 Good afternoon. This is House General Housing and Military Affairs and it is Tuesday, January 11th in the afternoon and we will be taking some testimony today on H273. For the rest of the afternoon that we have some outstanding things that we need to take care of which is furthering the conversation on the Budget Adjustment Act. I did receive a memorandum which should be posted from Legal Aid which expanded on their objections to the language change presented by DCF about hotel eviction processes or landlord tendencies, landlord and tenant issues. So that's, we're gonna talk a bit about that. David Hall is going to join us to talk about H157 which is the contractor registry. We passed that bill last year. It went to the Senate. They passed it on the last day of their session. It did not come over to us until this past week or till today actually, or till, yeah, last Friday it came back over. They did make changes to the bills, minor changes but also because the bill wintered over we may have to make some date changes in the bill. So we'll get an idea of what those are prior to taking any kind of action on it. And just as a clarification, you've all seen that age 78 has been on notice since last May. That was the bill that we did with, it was about the judiciary. It was about ways of adding a level of mediation to their contract negotiation process. And that's something that would align with the rest of the statute, the public sector statute on mediation. We'll get a review on that before Tommy goes on the floor with that on January 20th. In fact, we should all get a reeducation on what that bill did. But it's been on the calendar. I just wanted to acknowledge that we're finally going to move it forward on the 20th and vote on it on the floor on the 20th but we should just have a refresh on what it is. And speaking of refreshes, I wanted to welcome the folks who are here today to testify on S273. You'll remember that we did bring this bill forward last year and it was in April and it was toward the end of our year of taking testimony. And the day did not go as planned. We as a committee probably were pretty, we were in a groove in terms of doing our work but I do think that we had a situation with this bill where we created a circumstance over Zoom that really made people feel unwelcome in our committee. And I want to have the opportunity to give this bill an opportunity to start again in our committee and to really treat it with what I felt when I looked over the tape of what happened, there was just a general lack of celebration and that came from me on down. And I think that I am humbled enough and chastened enough to admit that I didn't have I didn't have this bill and hold it up high enough in a way that I like to hold up bills. And so it's a really important bill. The stakeholders have worked on this bill for a very long time. It's a little bit different way of introducing bills in our committee that was the case last year as well. And I'm asked them back, I invited them back to reintroduce it really. And the work that they did over the summer was to do some rewriting of the bill. And that version is something that I believe is on our website now, it's under David Hall's name. So with that, I'd like to turn the microphone over to, I'll start with Representative China of Burlington and he can start this process. And for those of you, Stefan, I understand you're under the weather. Having been under the same weather before, listen to your body. If you need to put your head down, please do. Zoom is a tough place to be. But with that Representative China, please. The microphone is yours. If the microphone is mine, I will start out with a legendary hip hop quote, too many MCs, not enough mics. But today we have one mic for many MCs to present to you the latest sort of rendition of the H-273, a BIPOC-led land access and opportunity bill. So I'd just like to start out by acknowledging that I'm joined today by a coalition of people known as Seating Power of Vermont and we're a coalition of Black, Indigenous and other people of color and white accomplices who are seeking to change policy so that resources and power are shared equitably in our society. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been forced to face the inequities and disparities in our society, which existed before the pandemic and have been amplified by the public health emergency of COVID-19. And in the recovery from this crisis, we have an opportunity to shape policy and appropriations so that we do not return to the old ways, but instead, in these old ways which have been grounded in a history of oppression, but instead we can build the foundation for a new way, rooted in social, economic and environmental justice. So H-273 does this and it does this by creating a fund dedicated to addressing racial and social equity in land access and property ownership. And it creates a board made up of representatives who come from the impacted communities and they're empowered to make decisions about how the money would best be invested to address inequities and disparities. We have done this kind of work before in Vermont. The Working Lands Enterprise Initiative Act 142 of 2012 created the Working Lands Enterprise Fund and the Working Lands Enterprise Board. And the Working Lands Enterprise Board is made up of private sector members combined with private sector members from the agriculture and forestry industries combined with staff from state agencies who make decisions about how money is best spent to promote some goals around how to encourage economic development. So we've done that. And furthermore, last year in 2021, we passed H-210 as a body and H-210 created a Health Equity Advisory Commission. And this commission was made up of appointees from a variety of impacted communities including black, indigenous and other people of