 had the chance to weigh it on this. One is your current work with Capstone, which I think is important in terms of Capstone clients and how they're affected by climate change and some of the things that we have in front of us, both in terms of the transition, in terms of the opportunity, in terms of some of the vulnerability of some of the folks who you serve. Also, you have kind of past professional experience that I think is really relevant to what we're doing here, in terms of your work as the chief recovery officer with regard to Tropical Storm. I read in terms of your work as the head of VTrans and the work that you did there, which is ultimately our transportation system is very closely tied into what's happening in the kind of climate emergency. So it was a variety of reasons. So I wanted to make sure that we had space and time for you to offer your thoughts on this bill, but also bring some of the things that are going on with Capstone right now, which we're eager to hear as well. Thank you for joining us. And as you know, we record our hearings for the records if you would mind introducing yourself. Absolutely. I really want to thank you for inviting me and kind of envision this maybe more as a discussion than sort of just me testifying. But for the record, I am Sue Minter, the executive director of Capstone Community Action, which is an anti-poverty organization in central Vermont, which really includes the counties of Orange, a few towns in Windsor, Washington County, and LaMoyle County. And Capstone is one of a network of community action agencies across the state, one of five. And we are a network called VCAP. I am here testifying really on behalf of myself and, as you say, some of my past experience. Good morning, Heidi. And I also, so I'm not testifying on behalf of VCAP, the network, but definitely representing Capstone. Thank you. And I wanted to just start out because driving here, I was listening to the radio as I tend to. And I learned that yesterday, which happened to have been my birthday, the doomsday clock was moved. And now, the doomsday clock, you may recall, was really about the atomic energy. And it is put forward by the Atomic Energy, not commission, scientists. The bulletin of the atomic scientists. Anyway, we are now 100 seconds to midnight by in the view of these scientists. And that incorporates both the threat of nuclear war and of climate change. So what I heard on the radio this morning was it's time to wake up, which I thought was good, because I didn't necessarily get a great night's sleep. So I thought I'd wake up for you. But just a reminder that this is a global emergency, that I'm really pleased that you are taking seriously and thinking, I guess, across sectors long term and sort of short term. And I do want to, and as I point out in my testimony, I appreciate your bringing some of my past experience here. Secretary V-Trans also Irene. And I think when we are talking about resilience and planning, I think the experience we had in Irene is the closest we've come to really what severe intense extreme storm looks like. And I did experience or learn in that experience that it is lowest income folks who are really the most vulnerable. They're often located in the highest risk areas, in structures such as mobile homes that are the least resilient. And in addition, they have the hardest time recovering. So I appreciate many pieces of your bill. I'm really here to offer sort of friendly amendments and to support your efforts. I also had the experience when I was. So my experience is I was at the Transportation Agency as the deputy secretary when Irene hit. And during that first four month period, which we consider the emergency phase, it was really logistics and response. After that phase, we moved into what they call the recovery phase, both the short and long term recovery. And that's when I was appointed to become in charge of. I would say that we were incredibly poorly equipped and unprepared for Irene. And one of the reasons I'm so pleased that you are thinking in the way that this bill does by bringing together a council that is cross sector and longer term in its horizon is because I worry a lot. We learn so many lessons in Irene and from Irene. We try to record them. We did a little bit of structural change within our government to at least have a position and a little post within the Department of Emergency Management who's thinking about mitigation and resilience. And we are certainly more prepared simply because of what we learned during that disaster. But I hope that we can use this opportunity to incorporate some of those lessons learned. I did also have the really extraordinary opportunity when I was redeployed back to VTRANS. The State of Vermont was asked to join an initiative of the Obama administration, the task force on climate preparedness and resilience. So this was, and I was lucky enough to represent Vermont, really, our governor in that position, which meant I was joined by 26 other governors, mayors, county commissioners, tribal land leaders from across the country, all these different jurisdictions, and trying to really combine and coalesce our lessons learned into a report. It was an extraordinary year and a half experience. I was then co-chairing a subcommittee that really talked about sort of recommendations for FEMA. It worries me that all of these good lessons, I don't know where they sit anymore, it was impressive that the entire cabinet of the former president actually attended our convenions and that every single cabinet member had climate preparedness in one of the top things they're doing. So I worry that we're becoming increasingly unprepared. So I'm very pleased by key elements of your plan. I did learn a little bit at a forum a couple of nights ago that other states in our region are adopting similar approaches. I guess I start by just, in my testimony, saying I very much appreciate that you do include marginalized and disadvantaged Vermonters or their representatives in your thinking for exactly the reason that I shared and I hadn't realized that the IPPC report actually referenced the disproportionate impact on these communities. And especially because the folks who lack insurance and lack resources will be the ones who the state worries the most about and spends the most on if they are so inclined, which I think our state really was following Irene, the more that we can be prepared, the lower those costs are. So I think there's an economic argument, frankly, to becoming more prepared in a broad sense. I do really support incorporating some clear enforceable reduction requirements. I was a member of this body along with many others in the room, or at least some. Representative Sherman and I shared a seat on the Transportation Committee. And when we, I think, first adopted this legislation, I think we set forth goals, and I think it's hard to achieve goals when they