 I have not had time to read all the emails that have come in in the last hour. But Maria, you sent one that said we've got a little constitutional issue. So we should probably deal with that one. Well, you do. And depending on where you want to go. So, as you know, the legislative committees don't have legislative authority. The joint fiscal committee. And in some instances, the emergency board in very limited instances. Interim. To reallocate funding. I don't know the exact amount. And it's not going to be the right time to really, to respond to needs that come up while the full session, the full body is not in session, right? So I had done, I have done some further research. I didn't know. If that interim authority had been expanded at all. Because of the. Public emergency. just limited reallocations of funds um and so but the short answer is no there is no they do not have that authority um and nobody else has suggested that they should have that authority um so I I think that that is a real um constitutionally problematic area if under the proposal that you know one of the suggestions was that you know maybe the oversight committees whether it's gy talk or the standing committees you know make a recommendation to the joint fiscal committee or the emergency board to kind of waive the speed requirements if it became apparent that um other projects would be more successful to reach uh so anyway the short answer is that would need to be done legislatively so if you're back in august okay that this has to do with the authority to waive the requirements yes okay not with the authority to if we haven't spent all the money to send it back or recommend that it get reallocated or you can make those recommendations absolutely um probably to the emergency board that seems to be as you know the governor's on the emergency board yeah but it doesn't it's like twice a year which requirements we discussed this is money right so right so the commissioner is going to be reporting to gy talk and this committee and house energy monthly on the program's implementation the funds that are going out the funds that remain plans going forward so the question is based on that information would you want to make recommendations to either the emergency board or the joint fiscal committee about potential reallocations of funding um okay let's kick that can it looks well this is it might we'll know in september how the money's going out this says the drop that date is the end of october if there isn't reasonable expectation that the money's going out then this committee could recommend that the appropriations committee reallocate it can we do that and if it looks like we're not going to be here in the end of october which may be possible then we will we can deal with it then and uh depending on how it's going we can make the recommendation at that time uh that appropriations reallocate and just to be perfectly clear i didn't i did not specify october um you know this just has any recommendations monthly reports and you can make those recommendations at any time uh the only kind of drop dead date is the december 20th any unexpended funds revert to the state yeah and i and we talked about moving that back because okay there's nobody meeting on our no december 20th right december 20th and the i guess the only consideration there is if uh the commissioner so this would be money that's still in the program and yeah available for the commissioner to um disperse you know based on the contracts with providers so should we be retaining some of that i i don't know if it's not already yeah lots then maybe you want december 20th i mean what we don't want to do is send money back to the feds so any unexpended funds to think that the appropriations committee is going to be meeting on december 20th to send those funds to the ui fund so maybe it's best to put in here that any funds unexpended by december 20th will automatically go to the ui fund and if appropriations wants to change that let them yeah and just i'll just say one more thing the bat reversion language um exists as standard administrative provisions in all of the the crf appropriations so even if you that will be included um okay so well let's let appropriations deal with that okay okay so we're back to if this money is not going out the door anywhere anyway near the speed that we hope it will when do we pull the plug and tell the appropriations committee you might want to take a look at reappropriating this and i think you know the end of october would be would be the drop dead date you're not going to do some you know get a grant october 30th and have somebody connected up given vermont weather by christmas it's i mean they're telling us you need six months is what they said yesterday so we're cutting this really close we could probably pull the plug in mid october so perhaps just saying that money um for now saying any money not expended by the october report from the commissioner the committee on finance will consider or the why do we just say the appropriations committee can consider reallocating so i guess i just wonder that um you won't be in session then and i don't know oh some people think we will okay okay that's what we don't know all right could you say any money not spent or you know what's the right word committed for um and then could we maybe in this case this is unusual compared to all the business support could we empower joint fiscal or somebody you know so and so many decide to revert this to a ccb or something yeah the only power joint fiscal has is to approve grants now we're approving all the administration's expenditures under the cr cares funds because they are federal grants this is also a federal grant so we could consider that's i that's something we need legal counsel to check but we joint fiscal is approving all grant expenditures yeah up to two tranches uh the third is going through the appropriations process so yeah we could return it to accd then the administration could come to joint fiscal and ask for permission to expand and i don't know who did that original drafting for joint fiscal probably check with the joint fiscal committee if that's acceptable i can check with jfo i know the language that i just found had was more specific to the emergency board having the authority between July 1st and September 30th to transfer appropriations so i i don't know what the right entity is but i can ask yeah jfo i mean the emergency board has the power and joint fiscal has the power and we're not in session to approve certain parameters of money switching yes i think emergency board has a higher parameter yeah um and does include the governor yeah my and but joint fiscal is basically charged with approving all all grant acceptances yeah and we have gotten agreement that in order to get us the co maybe because we've already approved accepting the covid money yeah because the rest is going through a probes we need this is something let's just send this to a probes and ask them what they'd like us to do with it i was going to say i can put placeholder language in there yeah just hadn't you know i can you know this isn't a bill this is our recommendation yeah to uh you know the appropriations committee senator you're bouncing all over the place at one point i had three senator piercings on my screen you are a lucky lady madam i guess i am but i don't have mcdonnell's cows no peaceful thing here i gotta find a teddy bear world war two up there i thought that was that was the protems thing right day since world war two they're in world war two i'm glad that he's adapted that i'm only copying him yes you're only copying him all right so we will say that it is our intent that money that is not committed that the appropriations committee consider reallocating it and let them deal with how they want to do that okay all right all right now we've got have we finished going through almost almost okay let's finish going through it uh so draft one got a third color the third color and actually this is draft 1.3 i think is what we're gonna say all those colors are easier to look at than all the black and white right so just a couple of other changes have since have been added since we last spoke but um so the big issue that i think you wanted to work on is the specific limits um within this umbrella fund the 17 plus million dollars um which can go to the five kind of funding streams that are now that you can see up on the screen the line extension you get from monitors connected now the potential lifeline program the broad connectivity initiative and then you already specify that up to 50 000 goes to wi-fi deployment so i don't know exactly you know where you want to come down but that's something that you want to i think consider and potentially fill in more specifically the amounts but we'll just flag that and you know there's just one change here this was the issue that i had flagged earlier you know about the customer installations that are submitted you know their service drops underground conduit to particular households or mobile home parks they don't really fall within the connectivity initiative which bases its um grants on eligible census blocks and unserved areas these are basically households within fiber network so this is just meant to clarify that yes the funds can go through the connectivity initiative even in areas that are otherwise considered served that's probably more the more likely place people with some resources that because i don't know how much of a line extension three thousand dollars is going to buy you now if i got three neighbors and we can go out but this is all has to go two homes with kids right it's school kids is the first priority