 Alright everybody welcome back to the House Committee on Government Operations Military Affairs this afternoon we are going to take a look here at an amendment to the Waterbury Charter and welcome. Good afternoon everyone talk for Anderson Legislative Council. You have draft 1.1 of the committee's amendment to H801 which is the Waterbury Charter. It demands section 2 of the bill in section 1 of Waterbury Charter to add a new sentence at the end of the authority for the local option tax to state that the tax shall be collected and administered by the Department of Taxes pursuant to 24 BSA section 138 which is the general law provision covering local option taxes. The purpose of this amendment as was discussed by the committee at the last meeting concerning H801 this will tie all of the procedures under general law for the collection of local option tax to what is adopted in Waterbury. So that includes for example the 70-30 split, the 90 days notice, all in quarter collection of the tax by the Department of Taxes, the entire kit and caboodle. So just bring it in alignment with every other Charter that we did correct by saying that. Yes every Charter in recent years let's say has had this provision added in to make sure that the Charter local option tax is not interpreted to be different from what general law requires for the adoption of a local option tax as far as the collection of the tax and the administration of the local option tax program. I was just asking this under since I'm reporting I believe I said I'm reporting this right now. I don't want to make sure that you need to go in 20-minute dissipation on one. I would like to arrive at that which I'd have to use you as following my friend to do so. Is it necessary? Perhaps not. Do the people want it? Another question 20 minutes on local option taxes. Who knows? Yeah I think we follow the friend if that's the case. The easy way to talk about this in the floor report as an amendment would just be to say that this is the usual language standard language to conform with all other modern-day Charters just like that. The question is called about Charter Anderson. You need to remember do we need to take separate votes to adopt the amendment and the bill? Yeah so I think if we want to adopt if we want to just have one vote as an amendment to adopt the bill as amended by draft 1.1 I think that that's fine. So moved. So Representative Morgan has moved that we find H-01 favorable one amended by draft number 1.1. Is there any further discussion on the 1.8? Thank you for volunteering to report the bill. Representative Morgan you're carrying more than your weight due to the time you were mentioned and this bill so I appreciate that. I'm such a marvel because I'm doing such a good thing. So there's motion on the floor. Is there any further discussion? Clerk Sheldon is on the roll. Representative Byron? Yes. Representative Boydon? Yes. Representative Hancham? Yes. Representative Morgan? Yes. Representative Perkburs-Reylton? Yes. Representative Mariki? Yes. Representative Chase? Yes. Representative Waters-Evans? Yes. Representative Cooper-Bernbell? Yes. Representative Nugent? Yes. Representative Higley? Yes. Representative McCarthy? Yes. 12.2. Thank you. All right. All right. See now we're running two and a half minutes early. That's the kind of efficiency that you come to expect from this government. So this is the rare opportunity for us to hear from foreign dignitary and house government operations and military. As we consider each 667, I think we're just a couple minutes away from our scheduled time and I think the sponsors of the bill are going to be joining us. And could you hear him come back? Let me have her go back. Right on. Demonstration? No. Two slides. Senator Daley, we're waiting on our bill sponsored. So welcome. Thanks for joining us. So I suppose Chairman, they're on Irish time. Are they? I have to ask this, but is himself at home? I don't always get home, but like I'm hoping to go home soon. Actually, you know what? Sorry, lads. No, I forgot to put on my jacket. I've lost the Wilson. What I mean is my mother killed me. Now, if you're going to an event, you better be properly dressed and stuff. How are you doing? How is the weather in Vermont? We have finally had a couple of days of sunshine. January was the cloudiest month since the 1950s. So we had almost no sunshine for the entire month. And now we've had a couple of days of sun, but it's very cold. It's about 15 degrees out, I think. I mean, like when I was there, it was like epic cold, but from my point of view. But like in my part of Ireland, like, you know, the way Johnny Cash sang about 40 shades of green, which is about Ireland, you have to earn 40 shades of green. Like, you know, it has to rain a lot. And in my part of Ireland, it rains 264 days a year. Now it doesn't rain every day. Like it just, we don't get like that kind of punishment, but like you have to earn that level of greenery. And God knows we earn it. We earn it like, but like, you know, it's nice rain. It's soft rain. It's kind of like home sideways comes out of the direction. So anyway, I appreciate the fact that you have so much cloud cover. Hopefully the sun will stay with you. So, committee, we, when we get our bill sponsors in here, we'll be taking up age, this is 667. Yes. And so that's why we've invited Senator Daley to come and join us today. And so I really appreciate you being willing to zoom in and provide a little bit of context for this proposal. I believe here we have our bill sponsors right on time. So I'm going to, would you representative Casey and Chase like to come together? Casey, if you'll tee this up for us, I think what I'll do is having you testify and then we'll have legislative council walk us through the bill after we've gotten the context of what this is all about. So I don't really, I don't think we're the main attraction today. So I can keep it short, but it's a pretty tie on you. It's an opportunity. It's a book or tell. But great. Thanks so much for having us. Everybody. It's Connor Casey, Montclair here. Heather Chase from Chester. And really excited to come in today to present the Ireland Vermont Trade Commission. This has really been something we've been working on for the last couple of years here. And it began actually with the establishment of the American Irish State Legislative Caucus of which has been formed in all 50 states at this point. And I'm looking at representative Nugent, but we were lucky enough to have seven members go over to Dublin this previous August here, visit with, you know, the Minister of Trade, various other Irish ministers. Senator Daly took us on a field trip up to Belfast, you know, to be with some of the counterparts up there. And one thing we would say as dysfunctional as the Vermont legislature is on any given day, the Northern Irish Parliament hasn't met in two years, right? Because of the power sharing agreement. So we were able to cover quite a bit of ground there. But really just want to bring it back to this bill. And this is a bill that's currently pending in about 30 states been introduced. And it's passed both in West Virginia and New Jersey. And bipartisan sponsorship, I think, in every case here. And it was actually a beautiful thing, you know. Heather and I, Kate, when we were over there, we're sitting with people we often disagreed with like from all around the country here. But one thing we agreed on was sort of the, the, the love for Ireland and the ties that bind us to Ireland from our various states here. And Vermont has a very special relationship with Ireland. First off, we're the fourth most Irish states in the country with 17% of Vermont. There was claiming Irish ancestry. You can walk through the halls of the state house. And one of the first people you're greeted by is Matthew Lyon, who is our famous congressman elected from jail, right? Also born in Dublin. Senator Patrick Laney, who we were talking to some of us last week and mentioned, mentioned this bill was one of the architects of the peace agreement and the good Friday agreement over in Ireland. And we're just really instrumental in making sure we never return to the troubles that we had before. You can go back very far and Ethan Allen, while he was on a British prison ship, it's soft off off the coast of Cork. And he was housed there for a period of several weeks. And while there, Ethan Allen was a prisoner and he was visited by the local Irish and given a lovely tweed suit that he always remembered that day forward. Because the Irish appreciated that Ethan Allen hated the British probably even more than he did. Or they did. So, so there's great history here. This bill is a very short bill, you'll notice. And a couple of key components of it is there's no appropriation attached to it. This is not meant to be funded on the banks of Vermont taxpayers. It would be a commission that self funds. And Heather can talk about a little bit. We say Irish trade commission. But when we say trade, it's not necessarily economic solely. Like Congress kicked it here. You know, certainly we can look at the benefits of the European Union. Ever since Brexit, Ireland is the only English speaking country in the European Union. Currently helped 900. Senator Daley can correct me. 900 American businesses and is the gateway to the European Union. So from an economic basis, it's a great place to do business. But in addition to that, you know, you look at Vermont. We've got the Burlington Irish Heritage Festival, which brings acts from Ireland every year. We've had great exchange programs with the University of Vermont. Bringing guest professors over. And I think Vince Feeney, who some of you might know, taught Irish history for years up at UBM. It was really interested in this bill as well. So again, it's pretty nimble commission. Three appointed from the governor, three appointed from the house, and three appointed from the Senate. The thought was, give us a shot, you know. Not again, not asking for any money. Come back in a year with a report and see what we can do to really build some of these ties between the states and the country that's given us so much. So I, you know, I'd hand it over to Heather there if you have anything else. I don't really have any. But we did have, it was first presented last year in commerce. Right. And I think we got a bit too cute with it. So we tried to really Vermont right-size it and say, okay, we don't need a staffer for this. We don't need to do it in New Jersey. He's doing it necessarily or West Virginia. But, you know, we can do it and maybe build it from there. Exactly. So, yeah. Yeah. Great job. I'm like a line of loyalty, but I talk with your focus. But if you have any questions, I'm super supportive of it. The trip to Ireland was very informative. I think it could benefit Vermonters and Ireland. And we do have that long heritage. And, you know, I'm very supportive of this. The other reason I'm super supportive of it is the gateway to the EU. And