 everybody. It's been a kind of a hectic morning with all the bills on the floor, but I think Michael is probably with us, I would hope. Yeah. I don't think so. Tell me momentarily. Okay. Well, anyways, getting back to our bill, what I kind of thought we ought to think about adding to the bill is what about a report back from the agency on a, you know, monthly basis or bi-weekly basis so that we would see and would understand how they're how they're performing and getting the money out. Sure. I like that. Yeah. Rose? Yeah, I think that's good. That's similar to the economic development bill that we just voted out. I just wonder if Michael is coming because I had some questions for Michael and how come? Well, hopefully he'll be with us and then you can go to that. I just had that one issue that if you could all agree, we'll ask Michael when he gets with us to add that on toward the end. Yeah. I had a couple of things that I wanted to ask you all about as well when we go through the bill. Namely, one of my biggest concerns is the size of the grants for the non-dairy because they're so small. So I just wondered if we could chat about that and hear opinions. And then I had questions for Michael. Yeah, we'll get, when he gets on, we'll get to that. I think Chris had his hand up. I had asked Michael to just give us a paragraph that's really simple and leaves it up to the agency but to come up with a few questions that will help us understand those farmers and processors. Michael said we should include them. That would be open or interested in technical assistance, succession planning, whatever the suite of options. So he thought that was pretty straightforward. There's sections where we're referencing the application. And so he has a quick paragraph. I hope that we can look at that and add that. Is that something, Chris, that would be added when they send the application out or something, a one-pager or one-pager? Yeah, yeah. Well, here, I'll just look at my emails back and forth here. So it's something like Secretary Vag shall prepare a short survey that applicants under sections one and three of this act shall complete to help identify farmers and agricultural processors that are interested in technical assistance, succession planning, or similar services provided by the state and its agricultural partners. We leave it up to the agency and I assume they join us in wanting it to be very minimalistic and simple. But we talked about that and everybody seemed to like it. So I wanted to make sure we didn't forget about it. We could even add a BHCB's phone number to that, where if they read that, they read that paragraph and they want to get signed up for help. They could just call right through the BHCB and instead of going around the barn to get to the front door, they could go direct and it might work faster. Sure. I wouldn't want to supplant that, but if you add in that contact, I mean, I kind of I wanted to make it pretty simple, so I left it up to the agency, but I'm open to those kinds of suggestions. Yeah. And you had a question or not so much a question, just a feeling in a way. I mean, I'm a little, I don't know, I'm unhappy in a way that we're not doing anything in this bill around food security. And I kind of understand why, because, you know, the money issues and whatnot. And I know we have these other conversations in the caucus where, you know, health and welfare says they're thinking about it. Other people say they're working on it. I just think it's our responsibility to see to it that something is done around food security. And we had a lot of good ideas that we kicked around early on in our conversations and they've all disappeared. I'm not proposing that we put, I mean, I would like to see us put them back in. I know that's an issue around the money. And I'm not, so I'm not naive about it. But I think if nothing else, we need to make a clear statement to the rest of the Senate that we need to make an investment of food security. We need to do these things. It's going to be really, we're going to kick ourselves in the butt if we go home and realize that we haven't done anything for food security when we have all those folks lining up for free food. It's just something that didn't nagging at me. So I just want to put that on the table. Yeah, I think Jenny sounded really positive about getting something out and Ruth had done Yeoman's work and getting basically it put together. I would hope that we could team up with them and do joint, you know, a joint piece of legislation. If we got Phil and the education crew on board, we'd have 15 boats right there. And I think it would roll through with no problems whatsoever. Yeah, I don't disagree. We have to make it happen. Yeah, Anthony, I'm sorry. I didn't copy you on an email that I sent last night to Jenny. Michael put together a draft that is just what, which was a conglomeration of all the ideas that we talked about related to food security. And I just sent that to Jenny. And I'm sorry, I didn't copy you on it too. Or you, Brian, I'm sorry, it wasn't intentional. It was just trying not to clog up everybody's emails. But it was the bill with all the things that we had discussed, the food service stuff, the school lunch, the food bank, the meals on wheels, and the other miscellaneous stuff. And Michael drafted that into one package. And I sent it to Jenny and copied Bobby and Phil and others and just said, hey, this is what we were thinking. Let's all work together to get this done. And she, that's what the conversation today before caucus or before the floor was about was response to that. So I think there's movement on it at this point. So I don't think it'll be forgotten. I certainly felt encouraged by Senator Lyons' comments this morning. Brian, did you have your hand up? Well, no, but when we first started, you said that the amendment from the other bill was mine and it was actually Brian Campion. So I just wanted that. Well, did I say, I thought I said just Brian, I could have been a little more clear on that. I don't know, that's fine. That's the reason I had my hand up. And just on this food security thing, I've