 We'll come to order just quickly. I think today we have counsel with us for the next hour and then potentially roughly from 11 to 12. So I think we'll try to make good use of Michael now. Then we can probably have some discussion amongst ourselves without him. Looks like Nolan will be with us. Nolan. Do you have the next hour? And then so much. And now you're here now. We can hear ourselves. That's okay. Nolan, what, what's your schedule this morning? Do we have you? Yeah, you have me for as long as you want me. Okay. Thank you. We also are at 11. I gather the governor will announce his one of the first of his. Economic stimulus bills that will include a significant. Portion piece of it. And what we understand is that is in many ways based on the beginning of our bill, at least the dairy section. So. I would suggest to me that. You know, we have a little bit of time. We are going to have support for at least some of the concepts we've been talking about. And I know that Bobby will be back with us Friday. And we're hoping we can then hear directly from the agency. Does that make sense? Just questions about that. Okay. We would plan to have answering in with us on Friday. That's the hope. I don't know, you know, Bobby was going to reach out. Oh, he was okay to see. Yeah. They, as you may have heard from others on the all Senate call, they got some people got a bit of a preview last night. And Bobby had a long chat with the incident apparently. And they, they commented that a lot of our discussion informed what they were doing in terms of the tears of dairy and things like that. Senator Hardy, did you have. Oh, no, I just, I, I just spoke with Bobby this morning and that's what he said. And I also, I urged, or I reached out to Abbey Willard and Ellen Kaler Abbey from the agency and Ellen from the Senate, who started with Stainable Jobs Farm to Plate and got a list of things. I asked them for their sort of priority lists based on the strategic, the ag strategic plan that we all got at the beginning of the session. So I sent that to you, I just got it last night, so I sent it to you last night. I haven't fully digested it, but it overlaps a lot, which is helpful. is more of the sort of sector-wide type stuff that we were trying to hone in on beyond just direct payments to farmers. So we can talk about that if you want, Chris, but it's in your email boxes this morning. Well, and I think over the weekend from the news reports, I don't know, Anthony, if you had the chance to get down to the Berlin food drop. No, I didn't check it out. It was pretty amazing. You know, thousands of people, thousands of cars, which means more than thousands of people. From where I live in Middlebury. So say that again, Ruth. There's one, there's a food, the same kind of food distribution thing today in Middlebury, right around the corner basically from where I live. So if I have a chance, I might run over there. But yeah, I think there's a huge need for people to have to get food. And I'd love to be able to address that in our larger package. The Times Argus said 1900 cars. Yeah, and they turned a lot of people away. There just wasn't enough food. So, you know, that speaks to food security. I mean, I don't want to gloss over. It's horrifying. It's very scary. And I've become more and more convinced that the next few months are going to be very revealing. And we're going to see a lot of the pain and the weakness of even the response to date. So it does food is central. And I think it should spur us on if the administration, as I understand it is only looking at dairy, I think, you know, speaking for myself, I want us to push more broadly as we've been discussing. Yeah, we also did get an email, not Montana, but from Betsy Rosenbluth, Rosenbluth, I'm sure if I'm saying it right, from feed and the School Network, National Farm School Network, etc. saying they want to talk with us about hunger issues and food issues. They work with the food bank and hunger for Montenofa and others. And they're trying to put together an approach to ending not any hunger, but dealing with the hunger issues. I expect we would have them in. And I also think Senator Hardy, have you guys been tracing the food, school foods? There had been some discussion about continuing the service they've been doing in Senate education. Have you been talking about that? Well, yeah, I mean, the last time I asked the Secretary of Education about whether or not, so they asked for a waiver for this summer to allow them to continue to deliver food like they have been doing. And the last I heard they hadn't heard back from that waiver, I can check in with with Rosie. But the feds are for some reason, being a little difficult on approving a waiver to allow school food to continue to be delivered the way it has been. There's still the summer lunch program. But that is more of a sort of pickup congregate setting kind of situation. So I don't know the the latest status. But I can I can find that out. Yeah, please do look into it because I think, you know, it's all part of the same parcel. And it seems to me even without a waiver that would be potentially eligible for COVID money. I mean, it is a reaction to food security and to economic impact of COVID. I think it depends on whether or not we can get the school districts to do it. We would have to fund it sufficiently to pay for the staff food and transportation. Okay, so just one more piece that Michael and I have been working on it and Nolan a new approach to the migrant farm workers piece that we hope will be eligible or allowable to work for doing using federal funding so that we can put it into the larger package and not have to rely on general funds for that. So Michael is working on it, an updated draft after I sent him comments last night. I sent you I sent you the updates. I don't know like three minutes ago. Oh yeah, you did. Wow. Magic. So I didn't I didn't know if you want one of them to go to Linda. Um, I don't know. I defer to Chris. I don't know exactly what our goal is for this meeting. If we're doing this stuff, are we doing the miss bill miscellaneous? No, let's hold this to me is the priority. The miscellaneous ag we're going to have to come to. And so if we run out of steam on things we want to explore as we wait for the administration on this bill, then we can shift to missing ag and Michael's ready to walk us through that. But let's start with the relief bill. And Michael, are there other updates in terms of language? To me, I have not confessed not been as honed in on the language and still thinking of it conceptually. But besides the the idea of helping migrant workers, are there other changes? Sarah, thank you. I just wanted to suggest maybe it would make sense to wait until we see what the administration's proposal is specifically. Before we take up our bill again, in other words, I think there's going to be some substantial overlap. And I don't know that it makes a lot of sense to make changes to what we've already drafted and then listen to what they have. And then we're going to have to go back and do it all over again. It's just a thought. And I know it's at 11 o'clock today. Unfortunately, we always are meeting at the same time that the governor is doing the press conference. So I've never been able to actually watch the press conference, not suggesting that today. But do you see where I'm coming from? Rather than sort of work on something and then have the other piece, which I think will be a bill, I believe it'll start in, I mean, it'll be a committee bill, not here, but it will follow the committee process from what I was told yesterday and eventually wind up an appropriation. So there just may be some duplicate of work done before we listen to what they have. Yep, Senator Hardy. Brian, do you know, I mean, will it, is it going to come to us? You said it's going to start in commerce, but are they going to, you know, section off? I mean, I guess, you don't know, but do you think we're going to get the section that's on for ag though? So we get to work on that, not commerce, because we've already. Yeah, I don't think the path forward is 100% clear right now. But I assume that if it has something to do with agriculture, this committee would have some something to say about that. And the rest of it with other businesses might go to economic development. But I think in the end, it'll be, it'll be a bill that a couple of communities will look at. So I don't know what I want to go. I think Brian's point is, is a good one in terms of fussing about language. I do think that, you know, it's a proposal that you're going to, they're introducing draft one, we will enact draft six. So to me, it still makes sense to cover concepts that we're interested in. And then we'll have the chance to weigh whether or not we think it's realistic, get feedback on what we're trying to add. If, if, as I understand it, it is pretty narrowly tailored to dairy. That is heavy influence. Yeah. But I think the breakdowns in terms of the size of farms was similar to what we have done in our bill. And the appropriation, I think is, is much greater to be honest about it. But I don't know yet because I, where I was yesterday, Anson wasn't there. So we didn't actually unpack anything having to do with the agriculture part. It was more of a overview of how much money total would be talked about today. So I see your point too, Chris. What I think makes sense is, let's have Michael talk about the details that he and Senator Hardy have come up with. If that makes sense. Do you think you're ready for that, Senator Hardy? Sure. You mean the migrant farm worker part of it? Yeah, yeah. Michael, send it to everybody. And Linda, how have we done this in terms of what we post? Have we typically had the draft up on the website so people can follow? Yes, as Michael is going through it. Okay. So let's continue with that practice so people watching can follow. We'll walk through what Senator Hardy and Michael have worked on. Then I think it would, I'd benefit from just conceptually putting things on the list. We should sort of review, let's call it the sections in terms of what we're trying to do. We talked about last week some of the stuff that Ella and the business planning dynamic. We talked about there was another existing program we referenced last week that I think the way I think of it is things that we would like to potentially include that would bolster, we talked about working lands, that was another one. Giving them a special grant that is directly sort of food security, emergency response, whatever. So things like that that we would like to consider for this before we get there. Does that make sense for our morning? Yep. All right Michael, why don't you get started? It's