 All right, we're updated agenda. And our first witness up is David Sher, assistant attorney general from law and attorney general. He's here to speak to S5, Dr. Lane, Ms. Lane, as cannabis regulation procedures. David. Good morning, Senator. Good morning, committee. For the record, David Sher with the attorney general's office, my understanding was that I am here to testify about the issue of advertising and- Yes. We are concerned about advertising. Got it. Thank you, Senator. And I do have a few comments I can make on the various proposals that came through the legislature last year. Ultimately, of course, the final legislation ended with a sort of directive to the control board and our office. And I believe to the health department as well to work out a system of regulation, that's certainly something we are, we were happy to be involved in last year. We're still happy with that outcome and happy to engage in that project. But if the committee would like to reconsider some of the legislative versions that were considered last year, I'm happy to give a brief overview of the legal issues. I was considering proposing an amendment that would have the house government operations version before it was changed on the floor to nothing or to no advertising. Sure, so let me- I would be, I was going to propose that the committee amend this S-25 bill with the language that was approved by house government owners. Senator Childs, Michelle. I just wanted to, so I think last time we talked about S-25, I then sent you a document that had all the different advertising language. And I just wanted to check to make sure y'all had that. So if David wanted to comment on the language that you're proposing, Senator Sears, it is in that. And if you don't have it, I can resend it to you and I'll send- Probably be better off to resend it right now because trying to find anything on my iPad while resuming and some people only have funds. Sure, I'll email it to you right now. I don't email it also to Peggy through Peggy can post it. And I made you co-host, Michelle, if you want to share. I'm good, I don't want to, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt David. I just want to make sure y'all have language if he was going to comment on it. Right, so I don't have it yet, but we will. The power of Zoom, I can't believe the email we get just while we take an hour off to do the midi work. Go ahead, David, I think you know that. Sure, yeah, thank you, Senator. What I'll do is I'll give you the headline, give a brief overview of the law. I won't go into great detail in it, although I'm happy to answer more questions about it and then answer questions generally. You know, our brief headline is that we do believe that the version has passed by the House Government Operations Committee is something that we'd be on fairly solid ground, defending if it were to become the subject of a lawsuit down the road. I did consult with our solicitor general who deals with First Amendment issues more often than I do. And we did go through those proposals and did talk a bit about the applicable law. The committee does know I think and should know that everything in this area is a little bit murky given the unusual status of the law in this case. We are dealing with something that's legal on the state level or will shortly be legal on the state level and is illegal on the federal level, which makes everything a little bit less certain. But the general analysis that's used when you're talking about commercial speech in the United States is something called the Central Hudson Test. It lays out the groundwork by which courts analyze whether commercial speech is protected under the First Amendment or whether it can be limited, lawfully limited. The Central Hudson Test has four prongs. The first prong of that test is whether it concerns, whether the speech concerns lawful activity and is not misleading. And that's not actually a First Amendment inquiry. It's more just an inquiry about the nature of the speech and what it's addressing and how it's addressing it. After you pass that first prong, so in other words, if you're talking about unlawful activity or if the speech is talking about things in a misleading or untruthful way, then it can be banned. There's no First Amendment protection at all. But let's say we pass those two tests. It is lawful activity and it is not misleading. Then we go into a classic First Amendment balancing test, kind of mid-level review. And the next three prongs are whether the asserted governmental interest is substantial, whether the regulation directly advances that governmental interest and whether the regulation is not more extensive than is necessary to serve that interest. And those are the issues we look at in deciding whether speech is, or a court will look at deciding whether speech can lawfully be regulated and the extent to which it can lawfully be regulated. Turning to the House Government Operations Proposal, which hopefully the committee will have or does have in front of it shortly. We looked through the prongs here and there's two things to think about. One is just applying the central Hudson factors to these prongs. And the second is the broader issue about whether the central Hudson tests will apply at all. I'll go through the first one first, which is let's look at these prongs and think about how the central Hudson test applies. And I'm not gonna go into