 House Government Operations Committee, we are meeting this morning to consider a bill language that is contained in Senate Bill 182, which has passed the Senate and will be referred to the House Committee for action. And so what we'd like to do is hear first from Legislative Council with a sort of a jog through what's contained in the bill. And then we'll hear from a couple of folks who can give us their opinion on what's contained in the bill. And then we'll go back to the language of the bill and do a finer walkthrough. So if that sounds good for folks, I think we will go ahead and kick it over to Betsy Ann to walk us through S182. Hey, good morning for the record Betsy Ann Rask, Legislative Council. Madam Chair, would it be helpful if I do a share screen so I can post on here the overview of the bill as passed Senate? So I did try to do that and it looks like I need to be get permission. Oh no, I have it. Great. Thank you so much. And thank you to Andrea who posted this overview for us. Are you able to see that overview? Great. Okay, so S182 as passed the Senate covers three main areas. The first area is emergency medical services. The second area is current electrician and plumber license terms. And the third issue is county funding of sheriff emergency needs. Now just to give a high level overview to remind you've already discussed these provisions, but as far as EMS goes, the emergency medical services topic, there's three main things that are going on here. The first is to eliminate the credentialing requirement for EMS personnel. EMS personnel already have to be licensed by the Department of Health. As a requirement of licensure, they also have to get certified by the National Registry of Emergency Management Technicians. And then current law also requires that they be credentialed by their affiliated agency. And the affiliated agency is their ambulance service or first responder service. And so the first thing that's going on in the EMS section is eliminating that credentialing requirement. This would be a permanent change in statute. The second thing going on in EMS is to extend ambulance license terms from one to three years. That's also a permanent change that's proposed. And then finally, the third thing that is happening in the EMS area of this bill is requiring the Department of Financial Regulation to enforce the current law requirement for health insurers to directly reimburse ambulance services rather than, for example, sending the reimbursement to the patient who would then pass it on to the ambulance service. There was conversation or testimony on the Senate side that despite this current law requirement for there to be direct reimbursement, health insurers were sometimes sending the reimbursement to the patient who then did not give the ambulance service the reimbursement. So that's a current law requirement to be enforced by the Department of Financial Regulation. So DFR would be added to that bill as an enforcer of that current law provisions. Those are the high-level overview of the EMS changes, those three EMS changes. Moving on, the second issue in the bill is to extend current electrician and plumber license terms. There's language in the bill that says that all electrician and plumber licenses that were due to expire between March 30th and September 30th of this year remain valid and are expired or set to expire on September 30th and any late fees that would have applied during that timeframe would be waived. The big idea here is that there are continuing education requirements of plumbers and electricians. I understand from the testimony on the Senate side that it has been difficult for plumbers and electricians to obtain some of that continuing education during the COVID outbreak and so the Department of Public Safety which regulates electricians and plumbers is working on getting continuing education in an online format that these professionals can obtain by September 30th. And then finally the third thing that the bill does is the county funding of sheriff emergency needs. You had testimony from an assistant judge on this issue before. Big picture what this section of the bill would do is allow a county's reserve funds, their operation reserve funds and their capital reserve funds to be used for the emergency needs of the county sheriff subject to the approval of the assistant judges. The sheriff would be required to seek reimbursement for example from FEMA and then any reimbursement that the sheriff does obtain the sheriff would need to provide back to the county to replenish the county's funds but a sheriff would only be responsible for providing back to the county the amount that the sheriff was able to get through the reimbursement resources and this is a temporary provision as it sunsets two weeks after the governor terminates the COVID-19 state of emergency. That's a high-level overview of what's going on in this bill. Any questions for me? Jim Harrison has a question. Yes thank you Madam Chair. Betsy Ann on the expiring of two weeks after the state of emergency. Maybe I missed it here but when do the funds have to the funds have to be paid back? Any funds borrowed by two weeks or is there a bigger window? I'm going to the actual language in the bill. It is within 30 days of receiving any allowable reimbursement. The sheriff has to provide those funds back to the county to reimburse the county so there is a 30 day deadline after the sheriff gets any allowable reimbursement. That's on the last page of the bill as you can see here. Okay so well I guess I have an opportunity to ask the others but I just wanted to make sure that folks were comfortable with that period. Thank you. Thanks. JP. I just have one quick question on if any discussion was had regarding the EMS license fees. Now I like the idea of going from one to three years but right now I believe it's I think our town's paying upwards of $750 a year for a license fee which I thought was quite high. So I'm just wondering if there was any discussion of reducing that fee to a what I would call a more reasonable figure. I don't recall that discussion. I don't I don't remember there being any discussion about the actual fees for licenses in that area of EMS. Maybe a good question for the witness today about those license fees. I thought there was something in statute about there not being certain fees but I'll have to double check and circle back to you if I find that language. I thought there was something about ambulance license fees that they're not being one but I can get back. I'll double check on that represent plastic. Okay thank you. I appreciate it. Rob LaClaire. Thank you Madam Chair. I'm curious to know on the the county funding of the sheriffs. Is there anything indicating what the reserve funds and capital reserve funds are by county? Oh by county. No I I'm not aware if that data exists. I'm trying to circle back to find where my notes are from your previous testimony on this that was on April 10th. I think you had testimony from the assistant judge there where he was discussing their operations reserve fund aka their rainy day reserve fund was around 50,000. I have that in my notes but I am I haven't seen any breakdown of reserve funds throughout all of the counties. I don't have that info. So is that 50,000 or a statewide reserve fund or county reserve fund for that particular county? County yes. Each county is authorized to have an operations reserve fund and a capital reserve fund by the statute that controls each individual county reserve fund. The operations