 Good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'm joined by Mayor Murrow Weinberger of Burlington, as well as the executive director of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, Ted Brady, to discuss permitting and the critical role it plays in housing. For years, you've heard me and others talk about our desperate need for more homes. And we've made significant investments during my time as governor, including a $37 million housing bond in 2017, which leveraged almost $200 million in private funding, as well as the $250 million package I put together for investments that I pushed for with ARPA money over the last two years. To anyone who's been trying to buy a home over the past few years, it can't come soon enough. And it's why these investments are so important. And I'll continue to make the case for this funding. Fortunately, for the most part, legislators also acknowledge the need. But there's an important piece of this conversation that doesn't seem to have the same sense of urgency, understanding, or agreement in the state house. And that's permit reform. There's no denying how difficult and expensive it is to build in Vermont. I share the goal of preserving and protecting the environment, but we're faced with an unfortunate reality. The majority of homes in Vermont were built before 1960. And the cost of buying one of these older houses is twice as much per square foot than new construction in other parts of the country. It would appear the lack of new housing stock is part of the problem. This means that to really make a difference, we need to pair historic levels of funding with permit reform to make smart growth easier and less expensive. That's why I propose exempting downtown and village centers the places where we want growth to happen from Act 250. That proposal actually passed the House in 2020, but isn't in the current Act 250 bill, even though it would be incredibly helpful. I've also advocated for changes to align state and local land policy or use policy with new funding to create more homes in designated areas. This would also make it possible for small towns, which are in desperate need of housing, the ability to get an Act 250 exemption. Unfortunately, this provision and others I propose over the years are not included in the current bill. Not only does this legislation not include the necessary policies to make Act 250 more efficient, the bill includes governance changes, which will likely slow the permitting process, meaning it moves us in the wrong direction. Again, to be clear, the current Act 250 bill would actually make it much more difficult to build homes at a time when we need it most. Mayor Weinberger and Ted Brady from VLCT have been vocal about these issues, and I thank them for their help. Our desperate need to increase the housing supply is not a partisan issue. It's a fact. And the mayor has been a leading proponent of addressing this crisis for years. I'm now turning it over to him to share some thoughts. Mayor? Governor, it's an honor to be here with you and your team today and get an opportunity to share some thoughts on the housing situation in Chintin County in Vermont. From my perspective, Chintin County and much of the rest of the state is in an acute housing crisis. As a mayor, both the mayor of Burlington but my fellow mayors from around the state, we are confronted with this challenge every day right now. Rents and home prices are skyrocketing and shutting people out of our cities. Chronic homelessness has surged in Chintin County by some measures almost 500% since shortly before the pandemic. When I talk to our businesses, they report that their biggest challenge that they face in this economic recovery is their workers finding good housing. This is a housing supply crisis. We build way less homes today as a state than we used to, even though more people wanna live in this wonderful place than ever before. And there's a pretty simple reason we're building less homes despite this huge demand. Our local and state land use laws have made it way too hard to build new homes here. The enormously time consuming and complex permitting system have created, that we've created has made it possible for small groups of individuals, sometimes as few as one person to obstruct the community need for critical new homes. As Seven Days recently put it in a cover story, our permitting system has turned Vermont into an obstruction zone. I think most Vermonters would agree that safe and decent housing is a human right. To make good on this promise that housing is a human right, we must build a lot more homes. To do that, policymakers at both the state and local level are going to have to find a way to protect the natural features that make Vermont great, that we hold so dear, while also dramatically improving our permitting so that housing can get built at a much faster rate. Figuring out how to do this is one of our major challenges in our state and unfortunately currently the Act 250 Reform Bill that has passed the House and that seems to be on the verge of passing through the Senate, not only would not improve the situation and create substantial material new exemptions for our existing downtowns and villages, it would actually go the other way. It would undo one of the most important pro-housing land use reforms the last 20 years, which was the reform in 2004 of the governance system that consolidated, that allowed builders to consolidate appeals from the local permitting and the state permitting, since they need to go through it both in most situations, allowed those appeals to be consolidated in the environmental court. This would undo that. Sounds kind of technical or wonky, but let me, this is a very serious thing for builders and that is why almost every mayor in the state, as well as dozens of housing professionals and builders have come out strongly against reverting to the pre-2004 appeal system. Already in our current system, let me try to break it down this way, in our current appeal system, someone who wants to build a housing project or other types of project in many, many cases, not every case, but in many cases, needs to get a local zoning permit and an Act 250 zoning, Act 250 permit. Currently, if those are appealed, as even one individual can do, that goes to one environmental court and the environmental court makes a coherent decision there about both of these appeals. That decision can now then be appealed to the Vermont Supreme Court and contested projects often have to go through each of those steps. I know this because I lived it myself. Before I was mayor, when I was a builder, I had a project in Burlington that had to go through each of those four steps to receive a building permit. The proposed change that has passed the house would undo that consolidation and it would say an Act 250 appeal, well, first of all, it would say the local DRB permit still goes to the environmental court. However, now the Act 250 appeal would go to a new body, the environmental board. Every time you force a project to go to another body, you are forcing a builder to pay tens of thousands of dollars in permit fees, but spend what can easily be hundreds of thousands of dollars defending that permit with the professionals, the architects, the engineers, the traffic experts and that is what this change would do is it would add that additional cost and complication back on to many projects. In short, this gives obstructionists to housing projects yet another way to throw sand in the gears of needed new homes. This is the opposite direction that we should be going. It is especially the opposite direction that we should be going right now in the midst of an acute housing crisis and I urge legislators to find another way to pass what are