 Good morning. This is Houseways Means. It's May 13th. We have a full and ever-evolving agenda today, which is the way it is towards the end of the session. We are going to start with S-25. And we have Michelle Childs. We have Representative Gannon. We have Becky Wasserman with us. And I think Graham Campbell is going to join us when he can. He's going to be just a little bit late. And my hope is to get to a place on the bill that we're ready to move it on to the Appropriations Committee where it has to stop before it goes to the House floor and then back to the Senate. So hopefully we can finish our work on it this morning, or at least by the end of the day today. So let me see if anyone on the committee has questions about anything, anything they want to put out there. Just remind everybody we have a joint meeting with the Commerce Committee on UI at 10 and at 11. So according to plan or be backed by ourselves and we're going to look at S-79, which is the rental registry bill, which is another bill that we really need to finish our work on, although we've barely had a chance to start it. So, I don't see any hands up. So, Michelle, why don't I go to you. I've done just to introduce it. I focused entirely on the fees, which is the part of the bill that is in our jurors, clearly in our jurisdiction. And as I said yesterday, the idea of having the fiscal committee set the fees or have a role in setting the fees raises issues, various issues that I think we want to avoid if we can. And so I've come up with a substitute for that process. And Michelle's done the drafting. I think I got the draft at what time last night, 10 o'clock. I don't know, something like that. So she's been working to try to figure out how to, with me to try to figure out how to, how to make this work. So, Michelle. So, so you should have a draft. I did it just as an individual amendment because I wasn't sure if they're going to be other and then I can roll them into a committee amendment. So it's dated May 12, 859 last night. So that's the version we're working off of. And the amendment is pretty straightforward. It's substituting a new section for a for a in the version that was voted out of House government operations or recall was the proposal to have the board be reporting to the Joint Fiscal Committee on September 1 and the process there and so this amendment would strike that section and substitute this new section for a and this would have the board reporting to the House Committee on Ways and Means Senate Committee on Finance and House and Senate gobs on or before October 1 this fall on all of those fees. It's not changing which fees they're reporting on. It's the same ones that were contained in Act 164 for the for the board to be that we're supposed to report to you on April 1 of this year. And so it includes all the all the state fees for all the various the six licenses the application license that the initial license fee and the renewal fees. For all of those as well as the different tiers because you recall that for cultivators and retailers there's to be tears within each one of those categories and maybe tears for additional ones. So this is just having the board report to to you on October 1. And that's it. So all the reporting that they were to do on fees again instead of joint fiscal committee on the first it would be to these four committees on October 1. And then, you know, what if the legislature is in has a fall session, you can act on it then or maybe the ways and means and finance can have a meeting in the fall and maybe tentatively agree and have me work on legislation that you can start with at the beginning of the year and at least maybe that will give even if they're not in place until January give applicants some idea of the general generally what the fees will be so some predictability for them. But it doesn't set any specific fees because in talking with the chair of the board. This feeling was that it needs to be kind of done holistically because the larger licensees are going to be subsidizing the smaller licensees, and you got to work back from the budget and look at all the number of licenses there to make it all work together. Yeah. Thank you. Let me see if there's any, any questions or concerns. Representative cornhizer concern a question I would love to just do like a quick walkthrough of the timeline. So I think that Michelle of sort of what is like what's imagined for sort of fees with this and then when the first licenses are imagined to be given and sort of from there. I feel like we didn't. So that makes sense as a question. Sure. I have a timeline that was that's based on Act 164 I haven't been I haven't done any kind of new one, but I would say generally what's going to happen is that the first applications that are going to be accepted are going to be for integrated licensees. There are laboratories and small cultivators, and that is, I believe, March 1 that they can start accepting applications with issuing applications starting April 1. And I will double check that to make sure I'm not off a month. Then, and then it goes, and it kind of rolls out through the through over the next several months for that. With regard to it'll each month will be a couple new licensee categories opening up for people to apply and start issuance and then the last ones will be in October of next year for retailers so it's going to start in the spring with the roll out. Thank you. Is that helpful. Thanks. Are there any other questions that committee members have. Is someone willing to move this as an amendment to the bill. Okay, I'm not sure who that was with that. Scott. Okay, David, you get to decide who it was. And is there a second. Sure. That sounds like Jim. Okay. So is there any discussion before we vote on it. Hello. Yeah. Oh, it's bill on the phone. Sorry. Bill and Bill and I are both doing way too much multitasking I sometimes feel like my head's going to explode so. I didn't second it that we amend as set 25 with this language. As we always do this will be a vote on the amendment at some point we will vote on the bill. But this is just on the amendment. If people are ready David would you call the roll. Yeah, representative Beck. Yes. Representative Brendan. Representative cancel. Yes. Representative elder. This is rep elder I vote yes. Representative Odie. Yes. Representative Maslin. Yep. Representative Mattos. Yes. Representative till. Yes. Representative cornhizer. Yes. Representative Ansel. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. 10, 0, 1. Thank you. And it's not in the bill, but I will be asking the speaker for permission for us to meet in October so that we can go over the recommendation. And assuming that it comes in as complete. I'm assuming that we should be able to meet on it before we before we get together in January. I haven't made that request yet. So I just want to be clear that all I'm committing is that I will ask. I'm assuming. If everything is ready to move. That we should be able to meet on it. So other issues on this 25 or are we ready to vote the bill. Okay. And does everyone have it? I think so. Okay. Did you want me to walk through it? Or did you want to explain it? You don't need to. I'll be delightful. Thank you. I also see representative Murphy's hand up. Right. Representative Murphy, go ahead. Yeah, I had a question and I don't know whether it belongs now. I don't know if it belongs now. I don't know if it belongs now. I don't know if it belongs now. I wasn't sure if we were about to move right into a vote or not, but I had to, I had to leave yesterday before I had a chance to ask. And Michelle, I guess I would ask you and representative Gannon might be able to. To help as well. I'm wondering whether a website. For retail establishment. That's. Purely informational. I don't know if it belongs now. I don't know if it belongs now. I don't know if it belongs to the advertising. Restrictions that are in the bill. So a website that, that showed hours of operation location. Etc. Would that be, would that be allowable or, or is a website just by definition. Under the language that we have. Considered advertising and that. You'd have to go to the definition of advertisement there. And then the board is going to be developing. Bulls that I think is going to add some detail. And so if you look at section five of the house government operations. There's the definition of advertisement. And section 861 subdivision two. And then there is a. You can look at. Sorry. So I'll just say I did look at that. And I still have the question. Right. Right. So I think that. You know, the extent to which what is on the website. I mean, I think obviously. You know, businesses are going to have to be able to have some kind of information there that location and hours of operation, things like that. I don't know the answer to that question in terms of how the board is going to. Necessarily work with that and what can be on the website. Right now. But I think, you know, there's a lot of information about the business. Things like that. And then it'll just have to fit in. It'll be bored as to whether or not, you know, what fits within the definition of advertisement. Okay. So that sounds like the board then has some flexibility within the. The language here to make decisions like that. Yeah. Especially when you're talking about websites. You know, you know, there's a little, you know, complex there is, I think the board is going to be focused a lot on that piece of the marketing and what's allowable under under the chapter. Thank you. Sure. I miss a sentence or two. My fault, but can. Is there some, I'm actually sort of interesting question. Is there something in the bill that references websites. You know, I think that's a good question. Yeah. It does say, if you look at the definition of advertisement. And it talks about verbal statements, calculate to induce sales of cannabis or cannabis products, including, and then it, and it references the internet. And so how they're going to interpret whether or not it's an advertisement. Designated, you know, kind of. You know, how they're going to interpret whether or not they're going to say. And so they would want to review the whole website or what's on there. Or whether or not they're just going to have information about, this is our business. This is where it is. This is our phone number, our. Email address. These are our hours of operation. You know, that is different because there is specifically language in here that talks about that the term doesn't have to do with any non-commercial material. It's not intended to induce sales. So I'm not sure how that they would look at that. And whether or not they would say that the, the whole entire website, you know, just the existence of the website is. It fits in that category or not. Represent again. And this is something that your committee talked about. Yes. Not this year so much, but last year when we were handling this, we had a lot of questions. I do think a website would fall under the definition of advertisement, especially if you look at what other states have done, or I should say other cannabis establishments in other states. Typically it's not just information about how to get to the, the location, but it advertises product. You know, flower edibles, concentrates. There's usually a list and price information. I think that would fall under our advertising definition. But it has to be reviewed and it's not permitted. If more than 15% can be seen by. Correct. And what most other cannabis, cannabis establishments in other states do. Is that they do have. A thing at the beginning that asks if you're 21 years or, or not. So that, I think that will have to be determined by the cannabis control system. So that's, I think that would be sufficient to block people from, that are younger than 21 years of old or age or younger from viewing the website. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine a website that's not intended to solicit sales. So. I can't either. Yeah. Okay. Interesting question. Sorry. I got distracted by it too. Let's see. Yeah. A question I had as this discussion began, which has mostly been answered. I think what would happen if some helpful person decided to do such a website on his or her own. And I think mostly we've. We've answered that question. And I guess we'll just have to see something. I mean, I can't imagine someone wouldn't try. We'll just have to see how it plays out. Yeah. I think we're back to you representative. I'm sorry. I would love if Michelle could talk through the changes and I'll explain my thinking with the changes afterwards. Great. Okay. And the, so. I don't know if it's a website yet, but it's on, it's in your email. And it's. So this is. It's on our website. I just got a new one. It's on, it's on the website that's out of line. The resort of corn heizer's proposal. Dated to 12, at 7.42, last. I just wanna make sure I just want to ask the question about whether it's been posted in case somebody's watching. Sertia has it been posted? They are both posted on the website. What's any, thanks. Yeah. Go ahead. So there's two issues in this amendment. Development Fund. And then the other issue is eliminating the advertisement review fee. And so the first instance of amendment is striking language that currently has it. There's a member during that time period where the integrated may be selling to the public prior to the retailers coming online in the fall. And in S25 is out of GovOps. It has it's 3% of gross sales prior to that date when the when the retailers come online with a cap of $50,000. And that would be eliminated and the substitute language would be a one-time contribution of $50,000 per integrated license to be made on or before October 15. So rather than doing the calculation and having perhaps a variable number, it would just be a flat $50,000 per integrated licensee. So there would be a potential of $250,000. And then the second, third and fourth instance of amendments have to do with eliminating the advertising review fee. So these are all I'm not deeply attached to any of these. They were all designed to sort of simplify and streamline. So the my understanding is that previous in some previous conversations about this, the dispensaries were sort of comfortable paying a flat fee and it moved into a percentage. And I think it's nice for the fund to be able to sort of count on an income and for to make that a flat fee. I think we also, Michelle, talked about having the money go directly into the fund rather than looping through ACCD. But I'm realizing I missed that when we were going through this. I remember that came up as an issue yesterday, but I didn't know. Sorry, I didn't realize you wanted that as part of here. And then on the advertising, I think we've already shown some of sort of the confusion about what advertising is and what isn't. And that's absolutely reasonable for the board to be going back and forth with folks who are trying to set up advertising. But the example that sort of made this clearest to me is if we are thinking about a web ad, like say a very targeted web ad that can cost the actual price of the ad could cost pennies on the dollar for someone. And but the back and forth about how often you change an ad and what is a change in ad requires just like a really solid positive regulatory environment and the kind of conversation I think we're all imagining the board will be having with establishments. But in but requiring to attach a fee to every single one of those applications rather than have that be part of sort of the services that the board is offering as part of engaging in a regulatory environment seems a lot clearer. So, you know, good web advertising changes every week slightly. And so is that a single ad? Is that multiple ads? Are tweaks to a website considered new ads? Are they existing ads? So just would to have the board set the fee for an establishment to include the cost to the board of negotiating around approved and unapproved advertising. Committee questions? Representative Till? Yeah, I don't really know the lay of the land in terms of the the five groups that we would anticipate going for integrated licenses to dispensaries now. But you know, part of what we thought was the plan with with this all along was to try to encourage small Vermont businesses as opposed to big, you know, big tobacco, big pot coming in and taking these things over. And I just wonder if the straight $50,000 could be an impediment to, you know, a relatively small Vermont business trying to do the integrated license. And I don't know if any dispensaries fit that kind of description. But, you know, that that would be my first concern. I had thought that only the dispensaries could get the integrated license. Right. But I don't know if any of them are, you know, relatively narrow Vermont businesses now. I see. Yeah. I don't know. Anybody want to jump in on that? Representative Gannett? I can't speak to all of the dispensaries, but I mean, there is one very large player in the market that actually controls both dispensary in Burlington, Chinning