a lot of that has broken down for Vermonters and U.S. companies because of Brexit. So that's a real attractive component of this. So I'd ask for your support and thank you for your time. And I'll just leave you like just a personal note there. You know, I grew up on the border of Ireland, Northern Ireland in the 80s during a very turbulent time. And I remember I liked to be sitting class and the desk would start shaking rice. And you'd be like, a pleaser is on an earthquake. And the teacher would be like, oh, no, that's just a custom station being blown up down the road. So like it was a very scary time. And, you know, I remember like moving to America and then moving back and seeing like the barracks down, the British soldiers gone and like no hard border, like the border where we were harassed every day when we went shopping. And it really was the American intervention and the ties that America has with Ireland. That brought about that peace. And it's so important to keep that connection to make sure we never return to those days again. And I think a commission like this goes a long way to do that. So thanks for thanks very much. Good day. I'm supporting this because I seem to have dried up on my connection to the mint chocolate Bailey's Irish cream. Will it be some provision in this for a more direct conduit? We did have, I saw on the shelf representative Hooper, didn't even plan this, but half a Guinness mac and cheese was on the shelf the other day. I was like, my God, like if the bill comes to the fruition, we could be eating that every day. That's great. Very careful that the commission not do anything that violates any of our Department of Liquor and lottery. Yes. Completely appropriate. Just under the table was fine. Thank you. Am I under the impression correctly that there are one or two other trade commissions that Vermont has entered into? I think Canada might be one. Do you know what others? I'm positive there have been several different types of commissions with the Quebec sort of cross border alliance there. The most recent sort of exchange program would be one that Governor Scott brought in with apprenticeships with Austria. You probably saw that a few weeks ago. So it's great to see that there is an appetite for it. And you know, somebody asked in commerce like, do we even need like a legislative approval for this? I think it does mean a lot that the legislature actually appoints this group of nine people with the governor to give it that gravitas to sort of go over there and actually meet with ministers on the level as sort of government officials or quasi government officials. Representative Chase, in the book. Thank you. Do you know what kind of coordination or effect would be between ours and the other states or the federal level? Like if there's any preemptioning from the federal level or would this be coordinated in New Jersey or West Virginia? Yeah, I think because it's fairly low, you know, the commissions would be talking to each other pretty regularly, right? It's, I think New Jersey just passed, was it last year or the year before at the most center that Daly can tell you? But you know, even though it's going to be a smaller scale, I think we can certainly learn from them. And obviously different industries in every state too might be distinct. Given your background, Representative Chase, you know, Ireland has been a leader sort of in some of the technological advancements there. So as far as, you know, bringing some of those groups together, I think Representative Priestley has been big on that in the Commerce Committee. Cool, thank you. I just wanted to say even in little old Vermont, there's quite a nexus to Ireland in that we have Irish Farm Road and Irish Hill Road and Murphy's and a bunch of other names settled the area in Lowe. So pretty interesting. Well, given your surname, sir, it's, yeah, you're a son of Ireland yourself. Great. So I wanted to give Senator Daly the opportunity to give your thoughts about how this is working and your support for commissions like this with other states. We're giving the full screen here. Thanks very much, everybody. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Connor, and thanks Heather, and thanks Chairman, and thanks to the members of the committee. I think this idea came from the visit by the New Jersey American Irish State Legislators Caucus, which at the time was less than a year old, and as Connor has pointed out, like there are now Irish Caucuses in all 50 states, and they're open to everybody. You don't have the Irish Heritage to be a member, you just have to be a supporter of Ireland. And every month, 2,000 state legislators who participate and their members of the Caucus receive the monthly newsletter, outlining what's happening in Ireland, what's happening in the United States, and importantly, what's happening in Northern Ireland. And Connor referred to Senator Lacey Padlehi was instrumental in the peace process, a quiet operator behind the scenes. And Padlehi is talking about fondly here in Ireland for his work in Washington ensuring that peace has prevailed because there are people alive in Ireland because Senator Leahy and others got involved, but stayed involved in our peace process. And that peace process celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. And when New Jersey came over and we brought them to Northern Ireland, they saw that the importance of continuing to support peace. And that is done through political engagement, through economic and trade engagement, and education, and what we're hoping to do is partner universities department. So in Vermont, the university engineering department would be partnered with the engineering department in Queens University, Belfast, or the university college Dublin. And you would have academic exchange and student exchange programs, which university college Dublin already has with UCLA in California. But what we want to do is what happened last August is that every August, the Vermont Ireland Trade Commission members and the legislators and business community and education community would come to Ireland and would go to Northern Ireland, see the opportunities there, come to Dublin. We're hoping to have, as part of this year's summit, it's not confirmed yet with the commissioners and legislators from across the United States, a summit on AI and Google headquarters talking about the challenges that we're having in terms of artificial intelligence trying to regulate that. So there's a lot of areas we can collaborate on, but the big selling point really is that Ireland is now the gateway to Europe. Having Britain, having left the European Union, as Connor said and Heather said, we're the largest English-speaking country left in the European Union, a market of 450 million people. There are 900 US companies use Ireland as their aircraft carrier, basically off the coast of Europe to access that market. And there's an American Ireland Chamber of Commerce here which could assist with this in Vermont accessing that market without having to navigate the colossal bureaucracy that is Brussels. You're able to base in Ireland benefit from the fact that the Irish education system has 70% of our high school graduates end up going to third level, one of the highest, the highest in Europe and benefit from that. But also Ireland is the ninth largest investor in the United States of America, which for a country of our size is quite impressive. But what we want to do is, like most countries tend to focus on the big states like California and Texas and the Florida's and the Georgia's and all those. But Ireland like Vermont is a small country that has to elbow its way into the world and keep ourselves, we have to be nimble and scrappy. And what we want to be able to do with your assistance is help each other in terms of assisting our people in Ireland and the people in Vermont in terms of affording the best opportunities in terms of economic opportunities and in other ways. And so this is a platform and as Connor has outlined the legislation drafted by New Jersey, nothing like a good idea. Normally you have to ram a good idea down someone's throat, but in this case it was borrowed, repurposed by West Virginia and they passed it into law before New Jersey managed to do so. And as Connor said, maybe about 30 states have it in various processes of passing. I just got the copy of the bill from Illinois just there half an hour ago. And again, it's about building relationships, and that's what having a platform and a structure where you would be invited over every year to Ireland and what we then have is we go to, we make sure that our ministers who have been informed by our Department of Foreign Affairs, you need to go to the other states. And as a result of West Virginia passing, you know, not just the Bastans and the Massachusetts and the Californians and those. And as a result of the West Virginia Trade Commission, the first Irish minister of state in 100 years in the history of our state ever to go to West Virginia went to West Virginia because there was an Ireland Trade Commission. The next minister is going this July. And that's because there's a structure and there's, you know, there's, then now we have a way of continual engagement. What can often happen with trade missions and trade delegations is they go and nobody goes for another four years and the relationships are lost. What you need is continuity and ongoing engagement. But Ireland, as Connor has pointed out, is the gateway to Europe. It's not a market of 5 million people. It's a market of 450 million people. Any questions for Senator Daley? Our committee is spellbound, Senator Daley. That's the first. You managed to silence anybody in my life, even when I was chairing. But no, I just want to thank the committee for the great opportunity. It's a great honor to be back in Vermont, if only virtually. But it was quite an experience to be there and really enjoyed my time there. Well, I really enjoyed when you were here just a couple of weeks ago to be able to have lunch with you and just to know that there is a Senator of your stature in Ireland that is making the effort to bring American and Irish relations at the small state level together. I really appreciate the goodwill that you're bringing and we'll try to meet you halfway and I hope to be able to make it out there myself eventually. Well, we look forward to it. And the good news is just so you know, the latest update is Starmont is back up and running as of last weekend for the first time in two years. They managed to elect a speaker. They managed to elect a First Minister and a Deputy First Minister. But don't worry, they were all on the payroll for the last two years while nobody did a legal work. I wouldn't fly in Vermont. Oh, no, I can guarantee you from what I know of Vermont and from talking to people there, that would definitely wouldn't work. But the reason that it got open running and it's slow stuff in Northern Ireland is the US kept at