 have their annual member date with 2,000 members of democracy, opting home ground for short, and a single organization who provides a normalcy institute for grounded in 2015 on the theory of change that it takes full power year after year to make the big, bold, large number of changes we want to see in this country. Will the guests and members of the report please rise and be recognized? Hi, good afternoon, chair. Good afternoon, vice chair Tanya and all the committee members. My name is Angela Lawrence. I am currently homeless. I am a mom of two boys. I, some of you might know me as making history, as being also an elected official, just like you guys, as being the first woman, black woman, high bailiff in the state of Vermont. I'm also, I do wear many, many hats here in Windham County. I just came here to tell you guys my story, my current story right now. As you all know, we are struggling. I am homeless. We're living off the car with my two boys, my seven-year-old and my three-year-old. And like Tom said, my injured spouse. My spouse is a carpenter. He got injured about, over about two, three weeks ago, fell and broke a rib and had a lasteration on his liver and a punctured lung. So he was the only income. We were one income family. I was a stay-at-home mom because Vermont doesn't let us put kids in daycare until, or preschool until age four. My child is three, so with the income that we have, it's much cheaper to have one parent stay at home and get a parent work, unfortunately. So I have been going through the system, through either economic services, whatever system, takes me about three hours to get to somebody with the hopes of having a stable place for my family and I, but come to find out three hours later, there's no place to stay. This is very, unfortunately, me being an elected official, I need a stable place for me in order to perform my duties appropriately. This, I'm sorry. Excuse my language, but the system is fucked up. I'm really sorry about my language. It's really messed up. I've been calling for 14 days straight through this system and there's no place for us, our family that's sleeping in the car, in the cold. This is really unfortunate. I'm sorry. The closest place to economic services is about almost an hour and a half. I have a child in the school district. There's no way I could be traveling almost two hours to just drop off my child to school. I am trying to stay close just because my child can get the education that he deserves. This is not just hard for regular people. Even elected officials are struggling. We're struggling to find a three-bedroom apartment. There's no three-bedroom apartment. There's no apartment for families. There's either one-bedroom or second-bedroom. You can't put four to five people in a bedroom like that, in an apartment like that. I mean, 14 days, it's a long time to try and find a place. You're sleeping in your car with two kids. It's a long time to try and get assistance. The benchmark of charging people for rent is at least a third of anybody's income. That's very unrealistic, because once you add up a lot of the bills, there's nothing left for saving or improving that quality of life, like home ownership. My dream and my goal coming to Vermont 10 years ago was to have that dream of having that white picket fence that everybody talks about. I immigrated to this country 21 years ago from Kenya. That was my dream to have a white picket fence, but you can't do that. It's impossible to do that, especially being a BIPOC person. It's very hard to do that. I want to keep my family in Vermont. In Kenya, I grew up with similar trait that Vermont has around a farm, milk and cows, facing the chickens. I want my kids to be able to face the chickens around like I did when I was little, but we can't do that. Vermont families are having their lives quizzed out of them by greedy, out-of-state, real estate investors that have no interest in the well-being of Vermont families, of Vermont communities. This is an effect of the runners of people of color, especially. I testified the same issue two years ago, and yet I'm coming back two years later. Two years before I was housed, two years later, I am homeless. Nothing has changed. We elect the officials because they promise us they're gonna change. They're gonna do what they're telling us they're gonna do during their campaign. The Democrats have now the majority. We need change. We need housing. You tell your kids that you failed them. How do you explain that to them? You don't put them to bed. You don't see them waking up in the morning because somebody else is volunteering to house them. Ms. Lawrence, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. And I'm so sorry at the difficult time, clearly that you and your family have been through. It's unacceptable. And I'm sorry that you and your children don't have a safe, good place to live. And do you have access to any of the emergency housing vouchers? I just, after almost eight days, I finally just, we finally just got our case worker. After eight days searching for a case worker and we finally got one and I'm supposed to meet with her at three o'clock today. And hopefully she can help but that's what I've been doing every day, twice a day. On the phone, three hours, going through emergency housing phone calls for 14 days straight now and nothing. My name is Mia Schultz and I am the Education Justice Organizer for Rights and Democracy in Vermont. Before I begin, I wish to share a land acknowledgement with the committee. Rights and Democracy acknowledges the Mexican in Southern Vermont and the Abanaki peoples as the traditional land caretakers of the Indakina, which includes parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, New England and Quebec. And as guests on unceded territory of the Mejican and Abanaki peoples, we honor their ancestors, elders and relations past, present and emerging. We also acknowledge that our nation has benefited from the uncompensated and exploited labor represented in the legacy of slavery and the present day reality of migrant farm workers. Thank you. So, Rights and Democracy, which we call RAD for short and our sibling organization, the Rights and Democracy Institute were founded in 2015 on the theory of change, that it takes people power year after year to make the kind of big, bold, long-term changes we wanna see in this country. And our members are from all walks of life, intergenerational, multicultural, activists, organizers, but mostly importantly and most importantly, passionate fighters for true social justice and meaningful change in our communities and across the state. Our current systems are rooted in historic oppressions, deeply dysfunctional and fragile. And while those fragile systems break, Vermonters who have been systemically kept out of places of power are those who are most impacted. So the Abenaki indigenous persons, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA individuals with disabilities, senior citizens, new Americans, youth, poor are the people who carry the weight of policies and systems that go wrong. And those individuals are nearly 80% of Vermont's voting population and are the least represented in our state government and are in some cases wholly invisible to those who enact policies. So our mission is to bring people together to take action, to build healthy communities and make the values of our communities guide the policies of our government. We believe we can achieve a society where people can earn a living wage and have access to affordable healthcare and where progressive and equitable tax system supports an economy that protects the environment and human rights. And it is our pleasure to testify to you today and share our visions of a more just and vibrant Vermont. And I'll kick us off by sharing with you our 2023 policy platform. So Vermont must do its part to ensure a just transition to a clean energy future that mandates renewable energy and ends our reliance on dirty polluting fossil fuels. And we must guarantee that everyone benefits, especially Vermonters who have been most impacted by past and current harms. And that's why this year we are supporting the passage of S5, the Affordable Heat Act, while still calling for greater equity provisions within that bill. We are also supporting to reform our renewable energy standard and ensure that Vermont can get to 30% in state renewable energy and 30% regional renewable energy in the next decade. In-state renewable energy is the key to our state resiliency and helps build the green economy that Vermont communities need and doesn't shift the climate burden of our energy use to other states. We're also supporting H56, the Rate Pair Protection and Thermal Energy Network Act. And this bill in the house environment and energy would extend electric rate pair protections to more Vermonters as a proven solutions to Vermont energy choices by creating a pathway for geothermal and moves Vermont away from combusting fuels by prohibiting gas expansion into new service territories. Also, Vermont is in a housing crisis. We all know this. And that means there isn't enough affordable housing for Vermonters and many Vermonters are forced to live in expensive unsafe places. And tenants who bring concerns about their living conditions to the landlord also have to worry about eviction and homelessness. We all need housing. We need housing for all. And that is why we need to work both on creating new affordable housing like provisions in the Senate Housing Omnibus Bill. And we wanna protect tenants rights. The Housing Omnibus Bill includes many zoning, many needed zoning and Act 250 and housing discrimination changes that we support and we hope that the bill passes in the house and the Senate. To meet the needs of tenants in Vermont, we also must pass a statewide just cause eviction protection. Eviction diversion programs and, I'm sorry, eviction diversion programs and cap the amounts of rent increases that tenants will have to bear. Last year, the legislature passed Burlington City's charter change for just cause eviction, but the governor vetoed that bill. We need to build off the 99 votes the house got to win the veto override and pass that bill this year. We also need to ensure that Vermont has all the data it needs to accurately track our rental market, including where the units are, who owns them, the accessibility of the unit and other pertinent information. Without this basic information, we will always be behind on understanding the true rental crisis. And it limits our ability to take action for Vermont renters. To achieve a just food system in Vermont, we must create equitable access to land, farming and food. And we were glad to see the passage of universal school meals in 2022, but it's time to take, to find a permanent funding solution to ensure that all Vermont's children get the healthy meals that they need without stigma. The land access opportunity bill is an equity board created by the legislator in the last biennium and is housed in the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. And in the coming weeks, the board will release a report of recommendations that the legislature should consider and take on. But what we do know now is that the board will need continued funding to do this work. And that means in a fiscal year budget and 2024 adjustment of $1 million. And this will allow the board to formalize its procedures and set itself up for the longterm work that is needed to create greater access and opportunity for those Vermonters who have been historically left out. Workers in Vermont retail, a restaurant, agricultural and other service industries play deeply vital roles in our communities. Yet these workers are often underpaid and under protected in their workplaces. And to thrive, all workers need fair and dignified wages, full benefits and strong legal protections. The sub-minimum wage, a direct legacy of slavery, particularly impacts women and disproportionately women of color. And it's time to end the sub-minimum wage and pass one fair wage for all Vermonters. We also need to pass the BT Pro Act that strengthens workers' rights. And when it comes to public education, we have a long way to go to make Vermont schools, all Vermont schools equitable and welcoming for all students. We need to remove police from schools, make anti-discrimination policies more accessible and develop an education funding system that is as equitable as possible by implementing the recommendations of the Income-Based Education Tax Study Committee. Mr. Collin, I know that you are the chair of that committee. So I know this is in particular interest to you. I'm just only a member of the committee. Oh, you're just a member. I'm sorry, sorry. Well, it's still an interest to you, I imagine. You have a lot of work to do in that area. So, you know, and Vermont is also known as a leader for voting rights and democracy. And we need to continue that leadership by implementing a system of ranked choice voting for the presidential primaries and then for all elections. Ranked choice voting gives more access to more candidates and gives voters real choices at the ballot box. And we must also create a state legislator that everyone can take part of. This means greatly increasing the salary and benefits for our state legislators and also the pergeums for those appointed to state boards and committees. And the last crisis that I'll speak to, and it certainly isn't the least, is Vermont's overdose crisis. Vermont has become a leader in the deadliness of the overdose crisis. The legislature last year passed many important provisions that were undone with the governor's veto. And this year, we must pass permanent bioproofing decolonization for personal use, create overdose prevention sites, make accessible community-based syringe services for all Vermonters, create a mobile methadone clinic pilot program and expand treatment education for first responders. And that means supporting H72 and H222. So those are the remarks that I have as my role in the rights and democracy. Like the hat that I'm wearing today, but for a moment I'd like to just switch my roles and talk about not only my work as an organizer for rights and democracy and specifically in education justice, but also as a civil rights leader for the NAACP and more importantly, as a parent. I am sure that you all know you have had constituents tell you or maybe you have even experienced it yourself that the state of education and schools has been difficult to say the least across the nation and in Vermont. And it has been most harmful to our most vulnerable students including BIPOC, LGBTQIA students and students with disabilities and poor students. Each child has the right to reach their full potential but our education systems are struggling under the weight of inequities. To overcome these disparities and guarantee that every child has an equal chance to receive a meaningful education, we must tackle systemic racism, homophobia, ableism and poverty as tangible obstacles to learning and future success. Every student deserves to have access to excellent teaching, equitable resources and a secure learning environment through their education journey from elementary school all the way to college. The welfare of our students is vital and it has never been more crucial to work towards their success. We need strategies and investments that build accountability to advance the successes of children of color. Our students with disability LGBTQIA and poor students they deserve to experience culturally relevant student-centered learning and not extreme punishments or hallways staffed with police officers. Police officers do not make schools safer but police presence in schools does increase the likelihood that black and brown students in particular will be introduced to the legal system and then remain in it. Yet in Bennington, the police have been called on elementary schools to handle what they perceive as discipline problems. And in Randolph and in a recently local organized survey 75% of students feel unsafe as a general rule in their school. Now you'll be hearing today from two people two very important people who are in these schools teachers, staffs who pour their hearts and souls into Vermont children. And so I'm urging you not only to center and listen to their testimonies today, but to see it, to call it to action, to look for root causes that center the most vulnerable students and create policy that helps them help our future. It's so important for us at Rights and Democracy and me myself to lift voices of people. And today I'm joined by some of our amazing leaders and also two dozen other leaders and other committees. They're speaking their truths today and we really do appreciate you giving them the voice and the