County area and one down in Wyndham County where I live. So that's the largest player. And then I think there are smaller dispensary players like in Montpelier, a fairly small operation. So they're sort of all over the map to some extent. But, you know, the one in Chinning County and Wyndham County is large and has attracted outside capital. Yeah. So, you know, that would make me really hesitant about raising the fee to a straight $50,000 since there is a variety of sizes of these dispensaries currently that might inhibit them going towards the integrated license. So my understanding is that this isn't actually a fee. This is a, it's called a contribution, but it seems to be a mandatory contribution. And that it's basically capitalizing this fund that is going to be used to encourage smaller businesses in, and I didn't go back and look at the language, but this is not a license fee, the integrated, there will be a separate license fee for the integrated license in addition to this. Yes, I understand that. What I'm saying is this can be a detriment to those smaller players. I mean, we're trying to encourage smaller players in this marketplace and this in and of itself could be an additional detriment to that, at least at the level of the integrated licenses. I'm wondering, so integrated license holders who are late in getting their license or aren't ramping up sales very quickly, everyone would now, any license holder that would be contributing $50,000 even if they had no sales, and is there, we want to somehow make exceptions for businesses that get their license on September 1st, for example, or I'm just wondering how it's worded right now. I'm not quite sure about the original language either. Is that a question for somebody? It's amusing. Okay, well then I'll go to Representative Kornhizer. I think Michelle can probably add some clarification, but my sort of one, this is to capitalize a fund that helps marginalized folks enter the market. So the more money that's in there, the more the small marginalized players can get into the market. The second thing here is that when I personally think of us making sure that small growers and small businesses can enter the market, I do not think of the dispensaries. I think that we are, the dispensaries can enter the market earlier in my understanding of the bill in order to make sure that we have a place for small growers to sell soon enough. But they are, when I think of sort of larger players in the market, I think of the dispensaries. And so I want to make sure that they are really paying very much their fair share into encouraging all of the other growth in the market. Dispensaries don't have to enter as so-called commercial, the word just fell out of my head. The regular cannabis market, the non-medical market, they don't have to enter that side of the market if they don't want to. But this is a, so for me, I see this as a way of really making sure that more small players will get in and we are encouraging the growth of small players into it. But Michelle, can you, will you answer David's question even though David didn't ask you to answer his question? Sure. So there are, there's five licenses and Representative Gannon is correct in that two of them are owned by the same folks. But those two and they are the ones that are actually locally owned. And the other three are larger corporations. So they may have a smaller share of the market, but they are outside. They're owned by larger cannabis organizations. And so the, so the two licenses that shared for, for Brattleboro and for Chinning County are, are local. I think that somebody had asked that. And the cannabis trade, the Vermont Cannabis Trade Association, of which all four dispensaries belong, has testified in support of, I don't know about just a flat $50,000. My general sense, I think as Representative Kornheiser had mentioned, I think there was an original kind of agreement maybe or discussion with them that they would agree to the, to the flat. And I can't remember the whole evolution of the 3% and 50, but that it had their support was my recollection. So if that helps. And so I don't think they were concerned about it being a barrier to them participating in the adult use market. It is a contribution. It's kind of a, because they would have a potential, potentially a maximum of a six month window in which to sell in the adult use market prior to the retailers coming on in the fall. They would, that they would be contributing to this business development fund to help smaller social equity applicants be able to enter the market. It's a worthy fund for sure. I do wonder whether a business that said, sure, we'll be happy to go along with 3%, cap it at 50,000 wasn't thinking that they would get anywhere near 50,000 based on what their plans are opening where that's the last of my musings on that. One of my concerns about the 3% is it just seems to be taking this kind of artificial period of time and applying a percentage to it that and if you wanted to pay less, you would just get your integrated license later and sell later, which doesn't help this fund at all. If what we want is we want the integrated licensees to create the market, which is I think what we're expecting them to do. I don't think we should give, I don't think it makes sense to build in a benefit for starting later. And that's I think what the 3% does. So I think it's very important that we figure out a way to capitalize that fund. I think that's a big piece of what we're trying to do in terms of the social equity issues here. Representative Massland and Representative Till. Yep. Sorry about the phone ringing in the background. I support the amendment for a couple of reasons. One