 everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. We will be looking at S-352, which is a technical corrections to the hazard pay bill that was passed in June. We have with us our legislative counsel, Damian Leonard, who will walk us through those changes. There was also an amendment that was placed in the bill on the Senate floor, which has to deal with, which is dealing with child care and moving some more dollars there. That is not our purview. So, we will not be looking at that today. We will only look at the technical corrections today. And if everything goes well, we will take a vote on that and hopefully move it forward so that it can be referred to the Committee on Human Services and then ultimately to the Committee on Appropriations. So, with that, Damian, were you able to get the bill? Yes, I have an unofficial copy of the bill. As you can imagine, are extremely backlogged right now. And so, they sent me over an unofficial copy that hasn't been proof read to make sure everything is right. But I can share that. Amy, can you make it so I can share my screen? Yep. I just made you the co-host. And I did post the unofficial version to our webpage and also send it to you guys by email. Okay, great. Thank you, Amy. Sure. All right. So, let me just pull that up. And there we go. Okay. Can everybody see this? Yep. So, this is the Senate, what the Senate passed here. So, basically, they're going back into the original hazard pay law and making some amendments in there. The first is an increase of $2.5 million. That takes the amount appropriated from $28 to $30.5 million. And this is the estimate to cover the various technical changes here for groups that weren't counted in the original estimate. The next piece here is this is the first technical amendment. So, this is a homeless shelter. And then, originally, when this was drafted, the assumption was that the hotels and motels that were housing the homeless would either come in under the definition of homeless shelter or a provider of services and necessities to a vulnerable population. The Agency of Human Services had a different reading of the statute. And so, this is to clarify the intent that the hotels and motels that housed homeless populations because the homeless shelters were unable to provide social distancing for those populations would be covered here. So, this would make them retroactively eligible. So, that's your first expansion. The next is... So, it came to the attention of a number of different legislative members that I heard from over the summer here that both cleaning and janitorial services and food service are frequently contracted out by nursing homes and other residential care facilities as well as... And this should have been obvious having had a couple kids in recent years hospitals there where the cafeteria is run by Eremark or another food service company like that. And so, this would provide for the cleaning and janitorial services that provide cleaning and locations that are open to the general public or regularly used by residents or patients of the covered employer and then for food service providers who provide meals for residents or patients of the covered employer. So, the employees of those larger companies that are actually working on another covered employer to do this work become potentially eligible provided they meet the elevated risk standards. Are there any questions on that? So, one thing I want to note for the committee and this has come to my attention through the Agency of Human Services and it really is a policy call for the legislature and it came to our attention after this bill had already passed in the Senate is that there are also I believe three or four contract nursing companies that have been providing staff to healthcare facilities during the pandemic who have been asking about whether they would be covered. Under the current bill they would not because the employer is not the UVM Medical Center it's the the nursing service that then contracts with UVM Medical Center to fill gaps in their nursing schedule. So, I can explain that much to you but those are actually what they call traveling nurses. Yeah, so these would be let me just see if I can pull up the email on my iPad here but yeah these would be traveling nurses or nurse staffing agencies that their business is basically when a hospital has a labor shortage they provide temporary staffing to the hospital or to the healthcare facility that you might contact like a staffing company to provide temporary administrative support to your company or secretarial support. Let me just see if I can find that. So, we did do that for contractors for nursing homes right? Yep and for occupational therapists and that kind of stuff but not for nurses. Yeah, so yeah, so the four companies here so this was forwarded from Wendy Trafton over to Stephanie Barrett at JFO who then passed it on to me and Wendy Trafton is the staff person at AHS who's been heading up the hazard pay program and so she had received email inquiries from Fusion Medical Staffing which provides LPN, CNAs, RRTs and MT MLTs to skilled nursing facilities and inpatient hospitals. I need to explain what all the acronyms are because I just don't know. And then Convergence Services Group which provides a is a travel nurse staffing agency with employees in Vermont nursing homes and rehab facilities. West Staff or We Staff also reached out that they it's not clear that they actually provide nurses. My familiarity with them is they provide administrative and office staff so I don't know if they would even meet the elevated risk. And then Primetime Healthcare which is another travel nursing staff agency that's provided staff to various facilities and then TLC nursing associations which provides healthcare staff including RNs, PCAs, LPNs, etc. to long-term care facilities. So those were the several inquiries that they'd gotten when they contacted us. I don't know if there are others. I also don't know any of the particulars of the work these folks are doing, whether they would even qualify for the elevated risk. But it just raises a question of whether outside of what's proposed in S353, whether there's another sort of frontline medical staff or a long-term care staff group that should be added to this list. And obviously I don't have a position on that. I just wanted to make you aware that they'd gotten inquiries. When I testified in the Senate I was asked about this and at that point we were not aware of any inquiries and that was my testimony in the Senate. So now we've received inquiries so apparently these groups are potentially out there. Was there has there been a fiscal note prepared to understand what additional dollars needed? There hasn't. So this might be something that I'll just pull this please. Yeah this might be something that needs an additional look if this is a direction that you want to go in. Wendy Trafton might be able to provide some more background or at least put you in touch with the employers if you wanted to hear from them. Again I don't know with the janitorial services and the food service providers the various notes that representatives got described the work they were doing and it seemed pretty clear that they were the group intended to be covered. But I don't know