 we are now live. Okay, thank you. Those and government operations June 2nd. And I see we have some guests with us. So just in case people don't remember who we are, we'll introduce ourselves, which we normally do when we're in the room in a committee meeting. So I'm Jeanette White from Wyndham County. I'm Anthony Polina from Washington County. Brian Collamore from Rutland County. Allison Clarkson, Windsor County District. And I don't know if we have Senator Bray. He says he's still connecting. Okay, well we will have Senator Bray from Addison County. So welcome. I see we have Catherine Long with us. We have June Heston. Hi June. And we got your news. I got your news. Yes. Thank you. I'll be sending out my announcement today. Good. Congratulations. Thank you. And we have who, let's see. Oh, we have Addison General Knight, Catherine Becker Van Hayes. Oh, and there's Senator Bray. Did I miss anybody here? Who's 802-380? Do we know who that is, Gail? There's somebody on here. Possibly Bob Burke. Yeah, that's me. 802-380. Thank you. No video. Good. Okay. Thank you. So what we're doing is before we left the statehouse in March, we had thought that we would have an update on our burn pit legislation. I was a major, for me anyway, I felt it was a major piece of legislation that we passed and wanted to just hear where we were, get an update. Has it made a difference? Is there anything new? Is there anything, excuse me, else we need to do? Committee, do you want to throw out any other ideas about what we might want to hear and then we'll just jump right into it? No. No, I'm most curious about whether people are signing up, taking advantage of it. Right. I guess I'd like to ask what has led to the lawsuit that we now have from the White River Junction area. All right. So let's hear first, I guess, from, I'm going to jump here and hear first from June. I think June, you were one of our major witnesses when we passed this before and I'd just like to hear your take on this before we get into real specifics or specifics. That would be great. I think I would have had a conversation with the adjunct in general or the deputy adjunct in general and probably six to eight weeks, but they had been doing a lot of work with getting kiosks up and running so that at any function they were hosting for Guard members, they had the opportunity right there to register on the burn pit registry because there is an issue, I think with, and I think, General, I can speak to this better than I can, but there is an issue when trying to get on a government computer and complete that burn pit registry and they have done some work in getting postings to all of the town clerk's offices, I believe, to posting, you know, for veterans to consider getting on the burn pit registry. I have no idea what the health department has done for that piece of the law, so that I would be interested in hearing more. Okay, and have you, I know that when we first did this, one of the things that you talked about was having heard from people around the country. Yes. Is that still true that people are? I am actually participating in an organization called TEAM, which is working on federal legislation. They currently have a draft that's focused on the VA, and that has been submitted for review. It's not, it isn't in yet, but we have had a couple of meetings in DC before COVID hit with Senator Jill Brandt's team has been working on legislation as well. The initial meeting was to try to get everybody to work together, but I think there's still three, at least three or four different pieces of legislation being proposed, and our goal was to try to have it be one. I'm not in love with the current proposal, but it is working on expanding health care and benefits for veterans, establishing research and review regarding exposure, and then improving the resources to the VA regarding toxic exposure. And now they're also writing a bill that will be DOD focused. So there are, I would say, 25 or so veterans organizations and nonprofits coming together to write this legislation. And Joe Stewart has joined the fight. Oh, good. He was pretty effective. He was. Yeah, great. So let's just kind of get some reports here and committee feel free to ask questions or we'll just go through and and then just have a general discussion. Is that okay? Sure. Do it that way. Okay. So, Adjutant General, do you want to, General Knight, do you want to tell us what's been going on from your perspective? Absolutely, ma'am. I'm happy to do that. Everybody's doing well. All things considered. So from the outset, we've been pretty aggressive in getting the word out through multiple venues and on multiple occasions. So as June had mentioned, we work with Town Clerks, the VA have done a couple of postings on social media. That's the Vermont National Guard Facebook page, the Adjutant General Facebook page, even to posting the CNN interview with West Black and talking about his experience. I've sent all Vermont emails, which goes to our full-time force and ideally percolates down to our drilling members in Air and Army National Guard. I put it on our SharePoint and it's that's something that most of the Army National Guard full-time staff can see. We've done directed mailings to retirees who were deployed to areas with open air burn pits and to those that separated from the service. And then, as mentioned by June, Ken, Greg set up work with our state counterparts and set up kiosks. So we do an annual soldier readiness processing and that's for administrative and medical readiness. And we put these drops that are not on the government system. What we found is there are a number of firewalls and it just presents some challenges in working through the DOD system to actually log in and register. So trying to make it easy for everybody to do that. My concern and a little bit of frustration is the further we get away from deployments, the more difficult it becomes to reach out to folks and encourage them to log in. I don't understand the rationale. We're making it abundantly clear why it's important for them to do it. But I can give you some numbers. So for instance, June of 2014 through the fourth quarter of 2019, Vermont had 544 participants in the airborne hazards and open burn pit registry. And then from June, now through the second quarter of 20, we're up to 637. So that's good. It's a positive trend. But I know for a fact we've had thousands of our members deployed over the past 15 years. That number still doesn't approach what we should be seeing in our efforts to get folks enrolled. And I did see a news article on the lawsuit against the VA from West Black. And to boil it down, it was either a misdiagnosis or a failure to properly diagnose what was going on with him. But that's what I've got for now, ma'am. So I do find it concerning that, Anthony. Could somebody just tell me, I feel kind of out of this. I don't know much about this lawsuit. Just curious, could I get a little more of a sketch of what the lawsuit's about? Yeah. Sure. So West Black deployed twice. He deployed once with us to Iraq in 2005, 2006, and then later with our brigade to Afghanistan in 2010. In both instances, he was exposed at some level to open air burn pits. He'd had some intestinal, lower intestinal issues, some bowel issues, and they were treating him for irritable bowel syndrome. But they never did a colonoscopy. And that's really kind of the root cause here. Had they done a colonoscopy, as I understand it, they may have identified the problem much sooner. Unfortunately, now it's metastasized. And I think at age 34, he's basically on a limited time with us. To use his term, he's a dead man walking at age 34. So that's kind of the crux of it. It was basically a misdiagnosis. Okay. Chris, that's the same. Yeah. I do find it very concerning that we have even that few, I mean, even though it's improving, that we have that few who have registered. Bob, do you want to weigh in here? Sure. Yep, sure. So again, same thing as the editor in general had said, we've put it out on our website, social media, any outreach that we have been doing over the past year, obviously nothing in the past three months. But we've been talking it up and encouraging people to participate, not just for the sake of participating, but to gather that information so that decisions can be made on causation and things such as that. So we continue to spread the word. Again, as June had said, I don't know of anything that the health department has done in terms of pushing out to civilian providers to ask that question. So I'm also interested if what or if anything has been done from that angle. And I am hoping that we invited the health department since they're on the list of and also the Vermont Medical