color, people with disabilities and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, et cetera, community or as I like to say the children of the rainbow and that these people were brought together to form a commission that would not only make recommendations about healthcare policy but also help the state to make decisions about how to spend money on the healthcare system. And so as we plan ways to spend both one time money in this pandemic and ongoing state appropriations, we can make better investments by giving more power to the impacted people to make decisions about how those investments are made. And so with H-273 by creating another board of impacted people to make decisions about funding for impacted people, the state can improve multiple social determinants of health for the impacted people who have faced historic marginalization and disenfranchisement. According to the World Health Organization, there are many social determinants of health but the ones that come from outside the healthcare sector have more of a cumulative impact than the healthcare sector itself on public health. And the social determinants of health that could be positively affected for black, indigenous and other people of color by this bill include income and social protection, education because we talk about financial education, food insecurity, housing, basic amenities in the environment, social inclusion and non-discrimination. And furthermore, last but not least, this approach significantly addresses the social determinant of health known as structural conflict. And structural conflict is the conflicts that are caused by the oppressive forces of our society which divide people and it's driven by unequal authority, unequal resources and time constraints. So when the state intentionally makes space and time for disenfranchised people to make decisions about the allocation of resources, we are investing in what is essentially structural conflict resolution. And by addressing structural conflict to changes in state policy during the recovery from the public health emergency of COVID-19, we can support our recovery from the public health emergency of racism which has plagued this country and state since our inception. So at this time, I'd like to hand the microphone over to MC Ashley Laporte who is going to share a little bit about the intent of the bill, history and findings, et cetera. So here you go Ashley. Thanks, I'll grab the mic. Good morning everyone. My name is Ashley Laporte. I use she, her pronouns. I'm calling in today from Duxbury, Vermont. What's known as Duxbury, Vermont which is on unseated Wabanaki land. And I'm about 10 or 15 miles down the road now on Route 100 for more I grew up. I grew up in Stowe with my mom, Chris Laporte and my sister, Jessica Laporte and surrounded by a really big family. And before I jump in today, I just wanna give you a little bit of background on myself and then I wanna close with some more personal anecdotes. I think a lot of times when we talk about things like historically marginalized people and systemic racism those terms can sort of cloud the fact that there's real people behind these stories. And that's what's so special. I think about the group seating power that's put this together. All of us are in some way affected by systemic oppression. And so this is really personal for us as we put some of these ideas forward. So one personal thing that I wanted to share is that it's occurred to me in my life that most of my white friends who I've grown up with always assumed that they would own their own home at some point. And it only occurred to me later in my life that I've never had that assumption that my sister has never had that assumption and my now partner who is Dominican has never had that assumption. And in fact, my partner and I decided we weren't going to get married because we realized really early in our relationship that when we thought about the pinnacle of partnership for us it actually wasn't the institution of marriage it was home ownership and land ownership. And so we've channeled all of our energy all of our conversation on partnership and all of our savings on owning a home which I'm so proud that we accomplished that last year. And sort of at the end of my time today I'll talk to you about what that process looked like for us which was incredibly challenging but also has really just set a completely different course for our lives and hopefully the children that we'll have in the future that come after us. So to focus on H273 the intent behind this bill is to directly address the wealth disparity that exists in Vermont between historically marginalized groups and Vermonters of privilege. And we aim to do that by creating new opportunities for marginalized folks when it comes to property, homes, farmlands and woodlands across every state in Vermont. So this is really a bill that's about yes and we'll talk about it a lot today historic systems of harm across the lives of people but this is meant to directly address home ownership, land ownership, cultivating the land. When we talk about marginalized people we're talking about people who have been marginalized for generations through things like settler colonialism, chattel slavery and other inequities due to race, ethnicity, sex, geography, language, preference, immigration or citizen status, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status and disability status. I'm a black woman and so I'll speak a lot today about the marginalization of black folks and indigenous folks. But I think often when we've talked about this bill or other bills that address inequity people see it or talk about it through one lens. And what that means is that when it comes to the legal barriers that this would face we end up getting bogged down in legal barriers related to race. And so we've done really deep work