this in great detail. Again, I am happy to sort of look into answer specific questions about specific prongs. But I would say that as we look through this, certainly it's lawful to outlaw speech or the banned speech that's deceptive, false or misleading. That's that first central Hudson test prong. We think that it's certainly a defensible position to say that you can limit advertising regarding overconsumption that promotes overconsumption. We think it is defensible under the central Hudson prongs to say that we shouldn't be representing that the use of cannabis has curative effects, especially in the commercial, that we're talking about non-medical here, we're talking about commercial sales, retail sales. We think that that is something that there is a governmental interest in not allowing for those types of representations to be made and that this advances that interest in a sufficiently narrowly tailored. Again, offering a prize or award for purchasing cannabis or something like that. Again, we're trying not to have this product which does have concerns about its health effects be overly, be promoted in ways that feel improper and may promote overconsumption. We think that's in line with that concept and similar with the offering of free samples. Depicting a person under 21, clearly the government has an interest in preventing the consumption by young people. The health issues on that are very well documented. Same with number seven, appealing to a person's under 21. The subsection C in this proposal, regarding the percentage of the audience that's reasonably expected to be under 21 years of age. I understand that that is borrowed from Colorado regulations. The percentage is slightly different. I'm not sure if the percentage as a practical matter is gonna make a huge amount of difference in terms of how the analysis plays out. But again, this is clearly something that relates to not preventing consumption by young people, which in which I think it could clearly be demonstrated to a court that there is a strong governmental interest in preventing that. And same with having warnings be on the labels. That's something that's also allowable. In terms of subsection E submitting the board to the board, proposals for advertising prior to the dissemination of the advertisement. Normally in First Amendment law, this sort of prior restraint, in other words, allowing the government or having the government look at speech before it's given. Normally that's quite disfavored. But in the commercial speech world, it is allowable. And I would say the circuit law isn't, the law as it's been developed has not been especially clearly developed on this. But the central Hudson case itself contemplates the idea that prior restraint that this type of prior restraint, prior approval is allowable. So clearly the precedent is there to support something like this. So that's a brief rundown through the provisions. Again, we feel comfortable defending this in court if it should get there. The overarching question is, does the central Hudson test apply at all? In other words, because this is illegal under federal law, does that mean that the first prong of the central Hudson test doesn't even get passed? And essentially that would give Vermont carte blanche an open field to ban as much as they want or limit as strictly as they want to limit. And I think that is an open question. There have been two cases recently, one in Montana, one in Washington state. They came down on opposite sides of this question. But we certainly, it is our read of the law that we are in a more secure legal position to limit as opposed to ban commercial speech related to cannabis. And it would be, we are more comfortable going into court defending a limitation as opposed to defending a ban. So given that analysis, again, going back to the headline here, we believe that this is fine language. We are ready to defend it if it should come to that. I will note for the court, I did reach out actually to some colleagues in Colorado who have worked on the Colorado regulations which do contain the percentage limitation just to learn how that's been working in practice. And the reality is that there really haven't been many lawsuits brought up in Colorado at all on this. Basically the retailers and other folks involved in the industry have accepted the regulations and moved forward within them without challenging them. There was a challenge early on in back in, I think, 2015 or 16 that came from publishers and they challenged the advertising limitations in federal court. Those were thrown out for lack of standing. So the merits of the issue whether or not in fact these did have First Amendment implications and what they were, those were never decided by the court. And none of the retailers, none of the folks who would have had standing under that ruling or at least the court indicated probably would have had standing under that ruling. Nobody ever seems to have brought a case. And I think what I've understood from my colleagues out there is that the industry seems to have accepted the regulations and decided that it was a better thing just to work within them as opposed to try to go to court and risk an opinion that was adverse and sort of the unpredictable outcomes that come from those sorts of court battles. I do have one question, David. In the House version F, the board may charge and collect fees for review of