then work from home right well it's if that's and telehealth and you know it's even quite honestly those are the three areas that most get emphasized right but there are other public programs um obviously access to uh the ui system or the court system or public safety you know there yeah but you have to buy this you know i think we send a disaract and find the farthest out person you can and bypass 20 houses and get it to that person might make us more subject to an audit if those 20 houses we bypassed were i don't know had no children in school had nobody that was sick i mean the more we can that's why the clustered areas the unserved areas are the most important this one yeah i think we could say while priority should be given to underserved areas yeah mobile home parks are i didn't realize they required underground that's pretty expensive from people that live in a mobile home so i say priority should be given to ask a quick question madam chair yeah i just want to go back to the prioritization did we do we want to put uh health over working from home i mean is it is it or is it just sort of it's the federal that's the federal guidelines thank you madam chair okay we can say whoa that that's who they're targeting and if we get called we have to show who are following federal that we are trying to follow federal guidelines i think what we heard is because of federal privacy rules we got four calls of people that needed hook up for telehealth and i gather that if we call the vna's even though they've been doing this stuff for years they couldn't tell us that so-and-so and so-and-so or my client or our clients and they need telehealth they can contact in here their people and say you can do this but so that one is harder but we have a pretty good and could probably if this money starts going out get a few school districts to come up with a better mapping of where they've got sections of students that need broadband or any connection we've got some that have no connection and just line extension could be doing an entire town i think could that or is that is really for that's the for an individual mile out of the town okay between one and 14 houses per mile you know that have not been able to afford the customer costs of that construction so that's money that goes to the the company my neighborhood waterberry 14 people could apply and probably come up yeah but it's more it's it's not tied to being in an underserved area it's tied to your underserved you don't have a connection even though your census block has a lot of connections that uh that that's right that's right it's a it's a separate program um uh yeah okay so the one for providers i just wanted now we've got our own it's all thrown in here but providers is still lit is it we limited this to fiber the other the house pretty much limited it you couldn't do any cable connections you were doing fiber unless it was in line extension for money to providers um that's true line extensions as long as you provide a 25 three service again that's assistance to the customer costs for any other funds under they're kind of expanded well not expanded but funds um any other funds to providers were for uh fiber to the premises customer installations and fixed wireless um i don't think that the house was necessarily opposed to larger scale fiber deployments i think they felt that that that that was just it was not reasonable to anticipate that any of the i don't think it is okay the house is still going to have to write off on this how we're getting this done by tomorrow i'm not sure but we need to get it out of here um okay so that leaves us with the madam chair before we yeah uh maria could you scroll backwards a little bit up the the uh there it is the project designated to serve economically challenged communities uh we did get an email that i thought was an interesting point that by hinging it to communities um that may look to census blocks um where you may have on average not economically challenged block but you know passed by some economically challenged home so i don't know i don't know what i think that was your language uh or something you were keyed into madam chair i wondered well i think i'm just trying to say if you've got a wealthy community that you know we've got a few wealthier communities up in some underserved areas that have set themselves have gotten a connection within their town craft's berry greensboro peachum their neighboring towns oh reedsboro isn't wealthy but yeah you know their neighboring towns or sections of their town aren't but there's there's clusters i'd rather i don't know it's communities why don't we just say areas or or even families okay yeah families families i agree okay families works households maybe yeah households households great so just to be clear that you you i think i heard two different things but in terms of the fiber to prim customer installations uh where the line might be running by a low income household that still exists under that program i think this is just a more of a general concern that there might actually be areas um whole areas where there could be build out kind of the larger scale deployment whether it's wired or wireless um that maybe there should be some direction to consider you know areas that might be more economically challenged so i just wanted to clarify that that was that an attempt to address both scenarios yeah i think i think that's it you know that we we definitely saw clusters in the map yesterday mostly in the kingdom some of those may go away is that northeast or northeast kingdom project goes through but there definitely were clusters of areas where students did not have access to broadband so you know we may not shut the economy down again if there's a flare up but we might well shut schools down um if the flare up starts hitting in the in the school areas so well how about if we say households or communities and that way we're we're giving them discretion and yeah we cover our basis but we're we're not hopefully getting ourselves in trouble no i think that's the purpose okay thank you so i think we've got michael all right take us through this and then we'll do i think i is subsection i you've you've spoken about we'll come back to this so you can make your final decision this is about the cud input and whether it's veto authority or just like what is proposed here where it's something for the commissioner to consider madam that's your final determination um madam chair on this point i've just asked uh uh 25 minutes been on the line with chairman briglin of the house regarding some of these provisions including this particular one house has a proposal that would be acceptable to them to deal with this particular section and that essentially is for the cud to be informed immediately upon any application for service within their area for the cud to have one week seven calendar days to raise an objection to the proposal and then thereafter as the commissioner may override the the cud's objection but but is simply required to document and writing why that would satisfy the house committee all right so can you send that to maria we can cut and paste it do you have it i gotta write it down and it basically it's exactly what i've said but maria might send you a note to that effect no problem no problem i think i got the gist of it so i can do that okay that works i have one week seven calendar days to raise an objection the commissioner may override but has to just document and writing why they've overridden nothing more than that okay so i think in terms of the money that um maybe retained i think you wanted to say that up to 40 percent maybe retained i raise that as an as an issue and you know whether it's something like 30 or 40 but the notion there is again the small providers just did in fact have a concern as to whether or not they could get the capital necessary to do this and if they don't have something like that it might just make the big guys the only ones who participate i think that's a valid concern well and we're we're now giving the commissioner permission but she doesn't have to but we're being we're doing our best to be protective of yeah i mean what the commissioner said is the standard when you're dealing with the legacy providers is she doesn't pay them at all until the job's done and where this one you can't say yeah you can have two more weeks um the more money that's out the door the more money the state of Vermont is on the hook for i would i would you know want to give the commissioner discretion to provide material money or you know necessary money to get the job going but i don't want her now to have Comcast come in and say well geez you've got to give us 60 percent when she didn't use to give them anything so well i guess you could have the you could either limit it to money for materials which again creates an accounting nightmare or you could say that the commissioner may retain you know may may disperse up to 60 percent of the funds upon justification by the provider that a financial hardship or something like that requires such such action and reasonable expectation that the project will be completed i mean my concern is we get an ice storm in the end of october or november and nothing gets built and i i don't want to have us having tens of millions of dollars clawed back the commissioners on the the call here and and maybe between her or rhea we could understand is there is this necessary to what kind of authority does the commissioner have in this area um herself after all the whole administration is going to be keenly uh worried about this based question that's a commissioner she is here okay i have here yeah that's a that's a very um topical