to really be specific about the inequities we're trying to address, which are holistic and they are multiple. So let's start with the historical context about sort of how we have gotten to where we are today where this massive wealth disparity exists in the state of Vermont. You'll hear me reference and if you look at the findings of the bill there's reference of national atrocities that have happened but we've also based on feedback that we heard last year have been really specific about how this applies in the state of Vermont. So often as an activist or an organizer I hear a lot well, that's a problem in Minneapolis that's a problem somewhere else it's not a problem in Vermont. The disparities that we're talking about very much are applicable to our state here. We know that residents in Vermont experience barriers to equal health and economic benefit of land access based on race and ethnicity. There's a lot of data that shows that to us. And so we're talking about that when it comes to black, indigenous and other people of color or BIPOC. The findings of this bill outline as I said, lots of those examples and many of them come from discriminatory laws that were created both at the federal level the regional level and at the local level. And so I wanna talk through some of those specific examples. There is of course, the horrifying example of the theft of land and disposition of the Abinaki people here in Vermont. Prior to self-declaring its occupation of the land in 1777, it's estimated that at least 10,000 indigenous people were living in this region, specifically upwards of 4,000 Abinaki people on this Champlain Valley. As we know, there were centuries of genocide, eugenics, broken treaties and many other things that have not only displaced the Abinaki people and other indigenous people but have created a massive wealth disparity and opportunity disparity for those folks. Another example that we all know well is the eugenics movement that had a deep home in the state of Vermont through Professor Henry Perkins at the University of Vermont. I'm not gonna go into a ton of detail there because I'm hoping all of you are familiar with that but the eugenics movement as we know systemically aimed to eradicate indigenous people and other people of color in this state. There is of course the example of chattel slavery and often obviously we know what chattel slavery has done to our total country. Often in Vermont, people like to say that Vermont was the first place to abolish slavery but there are many caveats to that statement. In fact, it only did so for adult slavery but it was still legal to enslave children in the state of Vermont. And so our own participation in chattel slavery it has had a huge contribution to the current experience the current wealth disparity and then the current experience for black folks and other people of color in this state. Of course we know that systemic racism against black people and other people of color continued after the abolition of slavery and that showed up at the federal state and local levels around things including sharecropping, convict leasing, Jim Crow laws, redlining, unequal education and as we continue to live the disproportionate effects of unjust criminal justice system on black and other people of color. Quite specifically to housing in the years between 1930 and 1950 there was a mortgage insurance program that ensured no government or non-governmental entities could offer black Americans the opportunities to become homeowners. And so those are me rattling off a series of examples from a historical context standpoint that have gotten us to this point. This isn't a couple of lawmakers or a couple of people who are racist. This is what we mean when we say systemic racism it's the layering of these laws and policies on top of each other that have resulted in a massive disparity in our state that this bill aims to directly address. It's a solution, not just apologies or talking or acknowledging the history. And of course we wanted to talk about how this is not just historical in the state of Vermont these disparities continue to exist today and they're showing up in very real ways across the state. We know, for example, I talked about the Eugenics program in Vermont earlier that has continued to oppress the Abenaki people today in many ways including the incalculable cultural effects of that kind of oppression. One concrete way that that has continued to oppress the Abenaki people is that many indigenous folks today are understandably skeptical of government surveys like the census fearing that the data will be used against them which means that they're not included as we go to create solutions based on census data. The Abenaki people over and over again in another example have been denied legal recognition by the state of Vermont and only became recognized in 2011 and 2012 like really, really recently and they're still not federally recognized which erases their histories and their cultures. And again, it also means that when we create solutions if we're not recognizing them as a legitimate group of people we don't create solutions for them. We know in another example that nearly 24% of black Vermonters live in poverty compared to 11% of white Vermonters and poverty rates are greater among people who include themselves into our more racial groups. And we know that increasingly we have mixed race folks in our state and across the country. When we look at housing in particular the 2020 Vermont Housing Needs Assessment showed a stark racial disparity. So the home ownership rate among white households is at 72%. It's at 21% for black households. I just want you to sit with that difference 72% versus 21. That's what I mean when I say me and my sister and my partner, we've never assumed we'd own a home. No one who looks like us owns homes in around us. Like