 All right, so this is, it is Tuesday, February or March 8th. And this is Senate government operations we're looking at S-251, which is a bill to divest our pension funds from fossil fuel companies. And I understand that there is an amendment. So Becky, would you like to, then Becky can put it up on the screen for us. It's a pretty short amendment and, okay, thank you. Great. So Becky Wasserman, Legislative Council and I will share this with you. I'm just getting used to doing this in my office. I think that works. I'm just trying to see if you can all see that. Is that big enough? Yeah, I, yes, it is for me. Thank you. Okay, so this is S-251 and it's a strike all amendment. The bill is an act relating to divestment of state pension funds from fossil fuel companies. That's the title as introduced. So the underlying bill as introduced had a schedule for the divesting from the state pension funds over a certain period of time, any investments in companies with fossil fuel, the highest companies with fossil fuel reserves. And this is changing the bill to a report, a study and report. So section one is now a report that is coming from the Joint Public Pension Oversight Committee. And this was established last year. It's a joint committee of all legislators. It was established in the pension bill that the legislature passed last year. So that committee, in furtherance of the Vermont Climate Action Plan's goal of preparing the state's economy to adapt to the current and anticipated effects of climate change is being tasked with studying and providing recommendations on a plan for the state to divest any direct interest in companies that hold fossil fuel reserves from the three retirement systems, the state employee system, the teacher system and the municipal retirement system. The plan shall require that divestment from all three systems occur on or before, oops, there's an extra word there, I have to take that out. On or before July 1st, 2027. In developing the plan, the committee will consult with the treasurer, the chair of the Vermont Pension Investment Commission and any interested stakeholders that have investment and environmental expertise. Subsection B of section one is a report requirement. So by January 15th of next year, the committee shall submit a report which would include recommendations for legislative action on the study of the study and plan for divestment to the House and Senate committees on government operations. And then section two has this bill taking effect on July 1st, 2022. And then line seven through nine would change the title of the bill after the amendment passes to an act relating to the study of divestment of state pension funds from fossil fuel interests. Thank you, would you go back up to page one, the bottom of page one? I wanna see that date. 2027. Yeah, it says shall require that. So it is being very directive here and saying that it has to happen before 2027. Yeah, so the plan they're coming up with is I guess the goal of that plan would be that divestment occurs by that date. I mean, obviously if they submit a report to the legislature, that's just the recommendation for the plan but that would be the goal of divestment. Right, okay. Okay, well, I wish we had Senator Clark's in here because she was the, so I think you can take that down unless anybody else wants to keep it up. Oh, sorry, I can put it back up. No, I think we're fine. So I guess what I'm gonna do is ask, first of all, any committee members have any drafting questions for Becky? No. Okay, it's so nice to see those guys sitting in our room there. I'm very jealous of them. Hi guys. Oh, we have? Yeah. We started at one. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought we started at 1.30. No, we're starting at one o'clock every day this week because of... I'm so sorry, Madam Chair. I miss, I clearly didn't focus on that. I apologize. Yep, every day this week, we're starting at one except whatever day we're on the floor at one. So we just... Can I just, I don't know if it's, I don't know if someone is manually doing this, but I don't know if Gal is aware that the camera keeps zooming in and out. So I just wanted to let you know unless in case you did not know that. That happened, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were there. Sorry. Becky, I do know that and I'm trying to figure it out. This is the first day with the in-room camera. So I'm trying to figure out how to keep it from panicking. So it moves as their sound, follows the sound. Is that the idea? It does. I guess it's unclear though. Well, it didn't move then. We can see all four of you. So I think it probably makes sense to just let it be stationary if that works, but. Okay, so we just went through the amendment here and I guess what I would like is to Tom and Eric, do you have any, unless there are drafting questions, first of Becky, we didn't get that resolved. No, no, I thought it was good. So Tom, Eric, would you like to comment on this? Thanks kind of chair. First of all, thanks for having us here again. You know, I know this is a, we've had this is the third meeting on this topic. I want to start by saying this is the first time I've read it. So I'm sort of trying to, trying to figure out the implications of each. There's two things that kind of jump out. First of all, I'm all in favor of the study because I think you can further the work that we did in 2016, 2017 with the Treasurer's Office. So any