 You're muted. Good morning. Hello. Hi. We've looked at this bill sort of generally a couple of times and but I know the committee continued to work on it. It's on the floor. And I read it through this morning. My thought is that it does not need to come into the committee but I want the committee to be briefed on it and have a chance to weigh in. So that's what we're doing this morning. So Betsy Ann, why don't you start us off and then we have no one here as well. Sure. Hello. Good morning for the record. Betsy Ann Rask, Legislative Council. When you reviewed this bill last time it had come over from the Senate but House GovOps was just starting to look at it and consider substantive amendments to it. This committee looked specifically at the dispatch issue because the Senate version would have allowed the Department of Public Safety to adopt rules to set the fees that it will charge for the Department of Public Safety to perform dispatch for state municipal and other emergency needs. And I think in this committee you discussed concerns with allowing that to happen by rule. What House GovOps does in its recommended strike all amendment which is draft 4.1 and thank you to Sorcia for having this posted on your site is to instead impose a moratorium on the Department of Public Safety's ability to impose dispatch fee charges until the General Assembly can establish a fee structure in law. And so there are two provisions of this if you are following along in the bill. The first one is to actually amend the Department's statute that currently allows them to charge for dispatch and that is in section 25. Scrolling ahead to find the exact language. Section 25 begins on page 28 in section 25, line 16. This section 25 amends several provisions of the Department of Public Safety's chapter in law but most of it is technical corrections until you get to page 29, subsection I. That's the substantive amendment where you can see beginning on line 13. I in current law provides that the Commissioner of Public Safety may enter into contractual arrangements to perform dispatching functions for state municipal or other emergency services, comma, establishing charges sufficient to recover the costs of dispatching dispatch positions that are fully funded under these contracts can be authorized under the provisions of 32 VSA section 5B which is in regard to accepting grants. The language here in Housegov Ops proposed strike all amendment would strike that charging authority. So it would strike the authority to establish charges. And then relatedly, if you keep scrolling ahead, there is a corresponding section 26 session law provision that begins on page 35, online 16. That starts by saying in accordance with the amendments to 20 VSA 1871 subsection I, which we just reviewed, set forth on section 25, that the department shall not charge fees in any contractual arrangements it enters into to perform dispatching functions for state municipal or other emergency services until the General Assembly establishes in law a dispatch fee structure for those charges. It goes on to say how the department will need to propose what an equitable fee structure should be. In subsection B on page 32 online 3 says by March 15th next year, DPS will need to hold at least three public hearings and consult with VLCT, the EMS Advisory Committee, the Vermont Police Chiefs Association and the State Firefighters Association and local EMS police and fire agencies. In order to report by that date, March 15th, to House GovOps and House Ways and Means and Senate GovOps and Senate Finance, the department's recommendations for an equitable dispatch fee structure for the department to charge for dispatching EMS police and fire and potential funding mechanisms for those charges that don't rely on property taxes. And then it finally goes on to say language that's based on the Administrative Procedure Act for one agencies have to describe any counter proposals to propose rules. This language provides that if the department decides to overrule substantial arguments and considerations raised against the equitable dispatch fee structure or potential funding mechanisms, it ultimately recommends. DPS will need to include in its report a description of those arguments and can considerations and the reasons for the department's decision to overrule them so that the committees can get a bigger picture of what some of the other proposals were for the dispatch fee structure. So my internet's unstable, so you're just gonna look at my picture for a minute. Is any other, any questions committee has? Let's see Bill. Thanks Betsy Ann. I just wanna check the date on that report. The report is due from DPS to back to the legislature on March 15th. Correct. Any other questions anyone has? Nolan, oh, Emily's gonna lose her internet, okay. Nolan, why don't you tell us what, give us the sort of fiscal, I don't know if there's an actual fiscal note or not. We don't have the bill, so there doesn't, technically need to be one, but let us know what it would say if you wrote one. There is a fiscal note, I sent to Sorcha. All right, thanks. Sorcha, if you could put it up and scroll to the second page. Yes, I will put it up just a moment. It really doesn't say much. I'm just focusing on, for the purposes of this bill, just focus on what bits, I'll just pick up where Betsy left off on section 26. If you could scroll to the second page, there you go. In short, as Betsy Ann mentioned, there is a three year moratorium on the dispatch fees. However, DPS is not currently collecting any of those fees. So even if they do a moratorium, there will not be any loss of revenues. So there's no loss of revenue. Okay. Participant, let's stop here again. Committee members, any questions anyone has? So to summarize briefly, this bill does not set fees and it doesn't reduce revenue because the moratorium says that we can't charge fees that we're already not charging. Okay, that's basically right. Okay. Questions, anyone has? Are people comfortable with my communication with the speaker that at least from our perspective, we're not asking for this bill? Yeah, I'm comfortable with this as a, somebody who represents a town who shoulders the dispatch financial burden for the entire area. I'm all for it. Okay. So, it's up to the clerk whether the bill comes in. It's possible that the clerk will make a decision and it will come in any way. At least we will have been briefed if it does, but it's not a bill that I would ask to have sent to the committee. So that's what I'll let the committee, let the speaker know. Anything else on this issue? George. We just want to have a straw vote for you, for the speaker. We can, that's fine. Why don't I just, it was hard to do a straw vote on here. Raise our blue hand. Yeah, raise your blue hands. Raise your blue hands if you're in agreement that we don't need to ask for the bill. That's basically what we're looking for. Okay, good, okay. Thank you. Thanks, George. Did we get through everything? No, we're efficient. That's 237 was the bill that's already on the floor, right? On my list, that's Emily. And S27 is on the floor. Yeah, and we don't, there's no amendment that I'm aware of. So I don't think it was anything we need to do on that bill other than be out there to support Scott, Scott, George. Oh, I don't know why I'm getting you too mixed up today, but I am. I'm sorry. I know it's about the title of the bill about people not looking at the wording and getting emails from members about home health care agencies and their. Yeah, it's a, you know, if I were boss of the world, I would change the rules so that we could rename the bill when we voted out rather than, or at least it would show on the calendar, but I'm not boss of that, that's for sure. So, okay, I think, does anyone have anything else? I'm gonna put my video back on so you know that I'm actually here. Robin. Just a question, we sort of reviewed all the bills at the beginning of our meeting this morning and I'm wondering, are we anticipating anything else or are we kind of done now? Unless it becomes, we don't know. The problem is sometimes committees don't let me know that a bill that affects revenue is coming. Sometimes they don't recognize it. A clerk has missed a couple of them. So we just don't know. We'll meet on short notice if we get something. But nothing we know about. There's nothing I know about that's gonna come in. Yeah, it's sort of the end, well, I think we're getting to the end of the biennium miracle of miracles. So things get a little, they're a little more in fits and starts than usual. No, nothing. Okay, you know, if Sorcia communicates with you, pay attention, that's all. And we'll reconvene if we need to. Thanks everybody, see you on the floor. Thank you, bye.