reserve fund I believe is capped at 15 percent. So there's a limit on how much they can have in there and I can pull up the statute or maybe it's in this summary here that we reviewed before. Yes okay so here I'm I've posted here this summary of county budgets and sheriff department funding that we reviewed when you discussed this on April 10th. Okay so if I if I go to that date I can pull that up Betsy Ann. Yes yes this is on your web page thank you Andrea. So the operations reserve fund shall not at any time exceed an amount equal to 15 percent of the current budget presented and then there's a separate capital reserve fund that by law cannot exceed 75 percent of the current budget presented. What date was that again Betsy Ann? Sorry. That was April 10th. Very good Friday. Okay thank you. Thank you. Any other questions from committee members? Let's see I am looking to see if we have Sheriff Bonyak on with us. Oh Mike Marwicky has a question go ahead Mike. My question is for the committee and I can wait until we have discussion time was it was not for Betsy. I don't see Sheriff Bill Bonyak on the call yet maybe he'll join us at some point soon. We'll we'll see if we can get him. So my apologies if this makes your head spin but we're going to jump around to a couple of different parts of the bill depending on who we're hearing from. So I think what I'd like to do is have Dr. Osher join us now so we can we can put away the share screen and invite Mike to share with us the rationale behind extension of plumber and electricians licensing so go ahead. Thank you Madam Chair can you hear me? Yes I can. Okay first of all thank you very much for allowing me to participate in this. We have approximately 570 electricians and 372 licensed plumbers who have licenses that are due to expire between March 30th and September 30th. Now some of these individuals are having difficulty obtaining the continuing ed classes and so what we've done is a lot of our continuing ed classes are standing up online but there are some individuals for a number of reasons whether they have internet access they just don't have the ability to take these online classes and of course the classroom instruction has been canceled. So what we're doing is we're in need of extending the licenses until September 30th to allow these electricians more time to obtain their continuing ed credits. Understand that these licensed trade professionals are in good standing with us and they're already licensed and we're under the same codes and rules that we were before this pandemic took place so from a safety perspective there's nothing lost here. So we would really appreciate the support of the committee to help our fellow trade professionals out especially when they're doing essential and support of the pandemic. So that's our brief summary of our request here. Thank you so much. Marcia Gardner has a question. So the last time we talked about this we were wondering if that September date would allow enough time for everyone for the plumbers and the electricians to pass their tests and especially if it happens to get busy this summer. What's your feeling on that? I think there was quite a bit of internal discussion on this. We feel that September 30th was a good solid date. The continuing ed requirements actually are pretty on the lenient side here in Vermont. We have the plumbers are re-licensed every two years. They only need eight hours of continuing ed and the electricians are every three years and they need 15 hours. So again this this is only going to serve those individuals that are struggling to receive their continuing ed credits. We continue to issue license renewals now and that will continue on through and has continued so we are working very hard to keep our business operations intact. So there's no delay in any license renewal process right now. The second part of this was that there be no late charge fee imposed on any of these trade professions. So we're pretty confident September 30th would work for us and certainly these are uncertain times. I would have never predicted we would be where we are right now but we have been able to take advantage of the technology just like we're doing today. I'm not an IT person but this has been interesting to see how much we're depending on this type of technology today to do our jobs and so we're getting creative. I think September 30th is going to work for us. Thank you. John Gannon has a question. So Mike thank you for testifying today. Just a quick question. Ken is there sufficient online CE for plumbers and electricians to get their eight hours or 15 hours of CE or do they still have to take regular courses? Some of the it's a good question. We have a mixed pool of capability out there with our trade groups. So for example it's very difficult and not enticing for a plumber to sit through an eight hour online continuing class. So that's what we're working on right now. There's some online classes available. People are taking them but we need to stand up some additional online classes whether they be in two or four hour segments to better suit the industry and that's kind of what it is. We just don't plumbers are able to sit at a computer for eight hours to take a continuing ed class and we also need to Brad Talbot is the president of the Vermont plumbers association. He is working real hard. He has offered one-on-one classes to people too. So we're working very close with Brad. He does a lot of the continuing ed for plumbers and he is helping people one on one which has been believe it or not has worked pretty well. So we are standing up this type of platform here to offer classes. So I think we'll get through this. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome sir. Rob LeClaire has a question. Thank you Madam Chair. Good morning Mike. How are you sir? I'm good. I'm good. How often do these licenses have to be renewed and what would the harm be if we just postponed the continuing ed requirement? Do things change that much in the industry that there would be a concern if somebody didn't take a continuing ed course for this particular? Right. I think that's what this bill does. This bill extends the licenses for those that cannot even obtain the continuing ed. There are, we have a number of electricians out of home right now and we're actually going to try to stand up some online training that people can get on because they're just home and they're not working right now. Right. Well that's what prompted my question is it sounds like that you're having to go to some fairly significant measures to come up with a continuing ed from your end? No. No. I wouldn't call it significant on the electrical side. A lot of the continuing ed classes on the electrical side were already stood up online. So the electricians aren't facing the same struggle as probably some of our plumbers. Okay. All right. So you're happy with the extension? Yeah, we are. It's, I think this is going to, this is going to work out well for us and again the numbers of those that will take advantage of this will be minimal compared to our entire pool of licensees. Very good. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I have a question, Mike. And I appreciate you being with us. This is my first opportunity to dive into what plumbers and electricians licensing would ordinarily look like. And so you've alluded to a couple of different organizations creating continuing ed modules. Can you say a little bit more about who typically, you know, who determines what the continuing ed curriculum is, who's actually offering that continuing education to Vermont workers? We have an active list on our webpage of all those online continuing ed providers. And I can't list them all. And they're, these are approved by the board. So the respective licensing boards approve the continuing ed classes. We chair both the electrical and the plumbing boards. So we have a constituent that has a program, an online program. They submit their agenda for the continuing ed to the, to the respective board. And those continuing ed classes get approved, and then they get, they get put on our webpage. And that's how these licensees are accessing this. Upon, if this bill passes and we can extend these licenses, there'll be individual packets that are sent out to these licensed individuals that have licenses due to expire. So with their renewal applications, they'll also receive the list of online providers in a, in a mailing also. So if I needed eight hours of continuing education, I might have a listing of 12 or 20 hours that I could choose from because there are different providers. Yes. Okay. Super. Jim Harrison has a question. Yeah, good morning, Mike. So could you just go back to the number of licensees you anticipate this would apply to? I thought you said 200 and some and I not sure if that's who actually need the additional training or classes or if that was the total population between this, this period. The total number of electricians with licenses out of due to expire between March 30th and September 30th is 570. We have 372 license plumbers with licenses due to expire between March 30th and September 30th. My opinion is that the majority, and I'm going to say up in the 80 to 90 percentile range of these folks will, in one fashion or another, get their continuing ed credits, understanding that some of these folks that have licenses do like say in April, they've already completed their continuing ed maybe in September of 2019 because the hours are minimal. So they'll submit their continuing ed certificate with their license renewal. So they've already taken the classes, but for us, we can't individually pool our 3,500 licensed electricians. So this extension of the license would allow us to have the flexibility to extend those licenses for those that are struggling to get the continuing ed in time. Okay. Thank you. So it's really only 10 to 20 of that total 900 and some odd licensees that might fit into this category that don't have the ability to get their continuing ed in the next few months. That's correct. Correct. And more of this will likely be on the plumbing side of it. Okay. And so related to this, if we're extending all of the licenses on March 30th to September 30th or April 30th to September 30th, whatever the case was, going forward, does that mean their renewal is now September 30th or is just, does it go back to the original expiration date? This is going to go back to the original expiration date. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Committee, any other questions for Mike? Okay. Great. Thank you so much, Mike, for being with us. If you're not rushing off to something, stick around in case someone comes up with a question in a few minutes. Thank you. So we have Sheriff Bill Bonyak, who is Orange County Sheriff. Thank you very much for being with us today. And we are talking about S182 related to Sheriff's departments having access to the county reserve funds during COVID-19. So, Bill, if you are able to share with us your thoughts on that, we'd appreciate it. So, Madam Chair, I apologize for being a little late today and you're breaking up a little bit. Yes, on the proposal for using some county. So, Bill, Bill, can I interrupt you for a moment? Hey, Bill, can I interrupt you for a moment? We are having a lot of trouble hearing you. And I think it must be something on the connection on your end. And now he's disappeared. Okay. So I don't know, Andrea, if we can give him the information on how to call in. Bill's back now. Bill, can you hear us? We're having trouble hearing you. Right. So what I'm going to suggest is that maybe Andrea, if you could email him with the information, some instructions on how to call in from a landline and we can admit him back into the meeting to share his testimony that way. I have a feeling that the internet connection in Chelsea might be a little challenged. I will do that. Yes, it is. There we go. Now we've got it. It's cutting in and out. I don't know what's going on. So Andrea will send you information on how to dial in from a landline. Do you have a landline that you can call in from? Yes, I do. Yes. So we'll be able to hear you on the phone. So if you can just take a peek at your email and rejoin us. Very good. Thank you. All right. So while Bill is doing that, we can just recall for a moment that we have talked with Jack Anderson already about the perspective of the county assistant judges with respect to accessing county reserve funds. And so we just want to close that loop and make sure that we have the opportunity to speak with someone from the sheriff's perspective about this as well. And we'll just give Bill a moment to get himself back into the meeting. Mike Merwicky has a question. I'm curious as to whether other committee members have heard or talked to their sheriffs. Committee, feel free to unmute yourself if you have had a chance to talk with your sheriff and not seeing anyone. All right. That's a great question. Jim Harrison? Yeah, this is more for Betsy Ann, but I thought in the Senate there was also some conversation about the ambulance services being able to borrow from the county funds, but maybe thinking of something else. Do you know where that ended up? No, I don't recall any discussion about ambulance services getting county funds. Okay. Maybe it was through appropriations. Yeah, there was definitely conversation about funding for EMS. Senate GovOps is actually just wrote a letter to the administration suggesting that the current special fund there is $377,000 in there as we understand it now in the emergency medical services special fund that it's possible could be used to help support the EMS system, but I'm not aware of any county funding, at least from GovOps perspective. Yeah, no, that's fine. I just had recalled something, but maybe I was getting the two mixed up. Thank you. All right. We have someone in the waiting room. Mike Merwicky, go ahead. To help, perhaps this will help Jim's memory. I think Jim joined the Wyndham County delegation when we talked to Rescue Inc., our counties. At the time, Drew, the head of there, had talked about accessing some state funding and maybe some other recovery money. I don't remember him talking about tapping into the county fund. Yeah, so I have been contacted by my local EMS agency, and they are they're experiencing extreme financial stress right now, so I appreciate that the Senate GovOps committee is exploring using the EMS special fund to hopefully assist in keeping some of those agencies operational now. I think we have Sheriff Bonyak back with us. Bill? Yes. Hello, I'm back on the line. Yay, we can hear you. Okay, so please share with us your thoughts on county reserve funds. So, it actually, where it came down to was actually Sheriff Mark Anderson in Wyndham County was possibly going to run into some issues with his dispatching service, and he contacted his assistant judges, and they thought it would be a good idea, and then eventually I reached out to, I didn't talk with Joyce McGmeek, and one of my judges, I talked with Laurel Mackin, and she was