study, particularly with the new pension oversight committee, I think is a tremendous improvement in what you've written here. So it's moving towards the goals of working with the new pension oversight committee. Couple of things though, I see in here, it kind of presupposes the outcome. What if the outcome of the study is that we want to work more in policy engagement or we want to work more towards mitigation of effects and direct holdings versus indirect holdings that we want to protect our private equity because there's a lot of other issues that could be affected by mandating. And this seems to me that it's presupposing that the investment is the only outcome of this study committee. And that would be a concern of mine. And then the second thing, just initially looking at it, I know the gentleman who spoke with us last time from Canada, as I recall, he had worked, New York had worked with Makita. And I know the prices Makita charges and a study like this probably would run somewhere between 50 to $100,000 to work with the committee. So I would assume I would recommend if there is a request for a study, which I do support, you put in some monies to fund it because we don't have it in the budget for VPIC in the current iteration, going through house appropriations right now. And so if there is the anticipation of a study, we already have two studies that we're anticipating this year. One is a compensation study to look at the structure of VPIC. And the second was the liability study to look at the liabilities of the different assets of the plan. So adding this in would be another one, but it would also take some extra funding. So I'd recommend adding a line item like you did with the pension task force last year. And I know you added at that point, like 250,000. I don't think it would be that much, but I could refer to Eric in that regard. So two comments, basically, I don't think you should presuppose what the committee would study the finding would be. And second, add some funding into the legislation so we could go to and get it in this fiscal year. So we'd be able to afford it into the summer. But thank you. Thanks, Tom. Eric. Nothing to add regarding the bill. I have a number of thoughts on divestment as we've been thinking about it at the commission level. I submitted this morning a copy of my latest report to the commission. And please keep in mind that was written two weeks before the invasion of rain. And what we've seen essentially is amplification of how complicated this transition to a low-carbon world will be. For example, this morning, you see nickel prices up by 250%. As you probably know, there are key ingredient in electric vehicle batteries. We've seen that broad divestment of fossil fuels does not reduce fossil fuel emissions. We think higher energy prices will. We think more efficient vehicles will. But ultimately, reducing fossil fuel emissions requires changing consumer behaviors, changing people commuting, having long commute from the excerpts into cities, changing our reliance on disposable plastic bottles, changing our reliance on polluting agricultural methods. All of these things are consumer behaviors that are not impacted by divestment. Divestment simply, in our view, sells the shares off to a potentially less responsible shareholder at a discounted price. And we're seeing news of that this morning with China sniffing around some of these divested energy holdings in Russia. And we do have some concerns that China's oversight of production and processing of petrochemicals is probably not going to be as effective as those of the prior owners, the Western companies that have divested in these things. And I would say finally that liquidating these holdings when there is concern about ultimate valuation is always an option. We've seen that over the last two weeks as we've divested of all of our Russian holdings. This was not based on a political headline, but based on a detailed analysis of facts by the experts that we've hired for us. So our emerging market debt manager, for example, had begun to liquidate all of the holdings of Russian debt before the market seized up. The index providers followed suit very quickly and removed Russian holdings from all the MSCI indexes and the JP Morgan indexes, essentially pulling them out of our portfolio. And then finally, I think it's tempting to say that the transition to a low carbon environment will kind of leave the big energy companies behind, but that's not what we're seeing. What we're seeing is Chevron, for example, buying up, it's called the renewable energy group. So these fossil fuel companies are making investments in the transition technologies to get us to a low carbon economy. And you're seeing that reflected in their share prices. Chevron, for example, and ExxonMobil are up almost 50% year to date as a result of what's happening. We think this will take time. We think it will take patience, but our investment managers are working very hard to effect these changes, doing things like developing more effective technologies for charging electric vehicle batteries, setting up fast casual restaurants at the charging station. So that if it takes 30 minutes to charge a vehicle when you're on a road trip, you can go in and grab a sandwich, reducing the use of petrochemicals in agriculture. We have technology, technology fund that's investing in smarter technologies. We have managers that are promoting the use of more sustainable