anything beyond just the list of you know types of nurses and facilities and then the employers that contacted AHS at this point. So the nurses would have to be frontline working with patients with COVID. Yeah and then the with the way the frontline employees are defined we'll see in a minute they may still qualify. So let me just take a quick quick look here but because they're one of the qualifiers is close contact with um populations that may have um let me just get the right wording here before I I say this wrong. So elevated risk is so providing in-person services or care to members of the public or clients um frequent physical contact or close contact or both with people who may be infected with SARS-CoV-2 but who are not known or suspected COVID-19 patients or in an area and we're revising this to an area or facility with ongoing community community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 then the job requires regular close contact with members of the public. So as long as these are nurses who are seeing patients um they're likely qualifying for the hazard pay if they're in an administrative role where they're not seeing patients um or not closely interfacing with members of the public then they likely would not qualify. Okay so it would be traveling nurses that that are working in the hospitals nursing homes, BNAs. Yep and then the other question too is are they earning $25 an hour or less? Right now there um there was a caveat for BNAs though and there wasn't. Uh so with the um yeah so we have home health agencies um so if you're employed by a home health agency um then then you're covered and I think that gets the BNAs um. So they're already covered now. Yeah so they they were covered on the original bill. Okay the traveling nurses. Yeah the difference is if you're a traveling nurse sort of staffing company so um but I'm thinking of um my wife's cousin who's a nurse um and at one point she was she was considering a position where basically it's a staffing company and they they move nurses around on three month rotations at different areas that are high demand. You know and so um that would be a little bit different than like our home health agency nurses there and this would be traveling traveling nurses. No home health agencies are using traveling nurses also. Right so if they're yeah if they're contracting with an outside traveling nurse group then they would not be covered unless we put language in that they are. That's right. Okay. Yeah they have to be employed directly by the covered employer so we'd have to make those contract groups the staffing nurse staffing uh agencies um a covered employer. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. I'm sorry I got here late but I'm trying to do work for the office. My understanding of the way the hazard pay worked was that if you were a nurse in a nursing home you were treated differently than a nurse who worked in a hospital. The $25 per hour limit didn't apply to the nursing home nurses but it did apply to the hospital nursing home nurse at the hospital nurses. Most nurses make a whole lot more than $25 an hour. I mean most RNs um I don't know what LPNs or um or you know you just you just they just make a lot of money traveling nurses make a lot more. Now part of that is because so they really wouldn't be qualified under the way we passed the bill last time and I don't know if it was um the nursing homes only got to have some of their personnel covered or all of their nurses covered um but most people in that field make a whole wouldn't be qualified under the $25 uh cap um and certainly traveling nurses. I mean those people of course they cost more because what you're doing is you're also paying for their lodging and they're the administrative costs for the the the service that provides the nurses so you might be paying them three times what you pay your nurses that are actually on your staff but it's not that you pay them it's that you pay the agency who then pays them but they still get paid a premium so I don't know if any of those I mean they're gonna be expensive I mean I don't know how much money it's gonna cost to include them but that's gonna really add to the cost of this and they don't have to come they're choosing to come I mean lots of people went from different parts of the country to where there were hotspots because they wanted to go there they don't have to go there it's not like you're hired by northwest and that's your job and you have to show up because that's your job you can choose to come or not to come so I don't know yeah the $25 an hour um cap the only exceptions to that are our employees of home health agencies and nursing homes yes um and they were those were separated out because they had nurses who were just above that that line and so that they had been separated out for that reason but there was a lot of testimony when this bill went through the first time that most RNs particularly are earning well above the $5 an hour cap and speak for for LPNs who I think earn less but I don't know if they're uh where they are in relation to the cap I just think they earn less than RNs um so but yeah it this is kind of a it's a question that came up I don't know enough about those pay rates um but I wanted the committee to be aware that it was out there because this is a question that had come up uh in the past and previously on the record I'd said we hadn't heard from any of these groups to say that they need coverage now we know at least four or five of these staffing agencies have reached out again I don't know if they have you know only five percent of their employees or zero percent or 50 percent would meet the wage and exposure qualification requirements um and that that's kind of the big question there there's also the question of if you're uh um you know there there are other questions too about if you were hired in the middle of this but you were collecting unemployment for a period you wouldn't be eligible either so yeah um there are there are various issues that could come into play here and I just don't know enough about the staffing makeup um for these groups to answer them it's it's something that I wanted to put out there I I mean from a functional standpoint um I I mean given that this has to move along there's also the possibility that if the committee wants to look into this more uh you could move the bill as it is today out and with the caveat that you might just do a small floor amendment addressing this issue it's a it would be a fairly discreet ad but you're right you would need a fiscal note you need to get an idea of what this population is my guess is it would take uh uh Joyce and Chloe over at JFO just a couple of days to get the necessary information together to put together a reasonable projection so it's it's not something that we could necessarily answer today right um when we did the the home health agencies nursing homes I know we're allowing them to go above the cap but is is there a cat to that or is that wide open for them um it uh was left to the determination of of the agency of human services I'm not sure for how they've um construed that at this point so I I just can't answer that I think it's a fairly you're talking about a fairly discreet population yep um of employees there