also heard Senator Kitchell reference it. She knows that it's a real issue. So I'm not sure, short of putting it in here, we have about as good a set of commitments as I've seen for these kinds of things. Good morning, Michael. I'm glad to see you. And thanks for all the work you're doing for us. It's been kind of crazy and heavy on your part, I'm sure. We had two or three, now a couple of suggestions and changes that we might want to make. Chris has been working with you on a little short survey. We wanted to add that language so that the aggregate actually would get that put together and shut down. And I didn't know if it would be appropriate or not to add in, you know, if they wanted to contact anyone on those different proposals, they could put BHCB's phone number right to Ella, so that Ella would get those calls direct rather than going through the agency or along with agency calls. So we wanted to add that, and then I wanted to or suggested that maybe we get a report back from the agency to the legislature in regards to how things were going and the number of requests that they've had in the payments going out so we could kind of have that timely. Would that be hard to add somewhere toward the end? Not a problem. How often or when do you want them to first report? Seems monthly. What do you think? Monthly. Monthly okay with everybody? Yep. By the first of each month? Yeah, or until December 30th. Up to the end of, I thought the program they had to be everything in, was it December 1st, Michael? I thought it was prior to that. We moved that date back ahead. Right, but you still allow the agency to make some payments after December 1st. It's December 20th. December 20th is the date where anything that's unexpended of CRF funds will be deposited into the UI fund. Okay, so we could go, do you think, with December 30th and that would be fine? Yep, you could ask for a report by the first of the month until January 1st. Right, and so you'll get, you'll get any information about payments made in December on January 1st. Yeah, that would be fine now. You know, if they give you, yeah, we'd better leave it the first of the month. Okay, Ruth, Ruth, you had some questions too? Yeah, I was just, I don't, I don't want to waste everybody's time, but I wonder if Michael could just go through the bill really quickly because I had some questions. Some of them are minor, but it's language in the bill. And then just some questions about some of the drafting language. And then my concern about the grants for the non-dairy portion of the program is that there are such small amounts, and I know that they're small because there are so many non-dairy farmers, but my concern for this section is actually the opposite of the concern for the other section, which, you know, we spend a lot of time making sure that we are getting money into the pockets or will get money into the pockets of the small processors and small dairy farmers. And in this section, I think grants are so small that some of our larger non-dairy producers are not going to get much benefit from this program at all. And I'm thinking, for example, of the turkey farmer who came in and may have significant expenses rearranging his operations in the fall in order to be able to process and slaughter turkeys in the fall, and he would only get 8,000 bucks. And so I'm concerned that that those kinds of things would disadvantage the larger non-dairy farmers who, you know, get their entire income from farming and will actually advantage people who are part-time farmers or sort of hobby farmers. You know, I talked to also a beef producer, and while beef prices have risen, the cost of processing beef is really expensive now, and because our slaughterhouses are full, anybody who's a major beef producer in our state are sending their animals down to Pennsylvania or further to be processed, and that's really expensive. So they're going to have significant expenses as related to COVID. When I talked to someone one month in, he'd already lost up to $30,000. And so I'm just concerned about this small amount of grants and wondered if we might have language either to leave it up to the agency or to do it as a percentage of the economic harm or something so that we don't have those sort of levels in that section of the program like we do with the dairy because it's less Why don't we think about that and we'll start right at the beginning, run through the bill. When we get to that particular section, we can have a little further discussion once everybody's kind of thought about where we are. Chris? Just so I understand, so you're saying we'd just give them $7 million and let the agency figure out the tiers or whatever? I mean, I think that's one possibility after they get all the grants in and all the applications and they sort of see what the levels of needs are, they kind of determine, well, this makes the most sense because right now we just don't have the information that we have for the dairy farms and so I want the grants to be sufficient enough to help them and I'm worried that they will get a lot of little tiny grants and applications but they wouldn't end up spending the $7 million because the limit is right now $8,500. So even the really big, like you mentioned, the vegetable producer, that's a really major vegetable producer, you're only getting $500, whereas his economic harm may be much higher than that. So trying to figure out what a reasonable amount is in this area is difficult because we just don't have that kind of data that we do for dairy. Don't forget though, we've got almost 100 dairy processors that are licensed and all of them could apply. So, I mean, there's certainly a lot of processors out there and that doesn't even include the slaughterhouse processors and those two, the two or four big ones, I thought we were kind of hoping that they would go right through economic development and get their money there along with all the big players. So this is not the dairy producers that I'm talking about Bobby, these are the non-dairy people. So the dairy producers and processors are separate in a separate program. This is the