 because we'd like to do it as soon, I mean, not delay like we do. Sometimes take the walkthrough and then wait and take testimony, but I think we'll do as much as we can today with this. So if you would tell us what this bill is, what it does. Thank you. For the record, Elena Gardner with legislative council. I believe you have in your folders H910 as past the house. It makes amendments at the beginning of the bill to the open meeting law and then thereafter to the Public Records Act. So the first section amends the definition section of the open meeting law. It adds a definition of the, maybe I should back up a second. I don't know if you wanted to know kind of where this bill sprang from. It started as a set of proposals from the secretary of state's office to the house gov ops committee. And then in their work on the bill, the committee directed secretary of state's office to work with the league of cities and towns. And so some of what you're going to see reflects work that the secretary of state's office did with VLCT. Some really became the committee's own work and then, you know, so it's a little bit of a hybrid. But the genesis was a series of proposals from the secretary of state's office. So the new definition is added on page one, the phrase business of the public body. That's a phrase that's already used in the open meeting law in a few places. And one of the key places that it's used is immediately below in the definition of meeting. So, you know, the open meeting law applies to public bodies, but it also only applies to activities that constitute a meeting of the public body. And the existing definition of meeting talks about a meeting being a gathering at quorum of the members of a public body for the purpose of discussing the business of the public body or for the purpose of taking action. So that phrase, you know, you can have a meeting just if you're discussing the business of the public body. It's a meeting even if you're not getting together to take action under existing law. That's old language, right? Yeah, and so I'm pointing out to you where the phrase, since it's going to be newly defined as a new phrase, business of the public body, pointing out one of the places where that definition applies. So the definition, and this is one of the areas where the Liga cities and towns in the Secretary of State's office arrived at the language and then discussed it with me on the definition of business of the public body. It means the public body's governmental functions, including any matter over which the public body has supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power. The next change in the definitions is we just went over the general definition of what a meeting is, gathering of a quorum of the members of public body. And then under existing law, this committee worked on language years ago to say what a meeting is not, saying it's not kind of the mere ministerial agenda organizing just mere distribution of materials without actually discussing them. So that's existing law, it's just designated as B. So there's sort of, and subdivision A, the structure is here, what a meeting is. Subdivision B is here, what a meeting is not. And then subdivision C and D on page two are posed additions for more examples of what a meeting is not. And this is language that Secretary of State's office worked with Gwen Zachoff of the League on, and of course it was reviewed and approved by the committee, but this reflects that compromise. So this meeting shall not mean occasions when a quorum of a public body attends social gatherings, conventions, conferences, training programs, press conferences, media events, or otherwise gathers. As long as the public body does not discuss specific business of the public body. So you see a little nuance there, which is on the prior page that we looked at. It talks about a meeting being a gathering quorum to discuss business of the public body. And this says, well, you have a safe harbor as long as, if you're at one of these events, as long as you don't discuss specific business of the public body. That at the time of the exchange, the participating members expect to be business of the public body at a later time. So as long as they don't do that, discuss specific business that they have, that they expect to be business of the public body at a later time. So if Senator Clapton and Senator White and I went out for dinner and I asked, did you get, have you gotten any letters from APRNs? That's doing business then, right? Because we have an OPR bill that has to do with APRNs. So putting aside the legislative branches and subject to the meeting. Okay, I forgot that. All right, well, we're on the same committee and we have to warn the work that we do. Right, we're supposed to warn. Well, it doesn't apply to us, but either on the select board and you go to talk about. I forget that, yeah. Yeah. And I don't know all the substance of the discussion and the impetus for this language, except generally speaking. There, Gwynne's and VLCT and the Secretary of State's office apparently get. Well, they get hundreds and hundreds of questions every year about the open meeting law and those questions fall into many categories. But some of the many of the questions are the nature of, well, we're getting training together, there's a quorum of us and we're getting training. And it's about generally how to do our jobs and things that we need to know about. But it's not, so we're talking about things that generally topically fall within the scope of something that might come before us. But we're getting training and informed on it. And so this is meant to, I believe, was intended to kind of provide a safe harbor that allows some training conference type activities or even the social gathering context as long as it's not specific business that they expect to come before them. Get that, got it. The next safe harbor, or I guess the exception from what a meeting is. This meeting shall not mean a gathering of a quorum of a public body at a duly worn meeting of another public body. As long as the attending public body does not take action on its business. So just remember, again, the two part definition of meeting. It's discussing the business or taking action. And this says, well, you're okay as long as you're not taking action. You fall within the safe harbor. And I think, so it really cuts out what is otherwise a meeting if they discuss the business, but I think part of the rationale that they were okay with that, or the Secretary of State, and they can testify to this, is that you're at another duly worn meeting of another public body. And again, they know more about the specific instances where this comes up. But I guess, sub-commit, you know. It could come off at town meeting. Committees come to other committees, you know. Not at town meeting, you could. Actually, it could. All of the long-spark conditions could be at town meeting. And there could be some subject about that might relate to it. And actually, the town, everybody could vote on something that actually related to the business of that commission. I was thinking more about the select board goes to a meeting of the school board to talk about school safety. And they can talk about it, and there are three of the members of the five go. So it is a quorum. And they are discussing business that affects the town. But they're not taking any action. So those are the amendments to the definitions section of the open meeting law. The next amendment to the open meeting law on page three is an issue that the Secretary of State's office brought to the committee's attention. And they spent, I don't think I'd be exaggerating this, say, more than 10 hours of testimony and discussion on this, what ultimately boiled down to four lines here. Is that an exaggeration, Chris? Yeah, not at all. So this is to address the issue of serial communication, otherwise known as daisy chain communication. And it's when, again, keep having to go back to that definition of what a meeting is. A meeting is a gathering of a quorum of the members of a public body. So there's an existential question. What is a gathering in this day and age, right? Could that be a series of communications that are not time, space, not exactly at the same time or in the same place? Can you have a gathering over email? Can you have a gathering spaced out over several days? There's no case law on those questions in Vermont. You could see a court looking at this definition of meeting in a gathering of a quorum of the members of a public body. You could see a court saying, well, I'm going to look at the intent language of the open meeting law, which actually is not shown in this bill. It's in the next section, 311. But that the open meeting law is about holding government accountable and saying, we're not going to construe gathering to mean you have to be in the same time and place with the spirit of the law shouldn't allow a series of less than quorum meetings to be used to defeat the intended law. You could see a court going that way. Or you might say, well, I think court saying, I'm going to go plain language. I think gathering means you