 All right, welcome everyone to this session of the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs. I appreciate everyone's patience as we're doing a little bit of technical issues and we're starting a few minutes late. So, we are going to be discussing H-S-4-9 and accurately into the Vermont Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And before I have, let's say, Council start to tee things up for us and give us a little bit of background on open meeting law and open meeting sections that I think we're going to focus on today. I did want to say that our focus here in government operations is going to be on not being work that was done last biennium on setting up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but rather how we are going to deal with some of the issues, both with the procedures for how the commission is going to do its work and also this issue of filling a vacancy. And I know I've already received some communication. I'm sure other folks on the committee have work folks that would like us to, you know, consider changing the commission and about its scope of work. And I think that those are valid conversations that we should be having them, but that is not the work that the government opportunity committee is going to be focused on. So just wanted to frame that up for all of us and the folks back home that we have a couple of procedural and technical issues that are really the focus of this particular bill. And with that, I'd like to invite Mr. Anderson to give us a little reminder and refresher on open meeting. So thanks for being here. Good afternoon to the record, Dr. Anderson might just like the council, wonderful to be back and to zoom out from the granular world of municipal charters in the broader world of a little bit of an overview and refresher for all of you. So we touched upon this at the beginning of last session, gave a little bit of a primer on the open meeting law and how it applies to the public bodies of the state. So the quick reminder version here is that all public bodies. That means multi member bodies that make consensus decisions. You might think of them as commissions or committees, task forces, things like that are subject to the open meeting law requirements. One vsa section 310 through 314. Any gathering of a quorum or more of members of that public body requires compliance with the open meeting law and the procedures for meetings in his state. So what is a quorum by default? It is a majority of the members of that public body. So whenever you have a majority of the members of a public body, gathering to discuss the business of the public body, you have a meeting that is subject to the open meeting law. If this hasn't already started to tee up a little bit of the sensation of what the problem is here today. Well, here's the spoiler for my fellow sci-fi nerds. This is a three body problem. In statute when you create a public body that has three members, it is impossible for the members of that public body to have any discussion of their business without meeting legally under the open meeting law. So this has happened quite a few times in the past where public bodies are stuck in cones of silence because any communication concerning the business of their public body would trigger open meeting law requirements. So there are some warnings, posting agendas, holding the meeting, recording minutes, and that is for any deliberative discussion of their work. The most recent example besides this one would be the tax commission that was formed to by any ago. They only have conversations about their work and warned meetings that were held in this room. Representative Chase. Clarification. Is the quorum of the total number of people that's supposed to be included or does it include vacancies? Like, if you had a 10 person body and five vacancies, would a quorum be five people or would a quorum be three people? It would be a quorum of the public body as it's established in statute. So it would be quorum of 10. Regardless of the case. Thank you. All right. This is key to not just this particular commission, but many of our boards and commissions and other bodies that this that we set up so just want everybody to kind of know that this is really unique to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Representative Hooper, did you have a question? Uh, trying to decide actually. No, not yet. I will. Quickly touch upon the concept of the business of a public body. It's not necessarily implicated beyond what we've already discussed with everybody problem. Any time and statute that you're assigning a duty to one of these public bodies, it will immediately trigger a meeting requirement for deliberations about that duty. So something to keep in mind of the future when you're determining whether to give a duty to a specific officer of government or to that consensus public body. If you give duty and authority to the body instead of a particular officer, you're going to trigger meeting requirements anytime that function is carried out. Something that articulated in this room in the past about some of the decisions and other bills that you'll be making. Okay, so moving on to some other issues in the open meeting law that you're very familiar with. Quickly remind you the work that you've done around electronic meetings. By default under the open meeting law in one vsa section 312 a to electronic meetings are permitted. Currently, so long as there is a designated physical location where a member of the public body or staff is present, and they complies with Vermont's public accommodation loss. It's suspended until July 1, 2024 based on the temporary authority that you passed last year, and that you also passed in three proceeding sessions as well. Any questions on electronic meetings. You are all very familiar with this right now. And we will be revisiting these I think that the Senate has taken the first crack it. A more fine solution with that in a bill that we'll receive later this session. In 2022, the General Assembly enacted a bill that codified a new one vsa section 312 a that provides that that temporary authority that you've put in all those bills will automatically be triggered whenever there is a current state of emergency. All right, I think that's most of the concepts that you need the only other one that I would touch upon would be executive sessions, one vsa section 313 executive sessions are allowed upon motion, and then vote of the public body to enter what is known as a closed session, where the public may be excluded, and where the public body may deliberate on a specific issue contained in the motion that meets the criteria, one of the criteria under one vsa 313 a. There's an enumerated list of the bases for the motion that you're allowed to have a close meeting. That's all I think I already mentioned this but there's no constitutional requirement broadly for open meetings. There's really only one constitutional requirement as far as that's concerned and it's the open doors provision of the Constitution that governs the State House that the doors have to be open. When the General Assembly is in session, unless there's essentially a public safety or public health concern, they would require them to be shut. But as far as the state and its political subdivisions and all those wonderful public bodies, it is all a creature of statute. Don't feel the power. And probably, all right, thank you very much Tucker for taking up the broad concepts for us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So for the record, Damien Leonard, Office of Legislative Council. So, because we've got Tucker here today, I want to take advantage of his time. And so I want to, instead of walking through the full bill, start with section eight. And look at sections eight, nine and 10 and then if we have time, I'll go back and do the other sections today and otherwise. We can do them the next time I'm in so section eight is amending existing law for the truth and reconciliation commission. The first change is on the bottom of page eight. And we're really just adding in a cross reference here that I'd left out before. So it's saying notwithstanding any provision of chapter 5 sub chapter 2 of this title, which is the open meeting law. Or section 911 of this chapter to the contrary. The commission shall permit any individual that they interview to elect to have the interview held in private. So basically. If you're being interviewed by the commission about your experience of discrimination, you can elect to have a private meeting with them so that your name and the video recording are not public forever. And that's something that was in the existing law we've added in this notwithstanding language to clarify that it's not just standing the open meeting law. The existing law Damian just contradicts or is a deviation from the meeting. We're just adding the reference and making it clear that we're not withstanding. That's a good way of putting that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, this is already the existing law in here. And so we're just we're just clarifying that. Yes, this is a deviation and we intend. To deviate from the open meeting law here. So section 9 adds a brand new section. And titled commission meetings alternative procedures and exceptions to the open meeting law. So notwithstanding the open meeting law. 1st, and we're on page 9 here for those people are following along 1st permits or more of the commissioners to attend. A regular special or emergency meeting by electronic or other means. Without being physically present at the designated meeting location. So this allows the commissioners to attend virtually. And the quorum requirements are not affected because they can have a quorum of virtual people at a meeting. 2nd, it allows provides a commission is not required to designate a physical meeting space. So they could have a virtual meeting with the public. Where they just set up a virtual meeting space. And then 3rd, the members and staff of the public body. Are not required to be physically present at a designated meeting location. And so again, this allows them to. Have meetings remotely and to have meetings with people who are around the state. So you could have people attending from the Northeast kingdom. From Brattleboro, Bennington. And they can all meet virtually here. So be provides certain requirements for when the commission does meet electronically. In order to ensure that there's public access. Those requirements are listed at the top of page 10. The 1st is they have to use some sort of technology that permits the public to attend through electronic or other means. The 2nd is they have to allow the public to access the meeting by telephone. The 3rd is they have to video record and live stream the meeting. And the 4th is that they have to post the information that would enable the public to access the meeting. And include that information on the published agenda. So just like we do for our meetings here. They're using technology that allows electronic attendance. They're allowing the public to call in their video recording and live streaming. And they're posting the information on the agenda so people know where to go. Hi. Thank you. Anything, posting any placed physically or not. Tucker. Sorry. Dependends on what the public body is. Public bodies are required. concerning the open meeting law. It's allowed to be virtual locations. That's not included here. So because they're not municipal, they're safe. So they don't have to have a physical location. Thank you. Thank you, Tucker. Just for framing, is this largely the same as the temporary authority that we did in Act 1 last year? Or are there key deviations? It seems, at first glance, like this authorization mission is really bottomable, we did in Act 1. Is that... There's one addition here, and that's the requirement to video recording the industry, which is currently defined, but that's a little bit of a temporary issue. So this would be a bit of a temporary authority, except there's no visual duty to have the video recorded. And as it's structured here, this authority would run contemporaneous with the authority of the Triton Rack Association Commission. So this is basically saying even if that temporary authority from Act 1 goes away, these are the rules for the commission. Thanks. Other questions? Okay. So subsection C just below that defines closed meeting as a meeting of the commission that's live streamed and video recorded, but that is otherwise closed for purposes of physical or digital access and participation of the public. So in other words, there's a live stream of what's happening. There's a recording of what's happening, but members of the public can't just jump into the conversation. Similar to what we've done with some of the hearings here where you have to have an invitation to actually join the Zoom call that's participating in the meeting, but anyone from the public can watch the live stream on YouTube. They just can't join into the conversation in the room. And then C2 is another particular piece for the commission here, and I defer to Tucker regarding whether we've used this language before. But what this will do is upon a finding by the commission that there are material threats to the health or safety of the commission, its staff, witnesses, or invitees, the commission may hold a closed meeting. In other words, a meeting where there's no physical or digital access for the public. And the commission may allow its staff, council, and any persons who are subject of the discussion or whose information is needed to access the closed meeting. In other words, they can have an access-controlled meeting if there are threats to the health and safety of either the commission and staff or the people participating in the meeting. Mr. Chair. Yes, I'm sorry for presenting Chase. So is that an only situation? Like the rest of the time, if they're doing a digital meeting, anybody has to have access to the Zoom? So for the other digital meeting, they have to permit attendance to the public. They have to allow public access by telephone, similar to what you would do with an open public meeting at the municipal level. I assume there's a public question and answer session if I'm familiar with the meetings from my own municipality here. So I apologize. This is really Tucker's wheelhouse and it's an area where I go to only the occasional select board, or I guess city council here in Montpelier meeting. So I'm not very familiar with it. Anyway, so is that answer your question before I move on? So it's essentially they can close the meeting if there's a health or safety threat or they can have a virtual meeting if there is no health or safety threat that's open to the public. Okay. That makes sense. And anecdotally, would that include the possibility of somebody jumping on from out of state with, let's say, unkind intent, like they saw getting in some of the Zooms? Yeah. Yes, it would have the potential for some of the jump on the call. Well, would that include, be included in the fighting that there are materials for us to help their safety? Would that be a reason to have a closed meeting? Or would that have occurred to have to happen first? And then I think the commission has to make the finding first. Let's see. Yeah. So I think the commission has to make the finding first in order to hold a closed meeting. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. I wanted to double check to make sure that there wasn't something that allowed them to close the meeting in process. Representative Haley has a question if we resolve that. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Apologize for showing up late. Looks like I had to reintroduce my Zoom. I haven't used it in a while. So here I am. But this is kind of a follow-up on Representative Chase's question. Are there specific instances that would warrant a health or safety threat? Who determines that? Is there situations out there and other instances that warrant what a health and safety threat would be? So the bill would provide the finding the commission determines that there's a material threat. I don't know if we have any existing case law guidance on how to make that determination. But I think that the commissioners can speak a little bit to why the commission asked that this language be included at some point. I just wanted to, while we're on this, just return to really underscore what the definition of closed is. This is not an executive session. We're talking about it being closed to people joining, for instance, the Zoom. But it's still being live streamed. People can still be... Yeah. Exactly. So imagine this meeting if members of the public couldn't just walk through that door. Right now, this is essentially a closed meeting electronically because it's just people who have the secure link that's been set out for the Zoom. And so a general member of the public can't do what happened at the beginning of COVID or anyone could just sign on to the Zoom meeting. And so in this case, this is a closed meeting if the public didn't just walk through that door. And that's different from an executive session, where an executive session, no one from the public can be what's happening in the executive session. So, and this is actually the... Actually, if you get down the seat three, it specifically addresses that the commission shall not be required to live stream or video record any portion of a closed meeting held in executive session. So it sort of distinguishes the two. So think of open meeting as anyone can come in off the street or from wherever they are in the world. If they're coming in electronically and join the meeting, closed meeting, it's just invited participants, executive session, public can't feel it at all. And in order to not give you representations, in order to go into the executive session, though, on record make a finding that there's a cause for them to go into executive session exactly like any other public body. Yeah. They could have a closed Zoom, but because there's fiscal elimination, that's a kind of a closed meeting. That's right. Like a public can attend. Right. So the key is open meeting and Tucker correct me if I get off track here. Open meeting, there has to be a means for the public to attend the meeting and to join the meeting. Closed meeting, public can view it, but they can't join the meeting. And then executive session is not available for public viewing. It's for a specific purpose. And there is a vote emotion on the record that's voted on to go into executive session. You discuss what you moved the executive session for when that discussion discussion is finished, you come back into regular session and the public can again view. So you some of you probably experienced this where you'll go into executive session for anywhere from a couple of minutes to an hour to discuss a topic. And then you come back and the public is again available. Sometimes there's a decision made that's announced or something like that, or you just move on to the next thing on the meeting agenda. I just want to make an analogy and I don't know if this is right Tucker, but a closed meeting to me sounds a little bit like being on a webinar. You're invited with a specific link, but you don't have dialogue with folks on who are presenting on that webinar. But you're allowed to watch everything that's happening. And that differs from an executive session when you're just period not allowed to be in that. Yeah. All right. I think we got this. Thank you. Great. No problem. It's as much of a challenge for me as it is for everyone here. So I have to have Tucker help me through this. So the commission's agenda here has to include information that will allow the public to access the live stream of the meeting. And they also have to post the video recording of the meeting and make it available for inspection and copying under the public records act. So this is again different from that interview we talked about earlier, which specifically excludes these requirements. So an individual who doesn't want their interview with the commission to be public, never available for public records act access. It's a closed meeting. It's not. It may be recorded, but it's not available to the public. And then this is an actual meeting of the commission that's open to the public. So there's the open meeting. There's the closed meeting that the public can view either contemporaneously or later. And then there's the executive sessions, which are completely closed. The last piece of this, if you turn to page 11, this addresses the issue of the commission being three member body. And it provides that deliberations of a quorum or more of the members of the commission shall not be subject to the Vermont open meeting law. So in other words, the commission members could finally meet to discuss the business of the commission without having to notice a meeting to meet whether it's two of them or all three of them when a third commissioner is appointed. Representative Hagen. Thank you. And that's just because this is a three person commission. If it were a five person commission, this piece would not be. Yeah, if it were a five person commission, you could still, you could still add this, but this would not be necessary. Right now, they're stuck where they have to use an intermediary if they're discussing anything besides basic operational. Has this language been used for others for member bodies? It should have been. Well, I think that that's a big part of why we're having a gravity that's in the room right now about, you know, this as a way to get around this issue, because we do have other very serious quasi judicial three member bodies. So I think about public utility commission principle. And I'm interested as we go through this process to learn a little bit more about how you've gotten around this issue in the past. I want to take represent, take lane that I'll give you again represent anyone. Thank you. Damien, if you could go back up to section nine again, it'd be a little a number one and I think maybe Tucker explained this. I'm sorry I was late again, but when it talks about a quorum or more of the commissioners may attend to regular. So we're talking to correct. Yeah, so to or or all three of the commissioners could attend a regular special or emergency meeting by electronic means. So in other words, they don't have to be in the same room to have a quorum for a meeting. Okay, thank you. Yep. And I want to follow up on our statement that that probably would apply if there are any three members left in the state of Vermont. Correct. Okay. So we're going to talk to her now and get since we're on this. That's okay. For this particular provision, I want to know two things for you. The first is the deliberations is a very specifically defined term in the opening law. And it essentially means the weighing of evidence and the arguments of parties or, you know, similar items that have come before the board, but it expressly excludes the taking of evidence and the arguments of parties. And the reason it's defined that way, and you just mentioned this, is that the deliberations of quasi judicial bodies are broadly excluded from the open meeting. So this is essentially saying that the deliberations of this body, whether or not it's quasi judicial are excluded from the opening law, they're allowed to have discussions weighing evidence, talking about the arguments that have been brought before the board discussing essentially the issues of the body, but not taking action and not coming to conclusions or weighing the evidence. Does everyone feel like they're on solid ground with the distinction between deliberations and the other activities of this commission and other bodies? So this exemption which can appear really broad is specifically an exemption that's about the weighing of evidence, not about the collection of evidence and not about they can't make any decisions outside of open meeting law. And that's not, that's not handy. This is not unique for quasi judicial bodies. This provision being so specific to one public body is unique. There's only one parallel that you could make, and that's the crime victim compensation board. And to navigate all of the specific issues that come up, for example, dealing with threats to the board, allowing access to people to those meetings who are the people who perpetrated the crimes, and they're there to witness the victims at the passing for compensation and maybe attempting to intimidate them, things like that. The way the general assembly navigated, trying to give carve outs to the crime victim compensation board has to greatly exempt that board from being able to do that. Just that one other body that I think of, that's the community restorative justice members of councils or boards, but those community organizations are exempt from dealing with that as well. And that represents Boykin. Just a quick question, Parker. Did you say they cannot come to a decision? They can't take formal action. This is strictly for deliberation. Okay, we're all going to be thinking a lot about what deliberation means. I don't want everybody to put that in their pocket. This is not the last time this will come up in this committee this year. All right, let's keep going. Thank you. So that's it for section nine, which brings us to section 10. It's another brand new section under the truth and reconciliation commission's enabling act. And this would create a new section 912 called affinity group sections, duty of confidentiality. And earlier in this bill, we've created express authority for the commissioners to establish affinity groups for individuals who have experienced discrimination as a result of state law or state program or something like that that they encounter. But the affinity groups are not necessarily run by the commission. There's something the commission can establish and the commission can talk a little bit more about how they would work. I sort of understand on a basic level, but I think that they can give you a better understanding of how these would work. But the key thing here is it's an opportunity for individuals who have experienced some sort of discrimination or hardship to share with other people who have experienced something similar. So obviously some really personal information to come out. So the first subsection, subsection a provides that the meetings and sessions of those groups shall be confidential and privileged. And that commission staff and participants shall be subject to a duty of confidentiality and shall keep confidential any information that they learn during those sessions. The next subsection there provides that a person who attended an affinity group session can bring a private action, a civil action in court for damages resulting from a breach of the duty of confidentiality. So in other words, if they are harmed because someone else reveals what they revealed during the affinity group session, but reveals it publicly, they can then seek damages and compensation for that harm. So this is similar to if someone invades your privacy now and you could bring an invasion of privacy action in court or if someone slanders you or something like that, you can bring an action for that harm that results from those statements. So this creates an affirmative right of action in statute so that there's a clear tie to what happened in the affinity group. And then subsection C simply provides that this doesn't otherwise limit or affect application of common law duties of confidentiality or any action that could be brought for breach of that duty. So this is basically saying we're creating an express right of action. We're not intending to limit people's ability to argue that other rights they would normally have may have been breached. So before I go to Representative Higley, I want to flag and maybe our committee assistant can help remind me of this. I don't know that we're the best committee at Quickster Really and I was sectioned. I'd love to have House Judiciary at least do a drive by if we move this forward and then on section 10 because I just write an action is probably a little out of our skis. I think getting too deep in the weeds on this, but right. Representative Higley, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments as well, whether judiciary or somebody else looks at this. I mean, who's the action being brought against? Who's going to represent? Is it is it they're suing the state of Vermont? They're suing who are they suing and who's going to represent? So I'll give you an example. An affinity group is set up. Person A discloses something private during the affinity group session. Person B, after the affinity group session decides for whatever reason that they're going to publish this information. They put it on Facebook. They put it in a magazine article, whatever it is by publishing that information. Person A who shared their story and has now had it splashed out in public experiences harm. They might could be something like the loss of a job. Could be other financial harm, reputational harm within their community. Now they've been outed as something that they was a deeply private family experience and it's been outed in the community. It affects their ability. Person A who shared the information and has now been harmed because it was publicly disclosed outside the affinity group can sue Person B because Person B is the person who committed that harm against them. This is the same as if you have two people and there is there's privileged information and then a person who receives that information without getting permission shares it publicly and invades the privacy of