aren't really staring you from the face. And I don't think we as a state have figured out good, constructive ways to measure where we are relative to where we want to be in a consistent way and thereby think about strategies to reduce. So I can't possibly think to testify about what the right targets are, but I've certainly seen and I did as a graduate student study environmental policy. And at that time, watched very serious positive impacts under the Clean Air Act by mandating emission reductions and with targets. And in certain states, and I certainly think of California, who have already started adopting greenhouse gas emission requirement reductions as part of their air quality infrastructure have really seen differences. So I support that. It's not going to be easy, but I think it's the right approach. One recommendation that I'd like to make about the council and is really in the structure and who you have as the chair. And again, I think this is my experience after Irene. So I would recommend that you actually have the Secretary of the Agency of Administration chairing that council. When I was the Irene Recovery Officer and I followed Neil Lunderville in that position, he was there in the most intense first four months. And he had been the Secretary of Administration. And he, in that experience, understood in a way that few others could, the levers of powered influence and how to conduct significant response. I learned then by being within the Agency of Administration just how much when you are a secretary of one agency to you are on a parallel, you are not above the others. And unless you have someone who has the authority to actually oversee those other agencies, I don't think it's effective. I learned that I was in the Irene Recovery Office, and I think Neil Lunderville specifically set it up this way because of his understanding, having been in that position, that the Secretary of the Agency of Administration oversees all of state government on behalf of the governor. It's separate from the governor's chief of staff and staff. It's really responsible for government. And I created, we created a multi-sector inter-agency essentially cabinet around Irene. And I think because I had the authority of the Secretary of Administration, I was able to be more effective. And that's why I suggest you consider that structure. The couple of people who I think you may want to add to your membership, the regional planning folks, VACTA, I think, are very important. I didn't see them, at least on the draft that I had. And they're not on there. Yeah. You know, after Irene and certainly, OK, I have to say, I have a degree in planning. I believe in planning. But I think what this council is about is trying to plan for our state. And we certainly relied tremendously on the regional planning commissions to undertake a lot on behalf of their member states. So that makes some sense to me. The other thing, I don't know whether it makes sense, but at least you should hear from the Department of Public Service. One of the recommendations we made after Irene that was not adopted was that the emergency management leader actually become higher up within the cabinet and a member of cabinet. Many other states do that. And those are states who are much more used to having emergencies to respond to. Can you just walk through it again? So right now, you have the agency of administration and then you have the Department of Public Safety. And within that, you have a division of emergency management. So that person and group is really the ones who understand and they have relationships with FEMA and they are schooled in that field of work, but also have a lot more practice in emergency response and drills. And they're just so far from the cabinet. And that is not the case in many other states I've served and elevating it. I had recommended that, but it wasn't adopted. But we did create a position, actually, which is still there. We had never had someone at that time really full-time focused on mitigation and resilience planning. This is pre-2010. Pre-2011, yeah. We have a very, no, we're frugal. Let's put it that way. And we haven't had to respond to emergencies of that scale had we ever before. And we were, I would say, under-resourced in that area and not nearly as educated as many of our neighbor states in everything that is expected of us by FEMA, by our federal agencies. By contrast, I was running the Agency of Transportation. Our federal agency was the Federal Highway Administration. We are very, I would say, well-resourced in the Agency of Transportation relative to many other state agencies and departments in Vermont. And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that we have federal dollars and that we understand and that the transportation world understands what it takes to do the incredibly important work. But because of our partnership with Federal Highway, they were right with us every step of the way. We were interagency. So the damage that was done, and there were 600 miles of roads completely wiped out overnight. The damage that was done to the state highway had federal resources and an entire infrastructure to support how did we manage that and an entirely different way to get emergency funding. But significantly, so and then all of the infrastructure that the towns, the culverts and roads, let alone the buildings and homes and business loss, but just the infrastructure, for example, totally different federal agencies, totally different practices and standards. And we were able to implement very different standards in the way we responded, the size of the bridges and culverts that we built after Irene, the Federal Highway administration supported. They went out, we went out on tours together, understanding why we were doing this. It was a much larger investment and they supported and funded it. I mean, we had our battles, but they were agreed to. The challenge after Irene was with FEMA and every one of our towns, especially in some parts of the state that were desperately tiny towns impacted by eight times the cost of their annual, full annual budget. But the FEMA organization said, no, we're not paying for larger culverts. And we got into a situation where we actually, the government, we adopted larger codes and standards that we required the towns to use. And FEMA said, we're not paying for that. So literally for two years, we battled, legal battles and FEMA does not respond to a court. You can only appeal inside FEMA. So we had appeals to the local level and then we went down to Boston and then we went to Washington. And it went beyond that and thankfully because we have a senator, two senators with very strong relationships at that time right up to the president. But we had advocates going to the head of FEMA and we had calls to the president of the United States in order to get the dollars for our towns, for our state hospital, for our