and they have to meet the exposure requirements so you won't be capturing for example the administrative right uh yeah I mean your RNs RNs do make pretty good dollars and so I'm just wondering in the guidance that that the agency put out on this I wonder where they set the set the limit at for them um okay Stephanie my question was about the the staffing agencies and if in other um legislation we wanted uh the uh the businesses to be domiciled in Vermont and I'm wondering if that's a concern with these staffing agencies even though the people are living in Vermont they may not always be residents of Vermont but they're living in Vermont for that period of time but their business but the business hiring them perhaps is not a Vermont there there's no requirement and hazard pay that the business be domiciled in Vermont and part of the reason for this is it's not uh direct assistance to the business it's to the employees um and so one of the concerns was for example um let's take Dartmouth-Hitchcock has operates facilities on the Vermont side of the Connecticut River um one of the concerns was inadvertently excluding frontline employees there just because they work for Dartmouth-Hitchcock and UVM Medical Center okay yeah Charlie Charlie yeah you're thanks I was just reading through H965 um as we passed it to try to tie together what we did for those home health agencies or the companies they contracted with and it's this long paragraph uh I don't know if it's worth just trying to do that kind of fix to this as well uh I don't know what that looks like it seems like we have a construct in order to make that possible uh within what we did last time but it would just be almost I mean we're doing a little differently for the homeless shelters because it could be almost the same way that we did for the home health for the nursing home facilities but I was just looking for that type of information to see what that looks like um so that's one question for Damian and then Mr. Chair I have the question in terms of what we know as to what we've allocated by Agency Human Services for hazard pay to date uh and I don't know if the Senate took testimony on that but it seems like it's either fully subscribed or will soon be oversubscribed one of those two why they've added that two and a half million dollars right so um when this was taken up in the Senate a few weeks ago um my understanding was the agency had received a little more than 30 million dollars in applications uh and obviously there's 28 million dollars in the fund um some of the applications were um for either employees or employers who did not qualify so they but their expectation was that it was fully subscribed these three technical changes add employees to that group um and so the two and a half million dollars is the estimate plus a few hundred thousand dollars cushion um because there are still applications trickling in for the original bill um and so the feeling was uh add a little bit of a cushion um just to make sure that we don't um because it is first come first serve to try to make sure that you don't have people who are completely left out um but yeah the the two and a half million is estimated to cover the janitorial food service um and then uh janitorial food service and hotel motel staff who would be covered in the language I just read through plus um the fourth group is former employees um and this was a drafting error on my part um because the bill was originally a present tense um uh hazard pay program and now it's a retrospective hazard pay program I didn't change the tense in some of the language so individuals who worked for a covered employer between mid-march and mid-may and have since been laid off or switched jobs could not get the benefit because they were no longer a on their uh former employer's payroll um so this the new language here allows employers to identify former employees who might be eligible so that the agency can reach out to them directly um and uh help them apply for the grant um and then pay them pay them the grant directly assuming they qualify um again if they collected UI benefits during the eligible period um they're immediately disqualified uh and there may be other things for example uh that that could disqualify them if they come back and say well I was working in the office or um I only worked 20 hours in in direct contact and the rest of the time was telemedicine um something like that so but that that does does create an avenue to get to those so those four groups are estimated to cost um a little more than two million dollars and then that was rounded up to two and a half just to provide a little cushion because the program was already fully subscribed Lynn yeah thank you it looks like we also added um for staff employee to child care programs to regulated by DCF was that in there originally or is that also new are you looking at uh S352 or S353 352 should I be looking at the child that you're looking at section 16 um oh you're at you're looking at section one we're not we're not gonna we're not dealing with that we're dealing with the technical corrections piece of it once we pass this it'll get sent to human services and then human services will deal with the child care issue okay then it goes to a probe so we have a little time if we're interested in pursuing this further um to include those those people that that are contracted but that take care of Vermonters that we have time to have Damien draft the language and also get a fiscal note because not as important to us as it is to appropriations that would be ready for them to make a decision on whether or not to include that so we're not doing 352 is that what you're yes we're doing we're doing 352 but just these technical corrections not the child care piece that that's that was an added amendment yeah okay I meant that was added okay janitorial it's um food service hotel workers hotel workers lodgings and then former employees okay right and now there's a possibility that we take a look at this this other group of people that that um um possibly should be included okay yeah yeah before we move on um is everyone comfortable with with taking a look at this further we get this out today um we can talk about this more once we see language and once we get um get something from jfo on um what the estimate is everybody good with that okay all right so yeah if you could take a look at that Damien prepare a language so that we can take a look at that probably Tuesday Christie have a question yeah just we're doing clarifications or technical input here on this and I appreciate that Mr Chairman um I got an email recently from a funeral home and within this bill there is a section for morgue does morgue equal funeral home or does funeral home equal morgue no it does not so you're talking about this not within a hospital where they receive the deceased uh yeah so the the funeral home and crema store crema to re establishments um would be added by the expansion bill which is s 353 so these are these are two separate bills um the reason they've been separated is s 352 the aim was to capture employees who were meant to be captured in the original bill that the house and senate had agreed on um and so just basically closing loopholes that we had inadvertently left open