 And then finally, subsection D states, nothing in this section shall be construed to limit the rights procedures and remedies available under any law, including the Vermont Administrative Procedure Act. So that's the language in the bill. Are there any questions about that before I move on to talk about existing remedies separate from the language in the bill? Great, so actually, I was just going to ask you about D that you just last went to, and it sounds like that's where you're going next. No, I'm going to talk about existing causes of action under existing law separate from the language in the bill, but we will definitely talk about D at the end. What it basically says is this adds to the existing remedies. It's another vehicle or another tool, but all other vehicles or tools under existing law are still available to a party. Okay, when we looked at cause of action in this committee several years ago as part of the clean water work, and can you remind us in what ways this is like or not like federal environmental legislation like Clean Air, Clean Water Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Danger Species Act, which as I'm recollecting, all included a right of a cause of action so that interested persons could in essence require the federal government to act in fulfillment of the intent of the law. Is this pretty much the same or are there distinctions what's being constructed here compared to the federal version of that? So federal version I'm not familiar with and I'm sorry I can't answer those questions, but remember as we talked about last week, this is a state law. So those federal laws or vehicles procedures do not apply. We will talk about state cause of action that exists currently and as you'll see there's quite a bit of overlap between the existing state cause of action in the language in this bill. And then just a basic question. It seems as though the remedy is sending it back to the agency to write, basically try again on rules, is that the normal remedy in such cases? I mean, I'll just, I can imagine someone coming up with an alternative that would say since your rules were not effective, we're going to ask someone else to write the rules. I don't know who a more suitable party would be, but so is it always constructed this way? You send it back to the originating agency to try again. Well, as you'll see in a moment under existing causes of action, I think that is usually the remedy. I am not familiar with a court sending it to a completely different agency or department. I don't see how that would work. Sure. If you remember, as we talked about last week, there's no inferred apparent authority to engage in rulemaking under Vermont law. So every agency and department has to be given that authority. So in this bill, A and R is given the authority to promulgate rules to implement the act. I don't see how a court could ask a completely different agency or department to assume that authority. Okay. Thank you. Any other committee questions before we go up? All right. Thank you. Thank you. So these are remedies under current law. I'm not going to spend time on the first two, but I want you to be aware of them. There's been questions about, well, how do you influence or have a role in the process? Obviously in a rulemaking process, there's extensive public outreach and remember under this bill, not only there's a rulemaking process, but there's a rulemaking process periodically. So the first ability to participate or influence the rules is to participate in that process. Secondly, under three VSA 806, any person and remember person could be the individual or a legal entity or an organization may submit a written request that an agency adopt a mandate or repeal a rule and the agency within 30 days must do so or deny that request in writing. So these are two tools that exist under current law. I do not intend to spend time discussing them. I want to focus under an action pursuant to rule 75. And then most important, perhaps an action pursuant to three VSA 807. This is a screenshot of parts of rule 75. I won't read the whole rule to you. I've highlighted the most important aspects of it. This really concerns what I call scenario A, where A and R has simply refused or declined to engage in the rulemaking process. It is similar to what is sometimes called a writ of mandamus. It is an action to force an agency or department or governmental official to carry out a duty that they're supposed to do under law. That's really what this concerns. And you'll see the highlighted text states that this is for any action or failure or refusal to act by an agency of the state. You'll see under B, there's language concerning how that action is commenced and what it must include. Under C, you'll see the time limits. And we'll talk about that in a moment. They're a little different than what's in the bill. And then D, there's language about what the remedy might be. And I, let me minimize my screen here. The judgment of the court shall affirm, reverse or modify the decision under review as provided by law. And under E, there's a right to appeal. So this is a rule of civil procedure that confers under existing law any person, the authority to go to court to challenge a failure or refusal to act by an agency or department. This is what folks call rule 75 action. So this would be available to anyone. Regardless of whether this language is in the bill or not. And I'll talk about what's different between the two in a moment. Are there any questions about a rule 75 action? Yeah. I haven't seen, I've heard of. This one before, but not familiar with, you know, I haven't followed any stories where someone said this has been filed. Is this when you were doing your work on this issue. Can you come across recent cases or are these common or rare? I don't know the answer for that. I did not research that question. Once again, this is similar to a written mandamus. So it would be a refusal of an entity to carry out a lawful duty. I don't know how common that has been. And when it says action or failure, so refusal sounds pretty straightforward. Like someone has not done something, but if they wrote a rule or operated, an agency in such a manner as to fail to maintain, for instance, water quality. Is that sufficient then to bring an action under rule 75? I think such an action would probably be better brought under the provision law we're about to talk about. Which would be when they take action, but it's insufficient to achieve the goals at fourth in law. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions from committee members. The next cause of action is under three VSA 807. And this might be the cause of action that would more likely to be brought. This would be an action for declaratory judgment on the validity or applicability of a rule. And the pertinent part of the statute states. The validity or applicability of a rule may be determined in an action for declaratory judgment in the Washington superior court. If it is alleged that the rule or its application interferes with or impairs or threatens to interfere with or impair the legal rights or privileges of the plaintiff. Now there's different grounds that you can proceed under three VSA 807 for declaratory judgment. They include that the rule exceeds the legislative grant of authority that the agency or department wasn't conferred authority to engage in this rule making or issue this rule. That the rules contrary to legislative intent. And most important that it is arbitrary. Unreasonable or contrary to law. And Senator Bray, you mentioned earlier federal law under federal. Law pertaining to challenging rules. There are sometimes similar concepts. I think they're expressed a little differently. So we're just going to focus under state precedent, but there are some similarities. This, if they are engaged in rule making, and they do issue rules and they're applied, but they're not achieving sufficient greenhouse gas reductions. This might be the cause of action. That somehow the rules were either on arbitrary or unreasonable or fail to achieve sufficient reductions. Now I want to talk about what arbitrary is defined to mean, but before I do that, are there any questions? Sure, I'm just trying to, if in a certain way, we're talking about insufficiency of the, either the rules or their implementation. So I guess I want to keep to those two threads in mind as we work through it. You could write good rules, but fail to regulate or you could write weak rules that weren't going to achieve those goals anyway. And you might regularly great. So are both those situations captured by three VSA eight of seven. Yes, I believe so. Okay. So the arbitrary is defined in statute in three VSA 801. Subdivision 13. As meaning there's no factual basis for the decision by the agency. The decision made by the agency is not rationally connected to the factual basis asserted. Or the decision made by the agency would not make sense to a reasonable person. And in addition, this statutory definition of the term cross references to Vermont Supreme Court decisions. One of those is called buyers and the other is called in RE town of shareborne. In the shareborne decision, there is some language that I want to read to you. The Vermont Supreme Court stated that in assessing the validity or arbitrariness or reasonableness of a challenged rule, the court says we must decide whether the decision or rule makes sense to a reasonable person. Even if the reviewing court might have weighed the factors differently. The agency or department that's making a rule has wide discretion over what way to give criteria or factors or what conclusions to draw. And even if the record underlying the rule or decision contains conflicting evidence, the board's findings or decisions or the department or agency's findings or decisions will ordinarily be upheld. And in the buyer's court, the Vermont Supreme Court stated the court will not substitute its judgment for that of the rule making body. So this is a very deferential standard of review. What would be held to be perhaps unreasonable or arbitrary? It's a tough burden to meet. And therefore if an art does engage in