the person who shared that information with them that was protected by the privilege. So right now it's the same thing as that where it's the person who disclosed it is subject to a potential lawsuit and the person who is harmed by the disclosure who shared the information in the first place can bring a potential lawsuit. So it's not the state of Vermont who's a defendant here unless the state is one who published it. Yeah, if I could if I could have a follow up Damian. So what if it is one of the commissioners that releases that information that isn't wasn't wasn't supposed to be released. Would the state represent them or are they on their own? So that's a much much more involved question because you're getting into whether they whether the breach occurred in them carrying out their duties as a commissioner or whether it occurred outside of their duties as a commissioner. So it gets more complicated when you're talking about a state official whether it's a commissioner or a state any state official who has access to confidential information breaching that duty. The question is did the breach occur while they were while they were carrying out their duties as a state official in good faith or did it occur outside of sort of the scope of their duties as a state official? So it's a little bit different question then and if it's outside of the scope of their duties as a state official the attorney general's office which would normally represent a state official may argue that it they didn't do this as a state official they did it as a private individual and we're not going to defend them and then there are a whole host of other pieces here that I don't pretend to be the best attorney in the office answer things like qualified immunity and so forth for officials carrying out their duties and so I really don't want to get too deep here because I think I'm going to end up saying something that's not quite right but the baseline here is if it was a commissioner or a member of the commission staff that breached the confidentiality the state would be looking at whether they did it within the scope of their duties and then making a determination at that point so it's it's a that's a much more involved question. Okay thank you for that Damien. Yeah and I will say that once we get through the walkthrough I'm hoping we'll have a little bit of time today and certainly more time when we pick us back up to talk with the commissioners and general counsel who are here about the context for some of this so appreciate everybody getting the words on the page and then we'll do what we usually do and try to build some context around our understanding of it. So that's sections eight nine and ten uh section eleven is the effective date uh and sections one through seven I can start running through those I don't know what your schedule is I'm sorry section 11 is an appropriation section 12 is the effective date um so I can start back at the beginning and run through as far as we can get or I can yeah I think that's a good call um okay aren't any uh I think it'll be pretty self-explanatory um the previous sections are a lot less uh yes in terms of things to weigh but uh I just wanted to put a bow on this so does anybody else have any questions right now about sections eight nine and ten open meeting law this we will come back to these so I just we're doing our first walkthrough I just want to make sure there wasn't anything that was super confusing rather than anybody not seeing hands so we'll okay start back up at the top would be so thank you. So if we go back to section one uh this is the sunset for the commission uh and what we're doing in this bill is we're pushing out all the dates for the commission by ten months uh because the commission got established more slowly than the timeline that was set out in the original bill uh and so this is to give them sufficient time to do their work so instead of uh ceasing to exist on July 1, 2026 they would cease to exist on May 1, 2027 and you'll see this repeated over the next several pages um section two same thing the term of each commissioner ends on May 1, 2027 when the commission ceases to exist. Section three gets to the issue that was brought up at our first discussion of this where we created the selection panel to select the commissioners and then uh as soon as they selected the commissioners the panel ceased to exist and now unfortunately one of the commissioners has resigned and so there's an open spot so this would reconstitute a selection panel um that would only be five members given the timeline um the way it's been drafted in this bill uh instead of having appointees select a panel of people who are not appointed by a state official this is going back to more of a traditional state appointment process so your selection panel would be the executive director of racial equity or designee the executive director of the center for independent living or designee an individual and then an individual appointed by the speaker the committee on committees both of them shall not be current members of the general assembly and then an individual appointed by the chief justice of the supreme court so the governor is not listed on here is uh with an appointment power because the executive director of racial equity is the governor's appointed so um so that that would be a five person panel you'll notice a lot of strike through on page three that's getting rid of the process from before um and then uh going down to page four we're striking out the ability of the selection panel to establish and maintain an office because we're not paying for an office uh that they would largely not use uh and also the higher temporary staff um again there's because they're not doing a large search for the whole panel we're limiting them a little bit the term of the panel members would begin on the date of appointment and would end on the day the commission ceases to exist so this panel would be permanent important things to note if someone steps down during that time uh if they're an appointee we'll provide later on that the appointing authority will just appoint someone now uh and then if it's uh someone who's serving ex officio like the executive director of racial equity where just by virtue of being that person they're the appointee or they appoint someone if that person changes then the position on the panel changes does that make sense? I just want to flag one thing uh we found out on other boards that a member of the selection panel could be a member of the general assembly they just wouldn't be able to be appointed by the house or the senate it would be appointed by one of the other three right yes that is a very good point um the uh let's see going down the only other changes we've added to the existing language for the panel uh is that members of the panel who are not otherwise compensated by the state are entitled to per diem and reimbursement of expenses the understanding being that at the very least it's likely that at least one or two of the members will be compensated by the state so um and then the panel has administrative and legal assistance from the commission staff so that's why they don't need to hire their own staff and then a member of the panel that is appointed may be removed by the appropriate authority for incompetence failure to do their job malfeasance or illegal acts so we're providing some ability here to not be stuck with the selection panel if something happens down the road and more of the members is perhaps not the best fit anymore and then a vacancy can be filled by the appropriate appointing authority section four um get this to the selection of commissioners and this is where we address the current problem on the commission of having a vacancy before we get going into section four representative oh i'm sorry representative no that's fine just going back i don't know if it would be in that section three or not but i don't see any deadline that the panel has to appoint a new commissioner uh is that purposely left out what's what's people's thoughts on that so that that is left out in this draft uh in part because it's not clear when this bill will pass um it does take effect on passage um if you could provide within you know 60 or 90 days something like that um but if it is left out again you know like you say we don't have a lot of time for discussion but i think if we're talking about a time frame and this thing's moving on and we've already extended things 10 months you know i would think there would have to be some sort of a time frame for that if the commissioners can't work with two they need three there's gotta be a timeline for them to get it done thank you and that that change would go right into section four um there so we would we would probably just amend on subsection d make that change yeah so i'm seeing a lot of nodding to this and i think it seems fairly obvious uh now the representative pointed it out so do we um in the i i guess what i'd like to understand before we settle on a date so i think what we'll put a payment in for our fabulous drafts people is that we do want to set a time frame i'd love to hear from uh commission staff and and other folks about what this because i don't know all the details about the original selection but how much time they need and what would be a reasonable number to put in there representative chase the problem with that would be as if somebody else uh resigns then that date is in statute for filling this one position but then we could make it a time frame though yeah for all vacancies like 60 days i was going to suggest that if we're to have an end line let's leave it flexible for when we start the clock yeah so so let's let's think about this so we know and something we'll have to put in a future draft but uh before we get through the bill and just acknowledge that this is something we should try to get in there but if you can make sure we get it right okay thank you so section five creates a brand new section in the enabling law and this is section 905a this this was requested by the commission um and it's something that we if you'll remember back to our first discussion um about the bill history that was actually taken out of the original bill and that's removal of power for the selection panel so this would provide that the selection panel may after noticing an opportunity for a hearing recommend or remove commission our foreign confidence failure to discharge the commissioner's duties malfeasance illegal acts excuse me or other actions that the panel determines but substantially and materially harm the credibility of the commission or its ability to carry out its work so this essentially again gets to the issue of uh if at some point between now and 2027 something uh unforeseen happens that would tarnish the credibility of the commission or uh prevent it from being able to actually do its work the selection panel could have a hearing and move to remove a commissioner for one of these reasons only so they have to make a finding that the commissioner engaged in activity that was either malfeasance illegal activity showed incompetence or failure to discharge their duties under the law or uh was some other act that would substantially and materially harm the commission's credibility for its ability to carry out its work so it's it's similar to removal language that we have for some of our other boards where there is a specific term and then we provide for removal only for certain causes representative so who would decide who would make that finding the other two the remaining two commissioners that are in question the selection panel the selection yep so it goes back to that panel of five so is that right there so there yeah it goes back to that panel of five who would then appoint her replacement and so if I was standing the the panel exists kind of out there but only when called upon to fill a vacancy or deal with a you know an issue of the commission along they would come together and meet but they're not they're not meeting regularly unless one of these duties present no that's right are there questions on that section um just just a quick one thank you so the selection panel does that have to be a majority of the selection panels that's specified anywhere it is not it is actually specified here um sorry I was going to say it's specified in the previous section but it's actually specified in line 11 on page six recommend or removal shall only be authorized by a majority vote so in section six we're adding the power um for the commission to establish affinity groups in which individuals who've experienced institutional structural or systemic discrimination or members of a population or community that has experienced that um they participate for purposes of sharing experiences and providing mutual support so it's it's a may they may do this they're not required to but they may do it in section seven we're pushing out the report dates by 10 months just like in the prior uh section pushing out the existence of the panel or the commission I'm sorry and section eight brings us back to where we were earlier and the only other thing to note in here and this will be something that goes across the hall to appropriations I assume is that section 11 includes an appropriation of 1.1 million for FY 25 which was the original annual appropriation in the that was projected in the fiscal note in which the commission uh has not received the full funding that was projected in the fiscal note has their need at this point so again they can speak to that but this is asking for full funding for the commission and otherwise the bill would take effect on the passage so whenever it gets through the process you didn't be able to start a process of getting that every commissioner on the on the commission and now we're we've closed the loop on all the length it's represent b3 I think this question for you actually um what exactly is our timeline on this fix so uh obviously this is a decision for us as a committee but I try to give us a background information and get us to you know to be thinking about this and getting to work on it obviously in the early days of the session because I don't want us to know where I am it's my intention if it's the the committee agrees we kind of move this the rest viciously I would do that the reason I ask is because I'm just we're dealing with concepts that are sunsetting right and we're also going to create extensions to some of those things and there's components to this that are certainly permanent are we going to impact some of your permanent stuff are we so this is a kind of bounce that are redeeming so as I see the construction of this bill all of the it's basically saying we're doing the different reconciliation commission the way we passed the last biennium we've acknowledged that we didn't really