opportunity to do so. So today joining me are rights and democracy supporters and allies, Megan Morgan Puglisi and Ted Kelman. And we'll start with Megan. Thank you to the House Education Committee and Rights and Democracy for welcoming me today. My name is Megan Morgan Puglisi. I'm a national board certified teacher. I train educators and restorative practices. I serve as local union president and I've taught high school math at Mount Anthony Union High School for 11 years. As I'm sure most, if not all of you know, Bennington is one of the most economically depressed areas of our state. We have many students experiencing extreme trauma as a result of the opioid epidemic, poverty, loss and other situations. Some of our elementary schools are in severe crisis. On a daily basis, staff are hit, kicked and assaulted. They have to evacuate their rooms to keep other students safe and resupply materials anytime a student destroys property. We have had over 80 injuries at one school alone. While the schools try to implement restorative and other interventions, they lack both the staff and the time since they're constantly putting out fires. As a result, schools have fallen back to over-policing our students in turn inadvertently harming our most at-risk students. Our school-based clinicians are at, in each building are at capacity. The district was headed this way long before COVID. COVID just delayed the crisis point for two years. Teachers and support staff have quit mid-year because of these conditions. And we started the year with far fewer educational support professionals than we need. So here's what we do need. One, we need more funding for clinician and wraparound services, including affordable healthcare with mental health services, affordable housing and an extension to the hotel voucher program to help our many homeless families. We need more community schools where students can access doctors, dentists and other services and families can access job and parenting support. And we need the state to provide the funding for those resources. We need higher wages, especially for our educational support professionals. Our ESPs are not paid a livable wage and have been fighting to get salaries increased. Over 55% of our ESPs do not take the district offered insurance because they simply can't afford it. We have no subs and they won't raise the sub-pay because it would cause them to be paid more than our ESPs. Teacher salaries in our district, one of the largest districts in the state remain lower than most other districts in Vermont. We lose staff every year to surrounding districts and states and it's incredibly difficult to attract new teachers and retain the ones we have. And we know that retaining good teachers is what our students deserve. And statistically, teachers who stay at a particular school and are experienced are the ones that our students learn the most from. We need more staff so we can provide the supports our students need and our school boards remain reluctant to increase school budgets because residents can't afford our rising property taxes. So perhaps most importantly, we need the state to rethink how it funds education, tying funding so closely to property taxes sets educators and schools against residents. They blame us for property taxes going up. School boards won't raise our salaries to the levels necessary to make our district desirable because they don't want to antagonize voters. And money is part of the reason why our district will not admit that we don't have the resources to serve some of our students. If we did, we would have to pay tens to thousands, to hundreds of thousands of dollars to send them somewhere else and we simply don't have the money. I teach because I love my students and my colleagues. My colleagues do the same. Our staff return every day because of our students and colleagues but conditions are making it harder and harder to keep going. Self-care isn't enough. We need structural change. COVID gave us the opportunity to reconsider how we do school but we miss the chance. I think our state, I think Vermont is brave enough to rethink educational together. We just need to do it. So thank you for your attention. So yeah, once again, I'm Kevin Kellerman at Randolph University High School. This is my 12 year here or something along those lines. Yeah, and I'm gonna echo a lot of the same themes that Megan was talking about. I think the staffing crisis that she's alluding to is something that I think is very much something that we're dealing with at Randolph as well. And I'm also a local union leader and certainly in my conversations with counterparts in other schools, it seems like this is extremely widespread. But it has a lot of different kinds of on the ground effects. I think the very similar situation where we just can't get substitutes in here and the result of that is that on a given day, I'm sorry, I'll get to that. I'll get to that, Kevin. But yeah, on a given day, there's a tremendous amount of chaos because at 7.30 or 7.45, on a day when the class is beginning at 8, pretty much every single day, we are having to, our front office person is needed to send out emails wondering who can give up their planning period to cover this, that, or the other thing. The result of that, I think, is that kids are going to a lot of classes where the plan has sort of come together at the last minute, where the person who is delivering the plan didn't have any time to think it through or understand or ask questions. In a best case scenario, this leads to learning loss. In a worst case scenario, it can present safety issues, right? Whether that's the students, the adults who's working with students, not knowing those students, not knowing what they need. And then of course, when there are disruptions, which I'm gonna talk about in a moment, just the ability for us to have kind of consistent and effective protocols to keep people safe is much more difficult. The subs are one piece of that, but as you probably know, there are something like a thousand unfilled positions statewide in schools, right? So I just wanna paint a picture of kind of the microcosm that we've been talking about today being a much bigger and more widespread problem. Turnover is also a huge problem which has lots of downstream effects. So our school, one out of every three employees of the district is new in their first year and close to 50% have been here for three years or less. And I think that many of those individuals who are new are valuable professionals with a lot to offer. But the institutional knowledge that's lost and the continuity that's lost and frankly, the huge amount of money that is wasted in professional development that then goes out the door with such high turnover, again, is hugely damaging to our ability to fall through with things. And I think as a student will probably attest, the result of that is like a lot of basic systems that should be in place that are still not totally in place, whether that's grade or grade book software, not behaving as it should be, whether that's having classes where because your teacher was sick, they're just learning doesn't happen because you just got to go to the library and do your best. And then I think staffing shortages in some critical areas also that have very specific impacts on students. Several students, I asked them to write about what's the biggest thing you would want the committee to hear, talked about the fact that there aren't enough counselors at a time whereas I'm sure you've been reading about student mental health is at a crisis point. And the result of there not being enough counselors or other resources that students need is a lot more behaviors. How many of you guys wrote about issues with bullying or students out of control and not being addressed? I don't know if you can see all the hands in all the corners of room, but yeah. Kylie would like you to know that that is a major concern. So I think that that's a big piece of it. I think another theme that has come up for us a lot is just the physical condition of our school is demoralizing. At Randolph, we lost more than three weeks of instruction earlier this year when our boiler stopped working abruptly and due to the fact the state did not grant us a waiver to continue remotely, we're just three weeks behind on instruction and still trying to figure out how we're going to deal with that. And the options that have been proposed aren't great. Things like going to school on weekends or over breaks or later into the summer, all of which I think for many students and many families and many teachers are hugely disruptive to our plans and not necessarily going to get us three weeks of learning. Kids are not as available for learning at times that they believe that they're gonna be on break. So I think, again, this is what's happened at our school but I know there are issues with physical plans all over. The PCB testing that's beginning in places like Burlington and I hear now Cabot too, similarly. So I think, again, many of us work and go to school in institutions that were built in the 1960s and unsurprisingly, institutions that were built in the 1960s and have not seen a level of state investment to maintain them and keep them up as snuff are beginning to crumble. So we're losing time, we're losing class time. Does anyone wanna talk about what the bathroom situation is like at this school right now? There are no bathrooms. For the boys, all the boys' bathrooms and the students are locked through the students vandalizing them and yeah. So there's like no one who's about to- But that's because you guys aren't listening to us. And a primary's dead. So I don't know how well you're able to hear that but we have a huge issue and this is probably like year two or three of there being like just literally not enough open bathrooms for the number of people we need. I would say one of the big issues is also that we have a huge staffing crisis in our custodial department. Because again, the wages that are being offered for custodians as well as other wage workers, paraeducators, front office staff, kitchen staff are less than what people can get at Shaw's or McDonald's. And unsurprisingly, when we're not offering competitive wages, we're having trouble finding people who will stick around and ensure that this kind of maintenance work is getting done. One more thing I wanna say, I'm not sure how much more time we have, but we were one of the 21 schools that was targeted by these swatting hoax last week. And I know that people had pretty wide variety of experiences I think for some people it was terrifying and extremely traumatic. And I know that we have students and adults who are still dealing with the fallout of suddenly seeing these officers carrying AR-15s burst through the lobby door. And I think there's others who didn't see that or didn't experience it in as terrifying way. But one thing that I think is true for all of us is that we are in a place where for many reasons, I don't think there's a widespread belief that school is safe, right? And for some, that's about the threat of armed intrusion. But I think for a lot of people, it's about other things as well. It's about the threat of racist or homophobic or transphobic bullying. For some, I think it's about just not being confident that the school is in a physical condition to give kids what they need and that that can lead to volatile outbursts or behaviors that aren't getting managed. So I guess that where I wanna end up is, I think that there is for hopefully, I think a lot of interest in school safety this legislative session. I know there's a bill coming out of the AOE, which is focusing on tightening up safety protocols. The message I would like y'all to hear about safety is that we need so much more than simply a better plan for managing a disastrous event like an armed intruder. We need to be proactive about making schools safe. And it's impossible in my opinion to do that without also looking at the societal factors that are making various trends that are making school a less safe and welcoming place for students. And yeah, maybe part of that is about school security, but it's also about making sure that our social safety net is more than just the school. I think that part of what's going on is that schools are seeing what happens when our society is failing to ensure that all families have access to the basic needs that they need to meet. And so I think that school safety is not just about preventing casualties in a mass shooting. It's also gotta be about making the profession of teaching and other school worker professions attractive enough and supported enough that people wanna stay and do the work. It's about making sure that all the families we serve have access to healthcare, especially mental healthcare. I just read an article that 30,000 Vermonters are about to lose their Medicaid coverage due to the sunset of a federal program. I like to know what the legislature is gonna do about that because that sounds like a ticking time bomb as a teacher to imagine that 30,000 families across the state are suddenly going to be unable to access vital healthcare services, including mental healthcare. It's about housing. I understand that there's a bill on the table that would expand funding for affordable housing. That's vital, right? Because we have students who are housing unstable and believe me, it is extremely difficult to get them to focus on writing a research paper about US history when those basic needs are not being met. And I could go on. It's about childcare, right? Both for families and for those of us who work in school. I can only guess how many days of education have been lost because of inadequate childcare resources in this state leading to teachers not being able to come in. It's about making sure that people have access to safe and dignified work in the private sector as well as the public sector. So I think I'm probably over my time. If it's okay, I just wanted to see if there's any students in the audience who wanted to add anything. Oh, one other thing that students can talk about that I just want to get in there is a lot of students have mentioned that in terms of curriculum in schools, really thinking about what are relevant life skills for students, people have talked about things like financial management and kind of more career-based education, which I would certainly echo. I think that like relevance in curriculum is one of the most kind of crucial pieces of what makes a difference between an effective education and one that doesn't feel to students like it's giving them what they need. And again, I would tie that right back to staffing, right? Our ability to plan and deliver relevant instruction is a direct, indirect correlation to our ability to focus on what our students need and not putting out fires, patching up holes and just trying to keep the lights on. That's all I've got. Thank you so much for this. Hey, the students, if you can talk about your experiences with over-policing or over-punishment or because of under-resourcing. There was an incident with a student that was just having a bad day and like kind of freaking out and yelling and the school decided it was a good idea to call the police and have them restrain him with force. And I believe that's like over-policing. Yeah, that's absolutely over-policing and that's not metaphorical, yeah. Well, thank you, Chair McCarthy and members of House Give-Ups Committee for welcoming us all today. My name is Tom Proctor, I'm the Housing Justice Organiser for Rights and Democracy in Vermont. Before I begin, I wish to share land acknowledgement with the committee of Rights and Democracy Acknowledges of the Mahecan in Southern Vermont and Abinaki people as traditional land caretakers in Endonica, which includes parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, New England and Quebec as guests on unceded territory of the Mahecan and Abinaki's people. We honor their ancestors, elders and relations past, present and emerging. We also acknowledge that our nation has benefited from the uncompensated and exploited labor represented in the legacy of slavery in the present day reality of migrant farm workers. Thank you. Rights and Democracy, which we call RAD for short and our sibling organization, the Rights and Democracy Institute, were founded in 2015 on the theory of change that takes people power year after year to make the kind of big, bold, long-term changes we want to see in this country. Our members are from all walks of life, intergenerational, multicultural, activists, organisers, but most importantly, passionate fighters for true social justice, a meaningful change in our communities and across the state. Our current systems are rooted in historic oppressions, deeply