 Good morning everybody. Good morning people in YouTube land. We're going to start off this morning as the agenda says with S 101. This is a bill that we passed out of our committee. It got changed. I'm not sure if it got changed at all in finance. But it did get changed in appropriation. They took out the money for the tax credits. And then it went over to the house and the house did major surgery on the bill. They took out some key parts including the waste water and water duplication of permitting section, which was important to this committee. And they added in a, and they took out the tax credits altogether and he wording around the tax credits. And then they also added a mansion tax, which is known as the mansion tax and an increased property transfer tax on, on, on homes that sold over a million dollars. And they added money to the mobile home replacement program. I don't have those words right, but to help. To help replace, I think it was 35 new mobile homes was the projection. So I think that's a good point. Helen is here with us to give us some more detail on that history. And, and she's was not. As intimately involved with the financial ends of stuff that I think took place in ways and means in the house, the changes they made on the substance of the bill was in house, in the house. So we may have somebody from joint fiscal or Abbey Shepherd come in to talk more about this on the financial end later. So with that, probably two wordy intro. I'm going to turn it over to Ellen. Ellen, welcome. Good to see you. Thank you. Yes. Ellen check out the office of legislative council. You covered a lot of what I was going to cover briefly. So. Just to remind you, S one on one was introduced with four primary parts. It was the bylaw modernization grant program. Then there was the expansion of the downtown and village center tax credit program to include neighborhood development areas. And increase the cap on that amount that was available every year. There was also an appropriation for the going to the grant program. And then there was also an application for the grant program, but then also for developers to go to the department of housing and community development. To go to developers to assist in technical training on infill housing. And then finally was the wastewater permit connection language removing the requirement that if for an applicant to receive both the state and town wastewater permit. And the budget was removed from the budget. It was just removed from the budget. And the budget was removed from the budget. And it did go to senate natural resources. It went to senate appropriations. The money was removed in senate appropriations, the actual appropriations. However, those appropriations did end up in the budget and were passed last year. And so I think you will hear a little bit more about that. So then the bill went to the house. In the house, as Senator Sarakin stated, the first committee to work on it was house natural resources. In that committee, they made some minor changes to your bylaw modernizing bylaw modernization program language. And we can look at that shortly. I have provided a side by side of the language. I think they largely kept your intent, but sort of just tweaked some of the language. But they did remove the wastewater permit connection language entirely. So then that bill went to house ways and means where they're, they did remove the downtown and village center tax credit language. And inserted the two sections that. Senator Sarakin mentioned the surcharge on properties over. A million dollars, as well as the expansion of the tax credit for manufactured homes. So. What has come back to you is a bill that has the bylaw modernization grant program language with some tweaks in it. And then the. Surcharge on million dollar properties and. The increase of the tax credit for manufactured homes. So that's all that's in this bill right now. Okay. So. Just one comment on what Ellen said, I had forgotten that our bill went to. Senate natural resources. And you remember one of the more contentious. Portions of this bill was the wastewater water. Duplication of permitting, which I think unanimously, we all agreed. That was unnecessary to go to the state. As well as a municipality that. Judged it by essentially the same standards, but there was a. An uproar from some. And certainly not all in the environmental community. So Chris Bray did a deeper dive on that section. And I think they also unanimously agreed with us. That that. Should stay. In the bill. I'm hearing a little bit. I don't have this on definitively, but that house natural resources that took that section out. Has come around. A little bit. So they may be open to putting that back in. And that is one of the major portions. Of this bill. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I'm going to turn it open to questions. For Ellen is that. And Senator Brock will remember this. The two provisions that are on this bill from ways and means. As they sent it back here, dealing with the mansion tax. And the manufactured home credit. We're also on, I think. Ellen is at age four 37. Yes, that bill did pass the house and is in Senate finance. And we had a long debate on those two sections at the end of the. Session and in finance, we decided not to go forward with those. So you can see this is a fairly. Complicated. Despite its shortness as a fairly complicated. Bill. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. And has. Had fallen into the jurisdiction of a lot of. Committees. And. One last thing I guess is, and Chris will talk about this. Is. We had a bunch of somewhat odd ball situations last year. With the budget. So. The. The Senate appropriations committee. As their want to do is they put in a lot of money in the. Budget. Anticipate. They took the money out of the bills. But. Held money sort of in reserve. Anticipating bills would pass. And in the crossfire, some of the money passed, but some of the underlying legislation. Behind it didn't pass. So. I think there's enough language in the budget bill. To spend the money or what the outlines of it were. This is the bylaw or modernization. Is perhaps. One of those. There's no like. There's a bylaw modernization. Protocol or guidelines or statute in. Our version of S one on one. In the budget. In the budget. There's $650,000 for minor. Modernization and technical. Assistance and. The. The administration thought that was enough. And they designed a program and have awarded grants. I think we'll hear from Chris that it's pretty similar. I think we'll hear from Chris. What's the phrase the cart leading the horse or something like that. The money's out there. And then the program is going to be defined in law after the fact. So that's where we are. I think that's a decent introduction. Is. Do anybody have any questions at this point of Ellen. For anyone else. Senator Clarkson has her hand up, Mr. I was reading the bill. Sorry. You know, and that's far more important. I guess I would say it's there too from our committee. We have two disturbing instances of this, both in S 79 and with S one on one. Of the money being in the budget, but the policy behind the money. Being separate. And not included. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think it's concerning because then it allows. Another body to make a decision about what that policy is. That is the foundation behind the spending of the money. And I think this is a problem when we disconnect the money in the policy, which is what I know our appropriations committee has done. Quite a bit. But I think it's a big, bigger issue. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good address at some point with Jane. Cause it's, it's now happened to us twice. Here. Well, yeah. I mean, I totally agree with you. But in Jane's defense, she was trying to help us. Oh, she saved our. Took a says in large measure. I get that. I mean, the three years, the three instances that I'm aware of is this. Where it just says bylaw modernization. It may say a little bit more. But it's been up to me. I think that the. The program of he hit money. Which never has been established in law. And the revolving loan program. Right. One out on all three of these and really. I think the, I think you'll hear the administration tried. To follow what the intent of at least our committee. Was on these programs, but that's. than kosher in this context. I would agree. And it isn't necessarily always gonna be that way. So anyway, I think it's a concerning trend that I think we should figure out how we better manage in the future. And I think too, Mr. Chair, if I could, I know that for the Appropriations Committee, it's always about making sure that we are moving forward on policies that matter a lot to our committees. And it doesn't always move in tandem the way we'd like it to, but really look forward to us figuring out how to revisit these and making sure that what is being carried out by the executive branch is in fact, what the intention was of this committee. Okay, I think we all agree. Good, Ellen, thank you. We'll come back to you to walk us through the bill. Chris, how do you wanna do this with Jake? I just, I can kinda just walk you through a little bit. I was just gonna do a little introduction reminder of kind of who we are and why we're here today and then update you on kind of what we've done over the summer and I can tell you a little bit more about the politics and what we've been doing this summer to kind of help set this up and then open this up for questions, if that makes sense. It does. Okay, so good morning, my name is Chris Cochran. I'm the Director of Community Planning and Revitalization, it's great to see you guys. I have one of the best jobs in state government and I'm supported by an incredibly talented and creative team or a small team, but we definitely hit way above our weight. We've had a very, very busy summer. We allocated $3 million in downtown and the Village Center tax credits. We had a nice event in St. Johnsbury to celebrate kind of how they've used that program to really revitalize their community. Senator Kitchell there was there we were doing very few of these events but the governor was there. So it was really nice to actually just get reconnected and to kind of the work we do in these rooms and seeing the