being posted online so if people are watching it may take a moment. That will show up on the Senate Ag website. But go ahead Michael and get us started please. So last week after the committee, Nolan and I talked over the phone about how to address some of the issues that were coming up in the farm worker assistance program. And Nolan had the idea to kind of shift focus to make it not about a farm worker assistance program but a farm worker retention program. And it's about fitting into the economic business interruption criteria under the CARES Act. And I think that it's clearly in my opinion is eligible because it's a second tier effect. It's to help those businesses that are suffering business interruption from COVID, which dairy is definitely and farms generally are. You've heard testimony that farms have had to let go of employees and are basically down to just the residents, the farm owners that are trying to maintain and operate dairy barns. So this to me seems like a very clear way to go forward to provide for the eligibility of who would be eligible. It would be someone that works at least 40 hours a week for a farm employer, less any time missed due to illness or injury during that period of March 13th through May 15th. And they are not eligible to receive CARES Act funding. So someone that already got a stimulus payment would not be eligible for it. So if you were a farm worker that got your CARES Act stimulus, you would not qualify for this. Also people that would not qualify would be members of the farm employer's family, an independent contractor, and an individual who received unemployment insurance benefits for any week during that March 13th through May 15th, 2020 period. So the first thing I did, which you will see on page one, line three to five, is add a purpose section. The purpose is to assist farms that experience business interruption from COVID to continue to employ their workers by providing an economic sentence of farm workers. So I think that specifically states that it's related to the business interruption and providing assistance to those businesses. Then if you can scroll down, Linda, you got a reference to what CARES Act funding is that you get the definition of eligible farm worker, which I just walked through. You got what is not an eligible farm worker, which I also just walked through. So I think you can go to the next page, Linda, and then you get what is a farm, which is the definition effectively from the RAPs. A farm employer means you own or operator of a farm where individuals are employed to conduct farming. Farming is the Act 250 definition, which is also the definition under the RAPs. You get the definition of personally identifiable information, which was the same in the previous draft. This is the information that will be protected from public disclosure and will not be subject to Public Records Act request. That takes you on to page three, where you get the establishment of the program. There's established a farm worker retention program to award eligible farm workers with the $500 direct relief grant payment as an incentive to assist farm employers in retaining employees during and after the declared state of emergency under 20 VSA chapter one due to COVID-19. Then you get the administration of the program. It's going to be administered by the agency bag, but the agency is required to contract with a public or private entity to conduct outreach, provide application assistance, process grant applications, and deliver assistance payments to eligible individuals. So it is going to be run through a third party contractor. The secretary is going to adopt requirements, guidelines, procedures as necessary to implement the program. They shall not be required to do rulemaking, to do any of those requirements or procedures, then in the contract for implementation. Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, they don't have to do this through a competitive bid contract and that it's going to be deemed to qualify for the emergency situation under administrative bulletin 3.5. And then the contract with a public or private entity that will implement the program shall require that entity to issue grant payments to farm workers pursuant to the provisions of the section and pursuant to the procedures established by the secretary. Then you go on to the application process. So the language that you had seen before was the farm worker directly applying. This is not going to be that. This is going to be the employer is going to apply. So in order to enroll in the program and make employees eligible for grants, a farm employer shall submit to the secretary as secretary's designee and those of enrollment in a form specified by the secretary on or before August 1st, 2020. The secretary shall require farm employers to certify that they are the employer of eligible farm workers. And as a condition of enrolling in the program, each farm employer shall agree not to require any eligible farm worker to pay an administrative fee or other charge in relation to the farm employer requesting or obtaining a grant payment. So the farm employer can't take a kind of an incentive to apply. They also agree not to reduce the hourly compensation, including any related bonuses or premiums of any eligible farm worker due to an awarded grant. A farm employer that has enrolled in the program shall make a request for grant payments in a form specified by the secretary for each eligible farm worker, according to the requirements established by the secretary or secretary's designee. The secretary shall specify the information that must be provided for each eligible farm worker when a farm employer enrolls in the program and when grants are awarded, the secretary shall inform the farm employer and the eligible farm worker with a written notice that the grant may be subject to income tax and that the eligible farm worker's grant may be subject to withholding. And then for payment, each grant check for an eligible farm worker shall be sent to the farm worker's farm employer. We shall give the check to the farm worker not more than five calendar days after the farm employer receives it. So that's the same way that the essential worker program worked. Similarly, similar to the essential worker program, the farm employer is not required to enroll in the program. You can't really mandate that the farm employer apply for their employees. And if you scroll down to page six, a farm employer that elects not to enroll or neglects or fails to submit a request for an eligible farm worker shall not be liable to its eligible farm workers for any amounts that they may have been entitled to receive under the program if the farm employer had enrolled. And then you come to the confidentiality provisions, all personally identifiable information that's collected by the program, any entity of state government performing a function or any entity contracting to perform the function shall be kept confidential and shall be exempt from inspection and copying under the public records act. In addition, the secretary shall ensure that any entity of state government performing a function of the program or any entity that the secretary contracts with should implements appropriate procedures and safeguards to protect any personally identifiable information that it obtains in relation to the program and shall not disclose an individual's personally identifiable information to another state entity or contractor and complies with all applicable requirements of the personal identifiable information protection chapter and title nine. Then there seems to be a false page break there, can you go on to then you get to the appropriation. So the amount of 550 is appropriated in fiscal year 2020 from the Corona Virus Relief Fund to that should say the agency of agriculture for use in fiscal years 2020 and 2021 for administration of the payment for the grants from the farm worker retention program until December 2020 which is when all funds need to be expended. That should say December 30th 2020 or until all monies have been awarded provided that the agency may only use up to 9% of the total appropriation for the purposes of contracting for the administration of the program. So that's that's it. I did note to Senator Hardy this morning about the personally identifiable information provision that is only state law. The CARES Act funds have the authority for the federal treasury to do single audits of programs and states. So the federal authority, audit authority, they likely would not recognize that confidentiality provision of the personally identifiable information. The contractor or the state could assert when asked but then the treasury they would basically initiate an enforcement action in federal court and the federal court would not recognize that state law. But the information resides in the contracting agency. The information would reside with the contracted entity yes. Now that's another point I made to Senator Hardy because it's passing through a state agency there needs to be accountability provisions that the state agency maintains in order to to ensure that the program is operating according to fiscal diligence. And so there are or there are grant provisions that are required under administrative bulletin. I can't remember if it's 3.5 or 5. And so some of them is transparency to the to the state agency that's providing the grant. So there there will be some transparency and accountability towards the state agency but in my opinion I doubt the secretary of agriculture the agency is going to get to that granular level of who each individual applicant is. Okay uh Senator Caldmore. Thank you. So I have a couple of questions and forgive me if we've already gone over this but I'm just not remembering it if we have. Why do we need an outside contractor? Why don't we just let the agency take care of this? Are we paying how much are we going to pay an outside contractor? Doesn't that take money away from what could otherwise be given away? So I think there's a couple of reasons uh that have been discussed and maybe not as as publicly as as as maybe desired. One if you if you contract through some of the different entities that are out there like the community action providers they they already have offices that are located around the state. So you have numerous options for a farm worker or farm employer to go and sign up for the program. You don't have to deal specifically with that central agency in Montpelier. You can go down the road to your local provide. The second is the agency may not have capacity. The agency is already kind of working at capacity and to put a program on them right now I think you would want to ask them whether or not they could