have to all be together at the same place and time. I don't know. I don't have any case law to point to in Vermont. I know that courts in other jurisdictions have wrestled with the issue and have used phrase-to-big phrases like contiguity and time and space being sufficient for it to be. Look at similar type, not exactly the same language as Vermont, but similar definitions of meaning and saying, well, if the communications are sufficiently close in time and space, we think that it'll look like a meeting. And you kind of know it when you see it. So there's other states that have, therefore, wrestled with this issue of when a series of less than a quorum of communications is considered a meeting. So this can happen in a couple of, well, multiple different ways. So take, for example, a five-member select board. And we'll call the members A through E. You could have A and B talking, B and C, A and B, and then B and C. So that's a simple example. Two different communications, separate communications, separate in time and space. But collectively, those two different sets of communications involve a quorum, because you've got three of the five members. So that's the simplest, I think, example of a serial communication that when you add up who participated, it would constitute a quorum. Then you can have conversations happen through intermediaries. So taking, for example, again, the five-member select board, A through E, A could talk to X, the intermediary, B could talk to X, C could talk to X, and X could, in a way, be coordinating and maybe lining up votes or lining up a decision on something all outside of a meeting. So those are some of the issues that the committee was wrestling with in that informed the development of the page three. So what it says is that a quorum of the members of a public body shall not use a series of less than a quorum communications of any kind directly or through intermediaries, so it does try to address the intermediary question, intended by any of the members to reach agreement or take action on the business of the public body. So there's a lot to unpack in that one sentence, as you can see. Notice the intent requirement, and that's not intended by all of the members who are part of what became a quorum. It's intended by any of the members, and it's not enough for the intermediary to have that intent. You have to have a member with the intent. So this seems like, to me, sort of new to this vision, seems completely overbored. Is there a real problem we're trying to solve here? Have there been instances of this as a challenge? I think that that isn't Helena's issue. Helena is addressing the technical everything. Helena is walking us through the bill and is the technical drafter of the bill. I think we'll hear from other people about whether it's an issue and how the resolution came. OK. But if I remember my question. I just, I just, I don't want to put Helena in the, sorry, I didn't mean defending or anything else. Do you have a technical question? Just a clarification. So if Claire and Alison and I were members of the board of Alderman in a particular city, and there's five members. So we, and I say to Claire, I think we ought to fund that at our next meeting. Will you check with her and see what she thinks? And so that constitutes a public meeting in terms of this language, correct? Right, you're intending to, if you're intending to reach agreement or? Right. Even though they may not be, I am, because I want her to ask Alison and then I want to get the answers back. But maybe it's just prepared for that meeting where you're actually publicly going to make that decision. Well, I mean, I think it satisfies the language. Yeah, no, no, I agree. But what, there seems to be a very fine line between prepping for something and thinking about it ahead of time and actually then taking a vote. We will hear from people who testify both for and against these parts, but Helena is the drafter. I get that. We ask technical questions and questions of clarification. Thank you. The other, it could spend a lot of time on this, like there's the other thing I wanted to point out. It doesn't say intended by any of the members to discuss the business, which is part of the definition meeting. It says intended by the members to reach agreement or take action on the basis. Section three, this is where the ship to the Public Records Act. This adds a new subsection to the part of the Public Records Act. That's the statement of policy and the short title. And it brings over, there's a provision in title three. That is the provision of law that requires executive branch state agencies to have a records management program and improve records schedule. And in that section of law, there's kind of foundational intent and context language. But that section of law only applies in terms of the record schedule requirements to executive branch state agencies. So there was a discussion where one of the, not a member of House GovOps, but one of the representatives, Dylan Jambotista, raised issues about, in general, the importance of records management in helping with the Public Records Act being administered. So one of the thoughts and recommendations was to add the context and intent language about the importance of records in general to the Public Records Act. And in each 585, the bill that you reported a couple of weeks ago include some of the, that added some other language to the Public Records Act about the importance of records management. So this is the other chunk of that language that was brought over from that provision in title three. So General Assembly finds that public records are essential to the administration of state and local government. Public records contain information that allows government programs to function, provides officials with the basis for making decisions and ensures continuity with past operations. Public records document the legal responsibilities of government, help protect the rights of citizens and provide citizens and means monitoring government programs and measuring the performance of public officials. Public records provide documentation for the functioning of government and for the retrospective analysis of the development of Vermont government and the impact of programs on citizens. So I guess you could characterize this as sort of an elaboration upon the, you know, subsection A is about accountability of government and then this is more about the elaborating on what records can do in terms of providing further accountability and insight into government activities. Section four relates to, it's an intense statement about what's happening in section five of the bill and it's, you won't really know what section four is saying I think until you dive into section five but it's saying in rearranging and kind of moving text around in section five, we want to make the text, General Assembly wants to make the text more organized and clear and doesn't mean to make any substantive changes, we're just rearranging things. Section five is the section of the bill that I dreaded walking through, I dreaded walking through it upstairs and because there's a lot of moving and rearranging and then a few changes that are somewhat substantive but not earth-shattering that but there's a ton of underlying and strike-throughs and whatever and you can only, I think, appreciate why that's helpful and needed if you look at existing law and see what a disorganized method is that will take, I mean, it really is a mess so that will take some time, I know there's a lot of witnesses in the room, I don't know if you want to kind of defer on that until a later time in terms of seeing how all the movements kind of match up. What I would do is on this, just tell us where this up to get the changes off. Sure, yeah, yeah. So the key issue here or the only real substantive change is that there's different time periods for responding under the Public Records Act, right? So there's the general standard of bottom page five in subsection B, you can say upon request, the custodian of a public record shall promptly produce the record for inspection and that part doesn't elaborate on what promptly means if you go further down, so you would think because it's saying except that that we're just gonna have a list of exceptions but this section is so disorganized that it actually elaborates on what promptly means and says it means three business days but then it can be extended to 10 business days in unusual circumstance. Oh, but by the way, if it's in storage, it can be a week, it's just everything's disorganized and so there's actually multiple kind of points where a time period might be needed, okay? So you have a request. Now a request can lead to multiple things. It can lead to we actually don't have any responsive records. Well, what's the time period within which you have to tell someone that you don't have any responsive records? Another path that it can go is we have responsive records but we're gonna claim them as exempt. We think they're confidential or exempt. So there's the time period within which you have to certify that you're withholding or redacting records