Society. I don't see anybody here from either of those from the department or from the VMS. Yes. We did not invite the health department, but I did get a note from Jesse Barnard, and I will post that on our website. Okay. Yeah, because the Vermont Medical Society was hopefully going to be very active here in sending out the information. That's my apologies for not making sure that the Department of Health was notified. That's that doing this virtually is sometimes a challenge because you don't have the access to the lists of who the usual suspects are. So so. Madam Chair. Yes. Can I ask a question now? You certainly can. Okay. I'd like to the address in general said was giving us a was giving us a head count on registrants. And I think you he'd said we got up to about 640, but he was a little disappointed. So Edgerton General Knight, can you what if you had a this ballpark of figure of how many people Vermont had exposed? I don't know. It's 640 compared to what universe? You know, you have a guess. Well, sir, I can tell you in probably about 15 years worth of deployments now, it would number easily in the thousands. I'd have to work a little bit and do some digging to give you an exact number, but certainly 2000 or more. So through four years ago, I just talked with Ken through four years ago, 2500 had been deployed and that that's Air and Army. Okay, great. And I guess just to sort of finish off the path, do you know how many folks have been deployed where there was a burn pit since four years ago or ballpark? I would have to say nearly all of them. And I don't know that number of people deployed. Sorry. Like how many have gone? Well, in the past four years, 2500. So we're probably going to be north of that number if you incorporate all those deployments for the past 13 to 15 years, going back to 2003. So probably closer to 17 years worth of deployments. And to echo Bob's point, and here's the point of concern for me, and June can certainly add her opinion to this. My concern is it's important to collect the data for the burn pit registry, which would certainly help with research. But the other part of this is we don't know when these aberrant diseases are going to manifest themselves. So our soldiers and airmen could be many years removed from a deployment and have some aberrant form of cancer show up. And if they don't know to mention to their primary care provider that they've been exposed, that information, they should be signing a medical release and have that information go back to the VA. So somebody within that process, within their medical system, within their treatment can establish a potential linkage. Because the stuff that we're seeing is these are just aberrant diseases that are happening far too early in life. And without having folks enrolling and knowing enough to sign a medical release, we're never going to be able to get to this. I'm looking to try and find Jesses. Did you put it on our website, Yael? I'm doing that right now, Madam Chair. I will forward that to everyone. Okay, thank you. Well, I, Catherine Catherine. Yeah, Madam, Madam Chair, this is Catherine Long. I just want to express appreciation on behalf of the senator for the work the committee did to draw additional attention to this issue nationwide. I think June is a great example of the kind of advocacy work that is happening at the federal level as well as at the state level. So just to highlight that the end result of work like this isn't solely on the number of registrants, but also the broader public awareness. I did want to mention that Senator Leahy advocated again for funding, not technically earmarked, but dedicated to the center, the airborne hazards and burn pit center of excellence in the FY20 appropriations. And we have heard some of that same concern that General Knight mentioned about the firewall. So we're very appreciative of the efforts that the National Guard has made to circumvent the DOD issues with that. My sense is that at White River, they're also trying to address any technical issues that individual veterans may be having with the with the registry itself. And I think that that's a good partnership, but perhaps the general or Bob would want to comment on that. And then finally, just from my own experience in dealing with veterans, I think that piece of educating the medical community is really typical in the National Guard population because so many folks come home and proceed with their civilian lives and have regular health insurance, regular community providers. So to build that awareness is really crucial. I'm happy to answer any other questions that may come up. And I'm sure Catherine Van Hees has some good input as well. Thank you, Catherine. Catherine. Hi. Thank you very much for having me here today, Madam Chair. Again, this is Catherine Becker Van Hees, State Director for Senator Sanders. So I will just add a little bit to what Catherine Long shared. This has obviously been an issue that Senator Sanders has been closely tracking both from his position as ranking member of the Budget Committee and as a member of the Veterans Affairs Committee. One of the issues I know we've talked about in the past when I have testified before this committee is the role of the Department of Defense in the initial exposure and responsibility for covering the costs associated with treatment. We all know that regularly injuries of body and mind occur while on after duty in the military. And then it is left with the Department of Veterans Affairs to treat the conditions that arise after service. So one of the things that Senator Sanders has remained focused on is ensuring that the Department of Defense play an appropriate role in responding to the exposures that they caused. To that end, Senator Sanders included requests this year in his appropriations requests to the Appropriations Committee of which, of course, Senator Leahy is the Vice Chair on both the defense request side and on the military construction and VA side. There is a fund that is a joint fund between the DOD and VA. It's referred, it's called the Healthcare Sharing Incentive Fund, which is sort of a matched pot of money between DOD and VA that can assist with funding research. And we had asked Senator Sanders had asked for an increase in funding to that fund specifically to cover the cost of additional burn pit research because we know that the VA alone right now is responsible for all of the research and we want to ensure that the DOD can help support the cost of that. So he did include that request in this year's appropriations process. I did want to let the committee know that we had a little bit of success this year, this last year in the National Defense Authorization Act. There were a couple provisions included in there that had primarily come from the House side to address some of the burn pit exposure that happens on the defense side. So in that regard specifically, it directed the Department of Defense to track exposure of their service members before separation. And if those service members were found to have exposure, which as the adjunct general spoke to, the vast majority of those who have served overseas in the last 15 to 20 years have that exposure, that all of those folks be added to the burn pit registry. So that is something that is happening now for those service members separating, looking forward. But of course, it doesn't help those that I think this bill so rightly considers, which is some of the folks who have already separated from our armed forces, including have had past service in the National Guard. And then the last thing I think I would just mention from Bernie's perspective is the importance of maintaining a strong VA and a VA that has robust ability to serve veterans. He worries significantly about efforts in Congress to privatize the VA and that would sort of dismantle the current VA healthcare system. And in particular, I think this issue highlights the importance of maintaining a strong VA because if all of these veterans from every branch of service just go out into the private sector and see their private sector healthcare provider, those providers are not well equipped and educated to look for these specific issues that General Knight spoke to. The VA is certainly ahead of the curve there. They're not as ahead as we want them to be. And that's why the research is so important. But they are way better equipped than your average private sector general practitioner. They have the research, they have the access to that information. So we want to ensure not only that we maintain a strong and robust VA healthcare system, but also that for every veteran who is eligible for that care, they can get in and get that care when they want it and need it. So I will pause