rulemaking is making a good faith effort to satisfy the requirements of the law, it is not an easy matter to go to court and have the court declare that that rulemaking is either arbitrary or unreasonable or insufficient. What might happen is that in a complex proceeding, especially something pertaining to greenhouse gas emissions, it becomes a battle of experts and really a battle of data and it's different interpretation. And if you remember, there's a requirement in the bill that are not only engaged in rulemaking, but also develop a detailed factual record about the basis for its rules, the basis for its conclusions, the basis for its decisions and that it file that with the proposed rules when it begins a rulemaking process. So Luke, in this case, you're saying what we're trying to determine here is if, again, and our were to go through the rulemaking process based on the legislation, their rules would not necessarily be able to or they could be challenged, but that the courts would basically permit or allow likely to allow those rules to be upheld. Yes, I would phrase it a little differently. But basically, I think we're saying the same thing. I talked about a differential standard review. Okay. So every case is distinct. The court should always look at the facts, the applicable law, reach a decision. Every case would be different. It's hard to predict, but it is a differential standard review. Now remember in the bill, the rules that A&R is required to develop must achieve those mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets. They have to, they have to do it. Right. And so there is, there is something very concrete at the end of the day that the court has to look at and see if those rules are achieving that or it's reasonable to think they will achieve it or not. So on one hand, that's very concrete. On the other hand, though, the courts have a very differential approach to rule making in general, and they give a lot of deference to the agency or department that's engaging in the process. Thank you. And if I could just also, so again, just to kind of go back to the big picture, we keep talking about a legislative check in possibly or there seemed to at least during our last meeting, some concern that there wasn't kind of a legislative check in, but as you were speaking, I was thinking to myself again, well, if the ultimate goal, of course, is to reduce greenhouse gases emissions and we are directing somebody to do that. And as you say, that is the goal. They have to reduce those emissions. I guess I need to go back and maybe I'm asking the chair and others, where were we thinking that a check in with the legislature would be perhaps warranted? You're asking about the bill or more generally? No, well, the bill last time we were in this discussion as a committee, we were talking about the need perhaps for a legislative check in. And I'm just looking actually to the chair as a reminder, where we're thinking that folks might check in around how they are going to actually reduce the greenhouse gases in terms of the processes that they might take to do that. So I think there were two places we were looking at, sort of pivot points. One is there is a plan crafted by a council that then gets delivered to A&R as the basis for rulemaking. And I think one of the questions we looked at was to what degree should the direction actually come from the legislature as opposed to from the council? So we talked about, without getting stuck in the words exactly, you know, would the legislature perhaps ratify a rulemaking plan that came out of a council and then it would become a legislative mandate for rulemaking as opposed to sort of a council mandate for rulemaking? That would be a check-in point. Then we looked at, well, when rules came out, would you ever have the legislature checking back in again? And I think, you know, well, Mr. Marlin can remind us of how he phrased it, especially from work on Elkar. By the time we've asked for rules to be written, we only have that handful of tests, you know, the reasonable, the arbitrary, the contrary law, beyond grant of authority, contrary legislative intent. So they have any rulemaking entity has a fair amount of scope. I wouldn't want to sort of bridge the, personally, the ministry's procedures that works well as long as we've given adequate direction at the outset, I think, you know, that to me is the key part. And that's sort of where I'm looping back in. Senator McDonald had some thoughts on this as well. Please. Mr. Chair, on the first scenario that I was concerned about was when the council met and convened, it never produced a plan or didn't convene and never produced a plan. At which point the bill allows the administration to, to put forth rules, period. I stated my belief that if the council puts together a plan, that gives the legislatures and the legislators an opportunity to take a look at that plan and sit and do nothing or to introduce a bill to fort or modify the plan. That's just the nature of things. I was worried about the administration putting forth a plan in the absence. Excuse me. The administration putting forth rules in the absence of a duly elected plan. That was my concern. Okay. Thank you. Thank you both. That's that again, I know it's a bit of a 30,000. Foot. Look back or look down on this situation, but there was helpful. Thank you. My remedy would be that a sentence somewhere said in the, when the secretary administration fails to call the council to meet, there'll be a alternative way of the council to meet by a majority of the council members saying, we shall meet. Senator McDonald. Have you worked at all? Mr. Martin Land to get draft any language to that effect? Sort of the make sure the council meets provisions. I had not worked with Mr. Martin Land on that till about 22 seconds ago. Okay. Well, we like. Nothing stale. All right. So great. If you are working with him to get some language together, I mean, I think we may start collecting fragments and then I'd like to create some sort of container to collect the ideas that come out of our discussions. We're going to have a lot more discussion in the balance of this week with some of our witnesses about this whole process. Tomorrow and. Thursday, Friday we have roughly 10, 12 witnesses. And a number of whom will be helping us learn about different ways to look at that process. So, I think we have a lot of different models from elsewhere. For instance, if we have, um, Professor cash with us from Massachusetts, I think he was involved in the Massachusetts version. So we'll have other models to look at as we think about looking for opportunities to make improvements. Um, Mr. Rantlin, can I go back to the, well, so I don't want to change topics on us. Um, but I think, um, you know, you know, you want to bring to our attention in terms of other ways of, um, looking for a remedy for it, should the state not achieve what would be mandatory climate greenhouse gas reduction goals. No, but I wanted to do is now pull these threats together. So we've reviewed what's in the bill. Yeah. I've given you an overview of what's an existing law separate from what's in the bill. So here's what's similar and different between the two. If you look at what I call scenario a, we're in our simply refused to engage in rulemaking. So, I think that would be very helpful. Thank you. Okay. So once again, we've looked at the language in the bill. We read through that at the beginning. We've now looked at, uh, remedies in current law separate from what's in the bill. So here's what's similar and different between the two. We've looked at what's in the bill. We've looked at what's in the bill. We've looked at what's in the bill. We're in our simply refused to engage in rulemaking. That's similar to the rule 75 option in current law. You'll notice that the bill specifically refers to rule 75. For the procedures. The time frames are a little different. So that is a difference between the two. The bill gives a longer period to bring in action. And the bill, unlike under rule 75, there's the notice provision that a plaintiff has to give notice to A and R before proceeding. In scenario B. Once again, that's when A and R has engaged in rulemaking, but the rules are not reducing greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently. That would perhaps be similar to an action under three VSA 807. The time frames are a little different once again. And under B, perhaps it's more limited than under three VSA 807. Because you remember in the bill, it requires that the rules be a substantial cause of the failure to meet the greenhouse gas emissions reductions requirements. And if A and R is making prompt and effective action to remedy that situation, they may be given an extension to do so. Now, there have been some questions, particularly in the house. Well, if you already have existing remedies and there's some differences as the time frames, do you really need this language or what's truly different about it? So under any scenario, if you're proceeding under existing law, rule 75 or the existing statute, if you were proceeding under this bill, you always have to have standing. You always have to show that you suffered some sort of harm. You could proceed under the language in the bill. You could also proceed under existing law. Maybe you can make the argument. Therefore, they aren't all necessary, but including the language in the bill certainly makes it very clear that there are these remedies and removes any doubt as to potential cause of action, what must be shown and how a person would need to proceed. So it provides certainty in that regard. Now the language in D, as you indicated earlier, Senator Bray, that makes clear that the current remedies are still available. So really what you end up with, if you were to proceed with this bill and the language as written is any potential plaintiff has a menu of options. And as you know, often there's multiple causes of action alleged or alternative pleadings. So it could be that an individual proceeds under rule 75 or 807, what's most applicable, and under this bill and could plead in the alternative. So really what this does