question as you're aware the administration has retained a consultant to advise on the appropriate use of the funds and so my understanding is that there has to be some socialization within the framework that the administration has set up to ensure that uh we're following the guidance that the consultants provide so i would expect almost immediately to be getting a you know a query out to them to say what is your view about what i can and cannot do here so there there will be another look at this in addition to what you folks are doing here and i think the caution is is well advised but at the end of the day um there is going to have to be some risk taking if we're going to get something done within the limited time frame that we have so i think you know as i understand it's uh you've prepared a a mechanism whereby the department is regularly checking in with gy talk and you will have um you know fairly it's not going to be real time but there will be a regular check in and if you if you see something concerning happening there there's an opportunity for you to you know to reach in and say hey we're concerned about the level of exposure that the state has at this point with the way you're using these dollars commissioner but i'm hearing you loud and clear and frankly you're not saying anything today that i'm not already very concerned about oh we there the fact of the matter is we are looking to move dollars through a loophole here the treasury guidance allows us to do something for students telehealth to some extent too even the guidance that came out of our night we affirms that but this clearly was not the the thing that was primarily in mind building broadband infrastructure when these funds were released to the states so there is an element of risk here that we are either going to take or not take that these projects get done and for disbursement purposes i'm i'm happy to abide by a regimen where the bulk of the the pay is not rendered until the project is done but as you all have pointed out today there are going to be participating entities that may find it hard to get going without the money up front or some part of the money up front so i think that's going to call for judgment and that's where you can put me in the hot seat to do that or you can put strictures around it in statute and you know we will do what we can within the confines of what you lay out and beyond that i don't think we're going to get much more certainty you have authority now under the connectivity fund to pay up front or pay at the end what do you do to my knowledge and to my knowledge there's nothing statutorily that prevents us from doing that that has not been our practice our practice has been to put us to give him a certain amount up front and then to disperse the rest of the grant once it has been confirmed i know clay is on the line too and so i'm happy to have him weigh on in on this i don't believe thank you madam chair i don't believe there's anything currently in the statute that would prevent us from paying some amount of money up front um we've typically uh not paid until the project is completed um out of an abundance of caution could we just say at her discretion um i don't even know that we have to say after consultation but there is a consultant there to make the sole purpose is to make sure that we don't and that people that get money get to do the documentation so that they can justify it but just give the commissioner discretion to you know say the as a general rule nothing gets paid until the project is done before the completion date um f at her discretion after i just say at her discretion the um commissioner may um award a portion of that money and i mean 60 sounds high to me but i don't know how much of it is labor and how much of it is equipment and i guess it depends on the project too but you know when you're laying fiber and so on i suspect there's some standard portion of it is uh is equipment cost can we say just say she may um she made this a portion um for necessary yeah necessary equipment uh commissioner i think we could take this whole thing out and i was going to suggest that you might consider something along the lines of what senator brock was saying earlier instead of having this um spelled out in this fashion um put the responsibility on me to exercise judgment i in turn um obtain certifications this is what i would have done anyway if you had been silent on the topic i would inquire into the circumstances and obtain certification from the provider as to the necessity of having any part of the funding dispersed up front because remember we're we're targeting two populations here one is so the CUDs and the other is providers who are able to string um fiber and the like and so for that second group they typically have the resources to do this work up front and get paid later it's really the CUDs that you're concerned about and i don't think it's going to come as a surprise to anybody that the CUDs might not have the requisite capital up front to get the job done what the concern has to be is whether they're actually going to be able to finish the job uh within the time frame that's the risk we're going to have to take and if i've at least obtained a certification from them as to why they say they need the money that's reviewable especially if that's being reported to gy talk and if they see something there that looks like it's going off the rails they can rain me in yeah that all right i'm maria's telling us what we're saying um say yeah the commissioner made the disperse an award for up front capital costs providing determines such funding is necessary and is not unduly somewhere we should say i think we'll do it because i don't think your job approval rating would go up very much if a bunch of these had to get clawed back oh it's already a little upset um um so but just say that you know in dispersing the the general principle is things don't get um paid for until they're up and running that under limited circumstances the commissioner can award a portion up front um provided she's taking all due precautions to make you know to limit the state's exposure to clawback i think you had it there maria before i don't know that we need to limit i can't look at you read maria i i don't think we need to say under limited circumstances if we're saying the commissioner may disperse an award for up front capital costs provided commissioner determines such funds necessary for project commencement that's that seems to be what we're saying yeah that's what we're saying um so uh then now we're not fiddling with 60 percent or 40 percent or any of that that's fine the only question is probably not we can make it clear that that it is based upon application uh by the the the potential of whatever and presumably it would the commissioner's not going to read one pager and dole out two million dollars this is going to be there will be some back and forth there will be some kind of application that will make it clear i mean i don't think we need to worry about that in page five of our bill i think she's gotten the message that if we start letting comcast correct their money up front we're not going to be happy um and uh unless you know they have to dynamite through a hill or something but um yeah that this is really meant to help the cudes or maybe there's another small contractor you know like we've got up in the kingdom exactly you know we could do it but and we got the trucks and we got the the personnel but we don't have the money to buy the material anytime i've had work done in my home i have to pay for the material up front seems that people are inclined to stick contractors so um yeah that i i think that'll do it um up front a good word for a bill up front i advance payment for capo cost necessary yeah advance like that yeah we got a long way to go here yeah we do and we're supposed to have had that i'm waiting i'll keep watching for the email from jane say where is it and madam chair i don't just quickly you've probably heard from the corner office but uh they're hoping for us to at least look at whether or not we want to take the abenaki bill in because that's uh something important i got any i got a phone call in the middle of the last session of this committee telling me they were going to take it up why would we want to take the abenaki bill in i think we're hoping you don't want to uh we don't want to it there's thirty five thousand dollar impact uh this is free licenses for hunting and fishing oh no i'm i'm yeah we're okay with you i just told the louis porter i don't know what with the act 250 bill did we want to take it in well that's different okay we're being shut down talk to the pro tem unless he wants us to take it in but i gotta take it in okay there is nothing in there that affects the revenues of the state right that's the question otherwise i mean i know the abenaki uh tribe would really like us to be able and i know the pro tem office and others would like this to go and if you don't want to take it in we can just bring it to have been referred to us uh not yet we could vote it in and out i mean let's see if we can fit if let's see if we can oh i'll email this afternoon just so someone can tell us in 30 seconds what it is and then we do that and i'll email it all right let's get on to this one we got to finish this one i think changing as i look at somebody on the floor is going to say shouldn't this be referred to the committee on finance because it affects the revenues of state i think well that's what i'm saying right now so we will see if we can get someone to come in later this afternoon and tell us right now we're going to go finish this one madam chair yeah well