that left people out um s 353 would restore the employees who were taken out by the house which included funeral home and crematory establishment workers um because of concerns about the federal guidance here so the federal guidance could be read two ways uh one way would be to say that hazard pay across the board hazard pay is prohibited um and it can only be paid to public health public safety health care um you're sort of um frontline medical or first responder um public health employees the other way is to read it to say that the limitations on hazard pay only apply to public employees and don't apply to private employers and as long as there's a covid related reason the state can provide grants to private employers or to private individuals and since we had this discussion I came down on the first reading because it was more conservative and I felt that that was the safer track to go on because of the potential for federal clawback of money that's spent for an impermissible purpose since then Pennsylvania and Louisiana have passed bills that disagree with that opinion that I gave to the legislature in June and so the senate had passed as a separate bill so wouldn't hang up the technical corrections and expansion for the house to consider pursuing there but but both Pennsylvania and Louisiana have done it Louisiana's program is a little unique in that it's a tax rebate so it might skirt the issue by providing the money as a tax rebate rather than as a traditional hazard pay program but Pennsylvania has gone right ahead and done it as a hazard pay program that covers forecast years and that sort of thing um and in that bill 353 you'd get to the private funeral home and crematory employers whereas morgue is a public um public um employer there which is why they were included originally thank you damien long explanation but okay so I think Tuesday we'll get into the nitty gritty of 353 um so let's um look at the rest of the language um on on the um workers that were no longer employed um when this came out but we're working during the the time period um in the bill all right i'm just emailing jfo now okay okay and so um the next change in the bill um is i'm going to reshare my screen here sorry i forget that my laptop is not a touchscreen um so the this here is one of those um catching sort of technical issues um we'd had different language throughout these sections here in some places we said members of the public or clients some places said members of the public and one of the things that uh we realized was that in a lot of these instances you're talking about folks who may not be dealing with members of the public but are dealing with patients or residents or that sort of thing um so that's all this is here is just cleaning up the language so that we're not inadvertently excluding um someone and then um the next here is just to cover the janitorial staff um we realized that the original cleaning language um required uh that the individual be cleaning premises that are uh that's used by individuals who are known or suspected to have COVID-19 but a lot of janitorial staff particularly in nursing homes are cleaning areas that are regularly used by individuals who could be infected but you don't know and the whole point of putting themselves at that risk is to prevent a breakout or an outbreak in the in the nursing home where you have a high risk population uh and so these individuals would be included here because they're taking the risk uh in high traffic areas in order to protect our most vulnerable populations here um the next clarifications here the ongoing community transmission uh this is kind of an interesting section here Vermont was an area with ongoing community transmission for roughly a month of the two month period but we also had facilities with ongoing community transmission of the virus uh and we wanted to make sure we weren't inadvertently excluding people who are working in those facilities um from uh the hazard pay um in case they didn't work because the the whole considering the state is an area of ongoing community transmission uh because it was only for a limited period of time there there were just concerns here that um about inadvertently excluding folks although they would probably qualify under the close contact provisions elsewhere um so but again this is as I like to say belts and suspenders and another belt or suspenders um we're just really trying to make sure they're covered um the next piece here is changing the eligible employee make sure the past tense this is the drafting error that I mentioned to you earlier where I'd left everything in the present tense um and so when these questions came up uh and I looked at the law with the folks from ahs I said you're right it says present tense so former employees aren't covered the other issue for former employees um as this committee will be very aware is the whole issue of once someone is no longer your employee they're no longer on your payroll um and to bring them back on payroll would be a burden so there's a whole separate process created for that um so that employers who want to give credit to their former employees can identify those employees to the agency then the agency will reach out and deal with the grant directly with that employee um are there any questions about this all right I guess why why does that just apply to former employees um wouldn't it apply to all employees it applies to both current and former the change allows it to apply to former okay but yeah so these these are the current employees because the the eligible period is mid-march to mid-may right um so in some cases those employees have stayed on um all the way through in other cases those employees may have left for a different job after the period ended um or maybe even during the period but they worked the required number of hours to be eligible um so um examples could be uh someone who um was working as a nurse in a healthcare facility but moved back home so that they could uh be closer to their parents during the crisis here or something like that yeah I I I understand that I'm just trying to understand why if if the agency felt that they could pay people that are still working for the same company why did they feel they can't pay people that used to work for them because you're talking about present tense and past tense so even when this passed it wasn't it was already in the past it should have been past tense so why why aren't the other ones ineligible then you know the ones that have already been paid yeah so the ones who've already been paid are folks who were working during the eligible period yeah um and so weren't the other ones yeah the ones that weren't working that aren't working for them presently but because of the language I'm gonna highlight here um so it said is employed by a covered employer that has applied for a grant and so the agency interpreted the language literally which is what we asked them to do um and they said well we're it's also okay so it's a they basically said okay I get it it's a you worked the hours during the eligible period but you have to be currently employed that's what the legislature told us and that was my mistake when we got it okay last minute as I forgot to change the tense yep um so this would make those