there, but those are some of the issues that Senator Sanders has been working on. And again, just thank the committee, thank Mrs. Heston and Wesley Black and all of the other folks who have really helped bring attention to this issue in Vermont and really had a national impact. Well, thanks very much. Thank you. I am concerned about the, I guess it's the DoD computers and the access and how the firewalls are set up. And I thought we had talked about some way of making that easier or allowing the National Guard or the VA to actually register people. Do you remember that committee or the details of that or June, do you remember that? Will you repeat that question? Well, I thought that we did talk some before about being able to access the computers and the ability to do that and talked some about making it easier to access them and to have computers at different places that would allow that to happen. Did anything, is that what you meant by setting up kiosks? Yes, that's what the guard has done, but that's really relevant for people who are currently in the National Guard, for veterans who probably don't even know that this is a concern. That's where having the health department get the information in front of them. So anyone who comes in has asked the question, have you served and do you think you were exposed? Sometimes they're going to say no, and the health professionals need to still pursue if they served after 9-11, pursue that line of questioning because they're not necessarily going to know. The registry is only as good as the information that's put in and that information isn't great right now and everybody knows that if information isn't great because many of the veterans in the last time I looked at this, and Bob can probably come up with the more accurate number, about 40% of the people who began that registry did not finish it. It's cumbersome. Two, it asks questions that make you think that they're trying to not be responsible, like how many drinks a week do you have? Well that's not relevant to burn pit exposure. It is if you're currently in the military and completing that questionnaire, it will ask questions that some military members think that it will affect their career. So not everyone is completing. Now what I've been told is the number is being counted even if the questionnaire hasn't been completed. The other problem is Mike completed it as soon as it came out, but there's no way of knowing in that database that Mike died as a result of his service-connected disability because you can't go back in and update. It is the only thing we have right now and unfortunately the initial plan on this federal legislation was to sort of come at it as a presumptive issue so that if you were exposed after 9-11, the presumption was you are eligible for benefits, but that is not the direction they're going. So I would love to see our federal delegates get into this conversation early because that eliminates the need for a registry. If everyone is exposed, it eliminates that need and that registry, like the 9-11 registry that was established, it is just not the best data. Yeah, and I thought we did talk about that, about not only, I think Catherine talked about having the DOD, I think it was Catherine talked about having the DOD track exposure of people who are currently there before separation and then automatically registering them, but I don't know why we can't just automatically register all these 25 or 4,000 people. They say that those systems aren't connected, but if you go into register in the top right corner, it comes up with your information of where you were deployed and when, with the exception of special forces. So they seem to have the information that they could create this database without putting the onus on the service member or veteran. That is my assumption. Yeah, I don't get that at all. I bet some smart VTC student could figure that out in about 20 minutes. Oh, I see we've been joined by Damien Allison. So I'm just looking at Damien's summary. Hi Damien. As I recall, we asked in the bill that the commissioner that we just that we asked the commissioner of health to distribute materials, but we never actually asked or we never required particularly in the civilian population because sadly, most of the stuff June and everybody's talking about is really would require federal action to require the VA to ask these questions of the veterans when they go in for their physicals and when they go in for their the appointments with the doctors. But we could be asking that every that health care providers ask if somebody is a veteran and if they're a veteran, yeah, they serve in these dates. All we've asked as far as I can tell on this act is that we have to distribute materials, which doesn't actively engage a veteran patient with reviewing their history and looking at possible exposure. June, you're muted. I think that when that was put in the bill, I was thinking it would be that this information that came from the health department to the medical providers would say you need to ask the question. Yes, may not be offered. The reason that information is important is because when I was gathering some research for the for the the drafting of this other legislation, federal legislation, it and Bob, you may have these numbers again. It appears that only about 60% of eligible veterans are actually enrolled in the VA system. And I think less than 40% actually use the VA system. Right. You heard of the people we're talking about aren't going to the VA, right? That's why all the other medical providers, civilian medical providers need this information in front of them. I agree. But I am noting that I don't think we actually required them to ask the question. And so it would be great to have the Department of Health in to see what the materials are that they're distributing now. And what are they asking of providers in terms of the questions they're asking patients. And I did send an example of what was being used within the there was some medical information I gathered at Attap's tragedy assistance for for program for survivors that I passed along that could be sent to the health department, but I haven't seen anything that they've produced. Yeah, so we Yes. Hi, it's Bob. Yep. So, Junior, your numbers are, you know, within the ballpark in terms of, you know, who is who is determined eligible and who is using. So, you know, not to make a generic statement, but anybody who serves the minimum amount of active duty is eligible. Okay. Where and how you get categorized, you know, from A to I think it's G, I think there's nine different levels, you know, that determines whether you, you know, will be able to avail yourself of those services, you know, based on, you know, the capacity of the system, you know, I'm not in the VA system. I've never applied because I have civilian insurance and I know that I make too much money and I don't have a VA disability. So there's a lot of people, you know, who are not getting captured. But Bob, if you understand you're in this, so to go to this exact point, if you had a condition, it might, well, even though you're not in the VA system, your condition actually may be a result of your exposure as a veteran in something. So, you know, it's, you know, you actually may have that exact issue, which your physician ought to be asking about. Yeah. That's correct. I'm looking at what Jess has sent. Yes, I'm looking at that too. And it really is, it's informational, but it isn't very proactive. Madam Chair? Exactly. Yes, yeah. Jess has joined us on the call. She was able to join us. Thank you. So, Jess, what this is, is the Department of Health information? Is that what this, what we're looking at? Good afternoon. Thank you. Jess Barnard with the Vermont Medical Society. In the bill and in the conversation, we were asked to distribute, well, actually, not just us directly. I think it initially listed us, but now it's all sort of professions and professional associations through their licensing boards. So, it's much bigger than the Medical Society, which only works with physician and physician assistants. So, we have been doing what we can to share the information from VDH right now. My understanding is that it's the website that we link to in our testimony. Excuse me. And so, we have been sharing that with our members. We've been covering when the legislature has taken up the issue. We've been putting that in our newsletter. We've been covering it in our legislative updates, and then we've added the information to our website. I don't think we, at this point, to my understanding, were not asked to specifically be asking or informing our members about specific screening questions or screening protocols. We'd certainly be