run a program like this as well as potentially a contracted entity. And I think you wanted to give some some confidence and surety to some of the people that may apply. We have third information was going to be somewhat insulated from from uh state enforcement and regulation. But I assume we're going to pay this outside agency something. Yes so you have that in there. It's a $550,000 appropriation and no more than nine percent can be used for the contracting for administration. So nine percent of $550, I'm just going to say $55,000. Okay so my other thing I'm wondering about the grant to the farm worker I think you said Michael it's going to be subject to income tax. Does that mean the farmer has to do matching taxes with both social security or state or federal taxes? So the the tax law will apply to that that employee as it as it normally does right and and and the grant is income and just like the essential worker grant it is is likely subject to withholding. Unlike the essential worker program I didn't include language that says that the state shall withhold any liability. If the state does then the state does there's there's just potential withholding the the whether or not they're going to be paying social security whether or not they're going to be playing UI etc etc. really depends on the employer and the employee you know farming in in many respects they're there are certain exemptions that a farmer doesn't have to pay. So it will be about that that farm and that farm worker the tax law should not cheat. Well can can we be clear because in the hazard pay bill there was withholding but it's not a wage it's and so it doesn't pass through the farm business in that sense. If I'm understanding it's a grant that the worker needs to acknowledge as income but it's not part of their wages therefore subject. I would have thought that fact leaves the farmer the business aside in that sense. That's a good point and I think that that I mean it goes to my underlying statement that the tax law should not change if it's not passing through the employer then it's it's not a wage but it is income to to the farmer farm worker. So it will potentially be subject to withholding. So in your opinion Michael the farmer will not be on the hook for the other half of it. You know I I don't think they will but I will double check with our tax with Abby and with the people that Abby's working with. Thank you. And and you know having noodled around the hazard pay that was structured similarly that was very clear Senator Collin Moore that that was why we did it as a grant. And just checking. Yeah no it's an excellent question we're definitely going to need to have confidence in the answer. Senator Hardy. Yeah first of all thank you very much Michael and Nolan for finding a new structure that hopefully will work. I am Michael I haven't had a chance to read all of this stuff that you sent me this morning but I I still remain a little concerned about the confidentiality issue and how much information the state's going to have about individuals because that was one of the reasons that we were thinking of trying to do it without federal funding. So there may be a lot of these people who don't actually want to apply and that because they're worried and their employers are worried and that concerns me so I don't know if there's any way we can make it even tighter but if not then that's the reality. And then I just wanted to go back and hear from the committee about the amount if you're comfortable with the $500 or if you think we should go higher we're getting a lot of you know outside pressure from certain group advocates saying we should be doing a more generous amount. The $500 I believe Michael is is equivalent to what the California program was. That's correct. Why that's where we came up with that amount so but I don't know if you can speak to the confidentiality more. Can I just try and ask it this way and and see if Michael you agree. First of all if if we are found if there's a problem with the let's assume this goes into law and the feds had a real problem with it we the worst case is that we would have to reimburse the CARES money or the federal government through state dollars right. There would have to be the clawback and the reimbursement yes. The the next step is whether or not they do initiate enforcement and they discover information whether or not they use that information in whatever way for whatever type of enforcement whether it's tax or otherwise. Yeah that's my concern is that it could be an immigration issue and that's why the most the way we can however we can insulate it and keep it confidential. The more we can do that the better. I mean I think that's the driving impetus behind pushing it to a partner nonprofit. I think the partner nonprofit is is one layer of insulation that personally identify protection as another level of insulation. The mandate that did not be shared or disclosed except for administration of the program is another level of insulation but that does not entirely insulate the program from a federal audit authority. Can we have it so that the the contracting entity collects all the information and then says to the state we have a hundred people who want who qualify and so we get you know five hundred sorry five thousand dollars that entity gets a five thousand dollar check and then they write the checks to the individuals so the state doesn't ever get the names of the individuals or is that not kosher? The way that the program set up the farm employer is is going to apply enrolls certifies they have covered eligible farm workers provide some information to support that. It's not real specific as to what information needs to be provided because you're leaving that basically up to the agency in the contracting entity to formulate and so at that point it's if that information is available to the contracting entity the agency could just ask how many farm employers applied or how many farm employees and so that that that is the type of granular data I think the agency could request. Now you don't have in here that type of limitation that that's all that could be could be provided just the aggregate information you could build into it that the contracting entity shall only share with the state the aggregate information about the number of eligible farm employees that receive the assistance. But Senator Hardy's asking about the actual checks is the is the contracting agency writing the checks? Well that's that's what I just I wrote into the bill this morning at the request of of Senator Hardy that there's a now a payment provision which I apologize that it was not clear in what I had sent out before. So each grant check for an eligible worker shall be sent to the farm workers employer it should be shall be sent by the contracting entity to the farm workers and then it's clear that the checks are being written by the contractor. Yeah and that the state doesn't necessarily need to know that the contractor needs to know that the state doesn't need to know that Chris Pearson is one of those farm workers or whoever. Right. Okay no one's got something to offer. Yeah I just want to also add and for the record no one line all the joint office a lot of the farm employers won't actually know whether their employees are eligible as in did they get a CARES Act check or whatever so they actually will have to ask their employees but that's not unprecedented and Senator Christian you may remember with the employer assessment employers have to ask like they don't know what their employees insurance coverages they have to ask them when they go and they file for EC1 form. So it's not unprecedented for employers to have to ask their employees these things but I wanted to just that's it's sort of an administrative piece that I wanted people to be aware of. Yeah it's a good point to that end is that infer any liability on the farmer on the farm business to having uncovered that detail does that expose them to you know knowledge that they may be working with a migrant worker this whole thing operates on a sort of strange cloud of fainting ignorance right. Well one of the language in front of you doesn't reflect it but when Nolan and I were talking about it on Friday one of our thoughts was the employer just asked if they received a payment under the CARES Act and that's that's something you just ask if they received it and that's something that that can be checked by the state if they really wanted to check that. A lot of people haven't are eligible and have not received them yet. Well that's what Senator Hardy's point was this morning that that that that because of the backlog in the check rating that people that are going to receive it haven't received it yet and that's why it says eligible instead of received it. It's a it's a good point but we were trying to cut down on that employer's responsibility of determining whether or not the worker was eligible or not. Okay. Senator Polina. Is it just backing up in a way is the reason that it goes through the employer meant to protect the worker. In other words the employer is the one applying for the money the employer is the one who's asking whether or not they got the CARES funding. I just want to know what the rationale is for that. I presume there's a part of me that would presume it's because we don't think the farm worker would be able to come forward and request the money. I'm just wondering if there's more to it than that. I think it's it's both that interest but there's also an administrative efficiency issue instead of of having six farm workers apply you have one farm employee your apply and so there is some efficiency built into it. It's based off the essential worker concept of the the employer applying for the employees to cut down on that burden on the employee of having to deal with the administrative application process. So it's it's both insulation but it's also administrative efficiency as well. I'm not presuming this would happen but there is a possibility that a farmer could choose not to apply even though the workers deserve the money. Well that's actually not trying to say there's bad actors out there but it is possible. So that is addressed in the bill. It says that the employer is not obligated to apply and the employer has no liability if they fail to apply or or they're negligent in applying and an eligible worker doesn't get their payment. That protects the employer. Yes. This whole thing is you know a calculation of of trying to get this across and be protective right that that's a real balance. Yes. Is there anything in here that gives you agency of ag any money to to carry out their role? No and I mean generally their role will be as the grant over Sierra the grant