 Welcome everyone to our bill analysis workshop, part of a series of workshops to help the public our members and supporters better understand the legislative process. So last time we did a general overview of the process. And today we're going to dive a little deeper into specific legislation to better understand how it works. And I'm going to turn it over to Bob how our lobbyist and he presenter tonight to lead us through this workshop. All right, well, hello everybody my apologize for the delay on my end. So, I have represented the Sierra Club now for three or four years and representing clients at the state house for 40 years. Right of that I served in the main house of representatives. And I live in the town of Brunswick. Now, Matt, do you want to allow me to share my screen. Yeah, you should be able to your coho so you should see that screen. So tell me. The first thing I are you seeing my what I'm seeing on my screen which is the legislative reports here club. Yeah. Okay. Is it. Is there something I have to do to accept. No, you are a cohost so you should be able to share. Voila. There we go. So, what you're looking at is the report I put together for the Sierra Club for bills I think Sierra Club is interested in and we add to this or maybe it takes something off. As I meet with Matt and the legislative team to discuss what issues Sierra Club wants to follow and and indeed get involved in. So, why don't we jump right in the first these are bills that have been posted, that is to say the fully drafted they've been assigned LD that is legislative document numbers. And we can see exactly what they do in most cases. Anybody is welcome to get this link. I have an email that goes out automatically to clients on Fridays for the link to the clients report. If you're not getting those and you want them let me or Matt know and I'll add you to the distribution list. You mentioned that the interest is 5050 and whether to take a look at the plastic bag band or was it. I was so involved trying to get my technology straight here I didn't catch everything you said. Yeah, that was for the bag band or offshore wind but maybe we could start with the hydro fluorocarbon and then I want to be the vice president and break that tie I'm happy to delegate that to you. Maybe somebody else will come on and take that responsibility. What bill number am I looking for here to the number 226. Thank you just pass it. All right, let me let me go up just a little. Here we go. All right. So this is the LD number if you can see my cursor circling around this is the bills title and you can see that that's a hyperlink. This is the description of the bill taken directly from the bill. Over on the over on the right here that's simply when I last made a change to this entry. The status is it's simply pending final legislative action because there hasn't been much action. This is the name of the committee of jurisdiction. We do not have a hearing or work session date. Let's look at the bill itself on the legislature's website. We do that by going here, clicking on that hyperlink. So this is a page from what's called the bill directory. And there's quite a bit of information on here. If we want to look, see what a legislative document actually looks like is here it is in PDF form. This is not at the front page is always the same state seal. We're at the beginning of the 130th main legislature, which will serve for two years, and then there's an election and then we'll be going to the hundred and for 31st main legislature in 2023. This is a document number. This one. First was reported to the House of Representatives and it went there first because it's primary sponsor is a representative. This line right here submitted by the Department of environmental protection would appear on any bill submitted by a department. This is represented by a legislator and Ralph Tucker, who happens to be my representative submitted on the behalf of the DEP because he's the house chair of the committee that will hear the bill. And you see here that the clerk of the house has referred the bill to the committee on environment natural resources, which Ralph chairs. This is the substance of the bill. A lot of this will look like some sort of foreign language perhaps to you, but it is adding a definition to some existing law. But probably the best way to start is to go straight to the end of the bill where there is a summary, and then you get a better idea. What the bill does. We're going to go straight down until we get to the summary and I went right past it. This is it. And this is what the bill does it prohibits the sale lease rent installation use or entering into commerce of any product or equipment that uses or will use a substance that is a hydro floor carbon with high global warming potential intended for any air conditioning anywhere. So propellant end use as determined by the DEP tracks the DEP to adopt rules. And in adopting the initial rules. The department must regulate each substance and end use as specifically provided for in the bill and may not regulate any substance or end use, not addressing the bill. The department may adopt rules adding or removing substances from the list of prohibited substances or adding or removing and uses. Well, what is all that mean. I think it's fairly straightforward. What this covers hydrocarbons. With certain intended uses the rulemaking stuff. That's pretty common, particularly with legislation that deals with it. Highly technical or complex subject. Rather than the legislature, the citizen legislator trying to figure out exactly. How the rules should be