 Tuesday, September 8th, I believe. This is Senate government operations, and what we're looking at committee is, and people who might be watching, is lessons learned from the COVID-19 and how we apply those lessons to areas within our jurisdiction, and some that aren't in our jurisdiction that have thrown it to us, but so that we will not find ourselves having to scramble should we have an emergency or some kind of an event in the future. So with that, and we are hoping to have this bill out on Thursday, because if we want to get it to the house and have them have any time with it and then make any changes or add anything, we need to, because we have two weeks left. Am I right about that? Is that what we figure? Oh, three. Yes, this is the beginning of three weeks that we have. Three weeks, yeah. So if we get it out on two on Thursday, that leaves two weeks for for everything else that needs to be done to it. So with that, I think so far we've looked at open meetings, posting of meetings. Tucker has been walking us through them. Betsy has walked us through a lot of stuff with OPR and the medical board and some other issues. So who would like to start here? Well, I can start. I want to tell Ms. Rask, I found the bill and I read it, and your language is much better than what we sent you. Oh, that's almost always true. Right. And I didn't know there would be a sunset. So yeah, I've read it and we'll find with it. OK, so that that is the for people who aren't aware that that is the section that deals with the ability of sheriffs to access emergency community emergency county funds in the case of some kind of an emergency. And they'd have to work with the side judges to do that. And I guess you worked with Sheriff Boneyack on that. And so you're OK. I sent him the same language and said it was fine. And I assume they don't think the redraft is fine as well. And Jack, I hate to ask you this, but as the clerk, I have to. Would you be kind enough to identify yourself? Sure. I'm assistant judge Jack Anderson, Windsor County. OK, so I think that is does is everybody on the committee OK with that that section so that we can just cross that one off. All right. To be clear, Senator, these are reserve funds that were statutorily allowed to have just in case. And there are there are caps set by statutes to how much money we can have what percentage of the budget and that that sort of thing. So it seems to be a continuation of what we did for COVID. And I didn't know it'd be a county emergency. I thought it would have been a statewide emergency. So that's that's cleared up for me. That's Ian. Yeah. Hello. That's Ian Rass, Legislative Council. Do committee members just want to look at where that language is? Yeah, I was trying to find a page in 15. Is it last? So this is on page starts on page 13. So Tucker and I I understand the committee will want to have one bill just because of our schedules right now. We have two separate drafts and the one that I put together covers local elections, professional regulation and the emergency emergency share of funding. And so this sheriff language is on section 13 starting on page 13. And it just takes the language that you already enacted for it was Act 100 that addresses the emergency public safety issues and converted it into a permanent statutory provision that could be used off the shelf. In case there is a future state of emergency that would impact the sheriff's department. And so the language there on line 15 starts up by saying during a state of emergency declared within a county under 20 VSA chapter one, which is the governor's emergency management chapter. So it's focused on it could be just an emergency within a county. For example, some of our weather related emergencies like tropical storm Irene could have impacted one county more than the other. So it provides that in order to support the emergency needs of sheriffs due to that emergency, a county's operations reserve funds and capital reserve funds can be allowed to be used for the emergency needs of the sheriff subject to the approval of the assistant judges. So it's thereafter set up very similarly to what you did for Act 100 but makes it more generally about emergencies within the county rather than COVID specifically. There's still on page 14 that requirement for the sheriff to seek any allowable reimbursement. And then in subsection C, if you want to keep it, there was that sunset in Act 100 for how long the sheriff's authority to use those county reserve funds lasted. In Act 100, there was a sunset on this authority for two weeks after the state of emergency was terminated. And so I retained that here, if you want to do that, to say that the authority for a sheriff to obtain funding for emergency needs under sub A sunsets two weeks after the day the governor terminates the emergency. And I think that sunset, that two-week period, was what was agreed upon by the side judges and the sheriffs. So I think I don't have any problem leaving it there for this. Committee members, are you OK with that? Yeah, fine by me. OK, all right. OK, great. I will send a copy of this to the sheriff if you haven't already to share a point yet. OK. OK. Chris. Yeah, Chris, did you have a question? You're on mute. You're muted. You're muted. I'm happy as often. I'm happy to wait till you're finished for this section. I was just trying to raise my hand as we go on to the next topic. Oh, OK. Yeah, let's finish this topic first, Brian. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to make sure is Sheriff Boneyette going to speak on behalf of all the sheriffs? Yes, she's the president of the Vermont Sheriff's Association. Great. Thank you. Sure. And Allison. Thank you, Janet. Would you be kind of to remind us how many do you know how many counties, how many sheriff's departments? I believe only one sheriff's department actually used this opportunity so far. I mean, obviously, we're still in a declared state of emergency. So it's possible other sheriffs. But to date, only one sheriff's department is used it. Is that correct? As far as I know, yes. I put out an email to all my judges and said, please, if your sheriff has taken advantage of this, please let me know. And I heard from Wyndham. And before this bill was passed, the side judges in Orleans had appropriated some money to the sheriff for PPE. Other than that, I haven't heard anything. OK, so are we all OK with this section? OK. Yes. Put a big red OK on this one, and we're done with it. Thank you for letting me go first, and have a great day. Thank you. Bye. Bye now. All right, so as long as people have that draft up, let's continue with that. Was that OK with you, Tucker, and Betsy Ann? OK, so let's go to Chris. Yes, so just that in terms of the press, that I emailed a link to the current bill to John Flowers and Mike Donhew, who I'd heard from, and suggested that they contact the committee if interested as soon as possible, perhaps even trying to connect with Gail today if the meeting allows them to come in. I don't know how full our agenda is. Well, we're just going to be working on this all day. Right. Well, I just want you to know the ball is explicitly in their court, and they've got the bill, so that's that. Thank you. Do they have both of them? Oh, well, they only care about this. They only need this section. I mean, this piece. The other one. They need Tucker's. Oh, I thought, oh, right. This is no Betsy and the municipal elections and sheriffs and OPR. So let's go on to municipal elections, because we have both Chris and Karen with us. I don't know if anybody else is there or not. I can only see a few people on my screen. So that's the end. Would you like to when is as well? Oh, OK, I did not see that. Thank you. Betsy, Anne, would you like to? Sure. So if you want to go back up still in the same draft, the 3.1, the bill draft would start with the local elections. And thank you to VLCT and the Secretary of State's office for working with me on this. As I understood from your last meeting, you as a committee did not want to address primary or general elections in this draft. So this would focus on local elections. And after I heard some feedback from VLCT, it's my understanding the two main things that VLCT would like to do is to have authority to move the date and time of a local election and then to allow for applying the Australian ballot system to a future meeting by the legislative body. So that's what these two sections would address. And so the language starts off by saying, and I'll need to say it needs to have a technical correction here. Right now it says notwithstanding the provisions of 2643 and 2641 and 2643, that should actually be 2640, not 2641. What I was notwithstanding there is a 17VSA 2640, which sets in statute the date of every town's annual meeting. So just make a note of that. So it would read notwithstanding provisions of sections 2640 and 2643. 2643 being a requirement to hold a special meeting. Or any other provisions of law to the contrary, because there could be municipal charters that could address special meetings or otherwise annual meetings. This language would go on to say, during a state of emergency declared within a municipality under the emergency management chapter, because it could be just an emergency focused on a specific municipality, not statewide. The municipality's legislative body may move the time and date of the municipality's upcoming annual or special meeting. If the legislative body determines that the circumstances of the state of emergency may harm the public health safety or welfare, if the meeting is held at its scheduled time and date, and if it makes such a determination, the body shall schedule a new time and date for the meeting so that it's held as soon as practicable and worn the meeting accordingly. This is a very tentative first draft of language, but it would just focus on moving time and date. It did not seem necessary to discuss moving any locations because there's already separate authority in 17 BSA 2502 that allows municipality to change the location of a polling place in cases of emergency. So it did not seem necessary to address locations, but more time and place moving. So that's a first draft. I don't know if you want to take it one at a time, Madam Chair. If you want to. Let's do that. Let's look at this section and see if there are any comments. Karen and then committee members, would you? Yeah, Karen Horn here. And I think that this section looks good to us. The emergency declared within a municipality under 20 BSA chapter one, this is more a question than a statement. That is that the governor would be declaring the emergency, but just for the particular municipalities that are affected. The governor under that chapter has the authority to declare state of emergency statewide or in portions of the state. So I just use that language within a municipality with the understanding that it would mean that if there's only a certain part of the state that had for which the state of emergency applied, then that language should cover the municipality. But I'm definitely happy open to suggestions on revisions. And I'm not sure. Tucker and I should be careful too that we're using the same language. And so that's another thing that we can do to make sure that the whole bill is consistent in that way. Chris, did you have any comments? Chris Winters. Sure, thank you. And then Chris Gray. Chris Winters, Deputy Secretary of State for the record. Unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of time to get in front of Will Sinning today to take a look at this draft, but some general impressions that we've had. I know you were considering some kind of check and balance on these authorities and maybe the Secretary of State's office or some combination of Secretary of State, VLCT, VM, CTA were possibly appropriate. But I think just as you've entrusted the Secretary of State's office on temporary election procedures, I think you're talking about a declared state of emergency. You're talking about the legislative body for the town. And you're talking about very specific set of circumstances. There's always the potential for abuse, but I don't see that risk as great as compared to the risk of not having a temporary procedure authority