is it has some slight differences with current law, but plaintiffs would have a menu of different options as to how best to decide to proceed. Are there any questions? Yes, please. So in how difficult is it to, for a person to establish standing in a particular is harm. For instance, do I need to demonstrate that I have asthma and that condition is exacerbated by air quality issues or can I simply, can I simply say that having a. Sustainable climate is, is a desirable thing for all of us. Therefore, there's the harm is that I'm that climate is changing and it's, because we haven't addressed, we haven't reduced the rate of damaging climate change. I think it's more of the ladder as opposed to the former, but that is a question you should definitely ask. I've never litigated in this field in Vermont. So that's something you should ask Attorney General's office. Some of your other witnesses I think have brought causes of action. I think they could answer that better as to exactly what level of harm you would need to establish. Okay. Another quick question is in the language, it says the court finds that the rules adopted by the secretary pursuant to section 593 of this chapter are substantial cause of failure to achieve greenhouse gas reduction requirements. How literal is that reading of rules because there's there's we've gone back and forth. We said, you need a good set of rules. You also need a good implementation of those rules. So when they, when the word rules is used there, does that mean not wrote adequate rules, but they were also adequately implemented and enforced? Well, it could mean a little of both. And so if you write a great set of rules, but you simply don't enforce enforce them at all, then that might be also under the rhythm and Amos under rule 75. They're failing to carry out a legal duty. So that's what I meant by there might be a multiple causes of action or a multiple pleading. So if they're a great set of rules, but the agency has never applied them or enforce them, that might also be the mendamus action. Okay. So a party might allege different things. Yeah. I don't know if it's as black and white as. Yeah. No rules or great rules, but they're not enforced. It might be alternative pleadings or real disagreement between experts about how good the rules were or how they could or should have been enforced. Okay. And one of their, just a phrase here, a little further down in subsea that follows where I was just reading from. It says that a plaintiff shall be awarded reasonable costs and attorneys fees, unless doing so would not serve the justice. So what does that phrase mean would not serve the interests of justice. Well, thank you for bringing that up in sea. There's a number of phrases such as substantially prevailing party. The phrase you just looked at would not serve the interest of justice. All of these are taken from other statues. So it's terminology that should be known and familiar to the courts. So as to would not serve the interests of justice, this phrase is actually used in multiple other statutes. It's something that should be familiar to the court. I think it's hard to define and it's intentionally not a defined phrase, but it's something that gives the court discretion. If they really think that the awarding of. Costs or fees would be. Contradictions interests of justice somehow inappropriate or not appropriate or not fair. They would have the ability not to do so. Okay. Any other committee questions for Mr. Martland on the cause of action and other remedies. Great. Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for walking. Is that presentation also posted to our website? Yes, it is. Okay, great. Thanks. And with that. Then we'll move over to, I don't see. Miss O'Toole. Are you, I don't see. Mr. Walk. There he is. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Tag team wrestling. You're welcome. Of course, to always. Both join in. If you want to do the presentation together or. One of the other. Thank you. For the record, Peter walk commissioner, the department of environmental conservation. I'm joined by Megan O'Toole, who is our lead attorney on all air quality matters. I will provide the overview of our testimony and then ask. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments. I hope that knowledge falls short. To assist. Or, or where I might otherwise get myself in trouble from being a lay person. So thank you to the committee for having us here. I speak largely on, but well, I should say largely, I speak on behalf of the administration here. As, as, as A and R has been the lead in pulling together. of state government. Obviously, this is a challenging problem that affects all state agencies and we all have a role to play that is reflective of the membership of the council and and the work that we're trying to accomplish together. There are many different parts and pieces that will come into play as we think about where our missions come from, how we're going to address them and then in particular thinking about the resilience factor and how do we prepare for a climate that has already changed and will continue to do so regardless of whether or not we limit our emissions. So I want to start there. I want to first and foremost say in terms of the intent of this bill, we have worked with the house since the beginning of the session and that fact before the session to try to to work together on this bill. I think that the intent which is to create a plan and a structure for Vermont to reduce our emissions is one we are supportive of. We have worked in our role as collaborating with other states around the region around the country. We've had many conversations along the way about other states that with other states that have pursued similar approaches and tried to understand and learn from their and what the differences have been and what's been effective and what's not. There are a number of these very similar bills that have passed in recent years in states such as Maine and New York, Massachusetts was the first Massachusetts California being first but but Connecticut has a very similar law to Massachusetts as well and just trying to understand what has been effective, what where states have struggled, etc. The, the Council model is something that New York and Maine both bring into their approaches but their their councils are. I would say too large to be effective. They book climate change obviously affects many different sectors of our state in our economy, but we still have to have an effective organization in order to function. And so we have to make sure that there's a balance there. So what we what we did over the course of the first half of the session with the house was to try to present some of the challenges that we saw within the con confines of this framework of the bill and have worked to address some of those things. The, the House did make some of those changes there are still some others that we would, we would like to see. I'm happy to walk through our proposed changes in a moment, but I wanted the final point that I want to make at the outset is that this was a significant discussion point in the house as well as the task that you are our leading state government upon solving climate change is a massive undertaking and one that we are not currently resourced to do. And as we think about this moment in time with where the budget is going. I want us all to be walking in with eyes wide open, we are. We are going to be facing significant budget shortfalls as you all know, and some of the things that we view as existing priorities are going to be difficult for us to accomplish, let alone a significant new body of work. So that's not to say that we are not interested in doing that body of work we obviously share the goals of trying to combat climate change we just want to be everybody to be eyes wide open. This process will not be will not. Okay, Mr. Commissioner so have you. We, all of us are learning how the federal dollars that are flowing to Vermont can and cannot be spent. Have you had an opportunity in the last month or whatever to take a look at that and see if some of this work may actually be supportable by federal dollars that are arriving by my read and that's based on on support provided by the Department of Finance management is that no this would not be eligible. It's not related to a COVID related response, either from a public health or or sort of in, you know, in adapting to the changing economic circumstances and how we're responding there. That would not be an eligible cost. Obviously there is some consideration being made in Congress now around the potential for backfill of state revenues, days before revenues to date that has not gotten traction and I'm not banking on that being a certain question. Okay. Yeah, I think it's many people's hope that federal dollars will support not just rebuilding precisely the economy we had prior to COVID but that if there are opportunities for instance. This seems like it will go hand in glove with a clean energy economy right so perhaps there's an opportunity to implement that is it may take someone out of an industry that suffered particularly under COVID but provide them with employment and an emerging area. So I don't want to get us too far off but I hope we're not. So, Mr chair, I would say that that would likely come in some form of not not with some sort of private stimulus dollars right if we think about traditional federal stimulus in the midst of a recession is typically, you know, sort of let's let's go ahead and build things and get people back to work and and and that sort of function. There has been considerable more discussion around. How do we, how do we build what we want to see versus what we, what we've had, which is, is some of what you're saying and so that conversation is ongoing and I know the congressional delegation is, is thinking those things through but it's sort of outside of our discussion for at least three. Okay, so so noted, there's a price tag associated with doing this work. Certainly there is there's obviously economic benefits to be gained from doing this work I think I want to separate out what doing this