written. They delegate that task to the department. Now, they can the legislature. Tell the department before the rules are implemented that they have to come back to the legislature for review. They do that if they deem the rules to be major substantive rules. And perhaps we can find up here whether they've done that rulemaking. No, they did not do that. The department should adopt rules to implement the section rules adopted by our routine technical rules. So there are two types of rules are major substantive rules which come back to the legislature review and approval. And then there are routine technical rules that simply go into effect once the department has conducted the rulemaking process. Which is prescribed in law. So, let me, before I go any further, let's see if there are any questions or Matt, whether you want me to steer this in a particular direction from here. Feel free to. Yeah, if there are questions, you can put them in the chat. I don't see any at the moment, but. I appreciate I appreciate knowing the distinction between major and routine technical major substantive. It's strictly a call by the legislature which type they are going to deem a set of rules to be my guess is they've done routine technical rules here because there's still there's already a very well developed set of rules on on the regulation of chemicals and substances and this simply adds another category to it. It's not it's not a whole new area of law. So what else strikes you about this legislation was this also was this given by the department or the governor. If this comes from the department. It's not a governor's bill per se. The governor can put in her own bills and she can do that anytime she wants. Whereas departments. Had a deadline in I believe early December. And then individual legislators submitting bills. In their own right and not behalf of the department or agency at a somewhat later deadline 18th of December. Now I will say the department is very unlikely to put a bill in without checking with the governor's office to make sure the governor is. Is okay with it. But it is not per se a governor's bill. I think mine had his hand up. No, you're batting away flies. Any other questions. Well I guess this does bring up what Bruce briefly touched on but the the rulemaking process so I mean this is legislation to change. And then with specific definitions by the department and then there, there is a rule there rulemaking processes for most agencies. Can you just give us a clear try to understand the difference between rulemaking and the legislative process. In this regard, sure. Well, let's let's start with the foundational governing document for the state of Maine and that's the state constitution. Everything flows from that. The legislature cannot pass laws that are somehow in conflict with the state constitution. Likewise, the department or agency cannot enact rules that are not consistent with the statutes enacted by the legislature. But assuming this bill. Well, there's no question about what their rules are likely to be consistent with the intent of the legislature because they're being directed by the legislature to do this. There is a quite a body of law statutory law governing the rulemaking process it's called the administrators administrative procedures act we could. You know, I could bring that up on the screen if anybody wants to get into it, but maybe this isn't the session for that. Suffice it to say perhaps that the public has to be given notice of proposed rulemaking. There is often a public hearing. I believe in all cases there is the opportunity to submit written comments. And then only. And I believe that the agency has to respond and writing to each set of comments. And then eventually they can promulgate the rule. And it has the force of law. The difference. If this were deemed a major substantive rule. Would be that after they've gone through that process they age of the D people not promulgate it until they send it to the legislature. And it essentially comes in like a bill. And the legislature can approve the rule. They can approve it with changes or they can reject it. Pretty much the same. Options that apply to any piece of legislation. And all all those steps and great detail, except for within the administrative procedures act. And that applies to any agency. That's. Has rulemaking authority. And agencies needs specific authority to adopt rules. If the legislature hasn't authorized an agency to adopt any rules, they don't adopt any rules. Okay. That's helpful. And I guess my only other question, I think I'm going to send another quick poll out in terms of how many bills people want to cover. They want to go more in depth on this one or cover more bills, but I guess my only other question before that would be, what, what do you think of this legislation does this seem. When does it seem likely to pass. What are your impressions. Well, the substance of what this would be a useful exercise. There's a little preamble up here be an active people, the state of Maine, as follows. This is a section number of the bill. It pertains to this 38 here is a title number. The environmental laws are entitled 38 there are 40 some I think titles, titles, title numbers, number titles there. MRSA may means main revised statutes annotated. Which is our code of statutory law. Bill squiggly is the symbol for a section, and it's creating a new section entitled hydro fluorocarbon use restrictions. It defines the term substance. I guess what I'm looking for. They don't. They don't in the bill to find hydro fluorocarbon it may be addressed in existing