 Thank you. This is the House Education Committee, the Vermont House of Representatives and we are continuing our meeting today. Right now we are looking at we have interest in a bill that is in the Government Operations Committee right now that is related to annual school district meetings in response to COVID-19. And I've asked the the drafter of that bill to come and give us an update on where the committee is with this bill and then we'll also have an opportunity here from the school board's association just to see you know how you're doing if you have any further concerns. So thank you Tucker Anderson. Can you give us an update and talk to us about this bill? Absolutely. Good morning ish everyone. My name is Tucker Anderson with the Office of Legislative Council. For those of you are new or who haven't worked with me before I'm one of the attorneys in the office that deals primarily with government operations issues and I'm the records officer for the Office of Legislative Council. As an update with what House government operations did yesterday, yesterday late afternoon they passed out a strike all amendment to age 48. It maintains all of the original text of the bills introduced and has two small new additions that I'll point out to you. And from what I understand you wanted to discuss some of the implications specifically for school districts. So if I may get permission to share my screen I will give you an overview of the bill and we can talk about the school district issues. Let me see if I have that. So the bill starts and this is the majority of the text of the bill with some findings intent and purpose. A general overview of the legislative findings here and the background for the bill is that the continued spread of COVID-19 has the potential to jeopardize the health safety and welfare of citizens who are voting in their annual town meetings. And that despite some of the work that the General Assembly did in the fall, which included giving permission to municipalities to convert their annual meeting to the Australian ballot system through a vote of their select board, that there would still be requirements for in-person contact specifically balloting locations or otherwise individual registered voters would have to request an absentee ballot before municipalities would have authorization under state law to mail them a ballot. So those two complications led to some problem solving around what municipalities could do to either hold their annual meeting later in the year when it may be safe to meet in person or to directly mail out Australian ballots to all registered voters in the municipality. Yesterday a new piece was added to the intent section at the suggestion of the school board association and the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. And that was to make clear that it is also the intent of the General Assembly that as municipalities are moving their annual meeting dates that there is cooperation between some of these larger municipal districts that we have in Vermont school districts, waste management districts, and their member municipalities to administer these annual meetings and budget votes. So some of the new intent language states expressly it is the intent of the General Assembly that municipal officials, and this is the key point that people were looking for yesterday, including boards of civil authority and municipal clerks, shall cooperate with and assist school districts and other incorporated districts with the administration of annual district meetings and budget votes. And one of the key reasons that this was brought up in discussion is that there was some thought that there should be increased communication and cooperation between districts and their member municipalities because there's the possibility that there could be staggered annual meeting dates throughout March, potentially April, May, however long these communities push out their annual meeting. The operative provisions of the bill and the two pieces that will have an impact on school districts are immediately in subdivisions A1 and A2. These are temporary provisions that would suspend general law in the year 2021. So it states that not withstanding any provisional law to the contrary in the year 2021, a municipal legislative body may vote to move the date of the municipality's annual meeting to a date later in the year 2021, there is no limitation on this in this language. However, there are practical limitations that will come up for municipalities, such as passing their budgets prior to deadlines that are associated with statewide education property tax rates. Subdivision A2 allows a municipal legislative body to require the municipal clerk to mail out to active registered voters in municipality Australian ballots to be used in the annual meeting. Both of these provisions are also available to school districts. School districts can move the date of their annual meeting. They can mail out Australian ballots to all of the registered voters in the district. One of the questions that has come up beyond can school districts use this bill is will there be any support, whether it's staff or practical support or funding for any of these four school districts? The answer to that is that under general law school districts are responsible for holding the district-wide vote. In the past, the district-wide vote aligned under statute with one annual meeting date for the member municipalities that is set by law the first Tuesday in March. That may not be the case anymore. An important thing that I'll note here is that there was always authorization for school districts to hold their district-wide vote on a different date than their member municipalities. They have a lot of flexibility in underlying law. The second question that came up around funding, the Secretary of State testified yesterday that they will be given an appropriation of two million dollars from the Joint Fiscal Committee to assist any municipality that chooses to use alternative procedures for their annual meeting and that would include school districts that they would have funding available, for example, to mail out and pay the postage costs of mailing out ballots. Another important piece to mark here before we get into some discussion around this, the Secretary of State is given authority under the provisions of this bill to support and supplement any of the powers that are given to municipalities under this section. And this will essentially allow the Secretary of State to wave any practical barriers that come in play for municipalities. The example that was brought up yesterday is the ballot tabulators. Apparently you have to request the ballot tabulator, something like 45 or 60 days before you actually need the tabulator, and those deadlines will have potentially passed by the time a municipality would need it if it's going to convert to Australian