 Good evening everyone and thank you for coming to Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition's hashtag housed 802 community meeting for Washington County. This is our third meeting of the series and we're going to be talking today about Vermont Government 101 and everything you need to know about the legislature. So just as an introduction, my name is Justin Sircic. I'm an AmeriCorps VISTA that's working for the Coalition as a resident engagement coordinator. And this whole project, this whole housed 802 project, was started fairly recently with our new staff that came in and our new director to really reach out to the community and bring them to the table and make sure that they hold us accountable to our advocacy for affordable housing. After all, everybody in Vermont, all of Vermonters, you know of all shapes and sizes of all stripes are touched by the housing crisis. So it's really important that we hear your voices and that we work together to really get something done to fix the housing crisis and to really help a bunch of folks here in Vermont. So with that, we're going to continue to have meetings of some kind, some shape or another throughout the next couple of months as the legislative session starts in January, as well as other activities and events. For instance, Homeless Awareness Day, an event that's hosted by the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition and the Vermont Coalition to End Homelessness, is going to take place on January 20th from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. with a series of virtual workshops, events, opportunities for testimony and a memorial visual for all that we have, all who we have lost over the past year. That event can be found on Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition's Facebook page and more details will be made available on that page about that event in the future. So for today's purposes, we're going to talk all about the Vermont legislature and Vermont government as a whole, how it works, how it serves you, how you can influence it as a citizen, as a Vermonter. And we're going to start off by talking about the General Assembly, then move on to the Executive Branch, Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition and Affordable Housing Advocacy. So some pieces of legislation involving housing that will be incredibly important that are coming up in January when the legislative session starts. And then at the very end, your power and our power collectively to affect change for the better and make a better Vermont for everyone. So the first thing that we're going to talk about, as I said before, is the Vermont General Assembly. So the Assembly is best categorized as a citizen legislature rather than a professional legislature. It's very small and the representatives come directly from the community. They're not full-time. They have regular day jobs just like you and me. And they live in the community like you and me. So they're incredibly accessible to you and are very willing to hear from you and your ideas. Along with that, the Vermont legislature also serves in a biennium fashion, which means once folks are elected that they serve for a two-year period, two sessions, one per year for a two-year period, giving them more time to come to the community and interact with you, talk to you, which is incredibly important. In terms of the composition of the Assembly, there are 150 members in the House of Representatives and 30 members in the Senate. And they're grouped into different single or multi-member districts based on population of a given area. Along with that, again, with the idea of the citizen legislature, it's not professional. There's no personal staff or offices for members quite literally to get in touch with your legislature. You can come up to the State House whenever you want when they're in session. You're able to get in and literally interact with them the hallway or pass a note, or go on to Vermont.gov's website, legislator.vermont.gov, and call your legislature at their personal phone or write a letter to them, which is very great. It's incredibly accessible. So now, in regards to Washington County specifically, Washington County has three senators among its 20 towns and cities, and those cities and towns are split into 11 different House districts, each with one or two reps in each district. Some of these districts include individual cities and individual towns. Some of them are grouped together, and then some of them, as we can see, are shared with other counties, too. So we have Worcester here, which is LaMoyle in Washington County. Waterbury, whose representatives serve Shitton County and Washington County. Roxbury, that's made up of a larger legislative district that covers Orange County, Washington, and Addison. So overall, you can use this map here, and resources will be made available on the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition's website for you to look at this, and really see where you're located in this map in the different towns and cities, which district you're a part of, and who your legislators are. You can also go and take a look at legislature.vermont.gov, too, and be able to find your district number, and then be able to find who your legislators are. So just to break it down even further, for example, so if you live in Berlin or Northfield, that makes up district one, Berry Town is district two, Berry City is district three, Montpelier makes up district four, Middle Six and East Montpelier is district five, Calais, Marshfield and Plainfield make up district six, Duxbury faced in Wharton, Wakefield and Warren make up district seven, and then you have these outlier districts that share towns of other counties, like Waterbury, Worcester and Woodbury are together in one district, Cabot is in a district, and then Roxbury is in another district that shares towns among the counties. So along with that, it's important to know about the legislative process, how our legislators affect change, so that we can better work with them and influence them to affect that change. So right here on the board, I have a list that encompasses the legislative process, and to talk more about it, I am going to use as an example S79, which was a Senate bill, which would have created a rental housing registry and had provided features for rental housing safety and inspections. So essentially this bill would have created consistent statewide code enforcement of laws that are already in place in regards to the health code out of the Department of Fire Safety at the state level, and this went through the legislature last year during the last session. So to go through the process of how S79 got into the legislature, first it was just an idea brought up by some legislators, maybe by some constituents like you, to their representatives, and it was introduced into the Senate as Senate Bill 79 and was read a first time. After this, it was immediately assigned to a specific committee or a set of committees that are related to that work. Generally, the session lasts