up your, your company in the state files. Now it's done within 20 to 30 minutes almost instantaneously the same thing with filing UCC codes. Those used to take somewhere between five and seven days to get filed today they're done instantly. That's the kind of stuff that we've used technology to to grow our services for our customers and that means for monitors. We also have common sense solutions for the business registration side. We provide a business friendly environment facilitating business throughout Vermont. For corporations partnerships LLC is UCC filings trademarks trade names, you name it. We have worked with some of the largest consolidation of companies mergers, for instance, CVPS and Green Mountain Power a few years ago, which was a very large and everything had to be timed just perfectly. But we were able to do that. And when we started back in 2011 the first thing we did was we held a meeting with Downs Rackland, one of the, if not the largest law firm in Vermont to determine what they saw as a need for this business friendly environment, and we have continued to reach out to the people who actually use the site to make sure that we're staying ahead of the game. Coming soon is the Vermont business Express in fact later this afternoon we were supposed to have a meeting of the steering committee but it's a collaboration between the Secretary of State's Office Department of Tax Department of Labor and the agency of Business and Community Development. We're working toward the next phase of the one stop business portal to assist businesses and starting maintaining and growing their businesses in Vermont. It will essentially bring when someone wants to start a business it'll bring it all under one roof, where they can they they can not have to fill out the same information over and over and over again as they go from agency to agency. And it'll be a much more interactive type site so if you sign on and you start registering your business that you want to register a convenience store for instance that you're going to start a convenience store. There are some, I don't know 25 or 27 different licenses or certificates that you need to do that. And the first three are that you have that you're registered with the state of Vermont through our office that you have your tax ID number, and that you have your unemployment insurance number from the Department of Labor. So the very first things that you have to get. And that's why we chose those three to begin this process. And then we're also adding a CCD and will as time goes on add more companies are more agencies to this pile, and this is going to be more interactive if someone is signing on to sign to, for instance, get their business registration for a community store. They may need several different ag licenses or certificates for meat products for dairy products for scales for the different things that they sell in the store. So the hope is that we'll get this to a point where it, it'll actually be interactive and it'll, it'll say to you okay, this is the business you're starting here's the different licenses you need. They'll be able to do almost like. I hate to say it but the Amazon approach where you'll have a shopping basket that that as you sign up for everything, any fee that's associated will go into that shopping basket, and you can pay it once instead of having to pay each and every time. Yeah, that's a professional regulation for one second there. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you Madam chair with your permission I'd like to just make sure we point out Jim mentioned everybody's name in the beginning but Stacy if you are able maybe turn your camera on for a second and just say hello to the committee so that you can put a face to the name. Stacy drink wine is very new to our office. We just hired her a few months ago and she went straight into doing our budgets because Stacy's not only the director of our corporations division but she's also the director of our business office. And so she's in charge of our budgets here so thanks Stacy. Yeah hi glad to be here. In the office of professional regulation as I said OPR, we strive for right fit regulation. We, we serve over 50 professions and approximately 80,000 licensees or certificates certificates. We're currently onboarding the massage therapy profession for later this this year. Public employers and licensees in all aspects of our lives and every day from accountants to cosmetologists to nurses to veterinarians, engineers, you name it, you know, tattoo us we, we do we do it. We set and force the standards for licensure and for practice and for the practice once they're licensed. We protect the public from unethical incompetent and unprofessional behavior by license practitioners. And this essentially what we are is is a public public safety group that that works to make sure that you're not impacted negatively by a licensee that they are following the standards of the profession. We work with several different groups. You know, for instance, we recently in recent years we onboarded some several licenses from the natural resources when they found out that we could do it better than they could do it. It's an administrative and regulatory process, and we've really perfected it well, and I will also tell you that we are ensuring the equity and licensing and regulations and discipline. We're working on improving licensure in the state through the smart licensing policy that benefits all while simultaneously targeting military families individuals with criminal backgrounds and new Americans. So we're reaching out to those groups to assist them in becoming