work means in the mind definition. Now, as, as the state agency put in charge of, of doing the plan and are leading the planning process, or helping to lead the process planning process and staffing things and doing the analysis and making sure we have that body of evidence that loop described. That's not free. Right. The, the, the transitions to a low carbon economy are obviously going to come with different a different set of costs that will be born by others and the state can contribute to those but those are not. Specifically, if we want to have a good plan and we want to have the right choices being made underfunding the process of developing the plan is, is, is pending wise and foolish. I don't want to interrupt the flow of your presentation. I'm hoping at some point we can do, or you can provide kind of a 30,000 foot look at like the architecture or bones of the bill how it's set up but how it operates and how you look at it whether those things are something that I think make sense and you support or something you'd like to make changes to before we get into the bill itself to. Yeah, that's, that's, that's actually sort of generally where I was going from there and then I'll, then I'll walk through some of the specific pieces of the bill. From our perspective, the, the intent of having a plan that leads to actions that then are held accountable in some form. There's there's logic there it's a question of what that looks like, and what exactly is held to account. So from from our perspective, the first task is the creation of the initial plan. The work should then flow from that plan, if it has been authorized by the legislature. And, and or funded by the legislature, and then the, then it can be held to account from there and so I make that distinction as a way to talk a bit about the legislative look back that you have been considering. We also discussed that idea as well wanting to sort of have a sort of thumbs up thumbs down ratification of the plan. Our proposal is actually a bit sort of in between that says you have granted us significant authority already. If the activities that the plan prescribes fall into those buckets where you have given us authority, then we should move forward with that. If there are instances where we do not have that authority, then it's logical for the legislature to weigh in at that point and say, go forth and do this per the plan. And then have the workflow from there. The other big picture piece from my perspective is that, you know, in our way of thinking we hold the plan accountable, because the plan is the sort of overarching balancing of effort to reach our climate change requirements. Right, that's the overall goal. The rules are a subset of those. Right, we may have rules that require certain things that lead to pollution reduction we may have, as we're doing now we may provide electric vehicle and other incentives we may provide incentives for people to ride public transit. All of those things that are not rules in and of themselves right their programs of state government that are that achieve results in a different way. So we want this to be a sort of a basket of programs that are is going to drive activity across lots of different sectors and this frankly builds on a bunch of the work that is already ongoing. And so to hold just the rules which are sort of narrow wedge of that pie as the only things that are held accountable. It's not appropriate. We think the the entire, you know, basket of a program should be held to account and if it fails to meet the, the task of achieving those requirements, then the job should be to go back and look at the plan see what's working what's not and make adjustments to the plan and then have all those those programs fall from that again. So that is a, as a more cumbersome process but it also allows us to make sure that we're seeing what's been effective and what's been cost effective and and spread the need for more action across the full full spectrum rather than just on those things that are our subject. Um, have you, well, it makes sense to me to be looking more broadly for instance, although we talk about efficiency Vermont, which is statutorily driven right. And it's been its goal was the has been kilowatt hour reductions it's also delivered emission reductions because we've used less power that was fueled with fossil fuels to begin with so to only look at the rules seems like we would be looking past or just seem like a complicated task. How do you take all the programs are in operation and say, how would rules basically enhance them and expand them I suppose if you, as the agency been looking at kind of inventorying or trying to assemble it seems like there's an inventory that needs to happen where you look at all the tools you already have and say where are we missing tools as part of this work. So, that that is not something that we, that's something frankly we started to think about pre coven as this bill was moving forward in the house but we, you know, we've had to set a bunch of things aside for the time being that that but you raise an excellent point. That is actually the sort of precursor action by the council in our mind is that council needs to review what we're doing now, what's effective what's not what needs to be ramped up what needs to be retired what needs to be changed in some way all those, all those sort of analysis of previous programs that are spread across state government and to understand what the, what the delta is what right what are we. What is the difference between where we would be if we continued on the trend line wrong and where's the like where we want to be when we get to the requirements. So that's the sort of piece in my mind that is missing from discussing with the house I don't want to misrepresent them they believe that that was a critical precursor. We just want to make it explicit. So that's where that that piece starts in my mind. The other thing I want to step back a little bit from from a structure of the council perspective and we'll go through this a little bit in the language but and I talked about a little bit before with the other state title makes decision making a challenge. And while having lots of perspectives is important, being able to get to a plan that's implementable is is as a critical need. So from what will propose to you and language that you have is that the council be separated off from an advisory body and advisory board that would provide that level of of stakeholder involvement and participation and technical knowledge that would inform the plan, but it would inform the council would be writing the plan. It's a slightly different way of thinking about it. It also we as the administration are accountable to you. The rest of the council isn't necessarily accountable to you in the same way. So our proposal is a is a smaller board made up of the administrative administration of executive branch officials. That would be required to come up with the plan and that would be supported by the the board. Just a quick question there. So this committee did a lot of work on helping establish the clean water board. And then there's a, there've been advisors to that board but because it was an administrative responsibility to deliver on those programs that it's a administrative board, although they work with non administer that we're with an advisors off that board. Is that the kind of structure you're contemplating. Yes, I mean, this is not intended to be a the administration is going to put forward a plan that has no stakeholder involvement and that's not that's not an effective model that's not that's going to be this sort of no slow challenge that has that as we've struggled with and lots of our climate change endeavors over the years. What this does is create a body that is beholden to you through your, your accountability your oversight of the executive branch to get that work accomplished. And then there is the same, where the same membership that the that would have been part of the original council that the house put together, we would simply propose to have them serve in an advisory board capacity to inform that plan and make sure that it was appropriate to meet the needs of Vermonters. Ultimately, the buck would stop with the secretary of administration as chair and the other members of the executive branch that would be appointed to the board by the legislature. So thank you. I want to send our campaign a quick question because he served on the active 50 panel or board. You also then had access to an advisory council sort of outside the board as you work and dug into certain areas. Was that a useful structure for the active 50 Commission. Yeah, I think it was an essential structure. Yeah, very useful. Okay, great. And Mr. Commissioner just on a time check sword 11, I'm figuring we have roughly 40 more minutes for your presentation, assuming that representative Brigham gets here. So I'm just for all our pacing. I just want to mention that. Thanks. I think it makes sense at this point to go into the, the bill that our proposed changes to the bill, if that would be appropriate at this point, and I'm happy to share my screen to do that. Great. Let me make sure that I do that effectively. Can everybody see. Nope. Okay. Probably multiple computer screens is the zoom can't quite handle moving it around. So as I'm looking at my screen my camera is actually over here I promise I am focused on our conversation but it's just hard to do that when things are 90 degrees out. All right, well it looks good here we can see the text. I'm going to blast through sections one through three of the bill because we do not propose any changes. The legislative findings in section two. We feel are appropriate. They're based largely frankly on the work that we have done within the agency department to try to, to measure and address the impacts of climate change. And then we see the change from goals to requirements and the specific numbers associated with it we don't propose any changes. So then we get into section four which is really where the bulk of the changes we propose are the bulk of the language of the bill as well so I'll