weren't able to start its duty so we're pushing it up 10 months so all the things everything just moves up 10 months so in that sense we're not really reinventing anything that they're all those changes so then this uh I want to hear um from some of the folks about the affinity groups because that's the one kind of new thing new power and then we're reconstituting the selection panel in order to have some body to help fill the vacancy and deal with this unforeseen issue and then there's all the open meeting stuff those are kind of the buckets right does that um I don't know if that really answers your question well it does actually that's a great answer I'm curious to know how much of the how much digging we're going to do in that last bucket which is open meeting law itself I mean I'm curious you know when executive session was first established oh god if we're going to talk about that stuff so what I would say is that this is uh almost like a reverse echo of what we're going to have to do when we look at all the open meeting and remote meeting authority which I assume we will do in the context context of s55 um and I will commit to the committee that if I am wrong and we do not get a bill on this from the senate this session we will all get together into a committee bill I know all of my my committee is very or my community is very interested in what is going to happen after July 1st with this temporary open you know remote meeting authority right so obviously we're touching on some of the same concepts here but you know we're I don't think we're going to solve all the problems one of the things that made me feel a little more comfortable was I asked is this modeled on what we did in act one last year where we did the temporary extension through this coming July of the remote meeting authority and open meeting law uh that we had done during COVID and Tucker basically said with the addition of the requirements around video recording yes it's basically the same so that kind of made me feel like we don't need to spend a whole lot of time on that here because that's already the temporary law for every other body uh with that you know recording requirement so it sounds to me like you're saying if we don't satisfy my hopes and the committees for dealing with some of that more in-depth policy we will yeah and if we kind of get it a little bit wrong in some way that is unforeseen as if we pass this bill quickly and we don't quite have the remote authority exactly how we want when we get to doing a permanent adoption of the remote authority we could try to harmonize everything um and sort of say you know truth and rec here's the rules go to your work but then you're going to be subject to whatever the general laws that we pass you know unless we're not withstanding and allowing there to be so we are going to have to harmonize any remote authority that's out there with whatever we we pass in the future but I think at this point we just want to like get past this particular thing where we set up a commission that now can do its work because of some of these unforeseen issues so those are great questions thank you representative anger thank you i'm not sure who can answer this question out of anybody who's here but during this time where we're kind of on pause because there are only two commissioners what's happening with the commissioner's salaries right now are they being paid during this time or so I'm happy to let the commission speak with us also my understanding is that their work is ongoing and the commission and its staff are being paid but that they're just not able to have non-public meetings right now that's that's the issue I said when they when the two commissioners get together it has to be a public meeting or there are something like this where they're attending another body's meeting that's good enough thank you representative higley thank you mr chair yeah quickly uh and maybe it's been said previously but uh when do the commissioners actually get started and when was the resignation of that one commissioner so we started in hope first could you identify yeah so my name is melody and I love the commissioners forward to your seat um so we started people first and then um I could be sure stand in he left I think his last day was um you know my first second I remember probably November 3rd November 3rd yeah um so we have continued to to do our work and um we have plenty of things to do and we can do them separately so um and we're still having public meetings you will see all of that in our report which will be to you by Friday so you'll have all of that so we are still continuing it isn't that we've stopped but um commissioner stand in was very important especially in terms of disability and lenses that we totally need to do this work and so um we are we may need to hire consultants if we do not if you're not able to get ready quickly um if that makes sense we have pieces of this work that needs to be rounded out by third commissioners and they have to find certain pieces okay uh thank you so so again I couldn't really hear real well but so April 1st the commissioners got started November 3rd the commissioner who resigned resigned correct correct thank you all right so I think we've gotten through the words on the page um so I um wanted to know if uh the general counsel uh if the commissioners had um any either prepared testimony or whether you might be interested uh in taking a few questions to round out our understanding uh of how all this is going to work so I don't know if it makes sense um if if you all would whoever would like to to testify I'm willing to defer you in terms of how you'd like to um engage with us and help us understand a little bit I think in particular it might be a good place to um to just talk generally um and then get into the affinity groups and and where that proposal's coming in because that's one piece that's new but welcome uh commissioner and then we have your general counsel here so thank you for joining us I'll let you introduce yourselves and then we can open it up for some questions and we have Mia uh the other commissioners here as well so um Mia do you want to introduce yourself oh you're muted Mia sure yeah uh Mia Schultz I'm the I'm a truth and reconciliation commissioner joining you from Bennington what knew that there was going to be some weather coming back so sorry I can't be in person but uh it's a two and a half hour you know drive so in back they're in back so so just like like emphasizing again uh why it's so important to have these uh virtual options I'm sure um you'll be discussing that further as we go forward anyway thanks for having me here thanks for you there and just to reiterate my name's Melody Mackin I'm the other commissioner so we're now a commissioner too Mia to Bennington I'm in Barry and um I'm Michelle Lovera I'm general legal counsel um and thank you so much for having us uh Payne did you oh there you are did a great job so the things that we were going to testify about basically we were going to sort of do different pieces of the bill um I certainly don't need to do that anymore and so I'm just happy to take questions I don't know if Mia or Melody had just a few things to say before we take questions um I I feel like Damian did an excellent job I was like oh well um but there's certainly pieces that we can talk about so what questions do you all have for us that we can answer I think the general the first general question I have is um what the affinity groups are sort of how that fits into your practice and just so we understand sort of why the ask of that new power um I'm curious more than anything but I want to know a little bit about the genesis of that language that's in the bill yeah so we wanted to be mindful of the trauma that people have when they come to talk to us people have been incredibly generous in sharing with us uh some of their stories and also their ideas um during public meetings we've been really privileged to be able to be guided by the public and we also want to be really sensitive to the fact um that is hard for people and it has hurt them so part of their process of restoration I think may be aided by what really I think in common talk is just like support groups are group work right people that have suffered similar harms uh folks we've heard from folks that you know that experience sterilizations or different kinds of discriminations uh really harmful really hurtful things um and if they would like to talk with other people that have experienced like things uh then we want to be able to facilitate that for them um we also know and people have said I don't want to advertise this is really uh maybe embarrassing or maybe just personal for myself and my family and we don't want that to be advertised so that was the confidentiality piece of that representative okay thank you so rather than interviewing individuals on their own your concept is to create a supportive group setting for folks to share no no not rather than if people and it's by statute if someone would like to be interviewed and tell us their stories we do hope that they do and um that would be really helpful to us in terms of formulating how we might fix discrimination in the future statutory or provide public forums for people to have reconciliation and truth during those forums but in support of how they move on personally right having experienced that trauma we've now potentially created more drama by them telling us their stories that's a separate piece okay so the affinity groups from following you follow their testimony to you where they expose themselves and potentially brought up more trauma and the affinity groups are support groups for them who have all gone through this process of testifying to the truth and reconciliation right the purpose the goal being right i think thank you all right and let me give you a little go ahead ma'am oh go ahead melody go ahead uh well i was just going to give a little bit of context um because so where the truth and reconciliation commission the second part of that is reconciliation so what are the tools that you need to be able to help people in a community move forward because it's it's we're going to need things like if we decide to do this right um how can we best support people it's not enough if someone's coming to us to tell their truth this is why we're still in the building and planning phase and we're working on a strategic plan because all of these questions have to be lined up before somebody sits in front of us and is telling us these really hurtful things um and we want to make sure we can support them right so this is one tool we could have if we decide to do it um and it's a i feel like it could be a very useful record reconciliation tool that makes sense um if it happens but thank you yeah mia did you have something yeah just to build on on that you know really um part of our work that we've done you know publicly is create a mission statement and part of that mission statement is about uplifting and centering the people who have been harmed and their truths i mean that that's why we're here that's why we were formed and that is also part of the pathway towards our healing and our collective healing together uh as as a state and as these individuals um um you know decide or decide to tell their truths and so we want to be able to offer as many options that feel comfortable and and safe quite frankly uh for those people and affinity groups is you know one of the many options as my colleagues have said towards that mission of of healing quite frankly and and i would also say that um you know just generally uh we want this to be um reparative for all of us um and that means giving options in every way possible um and so that's you know kind of the thinking of the affinity spaces um just adding an extra layer of safety thank you that really helped my understanding of what you're trying to get at and realizing and david i think did a good job of emphasizing it's a may right so it's giving you a power to to set things up uh representative hickley go ahead yeah thank you mr chair uh thank you commissioners um i do have a question um i believe the wording initially uh in a sense was uh any group or individuals that have been adversely affected by vermont's laws and policies um again i think what i'm hearing you say is uh you're going to accept anybody's testimony that feels that they were adversely affected but you're not going to make a determination whether or not that was rightly rightly just right i mean uh and then i guess my second question is when you were talking about options uh what are we talking about there what what options are we talking about well like the on the first piece of it you're asking about um whose whose cases do we uh deliberate about um and thus far when we've presented some emblematic cases at our emblematic case meetings uh we first uh the commissioners vote on whether that is a discrimination under the statute whether they fall into one of those groups or another group that uh the commissioners want to put into their purview um so that's one two we do not uh we are not a body where there's hearings on each case to decide uh who was wrong like who was the person that committed that wrong what should happen to them in terms of punishment that's not what we're about we're not yeah we're not modeled on that sort of hearing and uh decision-making type body uh i'll let me uh do that other the other piece of that yeah yeah we're not uh just to emphasize we're not um the original statute the original law does not make us a governing body uh so we do not get to like say for certain whether or not somebody is specifically guilty of a specific course of action right but what we do hope is that the state and the people who are um attached to the state right whether it be yourselves legislators or people who work in government agencies uh do participate in this process because it's critical to the pathway to um restoration so it's not a matter of blame it's a matter of um moving forward and not ignoring you know what's been our harm the harm that's been done by in the hands of the state so um so and that was all determined in our initial legislation um in terms of other you know what other options they might have it would be a one-on-one option it could be um a public forum type of option it could be the affinity spaces it can you know those are the types of options um that we've been exploring for um what we're calling testimony right now or storytelling right so again testimony some of these language does bring up an idea that this is a governing body but we're not thank you and again that the state has the state has many advocacy groups and support groups that will also you know give referrals that people might avail themselves of again that helps me uh when you've talked about