some good things in the housing bills that are being talked about this year without including this very problematic provision. Final quick point. Burlingtonians are environmentalists. We believe in the preservation of our natural areas we believe in the goals of Act 250 of preserving the character of Vermont. The character of Burlington is a place where we have a vibrant city where people of all backgrounds can come to start a career, to start a life, to start a business, to raise children and that character of Burlington is very much being threatened by our current housing crisis and this governance reform of Act 250 would threaten Burlington's character by taking us backwards. It also in the current form would make it harder to build in general in our Vermont cities and towns. That's why again almost every mayor in the state has come out against it and it is not good for the environment to make it more difficult to build in our authentic treasured cities and towns. It actually hurts the environment to create more complication there and force more development out into the countryside. So again, Governor, thank you for the chance to be with you on this important issue. Thank you for your leadership trying to get this done the right way and look forward to continuing to work with you on this. Thanks, mayor. I'm Ted Brady. I'm the executive director of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. Quick reminder, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns represents all 246 cities and towns here in Vermont as well as another several dozen units of government like villages and such. And we're here today because the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, every select board, every treasurer, every clerk knows that Vermont's in a housing crisis. And this is not a concept, right? This isn't just using that word crisis to raise alarm bells. Go on and search Zillow and look for some homes in your community for sale. I'm willing to bet money. Your community will only have a few houses for sale and never mind houses that are deemed affordable for new young families and for people to come here. So the legislature today, not in theory, the legislature today has a chance to make a big change and a big difference and take steps towards addressing that housing crisis. Unfortunately, of the several bills before the legislature reforming Act 250 and dealing with the permitting side of this problem, and I wanna give kudos, the governor, the legislature have dealt with the financial side. They have allocated a record number of resources at building houses. But when the cost of building a house doubles in a couple of years, you just can't keep up with that pace. You have to change the underlying rules by which you build housing to catch up with the needed demand. The legislature right now has a chance to do that. Unfortunately last week, the House passed a bill, S-234, that was heralded by many as being a step in the right direction, as being a solution to this crisis. Unfortunately, it wasn't a balance. When we do things here in Vermont to conserve land, we have a long history of doing a great job of making sure Vermonters have access to that land, can live on that land as well. And unfortunately, 234 failed to include the provision that the governor talked about and the mayor talked about that would have exempted our designated downtowns from Act 250 to allow for more housing to occur in places where we want it to occur. There's a story here that goes back a few years. Maybe not the full 50 of Act 250, but certainly housing developers, environmental advocates, the governor and legislature actually came to agreement about four years ago, five years ago, that Act 250 needed to be reformed. They came to agreement for two reasons. One, it was out of date for what we needed to actually conserve. Things changed in 50 years. Climate changed, you name it. But it was also out of date because our land use policies at the local level have also changed. The state designation programs didn't exist back then. We didn't have zoning in many communities. All of these things have changed in those 50 years. So these groups came together and agreed that there's a thoughtful way to change the way we conserve land to make it actually more protective and a way to change the way we develop housing to steer housing in places we want it to occur and to steer development in places we want it to occur in the modern environment that Act 250 lived in. One of the kind of most beautiful and simple, elegant solutions was that we could spark new growth by exempting Act 250 housing developments and really all development, but specifically housing development in our neighborhood development areas, our 23 designated downtowns, our new town centers, these designated growth centers, they go through a rigorous planning process which ensures the interests of the neighbors, the interests of the environment and our longstanding Vermont land use and planning rules are respected. The Vermont League joined with all of these advocates and all of these groups, really from two different perspectives to endorse this concept. This happened several years ago, three to four years ago, but unfortunately here we are. Years after a commission was created to look at Act 250, years after we all agreed, and as the governor mentioned, the house agreed that we could make an exemption to Act 250 to solve this crisis and the best we got was a bill in 234 that's passed both bodies that was called a major step, but actually includes only a modest reform to Act 250, targeting communities of less than 3,000 people. The narrow expansion would allow developers in these communities to double the number of housing units that can qualify for something called a priority housing project from 25 units to 50 units. Again, this is only in communities with less than 3,000 people. Priority housing projects, if you don't know about them, it's actually a really slick thing and I know the governor's champion this, many in the state hasn't championed these, they allow a developer to avoid Act 250, the duplicative process of Act 250 in our designated centers, if they build a certain limited number of homes and if they build in a downtown neighborhood area, a new town center or growth center, and this is the genius of this solution, right? Build a certain percentage of affordable homes. These tools, priority housing projects, have been key to our state's recent efforts to build more housing. However, they are not the solution, and while any easing of Act 250's jurisdiction over smart growth housing is a good thing, the priority housing project expansion won't begin to meet the challenge of our housing crisis. Put simply, our state's smallest communities of less than 3,000 cannot be expected to fix this crisis statewide. As the mayor has alluded to and the governor alluded to, S-234, this one bill that looks like it has the best chance of passing and becoming the governor's desk, it goes on to increase Act 250 jurisdiction. So instead of meeting us where we are in a time of crisis and need, it actually expands the jurisdiction to protect connecting habitat and more forest land not currently developed for non-forest use. This will effectively make developing housing more difficult by roping off vast swaths of land from development. Whether one thinks this is a good policy or not, and this is the key here, this could be very good policy to the mayor's point that Burlington is a conservation minded city. Most of our towns and cities believe that as well. The problem here is that this is not an equal compromise. You cannot go ahead and cut off areas for development without passing a law that aggressively is accompanied by aggressive moves to house human beings