on board 150% her words, and we worked out with the between the two, between the assistant judges and us, excuse me, we modified the language where everybody's happy, and this will only be used in an emergency if a sheriff needs it. There's some sheriffs who are very fortunate and have some emergency funds already put away, and they won't need this funds at all, but there may be one or two sheriffs who may need this to help them get through if this continues. As most of you know, the sheriffs really depend on the summers where you do a lot of traffic control details, and that allows us to buy vehicles, buy other equipment, and without those additional funds that will really, you know, will put a huge impact on several of us. Like I said, the other thing too is, if a sheriff does access any of the county funds, they shall apply to FEMA for reimbursement if it's available. So I'm open to any questions. Great. Thank you. Committee, do you have some questions for Sheriff Bonyak? Jim Harrison. Good morning, Bill. What if you borrow funds from the county and you either don't get reimbursement through FEMA or some other COVID funds, and you can't repay the county? What happens? That's an excellent question. It's an unknown right now. Hopefully the way FEMA is set up with this COVID-19, if anybody has been using buying stuff right now that's anything with COVID-19, they're able to get 75% back, and there's some talk about them waiving the 75% to make 100%, but that's to be determined too. Like I said, this is only going to be used, only if the sheriff really needs it, and it'll work with the assistant judges and what I would recommend, you know, to work together and look at the sheriff's financials too. Well, I asked because, you know, in some cases a town might have a contract with a sheriff department, and because they're not writing tickets or because of other issues in the town's facing budget pressures, that contract may be temporary suspended. So the sheriff department may still have their cross with the deputy sheriff, etc., but they're not getting the income back from the town. So obviously they're going to run into a cash flow crunch, and, you know, if you can't make payroll, arguably that's an emergency. So, but I'm not sure that FEMA would give you funds back because the town suspended your contract. So I'm just right. You are right. I'll give an example. Sheriff Chamberlain in Windsor County, he had a $300,000 contract with one of the towns down. It was strictly for motor vehicle enforcement, and the contract is temporarily suspended. So he and Mike had two people every day working down there. So, but also Mike is also fortunate to have other details that these two deputies are working on, and that's sure it could happen. You know, right now I haven't heard of any other, heard of any towns besides what happened with Sheriff Chamberlain about, you know, not fulfilling the contracts. And I know we're actually busy here in Orange County. We actually picked up the town of Fairleigh, won an extra 20 hours a week from us, and the town of Randolph, an extra 40 hours a week due to the amount of family slash domestic issues that have been going on. Okay. Thanks, Bill. So I guess there really isn't any answer. So Sheriff's Department has got to be very careful before they request funds and have a kind of a roadmap as to how to repay them. Exactly. No, you're 100% right. There's a lot of unknowns here. You know, hopefully we'll get through this without borrowing any money at all. But, you know, the worst case scenario, you want to, you know, you shut down the Sheriff's Department, you know, then what? It's uncharted territories, but also unprecedented times right now. And God forbid if we have a reoccurrence is like we're seeing that the cases have slowed down a little bit. But if we start allowing people to get out and about more and more, will we have a, you know, resurgence of cases? So there's a lot of unknowns. Bill, do you know if, I mean, part of what Sheriff's Departments do is they transport prisoners in some cases. They might bring folks to court hearings. And I suspect that some of that may be reduced. Is that going to cause a budget crunch in these various departments? I'm not sure if it's going to really cause a budget crunch. You know, there is a per diem monies that are not being used right now because of the lack of, or not lack of, but putting, you know, working with the courts and only transporting the emergency transports. So, you know, the transports have slowed down dramatically. And, you know, the state deputies, they're currently, they've been out, like mine's been out in the communities throughout Orange County, wherever, you know, wherever I need them. If you have a crisis in one area, that's, he's out there helping out. So the state deputies are busy in the communities. Just the, the per diems, it's like, you know, they're just part-time people we've been using, you know, for, I'd say decades. And, you know, just make sure we're filling, fulfilling transports. So I haven't heard any too many, too many issues about the per diem part of it. Okay, thank you. Betsy, and did you have something you wanted to clarify? I just wanted to confirm what I think one of the questions that Representative Harrison asked was about the reimbursement. And if it is on point to your question, I just wanted to confirm that on the last page of the bill in section 5B, that's the part that discusses the reimbursement. And it does require a sheriff to seek reimbursement from any applicable resources for COVID-19 relief that are known to the sheriff for any allowable reimbursement. So it's a required, a requirement to seek reimbursement. But under subdivision B2, it states explicitly that a sheriff is only responsible for reimbursing to the county an amount equal to the reimbursement the sheriff was actually able to obtain. So it's not, the sheriff is not required to fully refund the county for the amount of the county provided to the sheriff if the sheriff was not able to get a full reimbursement. But the sheriff is required to seek any known sources for reimbursement. That's correct. And also what we've been doing, and actually I'm doing this right now. We're looking at every avenue we could. We're working on a Bureau of Justice Assistant grant as we speak. We're working on that for actually some equipment. So this way, you know, if we could get some equipment from the, you know, through the programs that help offset and also there's some talk about if there is any overtime, we might be able to get reimbursed like FEMA. If we incur any overtime, FEMA will reimburse us for that. So you're looking. Rob LeClair has a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I probably should know the answer to this question, but let's just say that the county all of a sudden is running tight on funds. Where do they turn to, to replenish their reserves or their budget? It's kind of a jump ball. I don't know who I'm asking this question to. I guess, you know, I'm not trying to be rude to any body or anyone, but you've got to look at the essential services. What's going to boil down to for essential services in the state of Vermont? I think that's what it's going to boil down to. Let me just finish this. Could we wait on projects, you know, fixing some putting new windows in or some doors in or some minor stuff? Sure. So no one wants to be in a situation. I don't want to be in a situation. I don't want to be asking for money. I've been sheriff now for 14 years here in Orange County. And I