my community of people of color in Duxbury and Waterbury I don't know other people of color who own home or own land that I spend time with. That's all white folks. And that's because of that stat. 72% white households, 21% black households in Vermont. And the household income for white households at $58,000 a year compared to 41 for black households. When you look at farm ownership only 2.3% of producers in Vermont identify as BIPOC, 2.3%. And so these are sort of the wealth disparities and the access disparities. Those are many examples of them that I think folks may or may not be familiar with. And that's sort of our baseline. That massive disparity was our baseline pre-pandemic and pre what we know is just increasing negative effects of the climate crisis. Since the pandemic, we know food insecurity as an example has increased and that has only continued to exacerbate the massive disparity between white households and people of color. For when it comes to food insecurity, food insecurity, 49% of BIPOC households report that they have experienced food insecurity where only 25% of white households report the same thing. And when we look at the cost of homes which we know has increased during the pandemic, it's increased to by 45% between May and 2021, 2020 and 2021 and 46% of home sellers in that same time period traded up for newer, bigger, more expensive homes. So again, if we just sort of like, I'm rattling off statistics here, if we sort of think about what I'm saying, we're saying we have a bunch of data that shows us there was a massive wealth and opportunity disparity between marginalized groups in the state and those groups that are more privileged and those things have only been exacerbated by things like the pandemic. And so what we're saying to you with all of this data, with rattling off all of these things that have happened, not only in the past, but that we were seeing today, what we're saying is that this is a complex problem that the state needs to solve. But what we've put together is actually a really streamlined, frankly, a simple solution. And that's what I want to be clear on here. We have put together a solution that says we need to create a fund, a $10 million fund that's managed and distributed by people who are the most impacted by structural racism. And we believe that that simple act, that very focused solution is a concrete way to address the multitude of historical harms and the disparity and wealth that we're still experiencing today. I think often when I participated in the Social Equity Caucus Working Group and when I've participated in the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, I think it's easy when it comes to building policy to get bogged down in how are we possibly going to address all of the historical harms? When people talk about reparations, it puts hair up on people's backs because it seems like it would be impossible for us to approach that. But what we've provided here is a really streamlined focus solution, the creation of a fund that would be distributed by the people who are harmed the most. And so I just wanted to close again, as I said before I passed the mic to talking a little bit again about my personal experience. Like I said, it was sort of the major goal and focus of my adulthood and my relationship with my partner, Louise, to own a home and to own land. And so we've saved a lot to do that. We went through all the right steps, our credit was good. And I want to acknowledge that I'm incredibly privileged. I'm a light-skinned black woman. I had access to education. I was raised by a white family in Vermont that has history here. And so I can often reference my white family as street cred when I need to get things like loans. And still for me, an incredibly privileged black woman, the process was fraught with discrimination. I had a broker who gave me what I think was probably great advice for young white people, which is to write a cover letter to folks who we'd want to buy homes from. And we would write telling honestly who we were. We're a young mixed race couple for whom home ownership has been a dream for us, our whole lives. And we know that on paper, we had the highest bids on three of the four homes that we went to go purchase. And we had really attractive offers because our purchase was not contingent on a sale. And we lost those bids on three of the four homes even with the strongest offers in an incredibly competitive market. And there's no question for me that what ended up happening is those home sellers Googled my name, saw that I was working on anti-racist and anti-policing work in the state of Vermont and really we're not interested in selling their home to us. I think that when we showed up to look at homes, the eyebrow raises that we got from homeowners and sort of their assumptions about us made it clear that we weren't people who they were willing to sell to. And those are just small examples of what we faced which was not just structurally keeping us away from owning a home but was like incredibly emotionally traumatizing. And in the end, we ended up doing a for sale by owner and only by stripping away brokerages who were able to do lots of background checks and research that actually harmed us where we're able to create a direct relationship with a buyer is how we landed our home in the community where we are. And while that feels like a nice bow on a personal story that's like we've achieved what we wanted, our experience trying to create community here has been incredibly challenging because we needed to move to a part of the state where we could afford. There's a very small if non-existent community of color here. All of our friends who look like us continue to live in Chittenden County where there is a massive affordable housing crisis but where it's possible to access apartments and rentals and that's