happy if that's something that VDH developed or was working on. We'd certainly be happy to distribute that. I know the licensing boards were also asked to distribute the information to make sure it gets to all licensees, not just members of our association. And so, we're here to distribute or share what information is developed. Well, man, I have a question. Yes, please. My concern is that, as the chair said, as you've joined us, this isn't, in a way, it isn't sort of proactive enough because unless you're asking specific patients, in their history, did they serve? Are they veterans? And did you have exposure to certain things? I mean, veterans are exposed to all sorts of stuff, not just burn pits, and have all sorts of conditions that result from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and all sorts of other things. I would think that being a veteran would be kind of a key question to ask a patient. And then, from that, all sorts of other questions would arise. Is there a standard intake form where that question could be added that would be easy to add? I believe that is part of many screening questionnaires, if not for any other reason, and that often impacts insurance status. So, I do believe that that's often a question that folks are asked when they're registering as a new patient. I could get more information on that. I haven't asked that. That would be great. That would be great to clarify that, to find out what are the standard questions that are asked of patients. Sure. I mean, I'm not, I will give the caveat that I think it may be specific to each health care provider's office and their patient population and the system they use, but I can see if we can get any information around that. And to the proactive, again, that screening piece, since we are not the content experts in this area, the medical society, we were really just following the VDH lead in terms of what information or processes they are recommending. So, I will just say, we don't have experts on Veterans Health or Public Health on our staff specifically, so we're really the information channel to get to our members rather than the ones to develop that sort of content at this point. Thanks. Sure. So, what we really need to do is talk to the Department of Health about both being maybe more proactive in getting, asking the questions and then giving the information so that, yeah. Anything else, committee, that Anthony? This is sort of an aside, but it reminds me that we had a conversation yesterday, well, the other day about a bill that we were going to look at which asks the Agency of Human Services, I think, to ask about Veterans status and application for certain programs. And that would be one way to like move this, you know, maybe sign some other people up, identify Veterans who might be eligible. We had talked about not moving the bill, but maybe this is the reason to move it. Well, we talked about doing it kind of, Brian? Right, writing a letter or something. Right. So, I just wanted to add on to Senator Polina's testimony there. And indeed, we did talk about not necessarily making it a bill, but sometimes things are more effective when you just send a letter because you can direct it exactly the way you want. Whereas in a bill, you face, of course, getting it passed by both bodies and moving it along. So, I still would maybe favor that because I think we can put in that letter specific requests. But my question now, I guess, is in terms of this committee for our guests, what sort of legislation would be particularly helpful going forward? In other words, we did what we did last year. It seems to have worked fairly well for the most part. But are there specific things that this committee could do not necessarily this session, but next session going forward that would even make things better? Madam Chair? Yes. This is Catherine Long with Senator Leahy's office. I just wanted to speak to the point around asking that question. And Bob may have some better insights into the history of that. That's been, you know, a topic of conversation, you know, for the 12 years I've been in my position here. But one of the things that is available to the state of Vermont, if in coordination with the VA is what's called the Paris match, which would allow you to filter your beneficiaries against the VA list. And that's been used in some states to try to offer dual folks who are eligible for VA services and also receiving state benefits, you know, that additional federal support. That's something that Becky Rhodes at the White River Junction VA Medical Center is interested in making happen. And I'd be happy to talk with folks more about that. But it seems to me that that might be a way of at least engaging some of the population that's on state health insurance. So I just, I have a question, and I think all of these, we can think about doing all of these, but what is the impediment? And do we have any ability to automatically register this, whatever it is, 3,000, 4,000 people? We know where they served. They're eligible to be on the registry. We automatically register people to vote when they renew their driver's license. Why is it such an impediment for us to, or what is the impediment for us to automatically register these 4,000 people, or whatever those people are? We know that there's those five theaters. They serve there during a period of time. Just register them. Can somebody help me understand why we can't do that? I don't know, Bob. Yeah, so this is Bob Burke. So it's the proverbial, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. So you can't register anybody without having them answer the questions. I can't provide benefits to anybody if they don't call me and ask for help. I mean, we do it the opposite way. We outreach to people and say, do you need help? Do you know about these benefits? And some of them will say, yeah, I do, but I'm all set, or I've tried and I've gotten turned down so many times. I want nothing to do with the VA. So it's hard of the thousands of veterans that we have in Vermont. We have a very low usage of federal or state benefits. But this is more than just, this is more than just for benefits. This is for tracking the potential for diseases and also for doing the research to, if I remember right, doing the research to figure out which are the presumptive illnesses that are going to be covered here. So they're not necessarily, even if they register, they're not necessarily going to get any additional benefits. So I guess I don't understand, and if we have to ask the questions about how many drinks do you have in a week? Let's make it up. I have five drinks every week. I mean, if they're irrelevant questions. June? Senator White, the problem isn't going to be solved by the Vermont staff in the Veterans Affairs Office because this is a federal issue and I think those questions, somebody else came up with them. 80% of them are on their annual health review. And so why it's even on there? I'm not sure, but we aren't going to fix that. Our federal government needs to fix that. I think our issue is visibility and letting people know that this is a big concern. And so one of the things that kind of fell to the wayside was I was working with WCAX on PSA. They really wanted to be connected with a nonprofit, them with TAPS in DC, because it's a national nonprofit. It would be great to get them involved. And the ball was dropped on the nonprofit side. I'm willing to start that conversation with WCAX because one of the things in the new proposed legislation is the increased risk with those veterans and current service members having exposure because of COVID-19 brings another level of risk to our military members and our veterans. So I think now is a great opportunity to sort of put that urgency message out there. Is there another nonprofit if they still want to be associated with a nonprofit? Is there a local nonprofit that could affiliate with them? I actually think it should be national and I think so that this message gets out broader than Vermont. But if we're not successful in doing that, I mean what I hadn't thought of before is going to this group of nonprofits that are working on this legislation. Wounded Warriors is one of them, the Hunter 7 Foundation, which is doing a ton of research. They have actual science behind exposure and illness. And so I think what I'll do is approach one of them to say would you be willing to be the nonprofit that gets this awareness out? Hunter 7 would be my first choice because they are doing unbelievable work in connecting exposure to illness. That sounds great. I will take that off. Madam Chair, this is General Knight. Yes, please go ahead. So one other thing that I've noted at least from our most recent deployment