 I'm really happy to be with you Chris Winters deputy secretary of state and you have a particular brief I know you're kind of an all-purpose pro-democracy guy but tell us about your particular set of responsibilities and then let's talk about the reform of professional regulation in Vermont. Sure, I've been the deputy secretary of state for about seven years now I think, and I'm going on almost my 25th year at the secretary of state's office. So obviously I love what I do. I love this office. We're a state agency that's small enough that I feel like we can really get some things done and do things like eliminate red tape and solve problems. So that's what I'm excited to do as deputy secretary. I oversee all the four major divisions of the secretary of state's office so that's elections, corporations, the state archives and records administration and what I'm here to talk about today which is the office of professional regulation. And that's where I was before I became deputy. I was the director there and a staff attorney there. So I know that there's always a lot of complaints about how Vermont makes it hard for people to do business and you know there's kind of a cumbersome quality, especially probably around licensing so I imagine that this is a longstanding set of complaints. But how real are those complaints. And then we'll talk about what you've done you know this kind of announcement about the reform of them but just, you know, why do we have professional regulation, and has it been more complicated than it's needed to be. Yeah, those are great questions I think with a name like the office of professional regulation. It's a real real customer friendly doesn't you know where we get labeled as bureaucrats here in state government and sometimes that's that's deserved there sometimes things do get a little more complicated. And with professional regulation, I think a lot of very well meaning people over the years might lay on rule after rule and maybe we should look at this and they hear a problem about that and let's add another regulation here. And over time. Some of those regulations are not needed anymore, and you need to constantly reassess what's going on professional regulations started in the first place with professions like lawyers and doctors where the public wanted a further reassurance that that these people are qualified to do what they're doing, and that there could be some recourse if they were harmed by one of these professional professions. So over time some professions were regulated with good reason in order to protect the public. And that's our mission at the office of professional regulation inside the Secretary of State's office. We're trying to protect the public, but we have to be careful that we don't go beyond that public protection mission, and get into situations where we might interfere with the marketplace or interfere with someone's ability to get into the profession maybe people who are already in the profession are trying to keep others out to keep. Maybe to keep their fees high I'm not saying this happens a lot, but it's a real thing and it does happen. So over time, we regulated more and more professions we put more and more regulations in place again mostly by very well meaning people trying to protect the public, but it's good to, to check your driving every once in a while to make sure that laws that were passed rules that were passed still have the same effect and are still needed to fulfill the public protection mission. So is this a project that you undertook to do in the last couple years to review those regulations and to come up with some different ways of making it easier for people to do business while the public is protected. Tell us a little bit about the process. So so we regulate about 50 professions in the state and 80,000 licensees so lots of different ways that we make sure someone is qualified, and that we also have an enforcement system to take away their license if they if they harm somebody. Most people probably don't know it but they visit a licensee they get services from a licensee of ours probably just about every single day. Anything from your dentist to your pharmacist to your real estate broker if you sell your house. Your nail person air and nail that's right. So those it's it's an important thing that we do and most people don't realize we exist until there's a problem. We don't want to minimize any any of that. But over time, we just saw that, you know, just just serving people and realizing they're they're not just a piece of paper. These are people who are trying to get into the profession to fulfill a dream to you know be able to pay their bills. So we didn't get to work, and we shouldn't put anything unnecessary to the public protection mission in their way. So this was just a pet project a philosophy maybe that came over time that we need to be careful that we don't go too far that the pendulum doesn't just swing one way. We need to make sure that things are as streamlined as possible. And that was accelerated in recent years by a Department of Labor grant that we received they saw the work that we were doing they recognized it, and they sent some money our way to work on that even more so this was in the Obama White House Department of Labor and then they sent it to the Trump White House Department of Labor grant over three years for us to do some of this work to roll back these barriers so that other states could see it could be done and then to hopefully spread that to other states and that's been happening. So tell us give us some example of the barriers that you've rolled back in Vermont. This was called the professional licensing consortium there were 11 states originally and I think it ended up being 13 Vermont got in at the last minute, and got to be a part of this. And it's all based on this. The fact that the number of professions that require say government permission to get into them has grown and grown and grown especially in the last 20 to 25 years. So examples of that might be cosmetology like like you mentioned say cosmetologist or nail technicians, the number of hours required kept going up and up and up and with that, the expense that it takes to go to cosmetology school. And it's not a super high paying profession and it's a profession that people get into often without going to college they do this instead. And the fact that they're using those barriers are keeping them as low as possible and still protecting the public is is really important. So if you look at the public protection issues, it is important to know