changes on the land. We stood up as to the bylaw modernization grant. We did, I would note just to add that we did have, it was a unique and kind of awkward situation for me. So we did have conversations with both the chair of House Natural Resources and your chair, just to say, look, this is what we are intending to do. We did share the guidelines with both chairs just to make sure that we were on the right path. As you know, kind of the stuff we do in committee versus kind of when you have to actually figure it out and to kind of the details, there were some slight differences, but I can assure you that the spirit of kind of what you both passed and if you do the side by side, it's largely aligned. That said, if the program does continue and I believe there is support for the program, we'd like to see some small changes just so we can continue to run the program as we've designed it, but that's for later. We also stood up or working, it's been a bit of a challenge to create the Better Places Placemaking Grant Program, which is going to be a fabulous success. We've gotten outside support. So the $1.5 million that you have allocated already has additional funding and backing from the Department of Health, interestingly. We worked hard at developing a curricula to train kind of Vermonters. Chittenden County is going to do fine. No offense, Senator Sorraken, but how do we reengage communities to take care of the places where they live, invest in their own backyard? In my village alone, there's two vacant abandoned buildings. If I could just have the wherewithal and maybe the subsidy to take on one of these projects, I would do it, this is where I live. And I would love to have a new family in my community and using those buildings. And it's just, so we've been working on that. That has not gone as fast as we have, but we have lined up a great potential trainer, but we have to go through the state procurement process and we do have a curriculum lined up. So that will be probably later in the year. Mr. Chair, oh, sorry. Go ahead, Senator Bowles. Oh, just briefly, Chris, you've piqued my curiosity when you said interestingly enough, backed by the Department of Health. I'm just curious if you could just give us a quick take on that. It's very interesting. And I just want to know just a little bit more. Yeah, just high level, they have public health. I mean, the federal government has money for creating healthy communities. And a lot of the place making stuff in our downtowns involves, you know, promoting, you know, creating walking and biking, you know, in destinations, getting people out of their cars and getting people out on their feet and using their bodies again. So that's the nexus to some of the place making stuff that we're doing, but it's a great opportunity. And, you know, we're working closely with the Vermont Community Foundation to kind of be our fiscal sponsor to roll this up. It's going to be an amazing program. You know, the whole system, I guess, how we grant money is very risk averse and very slow. And to change the system to get to a quick yes is what we wanted. It's been some work, but I think it'll be well-received and by communities. And I do expect a strong response. Chris, we put a one and a half million dollars for three consecutive years in the budget. Is that right? It's just 1.5 for now. And we were, you know, we anticipate that will probably last a year to two years. Okay. And when you were talking about your community, you had two units that you would love to see developed. I got lost as to what is the impediment now? What are you referring to that we haven't done? So, you know, we have a great development community in Chittenden County, some areas outside of White River Junction, you know, in around Hanover area, they, you know, there is a developer class who takes on projects and builds buildings. In most of our communities, that's really not what's needed and that's not the right scale for them. In most of our communities, you know, the buildings are either run down or abandoned or vacant. So, you know, the VHIP program kind of helps a little bit with that. But what we need to be able to do is give people kind of the wraparound services, you know, give them the tools they need to take on a project where they live. And there's been some amazing successes in other jurisdictions, you know, helping, you know, giving people kind of the 101 nuts and bolts and the wraparound services to go through the permitting process, to figure out the financing, to make all these things happen. Is this the 150,000? Yes. The assistance? That's right. So, is this time, the bylaws? No. So, so those- I'm a little lost where we are. My apologies. I've kind of lost you in giving my, we've been busy this summer doing a lot of different things. There's a $650,000 appropriation. $500,000 of that goes to the bylaw modernization grants. 150, and this was what we discussed with the chairs, how to split those up. And the 150 will go to this training and wraparound services. And I think this could, you know, this is important to you, Senators Sorokin, because I know you're very interested in, you know, how to create more, you know, accessory dwelling units, you know, and I think this can be a, you know, a part of the strategy. You know, we need to get people excited, convince people they can do that, provide them the services they need, but they also need an incentive. And this kind of gets ahead of, you know, some of the stuff we're doing in 101 or was proposed in 101 could be a great development incentive to help these smaller scale and get these smaller scale housing units back online or get them improved or break up some of these really large buildings that, you know, we're over housed. We, our housing stock is not well matched for what our needs are. So, but that's all that. And we could talk more about that later. So I'm sorry to jump us down a rabbit hole. We've also represented ACCD on the Vermont Climate Council. That was a fun ride. But the good thing is a lot of the ideas in S101 and things that we've been working on with this committee and others are, you know, loaded up as recommendations in the Vermont Climate Action Plan. So that's great to see. And finally, you know, it's, we're a pretty diverse shop. We've also supported the Everyone Eats program, which has been a huge success supporting our farmers and restaurants, keeping those people employed. They're approaching 2 million meals served. And the New York Times is working on a piece to kind of showcase their incredible success in our communities, keeping people fed during this very difficult time. Chris, manager to ask Mr. Chair. It extended now through April, is that correct? That's correct. It is, you know, it's fully funded by FEMA and it is in budget adjustment and the administration is fully supportive of it. So I don't anticipate any bumps. We were also part of the stakeholder groups that worked with Representative Bongarts on his housing bill. It has a number now, it's H511. And I'd be happy to tell you more about kind of what's in that when you're ready. But bottom line, you know, we're a small team. The success that we've had is really, you know, contingent on our partners and the people we work with. And this committee has been an incredibly important partner to us. And I just really want to sincerely thank you for your help and support. You know, stuff like zoning and bylaws is pretty wonky and to have it kind of get such statewide prominence is incredible and do a large part to your support. So thank you. Chris and Ellen, I think very quickly, I remember last year when we put 101 together, we sort of were taking things from the ashes of 237. And some people didn't think we could do it, but we plowed ahead and did 101, which was some of the pieces. Ellen or Chris, do you remember the history very briefly of, and I don't need to go into the germane-ness in Act 250, but what other substantive pieces were in 237 that got passed and which ones got into 101 and which ones are in the ether somewhere? Yeah, I'm gonna probably rely a little bit on Jacob on the details, because he just looked at the bill recently. You know, the high level of the pushback was, you know, it was kind of a municipal preemption. You know, we recognize that these areas had water and wastewater capacity and that a lasoning well-intended was outdated and was holding up kind of the housing development and opportunities we'd like to see. You know, it did pass the Senate unanimously, just moved incredibly quickly and then just hit the wall in the house. There was a lot of pushback from municipal planners, a lot of concerns about, you know, what comes next. I will say that, you know, well, a lot of the bill did not pass. It was incredibly important to kind of raise the issue about how zoning can, you know, complicate some of our goals of compact settlement, of vital communities, of housing development. So while we didn't hit the ball out of the park, it was a great conversation starter and, you know, spawned the things like the bylaw modernization grants, which took a different approach rather than preempting, you know, local zoning. It said, look, you know, who are the communities that are want to work on this and who want to see more housing options in their community? And let's figure out a way to support them through this process and give them the money and resources they need to modernize their bylaws. The one that came out of the Senate was essentially sort of a carrot and a stick. We gave them like three years to do it, but then it would be imposed upon them if they didn't use the issue. Where did we wind up with two or four unit housing being treated similarly to single family housing? Has that ever happened? There was something in a bill last year, not very strong, but... Jacob, can you help me on that? You looked at the bill. Maybe Ellen can, yeah. So that didn't pass. There was part of it that did pass was the prohibition on denying up to four units based on character of the area. So that did pass, but the other provisions, so just quickly, the parts that did pass, amending the definition of accessory dwelling unit to larger units fall under that now. Small lots extending the connection to allow small lot development. Yeah, denying character of the area for four