supervisor. You to my knowledge don't give the agencies money to do that for any of their grants. No and do they do the appropriations are they given to the agencies to to pass through a grant? That's a good question. I mean I would guess that in many instances the agencies have grant administrators and the question is how much workload is there associated with being a grant administrator for you know adding to someone's existing workload. I can't imagine that this would require an FTE to implement this program or even a half or quarter it would be like a 0.1 FTE time tops. So I don't it's a great question I don't know the answer. Okay. Yeah Senator Hardy um if if the committee is willing if we can you know reinsert this version into our bigger package and then I think it might be I think it would be valuable to get somebody from the agency in here and the person who I think knows the most about this area is Allison Eastman and see what her thoughts on or I can even just send it to her and just say what what do you think but having her in to to talk to us about it. I mean we've been going through lots of hoops to try to make something work so that we can get some payments out to these farm workers who worked through this crisis and have families to support and bills to pay just like the rest of us and try to acknowledge the importance of their work to the dairy industry and I guess again are you guys comfortable with the $500 is that does that seem like a reasonable amount and Nolan and I have been talking a lot about how many workers there are and right now this assumes a thousand would would apply and qualify which is kind of the middle point of the the huge estimate variation that we have for the number of these farm workers so I just sort of picked the middle point as saying this makes sense but I would say language saying until funds are expended or whatever as well so that it's yeah I mean I would certainly go on record as supporting a higher a higher amount I mean thing is we're reimbursing people for expenses that they've had while they've continued to work we have no idea how long this is going to go on you know if it goes on more months or more I mean seems like $500 is not going to go very far compared to the amount of work these folks are doing so I'm not supposing there's appetite on the committee or in the Senate to go higher but I would certainly prefer us to provide more more support higher payments I'm fine with where it is I think for now we should leave it where it is as we're going to be taking temperatures on this sort of idea around you know in some ways if we think that federal money is eligible then might be possible to up it but I think before we talk about that we should see what kind of buy-in there is for the concept yeah I mean everybody's pleading with us to increase the amount of money we're going to give to the dairy industry in general I mean it's you know people wanting from 8 million to 9 million to 40 million to 50 million and the workers are sort of sticking around to 500 and they're not they don't seem to be going any higher so I just think they deserve to be higher consideration but but I hear you yeah I I don't know that any of us disagree so have we Senator Hardy have you talked to any potential organization that would help us administer this I mean we're assuming that somebody would step forward and I'm curious if we we would presumably want to talk to them if it's the OEOs or whatever but do you have any insight there I haven't had direct conversations because I was waiting to see how we structured this and what it might entail but the the organizations that we heard from that I think makes sense in a lot of ways are the open door clinic here in Addison County and then potentially British bridges to health that's at UVM and they have connections in the Franklin County area the Addison and Franklin are the two counties that have the vast majority of these workers and then you know sort of branching out to the other counties they probably even cover some of that they already have relationships with the farms and the farm workers so that was my thought I mean Nolan and Michael also mentioned the OE the OEOs as a potential and they're all over the state but I just don't think there are that many migrant farm workers in you know Wyndham County or I don't know but well that sparks another question for me that there are a lot of workers on farms that were not eligible for the federal stimulus who are not a dairy on dairies and does that concern you Michael in terms of eligibility of the federal use you know if they're I mean they're not apple pickers yet but a lot of vegetable producers others also have migrant workers so I'm just just walk us through that maybe it's a scale the overwhelming majority of them are a dairy but just help us understand that dynamic please I'm not sure why it would be different from a covered employer the farm employer that's a dairy if if they have workers that were not eligible for cares act funding and are otherwise eligible they can come forward and apply for the grant for their workers just as a dairy would is there an assertion that they have had a negative impact economically from COVID that's that's what I'm wondering about there is no requirement that the employer show loss or added expense due to COVID it's just basically in a it's an incentive to the farm worker to stay it gives them added extra financial assistance to cover potential losses that a farm may have thank you sir hardy yeah I was just going to note that that many of the other farm workers that you know work for apple farms or our vegetable farms are h2a workers and many of that we got testimony that many of them weren't actually here yet during most of this crisis and they just started arriving in April and the way that this is structured is that they had to have been working from March 13th through May 15th which I think is the same timeline that the central workers program has laid out and that there were some farms even for example the turkey farm we heard from that had h2a workers here and then they were sent home at the beginning of this crisis so I think a lot of those other migrant farm workers weren't actually in the state or only in the state for a very small portion of the two-month sort of height of the current height of this crisis so there may be other farms that have other farm workers but I don't know that there are going to be a lot of them is my impression I think there's going to be some some additional eligible individuals and the email this morning senator hardy may not read it I think and no one can correct me a dependent that's 20 years or younger would not qualify for the cares act funding but could be a farm worker that would qualify for this it's either 19 or 20 you can still be a dependent of your parents and they would not have qualified for cares act funding but they would qualify for this this yes you're right I have a 19 year old exactly yes um so that that that does speak to what you were saying Nolan I didn't read that yet Michael I'm sorry um but that does speak to maybe upping the numbers a little bit so maybe it is a little bit more than the 500 000 so yeah thank you that's a good point okay any other question this one center call more thank you Chris so Ruth you mentioned that there were potentially a thousand um workers that we were talking about do we know for sure whether the majority of those folks are actually not getting paid by the farmers oh they're getting paid by the farmers they just get the cares act what wait what do you mean I don't know if I understand your question well I was under the impression at times when we were talking that they'd lost their job somehow and they weren't getting paid is that not no uh well the way that this is structured is that it this would be helping farmers to hold on to those workers so there are a few farms that have gone out and farm workers have been laid off um so uh this would be not necessarily unemployment for those in that sense but it would be for the farm workers who were retained and did work through those two months okay yeah yeah it's a retention program and it acknowledges that they did not get or will not get the $1,200 from the IRS um understood yep thank you uh and then what uh the the grants the the grant administrator that's presumably in the agency come up with a first come first serve or whatever so if it turns out there's 2,000 people we would get that feedback and potentially react is that am I right about that but but we have locked it at $500 per person it's not you know we think it's 500 but then twice as many people apply and it's 250 do I have that right yeah it says 500 per person in it it's just a matter of how much we appropriate so we might want to put a little bit more in for the that 19 and 20 year old portion that I hadn't thought of um I don't know how many those are but okay well we have a framework we think we've figured out a way to get it into through federal funds this is big progress uh and and we need to talk to more people and see if the concept uh is workable anything else on this before we shift gears okay Michael you're got to go I think right I do uh I just want to note that if you're going to talk about the the proposals from Ellen and Abby uh to just keep in mind the criteria for the spending and the fact that it needs to be spent by December 30th and I bring that up because one of the proposals I saw was for FTEs and I don't know how FTEs fit into that has to be spent by December 30th I don't I was wanted to talk to Nolan about that could you like give the money out to to um as a grant to an association to hire an FTE and is that expended to her right I don't I don't know so there there's some questions there about the criteria and Jen Jen Carby actually was asked the same question in a different committee and I might suggest Michael you talk with her because she said that her I don't want to quote her too much it made it sound like her interpretation at the time was that the money has to be spent even by the grant even by the contractor but I would say we should we need to double check all that right if you look at the notes from the discussion with Treasury that NCSL now so had it really it it does lead to that conclusion that even the grantee has to spend that money and and that's that might be difficult for some of those proposals okay I agree I I I thought the same thing so thanks for mentioning that okay yeah I'll see you at 11 okay thank you Michael and just one last thing on that if I may yeah that although there's conversations in at the federal level about trying to create more leniency with the current CARES funding we don't know we have to obviously