where we want them to be housed in their designated centers. As the mayor also mentioned, in addition to increasing Act 250 jurisdiction, it also divorces the nearly two decade standard of having Act 250 permits and other environmental permit appeals go to the same place, creating what most likely will be used by opponents as an appeal process in two separate venues that will lead to more delays, more costs and most likely fewer units being built. I'll finish by saying the League of Cities and Towns earlier this year, actually last year and then this summer surveyed our members, select board members, clerks, treasurers, planning commission members and other officials and asked them what's the number one issue facing your community? The number one issue by far and away was affordable housing. Access and affordability to housing is making their communities less vibrant. It's making it difficult to attract new employees and it's making their communities a more difficult place to live. There are several provisions within S-234 and other Act 250 bills moving through the house and Senate right now that make good progress and will help address the housing shortage, including new municipal planning grants for our members to change their zoning laws to encourage housing in their communities and including a way to allow designated centers to be designated in more places that currently they can't be. But without an Act 250 exemption for these designated areas for our downtowns where we want housing to happen, we simply can't claim to be serious about solving our housing crisis. Put simply, the deal to reform Act 250 right now is not a good one. It doesn't adequately balance the need to conserve our sensitive environment while also ensuring that Vermonters can find a safe and affordable place to call home in our downtowns and village centers. Thank you. Thank you, Ted. We'll get into questions about Act 250 in a moment, and at first we're going to have a health update from Dr. Levine. Thank you, Governor. It appears I may be the only one up here today, not dealing with a crisis. As we know, COVID-19 is still with us and just like many other viruses, we as human beings have to endure. It's unfortunately one we have to continue to live with but it will continue to change and evolve. There's already another version of the Omicron variant with even more numbers attached to its name, the BA212.1. It's making up around 30% of cases in New England, we estimate and more than 60% of cases in upstate New York. This newest variant does need additional study to know if and how it could change our understanding of COVID-19, but CDC officials and our local data support this continue to believe that people who are up to date on vaccines are protected against severe outcomes. Regionally, we're continuing to keep a close eye on New York state as well as Maine and Massachusetts, which are having increasing disease activity. Our seven day average in Vermont has increased 4% by 12 cases per day to 338, so relatively static. And today we'll be reporting an additional four deaths for a tragic total of 648. Our seven day hospitalizations across the state increased slightly from 58 to 64. ICU numbers remain in the low teen range. Interestingly, approximately half of all COVID hospitalizations continue to be for conditions other than COVID, and this includes those in our ICUs. As I pointed out last week, although many in the hospital have been vaccinated, a continuing trend and theme seems to be that they have also consistently failed to get at least one booster shot. Critical to helping reduce the potential for severe illness. So I'll say it again, if you are over 65 or over 50 with underlying health risk conditions, please be sure to get at least one booster. So as this virus changes, we'll continue to evolve as well using our data systems to track its activity and provide additional public health guidance as we do with flu and other viruses. As I mentioned last week, COVID continues to spread at higher levels in the Northeast and in Vermont than in the rest of the country. Burlington and South Burlington wastewater data continues to show high but steady levels. The other six sites around the state have just started to use a new national contractor and they require two weeks of data before trends can be established. So I don't have any data for them to share at this point. So though many Vermonters are protected against serious effects through vaccination, this is a time when it's even more important to reexamine your personal risk. Please give serious consideration to taking what we know from experience our effective prevention steps, such as wearing a high quality mask in indoor public spaces and getting tested if you have any symptoms. And even though vaccines do a wonderful job of lowering your risk of hospitalization or severe illness, it's critical to know that if you are an older person or have underlying health conditions, you are still at higher risk. If you test positive, contact your healthcare provider to get treatment as soon as you get your result. While vaccination does protect you from serious outcomes, some people do need an antiviral medication to keep them out of the hospital. So do not assume you are guaranteed smooth sailing if you get COVID or that mild symptoms early on mean that you shouldn't seek treatment. You have no way of predicting your course of illness if you fall into one of the higher risk groups. And we have the therapy right here in Vermont and it is safe to take. And on that subject, we received more great news that in response to our request to boost this week's allocation, we're getting another 2,000 treatment courses of PacSlovid, the most effective antiviral pill. So please know treatment is available if you need it. To continue the theme of evolution, we've spoken many times here about data reporting and the need to focus on the larger picture of COVID. It's impact on our health as a population and on our healthcare systems. That's why our epidemiology teams are working on a new COVID surveillance report to look at this disease in a way that's similar to how we look at other infectious diseases such as the flu. The first surveillance report will be published tomorrow and updated weekly. It will help us to look at case trends, impact on hospitals, numbers of outbreaks, vaccination rates, there'll be new information on wastewater surveillance and the proportion of variants over time. We believe this in-depth report will better help us all monitor and determine the risk of COVID in Vermont. We'll continue to base public health guidance on our COVID activity as a state rather than on a county by county level. And with the publication of this new report, we plan to phase out our COVID-19 case dashboard later this month. The last update to that will be May 18th. The dashboard's been an amazing effort by our teams in response to this pandemic emergency and we know Vermonters have relied upon it to be informed along the way. But the widespread use of at-home tests has already made case counts much less meaningful in addition to other data such as percent positivity. Nor do the number of cases reflect the amount of severe disease in our communities which is our main concern when it comes to COVID. The health department will continue to collect, analyze and respond to data in real time but our teams need to get back to focusing their time on analyzing the most valuable data from a public health perspective to assess and respond to COVID-19 now and in the future. Finally, I want to just give a brief preview of vaccine news that may be coming in the month of June. The FDA's Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee plans to meet to discuss data submitted by Pfizer and Moderna for