unit dwellings, authorizing municipalities to adopt ordinances for short-term, on short-term rentals. The weird provision we had to deal with on invalidating deed restrictions. And then there was the language regarding the tri park facilities. Right. So that I think is all that passed. And then there were quite a lot of other... So that bill originally started with David and Becky and I. So there were other provisions, including the wastewater connection provision. There were some Act 250 things. I think Becky's TIF program may have been in there at some point. And then also, yeah, the bylaw, the requirements for the density related provisions for bylaws, that did not make it. Ellen, would you, I don't know if, I think it would be helpful to me if you could just make a bullet list of ideas that passed out of this committee that are still out there that we haven't acted on yet. If that's possible. Just a one, a short one pager, just like the two units treated, duplex is treated like, you know, like that kind of stuff. I don't know if a lot of it, sounds like there are a few. So... Mr. Chair, may I ask for a slight expansion of that? Because it would be great to know the pieces that did pass because they passed in different places. And so in some, sometimes it was hard to keep track of what passed and what didn't pass. So it would be great, Ellen, if we could just do bullets of each, what passed, what didn't pass, so that we need to... Okay. I think the Better Places program was in 237 to start also at some point, and then it kind of moved too. So there were a lot of things, 237 was huge when it was first introduced. That kind of. Yeah. Okay. So I'm like a bad penny, you know, when I pass something out of this committee, I want to keep working about it to make sure it finally gets to the governor. Oh, that hasn't worked out real well either. So anyhow, thank you, Senator Brock. Just an observation. This entire subject can get incredibly complex because each element depends to one extent on the other. It would be great if we could take a look at all of these various elements in some type of a graphic form so that we can see how they relate to each other. I know ACCD, I'll tell you who it was, was the business of the organization that does business grants and so on under ACCD, separate organization, I'm escaping the name right now, but they had a very, very excellent graphics capability that could take something like this that we lose information when we look at just a bunch of bullets and show how they relate to one another graphically, almost on a single page. That would be a very, very helpful tool, I think, for us and also for the public, try to understand what it is and how all these things fit together. No, I think that would be helpful. I mean, I can see like one, like it divided up in thirds or something. One is like money programs, other are policy laws, and then maybe a third being, I don't know exactly what, but a miscellaneous thing, but it all, I mean, if you look at the title, I love the title of the Purpose, and Ellen probably wrote it, the Purpose of S-101, it's something to do to promote housing through smart in smart growth areas or something like that. And that's what we're trying to do. And I think we get, sometimes we get stuck because it tends us, a poster child, positive or negative is act 250, and that's very controversial and it could slow down other good efforts when you get into that discussion. So, but this is a program that I was picking up, by the way, was the veggie program that does a very excellent job of taking information about a program and designing it graphically. They have the tools that perhaps Chris might consult with that group to see if there is a, there's someone there that could help do that for us. Right, I appreciate that. Okay, you're on mute, Chris. I'd be happy to do that. And I think it may be beneficial too, since you haven't really started talking about it, but looking at Representative Baumgart's bill and how that probably overlays graphically, because you've got some policy and some funding pieces and some act 250 pieces that all kind of come together in centers. And I don't quite have a vision for how I'm gonna do that graphically, but I like the challenge and I think it would be instructive. So we'll take that. Thank you. Senator Rom. Thanks. Chris, I might send over a bill that I've been working on as well. While we have Ellen here, we thought a summary would be helpful. I haven't had time to do it. And I think I haven't heard from David Hall about that, Ellen. I don't know if you could help with that, but it has a lot of pieces that may be in Representative Baumgart's bill as well. Things like a fund to help commercial properties transition to the residential amenities they would need to come online, a three-year TIF extension. I'm not sure if you've heard from communities about their falling behind because of the pandemic and needing that. A reduction in the need to, like a basically one-to-one need to remediate agricultural soils outside of a neighborhood development center if you're developing within a neighborhood center, et cetera. I just wonder, I just think this is really the time to, like you're saying, take good bills from the house, the Senate, wherever they come and get more housing online and get the opinion of the administration on which of these things it can be implemented most quickly. It's a good point for me to share my thinking of this morning and it's preliminary, but I would want to talk as a committee about this, but just like everybody's expressing, housing is at the top of everybody's list. And there's so many ideas there that I'm more and more interested in putting together a committee bill that starts out like Kevin Mullen used to do with all these ideas in various sections. And like what the house sent us last year on economic development, they sent us one bill and it was their economic development bill and it had 15 different sections which we went along with most of them. But so I'm thinking that we would have a deadline on a committee bill, but deadlines can find their ways to get extended but of the 31st of January. So we could ask Ellen and David Hall and they're interested to take all these ideas, put a 50 page bill together and go section by section. And that I think accomplishes some of what you're all saying. Senator Brock said, you know, there's so many moving parts and they affect each other and we would have them in one place. And if we start working on one section, they said, well, what about the section we just dealt with? It works against that, we would have it in one place as opposed to passing out five or six different bills. And we could incorporate house bills, we could incorporate, I know several of you are working on housing bills that we may see in the next couple of days. So we can put them all in one place. And you know, I think it's more likely to reflect our values and get signed into law if they're all in one place, as opposed to people having PowerPoints in this process to kill an individual idea. So anyhow, we'll talk more about that as an approach, but that's how I was feeling this morning. Okay, Chris, let's go back to you unless there are other questions. Can we start with bylaw modernization and tell us like the three versions, our version, the house's version and what you've implemented at this point? Yeah, I'm gonna give you the quick summary of kind of what happened. We got a strong response. We work closely with the regional planning commissions to get their input on their program. They obviously provide a lot of the services to help the communities. And so we wanted them fully engaged. With their input, we did make a few changes. I'm gonna ask Jacob, Jacob stood the program up. So I'm gonna ask him to speak about the details, but we got an incredibly strong response, oversubscribed, I believe by 150,000. But I think we're gonna announce this Monday or Tuesday next week, 41 communities. We were able to support bylaw modernization in 41 communities, which is incredible. And they're gonna get to work. And this is going to make neighborhood development area designation easier for many of these communities. So this kind of feeds into the tax credits and representative of bond guards as Bill. So I think, yeah, to your, Senator Brock to your point, I think your graphic pulling all these pieces together would be really, really helpful, even to me. Jacob, I'm gonna pass the mic to you. If you could just say a little bit about, we largely follow the intent, the house didn't make a bunch of changes. And, but if you could speak to a little bit where the changes were, we did offer language, I think to just ensure that the program we stood up was consistent with, if you do move forward on this, so it's consistent with what we created. Good morning, Jacob. Good morning, morning senators and thanks for your time. So on, when we were putting together the bylaw modernization grant program, we referred very closely to both the house incentive version and created guidelines that seem to be very, very consistent. We also collaborated with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and the regional planning commissions who were tremendously instrumental in making sure that we got the interest in this program that we did. We had, we have three multi-town applications serving 18 municipalities led by regional planning commissions. And then like Chris said, 41 municipalities overall. The only significant difference between the program guidelines and in my view and the house version was that the department rolled out a program that favored avoidance and minimization instead of a hard exclusion for natural resources in areas including flood hazard and river corridors. And that's because the bylaws cover the whole municipality. They often overlay natural resources. They can be regulated locally and they're frequently subject to a state permit. And so to go with that language, we thought would be lead to very complicated administrative reviews that close out and put the municipalities in a really tough place and considering how they might want to avoid and minimize natural resources areas but still develop in accordance with the agency of natural resources model river corridor and flood hazard bylaws and wetland