is I remember the discussion last year when we were setting up these different levels of licenses and participated in but I was never all that enthusiastic about these different classes of licenses at different fees. I accept that last year it was what it was, but I think simplicity in following the discussion from Janet and Emily and Michelle, formal name, formal name, formal name. I support the amendment and I also think that an integrated license is a pretty big deal. And I don't think $50 contribution to the fund is is beyond the means of what these outfits are where they're headed. I support $50. It's pretty excuse me, $50,000. Thank you, everybody. I mean, Graham turned his camera on when he said $50 over and over again. Anyway, we're all playing by the same rules. We all know where we're headed. This is the short version. I support the amendment. Thanks. If we do this amendment, I do want to address the flow of the money. It doesn't make sense to me to have it go to ACCD and then to a fund. We fund funds directly all the time and I'm looking for confirmation from Becky. May not give it to me, but I think I don't think there's any reason not to put the money directly into the fund. Before we actually vote on the bill, I'd like to see language with that change. Becky, did you hear my musings on that? So I think your question was whether you can put fees directly into a fund and that is done in other situations. Okay. Representative Till. I wonder if Representative Gannon could tell us the thought process about the 3% in their committee. Yeah. As I testified yesterday, we really didn't touch that. That came from the Senate. But so we did not discuss that in a lot of detail. Just my two cents. I mean, I am happy with that part of the amendment. I think that the integrated licensees can probably afford $50,000. And I think the social equity program is a very important component of the bill. And so this would mean that instead of having a floating amount of money available for social equity, we would know if all the dispensaries signed on to become integrated licensees, we would have $750,000 in the fund. There's $500,000 appropriation plus if you add up all the dispensaries, you get another $250,000. Representative Connizer. On the advertising fees, I just sort of want to be clear again. I think it's really important that the advertising is approved and is a really meaningful conversation between the regulatory body and the applicant. I just hope that the fees recommended by the board and set by our body include the cost of negotiating those conversations. I think a per advertisement fee could get really wild really fast and either would need to be scaled to the exact type of advertisement. And it's one of those situations where the examples never stop coming in. And so that's sort of my two cents on it. I want to be clear that I'm not imagining dropping the fees as a way of increasing advertising or encouraging advertising or anything like that, but just to create a more collaborative regulatory environment for negotiating those conversations. Representative Cantfield. Yeah, so if we remove the advertising fees, is that going to change the oversight that the board will have in these negotiations? I don't know. Does somebody want to shot it answering that? It doesn't seem to me. There's still a language in there that requires the licensees to present all advertisements to the board for review. So the fee, you could eliminate the fee and still require them to do that. I have another question, Janet. And the 3% gross sales and integrated license. If we were to eliminate the cap, would those larger players maybe pay more? I don't know if anybody wants to jump in. Graham. Yeah, I'm Graham Campbell from the Joint Fiscal Office for the record. So I would emphasize that the startup of cannabis markets in every other state is extremely uncertain about how it happens, how the rollout happens, whether you're going to, you know, it's going to be a slow rollout or whether it's going to be sort of a big pop at the beginning. It's quite uncertain. So I emphasize that for this discussion about this social equity fund, our estimates based upon what we had for the cannabis market that were used in the fiscal estimates for S54 that passed last year are that under a 3% regime as it came to this committee that the fund would raise likely $50,000 or less because the amount of sales are supposed to happen between. So we estimate that sales are likely to begin sometime in the summer of 2022. So you really only have a couple months of sales, even if you're getting up and running basically from the get go. And so based upon the experiences in states like Colorado and Oregon, which had really pretty successful cannabis markets, the average establishment sales there are just about one and a half million dollars per year in the first year. So it's not as if every outlet is going sort of gangbusters in those states. And so that is based on our estimates that under a 3% regime, you'd get less than $50,000 in money for this fund. And that's sort of on the flip side with related to this amendment, a flat $50,000, you know, as it was sort of touched upon by some other committee members here, there are sort of big differences in the size of the players here in the integrated market. And the decision about whether to even enter the market will depend upon whether they are ready. And I think the flat $50,000 might play a role in that because if you're a larger dispenser, you're able to sort of get selling right from the get go. It makes sense. You can make the sales to sort of make it worthwhile to pay the $50,000, but if you're a sort of smaller dispenser, even if you're