experience with our aviation unit, our medevac company, before they left theater they were sat down in front of a computer kiosk and the soldiers that were on that deployment registered so that helps us getting at it at the front end. We still have a long way to go. And thank you, June, for taking it up, but getting the word out and addressing those that have been deployed and have not yet registered. I think the numbers, if you look 20 years of deployments across the nation, we're probably over a million service members with one or more deployments. And the data that I've got in front of me through 31 March of 2020 only shows 200,104 veterans completed the questionnaire since June of 2014. So there's a heck of a lot of work to do. So at one point we had talked about, and I must admit that I kind of dropped the ball on this one, but we had talked about having days in different counties where people could, we would do promote and have people come and sign up. And is that still something that can happen? Would that be helpful? Is there, I know it's probably harder now because of COVID-19, but I don't know if we could have a virtual registry. I don't know, but is there something that we can do to spread it across the state? Anybody have any suggestions about that? I admit it. I was going to be working with Laura, Laura Sevilla, and we just got so wrapped up in other things that it never did really happen, but we'd be willing to try again. Senator, this is General Knight. That's actually a really good idea. So one of the kiosks that Mr. Gregg had set up, they're not just, they don't just reside, they're not within a hard structure. We have a mobile kiosk, so we could certainly work to put that kiosk on the road and move it around the state and publicize that accordingly and see if we get any returns on that. Okay, Brian. Thank you Madam Chair. So to sort of connect perhaps your suggestion and General Knight and June's, we speak quite often with Wendy Mays, who is the head of the Vermont Association of Broadcasters. So not just channel three, but channel five and then all the radio stations, if we could get a sort of coordinated public service announcement that you could voice June going forward and then tagging it with specific locations where people could go to register and coordinating that with General Knight's mobile unit, I think we could make a pretty good dent in that overall number. I agree. And then we could follow it up with the mobile unit going around each county or whatever, whatever we, we could do a, you know, an all state tour of it. Right, that's what I meant. Yeah, I think that was what Brian. That's great. Yeah. And I'd be willing to talk to Wendy about it. Good, that would be wonderful. Yeah, that's a great thought. So if we were to think about doing something with this mobile kiosk and getting it around the state, if we started, if we could get, I don't know exactly how we would do it in different parts of the state, I can tell you the Wyndham County delegation, which is a nonpartisan group. It's just all the legislators from Wyndham County. We meet regularly and my guess is that we would be, we could sponsor something like this, that the whole delegation, that we could figure out a couple different places in Wyndham County, one on the east side and one on the west side to have it and get some dates and figure out how to do it. So I don't know how it might be different in different counties about how how it would be organized, but is that something we could start to think about? Absolutely. Rowland County would be glad to be part of that. I could speak to the delegation. Yeah, and we could pull the Windsor County caucus together and do the same thing. I mean, I think it would be a great way to actually get the county caucuses together and host it. And it is something that we can do that truly, truly, truly is nonpartisan. It is, so we have almost a fifth of the counties represented on our committee. So I mean, a third. I mean, a third. My maskills are gone today. May I just have a general night? Excuse me? This is general night. So the only thing we would need is Wi-Fi access. So a number of ways to approach it as we move it around the state. My initial thinking is we could even leverage our veterans organizations and our patriotic organizations like the VFW and the American Legion. I'm sure they'd be more than happy to facilitate and they would give us enough space in there to be able to set it up and maintain, you know, social distancing and all that. Yeah, that's a great idea. All right, committee. Are we, I'm up for the challenge. Brian, you're up for the challenge. Allison. Yeah. And we have the VA. So it's a natural thing for us to do it in the VA and then maybe a couple locations. I mean, maybe we could do it in a couple locations in each county. Because the statistics about the number of Vermont veterans who access their benefits is really discouraging, Bob. I think that's odd that they, you know, you said that many don't take advantage of their VA benefits. That's correct. Yeah, we could be boosting that at the same time. And Senator Clarkson, that's a, that's a national number, but guessing it is reflective in Vermont. Okay, so what I'm going to suggest is that we think about this, that we do a couple things, that we find out from the Department of Health, what they're doing and suggest to them that they might be more proactive in what they're sending out to people, what they're giving people, and find out if there is a way to make sure that people are, that their patients are questioned about whether they're a veteran and if they served in those theaters, in those dates. And then, so that's one thing. And then we can kind of do some thinking about how we might organize some kind of a sign up day or whatever we want to call it and do some more publicity on that. And then Brian, you're going to look at talking to Wendy and work with June and Wendy on some kind of a PSA. Brian? Thank you, Madam Chair. June, did you ever actually record one or was that still in sort of the exploratory things? We had not recorded, we had scripted with Jay who's the GM at WCAX and ready to go, but he was then working with TAPS. The person there was left the organization, so we really haven't gotten very far. But I will follow up with Jay. And can you remind me of what Wendy's last name is? Maze, M-A-Y-S. Okay, I'll let him know that you'll be reaching out to her. Yes, and there actually is a file then, an audio file and obviously a video one, two. It's a written script. That's it. Yeah, we'll pull it together. Great. Anything else that would be helpful, how about from the federal delegations perspective, anything that would be helpful for us to do? This is Catherine Van Haas. I would say, from my perspective, this is great. I would, I think, put it a bit back on you and say if there's anything you want us to be doing on behalf of Vermonters, certainly we hear you on the cumbersome nature of the registry. We're happy to take that back to our members and to the committees that look at that issue. But we really appreciate your focus on this. And if there's anything we do that I do think of that might be helpful, we'll certainly let you know. But really appreciate the idea of thinking about how to get out and about and communicate to Vermonters about enrolling in the VA generally and in this registry. That's something that Bernie works on a lot and it's great to have your partnership on. Good. Thank you. Catherine? Yeah, I would echo that from Catherine that we're happy to help in whatever way we can. We appreciate what you're doing. And if you need help making that connection with the VA, of course, we're always happy to help with that. So thank you. Is it helpful or not helpful to have you both name Catherine? It's a little confusing. It depends on the day. The fact that we spell it differently is also either better or worse. That's true. Alison? I'm just curious in following up with June and the federal legislation, who's sponsoring that in both bodies and how could we be helpful as a committee sending a letter to those sponsors or to those committees saying how much we support this work or whatever? How could we be helpful supporting it at a federal level? That's a good question. And what I'll do is try to find out if they want help. It seems a bit they have a very tight knit group. And so right now, I know that Senator Gillibrand has legislation that's being proposed that I believe has presumptive language in it. This team group, the group that's working on the VA legislation and has a group of nonprofits working, they also have Senator Ruiz working with them who has been active. I would like to find out. And then there's separate legislation