know, you know, especially Orange County, there's very rural and there's not much of a tax base from a business standpoint. So, you know, we do got to be frugal. Yeah. And I'm, and I'm certainly not implying that you or others aren't Bill. I'm just trying to figure this thing out as far all the way goes here. Obviously we're unprecedented in time. So my question was, you know, would it be reasonable to expect that the county may end up having to turn to the state? And, you know, is that something we would need to try to factor in moving forward ourselves? Yeah, we may have to because you really think about it here in Vermont. What is county government? The county government here in Vermont is basically, you know, far as I know, for it's been the county, the assistant judges oversee the county budget for the courthouse and the sheriff's office. And that's it. There's no county highways, you know, maintenance to take care of on any main roads and stuff like that, like other other states. Vermont is unique. We're the only state in the nation that a sheriff's department is not 100% publicly funded. We got the business side. Jack Anderson. Very good. Thank you. Jack Anderson, did you have anything you wanted to add to the to the question representative Leclerc asked? We have, we have already instituted a plan here in Windsor County to shave our budget as much as we can. Our biggest worry is with all the unemployment, with all the uncertainty, with people not paying rent to their landlords. We don't know what our cash flow is going to be when the towns send their share. We send out the warrants in March. Things were in pretty good shape when that happened. But now we have put our capital reserve and our operating reserve with frozen that. We have cut as much as we can from our maintenance budget. If it's not broke, we're not going to fix it. We're just going to just have to wait and see how it turns out. The question is, what happens if we run out of money? That's uncharted territory. I haven't heard that because I pray it's not going to happen. But another comment I'd like to make is the funds themselves. And I think I said this on April 10th as well. We may build our capital reserve fund up to 75% of our operating budget. And we may build up our operating reserve up to 15% of the budget. It varies widely by county. Some have robust amounts. Some have very little. And I know some counties do not even have an operating reserve account. They never went there in the first place. So just like we do with the regular budget with our sheriffs, we think each sheriff has got to go to their assistant judges who I said before want to help as much as we can. How much money is there that I could borrow? How much can you release to me? And regarding the FEMA payback or restitution, I've looked at the FEMA guidelines. What will they reimburse? And I think all the sheriffs have a copy of that. So before they spend it on something, they should probably make sure it is a reimbursable expense. And I think we're going to go on the guideline that our county is not going to release any more money than we can afford to lose from the funds. That might be a starting point. If it's clarified that it is going to be reimbursable and a lot more comfortable. For sure. Great. Thank you. Sure. Committee, any other questions for Sheriff Bunyak on the question of county reserve funds? All right. I don't see any questions. So thank you, Bill, for being with us. And feel free to stick around and listen. We're going to shift gears right now. And I think that we have Kevin Gaffney with us from DFR. Thank you, Kevin, for being here. And we would love to hear your thoughts on the regulation of emergency services. Yes. Thank you for the record. Kevin Gaffney, Deputy Commissioner of Insurance at the Department of Financial Regulation. Do you hear me? Yes. Okay. Good. Yeah, I think when Betsy Ann did the walkthrough on those sections of the bill, which I didn't have any objections to that, I think what you're doing in statute is codifying what we've enforced to date. I can tell the committee one additional piece of information that you may or may not be aware of. And I apologize for the clunky handoff here because I know Emily Brown has done a lot of testimony in this matter and certainly a much better presenter than I on some of this issue. But we are clarifying the key issue here of direct payment by the health insurers to the ambulance providers for these costs, these emergency service costs, these ambulance service costs. That's already referenced in our regulation, but we are in the process and actually probably as early as today or tomorrow at the latest, we'll be signing a bulletin to just, sometimes a bulletin doesn't have the force of law, but since it's referring to a regulation, we often issue bulletins to just add further clarity to the issues. So that bulletin will lay out the reference to our reg, the reference to the sections of the statute and just clarify any potential misunderstanding of intent. The bulletin doesn't get into the other aspect of the legislation in section two on the enforcement aspects, but certainly the department is able to undertake that study for January 15. Thank you. Committee, you have any questions? And of course, when the bulletin is signed and issued, we're happy to get it to the committee for your review. We can also send it a link to our website, but we'll send you, we can send you a copy of the bulletin. Thank you. I appreciate that. Any other questions from committee members? All right. We have Shaila Livingston from the Department of Health and she's scheduled to be with us at 11. So we have a few minutes. Jim Harrison, go ahead. Yeah, this is for Kevin. Any idea if it's existing law that they reimburse the providers directly? Any idea why that's not always happening? I think like a lot of existing laws, you know, the execution of that is not always perfect, but it's clearly our enforcement of that issue has been consistent. So to the extent that we become aware of those situations, we certainly enforce those. You know, as you may know, the department has not only a consumer services section to just take individual case issues, but if there's any patterns or market issues, then those go to our market conduct staff to enforce. So I can't really speak to what the non-compliance specifically is, but certainly when there is non-compliance, we enforce in kind with the legislation. So you, I mean, I guess you could argue that the legislation might duplicate what we already have in a regulation, but to the extent the regulation is part of a much larger regulation, and I don't know how many pages it is, but it's tens of pages that the legislation will just make it perhaps more clear. And then the Bolton will certainly, because the Bolton is just going to be a two-page document that will just lay out the direction to the health insurers. Okay, thank you. John Gannon. Based on your enforcement of your regulation, Kevin, is there certain health insurance companies that are less likely to reimburse EMS services than others? No, I don't see that. Again, there's not like a bevy of health insurers that provide insurance in the marketplace generally. So to the extent we have regular engagement with those folks, because there's a number of issues as you can fully understand in our current environment. We've been engaged in regular context with all of our carriers about COVID-related issues and not. So these things have all kind of been vetted and I don't anticipate any carrier acting, not