permitting standards. So is that a, so the house in the Senate both had a prohibition and I think we were following your department's lead pretty much when we passed that. I don't remember hearing that concern back then or maybe I'm not understanding it, I'm sorry. Yeah, and I don't know if both the house version in the Senate version had both the exclusion. I thought there was a, I'm recalling that there was a distinction there but I'd have to look into that. Even so, we feel that that was a minor modification still consistent with the intent that we wouldn't be promoting housing in important natural resources. Good. I'm just saying, I mean, we might fully agree with that but it does raise a flag that if we passed it out in one way and I get a little concern that some of the players out there may have had undue influence on what you ultimately came up with and changed what we had suggested. So we can talk more about that but it sounds like it's still getting at the same purpose. So, so I saw the grant list and it looks like the average grant is in the 20 or low 20s or something like that. How much can that really buy? I mean, I've been on planning commissions and DRB's and I've seen rewrites of bylaws that had a cost a lot more than that. Mike Mungin comes to mind as the guru of all planning of the bylaw rewrites and he was working with the Essex Planning Commission for years to rewrite their bylaws. Yeah, well, $20,000 can go quite a ways depending on the scope of the project. If you're doing a bylaw overall that would be a lean budget. But I think this program is really looking at those smart growth areas, particularly the zoning districts in and around village centers and designated downtowns. So it wasn't targeted at town-wide zoning but enabling and opening up more housing opportunities in the smart growth locations and taking incremental steps that could have a big difference. And again, this was linked back to the department's zoning for great neighborhoods initiative that produced the enabling better places guide all designed to make it easier to welcome housing in and around centers and take incremental measures that can have a big difference in housing. So when you're looking at just a few districts, we feel that the scopes were very much in line with the allocations because they were targeted. And many of them had quotes to back them up. Those put yourself. And having the Regional Planning Commission's engaged, there's an economy of scale. For instance, our Senator Clarkson in your district, Two Rivers, I think they aggregated six applications for $60,000, that was a great value. But for the smaller communities, there's gonna be largely the same language. So I think you're getting a huge value. They're customized based on the community, but engaging them in that process really, you know, made the whole exercise a lot more affordable. Chris and Jake, how are you going to monitor the deliverables on this in terms of what do they have to produce for the $20,000 or how would that work? We would be looking at the bylaws prepared at the end of the process. And there would be a narrative-based closeout report where we would ask that the municipalities do explain how they've met the program requirements. Is this the program that we were sort of trickling out money where the last payment might come upon the deliverable or something? Yes. It is, there's an incentive to, if the bylaws are adopted before the closeout period and there's a 20-month timeline to do that, then the program, yeah, will forgive the 10% match. Got it, I remember that. So it's a two-year process. Right. Okay. All right, so anybody have any more questions on the bylaw section? So moving on to the wastewater section, I don't wanna spend a lot of time on this Tom Weiss who is a consumer constituent who was against the elimination of the state permitting has sent a renewed or new letter that's posted online. I think he may have mailed it to everybody. I don't know whether it's anything new from, I know he was active in both our committee and the natural resources last year and essentially we decided to go forward with the elimination of duplication. So you can read that letter and we can make a decision, but just keep in mind, I need to go back to the framework we're under here. This is a bill that passed the Senate and passed the House. We are in a position now where any day any one of us could stand up theoretically on the floor of the Senate right now and say, I move that we concur, I move that we concur with further amendment. One other option is to move the bill back into committee, but at the very least, I think we're charged with trying to preserve the Senate position. So we've made a decision on this, the House didn't agree with it, but my understanding is that they're more, they're warming up to our position on this. I don't know if Chris, you have any more information or feel comfortable expressing anything about that? I don't wanna speak for Representative Bongards, but I mean, he did express second thoughts about removing these provisions and he was open to reconsideration. I don't know if he's talked or to the extent of conversations that he's had with his chair and his fellow committee members on this, but he did express to me just kind of a regret. So the remaining issue, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, is really the downtown tax credits, which I talked about earlier. There's differences, obviously, between our committee appropriations and the House. I guess I would ask you, Chris, to describe your position or the administration's position on the two versions of the bill, the Senate version versus the House version of the bill. The Senate version of the bill basically made a permanent change to the downtown and village center tax credit program to extend the benefit to the neighborhood areas. We, House Commerce also supported that change, but members and ways means the chair, I think the vice chair, had some concerns about making a permanent change. They said, you know, this is a really good program. It works, you know, they wanted to essentially just partition it off and give and test the expansion for a five-year period to see if we could prove the outcomes that we believed that we would have improving the quality of the neighborhoods in and around our downtowns. Ellen drafted some language that basically mirrors the existing program, but creates a standalone tax credit for the neighborhood development areas. Really indications with ways and means are that it's supportive of this. And if you, you know, want to take another look at your bill, I do believe incorporating the language that ways and means is supportive of will get a good reception there. Thank you for that. The question more directly was, what is the administration's position on the Senate pass bill versus the House pass bill? The Senate pass, I'm sorry, the Senate pass bill is a better bill. And we would rather see that bill than the House pass version. If the Senate bill as is went to the governor, would he sign it? I can't speak for the governor, but I know he's a, you know, obviously housing is a big concern of his and he's been a big supporter of the downtown and village center tax credits. I think we're gonna hear more about this and hopefully the state of the state and the budget address. And I think that's where you're gonna get a good indication of how strong your support is. What is, does he have support for the, any kind of continuation of the bylaw modernization program? It was internally was, I, people understand that the permitting framework that we have in Vermont is complicated and is hindering the opportunities that we want. So I do believe there is strong support for the bylaw modernization grants, the amounts and to the extent, again, I'm not privy to that. Is there anything in the budget adjustment act, I think it's public, the governance proposal at this point. Is there anything in there that affects any of these programs that you're aware of? Budget. Not to my knowledge. There's several funding adjustments for housing related programs. And I believe deputy secretary Brooks should be able to comment on them. Senator Clarkson, do you have a question? No, I was going right to where Chris went, which is I believe that we'll see healthy and robust support for expansion of the downtown tax credits in the budget address. It's what like my hope is, cause they've certainly been, the administration's been very supportive of the Senate's position on this. Okay. Let's see, does anybody else have questions or any further comments you'd like to make before I go back to Ellen? All good. Exciting about better places. I mean, I think it's all, it's good. 41 communities doing bylaw modernization, that's great. Yeah, no, and we'd love to do more. So I hope we can get support to continue this. Okay. I'll chat about. So Ellen, we're going to break in about six minutes in case the committee is unaware of, we have goals of two 10 minute breaks each morning. When we start at nine, it'll be a 10 and an 11. And then it varies a little bit depending upon our schedule. But I'd like to try as best possible to keep to those. So we have about five minutes to get started. We may finish. Could you just walk through the language and the changes that the house is suggesting on the bylaw modernization sections? Sure. So I did send a document to Scott this morning as a side-by-side, that is a side-by-side. And so I will put it up on the screen but it is posted on your website. Great. So the bill as it came back from the house does look a little bit strange because so many amendments are in there. But basically what happened is the very first section of the bill has never changed. It's a very short piece of language that just cross references this new program with the municipal and regional planning fund because this program is going to be able to draw funds from that existing fund that is funded by the property transfer tax. So that section one, it has not changed but section two, the house did make some small tweaks too. So I'm gonna share my screen. Can you see the side-by-side document? Yeah. It's easier in some ways. It's bigger on our own second. If we have our iPads or something to look at it, it's slightly bigger. Okay, so I can stop sharing if that's