that's been proposed by two other senators. So let me get all of the details on that and get that back to you. Thanks. And anything else, committee, that we have neglected or thought about? Chris has a question. Oh, there you are, Chris. Thank you. Right there in the Senate chamber. Yes. The question I so I just want to double back on I think it's a great idea, the outreach work. And I'm just trying to have a sense of like the project manager view of this, like what pieces get assembled when and is there someone when I know there's a PSA under development, is there sort of a flyer? It's something that we can send to local papers. And, you know, and then I'm thinking about timing. Addison County and Rutland County are right next to each other. You know, do they spend a full day someplace? Or do they spend the morning in Addison and gone down to Rutland and things like that? So I don't know. I just didn't know if someone has is thinking about how to make the whole thing hang together and who that is. It needs to be this committee or what? You know, I don't know. I threw that question out and and I'm perfectly happy to take it on for Wyndham County and do the logistics around that and working with General Knight around dates and getting it out and stuff like that. In terms of statewide, I don't know that we have anybody that we would ask to that would be pretty major project. And I didn't mean to imply that it should be the legislative delegation in every area. There might be a very appropriate nonprofit or community group or particular organization or person who in a county that would be more appropriate. I just suggested our delegation because our delegation tends to be very active in that kind of stuff. And Laura Cibalia and I were two of the kind of promoters of it. Well, I think Chris's point is a good one. It needs to be organized by someone. It would be sort of crazy to get the kiosk down to Wyndham County for a day and then not be able to work it. It needs a strategy and a sort of a tour director. And I think we could all plug in, but it's going to be a busy, weird summer. And as well as much as I mean, maybe Greg, you had somebody that might be interested in doing that and coordinated with all of us. But I do think it needs somebody to be in charge of it. Yes, ma'am. I think it's actually a pretty straightforward approach. Well, that's my volunteer for something. I've been doing it for 37 years. So this will be an easy one. So we can do this. So to Senator Bray's point, we have a flyer. We can easily modify it to be inclusive of dates and locations and push that out to all the respective delegations throughout the state with an according schedule and then perhaps leverage Wendy Mays to help publicize that. And then certainly the National Guard, Air Guard, Army Guard and my social media pages and then do that with the town clerks and Department of Health. Plenty of ways to get it out there. Just take a little bit of coordination. Brian? Yeah, I would only offer that. It's your deliwag in general. So we would be at your mercy to kind of figure out the schedule of if it makes more sense to start all the way in the south and then work up or the other way down. I think that would be something that we could take direction from you if you're willing to or your volunteer are willing to do that. We got it, sir. We have that as a do out. We'll come up with a plan and we'll push that out to the committee. Right. We'd love to hear about it. June? Madam Chair, my only concern is with COVID-19, is this effective now? Because there's so much conversation about social distancing, is this going to be perceived as not doing what we're told to do? Well, I think that when I was thinking about this, I was thinking about this being later. I mean, not right now, but maybe and we're from everything we hear or that I hear we're expecting some kind of a resurgence late in the fall. So I was thinking like September when maybe we don't see the resurgence yet, but we might see some relief from the current one. That was what I was thinking. And I think that it actually could be helpful because of the, I don't remember who it was that mentioned that, oh, it was you, I believe, that mentioned that now with COVID-19, it's even more, there's even more exposure issues or vulnerabilities. So it might be good to be able to say kind of in the lull here, let's take care of this. Let's get these people registered. That was what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking of now because I think it'll take a while. Yes, and I think with the COVID-19 message, making it more is a question. Alison? Well, I agree, June. It now may not be the exact moment, but once maybe the emergency orders have changed and shifted a bit, we could take advantage of that. But it may all be, maybe it is more appropriately another public service message that's out there and that somehow we can reinforce in some way. But I'm open to all of it. But I think you're right. It has to wait. The tour would probably have to wait, but we could also do a virtual tour. I mean, there are lots of ways we could do it. So it's just good to put our thinking caps on and start thinking about how we might do it. In the meantime, then, by the time we get to that, so we could have some dates and stuff, the PSAs could be being done and worked on so that we would have those available to use. Damien, did you want to weigh in at all? I see you've been with us and we appreciate that. No, I'm just here listening in. So I don't have anything to add. Thank you for being here. Anything else that you can think of committee or anybody else? So I will write something up with to the Department of Health. And also I think that what I would like to do is then do a I'll get a list from the Department of Health and from OPR of all the professional medical professional organizations. Like just said, it isn't just the Vermont Medical Society. It's the Society of Advanced Nurse Practitioners. And there's a whole bunch of them and see what if they have been proactive doing anything and and find out from them. So I will take that on to get that to find out from them if they're doing anything, because I have nothing else to do. Hi, Madam Chair. This is Bob Burke. Hi, Bob. Hi. So I just I even want to thank everybody for for reengaging and reinvigorate reinvigorating. It can sometimes feel like a small voice crying out in the night. But I think this is a very relevant and very pertinent topic to keep pressure on. Thank you. Thank you. And it would be great when we get the when there's some kind of a PSA and as part of that, we can all have some talking points because we all write articles for our papers and we all write on front porch forum and those kinds of things. So I think that we can use those talking points in those the things that we write. Anything else? Also, okay. So if anybody thinks of anything, let me know it's only a little after two o'clock. Are we done? This is stunning. Well, again at seven. So, right, like I put in a full day's work. You what? I feel as though I put in a full day's work. I started at seven this morning. I know. I know. Yes. Wow. So for those who are who considered running and actually turned in their names, somebody said to me that they were surprised that there weren't more people turning in their names to run this year because they didn't have to get petitions signed. And so it was easier. And I said, anybody who's watching us in committees or in the all Senate meetings or in the floor meetings and sees how much older and tired and bedraggled we look, why would they want to? Why would they want to join us? Yes. Why would they want to put themselves through this? We have people who can't have haircuts. We have people who are shot up in little dark rooms. So, and then we have Chris Bray who's at the state house. No, he's not really. Holding down the court. Outside the house clerk's office, there's a bunch of big beautiful panoramic photos of the house members. They did them a number of years a long time ago. And when I first got here, I looked at that and I said, who are all these young people that I know they're still here in the house? And I said, must be like a 10 year old photo. And then I looked and it's like, wait, this photo is only four years old. What happened to them in four years? And I realized that room, these buildings, like an accelerated aging chamber or something seems to host people. Alison? Well, I was just going to say, you know, maybe they actually talked to people and found out that the petitions is the easy part of campaigning. Campaigning is hard work. And then maybe they found out actually that it's tough to run. It's a full time and it's not easy. So anyway, June, we welcome you