productive members of our society. Dr. 57 review gives OPR the power to conduct a sunrise a sunset or a scope of practice review to ensure that government oversight of a profession is appropriate. We don't want to have a heavy hand we what we want to do is have a protective hand. And, and I think it's important that we have been recognized over the years. By the White House, both the current administration and the previous administration for the efforts that we have Chris and Chris winners and Lauren Hibbert, try have traveled the country for NCSL for the NGA the National Governors Association and for the Council of State Governors providing seminars and our input into this we're considered one of the leaders in professional regulation and doing it right. Thanks Jim I just want to jump in and have Lauren Hibbert say hello. Hello. It's really great to see you all some very familiar faces some new faces I'm really excited for the legislative session and starting to work with you all and thanks for inviting us in. Thanks Lauren Lawrence the director of the office of professional regular regulation. That's the position that I held before I became the Deputy Secretary of State so while I love all of the divisions and directors equally. I do have a special place in my heart. You'll see a lot of Lauren over this session. And as Jim mentioned, there's a lot of really cutting edge work that's been done in this government operations committee and in the Senate government operations committee to do professional regulation in a little bit different way than other states are able to do. And there's a lot of work there that we're very proud of in that right fit regulation that you only regulate a profession to the extent necessary to protect the public and you don't go beyond it. And you'll see some more of that in there's an annual OPR bill with tweaks to all the many professions that we have so you'll be hearing from Lauren more this year. Thank you. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next up is the State Archives and Records Administration, Visara. Their mission is to preserve access to public records. It was established in 2008. It was a study group that actually began when when I was in the state Senate and oversaw Senate government operations. We had joined forces with the House of Ops to request a study. And it was established in that study was to bring public records management together with the State Archives. The result was was in 2008. And I believe if I'm not mistaken, the new facility opened in 2009 or 2010 but I believe it was 2009 I'm sure Tanya will correct me. And it was basically to administer the statewide records and information management program. It's charged with supporting all three branches of state government and local governments in better managing their records and information, regardless of the format, whether it's paper, digital, it doesn't matter, or voice. According to federal and state laws and including the Public Records Act, which we have over the last 10 years had several improvements to and we follow industry standards and bait best practices. Whoops, I think I went the wrong way here, hang on. So the the statewide records and information management program, it develops issues and maintains standards for managing public public records. We perform formal appraisals of public records and issue record management policies and record retention schedules, Tanya and her group work with all the different agencies and their records officers to do come bring this about. We ensure the low cost secure repositories and systems for public records are available, and that they can support clients. We also operate a record center for inactive paper and analog state records. We have we take legal custody of permanent state records, preserving and providing access through the physical state archives and digital state archives. We also have board administrative rules document authentication and several filing functions of the Secretary of State's office as well. I will tell you that it's, I hope that your committees will, will take advantage of if, if the, if the health situation of visiting the archives, because it's a really awesome place to be and to actually see the original Constitution and in its protection. That's their job is to protect those most precious documents that we have. And Tanya, if you could say hello here and Tanya's division is unique among our divisions and that it goes across all state agencies who were able to problem solve in records management. Tanya has a wealth of knowledge that all the various agencies and state government are constantly tapping into. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to meet everyone and to see those returning to the committee. And I'm glad I got my camera working. What you didn't seem as me working behind the scenes to get it to work after 10 months it might have burned out. I look forward to working with you and you may see me come in for different types of public records bills that might come up and always feel free to tap the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration with any type of legislative research that you might need or background. That's what we're here for. We support a lot of different committees and legislators and doing background research. Happy to do it and also provide background so always feel free to contact us or me directly, and I look forward to working with all of you this session. Thank you. Thanks, Tanya. Next up is our elections division free fair elections and access to our democracy is something that's very close to our hearts we we we operate in that