what chemicals you're putting into someone's hair, or the infections that can happen if you do nail technician work inappropriately, or you don't sterilize if you cut somebody and you haven't sterilized your equipment. It's important to public protection but do they require 400 500 800 hours of schooling that's the thing that we scrutinize and we look at. And so we've rolled back some of those requirements to require less hours of schooling alternate pathways such as on the job training and apprenticeships easily transferring from one state to another so you know we had this system set up where if you were from Massachusetts, and you've been practicing for many years you still had to take the Vermont exam you still had to get some hours to get into Vermont and really it wasn't necessary to public protection. So those are the things kinds of things that we scrutinize. Make sure we're focused on the public protection mission and then get rid of that red tape that's not necessary to get someone into Vermont and working a job that requires a certification or a license. And so as the example for lawyers or dentists roughly the same as nail estheticians. So those those requirements are more standard from state to state so again we have this thing called fast track licensure that says that if you've been practicing in another year. I'm sorry in another state for three years and you haven't had any problems on your record, you can get a fast track right into Vermont to get a Vermont license that goes for most professions most professions are very similar and what they require from state to state. There are a few exceptions where Vermont might have some different requirements where we, we would allow for a safety valve for a little additional experience or education or exam before coming in. But something like a registered nurses or osteopathic physician we enter into things called compacts so we recognize the other states license and they can pop right into Vermont or they can go right into the other state. The accountability is still there through licensure the public protection is still there. Like you don't have to jump through a bunch of unnecessary hoops in order to get to work here, and just a note on lawyers lawyers are regulated by the judiciary, as is required by the Constitution so we don't have anything to do with regulating the lawyers. So you've made this kind of big announcement that there's been this reform what other aspects should the public understand about the work that you've done. Sure so fast track licensing is a big one and we've already issued about 850 licenses under that, and just a short time. We also offer credit for military experience so any any people any folks who've served in the military and have experienced that they think should qualify them toward a license. We have a medic to LPN program that we've put in place, really important for our military members. Those apprenticeship past pathways that I talked about with cosmetology. We've also done it in pharmacy technicians, funeral directors optometry there are different ways for people to gain access to the profession without having to go to further training, perhaps lead the state perhaps invest a lot of tuition money in their education they can do it through an on the job or a learned experience, which I think is really important. And helps keep people in Vermont as well because a lot of these programs aren't even offered in the state of Vermont so people would have to leave the state in order to get those kinds of education and training. So we're welcoming new Americans and getting them to work immediately these foreign trained folks who come into the country often their training is disregarded. So we have some highly qualified people who could really contribute to the community contribute to society here in the United States but they can't take advantage of that training that they already have so we have an opportunity to use a third party credentialing service to say this is equivalent to Vermont, let's give these, these folks a license in their chosen profession and get them to work. We've also done a lot of work around people with criminal backgrounds criminal histories. Sometimes they are deterred from even applying for a license because they're afraid they won't be able to qualify. So we've set up a program that lets you come in at a very low fee to get a determination on whether your criminal conviction is going to be a barrier to licensure oftentimes it's not as long as you can show some proof of rehabilitation or that it's not related to the practice of the profession you're applying for. And also with passage of time things like that. We would allow for licensure so that's a good way to do that the compact licensing is something I talked about we just joined the nurse licensure compact, which will go into effect in a few months 37 other states belong to that so it allows you to freely move among those states, if you have a license in one state. So that's another thing to attract people to come into the state of Vermont. And I guess just the last thing I'd mentioned is that we try to be as user friendly as possible so all of our applications are now online you can do it from a cell phone anywhere in the world as long as you've got that cell phone you can apply for and get a license, and our processing times are really low compared to other states. I think we have a great team of people who are dedicated to serving the public it's something that Secretary of State condos emphasizes coming from a private sector background he really wants us to be responsive and be those problem solvers who were there for the people who use our services. Well, I will say, anytime I've called the Secretary of State's office I've gotten a prompt response. Oh good. Yeah, you know so I think it's not the kind of place you call and the phone rings, and you, you know, you don't get what you need, you know there's a, even during this whole pandemic period. It's been very helpful, I would say. So, applause, you get applause for this. Yeah, that's good to know. Yeah, that we strive for that and in, especially during COVID a lot of state offices closed down and people didn't know where to go so we got a lot of oddball phone calls that we were fielding and trying to point people in the in the right direction and really they just wanted someone to talk to when we're so grateful and we were picking up the phone. Yeah, it makes a big difference. So I want to thank you for this update and for the work that you've done I think people will find it quite