advertisements. That's a little odd. I'm not sure that's, I don't know where else would we do something like that? Do we charge mattress companies for a final liquidation sale that isn't really a final liquidation sale? In terms of speaking to this, just from- How many times have you seen on a wallet of mattress company a final liquidation sale that's gone on for 27 years? I don't- Do we charge a fee for that? I don't think I have seen that example in particular. Speaking to this from the First Amendment analysis, I'm not sure that this actually fits in neatly with that. I think that the state has- I think that in considering an amendment, I think we should take out F. And Senator, certainly we would have no, I think we would have no position on that really. I don't think that implicates the First Amendment issues one way or the other. I think that's more about what the state has the power to do in terms of imposing fees on people who are, certainly in other instances, the state does impose fees for regulatory reviews. That's fairly common. So I don't think that that has any real First Amendment implication, but I understand there might be other policy issues that the committee wants to consider on that. What I'd like to do is next Tuesday, consider them not next Tuesday, obviously, be the 9th of March. We would consider amendments on Tuesday, the 9th, we shall, to the bill. We've obviously had a number proposed and we can let people in if we have questions that are amendments, but I, other witnesses who may want to, and we can talk about that, Peggy, but it's more marked up of amendments to the bill. That's really fine. So we can move it along. It's gonna have to go to finance anyways, or appropriations, or bills. I wish it would go to aggregate. So any questions for David? Senator, I just wanted to make, if there, if this is okay, I want to make one other very quick point about what I get in stance here, which is that, as I mentioned, our office is more comfortable and feels like we're on more solid ground, defending a limitation as opposed to a ban. The other thing I just wanted to point out about that is that if we end up getting into a legal argument about whether specific provisions within this statute do or do not withstand First Amendment scrutiny, it may be that one or two of them get struck down, but it's likely that at least several, if not most of these, we do believe will be upheld. So it leaves the state in a more protected position to be arguing about a set of limitations. By contrast, if we are arguing about an absolute ban, and the absolute ban were to be struck down by the courts, there would be no limitation remaining on advertising for the cannabis industry, and that we believe would leave the state in a much worse position with respect to the various public health and public safety concerns that are trying to be addressed by limiting advertising. So that's another reason why we believe it's a better position for us to be and to be defending a limitation, a set of limitations. That's basically why we refuse to adopt the House version, the House amended version that had been amended before by the Donnie movement, because we felt that it put us in a really bad position. Can't remember what was in the governor's non-signing letter, you can call it another one. Thank you, David. Thank you. Appreciate your being here. Next, we'll go to an old friend who used to be here very often, back when we were eating, meeting non-COVID style in the State House, Taylor Nash, welcome back. Hey everybody. How are you? Nice to see you. Good, nice to see you all. I'm glad that I was finally able to take part in this committee with some actual concrete title rather than just this ambiguous student activist role that I seem to have been in for the past couple of years. Do you have somebody else with you today? Yeah, Blaine, she was having trouble with the link, but she should be part of it now. And she I think is gonna lead our testimony off. Okay, let me, I'm finding my agenda. Yeah, Blaine, so while we're waiting for Blaine to jump in. So what is your actual title? I am a public policy and research analyst for the Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Department for the city of Burlington. Say that three times fast. No, I can't even say what's fast. You're a research analyst. Yeah, are you surprised? Yes. No, of course not. Used to do research for this committee. Absolutely, any allies and things. So if you wanted to introduce, I think you know everybody on the committee, Skyler, maybe you can introduce your. No, this is, this is Blaine, my partner in crime at the REIB department in the city of Burlington, but also somebody that keeps me in check on a daily basis from just the way that I acted up with you all. And so, you know, we wanted to come here today. I did get excited and telling her that we were going to be testifying in my home committee today. So, you know, everybody be nice to her because I've been talking you all up for the past couple of days. So maybe you could just briefly update us on your, the role that I wasn't aware that Burlington had there's like what do you include in the belonging office and that there were policy research analysts. Either one of you tell us a little bit about this position. Yeah, well Mayor Weinberger created the position by appointing our director, Taisha Green, a year ago now, which seems kind of crazy to think