who is saying that mcdonald ah okay i can't see people so i got madam chair oh yes we might consider when we come in this afternoon to someone to make a motion to suspend the rules not to send the apodaki bill to finance okay we could do that okay what i'm maybe i'm i'm i what's concerning me in the pro tem's office can deal with it is there might be some people who would like to see it sent to us and they're and i think we should know that can we deal with a $35,000 question after we finish a $30,000 question yes all right so i think we've got some fine tuning of the wording maybe but i think maria if you put that back up we've got it program is in the service chart you can get it just working on it now well okay that's it that's the yeah listener shall notify the affected district and uh right while maria is typing that and i don't know if she can block us out the next question was did we want to put any uptos on this yeah so for example uh what do you mean exactly well we just said there's 17,000 so much money and we said and these are all the projects that the it can be spent on we have the other body gave a certain amount to each project or section they gave a line extension connectivity initiatives broadband lifeline program we have not done that it has been suggested we might want to put some uptos on there i at this point i don't know how we'd start i mean what are we if are we afraid all the money would go in line extensions to wealthy communities because they get their act together really fast so we're afraid that line extensions would go to poor communities that were not fiber not fiber extensions oh something as i was thinking yesterday the commissioner said they put out notices and it was on their website but when you're putting out notices of how to get attached on your website you don't have a website we need to find a way probably through the schools to send home with their children um some kind of a notice that you should call or check in probably call to find out how you could get assistance and getting you know tied in with broadband because wealthy communities are watching this they may be watching it on youtube right now poorer communities are out working in grocery stores and are probably not watching this and how do we let them know and if to start with all of the name you know the folks that are five miles 10 miles whatever miles out from my pillier or you know start coming in and the money is going out very quickly to line extensions do we want to say no that you know up to can go there and then again if nothing comes in on the other ones we don't want i'd rather get 2000 people hooked up on line extensions because no one feels they can get fiber to the home out in the timeframe we've got why don't we give it some shot and then if you if it made you more comfortable we could subject it to change from approval of jai talk or something well that do we run into the same i think we run into the same problem we had before if we set this as a limit jai talk can't change the law there's also a question of timing you know we're in we're in such a tight timeframe we're going to get anything done we can't have you know two or three weeks of laps before a committee goes and decides and then sends it to someone else the purpose of this was was really limited to preventing a cud that's not going to be up and running from for two years from preventing jane from getting her schoolwork you know which he can get right away from a cable line or joe from getting his telehealth right now because it's available sure sure that that purpose we're talking about two different things i think we all feel like we've softened the veto power but we're getting a check in from the cud's the the chair i thought was talking about do we create some up to numbers in the connectivity in the line extension in all that there had been this burn bomb suggestion michael burn bomb madam chair yes if i may i would suggest the following i i heard a concern also about publicizing i think that's how we got to talking about our concerns about which communities we're going to get this funding i think one of the things that we have learned so far in the coveted emergency is that we we have learned how to broadly communicate by pushing a message out not just through the website but also through front porch form for instance through community action groups through the schools the superintendent's association and frankly the legislators can be of help here too in reaching out through their newsletters and the like so i i'm feeling pretty good about our ability to get word out about the resource and when it comes to ensuring that they go where where you most want them to go these resources i think you've been very clear about your concern for helping the the folks who are not as well resourced and certainly this commission understands that the department has a fair amount of knowledge about the economic circumstances in the state who needs what where and certainly we have the benefit also of access to our you know our agency human services outlets and also the agency of commerce and community development so i i think we're pretty well positioned across these agencies to exercise some good judgment here if you've given the guidance which i think you have namely that you you want to ensure these funds you know to uh you tell me what the standard is greatest extent possible reasonably whatever words you choose go to communities that or folks in communities who have great need and we i if you get 2000 requests for line extensions all right from um not really underserved communities all right these are served it's just i got a hundred of them within 10 miles of the state house where the line comes to this side of the hill and that side of the hill and the five people on the hill can't get hooked up um and i want to get them hooked up and they will i'm quite sure if there's enough money to cover the cost apply and get hooked up what do they get hooked up to madam chair the cable is what's generally there maybe i would say no i would say no don't do that you're going to tell my constituents they can't they have to run on five one dial up madam chair if greensboro has fiber and there are four people there i'd hook them up if my town of williams town doesn't have fiber i would not hook up my people in williams town to cable because once you do that no one who wants to be engaged in business is going to move to williams town okay they're not going to move there because we did a short term such and such they're going to move to green borough if they want to do business because they have the resources because it has fiber but they're not coming to williams town and if we hook people up in williams town and make them happy right now this is this is not running a town senator senator this is not running a town i see you senator pierce and this is a town that is hooked up and it is allowing the school children in that town who happened to live a mile out from the last poll to access broadband that is the purpose of this money this is not our money i would hook them up if they could if they get broadband by hooking them up the fiber do it your cud will say we'll have a say sander pierce maria can you remind us that the house uh didn't have up two numbers but they did assign uh buckets so this this line extension what was their amount there i believe that was two million yeah it wasn't a lot would it make sense for us to say up to two million and that way we're pushing much more of it through the connectivity yep parameter up to two there we will be back here um right if it's if it's going disastrously with the rest of the money if the two million's gone away by august 16th and a large number of people are being told sorry the money's gone we're going to start to get emails um and then we can look at how the other the applications for the other buckets of money are going and make a decision at that point does that work yep the other question had come to us around fixed wireless but you know did we want to make sure the rest of it didn't go there and i don't i don't have strong feelings but that was the other one that was strongly you know you know that we were encouraged to make sure there was a little um a little bit of a parameter around yeah my only concern with fixed wireless my one thing that it's good at is that it can get service out quickly to very underserved areas and it does it's it's such poor service that it's not going to undercut the folks coming later that from deciding to get hooked up to fiber if and when fiber ever gets out that last mile plus we we did require to have a fiber backhaul if i recall so yeah we did our people is this all of the uptuing that we want to do i take silence as a as a yes vote yes vote or either they've all gone to sleep okay let's keep moving i saw magenta going by yeah i think we did that already magenta already okay this was yeah this was just the fiber installations within fiber networks okay so i think um i think you've already addressed the economically challenged households or communities yeah this hopefully we can just read through this hopefully this reflects what senator brock had suggested earlier about the cud is that so maria there's a typo on 16 line 16 oh award yep so proposed project under the program is in the service territory of a cud immediately upon receipt of the application for the proposed project the commissioner shall notify the affected cud of the proposed proposed project and provide seven calendar days for the district to raise an objection to the project the commissioner may award funding to the proposed project over the objection of the communications union district