 All right, so we are back. We took a little break there for a while. We had, to many people, it may not have seemed important, but we, 26 of us, no, 20, yes, 26 of us served under Tim Ash's pro tem. The four people who just joined did not, but we all felt it important to give him some kind of a send-off, because we couldn't do it because of COVID before. And so what we did is we had a little presentation of a gift to him and a little roasting, I guess, is what you might call it. But, and I'm just gonna say, is everybody there when Chris Pearson made his comment? No, he said, we laughed. Oh, I just, you all left and I stayed, I'm sorry. Yeah, we left at three, because when Becca left, I thought it was ending and then I thought, oh, we're 10 minutes late for witnesses anyway, because we said 20 minutes. I'm sorry, I am so sorry, but so what Chris Pearson said was, it seems to me that all the themes running through this are saying two things about you. You're a pain in the ass and we all miss you and love you. And that is exactly what it seemed. So, all right, so can we, I guess we're ready to get back to business here. Did anybody think about the idea of perhaps allowing another removal process, which would say maybe two thirds of the advisory committee? Amarine sent us, or I guess Michelle or Amarine sent us something that was another option, but I do like the advisory committee having some power like that. I don't know. What was the other option? I didn't see it, I haven't. It was, it was more concrete language about the rest of the board being able to remove that. Oh, it was the Green Mountain Care Board. She sent us a link with the Green Mountain. Oh, I asked for other examples. Okay, right. So she said the board has to adopt rules to define the basis and process for removal. So I was like giving the board another task, which is to decide how it's gonna go about removal when removing one of its members. I just, I think there's a nice idea of the advisory board having to be listened to because they have a little bit of power in that. It's like a real power. That's kind of a nice thing. I agree with you. I think it's a good idea. And just the Green Mountain Care Board is five people. This is just three people. It's really awkward. And as Brian says, they could be, they could be divided even the two that are left. So, you know, it makes no sense to just leave it to two people. So if you did two thirds, it would be, it would have to have eight people, which if you got eight people convinced that there'd be pretty substantial reason to remove somebody I would think. Anybody else? I agree. That makes some sense. Okay. Are we saying that that would be the way to do it or would they have two options? One is the other members could do it or the advisory committee could do it. We're not taking away the other members. I would say two options. Agree. Yeah. Okay. All right. So the next recommendation here is that the advisory committee be seated prior to the board providing its recommendations to the legislature. It does seem to me that if you're going to have an advisory committee that perhaps you should listen to it before you make your recommendations. Yes. Yeah. I agree. I don't know if, I mean, this is just offering language. I would think maybe we say something about seated and they allowed to review the recommendations. Yeah. Some formal like role that they have because otherwise seated is like they could do it. They could seat the people and still give us the recommendations like two days later. I agree. There's no time for them to remember it. It's not substantive. It's fine. I would say that the commission would provide guidance to the legislature after review by the advisory committee. I'm not sure review. I would say in consultation with because I'm not sure that you want them to be consulting with them but these are remember volunteer positions and if they're going to have to review every recommendation I mean, some of the recommendations are, they should be reviewing in consultation with the concepts and the principles but probably not whether they charge $12 or $15. Right. That might actually matter but I hear what you're saying. We don't want the language to be binding but there's nothing that doesn't seem consequential that they shouldn't review. They should be allowed to review whatever goes before the legislature before it happens. Yeah, I'm not sure how that will do timing because that means you're going to have to get 12 people together for every report you bring to the... How many reports are they bringing to us? Oh, they're bringing tons and tons and tons of things. They're bringing all the rules, all the licensing structures. Oh, you mean like not every quarter but like they have lots of things due to us next January. They have lots of things due to us in April. April 15th or whatever. Wow, okay. This is called Duggery or whatever Mark called it. How do we give anyone a chance to review? Maybe, I don't know. I think we want to hear, I want to hear from the advisory commission before we make decisions. Getting them appointed first is our challenge. Okay. I would say that the advisory, we can change this and because the advisory committee is not appointed by the board, there are some appointed by the governor and then the speaker and the different people. We can give a date by which they should be appointed and then we could make that date to be probably couldn't make it much before April 1st. It's in what Michelle, it's May 1st, I thought. Yes, but the reports are due to us. They aren't going to get to us by April 15th. We know that. No, forget it, that's not happening. But if we say that the committee, advisory committee has to be appointed by April 1st, at least it gets them there before recommendations are made to us. Yes, Brian. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think you make a good point. To me, the word review implies that they have to sort of give permission or sign off or agree with what the board has come up with. I would rather have them be consulted, which doesn't mean anything more than, you know, they develop sort of a collaborative decisions perhaps, but they don't have to approve it. Does that make sense? That is where I am, it makes sense to me, because these people are being appointed because of their very specific knowledge. So to have somebody with a background in lab science and toxicology making, having to review and give the thumbs up for how many licenses there should be is, I mean, they are an advisory board. So I think that they should be in consultation with, but. What is required in the statute, what's required of the CCB to weigh the advisory board's input? I don't think there's anything. Do you remember, Jeffrey? Yes, in our notes, we do have, let's see here. The advisory committee is created within the cannabis control board and quote has no stated purpose or duties beyond advising the committee. So it does, it seems there's lots of discretion there from our standpoint. Well, we've gone beyond what you would ask for. You just wanted them to be seated and active. We're asking that they actually be consulted. Yes. I mean, what's their, you know, if they're not, if the CCB isn't required to consult them at all, and why do they exist? I mean, the CCB could function without them. It was, again, if I had to do it, I wouldn't do it this way at all, but this is the way it is. And so I think that if we change the date to April 1st, that they have to be seated by April 1st, and that they have to, and change, we can change that language that Jeffrey just read to us and put that the recommendations will be developed in consultation with the advisory board or something like that. Tucker and Michelle can do their magic. I'm fine with that. Anthony. Yeah, that works. I have a different kind of question. So this advisory committee we're saying has to be assembled by April, whatever. Who's supposed to make sure that they're assembled by them? I mean, who do we get mad at if they're not there in time? Is somebody in charge of making sure it happens? We get mad at the governor for three appointments, the speaker, the committee on committees, the treasurer. So we would have to do that though. We would be up to us in a sense. But is there a staff convening them? Like how are they supposed to meet? Well, they meet, they are an advisory committee to the board. So the board is constructed and then they hire an executive director and an administrative assistant. It would be the administrative assistant and the executive director that would be giving administrative help to the board. We, the advisory committee, we could actually put in there that the advisory committee would be convened by a call, I mean, that somebody could convene them for their first meeting before there's an executive director and an administrative assistant. We could do that. We could have the... Well, there should definitely be some convening before we get the report, I think. Well, they need to convene. Sure. Yes. In order to make consultations or to consult, they have to have convened. Right. So let's put that they have to be seated by April 1st, that the board works in consultation with the advisory committee and that the advisory committee will be, that their first meeting will be convened by, maybe we, I don't know that we can ask legislative counsel to convene them. How about the executive director? The executive director will be hired. The executive director will not have been hired yet. Oh. That's the problem here that Deborah is pointing out. How about, yeah, how about the Senate Government Operations Committee? We could convene them. Okay. We'll convene them. Okay. Tucker, got that? We're going to convene them. Got it. Duly noted. We're at least in place. And we will have convened them by April 15th. Okay. Okay. Does that makes... I'm confused. I'm sorry, but what, what does it have? Do we convene advisory boards? Is this a normal thing? Can we do that? No, no. But there doesn't anybody do it. Okay. So we are, is it like a joint meeting, a special meeting, an evening meeting? Like, are they, are they really asking these people to come in the middle of the day to committee? Like, I'm just confused about the mechanics of this. We'll just figure out how to do it. All right. I'm down. I mean, these people, these people are going to be appointed. They're, they're going to know that they're on an advisory committee. My guess is that for the most part, the advisory committee will be meeting during the day. Okay. It will not be meeting. That's not, it could, but my guess is that it will be probably meeting in the day or late