state complex, for major things. It was a political battle, sadly. But at the very basic core, we didn't have the ability to offer our towns and even FEMA the kind of information and training and understanding of what's expected of you. So that's what I see coming out of this, hopefully. A lot of lessons were learned. We do have people now who are trained in that. For our state government, I don't think we are probably resourced enough at our regional planning commissions and elsewhere to continue that work. Just as one example, now there are some plans that you require here. Every town is supposed to do a mitigation plan. When FEMA had almost, nobody had done it. And so we very quickly, we couldn't start getting the dollars flowing until they had adopted and approved these plans and it was a nightmare. So it's the kind of work that must happen for us to get expeditious dollars. Now, I worry if we were to suffer from a disaster at this time, when we don't necessarily have an administration who will kind of upon our state the way we did at that time. And I think the budgets are so much tighter than even they were then for disasters. I worry that the way in which FEMA was willing to wait and help may not be acceptable. So being prepared means a lot of things. Right down to every town having an approved disaster mitigation plan, which I think you'll get to. So can I ask a question to the person that got into emergency management? Yes, he's still there. And their role is? You'll have to ask, because I just remember, I think that the position's title is disaster mitigation and resilience or something. I'm sorry that I don't actually know, we called it something and I think it's still bad and they're doing a lot of work. When I spoke to emergency management this summer about this bill and where they're at and their capacity and one of the things that they had noted was they don't have as much capacity as they need to help towns get those hazard mitigation plans written because towns are a lot of volunteer towns, as you know. So do you know if it was that type of disability? Yes, it is. Disaster mitigation planning and preparedness. So there's all kinds of trainings that what does FEMA expect? I'm sorry that I don't have the details really in my head, but it is exactly that kind of work that is very basic that we were completely underprepared for before I green and we tried to make adjustments to help us be more prepared but at this moment I don't know where we sit. What was the difference in reimbursement from FEMA? Well it went literally town by town. I mean there's a lot of things. One of the first battles that we had to wage was getting to what they call the 90%. So instead of having the feds pay 75%, we got to that. So that was battle royale number one. But every single major investment was a battle and a negotiation and very crazy making. But literally every single, I mean I'll take the town of Bennington really extraordinary that they had, because the roaring brook had already flooded so many times, they had gotten federal funding, the FEMA funding, hazard mitigation funding to recover in a way that was resilient. So we've learned that you can't just build trenches. We have to think about the velocity of the moving water and so we know that rivers meander and so we try to replicate that in the way we now respond to flooding. And that's because of the really leading edge river fluvial geomorphologists that we have in our agency of natural resources with whom the transportation agency has also learned and we are really working together on how to respond in a more resilient fashion. And I would welcome you to invite Michelle Boomhauer and her team to share with you the resilience planning that the agency has done thanks to support from the federal highway administration. And I think you should learn about that because it's relevant. And I mentioned it in one of my recommendations, but the town of Bennington had a $2 million investment in how they properly responded in resilient fashion when the roaring brook was decimated and we had photographs and we had the geologists and we had, and FEMA said no, I'm not paying for that. So a $2 million for the town of Bennington is just an extraordinary impact. So we had to get the Senate, so Senator Leahy got some of the staffers to come and take a tour. I went to Washington and talked directly to the FEMA staff. I mean, it took, and then we had to do these appeals. And actually a member of Michelle Boomhauer's team was at that whose now your environmental planner and policy was the attorney. You might be interested to get his testimony because it is telling what we had to do. We deployed attorneys from the Attorney General from the Agency of Transportation. We spent enormous resources to battle with FEMA on why they should pay for us to do exactly what the plans that the mitigation part of FEMA had said we should do. We won. Bennington got the money, the town, town by town, we battled on the culvert sizing. It's an extraordinary story and it is the mindset of FEMA not to be doing that. And I think it has to do with the fact that they don't have the money. Which I expect is exacerbated today. So however, the more prepared you are with your mitigation plans and the more you can, the other issue was mapping. We were relying on 20 year old maps from FEMA that were inundation maps and they weren't fluly old erosion maps. And what we now know is our threat is the river overflowing and the unbelievable damage that it will do. It is not, you know, slow-moving floods that then recede. And our Agency of Natural Resources had gotten funding from FEMA to do that kind of mapping and we had high hazards. So in the town of Jamaica, we had homes that were ripped away by that river. I think it was five homes and we could not get them funded for the buyout even though they met because they were on the high hazard map that our Agency of Natural Resources had already sent but they weren't on the FEMA inundation map. And it is just the lack of preparedness and planning and clarity that allows FEMA to say no until we battle back. So I went down a path I didn't expect to even talk to you about but it's relevant. And it's almost like PTSD to have these memories of the battle and it was very, very, very difficult. And it isn't that the people who work for FEMA are not very caring, hardworking people. I think they have sometimes got their hands tied behind their back and it's because we don't always have the funding available. And the battle for the funding unfortunately became a political battle and we were successful and it was a lot of work. So those were some of the things that I didn't expect to talk to you about. And I will just say, one of the other things I got to do was help just send a team, lead a team really of folks from transportation to Colorado after their flooding because their flooding was very similar to ours. And