one of the larger ones and you're not able to get sort of up and running until August, September, then you might make the financial decision that it doesn't make any sense to enter the market until after October or whatever the date is for the for the social equity contribution because you'll have to pay $50,000 the moment you make your first retail sale. And so that's I think that's another sort of layer here that I add. I would add again, just emphasize there's a ton of uncertainty here. They might do way better than we are thinking we're there. We're estimating. And so the $50,000 might not be that difficult of a contribution for them, but just to lay out sort of the fiscal impacts for this fund, I think under a three percent regime, I don't think anyone will get close to the cap under the estimates that we have right now. And I think under the $50,000, you know, I was thinking about it last night. I'd have to think about which dispensaries would enter the market because I have just based upon the data that I've seen and doing this estimate, I have doubts that every single integrated license holder would enter the market under a $50,000 regime. So I don't think it will just be the straight five times 50,000. But those that will operate from day one are going to get six months before October 15th. If everything on the timeline goes according to plan. And so it, you know, it's, it remains to be seen whether that's actually going to be held in place. I mean, when we originally wrote the fiscal note on this, we estimated sales would begin in the spring of 2022. We've since pushed that back, you know, because there have been delays because of the pandemic and also the formation of the Canada's control board. And so, you know, to be conservative, we're estimated that sales will start probably sometime in the summer, but we don't know exactly that's going to be followed. So yeah, I agree. It really depends on when, when the market gets up and running and who is able to enter the market from sort of the get go. That will determine how much gets put into this fund under a 3% regime or under the 50,000 flat regime. Comments? Questions? So if we, if we go with 3%, we know that we're under 250 just based on projected sales. And if we go with 50,000, we may be under 250 because we'll only have two participants rather than five. Was that basically the math? I can't say for sure whether it would be 100,000 or the 50,000, but that's probably the way I'm leaning is that those two, the large dispensary that owns the two outlets are the most likely to be more up and ready and ready to go to pay that. And, and if we went with the 3%, we just because of the way sales are going to ramp up, we might be at that same level as well. Yeah, right now in the fiscal night at $50,000 or less, so you might get more under the 50,000 flat. But again, I think the calculation for a business whether the end to the market is completely different under a flat 50,000 as it then it is under the 3%. So, you know, I think there's another layer of uncertainty there. So committee, where do you want to go with this? Jim's welcome to speak first. If you Oh, I'll support it with Janet's comments a few minutes ago about tracking where the money goes. I'm having it go into the fund rather than right the agency tracking me putting in the in the in the language where it goes. Yep. Represented quantizer. Happy to move the whole thing wondering if people would prefer to do that. Two pieces separately or not. So we made us interject in terms of scheduling. We have a 10 o'clock joint meeting with commerce so we can't be late. I have to drop off in a minute or two just to do a couple of phone calls and preparation for that. And what I'd like to do we have one amendment done. What I'd like to do is to at least get a sense of the committee with a strong vote on this proposal, either as a single unit or divided into two. However, you all want to do that. Um, and then get a final amendment to vote the bill later. We'll do it later today. We will do it today. We're going to finish up with this, but, but I just that seems like the right best way to proceed. And let me ask the committee, are there any other amendments that anybody is going to put on the table? That's good. Okay. So Emily, how do you get there? Your amendments, you should, I think you should decide how you want to proceed with them. I would like to proceed as a package. Okay. Thanks. So do you want to do a strong vote right now on that? Are people ready? This is, this is, well, we need to see language on the agency movement. So let's just get a show of hands of people who support the package. Um, and, uh, use your yellow hand just because I can't count that well on here. I'm trying to raise my hand. I don't know if it's working. It is. Got enough here. Okay. Okay. So, um, so good. So we'll, we'll come back with an amendment. Um, if you can lower everybody's hand, I suppose I could do that. Um, we'll come back. We'll come back with a full package. Um, we'll vote on that. And then we'll vote on the bill. Um, so, Emily, this is all yours. I'm dropping off for the moment. Okay. Thanks for the clarification on the, the money going into the fund. Um, so the, the, the money does go into the fund. I think the, and I understand I want it to go directly to the fund that goes to ACCD and there's this funny transfer in there. No, the, if you look at the, the language of the fund, it's come, the money is, um, is in, goes into the fund. And then in section 14, I think we're looking at the appropriation. The $500,000 is, goes into the fund as well. But then there's a subsection B that has the 500,000 being appropriated from the fund to ACCD. It doesn't