non-dairy and it does include slaughter facilities farmers markets and farmers and I'm concerned about the larger non-dairy operations just ending up with a tiny little grant when their economic harm may be greater because they're getting their 100% of their income from farming rather than just a small portion of it. Well, I hate to leave it up to, I mean, the agency to take care of that because 7 million could go quite a ways and I think if we left them the flexibility to raise the limits, like you said, depending on the size, maybe we could allow that, put that in and allow it that way. What's the committee think in regards to that? Michael, do you think we could set it up that way so that change that section to allow the agency to reverse that 7 million to produce? No, producers and processors that are non-dairy or is it just processors? So just leaving it up department is the agency to figure out the parameters of the grants, that's what you're saying? Yeah, depending on the size. Yeah, you can do that. You can say that the 7 million is appropriate to the agency to establish a grant program to pay agricultural producers that are non-dairy, commercial slaughterhouses, commercial processors, farmers markets, reimburse them for their economic harm caused due to COVID. That could be it. Yeah, and we could have an upper level or we could give them more parameters if we want. I'm just concerned that the levels we have right now are so low that people who are really hurting aren't going to get it. I don't disagree with the levels being low. I hear you on that for sure. Just not sure the best way to do something about it. Right. Gresh? Well, there's some irony here, but I just would point out that the agency has not been enthusiastic about this section of the bill and so I worry, I guess, a little bit about just giving them carte blanche. I don't know. No, I agree. I completely agree. I just feel like that the, I don't think all these small farms are going to be able, are going to come in and ask for grants and that many of them won't be able to show economic harm, but those that do and are able to show economic harm are just going to get so small grants and that concerns me. Why don't we just raise the cap then? We'll, you know, up higher at the tail end, just put a statement in there that the caps could be raised if their harm was greater than X dollars. You'll pick a figure and so they could raise the limits if they so chose. Or we could say that shall cover up to X percentage of harms if sufficient funding is available or something like that. I don't know, Michael, do you have a good idea? I don't really have an idea. Sorry. Remember, we also basically said go until it runs out, first come, first serve. So there, those are, those are sort of dangerous guardrails when you're taken together. You may end up with just a couple big ones coming out of money. I don't think that's our goal either. That's not my goal. But what's the highest grant that they could get is 8500. So we could just say, I mean, the highest grant that the dairy farmers can get is 100,000. The highest grant that the cheese and milk processors can get is 60,000. So we could say, you know, a tiered system with the highest grant amount x 50,000, whatever. And then, then the agency can come up with, has the maximum amount. So they're not massive grants, even 50,000 divvied up with 7 million, among 7 million is a lot of grants. But they would, that's pretty high when you think about the, well, I mean, once the money's gone, it's gone. And if you think, you know, I would pick a law, like I think Paul talked about revamping his slaughter parts to his slaughterhouse 25 or 30,000, he thought would, would be a real reasonable, you know, cost. And if we could go 20 or 30,000 in there, if the committee thinks that would work, we'll, we'll shoot for that 30 million or 30,000 say at the top, as long as they can be justified and proven. So Ruth, are you, I'm looking at the spreadsheet. I mean, it just means we're going to help a lot fewer farmers, presumably. And maybe that's okay, but well, if we did 30,000, if they, if they ended up all getting 30,000, that would be 233 farmers that we could help. So that's, you know, that's a good number. But, and not all of them will get 30,000. I mean, some of them will just get, you know, maybe the 2,500 they needed to build a farm stand and then go online or whatever. But there are some that are going to have more cost and limiting them to 8,500, I think seems really low given the other grant amounts. So well, so should we put numbers in there like we have now, but change them upwards? Well, what about how many would we have Ruth if we went 20,000 or 25,000 cat? That would bump up our numbers by quite a bit on the number of people that would qualify or that would would get help. Yeah, 280. 280 farmers, if they all got the maximum 25,000, we know they're not going to, but some from at least 25,000 is real money, you know, for a, you know, for a farm operation that has work to do to change for the COVID crisis. So okay to go with 25? 25 is the maximum. 25,000 being the maximum amount that an applicant would be able to receive. Yeah, and can we just limit it at 25 and then it was economic, they have to show economic harm and some people might get 12,000 or 2,000 or whatever. If Michael can get it out for me feels comfortable, that'll work, let's go for it. So the agency just sent me some more information about the number of farms using the low end numbers and excluding the dairy farms and dairy processors, there's about 4,200 farms with a $7 million program. I don't know how far that money is going to work go with the $25,000 grant max. I thought they testified though that they didn't know where these farms were, what these farms were, they just knew that there was 7,000 or some crazy number of farms out there and Right, so they've been trying to collect the information and they say it's still imperfect but it's what they've been able to gather internally and from their industry partners. That may not yet heard from everyone as well. So I just want to put that on the table, if