a vaccine for children under age five. And later in the month we'll talk about updating COVID vaccines for future strains and boosters. This is especially important as an endorsement of a strategy that provides a broader vaccine coverage incorporating the more recent variant strains. These updated vaccines, which might be administered in the fall, must be tested in the coming months to establish efficacy and safety. So we'll provide information when we have it but please remember parents and caregivers should plan to reach out to their pediatrician or family practitioner to get their child vaccinated when the time comes. Finally, I do have one small crisis to expound upon. This is now National Fentanyl Awareness Day, an opportunity to recognize the dangers of this synthetic opioid, which has killed many Vermonters and in fact was involved in 93% of all opioid related deaths in the year that's just passed. Fentanyl's found in other substances beyond opioids. In fact, 46% of total overdoses had a combination of fentanyl and cocaine. So please help share this message widely. If you or someone you know are using opioids, cocaine, meth or any other potentially dangerous powder or pill, learn where you can find fentanyl test strips and Narcan. Both are widely available in the state and can be life-saving. Visit our vthelplink.org or knowodvt.com, knlwodvt.com and you'll learn more about how to reduce the risk of overdose because help and support for substance use prevention, treatment and successful recovery are available when and where needed. Thank you Dr. Levine for now opening up the questions. Sorry there are folks in the room. You know, I know it's a disappointing outcome to many people fighting for our renters and renters protections in Burlington. Fortunately in Burlington, we already have some of the strongest renter protection provisions in the country. The city will continue to enforce and implement those reforms. Reason I'm here today is the way we actually make an impact in the lives of renters that we bring down rents, we drive up vacancy rates so that renters need to be respected and that there is pressure on property owners to properly manage their properties and treat renters fairly. The way we get there is by building a lot more homes and that's why this problematic anti-housing provision that is currently in S-234 is so important in the line bearer today. Your view on just called evictions in Burlington being sustained in the house earlier today can follow up to the renters? Well, again, I think it's good news from my perspective. I thought that that provision would make the housing problem worse, especially in the Chittin County area, our Burlington being the largest city in the county, that would have a ripple effect across the whole county. So it's really about timing. I don't think it's the right time to implement something like this. Along the lines of what the mayor had just explained, we need more housing. We have a housing crisis right now today. We don't need to make the housing crisis worse. We need to fix that problem before we tackle other problems. Implementing some of the changes that were in that charter change might be more appropriate after we get more housing in place. And I know that Ted said that there were other buildings that you would have like to see added to S234. Could you say, or give an example of what you would have like to see added to S234? I think if you look back at some of the housing bills that we introduced, we had some Act 250 changes within that. That's what we'd like to see. We'd like to, everything that we talked about today, we'd like to see more exemptions for municipalities, small towns, and so forth, designated areas. I mean, it just makes so much sense. We need to clear the way for more housing. We don't need to put up another roadblock. And it seems as though some of the provisions we're seeing in the existing bill today does just that. Puts up more roadblocks, creates more bottlenecks, and furthers our housing crisis. So there's still some bills out there that have some good provisions in there. There's still time to include those in the housing bill in particular. I might ask Commissioner Hanford if you might have some suggestions as well. Yes, thanks, Governor. Can you hear me? We can. Yes. The governor was speaking to some of the pro housing work that was done earlier in the second, in particularly S225, had a lot of the positive regulatory reforms that we were hoping to see. And as the speaker today mentioned, it was pulled and added to 234, which has some problem that it's elements to it. Now we're hopeful that that gets worked out and we can get the positive regulatory release that goes along with the very positive housing proposals that are in S226, like the missing middle, like a manufactured housing reform, like a pilot project to help communities establish new neighborhoods and what it would look like to build the sort of housing that we need for the future in a smart growth way with the proper planning and infrastructure to go along with it. So there's a lot of positive work in the housing front, but we need the foundation, the fundamental to go along with it, such as these regulatory reforms to really build the whole package. Lawmakers failed to override your veto as well on the clean heat standard. What are your thoughts on that and what is the plan moving forward in addressing our mandate under the global warming solutions action? Well, that's breaking news for me. Thanks for sharing from my standpoint. Once again, I didn't see where, and I know that the legislature had different thoughts on this, abdicating our position, abdicating the initiative to the Public Utility Commission. It's fine for them to do, but I felt the need for the legislation, whatever they came up with for a plan, think of them as the architect, whatever they came up with for the plan needs to come back to the legislature in bill form for it to be debated. And so that it goes through all the process in the next legislative session or whenever it's finalized so that we can look and see who it impacts, how much it costs, and what it does. Today we have none of those answers. And I know that their check back provision, they thought took care of that. That's not how it reads. And when you ask the lawyers to look at that, our lawyer doesn't agree that it clearly, it allows for it to come back in in bill form and go through the process in the legislature. Again, I think it's punting it to the PUC isn't the answer. I think we need as a legislature and as an executive branch to deal with this. And if it's a good idea and it does all the things that they hope it does, then we should be able to communicate that with voters, with our constituents, with Vermonters. So to explain to them, to make sure that we're not impacting the most vulnerable, those who are trying to protect. Now, again, as you remember, there was a charter change that I did sign in Burlington. That was their thermal energy initiative. The mayor was an advocate for that. And I let that go, I signed it because it was clearly stated in the end. Clearly it said any assessment, and I'm paraphrasing, but any assessment that is going to be imposed on Burlingtonians would go back to them for a vote before being imposed, right? So they got another, they get a vote on that. They get to plan this to take it and articulate that to their constituents. And then they have to take a vote on that. So all I'm asking is for the representation in the legislature to clearly explain what this is and to live by their vote and explain it to their constituents. Yes? I could follow up on that Governor. I think the lawmakers that are concerned about this say they're worried that two years from now we're going