manner. Pretty much all the time every day and you know since COVID hit. We've had to ongoing criteria that we followed for every decision we've made over the last year. The two involve protecting Vermonters right to vote and to to protect the health and safety of Vermonters as well as our town clerks and poll workers at the same time. We came off an election where our small but mighty elections team total of five members, although they picked up three honorary members and myself, Chris and Eric, our chief of staff. It was a very time consuming and burning out process over the last 10 months I mean literally will and his team have been working six and seven days a week since April. In some cases 10 or 12 hours a day to ensure the integrity of our election in November. We also have. When I first took office we had everything was paper driven, as I said before but specifically in campaign finance and lobbyist disclosure. Everything was paper, and we would just upload a PDF of paper so that it would people would have access, but you couldn't do anything with it. You would have to make your own spreadsheets if you wanted to. And now with our campaign finance reporting and our lobbyist disclosure reporting systems. It's, it's out there, it's updated on a regular basis. It's instantaneous when when a lobbyist or a candidate files hits the submit button. It automatically goes into position and it's filed where it belongs. We hope that all of this information that we have encourages greater civic participation, but really the integrity of our campaigns and our elections is really front and center for our entire elections team. And we also provide that customer friendly environment that helps train citizens voters candidates lobbyists and public officials by providing the proper information regarding the administration of federal and state law and elections, providing promoting voter registration we are at the highest level we've ever been. Currently, and we over obviously oversee and assist in the conduct of our elections. Now there are two sets of elections we have our federal and state elections and then we have our local elections. We don't oversee the local elections. That is something that the town clerks do. As far as the federal and state elections the town clerks assist us in managing that process, but we are the ones that oversee that process. So it's two distinct areas, but the goal for both is to make sure that we have free fair and accessible elections. And as part of that process, our election staff will continue to work towards improving and providing for an online campaign finance disclosure and online lobbyist disclosure, and we provide ongoing training as needed, and support and guidance to the 248 town clerks and city clerks. It's something that we're kind of proud of following the two. Well, let me go back 2012. We were ranked 38th in the nation by what is called the election performance index, which is now handled by the MIT election data and Science Center before was held by the it was managed by the Pew charitable trust. So we were ranked 38th in 2012 in 2014 we had improved to 16th in the nation. After the implementation of our new state of the art system, election management system, we had jumped to first overall in the nation, and following the 2018 election, it usually takes about 18 months for this data to come out. But following the 2018 we had slipped a little bit to third, which was not a surprise because other other states were starting to put new systems in place as well. But we're very proud of that over the last two general elections, we have been in first or third place in the nation for election integrity and performance. Is will there. Yes, they've all had a chance to meet will but say hello will. Hi everyone. I will just say, I'm really looking forward to working with you all this year. Good to see a few faces back that haven't been around in a while rep Higley. Good to see you. One of the favorite part of my job over the last 10 years working with the legislature and the legislative committees and with both House gov ups and Senate gov ups. Over the last eight years, we've made a lot of progress with the election law and the election process in Vermont. So I hope we, I have no doubt that we'll keep doing that and I'm looking forward to it this year. I would just quickly note that there is absolutely no rest for the weary for any of you or for us in terms of trying to figure out how we administer the local elections for the first six months of this upcoming year so I look forward to your help and we work together toward that goal of like Jim said safe secure and fair elections. Thanks will that's that's really well said and I think it's worth repeating that these successes that we're talking about are only possible because we have had such a great working relationship with the legislature, and you all have enabled us to be successful. Thank you Chris. Thanks will. Next up is municipal assistance. It's man by the very able Jenny Prosser. She supports Vermont towns one call at a time and to the tune of about 1200 calls a year. Vermont's communities cannot function without the service and commitment of our public officials. And as a result, the Secretary of State's office believes it's very important that our local leaders, and even our citizens have help navigating the complex and ever changing laws that may apply to them. And Jenny is our full time general counsel dedicated to municipal assistance handles much of that. Although I think that I know that Chris and Eric and I and will and his team also get involved but you know Jenny handles the brunt of it. She, she