to campaign season. Thank you very much. I'm drinking from a fire hose. Yes, you are. And it's the most unusual campaign season most of us have ever faced. So it's kind of a very interesting. It is, it is. All right. So anything else, committee? Just when we were starting, so I don't know if prior to going on the air, you had a conversation at all about floor today, but maybe we did not. Okay. We could have a conversation about it if you would like. And we also brought, remember we brought back 558, but we're dealing with that tomorrow. So. Well, no, I just had a point of information. A question came up about the sort of egregious behavior down in the Carolinas where someone was sort of out harvesting ballots, you know, and right, and maybe somewhat coercively, I think was the sense that was of concern. And since I'd already spoken, I didn't want to speak again, but there, there is a provision in that chapter I quoted from offenses against the purity of elections. I love that title. And sorry, I'm trying to, yeah, it's, it's the 14th of 16 provision, this number 2017. It's an undue influence provision. It says a person who attempts by bribery, that's or any undue influence to dictate, control or alter the vote of a voter about to be given at a local primary general or general election shall be fine, you know, not more than 200 bucks. So we've made it a crime to try to influence. Now, of course, there's a certain amount of influencing that goes on when people walk door to door and stuff like that. But so what, what shifts something over to the world to undo influence? I don't know legally, but there is a provision that attempts at least to address that kind of coercive outreach work. I can, I will give you a response I had back from the Secretary of State's office, but before I do that, just because we've kind of shifted topics here, I'm going to welcome people to stay if they would like, but knowing that you probably all have busy schedules. We thank you very much for coming. And but you are most welcome to stay, to talk about our other issues. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you. So thank you. I did have a hurry. I did have an answer from the Secretary of State about that. And they are working on, I mean, they can make some, let me pull it up here. Should, while you're looking that up, Jeanette, should we ask if Betsy Ann could join us? I don't, I don't, she can if she wants to, if she's available. Okay. Gail, could we ask Betsy Ann? Because I think the question of undue influence and whether it's defined or what it is, what the fine line is, would be interesting. Actually, you have another meeting at 2.30. Let me just throw this out quickly then, because Brian, this is your question. I wanted to ask the question. Right. So what the Secretary of State's office sent back is that they are working with the town clerks on how to do that, how to make, avoid that kind of egregious behavior that happened in North Carolina, which I don't know that we should assume will happen here, but not make it so restrictive that it somehow disenfranchises people who actually need to have somebody come and get their ballots for them. So if you limited it to family members, you may have somebody who really doesn't have a family member that can do that for them. If you limited it to BCA members, that really puts them as kind of the beck and call, because that could happen anytime. When BCA members go out, it's usually to actually have somebody vote, and it is almost always on election day. That's the way they do it. So they're trying to figure out how to do that in a way that isn't so restrictive that it disenfranchises people who actually need people to help them get their ballots in. But they are working on that. Right. If Senator Polina came over and said, I'm going to the town clerks, you want me to take your ballot, I would feel fine about handing over. If you said, hey, let's go over that ballot together, and that would be pretty different. What are you thinking about for a select board or whatever? It's very different ways of helping. There are. And you have to be really careful. People who live in assisted living facilities often need help, even help filling out the ballot for them. You can ask, who do you want to vote for, for governor without saying, you'd really like to vote for this person for governor, wouldn't you? It's a little bit nuanced, but I think we need to be really careful that we don't, that we don't disadvantage people who actually need help. Well, I think heaven's in a way that we've been running the experiment of 30% of Vermonters or whatever, already voting via absentee or early ballots. I would like to think it won't be substantially different than our current experience. And so currently somebody could do that. Currently, Senator Polina could come over to you and say, Hey, let's go. You want me to help you with this ballot, right? And then I'll take it and deliver it for you. Or did you happen to vote in this way? Well, I'll take your ballot and I'll just put it in the trash can. I mean, currently that could happen. I don't know that it'll happen more. I can keep an eye on him as he leaves. That's what I do, generally. Okay. Anyway, so I had seen that provision and I had wanted to share it in committee, not on the floor, because I already shared sort of a long-ish answer on something else. No, I thought it was very helpful what you did. We were worrying so much about the ballots. Senator Benning was calling them live ballots, so they, in a way, like, okay, so they could take on a life of their own. But somebody has to pick them up and vote them and return them in some way or another. And that person is bound by all the current law. So as I read that chapter, I said, you know, we've actually worked very carefully to craft 16 provisions, all aimed at trying to make sure that these, the ballots are protected, you know, appropriately protected. So I don't know if you want to. There was one other question that I did not have an answer for that came from Senator Benning about the list and whether it would be available from the vendor. But the vendor actually gets the list from the town clerks. That's where the list comes from. And anybody can get the list from the town clerks. And it can be used for any purposes except commercial purposes. So right now, I don't know how campaigns do it, but many campaigns check every day to see who has been mailed an absentee ballot. And then you call them and make sure that they send their absentee ballot in and you check them off. And campaigns do that all the time right now. There will be no different if just because they're mailed out of a central place. And the mailing lists are, the voter checklists are available for anybody. Yeah, Chris. Well, having worked with mailing lists and stuff, they can be so messy. And, you know, someone's entered the data wrong and things are missing and blah, blah, blah. It would be a scrubbed list that is the work product of the vendor who's mailing together. For instance, they check addresses against that post office database and make sure it's a quote unquote ballot address. A scrubbed list would be far more valuable than just the raw lists from your clerk. Vendor doesn't, isn't going to do that. That's going to be the secretary of state in the town clerk that do that before they give it to the vendor. Okay. Well, that's sometimes that's a vendor service. They take your mailing list no matter how good you think it is. And they for you. Yeah, that's true. And it's a worthwhile service because they're usually really good at it. And the rest of us are plugging away doing many things. So at any rate, so I think there is an interesting question there. Like, can now this vendor who's created this quote unquote scrubbed list, do they have to release that upon request of anyone else? I don't know. No idea. I think it says the government agency has to release it. But I have the secretary state checking on that. Okay. Okay. Anything else, committee? No. What's that? Well, actually, you know, Jen, that bill passed over this morning. Yeah, it was our bill that where we talked about the notices like posting notices. And I what they added to it, it was the idea of moving, borrowing from a town road fund to use for general expenses and or borrow a general fund to use for road expenses, that thing. So I don't think we would we're not opposed to that idea. But I think it makes sense. We should at least look at it inside if you want to think about it anymore. Yeah. And I was, I forgot about that. We should have done that this afternoon. So we could do it tomorrow. It just allows them to mix their fund their highway funds with their other funds, right? Yeah, basically use the