options i was concerned that it was options for some sort of reparations or whatever at this point but you're saying the options are for getting their word out to you folks uh and and i i understand that better now thank you and at the end of all of this we are submitting a report of recommendations so whether you take them or not is up is up to you or you know just in general um the community and in pathways to how Vermont can be a place where everybody because this has to be everybody right um all people in Vermont should have a stake in a better place right in a place where everyone can thrive so we make our recommendations and we don't um we don't have the power afterwards to do anything it's all up to you right and it's up to people whoever says to me seats in 2027 no we're not making determinations right um are there other things um that after this first walkthrough of the bill um that we should be thinking about in particular that you wanted to highlight is there anything that um we should particularly focus on as we look to go from this draft to something that we can get out of our committee this may um this will certainly have uh at least a stop in appropriations if we pass it in anything like the draft form so it's got a other other folks and um maybe this maybe this is a faux pas but i wanted to ask you all just like there was a mention about the budget and that is in um in the um the proposed legislation about the 1.1 million that was initially allotted to us in our original legislation uh but we did not receive that amount that basically covers our staff's salaries we had to get some computers we had to get set up an office you know we have those expenses but um so we're asking for the original amount back that we were initially legislated and mr if i understand this right this is this as it's written it's physically or 25 um so okay um so well that that's more of a question for our colleagues across the hall in the appropriations committee but i think the signal that we would be giving is that from a policy perspective you know we support the work of the commission if we pass anything like this draft bill um and of course we want you to have the resources that you need i guess my question is in the current appropriations process have you um what what was the determination that was made what were you budgeted if you have that information handy um i i did ask um the original was 748 000 is what we were budgeted where we're given when we started or that's what we have now this year okay so it's over the fiscal year this fiscal year 24 that we're in right now and so the ask for fiscal year 25 and start July 1st is the 1.1 yes okay thanks fiscal years uh we don't we don't talk about that a ton over in the side of the hall uh but thanks for cloning that up give us your yeah we definitely don't want to start to play appropriations committee over here in goboffs i've tried to keep the firewall as uh as tight as possible we tell them what we think is important and they figure out how to divvy up the money um great well we've hit the 230 mark um we do have one open slot on our schedule later in this week and so um i'll be conferring with folks offline about when we pick this back up again but it could be as early as thursday afternoon just to um set some expectations but i really appreciate everybody's thoughtful questions on this today and for all of you being here and commissioner schultz no apologies if you don't want to make the drive all the way up here this virtual option works great i'm happy to have you that way um let me know if you need any more uh reinforcement on that right it's hard living in beddington i'll tell you so um committee thank you very much thank you thank you for being here um so we're gonna uh just take a short break we will come back on 245 um i in the spirit of trying to both hear bill introductions from things we didn't get to hear last year and also try to keep some things topically revel relevant i've asked uh representative stephens to present uh her ideas from uh each 194 so we'll pick uh that up with a quick just bill introduction um because it has to do with some of the uh areas that we're talking about with government accountability that we're gonna hear from at three so we'll be back at 245 all right welcome back uh to the house committee on government operations military affairs on tuesday january 9th we're here for the second half of our tuesday afternoon afternoon is going to be devoted to um a look at government accountability and i wanted to start with a bill that was um referred to us last year and um i appreciate representative stephens joining us to introduce uh 8494 and i think her thoughts on this may contribute to our discussion of the summer government accountability committee's report and um the future work we have and flushing out and understanding their recommendation so represent stephens thanks for being the opening act of our government accountability work this year thank you chair mccarthy uh and for the record uh i'm gabriell stephens i'm a representative serving the south end of burlington uh and my day job when not a state rep uh is i manage a lot of projects and programs and i do a lot of evaluation of how states are doing with various energy programs so across the 50 states looking at how different uh different groups of people are rolling out programs that state legislators give them so first of all thank you so much um you know when i was first elected back in 2021 i uh co-sponsored a bill that actually called for a working group to look at what we should do so thank you very much for having that working group last summer if you notice h194 is a short form bill uh basically i you know after working on the we should have a working group concept i stepped back and i said you know there really just needs to be committee discussion and testimony and a lot more uh weigh in from folks who audit programs and evaluate policies to see how they're working uh so that's why it's a short form bill but in the event you haven't read it recently i'll just read it to you quickly the bill proposes to create the legislative office of government accountability and strategic planning in the legislative branch to assist the general assembly in one monitoring and improving the performance of state government two evaluating the operations and efficacy of state agencies departments and programs three developing strategies to harness vermont's strengths through prioritized investments in individuals and businesses the economy the natural environment and infrastructure for assessing the extent to which state government is sufficiently and appropriately staffed to meet its obligations and five ensuring that public funds are being used appropriately and in the manner for which they were appropriated or otherwise allocated so i i know you're going to get a rundown in a moment from the summer group um i'm really grateful for their work they have a lot of recommendations including some like duh recommendations like it would be great if we got some reports back more like november 15th so we could implement them into bill making uh and sponsoring um i i want to just set the table a little bit though which is i really don't see this as uh a party-based bill uh you know the founders of our government proposed three branches of government and they thought they should be equal uh executive judicial and the legislature uh we don't have that in vermont we have a citizen-based legislature we're part-time we're seasonal we don't have staff and two of the elements that came through when i read the summer study working group one was 80 percent of the rest of the us states have some form of tracking back to legislators to tell them hey you know that bill you passed really isn't serving your constituents or you know what this bill could be improved this way or maybe you should put more money into this program and less money into this program so 80 percent other states have this and on top of the fact that we're citizen-based we're part-time seasonal uh with no staff we we also have um the third smallest uh legislative council office so we're really trying to do a lot um within you know uh a certain bulk and as a project manager um i don't know if you guys have seen there's there's this triangle where you can either increase how much money you spend or reduce how much time it's it's basically cost time uh or quality and if you put tons of money at something then you can get it done really fast and you can get it done really well if you don't put much money at something then maybe um you know maybe it's not done on time and it's done really well or maybe it's not done very well but it's done on time and the point to all of this is how do we know if we're serving Vermonters if we don't know what the impacts of our laws and the implementation of those programs what those impacts are how do we know and uh they're not all 13 of us um but i although we probably some of us disagree on what the role of government should be or the size of government and how much money we should put to state government i'm fairly certain we all ran because we wanted to make Vermont a better place according to what we think for Vermonters if it's our friends or our neighbors or our vets or whomever so i really hope and i'm so grateful that you're picking up this bill um i don't i don't know how we improve upon our work if we are not tracking the data and coordinating across agencies and assessing what's working and what's not um let me just see if there's anything else i wanted to say i guess the the other major piece that i i wanted to say is that the challenge here is cost right like how much do you put into um assessing how we're performing uh and you know there's there's a saying in the data world junk in junk out if you put in junk data you're going to get junk data out so the other piece is how do you ask the right questions to figure out you're going to to make sure you're getting the answers back that you really want um so that then you can make the informed choice as to how to move forward do you change a law do a change of program do you get rid of a program but we can see this across uh you know decades if it's if it's eb5 if it's our last um you know our last budget vote uh with uh you know at the last minute trying to figure out what was going on with housing and the unhoused we need some mechanism to have a better report back in terms of what's going on and how we can serve better our constituents and our neighbors yeah so uh i am i want to recognize that our house co-chair of the summer government accountability committee has just joined us representative stephens and was was saying yes that's what we're talking about that's government accountability um so uh we are hearing uh i wanted to give representative stephens um the opportunity to introduce h194 her short form bill which was about uh government accountability and throw a couple of um the ideas and principles on the table from uh some of the work that she does in as a pre alluded to our hearing the report of the summer government accountability committee anybody have any questions for representative stephens representative who burned them watered thank you mr chair um representative i do beg your pardon if you mentioned this in your overview of the policy of the bill you put before us but regarding the history of the planning office in vermont you know this isn't a new idea right this used to exist from what years did it for how long and why did we strap it well it was actually one of my constituents uh governor howard dean uh who uh got rid of the uh government planning office so i believe that was in the 80s um and i think it was around i it was not around for long um and so you know i mentioned one of the questions of like the cost uh how much money do you put into assessing and evaluation um another question is where does it sit you know does it sit under the executive branch in you know in my proposal or rather in the bill that i co-sponsored in 2021 it was a new planning office and one of the questions was we don't know where it should sit uh in h194 i put it you know clearly i'm suggesting clearly that it report to the legislature um because you know after two and a half years under my belt i was like i i know that i voted on all these things and i don't unless i like dig through the websites or know who to ask for a report um then i may not know how whatever i voted on in 2021 has evolved so um it was a while ago it was in the 80s uh and governor dean got rid of it i did ask him why about a year and a half ago but i can't remember his answer i wonder if we can get him to come in and testify you know the tools we have today but to really look back and um reflect that in the same way representative waters Evans thank you i'm wondering um so there's the summer uh government accountability committee and it seems like um i'm wondering if there's sort of two male other groups committees organizations maybe even not associated with the legislature or you know the executive branch but like a nonprofit or something that's are there any other kind of two male organizations or committees that are doing this work somewhat already that could be so i guess my follow-up would be is there a way to your government or get it to work together is that just like a puzzle that's too big to put together well i think this uh a few answers one it sort of depends on what you're trying to look at um like for example there are nonprofits that will dig into certain policy areas to see whether or not we are achieving um the mandates that we've put into law so i would say that that's a form of accountability um but that's probably specific to you know child welfare or to clean energy policy or whatnot um then we have other areas you know i i served on health transfer transportation my first two years and the amount of dashboards and reporting and planning that they have to do for federal grants etc they do so much of it but is it and this is again where there's a bit of a rub um i said cost and i said who does the accountability report to another rub is um you know how do you make sure you're asking the questions that are going to give you the answers that are actionable because we can ask a lot of questions but if you're not actually asking the right questions then you've got a whole lot of data that you don't know whether or not you know a certain policy is working so that's another piece that i think as you guys take this testimony and as you weigh through this a key question and it's probably great for um you know the co-chair who just walked in and is going to present on her work this summer a key question is how do you how do you provide enough specificity but then also flexibility so that as things change our data collection our evaluation approach