acting in compliance with that. Okay, thank you. Any other questions for Kevin from committee members? Okay. Well, we have a few more minutes before we expect Shayla to jump on. I don't know, Andrea, if you have the ability to shoot her an email and let her know that we are ready for, oh, and there she is. Ask and she appears. Very nice. Thank you, Shayla. That is perfect timing. We are just ready to transition over to hear your thoughts on the language in S182. So welcome. Thanks so much. So hello, everyone. Shayla Livingston from the Vermont Department of Health. So the provisions in S182, and I'm sorry if you already heard us, were pieces of a larger bill for Senate GovOps around EMS. We've been working with them just on EMS delivery generally and before COVID-19 and how to support the systems that we have and maybe alter some of the ways that we're doing, especially training and EMS training in the community. So the pieces that you see on this bill are things that are doable right now given their crisis and could potentially alleviate some pressure for some of those EMS providers. The health department supports those measures and don't have a ton of other things to say about them, but I'm happy to answer questions that folks have. Thank you, Shayla. Not seeing folks jumping in line, but Jim Harrison has a question. Go ahead, Jim. Good morning, Shayla. There's a provision in here on the license extension. Just want to make sure I understand that. Is that just for this period that they're automatically extended or is it longer term? And in addition, is there any financial loss to the department for this change? And if so, do you have any idea how much it is? Great question. So hold on one second. I'll just make sure I see where you are. Term of license. Okay. So the health department actually came forward and requested this change pre-COVID. The department does not charge for EMS licensing, so it would not impact our bottom line at all, and it won't impact the provider's bottom line at all. It is simply an extension of the term of the license in order to try to cut down on red tape, but program determined that by extending the license, it would be less onerous for the providers, but it would not decrease any of the quality of oversight that we already have. And so it would not just for this period, but going forward, it would be three-year terms. Okay. So going forward, these licenses will be three years, and there's no charge either way. So it less paperwork on both ends. So, okay, thank you. That's helpful. Other questions from committee members? I'm seeing something in this chat. I'm just not sure. So Betsy Ann, why don't you go ahead and clarify the answer to the question that JP asked earlier? Okay. Hey, Shayla. Hey. Betsy Ann Rask, legislative counsel. Earlier, Representative Palacic was curious about the origin of some of the fees that, as I understood at his, the ambulance services in his town were required to pay. And so I was just sending a note to the group that just to repeat what you had already said, that DOH already doesn't charge a fee for ambulance service or first responder service licenses. I looked through the EMS T-18 chapter that regulates emergency medical personnel, as well as the DOH rules, and I couldn't find any fees and you had already just stated that DOH doesn't charge fees. So the only other thing I could think possibly that Rep Palacic's town was required to pay some sort of fee for EMS. There's a provision in 24VSA 2657 that allows emergency medical services district to impose and collect reasonable charges or fees for its services. So I was wondering if that was potentially the source of the fee that his town is required to pay. JP. Betsy Ann, I thank you. That is, I believe that is correct. I know we're paying about a $750 a year fee and not as you're saying, it's an EMS thing. I believe that is what we're paying. So it's actually going to the EMS. I think that might be a district fee or something. But thank you very much. All right. Any other questions from committee members for Shayla? All right. I'm not seeing anybody jumping in, but go right ahead and raise your hand if you think of a question. At this point, I think it would be helpful to go back to the language in the bill and to have us go more on a line-by-line basis to go through the details of what are in the bill. And again, the intent here is that we would tee ourselves up to be ready to vote this bill out of committee tomorrow. So we can think of this as a final walkthrough to look line-by-line at the language and ask questions of Betsy Ann. So go ahead, Betsy Ann, and take it away. And you are muted. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to go back to sharing the screen again if that works. All right. All right. Are you able to see the bill? Great. Okay. So as we discussed earlier, this bill covers three main areas, EMS, the DPS plumbers and electricians licenses, and then finally the emergency sheriff funding. And the bill goes in that order. It starts with EMS. So as we go through the bill, there are two main chapters that regulate EMS. There's this first one that's in Title 24 that regulates ambulance services. So this is the first part of the bill that changes the terms of EMS. Here, what's going on, the main thing that is happening in this part of the bill is extending the ambulance license terms from one to three years. But as you go through the chapter, you'll see what it also does is strike reference to credentialing. The actual credentialing requirement is eliminated in section two. But this chapter of Title 24 references credentialing, so you'll just see everywhere that there's a reference to credentialing, that reference is struck through like here on the first page. So that is what's going on in the first page here. On page two, again, just another elimination of credentialing of EMS personnel by their affiliated agency. On this sub-chapter two heading, it's just a correction because affiliated agencies are licensed. Affiliated agency includes an ambulance service or a first responder service. So this is just a technical correction to the sub-chapter two heading because it's about licensure of affiliated agencies. You'll see just another strike of that reference to credentialing. And then here, finally, on page three, you get to the substance, the first substantive change, which is extending those ambulance license terms from one to three years. The second main substantive thing that's going on in this part of the bill is that DFR enforcement. Here's that current law requirement in 2689A1 for a health insurer to directly reimburse an ambulance service for the ambulance services provision of emergency medical treatment. That's the current law requirement and the new A2 would require the Department of Financial Regulation to enforce that restriction. And as the Deputy Commissioner already described to you, that was already something that they were doing. Page four at the top in section two is just a report back from DFR on how that enforcement is going. So it's a January deadline to report back by January 15, 2021 to the GovOps committees and the healthcare committees regarding DFR's enforcement of that direct reimbursement does not specify the form of that report. For example, it could be a verbal report if DFR so chose. Bob Hooper has a question. Thank you. Hi, Betsy. All of a sudden, the wording here causes me to ask whether this is only sort of public affiliated extension or does it imply to like flutter Allen runs ambulances back and forth