they set up a tiered system not many people, either not many people are going to get the $25,000 amount or not many people are going to get an award or they're going to have to. Brian, that just farms or does that include processors too? It includes processors and includes meat handlers and includes slaughterhouses and includes hemp growers, maple producers, etc. Those hemp growers will take it all. So that if all 4,200 got a grant they would only get 1666 each. So $16? No, no $1666. That still pocket change. Yeah, I mean it's good money for a tiny little operation that is a sort of part-time you know operation that makes 10,000 bucks a year that's over 10% of your income but if you're a full-time farmer trying to revamp your operations during a pandemic the expenses are going to be a lot more. The $1,600 would be nothing. So let's just peg it I think that's an interesting idea Senator Hardy. If we just peg it to the I'm looking at the spreadsheet the top box is up 25,000 and then peg it to the 10% of the big number so the next one would be 10,000 and then the next one is already there basically with 5,000 and so we just are going to that those are those are amounts that are 10% of the upper level the bigger level is you know it's 100,000 and up so there is no 10% but we're picking 25,000 we're just going to have a roughly a third of these farms will be able to take advantage of this. But I thought throughout our discussion we were aiming this toward those smaller guys that have had real rough times. In this case the smaller guys are so small that there's no way it's all of their income or their I don't believe because this is what do we say this annual sales or annual revenue or what Michael annual gross sales yeah I'm comfortable with the what you just said the 2,500 5,000 10,000 25,000 and that would be yeah maybe a third of them we got all of them would get it we start out run through those numbers again Rose so for for farms that make 10,000 to 25,000 they would they could get a max of 2,500 for the 25,000 to 50,000 they could get a max of 5,000 for 50 to 100,000 they could get 10,000 and then 100,000 or more they could get 25,000. Well we cut that to 20 and then that would let in a few more you know it would it would allow the money to go a little bit further and even if they get 100,000 in business if they got a 20% they could show they lost 100,000 they'd still be recouping 20% which is much better than most of those dairy guys with what we've got them running at. Well yeah but we have assumed that 90, 95, 98 and 100% of the dairy farmers will get grants and we're saying that these farmers between 25 and 30 percent of you will get grants it's imperfect we're in an imperfect moment but I don't think we should lose sight of that. Yeah are you guys okay with the 20,000 or would you? I am if you guys want to go along with it and I think you know it'll all work out we'll we'll find out as time moves on and then on the second round on our you know that we're hoping to get in the fall we can adjust it so that the ones we short change this time will do a little better maybe the next time. Yeah okay thank you this makes me feel better it feels like more like real money and so I appreciate it thanks guys. So other questions in regards to the other portions why don't we run through it quickly I know I've got to be back on at one o'clock but we've still got 50 minutes and we could run through the bill quickly in case we pick up an error or something. Will this be the one that Michael sent Sunday? No I sent another one out this morning to Linda based on the request that Senator Pearson made. Okay. Linda just emailed it to us. I didn't get it well I haven't gotten a copy of that because I'm I'll have to check my other quarter to noon quarter to 12 she sent it. Michael could you share it on the screen are you able to do that? I am not a co-host. I can. That'd be great. Okay all right speed read Michael. Sure so just going down I'll just hit the changes. First change is online 11 page one the program used to be called the milk producer program or assistance program it's now the dairy assistance program going on to page two line three that's just a technical change getting rid of a reference to a subdivision page line seven the because you used to have the dairy processors underneath the other program but you now brought them back under this program we add back in the definition of dairy processor and you'll see multiple references to dairy processor being added back in in this section. You can move basically to page four line 13 this is how the milk producer is going to calculate their economic loss they can either use the Middlebury price from January 2020 or they can provide their own verifiable average price for January 2020 as well as added cost or expenses related to the COVID so it gives them options that allows the organic producer to not have to use the Middlebury $18 and $13 per 100 weight. Moving on from there page five line two this is just to clarify that another the double dipping they can't double dip if the same economic harm will be covered by insurance or another state or federal grant but they still could apply for Vita funds or or the other state funds for any expense of above and beyond what they were reimbursed for here. Now Michael with this section we've got federal grants in there what about they they aren't going to be able to get a federal grant and a state grant. Well that's a question for you do you want them to be double dipping do you want them to get a federal grant for their expenses and then get a state grant for the same expenses. It really isn't double dipping because we're using covert money to pay for this they're using USDA ad policy that's nationwide for USDA I think instead of saying I mean you could use federal grants with the exception of USDA I mean I don't think they should be able to double dip to get other covert 19 money but USDA money is is totally separate and those big guys that's what we were banking on to bail them out is the two funds together would add up to enough to maybe get them 50 to 60 percent of their losses. But