what you would prefer. I would like to keep it on so. Great, oh, that's better. Okay, so section two. So section two, as you will remember of this bill, it adds a new section to title 24, establishing the language on this bylaw modernization grant program. So the language that this committee passed and that the Senate passed is on the left side of the document. The language that the house passed is on the right and the changes are in yellow. And I don't think there are too many but I will read you the house version that has come over from the house. So there are created municipal bylaw modernization grants to assist municipalities in updating their land use and development bylaws to support a development pattern that is pedestrian oriented and consistent with the smart growth principles established in 2791 of this title. So this is gonna be sort of a theme throughout this amendment. The house really did wanna focus on smart growth areas and smart growth principles. And that was in your bill but I do think they added a little more detail about what that meant. So the grants shall be funded by monies allocated from the municipality allocation of the municipal and regional planning funds established in 4306 A3C of this title and any other monies appropriated for this purpose. So moving down to section B. Is there really much different? How would you in late terms in that first thing section say the difference between house and Senate? It's, I think it's just a small change. They are a committee that's focused on the natural resources and the environment. And so they did, they are very concerned about pedestrian travel and making sure that there are smart growth. So while yours has a reference specifically to housing which makes sense. This is a committee that usually focuses on housing. So I don't think it's much different. It just adds a specific reference also to the smart growth principles in 2791. Chris, does that in your mind is the first thing restrictive in any way? I mean, it says the development pattern that is pedestrian oriented. I mean, does that allow for bylaw changes that don't promote housing but promote sidewalks or commercial development downtown? I think it's consistent with the goals to create housing opportunities because you wanna, you know dense housing needs to be connected. And once it's connected then you have opportunities to reduce vehicle uses. So I think they're all supportive. Okay. Let's just deal with this next section and then we'll take a 10 minute break. Okay. So what is now section B was previously your section E. So they just moved this section up higher into the section and it's still largely the same. So I'm on the right side of the page B. A municipality that receives a grant shall use the funds for the adoption of bylaws that increase housing choice, affordability and opportunity in smart growth areas. These smart growth areas shall be areas that reflect the smart growth principles in 2791 that are located outside important natural resources area natural resource areas and are located outside identified flood hazard areas and river corridors or are acceptable for infill development as defined in the Vermont flood hazard area and river corridor rule. So again, most of this language was already in your bill but there was some clarifying language at the beginning to sort of, well, what does eligible mean but this is about receiving the grants they added affordability they took out the uncons, I don't specifically remember the conversation about the unconstrained water and sewers area and then they changed suitable to acceptable. I don't know how much of a, how strong of a difference that is, but. The same question for you, Chris. This either one works for you pretty much. Yes. Yep. So let's take a break before we do. Chris, could you on your to-do list, could you just get us a short memo that in your ideal world on, I guess this section and all sections of the bill, what you would like to see the language read, you know, I assume you're gonna try and make the language more reflective of the program that you've already put in place but if you can get us that language for those changes, that would be great. Yep, absolutely. We can get you that today. And then I'll work it'll take a little bit of time to think about kind of a graphic that puts together all these pieces but we'll work on that too. Okay. So thank you everybody. We'll take a 10 minute break, come back at 10 and we have about 20 more minutes on this and then we'll move to S79. Thank you. That was very helpful. Bye-bye. Your side-by-side and hopefully we can finish this up in the next 20 minutes and move on to the next bill. Yeah, there aren't too many more changes. So on page two of my side-by-side, we're in subsection C on the right side. Small change here. Disbursement to municipalities shall be administered by the Department of Housing and Community Development through a competitive process, providing the opportunity for all regions and any municipality to compete regardless of size. The house added, the department shall to the extent reasonably possible and sure that grants are awarded with the intent of achieving geographic distribution across the state. So the house was very interested in making sure that all the grants didn't go to Chinden County. Well, Franklin. So the next two sections don't have any changes, but just to remind you, funds may be dispersed by the department in installments to ensure the municipal bylaw updates meet the goals of the section. Funding may be used for mapping the cost of regional planning commission staff or consultant time, carrying out the provisions of sub chapter five through 10 of this chapter and any other purpose approved by the department. Onto page three, to receive a grant, the municipality shall identify any municipal water supply and wastewater disposal capacity, opportunities and constraints within map service areas in both traditional water and wastewater systems and smaller scale municipal systems, including soil-based wastewater treatment and decentralized water and wastewater systems. So wastewater systems have been a pretty big topic in connection with this bill, the house did spend time on this. So they added more language here to I think address some of the smaller alternative water system, wastewater systems that are in some of the towns. Next, the municipality shall allow at a minimum duplexes within smart growth areas to the same extent that single family dwellings are allowed. Require parking waivers in appropriate smart growth areas and situations. Ellen, can I stop you on duplexes? So this goes in both versions, it goes a little further than what we did in terms of consistent with the character of the area, but this is just for the communities that want grants under the bylaw modernization. Right? Correct. Okay, okay. We addressed this aspects of this issue in two different places, one in the bylaws and one in the housing. I can't remember which, 237, whatever, where we talked about this. Yeah, but yeah, this is gonna be required of the 41 towns that asked for financial help. The other one is for the whole state, but it's not a total mandate. It's a semi, it's not as strong as this one. It's an encouragement. Right. Right, and this is restricted to smart growth areas. So it's allowed duplexes within smart growth areas. So isn't a full mandate that duplexes are allowed? Right. Did we, that's a good point. When we were struggling with the duplex issue and we came up with the middle ground of consistent with the character of the area, did that also apply to just downtowns or smart growth areas? Or was it statewide? I believe it is statewide because it's in the section of law related to conditional use review. So it is four areas, but it's a little bit specific. So it's four areas that allow multi-unit dwellings and require conditional use review. Those multi-unit dwellings cannot be denied for character of the area. Okay. So they could be denied for other reasons like water constraints or building concerns, but character of the area, you can't say that a multi-unit dwelling doesn't fit the character of the area. I, when you do your bullet things of things that this committee has passed, I'd be very curious as to whether we ever passed anything on duplexes per se other than this, other than the one you're talking about. I don't, in other words, I don't know whether that was a compromise as it went through the whole thing and we started off stronger, but if you can refresh our memory on that, that'd be great. Yeah. I think the duplex language came out of 237, but I will check. Thank you. All right. Number three, the municipality shall require parking waiver provisions in appropriate smart growth areas and situations, shall review and modify street standards that implement the complete street principles and that are oriented to pedestrians. And then this is where there's another change a little bit. So the municipality shall adopt dimensional use, parking or other standards that allow compact neighborhood form and support walkable lot and unit density, which may be achieved with a standard allowing at least four units per acre with site and building design standards or by other means established by the department. So the house slightly modified your language. They spent a lot of time talking about acreage size and overall, I think both the Senate and the house have a goal of this section being flexible. And so the department is allowed to set standards here on how to achieve unit density. So allowing four units per acre or by other means established in the guidelines. So it doesn't necessarily mean that one quarter acre lots couldn't be used. I just, I think I recall that there was a little, they had a hard time deciding on acre size. So they just removed it. And then finally, the last change, they added another bullet point. So the municipality shall demonstrate how the bylaws support implementation of the housing element of its municipal plan as provided for in 4382, related to addressing lower and moderate income housing needs. So they added that. And then finally, just so you know, the date here is September, by September 1, 2021, the department shall adopt the guidelines to assist in applying for grants under the section. So that may need to change potentially