employees who have left eligible okay zike zike has a question yeah damian is there is there a mechanism for the employee the employee to the former employee to to submit an application you know I'm just I worry about some employers being preoccupied or you know not having enough time to really be thinking about these previous employees or in the case of who knows uh maybe uh an employer fired a previous employee and doesn't like them and doesn't want to submit the paperwork for them is there is there a mechanism for the individual to apply or does that make sense there there is not um and part of the concern about that was um whether administratively the agency could handle an influx of individual applications rather than and then having to do the follow-up with employers rather than having employers say these are the employees who qualified and all along that's been kind of the the process here as employers apply and you are always at risk that your employer is going to decide you don't meet the criteria um or um this happened in pennsylvania um for those of you who are familiar with the chain giant supermarkets just decided not to participate um so all of their employees they're the largest supermarket chain in pennsylvania uh all of their employees were left out of the hazard pay program because they just decided not to apply um and that's been in a potential risk here all along but administratively um the the administrative costs were diminished significantly um by switching over to this sort of employer application here where the employer initially identifies people and then it's processed that way so um but yes there are potentially people whose employers will just choose not to apply or choose not to do it for former employees or something like that so there is a risk okay thank you yeah stefanie all up on the same topic so uh the former so if an employee was employed during that during the period the necessary period no longer with that organization they would contact their former employer to make sure that they would be getting preceding the hazard pay that'd be their only only mechanism for them to get yep they could they could contact their former employer to say could you could you please submit the uh the notice to the agency the agency is also required to reach out to any employer that's already applied to say please let us know if there are any former employees who may also be eligible you don't have to confirm that they meet all of the eligibility you just have to confirm that they worked for you and cover job or an eligible job for the requisite number of hours and then we'll reach out to them directly and do all of the you know the social security number and the other application piece at that point um so it becomes kind of a two-step process where they say can you let us know if there are any former employees that we should reach out to and give us um their contact information then the agency reaches out and if the former employee follows up they can apply for the grant at that point so basically the agency says you may be eligible here's how to apply and then they'll review the applications at that point okay thank you i was concerned that the former employee would have to submit their own application directly to the agency thank you so yeah they will have to apply ultimately they'll have to submit an application but the the agency is going to reach out to the former employers to say can you identify these people so we can get in touch with them thanks yep Lynn yeah thank you can you talk about administrative uh burden how does a how does this creates a huge issue for an employer who someone's moved on they're no longer an employee um i'm gonna guess this has to come out of your payroll just like it normally would no did they send them oh they send the grant to the employer and then the employee passes it on the employee yeah there's i think that's further on in the in the language it is it's actually the next thing we're going to get to okay i'll hold thanks so i yep i will answer that um so one um piece that we took out here is the restriction on eligible employees um do not include an independent contractor or self-employed individual um and we've changed the um change that so it's the number of hours um including work performed as an independent contractor sole proprietor um so the reason for that was um that there was concern that you have individuals who are working two jobs um on one they're an independent contractor on the other they're employed and uh this was creating some confusion about whether those individuals or for example if they left their job and are now working as an independent contractor but they'd previously qualified whether they would be excluded from this program and so this is just clarifying that we are not um providing hazard pay for work performed as an independent contractor but that if you um but you're not restricted from receiving the grant if you have a second job as an independent contractor um are there questions on that clarification okay so the the next thing gets to um what we were just um talking about this first piece is just language um that allows an individual who um is eligible to receive a grant directly from the program and these would be your former employees are going to be paid directly by the agency um as if they're receiving or they'll basically be receiving a grant from the state of vermont um and so these individuals have the option to elect not to receive the hazard pay the reason for this has to deal with the benefits clef um there are certain instances where individuals may want to decline the hazard pay because whatever benefits program they're on may not disregard it in a lot of instances um this income because it comes in a single lump sum is disregarded for purposes of benefits programs and we've also got language in the original bill that directs the state to the extent permitted by federal law to disregard this income for purposes of determining eligibility but still people are this is basically saying you're not required to accept the grant um although it's outside of a real extreme benefits clef scenario it's hard to imagine any instance where someone would not want to accept the grant um oh damien this is this is just for the people that were employed during the period and then became so it puts them on the same footing as a current employee who can decline a grant but in this case uh the employer the former employer is providing name and address the agency is following up and asking them to file an application why would they have to elect not to receive if they're going to file the application aren't isn't it at that point that they're making a determination whether or not to accept it they're not they're not automatically automatically being given the grant um yeah um that's a good point um as i'm reading this it says by providing notice but that the providing notice language dates back to when this grant was up automatic and you had to affirmatively turn it down right um so yeah this i'm trying to think whether you even need to allow them to elect not to receive it um yeah because if they're if they're going to fill out an application then they're electing to receive it if they don't want to receive it they don't fill