we have to operate on the world we live in now three months from now it could be different but this is the world we're in now just want to say that yeah it's quite a world okay um so Linda just pop in here you just said what is I'm documented with the visions so Linda just messaged me that she has a document from the agency Linda what what is that a revision to our language or that's what they're proposing at 11 no this is a revision uh two-year language on on the farmer assistance bill it is what they sent was the farmer assistance bill with some highlighted areas they want changed I think unless committee disagrees I think we should wait and hear from the agency at once does that make sense yeah and I would like the chair to be here too yeah um so what um just without without staff here well Nolan thank you for listening but uh as we as we look at our current bill we have the dairy portion um let me see if I can pull it up hold on I've got to get another screen going here we have um Linda where would I go to find the draft Michael's little hold on I was gonna ask that too um he just sent it right before he came online so I can put it on the screen or I can put it on your webpage um I think I think we should put it on the have we been putting any of the drafts on the webpage we have and sometimes and sometimes we haven't okay all right go ahead and put that on the webpage under Michael for today um and it's labeled a draft this is you know people just have to bear with us as we all learn how to have zoom democracy as somebody framed it the other day I just want us to kind of look at not language but sections and and understand uh the different pieces of what we have what we have talked about what we think we want to potentially include as we move forward um and does anybody else need a two-minute break let's sure let's take a very quick break don't leave us streaming uh Linda and if you can post that and um and then by the time we get back we'll be back and I'll fill my coffee cup okay I'll mute you all thanks so I'm just talking we've got the dairy we've got non-dairy we've got farm workers I'm just looking for the headings and we just and this does not I assume reflect what we just walked through but maybe it does uh we've got the the workers safety do we have any update on that Senator Hardy this is something you've been focused on this is around Vosha and getting Spanish language stuff yeah so I spoke with um you probably remember Dan Baker the UVM professor who was the one who gave us all that really interesting data about migrant farm workers and his research he was the one that initially proposed that that was something we might want to consider including um I spoke with him yesterday or the day before I can't remember um and he's actually meeting with Laura Ginsburg at the agency um and is hoping that the agency may be interested in including it in the dairy innovation grant that they're working on um which is something I had asked the chair if we could have Laura in to talk about because I think that's a another source of funding for dairy um that is more sort of big picture um uh so anyway I think that for now we could probably put a you know not include that in our proposal because it may actually be more appropriate to have in that dairy innovation grant which is a regional thing to have a regional program um okay and why would we believe that that will change quickly that that is a good fair point um I think uh I mean we could certainly include it in our bill and hear what Laura has to say about it um I think he was trying to you know get the agency to partner in the efforts and they were interested in it um so if we think we want to uh do it in here and not have her I guess just maybe talking to Laura about what she thinks is the best strategy in terms of the grant versus this mind doing that offline sure I can yeah I can talk to her okay um I think that would be good because it is timely um but if there's a more natural fit for it um and then we we haven't talked about this a lot then there's the working lands future of food security did I miss that discussion or did we do is that just a placeholder my recollection is that was a placeholder that we were waiting to hear more details from them but we did get some more details so maybe we plop in what we heard from them okay so that's so so that's what we have now we just got an email uh from Gus uh and Ella so I just want to keep that on the list unless anybody well does everybody agree that we should at least talk that through that's fine I mean if Michael is Michael coming back that um yeah there's a whole bunch of yellow in here that he changed since the last time I'd like to yeah I'm not I don't think given that we don't have the chair and that we're about to hear a more presumably concrete proposal from the administration that we should worry about wording at this moment okay I'm interested in collecting sort of the the chapters of the bill if you like of what we what we aim to do um so so far we've got dairy non-dairy we've got the farm workers we've got this worker safety piece we've got some kind of working lands uh food security we've got um Gus's uh planning kind of uh what what how would we characterize the work that Ella does um economic development for it's kind of business assistance with the benefit of farmers I mean it fits into the idea of um helping farmers who we're talking about getting this relatively small grants to adapt to the new markets and whatnot I think that's a large part of what they're talking about is their ability to work with farmers to do that kind of stuff um okay are there other broad areas um we haven't plugged in anything to do with hunger really food security in terms of the bill I mean we've talked about it a bunch but we haven't actually plugged it anywhere well I think it is considered in the working lands placeholder sure but in terms of like funding like the farmers feeding what it's called Vermont receding Vermonters or I forget what it's called but there's a couple particular programs um that the food bank and NOFA operate that are existing programs that we've been encouraged to better fund yeah I agree with Anthony I think having a placeholder for them and there was also in the the stuff that we got from Abby and Ellen there was a proposal that um you know the EBT cards for the SNAP program they actually need uh the EBT readers and those seem like a really good thing to use the funding for I think they need 50 of them I don't know the numbers are in Ellen and or Abby's thing and you know that's it allows people who are on food assistance programs to use their cards at CSAs and farm farmers markets and online ordering and stuff like that but it's an equipment issue they just don't have enough equipment so and then also funding that program giving more money to that program to allow lower income Vermonters to buy food at these places so I think that is it and the Vermonters feeding Vermonters program is another and then school school uh Chris I don't know how we want to get back to that I don't know if our bill makes as much sense anymore but something in that area would I think be relevant well I think it makes sense in the context of the timing well it actually makes it makes sense to actually increase the the the goal I think I mean move it up higher percentage yeah I think the the goal definitely still makes sense whether the logistics makes sense given the stress on school districts um right is what I'm more concerned with uh yeah I mean we're we're just beginning to fully appreciate uh how the state's going to respond to $400 million budget challenge so so Ruth let me ask because you're in education I assume that um Dan french hasn't made any decision yet about the fall in terms of schools reopening that kind of thing no the not any final decision I mean they are working under the assumption that schools will be open in person in some capacity um how what the details of that are are still in the work and a lot of what they'll be doing this summer is planning for how that can can work but I think you know all things remaining the way they are or getting better the the plan is to have schools open okay I saw something I don't sure what where it was I think it was Colorado the governor there was talking about the fact that there'll be a certain number of parents who will choose not to send their kids back to what we'll call traditional uh educational settings because of concern but that it actually could be I don't want to say it's a good thing it would make the distancing situations a little easier to do because there'll be fewer students in classrooms I thought that I never thought about that but it it makes sense yeah I think that there the the potential for some kind of hybrid model where there's some distance education and some in-person education is is is uh certainly on the table as an option because you're right distancing social distance uh physical distancing in a school building is extremely difficult especially with you know students who may or may not comply a hundred percent or be able to given their age and their development yeah um okay so uh and then did anyone have the chance to look I I do think we'll get the chance to hear from Betsy and Vermont feed and and those guys uh they sent a request to all of us to to but I didn't I don't know if any yesterday was just slam for me um did anyone read their did they have a proposal attached or was it just a request to talk to us it was just a request to talk to us I emailed Betsy back and asked her to get to send us details um similar to what Alan and Abby sent us I was like we it'd be helpful to have a list okay so I'll just put them on the list of of uh people we want to hear because they are going right at this food security I think yeah and and one of the groups of NOF is one of the groups that they're is part of their little coalition and NOF had written us a letter a while ago that laid out some of those hunger programs and explained briefly what they were and what they were recommending in terms of funding for them so we can take a look at that we get a chance to yeah okay and it's all about you know making this work under the federal money it is remarkable we're going to have record uh state fund deficits and we're going to struggle to spend the covid relief money in time and not return it that's uh we're rich on one side and broke on the other well federal government helps you out by making it difficult for you to spend the money they're giving you yeah it is quite a state of affairs however uh on just the covid relief there are potentially some interesting ways to try to use that money to bolster not just uh you know the very short term but