if you want to move forward with this language, but so. So is Crystal with us? I don't think so. As James. No, they have departed. Okay, well, I think this question is better asked of them, but I'll try it with you. This stuff, you know, I'm proud of this work we did here. This is really good. I'm just wondering whether most of these people who are applying for money are only ones that have already pretty much gotten there already. Cause this is pretty good planning language, good smart growth language. And on the other hand, you know, I can see towns being scared of committing to doing this, taking the money and having to do all these things. So you probably don't know the answer to that, but in seeing the applications and knowing the towns that have applied will ask Chris whether, you know, this is achieving its purpose of making changes in those bylaws or those things already exist. And they're taking the money and going to do other changes to modernize their bylaws. Anyhow, is that true that you wouldn't know the answer to that? I don't know the answer, but my only thought is in looking back at this language, here at the top of page three, F. So the intro language here, I do think is a little bit unclear, could be clarified slightly. So it says to receive a grant, the municipality shall do the following things. And so it may make sense to invert that slightly and say upon receiving a grant, the municipality shall do the following things. Right, right. Because it almost reads as though they have to do all these things before they get the money. Right. And so that I think leads to your concern about towns that have already done a lot of work as opposed to helping towns that haven't done as much work. Right. So, Mr. Chair. I hope Ellen, you'll keep reminding us of that. We don't let that go because I think that's pretty critical. Mr. Chair, may I just ask a question? Yes. So I mean, this is our legislative language, but they of course have now stood up this program and have their own language. So it would be interesting to see in this particular area how they, it would be great to have a third side by side sort of the operational language, which is what they're using. Because clearly the language wasn't too big of an impediment if 41 towns have 50 towns applied and 41 got grants. So I just be curious to see if the language here seemed to be less of a hurdle in the operational program which got set up. And I think as we look at actually finally passing this we should see what they actually did. Can you work with Chris to put a third element in there, Ellen? I think we asked Chris already to come up with language changes. He would want to see that this does not reflect. I think I've always heard Senator Clarkson that these six things are aspirational and not required up front, if Ellen's correct, that's the way it could technically read. But even if it's aspirational are people applying when they know they have already met it or easily can meet it. And it may not be going to the best places that need the changes. So we'll keep an eye on that. All right, so the other thing I guess we can move to is the section on downtown tax credits. Do you have something on that as well? I don't have anything prepared because the house just removed everything that you did. And so I can put that language up, but it's actually very simple. It just adds downtown neighborhood development areas to the downtown and village tax credit program. So it just adds that that is an area where buildings are eligible to receive those tax credits. Okay, could you just before we end we'll have like four minutes. Can you give us a quick overview of what the downtown tax credits can be used for and maybe the highlights of what the expansion we had we had wished for would do for those neighborhood development areas. And what a neighborhood development area is. Sure, so the state designation program has five different designations in it. There are these sort of three core programs and then add on designations. So the three core designations are downtowns, village centers and new town centers. So currently tax credits are available in designated downtowns and designated village centers. There are three types of tax credits under this program. They are for facade improvements to the outside of the building. Code improvements, such as like elevators is one of the big examples. And then there's also a historic rehabilitation tax credit so that for historic buildings. So buildings in existing downtowns and village centers are eligible to apply for these tax credits. And so your bill was going to extend that to also include neighborhood development areas. So neighborhood development areas are added on top of either a downtown village center or new town center. And so it covers that designation and then also extends further into the residential areas around the compact centers. So they're largely neighborhoods where people live. Is that designated specifically? I mean, when they get a map and say, this is it and we want approval for that. Okay, and is there other guidelines like how far out from the town center they could go? Yes, yes. It's either one quarter mile or one half mile from the center of the downtown. So they're larger than the centers but by much they're not supposed to be huge areas because it's just supposed to be around the commercial core. And if I may, Mr. Chair, one of the reasons I think this is so attractive is actually our village cores and downtown cores are actually smaller than we think. We think, oh, the whole downtown but actually the designated parts for these village centers and downtowns are actually smaller than you think. So that's particularly for me why the neighborhood development areas are attractive for us to expand into because in our town it would basically just include the rest of what we all consider downtown. Okay, well, thank you very much. Anything anybody wants to add or they'll obviously be revisiting this but this was a great session. Thank you, Ellen, very much. Do you have anything you wanna say from closing at all? No, I just would add that. I think the part that the house struggled with is that there are 23 downtowns. There are 200 village centers but there are only seven or possibly eight neighborhood development areas. So there are only a few and they're only located in certain areas. So there are more towns applying all the time but that program is not as old as or as large as the other programs. But this would make it more attractive to apply for them. Potentially, yeah. So I think that was a piece of what is going on. Great, thank you so much, Ellen. We will now move on to S79 and we have with us Tate Brooks and I don't know if anybody else... David Hall is with us. David Hall. So I'll just give a brief overview for the committee of where we're at and thank you Tate and David for being here. This bill is our rental housing health code bill, it also had VHIP and I always forget the nomenclature for the Revolving Loan Fund. I think we appropriated, we wanted $5 million for VHIP and $1 million for the Revolving Loan Fund. That got into the budget but the bill did not pass. So we have another of these situations where the appropriated money was like a sentence and we didn't fully by law define the program. So we've been working on this, this committee has been working on this bill for I think three years. I think other people have been working on it for a lot longer. It has primarily to do with enforcement of the rental housing health code and the shortcomings of doing it through a volunteer program at the local level. We passed it, the house made a few changes and we concurred and sent it to the governor. We were taken a little bit by surprise on the veto because, and we try to stop that from happening as best we could because many of the concerns were not, let's put it this way, loudly articulated but that's the prerogative of the governor's office and I know for one Senator Clarkson and I have been working very hard to get to yes on this Senator Brock will warn us that he told us so. But still trying to get to yes. And that's why I've asked Scott to post the bill as passed the two chambers and the governor's veto message to send it to us so we can print it out and look at it. But I'd like to start with David if I could to tell us what he understands from veto message and from what passed to be the real, the issues as we can decipher from the veto message that we would need to change if to get the governor's approval and then we'll talk with Tate and he can probably shed even greater light on that. Is that okay with you folks or do you have suggestions for a different order? I'm not sure it matters a lot but I'd like to get grounded in the specifics of what we know so far and David in your presentation could you just go through, we don't have to deal with VHIP and the other things but just to refresh our memory, what's in S79 and what from your understanding are the objectionable areas. I know that there were several that we never intended to do anything other than what the governor was concerned about. So I think those are easily fixable and then we can talk about the other areas where we did intend to do different than what the governor wants. Claire's mud, right David? Yeah, good morning, David, all legislative counsel. I, you know, honestly, I would really defer to the administration on its position with regard to its objections to the bill and the basis for the governor's veto. I hate to put words in their mouth and honestly, I haven't read that letter in its entirety closely enough that I could do that justice. So I'm glad that Mr. Brooks is here and he'll be able to do that. I can tell you sort of at a higher level, the thrust of the components of S79 and where I understand there to be some discomfort with what the bill would have done had it not been vetoed. I mean, remember that, gosh, going back a couple of years now, you know, we discussed, I had prepared for you a rather lengthy compilation of the statutory and regulatory provisions that currently govern rental housing, health and safety. And there is a significant amount of overlap within the state and then between the state and localities on what is supposed to happen who has authority to do what with respect to rental housing. And right