as exempt. And then the other option is that, yep, we have responsive records and we're gonna respond to them. And then so there's that time period. And have we changed the time period? I mean, is it a substantive change or is it just moving it around so that it's better understood? Well, and then there's the whole issue of appeal where if records are denied and then you go to the head of agency and you appeal and you say, they shouldn't have been denied. And the agency says, request or you were right, we shouldn't have denied them. There's then what's the time period for if that denial is reversed on appeal, then how long should you have to respond? So what this does is, this only talks about uses the three day thing apparently in connection with if you're responding, right? Existing law refers to page six. You see struck through language starting on the fifth line. Such certification shall identify the records withheld on the basis of the denial. A record shall be produced for inspection or certification shall be made that a record is exempt within three business days unless otherwise provided in subdivision five. So it only kind of attaches three business days to the word prompt with respect to the denial or the disclosing. It doesn't clearly connect three business days to the reversal on appeal situation. The, oh, we actually don't have any records at all situation. So what this section does is at the beginning, it says, we're gonna say what promptly means, okay? And it's on page five, it says promptly means immediately with little or no delay and unless otherwise provided in this section, not more than three business days. So it's not saying unless otherwise provided in just subdivision five, five allows you unusual circumstances that 10 business days, but there's another subdivision that lets you have a week. So this says unless otherwise provided, whether it's the week or the 10 business days, promptly means from receipt of a request on this chapter or in the case of a reversal on appeal, that's that circumstance from the date of the determination on appeal. So then it uses that word promptly throughout, doesn't refer again to three business days, you've defined it above and it gets all of those touchpoints where you need a time period to guide when the responses do. So that's mainly, and then just a lot of the strikers and underlines are just reorganizing. Yeah. This definition promptly when I was raising my children. Three business days? No, immediate. Yeah. I like that immediate part. Okay, so have we gone to all the way to page nine? Nine. So now we're in and then the other, so that's the substantive stuff about reorganizing and defining promptly. H is a new subsection and this is substantive as well because it says nine. It's a brand new subsection H but in the middle page says a records officer designated by the head of a state agency or department pursuant to three VSA 218. That's the same section I was referring to earlier that about state executive branch agencies having to have records management program and schedules is they, it also tells them they have to have a records officer. So it says that officer shall be accountable for the processing of requests for public records received by the record officer's agency or department in accordance with this section. My understanding is this language was proposed so that the records officer, it doesn't say the records officer shall fulfill all the requests or personally search all the records and review them. It says shall be accountable so that I think the idea animating this proposal was that we want it to be not mysterious to requesters who they can get information from about the status of their request. So there's one person who's accountable for the processing. Section six. This looks like it's making this major new thing but this is codifying with a couple of changes codifying session law. So I don't, this is before my time but in 2011 act 59 established this idea of a public records request system and that was done as session law and it lives, it survives, it's ongoing session law so the idea is let's codify it, let's put it into statute. So it rearranges or reorganizes the text a little bit and it also adds something new which is towards the bottom of page 10 subdivision two it requires public agencies of the executive branch to post in a conspicuous location on its website a link to the location on the agency of administration's website where public records requests and system information is maintained. So the idea there was people in the public may not think that secretary of administration is, though they're probably not aware of the repository but if the different agencies have links to it and are able to access it through the different agencies they'll be more likely to find it and the other difference on page nine from the session law was that it requires the secretary of administration of post system information on the website of the agency of administration and they testified that they're already doing that. I believe the testimony was that they did updated quarterly. So this is codifying existing practice but this was not in that original 2011 session law. Okay, questions for a minute? Yeah, and at the bottom of page 10, section seven repeals that session law. It's a little different, so saying we codified it and changed it a little bit so repeals that and everything takes effect July 1st, 2018. Any questions? Josh, Chris, I mean Chloe and Mike Donahue but I see we have town clerks here. Do you want to testify today? On the opening meeting now. Oh, H eight nine nine. Oh, okay, you're here for that. Okay, great, thanks. And did you want to talk on this one? Please. Okay, just a few minutes. Okay, please join us as we will get into this. Oh, I was gonna answer your question. Oh, good, I'm listening. I'm just gonna go love Jamie's head. Did you turn the heat up? I did, I'm crazy. Can I give you my scarf? I have a scarf. I have. Did you turn up that much? We got four, we'll turn it down. For the record, Chris Winters, Deputy Secretary of State and thank you for taking up this bill. As Halina pointed out to you, this was an initiative of the Secretary of State's office and I worked with Ledge Council and the Chair of House Government Operations to come up with some of these changes. And the reason we put these forward was to address the problems that we hear about every day. We get all the calls, as you probably know. We get a lot of calls about open meetings and public records and people trying to do the right thing and trying to interpret the law appropriately. We get calls from the boards themselves, from town officials and from the public who are interacting with these boards with their local and state government around open meetings and public records. And these, some of the things we put into this bill we're trying to really add clarity to the existing law consistent with the advice we've been giving people so that they can find it in the law themselves. A lot of times they'd look at the law and they'd call us and say it's not addressed or what does this mean? We're trying to make it a little bit cleaner and clearer in the law itself and it's consistent with the advice that we give out and also consistent with the advice that the League of Cities and Towns gives out. Particularly, if we start with the open meeting sections, serial meetings and I will say, Senator Clarkson, serial meetings is a real problem. We get these calls more often than we'd like and more often than you'd probably think that boards are sometimes working behind the scenes to get things accomplished so that when they show up at a meeting, all of a sudden the decision is made and no public discussion is had. And it's very clear to those attending that the discussion has already taken place. So this is a real thing. It's a real issue. It's a real problem. And I think there are some other folks in the room who could probably give you some actual examples. So the action is public but the decision-making process is not there? That's right. And the intent of the open meeting law is to give the public an opportunity to observe, to comment, to sometimes participate and to know what their government is up to. And when it comes to a meeting and the decision seems like it's already a done deal and it's just made on the record with no discussion, you've not involved the public. You've subverted the open meeting law. I'm not saying this happens a lot but it certainly does happen and we want it to make very clear on the law that it's not okay to do that outside of an open meeting if you're discussing the business of the public body or taking action on the business of the public body needs to be done in a properly worn and open meeting. And that was the reason for bringing forth that provision. And I know it's not in here. We're going to change to it but what's the penalty for the public public meeting? So there are enforcement provisions within the law. The Attorney General's office can bring a complaint or individuals can enforce the law through the superior court. And I'm not remembering off the top of my head what the