where the majority of our friends who are people of color can live. And so we would love more than anything else to be able to own land next to other people of color and be in community with people of color. We'd love to practice indigenous farming and home settling practices and learn from people within our community. But even as we've broken through the many barriers to living this dream, we're alone in doing that because of our privilege and because of the barriers that exist for the majority of people of color in the state when it comes to accessing land and home ownership. So hopefully what I've shared today has given you all a sense of the why behind this bill. It's given you a sense as to why we think that we've created a really elegant solution to a very complex problem and that it's helped you connect to a story from somebody who's experiencing these disparities live today. And I don't know who I'm passing it on to. Brian, do you know is it going to Kenya next? Okay, great. First, thank you, Brian, and thank you so much, Ashley, for sharing. I know that's not easy to step into a full of white folks and talk about all the painful aspects of being black in a white state. I also grew up in Vermont. I live in Corinth, Vermont, next door to my parents, which is challenging and also great. I think when I was a kid, my brother and my mom and I were the only black people in the town and maybe the two surrounding towns also. So when I moved back here as an adult, it was important for me to continue to bring other people of color here because it really hasn't changed. I think there's maybe one other person now. So last year, or 2020, wow, it's already been a year and a half. 2020 when COVID came around and wrecked everything. My partner and I were just acknowledging in our home that we get to go outside still and we get to interact with family members still and we can just go down the road and stand outside and talk to my parents and my daughter still has relationships with them and still can play with kids outside. And the rest of my family who lives in Baltimore and in Atlanta, they don't have that. They could not go outside. They could not play outside. It was too dangerous. They were all trapped in their tiny apartments that they also don't own. And it just struck me how privileged I am and we are to live in Vermont and be able to access all of this land and be able to go outside and be able to engage with our neighbors and our communities in these really positive ways. So that disparity showed up for me and my family and it showed up in a way that my mom and I are able to live in Vermont in this way and there is a trade-off, obviously. All the things that Ashley's talking about are a major trade-off for us and it's not easy to be here, but we do have land. We can grow food. We can engage. We can hike. We can just be outside when it's hard to be inside. So I started the Everytown Project and I've been working on that for a little over a year with Mindy. Link was on this call. And part of, not all of it, but part of that is making sure that there is land access for BIPOC in Vermont and we're trying to secure at least one piece of land in every town in the state. And a larger piece of that is actually turned into the Neighbors Network, which is this group of allies and accomplices who are committed to creating safe space in their communities. And working with the neighbors and working with Mindy and working with the BIPOC land-matching committee whose job is to decide who gets matched with each piece of land has been incredibly eye-opening and it's only furthered my intention to make sure that this bill is heard and really heard and seen and read and hopefully passed because it's really important that there's not funding, there's not resources for the groups that we mentioned in this list. So at the risk of just babbling for hours, I will read to you like exactly what's in the bill and I know that you may have read it and I think it's important for us to read it again because last year when we introduced this bill we were not met with the reception that we had hoped and it was stressful and challenging and there was feedback given and it was hard to hear but we spent a lot of time like absorbing that feedback and listening and like even though it was challenging opening ourselves enough to hear the feedback and incorporate it into this bill. So we've made some changes and I hope that you'll notice them and appreciate them because we were listening. So as you know, this bill creates a fund, the Vermont Land Access and Opportunity Fund and at the same time a board is created to administer the funds from the fund. The funding for it comes from private and public donations and the General Assembly. The board is made up of the Executive Director of Racial Equity and or their designee. Five members will be appointed from the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs, at least two of whom will be Abenaki. Two members will be appointed by the end of the ACP, one member from the Racial Justice Alliance, one member from the Vermont Relief Collective, two members from the Everytown Project, one member with financial expertise by the Secretary of Commerce and Community Development, one farmer by the Secretary of Agriculture, a social worker with expertise in anti-racism appointed by the National Association of Social Workers from the Vermont Chapter, two LGBTQ or Children of the Rainbow, that's Brian. So eloquently stated. So two LGBTQ members of the Pride Center of Vermont, one member of the Migrant Justice to represent migrant farm workers and their populations, one member by the U.S. Committee for Refugees, immigrants and immigrants who belong to refugee or immigrant communities and or have experience representing those communities. We're just getting started, sorry. One member from the