about. And then our two positions were added and we were subsequently hired. And so we really in our department focus on policy. We've done a few programs in terms of BIPOC grants related to COVID relief for small businesses and organizations. But mostly we're focusing on policy, whether that's creating new policies to center racial equity in city departments and policies and practices or fixing ones that exist and are kind of missing the mark. So that's included, you know, cultural organizational cultural analysis, you know, policy proposals around procurement equity, housing equity, basically making sure that we are kind of the hub in the city for generating race-centered policies and practices. So I think, you know, something that we're really proud of and thankful for the mayor and the city council leading on and hoping to kind of make our mark here statewide as well. Hey, well, you're here just flying on that 25. Belen, you want to lead off or? Yeah, I'll go. Hi everyone, thank you for having me. I'm Belen and Tensea Skyler said we are partners in crime and we have reflecting roles. I'm also a public policy and research analyst for the city of Burlington's racial equity inclusion and belonging office. We're really starting off with the general to continue on a conversation you all had a little earlier around where is the language on race specifically in this bill? And I think that we would kind of echo that having race-specific language helps us actually reduce the harm that has been inflicted by marijuana drug laws. So where our first argument here is that nowhere in the bill do we directly address that Black and also some Brown communities have been disproportionately harmed by marijuana laws. And therefore we should be repairing that harm through this bill by including race-specific language. I think you're right. This is our meeting. Equity groups. Am I back? Yeah. Kind of. Okay. Okay. Well, if I do cut out Skyler, you can take over for me. Okay. This is not a good ad for Burlington Telecom. I know. We'll do something about that next. Go ahead if you can. Yeah. So we're just going to echo the argument that we should have race-specific policies in here and to continue on that as well as understanding that Black and Brown communities, but specifically Black communities have been harmed by this bill. We have members being taken out of Black communities through incarceration from drug policies and drug laws that we have. And those communities are then being harmed and still being harmed as we phase out of a state in which marijuana is illegal. So those communities as well need to kind of experience that repair that can come from the revenues from this bill. So that's our second argument here, is we're hoping that there's something in here that can address the harm of the communities themselves and addressing perhaps tax revenue going back into Black and Brown communities across Vermont. Can I, one of the confusions I have is there's Mark Hughes introduced an amendment today as did last week, Senator Rahm. And so as the committee tries to put this bill together, other specific things in either of those amendments if you're familiar with them that you would like us to consider or do you have amendments of your own? Yeah, if I may, I think on page three in the definitions, let me pull this up. Which version are we looking at? Let me see. And I'm specifically speaking on, let's see. Mark had introduced his amendment. Yeah, so we have, let me see. Page three, we go into talking about the cannabis social equity programs and the definitions that we use. And I think specifically there, we need to define what we mean by these groups that are historically disproportionately harmed by marijuana drug loss. And in research, both in Vermont, in Chinatown County, in Burlington, but across the nation, we see that that group is specifically Black people and adjacent also some other BIPOC communities. And that needs to be specifically put into this bill if we want to repair any of the harm that has been done in the past several decades. Senator White. Can I just ask a question about, because I think in Vermont, another group that was disproportionately affected was poor rural kids. And I think we need to address that also. Senator Benning. Good morning to you both. I'm wondering, if Phillip had brought up earlier the fact that race was absent from the document and the more I thought about it, I thought that is actually probably a very smart way of proceeding here because I don't know if anybody's done any research, but if you put the word race into or any particular race into the equation, I don't know if anybody's done any research on the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and how that might apply. I know that there are large areas of the state that have an extremely small BIPOC community. And yet there have been people in those areas who have been affected by being arrested for this. And I'm not sure how to resolve that with language that doesn't run us afoul somehow or provide an excuse for this bill to be voted down. So I just want to make sure if there's research out there that has yet to be done about the Equal Protection Clause and how it would apply, I would hope that somebody would follow up on that. We've kind of interrupted your testimony and gone afoul, which is something we often do. But if you have any thoughts on that, and I think the line is