this doesn't prevent them from getting other state and federal grants they could still get it because this money is not going to cover their total economic harm so if their economic harm is you know 150,000 and they get 50 through this they could still get federal money to cover the other hundred or insurance money to cover some of it so this just this just knocks out the double dip in on the same expenses right yeah okay yeah that's good okay um I think really some of this stuff is just language uh at the bottom of page five going on to page six you see the maximum grant amounts for milk producers um and then the maximum grant amounts for dairy processors should I move on from there yes uh page six line 20 and 21 this is basically just adding back in that dairy processors are going to be evaluated on their uh size um based on march 1 2020 um page seven that's just adding dairy processors back in and the reference to them page eight uh this is aligns 10 through 20 um clarifies how a person who's with a producer and a processor would apply um what if there are two separate corporate entities they have one application for each uh corporate entity if they only have one corporate entity they can still apply but will be eligible only up um to the total economic harm incurred by the applicant yeah um going on to page nine this is kind of a default terms and limitations the first the secretary shall issue grant payments on a first come first serve basis until all funds are expended or december 20th 2020 whichever sooner december 20th is when all unexpended crf funds will revert to the ui fund um sub two uh if this bill is going to be a standalone you want to have this language about the ag recovering funds and the ag or secretary of ag seeking appropriate criminal or civil penalties is authorized by law there's at least three different crimes that the ag could could pursue um but if this is going to be part of a larger more comprehensive program this kind of language is going to be moved to the end of the bill and apply to all of the programs so just be aware of that if this goes forward independently it should stay if it goes forward as part of a package it's going to be changed I I think from the discussions we've had to this point it's going to go through as a separate separate bill and so we should have but this morning we talked about that language and and if thought we talked about if if they submitted false information the person that submitted it would would have problems but if they submitted the material that they were asked for and later on it was found through an audit that it would it was the proper paper got paperwork got sent in according to what they were asked for but it was wrong from the beginning caused by the state then the state would bite the bullet and pay the bill well I can add a language like that but well that's really about clawback you don't want them to be clawed back right if they purposely submitted false information yes but if they submitted the information that was requested from them to cover and it was wrong information that they were asked for by the by the state well then it should fall upon the state to pay the money back okay that was in the economic development bill what you were talking about this morning all right I'll take a look at that and then pull out something from there yeah another point to make is on the bottom of page nine line 18 that data submitted to the secretary by producer dairy processor shall be a trade secret from public inspection and copying provided that the secretary may use and disclose submitted information in an aggregate form that does not directly or indirectly identify the producer or processor yes then on page 10 section 2 you get the money there's 228 that's appropriated to the dairy assistance program 19 million is available for milk producers 3.8 million available to the uh dairy processors and sub b you'll see that the funds that are unexpended by november 1 2020 shall revert to the agency for ongoing financial assistance under the program under sections one and three so section one's dairy assistance section three is the agricultural producer and processor assistance program who can demonstrate harm incurred through september 15 2020 hey my assistant yep oh sorry the i one of the things i know or didn't see in here and i i don't know where we ended up on it was the the ability for the small farms and processors and maybe the medium i don't remember um to be able to get money from both programs yeah that's in here it is in there yeah okay was it just the small or did we decide small and medium i can't remember uh it's it's not based on size it's oh it's not okay if you're both a producer and a processor um you and you're organized as a separate business entity you shall submit one application for assistance under the section uh for each corporate entity but um if you're not if you're just one corporate entity you just apply for both uh but you can't get more than the total economic harm that you've suffered okay great thank you michael um since uh the dates matter here and uh because we know we've had um some indication that the non-dairy portion of our bill is is not what the agency is dying to do is there anything in here that protects from them slow walking that section and then finding November one has arrived and sort of gobbling up that money and pushing it towards dairy that's part of the reason to get that report chris yeah i appreciate that and i i don't mean to disparage anybody it just i've been through it too many times in different agencies um so i i'm just curious uh if you if you think we're reasonably protected about me michael if you want to share funds across the program i don't think you are protected right now i think they could slow walk um the seven million and then use this language to take it and use it for dairy i i don't know if that would happen but it's a possibility i i really doubt that that that would happen with the correspondence and the input that we've had from everybody and and our working relations with ag has been pretty up front and straight forward uh i mean