walk through that. And then we get too deep into the end of the specific verbiage in the interest of time, but if, if there are questions from the committee I would prefer to stop and answer them now, so that we don't get. There aren't any confusion moving forward. A couple of things. This will become clear later. First changes to propose a definition of what the council is. The struggles that we had just in terms of the logical flow of the bill was that it kind of lumped the tasks of the council and of the plan together. And sometimes that since the council is responsible for the plan, there's, you know, that you can see why they would be similar nature. We thought it was really important to lay out the clear responsibilities of the council versus what the plan shall do. And so just provide some recommendations in terms of clarity there, and again provide a definition of, of, of what the plan is relative. So, this is where the change that I discussed in terms of the council membership comes up. I really worked with House Energy and Technology to put the Secretary of Administration on the panel as well and make him or her the chair of the council. Similar to the way the Clean Water Board works, which is an effective model in that the Secretary of Administration is first among equals has some ability to, to lead to, to decisions where where disagreements between the various and then here's the major change rather than having those the membership that follows that's appointed by the by the speaker and by the committee on committees, the those people are moved to appointed in the same way but onto an advisory board that supports the council. Commissioner May just ask a quick question. Did you these proposals did you already propose them to the house or are these, would you remind me of these new to us. We, we did propose them to the house there's a previous version of these proposals that is in PDF form. On the house energy technology website. What I asked Miss O'Toole to do and what she's done is to bring those changes up to date for the purposes of the bill that passed the house. So, since they are slightly different and we don't get confused as to what was in and what was out so. Thank you. These, these changes have been proposed previously before it, before it left many of them. Great. Thank you for that question though. This is mostly about moving things around but this is the provides a purpose statement for the council. The council also creates a specific requirement for the council very similar to what the clean water board does and it actually is based upon language that that's in the statutes, creating the clean water board that that has the council recommend to the secretary and the appropriate allocations of fun for the purposes of developing the state budget required to implement the plan effectively. So the one piece that is, that is not often discussed in this, in this construct is, what are the not you know what are the budgetary tools we need in order to address these changes we use water, example, there are certain regulatory changes we've made over time but they're also grant programs and other project programs to, to get clean water projects on the ground so that we can see those, those changes faster than they might occur for a regular. I have a quick question, you're right on this section it's just slipping off the top of the page here says is the purpose of the council to perform the following. And I'm this, it might sound like a semantic question but I just really do want to understand if there's something you're distinguishing here. Another way of saying it might have been the council shall, and then it would just list each of these things adopt recommend etc review. So I don't that it is the purpose of, I don't know if you're creating a little bit of a distance between the council and the things that follow, or it's just semantics. So let me. I think you. I think it is probably a semantics piece I think it'll become the distinction frankly becomes clearer in the articulation of what the plan shall include the council is given this entire charge in the existing language in the bill or given a charge in the bill includes what we, we think should be attributed to the plan if, if that makes sense. I think, what if you'll hang with me through that point, and then we'll revisit this question. Great. This section. That talks about or to talks about the budget. So three talks about periodically reviewing the implementation of the plan to make sure that the implementation is going effectively. We are supposed to be looking at the sort of reviewing the measures that are in place to make sure that we're achieving those reductions. So the five talks about providing resources to municipalities and state agencies bought for resiliency and adaptation and achieving the greenhouse gas mitigation requirements. The next goes into sort of whether or not adjustments are needed to the plan right in an ideal world you have a council that is constantly making adjustments to the plan so that we don't have to wait until 2025 and 2030 and 2050 to know it hasn't been effective. We need to make modifications as we go in order to stay on that trajectory. And then this, what's struck here is effectively what was in in the plan before, and pardon the noise behind me there are teenagers leaving the house. So, I'm going to skip down to where we begin. The next piece and this is something that was an open discussion in the in the house, ultimately determine not to but we think subcommittees are really important and the specific topics that these subcommittees would address are really important. It's a question of how we get to it and whether or not a specific subcommittee is needed or if it's a another way of addressing the concerns raised. So, we, we recommend that that be a may so that it's a permissive environment where we can, where we can get that input as needed, but if it's a formal subcommittee or not, or a different process altogether. This flows in part because as you change the council to be a council with an advisory board, the pool of bodies for subcommittees changes as well. And so we just want to make sure that we're not sort of limiting ourselves to the council advisory board where there are lots of other voices in in the in various interests within these different subcommittees that may exist. Are you, you're saying, let me make sure I understand. I get the whole structural and committee management organization concern. But for the, the council subcommittees named rural resilience and adaptation for instance, are you saying that you think the four that are named are topics that you want to address it's just not, you're not sure that you want to address that through naming a formal subcommittee. Cover the same territory, but cover it differently. Okay. Right, obviously thinking about rural resilience and adaptation is incredibly important. Thinking about how we look at cross sector opportunities is incredibly important. How do we look at making sure that the transitions for all of our monitors are done in a just way an equitable way. There are a number of factors that we want to consider there's obviously significant advantages that we have as as our for our natural and working lands and can we leverage those can we figure out how to support those those sectors of our economy to make sure that they that they both can be contributors to our climate change and adapt as well. So their number of factors at play. I know we're under time pressure. Let me ask just a quick question. Are you already set up as an administration to work across all agencies on this. So we have, we have a have had a number of efforts over time. So standing this up in a meaningful way would not be a difficult challenge in my mind. From the, in the previous administration of the climate cabinet that would then went to the climate action commission that that I had shared along with Paul Costello early in the administration to we now have a interagency climate energy working group that that continues to discuss implementation of some of those recommendations and other topics as they come up. The sharing of knowledge and implementation is alive and well. Just not in this form. Thank you. And the other the other piece that provides is a clear sort of organizational structure and management of that information right now it's a collaborative sharing environment which is important but there's not sort of a, there's less of that sort of who's in charge and how we how are we doing with this data which I think is there's relevance to this, this work for sure. Keep scrolling down is there are no changes on these pages. All right, so this, this is where we, where we bring some of the original charge from the council down to the specifics of the plan, and so the plan really is the is complete. I think that that's important in part because the cause of action section that we're going to recommend holds the plan accountable. And so that the plan, which is the full suite of programs as we talked about is held to account in the state as a whole is held to account for that plan. And if the plan is inadequate or then then the cause of action kick in, rather than simply one section of that as we talked about with the rules. So, being very clear as to what's required in the plan, or is important. And on dates, those December 121 in your assessment provide the structure you're talking about board plus advisory council to enough time to write a plan. I believe in Megan may be able to correct me but I believe that change was already made at our request in the house. I'm sorry it's been a few months and a lot has happened but I'm pretty sure that that change was made maybe look can previously in the house the original timeline was significantly faster. And I think this is a more reasonable time to do that work we're talking about a significant reduction in emissions across all sectors of our economy that's going to need public input and and effort into the plan and so to do it right would take a longer chunk of time than was originally proposed as the as the bill is introduced. Okay, that's 520 days between now