to be in the exact same place that the PUC is going to design a program and then we'll get to two years from now and you will still not like it and you will have the ability to beat it with that. Well, I may not be here in two years. So I think you have to rely on the process, right? I think it's just good government. Forcing this onto people isn't going to work. We need to explain it to people why it's so important and again, make sure that we're not, the PUC doesn't, they're an unelected body. They're not going to hear from their constituents. They don't have constituents. They're a judicial body and they're just going to design a system that they think works by the letter of whatever the legislature told them to do. I think the democracy works best. It's messy, but it works best when we all have the ability to petition our government, the ability to go to the legislature, the ability to go to elected officials and explain what we're doing and then make changes as necessary to make sure that it's done for the right reasons. And again, I think punting this to an unelected board is the easy way out. And I think that it should come back and then we should debate this. I think the legislature should debate this and I think the governor should have a seat at the table as well. Representative Briglin argued this morning that the way the global warming solution works is that the legislature dithers and the executive dithers and they can't come to agreement. It falls on the agency of natural resources to come up with a plan to reduce emissions sufficient to meet the mandates that are in global warming solutions act. I mean, you've begun to thought about what you would direct your agency of natural resources to do if we arrive at a place where it's time to meet the goals and we haven't done anything. Again, it can fix this pretty easy, clearly define that this will come back to the legislature and be debated. It's all they have to say. This bill could go through just clearly defined that it comes back in bill form. Pretty easy, pretty simple. Did it with a charter change. It could be done with this instead of some of the artful, legal interpretation that they came up with. It just gave them all kinds of opportunities. And again, maybe their intent, maybe the intent of this legislature was different. But as I've been reminded many, many times over the years, it's not your intent. It's not the intent of the legislature. It's what they wrote. It's what they passed. It's the law. And that's what you go by. Have you been able to determine whether conferences are working on the tax bill? Yeah, I mean, they've come a long ways and I really appreciate the work, especially with the economic development bill. I don't know what they come up with exactly with all of the details, but they're definitely moving in the right direction. There's a path forward there. And your thoughts on the budget that comprehensively? Yeah, same thing there. I mean, it's not everything I hoped for, but it moved in the right direction. They came a long ways to include some of our provisions. And they provided allowances, which is good budgeting, by the way, something the House should have done when they sent the bill over, but put an allowance in for a specific, like for economic development or whatever it is, it's a placeholder. Makes a lot of sense. Your thoughts on the yield bill? I don't know where we're at with the yield bill at this point in time. I just don't know. Obviously, with the yield bill, I wanted tax relief and I wanted money for CTEs. And we'll see if they include that or not. Fair to say, though, that you're feeling optimistic right now about the path forward to being able to support spending package and tax plan. Yeah, I mean, I think I feel better today than I did three days ago. And I appreciate the legislature and some of the members for conferees working towards including us in the process. If it was just the way it is right now, yes, we're better off without it. No, no, there's too many other bad things in that bill. I think they need to look back and see the other good things that are in, and again, focus on the crisis at hand right now. What beyond the governance change is it poison-focused? Is it force-frag? Oh, I asked what beyond the governance changes are a poison pill? I said force-frag. You make a lot of, over the last few weeks as we've watched you have these types of discussions, you seem rather frustrated with the legislature. Didn't you say something not too long ago to the United? You've come across to me as like a parent who's trying to corral a kid, and you're not being as successful as you'd like. Well, there's always frustration. I've been part of the legislature and part of this process for over 20 years now. Typically, no one's happy by the end of the session. I think that this session in particular, and I think there would be legislators, especially those on the money committees that would agree with me when there's more money involved, it gets harder. It gets more difficult. When there's less money, it seems as though we come together and figure this out, but the more money you have, the more difficult the decisions are. And I think with the pandemic, I wanna at least present the case that the pandemic has led us to more remote legislating. I don't think Vermonters were, and rightly so, I'm not criticizing the decisions. Now that we're back in the building, I think all of these issues that have been worked on over the last year or so remotely are now coming to fruition and not everyone's happy, not everyone understands what they're now voting on. So it's led to some more confusion, but again, we'll get through this. Keep it waiting for your thoughts. I think, again, my concern is, how much is this going to cost us in the future? Because it's not just about rearranging all the deck chairs, which is the way you would think about that, the waiting would lead you to believe that you take all the money that we have, the $8 billion we have in education now, or not $8 billion, $2 billion, $2 billion in education now, and redistribute that. My fear is that we're just adding to it, like to not taking away from some, but just adding to other areas. And we'll see where that goes in the next couple of years. So you're willing to give it a go? Yeah, I mean, I think it's fair. I think it's more fair for, especially the rural areas of the state. Last question I have for you. Members of the Oak Mountain First Nation recently gave a presentation that you denounced Vermont's one official has called on Vermont to revoke state recognition for those drives, your response? Yeah, I mean, I read some of that, but I was surprised to hear, to be honest with you. But I think we're comfortable with where we're at. Yeah, rental registry is a problem for me. So you want me to tell it? Well, let's just, again, I think they're coming a long ways and it's still, they haven't shaken hands on any of that at this point. So I'd like to give them the ability to move in the right direction. And what about work? Again, that has a lot of provisions. It seems that one too is moving in the right direction. So we'll see where it all ends up. I think we'll know a lot more, obviously in the next two days. Looks like they're trying to adjourn this week. I saw that this morning on the news and I wasn't aware, but I'm not surprised that there are shortages, there have been supply chains shortages. In fact, we make the formula here in the state and I was going to reach out to Ag and AHS to see if we could do anything to supplement in any way. Governor, on the State House, it seems like we've had some pretty remarkable gun violence. In Highgate, Springfield and elsewhere. What are your thoughts on what you're seeing? Yeah, I'm going