it, kept being involved. That's the very important part of it. Well, thanks for being with us. Feel free to stick around and listen if you would like, but we know you probably have other places to be. Oh, no, you're right. Like it's half past six here. And so I'm like watching, you know, this is like, this is like Disneyland for politicians. Like, what? Other people do business is always a great way because you'll always learn. I'm here to follow our YouTube channels. So to like and subscribe. What I was hoping we might do is have legislative counsel do a quick walkthrough of the bill and then take your testimony if that's okay. Sounds great. All right, great. So I'm going to invite Mr. Sago to join us and walk us through what appears to be a pretty short bill. So I think we can do this pretty quickly. So we all know what we're talking about. And then of course, I've already flagged, but if we do move anything like this forward, we've got to put a sunset in here and also think about how to fill vacancies. Those are two mechanical things we'll have to add if we do further work on this. Yeah, well, Rick Sago, legislative counsel. Thanks for having me back and gov operations. So yeah, House Bill 667. This is the bill that would create the Vermont Ireland Trade Commission, representatives Casey and Chase did a great job explaining the why, the how, and I'll just describe what I've done here with the bill. So really starts here on the second page. The question earlier was asked about a trade commission, how many we have in Vermont. We don't really have any creative by statute. There are some of the governor has engaged in the executive order. This would be the first trade commission via statute. Just so you all know, with Ireland. So I created a new chapter, chapter 111 B, which would hold all of our trade commissions. This would be the first one, the Vermont Ireland Trade Commission. So part A of 4129 establishes the commission and who makes up the commission? You have nine members, three appointed by the governor, three appointed by the Speaker of the House, and three appointed by the president, pro tempore of the Senate. Then you have the purposes of the commission, advancing bilateral trade and investment between Vermont and Ireland, initiating joint action on policy issues, mutual interest to the two entities, promoting business and academic exchanges, encouraging mutual economic support, encouraging mutual investment, and on page three, addressing other issues as determined. So this language really is quite a bit taken from New Jersey and West Virginia. I think South Carolina, President Casing is also inspirational here. So we're not creating this in scratch, in other words. Subjection C, the members shall be appointed for terms of four years and shall continue until their successes are appointed, except we will do initially staggered terms. And you see there are three members by the governor. We'll serve terms of two years, the three by the president, pro tempore for three years, and by the, I'm missing the Senate there, or the House. Let's see. The governor, two years. Yeah, I might need to figure out why the House members are not listed there. I'm going to note that for myself. Projection C. Yeah, section C. I have the staggered terms for the governor and the president pro tempore, but the Speaker of the House members are not listed there. Well, I'm reading that it is that the House members would be appointed for the four years, the three years, and then the governor would be two years, and then their four-year term started with Senate. That can be read that way. That's probably why I meant it, in case it's a quick read. You may not catch that, which I just did. So yeah, we could leave it like that or we could be prescriptive and say this is the House member terms. Subjection D. A vacancy shall be filled within 90 days. After the vacancy, Subjection E. The commission shall select a chair from among its members in the first meeting. And that chair may appoint committees and so committees at the chair's discretion a majority shall constitute a quorum. Subjection F. There shall be a report submitted by the commission sent to the governor and the general assembly within one year of its first meeting and on or before November 1st of each year. After that. Subjection G. The Vermont Ireland Trade Commission is authorized to raise funds for direct solicitation or other fundraising events alone or with other groups and accept gifts, grants, requests from individuals, corporations, last page there are foundations, governmental agencies and public and private organizations and to defray the commission's expenses and to carry out its purposes those funds can be used for that. The funds, gifts, grants or requests pursuant to the section shall be deposited in a bank account and allocated annually by the ACCB to defray its expenses and carry out its purposes. So one thing to note there Brooklyn Casey wanted to then he mentioned this that he didn't want the commissioners to be paid, right? So in this kind of setup we usually do pay members who are either legislative members or non-legislative members so I think we want to make that clear that we're not going to pay them if that's the what you want to have happen in this bill. We probably need to set that and say these members will not be paid. Section 2, initial appointment shall not be made later than October 1st, 2024 and the act will take effect on July 1st, 2024. Out of no to the sunset. Yeah, it sounds like there is a big the vacancy provisions are in there so I'm just flagging that as something anytime we set up a board council commission you've got it make sure we're thinking about any questions or just the words on the page at this point or if we flag a couple of things that already that we might need to clarify or tweak but Rick, thank you very much. I'm sure you spot seats with Mr. Sables. Thanks for joining us on this. Thank you for inviting me for the Rockford-Jones-Volstein Commission of Department of Economic Development. I feel as though I might be the skunk at the garden party. I would like to explain I've not been before this committee so I'd like to just explain a little bit about the structure of the department and how many we are and so that you can get an understanding of where I'm coming from. We're 28 people in total that's extremely small by state government standards. I'm sure you've met many departments that are much larger than that. Seven of those 28 are limited service positions the most of which are being paid for by ARPA funds and five of those are currently paid them. So the rest of the people and you think about we've got a commission or a deputy commissioner two admin people we've got certain government programs that are funded by the feds when you come down to it you've got like nine people handling 16 different separate distinct programs and so what's happened over the last couple of years every so often we get gifted I call it gifted a responsibility from this great body and we end up doing it and I think we it's fair to say that we're at full capacity however small and however well meaning the responsibility may be and so I thought I'd also talk about that we do have a person two people one and a half kind of handling international trade and as a result of their work they we have developed some relationships with various entities associated with Ireland regarding diplomacy bilateral trade and direct investment through the Vermont international trade alliance which is an association and Vermont private and public organizations have initiatives in exporting importing barn investment and it's made up of like law firms customs brokers airports federal and state agencies and banks there are established relationship with many European countries through active collaboration with the Vermont office of the U.S. commercial service which is a department within the international trade agency a federal entity they basically have offices all over the world anywhere we have diplomatic relations the U.S. commercial staff based in Ireland and the U.S. embassy in Washington D.C. we've been in touch with them regarding trade missions company business to business meetings and market entry opportunity so there may be small businesses that we help with exporting larger businesses may have questions we connect them with contacts within the respective countries in 22 and 23 the U.S. ambassador to Ireland they're thrown and met up with our team at the select USA barn investment summit in Washington to endorse the potential of an Irish trade mission we were very much in favor of that the team has also met with the Irish ambassador to the U.S. Geraldine Nelson at the Irish embassy to talk about Irish companies operating in Vermont and Vermont's international trade division also has direct contact with the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland based in Boston the council general's office of Ireland based in Boston general Fitzgerald and staff are very accessible to New England states twice a year the Vermont team meets with Marco Connell CEO of OCO Global which is a leading world trade firm who based in Ireland that recruits mostly European union companies to expand into the U.S. market the team has also met with Maureen Pace president of the world trade center in Dublin and her staff regarding utilizing their services and contacts when a trade mission is scheduled with Ireland we've also met with the executive director of the cork city commerce and economic development association about opportunities and county pork in southwestern Ireland we've also met with senator Peter Welsh's staff about the senator potentially accompanying some Vermont companies to Ireland and his Irish heritage and also a follow longstanding relationship with Ireland as senator Lay he had so I just hear to say that this is who we are that's what we do we're not sure there's a need to have another commission as you know sometimes those are hard to fill the governor's got hundreds of them it's not saying it's not a good idea of anything that encourages trade but again adding just another responsibility however seeming small we would be hesitant questions for Mr. Goldstein seems fair to characterize the administration's position as good idea not sure ACCD is the home for this I think there's a desire among the number of the legislators who've been involved in some of the exchanges some of our Irish counterparts to have some kind of official recognition of that and a place where they could raise funds into that would be appropriate and appropriately managed so if this isn't the right home maybe there's another one but we can but we can work on that questions straight to thank you commissioner could you answer the question about how many other trade commissions like this we've already entered into right so we didn't have one for a specific country we had the we had an international trade commission a couple of years back and it was dissolved it was