Vermont Development, the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council with lived experience, one member from the Vermont Psychiatric Survivors group with lived experience and any other members that the Advisory Commission deems necessary to carrying out the functions of the board including ensuring equitable representation for impacted communities. This board will be a balanced mix of Vermonters who have historically suffered from discrimination who have not had equal access to public or private economic benefits due to race, ethnicity, sex, geography, language preference, immigrant or citizen status, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status or disability status. So the duties of the board, that was a lot. And it's like, I'm starting to like stammer because it's like really important to me like it, I was like hearing Ashley's voice in my head as I was saying these things. And it's like, it's so exciting to me that this is even a possibility. And it's so exciting to me that like people like Ashley and Ashley's sister and me and like my cousin or whoever could apply for a grant and actually be able and be supported in buying a home. So with that, the duties of the board are to award grants for the purchase of a primary residence, to award grants for the purchase of farmland and land deemed suitable for regenerative practices, to award grants for land access and stewardship programs, to award grants for new and existing financial education, wealth management and regenerative natural resource programs led by and focused on Vermonters who have historically suffered discrimination from that list that I've said already. And I'm happy to say it again but for lack of time, I will keep it short. The duties of the board also include awarding funding to support anti-racist mutual aid networks, groups proposing to share land, to create commons and for collective land ownership. They will also grant funds to the every town project to purchase and hold land and trust in every town in the state for access and stewardship by Vermonters who have historically suffered due to race, ethnicity, sex, geography, language preference, immigrant or citizen status, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status or disability status. And finally, the board will also work with the Vermont Housing and Finance Agency to find ways to apply grants to mortgage subsidies and explore ways to overcome the barriers in obtaining a mortgage, including debt to income ratios, redlining the impact of algorithmic decision-making systems. They will work with the Vermont Department of Taxes to explore ways to provide tax breaks to all of the land attached to these grants. The board will have the authority to adopt rules concerning eligibility, rules of use of grant funds. The board will also allocate grants to a balanced and healthy mix of people, balanced and healthy. Okay, of private and collective land use. So that was like word salad, it felt like a little bit, but I wanted you to hear like where all of the members of the board were coming from because I think it's important. And that's like where we like really took your feedback and we were like, okay, was it representative enough? It wasn't inclusive enough for you. So like let's make it that way and let's make it like digestible also. So maybe that language wasn't so digestible, but the point is that like people, the people who are like commonly left out of this conversation of land ownership and home ownership will be accounted for. And it's important to us to have people from all walks of life and not just, you know, like the privileged and educated people who are generally like having a say in government and having a say in community boards. So it's really, it just like felt important for us to like branch out a little and like cover all of our bases and cross all of the T's. And we feel like we did a pretty good job of like being inclusive. And one nice thing is that we know that the state is receiving a lot of funding right now and like the ARPA money and one of our researchers, Chelsea, who's amazing, sent us a list of ways that like the ARPA money is actually eligible to be used in this way. So it's exciting that we're asking for $10 million which is like nothing compared to the amount of money that the state is getting right now. And so I'm like hesitant but excited that this is a possibility and that we could move forward with something like this that is inclusive and is led by the people that it's for. And so at the risk of dropping the mic, I will hand it to Stefan. Thank you. Hey, everybody, good to see you all again. As previously stated, my name is Stefan. And if I have to cough a little bit, I'll just politely mute myself but I don't think I will, I'm just gonna push through it. So anyway, I wanted to come today and just kind of speak frankly to some of the conversation I think that we have nationally, even taking it out of Vermont around land. I've heard so much of it be politicized and I always wondered why that was so. I don't necessarily think land and discussing land has to be a political issue if we look at just how closely connected we all are and how much all of us grow and all of our lineages grow when we all have access to land and opportunity which is what our country was actually founded on. And Vermont being one of the beginning, I mean, the state's been around for a long time and it's always believed in and tried to push forward that proclamation. When I think about my own life, I think about myself as a biracial guy, a black person, black queer person. And I think about my own lineage, right? My mother who is white woman, one of 10, all of her siblings besides her, which is, that's nine people, are conservatives. My mother's side of the family is a conservative Republican family. With that being said, my grandparents