the whole transportation world and I was the head of something called NASTO, the Northeast Association of State Transportation Officials and we started a whole discussion around resilient infrastructure. So the world of transportation has learned a lot and is really moving forward on thinking differently about how we build and where we build. In Colorado, we recommended to them to have their recovery team also really tied at the governor's office at the highest level of state government and I think because of that, they like us I think were quite successful. I really can't say enough about the difference between being really in the top tier of government versus having a chair of a council that's really on the same level as every other of their cohorts. It's harder for everyone. I have a few more comments in there that you can read. I think I've sort of covered the main points and again, these were just friendly amendments with suggestions. Some is wording about adding social equity including public health and housing stock into a section that I think you didn't have. Making sure as you think about what's required that you are aware of the town requirement now and learning that it isn't well resourced doesn't surprise me but it does worry me. And that's what this council I think can help bring to light. So that probably would talk plenty. That's correct, I think that's a good question. So one of the pieces that we have in here is a creation of a vulnerability index to help us kind of understand which communities are most likely going to need help just with doing this planning or they're just going to be overwhelmed with that. We were surprised to find that the agency has a socioeconomic vulnerability index with state. I don't know if you were aware of that. You know, I didn't remember that. I think there's been a lot of post-Irene work that I haven't been tuned into but the Department of Health was involved with me and us on that Obama task force and there was a lot of good thinking and engagement by the health department at that time so I'm thrilled to hear that and that's very interesting and relevant. The mapping, again, the transportation agency has done a very good mapping of our infrastructure vulnerability relative to our river system, our fluvial hemorrhagy and has a prioritization system. I actually got to present that at a national climate resilience department it's a national transportation resilience conference I think it was a year ago. Maybe it was two years ago. I think it was two years ago. But anyway, we've done a lot of thinking with the support of the federal government to actually map our vulnerabilities and I think that all of the different mappings that may be going on may already be put together in some way but if they're not, that's a great thing and if they are, then that's the resource the council can begin to really utilize because while we're mapping and we even have a way of prioritizing I don't know if we've adopted those priorities and thought about the investments that need to be made and being strategic about getting going. That's what's not, I think. Reduce the dollar going. Yes, and in some ways it's about which bridge we've thought about redundancies when this bridge goes down, okay and so it's a very complicated formula of thinking about, okay, what do we need to do next and why, specifically to make ourselves stronger for the future. Can I keep going? You can, Mike wants to get in there too. Oh, okay, I'll wait. But if you want to continue on this. Well, I actually, around the, so one of the climate change activities that sometimes concerns me coming from rural areas and is thinking about cost-effective, right? So of course we need to do that, we need to be responsible but cost-effective when we're mitigating climate change really screams to me like let's get as few cars as possible in the cities, it screams to me of increasing pressure in the rural areas and so I'm wondering if you have given your experience of working in a lot of devastated rural areas. If you can, if you have any thoughts about how to balance that well. So thinking about cost-effective but also most vulnerable. I think the things that I think about the most with the rural areas is both the infrastructure and I know that we've done a lot of planning and thinking about that but it's where people are living relative to the flooding that's going to occur and the incredibly hard choice of suggesting that people move elsewhere and we did do that after Irene and this was another, that's what we had hoped to get federal money for in Jamaica but thankfully in Jamaica, the philanthropic community stepped in in a tremendous way to help those families but there are whole areas that we've mapped that we know really are higher risk and we should be talking about buyouts and some of the funding, we still have a pot of money and this is stuff you should learn more about and I'm not sure I get clear but we have mitigation funding sort of a percentage of every federally declared disaster a pot goes into a pot for thinking about how to utilize these funds. So probably there is good strategic thinking going on the Department of Environmental of Emergency Management is thinking about this stuff but I think a lot more about the folks at risk because of their homes than sort of where the cars I'm not sure what you mean about that but I do know that the folks who plan our infrastructure are thinking a lot about that and I'm confident that continues. But the housing and getting people to move or not build in high risk areas and that becomes the issue of insurance and that's another really difficult conversation. As we're dealing with, as we're looking to deal more aggressively with climate change and reduce our emissions but also protect our people dealing with the effects right now. So I wanna make sure that we don't set up a competing interest around reducing emissions and are protecting our folks that are dealing with climate change right now. Is that, maybe it's not, maybe it's not really clear. Sorry, I was going totally into the thinking of planning and resilience and not so much the impacts of mitigation and emission reductions. Well, I'm thinking a lot in my work at Capstone about different ways to invest in low income communities with how do we get people around differently? How do we, your body supported the effort to help reduce emissions by getting lower income folks helping them get subsidized to purchase used high efficiency vehicles. So getting off the road, what many, many low income people rely on, gas guzzling, high building vehicles but helping to subsidize them to get into the used high efficiency car market. So that's a very small example of something that last year you all passed in your T-bill that we're working with the Transportation Agency to implement and I'm hoping that that's a program that you'll continue to fund beyond this one