dissolved because of lack of true specific mandate and then they didn't meet as a result and then eventually it was just dissolved because it didn't it didn't again it's really when we think about trade it's usually a federal we have relationships in all the federal contexts that have the relationships in the countries so that was dissolved so we don't we do have a very strong relationship with Canada it's not really called a mission we have trade missions that usually go to the country where there's a trade show a global trade show happening so that we could utilize some of our SBA funds to help pay to get to the trade mission because we don't have budget to just do trips it usually has to come out of our SBA funding for we bring small businesses with us to encourage their contacts and export opportunities in the country and we usually look at the global trade shows wherever they're held and we tried to do an Irish trade mission last year we didn't get enough Vermont businesses actively interested so we're going to keep trying on that front our international trade rep is of Irish descent and so there's definitely a theme of we want to we want to do this we think there's a lot of commonality but the commission sounds like we'd be collecting money and then dispersing we couldn't really understand yet what other purpose would serve and again being responsible for it we want to make sure that there's the true justification that there's a mandate and some specific outcomes that have to come as a result just following up on that thank you so to your knowledge there haven't been any other statutes put in place I probably should have asked the attorney that I told her that you that there haven't been any other statutes passed and put into place that established trade commissions with any particular sorry countries not that I could find I could see the international trade commission with the federal government's bold we have that but as far as Vermont state of Vermont with other countries and probably you don't have that I could find any trade commissions yeah that's right it's not like we had a Vermont Quebec alliance there was an appropriation a couple of years ago Lake Champlain Chamber was heading that but there isn't a formal thing in statute like we obviously want to work with our trading partners and encourage export because Vermont businesses need the export market as developed for sure Mr. Thank you very much you're very welcome sorry to be able to come no no I I think it's fair to say we need to find the right home and so that's not a huge problem so I guess I I might ask if you represent KC if you and represent Chase and others who might be interested in figuring out if ACCD is not the right home maybe we can work offline in terms of how do we facilitate you know sort of what our big priorities are here I think that's my understanding correctly that the main goal of the bill is to create a formal home for some of the activities that we you know want to finance and allow and sanction the happy so am I understanding that correctly absolutely and I know that you think that of some other places where this could be housed because you know as we said that we're getting it's trained but it's not a little bit economic trend so you know whether it be maybe like the treasurer's office could host something like that that's fine I think we're agnostic where the bank in town goes and absolutely sympathetic for the resources of ACCD but we can take around some options in the back then yeah which we would really appreciate that I don't I definitely want to make sure that we get it right and have kind of a willing fiduciary agent or administrative partner so we'll work offline and try to try to find that spot any questions or thoughts from the committee before we move on to our next agenda item representative chains thoughts I'm in support of this wouldn't make it suspected so you're on the ad hoc working group to find for the commission great thank you representative Chase for volunteering it looks like you forgot did you have your hand up representative Cooper only half way okay I think I felt I was like reading your body on anything considering kind of going if I just conferred with counterpart here with that maybe with the house and with control man this committee this week just full of comic relief and we're going to need it for our two o'clock topic great well I think we've got a few questions that we will have to answer on this one but the this is just our first little walkthrough and introduction so appreciate everybody's bringing this opportunity to the table now we need to figure out how to make it happen so center daily wish you well thank you chairman thank you for being here so we're going to just take a quick break and then come back right at two o'clock this we're gonna see some language that is relevant our jurisdiction that's being considered is these around the at finance and potential rewarning of school budget so serious stuff I take five so adjourn for a few minutes here come back to all right welcome back everyone we're picking up our work this afternoon with some language that is a committee bill that's being considered up in ways and means we've been asked to do a drive by since touches on our jurisdiction and the think what we're going to do is first add legislative council Kirby and Tucker are you going to testify jointly is one of you going to walk us through the language I believe Tucker is going to talk about the rewarning language and if you what background of the tax part does run for much sounds great so Tucker do you want to come up and give us the the run through on the pieces that are relevant to gov ups absolutely and if you do want any of the excellent tax information I'll call Kirby over to hang out with me and bail me out on all of that good afternoon we have in front of you a draft of a ways and means committee bill should be draft 1.1 draft number 24 dash 0 6 7 0 and the components of this within the committee is jurisdiction or in section 3 find that on page 4 and it relates to warnings for school district budgets for the upcoming school district meetings so if you are with me section 3 and subsection and the first thing that this does is authorize the legislative legislative body of the school district to cancel the districts vote on budget articles for fiscal year 2025 so notwithstanding any provision of law of the contrary the legislative body may cancel the districts vote on an article or articles related to the fiscal year 2025 budget and here's the limiting case for the sole purpose of amending the proposed budgets yeah it's under curvy Keaton's name oh okay sorry for a curvy Keaton so I have a question about pushing out the votes so representative Hango since you just came in yeah sorry I we're we're gonna hear what it is and then so actually let me take a step back so ways it means is considering a committee vote the purpose of the bill or we can speak to questions about that but I'll just kind of the wire flyer we is a particular bill how this is fitting from my language perspective so I'm sure you're all aware that because of the kind of unprecedented pressures on school budgets the budgets that were warned ended up being much larger this year proposals much larger this year than we're even anticipated back in December and they certainly the increase by percentage was much higher than anybody contemplated when act 1.27 the people waiting bill was passed and what that did was it essentially broke the mechanism that was being used to kind of smooth out for districts that had been historically advanced in terms of having tax capacity in the formula before act 1.27 you know they've been giving sort of a circuit breaker and an opportunity to essentially be able to spend above a cap and without having it affect their local tax rate well with increased pressures on school budgets many many districts across the state had large percent increases and so the Ways and Means Committee is considering essentially saying this isn't going to work the way we thought it was going to work in act 1.27 we're going to change that mechanism we're not here to review that mechanism that's changing that's the first part of the bill but the part that we're we've been asked weigh in on the mechanics of what happens if we allow districts who you know are now seeing a new formula to cancel their budget vote and do a new election so what I want to get behind is before anybody asks any questions we get down a rabbit hole is just have Tucker walk us through what the bill does in terms of the elections and the school budgets and then I know we'll have a lot of questions and I just want to make sure we all get on the same page first and then we'll dive in so so there will be time for questions I promise so go ahead Tucker I will back up of it to make sure that we're all in the same sentence to start so in subsection a regarding the school district budget votes not with standing any provision of law to the contrary the legislative body of a school district school board here may cancel the district's vote on an article or articles related to the FY 2025 budget for the sole purpose of amending the proposed budget so these are the school districts that are going to amend the budgets that have been proposed and for that purpose are going to cancel the vote on those articles for example I don't know what it means to cancel a vote I think you can take it by its express terms they're going to cancel those articles for vote at the district meetings what if the ballots have already been mailed out via absentee ballot which they already have the secretary of state and you will hear excellent testimony from will send as a plan in place for guidance that may be sent to local officials on how to alert the voters that it's going to be canceled part of though that is in here which is amending the warning to let the voters know that it's not going to be there and reaching out to voters with the mailing of the ballots and subsequent information to let them know that this article is not going to be voted on at the district meeting but instead of the later day I'm going to just ask everyone a hold question so that we can all get through what is on the page and then I swear we'll take questions we're going to get great testimony from will explain so if we can just give you to the words on the page just until Tucker get into it go ahead next the next provision in subsection A this is for those districts that have canceled the vote the district that cancels the vote on its budget articles shall amend the warning for its annual district vote to state that the budget vote is canceled there's an express requirement you amend the warning to state canceled and shall move the date of the budget vote to a date on April 5th to one more on the front floor to require this year first that you amend the warning to say canceled and second that you move the budget vote to a later date which has to be honored before