methods of controlling pesticides. We think our managers are taking a proactive approach to this. Don't believe that divestment in and of itself will reduce fossil fuel emissions. We do believe that innovation that makes it more convenient for consumers to change their behaviors will do so. And we are investing in those technologies. D-PIC does support the goal of reducing carbon emissions. I think it's in everybody's best interest. The question is, how do you best get there? And as we've shown in our engagement efforts with HES, for example, where we've gotten them to agree to reduce flaring in the Bakken region, our shareholder proxy votes are very effective tools in promoting change. We have a voice through these votes. It's a very loud voice and we take it very serious through our proxy voting policies. Again, we share your goal of reducing these emissions. We just question whether divestment is the right tool to do it. Thank you, Eric. I have any questions? I have to admit that I'm always, not suspicious, but I'm always concerned when we ask for a study when we presuppose what the outcome is going to be of that study. This isn't a study of whether or not we should, how best to move toward more sustainable funds. But it's presupposing that divestiture is the only result. Madam Chair. Yes. So as everyone knows, thousands of nonprofits at pension funds, I mean, huge numbers of institutions across this country and across the world have divested. And to know, to be honest, it is a major gap in the climate action plans proposals that they don't address this issue at all. And I'm happy to work with Tom honing this language with Becky, the three of us could certainly do that. But I think it's very important that we take another look at this and it doesn't need to be quite as prescriptive, but I'm very concerned about that. I think this goes part and parcel with the rest of our climate action plan work and addresses dirty money and money that makes us very open to some of the really tough lawsuits that are gonna come down the pike. There's a huge liability by staying invested in fossil fuel companies. They are going to be hammered and they are going to be, I think this is an important thing for us to be looking at and I would hope that the study would look at that, the potential liability of staying invested in these fossil fuel companies, which in many ways are trying to bear the brunt and the blame for the cleanup that we need to do in our world for us to remain sustainable as a plan. So I think that we could find some middle ground and maybe Becky, Tom, you and I could work to come up with something. Tom, if you wanted to propose something back for Becky and me to look at, that would be great. Let me see what Senator Romain still has a better hand on. Well, I guess I was gonna say, I think this is the middle ground. I would like to see us move in this direction and I wouldn't say that anyone's moving the goalpost right now, but what I thought I heard in the previous testimony was, we get it, we understand the intent and wanting to move in this direction. We just wanna see it look more like New York and have a timeline that is a phasing and something that we can sort of work with in a fiscally responsible way. And I really think it's critical at this juncture, especially in this moment in history, that we say we intend to divest and study in how to get there. I would oppose a bill that creates an offering because I think we've heard that these things are happening and I think from the testimony I've heard and what I've read and seen in other states, it feels insufficient to meet the moment. And I think this is the compromise. It's in that vein that we offered this as a group, but I also think if there is a line, I would be interested in seeing what Tom was at least willing to propose because I agree with you, Keisha. I think this is the middle ground. I think this is something we need to be doing and we just need to figure out a timeline and how to do it. Tom. Well, my only concern is that a middle ground could also be a strong policy that we pick about adopts and that is working through our investment managers. The problem with broad-based legislation is that it will inevitably have unintended consequences on the construction of our portfolio. The language of this bill as written, and this is where I can work with you, Senator Clarkson, in regards to formulating language, you're talking directly held or indirectly held. And that gets to my point from a couple of weeks ago that we hire managers and part of our strategy to get us the 7% rate of return assumption is to move more towards private equity, private debt, where we have significantly less control in regards to the... We're a general partner and we commit years and years ahead of time. And so to get in the top quartile of that group, we give up some of our control of the day-to-day manager of the investments for the benefit of being able to say, well, we overall on our portfolio can meet the 7% of return assumption. This bill seems to lump that together with everything we have versus just our directly held investments. And so looking at the language, maybe excluding that from this discussion, I don't want to water it down. I want to work with the committee through our policy development because I think that's where we'll have more material impacts, at least in a quicker amount of time. You're talking 2027 here, which doesn't sound that