in the case of a declared state of emergency. So we don't see the need for us to be a part of that decision and think that this authority is probably very much appropriate under a declared state of emergency. And I will get to Secretary Kondos and Director Sinning on this language sometime later today and probably definitely by tomorrow. And to see if they have any additional concerns, I'd relay those back to the committee. Thank you. Committee, anybody want to comment or have a concern or a question or comment? No, I had a question about the location but that's already answered that. Okay, Brian. Thank you Madam Chair. I'm just, I'm trying to think ahead like the worst possible situation. There are no guardrails on the temporal provision. So the local legislative body could put it off as long as they determine. I mean, it could be a year. Although I think Karen pointed out correctly, if it has to do with the budget, I mean, at some point you got to pass a budget in the town or you can't really continue to operate. But I don't, and I don't know that there's anything bad about not having guardrails on it. It's just an observation that there aren't any and I'm wondering whether that could present a problem. Karen, do you want to comment on that? Well, our comment would, I don't really know how you would put guardrails around it thinking ahead and what those particular circumstances might be around an emergency. So we were thinking that sort of the automatic control would be the need to adopt a budget and that you do have language here that talks about scheduling a new time and date so that it is held as soon as practicable and worn the meeting accordingly. I mean, you're not going to be able to go very long without having such a meeting with, and if you do, your electorate is going to be very unhappy with you. So that's the other consideration. Okay, thank you. Chris, Bray, did you have a question? I did not, thank you very much. Okay, so is everybody okay with the kind of concept of this and just working out any detailed language and we'll hear from Will Sending and Jim Condos. Yep. Okay, and the clerks, did the clerks weigh in on this at all? Because they're the ones that kind of run the elections? My bad, I didn't ask the clerks, I can send it to them now. Okay. But it is the legislative body that would make the decision. Yeah, but I think I will send this to Carol Dawes right now actually, I think. All right, do we want to go on to the Australian ballot section? So that's section two that begins on line eight of page two. And so big picture, this would allow a legislative body to vote to apply the Australian ballot system to upcoming municipal elections instead of the current law requirement that requires the voters of a municipality to get together to first vote together as to whether to apply the Australian ballot system to its future elections. So this, and this was again taken from your first GovOps COVID response bill that included this similar authority for moving to Australian ballot by a voted legislative body. So a startup by saying notwithstanding the provisions of subsection 2680A, which describes that Australian ballot, the current Australian ballot system that require the voters of a municipality to vote to apply the provisions of the Australian ballot system to the annual or special meeting of a municipality during a state of emergency declared within the municipality under 20 BSA chapter one. The legislative body may vote to apply the Australian ballot system to an upcoming annual or special meeting, not less than 60 days in advance of that meeting if the legislative body determines that it is necessary to do so in order to protect the public health safety or welfare due to the circumstances of the state of emergency. So it would allow the legislative body to do this. Speaking with VLCT, as I understand it, that 60 day window is to the not less than 60 days in advance of that meeting is so that they can go through the steps necessary to prepare for the Australian ballot system in advance of the meeting. And there's that qualifier that the legislative body can only do this if it determines it's necessary to protect the public due to the circumstances of the state of emergency. I went on and kept that subsection B. This is allowing for the waiver of statutory or charter or school district articles of agreement provisions that would otherwise apply to in moving to Australian ballot. You had language like this in your first GovOps bill but it was about the Secretary of State being able to waive statutory provisions to allow a legislative body to move to Australian ballot. So with understanding that the Secretary of State would not be involved in this and there would be a decision of the legislative body due to the specific circumstances, this language would provide that a legislative body that uses that authority in subsection A shall not be subject to any statutory deadlines or other statutory provisions or provisions in a school district's articles of agreement related to the municipal meeting that conflict with the need to apply the Australian ballot system to the meeting, to the extent necessary to enable the municipality to apply Australian ballot system to that meeting. I'm just wondering if this is necessary if you've got that 60 day window built into subsection A and whether there would be any deadlines that would need to essentially be waived to allow the Muni to apply the Australian ballot system to that meeting. It seems perhaps with the 60 day build out in subsection A that there wouldn't be any other lingering deadlines that the municipality would have to comply with but I wasn't sure of the answer so I left that in for now. Thinking that maybe that Secretary of State's office and BLCT can give feedback as to whether there might be statutory deadlines outside of the 60 day window that a legislative body would have to comply with. I just don't know if it's off hand. Karen? I don't know the answer off hand either. I don't think there are, but I'll have to double check. Okay. And Chris, you'll check too. Yeah, same here. I can't think of any, but that's a great Will's sending question. Okay. So does this also apply, give that authority to school boards as their legislative body? Yes, I read this because a school district has a municipality and it's using that general language municipality and legislative body. Okay. I want to run by Senator Baruth just to. Check in with him. So is it, does anybody have any concerns or questions about this section, Allison? Are there the school board, but are there other municipal legislative bodies? Are some fired apart? I mean, are there other ones that we're not thinking of that are also legislative bodies? Well, there are prudential committees and for fire districts and village trustees. And we could go right down the rabbit hole of all the different kinds of municipalities, but those are the main ones. And I think that this committee actually deals with most of those except school boards, which is why I want to run the school board one by Senator Baruth. Does that make sense? Sure. Yeah. Okay. All right. So you'll check on that, but other than that, we're okay. We're getting that clarified that B work. Okay. With this language. Okay. All right. So do you want to move on to OPR? I could madam chair. I don't, what works for the committee? I just have that I'm supposed to be in house approach briefly at two. And we've got VLC and Secretary of State's office here. I wonder, does it make sense to flip over to, are there are municipal provisions that you still want to review with Tucker? Oh, good. That might relate to open meeting or. Sure. Yep. That's fine. And Gail, just for your information, if John Flowers or Mike Donahue or somebody who identifies themselves as members of the press asked to be led into the meeting, would you just let them in? Okay. Tucker. Okay. So I have two new sections for you that have been added to the municipal provisions that you have been looking at and one change that you requested last week. So I'm going to share my screen here if I can. Is it possible for Gail to post that? It is posted. Oh, great. Thanks. I will. We're also having the email. Okay. But it's right here on our website. So I can't quite share it for you yet, but I'll just walk slowly through it on my own screen here. So the first change is right off the bat in that section X on page one, one VSA section 312A, you had asked for a particular trigger to be put in here for when a public body is considered an affected public body, they can take advantage of the open meeting powers that you're putting in here. So in subdivision A1, in the definition of affected public body, I broke up the two requirements. Subdivision A contains the language that you saw in the last draft and this is the first requirement. That's that the regular meeting location is located in an area affected by a hazard. And again, we looked at the definition of hazard, you can always narrow that, but for now this is a portion of the state where the governor has identified a hazard exists and there's a declared public emergency or state of emergency, excuse me. Subdivision B is the new language. This is the second requirement. The affected public body is a public body that cannot meet in a designated physical meeting location due to a declared state of emergency. So this is what you were asking for where it's not just that the regular meeting location is in an area affected by the hazard, it's that they can't meet in that area. They can't meet at all, they can't designate a physical meeting location. And this is perhaps broad enough that it would capture emergencies like COVID-19 where you have to remain distant, you can't hold a meeting that large to get everyone in the town in the same place or everyone who wants to attend a particular meeting in the same place. And it could address other emergencies where perhaps as Senator White brought up, the town has experienced some sort of chemical spill or radiological disaster where people can't leave their homes. Are there any questions about that? Questions, comments? Nope. I think those virtual backgrounds are so funny because Chris just stood up and it ended up looking like he was some kind of a blight spirit. It's like a ghost following him, his shadow. Peter Pan is really, it's kind of Peter Pan-esque. Yeah. Did anybody have any questions or comments or concerns about that section? I think that's a good addition, Tucker. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Moving on, the new section, first new section that you'll take a look at is on page six and this is in section XY. And this contains the language that you worked on around water and wastewater disconnections during a state of emergency. Oh, right. So this would add a new section to the chapter in title 24 that deals with the uniform water disconnect rules. And this new section, again, contains the same language that you passed but would be added in and it would be triggered by a declared state of emergency. So as you'll recall, the reason that this is so long is that there are multiple types of providers. There are municipal water and wastewater service providers and then there are licensed and permitted utility providers that are regulated by the PUC. So that's why there are multiple subsections but effectively what this does is that during a declared state of emergency, there would be a moratorium on disconnections from the service. I have highlighted that general language that you've been using all along that just says during a declared state of emergency under 20 BSA chapter one, I've highlighted that because there may be certain declared states of emergency that you want to exclude. And the discussion that came up around the time that this was proposed was that we were dealing with a state of emergency where people were effectively sheltering in place and that disconnections from water and wastewater services would be a pretty dramatic step to take for people who are in their homes all day. So I didn't know if the committee wanted to have a discussion around if this is going to be codified and somewhat permanently effective what types of emergencies would trigger this moratorium on the water disconnections. Any thoughts on that, Chris? Well, I'm just thinking a lot. I mean, there's like one scenario could be I think about Bennington where the public water supply had PFAS in it and in some... Well, actually no, sorry. Let me stop, misspoke there. It's the public water supply that didn't. It was their private water supplies that did, but there are systems smaller than full municipal systems. I'm just thinking about what happens, let me back up a step. What happens if you have a public water supply that there is a problem somehow it turned out the chemical of concern that Senator White was talking about got into that water supply. And I don't know that it'd be a disconnect, but you might want to not distribute that water to everyone and sort of shut down the system. So is shutting it down a quote unquote disconnect? I don't know, I was thinking about it could go either way. You'd wanna not let something bad get to people or you could want to or people might need the service. You're really just protecting them from an inability to pay their bill. If I may, this is Karen Horne. So regarding the issue of contaminants in the water supply, there's a whole host of agency of natural resources and department of health regulations around that boil water notices and those kinds of things. And down in Bennington, if you recall, they actually distributed bottled water and brought in tanks. So I think on that side of contamination that's taken care of in other statutes. And it seems to me that the real issue is when do you want to prohibit disconnections and when do you want people to have an obligation to pay their bill? So maybe you can say can't be disconnected for non-payment during the time of the emergency but that it doesn't unobligate people from the debt. I don't know if you can do that or not. Yes, that's what's been effectively done in many circumstances in terms of foreclosures and rent assistance, which is one of the challenges we face is that then they have this huge debt at the end, which we're dealing with, I mean, obviously do. That's part of what the assistance is for is for the landlords is to wipe out that whole debt ahead of time. I mean, that's accrued. Well, the other thing that towns will do is meet with a customer or a taxpayer and come up with a schedule for payment so you're not liable for the whole nine yards all at once because yes, that could be overwhelming. So can you put in something in there that they shouldn't be disconnected for non-payment during the time of the emergency? And then they need to make arrangements to pay the debt. I don't know how you say that. Tucker? If I can just say one more thing, I think, and Senator Clarkson, you would know that with respect to rent, it's like during the declared emergency and so many days after. I believe it's 90 days after. Is that what you're getting? Maybe mirroring that. Yeah. Tucker can check, but I'm pretty sure it's with David Hall, but I'm pretty sure it's 90 days. I will check in on that. So I have a few notes here that I'll recap on the section. First, Senator Bray brought up that it might be necessary to add a carve out here that disconnections are allowed in the case that the water system is contaminated and the drinking water is unsafe, right? So you have the emergency, the prohibition on disconnects kicks in, except in the case where it is unsafe to consume water or we'll come up with something similar. The second is we can add a clause in there that says, and it should be just as simple, that the rate payer remains obligated for the charges or rates accrued during the state of emergency. So that would make sure that the customer, still has this obligation through the moratorium on the disconnect. And the final thing that Karen brought up here is that you still haven't maybe identified what types of emergencies should trigger this. And I don't know if it makes sense to connect this specifically to those emergencies where the consumer or rate payer is compelled to shelter in place, whether it makes sense to connect it to all emergencies as you have it now. If you look at the list of hazards that can trigger this declared state of emergency, there are some broad events there that maybe don't connect as adequately to the water service. Sorry, my dog is itching very aggressively. So I don't know if it was even a hammer. I know, that's what I thought. It's all that discussion of water. It wants to go find a stream and lake and power around. I don't know how, I don't know the answer to that. Does anybody have how you define I'm thinking that it is connected to some kind of an emergency that impacts people's ability to pay, that it isn't whether they're having to stay at home or not, but it impacts their ability to pay. So if you had some kind of a financial disruption of some major variety. So that people couldn't go to work or they couldn't have their jobs. I think that in my mind, it's more connected to their inability to pay than whether they have to stay at home or not. Right. Yeah, some significant financial disruption that would upend their ability to earn money as we are experiencing now. And I guess some of that might end up then looking at a case by case basis, because if you had some kind of a natural disaster, and a flood and it wiped out the bakery where you work. So now you can't go to, and it's a declared emergency. Everybody else in town can go to work. Does that mean that I am covered by this because I can't, I don't know. Well, I think you're right though. It's a health emergency that affects somebody's ability to make payments. So a health emergency that results in a significant financial loss or something to those people. I think it does have to be connected somehow. But that also means going back to one thing we talked about a couple of minutes ago, if that's the case, that it's a financial problem that's resulting in this inability to cut off the water. You don't want them to come back and when the emergency is over and say, okay, now you got to pay up everything in right away. You want them to pay back on some kind of schedule that's reasonable. Which you didn't mention that when you, Tucker, you didn't mention that when you were going to your summary a minute ago. Just put it out there. I think Karen said that most towns will pay, will work with. And I think we heard from them that before we, I have this memory of in GovOps some time ago dealing with shutoffs to apartments for water. And if the landlord doesn't pay the water bill and the tenants get shut off, we had a long working with the towns on how that would work. And I think that was resolved. You're right, it was resolved. It had to do with legal aid was bringing it on behalf of some lower income tenants. We did resolve it, but I don't remember what we did, but we fixed it. Well, I think that the tenant has the ability to take on the billing going forward. The tenant would, I believe, not be liable for the past dues, but the tenant could take it on going forward and that way the water would stay connected. Yeah. So how do we resolve this on the connection we wanna make here to the type of emergency? Or is this an issue where it's too soon for us without more input to put it into the lessons learned bill? Allison? I think Tucker's gift with drafting could come up with something about financial disruption that would work because a significant financial disruption to the lives in that area or however you wanna define it. And I also think it's very simple. Every town has, I mean, well-managed towns have schedules upon which people are able when they're in financial distress, able to pay their property tax and their sewer and water bills, which leads me to the question, why are we not talking about property tax here as well? We're talking about water systems and sewer, but we're not talking about the much bigger bill, which is even more important for people, which is property tax. Some of those issues, which you did address during COVID around municipal property taxes, extending deadlines, waving associated penalties, that may be adequately addressed by some of the Australian ballot and annual meeting provisions I've been working on because then the legislative body has the power to kind of put those issues before the voters and the voters can then decide on how they want to adjust property taxes moving forward, how they want to address the budget. Some of the temporary provisions that you worked on were specifically because the voters had no power at the time that you were working on those issues to make those decisions. Oh, good point. Thanks. Karen, does that make sense to you? Yeah, yes, I think it does as well. You know, the collector of delinquent taxes is really the person who comes up with the schedule. Whoops, you're frozen a bit, I think. Pardon? No, you were fine. Oh, okay. The collector of delinquent taxes is the person who works with a taxpayer to come up with a schedule for payments and things like that. So the process for tax delinquencies and the effects there are the consequences, I suppose, of not paying or spelled out pretty specifically in the statute. And it's not on the turn of a dime that you would be losing your property. Right. And so the, we don't need to address it here specifically because we've addressed it with the Australian ballot ability of the town to decide in their meeting that they're gonna change the dates of collection or they're gonna change the penalty rate or whatever for that period of time. And they can change the budget. They're gonna change the budget. Yeah, I think it's okay. Okay, all right, so. With Tucker's magic, I guess we will maybe have another draft tomorrow about this. Yes. Is that possible? Okay. That is possible. All right. So are we ready then to move on to Tucker's last section, which I believe is the open meeting section? So we've covered the change in the open meeting section. Oh yeah. We've covered the new section on water disconnections. The last piece that you asked me to check back in on was the section from the Act 92 COVID response bill dealing with the extension of deadlines, licenses and permits that are issued by a means. Oh, right. Right, X, Y, Z, yeah. This is section X, Y, Z in the draft on page seven. And based on the conversations that you all had last week, I broke out the section that deals with those deadlines, plans, permits and licenses that are issued and administered by the municipality. I took that section out, organized it. So it's a bit easier to read. And it contains the same authority that during a declared state of emergency, a municipal corporation has the authority to extend any statutory deadline. And it's applicable to a municipality provided that it doesn't deal with any of the licenses, permits, programs or plans that are issued or administered by the state. And I made a small, but potentially significant addition here that says or the federal government. And that was absent in Act 92, but revealing the language, I realized that there may be federal grant requirements if a municipality is qualified and receive them that they may still need to comply with and that the state may not have the authority to suspend even during a state of emergency. Second, that they may extend or waive deadlines applicable to the license of the state. It's applicable to the licenses, permits and programs that the town municipal corporation administers. So they'll be able to extend those deadlines. Moving forward, the piece that may have been, right. So subsection B deals with the temporal element around these extensions. It says that any expiring license permit program or plan issued by the municipality shall remain valid for 90 days after the date that the declared state of emergency ends. And as I recall, the committee did discuss whether 90 days is the right number. And what I can't recall is whether you said that's the perfect number or whether that should be adjusted based on what the plan program or license is. I don't remember if we said 90 days was the magic number or I think that if we started saying it depends on what it is, then there's too many variations. Well, 90 days. Yeah, I agree. I don't think we talked about making them variable. I don't think we talked about that, at least not very seriously. And 90 days was what we put in the other language. So I would just leave it that way because that passed and that seemed to be acceptable to people. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions for Tucker? Lots, but not that pertain to this bill. Okay. So where are we committee? We're getting closer. We're getting closer. Is there anybody else out there that would like to weigh in that hasn't had a chance to weigh in? I think the only other person out there is Gwynne. Right. Gail. Secretary Young will be joining the committee at 2.30. Oh. Oh, right. Great. Right, we'd ask for them to weigh in from the administration's point of view. All right, so. Isn't this, may I just say, Gwynne, I think this is inspiring me to think about every committee ought to be doing this same kind of bill. Yes, my hope was that every committee would do something like this or send us. Their section. Their section and it could be put into one full bill, but I don't think that I have asked health and welfare because I know they had a lot of, a lot of stuff, you know, extensions and stuff, but I haven't heard from any other committee. Well, I will mention it to Michael because we have a huge amount in terms of staying evictions, staying foreclosures, the unemployment, you know, unemployment insurance, you know, there's a ton of stuff that we've learned and that might be added. And I don't think we sadly have the time at the moment to do that, but we need to make space for that going forward. Chris. Well, halfway since I'm in here, you already did take in what natural work. Water and sewer. Yeah. Yeah, we did. Do we, Chris, the other thing we put in there, I thought was the ability for operators to help out other operators or other municipalities. Do we, did that become permanent or do we need to put something in here about that? I think there was actually a provision in law preexisting, but I don't think it was a bit dormant. It was some post Irene Karen will help me remember. And there was a model contract for towns to use with other towns in order to be able to move operators around without incurring liability in the town to which they were loaning themselves. And I think that those are municipal to municipal agreements. And I don't remember in the end that we had any state war on that. Karen, can you help out on that? That's correct. We have mutual aid agreements between towns for actually a whole range of things, emergency medical services, fire, transport, road graders, and think of something. And there's a model template on our website that was put together by our property casualty liability insurance program that addresses that. So I don't believe in the end you had to write any legislation around that particular issue. That's my recollection too. Once we asked the questions, people got that contract out, sort of tuned it up and then people executed it as they thought it might be ahead of time in case they needed it. And I don't know that there was any case related to COVID happening enough for any operating wastewater treatment facility or public water supply ended up having people, enough people out to require that kind of mutual aid. Yeah, I haven't heard that they have, but of course we're not finished yet, but those agreements are in place around the state. And I think all the, that made me think about EMS. And I think that all of the provisions that we did around EMS have the ones that need to be permanently changed have been changed in 124, assuming we'll get that passed. Am I right about that? I think so. I think that Drew and Dan Batesy worked with us on that. We did end up in natural talk about one other thing. I mean, we have this strange jurisdictional, we split things with finance, so it was actually finance that checked in with, in the end, with Department of Public Service and the PUC, although both committees ended up talking to them, to also provide for not getting disconnected from utilities, so gas, electric, other utilities, non-public. Did they have to do legislation or did they just tell them not to? The PUC I think actually decided on its own, Tucker can help me remember. I think they actually, well, maybe not the PUC, I think actually issued, we were in discussions with them and I think they actually acted on their own to execute an order of suspending those things, basically sort of mirroring what the administration was already doing. And we were just discussing it and they had the power to do that without anything more from the legislature, so they did. Okay, so we don't need to do anything there. Okay, anything else that, while we're waiting and what I will do is I'll, I think Betsy Ann went over 220 with us the other day about the changes that they had made and they all seem to be pretty benign. And then she's working with Jen Carby on this pharmacy issue. Then next week, we had told, and I don't remember this man's name, Richard, something that who, the veterans for peace. Richard, I think it's Chaplinsky. Okay. Something like that. That we would, on Tuesday, we would invite the guard and have just a discussion about that, about who has authority over the guard when some kind of an emergency is declared and is it the governor or the president? How do we use the guard? And I think that is an important issue to discuss. I don't think there's any legislation necessarily, but we did say we would hear from them. And then by that time, I'm also hoping that S1, that the house will be done with S124 and that we can go over that so we can get that worked out. And Wednesday, I would like to hear, and I know that there's nothing to do about this, but in judiciary the other day, Colonel Baker was in and talked about the lack of PPE in corrections and how they were having such a hard time getting the PPEs and he said that one of the huge problems was purchasing, getting the right to purchase something from BGS because they at one point had identified, I don't remember, I'm making up these numbers now, 60,000 of something that they needed and by the time they got the approval to do the purchase, it was down to like 15,000 were left. So I think we need to just, because purchasing is in our bailiwick and I think we just need to hear from BGS about what provisions they made to deal with emergency purchases and how that happened. Does that make sense that we should hear that? It makes a lot of sense. It actually comes under lessons learned as well. It's anything we can do about it, but it's certainly relevant to lessons learned. Okay, Brian? Yeah, I think we'd like to hear from, is Chris Cole still there or is he already? I think he has already left. So I don't know who's there. Yeah, I'd like to hear from BGS. Yeah. Okay, so we will do that. And then I just heard from the house, the end of last week, that they're going to be doing the Burlington Charter and the Berry Charter and sending them to us. So I guess we will. The Burlington Charter with the guns? No, no, no, it's a really benign, do you know about a Tucker? Are you the Charter person? He is. Yeah, the Burlington Charter amendments for this year mostly pertain to allowing early voting for municipal elections. So it's mirroring some state law and a few of the provisions, but in general allowing early and mail-in voting. So I think it's four total amendments that will end up coming out. I actually can't recall what's in the Berry City Charter. It has not yet been introduced, but I think it's going to be on its way. And I was assured that it was also very non-controversial. So if we get them, I mean, I think that if they take them up, we'll know by next Wednesday, whether they take them up or not, even if they haven't passed them. And we can do the same thing we do with charters, sometimes just take them up so that we're ready for them when they come. Will that work? Sure. Because I wanna, is there anything else that people can think of that, sorry about that, that we should be addressing here? 220, 124 lessons learned. Charters, those are our, that's what's left. And the National Guard and BGS, which are just hearings, but anything else that we, it makes sense to me to leave the last week unscheduled because we don't know what the floor time will be or how we'll be dealing with it, get everything done by the 21st. Is that the Friday? Whatever that Friday is. The 25th. 25th. No, the Friday. 25th of Friday. Oh, Friday the, but... 18th. 18th. So that we leave the last week, unscheduled. That makes sense. I think that's very wise because who knows how packed it might be and how start and stop they might be, you know, all that stuff. Yeah. And really, we need to, I'm really committed to getting 220 and 124 out and lessons learned, those three, and then the charters if they come. Okay? Sounds good. Okay. So do you want to take a little break? Sure. Sure. So let's come back at 225. That gives us a 10 minute break. Okay. So committee, we have Suzanne Young with us. And Suzanne, let me just, I'm hoping that what we sent you was explanatory enough that you know what we're doing. But what we are trying to do is take the lessons that we learned from this pandemic in terms of adjustments we needed to make. And we're just, we're looking at our area here. We were hoping that many committees would do this so that if we find ourselves in the same position and we're not in session, or even if we are in session, we don't have to scramble and start all over again. So what we're trying to do is look at how we might put stuff into statute that is triggered by a declared state of emergency by the governor. And that has an impact of making it in the sense in the part about open meetings, for example, it creates the inability for people to meet in person. So it depends on what the impact is. And so what we thought we would do is ask the administration if there were issue areas here, particularly around whether or not you needed to have any legislative ability to extend deadlines that would be valuable to put in here so that you didn't have to have legislative approval every time there was a declared state of emergency. So that's what we're trying to get in here. And we hope to have this, I mean, we're going to pass this out by Thursday because if it's going to get to the house and be worked on and then get to the governor, we need to act quickly. So we'll put in as much as we can. And we know that we won't get everything in there that people might want because there just isn't time to debate it and to get it in. But so with that, is that lay the groundwork enough for you to? Yeah, I think so, Senator. Thank you for having me and thank you for asking me to appear today. So what I had focused on was the language that Council Rask sent to me, I think on Friday, which was draft language that would amend Title 20, the emergency management chapter to allow the governor to extend expiration dates of professional licenses if an event occurred that would create a barrier to obtaining renewal. So I did take a look at that. I don't know if there are other Title 20 amendments that you're considering, but if there are, I haven't seen them and I don't have any additional to offer up at this time. I've talked to some folks within the governor's office who drafts a lot of the executive orders. And at this point, I think we're pretty good. I think the reason we are is because we're confident that the governor's emergency management powers already allow for the extension of these expiration dates. The governor's authority to act in an emergency when the needs created by the emergency weren't that action, then we're pretty confident he does have that authority and he has been exercising that authority through executive order. He did it with the Department of Motor Vehicles. I believe he did it. I directed the commissioner of health to take certain steps for certain medical professionals within the Department of Health. And we're also confident that the governor can suspend rules that may apply to these professionals without consultation or approval from other officers or agencies of the state. So I guess that's a long-awaited way of saying we're not sure that the particular language Betsy and sent is necessary. But with that said, if the legislature is interested in codifying this, then we've got some suggestions. We