who I believe loved me to death, they're no longer with us, wanted better land and opportunity access for me. And so whenever I would hear these conversations happening, I would say this is not the conversations that my own family, my own flesh and blood had around our kitchen table, around what we wanted. It's been fascinating to watch all of my aunts and uncles' children who are my first cousins, and you can imagine there's a lot of them, 10 kids, each one of them, they were busy, they had a couple of kids themselves. And now all of them have children and a lot of their children look like me. They're brown, they're half Latino, half black, a fourth Middle Easter, it's really been amazing how it's grown and all of them want the same opportunities for their children despite the persuasion, the political discourse. When I look at Vermont, I see the same thing. I see a lot of people even who are on this call who have a lot of lineages that might not necessarily be so present by how they physically look. And there is a lot of vested interest in all of us moving together because we're all actually growing together and we're all kind of kin by blood. The issue is that because of what happened to the other side of my family and being African-American citizens of slaves, there was a bankruptcy of infrastructure and that bankruptcy of infrastructure is something that now me as the person who is the lineage of these two very different peoples who both care about me have to deal with. And I think that's the story of a lot of people in the United States being mixed or not. This is just my story. It's a story of a lot of people here in the US, especially in Vermont because of our current makeup that is changing, statistics are showing that it's changing. I also think it's important to realize that if we don't have an infrastructure then we can't have an actual people who are actually gonna represent us that would be wanna be represented. And when I think about people like y'all who have been elected really because people trust you and have really looked to you to stand up for all of us, I really think about what y'all could do and the power y'all have in this moment and it does make me excited. Everyone here seems like a pretty stand up person. So it's exciting. It's an exciting time. And it's also exciting to be able to be here and to speak to this in this way which is also a privilege. So I guess I would just say to wrap us up that right now we don't have the infrastructure we need. Our question is, and really the question that we all have to ask ourselves wherever we're standing in this is what can we do to change that? And how do we change that? It doesn't matter about where we came from, who our parents were, what our ideologies were. It really doesn't matter because in the blink of an eye the ideologies that may be my own grandparents described to change when I came into the world. And now all of my little cousins who look like me who have parents that maybe don't have the same political or social beliefs that my parents did are looking to me for answers regardless of if they have melanin in their skin or not because we're all akin to each other. That's where our country is going. We can't stop that. So we need to find a way forward. I'm hoping that this bill is something that can be presented as a way forward, that we can use it and really do some alchemy and make it work so that we can be part of a future and creating a future that actually allows that to happen. It's pretty simple. It's a fund, we've done that. It's a board, we've done that. I'm actually serving as vice chair of HEAC which is the Health Equity Advisory Commission. And that also was just created. So I know that we can create boards, I know we can create funds. We also now have what we didn't have before which is the money. The money is something that has been a big blessing to this state and we earned that blessing. Vermont did a good job. We did a great job to beat back the pandemic and we all came together to do it. And the Scott administration did not do a bad job in my opinion when they were called to help. And so I know we can all do it together. I think that we can do the same thing now together. And I'm hoping that as we end and that as you have heard what everyone is saying that you keep that spirit, whatever your positionality is, you come to this conversation with that goal and that we can actually work together to do some good work because I don't think any of us wanna waste our time on this. Thank you so much. Thank you, Stefan. We have Mindy and Chane and Chelsea here but are you here in support? So Stefan gave us a period to the conversation. Period. Perhaps an ellipses. So thank you so much for coming in and reintroducing this bill. We will reach out to discuss potential witnesses as we move forward and find work on some of the research that you've done and then again talk to other people as we move forward with this. And we will probably, even though Kenya, thank you for taking us through the bill, we'll work with our attorney to do a walkthrough. I would just urge us to reread the first section of the bill. Again, I think which Ashley, thank you for summarizing it and bringing this conversation forward. I appreciate you coming back. I appreciate the work that you did this fall and I look forward to continuing the conversation on this bill. So thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Committee, we're gonna take, sorry, Representative Kalaki. Well, I'd like to thank everybody for coming and I know we had conversations last year and I do feel that you really broaden the scope of the bill and I also appreciate that the inclusivity you brought to the reframing of it. And so I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you. We're going to take a break now for 10 minutes and we'll be back at two.