and then. Those include the days have taken place since the legislature met in January. Thank you, Senator Macal. So, and then, and then what we also do is set very clear timelines for when the plan would need to be updated beyond the sort of every four years that's anticipated that essentially saying if the we have an in a greenhouse gas inventory that comes out that shows that we have failed to meet the requirements, then that plan must immediately be updated and be completed within a 12 month time period. No, so that's in is if you look at my screen now the we've added the language that I'm going to highlight. Can you see that. Yep. That's that says that within 12 months of the publication of an inventory compiled that showing the state has failed to meet a requirement right so if we if 2025 roll around and the data obviously as you know has a lag associated with it. When the data is complete and it shows that we didn't make it. We immediately get to work updating the plan and making sure that we can address that that difference between where we hope to be and where we are, so that for the next milestone we can continue to make progress and hit that target that requirement. Okay, so it is a immediate trigger. So essentially saying for the purposes of the cause of action later on, we, we can we are as a sort of self accountability mechanism right the saying that we recognize we didn't make it, we need to get to work. No question about we need to wait for litigation to play out the state is immediately start to work to update that quick question on these triggers whether it's for getting yourself, you know giddy up, or if it's a cause of action being brought. The first milestone expressed in the bill is 2025 and our chg data lags by two to three years. So, are from a sort of a legal point of view or are we going to need to wait till roughly 2027 or 2028 to have a test as to whether or not we're meeting the goals of the, the bill. I mean, I know you could say, we could model and we could, we can look at a trajectory, but because they're expressed as hard targets, are we going to legally be sort of held. We won't be able to take action until that data is delivered and that might be till 2027 2028. And it's more of a sort of a theory of action question right if the state can take action at any point, based on the data that it has to update the plan and make changes. And if we if in 2026 we see the 2023 or 2024 data is not trending in the direction we're anticipating. We can make adjustments. Then, if you're talking about a legal recourse, then yes, everything hinges upon that inventory being complete. So, the other piece that I will say is that our overall greenhouse gas inventory data lags two to three years that is correct, but we have some pieces of information that allow us that are that are complete and accurate. So if we look at this in a more timely fashion, we just can't do the whole whole thing so we can see trends, where it's going and if you'll, if you take a look and I can share the share the link with with dude if you'd like the are our current inventory which is complete as of 2020 2016 is has projections out for for what we think 27 and 2018, the final inventories will be. And some reasonable and assumptions. Sure. I'm great. I don't want to say get too far into it I just wanted to check that big picture impression. And yes please if you get sure that you will put it up on the website for committees use later or interested others who are following me. Yep, I will, I will send that along. I think that's that's an important. This is new as of this year, and I think it's an important tool for it's not necessarily fully forecasting because it's some real hard data but it does, given the full lag and getting an inventory out it's important to have as much information as we can. I will also not to do for the committee's use. So, I'm going to, I want to anchor right here on on sub two here. This is really where we talk about being very clear about what are the existing programs that exist. And are they effective. So that we can can understand where we stand at this point. In testimony in front of the house. We talked about sort of how close we thought we were going to come to the 2025 goal or sorry requirement. The question has that at that point, based on the sort of modeling we've done as part of the state's consideration of TCI transmission and climate initiative. We had some sense of where we thought the kind of business as usual case was going in terms of transportation fuel use, and could kind of extrapolate out what projections would look like into the future so we did a five year and 10 years of 2021 and 2026. Those are mostly directional in nature. And by the 2026 number we were sort of at 22% reduction I think from 2005 levels. So, a year late and 3 percentage points short but in the, in the window of uncertainty. And the challenge I think that we're facing is that there's, as the world has changed. The underlying assumptions that that data of TCI data came from have changed as well so they were based. The impression that it likely wasn't going to be the excuse me that the clean car standards weren't going to be rolled back. And that the price of fuel was going to continue to sort of stay where it was and glad gradually increase. And we, we, we looked at sort of what would might happen if we didn't if the clean car standards were rolled back and gas prices say dropped to $1 50 as a sort of worst case scenario. And basically they're still in litigation but the clean car standards have been rolled back and gas is as of this as of yesterday and in Burlington was $1 59. And so these things that we didn't anticipate occurring have occurred. And we're also in the middle of a global pandemic and so a lot of this sort of assumptions that were made are somewhat influx. More than anchor in that point because that was something that's been come up and it's like how close are we at getting to that based on what we're doing now. And so I just thought it was useful for that. But I will keep moving in the interest of time. So in looking at that analysis we want to look at how effective the strategy has been and being reducing greenhouse gas emissions or promoting resiliency. Whether or not that strategy or program unfairly burdens, a specific group within Vermont. Whether it further is our state planning goals, whether any co benefits of the strategy are promoting other state goals. You know if we think about something like public transit, which has potential for greenhouse gas emissions productions. We typically a co benefit of our providing access to transportation for all Vermonters. So that that sort of the relationship there isn't one to one. Look at whether or not a strategy increases talking air contaminants or criteria air pollutants. And so then, and then making potential recommendations to modify those programs. This is an instance where we we make modifications if there is an instance where the state does not have the executive agencies do not have the existing authority then we would look to come back to you to to seek that authority. And this is where we get into it within the plan sort of what happens if all the existing strategies fail, or fail to meet the requirements, and that's, that's the state we're in now if we, if we were on the right trajectory, we wouldn't need to be having this conversation. So we need to make sure that we're continuing to make more fun. And so then you can you look at the same number of same sort of prioritization factors. I talked about previously and existing programs. And this again comes back to if, if we, if we lack the authority to do something. We lack that authority as Luke mentioned right you have to give us explicit authority to do rulemaking or other things. We don't have that inherent authority if we lack that authority specifically then we come back to you for implementation of that program. And that will matter as we talk in a moment about the timelines that we present as being related to, to this work. And so, so just hold your questions for now. And then going through some priorities, I think this is largely existing language moved around. And I'm not going to anchor here because we've obviously got lots of priorities within this work to make sure that we're accounting for all communities and not leaving anybody behind. And then the section five talks about how to make sure that we're accurately measuring and hopefully in a timely manner, our greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and then evaluation of the total costs to implement the plan. As we haven't discussed with the critical one. There is, and we sort of mentioned it earlier but not in terms of cost. There are actions that are going to be need to be taken now that will help make our communities more resilient in the face of climate change. And there are actions that are going to need to be taken now to make sure in the long run, we are less impacted overall by climate change. And there is a cost to both of those. And there is some sort of balance between the two of them that needs to be sort of. In the first round of the plan, the goal would be to come up with a sort of five year spending plan, not just the single budget that the council will be responsible for. So we're thinking about, we may want to eventually get to the point where we're doing X, Y or Z, it's going to take a year or so to wrap that up, and therefore we don't need, you know, again funding in the first year but we would need it in years two, three, four, five, whatever that might be. And that was so that would include looking at all the different ways in which we might use the state purse to support communities and individuals as they look to transition to different forms of energy. This is one thing that the number nine was it was in the previous bill but basically thinking about a municipal vulnerability index trying to think about how vulnerable a community is to climate change. And that was something that representative civilian in the house was very interested in working on and having the Department of Health, I believe, play a significant role in that