 Okay, first up on the agenda this morning, we have S107. We did a good, a good thorough jog through. So Betsy Ann, if you would join us. Well, my school board meeting is good last night too. Painful, but good. So committee, let's go back through 107 and I think it probably would make sense to jog through the sessions of the bill language as opposed to summary and move this towards markup and vote. Good morning, Fuller Edgar, Betsy Ann, legislative council. Yesterday, like you said, Madam Chair, we took a look at some of those potential amendments to S107 and strike all. The main thing that you wanted to do was add in the automatic voter registration at voter registration agencies. And then there were a few technical cleanup places and then you had discussed wanting to add in the constitutional or put in statute the constitutional requirement for the governor to issue a proclamation prior to the voters voting on a proposed constitutional amendment. So that was the one change that I made from the draft that you reviewed yesterday. Before I get to that, let's just review again what the constitution says. So this is our chapter two, section 72, for amending the constitution. It provides the two chambers, procedural responsibilities and two bienniums. And then after it gets to the general assembly and two bienniums, it then provides that it's the duty of the general assembly to submit the proposal directly to voters of the state when it's approved by the voters of the state it becomes a part of the constitution. But then the section goes on to say prior to the submission of a proposed amendment to a vote in accordance with this section, public notice of the proposed amendment shall be given by proclamation of the governor. And we discussed yesterday how this current chapter on how we ratify amendments to our constitution only discusses a governor proclamation after. And you can find it on page five of this strike all amendment. Here's the current law language on page five at the bottom in 17 BSA 1849. This is talking about a governor proclamation after the vote happened. So this is after the voters have already voted and potentially approved a proposed amendment. It goes to say the governor shall thereupon forthwith issue his proclamation attested by the secretary of state reciting the article amendment and announcing the ratification and adoption of it by the people and requiring everybody to comply with it. So the chapter as we discussed yesterday didn't provide in statute that the governor's proclamation by the constitutions actually supposed to be issued before the vote. It's the purpose of it is provide public notice of the proposed amendment. So with understanding that the current law language is pretty plan just saying that governor issues a proclamation it doesn't say in what form or how. I just use pretty plain language for this potential new amendment here under the first section in the sub chapter of this chapter that talks about what happens after the vote and how to submit the proposed amendment to the voters in the state. So we actually have a section in this chapter called constitutional requirements. And it starts out right now under current law by saying when there's been amendments to the constitution proposed by the general assembly and concurred in by the succeeding general assembly as required by the constitution. It gets submitted to the people of state for their ratification and adoption in the manner provided by this chapter. And so here's some potential language for you to consider for the pre vote governor proclamation. I just provided following the concurrence by the succeeding general assembly which is referring to subsection A language. But prior to being submitted to the people of the state the governor shall issue a proclamation providing public notice of the proposed constitutional amendment. Is that too simple or is that enough? I did look, I Googled last night to see what's been done in the past and from one of the hits that I got the governor's have been issuing proclamations before the vote even though this statute didn't exist yet because the constitution always controls. So governor's apparently have been doing this before the vote without further instruction on what it looks like. The only thing that seems odd about it is to call both the pre notice and the post notice. Both proclamations, that's the only thing that seems a little odd, but I don't feel strongly enough about it that I feel like we should change the post notice. I just think that putting in statute what the constitution actually says makes a lot of sense. Other thoughts, committee? Pretty good with this, right? Okay, so if you want to jog through then, thank you. That's the one substantive change from the draft review yesterday. So the bill just starts out by amending this chapter on how you ratify the constitution. Like in other parts of the bill, it changes free men and free women to the gender neutral term voters. And that's the same thing that the Supreme Court did and just cleaning up language here because big picture voters ratify these proposed constitutional amendments at the general election. So a lot of the changes that are going on in here is just cleaning up the chapter. You don't have to talk more about what the process has to look like if you just say it's conducted by the general election because that's where it's happening. So that's what was going on in this first section one. You had changed, you agreed yesterday to change this heading. So it no longer refers to checklist booths and clerks and more generally to conduct of election. That was one of the technical cleanups. And there's that post vote proclamation language with the strike there just being to eliminate reference to magistrates. We only have a very finite number of them now in the family court. We can just refer to them generally as officers. Then the bill moves into reapportionment and just a lot of cleanup going on here getting rid of reference to senators being county officers, which they're not just mostly more cleanup in regard to reapportionment more of that voter language rather than freemen and free women. Here was in section five, the addition of this undue influence section because it also used that freemen or free woman language that I didn't catch before. Then it gets into voter registration. The first change being in section six about DMV providing its databases to the Secretary of State's office so they can conduct checklist maintenance activities. And then here in section seven is that new section about automatic voter registration at voter registration agencies that you reviewed yesterday with the change from the bill is introduced being that these designations are limited to agencies or programs within agency that are already conducting that are already collecting the documents that are necessary, but also specifically whose secretary, commissioner or other applicable head of the agency has approved of the designation. So there's a requirement that the head of the voter registration agency has to approve of the agency conducting automatic voter registration as part of the benefits that it provides. And also in this language, the Secretary of State being able to audit any voter registration agency whether they're conducting automatic voter registration or standard voter registration, the ability to audit them in case they need to update their procedures to comply with this section with the Secretary of Administration providing assistance that's necessary. So if you go page 16, yeah, around line nine just seems that all the descriptors are plural and obituary and notice are singular. Ooh. I knew it. I had my hand down. That's all right. You've been waiting for me to get to that page. Awesome. No, I saw it wrong. Oh. All right. I paid