to ask Commissioner Shirling to weigh in on this, but I'm obviously concerned when we see it's a widespread. It seems that all revolve around illegal drug trafficking. So that's a big concern. Commissioner Shirling. Thank you, Governor. I think the praising of the question is probably that also contains the best answer. It is remarkable having watched crime in particular in Vermont for 30 plus years. Why does SWAT, the geographic distribution and sort of fastest frequency of these kinds of events that I think any of us have ever seen is very concerning. Now there's great work being done in communities to try to address drugs from the treatment level all the way up. I do think we are having some success with the investigation, but it has not much comfort after bullets are moving through the air in various communities a couple of times a week per day that we're at. So the most important message I think of Vermonters is if you're seeing activity that's problematic even if it is not at the highest level of run violence, the problems in the community, please engage your community leaders, law enforcement and others to try to spend this time as quickly as possible. One more, five, one more question for the public. Good. Governor, you mentioned forest fragmentation as being something you're concerned about in the X-250 bill and I'm sorry to drag this back to X-250, but I think all that the bill is requiring is that large subdivisions analyze their impact or will not result in an undue adverse impact on forest blocks connecting habitat or rare and irreplaceable natural areas. That doesn't sound to me like the kinds of housing that are being built in this state that are gonna solve the housing crisis. That sounds to me like sort of large single family homes out in rural areas and in forested areas. So what is your objection to those types of projects merely assessing their impact on forest? It could be a private type of roadway to a development of some sort. I think again, we need to focus right now on the housing crisis that we have and anything that would impact that, I'm just not in favor of dealing with at this point in time. I think that we need to focus on that issue alone. Make sure Hanford, any further response on that? Maybe we lost them. Sorry, governor, I don't have any additional, anything to get additional to add. I think you're right. We have to do everything we can to help build more housing in the smart growth locations where we want it. That will also have our positive impact on the environment. Left vehicle miles traveled, people closer to where they work, a more vibrant downtown. It is a pro environmental bill to build housing in our village center downtown as is. And we don't need to add more regulations to the system right now. I've got a quick follow up for Mayor Weimiger. Mayor, are you the best example of a mayor of a city that's negatively impacted how active 50 can affect housing development? I mean, Burlington has demonstrated it has its own challenges building housing even when active 50 has nothing to do with it. And I think Burlington benefits from multiple areas in the city where active 50 has no ability at all because you've got these priority housing development areas I think, and even neighborhood development areas in the city, right? So it was Burlington best example of a city that somehow restrained from growing its housing stock by active 50? So first of all, it's not just me that's making this point. I believe seven of Vermont's eight mayors have signed one of the couple letters over the last since early April raising concerns about this. So this is not something that is my concern alone. If anyone is, I've referenced these, this issue frankly I don't think has gotten enough attention over the last couple months. Again, there's been mayors, builders, housing professionals that have been raising concerns about this, written these letters if people want to see these letters they can get them from my office. And they're also, you know, they've been submitted in legislative testimony and whatnot. So you can find it there. But my office, Dan McLean would be happy to get those to you since I keep referring to them. Your point is you're right that Burlington does have some narrow limited exemptions for some projects in the downtown. There's a lot of areas where we would like to see housing being built where it's explicitly a city policy that we would like to see housing being built whether that's in the south end or the north end along the transportation quarters that are outside of those designated areas and that would if this passes be subject to this additional hurdle. You'll never hear from me that we've done everything we need to to make housing easier even at the local level. I've worked for a decade to make some very big changes to zoning to make it easier to build housing and it has had some impact. I've got three more and that's last December or major housing action agenda that included three major up zoning efforts that we're actively working on now. We got more work to do. There are other challenges and you'll never hear me say that it is only this Act 250. But what I am saying is it is already so hard to build housing in Burlington and Chittenden County throughout the state. We should be focused on making it easier as we are in Burlington. We should not be doing something that is pushing us in the wrong direction that is making it worse. And that's what dozens of housing professionals, builders are saying this would do. It would make things worse in the middle of the housing crisis. We'll go to the phones now starting with Tom Davis comes from I and we got a new microphone Tom. So I hope you don't have any of the complaints coming in about the audio. Now we can't hear Tom. Maybe it's not working well. Can you hear me now? We can. Governor, just switching topics for a minute. I've heard from some readers that this seemed to be a record breaking green update this year. They seem to pull more stuff out across the state. I don't know if you have any reports on the trash that was collected and also one of the theories that has been written about nationally is the pandemic has caused more littering. I was curious. Yeah, no, I don't have any updates, but I'm always curious. Screen update is a favorite for me and something that I think instills a lot of values we have as Vermonters. When I went out on Saturday, I pick up the same area around Berlin Pond and just anecdotally, I didn't see as much litter as I'd seen in previous years there. I mean, there's enough. Obviously I had enough to fill multiple, multiple bags, but it wasn't as bad as I remember in the last few years. But I think it depends on the area as well. And so I look forward to getting an update from the green update officials and to see where we stand. But again, I think they're still in need always and you don't have to do it just on green up day when you're out walking about and want to get some exercise, bring a bag with you and pick things up because that promotes, I think, a better, better outlook for our visitors. That's great. I appreciate it. Looking forward to seeing that report when it comes out, if that's available public. Yeah, I'll see. We'll check into it. That's not part of state government. It's a non-profit, but we'll see if we can find out. Okay, much appreciated. That's all I've got. Guy Page from Montailly Chronicle. Guy Page. All right, we'll move to Chris Roy, Newport Daily Express. Chris Roy. I think we got you. Jason, this is Guy Page. Okay, why don't we go to you, Guy? And then Chris, if you're on, we'll go to you next. I just wanted to say, please get back to me at the end of the queue and I'll have my questions ready then. Thank you. I didn't hear that. Chris, are you