can change um ideally we would have some form of higher level ongoing sort of report cards at a frequent pace so that we can see the change and then you know we also have the opportunity to do a much deeper dive into specific programs or policy areas um so but ideally we would get that sort of ongoing dashboard tracker to see whether or not the work we're doing the bills we're passing the um programs that we're asking the executive branch to implement whether or not they're having the impact that we are striving for um so yes long story short representative there are many groups doing many of this which is why uh you know one of the key areas here is coordination you know that the h194 has drafted and your next witness it's more specific to reporting to the legislature and providing the legislature the tools to assess accountability um which is a little different than whether or not you're trying to assess like if you're the secretary of transportation whether or not you're trying to assess whether or not you've you know met certain metrics so that's another piece with the the data and the evaluation that can vary depending on who's doing it so now that we have both of our co-chairs here I want to pause here on h194 I thank Representative Stebbins for teaming that up and her patience with us getting around to this and I hope that you feel better because I want to hear from our summer government accountability committee so thanks for being with us Gabrielle I appreciate being here thanks so much chair and thanks everybody thank you um so I would you like to come together Senator Brad from Representative Brum said please uh join us we're anxious to hear the report out from your committee's work over the summer I'm going to be back Representative Stebbins is going to stay stay out she can do thanks I am I also just wanted I apologize as they're taking a seat I wanted to say one last thing which is this is sort of basic good business is just being as efficient as we can with our scarce dollars so hoping that we can really find a path forward me too well welcome Senator Brock and Representative Brum said if you'd like to introduce yourselves and tell us about your work over the summer let me start I'm Randy Brock I represent Franklin County and part of Grand Isle County in the Senate and the Senate when I was here and I'm Jessica from Representative Brumstead and I represent Sheldon and St. George and I'm the co-chair of the House Human Services Committee and we spent the better part of our summer on one particular project that I think is close and it becomes closer to our hearts and I think it's a project that's important for the General Assembly as well that is on the issue of accountability you'll remember that we had a government accountability committee that we put to rest in the last section and and we did so after a considerable period of time because I think many of us felt that we weren't accomplishing what was really intended to be accomplishing one of those things that we were looking for is to help us deal better with the issue of accountability accountability is critically important for a legislative body because you know we passed tons of legislation we enact lots of things we spend horrendous amounts of money and the question always comes at the end of it is well didn't we accomplish what we intended to and we say well that maybe something we'll look at at the next session but we have all this stuff that we have to deal with right now and we go on and deal with the things we have to deal with now and often we don't go back one of the things that we tried with the other accountability committee was to provide training and information to people throughout the body to say well how should you look at legislation that you pass how should you think about the issue of how to be more accountable in what we do but when we look back and the look back had to be informal because there wasn't a real process to look back to say well did we accomplish that nobody was really able to say that again was kind of a clue as to how effective our accountability process was one thing that came out of it is we established our kind of indirectly a process in which the administration came back and produces a series of reports to us that says what was accountability like for the administration as a whole for key programs and we certainly looked at very often adding requirements for agencies of government to report back to the general assembly on a date at some point in the future information about what was done in conjunction with a piece of legislation that was passed and I think for any of you who've been here for a period of time you know that there is a pile of paper somewhere in a warehouse someplace in Montpelier that contains all those reports most of which we've never read that again was an indication of that government accountability as so many things got asked for and reported upon but reported upon often in such horrendous volume that none of us had time to read it those of whom actually decided to go read in the first place and so we had a challenge in front of us and one of the the biggest part of that challenge was defined what do we mean by accountability and is there something that we should do to look at accountability from a better lens and what we've looked at in the past and one of the things that we started doing was looking at well gee rather than reinvent the wheel maybe somebody's figured out how to do this in some of the state better than we have and so that's the way it's one of the places that we started kind of rough said sure so we as senator brats said we started we did hear from about 15 different through ncsl the national council of state legislatures we heard about about 15 different states and what they were doing and we sort of landed on legis stat i mean on new mexico that had a program called legis stat and went what representative stevens was talking about when i came in the room about asking the right questions in order to really get at are we being how do we measure and how do we collect the data we need to see whether or not we've met the goals of the legislation that we pass and they have come up with a way by pulling together folks from both joint fiscal and ledge council to really focus on accountability and so it might be a little similar with what governor dean some said it it sounds like but i also think that governor dean did that in the 80s which was right about the time that senator snelling had gone off to a ncsl conference and came back with this whole with what we were before the government accountability committee and that way that legislation we you all just sunset it and it was around an outcomes report and that was really a big new idea right and i think in some ways what representatives stevens said about the box and you know how are we needing what does it look like are we needing all the things we wanted to someone sort of checking that off that's what the outcomes report was and so now here we are 10 years later sunsetting that because that was more of a look if you remember when i came here last year that was more of a look back at what the executive branch was doing and what they you know how healthy is from our vermoner is how you know they were putting all the statistics together to try and see if those things were changing over time which is great but as far as the legislative branch goes i think what we we shot for was really looking at having a system of meaningful accountability for how tax dollars are spent but we have all i think struggled to agree on an effective way to do that so then as senator brock said we listened to ntsl we heard from the auditor's office we heard from joint fiscal we heard from um leg council we heard from office of um see if i can get it right perform the performance office through the governor's office um and we heard from the office of racial equity so all of those folks we we heard a lot of testimony remember you gave us three meetings to do this work in we ended up going to the speaker and asking if we could have four meetings and we didn't we did get our four meetings but we didn't get to the second half or the you know quite a bit of that maybe even the second three quarters of the questions we had we really tried to stick to government accountability and oversight and look very closely at that so we came up with some eleven common sense recommendations allowing the legislatures and the public to keep track of what happens after a law is passed how new legislation is implemented how and when dollars are appropriated through budget process as expended we oh the other folks we talked to was el car and we tried to come together on some changes that could be made right away and a lot of that came through the auditor's office and they are already doing it so one of the things i would recommend to this committee is to hear from el car as well they've made some substantive changes around how rules how the rules are written whether or not they're meeting legislative intent and so and so forth so i think that's really important as well um so the intent really is to reexamine the principle of government accountability by focusing on how evidence is used to inform policy how state laws are carried out and how our laws can best be written to and achieve the intended outcome so those are sort of the big the big three and just as an example right now up in the house human services committee we are moving forward on a bill that came to us from the senate um to ban all flavored tobacco and e-cigarettes it's really aimed at the zillions of kids who are using labored e-cigarettes in schools and we four years ago we passed legislation that raised the age to 21 that said no no internet sales just like we don't have any internet sales for cigarettes either so for e-cigarettes and we raised the taxes to the same as what we were charging for cigarettes for e-cigarettes and so we did those three things that we still have more and more more kids using e-cigarettes in our schools so my point to our committee was okay before we start taking up the the senate bill let's look back at that legislation let's hear from the attorney general's office and say hey are we following up on some of these things that we already know that that kids aren't supposed to have e-cigarettes right and and we hear that the attorney general has some really good information to share with us we're also following up with the department of liquor and lottery and saying are you guys doing the secret shopper are you going into the our stores and asking the questions and making sure that we're not selling to kids under 21 so that my point is just that we need as committees also not only are we talking in these recommendations about setting up possibly an office that would be oversight and accountable office but with a actually with a legislative committee that would work together with this office as well as to work together with the committees and the committees would then have the ability to to think about that when they take on new legislation so before they take on something new let's look back and see what we already have and I think ledge council we have actually had legislative council carby jump jump carby come in today to talk about what I was just talking about but the e-cigs and I think it was really helpful everyone around the table was like oh that's what we did four years ago okay so how much do we need to do today so I think that um it would be helpful to do that I I also thought that it might be helpful now to if you pulled up our report we could just go over the 11 things and see if you have any questions because senator breck and I both have sort of lived and breathed these 11 recommendations and you can find them on under other so if you committee so if you go to committee have them on page first day and there's a letter that's the kind of the cover letter but then I believe the document you should be looking at is the summer gag recommendations draft 3.7 that were adopted on December 13 that looks like yes and I think I'm on page three that has that list of 11 if you want to just pull them up and I and maybe you we can just well the question is which graph the document the summer gag recommendations is draft 3.6 in 1213 this one doesn't have seven dated 1213 on our findings right now I see that's the one yeah the final one okay I just want to make sure we're yeah definitely and you'll see the back of this report yeah we actually put the slides from New Mexico because we thought they were so helpful okay so one I mean the first one is obvious we talk about this all the time educating members of the general assembly on the importance of government accountability right we talked and interrupt me anytime if you have a question or send a book so that we can help help you all think about each of these but you know what you could ask the question well haven't you always been yes we have and we don't usually get that many members so the idea again is to really put another foot forward to encourage lots of our new members especially but all of our members to talk about this and as we as we move through these you'll see that there are a lot of other changes that will be important for everyone to understand as they go forward if you decide to take something like this up there's a linkage between simply the notion of educating and actually achieving some results from that education first talk about the concepts and methodologies using to do use to deal with the government accountability generally and we touched on that in the education that was presented by the by the last committee but also training and data informed decision making and then also the creation of some tools that could be used on a replicating basis throughout legislation that we construct so that we have some consistency in what we do so people are tied in to looking for particular things that would help measure results and outcomes of legislation that we pass this is the government accountability equivalent of how we in here look for a sunset for every board and commission that gets set up exactly exactly so two is create a joint government oversight and accountability committee and that might not that wouldn't be a policy committee that would sit that would meet during the regular time it just so you know each one of these so there are 11 and then if you go back through the report each one is has all kinds of examples and other information next to it but what we were thinking here is a committee that would probably meet in the summer and fall regularly would work alongside or with some input from the auditor's office as well as with the joint if we are able to put funding into some new staff that just works on oversight and accountability with committees through joint fiscal and ledge council that