you last night. Oh. I should do your own research. Did I pay you money last night? Yeah, you did. Okay. So it should read, thank you. It should read obituaries or other public notices. No. Thank you. G'day, g'day. I'll make that change. The only other thing that's going on in this section is just breaking up this really long one subsection in the other subdivisions. Just goes on for pages. That's why it needed to be broken up. Okay. Then the bill gets into political parties and how they get organized with the major thing being to just overall loosen some of the procedures on party organization. For example, the special notice that's required for town meetings is only required, would only be required for bigger towns now, towns of 5,000 or more in population rather than 3,000 and the ability for them to provide notice of town meetings on an online forum that specializes in the news of the community. Just some cleanup and how the language is structured. Instead of saying manner provided above, you're actually specifying the sections, which is what we try to do in drafting. And another big change that's going on here in this chapter is that instead of town and county committees having to file their certification documents with the secretary of state directly, they provide them to their state committee and then the state committee provides a secretary of state with information about the town and county committees that are being organized. Also loosening when county committees have to meet, overall loosening. We got our semi colon that was missing and also you had agreed to clean up the title of this 2319 because the section no longer refer to presidential elections. And we get in the nominations chapter. One of the things that's going on here is eliminating the prohibition on voters signing more than one petition or statement of nomination than the people running. And also for primary petitions, providing explicitly than a single petition shall contain only one office for which a person seeks to be a candidate. And then you agreed yesterday to provide the same for independent candidates, statements of nomination, that they have to provide a statement of nomination for each individual office that they're running for. You can't list all offices on one. There's the elimination of voters. Getting rid of that prohibition on voters not being able to sign more than one petition for the same office. Another thing that's going on in this chapter is that if a primary recount results in a tie, the party committee decides. The party committee already decides if it didn't head to a recount, but there's a separate recount section later in the bill that indicates if a primary goes to a recount and the recount results in a tie, it goes to runoff. But this makes clear that other section that's later in the bill that I'll point out and this language here in 17VSA 2369 makes clear that even if a primary recount results in a tie, the party committee has to decide. And there for independent candidates for their statements of nomination is where you agreed yesterday to add in that a single statement of nomination shall contain only one office for which a person seeks to be a candidate similar to what you provided for primary petitions. This in 2414 is just talking about how long the Secretary of State's office has to keep up the candidate disclosures. They stay up until the next election cycle. Here in section 11 about the election complaint procedure is making clear that this requirement for the Secretary of State to have an election complaint procedure only applies when there is a federal candidate on the ballot and that's in accordance with federal law. Then we get into the conduct of elections and voters changes instead of freemen and free women. Then in section 13, in accordance with that U.S. Supreme Court case, Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Manskey from 2018, it is amending the language on what sort of political material is allowed in the polling place on the day of an election in accordance with that case which struck down in Minnesota law as being too restrictive on political speech. This new language reflects that during polling hours on the day of an election, when you go into the polling place, you can't have political materials that display the name of a candidate on the ballot or any organized political party or that demonstrate support or opposition to a question on the ballot. So it's really focusing on what is that issue on the ballot? What are voters voting on? With the idea being that you limit the restrictions on polling materials to that which voters are voting on because that is part of the influence that these materials could have on those voters. Then, okay, then we get into earlier absentee voters. One of the things that's going on here, there's a lot of duplicative language. The sub chapter is not well organized. So you'll see changes going on in this sub chapter for organizational purposes. But also, one of the things that's going on is injury is added as a basis for the delivery of early voter absentee ballots by Justice of the Peace. Also, throughout this sub chapter, you're eliminating reference to the type of disability that a voter might have that would permit justices to deliver a ballot to that voter. And currently the law says only if you have a physical disability, but there might be other disabilities that a person might have that would make it difficult for the person to get to the polling place. And also, electronic delivery of ballots being permitted for voters who are ill injured or have a disability. So that's kind of big picture stuff what's going on here. First thing, here's the ability in cases of an emergency, even if it's after the deadline to request some EVAB early voter absentee ballot, the town clerk has the discretion to accept a request for an early voter absentee ballot after the current deadline. And that ballot can be mailed electronically delivered or delivered by Justices of the Peace. Some cleanup here of this section. You'll see there's the injury language, removing reference to physical disabilities, just more generally disabilities. You're getting rid of language, calling out people who are residing outside of the US or who are imprisoned because those are still Vermont voters regardless. You have a separate section on what it means to be a Vermont resident. That still applies. It's not necessary to call out those voters here in this chapter. So you'll see that going on in the chapter. This is more just cleanup restructuring of this chapter to make it easier to read. Again, page 41, you don't have to call out people residing in a state institution. They're still Vermont voters if they need the resident definition. Here on page 44, line 11 is language saying, Justices of the Peace, when they deliver early voter absentee ballots, they may but are not required to deliver them outside of the town. More cleanup and restructuring of this chapter. Here's the ability to electronically deliver ballots to military overseas voters. Right now it just says email, but I believe the Secretary of State's office testified on how those can be handled electronically through the voter system that they have rather than email. Here on page 48, starting on line nine, this is duplicative language when voters are blind or physically unable to go to the polls. They can be marked by one of the Justices who deliver the ballots. That's already addressed elsewhere. It's said twice, you only need to say it once. Okay, on page 49 is a new section about early voting in the town clerk's office and depositing ballots into the vote tabulators. This is largely based as we've discussed on the current Brattleboro charter, which already allows for this process but with the language tweaked a bit, but to refresh, this