out the application yeah okay yeah this you're exactly right this language can come out um good catch so that i guess would be the committee amendment for tuesday um or i can do that for today too um either today or we'll do it when it gets to the floor okay yeah i mean i can the the language i'm trying to think how quickly i could turn this around um because yeah i just strike out this subdivision and then i think what we'll do i mean the language it it's probably likely that we will make the change for the contracted nurses um and i think there's a need to get this out today so it can get to human services and then approach so i think anything that we need to change we can make an amendment on the floor after okay i will get this amendment going now okay okay so um the next piece here this gets now we're getting to representative um what i was just discussing with representative dickinson and so a covered employer may identify potentially eligible employees who are no longer employed by providing their name mailing address and any other information required by the secretary and then the program shall provide the individuals with notice of their potential eligibility and information regarding how to apply for a grant um and then subdivision j here or subsection j um basically said um they have to per says they have to provide them with notice of how that they may be eligible to obtain a grant and information regarding how to apply um and the notice and information shall be sent to the address provided by the former employer um moved hopefully they've provided a forwarding address but you'll notice this doesn't require the state to track them down just to at minimum provide notice um to the address provided um so um the notice uh sent shall inform them that they may elect to decline the grant and provide them with information regarding how to do so we could just change that shall inform the individual that he or she is not required to apply for a grant or even just delete that all together since application was there a language um from prior prior to this that uh in the original that talked about um notifying the employee that they they don't have to accept the grant but was there language that talked about the benefits cliff or anything there there wasn't well in the original in the original there was language that basically said that for purposes of determining eligibility for benefits to the extent allowable the state would disregard this this grant amount yeah but i but i mean we did we provide was was notice needed to be provided to the employee um to to check whether or not they could lose benefits because they accept the grant uh no i don't think so okay um so the and that the problem for that is um in the especially for these former employees you may not have their social security number and so forth and then for current employees the employer may not know that they're receiving benefits right so in both cases it's basically up to the employee to know okay um and you said previously i think a little while ago that it's unlikely that that they would lose benefits because of this yeah so for some of the programs the benefits programs a single lump sum payment like this uh isn't going to disqualify you anyway and then we added in language that says for the uh to the extent permitted by federal law hazard pay provided to an eligible employee through a grant through the program shall not be considered as earned income unearned income or resource for the purpose of any public benefit program um or make hazard pay recipients ineligible for any public benefit programs including vermont medicaid um and so we're basically saying to the extent that we can uh disregard this one-time benefit okay federal regulations we're going to do so okay um and so here you're suggesting we just make a few changes in the in the wording yeah i think at this point um you could just inform the individual that he or she is not required to uh her grant but he or she you're not required to file an application for the grant or yeah not accept the grant i mean it once they file the application they're basically saying they're accepting it right because at that point if you're deemed eligible there you're gonna get a check from the state right um so um i guess you can you know what the the thought is is they just i don't know how to word it but they're not required to file an application yeah they want the grant they file an application if you don't want it you don't have to file it yep um yeah i think we just strike from elect to decline through the end of the sentence and replace that with um uh is not required to file an application for the grant okay yeah and just kind of make clear that you know they they can choose whether or not to take this money um i think in most instances people will take it but there may be circumstances where this would change change something for them they don't want to lose a particular benefit um due to the additional income and this will be 1099 income um so it's going to be on a reported for purposes of taxation on a 1099 miscellaneous so um and then the grant would come directly from the program so Representative Dickinson this kind of goes to your question earlier because these are former employees um in order to avoid the issue where employers are not identifying former employees because they're afraid of the additional administrative cost of putting them back on payroll reporting taxes etc etc etc re-establishing direct deposit whatever it is um they're just providing contact information the state pays them the grant check and then sends them a 1099 miscellaneous and the individuals will have to report it on their taxes and pay any applicable taxes uh on that amount um when they file their taxes next year um and then um they have to be provided with notice that it may be subject income taxed kind of give them the heads up that they may want to set aside um a portion of that money um and then the last piece here is because we'll now be collecting social security numbers um any personally identifiable uh information um collected by the program any entity of state government performing a function or any entity that the secretary has contracted with um has to be kept confidential and then it is from the public records act so that's that's pretty standard language there that covers our basis um are there questions on that okay the last piece here section two just requires the program to send notice to covered employers um that it may identify potentially eligible employees who were no longer employed by the employer at the time it submitted its initial application and provide information regarding how to identify the eligible employees to the program um and then shall provide and for the third time we're saying the program has to provide those individuals with notice of their potential eligibility so and that's oh go ahead Damien uh just the difference in wording and not difference in wording but it's here consistently they covered employer may identify potential eligible employees uh and that's also above um so it's not a requirement that they identify eligible employees correct that's correct um so there's does that point before uh what happens if an employer decides not to and that um that employees