soon, but from a contracting point of view, it is very soon, particularly since we've already committed about 600 million or so or uncommitted capital to some of our private strategies. Would we have to unwind any of those? How would this impact? And so I welcome the idea of working on this. I just, I don't know if legislation is the proper vehicle versus policy development, as well as active in an interaction with the oversight committee to get to a common goal. And I guess that's what I'll end with. We do have formed an ESG committee at the commission. We've referred a draft policy to that commission is attached to my memo. The committee will be working through that policy in terms of figuring out how can we best position BPIC assets to not only maximize those returns, but also to affect positive change in terms of global climate change and other issues that are important to BPIC. We did find a study, a 2016 study by the Boston College Retirement Research Center that I think emphasizes your point, Tom, about statutory mandates. That study found that pension state plans that have a mandated divestment program, their returns lag, those that didn't have those mandates by 40 basis points. So, so it seems to me that the, there are three things in here that would not water it down, but that would instead, that we would direct a study, set up a study that would talk about the direct held and leave out indirect held. That would also require the oversight committee to come up with BPIC and the Treasurer's Office to develop a policy toward divestiture and present a timeline for that divestiture. I think that's what, when Senator Rom Hinsdale was talking, she talked about the New York plan that had a plan, a timeline attached to it. So if we had those three changes here so that we didn't, we didn't impose the deadline, we took out indirect and we asked them to actually develop a policy that would lead us toward divestiture. Does that make any sense at all? Or am I not understanding it? I would say that a policy and a plan may be the same thing I would vote, because I think what we don't want to see is just another study. We want to see a plan of action that's going to move us forward. You know, I hate to put, you know, say, but we are legislators. We do legislate. That's what we do. It's sometimes you have to legislate to make things happen. That's because divestment is not happening. But I'd argue that the last study we did in 2017 said divestment would be detrimental to the beneficiaries of the pension plan. We've seen it. It's happening around the country and around the world. But if we don't get a study that counteracts that, the current one that's specific to Vermont already says it's not in the best interest. And so I think a study makes a tremendous amount of sense, but I do not support just blanket, changing us saying we support divestment, because I don't. The current study right now says it would be detrimental to Vermont. And I would argue. We actually need to do a survey of those places that have already divested and see how many of them regret it. But we don't have, but they don't all have 50,000 beneficiaries with unfunded liabilities of $2 billion. I think we, I can't support something that's going to just, you know, the conversation we're having now is the conversation that you're supposed to be having with the study committee, with people developing a plan, not with me and you. That's the only thing. You have to start it with, well, what is this study committee going to be looking at? If you're already pre-supported. It's going to be looking at the best strategies to divest. But what if divestment is at only one tool that is used? Divestment is the one we're talking about. I know that there's other things that can happen in the world. I'm not saying divestment is to be all and end all the universe, but this is bill is about divestment. That's what people are talking about. That's what New York did. That's what Harvard did. That's what, you know, all these other people, entities are doing. I'd be willing to support it. Other things coming up. The study kids, like the things that Eric was talking about, the different factors Eric was talking about, could certainly come up with all the studies going on as well. I'm not saying it's exclusive to divestment per se, but the overall arching goal is to have divestment from fossil fuel companies. I mean, if we're not going to do that, then forget it. I mean, what's the point? I'm not saying we're not going to do that over time. I think it will happen simply because the markets are moving towards that. However, you do want, do not want to jeopardize the state pension plans and force us to lower our rate of return assumptions by eliminating. That's what I'm saying, right? If a troop got together, the group that we're talking about in cement got together and talked it through and did the research and found out that it would hurt the retirement funds, and they would probably close not doing it. No, I think. I think that, that we need to change some language in this because this, this bill, the way it's written, does not suppose that the study could come back saying that at this point, the vestiture would be harmful. It doesn't give any option for that. What it says is that there, everything shall be divested by 2017 by 2027. That's what it says. And that they need to figure out how they're going to do it by 2727. And I think that the three things that