did in the executive order when we extended licenses for some professionals that were within the purview of the Office of Professional Regulation at the Secretary of State's office, those executive orders did say with approval of the Secretary of State, the governor is directing the commissioner of health or whoever to suspend certain requirements. And that is because the nature and length of this emergency allowed time for this governor to act collaboratively with agency heads and elected officials and to be deferential when we could and include them as part of the process. As we all know, this has been a very long, a long emergency and a long pandemic. And unlike one that may be very sudden where we don't have the luxury of that time, and I don't mean that to suggest we have luxury of time, but we don't have the time to work with other elected officials or agency heads to do the work. And so that is why his executive orders have included provisions in some cases for consultation with or approval of others, so it's not required under his broad emergency authorities. Let me just see, I had a couple other notes. So we don't oppose codification of the governor's authority to extend licenses and waive fees that's laid out in the draft that I received, but we've got to be very careful that the effect of the legislation should not and does not limit or hamper the governor's authority to act as he or she deems necessary to respond to a declared emergency. And so the codification of the authority in our view should be drafted to apply regardless of which entity the profession resides in, which is what the language I've reviewed seems to do. And I have to remind myself and others that remember this is an emergency authority during a declared state of emergency where the governor has authorities that he might not have in normal times and that by law pretty much puts the other elected officials in a, I'm gonna try to find the right term here in the statute, effectively where other offices and agencies of the state become an instrument in the governor in an emergency. So if you look at some of the other authorities entitled 20, the governor can utilize services and facilities of existing officers and agencies of the state, cities, towns, and use an employee within the state from time to time as he or she may deem expedient any of the services, resources, property of the state for the purposes set forth in the chapter to respond to the emergency. So we would want to be really careful that we didn't put language in there that could be construed as limiting or hampering any governor's authority to act as deemed necessary in a declared emergency. So our thinking was if you're going to codify this, we would ask you to consider that the authority be drafted to apply regardless of which entity the profession resides in. Because right now it took me a while to sort through the language to determine why is it worded this way? And as you can see from the language, it basically says in consultation with the head of a professional regulatory entity within an agency under the office of governor. I guess we could make the argument that under the office of governor in an emergency means everybody's under the office of the governor but I'm not sure that's what was intended. So we would just want to be careful that we're not having these kind of debates about what does under the office of governor mean. It would probably just be cleanest and would be consistent with existing authority that we believe he has to just say the governor can extend for up to 90 days at a time the expiration date of a current professional license or other authorization to practice a profession or waive the fees. And if you want that to be in consultation with the head of the professional regulatory entity I would just take out this notion that it has to lie within the agency under the governor and maybe I'm not understanding why it's worded that way but that was the single thing that jumped out at us as problematic and interpretation. So I think that we because our committee deals with OPR that we very specifically dealt with them and then our hope was that you would have some maybe more general language than that would extend that would codify that ability with other professions so that people who are in fire and safety for example or ANR or agency of education if they need to have license extensions that there would be some general language in here that gives the ability for the governor to extend those deadlines. And I think with OPR it's pretty clear that it would be in consultation with the advisory board or the professional organization whatever there's Board of Medical Practice in here that has some and in the general I don't know that that needs to be done if the governor is just given the ability to extend those license deadlines. And the other one was around excuse me permits and other kinds of licenses that maybe under do you need legislative, would it be better to have it codified that for example DMV that it's already that you can extend the deadlines on those are fishing and hunting licenses. If you can't they expire and if you can't get them in a timely manner that you have the ability to actually do that that we codify that. I think that's where we were going. Okay, well that's helpful. I think my broad response to that is that we have done now all of that through executive order under the state of emergency. And the governor's authority for instance on the DMV front he basically directed the commissioner under his emergency authorities to extend certain deadlines because the pandemic prevented folks well prevented folks from obtaining their renewals or whatever service it was. And what I am saying is that we did not need to have that codified. It's generally codified in the governor's emergency authorities and then under the state of emergency the governor has been implementing this I think very carefully through executive orders and to the extent where he can consult with another elected official or another agency or department. He has put that in the executive order that I will do this in consultation with X person X official and one of them I know that he went with the approval of the secretary of state for his nursing licenses I think when he first suspended some of the requirements for the nursing staff at the height of the pandemic I guess I would that I think that's what we've done I don't think it needs to be codified because I think he can do it under his general authority without consultations with others but this governor has chosen to do so. And I'm afraid that putting that notion that there are separate emergency authorities into title 20 is going to be confusing. It may dilute the governor's authority or ability to act during an emergency. I'm just kind of thinking out loud here but what if they don't agree? What if there could be some really critical decisions that need to be made that are now hinged on somebody else exercising their own emergency authorities where in an emergency the notion is you have one guy in charge, a woman or a man who's the governor. So I don't know what you've done in the other sections of the draft with respect to the secretary of state and I apologize I was not aware of that I only have that one section. I think the other things that we put in there are the giving the director of OPR and the executive director of the medical board the ability to act when they can't when the board itself can't meet to act and both have used the medical board less but OPR has used it in this emergency. So I think that was the other beyond the deadline for yeah. That was the other major one, does anybody I don't have the draft right here in front of me does anybody remember what else? We have a lot in there that isn't related to the licenses and yeah. What are they all related? I guess I should take a look at the draft. I apologize I didn't realize it was more relating to emergency authorities than this particular section. There's a lot about open meetings, municipal government which I don't think the governor has the ability to do because those are set in statute. And we spent a lot of time at the beginning of the session. I mean, at the beginning of March trying to deal with this and we didn't wanna have to scramble. And Chris, did you have a comment? Yeah, I was just thinking of another category Secretary Young that we ran into issues around limitations on executive orders. And that was on the world of solid waste, for instance. There's enforcement discretion, but it's my understanding it's supposed to be case by case as opposed to saying for instance that any bottle redemption center can wave accepting bottles back during the emergency which was for a class of businesses not just for a individual business. And then we did move the house still has it they haven't acted on it. Variance language that would allow the secretary of ANR to modify solid waste rules on an emergency basis because already there was for the individuals there was enforcement discretion as a workaround tool but for all categories of actors there was no tool available for an emergency response. And because it was statutory, it wasn't waveable. So I'm just kind of flagging it. We happily things went well and we didn't end up meeting that variance language that the house still has but it just made me aware that had things gone another way we very much would have needed it and we don't yet have that one nailed down. There's no provision set up currently to address a similar situation in the future around ANR. Okay, I'm thinking the title 20 does allow the governor to two in consultation with the secretary do some pretty broad things. So I guess I'm somewhat surprised that there was not the ability to run without an executive order I'm not sure if the standard really is it's in statute versus rule. Maybe Tucker can. Yeah, on the solid waste side, I was just gonna say Michael Grady helped draft the variance language that we put in 227 which is parked over in the house now but so just as a resource he ended up working through in a lot of detail with the committee where the authorities began and ended what could and could not be done and that's why that language got crap. Maybe I'd ask Tucker to weigh in here a little bit. Sure, I don't want to get into too deep of an analysis and potentially over speak on the issue of 20VSA chapter one but certainly one of the concerns that exists is a constitutional one and whether statute can be suspended by the executive branch even in a time of emergency and the most general response to that would be that it would be unconstitutional for the legislature to give the governor the authority to abrogate or suspend statute. That would be the general response that is without many, many, many guardrails around it likely a non-delegable authority that is your supreme legislative authority. So that might be something that when Betsy has time over the next two days that we may want to diet into with some detail and there's distinctions there. Senator Bray brought up codified provisions around solid waste districts. Senator White, you brought up some of the fish and game requirements earlier. There are fish and game requirements that are in rule and that the governor would likely have the authority to suspend or abrogate because they have been issued by the executive branch. There are others that are codified in title 10 appendix. Those are very specific, often updated statutes that would need to be suspended, paused or repealed in order for those requirements to go away. You know, this is gonna require a review of 20 VSA chapter one to see what type of authority has already been delegated but a broad power to suspend statute is not likely to be embedded there. So what I think I'm saying and I appreciate that and I expect there will be some differences of opinion on that but I guess respectfully what I'm suggesting in this particular language for the professional licenses is to keep it broad, keep it broad, meaning do not confine it to under the office of agencies under the office of the governor. So that any governor has the flexibility to move forward with that particular action without relying on others to do the same within professions within