from January to April or May, mostly, and that's when a lot of the work is done, and when they are actually in the chambers at the State House in Montpelier. But surprisingly, a lot of the work actually happens in committee, and that's where a lot of debate happens, that's where a lot of testimonies heard, and they bring in expert witnesses to give all different points of view about any specific issue or piece of legislation. So that way, the members of the committee can make a decision and recommend it back to the chamber. So in the case of S79, the bill was first referred to the Senate Economic Development Housing and General Committee, the Finance Committee, and the Senate Appropriations Committee where it was deliberated upon, and amendments were made, different changes were added, and eventually after it passed through those committees, it was brought back to the Senate chamber for a second and third read-in, and during this time, during the second read-in time, is when all of the members in the legislative body in the Senate could debate the bill, offer amendments, and vote on them, and ultimately change different parts of the bill before approving it. So after a while, after some debate, it was passed during the third read-in, it needed 15 out of 29 to pass, it passed with 22 ye votes among all the senators, and because of that, the bill then found its way to the House of Representatives to repeat the whole process again. So the Senate bill that was passed went to the House, that introduced, it was read, it got referred to the General House and a Military Affairs Committee, House Ways and Means, and the House Appropriations Committee, and then eventually it found its way back to the floor for a second read-in, more debate, more amendments, more changes to try and improve the bill, and then for a final vote on the bill, which passed with 93 yes votes and 54 no votes. After this, sometimes the bills might be a little bit different. So the House bill, since it was amended and debated upon, might be a little bit different than what the Senate voted on. So generally, there would be a Committee of Conference, which would be made up of equal members, equal number members from both the House of Representatives and the Vermont Senate, to try and morph the two bills together into one piece of legislation. In this case, the Senate concurred to what the House had passed without a Committee of Conference by 20 yes votes. And then after that, that whole long arduous process, now the bill goes to the Governor's desk for the Governor's consideration, who can either sign it and pass it into law, you can leave it alone. And after a certain number of days, it would pass into law on its action from the Governor, or the Governor can veto it and send it back to the legislature if the Governor disapproves. Ultimately, in this case, Governor Scott decided to veto the bill in late June of last year. And there was no chance for it to go back to the Senate in the House for a veto override vote of two thirds majority vote, because it was so late in the session into the summer. And the session was already out of close. Ultimately, though, when the Governor sent his veto, he sent along a letter with a list of recommendations, changes, concerns that he had with the bill, which is why he vetoed it in the first place. And an offer during the next session to really work in a bipartisan fashion with legislators in both houses to reconsider the bill, make the appropriate changes and get it passed so that it could serve all Vermonters the best. So that sums up the legislative process. And now we're going to move on to the executive branch, which is the part of government that enforces the laws that are passed once they're passed by the Senate and the House and approved by the Governor. So much like the representatives in the House and the Senate, statewide elected officials like the Governor, the treasurer, the Secretary of State, the Lieutenant Governor are elected once every two years, though they don't run on the same party ticket, which is why you have, as example, with the current slate of statewide officials, Republicans and Democrats who serve the whole state of Vermont, who serve the executive branch together rather than a part. Phil Scott, who is Republican, and then the other members of that delegation who are a part of the Democrat Party. And again, those statewide officers consist of the Governor, who is currently Phil Scott, Lieutenant Governor Mollie Gray, the Secretary of State, who is Jim Kondos, the Secretary of State, which handles certain procedural matters, state elections, things like that. Auditor of Accounts, Doug Hoffer, who audits different agencies within the government to make sure that they're performing efficiently and using the budget appropriately, the treasurer, Elizabeth Pierce, and the Attorney General, TJ Donovan. So these are all of the positions that are listed in the Vermont State Constitution under the legislature. However, one of the powers of the Governor is to appoint other officers to help him execute the laws that are passed by the legislature. So that's why we have a variety of agencies and commissions and departments under the Governor in the bureaucracy and the executive branch that help enforce policies and codes and statute once they're passed by the legislature. So in regards to housing issues and housing matters, some of the more important administrative state agencies include the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, which is headed up by Secretary Lindsey Curry. Under that Agency follows the Department of Housing and Community Development, which is headed up by Commissioner Joss Hanford. And that's where you find a lot of folks in the administration that deal directly with housing, with mobile homes, affordable housing issues, and support services for housing. Very important. Another very important state agency is the Agency of Human Services, which deals with everything from community service activities to prison systems, to family and children. So that was chaired up by Secretary Mike Smith, who just recently stepped down and will be replaced soon. And within that agency is the Department of Children and Families, which is chaired by Commissioner Sean Brown. And that deals with a lot of the programs. They manage a lot of the programs that the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition actually advocates for that really help folks. So now to move on to the priorities that the coalition has. We're going to talk a little bit about how the coalition looks at affordable housing issues. And we mainly group all those issues into what we call the three-legged stool of affordable housing, which each leg represents a different thing. So there's one leg that represents capital investment to create more permanent affordable housing, right? To build more housing stock. The next leg is financial assistance that relates to housing in order to help folks fill the affordability gap and actually be able to move into and live in housing. Folks, low-wage working families, folks