responds to dozens of inquiries every every literally almost every day about municipal government open meetings public records access. She answers questions posed by both members of the public, as well as officials covering almost every topic. You can imagine that affects local governments from abatement proceedings to zoning ordinances. And support extends to fielding 100 plus calls each month from members of the public. As I said 1200 over 1200 a year from both public and municipal officials. We had we have information about open meetings and public records and ethics town meetings and local elections, officer roles and responsibilities. And topics from A to Z from animals cemeteries and fire districts to land use libraries and marriage to ordinances roads and taxes, providing free publications to help local officials do their jobs better, and to strengthen Vermont's communities by encouraging civic participation. We participate in trainings for local boards on request. We also hold a biannual. And this is the year that we'll do it again, the transparency tour, which is a series of trainings for public officials and community members at usually 12 to 15 locations around the state in the off year. We do it out off year from the the elections for obvious reasons. So Jenny, are you out there. Hello, thanks for having me and always feel free to questions my way or send your constituents my way if things come up in the municipal, municipal matters or open government. And Jenny is a fifth unofficial division of the office we talk about our four divisions as corporations the Sarah OPR and elections. Jenny is a division of one and a tremendous resource for everybody out there as more and more people know that she's there and what a great job she doesn't answer any questions she, you know, she gets rewarded with more calls and more emails. But you should feel free to ask her questions anytime, especially around open meetings in public records she's really become quite an expert. No rest for the weary. Okay. The office shows tremendous national leadership as I said, you know, as I said, I have been the president of the National Association of Secretaries of States. That was two years ago. I've been a member of the member of the Council of State Governance Executive Committee. I've also been a member of the Department of Homeland Security critical infrastructure governing, government, coordinating Council. I am the current national co chair with my Washington colleague, State of Washington colleague, Kim Wyman, Secretary of State and Washington of the Council of State Governance overseas military initiative voting initiative. You know, Lauren as I said earlier, Lauren and Chris have gone around the country to testify provide expert testimony and professional regulation. As I said, we also have the number one and number three state rankings in the elections performance index over the last two election cycles. We are the first state with a new of fully ADA compliant accessible voting system and let me explain that one a little bit. A couple of years ago we knew that we had to do something of, we have a federal mandate to provide a for the visually impaired accessible voting. And we had an old analog system that was costing us literally half a million dollars a year to operate. And it was, we had about 20 people that used it. So it was a tremendous cost, but it was a federal mandate, and we were trying to figure out what can we do and we, we worked with a group called democracy live that had this new ADA compliant accessible voting system that is literally fully ADA compliant. It doesn't matter what your disability is you can use this system, and it has a side improvement that that we're continuing to work on and try to utilize, which will allow over perhaps allow overseas and military voters to be able to vote through the system through the secure portal that they have. Because right now it is sometimes difficult with postal service around the world being impacted. So, so those are some of the things that we do. I also serve currently on the board of advisors of the EAC the US EAC which is out of Washington it's a, the election assistance commission. And, you know, we work on best practices and things like that for election systems. So we do have a national approach. Chris, did you want to add anything here. No, I don't I don't think so not on that Jim, I know we'll have time for people to ask questions. I do just want to extend an invitation to any of you if you do have questions you don't want to ask here you want to get in deeper on any one of our divisions or services or the subjects that we cover. I have an open virtual door and would be glad to meet with any one of you. I've done this for for new members in the past to help with orientation and answering your questions so please do reach out we'd be happy to talk to you about any of the things that we do with the Secretary of State's office. So, here's our staffing report if you want to call it. This is the Secretary of State's office in our corporations and business services. We have five employees that generate a tremendous amount of money well over $7 or $8 million. That's pretty much what the office operates under the office of professional regulation has 38 staff, including the director, the state archives and records administration has 18 including the state archivist. And we do have it we're going to have a request for the legislature to add to provide us a new position for the state archives, we already have it in our budget. It's been in our budget it's in our proposed budget for 22. The administration is not releasing any new positions