hopefully and I think we're all somewhat united on this trying to make uh investments that satisfy the short term and could be a little more enduring what about should we go back to the idea of how we want to talk about the dairy grants and what a survey looks like or or the conditions or the application I've been struggling with you know it's always scary to write this into legislation and then if you write vague concepts you don't get what you're after um I haven't had the chance to look was it Ella that sent us their intake application yeah Ella sent us the one that BHCB has been using it's very specific to the immediate crisis um you know what do you need right now um so it seems to me that it would need to be broader than that but I don't know if we want to spend time on the specifics of the dairy language until we see what the agency might be proposing they may have something in there already um yeah the other thing that I was just scrolling through the stuff that um Ellen and Abby said and both of them have ideas about marketing and I think that that might be something that we might want to consider um a sort of marketing blitz um that about local foods and supporting farmers and how you can do it um in a crisis and um really get people to understand a little bit more about what options are and where they can buy food um another email it was it's on their list of things um they had various and marketing was already something they were sort of pushing for but you know if we have to spend money quick yeah Brian you're the marketing guy so you know if you have ideas for that but it seems to me like that could be a a good way of supporting markets and then they also have some things about food hubs and distribution in there which I know Chris you're really interested in and Ellen also included and I don't know if this is necessarily something for our committee if we might want to alert Michael and his committee about it but um about assisting restaurant owners um because a lot of them are in huge crisis right now and are and I think it was to uh protect them from bankruptcy um yeah there there there can be no question that we will do something for restaurants I mean that that's a vital piece uh and and of course very relevant as we continue to you know only gently ease in um both restaurant businesses and tourism so I'm pretty confident that will happen um what about the idea of this who is the woman Ruth I think you got us connected to she's a vegetable producer in Asing County she has to take her product to the neighbor's farm because that's where Reinhardt will pick it up yeah that was a blue ledge yeah blue ledge farm Hannah Sessions so that's a goat goat cheese and she they used to come right to her farm but now they don't she takes it to a neighboring farm I just keep wondering if this would be an infrastructure thing that's very related to the food security issue of trying to have um you know distribution systems that are affecting and respond to the growth in demand for our for local food or for food um local food just sort of a I don't know maybe maybe it's worth talking to somebody Reinhardt but but how can we um you know blue blue was it spruce who was it ledge ledge so so that business you know used to get directly picked up now can partner with a neighbor but what about the little little producer that um doesn't have those connections that this is just what haunts me it's like how hard could it be for us to facilitate that um you know it doesn't have to be terribly expensive it's sort of a strategy thing it seems to me I guess I'm unclear what you're asking chris well if you I think we're talking about trying to build a more efficient distribution network essentially pickup and distribution network which I think is part of an infrastructure that needs to be talked about and I think that there might have been some in what um either ellen caler or abby's saying what they're kind of long I read them but I think that one of them talked spoke to that a bit and also spoke to the idea of processing plants as a way they talked about processing meat particularly and laid out some numbers and some goals around that so I think people see it as a part of what we're trying to do if it qualifies for funds is another question I mean I think it does obviously but I'm prejudiced I mean because it's trying to well it's trying to meet the new market demand you know they screwed up the market but with the pandemic so we're trying to rebuild a new kind of market which means structures trying to protect against the second wave right um it could it strikes me that could be something we try to direct through the working lands if we if we end up giving them a sort of short term grant I agree they're also not and the letter that Gus sent I only skimmed it but they were not asking for a huge amount of money they were they're into leveraging money so they that's pretty modest what they're talking about compared to what you get for it in return yeah yeah I was just uh the the stuff that abby sent she has timeframes on hers which I think are really helpful you know that uh anthony just mentioned the meat processing um and this issue of dairy having to call some herd some of their herd and how do we sort of glide that onto the market so that there's the the processing plants can our slaughterhouses can can handle the increase and abby has a proposal from that and it's you know the timeframe is June through December of 2020 so that seems to me that that would be something that would really be helpful and it would also be working with the vermont food bank to get some of the beef that is produced um so that seems like a huge win win win you know get more beat get more of the farmers some money for their called herd um get it processed to get it onto the market but also getting some of it to the food bank directly good protein yeah yeah okay um well I'm satisfied that we have a good list we've we've poked around some of these issues are more worked out than others and I'd be glad to bring this up with the chair and sort of uh you know we we were moving very quickly into the wording and um I think it's important now that we have a well I don't know that I would say I'm clear on the timeline but it's clear that this is going to be a little more organized in terms of a overall economic recovery package so um there there if people have other things you kind of want in the menu we should bring that forward now or quickly yeah sorry I'm also looking at um Abby had brought up the product associations you know uh like the Vermont cheese council for Vermont fresh network the brewers association there's probably the maple organization those organizations and maybe that's the way we sort of direct some of the marketing money but also um immediate you know payments to them to help their members um through the the the crisis too and that's a more immediate term so that may be a way of stretching this out across uh across sectors yeah that strikes me as a sort of a different strategy for the the um we have already in our bill in terms of um agricultural producers which is non-dairy um but it's a good thing to keep in mind or or a little bit of both um so I don't know we can we can take a break Brian you'd mentioned and it wouldn't hurt my feelings to watch the governor's press conference at 11 but we also potentially have uh Michael back around 11 he's at another committee until 11 but we know sometimes that goes long to start walking through the miscellaneous ag bill um which there's not a great hurry on but we're clearly going to have to put our attention to so what do what do people want to do um do you want to come back at 11 with Michael and do the miscellaneous ag you probably should do that although I wonder whether Bobby has seen it yet I guess he's probably looked at it um I mean if we have a walkthrough with Michael and he's not here we're either going to have to catch him up or we're going to have to do it again when he gets back well he he built the agenda and he told me that you know if you need time you should you should do this so um the other possibility would be to watch some of the governor's thing you know it starts at 11 he's it's we don't have to sit through all the questions and answers and all the follow-up and all that but listen to what he says at 11 and come back together again at 20 after 11 or 11 30 for a half hour go through the bill briefly okay do people like that idea I do like that idea Anthony I'm presuming they show it on it's it's live on I haven't watched any of them they're live on tv it's on channel three and it's on radio okay listen to it on radio it also never starts at 11 well that's true yeah that we they may not get to even get to the part part that's relevant to us by 11 20 but we can try maybe that'll be up front let's say 11 30 that also gives us a great better likelihood that Michael will be back with us so Linda are you able to hear this yes if you can um we'll we'll go offline in a moment here and we'll reconvene in an hour with Michael for the purposes of walking through the miscellaneous ag bill and then in the meantime okay I will I'll put you all on mute and I'll put a notice up that the committee will be back on this video at 11 30 sure will that be streaming the whole time too bad we can't put the governor on our on our on our I could send you another at invitation to another meeting or we can do it that way I'm not sure I care how you do it um we'll get back on this one um unless you send us something in the meantime but but importantly if you can alert Michael that we don't need him until 11 30 we'll do okay everybody okay I guess we'll hello Michael thank you uh so we we just so you know Michael we compiled kind of our list of uh the menu that we at least like to discuss for the relief bill most of that well about half of it is already in there um so I'll work with uh the chair on uh figuring out that discussion and if you were listening to the governor's press conference secretary of agriculture just suggested they were proposing 50 million dollar relief package for farms for dairy really dairy and processors so you know more than we were contemplating but in a similar vein to much of our work so so would that be in one time payments or over the four month period it's our hope that we will have somebody from the agency in on Friday to walk us through their proposal I know the chair was working on that uh when I talked to him last night or was that was his hope uh secretary chevitz did not give us much detail on that but my understanding is it's a one time payment so in other words if and I forget I think it was our large farms we were going to go 50,000 50,000 50,000 or 150 and one lump sum this would be