ballot. So the Secretary of State would have the authority to wave that deadline and get the municipalities their tabulator machines. So that would be wave on a case-by-case basis or is it a general waiver? It could be both. So the general waiver of the tabulator deadline would come down to case-by-case bases because municipalities would be potentially moving their annual meeting dates throughout the spring. There may be a general waiver in the future, and also specific waivers from municipalities who have moved their dates out further. Another example that they brought up and that they used, this same authority for the Secretary of State's office was used in the fall, is drive-up ballot reception from the town clerks, setting up a drive-through station for accepting and receiving ballots. That is something that isn't contemplated under general law, but that would be allowed under the section. The last piece that I highlight here that will apply to school districts, this subsection B states that in any municipality that moves the date of the 2021 annual meeting, municipal officers, so your school district officers, shall serve until the annual meeting and successors are chosen. So if the dates get moved out so far that you've moved past the expiration of the officer's term, they will stay in office until their replacement is elected. And from what I understand for school districts, there are service terms that are staggered all throughout the year. I do know that there's one set in statute for incorporated school districts that states that all of those officers take their office on July 1st. So hopefully those school districts will have held their meetings and figured this all out before then. Thank you. So just to clarify, this is considered enabling legislation, it's just allowing them to do this versus telling them to do this? Correct. Okay. I'm going to go to questions in a minute, Representative Toof. I think what I want to hear first is a response from the school board's association and then I'll go right to you because they were working on that and there's our concerns. So did we lose Sue as she's still there? Yeah. I'm here. Okay. Oh, there you are. So you were involved in this discussion and had an opportunity to speak and we know that there were some questions and concerns that you had and wondering if this addresses those concerns to the best of the ability. We were happy to see the language that was added yesterday afternoon that Tucker Anderson just referred to. And in addition, I would say that we continue to want to stress the importance of communicating on a state level to school districts and other municipalities about these options and more importantly about the importance of coordinating to the highest extent possible in order to make efficient use of the funds that are available for mailing ballots and preparing ballots. Just to put the issue into context for any committee, especially any new committee members, there are many school districts now in Vermont that are unified union districts which cross town lines and they include several towns. And for instance, yesterday I spoke to one school board member who was from a unified district that includes nine towns and that's not unusual. That board is anticipating the passage of H48 so it's been communicating with those nine towns about their plans for the upcoming annual meeting and coordinating. And so far six of the nine towns seem to be on board with coordinating with the school district by not changing the date of town meeting but there are three that are still three towns that are still deciding how they're going to proceed and if those three towns decide they're going to move the date of their town meetings it raises many logistical and legal questions for the school district's annual meeting and so many questions in fact that the school board is going to need to have its legal council at its next board meeting to ensure that it makes an informed legal decision and also that it prepares its warning properly. So it's because of those complexities with allowing the changes to the date of the annual meetings that it's really important to have state officials take the lead with an organized communication strategy and encourage towns and school districts to align their votes and we think that clear concise and timely communications really need to start now and that they're critically important so that officials can consider the implications of the legislation in preparations for their school district annual meetings. Okay I have questions but I think we're looking at the time I'm going to go right to Representative Toof and then Representative Harrison. All right thanks thanks Chair Webb and thank you Sue and Tucker for presenting today I just I mean I have a question and this isn't the name and I've already brought this up earlier but this is the name of public safety I understand that this is something that's really important especially given where we are in the pandemic was there any discussion Tucker I guess this question's for you maybe you don't have the answer but why are we allowing it instead of like we did in November where we had a full-on mail-in not campaign but like every you know we had a we had mail-in voting for November but we're not really mandating that now for March I understand there's a lot of difficulties with it but to me when I look at people like my grandmother who's 89 years old who doesn't want to go to the polls this is something and I know she has the ability to request and that's something that has always been the case but I feel like we're not better off now in January to March than we were in November so I just I just want to know why we're allowing them to the municipalities to do it instead of just mailing out through the Secretary of State like we did before we have the two million dollars for that so I think that's a question that is probably best for your colleagues in the House and in the Senate when they're working on this bill but it was a policy choice to make this enabling language rather than mandating a transition to a different form of annual meeting and I can tell you that one of the sources of making this enabling is that many communities want to preserve their traditional form of annual meeting where they conduct floor votes and there's a lot of communities are very passionate about preserving that system of you know direct democracy so they preferred to have an option where they could move the date to later in the year and potentially hold those viva voce votes from the floor rather than having a mandated mail-in campaign but yeah that's a that's a policy question that's probably best for your colleagues yeah and and I thank you for that and you know I do appreciate that I'd rather be sitting in my committee chair right now in the State House I understand the the passion that these communities have but for