provided he or she documents in writing the reasons for overriding the objection that captures what i asked for yes that's good okay let's go uh okay so i think we need to do some amending here but so far i think you want and it's okay obviously to have monthly reports to gy talk finance and energy and technology getting status reports now here's where the house has raised an objection to some of the role now we fixed that in which gy talk and and joint fiscal doesn't have the ability to do anything so that part's been fixed and i'm right now going back and forth in text with uh with chairman briglin what he wanted to do was delete everything after the date december 2020 and delete everything after that uh i just went back to him and say yeah but there's no ability to do anything other than recommend you want to prevent gy talk from recommending anything so i'm waiting for to answer that question okay you want to we'll just go on for now maybe now okay okay so i don't know though we actually spoke about these sections um these were just some additional considerations um senator pierson had brought up so one in subsection o just clarifying that any personal information submitted under the program is confidential and exempt from disclosure under the public records act such information may only be disclosed publicly in an anonymized and aggregated format so this might be health or income information then subsection just specifies that the program sunsets on january first but that the department shall be the successor in interest to any remaining rights liabilities and obligations so if there are any loose ends after the program is no longer in operation that the department is authorized um to act accordingly and then i don't think you would actually really talked about yet or address this issue of what role might there be for the existing telecommunications and connectivity advisory board which under statute uh right now reviews and makes non-binding recommendations about any grants under the connectivity initiative so presumably because some of the funding that's going out in grants through the connectivity initiative this board would have a role um but i don't know if you want to clarify that or uh uh yeah i mean but is third or pierce and did this come from you uh yeah the first two were were yeah those i understand yeah the telecommunications connectivity advisory board does already have these uh review authority over money that goes out through the connectivity fund and so it came up as do we mean to have them too i i i can't see why we wouldn't this is not slowing things down because it's a non-binding approval but it is another set of eyes it's it's a professional the board made up of other folks in the administration and some citizens so i i didn't see any harm and it was just sort of making it clear a lot how often do they meet or is it i believe they meet monthly monthly well the house has raised a question a flash objective to this entry uh because their concern was well would this in fact slow things down in other words would that review be done prior to the awarding of a grant under the program thereby slowing down the awards process and then they also just didn't understand why we wanted to do this well put it this way if we don't want this we should be explicit about that because i think they were basically included in the last draft without being articulated and so well they do under the connectivity fund but that's the that's a specific state connectivity fund that is funded with the universal service charge you're right you're right centercomings but this is they actually do the connectivity initiative that grant program oh okay these federal dollars some of them going through the connectivity initiative so well i guess what you could say is the board shall have post award review and non-binding approval something like that yeah or make it clear that they're not an intermediary i mean or we can say well that makes it i don't want this to slow them down i kind of like the idea of them being engaged but but i don't want it to slow down so we should unless people yeah unless they can meet on an emergency i mean this is going to be a couple months if yeah if they meet an emergency basis it'll affect the revenues of the state or something madam chair have to be on an emergency basis every time you have you know a project to approve missioner i thought it might be helpful if um if perhaps clay could give us a little description of what the process is now so that you have some idea of what this review through the telecommunications advisory board entails because again we have a six seven month window here and go ahead clay madam chair i do think um uh some there's some valid concern here about timing um the board meets monthly um i think that if you wanted to have the feedback review these projects we would just have to have set a regular schedule like every two weeks or something at least through the rest of the summer just to make sure that they meet regularly in in in review projects we generally when we get the responses to our rp and we select the proposals we want and we provide all of the materials to the t-cab to review and give us our input and the input's been valuable in the past so i i would i would prefer to have their input than not have it but it does require them to meet and we have a quorum and you know typical board stuff that um you know would have the potential to delay uh our announcement of awards if um if they didn't meet weekly or bi-weekly well again it's just it's just a delay factor and you know this this whole thing is is a house of cards as far as time is concerned it's really tight today when you you have to get their approval for other awards or you just get their advice we we we get we have to get their advice i think before moving ahead um and we've never had a timing issue like this before so um you know it did we wait for it um i think if you're concerned about time what senator brock has uh brought up um as a suggestion uh would probably be the preferable way to do it if they have strong objections to something we ought to know about it but right um yeah what if you provide them of it and and that way there's sort of another set of eyes but yeah yeah could we do that maria yeah let's um if they have strong objections they can notify the commissioner within three working days it comes in send it out the commissioner does that seem like that uh this could be an option but workable i'm just thinking we had a meeting today with uh with this board and one of the issues that came up is they very much want to be able to give the legislature their thoughts on this bill in the entirety and so they were thinking about working on a document through google docs and then meeting on monday next week to come to agreement and there were open meeting law questions that came up and this is an area of law that i'm not well versed in so what occurred to me listening to your conversation was if if the last suggestion is possible can that be done without running a foul of open meetings because it certainly um means a great deal to me when i get a letter like that from an advisory board like that to give full effect to to the meaning of the law that they're advising the commissioner i have to pay attention so um i'm happy to get a letter from them within three days i just don't know whether they can do that on an advisory basis without running a foul of open meetings somebody else would have to speak to that i i think we just the commissioner shall provide notice or shall notify of pending grants and and and then um trust they'll let you know as individuals or need to say the dates or whatever um if they're red you know i i we're such we're so stuck here but yeah we are we have a six month window that that we have to move this through and i think we're just not gonna be able to hit all the marks just period maria okay all right i think we saw that last problem thank you let's keep going want that last sense there the commissioners also authority or just take that out i i don't think it's necessary they the the advisory board has its power or we're kind of looping them in but we're we're we're making sure they're not a arricade to moving forward senator mcdonald art you trying to say something um i can't see you serena mcdonald you'll have to holler i'm sorry i didn't i didn't catch the request oh sorry all right so how much further have we got to go on this so we can get it to jane going back to uh the conversations with uh the house committee uh if you go to page five line five and it's sub paragraph g uh they had a bit of a problem with the last part of that regarding priority being given to 100 100 because they said well this this and to fix wireless served by five the by-call they said that this really paragraph really relates to connect connectivity addition and it doesn't quite make sense the way it's worded uh i frankly don't really understand the full nature of their concern but they would be satisfied if uh on the third line of g after the word however we inserted the language if uh or when the technology is feasible comma priority shall be given and that will satisfy their concern all right uh enough sounds good let's see uh they did again have the same question on on the technicom continuity board because of the concern about it thereby creating a delay uh we dealt with the cud information which was being informed which was their biggest objection and i haven't heard anything else from them at this point i sent uh the latest stuff that we've done uh over to uh to him and waiting for him to get back to me and if i have the draft that we get finished from maria i will send