penalties are but it doesn't, I'll say it doesn't happen very often but for intentional violation of the law there are monetary penalties for that. But there's also an ability to, I don't want to say do over. Ask for corrective action. That's right. Ask for corrective action which is probably, which we put in a few years ago, which is probably one of the best things because sometimes they're not intentional and you can. But the intent of this language is to give boards some further guidance and clarity in the law that it's not okay to discuss the business or in order to try to pre-determine an action outside of an open meeting. And that can happen in a number of different ways whether it's in person by email, through chain communications, through one person coordinating the effort. That's a good example. I mean you can take hundreds of them. Yeah, yeah. I've been at meetings where that there was discussion but it was so scripted that you knew very well that everybody knew before they got it here. And you say this and then you say that and I'll agree. And then you could disagree a little bit and I'll just have my guy be shocked. Never happens. The other portions of the open meeting law were to help give some comfort to the board members who are always calling us and saying we've gone to a conference together, we're carpooling together, is that okay? Is this okay? Kind of put in some safe harbors as long as they're not discussing the business of the board that they can do those things. And again, there was some nuance there, the specific business of the board because they might get together for a conference or a training and be talking in general about board business but not specific items. So that's to help clarify that. In the Public Records Act, clarifying what promptly means was something that we felt was important. The rearranging that Helena did as she went through this draft was really excellent. We were happy to see that and help a little bit in that, making it cleaner and clearer again to read. The tie-in to the records officer, every state agency has to have a records officer so that a tie-in that person is a lot of, well, I'm not responsible for that record, I'm not responsible for that record kind of thing that people were complaining to us about to tie in the records officer and make the records officer accountable is something we really supported. I think that was representative, John Batista, who started that conversation and we brought in Tanya Marshall to talk about it a little bit in the state records management program. That was all good. And I will just point out to you that we started out with a few other things in this bill that we were advocating for, one of them being an open government ombudsman, a place in state government where you could turn for these kinds of questions and have them help you without having to go to court, without having to go through a superior court process, be able to have some power to adjudicate some of these battles that come up between the public and boards and state agencies. The House Committee was really interested in that, but we ran out of time, I'll put it that way. I think we ran out of time to deal with it. There were some objections and some questions about what the power would be and also the cost of putting together a person in state government for people to go to. So while we continue to advocate for that, the House Committee cut it out and said they would actually support you continuing to talk about it if you found you had the time or the interest in talking about it, an ombudsman. Sort of like our business portal mentor. So we could have a meeting mentor. Something like that, yes. Somewhere to go in state government to get your questions answered and around open meetings and public records. We serve that purpose and DLCT takes those questions as well. It does fulfill some of that, but this would be something more where you could have someone, an arbiter of disputes. This agency says, does it apply? I don't want to get into that conversation now until we get, I'm just aware of other people who want to testify on what is in the bill. And what we might or might not get to. So if you have language, if you can get that to us. And I hate to stop or summarization, but we could talk all day about that ombudsman. Right. And the last thing that did get taken out on the House side, which I won't discuss, but I'll just identify it for you, was that we were looking to codify a lower court decision that said you cannot charge for the inspection of records. Throughout the public record law, you'll see there's a difference between inspecting and copying. You can charge for copies. There's some dispute over what you can charge for when you allow for inspection. If someone wants to come see you. Well, it's like access, can't charge for access. But there are significant costs that come with providing that access. That's the argument that was made on the House side. So say it's a really big records request or it's reviewing video. And so you have to have a turn in time. You have to have time gathering that up for someone to inspect. So there is a cost associated with really big requests and complicated requests. And so that's why the House, again, supported the concept of trying to thread that needle, but kind of ran out of time in being able to have a full discussion on whether you ought to be able to charge or not for inspection of records. So that's where it came from from the Secretary of State's office. We support everything that's in the bill now. And I appreciate you taking a hard look at this and hopefully passing some much newer changes to the open meetings on the Public Records Act. Thank you. Madam Chair, members of the committee, Joshua Diamond, Deputy Attorney General. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about H910 and about access to open government. If I may take the liberty just to make a few opening remarks before I comment on a couple of the specific provisions of the bill. The Vermont Attorney General's office supports open government and transparency. We recognize that to have a vibrant democracy, citizens must have access to the government either through open meetings or access to public records. But at the same time, we must recognize that when people conduct business with the state of Vermont, they often provide very sensitive private information. And just by merely transacting with government, we're not waiving those privacy interests. And that is recognized in the Public Records Statute, one BSA, section 315, which states, all people, however, have a right to privacy in their personal and economic pursuits, which ought to be protected unless specific information is needed to review the action of a governmental officer. And if I just may say, the office of the Attorney General stands ready to work with this committee, other interested parties to achieve that balance of making government open and accessible by, but at the same time, recognizing that we have legitimate privacy interests that need to be protected. These are not just idle words. I think it is also reflected in the conduct of our office. In 2017, our office received and processed approximately 115 public records requests. In the first quarter of this year alone, we've received and are in the process of completing 33. Could you say that one again? Your office got 115. 115. Is that where public records requests go? I thought to his office. To our office alone, to the office of the Attorney General. That's actually not probably very many. Well, it's one every three days. And at this stage, we're on track to do about, we've already had 33 come in in the first quarter. And these can be sometimes very easy. Please provide us with a settlement agreement. Or in some cases, we could get extremely large and broad requests, if I may just give one example. In 2016, our office received a request for all documents reflecting all communications from nine assistant attorneys general and 30 miscellaneous organizations and individuals, including various public officials, Bernie Sanders, Senator Sanders, various lobbyists and the Democratic Attorneys General Association. To merely identify what records might be responsive in that universe, we had to hire an outside IT professional who identified over 13,500 potentially responsive emails. And we started collating the email chains and things of that nature. We were able to whittle that down to 1,129 email chains. And then, as you all can imagine, we're a law firm. And so we have ethical responsibilities under the rules of professional responsibilities to maintain our attorney client privileges, we're product privileges. And therefore, in our circumstance, we also have to go through the process of redactions to make sure that we are comporting with our ethical obligations. So as you can see, it can often be a time consuming and burdensome process. Nevertheless, we recognize that public records, public access is an important goal of government. And we support that, but we need the policymakers to understand that that comes at a cost and a burden to our office so that instead of sometimes