with DMSs and stuff and LaMoyle Valley Ambulance Service is a corporate entity, not a public entity. Does this universally apply? About the ambulance license terms and EMS and all that other affiliated I believe so. I mean, Shayla, maybe she can confirm this is anybody that's operating an ambulance service has to be licensed and they get their licenses through DOH. So that would be my understanding of everyone. But Shayla would be the on point person. Absolutely. So it would be everyone, Rob Cooper. And it doesn't matter. I mean, there's the patchwork of how our EMS is provided in the state. There are nonprofits, there are for profits, there are, you know, hospital affiliated. There are also town run. So it's just very, you know, it's all over the map and we and all of them have to be licensed through us regardless of how they are structured. Thank you. So we got through section two. That's the report from DFR. And then we get into section three. Section three amends a chapter of title 18 that regulates emergency medical services. The big picture here is eliminating that credentialing requirement. So as it's provided in your summary, EMS personnel have to be licensed by the Department of Health. Pursuant to Department of Health rules, a qualification for licensure is a certification by the National Registry of EMTs. And then the current law also requires EMS personnel to be credentialed by their affiliated agency. If we get down to, so you'll see throughout the chapter, into eliminate credentialing, any reference to credentialing would be struck. But I'm just going to jump ahead. I'll come back. But this subdivision four of 18 BSA 906 describes what credentialing is supposed to be. So this provides under current law and it would be struck here. This is the main credentialing requirement that says in addition to the licensing requirements of this chapter, in order for a person to practice as an emergency medical provider, they shall be credentialed. Credentialing shall consist of the minimum and appropriate requirements necessary to ensure an EMS provider can demonstrate the competence and minimum skills necessary to practice within the scope of his or her license. So the big picture is eliminating that additional credentialing requirement with the idea that the current licensure and certification is enough to ensure the competence of EMS personnel to practice. So that 18 BSA 906-4 would be repealed. And so therefore any other references to credentialing would also be eliminated. That's what's happening here on page four and here on page five. Then in this 903, there are just some technical corrections. For example, emergency medical treatment is a defined term for the chapter. So it's just a correction to substitute that term for emergency medical care, which was not a defined term. And then also referencing rules that the department adopts rather than regulations because our technical term under the Vermont Administrative Procedure Act is the adoption of rules and the statute while you're in here making these substantive changes. Again there at the bottom of page five is the repeal of the credentialing requirement. And again you'll see on page six just another deletion of the credentialing requirement reference. Same things going on here on page seven. Eliminating reference to credentialing in two spots. And then the same things going on in the EMS advisory committee. No substantive changes here just updating the language while this statute would be amended again to eliminate reference to credentialing. Here for example on page eight and subsection E, they do have to provide an annual report to the General Assembly and so there's just cleanup language to get rid of a static date of January 1, 2019 since that's already come and gone. Still the current law requires an annual report and so that would not change. It's just cleanup of the language. You'll see there's just the reason the statute is amended even in this bill is because it included a reference to credentialing. So we had to get rid of that. That's why the bill is really so long is because there's multiple references to credentialing which would be repealed. You see that again at the top of page nine. That takes us through the EMS provisions of the bill. Madam Chair should I just pause here for any questions? Thank you. Marcia Gardner has a question. That's Ian or actually anyone else listening in on this? Do we have any idea how much faster removing the credentialing requirement will make the process? How much time will be saved? Maybe a better question for Shayla. Are you aware of that Shayla? That's a good question and I don't know because the health department is not actually directly involved in it but I can go back and ask and email you the answer. I do recall in Seneca Vops, when Seneca Vops has been focusing on EMS issues and how to make the system more sustainable and I just recall from testimony that credentialing was just one more thing that they had to do in order to practice and it was in addition to licensure and national certification so it was just one more step to practice and I think that was the suggestion came from the testimony from EMS personnel and Seneca Vops decided to suggest eliminating that credentialing requirement as not necessary. Thank you. Bob Hooper. Hello again, sorry. So this removes the state expectations of credentialing but if City of Burlington or UVM decides they want to require an extra level of of experience, assessment, whatever, they're not precluded at this point from expressing a desire for that, right? I don't see anything in here that would prohibit an individual employer from requiring certain qualifications of their employees. It's just eliminating the state requirement for there to be credentialing. And I do want to just add to that that it also doesn't change anything that would happen if there are any federal regulations or requirements like through OSHA or sorry through OSHA or something like that. So it is just the state rule piece of it. Yeah I can see where it wouldn't go up but it's sort of you know the advanced life support or whatever that UVM is running around, is it fiddle with that at all? No and and so just as background, credentialing is a very common practice in medicine generally. So it's done with providers who work for you know any you know hospital for example will have a credentialing process and then it's on top of the license and so you're right this is only for state rule purposes. All right. Any other questions on this section before we shift gears and go to public safety? All right. All right. Thanks. Section four is that Department of Public Safety provision that extends current electrician and plumber licenses. This language says notwithstanding the two statutes that regulate the renewal of licenses and set their terms. It provides that despite that law all electrician and plumber licenses that were due to expire between March 30th and September 30th 2020 shall remain valid and be deemed to expire on September 30th 2020 and any associated late fees for renewal that would have applied during that timeframe shall be waived in order to extend that license period so that those licensees can get the necessary continuing education that they might not have been able to get now under the during the COVID outbreak. And then finally section five gets to the use of county reserve funds for sheriff emergency needs. So it starts out with talking about this funding says to support the emergency needs of sheriffs due to the state's COVID-19 response. A