that over as well and hopefully we're we're pretty much in agreement well we're about three hours late getting the and i think some of this fine tuning may get done in the probes but i'd rather it get done here but they want to visit noon um do you want to welcome the other though but we all want things right did you just want to confirm the other programs um the telehealth and the cud planning or you're good with that is everyone reviewed yeah we haven't taken any testimony on that um so just so you know it's here and if you want to discuss it no problem but this section too this is the 800 000 for the cud's and their planning um efforts and i think you spoke about that um um then uh the telecom the 10-year telecom recovery plan the 500 000 uh for that work to be done now uh the only other thing i'll just bring your attention to is because there's going to be the sort of interim recovery plan you'll see section four there just pushes out the deadline um um for the the next telecom plan which was scheduled to be submitted in december by december all right pushed out to see on June 30th of next year and then similarly the next plan after that three years after that is june 30th so that's okay it's on a three-year cycle all right and then the telehealth connectivity program i think you've heard a lot from vpqhc i've just stricken the findings here because appropriations is asking that all findings be taken out and put in a memo that they're going to have accompanying all of their bills but the substance is what was so far what we have here is what's the house proposed that's 800 000 to vpqhc and this is a project that they're already working on a pilot proposal the connectivity care packages which basically just gets devices and training outreach digital literacy training out to patients and providers um and then and they report back january 15th of next year and then the last kind of broadband-ish program is funding for tag access access media organizations and the proposed amount is about four hundred and sixty thousand dollars so that's kind of the whole suite of broadband proposals that appropriations is expecting they're going to look at those two well they're yep and they're looking at this all falls within the twenty million dollar approved appropriation committee we ready to let the editors look at this and send it over one more question uh that i just got from the house again okay and that goes back to what we're talking about jay talk and its ability to recommend changes you remember we took out the notion of recommending to joint fiscal make changes and we saw that now basically what they're saying is joint fiscal can't alter a program's requirements so jay talk should recommend waiving requirements uh one of the things that to satisfy them and i don't know if we want to go that far is if we take a look at page six line 16 of taking all the language after the date december 20 2020 and delete it that's page seven just delete it all we still have jay talk in its oversight role we're just not specific upon what it's supposed to do and what it's supposed to report how would we say that it's being reported to them and if jay talk is there you know it's going to do what it's going to do i and i i trust giving the makeup of jay talk that if there's a whole lot of money not going out the door the appropriations committee may say wait a minute we need to do that we i i don't know who is on the house anyone and from the money chairs on the house side on that i don't care of anybody from approach on the house side of you are you chris no i thought representative felt this was on jay talk oh that's right she is you're right marty felt okay okay so we've got we've got a couple folks on there so if the reports are coming in that the money's not going out the door i think we can trust the appropriations committee to say we're going to alter this appropriation yeah i think i think that's fair yeah and they will they may actually alter this language if they have a better way of of doing it okay and strike this language then yeah wait wait wait no say that again i so i thought the proposal was to strike the language after the december 20th date right and i think the issue is that jay talk nor joint fiscal has the legal power to alter or give a waiver to a legislative standard or rule or law they don't have the power to to waive the law i mean in theory you could have jay talk submit representation recommendations to the committees of jurisdiction but again i i just don't even know if the language is necessary because that's what we're going to do anyway yeah i i think you're right i think it's belts and suspenders it goes all right and we'll let the yeah the the props are going to decide where they want unexpended funds to go and when all right okay and so did you want to okay that was the last issue um any unexpended funds as of october you wanted to add some language there or leave that i gotta believe that in august they they will empower the eboard some kind of some some holy smokes this needs to do this power but but i guess we could ask maria just to approach make sure that uh uh approaches sort of understands what we're trying to do and maybe they have a more thorough approach but i will drop an email to the chair and tell her this is our concern we're having trouble figuring out what the legal pathway is but if the money's not going out the door by the end of october and praise god we're not in session the end of october um how do we get that money back into the pile and reallocated and we that's let's ask and let's them figure that out they don't want it the only thing that i'm hearing is that you might want to have the an october trigger as opposed to just the generic december 20th for all other crf funds oh oh oh oh because right now all of the all crf funds unexpended as of december 20th come back to the state fund and all right because i was going to say but yeah december 20th they're really for all practicality is no state corona relief fund because that money all has to be spent in the next 10 days so i don't know enough to know what the plan is about whether it goes into the ui fund or what but i there is a there is a lot of thinking i just don't know what exactly it is to reallocate that money before december 30th which is the actual uh so let's put as of december yeah they're going to reallocate it i know no one wants to send it back and i've heard ui is the one safe place because they're going to need all the help they can get what if we say this is unusual though because um we we're sort of contemplating the money getting up against a deadline and not getting out right whereas the business stuff is i don't know it's a little bit different because you could write a chapter of business on December 1st so what if we just had november 15th any unspent money goes to accd and that way they have a little bit um well i think to push it out into business relief as opposed to the last failsafe is into the ui fund well i don't know what are the the state corona virus relief fund is where all this money is being kept and i'm assuming that it would be considered in yeah but they could go to joint fiscal for permission to expend it let's just flag this one put november in there and flag it to send you know with a note saying we're not sure what the the proper way to make sure unexpended funds get back in a way you know in a timely fashion so they can be reallocated okay i think it was anticipated that they they do have a plan as of december 20th what to do i just don't know what it is but that's all of the cf yeah okay there's a reversion provision in every let's just just let's just just leave this then and let the blood appropriations put the okay and we can always send them a note saying this amount of money has not gone out it's the end of october we don't think it's going out okay we might be able to get you know permission to do a committee meeting um we could say we shall meet but they might not like that but um there's a practical matter what are we going to do on december the 20th if it goes that late yeah maybe i'm confident that probes is figuring this out with a lot of programs i am yeah december 20th i don't think there's any option but the ui fund we're talking about money there's not enough money so i don't think we want to be sitting on it when we've got some businesses going belly up okay are we ready i don't even know if this needs to get proved because it'll get proved when they put it all together right i mean it can be if you'd like it to be but no it will go through the editors eventually final okay so re committee this isn't a bill can we do a thumbs up thumbs down are we ready to send this to i think we're ready madam chair yep ready is anyone not ready okay i'm not i'm not seeing any nose all right i got a thumbs up thumbs up okay we're good all right so this is being sent over by this committee um four you could forward as copies of the the final that would be helpful yeah just make sure we all get it and then if somebody goes oh we can let the but i'm sure there's also feedback coming in from the house i think the goal is this is going to come out of there today and hit the floor if we're going home tomorrow um but i think we're going to be on the floor probably all day tomorrow and then see where it goes okay so let's get that to them and then i think i've gotten a couple inquiries about that farm housing um that we haven't done and let's see if there's anything else on yes there do you want us to be ready on your amendment on mistax um well that's the question abby i'm trying to make sure we don't have and the comments you want me to get here this is thursday right okay