would allow a BCA to vote, to permit its towns, early voters, to vote in the town clerk's office in the same way that they would vote on election day by actually marking their ballots at the town clerk's office and depositing them into the vote tabulator. They have to do it as nearly as possible how they would do it on election day and the Secretary of State would adopt procedures, not guidance. You discussed that language change yesterday and approved it. Secretary of State would adopt procedures that towns would have to follow if their BCA allows them to do this. So this section goes on to discuss basically security measures about how they have to secure the vote tabulator in the ballot bin so it's not getting messed with in any way and they have to keep track of how many voters are using or voting and depositing their ballots so that they have that number that should show up in the vote tabulator and the vote tabulators should keep tracking that number. And anytime there's no election official around the vote tabulator itself in the ballot box has to be secured in the town clerk's office vault. And there's a requirement at the top of page 50 for the town clerk to maintain the record of the voters who are voting in person. And then on the day of the election, what would happen is that the election officials would transfer the vote tabulator in their sealed ballot boxes to the polling place and they don't get opened until after the close of the polls but when they first turn on the vote tab at the polling place town clerk would be required to verify that the number of ballots the vote tabulator displays is having been counted matches the number of voters who voted early in the town clerk's office. And all the ballots get co-equivaled. I don't know if this is a question for you or Will but have the clerks weighed in on this and has this been run by them as far as this big change? Yes, at least the BMCTA legislative committee who has my understanding makes the rest of the court community aware of what's contained in the bill. And their response has been favorable to this? That's my understanding. I doubt that anyone can say that every clerk across the state might hear from them. I don't know if people hear from them. Well, that's why I'm wondering, I don't know that we have heard from them, so I'm curious to know where they stand. We did. We heard you might have been. Carol came in. Right, so she was spending her all of her votes and heard her testimony and they were fine with that. Okay. I think you should know, Rep. Leclerc, that it does take a BCA vote, so. Yeah, I did see that, so there's still that firewall, but it just seems to me that I'm just surprised. Very good, thank you. Isn't it part of it actually to reduce administrative burden of opening the early voter absentee ballots on election day? I think that's one of the things that I recall. And maybe one reason town folk might like it. I'm wondering, and they just, because I mean, they could see election day spilling over into the day before. That's been an area of concern for Leclerc's already, but. Okay. I've heard Leclerc say that they are really happy to get everything kind of set and lined up and like ready to roll so that on election day, they're just concentrating their people in, as opposed to, oh my gosh, I've been checking people in all day and now I have to go process all of the absentee ballots. So I suppose it depends on whether you're a, do you have homework ahead of time kind of person or just rockin'? We have the vote tabulator, but you'll have the BCA members that will feed the absentee ballots in over the course of the day. And we have just a funny two-machine, but. That's right. Marcia and then Nelson. We had talked about the towns that don't have tabulators, but my understanding is that they can continue doing ballots the way they have. Is that true? Yes, of course. Okay. Yeah, I was gonna say I've got one town that does the hand count and then I've got the other that does the tabulator, but Leclerc has made it clear because of our office situation, there's no way she could set up the tabulator and continue to do it the way she's doing it, but. And she, you know, usually Leclerc controls the board of civil authority a little bit when it comes to voting on this. I would expect that no BCAs will prove it unless the clerk says it's in favor of. I think that looks good to me. Yes. All right. So this next section is about defective ballots and it does change what constitutes a defective ballot. It would, a ballot would be considered defective if the identity of the earlier absentee voter cannot be determined. Or if that earlier absentee voter previously returned a ballot in the same election, but it does eliminate the language saying that a ballot is defective if the affidavit on a certificate envelope is not completed. Then we get to the process of voting and counting votes. One thing that's going on here in section 15 is eliminating this requirement for town clerks to store unused ballots for 90 days after the election and just allowing them to be destroyed after the election, unused ballots. And this is consistent with the state archives record retention policy. Then the bill moves on to recounts. One thing that Stashe failed to address is a recount threshold for federal office. So just providing that the federal recount threshold is the same as our statewide county and senatorial offices. Here's that language we discussed earlier about recount ties, specifically saying if a recount of a primary election results in a tie, then that other section we already addressed applies, meaning the party committee has to decide it. This language in A2, if a recount of a public question results in a tie, you go to a runoff, that's just being moved up from current law, subsection D, just to put it all, all the ifs up above in subsection A and maintaining that if a recount of a general election results in a tie, then you move to a runoff election in accordance with the remainder of this section. Section 18 addresses a logistical issue. This is about special elections for vacancies in our congressional offices. It was pointed out that the current law language might not work out logistically, depending on when the vacancy happens and when the next upcoming election occurs. So this is saying that a special election for congressional vacancy may be held on the same day as an upcoming general election, so long as the requirement for ballots to get out 45 days in advance can be met. Then we move into local elections. This first section is about local election petitions, two things going on here. First, eliminating the requirement that a local election petition has to have the candidate's name appear as it does on the voter checklist. So if they want to use a nickname, for example, and also similar to what you've done elsewhere in the bill, eliminating that prohibition on voters signing more than one petition for the same office unless there's more than one nomination being made. So voters can sign as many local office petitions as they want. Then it gets into how towns might vote on the town manager form of governance. These changes were requested by the Secretary of State's office as I understand it, just to clean up the language of this chapter because the language was a bit clunky. So this is just changing the language on how the ballot language actually has to appear, for example. And then we get into campaign finance reporting dates. What's going on here is a move of the August reporting date. It currently says that campaign finance reports have to be filed on August 15th because we've got that earlier primary. This campaign finance reporting date normally happens after the primary. So the suggestion was to move it from August 15 reporting date to August one