afternoon sometime. Do they get a per diem for their meeting? They get a per diem. Okay. 50 bucks, very. Brian. So I'm just thinking this out loud too, because I've never convened anything except breakfast. What about if we just said to the 12 of them, they have to be appointed by the first within a certain time, pick seven days, five days, 10 days, whatever you think they have to meet and decide who the chair, are they going to have a chair? They can decide their own chair. So by their, by their very meeting, they've convened. If I'm. Yes. Yeah. But somebody has to, somebody, somebody has to be responsible for saying, when should we meet? You can, 12 people aren't going to take that responsibility. Is it somebody? It could be the, the agent, it's the secretary of ag or nominee or designee. I mean, it could be that person because that, that is the person that could be asked to convene the. There's a connection there to ag. Yeah. So secretary Tevitz would, would have to say, we're going to meet next Tuesday, all 12 members must be there. And once they meet, they can figure out who's going to be chair and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. That works. Yeah. Listen, my only concern with that is that, is that that's a creature, you know, the secretary is a creature of the administration. And so if the administration isn't supportive of this move and getting things going, they might drag their feet on that too. I mean, we're eager to get all this going. So we have a vested interest in, in action and in movement. So. Well, the person. We have to depend on the governor to appoint the three people. Once the three people are appointed, it could be that person. And it isn't necessarily the secretary. It says or designee, but the secretary could say, you know, I don't want anything to do with this board. I'm going to appoint Graham. And I don't remember his last name, who's the policy person for rural Vermont. Or I'm going to appoint somebody from NOFA or I'm going to appoint the head of the farm bureau. I mean, it doesn't have to be the secretary, but they have to be appointed by the governor first. So we're depending on the governor to appoint that person more than to call a meeting. Tucker. Some of the standard language around these sorts of boards and commissions would state that honor before ex-date, ex-officer of the state shall convene the board for its first meeting. And then there are procedures that play out during that first meeting, including the election of the chair. So if you make decisions around the timeline, you would like to see and who should convene, then legislative council should be able to craft something for you that would meet that deadline and require the convening of this particular panel and the start of their first meeting. So let's say April 1st, they're appointed. They have to meet by April 15th and they will be convened by the speaker of the house. You can do that. Sure. Yeah, we can do that. Okay. Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. If we said government operations committee could look down on it, not like that idea, but I was gonna suggest they be convened by the speaker and the president pro tem of the Senate. But if I was with me, if it was just a speaker, I'm not taking sides on it. I just think you wanted to balance it out. Tucker. I believe it is often the speaker of the house that is put in control of these things because in the Senate, it is not the pro tem who has that power. It is the Senate committee on committees. All right, well, I can go with the speaker. And I believe the speaker is as interested in moving this forward as many of us are. So. Yeah, I think that's the case. Let's go at least we now have. So we have solved two of those issues. Now, if I can find my piece of paper, the third suggestion here, have we the advisory committee? Yeah. Wait, wait, Jeffrey, are you okay with that? Yes. It sounds good so far. Thank you. I appreciate the deliberation. So now the third one here is that the advisory committee will have a two thirds majority enabled veto power to override decisions. We're giving them all sorts of new powers. Removal. I personally don't think they should have the ability to override because it's the legislature that approves or doesn't approve the recommendations, not the advisory committee, but that's my feeling. Well, I, I won't, I mean, I don't think we have to give them this direction, but I think we just want to know, it helps an advisory committee if they know what their powers are, you know, if their power is to make a, to weigh in in some way to make a recommendation to, you know, are they advising the board or are they advising us? They're advising the board. Okay, so then we're requiring the board to consult with them before they release their recommendation. So then what we want to know from the advisory board is if they felt sufficiently consulted with, not that we have to put that in legal language, I'm just trying to understand if we hear from the advisory board, we'd want to know, well, we advise this to the cannabis control board, they didn't accept that, you know, and they might, and they may not accept some. Right, right, but we might want to know, we just want a minority. Yeah, and we can have them come in. And my guess is that certain people are going to be asked to advise on certain things and not the entire board on everything. For example, if you're talking about levels of concentration in a product, that might be the lab science and toxology person. But if you're talking about the social equity or rolling that out, you might talk more to the person who has experience in dealing with systemic racism or I'm dealing with kids and how to keep kids out of it. You might be talking more to the person whose expertise is in substance abuse. So the entire committee will advise, but there might be instances where certain people are picked for their expertise to advise. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. So where do you want to go with this last? Jeff, Jeffrey has a question. Oh, I'm sorry, yeah. And I don't want to go backwards too much. I did want to bring this up while we're talking about basically the makeup of the advisory committee. And that is come March of 2022 under Act 164, the state's medical program, I believe is to fold under DPS and fold into the CCB. So with that context, if the CCB is tasked with administering our state medical program moving forward, presumably at or around March, 2022, was there any consideration for the advisory board with regards to the medical program? And if not, just curious. I will tell you where I think that happened. The House did not want the, they didn't want to deal with the medical part at all. They had it completely out of their bill. So they didn't think of that when they were setting up this advisory board. So I think you're right here. And I'm glad you brought that up because we might want to have somebody on here that represents the dispensaries. That would give it that odd number, 13. I don't know if that's relevant. I wanted to put that, we feel that concern from our constituents about the medical program. Yeah. And I think that's how it happened is because they set up the advisory committee, but they took out the movement of the medical marijuana program. So that was put back in and then, yeah. That makes sense. I appreciate you explaining that. And I don't know if those are familiar, but under, I believe DPS and the DMR, the Vermont Marijuana Registry, there is, I believe they have their own advisory committee if I'm not mistaken. They do. I don't know if they meet anymore, but that might be a good starting point if there is consideration in this area. That there would be somebody appointed by that, well, no, it would be somebody, we'd have to have somebody appointed. It could be the governor appointing. Good point, yeah. Because, and that advisory board is quite active. Again, just wanted to put on your radar. Nope, that very good point. Anybody else want to? Good point, I agree. Okay. All right. So thank you for bringing these forward. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate you guys spending the opportunity to look into these. These are sometimes seemingly nuanced issues that are very important to many Vermonters across the state. So I really appreciate your time on this. So. Yes, Senator Clarkson. So, Jeffrey, could you give us a sense when you talk about how important this is to all these people around the state? How many people by your guesstimation at the moment because you represent them? So you probably have a good notion of what size community are we talking about? How many, what you'd call professional growers are there? Give us a sense of the universe as it exists now. Great question. Difficult to give concrete answers to. I will say that, you know, the term professional grower, so we're not, you know, we don't have a legal state or a tax and regulate framework yet, but other states do. So I'll give you an example. One of our members is a business that consults in legal states. You know, they get hired by a company that wants to set up an adult youth shop. So there are different sort of nuances to these labels outside of what's sort of, you know, currently happening in Vermont. With regards to our community, there's, you know, we like to throw out the 2000 figure. There's just, you know, probably just under, I wanna say 2000 small businesses waiting to engage this marketplace. Now, a couple of footnotes there, not every single one of them will be operational, right? What we see in some states, you may successfully apply for and get issued a license. That doesn't mean that that business will be operational. There are other realities to developing that business, whether it's storefront, employment, what have you? The conventional issues that do come up during business development. Cannabis is not excluded from that. So we are looking at a good-sized, hopefully, crack-centric marketplace in this state that is well-represented in all corners. We do have pretty good membership in every corner of the state. Wow, so 2000 small businesses contemplating in some form of development. That's on the, yes, I would say that's sort of the maxed-out figure. In Vermont, in Vermont. And there, as you's point out, I hope we're smarter here with our helping people with business advice than we are with artists. Because what we see is that there are really great artists and performers out there who try to set up a business and it fails because they don't have the business background and expertise. And we've gotten better about that, but so many of these