spending our time devoted to prosecuting criminal cases or defending consumer protection or the environment, we are off doing other issues such as responding to public records. But nevertheless, in 2017 and responding to honor the 15 public records requests about one every three business days or one every three days, not just business days, we produced over 10,500 pages of records. And many more were reviewed to ensure that privacy interests were reasonably protected. And in further interest of transparency, our office now, starting with 2017, posts our response to public records requests on our website so that the general public understands how we're responding, what objections we may be asserting or exemptions so that we are acting in a transparent way to the Vermont citizens and the general public. With regards to the specific legislation, we support the efforts to create clarity on the definition of a public meeting and the efforts to provide clarity with regards to the procedures with which public records are responded to. And frankly, they comport with how we conduct business to begin with. There's really just one section that we have some concern with and that's subsection, I believe 5-H, dealing with the designation of the public records officer as the person to contact. So two things, we think as a matter of policy, the agency head should be the responsible party or their designee. As we understand the operation of this section is that we are identifying the individual, at least in our office, who is responsible to fulfill the archival or records retention responsibilities to also be responsible for the public records requests. And in our office, those duties are bifurcated and in fact, all our folks, all our attorneys are expected to be able to respond to public records requests. So we think it would be cleaner and more reflecting of the goal to hold our agency heads responsible for their agencies to have the agency head be responsible or their designee for the public records request. But within that in mind, we support the changes. So just to understand here, the age source as a records officer designated by the head of the agency. So you're saying don't make it just one person? Correct, and don't tie it to the person who is the archival, the person who's got responsibility for archival records retention. Well, I don't see that here. That's the reference, as I understand it, to three-digit section 218. And I think the reason for that was so that people would know where to go, that there was one person to go to instead of 23 attorneys. But it doesn't have to be the same person. And maybe by saying the agency head or their designee would solve that problem, at least in the operation for our office. Thank you. Thank you. Chloe, are you, Karen, are you here in place of Gwynne? Yes. Okay. Do you want to? Sure. Thank you for the opportunity. My name's Karen Hiram, I'm with the Vermont Lake of Cities and Towns. And as you've heard from Halely and Chris, this was a long, complex conversation in the House Government Operations Committee. And the bill is a compromise. I think that nobody got anything close to everything that they were hoping for in that legislation. But having said that, we are satisfied with the version that came over to the Senate and supportive of it. So that's really all I need to say at this point, unless you have specific questions. No? That was pretty clear. Thank you. Thank you. Chloe? Do you want to have copies of that, or would you like, because I make copies, would you like, is that your testimony? Yes. Would you like, would you like? We'd love to. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. I'm waiting right now. That's okay. Penny always says I had to bring copies for you all into this share, so I figured I'd continue to practice. Okay. I think that's the practice for all of you. Oh really? I think so. You know, you can, we can see how much you want me to speak on this. I know that you kind of were interested in seeing what was in the bill right now, rather than, you know, kind of what we want to be in the bill. So this is, this is a, I would try not to read from this. This is probably the longest testimony I've ever heard. You could have a list and post out with it. You know, so I'll try not to read from this. So you all have this written testimony. It's been very long. But basically, you know, we support the reforms relating to public records in this bill. Going for the record, I'm Chloe White, I'm Chloe Celia. You know, we, we're concerned by some of the changes made to the legislation as from when it came out originally in the draft that Helena and Chris worked on. And we really feel the bill doesn't go nearly far enough in meaningfully addressing the real problems in obtaining public records in Vermont. We understand, you know, that they, you know, when a big request comes in, it's really difficult for people to deal with. We know, especially in small municipalities, small towns, it's difficult to deal with a big request. But I think a lot of times people have used big requests as, you know, saying, well, this happens a lot. This is, this is a lot. And I don't think that's the case. I don't think, you know, when we have a, you know, there's a special case of, you know, like the deputy attorney general talked about, you know, there's certainly a case we made for, for sliding, for sliding costs or, you know, extended period of time. But I think for the most part, I don't think the requests that people are getting are so large as to make it the, make dealing with them the standard basically, you know, and as we know, access to public records, I mean, these are public records. And it's in the word. It's in the, that's the name of the act is the access to public records act. And there's really a presumption that these will be open except for blank. You know, and we have, you know, and unfortunately we have a lot of issues with public records access in this state. And that's why the Center for Public Integrity gave us an F in access to public information. And we have a ton of experience just with the ACLU. This is not including, you know, other nonprofits and reporters, all the issues with getting records, but we're currently litigating a case against Burlington police, which refused a public reference request for a video camera because they said they can't redact the faces of the people in the video. So releasing the video would violate their privacy, but the case is ongoing against those people. So their names are already out there. And basically now the public can't have access to a public record of an incident in which government misconduct is alleged. We just settled a case against Department of Agents for Education for $30,500, where the agency refused to provide records related to school safety. And despite admitting that they possessed the data, and Superior Court and Ruhlin ruled in our favor and ordered them to produce the documents. This is almost two years after their request was made. And not only after we won, then the settlement dragged on because there were misinterpreted, the agency interpreted the statutes, statute about attorney fees differently than we did, saying that anything, that only when you did things in court could attorneys fees, could we recover attorney fees, not before suing and not after during settlement, which is not usually how attorneys fees work. So eventually we were able to get $30,500. So people talk a lot about the expense and the time that it takes to provide public records. Well, it's also expensive when you get sued and you lose and you have to pay the money out. I mean, to avoid that kind of thing in the first place and avoid an expensive suit and taking people's time and sending time in a lawsuit. Of course, there was the VT Digger request for the EB-5 program where we sued the state. The state eventually released some information. When VT Digger asked for more information, the state said the request would cost $200,000. And that we think the matter could have been solved a lot more quickly with less cost to state taxpayers had the state provided better explanations for redactions and had the state not asked for exorbitant fees related to relevant documents. We've attempted to investigate the state's use of automatic license plate readers. Just this summer, Leah, Ernst and I tried to file a public record request to state police. We were told it would cost over $1,300 and would take several months to produce. So even though they would release the records, in effect, it's a denial. We decided not to pay that, but I think that was more of a matter of principle than we didn't have the money. But imagine that people who don't have that money who don't have the resources that the ACLU currently does, and they want public records. And this is an effectively a denial of seeing something that is public, is supposed to be public, from the government. City of Burlington has refused to let us inspect things for free, which, as Chris talked about, is in a lower court decision that inspection should be free. Other agencies do let us inspect for free. That's inconsistent, that's hard. We