reporting date. And because you would move it to August one, it made sense to move the July reporting date to July one rather than July 15 to keep the time spread out. I have a question on campaign finance reports. If I had money left in my campaign fund, left over from my campaign, am I required to file on March 15th or was I required to file on March 15th? That might be a better question for Mr. Sending. Yes, you were. Anyone who carries money over for a new campaign has to report on all regular reporting deadlines. I better get on with that. I can help you with it. I can help you with it. Good question. The no activity report option is... There was no activity and it's yes. Other than meeting today, taking a couple dollars for holding things, we're doing that more. Betsy Ann, at the top of page 57, that doesn't look like a sentence to me. Shall the town name? Shall the Montpelier adopter rescind the town manager of former governance? It just should be the voters of, perhaps, shall the voters of or something like that? Isn't it what it appears, for example, shall the city of Montpelier adopt the town manager of former government? Yeah, I mean, it's just something lacking in that sentence. I think if you, so for town name, shall the city of Montpelier adopt the town manager form of governance? Oh, okay, if you put city up or town up, then that completes it. All right, I knew it was small. Then, the last section is the effective date section. And there, you've changed again. The effective date for the Secretary of State having to adopt procedures, not guidance or guidelines, has to take place by January 1, so that those procedures are in place by the time that early voting by vote tabular in town clerk's office takes effect on July 1, 2020. Questions for Betsy Ann? So, committee, there's one other elections issue that is sort of a timely nature. And you'll recall back in February, we did a jog through of H-236, which is amending the membership of the Legislative Apportionment Board to include two independent members of the Legislative Apportionment Board. And middle of February, we heard from Tom Little on when we were considering the Senate redistricting limitations, we heard from him that he thought it would be a good idea to include independent members of the LAB. And so, before we vote this election's corrections bill out of committee, I thought I would just ask if we wanna pause and take the time to consider putting that in this bill. Jim? How do we classify someone as an independent when we don't have party registration? Right. That's the one issue that we would need to come back to, to try to figure out whether we can craft a definition of what eliminates you as an independent because I would assume that absent designation pretty much anybody could be considered an independent. And so there are some questions in my mind of whether we'll be able to do that. But I thought it was worth asking if we wanted to just take a moment to try. I mean, if I may, I don't personally have any issue. I think everybody should feel like they're representative, but I do question. I mean, the party members of the rear portion are self-proclaimed party members. So I just worry about the class line of the independent. And I guess from a procedure question I would have if we didn't include this here and we wanted to take this up next year so that we felt comfortable with that designation, can that still be done in time for the reapportionment board? I don't know when we set that up. Can I just say an apportionment board is appointed when? It's July 1 of next year. So there would be time next session effective on passage or what have you if they made it through. Just thought. So give some thought to how you would designate somebody as an independent or what would be the conditions upon which somebody would not be able to be designated as an independent. And do we have the ability to do that? I guess this is another question. All right. So committee, how are we feeling about this bill? As we've now looked through it twice in the last 24 hours. All right. I would entertain a motion. Representative Betsy Ann. And I would just change it. If you are going to move to approve, I would change it to 2.2. 2.2. Because you have to make it so true. Thank you, Rep Holston. We'd like to be grammatically correct. So I would make those changes on page 16, line nine. So Representative Rovicki moves version 2.2 of S107. The idea if Bob is going to be in the building today at all, I'm going to see out all day tonight. I'm going to leave it out all day. Okay. So we won't hold the vote open for now. Any discussion on this? I have just a procedural question. If you wanted to add this on the bill, you don't need to wait, too. Well, I think I was sensing that since we have time to consider this next year or the July 1 appointment of the Legislative Apportionment Board, that we would hold off on that and just ask people to mull over in their heads whether there is a clean way to define what an independent is. An independent is a disgruntled Republican or disgruntled immigrant. I don't know. How do we know what an independent is and it's not? Go right ahead. Gannon? Yes. Kidd Smiller? Yes. Rovicki? Yes. Leclerc? Yes. Harrison? Yes. Gardner? Yes. Lastic? Yes. Ronnell? Colston? Yes. Colman? Yes. I'm going to ask Mike to take the lead on this and he may want to tap one or two other individuals in the committee since it's a 60 page bill or I guess a 59 page bill. And I will update the section by section summary. Great. Of your weeks. So we just need to get Mike a clean copy of the bill and make those dramatic changes and if he can drop it off to the clerk's office by the end of the day. Sounds great. I'll set it up to Kelly. Thank you. Great. And you'll forward that to Kelly as well so she can put that on the table. Yes. Yes. Great. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. What do we do with that? I know so organized who just whips out a 10 page summary of the bill universally. Okay. So we need to take up the City of Montana Charter relating to energy efficiency and that's each 547. And so I have Mayor Watson up first. Yes. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. I'm sorry I'm behind. Did you, did I see you had some? I did stand along some written comments. Sorry. Oh no worries. So I'm good. Well hello again. Thank you for coming back. Thank you. Yes, thank you for having me back here again to speak to you about a Charter amendment. So I am delighted to be here to represent the voting public of Montpelier. I also want to point out I'm a couple other folks who are here. So we have Paul Markowitz from the Energy Committee in Montpelier. Abby White from Efficiency Vermont and Richard Faizie who is a part of the Energy Futures group. One of the reasons that I want to point them out is because Montpelier has a great robust set of partners on this Charter amendment and they have been really fabulous in helping us think through the logistics of what this could look like for us. So just a little bit of background as to how we got to this point. The city of Montpelier has a net zero energy goal for the whole community. We'd like to reach net zero energy by 2050 which compliments nicely the state's goal of 90% renewable by 2050. And as you may be aware, neither the city nor the state is on track to meet those targets right now. One of the reasons that we feel that there is that that's not making us as much progress as we would like to see is because there are some market failures actually that would appropriately push people towards making energy efficient decisions. And one of those market failures really is something called the split incentive. So we talked a lot about the split incentive as a community both with the council and with the public as leading up to