April 15th April 15th is the deadline for these purposes for holding that vote those of the mechanics subsection B there's an appropriation $500,000 appropriated from the general fund to the secretary of state for fiscal year 2024 for the purpose of offsetting election costs incurred as a result of this change one thing that I'll know here because it did come up in some of Will's testimony this morning is that there's a piece here at the end that ties this directly to the movement of that pursuant to this section and there may be districts that are able to use for example the act one authority their annual vote in order to accommodate the new calculations who may need assistance as well but I'll leave that to Will to articulate in better terms subsection C this ensures that if there's any conflicting authority that exists in an educational charter or a municipal charter that requires for example specific warning timelines or learning procedures that this temporary authority will supersede those charter provisions and will allow those educational corporations to use this authority so any questions just about the the specific the specific words on the page I think what I'd like to do is take those questions if it's just about like a definition but the mechanics I'd like to see questions about so how this will work until we hear Mr. Sutton's testimony so questions about the specific words on the page percentages I think it's about this if not we can defer to Will you said Cantal the articles would that mean that only certain portions of it would be cancelled then the rest of the vote would be held that the originally intended time correct including for example the district elections of their officers who are eligible for the election thank you sorry who is subsection c who is the temporary authority in subsection a the temporary authority is this bill itself so the temporary authority that is granted under subsection a that probably should say granted any subsection because when I thought of temporary authority I was thinking of some kind of temporary body for some working fact is Will going to talk to the money yes okay so I believe so you know I can't read Will's mind but I assume he'll adjust that's a significant chunk of money so before Will does that maybe Kirby could tell us when we're looking at the at the Ed fund I think this is context what in the conversations that were happening upstairs in ways and means what kind of amounts are they talking about potentially having schools that take a look at this formula what are the impacts in terms of production not in Ed fund pressure will be if a number of schools take advantage of this roughly just want to get a sense of the scale because this seems like a lot but I believe it's on the order of tens of millions of dollars potential reduction in Ed fund pressure sure so Kirby Keene legislative council the best person answer that would probably be Julia Richter from JFO just don't want to want to practice with that but what I can tell you is that the other part of this bill that does provide some relief for a as a transition mechanism to new people waiting would cost approximately the estimates are around 30 million it also repeals the tax caps if you're all aware of Homestead tax caps from Act 127 that would have cost far more than 39 I don't know the exact number I think JFO would because it's I think that number is moving a lot as we learn information about what's going on with the school district five percent the five percent cap would have yeah because seems like a lot of districts were taking advantage of it and it would have caused a quite a large hole that would have been filled by non homestead tax payers and by whatever the general assembly would do to address that whole also so the expectation is that without the five percent cap being such a huge relief that there will be it's speculative so who knows how many school districts will take advantage but some of them that have very high budgets will lose that five percent and will will need to go back I would imagine and and come up with a new budget potentially far less and if that happens across several school districts then that means that the entire system would have to pay for less there would be a much smaller hole so that's that's why the ways it means is interesting that this approach the meatball funds it's cool it's great and they're superintendent told us that a public meet had they found what many school districts had done and spent up to the point where it would have impacted them if they just spent everything that they could under the the current act 127 formula it would have been an additional 5.7 million dollars so if you assume that there are a number of districts that sort of I should say used the formula I've heard some people talk about it's taking advantage of the formula that it's we're talking about tens of millions of dollars so the idea here is to make an investment that'll potentially have a huge relief on the ed fund if a number of districts go back and say okay we can't take advantage of what was in act 127 because that formula no longer applies because of what's previous so that's kind of epoxy here more questions about act 127 or have a need to learn more about the mechanism of replacing the cats I'm sure some more questions will come up I think what we'll do is hear director sending talk about how this is likely to play out because I know who's worked a bunch with the Ways and Means Committee and you all let's cancel to come up with this language so we'll hear from him and then imagine folks will have more questions so will thank you for being ready for me we are okay yeah if you I think if you could walk us through the secretary states position on this and and give the committee your thoughts on kind of how how this will work in different districts that have different voting methods I think that would be really helpful can do thank you Mr. Chair I'm gonna take 30 seconds maybe 20 only just to start by thanking you all also for the resolution that you passed a week or two ago whatever it was that was really special for me really really appreciated the Secretary of State surprised me with my whole family in the chamber and I just I worked really hard over the 10 years I've been here to have a good working relationship with the legislature so to to hear that acknowledged in such a public way was really meaningful for me so thank you secondly and my last day is Friday so you guys are catching me a couple days before I'm out of here of course somebody had to throw a local election related curveball at me in my last week in the job what we do it's our way of thanking you and it's our desperate attempt to you know just getting back in the house go by one last time um right that's what this was all about in the end third I do need to know that I I am going to have to leave at about 10 of three so I've got about 30 minutes hopefully we can do this in that time it's I got to pick my daughter up at the bus and there's nobody else here right now to do so so I really can't not and so I'll try to be quick and then leave as much of the time as I can for questions great and what I told ways and means this morning was I know that this bill needs to move quickly right that's that's one of the most important parts of it because of the fact that the march fit meetings have already been worn and so while I otherwise might kind of look through language like this with a fine tooth comb and nitpick it and suggest some additions to leashes I spent a lot of time looking at what's on the page in front of you and I do think that it would be workable past as is with the language that is there now what it's going to require and I'll get into that a little bit in the next five or 10 minutes is a lot of additional kind of guidance and information from our office out to the clerks but I think that we can fill the gaps with that guidance without the need for writing them into this session law at this at this point in time the other the general message that I started with for ways of means is of course this is going to be messy it's going to be frustrating and an additional burden on those clerks that have to pivot and react to a school district that might take advantage of this provision and it's going to be confusing for voters I think we just have to accept that as a bottom line and do everything we can to mitigate minimize those impacts both the administrative burden on the clerks and the confusion among voters obviously the legislature or those who've given it their blessing so far have made the calculation that this making this change is important enough to kind of result in navigating those changes for what's already you know a local election annual meeting season that's already in process right now um and I say that because to kind of set the stage I think you all are aware but for the the March 5th annual meetings which is the standard annual meeting time for all town cities and villages and has also traditionally been at this a standard annual meeting time for a lot of school districts across the state those warnings were already required to be posted and have been posted this past Sunday additionally so the warnings were posted on Sunday and the ballot deadline for those votes for those districts that vote either the budget article or other articles by ballot is next Wednesday it's a week from today and just anecdotally with some exchanges with school districts and clerks who helped them administer their elections a week out from that that process has started for a lot of them maybe they're you know sent the finalized ballot proof to the printers for printing some may have begun printing some may have gotten them back by now but they the deadline for them to have those ballots in hand and available for voters is next Wednesday that's a deadline right it's not a they don't have to wait until then and so a number of them may already have these ballots ready and may have already started sending these ballots out that deadline provision works in conjunction with another provision where it says basically you start sending your ballots out to any voters who have requested early absentee ballots as soon as you get those ballots so it says by 20 days before the meeting or whenever you receive the ballots whichever happens first and it tells them it's some old legal language actually in the absentee balloting chapter where it says they shall send the ballots forthwith after receiving them forthwith I have always interpreted to mean as soon as possible so as soon as you can after you receive the ballots so we're in a situation here where there may be some school districts who have a meeting warned already and potentially may have even begun sending out ballots or at the very least printing ballots under will please yeah looks like it hey well if you can hear us it looks like your connection is frozen turn the video off and if you didn't just hear represent Morgan if it's possible to