their statutory purview. So if that is where you're drawing the line I would just give that authority to the governor in consultation with the professional regulatory entity but not confine the governor's authority to just those within the office of the governor. So in other words, as I think I mentioned if I could find my notes again I'm suggesting if you want to codify this particular authority that you expand it to make it as broad as it needs to be. Once we start narrowing a governor's authority by statute and parsing out, well, he gets to do this because it's a rule and he gets to do that because of statute. I think we're headed down a path that could be hard for any governor to navigate but with Tucker's concerns in mind with this particular language I wouldn't want anything in here to be debatable if we're in an emergency and we have a governor who needs to act quickly and if there's disagreement we won't always agree. I mean, we were very lucky in this state to have elected officials who've worked together very strongly and very carefully and very wisely and we have put in the executive orders. This governor has put in his executive orders that deference to for instance, the secretary of state when something fell in his purview. My point is I don't believe that's required. We don't believe that's required by law but we do understand that that's the way we work collaboratively when we can in an emergency where we have the time and the ability to do that. Oh, Chris? Yeah, just one, so to throw into the mix as we're sorting our way through I think one of the things I end up learning about as we tried to sort out that solid waste provisions was that in chapter two, article 20 of the constitution there's a short sentence. The governor is also to take care that the laws be faithfully executed which also can mean as I came to appreciate not executed in the form of allowing enforcement discretion. And so there's a lot of nuance to these relationships and I just wanted to flag that one. I know in enforcement there is always that notion of the prosecutorial discretion and law enforcement discretion to a degree but primarily the enforcement would lie with the authority that actually takes the offender to task either in court or before an administrative board. So what you knew for me was that faithful execution might include not executing. Yeah, I hear you. So I guess I'm a little confused here and hopefully I'm the only one that everybody else is really clear. But so the administrator, the governor does not have any input into the licensing under OPR. Am I right about that? That's purely a secretary of state and OPR decision. So I don't know that the governor has the ability to do those extensions unless the secretary of state and OPR are in agreement and what we're doing here is trying to say the secretary of state and OPR have the ability to do those extensions during a declared state of emergency. I may be wrong here but I don't think that the governor has any ability to affect those licenses because they're not under the administration where the AOE and ANR public safety, those are and the governor does have the ability to extend those probably under an executive order. But I don't, am I wrong about that? It just seems to me that I don't think that the governor has a role in OPR licensing. Well, I think what I was trying to say and didn't say it very clearly is that when there is a state of emergency, the governor basically has been provided additional powers within certain areas. And if you look at the powers and you look, I believe, at sections five and six in particular, other elected officials and agencies become an instrumentality of the governor because he is basically making decisions in an emergency. So the point of having emergency powers is for the governor to be able to make these calls where outside of an emergency, absolutely those duties fall to other officials, other secretaries, you know, secretaries, I mean, elected officials and independent boards and commissions. But the way we read, especially sections five and six is that those fall in an emergency or befall to the governor to make those calls. And this governor has made those calls in consultation with and with the approval of the secretary of state, specifically in his executive orders. He has deferred, he has consulted with the secretary of state on issues about professional regulation within his purview. He has directed the commissioner of health who serves the governor, who he can direct to do something to make changes in the medical practice. But again, I think we have to understand that in a state of emergency, if you look at those sections, unfortunately someone has to be in charge and the statutory construct is that is a governor and that the governor and others who may be elected to officials, maybe other officials are become an instrumentality of the governor and he has that authority to direct them to do things. But again, we're very fortunate that this emergency and that this governor has chosen to do so in the collaborative fashion and in his executive orders. And so I'm saying this, I don't believe this language is necessary. He has done these, he has issued orders that have extended deadlines and the like. I understand the distinction you're making that this is not in statute. But again, we read the emergency language is basically saying he could direct the secretary of state, he could direct someone, some other elected official to do something that's within their authority because they become the instrumentality of the governor in an emergency. And that's how we construe five and six and just general emergency powers generally. I get that, but so why did we spend so much time in this committee dealing with open meetings, public records, access to land records, EMS issues, we spent an inordinate amount of time in March and April addressing those issues when if the governor had the ability to do it, he could have just done it. But we angsted over open meetings and municipal elections and... Elections. Elections in general and OPR. All of it. Abilities, the Board of Medical Practice, their ability to function. EMS issues, we spent a lot of time on EMS issues changing a three year, I mean, a one year licensing to a three year licensing because that's what they needed. So I guess my question is if we hadn't needed to do that, all that work, why did we? Well, that's a good question and I hope it's rhetorical because I don't know the answer, Senator. I do know that the legislature, from what I understand was wanting to be helpful and it's a capacity issue as well, right? So the governor's team is working on responding to a medical emergency. It's responding to building medical capacity while containing the spread of the virus and that was a very intense, very resource driven effort. It still is. And the legislature was looking to be helpful and those are the types of issues, open meeting and maybe the public records. I was not involved in those. But those were things that we could use your help on and you did help on because those were not as emergent as the work that we were doing at the time and continue to do. So we appreciate the legislature helping with that and clarifying issues around those because we would probably still be noodling over those. If we had to issue executive orders on every single process and procedure. And that's what we're trying to avoid here is exactly that, that we can put in statute that there doesn't need to be an executive order to say, you have the ability to extend deadlines. It's here in the statute, it's at Tucker. And I think the statute is fine to codify that. I just, I think where the rub is for us is leading it to solely agencies under the office of the governor. I mean- What other agencies are there? Well, the secretary of state. Well, that's a separate- Yeah, which I was not aware of when, so I didn't. But my point is that you wouldn't have to do that. And you know, you could just do what the governor did in his executive order, which was direct, direct some easing up of some professional licensing requirements during the height of the emergency. And it was in consultation and with the approval of the secretary of state. That's what was in the executive order. So we're just hoping that we don't refine this. So finally that we're not gonna be able to do what needs to be done in a different type of an emergency because the governor at the time and others are not agreeing as to where to go when you need one person in charge with that authority, hopefully in consultation with those who normally would make those calls. That's all I'm saying is that an emergency, you know, I think this is fine to codify but I think it creates a lot of ambiguity to leave it within an agency under the office of the governor. But I mean, you can in consultation with the head of the entity would bring the secretary of state into it and any other, a licensing entity that may be independent of the governor's agencies or the secretary of state. So all I'm suggesting is keep it simple and this could be construed as a limit on the governor's authority when he may need it at some future time in some future emergency. I need to back up here just a little bit. I guess I am really confused. We have a whole section dealing with LPR. And their ability to extend licenses. Then we had a separate section, I believe, and I don't have the bill in front of me, but then we had a separate section that gives general authority to this governor to extend licenses to those in the administration. OPR is already taken care of over here in the bill. And then this is a different one that gives the ability for fish and wildlife or driver's licenses or anything else. And so I don't think that this limits the governor. I think this gives the governor authority for everything within the governor's purview. Am I wrong, Betsy or Tucker? Hi, Betsy Ann. Hello, I'm just joining you. Hello, Secretary Young. Hi. Hi, so I'm just catching, I was midway through the secretary's comments. And so I'm inferring you're looking at that draft 3.1, starting on page three, that would allow the governor to extend professional licenses under the office of governor. That's where you're at right now. Okay, and yeah, so this language right now is limited to professional licenses regulated by agencies under the office of governor. And then there would be the next section on page four would allow the director of OPR to extend OPR professional licenses. And right now that the language only applies to professional licenses, it doesn't apply to things like driver's licenses or any other things. So I didn't catch if the secretary was suggesting that it should be enlarged to things beyond professional licenses. The secretary was suggesting that we have done that. We have directed the commissioner of motor vehicle to take certain actions with respect to DMV licenses and renewals and extensions that that is part of his emergency powers. And that we do not need to have it codified and we're pretty confident. We're quite confident in our construction of the governor's emergency authorities in that regard. What I've said about the particular language that you sent me on Friday, and I apologize, I have not read the entire bill. I did not realize there was more to it. What I've said about the current language around licensing is that the governor does not need this particular law to extend professional licenses and that he could do so under his current authorities because other elected officials in state agencies become an instrumentality of the governor under sections five and six in the emergency orders. So he could arguably direct the secretary of state to extend licenses of professionals within the secretary of state's purview. He's chosen not to do that in his executive orders because we had the time during this emergency to draft executive orders in consultation with, for instance, the secretary of state. And in fact, one of them does require the approval of the secretary of state. So we've acted collaboratively. We've done what we did not believe we had to do by statute but we've done it by executive order. And it's a good thing. We're all very fortunate that we all get along and that we're a