year. It was a one time funds from the BW settlement so hopefully there will be a conversation and I'll be talking to others in the building about that and it's just one example and we are also working with the Agency for transportation on a very new program that the Federal Highway Administration is rolling out called Mobility for All. We have invested I think mightily for a rural state in our public transit system. I learned now with the folks that we serve that have access to no transportation and are literally trapped in poverty due to the lack of access. So we're looking to purchase or create an all electric fleet of vehicles to help get rides for people so they can go to work because our large employers can't find people and they're in our doors but they can't get there. People to get to their healthcare appointments which the hospitals are now very concerned of the number of people who aren't showing up. People get to their recovery. So we're trying to think locally about a system that uses electric transportation to meet the very desperate needs of folks in rural poverty. So thanks for your expertise. Your expertise is a goldmine of information on this. We're old and rusty about it. Gold never rests. Yeah, so, no, but I mean, it's amazing to hear the counsel what it took to get funding from FEMA. Anyway, where I was going to go though, as a director of FEMA, of Capstone, you do have programs that help people save money by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and heating and transportation and such like that. Tell me about the backlog of people that are requesting assistance with weatherization and aren't able to get it. Do you have a lot of backlog there? Yes, we have definite waiting lists and we have waiting lists and we do not advertise. The only way that people know is honestly last year and I want to thank this committee. I know you really supported efforts to increase the amount of weatherization funding that we have and even just the debate, we got a spike in phone calls and that we can't really meet the demand. But part of what's challenging is in order to meet that demand, we have to hire new folks and we have to really build out our base of employees. And unless we know that that's gonna be a consistent and honestly, there's probably another expert in this room who could speak much more about this but it's a little bit, we wanna grow but we can't start hiring those folks unless we know there's a real growth path. I cannot testify exactly how many people are on a waiting list. I know that we're constantly having to triage and prioritize who it is we will serve first by a very complicated but important formula and I know we're not meeting the need. And one part of it is people up to 80% are in need of income are eligible but people below the 60% are prioritized so the people between 60 and 80 essentially never get served. Right, that's what I'm gonna be back to. So the only way to approach that is by increasing the decimal. Yes. Well we definitely, I do have, I hope just a four minute video maybe to close up and talk about a little bit of what we do. You have four minutes. I noticed that but I thank you really for inviting us into this room and even more so inviting representatives of the folks we serve onto this council and look forward to continuing the conversation. I'm happy to be a resource in any way. Yeah, I hope we get a chance to have you back. So this is just a video to give you a sense of what it is we do because what I've learned in my just over a year is that we have an extraordinary challenge of people in poverty who who are needing support whether it's food, heat, or housing that we do vital assistance for but that we actually can help people get out of poverty and that's the thing I feel is the most important work we do, we support people in crisis but we also have very innovative strategies to help people get economic and self-sufficiency. So this is a little portrayal of what we do. Thanks. My wife gets a check one week and I get one a couple weeks later and then I get one from the VA. It's just, you know, you've got to plan all your money for each painter. I didn't do a whole lot of good. I did a lot of drinking and I wasn't able to maintain jobs or relationships. I really didn't feel like I had much opportunity. A lot of people right now, their income is so limited and they really cannot make ends meet. I made the mistake of marrying to support for my family and got myself into a very bad relationship. I did 22 years in prison and I got out here. I didn't understand the seriousness of what I had for a fit. Not knowing that my life was going to be changed forever, that I wasn't going to ever raise my son or be a father of my child. I'm 71 years old and my wife and I are both retired and we're raising very children. So my parents just weren't able to raise their children and raise them properly. DCF stepped in and took them away from them and gave them to us. As a single mother, it was really hard. I lost apartments and I had to choose between feeding my kids or clothing them. I was homeless a lot of the time. We stayed in cars or couchserve. Without a second chance, what could we do besides going back to the old things that we used to do? We were struggling with, you know, we'd get a hand at three kids and financially just getting higher and higher and higher and higher. I wanted more. I wanted to open a business. I wanted to be more successful. I wanted a federal line for my son. The program is there. The opportunity is there. It's providing jobs for others. People want to help. So you take it, you do it. You run with it. It's an amazing program. It gave me the steps. It was somebody right there with me walking beside me to guide me through to say that I've now owned my business for 11 years. Capstone was like a key to a door I was trying to get through. They orchestrated the right moves and made me see that, OK, I can do this. I can be a cook for real. Whether it is the food shelf or the cooking class, I'll help at the times of this. This whole capstone is my foundation of support. When they did the furnace, it would save us about half of what our fuel was prior to here. I'm relieved that I'm going to be able to do more with the grandkids. I've come a long way and my children have seen it. And there's plenty of opportunity. And that's really what capstone has done. I mean, doesn't that be an American dream, really? To go be what you want and do what you want and be successful and be happy in your career. And capstone's given me that. I had hope to get out of prison, you know what I'm saying? And I made it. I hope to make it up here to Vermont. I did, you know, I hope to get a job. I got it, you know? Capstone gave people a way out of difficult situations. I say empowerment quite a bit because they do empower you to be better. And capstone has always been that stepping stone for me to get to