turn your video off that might help so I'm back all right now that is solution I have no idea what just happened there the zoom box just completely collapsed I just re-entered so I think you had just finished will saying acknowledging that there are likely districts who have already started sending out their ballots and at the very least have them printed and definitely have their warning supposed to so the the most important points for our office to provide guidance on and I sort of the way I I framed it for the Ways of Means Committee was I wanted to make sure I was clear on what their intent was and I think I am and I do that the same with you all who are more of the experts in an election administration as somebody was asking initially right the way I read the language is that they can cancel just the budget vote and amend the currently posted warning in that regard so I think you all know too although there's some common misconception out there that school district annual meetings contain more business than just the budget vote it's not just the budget vote they have to elect their officers clerk treasurer et cetera they have to elect their board members that have terms up for election and they may have other public questions just questions like you get at your town meeting ballots that pertain to the school district so and as you were pointing out Chair McCarthy before right there's a mixture among those districts in how they vote those various articles they have the same three options that Towns and cities do where they can be either from the floor or by Australian ballot for their budget article their officers and or their other business and so there's all kinds of mixtures of those voting methods across different portions of the business even within a district right but what's important here is that this legislation authorizes them to cancel what may have been a previously worn budget vote so with regards to the warning and I think that is that is the approach you would want and it requires if you do that to rewarn a budget vote later in the spring they put a deadline of that on that of April 15th but that rewarned budget vote on just the budget article would require another full 30-day warning I think that's advisable I think you wouldn't have wanted to to pass something that said they can amend the budget that's been warned right now and still vote it on March 5th because then you get into you know sufficient notice issues with voters as well as sort of more complicated ballot issues because you would have to get the new number out to them in time to vote on March 5th so I think the approach taken here to say we're going to cancel that particular article or articles related to the budget and rewarn those on a full warning later in the spring is the right way to go where that leaves you though is that you may have the rest of the the business of the annual meeting occurring on March 5th that's going to remain warned the the warning that's up there right now at the post office and everywhere else in town there'll be a replacement warning put up as soon as possible after the school board votes to do this that has the budget article crossed out and makes very clear my guidance coming from our office always is whenever you're amending a warning in any kind of circumstances like this to make it as clear as possible that it's been amended and how it's been amended you know if the school warning is up there and you've looked at it and walked past it once if you just put up another one without a real clear indication that something's different you're not you don't have any reason to look at it again and so I really I encourage the clerks and their election workers to to make that as obvious as possible that there's been a change and then of course there's going to be reach out through all of their other channels of communication with voters their website and email lists they have potentially newspaper publications local papers and I would say definitely on front porch forum for all of them that regularly post town business notice on front porch forum so it does set up a situation where if they do this you'll still have the school district meeting and whatever form it follows for all of the business that's been warned other than the budget and then you're going to have the budget vote later in the spring which will also get a full warning that as a general matter that's that's just about really good clear voluminous communication with the voters on what's going on that's magnified right because as people have pointed out not all districts are going to take advantage of this so there may be some districts that are moving along on regular course and are going to vote everything on March 5th and aren't going to have a follow-up budget vote that makes it a little more difficult for instance from the state level for us to do any kind of blast consistent messaging I think it's going to be most important for the messaging to come at a local level what's going on in your town specifically so the voters are clear on that so that's that's the approach to warnings as amend the current warnings post them in every place where they're posted now do so as soon as possible after you're here from your board I was after I testified to ways of means I started I'll tell you guys drafting a bulletin that I will be sending to all the clerks with at least our first round of guidance on this I made it clear to them it's not always entirely clear it's a pretty common question that the warning should be adopted and signed by the school board the statute actually the school statutes allow for the now you first again well we should get some questions in we will absolutely I just I want to make sure that he has a chance to explain because I feel like he's already answered several several of the questions that you said do we have a possession no we will not have possession as well it's house education doing a drive by also this language has been closely coordinated between house edit and house ways and means I believe the bill is going to come out of ways and means but so they have joint hearing I don't yeah I don't I don't know exactly so I don't want to say on the record how they coordinated I have enough trying to coordinate what we're doing in here to know how how said and house ways and means are working together question basically was was this a chair to chair thing or was the committee were the two committees involved I was brought in legislation I was brought in late because representative Conlin and representative Kornheiser had both been had started to talk publicly about the idea so last week when they started to talk about the idea of changing the formula to a sense versus this percent formulation they made it clear that you know that that would make another you consider their budget and the initial proposal that just kind of got floated out and in one meeting I was in what's that you know somebody throughout the idea of a mechanism that I don't think would have worked very well and so I raised my hand and said you know I think we need to have the secretary state and other people weigh in on this language and now this is the first opportunity that there's been a draft to look at but we have will back but that did not answer my question about the two committees I can get that answer I just don't know okay thanks that's all I need to yeah all right will sorry no I really apologize I don't know what's happening with my zoom feed at least I'm able to jump right back on so if it happens again give me 15 seconds and I can jump right back in sounds good I have a couple of questions in the rooms I might just sit we'll use the pause to represent of hang on them represent of the group thank you my first question is absentee ballots that may have already been sent out if that school district of that um that region that's already sent out or that town rather that's already sent out their absentee ballots what happens to those absentee ballots that are returned early it's a good question and it actually lets me get into the last five minutes of what I was going to say and then completely open it up which is okay so how do you do with ballots in the the circumstance you just described their pango the advice has to be the only real option so if you've already sent out a ballot with the budget number and the budget vote that's now being revised and maybe or maybe not it has other business on that ballot too right but either way when that comes back you just have to ignore those so if if it's a ballot with a bunch of other business you'll run it through the tabulator print the results but you're just not looking at those results that vote's been canceled it has no effect it's they voted on something that now isn't isn't up for decision and that all the voters won't have had an opportunity to vote on there's there's no better way to approach that other than that's where you would get into you do you send them you're not you're not creating a follow-up ballot right now with the new budget to be voted on on March 5th it's going to be voted on later in the spring with another full warning period so you're not turning around and saying don't vote on that but vote on this before March 5th what you want to do is still kind of honor the opportunity they've had to vote on anything else that was on that ballot count those votes and you're just you're just ignoring for lack of a better word the results that come back they'll be they'll be incomplete and of no effect and so you just tell the clerks that that's you just essentially treat it like the article isn't there that's that article just that article and all the other stuff counts proceed with everything else in the same way that's that's been warned it's at its full warning it's been up it hasn't been changed and the thing for hand counted ballots that towns that don't have tabulators I think there are a few towns left same thing whether it's on a tabulator or not and then to just complete that thought right so you might have sent out some but not all if you still have more to send out or if you haven't sent out any my advice at this point left with no better option is that they can manually edit those ballots that they're sending out by which I mean take a black magic marker and strike through the budget article and say postpone in addition to that right it would be my guidance to them to try to include some kind of note in the mailing when the ballot goes out noting the budget article has been canceled by the board for the March 5th vote it will be postponed and voted on later in the spring you will see that reflected that it's been crossed out on your ballot don't bother voting the budget article if they still go ahead and fill in that oval the tabulator will read it when you run it through but again the clerk is just going to ignore that portion of the results because that article is not up for business at the meeting I was in thinking through the bullet and I was