mention the, the, the, the integrated license money that's in the fund. So I think what you were, it sounds to me like what you're saying is that you just leave it in the fund and you want to strike subsection B and section 14. I think that was, yes. Because if you look at the funding language, it does the, the fund comprised of those things and then section 14 moves part of those monies to ACCD. So I think that's what you're concerned about. In order for them to sub-grant it. Yes. Oh, I think we both understood it to be the reverse. So maybe that is okay. If you, if you look at, if you look at in section 12 on page 23, Give me one second to do that because I have a few too many tabs with a few too many amendments and show happening. Sorry. And I don't know if we all need to, if everyone wants to take a break and I can just talk to Michelle or we can do this all together. What do you? I'm okay staying here. You're on page 23, Michelle. Is it right? Yes. Yep. Okay. Yep. In section 12. And so you look at section 987, which is establishing the fund. See subsection B, what's comprised of the fund, what's in the fund. So it has all of the monies goes into the fund. And if you look down and you move on to page the bottom of age 25 and section 14. This is where and I, and I'm sorry, I can't, this is language that came from a joint fiscal office in a, in Senate approach. So I don't know the reasoning why they felt as though it had to be done this way, but there's the appropriation from the general fund into the cannabis business development fund. And then they're moving that $500,000 from the canvas business to fund to a CCD. And so I think the concern was that you just want it to be in the fund rather than the $500,000 moving just moving through the fund to a CCD. I think we both remembered it as the reverse of that. And so I don't know. I think it needs to be a CCD in order for a CCD to grant it. Yeah, I thought it was the other way too that we were talking about going to a CCD and then the cannabis control funded. The conversation was, well, why not just send it right to the fund? So it seems like if it's like that, it probably doesn't need any changes. Is Becky still there? I am still here. Yes. Okay. It's not possible for a CCD to grant out of the fund, right? Do they need it in their own? Sorry, who is administering the fund? If a CCD is sub granting to administer the fund to someone else, can the money stay in the fund or does it need to go to a CCD for them to do that? I think that they would have to be administering a fund to be able to grant money out of a fund. Sometimes special fund language also includes that money in the deposit in the fund can be used for specific grant purposes. So if it references that, that might do the trick. And then not have it go to a CCD but just have the fund reference the specific grant purposes. Yeah. So you can say, you know, money, any funds deposited into this special fund may be used for the following purposes. And then you can spell out what the purpose is that you want it to be used for. Representative Gannon, do you have some? Yeah. So if you go back to section 12, it does spell out the purposes the fund can be used for. So then we could leave the money still in the fund and not move it to a CCD. Becky? I am not as familiar with the language, so I have to look at section 12 to see if it allows for that. Just one moment. Again, just email the excerpt so you don't have to. Okay, thanks. Document. Yep. It looks like it does allow for it. Yeah. I mean, it says it's allowed to provide those loans and grants. So I think it's an allowable use of that money. Okay. So then for section 14, we don't necessarily need B, I guess. Is that correct? You wouldn't need B if the author rights uses are in section 12. That was my original understanding and now my new understanding. Yes. Yeah, just strike B and I think it works. Becky, catch up because she probably also had 12 tabs open when this conversation. Yeah. So because the funds are being directly deposited into the special fund, you don't need an appropriation into the fund. I think that's the question, right? No. Do we need to appropriate out of the fund to a CCD is the question? No, I don't think you do because the fund is allowing for that money to come out of it. And Representative Gannon, are we confusing something terribly that was deeply intentional? Okay. Not to my knowledge. Great. Michelle, do you? No, I think it's probably fine. I'll probably start with Stephanie Barrett to double check her as to why her recommendation was in Senate appropriations was that it had to be that, but it might have been that she didn't have the whole picture of everything. And so I'll double check that. And then as long as everything's okay, I understand your intent and I can include striking subsection B in your committee amendment. Great. Thank you very much. Yeah. And that was actually going to be my recommendation, too, is just to double check with JFO if there are some reason why it sort of administratively needs to be done that way to transfer to a CCD, but they would probably be the best to answer that question. And so can I just get clarification? So for the committee amendment, it'll be Representative Ansel's amendment plus Representative Kornheiser's amendment, both amendments and as well as the striking subsection B in section 14. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Sure. And then we'll vote on it this afternoon when we come back from the floor, which we hope will be soon after we get to the floor. Thank you. Representative Kornheiser, it's time for the Joint Committee with House Commerce. And the link is in the email. Thanks, Rasha. See everyone there.