frozen or unfrozen now, and she's having a hard time with the technical difficulties. Thanks, Senator. Oh, I was just going to say, I think she may be frozen, but what I would say to that is, I think it's something to ask a question about. I think our position in the RAIB department in the city is that too often when we cast this wide net without being surgical about intention, sometimes we can miss that mark. And I think Senator Baruch brought this up earlier is that if our intention is to help and aid and be repetitive towards black and brown communities, BIPOC communities that history has shown us unless we name that and are extremely intentional about that, it generally doesn't happen when we try to cast this wide net to serve all of those purposes at the same time. I just want to make sure, Skylers, you've now identified yourself as somebody who's performing research. I'm sending out the challenge. I'd love to see the research and just make sure we're not providing some kind of a stumbling block. And I'm not trying to suggest that I would vote against the bill if you went with that suggested addition. I'm trying to make sure that we cover all bases moving forward. No, you bring up a good point. You bring up a really good point. Senator Baruch. I mean, maybe I'm missing something here, but we've had grant programs from minority-owned businesses for how long, you know, like 50 years. It's hard for me to imagine that if we were to do a similar thing here, we would be in any kind of legal danger. So I take the point, I guess, that there might be some House members or some Senate members who might be less likely to vote for the bill if it mentions race or uses race-specific language, but I would just echo Skylers' point. If, for instance, Representative Chiena's bill, I read through that there's no mention of race. You could wind up with a program that ultimately puts out $10 million in funds and then find out that 1% of that went to the BIPOC community, at which point we would say, oh, dopey us, we should have cast our net in a much narrower fashion. So, you know, this is not breaking any kind of new ground or, you know, I thought that is what we were engaged in is trying to target people who had been targeted. Well, there have been challenges on quotas in universities, and so if you set up a quota, I don't see this as setting up a quota. This is setting up a grant program that would be available, just as we just did up, correct me if I got the wrong number, $10 million grant to women and minority-owned businesses. Right. Well, I just wanna make sure, guys, my name is at the very first list of names on this bill. What's your name, Benning? That's right, but I wanna make sure I can cover all my bases and say we've managed to delve into this question. The clause in the constitution is pretty specific. I don't want it to become a stumbling block somehow. So, Skyler, I'm anxious to see your new research skills. I will just mention quota system is where Senator White is. So I appreciate, Skyler, your comment about being surgical about this instead of casting too broad a net, but I do really believe that we need to make sure that I believe that a disproportionately impacted community in Vermont was poor rural kids. And if we don't say that, I mean, that's pretty surgical, but I don't suppose we need to say poor rural kids, but those in many communities, those were the significantly impacted people. Well, I think you say that by saying something about race, but you also say something about those disproportionately affected populations, including. If I could, Senator Sears, I think that Senator White, that's a great point. And I think that that's something we can't lose sight of particularly. There's this national movement where like, there's no argument that nationally and comprehensively, it's been the BIPOC community that is predominantly, but we also have to remain specific to Vermont. And so that's a good point. I guess my last kind of comment on this would be that if we're taking up this bill in recognition that systemic racism has contributed to causing this problem, that tells us how surgical we need to be in terms of putting constraints on that system to actually fix it, because if we leave the system to fix the problem without those constraints, then that systemic racism is going to continue to go up even when our good intentions to solve that problem without those constraints in direction, I guess would be a better word than constraints. Are we back in anything else? I think Blaine might be frozen again. I think unfortunately she is frozen and it does say a lot about Burlington Telecom. I can just bring up her last point. And it kind of goes along with this general conversation that we're having, which is that oftentimes it can be really hard and uncomfortable to get specific when talking about these things, rather than saying marginalized, it's much easier to say and give preference to marginalized communities, social equity, rather than being specific in our language and saying black people, but that as we move forward in this movement that we can't shy away from naming who we're actually trying to help with these things, whether it's cannabis, whether it's sentencing reform that let's get in the habit of being really specific and taking on that challenge of being specific and saying black people, black and brown people, BIPOC people, rather than generalized