at this point. And this is a position that works actually with all of the historical societies and libraries around the state. And you're off in your towns and they've, they've, you know, I guess I could let Tanya just jump in if she's still around to give a little more emphasis on this but this is something that she has been on a grant to us for the last three years but we've maxed out that that grant and we now have to assume it, but we need the position in order to move forward, and there will be no additional impact to the state. Tanya, you want to add. Yeah, thank you. This is part of our historical records program. We receive a lot of calls at the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration obviously for public records which are part of our statute. And we also have a little provision within the statute to also provide services, particularly grants that can come in to help historical records repositories throughout the entire state. So we have this position. It's a roving archivist travels throughout all the towns and also helps town clerks as well. We work with emergency management on emergency disaster recovery and emergency management. It's been a great resource so the the intent of that was, you know, consolidating into one resource and having that person be able to do a lot of things that these historical repositories and similar repositories can't do. So that's what that position is for. Thank you. Thanks, Tanya. You know, I can't tell you how important that position is, it's and it's a unique position. There is no other like it in the state government. So we'll be asking for support to add a that position, even, even though it's already in our budget. We don't have to add any additional funding for it. Elections division has five employees as I said earlier the mighty but small elections team. It's the smallest elections division in the country. That includes will. And we as we go down the discussion process of changing some of our election processes. We're also going to be asking for a new position here. We cannot do what we did this past year. Again, without additional staffing. It was, as I said, we were putting in a lot of overtime. And it the burnout was I was really fearful as the year was coming closer and closer to November 3 that, you know, and frankly, if one of us had gotten sick, we would have really been problem had a problem so we've been at five employees for my 10 years as Secretary of State, and it's time now to ask the legislature to approve a new employee for that division. I think if I'm not mistaken, that is it. You can contact any of us at any time we can we can provide more information for contact information. You know, by, by division directors. So you can ask questions if you have, but we are, we are an open book we believe that open government is good government. And we also believe in providing good customer service. I'll end right there and ask if there's any questions. Mark Higley. Thank you, chair. First, I just like to reach out and say how much I appreciate wills efforts during the past election. I've got a couple of relatively new town clerks and even though bulletins go out it's certainly a huge help to to have will reach and call directly to these people and I think going into the future I think there's actually going to be more and more that I see a lot of folks that are kind of at the retirement age are getting ready to be done and you're going to have a lot. A lot of new municipal elected officials, whether it's listeners or you name it, I mean, so it's it's more important than ever to have people that really can reach out more than just with a bulletin and I certainly appreciate that. The one question I maybe do have for Secretary condos is. And maybe this maybe this should be a question answered offline but you know with the with the ability to go digital digital so much more. Are you confident in the ability to keep what you have safe and secure. I know what you know the cyber security issues are, are at a forefront now and, and I guess I just worry about that and, and, you know, the budget for that sort of thing and. Anyway, do you feel confident that you're headed down a good road here. Absolutely we are mark and thank you very much for that question because it is a really, really important question. And I can tell you that several things first. Let me just say that our office has been focused on cybersecurity. Since probably 2013, at least that's when I started to focus on it was 2013 I came back from a conference. My colleague from the Secretary of State from Oregon was at the conference and she told us one night at dinner that her office had been breached. And when we all get back home that we should check on our cyber security status. She's by the way the new now the governor of Oregon. But I will say when I got back I pulled my IT manager aside and asked him I said, how are we, what's our, what's our profile, what are we, how are what's our status and cyber security. And he goes that's a great question I think he says I think we're in really good shape, but it wouldn't hurt for us to go out and hire a outside firm to take a look at it and we did in 2013 and we had an extensive report in 2014. By the way, it was a Vermont company, a young Vermont company that had the Department of Defense clearance and did a lot of stuff in Washington DC, and they have grown dramatically. They have about 50 or so employees in Vermont. They also have offices I think in Boston, New York or Boston, Washington, and I believe somewhere in Texas. So they've grown tremendously, but they're based out of Vermont. As you can imagine they're