law. Then there's a prohibition regarding these substances, and then there's a rulemaking authority. So everything from line one to line 15 is new law. Everything else from there on and you can tell that because it's underlined. The rulemaking authority is not underlined. I mean to make folks dizzy here. The rulemaking authority is not underlined because it's existing law, I believe, and we can check that by going. And Bob, as you do that I'm going to send out a poll because I mentioned earlier that this is kind of like choose your own adventure we're trying to gauge your interest in what you all like to get out of this so I'm just going to throw out a poll kind of wondering if we want to just focus on a couple bills. Pretty thoroughly like we are now, or kind of roll through a few more. And focus kind of just on the general overview content. So I'm just going to launch this see what people think. But carry on Bob. Yep. So, um, I'm assuming you can see something that says title 38 chapter 16 sale of consumer products affecting the environment. And these are all existing laws. Parasol sprays chemical septic tank cleaners phone products lead acid batteries. Plastic bad bags adult I think now elsewhere in law motor vehicle air conditioning wheel weights lead in them used to be ozone cleaning products bromide flame retardants posted furniture electronic way. So I'm just going to move to another area of the lawn. Oh yes his plastic bag reduction. So, see that that last one is section 1611. The new one is 1612. So when this is enacted. You go to this page and you'll see one other line here below this one. But if we wanted to look at plastic bag reduction, we click there. And it will take us to the current along plastic bag reduction. Just looking down to see if that contains its own rulemaking section. I'll go too far down the rabbit hole. You asked me if this is well drafted. I think it's very well drafted in that is. Detailed to the nth degree is really not much question about what it does. It's a little different than a lot of bills because of all of this stuff in here that deals with existing types of things that are regulated by the dp. As some degree of hazard. I'm guessing that might well be enough on this bill, but you tell me. Yes. I think so we got our poll result. Well, if you haven't voted. You have five seconds. But we have definitely the majority of people have voted. And yeah, and just before I show the poll. Isabel our legislative team regularly dives in deeper and I think our next workshop. I have to double check but I think we might. We might also look a little bit deeper as well. So once we do a few of these, it'll make more sense and you even just reading the summary really helps. But it looks like our polls with about two thirds reporting are to kind of move similar to this pace and focus on the few that we first talked about so this one and to maybe maybe three more if we can but the next one can be the pine tree amendment and then if we have some time we could just do both of those opposition bills that the band and the offshore wind. So you're talking about the environmental constitutional amendment to establish environmental rights. Yes, I think it's 60. It was 64 or five on there. That I have maybe I have it up at the top in the priority section. Yes, I do 64. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This will be a little different because it proposes to amend the state's constitution. So here you have the LD number. This is a title. We've description. It's going to. Well, it's going to the energy utilities and technology committee that's interesting, although not terribly surprising. I would have thought, however, we go to environmental environment natural resources, let's click on the link. And we'll open the document itself. So you've seen the format title. Oh, now I entered. I entered the committee on energy utilities, which was obviously an era. It's what I thought would have thought it was so I'll go back and change it. Sponsor. So it adds a new provision of the state's constitution and article 10 section 26. It establishes certain environmental rights, which are set forth here. And then. There's language that's unique to constitutional referenda that spells out the process. Including how the question will appear. On the ballot right here. Now, the The only way the main constitutional can be amended is if the legislature sends a question out to the people. Constitutional amendments cannot be initiated by the voters like statutory law can be. So, for example, we've seen. Citizen positions, petitions on the CMP corridor and the returnable container law and any number of other things, but you won't see a citizen mission petition. On a constitutional change access to start in the legislature. And not only that, it's not easy to do this and attentional. The legislature has to do this by a super majority of two thirds of the house two thirds of the Senate in order to send it to the voters. Like a lot of constitutional language. It's, it doesn't have a lot of detail. If this passes no doubt, you will then see pieces of legislation. Responding to this perhaps to create some new. Public hearing rights that the constitution guarantees or how to implement those rights. Not been scheduled for public hearing yet. As far as I know, we can go back to that page. And if one were to click on status and committee. No public hearings or work sessions have been listed for this bill. So these other links over here won't give us anything yet because the bill hasn't been heard. No amendments been offered. No committee divided reports. Nothing's