terms like marginalized communities, because it's not in every case, all marginalized communities that have been harmed by these drug laws surrounding cannabis. And so I think along with this ongoing conversation that in a lot of ways, the way that this bill reads, we're not necessarily seeking to provide racial equity. And so if that's what we really wanna do, then we should be specific about that. I think Blaine's back. Yeah. I hope you can hear me. I have nothing to add on Skyler's point. That was exactly the point I was trying to make. Thanks, Skyler. Senator White. I don't know how in detail we wanna be around parameters here, but what we heard from, I just got done interviewing people who have applied to be on the cannabis control board. And what we heard from almost all of them, and they were an amazing group of people for the most part that had done a lot of research and knew what was happening around the country. And one of the things that we heard was that most of the states, the social equity provision of their law or their rules was really sounded great and was good, but the implementation sucked. Excuse me, that's a technical term. And then what they found in some cases were that corporations or companies had set themselves up and then nominally named a person of color or a woman as the owner or the head of it without it being that being really true. And so I don't know how specific we need to be about the parameters and what the details are, but we need to be aware of that when we implement the policies. I agree with Senator White. If I could, I've got three other things that I just wanna bring up. Yeah, please. So when we're talking about the licenses, I think a recommendation that we would have is that we want to, you'll notice a trend here in our recommendations, ensure that a few percentage of the licenses go to black people that were specifically targeted by the criminal justice system with both local and federal bills. And a part of this, I think earlier, might be a little bit harder to accomplish in a good way because as we're moving forward on this, we're also moving forward with trying to expunge and seal records that have come about as a result of the criminalization of cannabis, right? And so then alongside of that, it might also be harder to find people, black people, any people that have been specifically harmed by the criminalization of cannabis, but it is still something to keep in mind as we move forward in terms of licenses. And then also with the low interest rate loans, we would recommend that for some period of time that the loans be interest free, whether that would be for a period of a year or two years before then introducing that fixed low rate on the loans. The only problem with everything having to do with money, there's no income right now because there's nothing, we don't even have the board established. Senator White, I think made the recommendation that we may look at appropriation similar to what we're doing to try to set up the board. We're pre-funding. So you would almost have to pre-fund in order to get it going because there is no income right now. I would add another, I think limiting to all of our drug laws were aimed at certain years. Not just cannabis, but all the drug laws. And if you look historically, I don't want to limit it to just those impacted by cannabis laws. I mean, there's evidence that Senator White will not like the term hippie, but we have the recordings of President Nixon deciding to go after a certain group. Politically was politically popular to go after that group and not the U.S. marijuana back in the day. So I think you have the evidence, it wasn't just that. So, and that included racial component of all of those laws. Certainly they go after certainly black musicians or one group that certainly get targeted. I can remember that group. Can't think of the guy's name, he was a drummer. They went after him, specifically on drugs. I wish my memory were better on some of these. Do you remember? Who, me? No, you don't remember. Anybody who's eligible for it. I could research it. I could research shots right now. Maybe you should research seriously the music industry back in the 60s and how biased some of the work, what the persons of color particularly were. Well, there were a lot of rhythm and blues people out of the South that were targeted. I think Robert Johnson and Led Belly and a whole bunch of people were. No, there were also groups that I can remember that I was familiar with out of Roxbury, Mass. Yeah, we lived there. All right, anything else? Skyler or Baylor? That concludes our prepared points, but I'm always willing to continue to go back and forth and answer any questions related or otherwise. How's things at the university? I wouldn't know. I haven't been on campus in months. Don't ask, don't tell. Although I would say that you've been picking on Burlington Telecom. I am a Burlington Telecom customer and I have not frozen one time here. And that's not to throw Blaine under the bus, but more to support our local utility. Okay. Well, for full disclosure, I'm on Burlington Telecom too, right now. So we're at two thirds efficacy. Well, it may be that Blaine lives in the middle of the street. I was told seriously, think about craziness of our public communications industry. I was told that I couldn't get, at the time it was AT&T internet because I lived in the middle of my street, if