useful. I'll include the web information online information so people can see it you know it's the other day we were looking for, we have a Vermont language justice project, and part of that project's goal is to translate public health messages into a variety of languages. So if you're thinking the Vietnamese community there's so many nail estheticians in the Vietnamese community that they might actually be a good network to help distribute some of these messages. So I looked up the list, and there was the list of the 148 or whatever number of people so that the public can also even if you're not applying for a license you can see who is licensed in the state of Vermont. You know that's that's publicly accessible information. That's absolutely that's good to that's good for people to know and if you go to our office a professional regulation website you can see all the different professions we regulate the rules around them. And you can actually look up licensees and all of our discipline is public on our website so you can see if someone has had a problem perhaps lost their license for some reason we unfortunately do that. We get about 300 times a year, we get about 800 complaints a year so that's that's that public protection mission that we still do even though we're hopefully lowering unnecessary barriers. And how does that work when a person makes a complaint. You know what's the process there. But as a whole administrative process we have investigators and prosecutors in our office of professional regulation the complaint goes through a screening process where we will talk to witnesses and decide whether it's something that needs to move forward. If it does move forward, we do a full investigation we have several former actually current law enforcement officers former police officers. We're now working as our investigators who will interview witnesses collect documents, and then it goes to what's called an investigative team, and we have one member of the actual profession so we have licensing boards and advisors so if it's a dental complaint for example, we'll have a dentist consult with us on it from the board and tell us whether there's something there does it violate the standards of unprofessional conduct. And if it does it gets referred for prosecution there are formal charges. There's due process afforded to the respondent is what we call the licensee. And a lot of those end up in a stipulation and consent order which is made public on our website so they agree to certain discipline. And then some of those go actually to a contested hearing. And so we'll have a full blown administrative hearing in front of an administrative law judge, and the board, in some cases say the board of dental examiners, where we'll call witnesses cross examination present evidence and testimony. And in the end the judge or the board will write a findings conclusions in order. And it can be anything from a reprimand to conditions on the professionals license, even to revocation in some instances. So all these complaints we get our looked at are investigated in some fashion, so we get about 800 a year and maybe 200 will end up with some form of discipline. And is your division, this particular division funded through licensing fees that is that the revenue source. In fact it's fully self supporting so we get to go into the, the legislature every year and ask for adjustments to our fees for one of the few agencies that get to do that every year most can only go in every three years. And we look at our entire budget we look at the number of complaints and prosecutions we've had our expenses for the office of professional regulation, and we raise fees or we lower fees depending on that we actually do lower fees sometimes we've gone in several ways to say that that say the profession of veterinarians, for example, have not spent what we thought they would and their fees are raising more money than they need will lower the fees in the, in the profession. So it's all special funded, all self supporting based on those licensing fees. So I want to thank you for talking with me about this. I, while we're, I have you, I want to just ask you, since you also oversee the elections division. So how sort of what's your evaluation of how municipalities have been handling elections during this coven time. It has been amazing, we couldn't have done it without our amazing town clerks and these municipalities and the election workers in each of the towns. And we have very decentralized elections in the state of Vermont all run on the town level. And we put everyone through their paces in 2020 we all had to kind of do the fire drill here and move the vote by mail for the very first time, with a really short runway to do it. It was amazingly successful. We had record turnout in 2020. We really had no issues in the towns. People were just willing to step up and do extra and do whatever it took to make sure everybody got to vote and got to vote safely and with vote by mail. We had about 75% of Vermonters voting by mail so that meant only 25% in the polling places which kept them not crowded and safe and sanitary. And so we didn't have any of the issues that we saw in other states election results report reported on election night and we're done. We broke records for turnout so we couldn't have asked for anything more and a big part of that is the hard work of our town and city clerks and all of the local officials the BCAs and the volunteers who could who helped us make it happen. I think, you know when things work. Well, it's easy to take them for granted. And, you know, it, but you cannot take the democratic process for granted as you said you know there are other states where they're still litigating the presidential election, for example, right. But it is, it is quite remarkable that we can rest easy because of the collective gesture towards assuring that everyone gets a vote, and that it's their, their fair and accurate. But it wouldn't happen unless you had a Secretary of State and the Secretary of State's office it was committed to this so I think you deserve as much credit. And thanks for saying so we worked really hard and we're gratified to see how it turned out. And just looking around at what's happening in other states we feel very lucky to live in Vermont. Yeah, well you know there is that exceptionalism, we have living here. So Chris winners thank you WD Secretary of State and thanks for talking to us about the reform and professional regulation, and a little bit about the elections yeah, it's great to see you. All right, thanks.