county's operations reserve funds and capital reserve funds which are described in law may be allowed to be used for the emergency needs of the county sheriff subject to the approval of the assistant judges. So the assistant judges already under current law are the entities that allow expenditures from these reserve funds and so that authority would remain. As was already discussed there's those two reserve funds the operations reserve funds which is capped at 15% of the county budget and the separate capital reserve fund which is capped at 75% of the budget but it could be less than that as our assistant judge Anderson was already discussing. But it's allowing those in accordance with the assistant judge discretion to be used for sheriff emergency needs. So emergency needs is defined here in the bill. It's defined as the needs to respond to COVID-19 and it includes it's not an exhaustive list but it includes hiring deputies dispatchers and other personnel in purchasing equipment and supplies. And that emergency funding it provides here in A2 would be in addition to the support of the sheriff's department that is provided under current law. And we have that handout that describes if you want to turn back to it about how sheriff departments get funded under normal circumstances under current law but this allows additional funding authority through the county's reserve funds pursuant to assistant judge authority. Now if a sheriff does get that reserve funding subsection B requires them to seek reimbursement this provides it any sheriff who receives county reserve funds for emergency needs under that subsection A shall apply to FEMA and any other applicable resources for COVID-19 relief known to the sheriff for any allowable reimbursement so the sheriff they sheriff gets reimbursement he or she has to apply to any known resources for reimbursement and it goes on to say that within 30 days of receiving any such allowable reimbursement the sheriff shall provide those funds to the county in order to reimburse the county for the funds that were allocated the sheriff under subsection A from those reserve funds but it does say explicitly that a sheriff shall only be responsible for reimbursing the county an amount equal to the allowable reimbursement the sheriff got so while the sheriff is required to seek reimbursement from any known resource the sheriff is only responsible for reimbursing the county for any funds the sheriff actually got from those reimbursement resources and then finally there's a sunset on this this is not an ongoing authorization but this authority is scheduled to be uh repealed two weeks after the day the governor terminates the state of emergency for the state in response to COVID-19 and finally effective date on passage of course excellent thank you Betsy Ann does anybody have questions for Betsy Ann about the words on the page or questions for any of the remaining witnesses who are with us to to clarify any aspects of the bill all right I am not seeing anybody jumping in line for some questions to be answered here so thank you Betsy Ann you did a fabulous job of walking us through that thank you I do see oh look like the rep prayers then raise his hand of course he did go ahead Jim well I feel like there's a void if no one asks a question so this is really a question for anyone on the call right now obviously to the extent possible we want to concur with what the senate does so we can get this enacted in law and not play ping pong with the bill but having said that um I'm just curious if any of the witnesses on the phone perhaps if they had to do it over something else has come to light that they might suggest that we amend and again I'm not predisposed to wanting to amend the bill but sometimes when you do something and you go back well maybe we should have done it this way so I just asked an open question well I don't see anybody um rushing to jump in with and that's fine that's the best response you could hope for I'm just just wanted to be sure we were good well the open ended question I'm sure is is the way to get at that answer and if we haven't hit the sweet spot with the language that's come over from the senate then now is the time or forever hold your piece all right I'm not seeing a lot of folks clamoring to to jump in on that any other questions from committee all right great well thank you Betsy Ann for walking us through that language committee we have about 24 hours to sit with this and and we will come back to this for tomorrow at 1130 to do a final vote out of committee so you can access the language at your own leisure feel free to to reach out to Betsy Ann if you have any clarifying questions and we will plan to move this bill tomorrow any other questions from committee members John Gannon so Sarah just to clarify so we'll vote on it tomorrow at 1130 we'll go on the floor that afternoon or on Friday so we have we'll be referred the bill tomorrow morning after the 10 o'clock meeting I'm not sure if that would get it reported in time to act on tomorrow afternoon but presumably we could request a suspension of rules to bring it up if the desire was to move it quickly I you know I know that for the first massive Zoom call for our floor session they're they're trying to control the agenda pretty tightly so that it's manageable and I just I haven't heard yet whether this bill makes the cut for something that would come up on the first day or not okay we will attempt to get it out of committee tomorrow so that it is available for that all right um so I think that completes our work on 182 today so I can thank all of the witnesses for being with us um we're going to have just a couple minutes of announcements here as uh as a committee and um and so you don't need to stick around for this unless you really want to so thank you all for being with us today I can let you know the Bolton was signed as we spoke so oh excellent send it over to the committee thank you well thank you madam chair and thank you to the committee members today thanks for being with us mike appreciate the help all right um so that completes our um our official business for the day a couple of things that I wanted to run through just to uh to have you all remember when we go to the floor session I have gotten in the habit um as as I've been conducting these virtual committee meetings of of lowering your hand for you after you have um been called on to ask your question um that is not necessarily the norm that other chairs or that the speaker will use when conducting floor sessions so I just want you to be super aware that when you raise your hand to be recognized for floor session then you need to actually lower your hand after you've been called on um because otherwise the speaker who's trying to watch you know 150 uh is going to continue to see your hand in the queue and that's just going to gum up the works so I I kind of um I kind of thought maybe I should stop lowering your hand for you just to to to have you practice that um so maybe I'll stop doing that tomorrow I've been doing it myself just because it's easier when I'm looking at the list of people who have their hands raised you know I know that I called on Jim already so I'm going to lower his hand um but just just so that you're aware that uh that when we're doing our floor sessions you you may be required to lower your own hand so as not to gum up the works um I believe that that is it for um for our committee meeting for today so I think we can sign off from our YouTube channel Jim Harrison has a question