 Good morning, everyone. It's a meeting of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee, and today is Thursday, May 7th. It's 10 o'clock, so we're going to get started. Good to see you all as a committee again. Senator Rogers can't join us, but he has sent in to Jude, and she's going to redistribute it to all of us. He is his priority. Okay, so is everyone all set? I see Senator Campion kind of. Senator Campion, are you all set? I am all set. I just decided to step outside, and I'm going to try to get, there we go. I don't know if you can see me. The garden looks beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Coming along. Coming along. Good old Mount Anthony in the background. It's greener where you are, I would say. It's much greener where I am, even though we too are expecting some, I guess, some cold weather. So I've sent the email to everyone, and as per our committee assistance requirements, I am supposed to take myself off the screen. So I'm here listening, and I can talk. All right. If we have an emergency, we'll be calling. We'll try not to have an emergency. Okay. Okay, well, great. So thanks, committee, for getting together. In terms of working with the Pro Tem's office, right at the moment, one of the tasks assigned to every committee is prioritizing work from here to the finish line. And I think it's still a work in progress. What do we mean by the finish line? I think there's a near term finish line, which my sense is it hasn't been clearly stated yet that early June, we may have budget adjustment plus first quarter budget for FY 21. That'll get passed and we'll, I don't know, go into some sort of more dormant phase as a legislature and be returning something like August, September for a final budget for the balance of the year. How much, so this is a tricky planning session we're being asked to engage in because it's not clear to me exactly how much time we have right now. And until we pass that first set of budget documents and then how much time we'll have when we come back, say August, September, are we, so I apologize that I can't lay out sort of clear parameters to help us make all our decisions right now, but I just wanted to let you know the framework we're working in. And I think we're still being asked to drive anything that's anything that we see that's COVID impacted, that we should prioritize addressing that. And then secondly, looking at the balance of work that's in our committees, either our, or in the Senate, either our own bills, we have two bills that we voted out that once on the calendar, the others in finance and could be out, I think probably in short order, it's our plastics and waste bill. And then we have, you know, a few big bills that came over from the house in our inbox. So what I'd like to do is just talk with all of you and hear your thoughts on, you know, the list, the email I just sent out that gathered together two earlier emails. Basically, the breakout is, you know, there's the COVID bucket, anything that we need to get done sooner rather than later because COVID is impacting something in our jurisdiction. Then secondly, non COVID. So I would put in that bucket, things like the active 50 bill. And then third, the two working groups have asked us to contribute. Senator Campion, you're a vice chair of one, you may want to fill us in in your own words, what your group is looking for. But between an email from Senators Westman and Campion plus a call from Senator Pearson on the other working group, the two, the things that we've been asked to contribute to the working groups are, as I understand them, for one working group, what entities will need assistance as our economy restarts? And secondly, what lessons for the short term and the long term have we learned so far so that we might try to record those or do some, you know, in some way keep track of the lessons learned with an eye, I think really, you know, like the next session. So that's it for the framework. And then the rest of those, the emails, layout, one of them is a list of bills. And then the other one was a list I sent out two days ago, all the areas that we work in that I thought we might just as a memory prompt, like, are there things happening in these areas that we should be working on? So let me stop there and say on the, well, any general discussion before we start to work our way through those lists? I mean, the only thing I might add, if I may, is there are things, of course, that I think we'd all like to see happen. It's part of it's timing if we're looking at two more weeks, possibly, of session before we take a break. I don't know how we would get to things like from, you know, Global Warming Solutions Act or even Act 250 stuff. Unless I'm misreading something, I mean, those are things that are exciting and I think really important. But I just trying to also deal within a level of reality. And I look to you, Mr. Chair, to say, to ask, you know, is this are these things that we actually could get done? Yeah. Well, you know, this is an open discussion amongst all of us. We've all been involved in all of this work. So I want to make sure that everyone feels that their voice and priorities get heard as we sort our way through. But if we have really only through the end of this month, basically three weeks to work, and even if we're meeting every day of the week, Tuesday through Friday, two hours. And I think I say two hours because Zoom is not the same as a normal committee meeting in my experience. Like, I'd say a two hour 90 minutes to two hours. I'm finding it's kind of good maximum dose of Zooming at once for productivity. And anyway, so round up to two hours, that would be even at four meetings week, that's eight hours and three weeks, 24. We could, I would say, honestly, we if we were to work on Act 250, the entire bill we received, even if we spent all the time we have, I'm not confident that we will have felt like we did our due diligence on Act 250, which has been under development since September 25th, 2017. You know, that's when the commission first met that was the driver for the bill that we got. So that said, not to stick to Act 250 too much, but I'm also thinking about are there elements of things. So we'd say, well, for instance, Act 250 doesn't seem feasible to take on that entire bill. But we know there was a sticking point around trails and exposure to Act 250 liability. And our economy is challenged. And we have an outdoor recreation industry that could be one of the brighter spots, you know, of the businesses that could get restarted in tourism and recreation. Things like trails might be a particularly good opportunity. So That's a great point. Absolutely. To kind of look at just pieces, particularly, I think the trails piece is something that I think we'd all be interested in. And there'll be sort of deeper dives and less deep dives on that. For instance, there was a jurisdictional opinion, either one or two of them, we need to get some help with Michael Grady from sorting through the filings and the status to find out where things are. But if we one possibility, for instance, might be a moratorium on implementing a jurisdictional opinion as it relates to trails, while the full trails working groups come up with something that I would call something like the AMPs of trails, you know, and we don't have a published set of AMPs, I don't believe yet for for trails. So we know there's an opportunity there. There's some legal clouds hanging over it that I think are holding people back. Can we get rid of the legal clouds for at least a balance of this year would be the question I have. Any thoughts on 250? Yeah, yeah, Senator McDonald. I thought it was a coin flip when we, whether we get it wrapped up when we took recess back in March. And I think it's impossible to deal with at this point to do deal with responsibly. The trails issue is, if we weren't doing an act 250, looking at act 250 bill, that would have come up anybody. So I would treat that as a separate issue. Okay. All right. So is the committee generally interested in if in looking into the trails thing, if that's sort of a discrete piece of work we can do going forward with the time we have. If we weren't going to be tasked with finding the inevitable or the end solution, but put a pathway no pun intended to get to one. Okay. Great. Senator Perry? No, I think that makes sense. Okay. Okay. So Global Warming Solution Act, that to me is a complicated and deep bill. And, you know, I'm open to working on it. The challenge I see is that it's a major shift in energy policy and that was developed over a period of months with intense testimony and I have some serious questions about it and I'm guessing you all do too. And so although I'm open to, if it's a committee priority to working on it, just to be direct about it, I don't see that we have the capacity to dig into that at this point and pass that unless we're going to get a lot more committee time than is my current understanding. What are other people thinking on that one? I agree. I agree. The interesting thing about Global Warming Issues is that this whole COVID, COVID business has been a kind of a lesson in how, what happens when you put things off and don't tackle them head on. I think many people have said that they agree. I agree. I agree that the interesting thing about Global Warming Issues is that this whole COVID, COVID business has been a kind of a lesson in how, what happens when you put things off and don't tackle them head on. I think many people have said that they agree. What are other people thinking on that? I agree. I'm sorry, I'm working on it. Is everyone getting this? Yes. Okay, so I'm gonna make sure. What happens when you put things off? I mean, I enjoy hearing more. I agree. Dude, are we picking up the YouTube feed into Zoom? Yeah. There are some problems. I'm trying to figure it out. Is everyone getting this? Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna make sure. I mean, I enjoy hearing more. Dude, are we picking up the... This is a round.