process. And then the nine. So 10 through 12 is really about the tools that municipalities need in order to be successful and be supportive of these goals, these requirements. And then just 13 is really about thinking about is there to should we think about as we've gone through a process to develop a plan, should we be thinking about whether or not we're organized in the most effective way possible. So if we come back to you and say there needs to be additional members on the advisory board. This worked this didn't hear some things that we think are necessary to move to really advance this forward, whatever that might be. So I think it's just important to sort of call out that that moment of self reflection. Again, these are things that were that we've reorganized from the plan so I'm going to just give through those. Obviously, you're going to have to get more and more testimony on a lot of these issues and we're happy to engage in that process as we go along, putting an interest in time on the board. So, section 593 we amend to say rather than saying rules we call it say implementation. Because what we what in our in our envisioning of this process the plan. Again, it's held accountable what in the plan how we implement the plan and whether or not that's effective right so the first instance is we, if we come up with the right tools. To address the need. And the second is did we implement them effectively and so rather than focus just on the rules, we talked about implementation. And this is really important there are three buckets within each free that we put strategies in the first bucket is those we have existing authority to do and don't require any rules. So essentially the second bucket list. So I'll start first bucket is we have existing authority and we need to do rulemaking. So that that's bucket one here. The second is, we have existing authority, and it doesn't require rulemaking might be some sort of other for voluntary program or something that we would do where, where rules weren't required. There's an adjustment to prioritization of focus of an existing program, whatever that might be. We. So we talked about December 1 2021, I believe as the, as the, as the data plan, this said that we would get the rulemaking done by December 1 2023. And if it didn't need rules, July 123, and then the bucket that it leaves out which is the frankly the most critical one is is that those instances of policy where we think action is appropriate. That have not granted us that authority. And then that's really the, the rub in the legislative look back. As we've talked about is that if we don't have the authority, and this came up a little bit in the house was that if we don't have the authority to move forward with a program, then it's difficult to hold us accountable for not having moved forward with that program. So our proposal is essentially that those are the instances as we described earlier where we would bring that to you and say, we need this in order to be able to meet the confines of the plan. Please grant us that authority. And then once that authority was granted we would go forward and implement it. And then every time that we update the plan, then there's a timeline, a specific timeline that we propose for any, anything that follows. Right, so it's an 18 month time making timeline for rulemaking and a 12 month timeline for non rulemaking activities. So essentially saying every time we go back and make an adjustment to the plan. There's another timeline that the public can then hold state agencies accountable, or the state as a whole accountable to that timeline. That makes sense. It'll be clear as we get to the cause of action. Okay, sorry to interrupt. Jude, if representative Briglin arrives, can you call that out to the to me. Otherwise let's keep on going with Commissioner because we're closing in on the end here. We are. This is moving largely moving some things around getting to the same sort of general intent but framed in a way we think is appropriate to frame. So we'll, we'll cruise through these. So getting now to the cause of action section perfect well timed. And this is I think where the changes that we propose have the most impact on ensuring that the state is doing the work that you are telling the state to do. Right. In the current cause of action and the available remedies that went through now. And primarily explicitly related to things that you've told us to do typically through a rulemaking process. As we've talked about there are our current list of strategies and any more we might develop our own are very few of them frankly are actually rules. Some of them are incentive structures or other things that were, you know, sort of adopting to, to get people to be able to afford to make transitions to lower carbon alternatives. So, when we think about that we want to think about the plan as a whole, because let's let's provide an instance where this gets challenged gets to 2025. And we look, we get challenged and or against the time period after that when we realized that we didn't make it, and we get challenged. The first look should be at where we know and what's difficult and what's cost effective that wasn't previously. And that has turned out to not be the most effective strategy, so that we can go back and look at the whole thing rather than saying just because this strategy wasn't effective doesn't mean we want to we want to dial down the requirements, right to say and we need, we need to emit more from the sector, when it turns out we could get all of the work done from another sector much more easily and cost effectively as a balancing point right just that if you're just saying that the rule needs to the specific rule needs to be adjusted. Then that that mean doesn't give us the opportunity to do a effective cost effectiveness analysis. That's for 2025. So that this would be for all. So this is for all of the milestones. That's about 2900 days. Thank you, Senator McDonald. Always trying to keep it, keep it measured against World War two which is 1336 start to finish, not 1336 start to finish plan, but 1336 to start and get to the end of the war. And I'd like to consider that we look back to where we've been over the last 30 years of knowing that climate change was a challenge and not taking significant sufficient action. Senator chaired. Yes, I got called yesterday by a radio station that wanted my opinion on whether or not we should postpone action on this bill, because of the COVID-19. And so should we the question should we still be working on this bill. And my answer was no, we should not still be working on this bill we should have done it 20 years ago. And we're being asked today because of COVID-19, why we're not postponing action on this bill to. And that's what happens in the bill that we have before us was, oh, 1200 1300 days to get to a rule that was in place that had been reviewed and now we're looking at one that close to doubles that so I'm not faulting the witness in any way but we keep finding reasons not to deal with this in a timely fashion. Thank you. So I'm just, I'm dealing within the construct of the bill that's been proposed. What is missing in here, frankly, as as the sort of the reason why there's been a discussion about having some sort of legislative look back is there is an absence of a specific policy recommendation policy decisions from the legislature. And that this is an effort to think holistically so all of those potential solutions can be considered together. And if this is the approach then then let me provide testimony relative to the approach. Yeah, this is a holistic approach that takes a quite some time. And that's, that's what's being proposed. And I would add we've learned some interesting things today about, you know, what the basis of gas mileage and automobile standards and etc etc that you've shared that the witnesses shared with us, which all of which have set back any climate actions, just by their nature, at the same time we're considering extending the time to deal with climate issues. Senator if I could, if I could finish the thought that I didn't make earlier that would be helpful is that I often get asked, is this the right time to take action in the transportation sector. Right, our emissions are our way down gas prices are cheap this is the right time to look at things. Well, if we look at it one yes our emissions overall from during this period of time because we're not been driving around and going to work and running errands and doing all those things are way down. At this time, if we look at the lines of Vermonters who are lined up to get food, right, the purchasing power of Montage right now is at an all time low. And so I, you know, I just, I want to make sure that those factors on place it's not about simply about the long term trajectory of emissions are are bleak, based on the price of gas, and, and clean car standards, it's a mix of factors that are predicting this future incredibly difficult. Barely so is setting goals and time once. Nobody I don't think anybody's actually arguing over whether the timelines and the requirements in here are. I have a hard stop at 12. Yep. Okay, so let's press on. I'm on the floor. So I don't think we're going to see representative Brigham let's let's keep cranking along for the finish line here. Thank you. So, in the cause of action, we hold both the plan and any rule that was required as a part of the plan and if you think about the timelines that we laid out for you in terms of 18 months after the original plan 18 months after any subsequent update to the plan, if those timelines are made then there'd be a specific cause of action. So if the plan's not done in the timelines that are laid out either in the initial timeline or in an instance where a plan update is required if that's not done in a timely fashion, then those those that cause of action still exists. So it's just making sort of clear how the logic flows from the plan to programs or rules, whatever they might be to then the cause of action will bring them to account. This is important. The reason why we have changed this from the Secretary of Natural Resources to the Attorney