that are living on fixed incomes that otherwise would have a hard time trying to find housing to live in without it. And then lastly, supportive services, which are really meant for those with the greatest challenge in trying to find and trying to maintain that housing and continually be able to live in it. So now I'm going to go over a few priorities that the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition has. Though eventually at some point our brand new legislative priorities list is going to be announced on our website vteaffordablehousing.org, which will have a more comprehensive list. So some of the big priorities that the coalition has is full statutory funding of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board of up to $30.8 million. And this is an organization, a quasi-state organization that essentially doles out money to different nonprofit housing developers and service providers so that they can build new affordable housing and also create new support programs or maintain support programs to help folks with rental assistance, food insecurity, things of that nature, financial other types of financial assistance, financial education and literacy, all really important stuff. So that's a big ticket item. Along with that is the Manufactured Homes Tax Credit Program, which is run out of the Champlain Housing Trust, which essentially provides assistance for folks that are living in mobile homes or manufactured homes and are looking to try and upgrade to an energy efficient model or the Vermont. Really in an effort to help the environment and then also to save energy costs too so that they can use those funds to deal with other things like buying groceries or paying for rent, which is incredibly important. Another priority is SASH, Support and Services at Home, which is a program that provides support and help for folks in adults in need of assisted living programs. As we talked about before with S79, Rental Housing Safety is another big ticket item on VAHC's priority list. So this would include creating a registry of rental housing across the state of Vermont and a centralization of health and safety inspections with the Department of Fire Safety, along with funding as well to help amend code violations when they come about. So it's not just like a landlord receives a certain number of code violations and is left on their own to try and fix it or to lose their ability to rent because ultimately that would not help out the housing type situation. Another issue that the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition is looking at is that of Just Cause Eviction, which was passed as a charter change specifically for the city of Burlington. However, because of the nature of it, because it's a change to the charter for Burlington, it needs to go for approval at the state house from the legislature and the governor. And Just Cause Eviction would essentially give renters in Burlington, tenants in Burlington, first right of refusal once their lease runs up so that they can continue to live in the same place and pay the same rent that they have. And it also requires cause for evictions such as not paying rent or violating the lease rather than folks just getting evicted without reason or cause. And then the last two priority backgrounds that I'm going to mention that are on the list are water and wastewater tax credit expansions, basically to help with hook up to municipal water, public water, for different neighborhoods, developments, mobile home parks. And then also a bill related to regulating recovery residences, which really don't have a certification body or real policies or regulation in the state of Vermont. So ultimately, each of these kind of fall under the different legs of the stool of affordable housing as well. So the Vermont Housing Conservation Board funding, which ultimately goes to build more affordable housing, for instance, with fall under capital investment, the manufactured homes tax credit expansion would fall under financial assistance because it's helping individuals to save energy costs in their mobile home or the manufactured home units. And then for supportive services, good examples of those would be stuff like SASH that help elderly folks that are trying to live independently and receive the help that they need to do so. And the Recovery Residences Bill, which really helps folks that are in our need of assistance with recovery matters, as well as housing too. So that's incredibly important. So overall, there's a lot of stuff on the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition's agenda right now, and a lot of stuff that can really help a lot of Vermonters who are being affected by the housing crisis. So with that, as I mentioned earlier, the coalition really desires to expand our outreach and our engagement with you, our fellow Vermonters, because ultimately, it's not enough just to send someone with a suit to go talk to legislators about housing issues, but to really incorporate you, the folks that are affected by the housing crisis, you, me, everyone else who lives in the state of Vermont, where this is an incredibly important issue. So with that, we want to bring you to the table. We want to make your voices heard. And we want you to hold us accountable too, as a coalition, to make sure that we're prioritizing issues that affect you and working in ways that will be useful for you in the State House with your legislators. So really, this is a call to help join us in the hashtag house 802 movement, to really make good positive change when it comes to affordable housing, when this session starts in January at the State House. So with that, you can find a lot more information about the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition at www.vtaffordablehousing.org. You can also follow us on social media, like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, where you'll find future events like this, information about affordable housing issues and legislation that's coming up, and events like the homelessness awareness day that's coming up in mid-January. And then along with that, if you're interested in learning more about our resident engagement arm, or interested in becoming involved with these community meetings and bringing folks to the table, bringing yourselves to the table, go into the State House, learn in about civic engagement, then I would highly recommend that you reach out to me, Justin Cersic, at Justin at www.vtaffordablehousing.org, or at 802-242-1517. So with that, I want to thank you so much for joining us tonight, and giving a listen to our Vermont Government 101 session of our monthly community meetings for Washington County, which we host right here in Montpelier at Trinity Methodist Church on Main Street. With that, I wish you all a happy holiday, and I really can't wait to see you join us in the rest of the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition as we fight for safe, accessible quality and perpetually affordable housing for all Vermonters. Thank you so much. Have a good night.