were pointed out, and then I see Eric has his hand up is that. It's both direct and indirect. That seems to be an issue that we're asking them to develop a plan and a timeline to move toward divestiture. That it's, I don't see why how that is watering it. Down to. Anyway, Eric. It seems to me that the ultimate goal of divesting is really to reduce global fossil fuel emissions. And perhaps that should be our end goal. And that's certainly how we think about it. Not only are we deploying these assets to maximize returns and paid on these unfunded liabilities, but to affect positive climate results to affect positive change by these polluters to hold management teams accountable for things other than the bottom line and their stock emissions. We've shown that with past. We've shown that with prosperity bank shares. We've shown that with company after company after company, where we engage through our proxy votes to accomplish things that we think are positive from an environmental, social and governance standpoint. That's what we're doing with our draft policy. We've talked to California. We've talked to New York. We've talked to Maine. They all share that view. We just don't see the connection between a blanket divestment and a climate change. And I think that we've also seen the connection between the climate action and the climate climate emissions. When we have more powerful tools to affect that change. I may have to disagree on that. You're. Yeah. Okay. Senator Robin sale. Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't want to speak for others on the committee, but I think you have, you know, at least three members of the committee who are, who are struggling with. Further compromise on this bill. they might still be using some other practices and proxy voting to, you know, further reduce their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, but they have all put themselves on a path to divest. So I'm just not sure what comparison we're making there. I think 2027 is a really reasonable goal given the urgency of the moment that we're in, I hope everyone on this call has read the IPCC report that we are now engaged in an atlas of human suffering by continuing to stay invested in fossil fuels and have a fossil fuel-based economy that's going to result in loss of life, habitat, economic value, and, you know, possible climate failure. So I just don't see, I think we also have to recognize in the moment that we're in that this even goes beyond reducing emissions. We are investing in companies and countries that have been bad actors who are heavily reliant on their own oil and gas reserves or annexing those of other countries. And I just think saying, you know, we want to stay at the table and work with them to do better. It's sort of beyond the time for that. It just seems like this is, I'm just not willing to entertain that at this point. I don't think that's what we're saying. What I'm saying is the state of Vermont has three investment staff. We rely on indexing for a significant portion of our investment strategy. This bill would force me to reevaluate that situation. And I'm going to tell you, if we index $4 billion out of $6 billion, one basis point increase, increases cost by $400,000 to the beneficiaries of the state of Vermont. If we have to change our strategy completely, this bill, as it's written today, implies that all direct holdings as well as indirect, which means I have to look at the whole portfolio. If I have to change it by two basis points or three basis points or four basis points, well, that's $1 million extra in fees that the state of Vermont are going to have to absorb either through increased taxes or decreased rate of return assumptions. And so I'm trying to balance it. I'm thinking a policy would be the best approach. I'm not saying eventually we won't get to be divested. But if you're trying to squeeze out the last 1% of these bad actors at the detriment of the rest of the 99% of the portfolio, I think you're going in the wrong direction. And that's where I would draw the line. And so I don't necessarily think divestment can't be a tool. I think by using it as the exclusive tool is going to seriously jeopardize Vermont. And I'd argue that at any committee that I have to go to. And I will need to get at least $100,000 to do this study. And so I'll have to go to the appropriations committee if you want it done this year. But this is exactly our point with selling our Russian holdings. There's no point in trying to engage there with these bad actors. We simply divested of them. Without a mandate, we concluded that we couldn't affect any positive change there. We've exhausted every route of engagement that could have been there. There was no future for them. So we sold them. So do you believe you're now indirectly out of Russian investment as well? They're not tradeable. Russian investments aren't tradeable. And we had limited amount anyway before this. I think ironically our gains in ExxonMobil and Chevron have offset our losses in probably all of our Russian holdings. And so Net would probably even, with the goal of getting out of them completely once the markets reopen. But that's a different issue. That's not necessarily divestment. That's getting out of an untradeable investment for a lot of reasons. It's more geopolitical versus fossil fuel. Even though fossil fuel has a component of that because of the Russian component is very much fossil fuel