don't know what the law is. So that's why we were disappointed that that codification was taken out. I mean, there are so many numerous problems, we think Public Records Act. There are over 260 exemptions, Public Records Act. There are more being introduced every year. As you know, you talked before about the Nutrient Management Plan, the exemption. And again, we, you know, the- That would be added. Right, that would be added. That's another one. 261, 262. I just received an email, but Senator Starver would like to put it into appropriations bill. So, so I think, you know, it's on comparison, the Federal Freedom Information Act only has nine exemptions. You know, difference of scale there. We think agencies regularly misconstrue exemptions. We think they exhibit a reflexive deny first response to records. So instead of saying, yes, I'll get you this record. Let me just make sure that it doesn't go, you know, it doesn't apply to any exemptions or any, excuse me, any exemptions don't apply. Instead it's, no, I'm not gonna give you this record. Let me search for the exemption so that I can, you know, that my denial is, is okay. Like this is what we're feeling that we are experiencing. And that I think a lot of other nonprofits, reporters, just members of the public are having difficulty with. You know, agencies don't just only provide justifications for redactions and withholding. They engage in inconsistent and improper denial of ability to inspect for free. Inconsistent, exorbitant fees for record production. There is a nonprofit that is looking to understand what people, what some towns and districts are doing to mitigate mosquito problems. And they've been told it'll cost them $2,000 or $3,000 just to get the records. And that part of the problem is that everything is in hard copy instead of electronic. So it's gonna take them time to redact. So that's also a problem of records management, we feel. You know, we, that's, you know, these are supposed to be public documents. Why aren't we preparing them in a way that they are, it's at least easier that when, if the public requests then it's easier to get it to the public. These are, I mean, this is, this is our government. You know, it's- Yeah, Chris, I see that, please. Okay, and I think also, you know, I think one of the, we do appreciate the definition of promptly in here because I think Secretary Acondas has talked about this as well as right now there's those agencies and towns which are supposed to have three days to respond with 10 days in special circumstances. But they will, they will tell people, I think Secretary Acondas told me a story about, they'll say, oh yeah, we have 13 days to reply. No, you have three, you're supposed to have three days and then 10 days in special circumstances. But instead they take, I mean, it's inconsistent. And so I've listed, this is on page three and four. I mean, a huge amount of changes that we would recommend to Public Records Act. I know it's April. We've had a long session. April four. That's true. But we really think this is, it's important, it's, you know, these are public records. We know it's difficult and we know, you know, a sliding scale for larger requests, I think it's entirely possible or maybe longer time for a larger request. We understand that there is, that there are times when a request is enormous. You ask for every time someone said the word the, in 20 years of email. I mean, that would be. Death by avalanche. Right. But there are also things that we can do to make better, you know, making all exemptions subject to a sunset, you know, with so many different things that we can do. And we think that these extreme and unreasonable records requests that people are talking about that they're few and far between. And we think that improper denials are valid requests or basic or things that end up being denials of requests. So huge amounts of money are entirely too common. So, you know, we just, as I told you, we settled that agency of education case for $30,500. Next week we filed that Burlington PD case. We and other requesters are gonna, we feel like we'll be forced to continue doing that until this deny first mentality is addressed. And so we would urge you to really think about public records reform, to try and come up with to amend this bill to reform the PRA and increase ease of access to public information. I would, Claire has a question, Krista, Allison, but first I may suggest that you, I suggested to you that you bring in language, bring in language. I've got it, okay, sure. And then we'll start taking testimony on the language instead of taking testimony now on credit. Could be, because we need to see the actual language. Absolutely. Claire, well thank you. I wondered, you said Senator Starr was gonna put something in appropriations and I forgot what that was. Is that the New Year's Management? Our New Year's Management. You said that last night, we knew that. Yeah, okay, I didn't, I just, all right, I'm behind the time. I was just hearing, oh. Chris, yeah, Chris. I'm trying to, to me I think there's a balance between a tiny town with a volunteer select board and the agency of transportation. And I, you know, you mentioned Congress, federal government, did you say they have nine exemptions? I guess I'd be curious to better understand those because I have a feeling that they just organized them better, right? So we have 260, but I bet we could make that into about 15 in principles. One of them in Congress is every member of Congress and their staff. So that's a pretty sweeping one. You know, and I've had a lot of, I've had not a lot, I've had a handful of records requests. I have no staff, so I then spend time, you talked about the cost, Secretary of State's office, as I understand it, pegs the cost of 27 bucks a minute. So the once to me came when we were out of session, so I'm not getting any money. In fact, I'm losing money because I'm stopping my paid work to comply with this. In every case, they went absolutely nowhere. It was a complete phishing expedition. And so this is where there's a balance and I don't know, I'm very sympathetic to trying, you know, there's a really important principle of transparency in openness. And, you know, I also try to recruit candidates from time to time and it's really hard to get people to try to do this job. Oh yeah. And when faced with headlines about these kinds of, you know, the more you consider being in public office, the more harassment you are putting up with. And I'll just, you know, be frank about that. And so I guess I'm not hearing a place where you're seeing the balance there. And you make a very compelling case that nobody should be charged $200,000 for something that's in the public interest. On the other hand, I don't think that I should have to set aside money of the two thirds of the year that are not serving to get 27 bucks to spend painful hours coming through email. One time I had one from a member of the press because I stood up on the house floor and demanded emails from the Shumlin administration that was the precursor of the $200,000 request. And somebody in the press thought it would be hilarious to then send me a request. And I thought, I'll never know what's the phrase, no good deed, I'll go to the punish. So I went to council and I said, I wanna turn all of these over. I'd like to do it today, can we do that? And council said, I said I got nothing to hide. I said my legislative email was a four month window or something. And council said, well, you should be careful because I was on the healthcare committee at the time. Some people would send me their healthcare stories. So that was not, I mean, I could have copied it and pasted all those emails in an hour. But actually it took some time to make sure and there weren't some emails in there. And so it took the week. And so my point is like, how do you define the balance? Can I suggest that if we could get some language from Zoe, from Chloe, that some of these do talk about the balance and we are the ones that make the decision about where the balance is. That's our job, that's our job is to do that and to say, but just kind of in the abstract, it's hard to look at these because we don't have actual language. So- You know, I'll just say that that member of the media admitted when I handed him the thumb drive. He said, oh, I just wanted to see if you would give me. And you? Yeah, I was like, all right. Oh my God, I would. But I don't think that serves the public interest. But most requests aren't like that. Most requests for public interest. 