that next level of confidence that I'm able to do so much more and help so many people because of capstone. I am president of Policy Council and part of the Head Start Program. With what I started with, which was not much, except for the desire to have my own business, then I was able to get that help, receive that help. It's fantastic. It's a team of things working together to accomplish one goal. And that goal is to live and to have better, and to work better. And to do better. You can't do that without a team. Thank you for listening. Nice to meet you. It's good work. Thank you. That guy's in the stuff. Yeah. Yeah, you've met him. Thanks for your work, everybody. I know it's hard. I know you're working hard and I appreciate it. Thank you for joining us early too. Yeah. It wasn't easy for you. Thank you for making time for us today. We're in the middle of considering the Global Warming Solutions Act. I think you know, age 688. And I know that you have some thoughts to share with us about that in representing the associate industries of Vermont. And I wanted to welcome you here and thank you for your patience and waiting for us to get off the floor. And if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself for the record as we record our hearing. Absolutely. So my name is William Driscoll with Associated Industries of Vermont. We represent primarily the manufacturing sector in the state. And certainly I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today about this legislation and hope to continue to engage with you folks going forward. You know, I'd like to maybe address some sort of high level issues today and consider the follow-up to further comments in writing and more specifics. Obviously we engage in some of the questions and answers and discussions as you folks try to figure your way forward with this legislation. So I just want to maybe start by putting into context it's not that it shouldn't probably be pretty obvious where we're coming from but just the perspective we're trying to bring to some of the issues and specifics in the bill here. You know, for us this issue is not these issues because obviously this is a broad and complex topic. You know, it's not about whether or not to have climate policies our primary focus is how do we have the most reasonable and balanced policies. One of our concerns, not surprisingly, is trying to avoid undue economic harms but also harnessing positive economic opportunities as well as we, you know, get into eventually what are details and specific proposals. Because however important climate priorities are obviously there are many critical priorities that we're all charged with trying to address and although climate and economic priorities don't have to be in conflict and of an art they're always the possibility that they can be when you get down into specifics. So that's the perspective that I have some sort of basic comments or recommendations both on the climate council itself and sort of how it's set up and also the sort of implementation and accountability provisions further out on the bill. With regard to the council, again from the perspective of trying to make sure that you're getting the kind of perspectives that kind of balance input that I think is important both in putting forward things that you ought to do and things you ought to avoid. Obviously there are a lot of perspectives that the stakeholder groups represented already was proposed but I think it could be adjusted to include additional representation that I think is important to the topic. The first thing is if I recall correctly you have farm and forestry combined as one representative and I think honestly a lot of both the challenges and opportunities in farming and in forestry are not necessarily the same I think it would be beneficial to separate those two and have one from each. Second, having a representative from the manufacturing and industrial perspective I think would be helpful. Obviously a lot of emission concerns and economic concerns and opportunities stem from manufacturing and industrial activities so I think having somebody from that that sector would be an important ingredient and similarly transportation and freight providers you know from our perspective obviously our areas of either concern or opportunity are not just operations and facilities in Vermont but as you folks know fully well a big chunk of our emissions portfolio is transportation based and the hauling of supplies and goods primarily over the roads in Vermont is a big part of that issue but also very critical to our operations and so having folks that can speak to those issues who's important and that's not necessarily entirely within the manufacturing sector a lot of that activity operates on its own in terms of the business sector. So those would be the primary sort of membership recommendations. The other one which obviously you provide some flexibility in the subcommittee structure and approach but I think it would be helpful if in addition to I think you have two subcommittees specifically cited in the bill it would also be helpful to have one that's specifically charged with looking at avoiding or mitigating economic harm but also realizing economic benefits from again the interaction between whatever proposals come forward and you know in businesses in the state I think that's an important part of the overall discussion and I think having a subcommittee that makes sure that that's really looked at I think would be helpful as well. One question I have and this speaks to the sort of next area of suggestions is also the question of the decision making mechanisms of the council. Anybody who's ever put together, served on, or sat in the same room as study committees and things like that, that legislation push forward the whole question of do you have the right mix of people and do you have a fair decision making process is a very difficult one to get right and to figure out. And unless I missed it I don't think that this really speaks to exactly how the council will make its decisions like for example, you know, majority consensus unanimity, you know, that could be a factor in how the sort of the quality and the reception of their final product could affect that. I think that can be addressed with what we propose on the implementation side. So I want to say we have I think hopefully fairly straightforward but anybody has any questions about anything we can recommend so far? You are accurate, there's not in here a mechanism that says here's what the vote count is, for example. Right. If you know if it was that straightforward in terms of adoption, you're right. So what we would recommend the next part which obviously has to do with deadlines and schedules and frankly the cause of action and the role of the courts which we have concerns about that for a number of reasons. What we would really recommend is rather than what you have