dysfunctional and fragile. When those fragile systems break, Vermonters who have been systemically kept out of place of the power are those most impacted. Abinaki and Indigenous persons, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA individuals, individuals with disabilities, senior citizens, new Americans, youth, poor, are the people who carry the weight of the policies and the systems gone wrong. These individuals are nearly 80% of the Vermont voting population and are the least represented in our state government or in some cases wholly invisible to those who enact the policies. Our mission is to bring people together to take action, to build healthy communities and make the values of our communities guide the policies of our government. We believe we can achieve a society where people earn a living wage and have access to affordable healthcare, where a progressive network tax system supports an economy that protects the environment and human rights. It is our pleasure to testify to you today and share the visions of a more just and vibrant Vermont. I'll kick off by sharing with you with our 2023 platform. One must do its part to ensure a just transition to a clean energy future that mandates renewable energy and ends up reliant on dirty polluting fossil fuels. And we was guaranteed that everybody's benefits, especially for Montess, have been most impacted by past and current harms. That's why this year we're supporting a passage of S5, the Affordable Heat Act, while still calling for greater equity provisions within the bill. We're also supporting efforts to reform renewable energy standard and ensure that Vermont can get the 30% in state renewable energy and 30% regional renewable energy in the next decade. In state renewable energy, it's the key to our state resiliency and helps build the green economy that Vermont communities need and doesn't shift the climate burden of our energy use to other states. We are also supporting H5-6, the Rape Hair Protection and Thermal Energy Network Act. This bill in house environment and energy would extend electric rate payer protections to more Vermonters adds a proven solution to Vermont's energy choices by creating a pathway for geothermal and moves Vermont away from combusting fuels by prohibiting gas expansion and new service territories. Okay, my part. Vermont is in a housing crisis. So we all know this. This means there isn't enough affordable housing for Vermont's, for Montess and many for Montess are forced to live in expensive, unsafe places. Tenants who bring concerns about their living conditions to the landlord also have to worry about eviction and homelessness. We need housing for all. That's why we need to work both on creating new affordable housing like provisions in the Senate Housing Omnibus Bill and we also need to protect tenants rights and in fact create new tenants rights. The Housing Omnibus Bill includes many needed zoning Act 250 and housing discrimination changes that we support and hope that the bill will pass the House and Senate. To meet the needs of tenants in Vermont we must also pass statewide Just Cause Eviction. Municipal Just Cause Eviction Charter Changes that have been Democrat and Municipal Just Cause Eviction Charter Changes that have been democratically approved by local voters and will come to this community when they pass in those local areas. Election division programs and cap the amount of rent increases that tenants have to bear. Last year legislature passed Billington City Charter Change for Just Cause Eviction for the governor vetoed the bill. We need to build off that 99 votes that House got in the veto override and pass that bill this year. We also need to act swiftly on any further JCE Charter Changes that make their way to this committee this year. Thousands of Vermont tenants are counting on you to grant them the tenant protections they have specifically voted for. We also need to ensure that Vermont has all the data it needs to actually track our rental market including where the units are, who owns them, the accountability of the unit and other person information. Without this basic information we'll always be behind on understanding the true rental crisis and it limits our ability to take action for Vermont renters. To achieve a food system in Vermont we must create equitable access to land, farming and food. We are glad to see the passage of universal school meals in 2022 but it's time to find a permanent funding solution to ensure that all Vermont's children get the healthy meals they need without a stigma. The land access opportunity board is an equity board created by the legislature in the last biennium and is housed in the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. The coming weeks this board will release a report on recommendations that the legislature should consider and take action on but what we need to do now what we need to know now is that the board will need continued funding to do its work. That means fiscal year 2024 budget adjustment of $1 million. This will also allow the board to formalize its procedures and set itself up for the long term work that is needed in creating greater access and opportunity for those Vermonters that have been historically left out. Workers in Vermont retail, restaurant, agriculture and other service industries play deeply vital roles in our community yet these workers are often underpaid and under-protected in their workplaces. To thrive all workers need a fair and dignified wages for benefits and strong legal protections. The sub minimum wage, a direct legacy of slavery particularly impacts women and the disproportionately women of color. It is time to end the sub minimum wage and pass one fair wage for all Vermonters. We also need to pass the VT Pro Act that strengthens workers rights. When it comes to public education we have a long way to go to make all Vermont schools equitable and welcoming to all students. When to remove police from schools make anti-discrimination policies that are more accessible and develop education funding system as equitable as possible by implementing the recommendations of the Income Based Education Tax Study Committee. Vermont is also known as a leader for voting rights and democracy and we need to continue that leadership by implementing a system of ranked choice voting for the presidential primaries and then for all elections. Ranked choice voting gives more access to more candidates and gives voters real choice to the ballot box. We must also create a state legislature that everyone can take part in. This means greatly increasing the salary and benefits for our state legislators and also the per diems for those appointed to state boards and committees. The last crisis I will speak to is certainly is in the least the overdose crisis. Vermont has become a leader in the deadliness of the overdose crisis. Legislature last year passed many important provisions that were undone by Governor's veto. This year we must pass permanent grouping orphan decriminalization for personal use, create overdose prevention sites, make accessible community-based syringe services to all of the Montes, create a mobile method own clinic pilot program and expand treatment education for first responders. This means supporting H72 and H222. It is important that we lift the voices of people. Today I'm joined by some of our amazing leaders. Today two dozen individuals are speaking their truths in a committee throughout the legislature. So joining me are rights and democracy supporters and allies and Zimmerman to speak on her efforts organizing around the Brasselboro Just Cause Eviction, Madeleine Heller to speak on her experience engaging with tenants across Vermont and Bridget Mienke to speak on her eviction experience and the efforts she's contributed towards a Winooski Just Cause Eviction campaign. The first speaker today is Anne. So I'm Anne Zimmerman, as Tom said. I live down in Guilford, which is in the Brattleboro area. And for context, I am a renter. I am someone who raised two kids in the Southern Vermont rental housing market as a low-income single parent and housing was during the time I was raising my kids the single biggest stressor in my life and to a pretty good extent continues to be even though my kids are grown and no longer dependents. And I'm pretty sure you're well aware that we are in a housing crisis particularly in the rental market. So I'm not trying to drive that particular point home. I'm here to speak about why we need to end no cause eviction and make Just Cause Eviction into the law. And at the very least, this body needs to approve local charter changes where they are passed by the voters as will happen in Brattleboro. I want to put a human face on the crisis of no cause eviction by speaking to the situation down in the Brattleboro market. My friend DeMaris and a group of her fellow tenants who reside or recently resided at a housing complex in West Brattleboro known as Westbrook Court you may have read about. There's been some recent coverage but I don't believe it's unique by any means. DeMaris and a few of her neighbors whom I've gotten to know recently had created a community of neighbors who've gardened and barbecued together and who generally looked out for each other especially since a number of them had disabilities and were aging or had other life challenges. They had created a pretty nice situation and felt as though they were good tenants who paid their rent and didn't cause any trouble. And last October, DeMaris and at least a dozen possibly as many as 20 residents of Westbrook Court received notices that their leases would not be renewed. No cause was given and they had either 60 or 90 days to move out and were supposed to move out in the middle of winter no less. The majority of those who got the notice of lease non-renewal were handicapped in some way or elderly or low income and a common thread seems to be that most if not all run some kind of housing assistance. The complex had been sold recently to a private equity corporation and it seems the new owners didn't wanna deal with any of that. Others in the complex who were offered a new lease saw their rent go up exorbitantly and also had to cough up more money for a new deposit, you know, higher deposit. And of course that caused immediate distress because of the extreme difficulty of finding housing right now in Bralboro area let alone anything affordable. Just for example, DeMaris's neighbor Matt who needs to be a handicapped accessible unit is facing major surgery that will put him in a wheelchair and not put off a bunch of times because of COVID and he can barely walk at the moment. So let alone pick up and move. Another former neighbor is a single mother with a daughter in high school and she was unable to find housing nearby. So she was forced to take something in King, New Hampshire while her daughter stayed behind in his couch surfing so she can finish the school year. So I don't actually have a hard time imagining that situation being replicated around town. I think that it probably happens in a number of families. So this is breaking up a community as well as separating a family. DeMaris herself is in her seventies and has Parkinson's. She also needs a first floor unit and she was forced to stop working during the pandemic because of her added vulnerability. And what I know that she would like you to know she said very specifically to me, she wants you to know how much trauma comes from finding out you have 60 or 90 days to move while trying to survive on a low income in this housing market. There is pretty much nowhere to go. So I realized that you don't govern by anecdote. There are so many stories from down where I live that it's important to me that these people are real to you. A pretty good friend of mine has been couch surfing for months when she was told she needed to vacate her apartment because it was for sale. So she vacated her apartment and rather than the building being sold another tenant moved in paying higher rent. And at least she doesn't have kids. But I remember when selling a building was a selling point if the building was fully rented to tenants. And that is no longer true. People are told that they have to move just so that the rent can be jacked up by the new owners or maybe even by the same owner because oh, by the way, they didn't sell it after all. And I'll just say that I realized that all of these folks are victims of a housing crisis that is driven by a lot of forces, some of which need more sweeping solutions and no one who is advocating for just cause eviction thinks that this basic tenant protection is any kind of panacea for all of our housing problems. But this is something that can be done to alleviate some of the considerable stress of folks who are otherwise in a precarious housing situation which renting is almost by definition and give more stability to families and communities. And I have certainly felt that acute stress myself worrying about not being able to find a place to live. And if you have never experienced that particular terror as a parent, I assure you there is nothing quite like it. So to me, here is the crux of the matter. One of the vacated apartments in Westbrook that had been rented for 1050. I recently saw advertised for 1700. It's very modest. There's nothing special. And that is out of range of someone receiving housing assistance. So you can see why the new corporate owners would want to remove the people in order to jack up the rent. Most people I know could not afford that rent. It is out of step with the reality of local wages, although perhaps it may seem more normal for people who are moving into the area from other markets. And these are also apartments that are in need of repair. They don't seem to be happening those repairs. It would appear that the goal is to make a lot of money very quickly not to invest in long-term quality housing. Just cause eviction would protect renters in places like that who pay their rent and haven't done anything wrong from having to be in a constant state of worry over losing their housing. And we will all be better for that when there's less constant turnover. And I will just finish by saying that I have listened to argument after argument from some of the smaller landlords who aren't part of that new corporate model who complain that this is the only way they can remove the quote unquote problem tenants. They insist that they only want to get rid of the bad ones and should not have to renew a lease to destructive or dirty tenants or maybe even the other tenants are complaining about them. And obviously I don't have time to speak to everything that's wrong with that assumption. But I would submit that there is a system of checks and balances in place whereby those committing violations of health and safety excessive noise, illegal activity, non-payment of rent or other lease violations can be removed. And when there is an inherent imbalance in the power relationship as there is between landlord and tenant, the habs and have nots, if you will, it involves something as basic as keeping a roof over one's head. We absolutely need to keep to that system of checks and balances rather than maintain the shortcut that is no cause eviction. So I'm asking you that if you believe that housing is a human right and I hope that we agree that housing is a human right that you will legislate in support of just cause eviction. And thank you so much. Good morning, Chair McCarthy. I will try to keep this brief and thank you all for having us today and listening to these stories. As mentioned, I'm Madeline Hiller. I'm a resident of Woodstock and I'm currently a senior environmental policy major at Middlebury College. This past semester, I had the opportunity to work with Rad to combat the split incentive issue by creating a policy proposal that would incentivize Vermont landlords to weatherize their units with no further financial burden on tenants. However, while doing this research, my peers and I realized that there are two key steps that must be taken before implementing a weatherization policy. And so first we really need to pass a statewide rental registry and a just cause eviction standard, as Anne mentioned. Establishing the rental registry is important because it creates built-in accountability for property managers and landlords, plus gives lawmakers such as yourselves better insight into the reality of the housing crisis in Vermont. And the just cause eviction standard protects tenants from unfair and retaliatory evictions as it requires landlords and property managers to have a legally allowable reason to evict tenants. Additionally, just cause eviction measures also protect good landlords from bad tenants. So with just cause eviction, landlords can still evict