people will need help with legal structures because they're not doing it legally now. So they need, how do you do a business plan, the legal structures, all of those things? How do you hire people? Because now if they hire people, they're gonna have to hire people using human HR laws and follow all of that. It's gonna be very different for people, like you say. And the more we can make this market ultimately accessible to everyday Vermonters, the quicker you guys will see a return on investment. You'll see the effect of other small businesses generating revenue. Listen, are you okay? I think a spider just fell on me. I mean, just like swished down. It was awful. Sorry, I should have turned my picture off, but it happened so fast. No, it's quite entertaining. It was. I thought maybe you swallowed a spider for a minute. No. No, but spiders in your hair are as yucky. Okay, sorry about that, Jeffery. Oh, no problem, no problem. All right, I apologize. I'm not too quick on turning off the camera. No, but you're right. The sooner we get all these things worked out and the sooner we get people in there, the sooner we'll start to see revenue. We should have been seeing revenue two years ago, but. We'll get there, we'll get there. We'll get there. Slow but steady. Okay, so unless people want to keep talking, I would say that we're gonna do this on Tuesday when we come back, because a judiciary wants to do the markup of the bill. So we'll get these, we can actually get these changes to judiciary before Tuesday more, I mean, I can bring them in on Tuesday morning. And that's the municipal issue, the board, how to remove members from the board, the make up of the advisory board and seating the advisory board and the timeline for that. And then we can look at, what we'll look at on Tuesday then is primarily Senator Roms. And I would urge us to read the, and I think by then, this will be actually put into the hopper and introduced as a bill. This is a draft and according to Michelle, this is a little bit different than what representative Tina actually introduced. So we'll put, I'll get that put up and we can look at that in relation to that whole issue. And then anything else we wanna look at around cannabis. Does that work? Oh, and the 2% if we wanna hear, if we just wanna hear what that, for Anthea, what that is. Right, I'd love to hear that, that would be great. And the other, all your other proposals, Jeffrey are being taken up by judiciary. Okay, I was gonna ask. Yeah, we told them that we would do the board, primarily the board, cause that's our responsibility. Right, but is judiciary looking at your other recommendations? We've walked through them and we have them. I don't know where we are with them. I think we're dealing with that on Tuesday morning also. Oh, okay, very busy Tuesday then. Every day. Every day. And sadly our pound meeting week off is looking flat out. Kasia, did you have? Well, it's a different topic. I just, before we adjourn for a week, I just wanted to make sure people knew that one of the last black women who is serving in local elected office, Rachel Edens decided not to run again, is withdrawing her candidacy. That leaves, I believe, just Zariah Hightower on the Burlington City Council as a black woman serving on a select board or city council, not school board. And then there are two black women running in Middlebury and Bennington. And there's a black gentleman running in St. Albans. And I really think we need to schedule when we get back a discussion of harassment and threats to local candidates. And that's what I wanted to say. Yeah, we will definitely do that. And the other thing before Alison and Anthony, I'm just gonna say that I'm gonna try and figure out setting up either Thursday or Friday as an executive session. Thank you, thank you. I will talk to people about what that might mean. Thank you very much. Okay, so Anthony. I was just wondering where the person you're talking was serving, what community was it? Hartford, in my district, I watched that select board meeting until 1030, that the information candidates, it was the information meeting and the candidates night. And until I got off, it was very, I mean, it wasn't easy, but it was a very good, robust conversation. It was reported in the Valley News yesterday. And I'm so sorry things have happened since then to affect Rachel's decision, because she presented beautifully, she was so terrific. And many of her concerns were addressed in the course of the conversation. So, and other candidates behavior called out during the course of that meeting. And so it was a very trans, it was a pretty direct conversation. And I thought I was hoping she was feeling very supported after that. We might hear from people like her, Lisa Ryan, who's also not running again, just the people who have behind the scenes done a lot to try and protect themselves and are putting on as much courage and sort of positivity as they can in public settings but are not feeling safe. Do you actually know Rachel? I mean, I know Becca does, Becca does. So I can get, oh, I'm, cause I'd love to reach out to her this weekend. That I'm very discouraged to hear that she has withdrawn. That's too bad. That's a loss for us in Windsor County and in Hartford. Brian, you had to. No, I was just ready to say goodbye actually. Oh, okay.