i don't i don't feel they would do that and if they did we could certainly with our reports we could send them a pretty nasty letter and and we'll be back in session in august to if we had to we could re-deal with it okay people okay yeah i'm fine with that okay michael all right moving on um on page 11 you're now into the agriculture producer or processor assistance program page 11 line two three five as that gross annual income test of $10,000 from the sale of agricultural products and one of two or three of the five calendar years per meeting preceding submission of the application ag products added because it's referenced in the definition of the definition of ag product is added because it's referenced in the definition of ag producer this is basically the definition from the raps that takes you to really page 13 um on the eligibility you had wanted uh for that demonstration of harm that had to have occurred or accrued on or after march 1 2020 and before december 1 2020 it had been december 30th and that doesn't really work with the ui um reversion on december 20th you still have an unanswered question based on page 13 line 15 16 based on some of the input you received last week about whether or not uh the applicant had a net business profit and the time frame for when that net business profit um must have been calculated uh it had been um july one you moved it to august one i think there was still some discussion among the committee about whether that is the appropriate date which which line is that michael uh it's page 13 line 14 and 15 it's the great out language if you can see any great highlighted language on your screen oh okay that's yeah i didn't get a new copy i think that was the old one is it uh when is the deadline for it was it october 1st uh when well the deadline for applying for the grant we're having the extra time to apply um yep they have to and submit their uh addition addendum to their initial application not later than october 1 2020 but i would i would recommend backing that august date up because uh all hell broke loose um you know in that march uh timing and if they show the profit say from march april and may uh you know i i that might be march april may that's three months you know we could we could back that august date up uh month or two because that's a long trip uh april may june july that's four or five months four and a half months um if that got and you know what happened to the milk deliveries and shortages in the in the stores and that whole fiasco if you back that up a month or or 45 days even uh that would tell if they were really losing and taking a big hit michael is this just the dairy or is this everybody uh this is this is just the ag producers that is not dairy you do not have the net profit eligibility requirement for dairy because it because there would be a lot of non-dairy businesses that have no intention or no expectation of getting a profit between march and august right i'm not too worried about the hemp farmers but as an example they don't make any money until october yeah um and so i don't i i'm not it's not clear to me how what we're we're what we're trying to we're trying not to give money to profitable businesses that right i get that um but boy they can't even apply if they aren't if they're showing no uh profit between these months they wouldn't be able to apply until august after august first right and if they are showing losses uh they could get on to it i don't remember what our our goal was here because i i agree with chris that there are a lot of farm businesses that you know they're upfront expenses in the spring and over the summer and then it's fall that they get out most of their income i mean whether they're hemp farmers or vegetable farmers or turkey farmers for that matter most of their sales are going to be in the fall so i don't remember exactly why we were what we were trying to do here because they still have to show economic harm right so if they have a profit they don't have economic harm well i i think the concern was when the dairy processors were in this section you were concerned that they could show an expense but a processor that's had a very profitable quarter could still show an expense and still be compensated from the fund isn't it net economic harm no it's it's it's that's not how it's defined it's any economic harm from if you look at the definition of economic harm it's an eligible applicant's expenses or lost revenue or both related to coven so it's not net it's their expenses or lost revenue i well get me out of this one i if you guys want to leave that in it's fine to me well and if we had to have to change it we will but um we don't we don't want somebody that's making a profit to take money away from people they're losing their share so i always leave it in and send the phone calls and emails to me well is is august first the right date or should we move it to october first so that it's a longer period so that the businesses that get their revenue in the fall would be captured well well i'm okay leaving it at august okay okay should i move on yeah all right uh so on page 14 line 11 you have the the maximum awards per uh different type of uh the amount of annual gross sales per producer or processor you've changed the payment amounts uh line 18 that 4500 would be five the line 20 the 6500 would be 10 and then on page 15 line two uh i believe you settled on 20 um you want to run through those again michael sure on page 14 that first tier for those we go from 10 to what no for the first year the lines 15 and 16 10 000 to 24 9 would still be 2500 dollars but then an an applicant with gross sales of 25 000 to 49 9 9 would go to 5000 instead of 4500 and then an applicant with gross sales of 50 000 to 99 9 9 would go from 6500 to 10 000 as the maximum and then anyone with gross sales exceeding of 1000 100 000 or more would receive a max grant of 20 000 well that that certainly looks a lot better i mean those those numbers we had there pretty tiny yeah thank you you every day all that was that yep okay don't yeah on page page 16 this is just that those generic terms and limitations