writing with them this morning I think my guidance will be that if they do that for their absentee ballots that go out from here on out they should do the same thing for the in person ballots at the polling place and try and strike through that article on all the in person ballots so that as much as possible all the voters are getting the same form of ballot given to them if they're lucky enough to have not printed them yet they're waiting for that 20 day deadline next Wednesday then we would tell them not to print the budget article omit it from whatever the proof is that they send to the printer if they're bored acts in that amount of time I think for clerks that may have had them printed already haven't sent any out and use tabulators this is where you get a little bit into the details but I think it actually would be more difficult to go and get new tabulator readable ballots printed right now because what that's also going to do is change the programming on the machine it'll change the setup of the ballot if that article is taken out so then the ovals are in different positions and the memory card on the machine would have to be reprogramed to to accurately read that ballot so they can do that they can incur that additional programming costs and and ballot design redesign or they can go with the ballots they have now and put a big black magic marker through the budget article and say canceled so one last question if you want to follow up and then I've got a coloring thank you so if other items are on that ballot which there are that are being voted on that don't need to be amended or struck out for instance school board directors are being elected if new school board directors who did not participate in the budget development process and now a new school board is seated on March 5th or 4th or whatever date it is 6th so new school board is seated the budget hasn't been voted on because the board has just the previous board has decided to postpone the vote so now you've got a new board that's a pretty tight turnaround to have them back in voting on having a vote having a budget ready to be voted on by April 15th so how does how does that affect this process I think what you described is true the the new board members take office upon election and then would be voting active members of the board at that point and would have to come up to speed pretty quickly to get a new budget in place that's that's the nature of what we're faced with with this late change so if if the board were able to rework their budget if the current board were able to rework their budget really quickly before March 5th how would that be presented to the voters if a new board is seated on March 6th does that make a difference or would they have to wait until March 6th to rework their budget there's no language to that effect you're getting a little bit into you know school board machinations that are a little bit outside of my area I don't mean however it would but what I would say is where the rubber meets the road is when the warning gets approved in terms of the election and in terms of the language that'll be presented to the voters so that's 30 days the deadline in here is April 15th so that puts it in the middle of March by when they need to actually sign off on the warning and that's you know they could have all kinds of preliminary votes on what the budget number maybe should be but it's the vote when they decide what they're gonna post on the warning to the voters that's the substantive one and that probably should be after March 6th when a new board this legislation is signed on that though right Will it's up to the districts that whatever whichever duly elected school board and the reason we're trying to move this as fast as we are is that we want school boards to be able to get out if they're going to take advantage of this authority they'll have to but if they're gonna look at the change in the formula that's in the first part of this bill and decide to do that we want them to be able to make that decision as quickly as possible I would guess to represent hangers point most of them are gonna do that with the currently seated board if we move this before the end of the month I think they're going to know because they would have had that the existing school board would have had the opportunity during the budget process to make the decision about whether they were going to use all of the capacity that they had or whether they were going to do like what my school district did and you know do more of a you know tighter or more conservative budget and so not every district is gonna take advantage of this this is just an option that we're giving them but you know just because we are changing the formula but I'm guessing it's gonna be the the all right the the outgoing board that it will probably do just giving the timeline unless we take it too long to consider this bill so I had a bunch of short so I wrote the same footbridge you have a question it occurs to me that my question probably is not for him because it's not going to build a balance elections I guess I was gonna ask him but I could ask anybody what's our timeline I could ask you I believe the Ways and Means wants to vote this out by Friday in order to give but we don't have possession criminal so we're really are just basically we're here just here field of opinion right well I think the Ways and Means Committee for instance there's this issue around Act One Authority if they wanted us because we do election policy and we crafted Act One this significantly changes Act One what we did last year sure right it's in some ways for the districts who decide to to re-warn their budget it says you know you originally had this flexibility that Act One gave you but now we're just saying if you're changing it midstream you have to have a new number voted on by April 15th am I right about that Will? That's my understanding and I did point out to Ways and Means this morning that in the very underlying school district law they have flexibility and when they schedule their annual meeting in the first place a range is given from March 15th until June 30th for school districts to hold their annual meeting that's long time existing law and there are certain school districts I don't have the number or the names off hand but that probably as a traditional matter have their annual meeting scheduled even after April 15th but sometime before June 30th and then I I added the additional layer that there is the Act One authority you're talking about which could in theory still be used I think to reschedule a meeting until July 1st My only other question was I think Will already answered we don't know exactly how many districts are on have already sent out their ballots is that correctly but you're not sure if you if you if you Well that was the time I could have done that Oh yeah I think you'll find people are just getting them printed right now and they'll be available to mail generalizing in about four or five days printing is as effective as mailing right it's creative yeah it still exists Will can you just clarify that before we go to represent the loose question which is so many districts have sent their ballots to the printer kind of receiving them now that haven't mailed them to voters yet the ones that are going to mail them to voters or you know just have them available physically and start doing absentee ballots so you had talked about those folks who get ballots if their school board decides to take advantage of this authority if we pass this relatively quickly through both bodies and the governor signs it they might be able to actually mark that the budget article has been canceled on those ballots before people have a chance to vote yes it's going to be close and I just want to be clear that's entirely anecdotal in what I've heard via a few emails as to what position various districts in I would suggest the school boards association may be able to do a survey you know my email list is town and city clerks but the school board association may have a superintendent contact list and or board share contact list that could quickly be used to try to gather that information so I think this is for you Will I know because this is such a special provision should there be something included in there that says that you know towns will still have to be required to warn the article 30 days before that date of honor of April 15, 2024 I mean you've stated that they've got to do it but should it should it be in this as well or are folks going to for sure know that it's not a special time without without it being in this it's a good question that was one of one of the examples I was thinking of when I led off by saying I could nitpick it and suggest additional language to make it perfect but but rep Higley it by omission since it says nothing else it's a 30 day warning period for any vote and that will be at least our office's clear guidance okay thank you represent Morgan did you still have a question no I was just re clarifying but I think Wilson just real quick is it is individually up to board by board by board school board by school board by school board it's their discretion and it's not mandatory it's not mandated it's up to them individually yeah so the construction here my understanding is and will correct me if I'm wrong each so this is saying here's some extra authority so the top part of this bill makes the change in the formula and does all the act 127 stuff that Kirby's can answer questions on once will has gone if if folks need the context but the piece we're looking at here in section three says if you change your budget and want to re-warn it school board so it's giving a power to the school board yeah if you do that then will help defray the cost of the additional printing voting etc and that you know you have to have that vote no later than April 15th if you decide to do that and so just given all the percentages and numbers I think representative cornheiser said at caucus yesterday that you know as many as a third of school districts may be impacted in some way but then there are districts that they actually were a little more conservative and didn't spend all the way up and they may just decide our budgets as tight as we can make it we're not going to do anything there are others who are very public about saying we had an opportunity to do a capital improvement project that we've been waiting on for years without having any tax impacts so we're just going to go ahead and grab everything that the existing crap 27 formula would give us and they essentially spent an extra three to five six million dollars that they might not have spent otherwise and so the whole idea here is to give the school board the ability if we're going to change the formula to to rewarn their budget and and vote on a budget that reflects the current tax costs and because everything about the December first letter and the act on 27 formula if we pass the first couple sections of this bill