would you like me to gather Doug Farnham and abby shepard for this coming abby would be good i i have not seen i think abby may have sent over a copy i just let me get gather them for you yes let's get everyone gathered let me see if i can find i think it came just as we got off the floor okay there it is senator campion did uh or mcdonald did did you approve the abnaki fishing license bill is that why you brought it we voted it excuse me we voted out 500 this morning yeah i think about noontime because that's when the phone call came in right just as we were trying to vote you're muted mark that's fine some things i wouldn't mind retaining after we're back i wouldn't either i think he figured it out i texted the pro tem's assistant to see whether we could get a heads up on whether or not we ourselves might choose to suspend the rules to not have it sent to us and that would certainly send the signal and um and um the abenaki bill and we'll put it right on you know okay put it on notice let's let's deal with this while we're dealing with this um who is the drafter on the abenaki bill ellen chicowski okay let's see if ellen can join us and just tell us what the abenaki bill is oh wait everybody's leaving me no we're here that was the commissioner oh we're saying goodbye to the commissioner thank you we're obligated we're obligated to you madam chair okay then madam chair if you'd like i can tell you what's in the abenaki bill but if you know i want to have the drafter tell us what's there that we need to know then when it comes up i've not got someone getting up on the floor saying how come the finance committee isn't looking at this all right great idea thank you okay so faith if you can see if ellen can join us and win then my god we got a whole hour all right has the committee gotten this amendment to section eight do you have copies of that which bill tender comics is contacted abby and dug to see if they can join us now and ellen and dan dickerson to also see if they can join us now and i'll let you know when i hear from people okay thank you faith this is to settle the issue with the 954 in the safe harbor tax i really don't want to get up and speak against the committee i take unwritten rules very seriously i also take being truthful with the public very seriously and i can't put out a table i know isn't reflecting the truth this will i believe kick the decision close go away down the road what under doug farnham has just joined us if doug has joined us i know you can't send the email it's not an email i don't want to send it i want it to go away all right now it's not going to go away all right my computer is doing the undercomings ellen tchaikovsky has just joined us i don't know if you want to stay on nine i want i want to do this first ellen will be with you shortly all right now i'm back where i am okay this safe harbor and at is abby with us she is not because i am just all right what this says is before next january they'll be this report given to us by the tax department doing a little further research into this tax bill i will agree to this but my intent is to have it taken up before we adjourn cna da because the tax department has to get out their tax forms and i want to make sure they have time to do that when is that madam chair senator comings abby shepard is just okay abby can you we're looking at the amendment that you drafted bill number it's 954 thank you this is the amendment to section eight the safe harbor bill abby can you tell us walk us through this could we see it maybe sure i can share the content it's not on the website is it it is not i haven't been asked to post it post it i'll post it now this lady is tax bill right i'm sure yes thank you they can sense your weakness abby they know as well as cats sorry not to worry my grandkids will be in masks and all from day camp waiting for pickup while we close day camp at 430 when parents get out of work at five i don't know but we do so let's go okay so this i just to confirm this is the amendment that i emailed you earlier today madam chair okay great you're doing that many amendments too i will start uh sharing my screen in just a moment okay while she's doing that um see see yeah knowing your weakness i had a dog who was the smartest most alpha dog i've ever seen i got on the phone one day and i had a bag of fiber fill you stuff things with he looked me in the eye went over grab the bag of fiber fill which was about two feet high and proceeded to empty it piece by piece all over the floor all the time watching me and he knew i couldn't get this what kind of dog was it it looked like a many german shepherd it was a nazi understood barter you take the tv thing the tv remote and wave it in front of you to see if you'd pay attention can the committee see my screen and hear me yes yes great and i apologize for your voices in the background it's fine so this uh if you'd like i can walk you through it's it's fairly brief yep um so this is a an amendment um under senator comings name that would strike out the um action that was taken yesterday which deleted section eight the use tax safe harbor provision it adds in instead of report um required honor before january 15th of next year by the department of taxes with the assistance of jfo um a report about the remittance of the vermont use tax that is reported on individual income tax returns um the report and i apologize i do have an edited version which i can share it's okay the situation this was drafted really quickly so this report would require the department to analyze the fiscal impact on the remittance of the use tax um on personal income tax returns the impact that was caused by the passage of south dakota b wafer the us supreme court decision um which triggered the vermont um the conforming or corresponding vermont remote seller collection requirements and then it has the site to the section that imposes those that's the proceeding um proceeding 12 month period and won the hundred thousand dollars of transaction for that number of transactions it also requires an analysis um related to the marketplace facilitator collection requirements that went into effect last year um so it looks it requires um analysis of both of those and as well recommending options either for reducing the amount of the calculation or for other amendments um such as what were proposed this year adding in the use tax table to statute or uh reducing the amount which is currently 0.1 uh percent percent of agi so i do actually have an updated version that i can share it's just some slight editing tweaks to make that a little bit clearer okay i think though the um this is being looked at i think as a compromise i would like i will take down my amendment which deletes section the second amendment our second amendment to the bill which deletes section eight and i will submit this as an alternative but i would like the committee to sign on to it so that this is in fact a bill the committee has sure now agreed to and then you can uh you know at least like a good portion of the committee on there with me so um i will lead all right thumbs up with senator brock and senator mcdonald anybody else senator ballant senator campion okay anyone else piercen okay all right so rockin going once going okay painful but he's got his thumb up all right so i can say i'm i'm going to submit this on the behalf of the committee and quicker calls it was approved seven zero okay well we can't do a committee bill but yeah all right and it'll be a substitute for the calendar amendment yeah and i am going to get on my email abby can you email that the edited to secretary bloomer and i will right now um let john know and peter sterling what we're doing okay all right then we and i guess ellen is here and they're coming stan dickerson is here who also wrote in is here this is 954 right okay thank you committee i think we can move forward doug you're here does this work for you now that we voted yes madam chair um so doug farman tax department the one thing you said before the vote was about timing and i want to make sure you have time to get tax forms done so we speak we try to have solid drafts in november for the vendors i think the biggest kink here is making sure for the vendors that produce the tax software have enough time to make any adjustments um changing you know the instructions the percentage on our on our on our on our own forms isn't that bad but it's it's the computer programming that they have to do in the preparation software that is the timing challenge um so the delivery date of january 15th when we usually have our forms um you know in a normal year uh where we start taking returns around january 20th um yeah no by my intent is we're going to get this out when we come back in august so that you know august september in that time frame so that if any changes are necessary you have time to make them okay right so madam chair then the the the date and the amendment is january 15th but the expectation from the committee would be delivery of the report in august i think so be ready to yeah the best you can do when i'm not going to wait till january because i know those tax forms are out well before that but i think this just gives more time to get a little more succinct analysis and uh look at you know we tended to look at a million dollar hit but didn't look at the million dollar gain on the other side and just just a little more i think organized in united analysis for us all right right uh i certainly the department doesn't have a problem with that we can um try to have as much preliminary analysis ready in august as we can i was looking at some of our statistics in uh sorry do i have time to talk for a little bit