the one lump sum but I don't know what that number is going to be yeah kind of thing um right so we'll hope to get more details either friday or early next week senator hardy but there was nothing in their package for anything beyond dairy and cheese um so I would assume that that's something we would want to make sure we cover yeah yeah because you you said they mentioned so 70 million for processors and it's interesting to see what those processors are are they just dairy processors as opposed to me and other things that we need to do yeah I don't know it was 10 million and I don't know where it's earmarked that's right no we'll look for those details and uh of course it's just a proposal the way the budget is a proposal at the beginning of our process they they have to partner with the legislature we look forward to partnering with them and and injecting uh some of our own ideas and also uh complimenting what they're trying to do so um at the moment so we'll hear from them as soon as we can hopefully friday if not early next week um given that the the next stop after we do this relief package will be miscellaneous ag michael would you uh we might as well take your time now if 25 minutes left if you uh could just start introducing us to that house proposal that's now in our possession um sure um all right that's just what I was just going to ask for your own thank you is it also on the website yeah yes sure um so h 656 is an act relating to miscellaneous ag subjects the first second well just be clear it really is miscellaneous there's there's a ton of different stuff in here very different subject matter the first section relates to commercial feed and a prohibition on page two sub d that would prohibit a person from distributing a commercial feed product in the state that is labeled as bait or feed for white tail deer and that's on page two could you say that again michael so so right now there's requirements for commercial feed in the state including the labeling of commercial feed and it is currently prohibited to take deer through baiting okay and there are people that are selling commercial feed in the state that is labeled as bait for white tailed deer and the and the agency would like to prohibit people from distributing commercial feed that is labeled as bait for white tailed deer does that answer your question yes thank you linda could you just scroll up a tiny bit um sorry no there there's underline language that michael's describing and a little bit down page two um so michael how does that work you're very specific about the labeled so what if they just don't label it as bait and then well well a small uh thing to alter the label in this case right so um there is legitimate use of of feed for deer in vermont there is a captive deer facility in vermont and so you can sell feed for deer that that is a legitimate use and and the and the feed is not just limited to to use for deer so there there are legitimate uses for that then it if somebody takes that legitimate feed and and uses it to take a deer with that bait well then that's a fishing game violation it's a criminal violation it's a felony violation actually um with imprisonment so that that's that's how that would play out okay thank you okay um moving down to section two these are required record keeping requirements for livestock transporters you may not remember but a couple of years ago and you can go on the page three linda you um did a substantial redraft of the um requirements for the handling of of livestock including their transport and traceability and you required uh livestock transporters haulers etc to maintain uh records compliant with applicable state and federal statute rules and regulations and what the agency was looking at for was basically information about what livestock haulers and transporters were doing what they were purchasing etc but as it turns out under under the usda rules there are sometimes when uh a hauler doesn't have to include certain information and the agency wants this information so on page three you'll say when not required under the requirements set forth in state and federal statutes the records that a livestock hauler transporter needs to maintain shall include livestock purchase repossessed sold or loaned by a livestock dealer transporter packer the complete name and address of the person from whom livestock was obtained and to whom delivered the official individual id number that is required uh and for equine livestock there's a separate set of requirements that are are elsewhere in statute but it's just to make clear that even though the federal rule might not require that the agency still wants this information for haulers packers and transporters it's it's about accountability and managing the system and they think it's it's worthwhile information um to maintain so should i move on did you have a question yeah i'm just making sure um so the transporter would just have to have their record but that person is not sending that to any agency right no it's it's it's one of those records where the agency asks them to to maintain it subject to their inspection but it's not required to be submitted to the agency and this isn't in essence asking them to do anything more than they're already doing well they may already be required to do it if they're if they're um triggering an activity that's covered by federal rule or other applicable state statute but there are situations where they're not required to do it by federal rule and the agency still wants that information in those instances okay thank you um section three i don't think any of you were on the committee um when the issue of testing captive deer for chronic waste and disease came up but uh at that time the debate was whether or not the state should pay for the testing of captive deer or whether the um owner of the captive deer should pay for the testing testing is required under federal rule the animal plant health inspection and safety vision of USDA requires chronic deer uh captive deer to be tested for chronic wasting disease once slaughtered um the committee the senate ag committee uh included this provision that the secretary bag shall pay for the testing the secretary the agency bag is asking now that that uh requirement be shifted to the operator of the captive deer operation um from which to test the captive deer originated can you give us a sense of what the cost is um it's not substantial um but it is in the thousands of dollars it depends on the number of deer that are sent um to slaughter and then are required to be tested i i i remember that when this was changed a few years ago it was it was about $15,000 and there's fewer captive deer facilities now so it's probably less um but that's that the agency could probably give you how much they paid for it last year so michael they're tested at that slaughter time is that when they're under tested that's just randomly no you have to test the brain um so it's it's at it's at slaughter perhaps or slaughter how many how many captive deer operations are there i think currently there's only one oh yeah i think it's it's in my district i it's pretty close to where i live are there other comparable types of tests for other kinds of livestock michael that are either paid for by the state or paid for by the producer um there there are other testing whether it's brucellosis or or those other required testing um i i can't tell you who pays for them my intuition is that it's on the producer but i would need to double check that yeah i just if this is making it more consistent with other types of livestock that makes a lot of sense um and it's a federally required test you said right yes the the requirement to test is federally required and i'm just wondering if the rationale by the agency was just to well i don't know how else to say it save money in their budget um i think the agency has a um uh philosophical perspective as well okay that that uh the the cost should be borne by the the livestock um producer and not by the state okay so i'm looking at the brucellosis and tuberculosis testing requirements and i don't see it just says that the producer shall ensure that they are tested i don't see any mandate who pays for it one way or the other um uh moving on to section four this is about the interstate movement of animals again a few years ago you changed some of the requirements for livestock management one of the things that you did is that you required all livestock being transported within the state to satisfy the requirements for a official ID under USDA's traceability rule but it's it's there's been some situations where the agency is like oh we you really don't need to comply with that rule like moving moving animals between your own barns you know you might have a farm in franken and a farm in addison and you're moving your animals you really need to to follow all the id requirements there um and so the secretary asked for the ability by procedure to waive the requirements of subsection a those traceability requirements for certain types or categories of interstate transport of livestock and so that's what section four would do and give the secretary that authority so i move on so that brings you to section five and you can go to page seven you're uh entering a few different sections amending the apiary laws in the state um the first is amending the report requirement um the um the report is supposed to provide the location of all apiaries and the location of an apiary shall become its registered location however the first change is that registered location is only going to be considered its its location if it meets the other requirements for a location which are at six psa three zero three four which i will get to in a minute and then further down on that page and subdivision three the term serious is being struck there's a this a definition of what disease is for um bees and it it includes serious so having serious here is redundant and so that is being struck and in addition page seven at the bottom of the page if applicable it's it's not necessary um it's applicable um anyone else find this minutia oddly comforting uh yes i was thinking the same thing i was like this feels like the ag committee again i know how you feel um going on to the next page there's a notification that uh the apiary owner report the detection of american foul ruled uh in their hive um to the secretary as soon as possible soon as practical balls i should say um and then going down sections that wasn't part of last year's requirements already uh no it wasn't it wasn't in there last year um in section six there's been there was discussion in the house about what standard the laboratory needs to meet for testing whether or not it