word borrow that you could borrow from the general fund to put into the road fund and you can borrow from the road fund to put into the general fund. I used the word borrow. But basically, yes, that's what it does. Well, I had a sense of bill that I looked at. The one I looked at it added, we took the legislative body of a municipality and let them only post the physical location. Remember, we changed all that. And I thought this added things like the development review board and all that other stuff. But maybe I was looking at the wrong bill. What is the number, Anthony? I don't know. I'm looking, I forget. I think it was S345. Does that sound right? That sounds right. Yeah. Well, I, we have it in the calendar right here so we can just look. I can pull it up quickly. It was 345. Yep. Three. Good memory. An act relating to temporary municipal meeting provisions in response to COVID outbreak. So what page is that on? And it says, it's on page 4, 9, sorry, 4, 9, 14. Page 4, 9, 14. It says, during a declared state of emergency, a municipal public body may post any meeting agenda or notice in the special meeting in two designated electronic locations in lieu of the two designated public places in the municipality or in any combination of those. A municipal public body shall post the notice or agenda in or near the municipal office, clerk's office, and will provide a copy of each notice or agenda to the newspapers. I think we did that for everything else except for like the BCA and the development review board and that kind of thing, no? But when I go to page 49, 14, I look at House Proposal of Amendment for S345, it says municipal property tax, highway expenditures, general government expenditures, notwithstanding, et cetera. Municipality is authorized to one, borrow money's appropriated from property taxes for the highway expenses of the municipality as part of the budget approved by the legal team, legal voters of the municipality to expend on general government expenses. So basically, you could borrow money's appropriated from property taxes for the highway fund to go into general government. And then number two is borrow money appropriated from property taxes for the general government fund of municipality and part of the budget to expend on highway construction, highway expenditures. It's a strike all. No, they struck section two and I don't remember what section two was. I think section two was just the effective date. Yeah. And then they added this, it's not a strike all, it strikes out section two and then adds this. Right. And now section three is the effective date. And all this does is currently state law says that they cannot use highway funds for anything other than highway funds. That's, but the highway funds and the general fund of the municipality are not fungible. And all this is saying is let us move them back and forth. And this does not apply to it only applies to municipal funds. It doesn't apply to state highway funds that come to the municipalities. Right. It says it only property taxes collected by the by the municipality. This section shall not apply to any state aid for town highways. Right. It's just saying that if they're unable, I mean, it's, it's another instance in my mind of us being so over-prescriptive for the towns that they have to come to us to say we can't do our highway project this summer. We're way behind because of the emergency order. Can we use this money for something else that's really necessary in our town? Brian? Okay. And I agree with all that. I just don't remember voting it out. How did it get to the floor if it's got a proposal of amendment on it? We voted this out. This is now them sending it back to us. This is the house of proposal of amendment back. S345 was about the Anthony, I believe you are right. And Brian, you are right. S345 was allowing the municipalities to not have to post their agendas in certain places. Right. It went to the house. They are adding this to that bill. They're not changing the bill that we had. They're just adding this because they needed a vehicle for this issue. It would be nice to see the bill actually in entirety so that we actually see that our work is still intact. So that section one was our work. Is that what you're saying? Yes. So let's look at S345. And also, by the way, says that if you borrow money from fund to fund, municipality that borrows and extends money under the section shall no later than December 31, 2021, transfer at any such fund from which such borrowing has been made in the amount equal to such borrowed amount together with interest. So they basically have to pay it back as well. Which doesn't make any sense to me at all. They ought to be able to do what they want with their own money. I agree. But that's not the way we operate. So. It says with interest on the borrowing amount of such rate. So the town is paying itself interest. Right. It makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. The opposite of a state bank. It is a strike off. It says strike section two. Well, I'm looking at the calendar from last week. What the heck did I put it now? This is getting very complicated. If you pull the bill up and it shows you the history of the bill on 529 whatever I guess that was Friday. It refers to the calendar page 48 16. Okay. And when I open that up, it says the house proposes to the Senate to amend the bill by striking out section two. You're right. Yeah. In its entirety and starting in lieu. Okay. So. If you look at the bill as 345 as passed by the Senate, section one is the temporary authority to electronic posting. Section two is the effective date. So all they've done is strike the effective date added their section two and section three is now the effective date. Right. Okay. And I'm fine with that. I don't see any need to have to pay it back. But for some reason, maybe the league wanted to do that so that they didn't have select boards willy nilly switching funds around. I must have been in La La Lynn because I don't remember voting on this section. We didn't. We didn't. This is all new. This is their proposal of amendment to us. And it came to the floor today because when they send it back with a proposed amendment, it just comes to us and we can concur or not. Okay. So my suggestion is that tomorrow we simply concur. So it does say Anthony when we were talking about the interest, it does say that the interest at such a rate as the legislative body of the municipality shall determine. So it could conceivably say 0% interest. That would make sense, wouldn't it? Even if they said 25% interest, they're paying interest from one to another. They're paying themselves interest. So what difference does it make? I know. I don't know even one. All right. So do we, can we concur with this tomorrow? Sure. Brian? Yeah, I'm fine with it. Chris? Yes, ma'am. That's the thumbs up symbol. Oh, yeah. Alison? Yeah. Yes, I'd love to just check in as we get through to more, where's our bill about our No, wait, let's finish this one first. Let's finish this one first. Yeah, I'm fine with this. Okay. Now, now what's your question? My question is where is our bill about the special voting and the village voting? Is it gone to the governor? Is it, I just couldn't remember where, where it was. And the, you know, the places that haven't yet voted. Oh, the school stuff, you mean? No, no, no, not school. It was the town. The very town Woodstock Village one. It's the, it, I can't remember where it is. Is it in the house or did it go to the, did we finish it? I don't remember the number. We voted it out. We voted it out on the Senate floor. Right. I know we did, but I can't remember if that was it or if it went back to the house. Do you remember the bill number? No, but let's look at bills in and out of committee and I should do that. It seems like it was an H bill. So it's probably in the governor's hands. Yeah, but is he signed it? I mean, anyway, I'm just, I have no idea. I don't know what the number was, but we can check on it and see. Okay. I haven't, we haven't heard anything from any of those towns. So okay. Are we all set? I think we are. All right. I'm going to go work in my garden in the cold weather. It is cold, but it's at least it's not zero degrees. Well, I was walking the dogs last night and I said, wait, it's June. I have long pants, socks, boots. I have a polar fleece on. My wool jacket on top of that. Oh no. I had wool hat and gloves and we were fast walking. So it wasn't like you're dawdling. And it was still a little chilly out there. Well, it was kind of damp here. Well, this is what happens when you look this close to the North Pole. It just is cold. Well, it could open up better. Anybody else? Have fun and we'll see you tomorrow. Thanks. Bye.