happened in the chambers yet that is to say that full house and Senate. The actions that have been taken. That's it so far. Refer to the committee. And I'll go in and change the committee that I listed on my report. I made a mistake. I don't know. Any questions on. On LB 64. I don't see any yet, but just to clarify. So this would need a two thirds vote of the legislature. And that's it and a majority or two thirds vote of on the ballot. Majority of the voters, but. Majority of the voters. Okay. Yeah, I don't see any others. I don't see any. I don't think to. For a way to keep track of this. Specific campaign. And I did mention that. I believe there's another bill relating to this that. Is. Better in terms of what are. Our folks are interested in supporting. It's very similar, but. It's very similar. It's very similar. It's very similar to the competing bills of a similar topic, even for ones that amend the constitution. And somehow. Because there's no, there are no limits on the topic or number of bills that can be put in in the first year of the two year. In fact, there are some exactly identical bills that have been submitted. In the normal year, which this isn't. In fact, I would have those two identical bills combined into a single one. But COVID's changed the way a lot of things are done. And this office I refer to is called the office of the advisor of statutes. They haven't been trying to. Combine identical bills. They're letting the committees. Sort that out. One committee. Had hearings today on two identical bills. But they'll report. One of them out of committee eventually. Yeah, I'm not sure off the top of my head, which. The other. You're talking about another proposed amendment to the constitution. Yeah, and I'm not, I'm not quite sure how. I guess it just hasn't been printed yet, but it was introduced, I think as an LR. Yeah. That's another thing we might mention briefly. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. On December 18. The deadline for. Individual legislative file of bills. They're about 1600. Had been filed. And one can go and look at a list of the titles of those bills. They won't all become printed documents. And. And there's no. The only thing that shows up as a printed bill, it really depends upon when the revised office gets to it. But that process. Bill will, will continue to emerge. Over a period of two or three months. Maybe even four. Once they posted like. Like, well, let me go. Let me do this again. Once they're posted in this format. We'll have a rules call for two week public. Notice of the hearing. And one can get on a list. Each committee has a distribution email list for notifications of its activities, including public hearings. And one can get on that list. Perhaps Matt, before we're done, I could do a screen share of the legislature's website and just. Point out a few things that. I think are very helpful in trying to get information about what's going on under the capital don't. Yeah. Whenever you think it sounds like maybe at the end, but I was just going to suggest maybe as a segue, you were just on that plastic bag band. Maybe. We just hop into that and it would be great. It seems like timing is, is going okay. But feel free to ask questions. Folks. I think we still could cover that offshore wind. Yeah. I think that's a good idea. I'm going to try to repeal as well. Cause I actually haven't read it yet either. And I'd like to look at it. But we just looked at a constitutional amendment. We looked at. Department bill that. Defined. Hydrofloor carbons and what should not be allowed. And now. We have a bill that is trying to. We have a bill that was passed last time. Yeah. And I'm trying to get us to. The law. It would repeal. Well. There with me. And so you're 16. 1611 is the one I want. Just. 1611. Which is right here. So this is the current law. This is what the bill would repeal. So. So. First, you've got. Some definitions, including. Plastic. Post consumer recycle material. So forth and so on. And then you've got a list of. They define restaurant retail establishment. What's a reusable bag. What's a single use carryout bag. And then after the definitions. And then exemptions from the prohibition. So. This sentence here contains the prohibition. And then following that under B, a bunch of exceptions. Retail establishment may not provide a single use carryout bag to a customer. At the point of sale or otherwise make single use carryout bags available to customers. But then. Here's a list of exceptions to that. My favorite newspaper bags. We use them for doggy poop bags, but that's all right. At least they get second. Use at least twice. And then after these exceptions. A retail establishment may make single use carryout bags made of plastic that are exempted in paragraph B available. To customers to bag products within retail establishment other than at the point of sale. Only if the retail establishment. Locates inside the retail establishment other than 20 feet of the main entrance of the retail establishment. A receptacle for collecting any single use carryout play plastic bags and ensures that single use carryout bags made of plastic that are collected by the retail establishment. A recycled or delivered to a person engaged in recycling plastics. Then you get into a section on fees. Whoops, didn't need to jump quite that far. Okay, so retail is made charge of 5 cent per bag. Fee. If they use a recycled paper bag or reusable plastic bag. And then an exception to the fees. So, I'm going to give you a little sense of what the current law is. There's no secret that some people didn't