me it's just it comes down to safety I will ask that question thank you um and I appreciate you taking the time with us today thanks um representative are we we've got uh 12 minutes to represent embarrassing and do it less than that uh do we have any kind of handle on what the schedule is going to be this hitting the the House floor and the Senate doing a parallel uh process it well Tucker you may know how we're going to handle this this Friday so I don't know if it depends on whether we have a you know just a my understanding and none of this is definitive I'm not the parliamentarian for the House but my understanding is that it's on notice for today and will be taken up next week the Senate has already scheduled committee hearings for this afternoon I think they have me booked for three or four hours for some reason to go through a similar process of discussion so we take it up Tuesday then what that would mean yeah yeah what I was asking was I know the reason I was this morning was on the phone the Cavendish County first office and having a meeting Monday we're having a meeting Tuesday of our select board and everybody's kind of on pins and needles that this thing happens soon as possible thank you yeah there are definitely some challenging dates that are in the books now Representative Conlon and then thank you go ahead thanks uh uh first of all great to learn the term viva voce I'm going to break that out sometime in the future in the bill it talks about the intent for cooperation of municipalities can you talk a little bit about what sort of power that statement carries as sort of an intent statement it will help frame intent around the bill itself but it is not binding language the request that came out of the committee and more specifically from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns yesterday was that this be an expression of what the general assembly wants without mandating for example that a board of civil authority has to bear the expense of carrying out all of the administration of district meetings great yeah recognize thanks and I'm glad it's in there does a nice change and the need for speed here has to do with a lot of dates that are currently in statute that if we don't do this quickly it's going to leave folks and in some pretty dire straits so any other questions at this point Ted Fisher for the AOA did you want to add anything I don't um for the record Ted Fisher Vermont Agency of Education I don't have much to add specifically with regard to the bill just to note that this is something that's been on the agencies right our screening on the radar screen of other other state agencies um some of our partner uh state agencies um in terms of just like the what the concerns are um uh as as as I'm sure folks are aware schools are often the venues for annual meetings um even if they're not the specifically regarding to them it's often the annual meeting uh location for the for the municipality itself um and currently our public views of schools guidance that's issued under the current COVID-19 emergency greatly restricts the um the access to school districts um or to two schools for a safety perspective um so that's that's obviously something that we're that we're keeping a close eye on um because uh holding those votes in person we have some concerns about the delay timeline it's it's hard to project at this point I keep saying this since the beginning of the pandemic but um it's hard to project at this point there are um like when conditions will change or improve in terms of scheduling a delay in order to try and have an in-person meeting um and we also um you know the the current um executive order is one that's called a gathering size um and but by definition you can't have a town meeting side uh the town meeting because citizens need help and debate and vote so um so yeah we just have some concerns not specifically to the bill but um but this is an issue that we're watching very closely in terms of the safety aspects of it. Thank you representative Toof. Yeah thanks just real quick I just want to thank Ted for the kind of he kind of reiterated some points that I was trying to get to with the using the schools and um just another you know tip to the new to the newer folks and my my pick up or my hold up is is the fight we always have is the shall versus the may and uh that's kind of where I'm um stuck on so thank you. That's that's one of our discussions we always have isn't it the shall versus may okay we do not have position of this vote this bill so I'm not going to take a vote at this point in time um I'm just looking at um are there any further questions going forward I I will intend to support the work of the committee I just anybody else have anything else to say any other concerns or we've gotten a few more minutes before we go yeah we're okay got enough information thank you and thank you so much to the school board's association for weighing in and doing the doing the work and we remember how incredibly complicated this was last year and also I think it does open up the conversation uh moving forward as to the complexity of of voting on school budgets when everybody has different ideas about when they're doing it and we certainly saw that last year so that could be that discussion possibly for another time maybe not right now um but the discussion going forward okay I thank you so much Tucker for joining our committee um and a Sandra Cameron from the um you're you're all set you're you're with Sue so you're in okay I think what we'll do then is um we will uh stop here Jesse can you remind me what we have so far going on next week we will email you something over the once we get this schedule worked out probably on Monday um what the schedule is going to look like but for Tuesday next week um what do we have and I'm gonna thank you okay uh definitely yeah so moving forward for Tuesday um for short we have a 115 joint meeting with general housing and military uh in regard to VT NEA and we'll hopefully be scheduling in correct me if I'm wrong chairweb um some teachers for the afternoon yeah we're hoping to do that we're we're going to start next week really looking at um how are our children how are our schools just where are we what do we need to know yeah okay so at the moment the only thing we have on right now and I am going to be speaking with um with uh Tom Stevens about that plan because I'm we're going to it's going to be a joint committee meeting so I should have more of that more of that either by the weekend or Monday um I think Jesse's going to email out to me um if you can share your information cell phone number so right now at it's really helpful to have a cell phone number that I can text you that's sort of my easiest way to communicate with you and with that I think we can go offline we can go off YouTube um and then be preparing to go to the uh the text workshop