small state and we're collaborative. So that's the way he chose to operate through these executive orders to be collaborative with the legislature to be collaborative with other elected officials when the emergency allowed. And so I think that does answer a bit of your questions, Senator White, is that the public meetings and the public records requests were not a burning fire during this emergency. But something that needed to be dealt with, absolutely. And I'm sorry if I minimize that but I didn't mean any disrespect. I'm just saying it was something that could have had a more mindful approach to it. So that's simply what I'm saying is this language is not necessary, but if you would like to codify the authority for Betsy's benefit, I was recommending that it be reworded to take out that provision under the office of the governor and just give the governor the authority to do what he can now, which is to extend the expiration of professional licenses. So does the governor right now have the ability to extend professional licenses under OPR? We believe he does and yes, we do believe he does and I think that we have done that with the Secretary of State by executive order. There's a difference between the law and the executive order. And I'm looking to see if I can find the particular executive order because there are several. Tucker. But he chose to do so with the approval of the Secretary of State in the executive order. Say that wasn't a necessary provision but that is how he chose to operate that particular. I feel like there's a very robust constitutional discussion that could be happening right now. And I think it would be very helpful for the committee to constrain some of the discussion around the professional licensing. The open meeting law provisions and some of the municipal provisions have been brought up a few times. I would set those aside as entirely different. And from my subject area, I would question at a very aggressive and high degree the governor's authority to suspend the open meeting laws that are in statute. I would also call to your attention to the fact that all of the powers that are being referenced were granted to the governor by statute. These are not divine. They are codified in 20VSA chapter one. And it might be helpful to take a look at the particular sections and subdivisions the Secretary is calling out as containing those authorities just from the last few minutes of discussion. You might wanna take a look at, for example, sections five and six, excuse me, subdivisions five and six in 20VSA section nine, which is what the Secretary was bringing up, those deal with the governor using services and facilities of the state agencies. And I would compare that to subdivision three that precedes it, where the General Assembly specifically called out licenses and the governor's authority to suspend statutory requirements around those licenses. What does that apply to? Strictly motor vehicles. There's a clause that calls out motor vehicle licenses right there in subdivision three. It would be incredibly curious to say that under subdivisions five and six, there is a uniform authority for suspension of requirements around licenses, but for some reason you had to call out motor vehicle licenses as a specific constraint in subdivision three. And again, the only reason I bring this up is that this is a potentially robust entangled discussion. If it's something you want to dive into, you should take your time with it and make sure that you are paying very close attention to some of the constitutional arguments that are being made. So I don't think that was the time or place to have that robust constitutional argument. I'm not sure if you've had that. And so all I'm saying, and I have been limiting myself to this language that was presented to me for comment. I've given you the view of the administration that it is not necessary, but if you should decide that it is something you would like to codify, I am suggesting that you take out under the office of the governor and just give him the authority to extend after consultation with the regulatory entity, but give him the ultimate authority to extend those deadlines. That's all that I am suggesting. I think that's a prudent recommendation. It leaves one person with the authority in an emergency to make that call, but it does require that person to consult with the subject matter expert. And in these cases is going to be the secretary of state or the commissioner of health or others who are issuing those licenses. So you would take out the entire section that we put in on OPR. Well, I don't think it's necessary. And I think it's confusing and it creates, I think just two parallel universes or maybe more as to who can do that and how are they going to exercise that authority? They don't have executive order authority. They are not able to issue declarations of an emergency. So I guess this is the legal construct that we have been working in since March when the first date of emergency order was issued. And we've been very careful and very mindful as we roll out iterations to consult with those who outside of a state of emergency have the authority that the governor is being to exercise in the executive order. And to seek secretary of state's approval when we could. So I guess we're never going to, I don't think we're ever going to agree on the scope of the governor's authorities at some point in time, they'll be tested and challenged but I think that the law provides for the authority that he has exercised in the law. And the emergency powers laws in precedent. So I still believe that because the governor has no role in licensing under OPR at all, that the administration is never involved in that licensing, that that is that we need to give that authority to the director in consultation with the secretary of state, I believe is the way it's, or the director, this in consultation with the secretary of state is the ability for the director and the medical, executive director of the medical board to act in lieu of their boards. I think we need to give that authority to the director of OPR because that's where the expertise is. They're the ones that do the licenses all the time. They are the ones who would know which licenses need to be extended and which don't. So I'm personally unwilling to take this OPR section out. If the administration feels that you don't need to have that other ability, that you have that other ability for licenses, professional licenses that are under the governor's office, then we just don't need to put anything in there at all about that. The OPR will have the ability to do it for their licenses. And if the feeling is that it can be done by executive order for the other professions, then it can be done that way. I would just, not to belabor a point, but to have it in consultation with the professional licensing entity in the language that I'm suggesting would obviate the need to have a special statute for the secretary of state and would bring the secretary of state's expertise into the conversation should a governor decide to extend deadlines and other licensing requirements. I mean, so in consultation with the professional licensing entity would bring you the expertise that that other licensing entity, which might not be directly in the governor's authority line outside of an emergency, it would bring that expertise to the governor prior to, you know, taking the action that's contemplated. So it's a different one. I guess I don't understand here what the issue is. We're saying that there's a declared emergency. The governor declares an emergency. What we're doing is saying, we don't now need to review all of those things. That the governor doesn't need to review them and say, let's see, should we extend the licenses for nurses or should we not? The governor doesn't have to do that. We've given the permission to, just like secretary, you said that we jumped in and helped out about open meetings. I don't think that that's entirely accurate. I think that we're the only ones that can do that. I don't think the governor has any ability even in an emergency to supersede the open meeting law. And it had to be worked out very carefully and because there are many players here and just issuing an executive order saying no more open meeting law. Well, that certainly is not what would be contemplated. And I'm not suggesting we would say there's no more open meeting law, Senator. You know, I believe in the open meeting and public records law as strongly as anybody on this committee, what I'm suggesting is that if there needed to be a course correction or less frequent meetings or whatever necessitated by the emergency, then he would arguably have that authority. But thankfully you've stepped in and you've made that clear and that is one less thing on the plate. I'm not arguing with the wisdom of the Secretary of State by any means and his authority in this regard. And I respect, you know, that office very highly. I'm just making a point that if you want consultation with the subject matter expert, it can be accomplished by putting that in the statute which you have and then removing under the office of the governor and then the governor will consult with whoever is the head of the professional licensing entity before acting. And that's prudent as well. But I don't believe we need the authority for the other offices. I don't think it's necessary to include that in your bill. Clearly you've got a different opinion on the Secretary of State and we disagree. And I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree at this point. So you can move on with your bill. But, hi. Any comment? Any other committee members? Allison? Well, you know, Suzanne, I appreciate your input and a lot of you've used the word, you know, how well we've worked together, how collaborative it's been. But I'm also envisioning a scenario where it might not be as collaborative, where people might not be as a trusting of other people's expertise and other office's expertise. And I think that we have to also think around those corners and think into what is best for enabling a state when you don't have time to roll out new executive orders every week and when you want things to go into play immediately. And this shortens the timeline for a lot of the things we now know need to in certain circumstances go into play. And I think this liberates the governor's office to address the bigger things and other aspects of an emergency and really lets the functioning of government and the mechanisms of how we function go forward in a constructive way. So I actually think they work together. And I also, you know, I'm concerned that sometimes we aren't always working as collaboratively and we wanna have these go into play right away. It's sorry, did I say? No, I think you're right that the point here is that once there was a declared emergency, there does as Senator Clarkson said, there doesn't have to be an executive. The governor's office doesn't have to think. What do we have to do? These go into effect, right? When there's a declared emergency and that's what we're trying to do so that we don't have to spend two months scrambling and the governor trying to put out executive orders all the time to deal with other situations. We're trying to take the situations that we learned from this and let them immediately go into play when there's a declared emergency. That's the only thing that we're doing here is trying to allow, as Senator Clarkson said, the functioning of government to go forward without having to spend a lot of time trying to figure out once again how to allow that functioning to go forward. Right, we don't want to reinvent the wheel all the time. Right. We have a hard enough time reinventing it or inventing it once. Right, we're capitalizing on this moment. Chris? And the other thing just to be careful is that we weren't imputing anyone either this legislature or this governor or any future one but we had a discussion the other day about their real belief in Vermont exceptionalism. But I'm guessing in Wisconsin, they felt that there was Wisconsin exceptionalism or other states where they were an administration and the legislature found themselves at loggerheads and they wouldn't have