on the implementation side in the bill right now is you have the council make the recommendations and reports that they are required to do but have those not simply submitted to the legislature but require their approval by the legislature. That I think first of all given the balance of considerations that need to go into specific proposals I think having that go through the legislative process is both important and reasonable. That can also serve frankly to be a filter or if you will, for the other challenges of trying to make the council the perfect representative body with the best process for approval. I think similarly how we don't have study committees and working groups go straight from report to law or rule there's a good reason why those go through the legislative process I think given the significance of the issue and the policies and proposals that are likely to be coming forward it's all that much more important that those should be approved by the legislature. Just looking for clarification on what it is that should be approved so we require reports is that what should be approved or are you looking is it before that? So involved in the rulemaking? Right well so say the council's recommendations include the obvious one would be legislative changes but also specific rules that the agency would be required to put forward that the legislature would either adopt the legislative proposals or if there's specific rule direction and authority that's recommended that the legislature approves that. Similarly to how now the legislature passes laws that require rules for implementation. So it would give an opportunity for the legislature to review the actual specific proposals and approve them and if necessary maybe make adjustments if they see that there's good reason to do so. Again I think this addresses some questions whether in the collective judgment of the legislature whether the council has gotten everything right in terms of balancing priorities or specifics also addresses the question of you know getting that balance of representation and fairness and decision making correct as well. And I don't think that I don't see why having that legislative approval step would necessarily really slow the overall schedule or progress of what you're trying to achieve I don't think that I don't think the timing or the substance or the merits of what's done would change by requiring a legislative approval and I think you might be able to achieve some balance and judgment of that sort of a more sort of I want to say a hand-fisted in a clumsy way but in a more strict way that court intervention might be might lead to in terms of input and considerations that are brought to play. I think frankly sometimes especially if you look at you know court intervention where there's maybe some delay in the council's recommendations or delay in the rulemaking sometimes there should be a reason for those delays it's not necessarily something that warrants a court case just because you're off by a month or a couple months or whatnot there may be practical reasons for that and I think having the legislative approval process allows some more flexibility such a sensitive trigger on that and also when it comes to meeting the goals and having cases brought to the court to have the court direct rulemaking I think that raises questions in that kind of context are you going to have the same sort of public input process that you would have in the normal rulemaking process are you going to have a consideration of different perspectives and also some judgment in terms of weighing the process of specific proposals I think having the legislature really driving that allows for that much better than setting up a situation where where if you're off by a percentage point or two or more on those target deadlines I think it's a little more again it's the most more blunt instrument to use the courts and I think if you try to come up with guardrails or other ways to try to moderate that or what you're really doing is you're getting closer closer to replicating what might be a legislative process anyway so I'll stick with that on the outside so that's a very general area of recommendations there are reasons for specific things just before we move back to that one thing I'm hoping to think about more and come back more the bill makes reference to maintaining net zero emissions across sectors after 2050 and I think we would like to sort of consider more what that might mean in terms of say for example business activity or manufacturing activity that obviously has a greenhouse gas footprint regardless of how efficient you might be could be written into a situation where you could have a state-of-the-art facility but if you we actually have more manufacturing expansion here at Vermont are you going into situations where simply expanding activities that we might not want for various reasons might run counter to again a net zero concept part of that to be frank I need to talk to more people about what we say net zero can I just mention something because I think it's actually relevant to a number of your members and I think some of the consideration of this is reflected in looking at what New York has attempted to do and part of the New York law acknowledges that there are sectors of the economy that are going to be really challenged it's not clear what the technological path is to completely eliminate in 30 years fossil fuel as part of the fuel mix and greenhouse gas emissions as part of the manufacturing process that's specific to manufacturing and I think what New York has tried to do is provide a path of very strict and narrow for industries that have difficulty getting there finding where there is mitigation through other means that there may be industries they can't get off the fossil fuel may be able to reduce but not eliminate whether it's generally speaking through sequestration means or other can get to net zero even while they still may be emitting but it's a very prescribed and narrow path that was one of the concepts that was embedded in the New York legislation so that's something we can talk about more but I think it's very relevant to probably some of the people that you represent and certainly if we're talking about goals and aspirations trying to find ways forward I think that allows some flexibility as we get closer it's hard to predict what we're going to do today and whether if we're blocking ourselves into some things today that may not really work that there could be some challenges net actually I need to get back to another panel but one other one other aspect which again I'd like to come back to you folks I just want to sort of flag now on page 23 line 18 which is the only line reference I was going to make policy and currently the policy is based on a concept of lease cost which includes environmental priorities which I think would cover greenhouse gas reduction