100% of the ones that have come to me, I guess I'm lucky. I'm so bad at it. Can I comment on the number of exemptions we have? We- You're the chair. I feel very, oh, thank you. We took three summers to go through every single exemption and we could easily have put them into 15 or 20 categories and they would have been very broad categories and they wouldn't have been less exemptions but they would have sounded like less. And so people would have said, oh, we had 260 and now we've got 15. It wouldn't have made diddly squat difference at all. They would have still been the same exemptions. Do you have thousand dollars? Oh, yes, we do. We went through, we took three summers and went through every single exemption. I read all those reports over the summer, so I appreciated that. You must have had a lot of seriousness. So it was great. Anyway, I'm just saying that I don't think the number of exemptions is indicative of anything except for those people who do these reports and say you have 267 exemptions and so therefore you're bad. And I don't care what those reports say ever. Just to put that on the record. Allison. I wanted to know what state got an A. What's your question? New Jersey. How are New Jersey places in the south? Florida. Florida. Oh, yeah. That's right. Florida. That just proves the point. Right? Yeah, that's true. So you get an A. They, they're a Sunshine Act. I think it's, you know, someone has explained to me, you know, there is this trend of Florida man. You know, Florida man finds Badger and hugs it and gets a $300 fine. Some odd story, you know, it's always a Florida man, Florida woman, and it's because of their very expansive public records act that things are very open there. But yes, Florida gets an A. I think, yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting. New Jersey. They work quite well, I would say. They work quite well in ethics. Oh, was it? They actually did well in ethics. That's surprising. Any other questions for Chloe? But I would suggest that you have some language on these because some of these really are very legitimate and should be addressed. Absolutely. I mean, they're probably all very legitimate, but. I understand. Thank you. Thank you. Mike? Thank you. My name is Mike Donahue. I'm the Executive Director of the Vermont Press Association. Also here today representing the New England First Amendment Coalition. Generally, very supportive of this bill. I'm here with a couple of people. It doesn't go quite far enough, but I figure we'll take a half a loaf. Anytime we can keep getting a half a loaf. So I. It's not the nutrient. Yeah. Oh, no. It's a good part. But I mean, I am supportive of some of the things that the ACLU said, I'll touch base on it. And in answer to, can I support what Chris said about the whole purpose of meetings is to have things hashed out in the meetings. And Senator Clarkson that you asked about, you know, is that a problem? There are a lot of meetings. And I'll give you one example, where a chairman of the select board, and I couldn't believe he said this. I asked him about something and he said, well, I sent an email to each of the selectmen. And they told me how they felt. I said, really? You know? And he goes, yeah. He said, and then I called him and we talked. And so that they took action on something, an appeal. And I said, well, why didn't you have an emergency meeting or a special meeting or anything like that? And then it's a long case, but then they retroactively went back in corrected minutes of a select board meeting from like two months earlier and amended the minutes to say that they had done all this stuff. So, I mean, is outrageous some of the things that you see that they orchestrate outside the meeting and then you come in and everything is already choreographed and everything like that. So, we are excited that the word promptly finally is sort of going to be defined for governmental officials. It was always interesting that I always tried to contend that meant forthwith, like right away, like right now I'm coming in to, you know, you. Five days? Yeah, you know, and I would say to people promptly, like if your house is on fire, are you going to report it promptly? Are you going to wait two or three days or are you going to call the fire department right now? I want it promptly. And if several of you remember, I mean, it was two days and we expanded it to three in one of the compromises to get some of the other things for transparency. We do support the concept of not charging for inspection. We think if somebody wants to go in and read minutes of a select board meeting, they should be able to read them. Why would you charge to go in to a city hall, our town hall and look at the town recreation committee or whoever's minutes or any sort of governmental records that are common? Democracy costs money and there's no two ways about it. And you have to invest some money and we would, I know everybody likes to talk about the OJ case and the big case, like Josh mentioned, there is those big cases that come along everyone's want but also when you changed a lot a couple of years ago, there was the potential of negotiating with the person. The law was silent to that for many, many years and people thought because the request came in, you had to do what the request was and you changed the law thankfully so people can call up and say, what is it you really want, Mike? And I'll say, well, I'm really, I think I'm told there's a contract about this. Oh, okay, I'll send you that. And that happens an awful lot but there are phishing expeditions and I'm sorry you were subjected to a phishing expedition of, and I think I know who it was. No, we've had them too. Yeah, I'm not saying he was, you know, whatever, but, and you seem surprised a little bit that the AG's office had 115 complaints. I don't know if that was a lot or a little. The other request or request for. Yeah, for three days. Which is not, yeah, that's pretty long. I mean, that's, and if you look at the records. Josh doesn't think that. No, if you look at the record. You need a separate, it's basically a full-time study. Yeah, that's a huge job providing us all the time. Some of the requests could have been, can you send me the minutes from a meeting you had or could you send me this one thing? Some of them can be answered in about 20 seconds. And some of them, yeah, gigantic. But I mean, I went on and I looked at a lot of the records that were asked. I mean, there's cops putting in requests. Can you tell us about such and such a company? So law enforcement is actually using it. Instead of just, you know, going to the AG's office and I mean, we were sort of surprised to find law enforcement doing it. They're supposed to be investigators, can't they do that? That's what they're investigating. They're asking for records. They wanted to know about the pool company in Woodstock. Do you have any complaints about, and there's a lot of consumer fraud? Oh, I feel for that is what you look, okay. There's a lot of consumer fraud complaints where people were writing in, can you tell me if you've got it against Donahue Pool and Spa Company? You know, those are, I don't say a lot, but a good number I saw when I was going through that. And if I may, Madam Chair, there's a redaction process. So even though it may be a simple request, there's work that has to be done. Right, we understand that and I don't want to get into the discussion about how many is good and how many is bad. We have thousands and thousands and thousands of public request, record requests every year and from all the agencies. And that, we have a report on that every year of how many there are. And there's thousands and thousands of them. Most of them very legitimate and well-defined, but we can get the report if anybody wants to read it. Open meeting, we're exempt from open meeting. We're not exempt from public records. All right, Mike. And just, I want to back up on working with people, I'll give you one example. I did a public records request. I wanted to find the worst drunk driver in Vermont history. Okay, and the DMV records were pretty housing because everything was computer-opened. It would only show anybody who had DWI three or more. So if you were caught a fifth time, it was DWI three or more on the computer. Or if it was seven times, it would show DWI three or more. So the free press bot, I think it was 675 driver licenses, records for anybody with DWI three or more. And that was the only way we're able to write the story that a guy had 16 DWIs. So, you know, and it was, you know, that's what changed the law because they were all misdemeanors and then now you changed the law so that DWI three is a five-year felony. This would no longer be possible. But it's, but there was negotiation there. I didn't hold them to, you've got three days, I want 625 records. I mean, and I think a lot of times people will work with them when they're realistic and everything like that. So, so I guess those are just some general comments I make. You know, there are a few things, minor things that it may submit, but if you were to hear it. On what level we have in front of us or that we would like to add? Well, I'll give you one that on page one at the very bottom be when it talks about the meeting. Shall I not mean? Shall not mean written correspondence, electronic communication, email, and then I think it's, and it says, as long as it's available for inspection and copying under the public records act as set forth. And I guess the question becomes, if there's phone calls, how do you get public records out of that? And I guess we would like to see something possibly inserted there where it says it shall not mean written correspondence, electronic communication, through the