that i discussed with you about the no producer and dairy processing it's the same stuff about um first serve first first come agey authority to recover and enforce trade secret information etc yeah then on page 17 uh you get section 4 the appropriation which you can go over on to page 18 and you'll see that reversion language as well if funds are unexpended but i know that number one 2020 they revert to the agency for assistance under dairy or under um this act it's this section i should tell so i'll stop there any questions i think it's good well actually michael on the next set the assistance outreach section did you go over that no i just wanted to stop for pause here because those were the two major programs um so going down into section five into the assistance and outreach this is the section that i amended this morning based on secretary piercings senator senator piercings request um what the heck is your secretary i really think he's after your job oh yeah you want to be clerk mr secretary will be fine oh yeah um in section five title i had the wrong title previously i'd had our reference to slaughter houses which is because i pulled the language from from an old act so i changed that uh one of the things that i didn't get directive from you about whether or not before the outreach and education whether or not you wanted to give them any money to do it i think i think you could delete the question mark the dollar sign and those zeros and and move the the rest stop right so you've you've done it both ways in the past you've you've not given them money and told them to do outreach you've given them money and told them to do outreach it's it depends on which way you want to do it well i don't know where we'd get it from right that's not giving money oh i was going to argue to give them money but it sounds like i'm going to lose well where are you going to get it from without taking it out of somebody's pocket that really that really needs that they've been they've been doing okay okay i mean what would we give them five ten grand and and it would disappear and that would be two or three of them small guys getting a grant so maybe at the end we can give them some money if there's money left over to their cost because then take this okay yeah okay and then i added the survey requirement so you'll see the secretary of ag shall prepare a short survey that applicants under sex one and three so under the dairy assistance program and under the ag resource assistance program and shall complete to help identify farmers and ag processors that are interested in technical assistance succession planning or similar services provided by the state and its agricultural partners sorry to interrupt this is no one sorry i'm late i got i was kind of pouncing back and forth between my other committee and i was watching on youtube and i heard the conversation about should you give them money or not give them money and i missed half of it but a suggestion maybe you already said this but a suggestion that i had was if you could you could say may use up to a certain amount of money through some of the other appropriations that you've used that are going to be on expended so you can still keep that at a zero so that was one idea where you could give them allow them some flexibility to spend up to a certain amount of money but without having to appropriate any additional money does that make sense well what we were shooting for here is that they would contact firm bureau the extension service vhcb the grains contact them to get get this word out we weren't really relying on the ag agency to to go door to door with a pamphlet we were just encouraging them to get the other participants rule vermont and all them to get the word out monthly monthly newsletters and things okay i just i just okay we could put if we wanted to be polite and and nice we could put some language in that they could use up to five thousand dollars or some nominal small number to to do this with i mean you could say up to five ten fifteen whatever from section and just pick one of the funds that you're a lot of money to because there's a little bit of flexibility and don't get carried away with those numbers this bill's got some some ways to go if if the agency's really worried about their administrative costs i'm sure they'll find a friend to bring it up down the road well definitely brian michael can you go back to page 18 i just want to read this again i think i saw a shell in there which to me implies that they can't get the funding unless they complete this servo is that true yes yes that's that is how it's drafted right now that they have to complete shell complete to help by that right yeah i don't like that well i think our intention has changed and and we never maybe corrected that i thought we were going to send the survey out with with the some notification with the application not that they absolutely had to return anything this is come on this is are you interested in technical assistance yes or no are you you know would it be helpful to have some succession planning yes or no this is not burdensome i i talked to a farmer yesterday who's who's copying receipts and sending all sorts of garbage to the feds this is like three or four questions yes or no here you go this is my address would that be on the application so it isn't a separate piece of paper it's worded as it's part of the application i i really continue to believe this is anything but onerous this is just a small part so it's a check off it's not a separate piece of paper that they've got to fill out and that's your account i think they shall send it we we don't even say they have to fill it out it shall be part of the application well it shall be are you okay with that brian it's just part of the application then yeah all right so i i i do have to change that then wait um because right now it says the secretary bag shall prepare a short survey that african shall complete to help identify farm so you want to say shall prepare a short survey that shall be part of the application that applicants complete to help identify all right brian is that