left out uh there's no recourse for that employee uh and the way the the bill exists at this point in the same way that if you work in a covered potentially covered job now and your employer decides not to apply there's no recourse for you there's no way for you to get that grant if your employer decided not to apply for it it would it would seem to make sense that if the employer is applying for anybody to receive hazard pay that they have to identify both those who are currently employed and those who are formally employed so that could be a change that the house puts in um the senate discussed uh that to some extent um one of the concerns that was raised in the senate um and part of the and this was part of the discussion that ended up with the word may being left in and again i'm not taking a position on this um this is just some of the discussion that i remember on this were concerns about for example someone who'd been terminated for cause um during the uh either during the benefits period or afterwards but it was otherwise eligible because they'd been working in uh the position and so forth but they were terminated for misconduct um the employers may not want to apply for them um and so that that was one of the potential issues that was just raised uh raised and when the senate considered this and and elected to leave it as a may um that's awfully petty you know if they're applying i mean i i won't make a i mean i understand we've got to get this thing out and all of that i just want to make a point that you know if you have an employee and you you're applying for your current employees and you did terminate someone for cause for whatever reason to do further punish the employee the former employees i think just petty i just i'll just leave that at that as a as an editorial comment i'm not going to do anything about it but i just um maybe that's how the senate views employees i'm just saying well i i think what damien was talking about was um when you when you let somebody go for cause that means that they've done something that they shouldn't have done like steal from you or it's it's not just you know somebody quit and that's it there's generally a good cause so i can see both sides of it that's why that's why mr chair i'm not doing anything about it i can see the other side too i just wanted to make a point yeah i'll be quiet now in an at will state though you could let somebody go without cause right yeah right you can go for good cause bad cause or no cause no cause so just seems like if they if they want it if an employer wants to play in the game and they should be covering all the people who are employed during that hazard period i mean if we're really trying to thank the people there's just what this really amounts to thank the people putting in their pocket for subjecting themselves or willingly working in a role that exposes them to coven 19 and those employers should be forced to include both those who are still employed and those who were employed during that period thank you representative kimball and and i wonder if there's a could there be a discrimination issue with that could be filed against the employer for discriminating against a former employee and not providing their name when they did provide it for all their other employees it you know that's a great question i think it would be a novel um novel uh legal issue certainly it's conceivable that um that could be part of a discrimination suit um an alleged harm that occurred in a discrimination suit you know i raised i filed a complaint about sexual harassment i was terminated because of that and then even though i'd worked the required number of hours um you also didn't identify me for hazard pay um you know so it could be a retaliatory um termination and then non-identification but in that case the individual assuming that and this gets to a much bigger question of sexual harassment is a particularly bad one because it's a very high standard to prove um and it's very difficult to prove in court um but assuming the individual could could prove it in court they have a remedy that way um where they can get damages um but yeah i mean that that requires individuals to um you know be able to file a successful lawsuit for discrimination which in and of itself depending on the circumstances is often extremely challenging in a long drawn-out process so yes there are instances that i can think of where it would potentially be part of the damages consideration and an example of retaliatory conduct or discriminatory conduct but uh well i just wonder if it sets up the state making it the state look bad where uh you know individuals that had worked for someone they they declined to enter their name although they did with all their other employees and the state doesn't have a remedy for it i i just think it could give the program a bad name too yeah i think in the instant um you know particularly with um particularly with uh current employee um yeah if you've got disparate treatment between someone who's in a protected category and someone who is not i think there's uh at least a colorable discrimination claim you know so if for example um you you filed a claim for all of your employees who practiced a certain religion but not for the one employee who didn't there you've got a colorable claim of discrimination on the basis of religion same thing if if you filed it for all uh for all the people who were you know born in the united states but you didn't file it for the people who are born in canada or something like that the there's a that's a clear disparate treatment argument um it gets a little dicier if the if you've got an instance where the employer alleges that they fired you for cause um and you're alleging that the cause was basically made up cause to cover up the fact that you'd been you raised a complaint about uh discrimination or an osha violation or something like that that was occurring in the workplace and they were doing this as retaliation and then to further the retaliation they they also didn't include you on the list of people who are qualified so if they filed something if they fired you for cause it would have to be after the after the period because if they fired you during the period you wouldn't be eligible is that correct not necessarily um because the way it's worded now um so imagine you work 40 hours a week in a potentially eligible position um within two weeks of work you'd meet the minimum working eligibility requirements assuming that all of those hours of work are are in the risk and it's an eight week period or a nine week period so um you you could potentially be fired halfway through the period or or even you know three weeks into the period and still have met the minimum to qualify for the $1,200 grant um so yeah I mean there there are definitely potential instances here where there are former employees who um could have fired for this reason it it's really impossible for me to say how likely it is that we're going to find those individuals um I think another possibility is just that you have an employer who says I'm gonna file for my current employees because they stayed with me but I'm not gonna file for my former employees because they didn't um you know if if employees left for greener pastures or something