investments. And it made up a portion of our 2.5% that we talked about last time as being the whole exposure to those 200 names that came up on the list. So I believe we will get there. And I believe we will get there. I just am worried that mandated legislation without really having the study behind us is a bad move. So I'm going to I'm going to ask we keep referring to New York and their plan. And everybody seems to think that that's the that's the gold standard. What what is their plan? What I mean do they have their plan is a policy. There is no legislation at this point. Okay. And it's a policy. Yeah. It's a policy. A broad statement. So Tom Lee made broad statements that he's going to be divested by 2040, as I believe by when the city or the state. Well, we keep talking about the New York plan. So what are we talking about? I refer to the New York state plan, which is Tom Lee and the chief investment officer's plan for the state of New York. And his plan is to divest immediately out of certain issues. And then to over time use this proxy voting and to create an internal list whereby they will divest if they failed certain tasks over time. And then they'll complete they'll use that as a last resort to get rid of those positions. Eric can probably fill in more in regards to Tom's specific policy. So I just I want to I thought that when we were having something drafted here, that it was going to be reflective of how of the New York state policy. But this does not it does not seem reflective of the New York state policy. So now I'm really confused because I thought that when we talked about it before everybody said yes, the New York state policy is where we should be going. But we're not. We don't have those same steps in here. We're saying an absolute by 2027. They're saying there are certain steps that you have to meet and when you can't when you can't do it this way, then you do it this way. So I'm really confused here because I thought that that was the redraft that we were going to see. Well, at this point, Madam Chair, in our committee process, we felt that actually giving the oversight committee a work and we could add language to look at the New York model and incorporate the New York model as they propose a strategy for divestment. And I would be I'd be happy. I think we'd be happy to do that. I think just step back. What by passing the Global Warming Solutions Act, we have committed as a state to doing all we can to make ourselves responsible actors in the world and divesting from fossil fuel industries is to say we don't want to invest. We do not have the value. We do not support the value of what it means to be invested in a fossil fuel company. And to me, this is just fundamental to the work that we're trying to do. The bigger policy work as a state. So this is consistent with our goals as a state to do this over time. I am and Anthony and Keisha and I haven't spoken together with Becky, but we could certainly build in a reference to the New York model and to the oversight committee looking at as Tom, you know, to looking at the New York model is something to incorporate as one of the things to review and perhaps recommend. Well, I think that it needs to be more of a change than that because this draft clearly says direct and indirect. It clearly says all divestiture done by 2027. It clearly says those two things. And that is not what then so if we were going to say that they should look at the New York plan and incorporate the New York plan or aspects of the New York plan, we couldn't have those two things in here. And I also just and I don't have any problems with us divesting of bad actors and companies. But I also want to remind us that Tom has just said that he will need $100,000 to just to do this study. And that if he has to do this now, because this is by 2027, this is 23, it's going to be 23 before this study gets done. Then that leaves four years. So they have to they're going to have to reassess all of their with the three people that they have, they're going to have to reassess everything. And they're going to it's going to cost over a million dollars. And I want to remind us that we just came up with a really hard fought pension plan to save our pensions pension funds. And I'm happy to divest of fossil fuel companies. But now if it's going to cost us a million dollars over the next four years, we're going to be we're we're just screwing ourselves on our pension on what we just the hard fought concessions that we just made. And we don't want to put those in jeopardy. And we don't have any intention to put the pension funds in jeopardy. Well, it is if we're going to lose a million dollars. If we ask this pension committee to come up with a plan for an investment based upon models in New York, and maybe I want to others and ask them to come up with a plan. In other words, it would be similar to us over a summer study in a way like interviewing people from New York and saying, how did you do it? Why did you decide to do that? I don't see why that would cost the state 50 or 100,000 dollars. Because we're not talking about coming up with a plan. We're talking about looking at plans that already exist, the picking one that works for us. Right. That's not what the study says. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying, we should say. That's what's making a change. It's not what this bill says. I mean, I support this amendment that's been drafted, but I want to say I haven't seen it until this afternoon either. But I think I would be willing to entertain an idea where we said that our intention is to divest. We know that there are other good models, entities that have already divested. We propose that the Pensions Oversight Committee look at a plan, come up with a plan to divest based upon certain models that we know are in use already and say New York and maybe one or two others. And that would, that date would not be the same either. I mean, they, the date, the 27, 27, 2027 date would not necessarily be relevant anymore either. Right. Senator Rom... The easter ones might be next year. And then the longer ones, the ones where you wait trying to change their behavior before the election, that would take longer. Yeah. Senator Rom Hinstale. So I think it's a fair and valid question to ask how New York did this, whether it was a policy in position or coming from their comptroller. I don't know if their comptroller is personally, I don't know if they're elected or appointed by the governor or what political pressure they feel. So they're elected. So, you know, I think I had put a couple emails that would lead us to the comptroller's office for the witness list. I'm not sure exactly what happened. I think there are many ways in which we should let them speak for themselves. But I just want to set the record straight from my understanding that the New York state comptroller, you know, who has touched on divestment efforts at the legislative level and thanked, you know, certain senators and members of the legislature at the assembly in New York for their advocacy work, you know, committed to without legislation necessarily needing to pass full review of every fossil fuel investment, a commitment to fully decarbonize the pension fund by 2040 with phase target dates and a reporting schedule that has an annual report. And the immediate divestments in the next, you know, few years or, you know, on their more tight timeline, they have divested from 22 coal companies, they are divest, they probably have divested since, you know, in the last couple years from tar sand investments, they are divesting from shale oil and gas, major oil and gas like Exxon and Chevron, all oil and gas exploration that is looking to pull new fossil fuels out of the ground, fossil fuel service firms and fossil fuel transportation and pipeline companies. So that's a more immediate divestment approach they're taking. We are not the treasurer or the comptroller. It is hard for us to be as surgical about what can be faced in more quickly and what's going to take longer to decarbonize the entire portfolio. You know, maybe we should use language like decarbonize because even more than divesting from fossil fuel companies that saying we don't want to invest in further carbonization of the atmosphere, which include transportation and a lot of other, you know, elements. I think what New York did is pretty impressive. If we can track to that great, you know, but I just want to make it clear that they have a longer term timeline, but a very short term incisive commitment, you know, to things that they know they are specific and direct to they can divest from while they work on the indirect divestment. That's hard for us to do as legislators, but we don't we need leadership to have that kind of plan in place. But that's and that that I believe is what this amendment, what is trying to happen, what I thought was going to happen with this amendment. It was that it was going to direct the Treasurer and VP to work with the oversight committee to come up to have to develop a policy similar to what New York is doing. And they have their complete divestiture at 2040. And we have it at 2023. That's 17 years difference. I mean, really, what were we thinking? We were ambitious. Well, I don't think 2027. I got three people working on this. New York has hundreds, California hundreds. They index themselves. I don't, they can't do this that quickly. I just really caution you to be careful here. I would be happy to work with this new joint pension oversight commission. And I will commit to make this a priority of VPIC over the next year or two and make frequent reports. When you legislate it, though, it becomes a mandate. And then you need you need monies to bring in consultants, even the gentleman from from Canada said they brought in Makita, Maine brought in Cambridge Associates and Makita to address all of their investments. Those cost a tremendous amount of money. So we need to move this figure out a way to move this forward. And I don't know. I'm not clear at the moment. I'm I guess I'm I'm how we can move this forward. But I'm happy to chat with Becky's gone off the call. Sadly, I think she's no longer with us. Well, no, she is there. But but we I'm going to I'm going to put a little bit of reality in here. We this is Tuesday, we have six bills that we're trying to get out of here. I believe I think it's six before Friday. I was really hoping that this would happen. I was hoping that we could we could do that too, Madam Chair. I'm happy to commit to working on something with Keisha and Anthony, Becky and Tom, that if we could meet at some point fairly soon in the next 24 hours that we could come up with language that we could agree to to keep this alive and move it to the house. Keeping in mind that we don't need 100 people to come up with the analysis of the plan. You need more people stop people maybe to implement