needs to be a federal laboratory could it be another laboratory could it be a certified laboratory what certification would the laboratory need to have to avoid all of that discussion the house just said it's a laboratory approved by the secretary so the secretary can can determine which laboratories it it feels meets the standards and um inform the apiary community of that all right uh moving down to section seven uh if a person is um going to sell their bees that they're engaged in the rearing of bees for sale currently they are supposed to at least twice during the summer have their apiary inspected and that that's just a um uh burden administrative burden on the agency one of the things that they like to do is to reduce that somewhat and so instead of it being twice each summer it's going to be prior to sale at least once each summer so that will allow the agency to reduce the number of inspections but it will also be conditioned on before they are sold so the agency will have that opportunity to they'll look at the health of those bees before they are sold michael i oh go ahead senator hardy i don't know i bet you were going to ask the same thing i'm going to ask which is i seem to remember last year when we did our b-bill that we increased we we provided additional resources for the agency to provide to do inspections and that part of the goal was that they do more inspections so this seems to be going in the other direction well they they do they did hire someone i think she's actually full-time i think what um and they are doing more inspections because they've hired brook um but i think it's still something that they they believe they can achieve the intent of this uh and ensuring the health of the the the bees prior to sale while reducing that administrative inspection requirement i also seemed to recall there was a time window we had to if you were transporting that have a test within two weeks or something we're gonna get to that okay so so that's the next section section eight um so the agency shall not approve the import of bees use equipment or colony colonies from out of state unless a company by a valid certificate of inspection within the previous 45 days last year you set it at 60 and now the agency's asking for 45 so you can't bring your bees in from another state unless it has a certificate of inspection from that state issued in the previous 45 days and then moving down in b um any person other than a common carrier who know only transport or causes to be transported used equipment or colonies to appoint within the state shall provide the secretary with an approved import permit and certificate of inspection no less than 10 days prior to entry so current law is you provide that certificate not more than 72 hours after entry and so the agency wants to go back to the import permit and inspection is provided prior to entry that's what it used to be prior to entry and they want to go back to that and how does one get an approved import permit you apply to the agency for that okay and they just say yep bring them in or do they uh they have they have an application and you fill it out you provide the information and they approve or not because that is not part of the current law correct so you you did not need an import permit um you just needed about a certificate of inspection and and now you would need an import permit okay should i move on um on page 10 at the kind of in the middle there is an exception to the um requirement for an import permit or a valid certificate of inspection um and that it you had that favor the bees are registered in the remote were transported not more than 75 miles from the registered location and are imported back into the state currently the condition was they were imported back into the state within 90 days of the date of original transport there is some concern that that may be too long um and that 30 days is sufficient for them to travel across borders to do their um job of pollinating crops or orchards and then to come back into the state so that that was the proposal to move it from 90 to 30 should i move on all right section nine is just that first change of getting rid of serious before bee disease because it's redundant section 10 is the criteria for establishing an apiary location i won't go through all of them but this is the section that's referenced in your first apiary section about when a location becomes the registered location the only change here is is on subdivision four it was unclear whether all of these conditions were individual or conjunctive so we added an or it's all of these are are individual exceptions that you don't have to qualify all of them qualify for all of them to be accepted section 11 is about rabbits and slaughtering them rabbits are not an amenable species under the federal meat inspection act and the federal meat inspection act and require states to be equal to meaning that their requirements need to be the same as the federal meat inspection act so rabbits are being removed from the definition of livestock under the slaughter requirements a person that raises rabbits still can voluntarily get them inspected and rabbits still need to meet the FDA standards for the sale of food meaning that they can't be adulterated but they are not required to be inspected under the federal meat inspection act and are being removed from that requirement under state law section 12 and 13 there are two ag water quality funding programs that are not under the ag water quality funding chapter or sub chapter and the agency wants to consolidate all of those funding programs into one chapter sub chapter so that's what section 12 does it takes remote seeding and filter strip program and the farm agronomic practices program and takes them from where they are in law under existing sub chapters and moves it to the ag water quality sub chapter it doesn't change the substance of these sections at all one word has been changed they are the same as existing law they're just being moved and that allows you to go to section 14 this is just some technical changes to the requirement that the agency adopt RAPs you're you're gone by Linda so the agency was required to adopt or amend the RAPs to include requirements for small farm certification and they were supposed to do that on over for July 1, 2016 they did that they would like to get rid of that date they feel it's been met now the reference to it is obsolete and they would like to be directed to maintain the rules for small farm certification instead of adopt them and that's what section 14 would do should I go on section 15 is about the certification of custom applicators custom applicators are people who apply manure or nutrients to the land of others for compensation and you required them in act 64 to be certified by the state in order to provide those services however you have some exceptions from the requirement to be certified and those are on page 16 first the owner or operator of their own farm applying manure or nutrients is not required to be certified custom applicator that condition for act 64 was conditioned on the owner or operator completing ag water quality training well ag water quality training is already required if a farmer hasn't completed their ag water quality training they're already in violation so the agency doesn't want to condition this on something that's already a requirement they would like to just keep those two requirements separate a farmer that didn't complete their ag water quality training would already be in violation they don't think it needs to be a condition to the exception from custom applicator certification and then Michael is there other than neatening it up is there any problem with having it here as well um you know the the the one problem might be kind of a timing thing based on when farmers have to do their training so you might have a farmer that is in good standing is about to get their training training gets delayed for whatever reason and they come out of compliance with the training requirement but they're they're in all intention is for them to come into training would they then be prohibited from applying manure to their field that's that's I think where the agency is looking and saying uh there's some situations where that requirement here could could create a problem okay let's try to get through halfway and then okay well can you move back up to page 16 sub 2 this is this is the neighborly neighbor provision as it's being called this is adding an exception to the custom applicator certification for application of manure or nutrients by a farm owner or operator on the field of another farm owner or operator when the total annual volume applied is less than 50 percent of the annual manure ag waste by volume generated on the farm where the manure is spread the concept here is you're a farmer your equipment for spreading breaks down can you ask your neighbor to to apply manure on your farm for half a side of beef for for you know a cut of hog and not have to get the neighbor have to get certified as a custom applicator the agency would like to have that ability of neighbors to provide those services without having to be a certified custom applicator but they want to put some limits on it it can't be more than 50 of the total annual manure ag waste by volume generated on that farm provided that the agency may approve the application of more than 50 on a farm by another operator when circumstances require an application of the manure would not pose a significant potential discharge to run off to stay water that's more of an emergency provision if if you really need that neighbor to go in there and deal with it the agency has that authority to do it if it's not going to create a threat to water quality all right moving on section 16 this is about the management of non-sewage waste up until recently the agency i'm just going to jump in this seems like uh we've had beginnings of this kinds of discussion this is not simple uh change of word here and there so i don't think we should do it since we're running over our noon deadline and we all have to be on the floor in less than an hour okay anybody feels strongly that we should just call there yeah that sounds good are we meeting tomorrow i can't remember no i i think we're meeting linda what time are we meeting friday it has been at 10 o'clock is that what you want again well i i think so the chair will be back in action so you can check with him but i hope and our floor friday is 11 30 right yeah that's a good point um i think you have to ask bobby um but it would make sense to me to be a little earlier um okay we can stop i do have a scheduling question but we can stop the live speed unless anybody has any questions for mike