like that when it was first enacted. It was by no means unanimous. So we go back to the bill. And it appears that what this bill is trying to do. Is to go back to the prior law because when the current law, this one was enacted in 2019. Replaced this law. This bill puts that old law back and then down here. Repeals the current one. And the old law said that a retailer may use plastic bags to bag products at the point of retail sale only if the retailer. Locates a receptacle. And ensures the plastic bags are collected. Recycled or delivered to person engaged. So, um, I think in the wisdom of the legislature. This old law was not sufficient to reduce. Sufficiently the number of plastic bags that end up in. The trash or on the streets or on beaches. So forth and so on. Thus. This law. I dare say. This bill will not pass. We'll see. Thank you. I'm responding to Mandy's question, which pointed out. Oops, sorry, I was muted. I'm just responding to Mandy's question that there are actually three of those bills for appealing. And I, um, I know you'll show it at the end, but I thought that was a good opportunity to. Use the site to search. So I searched plastic bag ban on that link I sent. And. I now see those three bills. LD 39, which we were looking at LD 108. And 108 and 244. And 108 uses. You know, the language of public safety as, um. To try to improve public safety. But I just wanted to point out, thank you. Bring that up. There are a couple other bills in this regard and we do track. We do track as many of these as possible. So we will definitely be adding these to the list. This appears to me to be identical, except for the title. To the first bill we looked at. I don't see much difference. I jumped back and forth between the two. I don't see much difference. Yeah, that's an example of how the revised or didn't screen out identical bills. Let's take a look at that third one. Yeah. And I haven't read through all of these. Isabella just brings up if these are, if it is, has been effective or not. I thought there was an implementation piece. Maybe you covered it Bob of. I don't know if it's been phased in or if it is just a charge on plastic bags, but it is definitely an interesting point about. How to go about either banning or taxing. And sometimes. I know for taxes or bands. I believe I'm no legal expert, but the US constitution sometimes comes into play with the commerce clause. So some, I don't know if Bob, if you agree with that, I know sometimes people have to decide which way to go. If you're kind of taxing or banning and it has, it can have bigger implications if they're national corporations. Well, yeah. And what you will sometimes hear on that last point is that all of the state of Maine shouldn't do this. This really should be a national policy. So things are uniform from state to state. And that's what same lobbyists when Washington telling the federal government not to do it either. Now we have three identical pieces of legislation. We wouldn't have seen this before the 130th legislature but blame it on COVID but it's a schedule for hearing at the same time. The sponsors will all stand up in a single hearing, make their pitches. And the committee will, will kill two of the bills. They may kill all three of them, but, but they won't report more than one out. Great. Well, thank you. Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. And thanks Isabella for kind of pointing more towards how, how people are actually trying to address issues and are they effective is definitely something that we continue to look at for everything moving forward. I wonder if this is also as we're kind of moving towards the end, if we could look at the offshore wind ban before we start. Finishing up. Right. Did you want to talk at all about right choice voting. I not, I think that that one got the least amount of votes, but Okay. And then let me give you, let me give you 15 seconds on it. The reason this is a resolution to amend the Constitution is that right choice voting for the governor of Maine and the legislature cannot be used because the Constitution says the winner is the one who gets a plurality. That does that prohibition doesn't stand in a way of ranked choice voting for federal offices or for primary elections because those are actually party events that apply to the governor in the general election. Got to change the Constitution. All right, when do you have the bill up ahead? I think it's one, I think it's one on one right there. One on one. I did a word search on. Okay, so this, if you were to look at the sponsors down here. It's a very similar cast of characters that you will see on the plastic ban repeal. And it's interesting. Most of these legislators. Well, half of them anyway. Don't live near the oceans, but there's a couple of them that probably represent a fisherman. So anyway, here we go. We'll look at the bill itself. Fairly short bill. Let's go to the summary of proof prohibits any department or agency or political subdivision of the state like a town or city from approving or permitting offshore wind projects. And then it says that these various state departments have to submit by the end of this year. Legislation necessary to align those provisions of law under their respective jurisdictions with the prohibition and offshore wind projects. And then it says what, what, what kinds of projects are these include community based offshore wind energy products, deep water offshore. Offshore wind energy demos. And off and wind power projects. So, I'm not quite sure what their objection is. The strongest objections I think have come from. Is