for nonpayment, branch of lease, breach of lease, or breaking of tenant obligations. And I just wanted to reiterate that you all be receiving any just cause eviction charter changes that pass in March, as Tom mentioned, and we'll also be working with the Burlington just cause eviction charter change in the near future. So without tenant protections, almost 30% of Vermonters live in fear that at any moment they're a landlord can arbitrarily evict them. And just cause eviction standards will allow tenants not to be fearful to report code violations or landlord harassment because they know that they will be able to stay in their home and not be evicted at the end of their lease. I recently had the privilege to speak with a tenant in the Burlington area who had to couchsurf for one year. And after being forced to move from their home and live day to day, not knowing where they may sleep the next day, this tenant felt very stressed and disorganized. She felt that she could not be fully present at her job, could not focus on her relationships and did not have time to take care of herself. When she ultimately found an apartment, she was afraid of pushing too hard for the property manager to do the right thing because she did not wanna be evicted or simply asking for an infrastructure or utility fix. She also felt uncomfortable addressing these issues out of fear of experiencing the anxieties that couchsurfing had added to her life the previous year. So for other tenants experiencing the same reality, unjust evictions could lead them to losing their jobs, leaving their community, splitting up their family, moving to a different state or even becoming homeless. And the desperation of needing a roof over your head should not override having a quality living situation. Having a quality living situation should be and is a fundamental human right. And with just cause eviction standards, tenants will not have to fear the power dynamic between themselves and their landlord. Instead, they will be empowered to advocate for themselves and address whatever issues there may be with their living situation. Finally, I'd like to finish up with a story, a recent eviction that happened in Brattleboro. Just two weeks ago, a resident of Brattleboro and her family were evicted from their home. And this was during that cold snap that we had with negative 30 degree wind chills. So the landlord had shown up unannounced in 2022 to the home and decided that the house was too messy and that the tenants were not abiding by the contract. So in Vermont, a landlord must give 48 hours notice before going to inspect a property. And this landlord decided to evict the family after she broke the law by arriving to inspect this house without prior notice. So when they got the eviction notice, the tenant immediately began searching for housing and had been looking since August of 2022. However, due to the lack of affordable housing for families in the Brattleboro area, they could not find anything that would accommodate them. So the tenant, her husband and their children who are seven and three years old are now living in a motel until they can secure another place to live. Throughout the eviction process, her only hope has been to have a roof over her head somewhere she can properly raise her children and build a true home. So I'm asking you all to really take these stories into consideration and it is clear that this is not the only family that is going through this. The tenant in Burlington is definitely not the only tenant who has had to couchsurf in that area or be stressed about when they can find new long-term housing. So I urge you all to seriously consider this new legislation and help these people who should have a roof over their head and deserve to have a roof over their head. Thank you. Thank you, good morning. This will take about two minutes and that should bring us right to our 15 minutes that we were allotted. I'm here today to talk about my support for just cause eviction. As a Vermonter who works in affordable housing who has been campaigning and Winooski knocking on doors talking to renters and homeowners. There's a lot of support out there for just cause eviction. People wanna see it become policy. I am someone who's been personally impacted by no cause eviction. Last year my husband and I received a notice that we were being no cause evicted from our rental. The notice stated we had 30 days to vacate and offered no explanation whatsoever. Let me be clear. We were rule following rent paying tenants. We were not problem tenants and the motivation was an egregious rent increase. It's painful for me to even talk about the months that followed the eviction and going through a no cause eviction is destabilizing and traumatic. We went from being a happy active family to being completely stressed out and anxious overnight. It impacted our mental health, our work and literally every aspect of our lives. My husband and I weren't even sure if we were gonna be able to stay in Vermont when we were going through our no cause eviction. There's so little housing available and I'm not just talking about affordable housing. I'm talking about any housing. Finding suitable housing for a family of four takes time and it's not something people can reasonably do in 30 days. We were just completely unprepared for anything like that to happen. Just cause eviction policy would have been a safeguard for my family. It would have protected us from the undue stress and hardship of facing an unjust eviction. Nothing could have prepared me for the idea that one day, apropos of nothing I would get a 30 day eviction notice. There's no reason for that. It's senseless and yet it's a common practice in Vermont. We need to do better. My children are eight and 10 years old and it was impossible for my husband and I to hide our stress from them. So we didn't. We talked to them about what was going on and we taught them that everyone deserves a decent place to live and that housing is a human right. So my children also have a message for you today. They would like you to please support just cause eviction so that nobody has to go through something as unfair as no cause eviction now. We're homeowners now thanks in large part to a VA loan but the last thing I wanna do is close the door on my way in. My family did not become homeless but others will not be so fortunate. Vermonters need tenant protection laws and Vermont renters deserve safe and stable housing. They do not deserve to lose their housing in arbitrary retaliatory and discriminatory evictions. Thank you. Yeah. Well, thank you members of the Senate Agriculture Committee for welcoming rights in democracy today. My name is Anna Mejia. I am the organizing director for rights in democracy in Vermont. And before I begin, I wanna share a land acknowledgement of the committee rights in democracy acknowledges the Mojican and Southern Vermont and Abenaki peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Imbakana which includes parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, New England and Quebec. As guests on the unceded territory of the Mojican and Abenaki peoples, we honor their ancestors, elders and relations past, present and emerging. We also acknowledge that our nation has benefited from the uncompensated and exploited labor represented in the legacy of slavery and the present-day reality of migrant farm workers. Thank you. Rights in Democracy, which we call RAD for short and our sibling organization, Rights in Democracy Institute were founded in 2015 on a theory of change that it takes people power year after year to make the kind of big, bold, long-term changes we want to see in our society. Our members are from all walks of life, intergenerational, multicultural, activist organizers and everyday people. But most importantly, passionate fighters for true social justice and meaningful change in our communities and across the state. Our current systems are rooted in historic oppressions, deeply dysfunctional and fragile. When those fragile systems break, for monsters who have been systemically kept out of places of power are those most impacted. Abenaki and indigenous people, people of the global majority, LGBTQIA individuals, individuals with disabilities, seniors, new Americans, you, and those living in poverty are the ones who carry the weight of policies and systems gone wrong. These individuals are nearly 80% of the Vermont voting population and are the least represented in our state government and are in some cases wholly invisible to those who enact the policies. Our mission is to bring people together to take action, to build healthy communities and make the values of our communities guide the policies of our government. We believe we can achieve a society where people earn a livable wage and have access to affordable healthcare. And where a progressive and equitable tax system supports an economy that protects the environment and human rights. It is our pleasure to testify to you today and share our 2023 policy platform that encapsulates our visions for more just and vibrant Vermont. Vermont must do its part to ensure a just transition to a clean energy future that mandates renewable energy and ends our reliance on dirty polluting fossil fuels. And we must guarantee that everyone benefits, especially for monitors who have been most impacted by past and current harms. That's why this year, we want to see the state pass an affordable heat act that actually meets the needs and demands of communities at the front lines of climate change. We want an affordable heat act that prioritizes the health of frontline communities by eliminating biofuels as a clean alternative that supports geothermal and other thermal network energy as an alternative to fossil fuels. That includes renters and current energy assistance beneficiaries in the clean key equity advisory group. And that delivers a more equitable proportion of the benefits of this act to low income remanders including renters. There's been some progress on this affordable heat act policy, but we must go even further by making the changes listed to make the call for a just transition and pass a bill that frontline communities cannot get behind. We are also supporting efforts to reform the renewable energy standard and ensure that Vermont can get at least 30% in state renewable energy and 30% regional renewable energy in the next decade. In state renewable energy is the key to our state resiliency. Helps build the green economy that remanders from what communities need and doesn't show the climate burden of our energy use to other states. We are also supporting H56, the rate payer protection and thermal energy network act. This bill would extend electric rate payer protections to more remanders, as a proven solution to Vermont's energy choices by creating a pathway for geo-vermont and moves Vermont away from combusting fuels by prohibiting gas expansion into new service territories. On the housing front, we know Vermont is in the housing crisis. That means there isn't enough affordable housing for remanders and many remanders are forced to live in expensive unsafe places. And tenants who bring concerns about their living conditions to the landlord also have to worry about eviction and homelessness. We need housing for all. That is why we need to work both on creating new affordable housing like provisions in the Senate housing on of this bill. And we also need to protect tenants rights. The housing on of this bill includes many zoning, many needed zoning, active 50 and housing discrimination changes that we support and hope that the bill will pass the House and Senate. To meet the needs of tenants in Vermont, we must also pass statewide just cause of eviction protection, eviction diversion programs and capital amount of rents increases to tenants that tenants will have to bear. Lastly, the legislator passed Wellington City Charter change for just cause of eviction but the governor vetoed that bill. We need to build off of the 99 votes the House got in the veto override and passed that bill this year. We also need to ensure that Vermont has all the data it needs to accurately track our rental market including where the units are, who owns them, the accessibility of the unit and other pertinent information. Without this basic information, we will always be behind on understanding the true rental prices and it limits our ability to take action for Vermont renters. With respect to our food system, we must create equitable land access but equitable access to land, farming and food. We were glad to see the passage of universal school meals in 2022 but it's time to find a permanent finding solution to ensure that all Vermont's children get the healthy meals they need without stigma. The land access and opportunity board is an equity board created by the legislator in the last biennium and is housed at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. In the coming weeks, this board will release a report of recommendations that the legislator should consider and take action on. But what we do know now is that the board will be continued funding to do its work. This means a fiscal year 2024 budget adjustment to one million. This will allow the board to formalize its procedures and set itself up in the long term for work that is needed in creating greater access and opportunity for those Vermonters who have been historically left out. Workers in Vermont's retail restaurant agriculture and other service industries play deeply vital roles in our communities. Yet these workers are often underpaid and underprotected in their workplaces to thrive all workers need fair and dignified wages, full benefits and strong legal protections. The subminimum wage, a direct legacy of slavery, particularly impacts women and disproportionately women of color. It is time to end the subminimum wage and pass on their wage for all Vermonters. We also need to pass the Vermont Pro Act that strengthens workers' rights. When it comes to public education, we have a long way to go to make all Vermont schools equitable and welcoming for all students. We need to remove police from schools to make anti-discrimination policies more accessible and develop an education funding system that is as equitable and as possible by implementing the recommendations of the Income-Based Education Tax Study Committee. Vermont is known as a leader for voting rights and democracy and we need to continue that leadership by implementing a system of ranked choice voting for the presidential primaries and then for all elections. Ranked choice voting gives more access to more candidates and gives voters real choice of the ballot box. We must also create a state legislator that everyone can take part in. This means greatly increasing the salary and benefits for state legislators and also the programs for those appointed to state boards and committees. The last crisis I will speak to certainly isn't the least, Vermont's overdose crisis. Vermont has become a leader in the deafness of the overdose crisis. The legislator last year passed many important provisions that were undone with the governor's veto. This year we must pass permanent deprimalization for personal use, create overdose prevention sites, make accessible community-based syringe services for all Vermonters, create a mobile methadone clinic pilot program and expand treatment education for first responders. This means supporting H-72 and H-222. It is important that we let the voices of the people and today, Rad will be joined by many of our amazing leaders over two dozen today in giving testimony in several committees. We thank you for allowing Rad to speak to you today and hope that you will listen to the voices and messages of the people that you will hear from. Joining me today in this committee are rights and democracy supporters and allies. Today we have Jessica Port and Mindy Blink. Jess is a member of the land access and opportunity board and co-director of community resilience organizations along with Mindy Blink. Both are also activists on climate and racial justice. And I will hand it over to Jess. My name is Jessica Port. I identify with she, her pronouns. And I grew up in Lomel County in Vermont. And I guess I never really thought I saw myself being involved in advocacy but I've been deeply engaged in BIPOC affinity spaces across the state, land access work and also involved in police reform work in the state. And every time that I come to testify on behalf of something, I'm constantly asking like, why am I here? Both in the sense of why would you all want to listen to me? And also why am I here to represent this work? And so I just want to acknowledge the privileges that give me the capacity to be here that aren't shared by all of the folks that I'm truly