or are you needing to switch to broadband no we did broadband we've got to get to abinac fishing rights okay and we have about a half hour to do that um so but i've got to get this out okay secretary bloomer very very briefly then um historically over one percent about 91 of our use tax has come in by the month of august so we should have enough of the 2000 tax year 2019 returns to turn on some updated information in august in addition to these other analysis that i could even request against manager okay good thank you okay then are you with us yep no yes yes okay there you are i'm looking at the names okay you want to start and maybe we'll get this committee a little break um elin madam chair makes ask elin a quick question elin did you send me a copy of that bill for the senate secretary so i didn't send you one because you the senator resources committee didn't make any changes you're just concurring with the house okay so i can just let the senate secretary know that thanks okay um yeah i'm not i'm not actually sure from a procedure standpoint if you need anything because you guys didn't make any changes to it um so the uh h7 16 is very short it is an act relating to avanaki hunting and fishing licenses it's on your screen and uh it adds in the uh title 10 license section uh we add a section that allows certified citizens of a native american indian tribe that has been recognized by the state pursuant to one vsa chapter 23 may receive a free permanent fishing license or if the person qualifies for a hunting license a free permanent combination hunting and fishing license upon the submission of a current and valid tribal identification card so members of the state recognize tribes that have their valid tribal ID cards can apply for a free combination hunting and fishing license they have to meet the qualifications for a hunting license which includes passing a hunter safety course so we're not we're not changing anything they still have to follow the existing hunting laws and regulations uh the there's also a report so we're asking the commissioner of fishing wildlife to report back after three years how many of these licenses were issued and then it takes effect on january 1 2021 it was there a fiscal note with this yes okay do you know what that was um yes dan drafted it i don't know if he was here ah there's dan hi dan okay dan hello yes um oh i um faith can you put up the fiscal note dan i've made you co-host i'm trying to do a few things can you do that okay okay uh yeah okay sorry um i've got me why is it not i want to do that sorry i'm for some reason this is not working for me yet dan i'll do it okay thanks faith sorry i i can get it to work um so the fiscal there there are two main revenue streams that would be impacted um by passage of the bill uh one being uh the stream that that funds the operations of um the fishing wildlife department and that comes primarily from the sales of the annual and the five-year hunting and fishing licenses um and so i you know i basically did an analysis um from the number of members that are in one of the four recognized tribes and then based on you know the total number of remoners that typically buy these licenses um and apply that to those uh that smaller cohort and i estimated that it would result in a loss of roughly 30 to 35 000 annually starting in FY21 and then the second stream is is the sale of lifetime licenses um which i did estimate that there would be a few of those that you know would have happened normally but now because individuals are eligible for the the permanent license through this bill they wouldn't buy those licenses um that money goes to a trust fund that um i think collects interest and the fishing wildlife department can use it for i think land purchases or for big purchases you know i'm not positive of of everything i think yeah i think it's potentially land and other things um and so that would be about five to 10 000 annually um so in total it's you know 35 to 45 000 of lost revenue um from those two sources the question question yes senator mcdonnell we've heard a lot of talk about how fishing licenses are up with folks not um you know sequestered what's the what's the just the ballpark for those numbers um i don't i don't know off the top of my head um how much they're up specifically i do know i mean i've i've heard the same thing um you know and i i put a note at the end of the fiscal notes sort of saying you know the short term trend has been that more people are buying fishing licenses which could you know give the department more capacity to sort of absorb this the cost of of this bill um but it really depends on you know how long the impacts of the pandemic are felt you know if um you know if something if uh if a shot is or some sort of uh medication um is developed you know before the end of the year then it could be shorter but if it is ongoing then wasn't asking for prognosis just curious how much they're up okay i yeah sorry i don't know you don't know the number but they're up okay senator pierce and my question is out of curiosity how does one prove they are a certified member of so um oh oh go ahead do you want to do do you want me to take this yes yes um so there are four tribes uh four state recognized tribes they all have slightly different procedures um but as a tribe member they're all eligible to receive a tribal identification card from the tribe so uh the tribes do issue these cards and they can be issued at any age thank you so the tribes certify who is one of them okay sander seroton can i take two minutes to tell a personal story here is that a yes yeah okay so going back 30 years my law firm represented homer st francis and the abinakis in a fishing rights claim where they arrested him for fishing and wanted to find him and we spent we represented them pro bono essentially over two or three year period and we actually won the case at the trial court level and it went to the promont supreme court and in one of the poorest decisions i've ever seen written it was overturned and i i lost a lot of faith in the judiciary with that decision because if that case had been upheld we had flown in all these experts from from colorado and stuff and it was a long long trial you had to show continuing presence in franklin county otherwise without interruption to be certified as a tribe they would have had a land rights claim to about a third of the state of vermont and that was never going to be allowed by the people who were in power uh i can get you those decisions but they were just remarkable and obviously i'm strongly going to support this bill uh because they shouldn't have had to pay for their licenses all along because i think we made a case that it was their land so that's all i want to say okay um so committee do we feel any need to take this bill in we say we reviewed it and all right so i will text the secretary and the pro tem's office and tell them we've looked at what is this number h 7 16 and could we just understand ellen do you know if i guess it's fish and wildlife do they think this they can just absorb this in their budget what was porter what was porter did not make an issue of that before the it was asked that question in in um natural resources and his answer was no he did not say no we need this money in our budget they supported the bill that works thank you 7 16 is that what we're looking at senator parent also asked us to step to find a way to raise some raising some money for the department without actually raising some money okay so this is h 7 16 okay think committee you're going to get 20 whole minutes off thank you we've done a lot today and they're coming do you plan to meet tomorrow i do not have anything on the agenda so i don't plan it however we all serve at the pleasure of the powers that be so check your emails because something might get sent this way ellen do you know something i don't i apologize i don't know what you did this afternoon but did you get each 926 the act 250 bill not that i know we did we get we got a bill referred today it's undercomings it came to us today it came to us today but it's my understanding that it's being dealt with i don't know so we may yeah stay tuned okay stay tuned no one has told me they've told me we're shut down so okay and we're not going to do committee dinner rock you all we've been doing committee lunch for six months okay that's just my final question but if we're not okay thank you okay well we are not at this yet we'll see each other right but the bill was referred because it does affect the revenues of the state and i would expect that some folks are going to be asking about why if it wasn't referred why not okay deal with it why not well this is 716 so i will write i will write an email asking um no i wasn't referring to the ad neck but i was referring to i i will i will query that the 250 bill was referred here yeah that's the bill we're talking about yeah it was we have it i think yeah but and the question is you know is the if the committee doesn't do anything about it you know is that you should should should the judge should the the floor be waiting for a return from the senate finance committee of that bill which we referred to them i mean i could be wrong but i thought that you know it might get to the floor you know in late august september i i don't know if there's a rush on it to be honest with you okay that's that's just me i i i don't know i hope we could meet around eight tonight that'd be great i'm looking forward to that by by the way the house approved the yield bill great oh good since it was their bill i've said senator comings would you like me to swap livestream okay yes we are done we are adjourned so