General is that while we as the state agency, primarily responsible for sort of managing climate change activities. The authority is not exclusively going to be used as we look at programmatic pieces, right? There are things that might be in the agency of transportation world or the public service department's world that would not be activities that we would undertake. So holding the, again, stepping back to this is a one state one effort, holding the state accountable and having the Attorney General as the state's attorney, providing that oversight. So, moving on to the next cause of action. Sorry, I just got a little bit lost. It's really that the thinking about whether or not the plan itself is adequate. That's what we get at here, right, any action that talks about whether it's adequate. So that's really thinking about whether or not the work that has been described as part of the plan, rather than the rules again are sufficient. And then thinking about the plan rather than the rules. And then the, the, the, what stepping back to the plan is, we don't need to talk about a substantial cause of failure because we're not talking about a subset of the plan of the plan anymore. And the three here, essentially says that if the, if the plan was adopted, and was the cause of the state's a failure to meet the, the requirements as laid out, then there would be a cause of action available to the to plaintiffs that would then require to go back and amend the plan and develop additional programs that actually are different programs that actually meet the requirements. So that's, again, it's the logical flow of how the work would naturally occur and make sure that we can balance factors as they change to make sure that we have the most effective and most cost effective and most equitable strategies. So the expansion in a way from rules to plan means that you're any aspect of it, including the rules could be quote unquote at fault. But do you want to make sure that the totality of the program is sort of code would help responsible. So when you're calling that that totality is the plan. Right. Okay, got it. Thanks. So that's, yeah, that's, that's a great way I think that let's think about the totality of programs that we would we're going to need and to make sure that as a whole they are evaluated rather than on an individual basis to determine whether they're substantial costs. So, would this then sweep up something like we have weatherization goals. I don't know that they're hard targets, the way the spills proposing, but could someone under this as you read it now say you know we we failed to weatherize 80,000 homes and that's, that's actually one of our major sources of emissions in the country is you know burning fossil fuels to heat homes so why didn't the state, you know, someone would bring action in a way to challenge our level at which we executed there. Is that permitted in this language, or would that be excluded. I don't think that it wouldn't be a part of it because unless unless we incorporated that specific goal as part of the plan it would not be held to account what I guess what I would say is, is we're missing a couple steps along the way. Yeah, as we're developing the plan we recognize that the tools we have in place to meet that 80,000 target or frankly whatever target is actually needed to get to those to that part of the requirement. Then, then we if we would augment the existing tools with new ones. And if those tools were insufficient to meet the, the requirement, then that would all of them would be held to account so it wouldn't be the goal necessarily of 80,000 homes, which frankly is was based on sort of a best estimate at the time but may not be relevant currently. So they wouldn't hold that goal specifically to account. Okay, thank you. We think, sorry. It's making me think that things that we would like to see executed. One way to get them into this paradigm is to make them. And I'm not sure exactly how it happens. It's actually part of the plan. Well, sure. I would say that that I'm not to step outside fully outside the realm of this, the bill in this discussion but that would be if, if the, if the legislature's intent is to set a specific policy outcome then you should pass that policy and then we would incorporate that as an existing strategy that we would consider. Right, right, convert a goal to a hard target, and then it can become part of the plan. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I mean we would in court. So, I, we would. I don't think we would incorporate the 80,000 home reference into the plan what we would incorporate is the expected emissions reductions from those 1000 homes. The, the, and, and frankly that still doesn't give us the the actual strategies to get us to that reduction. And, you know, just, it's a good way to think about co benefits as well we do a lot of our weatherization work. So, for public health and low income, you know, public safety reasons rather than fully and reducing emissions. Right it's a cost cost savings issues for our most vulnerable population. Many times the emissions reductions that we see aren't as strong as we hope because people are simply able to have the temperature in their home be more livable. And so, and be able to afford that so there's there's a balancing point there what I would want to look to as the outcomes we're trying to achieve which are emissions reductions, how do we get. Okay, great. And then following we propose striking any attorneys fees associated with these actions. We don't think that's because it would become burdensome to the state in terms of cost. But it's my impression that we don't do this in other contexts. I'm not sure why it should be different here. Okay. We'll leave that one alone. All right. No major changes here we're going to get down to. Yes, this rather important section nine down at the bottom which anchors, which brings us back to the where I started early on, which is, as you as we've laid it out this is a pretty big part of what we're trying to do. We're trying to get the body of work just in developing the plan to make sure that we then have the tools to move forward. Obviously, we need to have a sort of separate discussion once the plan is done about fully funding the tools and making sure that that works but just to do the plan in and of itself is going to caught is going to require some of the resources. We've spoken to many states around the region. About what it takes to implement their work. There are some that are doing it, where they basically just reallocated somebody's existing job duties and said you're not going to do those. Not the approach that we necessarily recommend taking. But, you know, Massachusetts has within their department of environmental protection and with their in their secretariat on energy and environmental flares has, you know, a dozen or more people working on this topic. And while it messes up a larger state from a population perspective, the issues themselves and the technical knowledge needed don't necessarily downscaled to a similar percentage of the population for months. As I said, obviously they're not, you know, even in, even in normal budget times adding significant resources to the state budget is, is, is a difficult task and so what was arrived at here was the creation of three new limited agencies in order to support the planning development work, and then associated costs with them along with, you know, the detailed modeling and economic forecasting and cost effectiveness analysis that you want as part of the record associated with the plan and the actions taken to fund that effort. I am not at this point speaking for the administration in terms of whether or not we think this is an appropriate amount of money and appropriate to go through at this time. I'm just flagging where we were, and how this in conversation in February was a significantly different conversation than we were having now. I think about a, you know, even the sort of 2% reduction scenario that's been proposed for a skinny first quarter budget. That's a 2% reduction from FY 20 enacted dollars, which is not where FY 2021 proposed was and where it had gotten to in the house before things changed. It is, you know, so we're going to need to be working with you to be making some difficult decisions about where we prioritize existing resources. And so, while this, this challenge to center McDonald's point needs to be needs to be addressed and we should have been on it 20 years ago. There, there is only so much work that I can that I can have our staff do with the available resources. And double check on that 2% so my understanding is it's actually 8% cut an annual. Yes, perspective right and because we're only talking about a quarter we're talking about 2% in terms of dollars but. So depth depth of cut is 8%. And for us if you so so we've done the math and I need to lock this down but I think the 8% really is closer to 15% of what we proposed for FY 21. 21 was going to be an increase over 20. Right. Okay. So, great. Well, are you, you've less of on the screen is left us on a moment of suspense it just says effective day what is the effective day. That we do not propose to change. I don't know McDonald's point we need to get to work. Okay. Okay, it is 1158. So, thanks for a marathon discussion walkthrough. Thank you very much. It was very helpful to hear about here the administration's thoughts on all this. So committee thank you everyone will reschedule representative Brigham and tomorrow we're often running tomorrow Friday with a five witnesses a day I think we should learn a lot more and it'll be interesting to explore the questions we've been raising so far with our witnesses coming in. So, thank you very much Peter. Have a great day. Thank you very much. I appreciate you giving me the time sorry I went over my a lot of time but I think it's an important conversation that we get right. Yeah, it's a, it's a complicated conversation so I'm glad we got into it in the depth we didn't and I'm sure we'll have more discussion and questions to come. I have no doubt. Yeah, we'll do our best not to disappoint everybody. Thank you.