engaged in this work with. And I know Anna would echo the same for Rad, right? We send representatives, the people who have the time, the capacity and the resources, but also who might be maybe a little bit more received when we think about the way that our policies and even our government functions just showing up here today was a little bit of work. But I want to speak on behalf of the land access and opportunity board. I'm curious if you all are familiar with the board that was created in the last biennium. I'm not, really, yeah. Great, I'll start there then. I know a little bit of help. And I think that is actually really indicative of this process, right? Is there's so much happening in the state house, there's a lot created. And this is an example of a board that has the opportunity to collaborate with many, many departments and different branches of the legislature to move forward agendas around equity. And I think it's something that many of our departments who are actually named in the section of Act 122 that created the board, many of those departments, the Vermont affordable housing and even the working lands and all of these different things, they have these equity goals. And everyone is kind of working across different parts of the government and the state to move forward these equity agendas. And the Land Access and Opportunity Board is an opportunity for the legislature to consolidate those. So I just want to read the intent statement. And I would really encourage you to refer to it and to think for your committee, how would this board partner with either somebody who's presenting something else related to equitable land access to you all and you're trying to maybe work on a bill. The Land Access and Opportunity Board is an instrumentality of the state that will be available to set up programs and also to support programs that are trying to improve their equity work. So the intent of creating this body is to acknowledge structural racism and address prevalent wealth disparities by creating new opportunities to improve access to woodlands, farmland and land and home ownership for Vermonters from historically and continually marginalized communities who continue to face barriers to land and home ownership. This was originally introduced as the BIPOC Land Access and Opportunity Board Bill, age 273 in the last biennium. But this board really treats all protected classes. We have representation from the Department of Developmental Disabilities and from the National Social Workers Alliance. We are trying to work across all of these communities because some of our barriers to access are the same and some are very different. So I tend to talk very long, so where am I? Are we doing okay on time? Need to move quickly? Okay, so in terms of moving forward with the board, we are intended, we have 11 representatives on the board from a number of community-based organizations and I would like for you all to maybe consider this board similarly to the Health Equity Board that was created in the last biennium, in the first year of the last biennium and the Environmental Justice Committee that was also created in the last biennium. All of these boards can work with your departments to implement some of the strategies that you're looking for and with the right resources and that's where the appropriations comes in, with the right resources can also be a partner in the truth and reconciliation process when things are surfaced through truth and reconciliation. One of the boards or one of the bodies that could take action on housing and land-related equity issues would be the land access and opportunity board. So our focus for this next year and the nearly $1 million appropriation that we're asking for is about capacity building for the board to be able to engage these community members in meaningful ways in this work on the state level. And we would really like to have the appropriation to engage in some assessment ourselves while also recognizing that there's gonna be deep work done by the truth and reconciliation process so we don't need to replicate that but we want to dig in specifically around housing and we think that community engagement is incredibly important for that. Are there any questions? Well, I'm wondering who set some up? So this board was created in Act 122. Wait, yeah, 122. Sorry, I'm like really bad with all the numbers. It was like 121. Act 122, section 22. And it's under the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. So it's not an independent organization. There is potential for independence in the future but we also recognize the need for efficiency. There's no, I mean, especially given the reporting that's needed to be an instrumentality of the state. If we can continue to exist and work within an existing instrumentality that could be advantageous. And in a similar way, when I was mentioning like there's an important part of the statute that is about advisory powers over these other housing and land access initiatives that the state is doing. And the hope would be that there would be transparent and open communication and the opportunity for this board to provide advice recommendations but also to potentially consolidate some of these programs. Because there's a lot of replication. And I think the take home though has to be that there continue to be people who are left behind even in our existing programs even in existing housing affordability programs and existing land ownership or our existing farm lands and working lands provisions leave behind a lot of folks. And the goal of the Land Access and Opportunity Board is to fill some of those gaps by strengthening the existing programs and likely standing up new programs as well. Yeah. Hi everyone, I'm Mindy Blange. It's so nice to be here. Thank you so much for this opportunity. I have been living in Vermont for my entire adult life. So I'm a Vermont-wide choice and this is my chosen home. I am a lifelong climate justice activist. I have worked on state, national and international policy and I haven't been so hopeful and enthused about a piece of legislation or a piece of policy since the Paris Treaty of 2016. I have been working with the Seeding Power Coalition that is the group behind the Land Access and Opportunity Board that's been working for the past several years to draft legislation. We're a citizen group. We are a community group of people who came together because this is important. And so we're a group of community activists. We've been working for three years and there are just a few points that I want to make about the Land Access and Opportunity Board. It's, as Jess pointedly talked about and shared about this board, it's an Act 182. There's so many things to remember. No, we have a whole line out here. I know. No problem. 182, it's on stage 39. So easy for you to find. You can read more about it. And this board has jurisdiction to advise many different agencies working on housing, agriculture, finance, taxes. It has jurisdiction across the board to advise in many different agencies. And so it's really important to look into. And this board is a mechanism that is constitutional that is tackling really tricky things in a really tangible way. And it's building reparative programs for marginalized populations in Vermont by those populations. And so it's people who are intimately involved in working with these communities and who are setting out really clear ways to actually improve access to land and housing. And this board has garnered so much support from constituents in every single county, in every single region across the entire state and beyond Vermont too. And it's similar to the Working Lands Enterprise Initiative in terms of organizational support that's behind this board. There's a lot of organizational support. There's philanthropic support. And I am confident that if the state continues to appropriate funding for the board, which is what we're here to advocate for is the continued existence of this board. If that happens, I have absolutely no doubt that private funding will also come to this board. And so this is a really important mechanism. And this is something that people have been scratching their heads about for years. How do we do this, this board? And so the sunrise report that is coming out from the board this week, it has a budget and that should be looked at as a baseline budget for operations of this board to continue. And hopefully the way that appropriations will look will be funding for multiple years for this board. So it's not just one year of funding for this board to continue, but actually multiple years. And so I just want to put that out there so that you have a sense of what an appropriations ask might be and that the board may come back next year, the following year to ask for appropriations for the programs. But what it's setting out is the actual baseline budget for this board to continue existing and for it to blossom. So thank you so much for your time. Very quick highlights. Obviously, just because of each one coming back through again, that'd be probably more likely to go up, but we also need that statewide, we can hear just from the person for it, if you have an addiction crisis. We're dealing with it with Burlington. It's our pilot. Yes. Well, it's hopefully going to come through again. You know, we get on the pilot, we're new scheme, Brattle Bro, and both Essex is in the next two weeks. So I think it's going to get through. Yeah, last Essex just came on board a few weeks ago. So four municipalities. Wow. We also need to be able to track our rental markets. So data collection in this housing owners bill would be greatly appreciated because we don't know what we don't know. And I don't need to tell this to Senator Clarkson, who knows us all well. The Land Access Opportunity Board has been doing great work. It does need continuing funding. It means in fiscal year 2024, we need to push budget just one million dollars. As we'll hear in a second from some of our speakers, one fair wage is something that's really important. We are certain industries have been gutted right now because of housing, because of inflation, because of the stagnation of their wages. We need to pass the BT Pro Act. We need an income-based education tax study committee and replacement schools and make more anti-discrimination policies in schools. We need rent towards voting. There's one really set. We also need to start paying legislatures properly because as you guys all know, you're paid very poorly and it does limit severely the amount of people that can actually sit in office. We've lost a lot of people over the last few years because of the commitments for their time. Hence our bill. Hence your bill. I'll look at it and have bills, but you're good. We're reaching the choir on this one. Finally, once the overdose crisis feel like this gets to the bottom every few years, but it is still very much raging. We need to pass permanent poop and orphing, poop criminalization, overdose prevention sites, mobile meth don't put in pilot programs. So that's H722 and H222. But really it's not about rats today. It's about lifting up voices of other people. With me today is Adi Lensner, Infinity Sandifer and Justin Barrett. And I'm going to start off with Adi. Thank you so much for having us here today. I'm really excited to be able to speak to you all. So I'm just going to hop right into it because we have limited time. So I'm Adi Lensner. I live in Bennington. And I wanted to start off my testimony by just talking about Terry Huega who in February of 2020 was a man experiencing homelessness who went to sleep under a bridge. It was four degrees outside and by the time morning rolled around, Terry had lost his life. So I tell the story a lot, but I'm going to keep telling it until Vermont lawmakers take action to address the homelessness crisis. So when COVID started, everyone experiencing homelessness wasn't hotels and I was really proud of Vermont. You know, motels aren't the solution to homelessness but they provide a immediate shelter need. So we must continue the GA Motel Program fully funded at $21 million until at least June so that advocates and legislators can work on affordable housing. I have always believed that this is the route to end homelessness. And Chloe Weiner-Cullins, the Executive Director of the Homeless Shelter in Bennington kind of affirmed this for me and gave me some insight into the problem. She told me that when I asked what would happen when GA ends, she said it's about to get worse than Bennington has ever seen. So this really struck me and just kind of what's furthered my point that the Motel Program really serves an immediate need and I urge you to use your power as legislators to push for the Appropriations Committee to include the full 21 million in the Budget Adjustment Act. But aside from that, we need to invest in affordable housing and this is where you all come in. So tiny homes, mobile homes, renovating old buildings are all good ideas and through the organization and homelessness for Mot, I'm starting a tiny home community in Bennington. So Chloe told me that we need more low barrier shelters with mental health services and these tiny homes could serve that purpose while we get other housing ready. But in short, we just need to create more housing and we need to do it fast and this calls for creative solutions. I really could use your support in making this happen and I urge you to include affordable low barrier shelter options that can be put up quickly in any housing bill that you pass. I also wanted to mention that we need to stop protections to stop homelessness from occurring in the first place as Tom mentioned, like just cause evictions and landlord accountability and a rental registry. So with all of that said, I wanted to just leave you with a statistic. Vermont had an increase of 259% of homelessness from 2007 to 2021. And we are also the second to worst state behind only California with the highest increase in homelessness per capita. So we can't just continue with the status quo. It's time for change in Vermont and I'm glad that I have you all on my side in making this happen. Thank you. Yes. Hi. So I'm gonna talk about raising the wage. I'm currently a service industry worker. I'm a chef. I've been a chef off and on for about 16 years and there's a reason that it's been off. Right now. Where are you now? I'm sorry. I don't wanna like identify you too much but are you in your community? Is that- Are you currently standing outside of my job in White River Junction just across the street from the train station? I currently work at Peace Meal Pies in White River Junction and I make about $26 an hour. The reason I make $26 an hour right now is because we have a PACE model that has worked out really, really well for the employees here at Peace Meal Pies. We don't rely on tipping. Our owner decided that that really wasn't working out relying on the kindness of strangers to make sure that your servers can make enough money to survive is a bit ridiculous. So instead we do an 18% service fee on every ticket which guarantees that staff get 18% of what would be a normal tip. This works out really well. Takes my wages up about $10 an hour every pay period. So for the 40 hours I work I make another $10 an hour on top of all of the PACE wage pay. Right now with the rising prices of everything we're seeing that in the service industry people aren't showing up to buy food much less able to tip. They can barely cover their own bills. Relying on tips as a way to make sure that somebody can survive which I don't understand why the idea that my time a third of my life is worth less than a third of somebody else's life but I spend 40 hours a week working to make sure that this restaurant stays open and because my employer came up with this idea and has implemented it I'm able to have a living wage but I will work right next door to a bunch of folks in another restaurant that don't make a living wage. And they're watching their tips completely disintegrate because folks cannot afford that on top of the rising price of their bill just to eat their food. If we don't raise wages for service industry workers there will be less and less of them until there aren't anymore because we cannot survive on that. It's not possible. Eggs have quadrupled. Eggs have quadrupled in the last four months. I cannot afford to survive currently and I make more money than I ever have in my life. And it's because the price of living has gone up so much and I am seeing my friends and my family and my coworkers from other jobs suffering on a daily basis because they can't afford to pay their rent buy food or toilet paper. And it is ridiculous that we live in a society where folks are just going hungry working 40 hours a week that