this vote that happened on time meeting day. So the split incentive, if you're not familiar is a problem where the, let's say you have a renter who is paying for heat in their apartment. They don't have any authority or power to do any weatherization work to reduce their bills for heat, but the landlord or the property owner may not want to make that investment because they're not paying for the heat. They may not be able to actually make up any of that investment that they would have made. So that's one market failure. Another market failure is in terms of the pricing of houses. So if someone goes to sell their home, if they have done weatherization work or let's say they have solar panels on their roof that may actually not translate into increased value for their home and we see that as inherently problematic as well. So just like car manufacturers are required to tell you about the gas mileage rating of the car, we think it would be right to have standardized energy efficiency information about a home so that buyers can make the best possible decisions for their purchase. So those are a couple of things that we have been talking about as a community. We also just want to know that with this charter amendment that would allow us to regulate energy efficiency performance and energy disclosure in both new and existing homes, that is just one piece of a larger picture for us. We want to be supporting anything that we would be looking to enforce. We want to support that with education, outreach and particularly incentives. So I've actually already, I'm already having conversations with VSECU about how we can support initiatives in Montpelier. We already have a program with efficiency Vermont specific to Montpelier. The city itself has some revolving loan funds that we're reconfiguring right now to hopefully support this work so that in the end property owners would be financially well supported to make any transitions that they need to make. And then the only other, actually I have a couple other things to say I suppose. So I just want to also point out that the city of Montpelier already has authority to make these kinds of regulations for new construction, for additions or renovations, anything that would qualify, that would require a permit. So really this is just an extension of the authority that we already have. Seems like a logical sort of next step to also look at how we can be addressing this for existing buildings. And then I also just want to point out that one of our inspirations for this was an ordinance that Burlington has in which anytime a multifamily building is sold that building must meet a certain energy performance standard as a part of the sale or at the time of the sale. And that there is a cap on the amount that a property owner might be required to spend so as to not prevent the sale. And as far as energy labeling goes we're also looking at what cities across the country are doing. One for example is Portland, Oregon. So there is precedent for the kinds of ordinances that we are looking to do here. And we're excited to move forward. So thank you again for hearing us. As you're rep, you know, I will support this. But I have one concern is for, let's take the case of an elderly couple possibly out of fixed income. They may have spent 30 years paying a mortgage on their home and that will be included but they don't have any extra money. How do we force them to spend money that they don't have to make their home more energy efficient where it can be done to fix the problem for them? So particularly for someone for a couple like that we would be looking at organization perhaps like Capstone who also works with low income for monitors to do weatherization work. So already having conversations with them about how we can partner with them. And I think we would want to absolutely keep that in exactly that case in mind as we move forward. It just came to me that one possible solution might be to forgive that requirement for their lifetime but when they pass and the house is sold to require a new owner. Yeah, perhaps as a part of that transfer property or sale. Sorry, I can't really call on people, can I? You do have another answer. Richard Fasey with Energy Futures Group in Hinesburg and a resident in Starksboro. Portland, Oregon has implemented a similar time of sale requirement for information. There are a number of exemptions they built into that for certain cases and I think we would look at that as part of my pillar for people who are transferring properties within families or a low income situation. And then also as Ann suggested that there are a number of program resources that are out there, we would make sure to line up those resources with people in need. Okay. Good. As long as they're seen and heard and cared about. Paul, would you like to share something? Just one of the points is that we envision a fairly robust public process in terms of what the specifics would be that would be actually passed. I mean, this is just giving us broad legislative approval. The specifics of what it looks like, point of sale, is it applied to rental properties? What applies to owner occupied? Those specifics would be addressed through a process we're already talking about reaching out to the property owners in June and having a discussion. So we look at a robust process to engage the public property owners as well as home owners. Jim. So I have a couple of questions. First of all, I believe there was language, but it's the language of the original charter proposal that we received here says enforcing minimum energy standards. It doesn't say anything about regulating, which so enforcing to me means what's on the books, but regulating means coming up with new ordinances. So how do we reconcile what was proposed to us in the original part? So the way that we had talked about it as a council and with the community really was more in line with the regulate sort of language. We did have original reference to state and local sets of standards, which is to say that we wanna use the kinds of standards that already exist, but because there are no standards for existing buildings, we would have to have some kind of, we'd have to create some standards there. So this language that is before you now is actually more in line with the intent of the way the council was talking about it. Okay, intent in your mind and in my mind might be two different things. Fair. What was the charter presented to the voters when they actually voted on it? What was the wording? It was able to enact ordinances to enforce. Okay, so we're taking a leap of not approving something that was not what was before the voters. So just FYI, we've had another charter that has a perhaps similar issue. Larger. Larger issue, I'll grant that. I'll take faceted. Okay, secondly, when we enact state, federal, whatever, energy standards, you mentioned cars, it typically goes on, new cars going forward. We don't typically go backwards and say, by the way, your cafe standards need to be on your 10-year-old dodge, need to be expressed. What you're proposing here in the revised wording or intent is to go back and say, well, yeah, you do have to change the gas standard of that 10-year-old dodge. Yes. When we do plumbing standards, we might say, you got to have low-flow toilet fixtures. And we don't tell people that, by the way, this is the standard, you better change all your plumbing. I appreciate that. You'll go through a, as Paul mentioned, a robust public process, but we're really opening this pretty wide, wide enough that I'm not sure the legislature would go back and make people change their plumbing fixtures in their house. So, I just. My errors. So, I would point out that one major difference there is that cars end up off the roads in approximately 10 years, whereas buildings do not typically do that, and Montpelier is pretty well built out. So, we don't see cars, we don't see buildings, we don't see a lot of new construction going on in Montpelier, and so being able to address our current built infrastructure is really important. If we're gonna reach our net zero energy goals, there's no way to do that without addressing existing buildings. What was the, you may have said this during your presentation, I apologize. What was the vote on this? It was actually 51%. It was very close. Rob? I got a couple of questions, one I'm gonna sort of echo my friend's concerns to my mom here today. Oh, I'm here today. Today. No. It's still her. It's important. You know, to me, the process is kind of backwards, and I'm gonna make the analogy here with your public safety authority. I was part of that discussion early on, and I felt that you needed to go through and flush out some more things than were done before people went ahead and got hooked on with that public safety authority, and I'm gonna see if my prediction was true. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent on that thing, and it has gone nowhere. I look at this as the same way here. You're asking for a blank check to go through and have these robust discussions after the fact, and my preference would certainly be is you have those robust discussions before because I'm one of those landlords that own multi-family buildings, but I will say I make a point not to buy anything in Montpelier because Montpelier is very challenging. Very, very challenging. I pay my heed, my tenant's heed, but this to me is just when you're gonna go through and now interject yourself into my closing on property, I have some major, major concerns over that. And as you say, Montpelier has not had a lot of development. You might take a look in the glass and say, why haven't we had a lot of development? You have a lot of old housing stock. Vermont has a lot of old housing stock. Multi-family units are all old housing stock, and it is very expensive, even without somebody looking over your shoulder to go through and make the upgrades that you have to make. So I have some major concerns over this. Normally I'm a local control person, but I think this is absolutely an overreach person. I also own apartments and I pay both the heed and lights, electricity for those units. And it's more so because most of the tenants today have very difficult time paying for heed or lights and rent because they make choices. So this way here, they only have one type of payment. But at the same time, that kind of challenging to maintain a place like that. I've done all new windows, I've done insulation, all new doors, and the very old house probably built in the 20s. But the catch I see is that right next to me is somebody else who owns a duplex who has a very much challenging meeting in his own bills when he's running there. How is he going to, I know you talked about having others come in, but I continue to see the regulations change where how you as a renter can rent property. So you as an owner has more and more challenges all the time where the renters are getting more and more assistance or other things to help them through this process. If you do not help those other owners of property in some way, they're not going to spend that kind of money. I think I put $90,000 in a private house to try and get the energy up. It's crazy. So the thing is how do you get people to do things like that, I don't see it easily and I don't see it by coming in and passing an ordinance that says all of a sudden you have to do X and most landlords won't even know it because they do live out of town, a lot of them, and all of a sudden they're receiving these regulations. What you find instead is they'll be selling and they'll try to sell to some of the residents as well and you'll end up with another bigger problem. Now you're going to have more places to assist or places that won't be rented at all and you'll see signs happen where they're left, they're empty. So that would be actually a remarkable thing for us because Montpelier has a less than 1% vacancy rate right now. So this is absolutely a seller's market and this is arguably absolutely the right time to be doing this sort of thing because properties in Montpelier are really hard to come by. The same in my town, I see this selling but the problem is I have, and my town's rural, very few in it, but most of the people that buy in our state, but the catch that I see is the challenge is how do you work with all parties as the key? Yes, so for the folks that you described who are of low income, they have lots of assistance and even if they don't own the property, there's still assistance available for them. For the next sort of tier up, there are other assistance programs that are available and I think Efficiency Vermont has programs for them as well. So part of the intent with our discussion is to find like how do we appropriately assist everyone on the spectrum? I guess I need a better understanding of how you would put this into practice. So would a home just be audited when it's getting ready to be sold or? So actually I'm gonna defer that answer to Richard if I'm right. So I think there's a little bit of clarification that would be helpful too. I think we're talking about two market sectors here. Your question was primarily, as I understand it, focused on single family homeowners and residential homeowners and the disclosure component of this. What we've been talking about previously is energy standards for rental properties. So I think there's sort of two sectors out there that this would potentially address. On the single family sales side, right now there's no standardized way of informing the subsequent buyer of what the energy use of that home would be and right now you can provide past energy bills, but if you have a large family that's moved out and a small family that's moving the energy, a different weather from one year to the next or somebody sets their thermostat at a different point, there's no standardized way of assessing the asset as we call it in the business. So it has some standardized way of ensuring that there's a way of looking at buildings across different ownership families that move in there. So the model that we've been looking at, efficiency of Vermont has been putting together based on one that's available, it's rated millions of homes in the U.S. as part of one of the online realtor portals. And it's simply that the seller or the realtor can put in the age of the home, the heating system type, the size of the home and some other features without having to hire an independent person for a cost that might delay and come up with a standardized measure of that home's energy usage that would then be conveyed to the buyer. So they have some idea of what's there. If they had done some additional improvements to that home, done a home performance, whether they should job or put in a new heating system, they can fine tune that in the model and come up with that information as well. So this process, efficiency of Vermont is developing these tools right now, would work with the realtor association and others and phase this in over time as well too, do the training and provide those resources so that standardized dollars per year, what it's gonna cost for someone when they're buying a house, they have that information upfront as they're looking at homes. Go ahead, yeah. Now on the other side, Ritha, you mentioned the rental, how would that be different? Well, presumably the rental could use that same information. The presumption as well too, looking at what Burlington has done, they have some minimum energy standards that buildings would need to meet when they changed hands. In Burlington's case, it's when the properties are sold and