I was on one end or the other, the service was good enough for that. Even though they had sent me an offer and I had already paid for the offer. And that's how I ended up with Comcast, internet provider. So you may live in the middle of the street not on one under the other. I still don't know if that was true or not, but that's what they told me. Can I comment on something Blaine said? Yeah. We often hear people talk about colleagues or coworkers or whatever, but you use the term reflecting roles. And I just love that because it just, it was like there's a mirror here and we're both doing it. I've never heard that before and I liked it. I'm glad, thank you. I think, no, go ahead. No, I'm just gonna thank you both for being here and I'm sorry about the technical difficulties. Oh, thank you for having us. Yeah. I think the technical difficulties are on my side. And I actually, I do have Comcast. So. Oh, wow. Wow. So Burlington telecom on in the bus quite, yeah. Should have had Burlington telecom. I know. I'll give Comcast a call after this. Well, anything else? Michelle, can you join us for a moment? You're still here. Maybe she's fixing her bike. She had burst pipes in her basement. Oh, geez. She had what? Her basement pipes first. She had a plumber coming at some time and the plumber may be here now. What I would like to do is next Tuesday, take this up again and start to go through. This is Tuesday the ninth, not next Tuesday. Tuesday the ninth and go through some of the amendments. In the meantime, Senator, oh, there's Michelle. In the meantime, Senator White has an amendment from the government operations committee or will have. We, we are going to spend Friday focusing on this. So we will have something for you by Tuesday. What we need to do is I've already alerted people that this needs to go to finance appropriations anyway. So we may, do you want to take the bill, Senator White, or do you want to incorporate government on? No, I don't. I think that that's, I mean, I wish the bill would go to, I really wish the bill would go to agriculture. I asked Senator Starr yesterday and he indicated he did not want it. Well, so we're going to do it Friday and Tuesday. So we may have not finalized by Tuesday morning. I thought Jeffrey brought up a good point about, you said, I'd like to see the amendment that we passed in the Senate on earnings. About what? Here, current use. Oh yeah, yeah. Because that is, that does become a problem for those who want to use their own farmland that's currently in current use for a larger plot. If I may, I just, I want to give you one last thought before we hop off here and get out of here. It occurs to me that this may be the first time that I've spent time with you all without either a suit jacket or a tie. And so I don't want you to think that I, that you're, you know, you all have lowered in importance at all or an esteem and I mind that just occurred to me and now I'm feeling really bad. So I don't believe that. Although Senator Benning, I believe said that. You're ears must have been ringing, Skyler, because I was commenting yesterday when I learned that you were coming, I said, I don't know where that man gets his suits. I'd love to find out. I appreciate, well, after we, you know, we can all go shopping once that this COVID crisis is over because, you know, you can never have too many of them and I got to make sure that I have a fresh one for the next time I show up for you all. I just said you went to form a Senator McNeil store down in Brooklyn. And you might invite Clarence Davis too because I've never seen anybody dress like Clarence. Well, I try to take a, he sets the bar for me. Oh, okay. He's the pacer buddy. So getting back to, thank you Skyler for that paid announcement. Let me get out of your ways. I'm causing trouble. No, no, no, no, no, you're not. Just, I'm trying to think of what, so anyway, if you can resurrect that amendment on current use. I don't know how to deal with the agriculture parts. I really don't. I think they've made great points and I'd like to build them in. So can I ask a question about the current use? What you just said about, you wanted an amendment on current use? Yeah, we had a provision in S54. I think Senator Pearson put in regarding current use and it was a larger amount or maybe it's something we offered on the floor. I mean, Senator Pearson was the one who pushed it and it would have allowed, Jeffrey brought it up in his testimony or maybe it was Graham. I don't know which. Regarding the limited size, the thousand square foot size for current use was problematic for many of the growers and I've wanted to go at least look at what we had put in S54. It may have been a floor amendment from Senator Pearson or from agriculture. I can't remember. I think what it was, is it was just in the back and forth negotiation during the conference committee on current use because the discussion of current use didn't come in until it was in ways and means on the house side. And so your debate for conference was around how much could be in current use the house was opposed to taking in to doing current, to taking, I guess they didn't want to lose the tax revenue. And so I think what you guys settled on was that a thousand square feet or less could apply. It doesn't take, so if you have a thousand square feet and it's on a track of 20 acres that is in current use it only takes that small plot out of