this committee then would work with them off cycle you know off when we're not in session and one of the things that we saw from looking at the work done in other states particularly those that the state auditors also are involved in an oversight function is that reports are created under government auditing standards about issues and things to look at things to improve things that have created problems elsewhere but their mechanisms to ensure that they're in fact as follow-up right now Vermont has has has a void there can be audit findings and audit findings of significance most of the time those findings are resolved but not always and you certainly have situations in which audit agencies say well we don't agree with that audit and things die on the line and don't get looked at further there isn't a mechanism to continue the oversight process to the extent that it should be and as a result significant issues potentially die on the vine what we're designing here or talking about designing here is a mechanism not just to provide uh uh accountability but also to provide oversight so that the legislature has kept the prize of things that are open things that are problem areas things that may blow up at our faces so that we're aware of it and also provides a mechanism to follow up to the extent that is necessary again with some controls and guidelines to to do that so an example of that is the auditor finding that our dance some of our dance might not have been meeting the safety requirements and so what happens to that report who's looking at it who's making sure that in a year there's some change that the funds are there and they're actually being spent inside of government to fix those problems and then there are also issues that happen in the past that can potentially be embarrassed to people either in the general assembly or in the administration and I certainly as a former state auditor I've seen this many times in which people don't really want to look back at things that will embarrass them as a result they don't often get looked back to the depth that they should and this provides an oversight mechanism to ensure that we do in fact look back and it provides a level of look back control so that this committee doesn't have the ability to go and create a major investigation of some kind again without authority and the permission to do so but it says the ought to be this group can look at some things that get referred to it whether through auditor otherwise and recognize that when we talk about audit we aren't just talking about audits that are done by the state auditor's office we have lots of auditors in state government provided by agencies the federal government for example who provide audits and provide audit reports question is is there a place that that goes to from a legislative perspective that provides oversight to it and this provides a mechanism for that to happen also and so then number three it builds on that right as to where's the staff coming from and it's to define a policy planning and program evaluation staff function to assist the general assembly with improved account of so that's that coming from joint fiscal pledge council together to help us with that work both in committee and outside of committee there's consumed um so it seems like with what Mr. former auditor just said the continuation of this that is getting to be a pretty fine line between the administration's responsibility to carry out the will of the legislature and our ability to just say here's the money go do what we said and how do you deal with that I mean we seem to be enforcing something that we may traditionally not have the authority to do I think that that fine line is exactly what's here don't we do that now we sort of do this now we come back in January and we say oh how come we didn't spend that money on the housing in Bennington but we approved it and so there are and then we receive reports we might receive a report from the federal government that goes through the auditor's office and ends up in a committee that says all kinds of things that we should be doing I'm trying to think of a good example the child care financial assistance program had been told when they were audited that they didn't their IT systems were not up to speed so we made sure through the appropriations process that that money kept going funneling into the agency of human services department of children and families in order to upgrade that and it wasn't happening and we didn't realize truly that they were not in compliance and so this is an opportunity rather than just as we do now which is sort of walk on both sides of that line trying to figure it out even though we're a part-time legislature this is an opportunity to really look to have systems in place that make it so that individual legislators don't have to remember it on their own so the ccfap plan a problem that came up I knew about it and I don't know if you remember representative Treber was the one who had told me in appropriations and so we we kept asking those questions right but if both of us had left office at the same time the systems weren't really in place to make sure that people were asking those questions based on these sort of things being in place and that's what we're really saying that there is a fine line but we're trying to figure out how best to follow through without it being about the individual sitting in the price and it's in most states that you looked at it is a legislative watchdog as opposed to a separate specter general sort of organization the legislature in many of the states that we looked at did have a mechanism often a legislative audit office for example in which the reports by these outside agencies went to one place in the legislature this is not exclusive but one of the things that legislatures did is to look at whether or not the legislation they passed was being implemented and the processes they put in place were in fact being followed and then it gave them the ability to have sufficient information to be able to ask the questions that legislators typically ask when they talk with agencies or others who are involved with the implementation of programs also was designed to help legislators look at was the the legislation passed sufficient was it working was it doing what was intended and is there something else we should do it it helps answer questions and that's the real goal it's not designed to replace anybody else okay and then the next one is just the timing of the programmatic and performance measures budget report as well as other reports we just noticed and this again is something to take testimony on but we really noticed that the budget really is a it's one year right from we know there's beginning and an end but couldn't do you have to look at it at the beginning or the end could you look at it when it makes sense so if you always look at it in October then it's still one year that you're looking at it in October so that by January you're prepared and ready to go um is a question that I think is important for you all to think about like why do we stick to certain deadlines when we know how difficult they are to meet for both sides so that's in particular you may get a legislative report that is delivered to the General Assembly on January 15th but in order to prepare a budget to deal with it you have to have the information well in advance so that the information is useful in the construction of that budget which is actually going to be delivered in January the fact that we have information coming in at various points in time is rather as rather than having some consistency in having reporting days that match the actual need for the information that's the piece that seems to be missing and what we're saying is perhaps if there is more consistency in this and more thought given to when reports are delivered to us to act on we might be able to produce better end results right all together um five is increased consistency and accountability and rulemaking with support from the legislative committee on administrative rules and that's the one that I said they've already started some of these changes um that both we recommended and the auditor has recommended so I think it'll be important for you all to hear from Elkar do you have representative Higley here who is our ambassador to Elkar in terms of both dismissing him Elkar great um okay number six develop processes checklist and timelines to ensure all key legislative reports and deadlines are easily accessible to the general assembly and the public and that's that once we do have um work completed that shows how we're doing that it's actually somewhere on our website accessible to the public as well as to legislators who maybe didn't sit on that committee or didn't realize that that had happened or they're new and they want to check out how we're doing in different areas we don't really have that anywhere on our website it's pretty much dependent on what you know you're going after to look for but if you're just a member of the public it's really hard to find information out of our accountability um number seven establish a process to ensure that committee members and committee staff regularly and formally review past legislation legislative mandated reports and other materials i think we've talked about that a lot number eight establish a process that allows house and senate committees dealing with issues related to appropriations institutions and transportation and the reason for those three committees these are money committees to follow up on the previous year's budget with historical data so the idea being that rather for those of you i'm not sure if this committee works on the budget but most policy committees work on the budget so our house human services committee we um look at the policy decisions that are made or not made um based on how much money is appropriated right so this idea is that we wouldn't right now the way when we look at the budget a lot of it is around the ups and downs but not those things that happen to stay saying it might have been that they went down or up but not by the end of the year they were back on the same line and so we miss a lot of information right overall and then the real question is shouldn't we be looking at three or four years back and see what's happening we do get some information like that when we look closely at the budget um we see some bar graphs and things like that but it would be what we really like is the big numbers to be over time so that we can actually see how things are changing in government over time that one's a harder one and i think you'd have to hear from the appropriations but we we did see some evidence of this in the new mexico bills it seemed like it was a lot of the um the questions that were opposed by staff in the joint fiscal office were around over time they weren't very specific to last year and this year you know just looking at like the 23 and 24 budget they were looking back to the 20 budget that sort of thing um and then number nine is that right yeah establish a process for committees to monitor and report upon deadlines relevant to enacted legislation and so that's in our committee we passed the big child care bill last year we made sure that our committee assistant had um has all written down into our timeline when every report is due and if it's not in checking on it that sort of thing but really to making that a system something we do in every committee it's not all the same the other thing is legislative council does a report at the end of the year that summarizes all of our laws that were signed by the governor and in it they have a chart that shows um when everything is due to be done from that law but it doesn't just go in a structural way to every committee like legislative council doesn't always come into every committee and explain that it's specific to the bills and the laws that they worked on um some committee chairs encourage it and go ask for it others don't and so again back to my point out it shouldn't matter who's sitting in these seats it should just be a process so that everyone gets used to that happening and makes and is able to respond they would like so number 10 is require a performance note for legislation that is a priority or costs more than a threshold dollar amount this is a big one and um if you look back here into your section by section if you go to 10 you'll see my pages aren't numbered but I bet your pages are um is it for you no your pages are numbered well I have it on the pdf I have it's page 11 it's does the number 10 at the bottom I have it at the very bottom okay and then when you go over to ab and c and d you'll see that this is that if you are doing legislation that you have a clear statement of legislative intent the overall goals and the changes anticipated a description of expectations and timelines for these expectations how you're going to collect the data in order to collect to measure results and evaluate whether the legislation is having its intended impact including its impact on specific populations an entity designated by the general assembly preferably one that is independent and nonpartisan to be responsible for data collection monitoring and reporting back to the general assembly on the progress associated with the policy changes and investments and it could be this new group of staff that we've been talking about right that would help us to walk through this on legislation in the committee room but then also would help us to look back when we um get to the next step let's talk a lot you know which we do and I'm sure you all see uh the kind of fiscal notes that giant fiscal prepares for us to give us an idea about costs and estimates and what this is is is is something somewhat similar a performance note it tells us if we're going to pass this bill and if this isn't for every bill this is for key bills or certain bill and perhaps that past financial threshold something that tells what is it we're trying to achieve if we did achieve it what would it look like how could we measure that achievement and how could we put numbers to it if there is an issue of cost or return on investment and then how do we monitor it and one of the things if you've been here for a while and you hear a lot of agencies come in to tell you about how they do they typically don't come in and say you know we really messed this up we missed our budget target we didn't save any money we added a lot of staff that didn't stay a lot of things went along that's a that's a lesson that you rarely hear but those in some cases are lessons that are real and that's why we say ideally the answers that we get to those questions should be done by someone who has a degree of independence to be able to tell us without necessarily having ownership of the problem and there again a