that's one of the potential triggers that could, Mark Healy could look at. Of course, this is gonna be part of the conversation that Paul mentioned, the discussion with property owners and others in town, how that would actually work. The way it works in Burlington, if you have walls that are uninsulated, believe it or not, there's still a lot of buildings in Burlington that don't have insulation walls that those would need to be filled with insulation. If you've got single pane windows, you need to put a storm window on it. So there's some sort of minimum standards and in Burlington as well, they have Vermont gas systems, serves most of those customers and so they have programs for subsidized heating systems and incentives for improving the efficiency of the heating systems in hot water systems as well too. But only at the time of sale. That's just at the time of sale, yes, in Burlington. Now something. What about change of occupancy? That's where it comes in the realms. I know that due to times of sales, what you do with product, what about change of occupancy? Is that when you go in and check each time there was somebody leading? You wanted to address that? Not necessarily. We could, but it just depends on how we set it up. Do you have an occupancy permit now and not through here? Where a person can't change? If a runner moves out before somebody can move in, you have to check the property, give them an occupancy permit? I'm not sure, actually. That's a good question. Rob? Well, to go back to the multi-family, I find it hard to believe that there would be anybody out there that would consider buying a unit that doesn't go through and do a cash flow analysis and you pin down exactly what your utility costs are, your income versus loss. I mean, to me, you're already trying to, that's redundant. And again, I'll express my concern is that you're trying to interject yourself into a process. You're very late in the process because if I've got the property listed, so you're telling me that I have to go through and have this energy audit done and have all the recommendations that they're claiming need to be addressed before I can sell my property if I own one of my players, is that the position you'd be taking? I believe that's similar to what's done in Burlington right now. Though there is a cap on the amount of money that would be the property owner or seller would be required to spend. What would that cap be? I don't know what Burlington's cap is. I think it's something like $1,500 a unit. That's a pretty minimal. It might be a couple thousand and they're looking at adjusting that. I don't know what's there. So if you've got a four-unit gear document or from $6,000 to $8,000, did you have to invest in that property before you can sell it? Sure. Sure. Okay. Great for somebody that doesn't have to pay that bill. Which won't come close to really energizing that building at $6,000 or $8,000. When it was a loan for what you're talking about for apartment, we'll go way beyond exceed that. So I guess my concern that I'm hearing is you want to do something that's energy efficient and make sure these places meet those requirements. But I know from past practice that there's a significant cost to do that to an older building. So if you're really planning to do this to gain, you have to look at it in a much bigger picture is the way I would look at it to meet that. Because if you do this, touch the thing, you really haven't accomplished anything at all where you think you're going. Well, so I would make the case that we are trying to think about this in a big picture way. Trying to have the authority to do some regulations around this. We'd also, I mean, we know that incentives alone are not sufficient to make people, make the choices towards energy efficiency that we know need to happen in order for us to meet our own goals. And so if we, actually it's interesting if you look at the data from up here, even for this year, because we've had this conversation as a community, we have not implemented any regulations at all at this point. But even just by having the conversation, the number of energy efficiency projects that have been done and are being tracked through efficiency Vermont is already greater than the totals for the previous years. One with, as we know, the population in our state is older than, there's very few young people. Most people that are doing these investments, you know, I just did an investment in my own home. I know that I will not recover I put in the people, even though I have a very efficient furnace in the new home. I will not be around when I get back the money that I put into that. I did it because I wanna make sure of the future of people. But the bottom line is, there are people out there that just, I just don't see how everybody's gonna be able to afford this, this is where I come from. It's gonna be hard for people who are in fixed incomes that are elderly, living in a home that they own to meet the requirements to really improve the efficiency of a house. That's my concern, how do we, and if we force people into that, what we really do is force them into worrying about how they're living, whether they're gonna buy food or whether they're gonna pay for efficiency or something else. And I think we're doing the wrong thing if we do that. We shouldn't be putting pressure on people in areas that we know they can't meet. And again, I'll just repeat that we have, we're planning on building in some supports, particularly, especially for that type of situation. And I wanna thank you for doing the right thing with your property, that's awesome. I would also observe that from an economics point of view, it's also, it's not necessarily a financial decision. It was a decision about what's right for the universe and right for humanity. And we need more people like you. And if everybody was behaving like you, then we wouldn't be in this situation. But we know that we are. And not everybody's making that same choice, unfortunately. Usually when people sell a property, they fix it up a little bit and the price of the supports goes on the market. And you build those costs into the selling price of that property. So if you have added energy efficiency to that house, I would think it would make it more valuable and therefore you up the price and you recoup your money back. Yep, that's my, yep, limited knowledge of real estate. And a lot of real estate, that is not always the case. You could put a brand new roof on a property and it doesn't necessarily enhance the value because people are walking in there buying that place expecting they're gonna have a roof that does not leak or a septic system that works. You could put in a brand new septic system. Energy efficiency, it does not necessarily add. It might drive down your annual cost if you have it long enough. That can help the fact too but I'll still go back to, we have a lot of old housing stock and you wanna talk about doing the right things. I mean, when you spend $15,000 on a rehabbing one apartment, takes a long time to get that cost back and you may not ever get it back. So, no, it does not always equate a dollar spend as a dollar return by any means. So we actually have data on that and I'm gonna refer to Richard. Well, I was gonna respond. Okay. This is exactly why we're trying to do this is to leverage the power of markets. Right now, this information on energy consumption is not out there in every transaction and home sale. If it is, people start valuing it. There'll still, the appraisers will have that information in front of them. There'll still be a standardized way. As people look for properties, they'll know to look for that information. So we're trying to leverage the power of markets through transparency, trying to have a way to put this information in front of