bunch of young people. And I don't begin to know the first thing about cybersecurity I just know that they have to, they better cover my butt for that so. Yeah, we do annual vulnerability and risk assessments we do annual penetration testing to see we hire, you know professionals to try to hack into our systems. And, you know, we take what they give us for, you know, we take it to heart and we actually work to secure those systems. And obviously a lot of the discussion has been since 2016 on, and the Russian attacks on our election systems. But we do it agency wide we don't focus just on elections. And the last thing I want to say is and this is important in the area of elections with the voter checklist. It is backed up every night. So we have an image of it. So if something were to happen. We can go back 24 hours and reset it. And we have that capability not capability we had we do that across the agency so everything we do is backed up on a nightly basis, so that we if we do get hacked, we can set up relatively quickly. And I'm going to be honest with you representative Higley. It's cybersecurity is like a race without a finish line. It is going it's our new normal and every state agency and better be paying attention to it because just because you're good today doesn't mean you're good tomorrow. And we all have to be wary of those situations. And we take it very seriously. Thank you for that. Jim and coming from energy and technology I had a you know some of the inside scoop is to actually what you're talking about. And it is becoming pretty scary, where you're going to be hard to even keep up with it but I appreciate that. You're welcome. Other questions from committee members. It's time where I want to welcome new to make an inquiry ask a question, even if you think everyone else in the room already knows the answer, because it is entirely possible that they do not. Peter Anthony. Yes. Good afternoon. The troops from Jim condos shop. Thank you very much. It's a great overview. My question or comment actually goes to the division of professional regulation. I had the pleasure last session of supporting and voting in favor of an expansion of some of the reciprocity work that your office has been engaged in melding fees and so on so forth. And I stepped over in another conversation last session was a difficult obligation on the part of towns in the area of assessment and reappraisal. And I had reached out to the illustrious member from Chittenden as a matter of fact, because they knew he was on government ops last session and said you know I don't know how we're going to crack this but the state has an interest in making that the grand list in the towns is up to date in the CLA discussion and you know people being 10 years without a reappraisal. And I have discovered that if you call to get a reappraisal as a town clerk or town manager, you can be prepared to wait anywhere from three to six years, and it's because they're very few firms, I guess and I will pursue this with Miss Herbert I think offline but it seems to me that there is a bottleneck there. And I'm not sure it is at the Secretary of State's office as opposed to some of the private trade organizations which also certifies in those area, but the state definitely needs to open the gates in the reciprocity area so that they're more able to answer calls for reappraisal at the town level and correct the CLA problems. Thank you. Lauren, did you want to answer anything there. Yes, thank you Madam chair representative Anthony, I think what you're touching on is a very. I guess many people on this call because it affects Jenny Prosser as well at the municipal level, but the assessors and the appraisers through towns are different than the appraisers that OPR regulates there may be some cross. Then diagramming some people who are appraisers who are also assessors but the appraisers that OPR regulates are the appraisers that do appraisals for mortgage companies upon the purchase and sale of a house or commercial facility. The appraisers that you're referring to are with the town and regulated by the Department of Tax but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue the conversation and try and figure out if we can release that bottleneck that you're referring to. Lauren and representative representative Anthony let me just also say I'm a 18 year member of the South Burlington City Council, and we went through at least two reappraisals during that time. And I think a lot of times what happens is that the, and this is not a knock it's just the way government works. Sometimes we'll wait until they're real close to the edge before they decide they need to go out for their reappraisal. And then at that point it's two or three years later before they can get it actually completed. And I know we always, when I was in South Burlington, our action step line was, I think about 85%, we would start to think about how are we going to do this going forward, because we didn't want to get stuck in that never ending battle trying to get an appraiser to come in. And you're right, there are very few companies that do it. And most are from out of state, unfortunately. Thank you very much anyway. You're welcome. Other questions. All right, Tonya. I'm chair secretary condos I'm wondering if there is any proposal or thought to move towards the expansion of automatic voter registration beyond simply driver's licenses as we know driver's licenses aren't held by everyone and will the lack of that holding will likely disproportionately affect people with disabilities, people with lower incomes and new Americans so I'm wondering what what your thoughts