 Welcome to Capital Beat. It's Friday, April 29th. Capital Beat is a production of Montpress Bureau. I'm Joshua Gorman. This is Bureau Chief Neil Goswami and Orca. And we're going to talk about emails today coming from the Shumlin administration, possibly regarding the EB-5 scandal happening up in J.P. and Q. Burke. We're going to talk about the independent contractor bill. We're going to talk about marijuana and let's start off with emails. So it was on Tuesday this week that the house approved a resolution calling for the Attorney General to go ahead and look at these emails that the Shumlin administration had requested to be deleted to determine which ones are going to be available to the public. This is a pretty rare demonstration of tripartisan support. It was sponsored by House Minority Leader Don Turner, by Majority Leader Sarah Copeland-Hanses, and by Progressive Leader Chris Pearson. Very, very interesting stuff. So Neil, you've been following what's going on with these emails closer than I am. So what's going on right now? So back on April 1st, the Shumlin administration made a request to the Department of Information and Innovation to delete the emails of five former staff members in the Governor's Office who have been not employed there for at least three years. And that request was repeated on April 7th or April 8th. And it didn't sit well when word broke that the two developers in the Northeast Kingdom, Ariel Kiros and Bill Stenger, were charged or with civil fraud charges. And people began to suspect that perhaps the Shumlin administration was looking to destroy these emails because they contained information or communication about the EB-5 program. And to be clear, the Shumlin administration has maintained that there's absolutely no connection between the request, delete the emails, and the subsequent investigation. Right. The request they said was part of an ongoing effort to archive emails in the administration and figure out which ones needed to be kept and which ones could be deleted and erased permanently. So, you know, you fast forward a little bit. There was the fraud charges were revealed. People began to suspect that perhaps the administration was looking to hide something. The administration maintains that no, that's not the case. And any EB-5 related correspondence was already preserved because of litigation holds that the Attorney General issued back in October. So anything related to EB-5 in the JPQ Burke Mountain and Newport Development Projects was already taken out, preserved, saved for for the potential case. So today, Friday, the 29th, we expect the administration to release the first batch of emails that was slated for deletion. The Vermont Press Bureau put in a records request, and which was subsequently copied by a number of other media organizations. And the administration says we'll get the first batch today. I'm told it'll be about 5,500 emails released today that we will put up on vermontpressbiro.com. And the public is invited to review them and see if there's any anything interesting in there that doesn't look right, smells a little funny, or just if you're really bored over the weekend and you want to read some emails. I suspect there will not be much to learn from these emails. I think most of them will be pretty routine. But we thought it best to make the request and see what's in there just in case. So we'll get the first batch today and as one of the things that the Schumann administration told me was that they have been reviewing these emails all week. Many, many staffers, six, seven staffers around the clock to redact privilege and personal information. So we'll see what they contain beginning probably later this morning or this afternoon. Interesting. You're also paying attention to the revival of a bill that many consider dead. And that's the independent contractor bill. So I wrote a piece about this a couple weeks ago. It's kind of had an interesting path that came out of the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee with the unanimous vote. And Schapp requested that he get sent back because he expected there was going to be a fight with the Government Operations Committee. So the bill was recommitted and then it just kind of lost any sort of momentum and we thought it was done. What's happening with that right now? So yesterday, Republican Kurt Wright of Burlington was prepared to make a motion to relieve the House Commerce Committee of the bill, which would in effect send it back to the House floor. House Speaker Schapp Smith and the Commerce Committee Chairman Bill Batzo got word of this plan and opted to make the motion themselves. There was some fear, I think, among the Democratic leadership that if a Republican member made the request, it would have been voted down by the Democratic majority. And it would appear as though they were trying to block this bill. So instead, they made it themselves, made the motion themselves, and it will allow the bill to come up for debate on Monday. And members will get a chance to debate this bill, to amend this bill. But for all intents and purposes, it is still dead. Let's remember that the legislature plans to adjourn on Saturday, May 7th. It'll be debated Monday and Tuesday by the House. It'll be noticed in the Senate. And the earliest they would get it would be Wednesday, leaving Wednesday, Thursday, Friday for that for the Senate to to act on it. And that simply is not going to happen. I spoke to a Rutland Republican Senator Kevin Mullen very briefly this morning. And I said, Hey, will you look at this bill? He had a quick, simple answer of no. So it's not going to move this year. But proponents of the bill, including Representative Heidi Sherman of Stowe, believe that simply being able to debate this on the floor sets the tone for next January. And she believes that the House and the Senate should act within the first 60 days to send a bill to the governor's desk. So it's really more about posturing at this point than than it is advancing a bill because it has no hope of passing at this point. I see. Very good. There's also been some interesting developments on marijuana. We've been talking quite a bit about the marijuana bill this year and whether or not the state will move to legalize the drug. On the other day, Senator Sears attached the Senate's version of S241, the bill