there's absolutely no reason that they should ever be happening. If you were putting in a third of your life to serve a purpose you should be able to enjoy the rest of your life. And I don't, I don't. I currently am struggling to try to figure out rent because it's going through the roof and everybody else's too. If we don't figure out housing and wages we are going to see a lot more homelessness and results of that are gonna be death. It's gonna be drug overdoses. It's gonna be folks who put themselves in dangerous situations to make money. When people don't make enough money, they sell drugs. That's what they do. They put themselves in dangerous situations so that they can make money in illegal ways because there aren't ways to do it legally anymore. And as we continue to move forward in this you're going to see rise in everything from drug convictions and overdoses and homelessness because folks are going to start grabbing at any avenue they can and that's going to lead them down dangerous paths. And it's not fair that we are putting ourselves in these positions to just try to survive and we are being sexually harassed at the job because we have to take this job because it's the one that we get. Women get sexually harassed in this industry more than any other industry. It is atrocious. And we put ourselves in these positions because we don't have a choice. We have to provide for our families. I feel like the structure that we have now is honestly embarrassing and sad. I can't believe that we are okay with people making half minimum wage because they might get enough tips to survive. Especially when we go to the grocery store every single one of us walk into that grocery store and we've seen how these prices are rising. It is an immoral justification to say that they make tips therefore they don't need to make a living wage. And I fully support changing this really messed up system so that folks are just able to survive. I just want to thank you, Jared Durfrey and everybody on the agriculture, food resilience and forestry committee for letting us have this time to come and advocate for these policies that we really care about deeply and that our members are really in need of. May I continue or? Yes, I just wanted to note that we also have Laura Rich in the room here who's our committee assistant and some of you may have missed earlier, but yeah, so please. Great, thank you. So my name is Michael Weiss and I'm an environmental justice organizer with Rights and Democracy. And before I begin, I want to share a land acknowledgement with the committee. So Rights and Democracy acknowledges the Mahican in Southern Vermont and Abenaki people as the traditional land caretakers of Endakina, which includes parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, New England and Quebec. As guests on the unseated territory of the Mahican and Abenaki people, we honor their ancestors, elders and relations past, present and emerging. We also acknowledge that our nation has benefited from the uncompensated and exploited labor represented in the legacy of slavery, represented in the legacy of slavery and the present day reality of migrant farm workers. Thank you. So Rights and Democracy, which we call RAD for short, and our sibling organization, the Rights and Democracy Institute were founded in 2015. It, on a theory of change that it takes people, lots of people and people power to really make the change year after year for big, bold and long-term improvements that we all want to see in our country and our state. Our members are from all walks of life, intergenerational, multicultural, activists, organizers, but most importantly, passionate fighters for true social justice and meaningful change in our communities and the state of Vermont. Our current systems are rooted in historic oppressions, deeply dysfunctional and fragile. Vermonters who have been systemically kept out of places of power are those most impacted by these systems. The Abenaki and indigenous people, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA individuals, individuals with disabilities, older adults, Native Americans, youth, new Americans and poor are the people who carry the weight and policy, weight of policies and systems gone wrong. These individuals are nearly 80% of Vermont's voting population. Are the least represented in our state government and in some cases wholly invisible to those who enact the policies. And that's why we're here today. Our mission is to bring people together to take action, to build healthy communities and make the values of our communities guide the policies of our government instead of vice versa. We believe we can achieve a society where people earn a livable wage and have access to affordable healthcare and where progressive and equitable tax system supports an economy that protects the environment and human rights. It's our pleasure to testify before you today and share our visions of a more just and vibrant Vermont. And I've shared with you all our policy platform for 2023 and I encourage you to look through it and I'll be speaking more to all those policies because all of these policies work together to build a stronger Vermont. So to begin, Vermont must do its part to ensure a just transition to a clean energy future that mandates renewable energy and ends our reliance on dirty polluting fossil fuels. And we must guarantee that everybody benefits, especially Vermonters who have been most impacted by passing current harms. That's why this year we're supporting the passage of S5, the Affordable Heat Act while still calling for greater equity provisions in the bill that prioritize renters, low income folks and ensure that heating fuels don't impact our communities, don't hurt our communities. We're also supporting efforts to reform the renewable energy standard and ensure that Vermont can get to 30% in-state renewable energy and 30% regional renewable energy in the next decade. In-state renewable energy is the key to our state resiliency, helps build the green economy that Vermonters need and doesn't shift the climate burden of our energy to other states and marginalized communities. We're also supporting H54, the Ratepayer Protection and Thermal Energy Networking. This bill in house environment and energy would extend the electric rate payer protections to more Vermonters, add a proven solution to Vermont's energy choices by creating a pathway for geothermal energy and moves Vermont away from combusting fuels by prohibiting gas expansion into new service territories. On top of the climate crisis, we know that Vermont is also in a housing crisis. We all know this, there isn't enough affordable housing for Vermonters and many of us are forced to live in unsafe places that are too expensive and tenants who bring concerns about their living conditions to landlords also have to worry about eviction and homelessness. That's why we need housing for all. That is why we need to work both on creating new affordable housing like provisions laid out in the Senate Housing Omnibus Bill and also we need to protect tenants' rights. The Housing Omnibus Bill includes many needed zoning, Act 250 and housing discrimination changes that we support and hope that the bill will pass the House and Senate. To meet the needs of tenants in Vermont, we also need to pass statewide just cause eviction protections. Eviction diversion programs and cap the amounts of rent increases that tenants will have to bear. Last year, the legislature passed Burlington's city charter change for just cause eviction but the governor vetoed that bill. We need to build off the 99 votes we got in the House last year towards a veto override and pass that bill this year. We also need to ensure that Vermont has all the data it needs to accurately track our rental market, including where the units are who owns them and the accessibility of the unit and other pertinent information. Without this basic information, we will always be behind on understanding the true rental crisis and its limits and it limits our ability to take action for Vermont renters. When it comes to public education, we have a long way to go to make all Vermont schools equitable and welcoming for all students. We need to remove police from schools, make anti-discrimination policies more accessible and develop an education funding system that is as equitable as possible by implementing the recommendations of the Income-Based Education Tax Study Committee. Vermont is known as a leader for voting rights and democracy and we need to continue that leadership by implementing a system of rank choice voting for the presidential primaries and then for all election. Rink choice voting gives more access to more candidates and gives voters a real choice of the ballot box. We must also create a state legislature that everybody can take part in. This means greatly increasing the salary and benefits of our state legislators and also the per diems for those appointed to state boards and committees. Furthermore, we must address Vermont's overdose crisis. Vermont has become a leader in the deadliness of the overdose crisis. The legislature last year passed many important provisions that were undone with the governor's veto. This year, we must pass important provision, we must pass permanent view profanine decriminalization for personal use, create overdose prevention sites, make accessible community-based syringe services for all Vermonters, create a mobile methadone clinic pilot program and expand treatment education for first responders. This means supporting 872 and H-222. And of course, to both mitigate and prepare for the climate crisis, nurture community and local economies and support the health of Vermonters, we must create a food system rooted in justice. We must create equitable access to land, farming and food by addressing legacies of inequity in land ownership and access. We were glad to see the passage of the universal school meals in 2022, but it's time to find a permanent funding solution to ensure that all Vermonters, all Vermont's children get the healthy meals they need without stigma. Additionally, the Land Access and Opportunity Board is an equity board created by the legislature in the last biennium and is housed at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. In the coming weeks, the board will release a report of recommendations that the legislature should consider and take action on. But what we do know now is that the board will need continued funding to do its work. This means a fiscal year 2024 budget adjustment of an initial one million for the coming year. This will allow the board to formalize its procedures and set itself up for the long-term work that is needed in creating greater access and opportunity for those in Vermont who have historically been left out. Additionally, workers in Vermont's retail, restaurant, agricultural, and other service industries play deeply vital roles in our communities. Yet these workers are often underpaid and underprotected in their workplaces to thrive all workers need fair and dignified wages, full benefits, and strong legal protections. The sub-minimum wage, a direct legacy of slavery, particularly impacts women and disproportionately women of color. It's time to end the sub-minimum wage and pass one fair wage for all Vermonters. We also need to pass the Vermont Pro Act that strengthens workers' rights. It's important that we lift the voices of the people and today I'm joined by some of our amazing leaders. Today, 2,000 individuals are speaking their truths in committees throughout the legislature. Joining me are rights and democracy supporters and allies as I've already introduced. Thank you for your time. Good afternoon. Hi, hi everyone. Yeah, Jess LaPorte, I identify with she, her pronouns. I was born and raised in the Moile County, which is also where my mother was born and raised. And I am speaking as a member of the Land Access and Opportunity Board, but I'm active across the state in a number of BIPOC affinity spaces focused on equity work across a lot of different topics. And I show up in the Land Access and Opportunity Board as somebody actually very well represented by a lot of what Michael said about the people who are involved in RAD. Because I grew up as a low income Vermonter, I understand how challenging it is to not just gain access to housing and land, but to maintain it. And I'm here to share about the Land Access and Opportunity Board and I wanna know how many of you are familiar with it and it's creation in the last, yeah, yeah, I know. Anyone else? So no, I'm gonna say on my behalf, but can you just, so for those who aren't, remind us how it came to be. Yeah, so it's an Act 182, I'm bad with numbers, Section 22. And it originally, the thought behind it and the tent behind it began in H273, which is the BIPOC Land Access and Opportunity Bill. And the purpose of the Board always included other protected classes, but now it's very explicitly a part of it. As Michael mentioned, it's under the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. And I just wanted to share the intent with you all is to acknowledge the structural racism and address prevalent wealth disparities by creating new opportunities to improve access to woodlands, farmland, land and home ownership for Vermonters from historically marginalized or disadvantaged communities who continue to face barriers to land and home ownership. And as I'm sure on this body, you all are also aware of the challenges of retention once you have land and home ownership. So this board has a few different responsibilities, but a big part of the intent is to have a community base. So there are 11 nominating bodies that are really from community-based organizations that may or may not actually ever interface with the legislature. A number of them are not really lobbying type bodies. I am the representative from the Everytown BIPOC Land Access Project, which works with the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust to increase BIPOC land stewardship in Vermont. And a number of other similarly, maybe less represented bodies. I wanted to also share with you all, I think it's really helpful to understand that one of the major purposes or one of the large powers of this body is advisory power over a number of different agencies involved in housing and land access. So VHCB as our fiscal sponsor home, the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, the Vermont Economic Development Authority, the Vermont Agricultural Credit Corporation, as well as other programs like those that are created under the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund or our working lands. And this is really important because as our state has been having these conversations about equity, we recognize that all of these different institutions and instrumentalities of the state are trying to develop mechanisms to make things more accessible. And this body is an opportunity for partnership and for more continuity and more effective strategies to overcome barriers. And an important part of it is representation of people from those communities because our kind of cookie cutter income barrier for access to programs is leaving so many people behind. We're talking about more complex households. We're talking about aversion to risk and taking on something even like a forgivable loan to get into ownership because of lived experience, because of factors like immigration within a household, substance abuse, incarceration. And so we're trying through this board to bring members of the community into the creation of those programs. And hopefully over the coming years we can bring efficiency and more continuity to all the existing programs. But we can't do that as a body of the state. And as we've said here, there's only a few people in this room familiar with this board. It's not going to be effective unless we make it the partner that it can be. And so as a member of the board, I'm here to ask for that partnership. And I'm also here to stress the importance of appropriations for this body. Michael mentioned that we're looking at about an initial one million for the capacity building. That's including actually hiring staff. I am only compensated for my involvement in that body at the state per diem, which is incredibly unsustainable for the type of thought that needs to go into this work and the relationship building to make it an effective body. So the initial one million is kind of what we're seeing for the first year. But what we really would like to see in this year's appropriation is four million, multi-year funding. It's not a great job prospect to not have anything secured into the future. And we also want to acknowledge the other community-based bodies that have been created like the Environmental