current use. It doesn't take the whole crop. It doesn't take the whole acreage out. So I can go back and see and I talked to Senator Pearson about what you wanted. Yeah, we did talk to Senator Pearson about what we really wanted. I think we wanted to not have any impact on current use. Okay. So if it's already in current use you don't want it to come out of current use no matter how big the field is. Okay. I think that was where we were at. You're right. Probably negotiation. Right. And then what, and is there, other than the current use issue is there anything else you need to take? Well, I think we have to. Can I throw out the idea that I think that they had a good point about the difference between in and outdoor and that somehow the regulations are, seem to be the same. So if you're producing indoors you can produce four crops a year. If you're producing outdoors you can only produce one crop a year. But so the size, if we're putting some kind of a product cap on at all we need to differentiate between in and out. I don't know where we go with that. And the other issue that they brought up was making an agricultural product. I don't think that'll fly at all because of the no regulations around grow they don't comply with zoning or anything and don't pay any sales tax on any equipment for agricultural products. So I don't think that will fly. Jeanette, why would we get into a conversation about indoor versus outdoor when technically that would be in my eyes a rule that's developed by the board? Yeah, I'm fine having it be a rule because I think there's a lot of this that should be rule that's developed. Well, we can direct the board to develop size. You did. Yeah, we did. Okay, well. I'm fine with that. Well, all right. Well, we'll pick up a week from Tuesday. So is there anything, I mean, I'll be with the Senate government operations as they do their work and Senator White, you guys are gonna take up. We're not gonna do it this afternoon. Yeah, they'll just not wait. But tomorrow starting about 1.30, that's all we'll do. And the topics that you're gonna focus on? Well, I thought that the vote, the issues around if there's issues around the board, Senator Rahm's amendment and the committee wanted to hear the 2% bill that just got sent to finance. They just wanted to hear. Okay, so can you have that? Do you wanna have an Nthia in on that? Sure, and we'll deal with those issues and then continue them on next Tuesday. Okay, but Senator Sears, you're gonna keep the social equity discussion in judiciary, right? And so we'll just come back to your language that's in S25 and talk about if you wanna make any tweaks to that or... Well, I'd like to incorporate as much of the views amendment as possible. So I would say that it's gonna need a lot of work and hearings and testimony. There's some pieces there that around... One part of it doesn't have funding. There's, I would just... You would need to spend some time on it is what I would say. So and you might wanna have Senate economic development weigh in because it's ACCD that's in S25. Weigh in because it's ACCD that's gonna be doing the loans and the grants. And so just wanted to mention that. All right, I'm gonna take a 24 hours to think about this. All right, yeah, let me take 24 hours to think about how much can we incorporate. But I like the idea of not being constricted by time. Good luck with that concept. I mean, we're not constricted by time if we don't wanna have something passed out this year. There's no time constriction if we're willing to continue the conversation and not pass it this year. I didn't think Mark's point was well taken that in his groups and the other group's minds, they've already waited a year past where they wanted to be. So if it's at all possible, I would support where I think Dick is going which is trying to get as much of their amendments through this year as we can. That doesn't preclude what Jeanette is saying which is we could continue the rest of it or what we don't have time for next year. Well, the house has time to work on it. If we pass it, the house can expand on it if they're willing. Yeah, but there's also time to continue to work on it because this bill has to go to appropriations and finance. We voted out it automatically goes to appropriation and finance. So that's two stops and that we can after crossover. The question I would have is, given the shape that it's in and the fact that there are some issues in there that I'm not so sure are easily settleable, does Michelle even have time to put it into a format that we could actually vote on? I guess that's a bridge we'll cross when we come to it. I mean, I think in terms of Mr. Hughes proposal, I think you would just need to go through, section by section, line by line, understanding what's in there, what needs further refinement, what are you comfortable with from a policy perspective? You'd want to hear from the banking and the finance folks. I'd probably want to bring David Hall in because that's really his area and that sort of thing. So I can certainly be the GC and kind of figuring out, because I've got the timeline. I don't think it's our expertise to go through the banking and we can deal with it. That's what that proposal is. It's about loans, loans, just loans and grants and how do you determine who's eligible? And that's all for that. This has been a great meeting Peggy and I think we're pretty well finished.