people so that they can value energy because right now the markets are broken and people aren't valuing it. So information is the key to one of the components we're trying to put in place here. Yeah, just to follow up, there is data out there in places that have implemented energy efficiency labeling and it does show positive impact on sale homes. I would love to see those sources. Yeah, to me. Any time on the market too. Yes. You get that? Yeah. So I agree information is very helpful. I buy an appliance. I look at that energy guy. There's new appliances when I buy a car. I've been influenced, everything else being equal by the miles per gallon. But that's a transaction for a purchase decision. What you're proposing here is to pass an ordinance that may put everyone who's in an existing home or a commercial storefront, you could have a representative of Kits Miller's old store. Probably big single pane picture windows. We're 74 that we're all exactly the same size and it took sort of a three year plan to replace all of them. But had you not replaced them, this would have said, by the way, you gotta have double pane, triple pane, whatever the case may be and it's gonna cost you $30,000, whatever to do that. We're not talking about when he sells that real estate. We're talking about existing. You could be in a home that you're gonna be planned to be in for the next 50 years. You've gotta upgrade it because you passed a new ordinance. So this is pretty broad. This is not the language that was approved by the voters on a very close vote. This is gonna require, and from my perspective, a little bit more conversation. I guess one thing I would like to see if we agree on is that there are market barriers out there to helping the state achieve its 90% by 2050. Split incentive is not something we made up. It's not something unique to Montpelier. It's all across the country in terms of why property owners who don't pay the heating bill don't invest in improving efficiency. It's not like, some of those, like I'm a representative here, but do the right thing. What we're trying to do is go after the folks who aren't doing the right thing, aren't those. So it's like, let's agree that yes, there's a need for regulation as much as we don't, a lot of us don't like regulation. Things that the market alone aren't gonna get us there. And also we're asking for is the broad authority that will then have the conversations, property owners, renters across the board in terms of what makes sense for Montpelier. That's what we're asking for. You know, I agree with all the disclosure. I think that's very valuable. But when I hear the word we're gonna go after people, it really concerns me. Because I think the first step is really getting the disclosure out there and making sure that people understand how energy efficient their apartment is, that they're renting, or how energy efficient the house or condo they're purchasing is. That I see as a great first step and to see how that will influence people's decisions to purchase or rent. But it's the second part, when people get penalized that I do have some concerns around. So I think it would be helpful at this point if we asked Tucker to join us and to go through the actual words that we have settled upon after a little bit of refinement. Do you have that so that you can pull it up? It's in the Montpelier document. Okay, so let's go back to the document. Tucker, you can help put this in context for us so that we can see how this exists relative to the pressure on the impact. Very well done. Okay, so yes, this is the original. Let's see. Good morning, Tucker Anderson, Office of Legislative Council. Taking a look at the suggested amendment to H547 that Montpelier has brought this morning. First, it would add the term regulation to what was presented to the voters that would allow ordinances to be adopted in this specific instance that are, in addition to those energy efficiency standards that are outlined in general law and we'll come back to that at the end of this amendment. The clause at the end here states that the city's energy efficiency standards shall be at least as strict as the standard said by 30 VSA chapter two. That is the chapter, title 30, that sets the statewide energy efficiency standards. There are provisions in chapter two that allow for local enforcement of those statewide energy efficiency standards. And most importantly, they allow a municipality to enforce them through their issuance of a certificate of occupancy or a plumbing or electrical permit, which is the basis for the city of Burlington's ordinance that was discussed earlier. And an important note that should be thrown out and further discussed, perhaps when you come back to this, is the capacity for any level of government to interfere with the sale of property that has come up quite a bit this morning that somehow property would not be allowed to be sold unless it met certain standards. The standards may very well affect the value of the sale, but to intervene in the transaction of property would likely constitute a governmental taken. Now, how does state law address this very specific issue? How do we get to the top here? Well, in that chapter, there is a subsection added into, am I even in the right chapter? Can I help you? Please. That, you've seen quite a bit in this committee, that has been discussed quite a bit, and that you added to H526 when discussing the survey plans. This subsection I, title validity not affected, a defect in marketable title shall not be created by a failure to issue certification or a certificate as required under subsection F, subdivision H4 of this section. This is for the disclosures. This is stating that as these energy efficiency standards are being measured and enforced, that the title to the property is not going to be affected by the rating or by the enforcement done by the municipality. The buyer may have leverage in the city of Burlington to say this property is not as valuable as you are asserting because it is not meeting the city standards, but the city is likely not going to be able to say you can't sell this home because it's not meeting our standards. Also a note to throw in this discussion that came from the Senate on your committee bill H526. On the floor there was discussion about the city of Burlington's energy efficiency standards and the president Pro Tem shared a story that he had to replace a broken window and that window was installed before some of the new energy efficiency standards. And when he replaced it, he had to record on the title for his home that the new window met the city's energy efficiency standards and he had to pay the city recording fees that were just increased by this committee. So there is a more robust and complicated... Say that was the Pro Tem. Yes. There is a bit more of a robust discussion around these issues to cover very quickly as I scratch your iPad. I'm not even sure where this is anymore. Some of the differences here between the authority that would be delegated to the city of Montpelier and what lies in general state law. Really it's here regulating the disclosure requirements which Alan Czajkowski from legislative council may be able to more articulately and delicately explain. But as far as I know, those are optional at this point. So there could be authority here to make the mandatory. And the second, the existing properties which has been part of the in-depth discussion this morning. Let's choose for a timer or for Alan Czajkowski for energy efficiency. Thank you very much for the rapid walkthrough of the language. So committee, we have floor bells ringing. We will come back to committee right after the floor. We have S134 right after the floor and we have charter committee discussion for tomorrow morning. So we'll work and do good work.