like that um you you also potentially run into that the other thing you run into is um and this this is just in the requirements the program altogether if someone quit partway through because they for a valid UI COVID related quit reason they don't qualify for this because they would qualify for the federal pandemic on employment compensation right at that point though their employer still identifies them as potentially eligible but then in the application they'll probably have to check a box that says did you accept unemployment benefits during that window right and so they're if you get tired you're not eligible for unemployment benefits okay right if you've been um yeah if you were fired for gross misconduct and your employer reports that you're ineligible for unemployment anyway but you could have collected pandemic unemployment assistance um so okay although Zach has a question yeah it was I guess um kind of going back to Charlie's question about the May versus the shall and not really even if somebody was fired for just cause it doesn't feel like that should be a reason that they don't actually receive this hazard pay they still obviously risk their you know they're risking something so I'm trying to find a good reason why a company wouldn't be required to do this if they had employees that were working and it feels like an employer would want to do this anyways but you did mention that a grocery store chain in Pennsylvania Damien do you know why they decided they didn't want to apply for this hazard pay I don't um I I know I just know that they were named um and one of the news reports on the Pennsylvania program which was rapidly oversubscribed um and so I mean to to put it in context this is a 30 million dollar program for Vermont Pennsylvania put aside 50 million for the entire state of Pennsylvania um so that kind of gives you an idea of the and they theirs was available to a broader cross-section of employers um so I don't know if the grocery store chain felt that it was too much of an administrative burden um or that they were unlikely to get a meaningful benefit out of it or or what it was but it was they were singled out because they were one of the biggest employers that was eligible um and the it was public knowledge at that point that they had chosen not to apply um presumably because their employees had had made that public um and you could confirm that with the list of applicants from the state um and so it just stood out to whoever that reporter was so they said you know several several large employers have chosen not to apply including this grocery store chain um that's really interesting I you know I I think maybe maybe there's an opportunity for a floor amendment for this in the future um if if you think so but it does feel like I don't I don't see a real good reason I mean maybe that was a case for Pennsylvania doesn't seem like it would apply for us I think our benefits are probably better but they might might be worth exploring either turning it into a shell or coming up with some sort of mechanism that allows for the individual to apply although I do understand that that creates a lot of additional work for the Agency of Human Resources so I or services so I I wonder if there's a less burdensome uh track to to to allow for individuals to apply um yeah and that's that's a good question you'd have to talk to the Agency about kind of the burden um so we've got nine minutes to the floor that means we've got about seven minutes to move this bill um so I think let's think about this um at least turning the the May into a shell for businesses that have applied um so we'll we'll see the language from Damian on Tuesday and then we'll make a decision of whether or not to make that change also so that'll be in our floor amendment um at this point is there anything else we need to know Damian excuse me there is not okay so we have all the information um is there any more questions for Damian or any anyone need any more clarifications okay Stephanie um paperwork ready okay so uh at this point I would um I would uh entertain a motion to report favorably on S 352 okay uh representative Sullivan moves and it's seconded by representative Watson to perfect and report favorably on S 352 is there any further discussions if not the clerk can call the roll representative Bancroft yes representative Bach yes representative Carroll yes representative Dickinson representative Jerome yes representative Kimball yes representative Marcotte yes representative Morris yes representative O'Sullivan yes representative Tolino yes and representative Watson yes and Dickinson not back on okay yeah I just have one question what do we do I've been I've been trying to do two things at once here we're voting on the bill as it stands right now okay what does that do with the contracted nurses nothing because we have that that'll be an amendment okay all right well yes on the whatever the changes are okay representative Dickinson yes all right thank you okay so it looks like an 11-0 um who would like to report I've never heard so much silence in my life anyone wants to do it I would nominate representative Bach but I don't want to subject him this to him his first bill I I would volunteer for a provider that we move forward with that amendment that'd be great we move forward with it with those amendments well I'm I'm assuming we will I'm hoping we will anyway but okay and I would be happy to okay so what's the process now Damien um it's gotta we gotta get it to the floor so it can go it can move so does Charlie um let the clerk know um yeah I think you let the clerk know that you voted it out um don't have a clean copy yet right no we don't but you've you've um I think at the moment you voted to report favorably on the the senate proposal right um without further proposal of amendment and then the the floor amendment that we're going to look at next Tuesday will be it won't be a committee report it'll be an individual amendment so whatever you vote out as a committee um can be sponsored by as many members of the committee as want to sign on to it yeah but does the clerk need the clean copy now in order for Charlie um I think you that's a great question for the clerk okay Charlie why don't you um just give give the clerk's office a call tell him we just voted it out but it is going to have to move to human services and then to approach um so just tell him a clean copy is coming it's the drafters are backed up and I'm sure they'll they can they'll let you know what to do yes as soon as we get that out I'll um I'll send an email to uh uh you mr chair and to Charlie um just to let you know that it's available and that you can provide the clean copy of the clerk's office which they should have to okay so I'll scan this and get this to the clerk's office as well I'm sorry I'll get I'll get this um doc the uh record of action to the clerk's office okay okay yep great okay super um so we're on the floor in three minutes so thank you committee um Damian thank you you're welcome good work this afternoon we'll finish this up Tuesday and then we'll start working on uh to the 353 which would be probably a little more intense so thank you again um and have a good weekend everyone we'll see you on the floor in a couple minutes thanks Mike