imagined that happening. So I think we're actually just trying to be cautious that we would set up something that would help navigate, help the entire state navigate even if we didn't have folks necessarily quite so inclined as we've been in this emergency to pulling together and working really well, that's all. So I think we're trying to be cautious. So committee, where are we? I understand, Secretary, if you feel we don't need to put in this, the ability for to extend licenses, we don't wanna put anything in here that you don't want. So if you don't feel that you need that provision that it can be done just by an executive order, then we'll just leave that out. I feel very strongly about leaving in the OPR. I don't know where the rest of the committee is on that at all. I do too, because I think, again, licensing, I mean, a lot of these things are part of just functionality and yeah, I don't see a reason not to keep it in. Any other committee member? Brian? Yeah, I must confess to them, I thought we were gonna do a really good thing and now I'm feeling like there's some constitutional toes that are being stepped on in some fashion. And I'm confused because I don't know what the right answer is. I'm not a constitutional scholar, so I don't know. I trust Tucker and Betsy to end to kind of guide us in the proper direction, but I'm also sensitive to Secretary's young position that it may not be needed in some cases. I guess maybe I would ask her, is there anything in the bill that we do need to keep in because it wouldn't otherwise adversely affect what could be done in an executive order? I don't think I can pass that very well, but I'm just trying to weigh where we are. So we'll have to take a look at the entire bill. I apologize, Senator, when I was asked to come in, I only had the one section of a larger, clearly a larger bill in front of me, and so we'll take a look at the bill. That's Anne. Yes, and Anthony. And just to give some background, the reason why the, if the committee recalls, the reason why you wanted to pursue potential professional licensing issues is because the Department of Public Safety had specifically requested the General Assembly extend the electricians and plumbers licenses in what became Act 100. And so that's where the original language came from. It was Act 100, Section 4, where pursuant to Department of Public Safety request, the General Assembly extended electricians and plumbers licenses that were due to expire between March 30th and September 20th. You deemed them valid so that they would expire on September 30th of this year. So there was a specific request from the administration to extend those professional licenses. And then the committee asked that to do, to have language to do the same thing for the off the shelf bill for applicable professional licenses. Yeah, that's a good reminder that that is where that the request came from the administration to begin with. And I appreciate that. And that one could argue that was out of an abundance of caution. I'm not saying that was the wrong thing to do. We're just really talking about what is necessary and what is not. And the committee acted on that request and that's great. I'm just trying to really carefully think about what it means to be a governor, not just this governor, but a governor in a state of emergency. And that there are provisions in the law that suggest that may not have been necessary, but we're happy that you did it or in that this provision is not necessary. And I appreciate the fact that you're going to leave it out. And we can argue some day in front of a court maybe whether it was necessary or not if challenged, but that is our current interpretation of a governor's, a governor's emergency authorities. Someone has to be in charge. There are checks and balances, but at the end of the day someone's got to make the ultimate decision. And so that's. I think in January, I would love to have the conversation about the constitutional issues with Betsy Ann and Tucker and maybe Peter Teachout and some other people around when can a governor suspend statute and what statute can be suspended? Is it anything that's in statute during a state of emergency that the governor can simply suspend? I don't know, but I'd like to have, I think that in January that would be a great discussion to have around what that means. And does it mean that during a state of emergency, the entire green books are gone? Right. You should have lots of precedent by then from other states. I mean, there have been a lot, everyone's in a state of emergency, I believe, and there have been challenges across the country and maybe we'll have a richer body of law to inform us next session. Well, our constitution is very different than many states' constitutions. And so I think that we could, if we think that the governor has authority completely to suspend statute, it could, and I'm not talking about this governor, I'm not talking about anybody that's in my mind that could be a governor, but we could have a very authoritarian governor declare a state of emergency and simply suspend all the statutes. And we give- Which would be quickly challenged, I'm sure. But we give the governor those executive order up in our, I mean, we have given those to the governor. Maybe it, you know, after this pandemic is done, that's a section of law we have not necessarily looked at recently. Maybe we should be reviewing 20 BSA. Is that right, Tucker? It's title 20. Is that right? Yeah. So, I mean, maybe this is an opportunity for us to review those together. Also the governor's office with its, you know, experience now having gone through this huge emergency and lengthy emergency, they would have input also as to how to beef it up or not, but it's a, you know, clearly, it's not, to me, this isn't a constitutional issue. I mean, it seems like we've given that authority that we're discussing. We've given that to the governor's office and it's not like it was in the constitution. Well, I think what's in the constitution is that we have the authority and we can give it to the, we can give certain authorities to the governor or to the secretary of state. Or, I mean, we've given the, we don't have saddlebags full of votes anymore that we count. We've given that authority to the secretary of state's office as an efficiency, it's a functioning of the government. So we don't do that anymore. We've given that authority there. We haven't given, we haven't given all authority to any office. And I guess the question is what are the limits to that? I mean, and that's what we can review with only 20 of the essay. Yeah, I think this will be a great conversation. Oh, we all have to bring this around for it. Yeah. I think the constitutional issues are important and obviously interesting. It would make for a good discussion, but I just think there's two practical things that I keep coming back to. One is that I thought part of what we were doing was trying to make things be more efficient in the future should there be a similar situation. Because as you mentioned, Jeanette, a lot of people came to our committee and said, you know, we need you to take a look at this, whether it's holding meetings, open meetings, whatever it might be, different powers of local communities. And they needed those to be discussed and they needed the authority or the go-ahead from the legislature to make changes. The governor obviously signed these things into law. So at the time, sort of must have agreed with the idea that it was appropriate for the legislature to be doing it. The other thing, I think it is important and you said this as well. You've both all of us said this, but right now we're talking about a particular governor a particular state of mind in a particular relationship with the legislature. And everything was very smooth and the governor did a great job of making sure things stayed smooth. I appreciate that. But we're not talking about this governor, you know, we're talking about what may come in the future and we don't know what may come in the future. And I think in the future, we have to be prepared that we may have a different governor with a different point of view, maybe a different ability to move forward. And you know, we may find ourselves really wishing we had or I think we'll find ourselves appreciating the fact that we have in statute what would happen in certain areas if the governor declares an emergency. Emergency declaration means A, B and C and D can begin to happen right away without having the legislature have to go over these things again and take the time and energy necessary to rethink them. So I think, you know, it's hard to base it on this experience because this experience was pretty good. Although it was pretty good in the sense that we also spent a lot of time waiting through these issues but it may not be so good in the future. So we have to be prepared for the worst and do the best or something like that. I certainly appreciate that Senator because, you know, it could be all changed in the future. I think it's worth having revisitiveness outside of the emergency, you know, lessons learned and looking back and really do appreciate the work that you've put in the thought that you've put into these issues. So certainly don't want to minimize that at all. And it's value. It's just really a question of, you know, necessity. And I understand the argument we could have in the future a governor that we wouldn't trust with this authority and need some check in statute or we could have a secretary of state. We don't trust in this. You know, I mean, the shoe fits on everybody's foot at some point here in the conversation. So certainly do appreciate the fact that things could change in many different ways in the future without whoever's in office and whatever office. Okay. So committee, where are we? I think that we're going to lose a couple of people. Yeah. I like. Thank you, Secretary Young. I think we should also be careful about the special powers delegated to the chair of government operations. So we don't have to talk about that much yet. But it's a little awkward to bring up but I think we're going to have to. Okay. Betsy, and if you've got that language, I ask you to draft. So I think we're, am I correct here or is that tomorrow we're losing people? I have to go ahead. Right now, Anthony's leaving and I have to leave in five minutes, sadly. Okay. Is that, that's today, right? That is today. Okay. That's called. I would suggest that we review, that we have a new draft tomorrow that we review it and then we have the discussion about where we want to go and we'll leave out the section giving the governor the authority to extend licenses in the executive branch. My feeling is that we leave in the OPR language. I agree. Yeah. And okay. And then we'll have some more language around the municipal elections and the, there were some other suggestions that were made today and we come back and tomorrow is Wednesday. So as much as possible, and I don't know if it's possible, Betsy Ann and Tucker, to try to put it together into one thing so that we can have a review of it tomorrow. You may have them collaborate and unite. Does that work? Okay. And if there are, and then, so it'll be pretty, pretty firm at that point and we'll just take general comments. And if there are any press people that want to come and look at what we've done around open meetings or anything else, we'll take some comments on it, but it'll be pretty much, pretty much a finished bill tomorrow, we hope. Betsy. And then Mancha, did we, will OPR and Board of Medical Practice be able to come in tomorrow to testify on the remainder of these sections, which are, we're just piggybacking off of Act 91? Yeah, if they want to, I think that they, Chris Winter sent a note that said that he had to leave and that OPR was okay with the changes, but we'll notify everybody. The league, the clerks, the OPR Secretary of State, the press, who else needs to, that's pretty much it, isn't it? And do notify, we'll notify David Hurley, he also, because just to make sure that that's anybody else. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. That was very interesting. Thank you. It reminds me of why I'm glad I'm on this committee. All right, thanks. Bye.