that the state is going to be living and in fact, the governor is going to ask the legislature for 10 year moratorium on offshore wind that's within. The three mile limit that the state regulates her proposal would not apply. To things further offshore. That. That one needs only the federal. Government to approve. That one needs only the federal government to approve. She couldn't do that anyway. She couldn't go be out beyond three miles just for that reasons. That's how far the state's reach goes. Now representative walking and he is from a coastal community. And he's a primary sponsor. So I'm sure he's hearing from his officials. Fisher folk. Bob, I'm, I'm first, I'm struck by. I don't see any. I don't see any reasoning in there. I don't see any reasoning in there. And given you would think they're in some defense and a court of law later. It would say, you know, in order to protect such and such. This is no longer allowed, but I don't see any reasoning in there. Do you. No. And it's not necessary in order to enforce a law. That this can happen and that can't. And you may find a rationale in the legislative record, but you won't find it usually in the. The law per se. You can bet that once this bill gets to a public hearing. In fact, I'm going to show you. I'm going to take the liberty of showing you. Something from the last legislative session as an example of what you can find. On a. I'm just going to pick something at random here. So all weather tires and automobiles, what the heck. So I'm going to. What happened with this is that it was given. This is not a good example because it looks like it never got a public hearing the sponsor. LTW needs leave to withdraw. I'm not sure we drew it before it ever got a public hearing. Not a good example of what I wanted to show you. Sceptic inspection of the shoreland area. We'll try that one. Okay, this is, this is good. This is the status and committee page. The committee name. When it was reported out and how, and I'll get to that in a second. Anybody. Okay. I'm going to go through that written testimony. For a bill and you can do it through a web portal. In this case, 20 people did so. Are there names. They're affiliations. You click on the names. You can. See what they have to say. Very open process. You won't, you won't get anything like this. This is not this, this easy. So, Nick Bennett, staff, scientists for N. R. C. M. Testified in support. Gives us reasons. So you, you can. You can get to that question. Matt, what the basis was, what the reason was. Not so much by looking at the law, but looking at what people said to justify the law. up here. The 13 members of committees, we talked about this in early workshops, don't always agree. Often there's more than one report, and indeed there was on this bill. The majority of the 13 supported the bill. Two of them didn't like anything about it and voted against it. You can then find out what happened when the bill got to the House and Senate. Tells you when it was enacted, when it was signed to the governor, and what public law chapter number it was assigned. I don't want to keep you too late. I'm good as long as you are. Where would you like to go next? Just to, I guess, answer Bruce's question, which is definitely a legal question in my mind, but he said, what is legislative intent? Does it have any weight when rules are made, or if there are disputes in the interpretation of a law derived from the bill? I'm sorry, the last part about interpretation, I didn't miss the word. Does legislative intent have any weight when rules are made, or if there are disputes in the interpretation of a law derived from the bill? The answer is yes and yes. Legislative intent has everything to do with how the rules are drafted, but yes, that can be disagreement over the intent of both the law and the rule, and that's why we have courts to arbitrate those disputes and decide to discern what the intent of the legislature was, and the courts can look at more than just the words of the law itself. They may very well go into the legislative history and look at, it's not the one I wanted, I may have closed it, but we were looking at something a minute ago that showed a bill from the last, oh wait a minute, is this it? Yeah, the courts may very well look at this testimony. There is also something called the legislative record. Every single word spoken on the floor of the House and the Senate, at least when they're on the record, and not talking about when they're going to meet for lunch, is recorded and transcribed, and it used to be those, you could go to the law library and find those hefty tomes now they're online, but the debate on a bill is also very much fertile ground for a court to try to discern the legislative intent, and in fact some, it's not unusual for a legislator, and it may often be the chair of a committee that reported bill out, is to read a statement into that record to emphasize what the intent was, and what the meaning of the bill is. So that's the kind of stuff the courts will look at in addition to, you know, the black and white words on the page. Thank you, Bob. And I, yeah, it does strike me that as you said it's still the judge's decision, and at least when I think of, you know, other courts at the Supreme Court, they may or may not care about intent. So yeah, I guess this this was great. We got to cover all the ones we voted for, so I'm glad we could do that. I know a couple of people have jumped off, I think they probably had to leave right at the top of the hour. So I'm going to stop recording, and anybody who wants to receive the Friday reminder