there? If not, we'll go to your colleague at Barbara, Newport Daily Express. All right, we'll try. Yeah, good afternoon. I'm all set today, thank you. Thank you, Ed. Tim McQuiston, Vermont Business Magazine. Hey, Governor, I had a lot of questions about the housing in Act 250, but I'll try and narrow it down. One of the questions I get is, how could there be a housing shortage in Chittin County when there's been so many apartment buildings built in the last few years and more are going up all the time? And is this because, you know, Vermont has the lowest housing density in the nation in that, you know, household size? Is it just the apartments aren't picking up enough slack, even though there's been so many units? And is that why you're pushing more single-family home type of development? I actually don't have the answer for you. Maybe one of my experts behind me might have the answer or Josh. Go to Josh first. I'll go to Josh first and then I'll go to Ted and maybe then Mayor after that. Josh? Yes, hi, Jim, can you hear me? I can hear you, Josh. You know, we've had a number of studies that have shown we are over 5,000 units behind in our housing stock, just for the existing need, and you're correct. A lot of that is related to smaller household size. You know, we have a lot of one, two, three-person households and much of our housing stock was built down before 1950 when household size were much larger. So we have a need for a lot smaller units, one, two-bedroom apartment, and we've seen a lot of those in Chittenden County. But if you remember the Building Homes Together campaign, the Vermont Futures Project, it's always been talking about a net increase of 5,000 units just to meet the existing demand. And that doesn't count, you know, sort of the influx of folks that may be looking to move to Vermont. And so that's why there's still more to be built, even though you're seeing great progress in Chittenden County, especially some of the larger apartments. And it just wanted to add another point to the discussion on the Act 250 and S234 and the priority housing project exemption that exists. It's been used and it proves to us that if you designate an area that is smart growth and you give folks an easier path to build housing, they'll take advantage of it. If we hadn't had that, where would those units have been built? I'm not sure we would have a good track of that. But because we've given an easier path to build more densely in smart growth locations, we know where these units are being built. We see the benefits, but the priority housing project doesn't solve all the housing needs. That's why a cleaner exemption is needed. We have home ownership units that need to be built. We have a crisis shortage level of single family homes, modest homes for growing families to purchase their first-time homes. And we need more of those units built. And anything that gets in the way of that is going to make Vermont less equitable. Folks that either can afford a large big home outside of town or an affordable apartment, that doesn't make for a complete community. So we need to allow rooms for neighborhoods with modest single family homes to be built as well. If the state's really going to solve its housing problem and be equitable and have a vibrant community that include everyone. I had a question for Mayor Weinberger also about city play. That's over 400 units that that were to go through. And a lot of people, will they ask me what's happening with it? So I'll ask you, Mayor. So here's where we're at, Tim. The city in 2020, once again, delivered everything the city is responsible for in this public-private partnership. This is a project that has always been on private land where privately owned developer needs to perform and needs to deliver. The city has, again, done its job and where we're at is 2022 is a year in which the developer needs to deliver. They certainly made significant progress in 2021 in many areas, but they're now in a crunch time. And they are the ones that can best speak to whether they're gonna get this done. I know there's a great deal of activity happening behind the scenes right now. And hopefully the project has some positive announcements to make soon. If they don't, I will say the city will once again hold them accountable for their performance failures. We went to court a year ago and secured a new settlement that resulted in the city securing millions of dollars of land and contract benefits to build the city's public infrastructure, which has been the public part of this project from the start. We have an enforceable contract, which essentially, if they do not get the projecting over key hurdles between now and the end of the year, we will move forward and enforce those. We will get the streets built at no cost to the taxpayers. It'd be far better to see the full project moving forward. And I'm hopeful that the developer's gonna be able to deliver that, but they need to take, they need to make progress real soon if they're gonna achieve that. Ted, did you have anything to add to any of that? I'm not putting it on the spot or anything. Well, thanks, Tim. I do think- You want to step in and work on city places. Yeah, let's go back a question back to, why do we need more when you see so much going up? Commissioner Hanford answered that question pretty clearly. It's because the numbers show that we need more units of housing, period, and not a few more, thousands more units of housing. And we look at a place like Williston and South Brunk, and they've been able to use some of the tools that the state has created, the legislature, the governor have created over the years. You know, that's a decade or more of planning and effort that's taken to use these somewhat intricate and somewhat convoluted programs to figure out how to develop housing in these designated centers. What we need to do is expand that possibility and capability across the entire state to recognize that places that we want development to happen should be exempted from Act 250. And this is not exempted from all permitting and all environmental review. It's exempted from a program that was created 50 years ago that no longer is relevant in our downtowns and in our designated growth centers where we have other layers of planning and zoning happening out there. And it needs to reach every corner. It can't just be Chittenden County that's developing units. We hear from our smallest members when they try to recruit a police chief, when they try to recruit a road foreman, when they try to recruit a snow plow driver. They have people saying no because they cannot find a house, not just in Chittenden County in every corner of the state. Andrew McGregor, Caledonian Record. Thank you all for that today. Appreciate it. Brian Potanko, B.T. Digger. I believe my questions are for Commissioner Levine. Specifically, I have some follow-up questions on the proposed plan. I'm guessing it is definitively happening. Switch from the case dashboard to the weekly surveillance reports. It sounds like that'll have a lot of new information in it, but it also, you kind of hint that perhaps there may be some things that you have been publishing in the dashboard that might not end up in the surveillance report. I know that the like flu surveillance and other kind of surveillance updates you guys publish are not nearly as extensive as the COVID case dashboard currently is. So what should we expect to see in there and what should we expect to see no longer being published? Sure, so I did allude to the fact that cases and things like percent positivity lack a lot of relevance at this point in time so that those would probably not be something that you'll be looking forward to following. However, certainly things like impact on hospitals and