this bill would set greenhouse gas reduction outside of and alongside lease costs right now lease cost is a basket of critical priorities which are then balanced and by taking greenhouse gas reduction sort of out of the basket and having it co-equal with everything else combined again obviously employers can debate about what the lease really impacts but that raises a potential concern are we are we upsetting the balance of all the priorities that we need to focus and is that really appropriate or necessary and again I'd be happy to come back to you with more thoughts but just to look back and kind of skipped over this part as sort of following on to having the implementation authority and timing put into the hands of the legislature we would further recommend that that you remove the cause of action for the enforcement of it and frankly I don't think you need to make your goals mandatory if the legislature is going to be involved in implementing the targets along the way if for whatever reason the legislature takes actions that don't meet up with those mandatory bills I would presume it would be for some brief reason or not I think as long as you have certainly if you have an explicit cause of action and even if you simply make it mandatory without an explicit cause of action I think you just raise some potential legal concerns that I don't think are necessary but if you go along with the legislative approval as you go through the schedule the same schedule that council is already supposed to be working on there you are going to go back and track that up for you I think actually anything I could do to help I remember just a comment following up on what you said and what the congressman Chargers said about this a lot in terms of the manufacturing sector I'm very aware that depending on what it is the manufacturing and what the manufacturing process is that some industries are at this point in time and for the immediate for a simple future much more dependent on fossil fuels than others those that require huge amounts of heat as part of the manufacturing process that's where it comes from now and I read other alternatives coming along the pike but not next year 10 years maybe 15 years from now so I think that's something we should be cognizant of I think and it's just an observation because it came up with a particular suggestion or proposal in terms of representation on the council or anything like that at this point and I think a big part of that that part of it too in terms of what can be done and how it can be done the challenges like you say certain production activities lend themselves better or worse to electrification versus fossil fuel and frankly in terms of picturing a reduction in path the ability to convert from basically diesel to natural gas for example I know you folks may not be aware of this but access to natural gas and natural gas infrastructure is kind of a complicated issue so Heidi has experience on committees where I actually couldn't help but make everybody laugh quite a bit I come back more often hopefully I'll get you guys but yeah isn't this a complicated question and I'll just add as a footnote to Avram's point that something that we've had testimony on this committee and that other states have focused on it's not something that's in this bill is that the focus on emissions reduction should relate to what the contribution of that pollution is you know there are certain sectors transportation which you've highlighted but then also certainly thermal are the major contributors in Vermont and as you mentioned our manufacturers certainly engage in transportation and heat plant floors but the industrial sector as a contributor is a piece of the pie that's actually pretty modest in Vermont that's not to say that manufacturing businesses aren't meaningful contributors they are but in kind of looking at the pieces of the pie that we want to focus on we know where those are part of this is sort of the connection between manufacturing and some of the other sectors like transportation I guess one thing I would just point out there again not that folks don't see it this way too you can certainly look at it from the perspective of where are the contributions coming from but then the relative distribution of contributions is not necessarily the same as the availability of redresser measures in other words an area might be a big contributor but you might face some significant limitations on how you actually can go after that one diesel fuel transportation is a very good example that's certainly a chunk of the contribution but if you look at the efficiency of logistical planning and the technologies available there are big challenges in trying to reduce that contribution so the answer is an example of some of the things to look at airplanes might be an even better example and I'm sorry I don't mean to grab or keep a bad fit another question I think for folks and this gets to the rulemaking for A&R and the authority of it it wasn't clear to me looking at the bill obviously the council will come up with all sorts of recommendations but it looks like it's really A&R that's going to be doing the rules and so it raises the question of does does any recommendation of the council even if it's in an area that's not currently within the jurisdiction or the traditional responsibility of A&R some transportation sectors or other that is A&R actually going to be given both the authority and the responsibility of doing such rules as the bill is structured or as you might change it so that's just not a thing for us the quick answer is they would have the authority not necessarily the responsibility bringing people together in the council certainly allows regulation to occur there's nothing in the bill that precludes agencies that currently have authority to use that authority how the bill is currently drafted is at the end of the day A&R as the primary regulator of pollution air pollutant has the ultimate accountability for that but I think what the bill envisions is that different agencies in state government would collectively work to regulate Mike I want to make sure you get your question to go so thanks for coming here Bill I was listening but my computer wasn't catching up with the recommendations you had on the membership of the council so if you could go over that once again I'm very sure that farming and forestry should each have their own representative have that combined it should be represented from manufacturing slash industrial sector and also one from transportation slash freight manufacturing industrial sector and what was the other one transportation in our mind we're primarily thinking of goods and supplies commercial freight transportation but I think there are some recommendations out there that represent those things okay thank you any other questions great thank you thanks for joining us thanks for the specific suggestions yep