to legalize, regulate marijuana. He attached that to a separate criminal justice bill or criminal procedure bill and sent it back to the House. So the House will have to deal with that on Monday. They can they have a couple of options. They could concur with it, which would in effect mean that they agree with the Senate's marijuana proposal, which is not going to happen. They could vote to not concur, in which case, presumably a conference committee would be created and they'd have to try and hash out their differences. Or I believe they can amend it again. The House could change it back to the original bill and send it back to the Senate again. So, you know, either way, this will probably be, this may be the only vote on S241 that the House takes, even though it'll be sort of a proxy vote on this other bill age 858, I believe it is. So the House will vote most likely not to concur. But I would imagine there will be a roll call. So we'll get a sense of where members stand on the marijuana issue, even though it's not really a straight up or down vote on the Senate bill. So you think that's something that House lawmakers have been looking to avoid, given that they're going into an election season? Absolutely. There are a number of House lawmakers, even those that are sort of in favor of legalizing marijuana, that absolutely do not want to vote on this. Probably a little bit of political cowardice heading into an election year. But I think there's plenty of people who are hell bent on getting some kind of vote. And in essence, Senator Sears ensured that there will be at least a proxy vote on the marijuana bill this year by attaching it to another piece of legislation. So plenty of people do not want to vote. The governor wants this to come up to a for a vote on the on the House floor. Matt Simon of the marijuana policy project tells me that he is in favor of a vote, even if it's voted down. So there's, you know, another week to go, we'll see what happens. There'll probably be some more maneuvering. But at least we know on Monday, there will be some type of vote on this on the House floor. I see. Very, very interesting. Yeah, you've been following a couple of interesting bills too. Yes, yes. Phil, how you've been spending your week? Well, so in addition to the House resolution regarding the administration emails, yesterday, House lawmakers gave the preliminary go ahead to a bill that's intended to enhance protections for DCF workers. This bill is coming up in light of the August slaying of DCF worker Larry Sobel, allegedly by Jody Herring, who was just found incompetent to stand trial, by the way. And so what this bill does is that it adds DCF workers to a list of occupations that includes law enforcement, emergency responders, health care workers. And I'm forgetting the fourth one right off the top of my head. But at any rate, so for these folks, there are what they call enhanced protections. And so if you assault any of these people, the first time it's the same as assaulting you or I carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail or $1,000 fine. However, a second or subsequent after that carries up to 10 years. People who argued against this said, Hey, somebody who's really in the throes of rage isn't going to stop and think, Hey, I might face an enhanced penalty for this. However, there was a feeling that lawmakers needed to do something because the Larry Sobel incident was far from the only incident in terms of the violence and threats that DCF workers face. So what the House went ahead and did is they kept the language from the Senate bill. That's where originated was in Senate Judiciary with Dick Sears, who's got a lot of high profile bills. It does. It seems to every year. We think about it. So what they did is they went ahead and kept that. But they stripped out language that would have criminalized the act of making a threat. Right. However, what they did do in turn was tack on a bill that the house passed in March that criminalizes the act of stalking and stalking includes the act of making threats. Okay. And so what this and now that bill passed the House in March and then just landed with a thud over in the Senate. It was referred to Senate Judiciary and as far as I can tell, according to the bill tracker, there was no further action on it after that. Okay. So what's going to happen here is House lawmakers going to vote on this today. There's possibly going to be an amendment from Representative Paul Poirier, who's an independent out of Berry City. And Paul is concerned that the bill as it's written, the enhanced protections are not for all DCF workers, but just for DCF workers who are within the family services division. Lara Sobell was in the family services division. Poirier would like to see that this bill expand the scope to include say DCF workers that are also involved in making sure that people pay child support. As he says that those people encounter every bit as much a hostility when they're trying to collect money out of people who don't want to want to pay it as anybody in the family services division. So as we're talking right now, the House has adjourned and they have separated Republicans and Democrats are caucusing right now. I'm not sure if it's actually on this topic or not, but I know that they are going to be voting on this today. And so we'll find out if they're going to include the Poirier amendment or not. Interesting. Yeah. That's what I have going on for sure. Good deal. We should also note that the Senate has completed its work on the budget, the tax bill and the fee bill. There have been conference committees appointed by both the House and the Senate and they've begun sort of sitting down and negotiating over final versions for each chamber to consider. So next week looks like it'll be the final week of the session. As I mentioned earlier, adjournments slated for probably Saturday May 7th. So we'll be back at some point after that to provide a final wrap on the legislative session and see how it leads into the election season. All right. That sounds great. Thanks for joining us. You can catch this episode and past episodes on vermontpressbureau.com and orchamedia.net. And if you are interested in reading a bunch of emails from the Shumlin administration, check out vermontpressbureau.com and we'll have them posted there. Thanks again.