now, the Department of Health has full regulatory authority over anything that might be considered a public health hazard or public health safety concern. And authority is invested in the Secretary of Health and the agency of human services and the State Department of Health at the state level to enforce those types of health and safety concerns. And under that authority, the Department of Health has adopted the rental housing health code which addresses all kinds of issues from, you know, building safety to infestations to adequate plumbing and heating and water supplies, et cetera. That's all on the books, right? And then sort of the other leg of the stool on the health side is that local governments, municipalities are also able to have local boards of health, local health officers and enforce both the state components of that health code and also any local health regulations. Municipalities also have their own authority for building codes and building inspectors. So lots of overlap between state and local health people. There is another component to the whole system which is the Division of Fire Safety within the Department of Public Safety. And it has what is I've always heard and testimony characterizes being about 60-ish percent of the same authority because it has fire safety and life safety, electrical plumbing authority over all what are called public buildings which includes condos, it includes state buildings and includes commercial buildings. It includes not all living situations because it doesn't include single family homes but it does include rental buildings. And so the thrust of S79 was to take a look at the situation we have on the ground which is this. State Department of Health has this authority doesn't really exercise it. Local departments of health have the authority don't really have the capacity. State Division of Fire Safety, Life Safety has the people and the know-how but not enough capacity and not the complete authority to do everything that health otherwise should or would be doing. So S79 in a few places in an attempt to just streamline the language into its existing authority, this bill would expand and give to Department of Public Safety the rest of what it doesn't already have provide personnel to do a complaint based system as we have now and to basically round out the rest of the inspection and enforcement that they don't already do under the auspices of fire and life safety. There are ways, I don't wanna get too deep into drafting here but there are lots of ways to crack this nut, right? We could have started from scratch and come up with a whole new chapter and title and chapter and sub-chapter in law and said from the beginning, public safety, fire safety, here's the parameters of your authority on health and safety for rental housing, here's how you're gonna do your inspections, here's how you're gonna do your enforcement, here's what the penalties and fines are gonna be, here are the remedies, et cetera. That could have been created from a whole cloth that was one way to do it. A second way to do it would be to take the language verbatim from what's already over on the health side and graft it into the public safety side and say, department of public safety, here's the exact same language that department of health has, you're gonna have it now. And we want you to do the same thing they're doing with the new people we're giving. And then the final way, third possibility would have been to do it the way the S79 does it, which is to say, within the structure you've already got, which is frankly a little bit unwieldy because it's been changed a lot over the years to not just be fired, but to be other things and say, we're gonna try to just insert into your existing authority, whatever words we might need to be clear that you can do rental housing, health and safety. And so S79 does that, I'd say in a minimalist way, it also has an implementation provision at the end that sort of parses out who's supposed to do what. And so having taken that path, I think there are concerns, whether it's from landlords, administration or whomever about the way the words actually read because they, they're the existing law and that there may be a disconnect between what the law says and what actually happens. For instance, this concept of a complaint-driven system. Fire safety right now uses a complaint-driven system that is not the limit of their statutory authority. Technically tomorrow, fire safety could go out and have a system that's not just driven by complaints. And it does that for new buildings that has to go out and issue permits and certificates of occupancy and stuff like that. But by and large, fire safety only has the people and the time and the capacity to do complaint-driven inspections. And that was always, at least from the testimony that I've heard that was always their intent and always the legislature's intent that that's the kind of system that would be continued into the future. Again, the statutory language is not specific on that point. It doesn't say when conducting inspection of rental housing you shall only use a complaint-driven system. And so I think there was definitely discomfort in some of the committees and some of the communities about the absence of such language. So that's one possible disconnect. Another one is in sort of the enforcement side, the fines, the penalties. There was some hard burn within certain committees and certain members about the breadth of the enforcement language that currently exists in law where it says, you could have criminal penalties or fines at the $5,000. And there was no attempt in S79 to draw a tighter line around, for instance, the penalty, the punishment fitting, the crime. That's a little, again, that's a disconnect between what the statute says and what practices them in reality of any given enforcement scheme in all of state government, there is the way that the language usually constructs and says a penalty or a fine shall be not more than or up to $5,000 per occurrence, not more than two years in prison, et cetera. I mean, the reality underlying every single one of those statutes, of course, is that there is always some give and take, there's some push and pull between statutory authority versus prosecutorial discretion, what will an agency or attorney general pursue versus what they have the authority to impose. So I think a disconnect between how broad the language is in statute on enforcement versus I think a lot of people that were concerned about it wouldn't have liked to have seen some more tailoring on what the penalty should be for particular violations, et cetera. You know, there's authority underlying in the statute about municipal and enforcement, state enforcement, condemnation of buildings, these types of broad provisions that are on the books that would have been carried over into rental housing that could also be more tailored. But again, I think in this, I don't wanna speak for the division, but it was their preference at the time that this bill was being crafted, that they be able to avail themselves of the language that they already know and the format that they already have and the system that they already use. So they, rather than coming up with something new or borrowing from health, they felt more comfortable with the scheme that they already have. Again, that's been testimony over a few years. I'm not purporting to attribute any position to fire safety at this point. I have no idea what their position on the bill is, but as the bill was coming along and the options are being considered, that was testimony that I heard. The new pieces in this bill are the mandate for registering certain housing and for providing data to the state. The legislature started down this path a few years ago by requiring the Department of Taxes to collate the data that it has through the landlord certificate and make that information available to the public. This would have gone obviously a couple of steps further. It would have been housed in DHCD. It would have added person power and funding to creation and maintaining of a registry and a database. There were guardrails in the legislation about who could access it and what for what purpose, but it definitely is another step beyond what is currently in Title 32 that the Department of Taxes is charged with doing. Of course, there are exceptions to the registration requirements that are pretty technical. I don't think we need to get into those, but there's a lot of nuance in there about who is or isn't required to register. You know, this bill would have created more positions. It would have created the registration fee that would fund those positions and that work on a go-forward basis, up to five more positions in DPS, a couple of more DHCD or one and a half plus the database management. But otherwise, besides the VHIP and the Revolving Loan Fund, that's really the scheme. And again, I guess I'll just finish by saying that this disconnect between language and intent seems to be a pretty big divide. And there's also some policy differences just on whether we should even have a registry or a database and who should administer that and whether there should be a fee, et cetera. So I'll leave it at that and see if you have any questions. David, that was great. I want to ask the committee. I was going to honor David's request though, I think in some ways he violated his own request by going into unwittingly what the administration's objections were on several fronts, but I was going to say we can turn that over to take to better do that. But I was wondering if the committee would like David to walk through the bill, at least up to the VHIP and other things, very cursory review. But so you can see it again, if you need your mind refreshed on the specifics of the bill, I would ask him to take 10 minutes to just do that. And then we would take a break. Do you feel a need to see the bill? I know Senator Clarkson doesn't, but other people might benefit from just going through it again. I generally like to do that because I don't want to assume that people have memories of the detail. I mean, I've lived with this, I've met with Tate on this and so I'm very familiar with all the sections, but it couldn't hurt to take 10 minutes to just see the bill again. I think also, Michael, it