are on how we might expand that to truly touch everyone. It's something that we constantly look at we actually have legislation that allows us to work with other agencies, but keep in mind the questions that we ask versus the questions that some of these other agencies may ask. The reason why DMV works is because they asked the same three questions we do, are you a US citizen, are you a Vermont resident, and are you 18 or over. That's pretty easy information to grab when you're talking about driver's license. We also have the 17 year olds are able to register if they're going to be 18 by the general election. So, those are components that we already have that was the primary driver for automatic voter registration across the country, but it's also embedded in federal statute that other state agencies are allowed to provide that information. So the question is, and I think we'll can answer this better but I believe that if I remember correctly will we have, we have links on some of those other agencies websites to the voter registration, the online voter registration so that they can register. Is that correct will. Yes, and in more generally two for years. Under the MVRA, they do offer standard registration and opt in style registration at all the other social service agencies and we get a packet of registrations pay perform registrations from those agencies on a periodic basis but my answer would be we're always open to talking about expansion of that automatic system, Secretary condos hit on the important points that make it tricky. It's about collecting the right information transmitting that information and the MV was the fact that they didn't store the citizenship information, and it took a lot of coordination with them to for us to be able to get the citizenship status of potential voters without the MV actually storing that information in their database. And that will be tricky with other agencies also, but we're willing to work on it. And I think to rep the whole ski is the one of the problems is funding. That's not something we would fund. It's something that the agency has to fund because it's, it's, it's that digital footprint if you want that they have to be able to connect to our bridge to our system. And so it is a question of sometimes that stuff doesn't work it doesn't mesh digitally and we have to, it took us several years to get it with right with the motor vehicle department. And we were only able to move forward once they had had figured out that bridge. And then we were able to actually step it up from there. Any other questions from committee members or highlights from work that the legislature has done in the last biennium that that you think you'd like to hear the Secretary of State's office comment on. We do enjoy working with this committee obviously the House and Senate Gov Ops are are really the lifeblood for much of the work that we do. You know it crosses pretty much across all of our agency, and that's actually a good thing to have a good consistent group that we can work with that understands the things that we do. And we're, as Chris had said, we're more than willing to step up and if you have questions we can, we could do a zoom meeting or whatever to discuss something or even, you know, once, once things get better have a cup of coffee. We're hoping for that day soon. And maybe we could travel to Bradford for that coffee. I know where you could find some coffee. Some good coffee. Well, I know for a fact that we have intentions of getting back together with OPR and elections on on upcoming bills and debriefing the the 2020 election so I know that we'll see some of you back sooner rather than later. But thank you Secretary condos for for this great presentation. If there are no other questions from committee members we will let you go about your day. Thank you for spending so much time with us. Thanks for having us we're we're here to serve. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you. All right, that is a wrap for our committee meeting for today. We have an evolving agenda that is posted on the legislative website and for those following along on YouTube I would just make note that you will see two time blocks on agendas in future weeks that that's one of the things that I would like to make note of is that I would like to make note of that. I would like to make note of that. Advertisers when I will be holding office hours. It is my hope that members of the public or the press or lobbyists or advocates who have ideas or questions that they want to ask of of me as committee chair would have a more of an open opportunity to ask those. I would like to be on my way to the house floor or, or even on my way to the facilities. And so the office hours will will be an opportunity for folks to come and meet. Let us know what you what your question or your idea is. I would like to be on my way to the office hours. I would like to be on my way to the office hours. And then access office hours. All they need to do is send an email to our committee assistant, and, and we can make time available to meet so that that time will be published on the agenda. And so committee members I would like to be on my way to the office hours. I would like to be on my way to the office hours. And being first out of the gate with the first bill to pass through all stages of passage in the 2021 session and for all of that good hard work you have earned yourself an early reprieve at the end of the day today so I have a few emails that are piling up and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning and committee at 9am. Good work on the floor madam chair. Thank you.