Justice Council Committee, Advisory Council, thank you. The Health Equity Board, as well as the work that Truth and Reconciliation is going to be doing, we want to do some of our own assessments, but we are 100% in support of the work that those bodies will be doing. And we'll be in collaboration with them. So I hope that helps for some context. And obviously, you can be in contact with me through RAD, but more importantly, be in contact with the Land Access Nobility Tunity Board through VHCB. We have a landing page on their website. We have contact information. All of our meetings are publicly warned. Agendas and minutes are available there. And I would really love to see more communication from legislatures. So I'm happy to introduce the board. And I hope this is the first of many conversations. And Mindy might add some things. I might add or reiterate, that was wonderful. Hi, I'm Mindy Blank. Thank you so much for having us here today. It's a pleasure and honor to be here to speak with you. I live in Barrie. I have been living in Vermont for my entire adult life. It's my chosen home. I'm also a lifelong climate justice activist and have been shaping policy at state, national, and international levels. The Land Access and Opportunity Board is a board. It's an outcome of, as Jess mentioned, H273, the BIPOC-led Land Access and Opportunity Bill. I'm a member of Seeding Power, which is the coalition behind that initial bill that the Land Access and Opportunity Board was born from. And we've been working on this piece of legislation for the past three years. And since the Paris Treaty was signed in 2016, I have not been so excited about and hopeful about a piece of legislation and something that is actually really effective in the climate justice sphere because this lays out, the board has already been created. It's already staffed. It's already under BHCB. It's receiving administrative support and it lays out incredibly clear and tangible ways to actually improve land access. And for the House Committee on Agriculture, Food, Resilience, and Forestry, I think that there are a lot of intersections and a lot of ways that this committee could actually be collaborating with the board. And as Jess mentioned, the board has advisory power to and jurisdiction to be working with all sorts of agencies and committees. And I think when we are considering the amount of dairy farms that are going under in Vermont and how to work on succession of the properties and how to do that, I think that the Land Access and Opportunity Board is a great board to reach out to brainstorm, to figure out some ways to be able to work together. And there are so many different intersections like this that I think that you have. And the appropriation side, this isn't a policy bill. We're not putting a policy bill in front of you and asking you to approve that, but we're advocating for the continuation of this board that has just gotten started, which frankly was tasked with just a massive workload that I'm sure you all can appreciate being in this work and having a new group of people come together and do the work that they have to create the sunrise report that's actually coming out at the end of today. So we can celebrate that, which is really exciting. But the budget that's set forward in that sunrise report is for annual baseline operating budget. That's what it is, baseline occupations. And so what we're doing here, understanding the financial landscape that our state is in this year and having no idea what it's gonna be like next year or the following years, we are looking for appropriations for the board to be able to continue for four years so that they can actually really go into the work with some longevity and not having to come back to next year and ask for the basic operations budget, but maybe to be able to come back next year in collaboration, hearing things from other committees and other agencies and asking for more appropriations for specific programs, but not for their basic operating budget. And also in the report, it talks about how at some point this board would like to move away from VHCB, but is also really appreciating that administrative power. So we wanna make it clear that VHCB is a pass-through for appropriations and it's not additional funding for VHCB. It is specifically for the Land Access and Opportunity Board with the idea that it will be a separate board from VHCB at some point. So thank you so much for listening. Yeah. Yeah, we might have some, yeah, representative. Oh, can you just make that report available to us? Absolutely. We can send it to Elora and then we can pop it up on our page. Yeah. And also if you wanna take a look at Act 182, the Land Access and Opportunity Board, this jurisdiction is spelled out on page 39. So you can read it. Yeah, section 22, it's just a couple pages and so I encourage you to check it out. What was that number again? 182. That's what that was? I don't know. Oh, and Shane, our lovely seating power member will email you all dividing and conquering. I guess an ending question for you all is how are some of the policies that are in front of you and that you're working on, how could the LAOB be a partner? In particular, it's very important for us to establish precedent. We do not need, I think with the EJ Council, Health Equity and the Land Access and Opportunity Board, we've covered a lot of faces if we're equity work and rather than standing up new committees of under-resourced community members, are there ways that we can actually bring more precedent to their space in the state policy landscape? So I would hope to hear from some of you like, hey, should we put the LAOB in here? Should we put it in over there? Or when we're talking about creating a new body, are there some that exist already? Yeah. First of all, small request. You use an acronym at 100 miles an hour. And some of it is still driving at 55. Oh, I'm glad that it's going back and forth because I'm so confused when I'm here. I just can't be in this room without recognizing Jess LaPorte. How important she, her sister, her mother, her family, her aunts and uncles and cousins have been in my life, my kid's life. She's one of the great leaders of our community as it's her family. And it's just a huge honor. Thank you. You're welcome. There are a lot of us. Thank you. All of you, but I specifically wanted to point out, we've spent a lot of time on universal school meals, farm to school, farm to table, focusing on small farming initiatives and opportunities, including, I'm one of the new members here, but there are others that are very much involved with food resiliency and small farm initiatives. So you bring inequity aspect which hasn't here to forebend in the last six weeks are focused. So you're very timely that you're here, but it is a focus that we're seeing a need. And as succession and farming struggles, I feel this committee could advocate with a broader vision. And I also sat on a board that just, so after I left got on, we had the, these were community farms and there were, I don't know if BIPOC was a word then, immigrant communities that take advantage of the farm and enterprise access and enterprise initiatives there that make a big impact in the particular county. So, yeah, so thank you. Representative Tepola. You finished up by asking us, but it's funny, I was gonna ask you the same question. So how do you see your, first of all, what have you been doing? I know that it's a new effort. What have you been doing to bring disenfranchised populations to the land? And how can we, you know, how do we start? I think the answer to that for me, it happens outside, but related to my role on LAOB. Recognizing that I am not working on that LAOB full time and we are very early on, but I think that what we're finding is that a lot of the economic measurements, you know, for access to funding or lower interest loans, as well as, you know, what do we define as a farm, right? And does food production inherently have to be profitable in order to receive subsidization in order to receive support from the state? Those are the questions that I ask in general in the work that Mindy and I do with community resilience organizations, the Everytown Land Access and Opportunity Project, because what is existing, whether it's in land conservation or in housing access, there's a lot of households that are falling through the cracks there. So I think the Land Access and Opportunity Board, the hope would be that it grows into both having some of its own programs and also being a navigator of programs. And I think it's really important to establish this institution, which is currently under BHCB, but this instrumentality of the state to be a part of that navigator in a bias for us. We have representation from the Developmental Disabilities Council, National Social Workers Alliance, Pride Center, Vermont, and we're seeking to have these community-based support services who understand the intersectionality of marginalization. So I guess in terms of what policies and where I see this fitting in is I have a lot of questions and cannot follow how many times we're using a simple economic indicator is the only equity measure to make something more accessible. And it's all wrapped up in all of the renew stuff. I wanna make sure other people have time to talk, but I feel like it comes up in the Affordable Heating Act. Is that what is being called these days? Yeah, the Affordable Heating Act in that only 50% of that funding is allocated, less than 50% of money is allocated to low-income households. Who else are we trying to make heating affordable for other than low-income households? I was raised by a single parent working in the service industry with zero benefits. So if anyone is supposed to be having those benefits, it's those folks, but we lived in a multi-generational house and therefore often through a series of things, you don't always qualify, right? And so my hope is that the LOB could partner to provide recommendations to policy and to existing institutions, but we also have to be willing to question the basic assumptions of the game in order to do equity work. We can't constantly say, oh, well, we can't actually do that because it might not be constitutional. We can't do that because we're not sure if there's gonna be legal blowback. We actually have to be willing to move the end posts. I don't know why I use the sports metaphor. I play hockey. Oh yeah. On that note then, I've been working on a project outside of this committee in the legislation, in the legislature, and I've been working with an advocate, Reverend Mark Hughes, who's been- Who's on the board? I was- Or, well, he's an alternate. I would be surprised. I would not be surprised, but so in this particular issue, he was pushing really hard on the equity point to the level, though, that in many ways, it would destroy the structure of the program inherently. So in a way, he's seeing that the existing structure by its nature is unfair to minority populations and to not just minority populations, but to even certain people within the majority population. And I'm just seeing a dilemma here, and I would love to know how we can engage in our current system while inviting other people in. I know it's very abstract. And I'm wondering if that's also having to do with the structure of the board appointments and the compensation for the board. I'm not sure if that's particularly what he's talking about, but that's an example of something we have to be willing to question. When the state decides that a piece of work is important enough, they create a commissioner or there's a department or there, and those are salaried positions, but we have not decided the equity-based work for whatever protected class that is. We have not yet decided as a state that that is something that we are willing to fund and actually resource people to do. And when you sit on these boards, you're not just asked to show up to the meetings. You're then supposed to become the conduit for all of these legislators and different white-led institutions, I'm speaking as a black femme, like to be somehow their Rolodex for all the black people in Vermont. They're Rolodex for all the people working on disability rights. They're Rolodex for all the people working on housing access. And for, especially for tenants. And when I tell you that I am lucky to be compensated for the climate justice work that I do, I'm truly lucky because most of the people I work with on the community level are not compensated for the work that they do. They want groups like the Vermont Relief Collective to be their Rolodex, to give them access to all of the BIPOC folks and all across rural Vermont that people seem to not be able to see themselves in their communities that exist there. But who is actually gonna fund these affinity spaces and people providing direct services to the exact populations that are being missed? And so if I don't know, if I hold the same position as Mark, sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. But I do think we need to question, we have tried to do what we can in this initial capacity building budget to increase the compensation for board members. But at a maximum, it's gonna be $750 a month. And that does not put a dent in household income. When you look the hours, the uncompensated hours that I and other members have put into this board just in the first months of its creation, it's not like I can join this board and job one of my two part-time jobs. Right. And I'm lucky to be compensating for mission-driven work that I care about that is related to this. And we want to have board members that may not be somebody who has a recognizable name or an organization that compensates them for full-time work. So I think there are, like it's a very difficult experience. And I will say that I choose to be a part of it because I know I have some of the privileges that allow me to do it. But I definitely wouldn't invite just anyone to join a state board. I don't invite just anyone to testify. It's a very challenging experience. And I think that we, I think one million is a really low ball considering how much our state has put into housing and how much of the money our state has put into housing is supposed to be about equity. One million is a drop in the bucket. But I hope that it can be meaningful, at least for that board, to establish precedents and build capacity into the future. I don't know if that answers the question. But I am cognizant of time. I want to make sure that other important folks from Rad can speak. Maybe ask you a question that could have a long answer. Especially if it's me. Given that there's a report that will be able to see tomorrow. Is there anything that you would call our attention to if we had the report in front of us that you would be saying the work of this committee certainly intersects with this, highlighting that. Anything in particular that you're... I was going to say Mindy's example of like as you're working on land dissection, that's one example where the intersection comes in, where as we're dealing with how our full landscape is transitioning in Vermont, whether it's transitioning towards hopefully making multifamily housing more realistic, or if it's a session for farms, I think that it's really important to think about partnering with this body to help provide some of those recommendations. And also to maybe be a part of actually administering those programs in the future, if that makes sense. Yeah, and something that I would add to that is that the support for the Land Access and Opportunity Board is somewhat similar to the Working Lands Enterprise, where we have a huge organizational base that's supporting this. And so Vermont has this image and reputation and something we love about Vermont is the working lands, right? Like we love that it's an agricultural state and a state with forests. And I think that the Land Access and Opportunity Board is the equity intersection there. And so as you are considering grant making, as you're considering new policies, I think the intersection is consulting with the Land Access and Opportunity Board because you have a group of people, hopefully who will be compensated equitably within this to be referenced people. And so you can look at this board also as a reference for how you were doing your policy making and grant making going into the future. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. So good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, members of the House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency and Forestry for welcoming me today. My name is Alex Lindner. I use she, her pronouns. And I'm currently the Vermont Field Organizer with Rights and Democracy. I'd like to extend my gratitude to you all for your decision to serve Vermont in such a meaningful way. A little bit about myself. I just moved to Montpelier with my partner and we moved here from the Sacramento Valley in California where we were both farm workers and food system advocates. Part of what drew us to Vermont is that we know Vermonters are deeply committed to co-creating resilient, just and ecologically vibrant food and farming communities. During this session, your committee has a lot of exciting opportunities to advance goals of food justice, land equity and ecological and community resilience. Today, many low income and BIPOC households across Vermont face food insecurity. A 2021 university of Vermont study demonstrated that when compared to white individuals, BIPOC individuals in Vermont were almost twice as likely to go hungry each month from lack of access to affordable and nutritious food. The study also found that households with children were almost twice as likely to face food insecurity in Vermont. Hunger is a racial and social equity issue. Food justice requires implementing changes that guarantee access to nutritious, affordable and culturally appropriate food for all Vermonters across race and income. With this in mind, I urge this committee to advance these goals of equitable access and affordability by providing permanent funding and support for universal school meals. All children deserve access to nutritious meals to support their learning and development while at school by providing breakfast and lunch to all students at no charge, you improve nutritional equity and ensure all students have access to healthy meals without stigma. Additionally, I urge this committee to secure permanent funding and support for the local foods purchasing incentive grant, which provides a financial incentive to schools to purchase food locally for their school meal programs. This incentive program benefits farmers who need a reliable market and students who need nutritious meals and it supports a vibrant local economy here in Vermont. Food justice also requires implementing changes that ensure social and racial equity and land access. I believe equal access to land is a human right, a right long denied to BIPOC citizens. Farming and land ownership in Vermont is enmeshed with racism and the legacy of slavery, settler colonialism and the genocide of indigenous peoples and racial capitalism. This multi-century enmeshment has a profound impact today on who owns farmland and who benefits from ownership of farmland. According to a 2017 US agricultural census, 97.7% of Vermont farms are white-owned today. For all these reasons and so many more, I urge this committee to secure permanent funding and support for the land access and opportunity board which was spoken about by our much more eloquently. The land access and opportunity board was created in 2022 as you already heard to improve land access for BIPOC farmers and other marginalized communities across Vermont. Finally, I urge this committee to take action based on the findings in the final report of the payments for ecosystem services and soil health working group. I support their pilot program, the Vermont Farmer Ecosystem Stewardship Program that works to supplement the USDA NRCS's Conservation Stewardship Program. We all rely on farmers not only for food and sustenance, but also to protect our natural resources for present and future generations. Farmers who champion climate and environmental stewardship should be compensated for these services. While farming in California the past several years, I engaged with the Healthy Soils Program, a statewide financial incentive program for farmers who adopt practices that enhance soil health. In California, I saw firsthand how this additional source of funding for farmers spurred all sorts of innovative on the farm soil conservation projects that otherwise would not have taken place due to lack of financial resources. In the results of the 2022 Vermont Farmer Conservation and Payment Freakert Ecosystem Services Survey prepared by the working group, it was found that 94% of Vermont farmers believe they have the knowledge base and technical skills to improve soil health, but only 58% have the financial capacity to implement these soil and society beneficial practices on their farm. This statistic clearly demonstrates that a payment model for ecosystem services and soil health would unlock new and creative conservation potential on farms across Vermont. When developing and implementing the statewide pilot program, I suggest that it is critical that one, you continually center farmers' voices and needs, paying particular attention to farmers who've been historically and ungrowingly discriminated against and marginalized. Two, you do not succumb to carbon tunnel vision, but maintain a holistic vision of soil and ecosystem health. And three, you explicitly position this payment for ecosystem services program within the larger just transition framework and continually center racial equity and social equity across program planning, implementation, and evaluation. Thank you for your time. Could we ask you a few questions if there are any? Sure, yeah. Okay. Members of carbon tunnel vision, is that the expression you use? Yeah, so are you asking what it means to me? Do you mind just, yeah. Yeah, so I studied social science and college and I worked on a farm in California that was really focused on becoming a climate smart farm, but I think a lot of the times you're so focused on quantifying soil organic carbon as a metric for compensating farmers that you lose track of all these other really important indicators of ecosystem health and vitality. Like what are the insects on your farm? What are the pollinators on your farm? What is the microbial population that's helping you out in your roots? Yeah, what's the wildlife situation? So I think not just narrowing in on carbon because the climate crisis and our environmental justice crisis is not just carbon, it's also nitrogen, it's phosphorus, and it's beyond just nutrients too, it's organisms. So I think it's really easy to just fixate on carbon and fixate on measuring carbon as like a solution, but it's way too narrow and it also ignores all these human dimensions in addition to all these ecological dimensions that I think need to be considered for holistic measurement of what is a healthy, resilient farm and food system. Thank you for that. Any other questions? Just a very short comment. Alex, all of those soil science deep dive that you articulated is exactly what true forest sustainable forestry and forest ecology is about. It's beyond recreation, wood, clean water, forest products, clean air, and carbon storage. It's that whole complex microorganisms that nobody's aware of, but loggers are actually. Thank you. Thank you. Hi everyone, thank you. My name is Anna Mejia, as Michael mentioned, I'm the Vermont Organizing Director with Rights and Democracy, but I also wear many other hats in the community. And I actually, I live in Heartland, Vermont, and I've also been a member of the Vermont Relief Collective for a while through my work with Relief Collective. I was also serving as an alternate with the Land Access and Opportunity Board, and just generally in the climate justice ecosystem, Vermont. And what I hope to do today with my testimony is a little bit like address your question of like, what is this committee doing? How can the Land Access and Opportunity Board tie in? And especially with like what Alex was naming with the payment for ecosystems services. So I wanna name just that is, I see great opportunities and also great risk if we don't have a Land Access and Opportunity Board. When you talk about rolling out a program, payment for ecosystems services, when we've heard the statistics of who has, who currently has access to land, to stewarding land. So if you roll out a payment for ecosystems program, that when you know that there are these existing barriers that haven't been resolved, then who is benefiting and who isn't? So ensuring that at the same time as you're, appropriating funds for these types of programs, we are appropriating funds to make sure that those programs are equitable, are accessible and removing the barriers to people. Because we know that despite the statistics around BIPOC farmers and land, land caretakers, I think that's the word. While many black indigenous people of color are not on the lease, on the land may not own the property, there are many of us people of color who are working with the land that are growing food and have so much knowledge, make so many contributions to our state, but don't reap sometimes those financial benefits, the ownership benefits. And so I see the Land Access and Opportunity Board as a mechanism for ensuring there's a pathway towards not just being in service. And again, just underscoring the dangers, maybe I don't want to sound too alarmist, but we really need to be pursuing these two in tandem, they are complimentary. And that's it, I'll keep it brief. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much for joining us today. If there are questions, is there anybody else, Michael, who's gonna? That's all of us unless anybody wants to add on to it. Everything's all right. Okay, Heather, I'm scooping you a tiny bit. You and I talked about this a little bit at the Milton Library. How do you address, how can I phrase this? The seeming unconstitutionality of favoring one group over another. And yes, there's protected status, and I understand that, and this is sort of for all of you. But then how do you, because we're grappling with something right now with the farm thing and another housing thing, and how do you address the issue of this group, for lack of a better phrase, gets preference over basically white people. And how do you balance the people who are then gonna sue you and address that as an unconstitutional thing? Because it's, you're discriminating. And I don't agree with that, but I also feel like how do you, how do we write that wrong without getting always caught up in the legality of now you're favoring a different group at the exclusion of another group? Yeah, so. Don't you wanna? Yeah, I wanted to say, Shane, just let me know that the report didn't just come out. So, cut off the press. Oh, nice. It's not long today or tomorrow. So, I think the constitutionality was obviously one of the biggest challenges with moving forward with age 273 as it was written. And the report does address, we have a whole subsection and our legal council provided a primer for us on the 14th amendment, which is where really that constitutionality argument comes from. And I think this is related to my comments earlier about we have to be willing to question the basic assumptions. I mean, we are all living in a reality where the 14th amendment was intended to protect people based on different classes and instead is constantly weaponized against them. It's why we turn to the economic indicators to access programs. And I think it is important for us to consider what are the pathways we are willing to take to push back against that precedent and to create a new precedent. So, I think part of it is we are looking at utilizing a model that would allow us to sub-grant to community-based organizations that might not necessarily, like community-based organizations like the nominating organizations for that body and other programs in the community that are not exclusive to, but are adaptive towards people of protected classes. So, in that case, it might be people who are working with the psychiatric survivors, oh my God, she's an organization institution, they're a part of the LAOB. It might look like sub-granting and how do you create pathways to housing and land access for people who have been institutionalized for mental illness, right? They're not going to exclusively provide funds to only people, but their programs or their approach to it will be adaptive to those circumstances. So, I think rather than this instrumentality of the state directly running protected class-based programs, they want to bring in the voices, experiences and existing programs to further resource them in this area of housing and land access. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, because the way that we are suggesting the board be established, not be established as it's going to be money only specifically to one protected class. It's about all of these protected classes and acknowledging that we don't have the depth of resources within the state institutions right now to reach those communities effectively. So somebody might be, there's somebody way better than me, even though I'm in the immigration process, how do you adapt for documentation status and immigration? How do you adapt for different statuses and housing access, if that makes sense? No, it absolutely does. And I really like your phrase of, the 14th amendment has been weaponized. It has. And I'm really feeling that and I'm feeling timidity around pushing up against that. And thank you, that was incredibly helpful about that. How to push back in a way that's going to calm everybody down. But ultimately do what you want it to do. And this is something that I talk about in other areas of the work that I'm doing around equity, which is there's this big desire for everyone to be able to do everything, like each individual body, whatever it is, this committee, institution of the state to be like the wraparound services. And the point is the way that we create wraparound services is by resourcing more groups to do what they're doing. So rather than everyone standing up, their nice little equity program, which quite frankly thus far have been very ineffective for many people in situations, is rather actually saying how do we resource the people who are on the front lines of providing those essential services. And so when we want to solve housing, there's going to be a strategy from the Pride Center that looks different from psychiatric survivors, which looks different from the every town land access and opportunity project. And we need to actually be putting our state funding out there for that support. And the hope is that the LAOB is that connection point, that bridge. Maybe that's just my vision, but. Well, that was really nice to explain. Yeah, I want to build off on that and why that's actually like a bigger thing for your back book than having the state be the ones that's like disseminating these funds. And just noting that because these are organizations that are led by, that are representing these constituencies, they have that trust. They have that like cultural capital. They don't have necessarily the like monetary capital to actually deliver the robust services that they want to. But that's something that I have seen even with some of the programs that for example, BHFA has been trying to roll out. It's just like the distrust of like when they reach out to us and say like, Hey, talk about like the first time, first generation home buyer and stuff. Like if it's coming from an organization, let's say like Peace and Justice Center or every town, there's like, okay, like, you know, the attachment of that entity is like, all right, I trust that this is gonna be, this is actually relevant to me and not like, this is a BHFA, this is a state thing and that's gonna be such a hurdle because that's what people's experience has been when they try to apply for any state, like Medicaid benefits, food stamps. And so that kind of degree of removal and like authority and to some, well, maybe not authority, but to those community organizations is critical to ensure that they're actually effective. Yeah, and to, I mean, I just working with folks in community spaces like how many times we try to band together with each other to help each other fill out state applications. And it's, we're not successful. Like we spend a lot of uncompensated time trying to navigate the systems with each other and for each other, and then we still get denied versus if we are able to kind of be more resource to support our community more directly. Yeah, and I mean, I'll be honest with you all, it's all of the money that has gone into having listening sessions that are not even hosted by us and for us. Right, like it's, and you maybe, maybe you get one person helping to like, the facilitator might be from the community they're trying to talk to, but like I am personally, as somebody engaged in a state body, I know that I have very little energy left to go to another listening session because I'm not seeing that converted into action. And I really trust community based institutions to convert it into action. Right. And often funding is a huge hurdle for people to overcome to say they, we already know what the needs are, but we don't have the dollars to put behind it to answer. So.