be really unfair and create chaos I think to not give school districts the opportunity to go back and and rethink some of the decisions that we know have been made and at least some of the districts so Will I know you need to go so anybody represent Hango is your question for Will I'm not sure if it's for Will or Kirby that probably could be either one so is it about the elections mechanics yes okay go ahead let's for Will okay so this bill does not say anything about how the election will occur how the balloting will occur so this my assumption is your whoever wrote the bill is thinking that everyone will go and vote in person again on another day the date to be set sometime before April 15th is that correct or again reach out to your town clerk to get an absentee ballot so that's going to really require a ton of public attention to this to bring people's attention to it really good question you've had a couple today that have reminded me things I wanted to say where I thought you were going first is of course in terms of method of voting whether it's voted at a floor meeting or by Australian ballot would stay the same that's been adopted by the district as the method of voting their budget right for all time and so if they scheduled that reschedule vote would follow that same method but more importantly and it's one of the one of the only things I might have wanted to have specifically called out in the bill in an ideal world but will be part of my guidance is that if a person had an absentee ballot request for the school district ballot for this currently scheduled meeting they will be automatically sent one for the reschedule meeting and will not need to make another request for that new vote I think that's just in fairness to the voters we should say that a request for this meeting that was then subsequently cancelled at least one article of this meeting and postponed that you shouldn't have to request another ballot you know all the steps are going to be to try and make sure everybody knows this is happening and one of the easiest ways to do that would be to send a ballot to anyone who had a request for this vote and with that I do really have to run chair McCarthy the it takes me about 10 minutes to go down there and get her at the end of the road and come back I can email you if you're still in discussion and want me back I can pop back in I will yeah so we I think Ways and Means is looking for a recommendation from us but we have you know they're trying to get a blowout by Friday so I think we're gonna have a little committee discussion now if there are other questions we will get back to you I'll shoot you an email and if we could get you back in for a few minutes tomorrow if we need to then I'll keep you on speed I was gonna say I actually am pretty wide open tomorrow great well very helpful thank you very much well we'll get you guys thanks everybody all right representative hangover thank you he's a lot a third of the 120 something school districts are possibly affected by this that's quite a few voters and I'm wondering how many of them are going to show up with polls on another date to vote on this and I know there's no answer yet but I just wanted to up that turnout could be I mean we have enough trouble with turnout as it is so I don't really know where to go with this yeah this is like this is one of those things that's a real conundrum go ahead no I was just gonna say that piece and I know I'm like walking in like 90 percent away from the conversation but with that right it's the the districts making the chance so they're making that calculation we're just providing them with the tools to ask for it to do so if they choose so that's a yeah go ahead represent are we is this speaking freely we don't yeah it's community discussion we don't well that brings up an interesting reality right that we're basically signaling to districts that they have the option to produce a budget figure that is smaller than the one that they've already prepared what gives them any inclination to do so why would so Kirby can answer that question I think because we didn't talk about what the first part of this bill does yeah exactly in any detail but I'll tell you what they're they're gonna have a strong incentive that it was gonna go to the whole question just for your own for for your premise I frankly don't think that this bill becomes supposed to directly saw or even trying to solve a problem directly this is basically an extension the first step in a long process yeah a long process that's never worked budgets don't ever go down but they just don't and this bill isn't about to do like it's anyway maybe he's got yeah let's let's do this part then we'll get back to that Kirby King Legislative Council so the the question is what incentive my school district had to re-warn a budget so section 7 of that 127 is repealed by the bill which means no more 5% tax rate cap for homestead properties and also there's this tax rate review that's also being repealed that's related to that and instead it's being replaced with a percent decrease for tax rates but only available for districts that had less tax capacities one way to put it without trying to get into a whole lot of math there's the reason why this is happening at all of course is because that 127 changed how pupil waiting is done and there were some districts that will have less tax capacity because their their pupils won't be counted as as highly as they used to and there'll be other districts that have that basically have more people even though they don't necessarily gain students or anything based on the waiting sure more people's means more funding right or more tax capacity right so the instead of having a tax cap for everyone before just the districts that have less capacity now and that's measured and the bill as a relative decrease compared with the state share of tax capacity the new people waits overall I don't know if this is it's going to just confuse things or not but overall tax capacity for the whole state went up because many people waiting the bill looks at your relative increase or decrease compared with all the other districts right so compare with everyone else or you have do you have a lot less tax capacity or or negative tax tax relative to the other district sure so I believe I'm not JFO I don't have the numbers but I do think it might be it might be less than 50 percent of the school districts or have that decrease in fact capacity but under this those are the only ones that will get a benefit otherwise there's not the five percent cap disappears and nothing replaces it right for those that have increased capacity so for school districts for instance that had that had increased capacity but they still took advantage of the five percent cap rate because of a capital project or or just because they felt like other districts were doing it and they were going to be left behind I mean lots of different reasons right they could have done that maybe their their budget for this year was the proposed budget was a lot higher than it would have been I don't think they're not capped at five percent and they learn that that's your incentive to maybe go back and spend a lot less because it it would mean that the homestead taxpayers in your district are going to pay a lot less if you go do that so there'll be and the and you know the homestead taxpayers tend to be more like the voters and those are the ones I believe that the school districts are concerned with how they feel about so in general this is basically the theory that we create the option for I don't know maybe not even 50 percent of districts to go back to the drawing board assuming all of them did that right how much do you suppose and I know you just said you're not definitely don't have the numbers but percentages maybe estimates what would we save like what would I mean it seems to mean the problem that we're trying to solve here is the reality that in almost all districts property taxes are simply too hot and they will continue to go up and they will continue to go up next year and the year after despite having done this bill it's a non-solution to a problem that we are pretending to address that is problematic so me so representative cornhizer has basically described this and she's just yesterday pretty clearly that there are a whole bunch of pressures you're totally right school budgets are going up but one thing that we did though that exacerbated some problems that there is a sort of universal recognition that that we did not anticipate when we passed Act 127 was this idea that the mechanism that we used to give a glide path for those districts that we're going to lose tax capacity in order to solve some of the equity issues that because so many of the budgets went up so much more than we would have anticipated all at once like this year had kind of an unprecedented one year because of the perfect form of 16 percent healthcare increase the Essar funding going away but districts still needing to keep a lot of the things that they were funding going there are a whole bunch of factors that representative kind of representative cornhizer's committees have been digging into that's kind of not our bail away but I think what you're getting at really appropriately is that this isn't going to solve all the problem but what they've talked about is something on the order of districts who especially had like long term capital needs that they just hadn't been able to fund they had an opportunity because of Act 127 to spend $500 more than they might have otherwise without having a local property tax impact and then that burden was pushed onto everybody else right so we can at least with this mechanism potentially fix that part of it but you're totally right this doesn't solve the whole problem but it might solve like if we think the problem is like $200 million it might solve like $50 million of it which isn't nothing actually Act 127 and I truly supported this enhancement really complex funding formula but it's becoming it's becoming suddenly evident the funding formula doesn't seem to work and we don't seem to have political will in this family to address that that reality because we've done way too many years sessions after seven years of work on policy that in theory right creates what all 50 states could hopefully consider the most theoretically critical funding formula in public education but it doesn't do that so I think that's valid and that argument is going to be happening for years but right now what we have before us is a mechanism to address a chunk right but you're right question for us and we've got to go up to the floor but the question for us is is this language around balloting and budget the did we get that right the mechanics of that right that's what ways it needs is asking for our input on I'm going to ask Will to come back again tomorrow afternoon so look at this language overnight think about questions we'll continue this discussion tomorrow afternoon