yeah yeah that's fine first thank you all right okay okay moving on from there uh somebody this morning asked me to include in the survey reference to the providers or contact information for the providers so contact for v8cb contact for vita i don't even remember who asked me i brought it up but it's nothing that you know i just thought it would save swapping hands two or three times and getting lost in the shovel a shuffle if if at the end uh they needed this assistance uh uh be called vhcb and get ellis phone number the way it would go to her office and she would tend to it instead of going to the ag agency then over to vhcb and taking more time but um i just thought for one line it might save a lot of work do you want me to include language with regard to that yeah just simple language uh please you know please call vhcb and then we'd have to get ellis phone number and put it in there so so um why doesn't it say shall prepare a short survey and list and contact information for um agricultural partners to help identify and provide resources to farmers and agricultural processors that are interested in technical assistance etc so it becomes part of the information part of the survey so does that work for you yep i guess that'll work that sounds good moving on uh you took out the farm worker retention program so that that is not in here moving down on page 19 to line 17 vhcb had um requested that they will be providing assistance for farm and food businesses yeah they looked at the language they're fine with it um page 20 section eight this is the vhcb it michael i'm sorry that there is this language the farm worker safety thing is that's this is still in there right yeah nothing nothing changed with that i was just going through changes oh i'm sorry and i i was wondering if i thought that that we got testimony that this had already been done that had already been translated into spanish right so it's it's not requiring them to translate it's requiring them to post the spanish language vhcb translations on the agency website so it requires the agency of ag to post on the agency's website educational material from voccia related to farm worker health and safety including best practices or preventive measures farm workers should implement to address covid and then the secretary shall post the english and spanish language versions on the agency's website and shall provide links or reference on how to obtain the material from voccia and other languages so it's just basically the agency just needs to include some links on its website to the voccia material and have they seen that language and have they contacted you with any problems the language has been in there for several different versions of the draft they have not contacted me about it now Denise has been as probably swearing to herself right now but um no i think we're okay much okay uh page 20 section eight that's the vhcb request to amend their authority to clarify they have the authority of nonprofits and then on page 21 to clarify that they have authority to receive and accept grants from any source to make and publish rules for their housing programs um and two other things necessary convenient to effectuate the purposes of the chapter and then you can go to page 25 section nine this repeals the sunset of the ready program so it repeals it entirely and so there would no longer be any sunset for the ready program right and then everything takes effect on passage can you remind me what the ready program is for economic development program it's the money that vhcb uses to provide grant writer services to municipalities and others to access grants that they don't have capacity at the local level to navigate that's the famous $75,000 thing yes got it okay thank you yeah we're in the process of raising that up to maybe 200,000 or something in approach uh because we could we could really utilize all these grants that don't get picked up we could use more people chasing um okay back to the bill brian yeah uh thank you mr chair and i know all of us want to vote this out the problem now is i got nine minutes i think we all do before the next event and i don't want to hold things up i really don't but i really would like to see a finished uh copy of of the bill before uh before we vote so i apologize if that means another day but i don't know what else to do unless you want to come back after the afternoon committees yeah could mean another day um the once michael gets done can you do that this afternoon michael um what it depends on when you want to come back i have a 130 a 230 a 330 oh no we all got we gotta get right back on it'd be like 430 yeah i can try to do it by them or i mean we're all home i guess we could do it at five necessary would that be easier for you sure so why don't we do five o'clock guys okay that sounds fine um sorry michael go ahead i just want to i'm gonna have a clean copy won't have any highlighting or any any more it'll just be plain text okay okay that's fine so we'll we'll see everybody at five rules i just wanted to know if the plan for this bill is similar to the economic development bill is it are we gonna do it tomorrow and speed it through or does it have to go to approach or what's the what's the word on that bobby i sent jane a copy on sunday of the uh or saturday of the draft we got from michael uh last toward the end of the week um i haven't really talked with her but i again but i would think that tim wants to move this as soon as possible and i would hope um i would hope thursday we would um we would take action on the floor and and move it thursday tomorrow we probably will do a caucus uh a more intact caucus with it and then um thursday bring it up like we did michael's bill this morning i would hope bobby do you want to check with peter tim jane or do you want me to do that or yeah i'll check with them i'll call him right after we get done here and go from there okay there's also a caucus thursday at eight a.m uh yeah well we'll talk about that uh when i talk to tim or peter i'll talk about yeah about that all right all right so we'll see everybody at five good thanks guys