email, telephone, teleconferencing between members for the purpose of scheduling a meeting, organizing an agenda, so forth. No issues of substance shall be discussed if you could add a phrase like that, that no issue of substance. Just to make it clear. I think that means it's only for scheduling a meeting, organizing an agenda, or distributing materials. But it would be great to add that because I think that's what happens. You get on the phone and you start talking. And you're talking about the agenda and then as Brian said. Would you put that, would you have some language for that? Yeah, I mean, I just, no issues of substance shall be discussed, but I'll put it right into you. Yeah, because we need to know where exactly. I just, I think it was Betsy who determined that we would just decide what could be discussed or what could be done instead of having vague language that could include a lot of stuff that couldn't happen. For example, it was in a different bill. But for example, no issues of substance. That is enormous. What you decide is important might not have felt important to me when I discussed it, like, are you gonna be at the, something on a meeting next week? You know, it seems that keeping it clear that it's for the purpose of scheduling a meeting or organizing an agenda or distributing materials seems pretty explicit about what can be discussed. I mean, you could put the thing instead of substance, you could put the thing in that refers back to the definition at the beginning of business of the public body. That makes sense, whatever. Yeah, whatever. Whatever. Yeah, that it should be taking place at these meetings and not in these serial meetings by phone or whatever. Anything else for Mike? Anybody else on the list today? Take this up again next week if everybody can have their any suggestions to us so that we can post them so that then people will know what we're going to be talking about. Like a public record. No, it's gonna be a private. Yes, it is a public record. I don't know if you'll leave it to us yet. I know that was a joke. You know, I hear you say clearly that you don't care about the rankings we get and I don't care about the rankings we get. And I don't care about the rankings per se, but I think that it is, I mean, we saw it coming up in the OPR bill around law enforcement. Like we added one more. We said they don't have their home address. Right. But OPR told me that they're considering a blanket exemption that the professionals they license, we don't, it wouldn't be whatever, be an exemption for their home address for all of the professionals. So I guess I am intrigued by the idea of better categories that we might look at. Maybe it's too big a lift in the short time we have left. But we can't, I don't think we could do it. It took us three years to go through the ones that we had and I believe that now they are put in categories, but they're not, so there's a category that deals with trade secrets. And there's a category that deals with personal information exemptions. They're not, and then each of the exemptions that relate to that are put underneath that. But they're not, it's not broad categories that we've just gotten rid of all the exemptions on. Yes, with the chair's permission, I'll put a visual here under the small laptop. But under, on the website, under reports and research, there's over the rate, PRA exemptions, exemptions in order, PRA exemptions by subject so they're organized by subject. So the different subjects include kind of complaints and investigation type stuff. And then you have records related to judicial or administrative proceedings and then it's further broken down there, adoption, court diversion, and so on and so forth. And I also have a good table of contents for this. But anyway, it's updated, has to be updated every, at least every two years and then, I'm sorry. I'm sorry too. If you collapse that, how many would there be? So you can see in the other part of the tab, PRA exemptions in order, these are just the statutory exemptions in the broad statutes annotated. So there's the possibility of additional exemptions if a rulemaking authority is so broad as to allow creation of an exemption and a regulation, it could be there, that's not captured in this list. And then there's the kind of the mega exemption which says, C1 says, records are exempt if they're designated confidential by law, which can include federal law. So this list doesn't try to get a list of federal exemptions, but this list here was most recently updated and republished in December and there's a 253 exemptions in the statute. But there's probably 24 categories. Yeah, yeah. And so we could. A whole pile of them are trade secrets. So, okay, I take it, but it's just too big. But we're going to forever be, this is gonna just keep going back as long as we have the side catching. Yeah, and I don't know how else to deal with it. We could just say all trade secrets are, I mean all business, what do you call them? Trade secrets, but it's anything, it proprietary that would put you at a competitive disadvantage to someone else. That's the key, it isn't necessarily a trade secret, like it's something that would put you at a competitive disadvantage to somebody else. We could put that in one category, just take that one statement, and then it isn't clear at all and people would have to say, let's see, does this, if they requested the nutrient management plans, would that put them at a competitive disadvantage? If you had a specific exemption or not, then you would know that it was exempt or it wasn't exempt. But if you put it under that broad category, then somebody would make the decision. Yes, this would put somebody at a competitive disadvantage. And then the person that requested it would say, no it doesn't, I don't believe it doesn't, and then they would have to go to court to have it settled. That's the way, I think that's the way it would happen if you had broad categories instead of specific exemptions. Just to, I mean there is a broad trade secret exemption and it's part of the list that starts off by saying here are the records that are exempts. The fallen public records are exempt from public inspection copying. It doesn't say the fallen workers are exempt and shall not be disclosed. It says here are the records that are exempt. And there follows a list that seems to include records where you would really want the agency that have discretion whether or not to claim the exemption. And then there are things that you can't conceive of, you think it would be bad if the agency didn't claim the exemption. But they're all in the same list combined together. And it doesn't provide a lot of, and so the trade secret is a standard, it's a test just as you articulated. And there's prongs to that test and reasonable minds can differ about how those prongs of the test whether they're satisfied in particular case or not. So that's the kind of the broad trade secret exemption and all these parties that want their own many narrow nutrient management or whatever say, well, we don't want to have to duke it out or fight or having any uncertainty about whether it qualifies under the test. We want to make clear direct statement that it's covered. So in a way, if you look at, if you think in terms of Venn diagrams, like circles within circles, you could say C9 is this circle. And then there's all these little mini ones inside there that probably already are covered under the broad C9. But by having them specifically spelled out, they provide comfort to certain people in certainty. And some of those exemptions also say, their exempt and shall not be disclosed or shall be kept confidential. They explicitly say that. And if I remember, a lot of the trade secret ones came through DFR, ACCD, and some place else. Because I really get people to go along with a lot of the regulations we wanted to put in place for one thing or another. We had to promise we wouldn't disclose it. Well, yeah, with ACCD, they apply for loans and grants and they put things in there that they're financed. Information in their applications that certainly would be detrimental to them if they got it. So any more questions on this? We'll do this again next week. And hopefully have some language and we can, but what I understand is that the bill as it is, nobody objects to the things that are in there. They would like to see more things in there. But did you object to something that was in here? Oh, yes, the one person. That's me. Yeah. I think to accomplish the same goal of allowing the agency had to be responsible or doesn't mean, yeah. Well, it isn't the head of the agency. It's a records office designated by, but the records management officer doesn't have to be the same as the public records officer. That was, yeah, okay. Is this the bill that started as having a person be like- Oh, that's what they wanted to do, it's on the meeting mentor. What the records? It was more than a mentor, which was a, they had some kind of judicial, quasi-judicial authority, and it was far more than just answering questions about it. Like New York and Connecticut. Yeah. All right, so let's move to the next book.