would be helpful for the people watching on YouTube. I think those of us who've been intimately involved, not everybody has been. So I think that as we launch into this work, it would be helpful for the broader audience. Okay, David, could you take, could you with a 10 minute timeframe, could you just walk us through a 79, pull it up on the screen maybe and... Sure, I would turn to Scott and see if I am a co-host at this point and able to share. It looks like I'm not. So I'd have to have that opportunity. David, I just made you a co-host. Great, thank you. What's the best way for me to do this is probably just going to be to pull it up here. Tate, are you okay with coming back at 10 after 11? Mr. Chairman, I'm okay with that, yes. Thank you very much. All right, is everybody seeing S79 on the screen? Yep. Great, so 37 pages, but a lot of fill. So I will be quick. I will stick to the 10 minute timeline and take you through this briefly. You know, as I alluded to at the beginning, we're talking specifically about the existing statute that governs the Department of Public Safety's Division of Fire Safety. You'll see in the very beginning here, Chapter 173 is right now called Prevention and Investigation of Fires. But again, over the years, those things have this authority has been expanded a little bit even in different areas. You'll see the reference to energy standards. I mean, that's just because of some energy work you guys did. It's little narrow, but what I'm trying to do here with expanding the title of the chapter and the sub-chapter is sort of reflect the fact that this isn't just fire anymore. That's not everything that they do. So for instance, I mean, in 27, 29, we're talking about not only the general provisions, we're talking about fire safety, we're talking about carbon monoxide, et cetera. So again, as I said, the scope of their authority applies to what we call a public building. And you don't have the whole definition here, but it's expansive. And it does include, as you'll see already in D, a building in which people rent accommodations, whether overnight for a longer term. So I mean, right now, fire safety has that authority over rental housing, over condos, over hotels, over Airbnb's. I mean, if it's rented to the public, then they have that 60% authority to come and do inspections and enforcement. This adds specifically rental housing as you are defining it in subsection F. And that is specifically to include long-term rental housing that's, you know, subject to chapter 90SA 137, that's the landlord tenant law. And then also short-term rentals as we define them in the health title in 18VSA 4301. So both long-term and short-term rental housing, we just wanna make sure those are specifically included here. I mean, the crux of this whole thing is this line in 2731. It is adding, you know, the authority to adopt rules governing the construction, health, safety, sanitation, and fitness for habitation of buildings, maintenance and operation of premises, preventions of fires and removal of hazards, prescribed standards necessary to protect the public. And that is, that's a freestanding statutory authority. It's also the specific authority to adopt rules to govern these issues. And that could include, you know, having a very specific framework about how they do their work, what the standards are, et cetera. You'll see later on in the implementation section, the idea is that fire safety would adopt and whole cloth the current health code. David, I have one specific question on short-term rentals. I know this committee and you worked on a short-term rental bill, maybe more than one. And I remember there having to be some notice to people who are renting short-term rentals that if they had any complaint about it, they could call either the Department of Health or the Department of Fire Safety. Am I dreaming that up? No, that's correct. The current law says that the proprietor of a short-term rental has to provide the contact information for both Department of Health and the Division of Fire Safety. So the implication, I guess, of that would be that at least the legislature intended that the Department of Fire Safety could do something with that complaint or the Department of Health could do something with that complaint. Yes, there's another provision in that chapter that says that basically, you know, even though it's house in Title 18 and it's under DOH, nothing in this is intended to, you know, limit the authority of the Division of Fire Safety. Okay, thank you. Yep. So 2731, I mean, again, as I said, a lot of this is just the existing statute and authority. The new matter here in B3, this is an importation of the language from the current health code. A few years back, you guys added to the local health officer section of Title 18 what they had to do as far as the protocol for inspections, investigations, and issuing reports. So this is that language. It is taken from Title 18 local health officials. It is put here so that when DFS would conduct these inspections and investigations, they'd have to follow the same protocol as far as issuing reports, what the violations are, how to correct them, et cetera. You know, 2733 here, these orders to repair, rehabilitate, remove a structure, all existing law, all existing authority. The one addition is that you have to provide notice to people who would be displaced by one of these orders. The penalty provision, same, you know, this is existing law. And I think maybe this is the place where there's concern where there's this opportunity to be fined not more than $10,000. Obviously significant amount of money, 20 for a subsequent violation, et cetera. Administrative penalties of 1,000 per violation. Again, these are all part of the existing statutory authority for DFS. Same with 2736. The intent here is that a municipality that has its own program can continue to operate that side by side with the state. You know, so this is a lot of language, but you'll see this is mostly just sort of statutory cleanup. There's a lot of capitalization. Just one question on that. Yep. I was unclear whether the seven places that have their own program, do they preempt this or they're concurrent with this? They're concurrent. Okay. Yep. They're concurrent now and the authority is concurrent. Whether you even have your own detailed program established the way that Burlington does or your any given municipality, there is concurrent authority right now between the State Department of Health, the local board of health, local health officials, and then to the extent they apply DFS as well. All right. So again, the housing registry is here. This would be added to DHCD. You've got all this information that they're supposed to collect. There is, there's some provisions here that deal with the interplay between a city that already has its own system, has to provide the information to the state. If you pay to register with a city, you do not also have to pay the state. This is the registration requirement. It's housing and short-term housing. It's $35 per unit. Same deal about, I already mentioned the fee piece. And then we have exceptions. If you're already registered with the mobile home parks division, there's some nuance there. If it's not offered to the general public, you don't have to register it. If it's housing is a benefit of farm employment, you don't have to register that for a time. And there's the fund created to manage the fee revenue that's generated. There is a penalty for failure, but that doesn't come online until a couple of years down the road. You guys set that up in a staggered approach. So the requirement comes online. The penalty for not registering is gonna wait. As I said, there were DPS positions authorized and DHCV positions, five and one and a half respectively. This is the local health pieces. This is just housekeeping. No substantive change there, except for this inspection report language, as I said, is moved over to title 20. And then the language above says if you're working with DFS or you're doing an inspection on your own, you have to follow the same protocols, issue the inspection report, et cetera. So the transition provisions, we're about a one minute here. And I think this is important. So I'll spend my last minute on this, is as I mentioned at the very beginning, this is sort of the roadmap up how things are supposed to work. So you'll see in A, so until DPS adopts rules, governing rental housing, health and safety, DOH, local officials and DPS would have this concurrent authority to enforce rental housing health code adopted by the Department of Health. Two, says DPS can immediately adopt a rule incorporating that code without having to go through the Administrative Procedures Act. So if they don't change it, they can just adopt it without having to do the rulemaking process specifically. It just moves from one department to another. However, if they do make substantive changes to that code, then they do have to go through the rulemaking process in the Vermont APA. Once they do adopt rules, governing housing, health and safety, this is how it works. One, DPS is the state government entity with primary authority to enforce state laws governing rental health and safety. Two, DPS and local officials have concurrent authority to enforce state and local laws governing rental housing health and safety under these applicable chapters. And then three, DOH, state board of health, local health have concurrent authority to enforce state and local laws governing public health hazards and public health risks as those are defined in Title 18. So that's sort of the division of labor anticipated going forward, if this were to become law. I think that's it. You did a great job. Yes. Okay, so, David, are you able to stay with us till noon? Unfortunately, I have to go back to commerce and start talking about Vita. Okay. At what time? Now? Now. Well, if you can rejoin us, that would be great. We're gonna hear from Nate. It's now 11.02. Let's come back at 11.15 and we'll continue our discussion on this. Anybody have any questions or comments? I just wanna say, David, I think you did a fabulous job. That was great. Oh, thanks. I will come back as soon as and if I can, okay? Great. If commerce are best. Yes. So Scott, can you take us offline and we'll reconvene at 11?