business education about how to achieve that and a good example of that is again I have to always draw from my committee because that's where my examples are but the child care bill we worked really hard to make sure that there was an entity that is going to collect the data to show whether or not this bill is having its intended impact it was a leadership priority last year so it would fit in this qualification right it cost money was a new tax I mean all of those things and what so we put building bright futures that is of quasi-public private independent group in charge of they do qualitative and quantitative research with 14 groups from all over the state talking with parents families providers all of it and really are able to track down and are helping us to come right now I think on January 15th they're going to be releasing a report to the legislature that shows what they're going to be tracking how they're going to track those things and they just came into our committee the other day and already it's only been six months and we've created over a hundred new spots and child care spots all over Vermont especially in some of our most rural areas through course St. John's very and we wouldn't have that information if we hadn't built it into the legislation so it benefits all of us not just you know there's it's a it makes so much sense to be able to look and say it worked this is working after just six months and they're going to be giving us updates every year for the next 10 years to be able to show and this will help us treat the bill if it's not going quite right if we find a problem we'll see it we'll see it in the data how I can't imagine anything better than that so I have to say that this number 10 is my is my paper um that just has the idea isn't that we were doing performance though if we're doing like some procedural tweak to election policy this is when we're creating a revenue source in a big program and we're trying to impact thousands of families on a huge thing like child care then we want to collect data and we want to understand who it's coming from but who's going to be helping out about who's collecting it exactly like housing wouldn't it be nice to have all that kind of information on all the things that all the um what we've done so far in housing we put in a huge amount of money but we don't have a huge amount of information to help us understand it and I think that that's that's the point the um the other thing is some little things we might want to know some of this data we might want to have for for example this tobacco bill won't be a huge cost it'll actually be pretty low because it shouldn't impact taxes too much we will lose a little maybe but we do want to know is it helping us to reduce the number of kids who are using e-cigarettes and there are many other questions we have too so there it's important for everyone I think to take some responsibility for looking at what they introduce and if it were to pass would they want to be able to tell people in their district or in this state how it has impacted the state I think don't we all want that in the long run and even if it comes out as senator brock said it comes out not quite what you and thought like oh there's no new spots being created in child care okay I'm out what's going on are we not paying for are we right so then we can still make amendments that's the wonderful part or we can sunset a bill and start over but at least we'll have some data to make our decisions with and that's really what I believe this is all about as we look at the tobacco as the classic example is we want to know what's the effect on the sale of tobacco we also want to know what's happening in neighboring states and particularly in those states that a but Vermont in those communities but Vermont are their sales rising and are the numbers such that you can see that we haven't really made much of a dent at all I hope that isn't the case but that is one of the things that we should be looking for we should be looking for information that helps us validate that what we did was the right thing or if what we did was not the right thing is not working to help us correct the course before we spend large amounts of time and large amounts of money on something that isn't working and so number 11 is just simply define and right size the overall staffing necessary for the legislative branch to carry out the recommendations of this report so and it gives you in each one where we should be looking or hearing testimony it would just help I mostly these are written in a way that hopefully will help you all to hear to know where to get your where to hear testimony from in order to be able to make best decisions you want to make for us the and so it goes through each each of the recommendations and where you might want to I think finally very very important is the last section that's on recommendations addressing 2023 axon resolves number 53 section 2a and these are the questions that you asked us to answer around equity and inclusion and sunsetting you know those were the um well it says it right here it gave the summer committee on government accountability a very broad charge and initially only three meetings the committee focused its initial meetings on this first charge which is what we've been talking about of creating systems within the general assembly to increase accountability but the second through the fourth charges focused on composition appointment and compensation of boards and commissions and are an entirely separate body of work from the first charge the committee is grateful for the attention and effort of the office of racial equities executive directors is on a Davis for bringing these issues to the committee's attention at both its November 3rd and December 13th meetings but given our limited time I mean we had four meetings and as you can see we did quite a bit in four meetings we're available to meet these ambitious legislative charges by mandated deadline and the profound importance of these volunteer positions to our state's functioning the committee recommends the following next steps and those are for you all and honestly if I were you I'm just I guess I'm sitting in this chair so I get to say it one time which is I would put these in our own bill separate from government accountability because government accountability is is something different and this it both have equally incredible importance to the way things work but they're different and so I put them into two into two bills if it were me that's it questions for our co-chairs for President Penko this is not a question this is something I've expressed to each of them individually but I've found this to be one of the the most compelling reports that we've ever been presented with because it really specifies actions that we should take and I feel like it's all really common sense and some of it I don't believe that we really aren't doing but aren't doing already but it's it's understandable when you think about how much turnover there is both with legislators with staff and how reports could just get lost even though they're well intended that people will read them so I really appreciate the work that you did and can't believe you did at all four minutes it's amazing thank you I am cognizant that we were referred a bill and I had that on the agenda today H702 did I get the number right which I believe the house members of the committee all co-sponsored and it is a short form bill that I think I know legislative council is not here but if I'm not mistaken it just says adopt the recommendations that are in the report that we can walk us through so I think you know for us as the committee I'd like to take the next step and actually start to flush some of this out outside of the bounds of our committee room and honor the work that you all did this summer and try to turn 702 into a vehicle to enact these recommendations I think the recommendations are clear and I really value all of the work that you put in I also know that it is going to be a challenge I think to get them into legislative language where we can get consensus and actually move it all forward so we've got some work ahead of us to dive into this but it's one of the things that I think we said we set you all out some work you've come back with good specific recommendations and it's our obligation to do our best this year to try to make some progress in these areas I don't know if other folks on the committee if there's anything you're particularly excited to work on but I'd love to get we don't have to do this right now but if there are two or three or four of us that want to work on the language and consult with Senator Brack and represent Bermuda and say is this really what you meant by that legislative council and try in the next couple of weeks to get 702 kind of fleshed out I would appreciate you volunteers to help with that work because it's going to be a lift I'm happy to help to I guess you're going to get time in the senate to do that but I think the house is going to start right is that correct what's that you're going to start the bill here yes send it over yeah it's our so senator hardy and I began a tradition last year and we've both house and senate gov ops have worked well then on some of these bills that are kind of priorities for both bodies where we kind of know one group is one body's going to start and then the other committee will get to finish we've been able to sort of divvy up some of that work and pretty well and I drew the taking the first crack and I'm taking your recommendations and getting them through the drafting process so this will be I think the house side going first and we'll do our best to give you all something over the senate senator brack that you can not have to stand down too much I think it's definitely maybe next here from new Mexico I think you'd be interested in what they did and they might be able to help you with legislative language and also we had Tim Depplin from legislative council is that who we deal with so he knows that too and if you look at our webpage you know when you go to committees and go to other and then under that summer government accountability committee we have a lot of slide decks from I think like 12 different states so you could look at that as well and if something you know the nice part is if you do maybe do small groups working on three or four of them you know like separate out the recommendations and have it kind of like what we do on the budget and we do it outside of the committee room and then we bring our stuff together and talk about what we found then you could look at some of those different states and say oh in this area this state has some good ideas and oh in that area of this state I mean I've been thinking about this late at night you know right so how on earth do you get on top of all that you would have to do and that's just an idea because you don't have to I don't think you have as much of a lift during budget sessions so this might be an opportunity that would be a good time to do it the way we do it during budget we still have stuff going on in maybe we still hear testimony but we're all off on our own in small groups of two or three doing work on a couple of areas so you could do it something like that just an idea I appreciate the suggestions because there's a lot here and I also I'm glad that there are other states have gone forward that you're saying yes these bottles look like yeah I emphasize I had the opportunity to meet the appropriations chair from New Mexico by a star and they have a very different style of how they do business in New Mexico but some really impressive ways of thinking about how to organize their legislative work and not surprise that they have a model that we can create from what is nice with their legislative council there is the legislative council actually helps them to think of the questions too like as they work through a law a new bill they'll say you know okay so what are the goals here what is the legislative intent it does make a difference when you're asked those questions meets of course is everyone at the table to think about it any final questions for our co-chains well thank you very very much for inviting us and uh this is a fun project this is critically important and you know it really isn't that complicated once you sit back and you think about gee wouldn't it be nice to know what it is we're trying to achieve in this bill and wouldn't it be great to really understand did we do it that is complicated when you really think about it to its fundamentals well I think what you're suggesting here standardizes the questions and it seeks to create mechanisms where there's a culture of continually coming back to those same questions to check back in and make sure that we're actually doing the things that we set out to do in legislation and it's it's not being uh victims of the immediacy of whatever the next thing is the next thing and I think one of the things we also talked about was the ability to have some immediacy and are reporting on the one hand to the extent possible and second to have clarity we have this tendency in government as you know to produce 450 page reports that no one reads but really understanding whether something works and whether or not something does what's intended can often be expressed pretty simply and the key to people understanding reading and pushing it it was the ability to express it simply and that sometimes is hard to do without thought you are reminding me senator brack that Tucker Anderson of legislative council has compiled the list of reports that are up for a repeals review and that those we haven't done that whole process in a few years so it's a little backed up I believe there are 140 candidate reports that the chairs of the relevant committees jurisdictions have all received a very organized spreadsheet description of those reports and been asked to get playing with their committees and give feedback to us to compile a list of reports that may be ready to go off into the sunset so I think the the timing is good and there's a little bit of a parallel there so we're going to try to be about efficiency and accountability and just doing a little bit of government house cleaning this year in a way that maybe we don't always take a step back and do so this is the video for that here in gov up so I appreciate you doing all this work with us and we will definitely be contacting both of you for help and guidance as we try and get into the drafting process on this so great great well committee we will be back here at and time tomorrow and we'll let our co-chairs go I don't think there's anything yeah I think we're picking up our harder work but I don't think there's any big announcements or anything that I need to make so I will wish you all a good evening