outbreaks and vaccination rates, the wastewater issues, the variants and how they are performing over time. Much like the flu report, there'll be these items that we call syndromic surveillance, which is a nice substitute for case numbers because it does allow you to understand where emergency rooms and urgent care centers are seeing people presenting with symptoms of the condition that you're concerned about and what the trends over time are just like we follow that every flu season. There'll be data that you see on the flu report that you'll see on this report and data that you don't see on the flu report that you won't see on this report, mostly because of the relevance that they have or don't have at this point in time with this particular virus as we follow it over time. So you'll be able to get a glimpse of this tomorrow and maybe you'll have more questions on a subsequent week but why don't you just do that? And then we'll also have things that get added to it later as they become more available in terms of some of this wastewater and variant analysis. You know that the dashboard is kind of designed to be interactive and accessible and the fraud data is published via the Vermont Center for Geographic Information. The word report on the other hand kind of evokes a PDF format to me. Is there going to be kind of any specific effort to put it into interactive format? Or is the raw data still going to be published that kind of powers that report or are those kind of processes also going to be taken away? No, so the raw data is available on a geo website which will continue to be available. And in fact, it's data that we in the health department will continue to follow. So that even if a Vermont or a person in the media is not tuned into wanting to have that interaction, clearly the data doesn't vanish out of the planet. We will have it and we will use it. But a lot of that raw data will still be available. Maybe this is a better question for, I don't know if someone from the Department of Financial Regulation is on the call but I noticed that they haven't published their usual modeling update this week. Are they just running late or is that also going to be kind of phased out? Yeah, so they are not on the call today. And as you know, there was a transition in leadership at the DFR as well as a key data person. So the transition of the material that's on that website has yet to occur. Okay, thank you. Landers, seven days. Hi, thanks. So people have been hearing for weeks now that a lot of this, a lot of how we respond to the pandemic as individuals is up to us to decide what we're comfortable with, what are the individual responsibility. And I think some people are gonna see this move of stopping to update the case dashboard runs a little counteractive to that. If you don't know how many cases are each day, if you don't know what the prevalence is like in your individual county, how are you supposed to make a decision based on your own individual health? If you talk a little bit about that, how does that not undermine that message? Absolutely. Certainly the word undermine sounds more nefarious. And I would want you to understand that there was a lot of data available, a lot of interpretation available, the CDC community level map and community level concept is still one that's alive and well and that is available to all of us. And we will be able to communicate, I think quite effectively over time. Obviously if something dramatic changes like it did in March of 2020, there'll be different measures taken as you saw then. But right now, we believe that the data that's available and the opportunity for people to interpret it with our guidance and without our guidance, if you will, is always going to be present. So I don't think, again, I've always cautioned against a daily look at anything and drawing a conclusion from it because it really doesn't make sense unless you start to look at where the trends are and the trends take time to develop. So again, if there are people who have an addiction to going on the case dashboard every day and waking up and deciding if they should put a mask on or not, that's probably not the way that they should be approaching this and it should be really over broader swaths of time and looking at trends in the data. Okay, just a couple more things for you. These reports that are going to be coming out weekly, I wasn't sure based on your comments that Aaron's question are like weekly case counts going to be announced? So no, there won't be weekly case counts in the report. Okay, so if there is somebody who does enjoy following along the daily case counts, where do you recommend that they look to find this data? Yeah, I don't have the website to recite to you now, but there is a website that we use that I can announce subsequently. And will the state still be reporting case counts daily to the CDC? Is that something we're still doing? I don't believe we are doing that. I'll have to look into that because again, we have our PCR data that clearly is what is driving our case dashboard. And then we have self-reported tests and unreported tests. So the CDC is quite aware that it's not getting complete information either. But I don't think, assuming we are reporting our case dashboard to the CDC, I can't believe we would interrupt that because that would be something that we adhere to. Okay, thanks. Guy Page, Page from on Daily Chronicle. Governor. Go ahead. Governor, Mark Hughes, another racial justice advocate, say that one of the worst forms of historic systemic discrimination are spending inaccessibility of home ownership and passing it along to the next generation. The things that state policies have made single family home ownership for people of all races in backgrounds even more challenging. Do you see this recent heightened inaccessibility of being able to buy a home as a racial justice issue? I think it's a crisis that is affecting all of us. And it isn't race related or I think it's as significant for all of us as anyone. So we're trying to promote home ownership for everyone, anyone to provide more permanent housing for those who are in need. And I think that it is, it's a milestone in everyone's life to have property, to own a home and some place to call home. So I think that's part of what we're trying to accomplish. Thank you. Also, could you or commissioner Luzine please confirm that the title 10 money that was reserved in last year's budget, I believe a year before the family planning plan parenthood because the federal money was taken out is not in this year's budget and that it has not been reallocated the re-purposed as another budget item for plan parenthood? Yeah, I wonder if Kristen might be on and could answer that. It seems to me that, and I'm just going by memory that in this budget for the next budget cycle that we've included title 10 money, but I may have that wrong. Kristen, do you have, are you on? I am, governor, I believe that's correct, but I will double check the draft in front of me and circle back. I'm sure I guess I didn't quite hear that you believe that it has been included? I believe in this budget that is being debated at this point in time for the next fiscal year. Yes, I believe it has. Let's get the, let's make sure we're dealing with facts and Kristen or someone will get back to you with that information. If it has been included, how does that square with the federal government over that money have coming back from the federal government for the last month? Yeah, there was some change guy that made that possible and I just can't recall what it was to be honest with you. Okay, why look forward to talking to you next week. Great, thank you. Thanks, that's it. All right, thank you all very much. We'll see you again next week.