the plan, but not to come up with the plan. But but you need people you know, but you do need people as Tom has pointed out, New York and California have a lot of people work, they do their own their own betting, betting of their investments. That's not coming up with the plan, that's implementing the plan. But even okay, all right, okay. So I will I will say if you can come up with something that talks about coming up with a policy that doesn't talk about 2027, I I could never vote for that. I just mean it would be lovely if we could do it by 2027, but I there's no way. And that talks about maybe Senator Rom Hinsale is right, maybe divesting from fossil fuel is not the the term here, maybe it's how to best decarbonize our investments. That's the right term that I used. Keisha, I'm not sure that I was that right, but you know what I mean. They did have short term divestments directly from fossil fuel companies on long term decarbonization. Yeah, right. And I think it's yeah, that's where the decarbonization is used. Long term. So I'll tell you, be in touch but maybe we could all touch base or maybe Becky, Becky, do you have any time tomorrow during lunch? I'm available tomorrow after 1032 and then from three to four. Maybe we could maybe we could Anthony and Keisha and Becky, maybe Becky if you had some time at 12 noon, we could do some work together at that point. I have time then. Could you do that? Okay, okay, let's put something together and try and move this forward because I really, I think three of us would really like very much to at least get this to the house in some form that's workable. Okay. Yeah, I would I would like to do something too, but I don't think this is this is it. Okay. Can you give me money to do this? Is it that this committee or is that? No, I don't know that. Because it costs us 50 grand to do this study in 2016 2017. We're not talking about doing a study. We're talking about looking at the New York and a couple of other states and analyzing them. It's not a study. No, it it. Somebody's got to do it. And if you're looking, you're not, you're looking at five at six legislators on the oversight committee, and Tom and Eric and Beth, that's what you're looking at here. That those are the people that and they you are asking them to come up with a plan. That is a study in order to come up with a plan, you have to have a study to come up with. It doesn't cost $50,000 is what I'm saying. We need subject matter experts, similar to what the pension task force used to come up with a cohesive plan that we could implement over that period of time. And it will cut them out. And California and Maine, they all they all used people to do the studies. So I, I just, I'm going to go to Senator Robinson and then Eric, and then we're going to switch gears here. I mean, this is where I can try and reach out to someone in New York or whatever would be helpful. But, you know, I'm just curious and making sure that our appropriation is well placed. And, you know, it's paying a consultant $100 plus $1,000 versus having a staff person dedicated to carrying this through seems to be a question in my mind. I just want to make sure Tom, have you talked to other states about how they've done it, not just they have a lot of staff that I agree, if we had the staff that we could allocate time for it. But remember, the legislature has also asked me to put a compensation study for this new VIP pick. The integration of the pick as a new entity is going on this next year. The asset liability study to match our liabilities for long to to match the $3 billion underfunded to make sure. So we already have our current investments that really fall out over the next six to 12 months. And so to get another to squeeze, I think we'll lose Katie and Andy if we try to make them do something else. In addition to have Katie work with Beth in regards to all of the ESG work that she does, because I think I gave you that report last time, there's like 11 pages of things that Katie's been doing on there. So I'd love to have another two people that could help me with this. And I'd love to be able to tell you that we could we could fit this in. I'll do my best to see where we can get at. And we have a good idea about it. But will it have the weight that I could use to meet our fiduciary obligation to the pension trust? And without having a third party come in and verify that, I'd be very hesitant to say we could do it in that time. We'll do our best. But that's why I said 50 grand to 100 grand makes sense to me just because that's what it cost us four years ago. If we're going to meet tomorrow at 12 noon, Tom, if you could think further about what we could do for less, because I think it's a legis, you know, we were thinking of this as a legis sort of oversight committee and not with a budget other than paying the legislature. Has that committee, I haven't, that oversight committee hasn't met yet. So I don't even know the members, all the members have been appointed yet, but I'm looking forward to meeting with that committee. I have not been appointed, at least the senators have. I have no idea who, if the house has appointed members yet. Right. So Becky, you and I can figure out who's going to send out a Zoom invite, but we'll send out a Zoom invite Tom, Anthony and Becky and Keisha. Is that okay for 12 noon tomorrow? Yep. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Tom, Eric, Becky. Thank you, everyone. Thanks.